A Sword From Red Ice (21 page)

In Marafice Eye's opinion he was the most valuable
man in the camp.

The Knife waited for the communion to be done. He
was little used to waiting and it made him grumpy. Watchful eyes
marked the deference and judged it. That made him even grumpier.
After a time he dismounted. Pain shot along his damaged foot as his
weight hit the ground. He ignored it.

"It will snow and it will be bloody,"
Perish said at last, stamping his heel on the crucible and driving it
deep into the mud, "but His work will be done."

Andrew Perish turned to face his
commander-in-chief. Cataracts were beginning to whiten his brown
eyes, yet it only made his gaze seem sharper. It had the force of a
fist punching through a wall. "Every clansman we kill will be a
prayer: See how we love thee Sweet God." Marafice made his face
like stone. True belief disturbed him. His experiences during the
Expulsions had taught him to be wary of men who had the fuel of God
burning in their eyes. You couldn't always control them. There had to
be close to a thousand here today who had come for no other reason
than to slay heretics. They were good men, hardworking, ordinarily
loyal, yet you could not predict what would happen if their God fuel
was ignited. The Knife had a strong memory of sitting his horse and
looking on as his fellow brothers-in-the-watch hacked off the hands
and feet of Forsworn knights. He had not forestalled that unnecessary
cruelty, but it did not mean he had liked it.

He was all business as he spoke with Perish.
"Inform Hews he'll be taking the center. We're splitting
Rive—we'll flank him. I'll be leading the east flank. Burden
will head the west."

Andrew Perish bit this off and chewed on it. As
battle plans went it wasn't the brightest, but Perish wasn't the sort
to quibble over details. He was the liaison, the bridge between the
grangelords and their armies and the great unlanded rest of them.
Perish could talk to the most foulmouthed, foul-smelling swine
herder, in Mud Camp and then turn around and parley with a pride of
perfumed grangelords reposing in their silk tents. All respected him.
He had foot soldier's muck on his boots and the blood of lords in his
veins.

The Knife knew he could command the grangelords
without Perish's help, but this way it was easier. Smoother. Tempers
were held in check on both sides. The grangelords didn't have to
receive orders directly from a butcher's son, and everyone else was
spared the aggravation of dealing with the grangelords firsthand.

"Watch him." Perish's voice was
iron-hard. Between them there was no need to name names. "Once
the battle is met he will abide by his own rules."

Marafice glanced east toward the river bend that
concealed the green traprock walls of Ganmiddich. The first snow had
begun to fall sleek and heavy flakes that entered the water like
diving birds. "I have my own rule in this battle," he said.
"Dog eat Hog."

A Cart Pulled by Twelve Horses

"Raina. What d'you make of that?"

Raina Blackhail followed Anwyn Bird's gaze south
across the Blackhail clanhold. They were standing on the ancient
bowman's gallery that jutted from the roundhouse's southern wall.
Longhead said no one had been up here in decades, and Raina could see
why. The gallery had been built on to the exterior dome by the War
chief, Ewan Blackhail. Ewan's son had slain the last of the Dhoone
kings, and Ewan had feared retaliation. Amongst his many hastily
built defenses was a ringwall that circled the roundhouse at a
distance of two hundred feet, a six-story watchtower built atop
Peck's Hill in the eastern pinewall, and a series of booby-trapped
wells and earthworks that ran along the Dhoone-Blackhail border and
that, as far as Raina knew, had killed a whole lot of sheep. Five
hundred years later and few of Ewan's creations were still standing.
Judging from the cracked stonework and faint rocking motion of the
ledge this one didn't have long to go.

Still. It was good to be here. The strange eastern
wind was blowing, snapping the blackstone pines in the graze and
pushing around the last of the snow. A red-tailed hawk was riding the
thermals, scanning for weasels and other small prey through the bare
branches of Oldwood. The sky was clear, and a cold and a brilliant
sun was shining. Standing high atop the roundhouse you could see for
leagues.

And no one but the person standing next to you
could hear you speak. Raina glanced at her old friend, the clan
matron Anwyn Bird. Anwyn was getting old. Her ice-tanned face was
deeply lined, and her eyes had extra water in them. Not for the first
time Raina found herself wondering why Anwyn drove herself so hard.
She had never married, had no family that Raina was aware of, yet she
had more strength of purpose than anyone in the entire clan. When she
wasn't baking bread for two thousand, she was butchering winter kills
in the gameroom, milking ewes in the dairy, gutting eels in the
kitchen yard, plucking geese on the poultry shed, distilling hard
liquor in the stillroom, or fletching arrows in her workshop. Clan
was her life. Comparing Anwyn's dedication with her own, Raina found
herself wanting. Yet it was she, Raina Blackhail, who had spoken up
in the gameroom.

I will be chief.

"Over there," Anwyn said, nodding her
chin southwest. "At the tree-line."

Raina looked again and this time she saw something
emerging from the black-green mass of the southern pines. A team of
twelve horses was hauling a war cart toward the roundhouse. The cart
was built from whole glazed logs that shone red in the sun, and its
weight was so great that it needed six wheel axles to support it.
Black smoke gouted from a chimney built into the center of the roof.
A pair of archers, crossbows loaded, prowled the roof's flat timbers,
and a dozen heavily armed outriders formed a shield wall around the
cart and team.

"Can you see their colors?"

Raina shook her head. "Dark, is all I can
make out."

They watched in silence as the great, smoking
behemoth lurched and rolled along the uneven surface of the graze
road. Raina wondered if Anwyn was feeling the same level of unease
as she was. Ever since the clanwars started all roads into the
clanhold had been heavily patrolled. Redoubts had been built at key
bends and crossings. Nothing could get this close to the roundhouse
without sanction. So who had sanctioned this? And why hadn't she and
Anwyn been informed?

"It's probably some war contraption brought
in to defend the Crab Gate," Anwyn turned her back on the cart
and looked Raina in the eye. The sudden movement made the fox lore
suspended around her neck jump out from beneath the neckline of her
dress. "The first thousand leave at dawn. Mace just told Orwin
he intends to ride at the head."

Raina nodded slowly, letting the news sink in. She
had hoped her husband would lead the war party headed to Ganmiddich,
but until now she hadn't been sure. Ever since Arlec Byce and Cleg
Trotter had returned from the Crab Gate, the roundhouse had been
gearing up for war. Weapons, armor, horses, mules, carts, supplies:
all had to be assembled and coordinated. Mace had taken charge of the
planning, but when asked if he intended to ride to defend Ganmiddich
himself he had been evasive. He was a wolf, you could not forget
that. Secrecy was one of his ploys. How could your enemies plot
against you when they could not be sure of your plans?

"With Mace gone we should be able to restore
some order to our house." It was the closest Anwyn had come to
open criticism of the Hail chief since the night in the gameroom. She
looked like she might say more, but Raina spoke to halt her.

"The repairs are going well. As soon as the
remains of the Hailstone are removed we can seal the east wall."

"If they ever get removed," Anwyn
retorted. "The one man who can decide the fate of the stone
rides off into the sunrise at dawn. That's our soul, lying there and
turning to dust. How can he stand by and watch as it blows away?"

"Hush," Raina whispered. Even out here
she was nervous of her husband's spies. Little mice with weasels'
tails. "If Mace rides tomorrow without reaching a decision it
will suit us well enough. I will decide what will be done. I will see
that the remains of the sixteenth Blackhail guidestone are laid to
rest with proper dignity. Me, wife to two chiefs. And once it's done
I'll send a party east to Trance Vor and command them to return with
a new stone." Raina hardly knew where the words came from. Until
the very moment she spoke them she had been dead set against
interfering with the fate of the guidestone. That's how power works,
she imagined. See an opportunity and seize it.

Muscles in Anwyn Bird's plump face tightened and
Raina feared she had made a mistake. Yet the clan matron simply
nodded. "Fair enough. Someone has to do it."

Raina searched Anwyn's gray eyes, but found them
guarded. I will lose friends, she realized. Claim power and people
will judge you. Suddenly Raina wanted very much to run through the
roundhouse, find Dagro and crush him to her chest. It was so easy to
conjure up his smell: horses and tanned leather, and that fine earthy
scent that was his own. Gods, how she missed him. She did not want
this. Did Anwyn actually think that she wanted to be chief? She would
give up everything to have her husband back, willingly go and live
in a mountain cave with the wild clans and eat nothing but rabbit
haunches and tree bark for the rest of her life. You couldn't turn
back time though. As a child she'd been told stories of dragons and
sorcery and giants; stories where forest folk abducted children while
they slept and dragged them into enchanted worlds, where men were
turned to stone by angry necromancers, and where the gods crushed
entire armies in their fists and the next day built walls with the
bones. Not one of those fantastical, unbelievable stories had ever
mentioned turning back time. None had dared offer that false hope.

Anwyn could read people's thoughts, Raina decided,
for she said, "The past months have not gone easy on any of us,
Raina. Loved ones dead. War. Hardship. And now the stone. Yet we are
Blackhail, the first amongst clans, and we do not hide and we do not
cower and we will have our revenge."

Hairs on Raina's arms pricked upright. The clan
boast. Sending out a hand to steady herself against the stone
balustrade, she let the east wind roll over her face. She smelled
pine resin and frozen earth. Yes, she wanted revenge. Her husband had
been slain in cold blood. Her body had been violated. Shor Gormalin,
the man who would have protected her, had been shot in the back of
the head. And what had she, Raina Blackhail, done to right those
wrongs? Nothing. She shared a bed with the man who had done them.

Sister of Gods what have I let myself become?

Letting out a long breath, Raina studied Anwyn. It
was unusual to see the bleached cross section of fox bone. The clan
matron normally kept her lore tucked away. People often made the
mistake of assuming Anwyn's lore had to be some kind of
bird—pheasant, turkey vulture, hawk—but it wasn't. Anwyn
was a fox. Raina hadn't learned that fact for many years, for lores
were private things and it was considered impertinent to ask someone
outright what spirit claimed them. Instead you learned through
friends and kin. The widows knew the most, keeping tally each night
around the hearth. Bessie Flapp had been the one to tell Raina that
Anwyn was a fox. "She's a queer one, is our Anny. All hustle and
bustle on the surface, but quiet as a fox underneath." Bessie
was dead now, killed during the sundering. Raina had never known her
to speak a word that wasn't true.

"Why do you push me, Anny?" Raina asked,
surprising herself again. "Out of a whole roundhouse of people
why should I be the one to overthrow him?"

Anwyn laid a hand on her skirt to stop the wind
from getting under it. When she spoke the normal ruddiness dropped
from her voice, revealing a deeper, clearer tone underneath. "Who
else? Dagro wasn't the only one to die in the Badlands. Meth Ganlow,
Tern Sevrance, Jon Shank: all could have been chief. Shor Gormalin
was killed a month later. Who does that leave? Orwin claims he's too
old. Good men like Corbie Meese and Bailie the Red are loyal to their
chief. Someone has to oppose him. Blackhail must be saved."

"I was born at Dregg."

"Tell me you don't consider yourself a
Hailswoman."

Raina could not. She had lived in this house for
seventeen years. Blackhail was her life.

Looking out across the gaze she saw that the war
cart was stuck in a rut. The teamster had dismounted and was lashing
the rumps of the lead pair of horses as four of the armed guards
pushed their backs against the tailgate. The cart jerked sideways and
then sank back down. More armed guards dismounted. Raina still
couldn't discern their clan. Bannen, Dregg, Harkness, and Scarpe all
wore dark colors on the road.

Raina turned her mind back to Anwyn. Manipulated,
she decided finally. That's how she felt. Anwyn's use of the clan
boast had been a jab in the small of her back. Anwyn was the real
instigator here. She was the one who had arranged this meeting today,
and the meeting before that in the gameroom. It was she who had
invited Orwin Shank and the chief's wife and then sat back and waited
to see which one was willing to speak treason. Looking into Anwyn's
open, doughy face it was hard to understand why.

"What do you want out of this?" Raina
asked finally, tired of thinking.

"Nothing." Anwyn held herself steady.

Raina inspected her. You could tell the truth, she
decided, and still leave room for concealment. In this case she
couldn't be sure. "I need to know where you stand, Anny."

The clan matron pushed her long graying braid
behind her back. "I am with Blackhail, Raina. As long as you are
the best hope for this clan I stand beside you."