A Fortress of Grey Ice (Book 2) Read Online Free

of Scurvy’s grip. He didn’t like Hadda, but she had sung, the song that brought the darkness. And without darkness they’d still be in chains.
    Scurvy cursed with disgust. He went to turn away, but something stopped him. Reaching into his torn and ragged tunic, he muttered, “Let no man say Scurvy Pine doesn’t pay his debts. Here. Take this.” He held out a small round object. “Show it in any thieves’ den north of the mountains and you’ll find protection in my name.”
    Crope’s big fingers closed around a metal band: a ring, light and very fine. Not a man’s ring, not even a woman’s, something made for a child. He looked up to find Scurvy watching him.
    “Take care of yourself, giant man. I’ll not forget who broke my chains.” With that Scurvy was gone, slipping through the darkness and the snarl of panicking men, a shadow amongst the shadows, moving swiftly toward the light.
    Crope carefully tucked the ring into the seam of his boot, and then went looking for Hadda the Crone.
    It was cold and gloomy in the diamond well, and not one human was moving. The rock was sticky underfoot and the smell of blood rose from it. Crope went unchallenged as he walked amongst the bodies. It was hard to tell the hags apart. All their hair had been shaved so they’d have one less place to conceal stones. He wouldn’t have recognized Hadda if it hadn’t been for the diamond in her tooth. Bitterbean said the pipe lord himself had given it to her the day she found a stone as big as a wren.
    Hadda was barely breathing, but he picked her up all the same. There were wounds across her legs and belly, lash marks that ran straight and deep. She was so light it was like carrying twigs for the fire, and he was overcome with a sense of shame. Everyone who helped him ended up hurt. You’re good for nothing, you misshapen monster. Should have been drowned at birth.
    Crope shook the bad voice away. Something dark and full of shadow was moving at the corner of his vision, and he knew it was time to leave. He heard the blistering crackle of charged air, the swift snick of something with an edge severing limbs. And screams: screams of diggers he knew. It was hard to hear them, and harder still to turn his back. But he had Hadda, and his chains were gone, and it was time to find the man who owned his soul.
    Sixteen years without his lord was too long.
    Bearing the dying woman up through the pipe, Crope began to plan his search.
     
    The ice on the lake creaked and rumbled as it cooled, its surface growing colder and drier as the quarter-moon passed overhead. There was no wind, yet the ancient hemlocks surrounding the lake moved, their limbs rising and falling in air that was perfectly still. Meeda Longwalker had made camp on a plate of shore-fast ice, three feet thick and hard as iron. It was the coldest night she could remember, so cold the shale oil in her lamp had frozen to thick yellow grease and she had been forced to burn a candle for light. Smoke rising from the candle’s flame cooled so quickly it floated back down to the ice, and Meeda had to keep pushing it away with her gloved and mitted hands so it wouldn’t cumulate and kill the light.
    She should have returned to the Heart. It wasn’t a night to be out alone on the ice, yet she had something in her that had always rebelled against good sense. She was a Heartborn Daughter of the Sull, mother to He Who Leads, and it seemed to her that any wisdom she had a claim to had come on nights such as this.
    Besides, she had her dogs; they would warn her of any danger. Warn, but not protect. Meeda Longwalker was no fool. She wasn’t like some trappers who drank themselves stupid on green elk milk turned sour and then passed out around their dark-fires, sure in the knowledge that their dogs would save them if . . .
    If what? Meeda pulled her lynx cloak closer, wishing for a moment she had bare hands so she could feel the sweet softness of the fur beneath her fingers. Almost it was