Raif grinned. He was beginning to feel better, but he had a hunch it wouldn't last. "And the souls of the dead?"
A smoke ring of breath blew from Tallal's mouth. "Morah." The word had power. Raif felt it pump against his eardrums. Slowly, rhythmically, Tallal began to rock back and forth on the balls of his feet. "Morah is the flesh of God. Every man, woman and child who passes through this mortal world grows a portion of God within them. This we call the soul. When someone dies their soul rises to the heavens and God claims it and sets it in place. The Book of Trials foretells the day when the Maker's body is whole and he will walk amongst us and we might look upon his face. We, the Sand People, await that day with hope and deepest longing. Yet if as much as a single soul is lost God's body will remain incomplete and he will be forever unknowable.
"The Book of Trials commands the lamb brothers to seek out the lost souls of the dead. All must be counted and released. They are precious to us beyond reckoning, for they contain the substance of God.
Raif stared into the flames whilst Tallal spoke. The wood burned green and white and gave off the cold and empty smell of high places.
Listening to the lamb brother made him feel sad. Tallal had been set a task that would never be completed. His god would never come There were too many men and women out there who had lost their way and died without peace or salvation. Generations of bodies had disappeared; flesh eaten by maggots, bones dried to husks then ground into sand. How could they be saved when there was no record of their existence?
And who would save the souls of the Unmade?
Heritas Cant had said that every thousand years the creatures of the Blirflride forth to claim more men for their armies. "When a man or woman is touched by them they become Unmade. Not dead, never dead, but something different cold and craving. The shadows enter them snuffing the light from their eyes and the warmth from their hearts. Everything is lost."
Without thinking, Raif raised his hand to his shoulder. The wound, had begun to sting. If Heritas Cant was right, then countless people over thousands of centuries had been lost, their souls claimed by the Endlords. Raif glanced at Tallal. Did he know this? Was he aware of the impossibility of his task?
Tallal's gaze was level. "Once a year in the hottest month of summer, when the sand snakes grow bold and even the blister beetles search for shade, the storms come. Day falls dark as night. Rain crashes from the sky and lightning strikes. Once in a very long while when lightning touches sand it turns to glass. This glass is very rare. A thousand thunderstorms may pass overhead yet everything—the sand, the wind, the moons and the stars—must be in accordance before lightning can transform sand into glass. Stormglass is a powerful talisman. Kings and shamans covet it. It is said that when you look into it you see other storms; storms that are gathering and may come to be, storms of thunder and storms of men. My people sweep the sands for it when we travel. Like gingerroot it lies beneath the surface, out of sight, and we use acacia branches to comb the dunes as we walk the cattle. We dream of finding the perfect unbroken piece, long as a sword and clear as water. In my lifetime I have never known anyone to find such a piece. Yet still we sweep."
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 Tailal, 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 fdl 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.
SEVEN 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 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. Shirting 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 Surlords 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 horn 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.
Marafice squinted into the eastern sky. Behind the stormheads the sun was rising. It was time to move out.
He returned to camp quickly, signaling to the hornsman to call arms. Jon Burden rode to meet him and together they inspected Rive Company as it formed ranks.
Helmets, Marafice thought dryly. I should have forked out for some matching sets.
The men of Rive Company were lean and hard and cloaked in red. Those who were wearing birdhelms looked frightening enough to appear in children's nightmares. With their feces entirely covered by steel likenesses of the Killhound of Spire Vanis they could no longer fully rotate their necks and moved like being, awakened from the dead. A good third of the seven hundred did not possess birddhelms and wore whatever they could beg, borrow or scavenge. Many wore stan-dard pothelms forged from black iron. Others had full visored helms complete with crests they had no rights to and leathers they had no need for. One man sported a helm with two enormous bullhorns forged to the sides, and another wore something that looked suspiciously like a wooden bowl.
"Weadie," Marafiea called out to the man.
Will Weadie was in the process of binding his horse's tail to prevent it from flaying in the charge. Tall and veiny with a nose that was beginning to wart, Weadie was pushing fifty. Marafice remembered training under him as a new recruit. Weadie had been second to the master-at-arms, Andrew Perish, who was also amongst the seven hundred here today.
"Sir." Weadie rubbed his nose with the back of his hand.
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