A Sword From Red Ice (19 page)

Tallal paused, waited for Raif to meet his gaze.
"To search is to be sustained by hope. Every morning we may wake
and say, Perhaps today I will find what I seek. A sense of purpose is
like a meal of lamb and rice; it can fill an empty man."

Raif breathed in deeply, letting the cold air
steep inside his chest. He wondered at what point Tallal had ceased
talking about the search for stormglass and started talking about the
two of them instead. Glancing down at his hands, Raif saw the cold
had turned them gray. His fingers felt raw, and the stump on his left
hand where Stillborn had chopped off the tip of his little finger
looked bald and misshapen. The wound had healed months ago, but the
ridge of scar tissue left behind by the stitches would never make a
pretty sight. It was the price of admittance to the Maimed Men. You
could not become one of them and remain whole.

Will you come back?

Raif thrust his hands into the folds of his Orrl
cloak, hoping to thrust away Stillborn's words. Sunlight broke
through the haze, giving off a weak silvery light that made nothing
seem warmer.

Tallal rose to standing. A figure emerged from the
farthest tent and headed toward the fire. Judging from the stoop of
his shoulders and the slight rocking motion of his walk, Raif guessed
it to be the elder lamb brother he had addressed earlier. The man was
carrying a rolled-up prayer mat.

"We pray now," Tallal said.

Raif stood. He needed to think. Crazy ideas were
getting tangled in his head. Did the lamb brothers know who they had
rescued? I watch the dead. They save them. Does it mean something or
nothing?

Tallal walked to meet the elder man and the two of
them exchanged a handful of words in a foreign tongue. Wind twisted
their cloaks around their legs. The elder nodded once. More words
were spoken and then Tallal headed back toward Raif.

"My brother asks if you will join us in
prayer."

Raif was surprised by his desire to say yes. He
had not expected to be included. Shaking his head, he said, "Perhaps
tomorrow." As he spoke he knew it was a lie.

Tallal knew it too. "As you wish."

A moment passed where Raif wanted to say something
but didn't. How could you tell someone that the reason you didn't
want to pray to their gods was because you feared being struck by a
bolt of lightning. Nodding farewell to Tallal, Raif headed back
toward his tent.

The lamb brother stopped him with a question, "How
long have you walked the Want?"

Turning, Raif smiled gently. A distance of twenty
paces separated him from the masked and robed figure of Tallal.
Pumice blowing from the dunes was already beginning to fill in his
footsteps. "Too long."

Tallal did not return Raif's smile. His eyes were
serious, and for the first time Raif noticed deep lines around them.
"A man who does not know where he is headed will never find a
way out."

Raif turned and walked away.

Twenty Stone of Eye

Marafice Eye thrust his good foot into the stirrup
and hauled himself over the back of his horse. The steel-gray
stallion shook its head and stamped its iron-ringed hooves against
the traprock, and Marafice the Knife had to shorten the reins and rap
on its rump to take command. It was a fine beast, and the Knife
didn't blame it for fighting. If someone thrust a metal bit between
his teeth and forced two metal spurs into his belly he'd likely do
the same.

Damn, but it was cold. The sky west of Ganmiddich
was turning that mouth-ulcer color that meant snow, and the slow
water on the inside edge of the river bend was quickening to ice. At
least there was no wind. It wasn't an ideal day for an assault on the
Crab Gate, but in Marafice Eye's experience it was always better to
attack than wait.

He was careful as he tightened the waist and chest
cinches on his breast and back plates. Small things like that could
betray him; those little adjustments close to the body that everyone
with two eyes could do without thought. And they were watching him,
make no mistake about it. Those high-and-mighty grangelords and their
sons; he could feel their sharp and critical gazes on his back.
Butcher son, they called him—but never to his face. That wasn't
their way. They preferred to smile and nod and "yes, sir"
him man-to-man. They were scared of him, of course, but fear was an
interesting thing, Marafice had noticed, and feeling contempt for
what you feared eased the sting. So the lordlings were nice to him in
person—though they choked on it—and in private they
cursed him as a low-bred, savage beast.

Ignoring the squire waiting with his sword,
Marafice Eye spun his massive warhorse and looked out upon the sea of
tents that spread across the wooded upland north of the river.

It was a quarter past dawn and the strange mists
had gone, but there was still something not to his liking about the
light. The grangelords had claimed the best and safest ground, hard
along the rocky cliffs of the Wolf, and their fancy silk and linen
tents reflected the unlovely color of the sky. Breakfast was being
cooked, and from the looks of things the grangelords weren't denying
themselves one bit. Servants were stirring pots, plucking game birds,
toasting cheese, and grinding peppercorns. Some fool had built a
smokefire and was cranking an entire side of lamb. What did they
think this was, a day at the tourney field?

Grimacing in disgust, the Knife began to turn his
horse, but at that moment his attention was caught by a single figure
standing in front of the farthest silk tent.

Ready, that was Marafice's first thought. Unlike
most of his fellow grangelords, Garric Hews of House Hews, heir to
the vast holdings of the Eastern Granges, was armed and armored. His
chest piece was simply fashioned, with rolled edges around the neck
and waist, and a reinforced plate above the heart. It had probably
cost more than a house. Marafice knew subtle workmanship when he saw
it. The enameling alone would have taken an armorer three months.
Contrasting bands of white and silver ran along the turning edges and
cloak pommels, and a coin-size decoration on the right shoulder had
been jeweled and enameled in the shape of a rampant boar. The
Whitehog of House Hews.

Garric Hews returned Marafice's stare. His war
helm was tucked under his arm, revealing a soldier's close-cropped
hair. He was nineteen. Yet it wasn't a normal nineteen. Being a
grangelord bred arrogance. Being heir to the greatest house in Spire
Vanis bred something more. Twenty-three surlords had called
themselves Hews, and Garric Hews' desire to make himself the
twenty-fourth could be read in the muscle mass beneath his face. The
Knife had observed him on the practice court and in the barracks; he
was a savage fighter and a cool-headed controller of men. A company
of seven hundred hide-clads rode under him. They were the
best-equipped men in the entire army; each and every one of them
horsed, and chain-mailed, and armed with dagger, horse sword and
pike. Hews trained them daily in formation, and Marafice had to admit
he did a good job of it. He knew the value of well-trained men.

They both did. Shifting a muscle close to his
mouth, Hews showed a cold smile to his rival. Marafice received all
the information delivered in the smile, and then turned his horse
sharply and rode away. He would give the Whitehog nothing back.

The game trail ran southeast, following the river
as it bow-curved upstream and Marafice took it through the camp. Jon
Burden was crouching by the red fire, drinking breakfast. It was
likely there was ale in his pewter tankard, but Marafice wasn't
worried about that. The first captain of the newly formed Rive
Company knew how to carry his drink. He and his second-in-command Tat
Mackelroy, known as Mackerel, stood as Marafice rode toward them, but
Marafice waved them down. He would parley with them later. Right now
he needed to be alone.

The camp was spread over half a league, and it was
already starting to smell. Horse shit, man sweat, woodsmoke, and lamb
grease had combined to form a sharp-sweet scent that the Knife had
come to associate with war. Here in the Rive section it was
especially bad. For some bloody-minded reason known only to
themselves, Rive Company had taken to burning horse turds as fuel.
Rive Company had been formed three months earlier in Spire Vanis from
volunteers and veterans of the city's Rive Watch. Through no
coincidence whatsoever they numbered seven hundred. Marafice Eye
hadn't been present when the decision to burn horse turds had been
taken, but he guessed it had little to do with a shortage of fuel and
more to do with camp politics.

Rive Company was directly upwind of the
grangelords' encampment, and they gifted the grangelords with the
smell. It was the way it had always been in Spire Vanis: that old,
bitter rivalry between the grangelords and the watch. The grangelords
held and sheriffed the land outside the city and the watch policed it
within. Nothing, not one wormy apple or tin spoon, entered Spire
Vanis without passing the inspection of the watch. And no one, not
even Garric Hews or the High Examiner himself, could gain access to
the Surlord without being escorted into his presence by the watch.

The grangelords resented those two facts with such
intensity they all but frothed at the mouth like rabid dogs. Power
was theirs. They were the ones with the wealth, the land, the titles
and the private armies so misleadingly named hideclads. Outside the
city they were as good as kings. Within it they were reduced to
supplicants—by baseborn, lowbred thugs, no less. That was what
galled them the most. Marafice stretched his lips into a tight smile.
They were his men, the watch. Good men, hard-fighting, hard-playing,
down-to-earth. They weren't having roasted game bird for breakfast,
that was for sure. It would be porridge with a dollop of lamb's
grease—and a chunk of blood sausage if they were lucky. They
were well-equipped though. Marafice himself had made sure of that. He
wasn't about to send his brothers-in-the-watch to war unprepared. All
seven hundred had Rive Blades, the blood-tinted swords fired in the
Red Forge. The Knife had wrung money from the Surlord to pay for
their pikes, and when he hadn't been able to wring more he had paid
for their plate armor himself. It had cost him the entire dowry he
had received from Roland Stornoway for the pleasure of marrying his
eldest daughter. That, and half the savings he had on account with
the tight-lipped priests of the Bone Temple. It wasn't fancy stuff
like the Whitehog's, but it was solid, and if a lance blow landed
just right it might make the difference between broken ribs and
disembowelment.

Reaching the edge of the cliff, Marafice reined in
his horse and dismounted. He was free of the camp now, hidden from
hostile glances by a crop of spindly weed trees and some evil-looking
thorns. Below him lay the great expanse of the Wolf River, its waters
brown with tannin. Trees and bushes uprooted by an earlier thaw had
log-jammed to form an island midstream. Some kind of waterfowl
perched atop one of the upturned root balls, but Marafice didn't know
enough about birds to identify the breed. Abruptly he turned. The
updraft tunneling along the cliff had chilled his dead eye.

Cover it, advised the very few people who dared
speak to him about the loss of his right eye. Have a bridle maker cut
out a patch and strap it over the socket. He had nearly done just
that, but something had stopped him. Some kind of fool pigheadedness
that he had come to regret but would not now reverse. For better or
worse it had become who he was. The hollow socket repulsed him, and
he had not willingly looked in a glass in three months. On his worst
nights he suspected that his exterior now accurately reflected what
lay within. People had always thought him a monster. Now he had
become one.

The strange thing was that sometimes he thought he
could see through his missing eye. In his dreams he saw further. The
colors were deeper and the edges as crisp as a line drawing. Even
after he woke he was sure the eye was still in place . . . right
until the moment when he reached for the water pitcher and poured
himself a cup. It spilled. It always spilled. He could see well
enough over distance, but those small judgments close to the body
betrayed him every time.

Marafice rubbed the socket with his gloved fist.
The coldness was hard to get used to, the chill so close it could
freeze his thoughts. Damn Asarhia March. Her foul sorceries had
robbed him of the skin of his foot and an eye. She had killed his
brothers-in-the-watch, too. Five of them, blasted against the hard
granite of the Bitter Hills.

Enough, he told himself. What was done was done.
He was Marafice Eye, Protector General of the Rive Watch, the
Surlord's declared successor, and husband to Liona Stornoway,
Daughter of the High Granges. He had gained more than he'd lost, and
you could not say that about most men.

True enough his new wife was a high-strung
slattern whose belly was currently swelling with another man's brat.
But she was rich beyond reckoning and she had the very great fortune
of being born into one of the five Great Houses of Spire Vanis.

Stornoway could give Hews a run for its money. It
was older than Hews, claiming an ancestor of the Bastard Lord
himself, Torny Fyfe, and although it could not match the sheer number
of surlords spawned by House Hews, it more than made up for it in
wealth. Stornoway held the two most important high passes south of
the city, and all goods coming north across the mountains were
subject to its tariffs. That, canny management of its holdings and
rumors of Sull gold made Stornoway a byword for untold riches in
Spire Vanis. The scale of the wealth took some getting used to. What
did a butcher's son know of baudekin, emeralds, ambergris, perfumed
cushions, and gilded prayer books? What did he care? Power was what
counted. That Stornoway gold would need to work. Arms,
fortifications, horses, guards, bribes: those were the only things it
was good for.