A Cavern of Black Ice by J. V. Jones

filly round, so that her face was not visible to anyone in the
party, including her foster son.
    Raif stood at Mace's back. The
bristling anger he had felt at being called a boy was now mixed with
something else: a kind of slow-setting fear. Mace Blackhail was going
to get away with it. Raif could see it on the faces of the meet
party. Even Shor Gormalin, who never rushed to judgment on anything
and was as careful about all decisions he made as he was with his
blade around children, was nodding along with the rest. Didn't he
see? Didn't he realize?
    And then there was Drey. Raif glanced
over his shoulder, where Drey stood only a pace behind him, a handful
of Raif's oilskin twisting in his fist. If Raif meant to move forward
to speak, Drey meant to pull him back.
    "Dagro's body," Raif hissed
for Drey's ears alone. "It wasn't—
    "What's that you say, boy?"
Mace Blackhail spun the roan around. Brass bow and hammer hooks
jangled like bells. "Speak up. We are all clan here. What you
say to one you must say to all."
    Anger made Raif slam his elbow into
Drey's fist to free himself from his brother's hold. Blood pumped
into his temples as he spoke. "I said that Dagro Blackhail
didn't fall by the posts. We found him by the rack. He was butchering
the black bear carcass when he was taken."
    Mace Blackhail's eyes darkened. His
lips curled, and for half an instant Raif thought he was about to
smile. Then just as quickly he wheeled back to face the meet party,
stopping all hushed mutterings dead. "I moved the body from the
posts to the drying rack. I didn't want to leave my father outside
the tent circle, exposed. It may have been foolish, but I wanted to
him close to the fire."
    "But the bear's blood—"
    Drey grabbed Raif's wrist with such
force that bones cracked. "Enough, Raif. You're hounding the
wrong person. It's the Dog Lord and his clan that we should be
attacking. We both saw the grooved hoofprints made by the Bluddsmen,
you can't deny that. What else
didn't
we see? In our way we
acted just like Mace—doing things foolishly without thinking.
We weren't there, remember. We weren't there. While we crept away in
the dark to shoot ice hares, Mace was standing dogwatch over the
camp. We can't blame him for slipping bounds to see off a bear.
Either one of us would have done the same."
    Releasing his hold on Raif's wrist,
Drey turned and faced his brother full on. Although his expression
was tense, there was an unmistakable appeal in his eyes. "Mace
did the right thing coming back, Raif. He acted like clan, doing what
any experienced clansman would have done. We acted like"—Drey
hesitated, searching for the right words—"two brothers who
had just lost their da."
    Raif looked down, away from his
brother's gaze and the sharp looks of the meet party. Drey had just
won himself a lot of respect in the eyes of the clan; Raif saw it in
their eyes as they listened to him speak. Drey was the voice of
reason, humbling himself, speaking with the same weighted reluctance
that his father had before him. Raif swallowed, his throat suddenly
sore. For a moment it had been just like listening to Tem.
    Glancing up, Raif saw Mace Blackhail
watching him. His face was fixed in lines of concern, in keeping with
the new mood Drey had set, in keeping also with rest of the meet
party, who waited quietly, gravely, to see what Drey Sevrance's
troublesome younger brother would do. Raif's gaze descended from Mace
Blackhail's face to his gloved hands, which flicked at the roan's
mane with all the satisfaction of a wolf switching its tail. Drey had
done his work for him.
    Mace Blackhail's gaze met Raif s, and
in that instant Raif knew he was dealing with something worse than a
craven. Mace Blackhail had ridden to the badlands on a stocky,
fat-necked cob, one of twenty dozen other yearmen, a fosterling from
another, lesser clan. Now he sat on his foster father's blue smoke
roan, wearing a wolf cloak that reflected only rich shades of