A Sword from Red Ice

by Julia V Jones

  Raina took a breath. This was turning into a dangerous swamp. Only seven months ago the clanholds were at peace. Old rivalries brewed, borders were in dispute, water rights were claimed and defended. There were skirmishes and cattle raids, but no open warfare A year ago Dagro had stood in the chiefs chamber beneath this very hall and told her that once the feuding between Orrl and Scarpe was over he'd count his chiefdom a success. "The clanholds rest easy now Our boys are fostered as far as Haddo and Wellhouse, we have traded gifts with Frees, the Dog Lord is growing old and tame. Soon there'll be naught for me to do but stay abed with my pretty young wife."

  He could not have been more wrong.

  "We'll need to send more men" she said.

  "Aye," Corbie agreed. "At least another thousand. Maybe more." His mind was no longer quite with her, she realized. He was thinking of Drey Sevrance, Bullhammer, Tom Lawless, Lowdraw, Rory Cleet and the two hundred other Hailsmen who were garrisoned at Ganmiddich. He was waiting for his chief, anxious to have the matter settled and be on his way to defend them.

  It shamed her, for she could not stop herself from thinking, Please do not let this delay Mace's departure. It would be so easy for him to decide to send the first thousand south and travel with the second contingent. She might be damned, but she didn't think she could stand another day of him. Just to rest, to lay her head on a pillow and not have to worry about what the next moment might bring. Ever since the day in the Oldwood she had known no peace of mind. Always, it was: What will Mace do next? Does he know what I'm thinking? Can he tell how much I despise him?

  Raina straightened her shoulders and willed her mind away from the dark place. If she stayed there too long he won.

  "Where is my husband?" she asked Corbie.

  The hammerman flexed the huge saddles of muscle on his upper arms. "As soon as he spied that big wagon out on the graze he took off. He's escorting it in right now."

  Raina glanced at the door. She heard voices from outside but couldn't see anything beyond the great crush of clansmen on the threshold. She heard herself ask in a calm voice, "Do you know what the wagon s about?"

  Corbie shook his misshapen head. "I best go, Raina. Meet him at the door."

  The east wind was howling through the roundhouse now, pushing men's cloaks against their thighs and blowing out torches. From her place, three steps up, Raina could see the great circle of the entrance hall. She watched Corbie navigate the crowd, listened to the rumble of something heavy approaching.

  Suddenly there was a great push toward the door. Raina thought she heard Mace's voice, but she couldn't be sure. Clansmen were shout-ing out the news.

  "Bludd rides to Ganmiddich." "Dhoone is retaken."

  Raina's heart beat in deep powerful strokes. A lamp close by blew out, then another. She smelled the strong black smoke of extinction. On the other side of the doorframe a conference was taking place. She knew Mace was there now, for his presence could be detected in the silences. Men were quiet, listening.

  A lone clansman cheered. Another followed, and soon over a hundred clansmen were shouting, "Kill Bluddl Bill Bludd! Kill Bludd!"

  Mace had pleased them. He must have spoken again, for the noise quickly died. A group of hammermen broke away and headed through the roundhouse with purpose. Corbie Meese wasn't one of them. Raina resisted the urge to run after them and discover what was happening. She was desperate to know and desperate not to know, her mind rolling back and forth like a boat in a storm.

  Orwin Shank was the next to make his way inside. His face and ears were flushed. As he crossed the hall he saw her, but quickly averted his eyes. Like a sleepwalker, Raina began descending the stairs. Men made way for her, opening up a passage to the door. She was chief's wife, and sometimes she forgot her value. Scarpes had no respect for her, but this was a crowd of Hailsmen, not Scarpes. Walking into the space they created for her, Raina felt the heat of their bodies. Big, powerful men they were, dressed in black wool and worn leather, their bodies weighed down with hammers and longswords, axes and gear belts, knives, ice picks, shovels.

  "Do we still ride tomorrow?" she asked no one in particular.

  A dozen replied, "Aye, lady."

  Sunlight from the door blinded her. "And my husband, does he still ride at the head?"

  Bailie the Red placed a steadying hand on her elbow. She had not realized she had begun to sway. "Mace will ride with the first thousand as planned," he told her in his rough burr. "The second force will be led by Grim Shank."

  Bailic smells like beeswax, she thought inanely. Probably uses it to waterproof his bow. She stepped outside. For a moment she couldn't see anything, so great was the contrast between the dark, smoky entrance hall and the harsh sunlight of midday. Man-shapes coalesced from the brightness. The blocklike form of the war cart came into view. Seen this close it was bigger than she had imagined, a stovehouse on twelve wheels. The teamster was releasing the lathered and shaking horses from their yokes.

  "Who'll be in charge of defending the Hailhouse while they're gone?" she asked the nearest warrior.

  "Chief gave Orwin the honor."

  She did not recognize the young Hailsman's voice, and did not turn to look at him. Her thoughts were like beads, connected only by the slenderest thread. So far so good. Orwin Shank was the best, most logical choice. He would not interfere with her plans.

  When she was ready, she turned her gaze to her husband. Mace Blackhail was standing by the wagon's front axle, speaking with two men. One was the Scarpeman Mansal Stygo, who was never far from Mace's heels. Mansal had killed the Orrl chief with a hammer blow so hard it had driven Spynie's head into his chest cavity. A month later Mace had invited Mansal and his crew to overwinter in the Hailhouse. The second man had his back to Raina. He had the shoulder breadth of a hammerman, but something in his posture warned her there was more to know. His ful-length cloak was narrow across the back and oddly formal. The fur collar was a deep, luxurious brown; she couldn't decide what animal it came from. By contrast the cloak's hem was in poor shape, tattered and black with mud. When the stranger noticed Mace's attention shift away from him, he turned to see who the Hail Wolf was regarding.

  Raina Blackhail stared right back.The flesh on the stranger's cheeks had been scarified and tattooed to create the illusion of depth. Sunlight disappeared into carefully manipulated pits in the skin. He was a Scarpe, she saw that now, for black leather traces were woven into his shoulder-length braids and his fur collar was the fancy weasel known as mink. He appraised her, there was no other word for it, looked her up and down and decided what she was worth.

  Mace spoke a word and the three of them moved toward her. Three Scarpes. One plan. Raina kept her shoulders straight as the pieces came together in her head. The wagon. The cloak hem. Mace's face.

  "Raina." Mace's voice was tightly controlled. Beneath the hardened leather carapace of his riding armor, his lungs were portioning air. "I don't think you've met Stannig Beade, clan guide of Scarpe and counsel to its chief. He's brought us a gift from his clan."

  Dear Gods. No. Wind knifed across the greatcourt. Hammer chains rustled, dry snow snaked over the stones. Everything that was Blackhail was being blown away, and she had been a fool to imagine that she could be the one to stop it. Raina glanced at the wagon. The sawn ends of the poison pines were oozing sap. Poor Anwyn. She had not seen this coming. But the gods had. That's why they left.

  Unable to find her voice, Raina nodded at the stranger with the darkly watchful face.

  "Raina." He did not bow; she had not expected him to. Nor had he offered her the courtesy of "lady."

  "Stannig has split the Scarpestone," Mace said, raising his voice so all gathered on the greatcourt could hear. "Today he brings us our half. Blackhail is no longer a clan without guide or guidestone. For a thousand years we've shared warriors and oaths with our brother clan, now we share their stone."

  Silence followed. The wind blew. And then Mace Blackhail spoke again. "Stannig will stay in our house unti
l the Stone Gods return.

  NINE The Crab Gate

  The Ganmiddich roundhouse commanded a bend in the Wolf where the river changed course from west to south. Built from the same green traprock that formed the cliffs and banks of the river, it sat on high ground above a crescent-shaped gravel beach. The great dome of the roundhouse dwarfed the east and north wards, which had been added at a later date. The primary entrance to the dome was through a pair often-feet-high double doors known as the Crab Gate. Carved from seasoned oak and armored with plates of fossil stone, the Crab Gate was held to be one of the great wonders of the clanholds. How the fossils had been fixed to the wood, where they came from, and what creatures they revealed were sources of wonder and myth. Marafice had once seen them up close for himself and they had given him a chill. Segmented eyes, pronged claws, winged fish, cloven tails, serrated fangs, scaled birds, basilisk spines, kraken heads: all displayed in deep relief in bone yellow limestone.

  It made for a good show, but not necessarily good defense. Marafice knew the gates were heavy and resistant to flames, but he suspected the fossil stone would crack if barraged with missiles, and double gates, by their very nature, were weaker than single ones. If he remembered correctly, there were two big couplets on the interior of each door that were large enough to accommodate the girth of a hundred-year oak. So a single tree trunk barred the entrance to Ganmiddich. Marafice saw it most nights in his dreams.

  Now, though, looking north upriver toward the bend, flanked by an army of eleven thousand hideclads, mercenaries and brothers-in-the-watch, he looked upon the Crab Gate's pale exterior a quarter-league in the distance and felt some measure of fear. He did not believe in the God of priests and knights, of temples and prayer books and a thousand fussy rules, but he did believe in something. Exactly what was hard to quantify, but if pressed he'd call it power. He spoke to that power now. Guard me. Guard my men.

  Snow fell as the army of Spire Vanis advanced at slow march. The wind was from the east and it channeled along the river and through the bluffs. The Wolf ran shallow here, boulders and gravel banks slowing the flow. Birches and willows choked the water margin, and evidence of recent high water could be seen in uprooted trees, undercut banks and newly exposed stone. The frost that begun in the early hours of the morning had claimed shallow pools and slow meanders, coating them with opaque crusts of ice.

  Close to midday now, the temperature was barely warmer. Marafice felt his plate armor sucking away his body heat and did not much like the thought of donning the birdhelm. Like many in the lines he was putting it off until they were within fire range.

  Shifting in the saddle, Marafice looked back over the ranks. The rear guard, led by the improbably named Lord of the Glacier Granges, had cleared the bend and was forming ranks. Hideclads, Marafice thought with some heat, a man could be blinded looking at so much steel. Which damn-fool surlord had been responsible for repealing the Hide Laws, that's what he wanted to know. The Hide Laws had prohibited private armies from wearing chain mail and metal plate unless directly under the command of the surlord. The law had given the hideclads their name. For hundreds of years the armies maintained by the grangelords to defend their granges were allowed to armor themselves only in hardened hide. It had been, as far as Marafice Eye was concerned, a very fine law, and one which he wouldn't think twice about reinstating. Nothing wrong with a surlord having the best army. Nothing wrong at all.

  Facing forward, Marafice gave the command to sound the drums. Tat Mackelroy, who was Jon Burden second-in-command but today was riding at Marafice's right hand, stood in his stirrups and bellowed the order down the ranks. Seconds passed, and then the kettledrums began to sound. Slowly, rhythmically, forty drumbeats fell in time. The deep hollow booms sent waterfowl into flight and spooked the horses. Some shied and broke the line. One reared and threw its rider into a rank of foot soldiers. The teams pulling the scorpions and the battering ram were unaffected by the noise: they had been brought in from the south and were trained to stillness in battle. Marafice had thought his own mount trained, but training and experience were different things and the great black warhorse was unsettled.

  Da-dum. Da-dum. Da-dum. The noise hurt Marafice's ears.

  "Shall I call horns?" Tat Mackelroy asked. He was a six-year veteran of the watch, an expert broadswordsman who'd been promoted so quickly through the ranks that some resented him for it. Mackelroy didn't care. He was too busy doing his job.

  "No horns. Not yet." Marafice glanced east at the Ganmiddich Tower, perched atop the inch. Old beyond knowing, it was the tallest standing structure in the clanholds. On clear nights some said you could see the fire burning in its top-floor gallery from the far side of the Bitter Hills. Marafice didn't know about that. He looked and saw a five-sided tower erected on an overgrown rock in the middle of the Wolf. It was not constructed from the same traprock as the roundhouse and it did not resemble any structure built by clansmen. It was occupied, the darkcloaks had informed him of that. Close to a hundred long-bowmen, mostly Hailsmen, lived in and patrolled the three upper floors.

  Today, for them, there would be no going back to the roundhouse. Last night the darkcloaks had sabotaged their boats. Marafice could see the boats from where he sat, their keels drawn up high on the rocky beach. They looked fine, but they weren't. That was the way the darkcloaks liked to work.

  "I won't have them," Marafice had roared at Iss two months back in Spire Vanis. "They're sly, skulking. They cannot be trusted. And the men won't stomach them."

  "Don't be a fool," Iss had replied. "Stop thinking like a butcher's son from Hoargate and think like a man with something to lose. You'll be commanding an army in excess often thousand. You'll be responsible for their food, safety, lives. You cannot afford to indulge your backwoods notions of what is and isn't right. Take the darkcloaks and use them. Put them to work, let them be your ears in the ranks and your eyes in the field. The things they know can tip the balance; tricks with fire and smoke, snares, bluffcraft, sabotage. They're trained to see what is hidden: weaknesses in buildings, concealed doors, animal tracks, strategies, men. If you must, use them only to gather intelligence. It will be little, but it may be enough."

  "They are sorcerers!" Marafice had cried, punching his fist against the Blackvault's door. "How can I look my men in the eye knowing I countenance such foulness?"

  Iss waived a pale hand, unconcerned. "Do not look them in the eye then. A surlord does what is best for a surlord, not what the majority of his acquaintances decree acceptable. You are going into Ganmiddich blind, with your enemies beskfe you. I'd say you need all the help vou can get."

  Even then Marafice had not relented. Fear of the old skills ran deep. There was a dirtiness to them, a sense that once you used them their stench clung to you and you were lessened in some essential way. It was only a week later, when Iss had visited him at the Red Forge and casually thrown a curl of parchment on the table, that Marafice had changed his mind. "What is that?" he had barked, unnerved at having the surlord interrupt him as he ate his dinner of ham and beans.

  Again, there had been a wave of the pale hand. "Read it," Iss had said, knowing full well that Marafice was barely capable of writing his own name.

  Angry, Marafice had pushed away his plate. "Just tell me what it says."

  "It says that last night Garric Hews met with Alistair Sperling, Lord of the Salt Mine Granges, in the back room of a small tavern south of the Quartercourts. They discussed you. Hews knew Sperling had just committed to riding to Ganmiddich with three hundred men, and he sought to discover how the esteemed lord might react to a possible mutiny on the road."

  Marafice had stood. "What was Sperling's response?"

  "Oh he was for it, bless his salty little soul."

  "Then I do not want him or his men."

  Iss had laughed then, a superior sound that did not let Marafice in on the joke. "You cannot exclude everyone who does not like you. You'll end up with an army of one. The questions to ask are these: H
ow did my surlord receive this information? And: How can I stay one step ahead of those who mean me harm?" Iss had paused, more for effect than to allow Marafice the opportunity to reply. "The answer to both questions is dark cloaks. These are men who love to spy."

  So Marafice had taken them, a half-dozen in all, perhaps more. Their numbers were hard to pin down.

  Already they had earned their keep. Most evenings he met with one of them in the privacy of his tent. Usually it was the man named Greenslade, a thin trapper with elaborately queued hair. That was another detail he'd learned about the darkcloaks: they often masqueraded as other things. Greenslade kept him well informed about loyalties in the camp. A day south of the Wolf, Hews had arranged something Greenslade called a tester. Hews' plan had been to separate Marafice from his brothers-in-the-watch during the river crossing, then stand back and observe if any other factions in the army of eleven thousand would step forward to protect their leader when it appeared he might be vulnerable. Knowing that one simple fact about the river crossing had been enough to foil the plan. Marafice had simply ordered the Whitehog to cross the river first and it was done. Even arranged to have one of the guide ropes break so the whole damn lot of them got a soaking.

  It had been a very satisfying moment, and it had changed his opinion of the darkcloaks. Iss was right: Even though he was uneasy with their services, he could not afford to waive them.

  Since then Marafice had learned other useful things. Greenslade had provided a headcount of the forces in the Ganmiddich roundhouse, and also disclosed information about messengers sent to Blackhail for reinforcements. By Marafice's calculation the reinforcements were at least five days away: more than enough time for him to gain possession of the house.

  Today he rode to break the Crab Gate, and it was a strange feeling to know the darkcloaks were in place and ready. Their aid made him less of a man and more of a surlord, and that was probably the way it had to be.