A Sword From Red Ice (56 page)

Later Marafice had had to battle the point with
Perish who counted it as an offense against God that men in this
column were carrying, how did he put it? The ashes of pretender gods.
It had not been a comfortable conversation for Marafice, for at some
point he realized he was dead set on having his way. To tell the man
who had first taught you how to correctly balance a sword that you
were favoring an enemy at his expense was hard. Yet something deep
down in Marafice would not move. Strange enough, Perish had let it be
and had not referred to the matter since.

It had been Jon Burden who brought up the subject
of interrogating the captives. The commander of Rive Company had
rightly pointed out that they needed to know the names and ranks of
the five men. Marafice had allowed him to question them without use
of force but that had yielded nothing. Burden now wanted to be free
to rough them up and scare them. Marafice agreed that such measures
were necessary, but told him to hold off until the worst of their
wounds had healed. Who cared about clannish ranking anyway? They had
chiefs, but not much else.

"Driver! Hitch the horses!" Marafice
wanted to be gone. He and the other men had made the small adjustment
necessary to take the cart on a different course up the bank and now
they held it steady while the driver positioned the team and fastened
the cinches and chest bare. Rusty water ran over the toes of
Marafice's black boots. Some got in. A clannish sword had pierced the
leather during the final charge on the gate.

"Ride on," Marafice commanded. The
driver was back on his seat and he clicked his tongue, setting the
team into motion.

Marafice realized he was sweating as the weight
finally moved off his chest. The young hammerman stared at him as the
cart climbed the bank and Marafice frowned back. Damn captives. More
trouble than they're worth.

When he was back in the saddle and riding up the
column, Marafice found himself snapping out orders. The machinists
were falling behind with their contraptions, a wounded mercenary had
slumped over the neck of his horse and nobody had bothered to aid
him, and a handful of free pikers looked drunk. The Knife was in a
bad mood and the sight of that smoke above the rise north of the
river did not do anything to improve it. It was one thing for the
great Penthero Iss to do dealings and double dealings and
dickering—he enjoyed them—but not Marafice Eye. He feared
being tricked.

Yet even as he joined Jon Burden at the head of
the line he spied a movement between the sickly purple trees. The
river was well used here, he noticed. As they followed the curve of
the river north, plank jetties and worn paths came into view.
Draglines told of boats hauled up the bank and concealed in the
woods. A wooden gutting hut sat on piles at the water's edge, and
everywhere there were signs of men: burned-out fires, moldy tarp,
tattered fishing line, whittled sticks, apple cores, trout bones.

Marafice knew they were being watched and kept his
chin high and back straight. He had told no one other than Perish
about his plan to deal with Scarpe and he was glad of that because it
meant no one in the column slowed. Iss' advice moved like a cold mist
through Marafice's brain. Let them come to you.

The Scarpe roundhouse was a couple of leagues
north of the river and you could not see it through the trees. The
smoke from the house smelled oily and slightly poisonous—not
good for children or asthmatics. Marafice wondered about Scarpe's
system of watches. How long had they known the city men were coming?
Certainly long enough to abandon the riverbank and hide the boats.
Was it long enough to plan a surprise attack? The Knife gave a silent
order to Jon Burden to relay down the line. Stand ready.

He meant it for himself, he realized, for the
column had already fallen into a quiet, jumpy watchfulness. None
dared draw weapons without his say, but they were thinking about it.
He could see it in their eyes. A quick glance down the ranks revealed
that mounted brothers-in-the-watch were now heavily flanking the two
carts that contained their wounded. The third cart, containing
mercenaries, a handful of hideclads and the captive clansmen,
deserved no such consideration apparently, and trundled along
unguarded save for a lone spearman stationed there by Steffan Grimes.

When arrows were loosed from behind the trees,
Marafice jumped in his saddle. Even expecting a surprise he had been
surprised, and watched the missiles fly with something between panic
and amazement. Long arrows, nearly four feet in length, pierced the
dirt and grass in a near perfect line twenty paces ahead of the
column, forming a barrier to the way ahead. Dozens and dozens of them
continued striking the same thin stretch of beach until a wall of
sticks was formed. The arrows' feather fletchings riffled in the wind
as the shafts vibrated, sending their message to the city men.

Do not pass.

Marafice and Jon Burden exchanged a glance. The
head of Rive Company waited for his commander to speak. The wall was
four feet high, two deep and eight long: any fool could pass it.
Marafice raised an arm, calling the column to a halt. It was a
technicality; most men had already stopped. The woods surrounding the
river were quiet. Marafice could not see anyone move within them. He
waited, waited. A red-tailed hawk rose on the thermals above the
river and swooped south in search of prey. Men in the column began to
cuss and spit in mild shows of disapproval. Marafice ignored them.

He heard the mounted men before he saw them, horse
hoofs pounding dully in ground softened by yesterday's rain. Thirty
warriors dressed in black cloaks and black leathers rode through a
break in the trees. They were lean men, tall and pale, with thin
braids fastened in complicated arrangements and gleams of silver at
their throats and ears. Their weapons were couched, but as they drew
to a halt all men save their leader drew swords.

Marafice's hand shot up, commanding his army to
stillness. It was an order he would never have given in the past.
People who drew weapons in his presence usually ended up dead.

"Our chief denies you passage through this
clanhold," called out the head warrior. He had stopped about
fifty paces upshore, insuring high ground and a quick retreat for his
men.

Marafice forced himself to remember the bowmen
concealed in the woods. Otherwise he would very much like to hack
these men down. "I want passage south, not west. Take me to your
chief."

The head warrior showed no surprise. A hand gloved
in expertly tanned black leather patted his horse's mane. "Choose
two men to accompany you. Your weapons will be ransomed but held
within your sight."

What the hell good will that do me? Marafice
thought. Aloud he said, "Pick three of your own to stand as
hostages for our safe return." After taking a long and pointed
look down his column, past crossbow-men, pikers, swordsmen, more
swordsmen, spearmen, machinists and foot soldiers, he added nastily,
"They can keep their weapons out and swinging."

Two spots of heat colored the head warrior's
cheeks. He chose three of his men who couldn't have looked less
thrilled and directed them to stand by the wall of arrows. To
Marafice, he said, "Follow me."

He was a fine horseman, turning his horses with
grace and precision and building up to a canter as he headed for the
trees. All the Scarpemen moved swiftly, putting Marafice and his
chosen at a distinct disadvantage: their horses were nervous of
picking up speed in the woods. Marafice had picked Tat Mackelroy and
a mercenary from the ranks he did not know to accompany him. It was a
decision made in an instant, but he was pleased enough with it.
Perish and Jon Burden were too precious to lose—they would know
what to do if he didn't return. Cut their losses and force a path
west. Tat was a good man, and Marafice had become used to having him
at his back. As for the mercenary . . . well, the poor sod might
learn something. Or die.

The head warrior cut a tight path through the
pines. The tree boughs had been sheared off to a height approaching
twelve feet to enable men mounted on horses to ride freely. Marafice
felt a tightness in his chest all the same. His deepest fear was to
lose his remaining eye. Sunlight razored through the pines at sharp
angles, creating bands of light and shade. Seeing the way ahead was
difficult. Marafice lagged behind. Tat and the mercenary stayed
close, confused but loyal.

When Marafice took a hand from the rein meaning to
push away a drooping pine bough, Tat warned him not to touch it.
"Poison pines," he murmured softly. "Scarpe's known
for them."

They were led not to the roundhouse but a large
clearing in the woods that had been seeded with dark green grass. A
canopy made from the same fine black leather as the head warrior's
gloves had been erected in the center. Under its shade sat the Scarpe
chief, waiting.

Yelma Scarpe was small and sharp-shouldered with
thin lips and dyed black hair. She wore a sword like a man, and every
one of her ten bony fingers glittered with oversize jewels. Once
Marafice and his two men were in open ground, she scribed a shape in
the air, and two hundred men stepped from the shadows, swords drawn,
points out, forming a circle of blades around the glade.

Marafice forced himself to calm. He had thought it
would be a small thing to put himself in danger, but he realized now
that it was not. Riding through the pines had thrown him off center
and he could not recall what advantages he brought here. Part of him
had assumed that once he was here he would know what to do. Iss had
made negotiation seem effortless, like breathing, but this air was
too rich for Marafice's lungs. He wanted only to be gone.

The chair occupied by the Scarpe chief was
high-backed and solid, made from a single block of oak. The armrests
were carved in the shape of weasels and Yelma Scarpe rested her
rubied and sapphired hands upon their heads. "You stand in my
clanhold without my leave. This does not please me."

Marafice was unsure whether or not this statement
required a reply. He had remembered one piece of advice given to him
by Iss and he held on to it like a talisman. Listen twice before you
speak.

Yelma Scarpe drummed the weasel heads. "My
nephew tells me you need to cross the river. I command the last
crossing between here and the Storm Margin. That means you must make
terms with me. It is possible that you would be able to force a path
west through my clanhold, but that would cost us both men, and leave
you farther away from Spire Vanis, searching for a crossing that does
not exist. Five rivers drain into the Wolf beyond this point, three
of them from the north. What this means to you and your army is that
even staying on course along the Wolf will be difficult, and you may
be forced into the northern woods."

She paused, favoring Marafice with something so
hard and joyless he doubted if it could be named a smile.

"My scouts tell me you have injured. Three
cartloads."

Marafice said nothing. Sunlight reflecting off one
of the Scarpemen's swords was bouncing into his good eye. A black
rage was simmering within him and he imagined kicking the Scarpe
chief in the head and crushing her against the chair. Finally the
pressure became too much. "What if we just steal your fucking
boats? You can't match us for numbers—half of your men are at
Blackhail."

"You'll be stealing burned wood if you try
it," she said back to him, relaxed now that he had stepped into
the hole she had dug for him. "The barges have been primed with
lamp oil. One word from me and they're up in flames."

Marafice felt like a fool. All of it could be
bluff and he would never know it. The five rivers, the last crossing,
the barges wet with oil. Iss would have never walked into a meeting
ignorant of such things. Knowledge was power. And lack of knowledge
meant that you could be backed into a corner and made to pay to get
out.

"Shall I name my terms?"

He did not know how he managed not to choke on the
words: "Go ahead."

The Scarpe chief made a small satisfied sniff. "I
want the war machines, the battering ram. Two hundred horses and
their saddles, two hundred suits of armor including leg pieces, and
the clansmen you hold as hostage."

Her scouts were good, he had to give her that. She
waited for an answer, her purple tongue flicking out once to wet her
lips, her jeweled fingers stroking the weasel heads. How had it got
so hot in this damn glade? Marafice glanced at the overhead sun and
then wished he hadn't. Circles of light burned his eye. That moron
with the sword was flashing him on purpose as well. He needed to
think but all he could see in his mind's eyes were weasels and
blistering light.

With a biting motion of his teeth, Marafice forced
himself to weigh the chief's demands. The war machines? She could
have them. They only hit their target one time out of five, as he
recalled. And the battering ram would be a pleasure to leave; its
wheels got stuck more often than the carts'. Steffan Grimes might
kick up a fuss—it was his company's ram, after all—but in
Marafice's experience professional mercenaries were usually inured to
the vagaries of war. People died, possessions were lost, others were
gained: such were the norms for professional soldiers.

The horses, though. They were different. Two
hundred was a greedy little demand and she knew it. If he met her on
this it would cost his army dear. Brothers-in-the-watch would be
deprived of their mounts, for Marafice could not see a way to take
horses solely from the mercenaries. The cost would have to be borne
fairly, else mutiny was risked. As for the armor—well, she
could have his riding plate, for a start. Thing chafed like all the
hells when you tried to move in it. The other hundred and ninety-nine
suits shouldn't be much of a problem either, though the pieces would
not necessarily match.