Watcher of the Dead Read Free

Swamp
    â€œYOU’LL EXPLODE IF you eat
one more of those.â€

CHAPTER 10
    The Treasure Hall
    TAKE IT, RAINA. By rights this is yours
to do.
    Raina Blackhail recalled Orwin Shank’s
words, spoken last night in the privacy of the chief’s chamber,
as she entered the Great Hearth. Noon was the best time to find
Blackhail’s principal chamber, domain of its sworn warriors,
empty. Hailsmen were out riding patrol, practicing on the weapons
court, and hunting in the Northern woods. Raina had hoped that its
great curved benches would be empty, thereby saving her the trouble
of making her business public.
    She was out of luck. Gat Murdock and a
couple of old-timers were playing some dusty old game with pieces on
a board. A pair of sworn Scarpemen were building up the fire, and
Corbie Meese was oiling the chains on his war hammer. The old-timers,
who looked half bored to death to begin with, regarded Raina with
interest. Here was something to lively their game: the chief’s
wife, without cleaning crew or kitchen crew, entering the Great
Hearth with purpose. Women were not disallowed in the hearth, but
custom did not favor it. Raina girded herself, there was no other
word for it. She drew air into her chest, squared her shoulders and
sucked in her gut. Gods, this would be all over the clan by sundown.
What was Orwin thinking?
    â€œLady.â€

CHAPTER 11
    The Sull
    WE ARE BLACKHAIL, the first amongst
clans. We do not cower and we do not hide and we will have our
revenge.
    Raif’s lips moved in time with
the clan boast, but he could not tell if he spoke the words or
thought them. Differences like that were getting harder to separate.
Whole days had passed where he could not be certain if he was asleep
or awake.
    He was pretty sure he was awake now.
Mosquitoes were feeding. A couple of hours of sunlight and they would
hatch from pools in the snow and rise in a cloud to torment him. He
made an easy target. A sitting duck. Throwing his weight forward,
Raif forced the cage into motion. The mosquitoes took flight and he
had a minute of peace as the insects scrambled to match trajectories
with the cage.
    We do not cower, Raif thought with
satisfaction. Maybe he said it.
    A hunger cramp sliced through his gut
and he pulled up his legs and chest to wait it out. His body hardly
seemed to belong to him anymore. He could not keep track of all its
weaknesses. His back and shoulders were a landscape of pressure sores
raised by the ridges of the cage. At night he used the waterskin as a
pillow for his head but there was nothing to cushion the rest of him.
He was beginning to understand it didn’t matter. The worst
sores, the ones that were leaking and beginning to ulcerate, were
tended.
    And they took good care of his hands.
    Raif shivered. He did not want to think
about his body in their possession. Taking a shot of water, he
focused his gaze on the rising mass of the Boreal Sway. The sun had
come and gone and snow clouds were closing in from the north. The
first stirrings of wind moved the forest canopy and Raif watched as
the wave it created rolled toward him. His sole unobstructed view was
to the north. This was it. Wake in the morning and wonder if he’d
been darted and drugged overnight, piss and shit through the cage,
drink, sleep.
    Patrol.
    He had a place to go to now. The line
between days was dissolving, and although he could look at the record
of his days spent in the cage—eleven horizontal scratches on
the northeast corner post—he could no longer recall when he’d
added to it. Time moved differently in the other place. Shifts in
light, wind and gradient were what mattered. Raif licked his lips and
scanned the forest. The light was changing now, decreasing. Hearts
were on the move, hunting, evading, feeding.
    It was an easy thing to loose his
sights, to send his mind’s eye out of the cage and into another
living thing. A shock of heat, a switch in rhythm, a