A Sword from Red Ice (Book 3)

by J. V. Jones

  The Knife would not deceive himself. It would suit him well if Garric Hews was picked off by a sharp-eyed clannish bowman. No duels or backstabbing need be done. No risk of open grangewars between the Eastern Granges and the High Granges, no repercussions, ill feelings, or mistakes.

  Marafice Eye shrugged shoulders the size of full-grown sheep. A man could always hope.

  Mud Camp was situated at the north of the encampment, hard against the treeline. Two creeks, which the mercenaries had named the Ooze and the Pisser, ran like open drains through the ranks of tents. Within the camp the mercenaries had formed clans. The professional companies had chosen the most defensible ground, backing onto thick stands of stone pine. Upstream of the other mercenaries, they had the fresher water and higher ground. Their cover consisted of giant sheets of waxed canvas hung over birch poles. Sourwoods, uprooted for use as windbreakers, had been lashed into lines in place of walls. Marafice admired the design. It was trim and economical, and had the advantage of leaving the mercenary companies light on their feet. They didn’t haul a dozen cartloads of tent supplies from camp to camp like the grangelords. They carried everything they needed on eight packhorses.

  Marafice’s gaze became less admiring as he scanned the lower tiers of Mud Camp. Professional mercenary companies were one thing. Freelancers were another entirely. Motley bands of ill-equipped foot soldiers were milling around the cook fires, sucking on sparrow bones, oiling spear heads with filthy rags, fastening on buckled and peeling body armor, scratching their flea bites, swilling from tin flasks filled with crude grain alcohol, and spitting with feeling into the dirt. Chicken farmers, street vendors, tallow makers, stablehands, fish picklers, lime boys, pot boys, bath boys, outlaws, thieves: they were all here and nervous as hens around the smell of fox. Their contracts promised one silver piece a tenday and a “just and equitable portion of all common spoils won during the campaign.” Which meant they would probably get nothing at all.

  Marafice felt some sympathy for them, but his disgust at their unpreparedness and the state of their camp was stronger. What sort of men let their animals stand in a lagoon of their own filth?

  He was not pleasant as he gave his final orders.

  Steffan Grimes, captain of the largest professional outfit and acting commander of the entire mercenary contingent, rode forward to discuss the last-minute changes. Born from scratch-farming stock on the brush flats east of Hound’s Mire, Grimes had propelled himself far for a man who was still a good five years under thirty. When the Knife looked into Grimes’ blunt, ice-tanned face he saw himself. Younger. Coarser. Still intimidated by the high-and-mighty grangelords.

  “They have arseholes just the same as you and I,” he had said to Grimes at the start of the campaign, “the only difference is, with all the duck livers, lark tongues, and raw oysters they eat, they use theirs a lot more.”

  It had been exactly what he wished someone had said to him at that age, yet Grimes had not been ready to hear it. He was still unsure of himself around Garric Hews and his high-stepping brethren. When a grangelord barked an order, Steffan Grimes’ first instinct was to obey. It was a problem. Grangelords came in all varieties, from shrewd, to middling, to full-blown raving idiocy, yet each and every one of them believed he had a God-given right to lead men.

  That was where Andrew Perish came in. Marafice clasped Grimes’ forearm and wished him “Profit on the battlefield,” and then turned to meet his former master-at-arms.

  Andrew Perish had removed himself from the bustle of the camp and was standing on the cliff edge, gazing south at the hazy purple mounds of the Bitter Hills. Smoke rising from a fist-size iron crucible at his feet warned mortals to leave him well alone. Andrew Perish was speaking with God.

  The master-at-arms of the Rive Watch was sixty-one years old, yet he had the spread-legged, straight-backed stance of a man half his age. His hair was soldier-short and perfectly white. A shiny rash on his jaw and neck told of his habit of shaving twice a day. That same unbending self-discipline made him rise in the darkness of predawn every morning to prepare his kit, wash his small linens, cook his breakfast and tamp his own fire. He was a forty-year veteran of the Rive Watch, a man of fierce faith, and once long ago in a separate lifetime he’d been the second son of the Lord of the Wild Spire Granges.

  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.”

  EIGHT

  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 in 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 treeline.”

  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, Tem 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 Ballic 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.”