“We go the long way,” Raif reminded Addie Gunn.

The small fair-haired cragsman frowned, said nothing, thought about it some more and spoke. “Most people given the choice between traveling through the clanholds or the Sull Racklands would pick the clanholds.”

“I’m not most people.”

“They’re after you.”

Raif considered this, decided it didn’t matter if Addie meant Sull or clan. “I know.”

Not long after that the sleet started. The clouds had been dropping all day and the temperature had hovered above freezing. An unsettled wind sent the sleet spiraling around rocks and brushcone pines. No soil softened the headland, and crevasses between boulders were the only places for trees to seed. The pines were gnarled and dry. Their needles had the color and texture of rusted nails.

The air smelled of gas. Earth had moved in the night, and Raif found it easy to believe that matter trapped beneath the surface was leaking out. He and Addie had been woken in their tentless camp at midnight. A low rumble had been followed by a series of concussions as unstable boulders crashed to lower ground and dead and diseased trees fell. The quiet that followed had lasted until dawn. Neither wolves nor owls wanted to be first to let their presence be known in the darkness.

Addie had brewed tea, and he and Raif watched the moon set and stars turn. There didn’t seem any point in pretending to sleep. When dawn came it was a relief to hear the birds. Ptarmigan, ravens, woodpeckers and longspurs called from cover as the sun rose. The world looked the same, but didn’t feel it. Addie and Raif were on the trail within the hour.

It was midafternoon now and Raif was beginning to flag. The wound in his chest was pulling tight and a looseness in his knees forced him to concentrate on every step. Addie too was weary. Fighting the wind and sleet on three hours sleep was draining and his shoulders and head were low. One hand cinched his cloak at the throat while the other white-knuckled his walking staff. The fact that he had brought up the subject of heading south into the easier terrain of the clanholds was telling. It was the closest Addie Gunn came to complaint.

Raif said to him, “We should start looking for a place to camp.”

Addie poked his stick into a pile of scree, testing for firmness. “Might as well stop here and sleep on the boulders. Ain’t getting any cozier.”

“You know this land?”

“Know. What’s to know? I’ve eyes. I can see.”

Raif scrambled up a shoulder of granite and looked north and east. Addie was right. There was nothing to see but more of the same landscape of stunted trees and granite bluffs. They were north of Bludd and ten days east of the Maimed Men. Since they’d left the lamb brothers’ camp three days back the going had been slow. Bad weather had hampered the pace. Raif’s desire not to set foot in the Bluddhold hadn’t helped either. The borderland was a breaking ground of rocks.

“At least the bird won’t be out.”

Addie’s statement took Raif a moment to understand. Easing himself down from the ledge, he said, “When was the last time you saw it?”

Addie hadn’t shaved in four days, and sleet caught in his bristles. A cap he’d stitched together from strips of black lambskin rested too low above his eyes. Wait and see, he’d told Raif a few days back. A week of rain and it’ll shrink up just right.

Wagging his chin, Addie said, “Bird was out this morning afore the wind kicked up.”

He was speaking about the hawk they’d seen every day since leaving the Lake of Red Ice. The bird was not wild. It had silver jesses tied to its legs. Neither he nor Addie had spoken the name of who they believed had fastened them there. Raif did not want to think about the hour he’d spent in Yiselle No Knife’s tent. She was Sull and her people believed that he, Mor Drakka, would end their existence. The hawk belonged to her.

Raif met Addie’s gaze and Raif could see the question in the cragsman’s eyes. We’re in danger here: how could stepping into the clanholds be worse?

“Find us some cover,” Raif said.

Addie nodded slowly, thinking. “An hour back we passed that creekbed running north. Be undercuts there if we’re willing to turn east.”

“Let’s do it.”

Both men were silent as they made their way deeper into the Racklands. Addie Gunn was a smart man, Raif reckoned. Smart and good. The hawk wouldn’t fly in the wind and sleet. Now was as good a time as any to hide from it. Once the weather cleared, the bird’s owner would send it west. She would not imagine that Raif and Addie had backtracked east. If they spent the night under cover and raised no smoke they might be able to evade further surveillance. It meant a longer journey and more time spent in Sull territory, but Raif found nothing within him that was eager to return to the Maimed Men. As long as the journey lasted he had no responsibilities to anyone save Addie and himself. Later he would become King of the Rift, but for now he had a kind of freedom. And Addie guessed he wasn’t in any hurry to give it up.

The wind streamlined as they made their way northeast. It blew from the south, pressing their cloaks against the small of their backs and carrying the scent of copper and red pines. As they climbed higher the great dark mass of the Boreal Sway became visible in the far east.

“Largest forest in the Known Lands,” Addie said softly as they stopped for a moment to comprehend it. “A man could wander for a lifetime and never see the sun.”

Raif tracked the black mass until it disappeared into mist… and warned himself not to think about Ash. She was gone. The Sull had claimed her. It did not matter to him if she was somewhere down there. Swigging water from his flask, he turned away.

Behind the clouds, the sun descended. As he and Addie worked their way down into a draw the wind died and temperature dropped. By the time they reached the creek, sleet had turned to snow. Dogwood canes and winter-killed thistles choked the banks. A trickle of water darkened the rocks. Something dead—a fox or a fisher—lay eviscerated and partly eaten midstream.

“Wolf-kill,” Addie said, turning the carcass’s head with his stick. “It’ll be as much about territory as meat.”

Raif nodded, and headed upstream. There didn’t seem any place to rest his thoughts. Ash, the Maimed Men, the lamb brothers, even the wolf kill: everything seemed like a warning.

Pushing forward, he opened up a space between him and Addie Gunn. Last night’s tremor had felled shallow-rooted pines along the bank and Raif clambered over them. The sword cross-harnessed against his back kept striking his left shoulder and right hip. Its weight didn’t bother him, but its length was becoming a problem. Sull warriors had special harnesses for their weapons, ones that mounted swords higher on the shoulder so their crosshilts were parallel to the shoulder blade. Raif guessed he would need a similar rig. Clan blades were rarely over four and a half feet in length and most were carried at the waist.

That was another thing: He’d have to learn how to use it. The sword was a full two-hander. Hailsmen armed themselves with hatchets and one-handed blades. Wielding Loss would require skills rarely practiced by clan. Grinding and refitting it would also take skills unknown at Blackhail. Someone would have to take a chisel to the rusticles that had grown from the crosshilts and grind the jagged metal left behind. Raif couldn’t imagine the repairs would make for a pretty sight. A grinding that deep would scar the blade. Still, there was something in him that wanted to see what lay beneath the canker. This sword that had belonged to a friend of his, Raven Lord, the man without a name.

Spying the black shadow of an undercut, Raif slowed to investigate. Water had flowed with force here and a broad seam of sandstone had been carved into a hollow. Crouching, he edged his way into the opening. The cave was shallow and smelled of muskrat. Iridescent bird feathers were half-buried in the gravel floor. An abandoned nest still contained pieces of eggshell and puffs of down. Except for a small mosquito pool at the rear, the cave was dry. Deciding there was enough space for him and Addie to spend the night, Raif backed out.

While he waited for the cragsman, he dragged one of the fallen pines downstream and jammed it against the cave entrance.

“Won’t stop the wolves,” Addie warned as he approached.

With no fire to build, camp preparations were sparse. Unable to forgo the habit of tea, Addie filled his pot with cold water, crushed some herbs into it and prepared for a long wait. Raif untied his bedroll and laid it parallel to the cave entrance, leaving the low-ceilinged rear to Addie. The cragsman argued the point, but Raif shook his head. If anything came for them in the night, it would have to deal with Raif Sevrance first.

Not all the people he cared about were far away.

Addie grumbled. Frowning at the cold-brewed tea, he settled himself on the fallen pine and said, “My father was a Fontsman at Wellhouse, companion to the chief. Back in the days when he hoped his son would would become a warrior like himself he told me something I never forgot.” Pausing, he patted down his waistcoat, locating his stash of smoked meat. After brushing off a piece of lint from a stick of jerky he took a bite and began to chew.

Raif waited. He knew that jerky. This was going to take a while.

It was getting dark and Addie was soon nothing more than a profile against the northern sky. He swallowed with force and then spoke. “My da told me that information protects a man better than any sword. It gives him an extra edge. And right now, as I see it, I’m not sufficiently armed. On a night like this, in wolf country, in land claimed by the Sull and within kissing distance of the Want, a man needs all the protection he can get. I need something to fight with. So start talking. Why are we keeping clear of the clanholds?”

Raif hunkered by the shore. He’d been expecting this. Addie knew why the Sull feared him—some of it—but little else. It was hardly surprising he was growing impatient. Unable to think of a good way to start, Raif said, “I’m wanted by Bludd.”

Addie’s profile registered no surprise.

“You’ve heard of the massacre on the Bluddroad?”

“Aye.”

“The Dog Lord’s grandchildren and the wives of his sons were slaughtered in cold blood by Hailsmen. I was there.” Raif waited for a reaction, but Addie held himself still. “Seven days later I defended Blackhail’s actions at Duff’s stovehouse. Four Bluddsmen died.”

There was no need to add, By my hand. Addie understood.

The trickle of water in the creek was the only noise in the darkness. Seconds passed. Addie said, “So you declared your part in the slaughter?”

“I’m the only the Hailsman Bludd knows for a certainty was there.”

“Sweet gods.” Addie sucked in breath. “I wouldn’t want the Dog Lord and all seven of his sons after me.”

Raif waited a beat. “I am condemned in Blackhail too.”

“Stillborn said you killed a sworn clansman at Black Hole.”

Suddenly Raif did not trust himself to speak. He moved a hand.

Addie was clan. It wouldn’t be difficult for him to imagine the horror of killing one of his own. The cragsman’s silence was knowing. He left it awhile and then changed the subject.

“What about the sword?”

Raif had not imagined he would ever be grateful to talk about Loss. “You saw me kill the… thing on the ledgerock the night Traggis Mole died?”

“Aye.”

“It took two swords to do it. The first one bent. The second went in only because it used the entry wound made by the first. There’s a limit to what normal weapons can kill, Addie. The creature was on the edge of that limit. And it’s not the worst. The worst’s to come.”

A fisher screeched a warning in the east. Wolf.

“The sword will make a difference?”

Raif shrugged. “It did thousands of years ago, the night before the lake was flooded. The man wielding it changed the course of the battle.”

“Will the Sull try and take it?”

Unable to contemplate the answer and sit still, Raif stood. “No,” he said quietly. “They will try and take me before I learn how to use it.”

“They track you?”

“I believe so.”

There had not been powdered guidestone at Addie’s waist in ten years, yet he touched the place where it had once hung from his belt. “Days darker than night lie ahead.”

The old words, spoken by storytellers around the hearth and clan chiefs in time of war, had weight to them. They didn’t blow away, and it wasn’t easy to speak into the silence as they sank. Addie made the effort. Upturning the cooking pot he said, “No fire, cold tea. I’m off to sleep. As Giddie Wellhouse used to say, may our enemies appear in nightmare, not flesh.”

Raif hiked upstream as Addie kicked together a mattress of pine needles. Giddie Wellhouse had borrowed those words from the Sull; Raif had heard Ark Veinsplitter say them to Ash. Addie had changed your to our.

The stars would not come out tonight, Raif decided. Clouds smothered the north. The world felt unsettled. It had moved once, it could move again. Out of habit, he tracked heartbeats in the darkness. The wolf trotted east, deep into Sull territory. A pair of ground owls with eggs in the nest waited for it to be gone before hunting. To the west an injured stag nosed milkweed from between rocks. Its heart was beating too quickly: it feared wolves and rivals were drawing close.

Raif knew how it felt. Briefly, he considered stringing his bow and stalking it. He didn’t need meat though, and he was wary of the impulse to heart-kill. Was it stronger now? Had he always felt that spike of anticipation in his gut?

He headed back, tired but sure he would not sleep. The camp was dark and he edged his way around the fallen pine and into the undercut. Once he’d placed Traggis Mole’s longknife and the Sull bow within arm’s reach, Raif closed his eyes and tried to stop his thoughts. The pain in his chest felt like heartache, and it was difficult not to think of Effie and Drey and Ash. He must have dreamed, for he felt Ash put her lips to his ear and whisper the words she’d said to him before she’d left to join the Sull.

Guard yourself.

In an instant he was awake. The darkness spun as he oriented himself within it. Usually he had a sense of how much time had passed while he slept, but that instinct failed him in the moonless, starless night. His raven lore was pressed against his throat; it felt as if it were taking a bite. Thumbing its cord, he pulled it loose. With his other hand he reached for the Sull bow. The arrows were still suspended across his chest in their suede case; they rose as he did.

In the quiet of absolute blackness every noise was amplified. As he scooped up Traggis Mole’s longknife, the crunch of his fingertips pushing sand sounded like footsteps. Addie did not wake. Raif left him there and ducked out of the cave.

Something moved to the south. Raif perceived it as a ripple in the darkness. The air it displaced touched his cheek. It smelled like smoking ice. Raif turned his head before inhaling. He did not want to breathe it in. What had been made in this world, had fed and grown and felt sunlight upon its back, had been unmade by the Endlords. Flesh and blood had been replaced with something other. The Sull called it maer dan—shadowflesh—but Raif did not think the word sufficient. It was as if the blackness between stars had been condensed and forced into human and inhuman remains. It had weight and density and purpose. And just like living flesh it required a pumping heart to sustain it.

Raif tracked the heart as it swung across the creek downstream. Experience warned him not to let it settle too long in his sights. It would suck him in. His own heart was racing, pushing blood at pressure through the arteries close to his skin. His fingers jumped against the belly of the bow.

The night’s frost had killed the creek. Raif stepped into the dry bed, brought an arrow to the plate, and waited. Anything that came at him would have to clear the rocky banks. Seconds passed. All was still. Raif’s eyes grew accustomed to the gloom. He had lost track of the unmade being, and resisted the temptation to focus on its last position. From the brief glimpse he’d had, its form was subhuman. No telling how fast it could move

Wind trilled the pines. Raif smelled something, and before he could put a name to it the earth moved. A wave of sound rolled along the creek. The ground shuddered into motion. Rock buckled and popped. A tree cracked. Stones bounced down the bank. Raif braced himself. Something hit him in the back and he swung around. Nothing. Probably a stone. The earth jerked wildly, throwing his weight forward. Sheets of scree rolled into the creek. Raif could not track all the movement.

By the time he sensed the heart the creature was nearly upon him. Its black form poured down the bank. Big and massively broad, it was missing some essential proportion that was common to all humans. Voided steel purred in its grip.

Possible actions flashed across Raif’s sights. It was too late to draw and aim the bow. Turn and run to get some distance and he risked being impaled. Traggis Mole’s longknife was only two feet long from pommel to tip, but it was sharp and it would have to do.

Springing to his left he flung the Sull bow in the opposite direction. The creature’s head whipped around as the bow skidded to a halt on the far side of the creek, providing a fraction of a moment for Raif to use. Feinting backward he slid the arrowcase from around his shoulder and launched it straight at the thing’s chest. As the creature raised its free hand to its rib cage, Raif sprang forward. Moving inside the edge of voided steel, he stabbed the creature’s hand, ramming the blade toward the heart. Thick iron armor chewed up the knife and Raif had to use the heel of his left hand to punch in the point.

Shrieking, the creature swung its sword. Raif yanked out the knife and leapt sideways. The point had touched the heart but hadn’t homed and the black insubstance of unmade flesh smoked through the hole. The creature rippled, re-formed, and struck with inhuman speed. Raif had time only to raise the crudest block—a diagonal across his chest—and the creature’s downstroke drove right through it. As the voided steel slid downblade it sheared the edge from the longknife. Curls of live steel were sucked into the void.

Raif danced back, ducked. Voided steel ripped down his side, slicing the Orrl cloak and his deerhide pants. If skin opened he didn’t feel it.

He didn’t even know if the earth had stopped shaking.

The thing was fast and it was watching his eyes. When Raif moved to the left it moved right along with him, cracking its sword into air barely cleared by Raif’s leg.

If you are killed by voided steel you are taken. Unmade. If you die later from your wounds you are also unmade. Angus Lok’s words kept running through Raif’s head. They didn’t help. With sword and arm length combined the creature’s reach was nearly twice his own. That wasn’t what worried him the most, though. It was the ways in which the creature was different from other Unmade that chilled him: calculating, intelligent, prepared to wait. The others struck with no thought for self-preservation. This thing intended to survive.

Even injured, it was ferociously fast. It forced Raif back along the creek. Stones slick with ice provided no traction and Raif had to dig in with his heels. Traggis Mole’s longknife took a beating as he blocked blows; the only thing it would be good for later was staking a tent. He snatched glimpses of the creature’s heart, but couldn’t move quickly enough to act on them. That was the thing about heart-killing at distance with a longbow—you had the luxury of time.

“Argh.”

Raif sucked in breath as voided steel opened his knife arm from elbow to wrist. Hot blood welled to the surface.

The creature hissed. It lowered its strange, streamlined head and launched itself straight at the weak spot. Raif circled the longknife counterclockwise, protecting his arm as he edged backward. Blows forced him down onto the bank. Rolling downstream, he tried to move clear of the creature’s range. Stones crunched against his back. Voided steel slid into his shoulder muscle. Pain whitened his vision. He lost a second. The creature rippled above him, an armored shadow with holes for eyes. Raif saw the absence that was voided steel arc toward his heart.

In that instant he knew what his victims felt: the loosening of gut as panic gave way to a single word.

No.

His heart contracted. He saw Da.

Hailsmen do not close our eyes when we die.

Raif opened his eyes, saw something his mind could not immediately translate. Two figures stood where there had been one. The shadow had a shadow… and they were connected by something. A bright silver ribbon spooled from the hand of the second shadow and seemed to float through the chest of the Unmade. The ribbon glowed with moonlight—yet where was the moon?

Raif blinked. He felt pleasantly tired. It was good to be lying down.

Suddenly the second shadow pulled back the ribbon and the Unmade stumbled. Its high-pitched scream made Raif’s neck hair stand on end. Crumpling to its knees it seemed to shrink. It rocked for a long moment and then collapsed. The voided steel made a queer buzzing sound as it hit the creekbed and Raif watched as it began to sink through the loosely piled stones. The sharp, grassy odor of burning rock made him retch.

“Take my hand. You must stand.”

The remaining shadow spoke and Raif obeyed, clasping the hand that was thrust at his face.

All kinds of pain had to be endured as he was yanked to his feet. Hold steady, he reminded himself as the shadow withdrew support. Soaked in his own blood, Raif felt shivery and sick. Wanting to put some distance between himself and the voided steel, he took a few steps. These took him to the opposite bank where he was faced with the task of climbing out of the creek. It was too much and he picked a rock and sat on it.

“Drink.”

Again something was thrust in his face. This time he realized that the words that accompanied the gesture were not Common. He had translated them. They were Sull.

Fear woke his brain. A Sull warrior stood above him, holding out a flask wrapped in snakeskin. Raif recognized him as Ilya Spinebreaker, one of Yiselle No Knife’s men. All became clear. No Knife had tracked them to the creek and sent out a warrior to slay the Unmade that Raif Sevrance, Mor Drakka, could not slay himself. The silver ribbon was Spinebreaker’s six-foot longsword.

Spinebreaker acknowledged the realization on Raif’s face with a cold bow of his head. “Drink,” he repeated.

Raif pushed away the flask. Blood sheeted down his arm. “Where is Addie?”

“He is ours.”

The words, spoken in Common, chilled Raif. He stood and immediately his knees buckled. Rings of green light floated across his vision as he slumped back down on the rock.

Spinebreaker’s nostrils flared in contempt. He was uncloaked and armored in iridescent hornmail that reflected the colors of deep water at night. His sword and knife holsters were made from leather that had been silvered and then burnished so they glinted like iron bars. A series of opal clasps cinched his waist-long braid and pulled back the hair from his face. Small tattoos of the moon in all its phases ringed his hairline.

“Take me to Addie,” Raif said. His voice seemed to come from a distance. Weak echoes repeated in his head. Take me. Take. Take.

“You are being unmade, Clansman. I would make no demands of this Sull if I were you.”

Smoke slithered across Raif’s forearm as Spinebreaker sheathed his sword and headed upstream. Raif tried to brush away the smoke, but his fingers passed right through it and it would not disperse. It joined with a second curl and pooled above the open wound. Raif imagined it tapping a weakened vein and being sucked toward his heart.

“Help me,” he cried.

The Sull warrior was already too far away to hear him and the only answer came from the echoes in his head.

Take. Take.

Taken.