DAIN RUTTERKIN

Chapter 9

I awake in the shivering dawn to find Stroud sitting cross-legged beside me. I manage to sit up with her aid, and she hands me a flask.
    "Brandy," she says. "To warm your bones."
    I take it from her and sip. The liquid burns my throat but warms my stomach, and my chills subside instantly.
    "Are you hurt?" she says. "Your jaw." She touches it and I wince. "Sorry!"
    "It is not bad." My jaw does throb. "Bastard hits like a sledgehammer."
    Stroud has raw red claw marks on her throat where the monster gripped her, but otherwise appears well. I do not see any bite wounds on her throat, but I ask her anyway.
    "No, he did not."
    I am relieved, but all I can think to say is: "Good."
    Stroud suggests we leave immediately, desiring to be as far away from this awful place as possible before nightfall. But I insist on examining the tower first. We may find some clue as to the nature of our enemy.
    "And what if our enemy still lurks hereabouts?" Stroud says.
    I sniff the air. "No. He has gone. Besides which, he could have slain us in the night, had he chosen to. We are alive now because he wishes it."
    Stroud's brow furrows. She still doubts my nose, I think.
    "Can you sense what direction he traveled from here?" she asks.
    I sniff again, breathing in the crisp dawn. "There is a hint of him on the currents blowing from the Rift. Then nothing."
I lurch to my feet and stagger on unsteady legs across the courtyard to the tower keep. It is a gargantuan spiral of twisted coal-black stone, and windowless as far as I can tell. The twin portals permitting entry are massive slabs, oaken and ironbound, rising nearly twice my height. The door latches are wrapped with thick chains of iron laced with cold blue webwork. A massive padlock of the same blue-veined metal, weighing near thirty stone by its look, secures the chains firmly. Set into the padlock is a great keyhole whose key must be the little finger of a frost giant. The weight of chains and padlock together must be three hundred stone, enough to crush a man caught beneath them.
    "Legend says Riftreach was built by giants," Stroud says, coming up behind me.
    "And designed to keep something inside rather than us outside."
    I extend a hand to touch the strange blue metal of the lock. Searing cold, like frostbite, shoots through my fingers and hand and up my arm. I clutch and cradle my limb to my body, shivering.
"Are you all right?" Stroud massages my arm, attempting to warm it. "Let me see it."
I extend the injured hand to show her. The flesh is pallid, nearly blue, as though I had submerged my hand in ice water for an hour. The tips of my fingers, where I touched the padlock, are encrusted with ice crystals.
"Cold iron," Stroud says.

    "There!" I think I see a patch of dry ground ahead and lurch toward it. No sooner have I slithered from the surrounding bog onto the moist earth, like a water snake from the depths, than I am dry-retching again. Breakfast has long departed me, perhaps half a league back. I fear that supper too will only serve as fodder for the denizens of the marsh.
    Stroud follows me up onto the narrow stand of earth and weeds, her fine mail leggings foul to the knees with muck. But her breakfast remains where it belongs. She drops her saddlebags unceremoniously and sinks down beside me. We found the remains of her dapple not far from Riftreach. The wolves had stripped the carcass clean and departed for parts unknown. I lost their scent soon after we entered the fens. I think my heightened sense of smell is playing a part in my vomitous state.
    "Some more brandy?" Stroud asks.
    I nod and hand her the strip of torn shirt I have been using to cover my nose and mouth. It is stained brown with the liquor, but the scent of cherries and caramel has faded and the bog is once again seeping through.
    Stroud dabs the cloth with brandy and hands it back. I press it up against my nostrils and tie the ragged ends of the strip behind my head.
    "Better," I say.
    After a short rest, we descend back into the muck and forge on. The implacable marshland that cuts through the lands west of the Rift is known as the Red Fen. To the north is Tyrantium, the peaks of Snowthatch, and the icy realms beyond. To the south lie the Nithiri kingdoms of Varkoth and Sogoth, and beyond them the Cairns and the great woodland realm of Sylvanus. Stroud tells me we will soon pass through Sogoth itself via the ancient battlefield of Sogthiri Moor on our way southeast to the sea.
    We slog through the remainder of the morning until the sun is shining straight down upon us. The dawn mists have given way to bright golden daylight. It glints off the scaled reptilian bark of the dragonclaw trees and reflects brightly on the surface of the bog. Were the fen less noxious than it was, the environs might even seem pleasant.
    "The water looks shallower here," I say. Stroud shouts a warning, but before I can register it I take another step and sink like a stone.
    My eyes see nothing but brown water, mingled with moss and bark and tiny flitting fish. My feet have hit bottom, but I inhale only bog. I can hear Stroud shouting for me above, and looking up I catch a glimpse of sunlight and reach up. A hand catches mine and pulls. My head breaks the surface and gasps air.
    "Try to climb the bank!" The outcrop I fell from is right in front of me, forgotten in my panic. I clutch at the mud and rock with my free hand while Stroud grips my other arm in both her hands, and with surprising strength helps to pull me forth. I rise to my knees and immediately retch.
    "We must take care from here on," Stroud says. "Follow where I step. See the flowers with the pale blue petals there? Fen orchids. They grow almost everywhere the bog is shallow. If you do not see orchids, beware."
    I nod. In the aftermath of my dip into the moor, I am shivering with cold despite the warmth of the sun. But miraculously, my stomach has settled for the nonce.
    We spend the afternoon slogging through the maze of blue petal-lit paths and watery deadfalls without further incident, thanks to Stroud's skill at navigation. Surely this is not her first time wading these treacherous environs. As eventide comes on, the land begins to rise higher, and we reach dry ground again. I collapse in the moss and leaves, shivering with cold and retching once again from the bog, which seems to have attached itself to my skin. Stroud notes my noisome state and kneels beside me.
    "I suppose we shall make camp here," she says. We are in the shade of a stand of willows, which form a natural canopy. Stroud goes off and returns after a few moments with kindling. But the wood is suffused with wet and won't light.
"Take off your clothes; you will take ill if you sleep in them."
    I do as she says, too cold and sick to care much for modesty. She hangs them on a willow branch to dry, then removes her own mantle, which is still mostly dry, and wraps it about me. She sits down beside me, very close so that her body warms mine.
    "Brandy?" She produces the flask and hands it to me.
    I take a sip and nearly gag, but once the liquid is in my stomach the warmth spreads to my chest and out into my limbs. I take a longer drink, sighing as the brandy passes down my throat. Stroud takes the flask from me and drinks.
    "The rations are soaked through with wet and stink," she says. "This will ease our hunger until we can find something else to eat."
    We huddle on the hillock together with our dead fire. "We must be careful tonight. There are things that live in the bog, swimming about in the depths. They will sometimes emerge onto land during the night to hunt. They can smell those with warmer blood."
    I nod but my thoughts are elsewhere. Feeling Stroud's thigh up against mine and the heat of her body, I remember the night in Mudflats and wonder what the flesh of that thigh must feel like to touch. I realize I am stirring and shift my legs so she will not see. I have talked with, teased, even kissed a few of the prettier lasses in Haven. But none of them were anything like Stroud.
    I turn to look at her. Stroud is looking straight ahead down the slope of the hillock into the bog from which we emerged. The trace of a smile curls her pink lips, and her cheeks are slightly flushed.