by J. V. Jones
That made Marafice crack a smile. Glancing again at the tower, he decided to steal a little of the Whitehog’s thunder. “Sound the horns!”
Tat Mackelroy relayed the order and within seconds the first blasts of trumpets could be heard. The battle for the Crab Gate had been engaged.
You could not hear the horns and not be stirred. Marafice felt it. His men felt it and pushed against the line. Garric Hews was no fool and knew better than to fight the moment.
“Charge!” he screamed. “To the gate!”
The charge was like being propelled forward on a crashing wave. The noise was deafening, the colors blurred, the danger of tumbling out of control real. Air and snow rushed through Marafice’s eye slit as his armor creaked and sawed, shaving skin from the back of his neck. He could no longer risk glancing at the tower, but the signal had been given. It was in the hands of the darkcloaks now.
As the charge moved forward, the line spread, opening up space in the interior for the machinists and bowmen to work. The scorpions had been carried in pieces to the clanholds and assembled at the camp: once they were set down and loaded they’d be ready to deploy.
Da-dum. Da-dum. Da-dum. The drums boomed and the horns wailed as a wall of arrows shot from the tower rained down on the east flank.
Marafice stared ahead. The Ganmiddich roundhouse and its square ugly outbuildings were still a blank. As the charge grew closer the risk of looking foolish increased. A city-men army at full charge was a fearsome sight, but if the clansmen did not engage the charge would break on the walls and they’d be forced into a siege. No one on the line wanted that.
What was taking the darkcloaks so long? Marafice could see the fossil stone on the Crab Gate clearly now, see brief shadows of movement behind the arrow slits and embrasures. Part of the east flank had spilled into the river shallows—easy targets for the bowmen in the tower. One man fell. Then another; his foot catching in the stirrup as he slid from his mount. The panicked horse bucked and reared, trying to shake itself free of the body. The momentum of the fall had dragged the saddle down the horse’s torso and the belly strap was now pressing against the stallion’s scrotum. Poor beast, Marafice thought before yelling, “Either kill it or cut the straps.”
An arrow pinged off the right side of his birdhelm, grazing his horse’s leather rump armor as it continued its flight. An instant later a second arrow buzzed right past his left ear. It took him a moment to realize it had come from the direction of the Crab Gate. The roundhouse had opened fire.
Behind him the first wave of crossbolts were loosed against the roundhouse. Thuc, thuc, thuc, thuc: hundreds of times in Marafice’s still-ringing ear. When the bolts met the traprock walls they simply stopped and fell to the ground. It was not a reassuring sight. Bolts first, cavalry next.
Insanely, Hews was still holding the charge. They were less than two hundred yards away now. Did Hews think so little of clannish buildings that he imagined horses could knock down their walls?
Suddenly there was a scream from within Hog Company. Two lines deep, a hideclad’s cloak was alive with flames. Fire arrows, and even as Marafice realized the cause, the sky blackened with smoke as a volley of flaming missiles was loosed from the roundhouse. Swatting one away with the flat of his sword, Marafice watched as Hog Company started to panic. Hideclads began tearing at their fancy white capes and driving their horses away from the center where the greatest concentration of arrows were falling. Hews spun in his saddle to calm them, but he could only do so much. Men afraid of fire made poor troops.
As the line met the hill the charge slowed. The horses were tiring. Nerves were worn. It was hard to look at the blank walls of Ganmiddich and not be discouraged. Hews had been counting on the famous jaw of the clansmen, the pride that demanded fight, not hide.
But not Marafice Eye. As they scaled the base of the hill and the first stone ball was loosed by the scorpions, a cry went up from the ranks.
“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 oldgrowth 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 bloodred 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 shee
r 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 kickball. 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 long 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.
“We take the house as planned.”
Even as he spoke, the unfamiliar horn sounded from the woods directly behind the roundhouse. Whoever they were, they had arrived.
TEN
Parley in the Thief’s House
Crope moved with as much stealth as he could manage. It wasn’t much—seven years in the mines had turned his joints to creaky doors—but it was enough to sneak up on the fly. It was a big one. A biter. Most people called them black flies, but if you looked real close you see they were really brown. This one had landed on the wall next to the strange shiny stain that smelled of snails. It was the perfect position from which to launch an attack upon the figure on the bed . . . and that wouldn’t do. Crope dove forward and snatched it into his fist. That wouldn’t do at all.