A Sword From Red Ice (25 page)

"Fire in the tower! Fire!"

The stone ball smashed into the top of the hill,
cratering the slope and throwing up a hail of dirt and snow. Horses
in the line shied, some halted. Marafice's own mount shook out his
head, but kept its pace. "Fine beauty," he murmured,
angling his upper body toward the tower.

Black smoke gouted from the narrow windows and
upper gallery of the Ganmiddich Tower. Weird green flames shot from
one window, swiftly followed by a fountain of sparks. A short
explosive crack sounded, and the stench of sulfur and smelting metal
drifted over with the smoke.

"Mother of God," Tat Mackelroy
whispered. "What's happening?"

Marafice did not look him in the eye as he
replied, "Call it a lucky break."

Tat waited to hear if his Protector General would
say more, and when the great man said nothing, returned his attention
to his mount.

Marafice barked an order into the center to halt
the charge. He did not like himself much just then.

For a wonder, Garric Hews minded what he'd said
and broke the charge. The steepness of the hill made for a
surprisingly short stop and for a few minutes there was chaos as six
thousand reined-in horses scrambled for space. Marafice used the time
to monitor events in the tower, it was telling that all missile fire
had stopped. Smoke was pouring from every window in the stone
structure. If there were flames it was now too dark to see them. The
sole entrance to the tower was by way of a small rounded door plated
with lead that directly faced the roundhouse across the water.
Marafice sent out the order to bowmen and machinists to target the
door. Reckoning he now stood within hearing distance of the
roundhouse, he made sure his voice rang clear.

The Crab Gate remained closed, but Marafice
imagined it wouldn't stay that way for long. At midwinter he'd
visited this very roundhouse and met with clansmen firsthand. He'd
come away impressed. They were fighting men, fiercely loyal, and he
did not think for one instant they would stand by and let their
fellow clansmen die.

Behind the roundhouse the old growth forest known
as the Nest clicked eerily in the rising wind. The trees were gnarled
and ancient crippled by the weight of overgrown limbs. The darkcloaks
said there were paths running through them leading north toward Withy
and west to Bannen. According to Greenslade, the paths were always
vigorously defended.

Marafice's attention was drawn back to the tower
by the retort of a half-dozen crossbolts splitting wood. The door had
moved. Those inside wanted out.

Quietly now, Marafice sent an order propagating
down the line. "On your guard. Be ready." He did not know
exactly what the darkcloaks had done to fill the tower with fire and
noxious smoke, and he decided now he would never ask them. Let them
keep their bags of tricks to themselves. Spying ashes on the flat of
his sword, he wiped the blade clean against the back of his sheepskin
mummah.

All was silent for the longest moment and then the
Crab Gate swung open and the battle was met.

Mounted clansmen rode out of the roundhouse:
Hailsmen, Crabmen, Withymen, and Bannenmen. More poured from behind
the outbuildings, as stable doors were flung apart.

"Kill Spire! Kill Spire!" they chanted
as they used the downhill momentum to steal a charge.

"Spears out!" screamed Garric Hews,
scrambling to harden his line. Marafice's own line was hard, though
he knew his men felt fear. Clansmen were like animals, wild and
brutal, wielding hammers as big as children as they bellowed at the
top of their lungs for their enemies to die. Heads low, battle
cloaks streaming out behind them, they met their enemies full-on.

A great clash of metal sounded. Men gasped. Horses
squealed. Blood jetted through Marafice's eye slit and into the
socket of his dead eye. Where it came from he could not tell. His
great blood-red Rive blade was up and cutting. He figured as long as
he did not let it rest he would be safe.

Clansmen came at him in hordes, hammers and axes
swinging. They had the advantage of high ground and superior
maneuverability, but the city men had heavy-gauge plate and four
times their numbers. It was hard to remember that in the fray. The
sheer relentlessness of the clansmen was something Marafice had not
counted on. You wounded a man, he should fall away. Not clansmen
though. They smiled grimly and attacked again.

Marafice became a machine. One mailed fist on the
reins to drive the stallion forward, the other on his sword hilt to
thrust the blade. At his side Tat Mackelroy was fighting two-handed.
In his left hand he braced a spear against his horse's flank,
protecting his Protector General's right flank, and in his right he
wielded the Rive blade. The reins were between his teeth. Marafice
had several occasions to be grateful for his chief aide's spear.
Sometimes when a hammer came close to his body he could not see it.
There were blind spots with his one good eye.

In the center, Garric Hews and Hog Company had
fallen back and then rerallied. This might have been the Whitehog's
intention, for it had created space for the clansmen to charge into,
which Hews slowly began to close off. Jon Burden had disengaged the
west flank and was pursuing the clansmen who were pouring from the
outbuildings. It was in the east, in Marafice's turf, that the
fighting was fiercest. Clansmen were desperate to break through the
Eye's line to reach the shore and save the tower men.

Trapped within the birdhelm, Marafice's sweat
began to steam. Between gaps in his stallion's armored plates, lather
was rising. He no longer had the time or energy to monitor events on
the inch. Perhaps the tower men had risked the door. Perhaps they
were still inside. One thing was sure: they were not visibly dead,
for the look in the clansmen's faces told him they still hoped to
rescue their men.

The day darkened as the battle wore on. Bodies
piled up on the field. A man's severed head was rolling between the
horses like a kick-ball. The machinists were still launching missiles
at the Crab Gate and the outbuildings, cracking stone walls and
flattening the odd clansmen. The bowmen had been charged with
targeting the lines of clansmen leaving the outbuildings, but the
mass exit had ceased and now the bowmen were still. In any other
battle they'd be assigned to pick off runaways. But these were
clansmen...and clansmen didn't run away.

Marafice's armor was black with blood. The pain in
his sword arm was so intensely ingrained that it actually hurt more
when he rested it than it did when he just kept thrusting. So he kept
thrusting. His voice was hoarse, but he barely knew what he'd been
screaming. His line still held, so he imagined he'd been screaming
something right. At some point during the long hours of fighting, he
realized that the battle had turned in their favor. Hews had
successfully drawn out and cut off their center, Jon Burden had
killed their side guard, and Marafice's men had held the water
margin. All that remained was to finish off. Down the ranks, the foot
soldiers and mercenaries already knew this and began a serious push
for the Crab Gate.

With the luxury of more time the machinists
actually managed to align one of the scorpions perfectly with the
double doors, and launched a stone that bowled down the left door.
Fossil dust shot up in a great cloud and although Marafice didn't
much fancy breathing in those old and freakish remains he knew he
didn't really have a choice. He wasn't the only one to spit a lot
after that, he noticed.

With the door gone there was no chance of retreat
for the clansmen, and the part of Marafice that respected honest
fighting men felt for them. It did not prevent him joining the final
charge.

As he kicked his horse forward two things happened
that seemed strange. The first was the sight of a lone horseman,
freshly mounted and lightly armored, galloping along the river and up
through the ranks. A Spireman, no doubt about it, and from the looks
of his kit some sort of messenger. The army hadn't received word from
Spire Vanis in several weeks, and Marafice wondered at the wisdom of
a messenger riding onto the battlefield. If the news had waited that
long, a couple hours more would make no difference.

The second thing was a horn call from the north.
It sounded so quickly, Marafice had to glance over to Tat Mackelroy
to confirm that he had really heard it. Tat's brief nod had told him
all he needed to know. At first Marafice assumed that the call must
have come from a crew of Hailsmen in the Nest, sounding a retreat,
but when he looked into the unguarded faces of the enemy he saw
confusion and something that might have been fear. Troubled,
Marafice put all his energies into the charge. The sooner they took
the roundhouse and secured it the better. Glancing over his shoulder,
he saw the Whitehog was also preparing for the final push. Just this
morning Marafice had planned to kill the Lord of the Eastern Granges
if a suitable opportunity presented itself. The rush for the gate
would be as good a time as any. While an army of eleven thousand
attempted to wedge itself through a nine-foot opening there was no
telling what mischief a man could do. Yet Marafice knew he would not
act. Not here. Not now.

The Whitehog had fought like a demon. He'd made
mistakes—they all had—but he'd never failed to watch his
men, never paused to rest never once issued an order that excluded
himself from danger. The clansmen had a saying, "You are worthy
of respect," and it summed up how Marafice felt as he watched
his rival on the field. You could not fight all day with a man and
then turn around and kill him. Marafice hadn't known that this
morning, but now he did.

Strange, but he felt lighter than he had all day.
It was as if a weight had been removed from his chest. Good fighting
men: that's what counted. Tomorrow he would send the darkcloaks home
to Iss. The Surlord could keep them.

The charge for the gate was poorly planned but
enthusiastic, with foot soldiers, hideclads and mercenaries moving
forward in a disorganized line. Even as he approved of their high
spirits, Marafice worked to restrain them. Many of the men pushing to
the front had not seen hand-to-hand combat with the clansmen and
didn't realize the remaining force, while small, was deadly
dangerous. As the Whitehog appeared distracted by something in the
center, Marafice decided to head the line himself. He was Protector
General of Spire Vanis and leader of this army: it was right and
fitting that he claim this territory first.

The final push was surprisingly hard. The clansmen
who were left were mostly Hailsmen and they fought like cornered
wolves. Helmets were off now and their braids banded in silver
snapped against their necks as they moved. Marafice was so intent on
the fight that he didn't immediately register the softening. He was
so close to the door now he could see individual scales on the
kraken's ugly hide. Tat was at his back, blade long abandoned,
fighting solely with his spear. Worrying noises sounded, but as
Marafice didn't hear the horn from the north he figured he could let
them pass. Then Tat touched his arm.

"Hog company and the grangelords are
withdrawing."

This sentence made so little sense to Marafice
that he ignored it, and chopped his Rive blade into a clansman's
hand, cutting off two fingers at the tip. The man's heart was beating
wildly and there was a lot of blood. In the small pause that
followed, Tat grabbed his Protector General's forearm and yanked him
out of the line.

"They're going. The grangelords are leaving."

Marafice tried to catch his breath. "Going?"
he repeated stupidly. "Yes. Look." Tat was taking no
chances and physically spun Marafice around.

Blinking, Marafice attempted to take in what he
saw. Over half the army was leaving the field. All those who were
retreating were mounted. All were grangelords and grangelords' men.
Lord of the Salt Mine Granges, Lord of the Glacier Granges, Lord of
the Two River Granges, Lord of the Iron Hills, Lord of the Spirefield
Granges . . . Lord of the Eastern Granges, Garric Hews.

"What is this?" Marafice asked, blood
draining from his skin. Andrew Perish trotted his horse forward. The
former master-at-arms was bleeding from a wound to his foot. A small
gobbet of flesh was glued to his ancient breastplate; it did not
appear to be his own. "Messenger from the city. The Surlord is
dead."

Sweat and blood dripped from Marafice's helmet to
his neck. At the door the battle was still waging, but more and more
men were congregating at the top of the hill.

Iss dead. It made no sense. Who could have slain
him? Marafice watched the retreating forces gain momentum,
accelerating from walk to trot to gallop, rushing to get back to the
city and stake their claim. A surlord was dead. A new one would be
made. Me, Marafice thought. Me.

He looked at Andrew Perish, stared straight into
his occluded eyes. "I will not leave the field until His work is
finished," Perish said, "and I have a thousand men here
who'll back me."

The believers and fanatics. About two hundred of
them were Rive Watch, Marafice reckoned.

Perish did not wait for a response. Extending his
Rive Blade forward he cried solemnly, "For His glory!" and
joined the charge for the gate. Others followed. Marafice didn't
blame them. Victory was so close you could smell it. It smelled like
a broken door.

Scanning the motley remains of his army—the
mercenaries, machinists, foot soldiers, drummers, retired
brothers-in-the-watch, and walking wounded—Marafice wondered
what to do. He, Marafice Eye, should be the one rushing back to Spire
Vanis. The surlordship was his. The whole point of being here was to
secure that one glittering jewel.

Yet he could not leave men unsupported on the
field. He was not Garric Hews. If Perish was right and he did indeed
intend to lead a thousand into the roundhouse, then that would be a
thousand men at grave risk. Marafice glanced at the one remaining
door. A great chunk of fossil stone had broken off, revealing plain
old oak beneath. Marafice thought of the clansmen, and the
darkcloaks, and Garric Hews. Nodding softly to himself he made a
decision.