by J. V. Jones
Even as he and Effie walked through to the main entrance hall, a group of crofters were being greeted by Anwyn Bird. The stout-bellied matron wasted no time in ordering the men to strip down to their softskins and felt boots. Raif took note of the snow on the crofters’ shoulders and hoods. He also noticed that all three men had their bows braced and ready. The oldest man, a great red-haired giant who Raif recalled was named Paille Trotter, had a donkey basket on his back crammed with arrow and spear shafts and a bucket of neat’s-foot oil hanging on a rope around his neck. It was a point of honor among all tied clansmen that they never came to the roundhouse empty-handed.
Suddenly uneasy, Raif raised his hand to his neck and searched out the hard smoothness of his raven lore. This was the first year he had ever known a crofter to bring weapons, not food, to pay for his winter keep.
“Now go and warm yi’selves by the small hearth and I’ll send a girl in with some peas and bacon. There’s no blackening left, mind, only meat and soft lard.” Anwyn Bird’s tones dared any of the crofters to find fault with the offered fare. None, including Paille Trotter, who was twice Anwyn’s size and had a face fierce enough to scare bears, had the nerve for it. Anwyn Bird nodded, well used to cowing all who stood before her. “Go on with you, then. You’ll find a skin of good ale warming by the fire.”
The crofters, looking slightly embarrassed in their softskins and felt boots, were quick to do Anwyn’s bidding.
Anwyn Bird, grand matron of the roundhouse, head cook and brewer, expert on all things including childbirth and bowmaking, turned the considerable force of her attention upon Raif and Effie Sevrance. “And where might you two have been?”
Seldom asking a question that she wasn’t prepared to answer for herself, Anwyn Bird gave neither of them the chance to speak. “Been dawdling in the guidehouse, I’ll swear!” She nodded at Effie. “You, my girl, are coming with me. Everyone else round here might dither about, ’fraid that you’ll run off again and never be found. But I for one intend to see that you get a good hot supper, some oatcakes, and a sop full of butter. If you get any thinner, I swear Longhead’ll mistake you for a sapling and plant you in the graze.”
“Longhead plants the saplings in the rise, not the graze,” Effie said matter-of-factly. “And it isn’t the season for them anyway.”
The loose skin under Anwyn Bird’s chin wobbled in indignation.
Raif bit his lip to stop himself from smiling. Raina Blackhail and Effie Sevrance were the only two people in the guidehouse who could render Anwyn speechless.
Muttering to herself about young girls today, Anwyn Bird grabbed Effie by the collar and marched her toward the kitchen. Effie’s rock collection knocked together as she moved, and just before Anwyn passed out of earshot, Raif caught the phrases “lot of nonsense” and “fuss about old rocks” puffing from her lips.
Glad that Effie had fallen into the hands of someone who would see her fed, Raif let out a breath of relief. At least for tonight that was one less thing to worry about.
Spinning around, he took a moment to think where Mace Blackhail would likely be at this hour. Despite the eleven-day mourning set by Inigar Stoop, events were moving fast. Crofters were coming early to the roundhouse, bringing arms and bow grease, the guidehouse windows had been boarded up and barricaded with pullstones, and just this morning Raif had woken to the clang and shudder of the clan forge—and it hadn’t even been dawn. Clan Blackhail was preparing for war, and they were doing so under Mace Blackhail’s orders and supervision.
Raif pressed his lips into a white line. The man was worse than a murderer. He had ridden home from a killing field with his mouth full of lies. Even before he had made a decision where to go, Raif exited the entrance hall. He had to find Mace Blackhail, see for himself what the man who would be clan chief planned next.
The interior of the roundhouse was a vast warren of stone. Tunnels, ramps, and dug steps led down to windowless chambers, grain cells, root cellars, arms locks, and vaults where enemy bones had once been laid facing north to rot. Way down, two full stories belowground, Longhead kept a wet cell and grew mushrooms year-round. All chambers were stone walled and barrel ceilinged, supported by massive bloodwood stangs sealed with pitch.
Nothing was locked, not even the strongroom. A clansman who stole from his own was considered as good as a traitor and promptly staved and skin hung. Raif had seen it happen only once, to a soft-spoken luntman named Wennil Drook. Wennil’s job as luntman was to keep all torches lit in the roundhouse. He had access to all chambers, could go wherever he chose, unnoticed and unquestioned. When Corbie Meese’s fine silver handknife went missing one night after supper, the entire roundhouse was searched. Mace Blackhail found the knife a week later wrapped in dockleaves at the bottom of the luntman’s pack.
Raif forced his teeth together as he ran down a series of short ramps. Early the next morning Wennil Drook was taken onto the court and laid facedown upon the clay. One sharp pole was inserted under his skin from shoulder to shoulder and a second from hip to hip. Wennil Drook was then lifted by the staves and suspended between two horses. The horses were ridden by their riders over the fellfields and onto the Wedge. Wennil Drook only made it halfway. The skin on his back tore off in a single piece, and he fell to the ground and was dead before dark.
Corbie Meese was given the skin off Wennil Drook’s back. He had used it once to clean his hammer, then thrown it away.
Frowning, Raif took the steps down to the fold, the great chamber that lay directly beneath the entrance, where all horses and livestock were held during hard frosts and sieges. It was empty. Not one clansman stood in the center, training his dogs, not one clans-woman leaned against the enclosure wall, letting her children run and play. Raif halted by the entrance. The fold was the largest cleared space in the roundhouse. On days as cold as this it was usually heavily used.
Raif punched the stonework with the heel of his hand. It was time he paid a visit to the Great Hearth. How long had he been in the guidehouse with Effie? Less than an hour?
The tunnels and ramps of the roundhouse were built narrow and winding so they could be easily defended if the main gate was breached. Raif found himself cursing every twist and curve as he ran. A man could get nowhere fast. Passing alongside the kitchen wall, he heard children’s laughter bubbling against the other side. The sound did little to settle his mind. Children playing in Anwyn Bird’s kitchen? Wasn’t the deepest spiraling hell supposed to freeze over first?
The Great Hearth was the roundhouse’s primary chamber aboveground. Yearmen, visitors, and all male children old enough to find food and beds for themselves slept there each night around the fire. Most clansfolk ate supper at the curved stone benches lining the chamber’s east wall. In the evenings everyone gathered about the fire to keep warm, tell tales, sample one another’s homebrew, smoke pipes packed with dried heather, court, sing, dice, and dance swords. It was the Heart of Clan; all decisions of weight were made there.
Even as he rounded the last of the steps, Raif knew something was wrong. The Great Hearth’s oak doors were closed. Not pausing to smooth his hair or brush down his coat, he pushed against the oak planking, forcing his way through.
Five hundred faces turned to look at him. Corbie Meese, Shor Gormalin, Will Hawk, Orwin Shank, and dozens of other full clansmen were gathered around the vast sandstone hearth. Raina Blackhail, Merritt Ganlow, and a score of other women with due respect also had places close to the fire. Sitting around the edge of the room on curved benches were the yearmen: the two middle Shank brothers, the Lyes, Bullhammer, Craw Bannering, Rob Ure, who was fostered from Clan Dregg, and dozens of others.
Raif felt a hard lump rise to his throat. Drey was there too, sitting beside blue-eyed Rory Cleet, his hands resting upon the newly scored hammer in his lap. Raif looked and looked, but his brother wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“You weren’t called to this meeting, boy.” Mace Blackhail stepped out from behind a bloodwood stang and walked five paces fo
rward before coming to a halt. “You won’t be made yearman till next spring.”
Raif didn’t care for the tone of Mace Blackhail’s voice. He also didn’t care for the fact that Mace Blackhail was wearing his foster father’s Clansword. Steel skinned, black as midnight, and hilted with human bone packed with lead, it was kept in the roundhouse at all times and worn only by the clan chief when he was called upon to pass judgments of death and war.
Glancing around the Great Hearth, Raif took full count of the group. More clansmen than he had seen together in one place since spring Godsfest had gathered for a meet. Even a few tied clansmen—crofters, pig farmers, and woodsmen—had been given places near the door. The only full-sworn clansmen who weren’t present were those manning the strongwalls and borderholds, the hundred or so standing nightwatch, and those away on longhunts in the far northern reaches of the clan.
Raif’s eyes narrowed. “If you have met to speak of war,” he said, glancing from face to face and ignoring Mace Blackhail completely, “then I demand to be present. Before the first battle is joined, Inigar Stoop will hear my oath.”
Corbie Meese’s large head, with its hammer dent, scar, and bald spot, was the first to nod. “He’s right, you know. We’re gonna need to bind as many yearmen as we can, as soon as we can. And that’s no mistake.” Ballic the Red and several others nodded right along with him.
Mace Blackhail cut the nodding short before it had chance to spread. “We must decide upon a clan chief before we speak of war.”
Raif shot Drey a hard glance, boring through his brother’s skull until Drey was forced to look up. Mace Blackhail had called a meeting to decide on the next clan chief, and his own brother hadn’t even told him. Raif scowled at Drey. Didn’t he realize he was playing right into Mace Blackhail’s hands?
“So,” Mace Blackhail said, taking the last few steps toward the door and pausing before he opened it. “As war isn’t our main purpose here, I say we let this boy go.” He smiled almost sweetly. “Delicate matters such as these would more than likely bore him.”
Raif stared at Drey’s bent head. This time his brother refused to look up.
Mace held open the door. With his back turned to the clan, he sent Raif a look filled with malice. Go, he mouthed, his eyes shrinking to two black-and-yellow strips.
“I say he stays.” It was Raina Blackhail, standing as she spoke. “Despite what you say, Mace Blackhail, Raif Sevrance is hardly a boy. If he wants to have his say along with the rest, I for one won’t stop him.” She looked her foster son straight in the eyes. “Would you?”
In the seconds it took Raina to speak, Mace Blackhail’s face changed twice. By the time he had turned back to the clan, the only trace of the anger her words had caused him was the rapidly diminishing lines around his mouth. He let the door fall closed. “Very well. Let the boy find a place at the back.”
Raif held his position a moment longer, then edged sideways, joining a group of crofters behind the door. His gaze did not leave Mace Blackhail for a moment.
“I warn you, boy,” Mace said softly, weighing his words. “We’re not here to rake over what happened at the badlands camp. You’re upset about the loss of your da—we all saw that the other day. But we’re in mourning for others besides Tem Sevrance, and you’d do well to remember that. You weren’t the only one who lost kin.” Mace made a swallowing motion with his throat. “Others did, too. And every time you speak up rashly without thinking, you injure their memories and wound the grieving.”
Mace Blackhail’s words stilled the clan. Many looked down, at the floor, at their hands, at their laps. Several of the older clansmen, including Orwin Shank and Will Hawk, nodded. The tied clansman by Raif’s side, a pig farmer named Hissip Gluff, edged minutely away.
“Let’s get back to the matter in hand.” Shor Gormalin spoke in an even tone. He was standing by the hearth, his fair hair and beard smoothly cut and tended, his swordarm resting on the mantel. “I daresay the lad knows himself when’s right and proper to speak.”
As always when the small swordsman spoke, people agreed. And those men and women who had given Raif sharp glances seconds earlier now found other things to look at. Raif said nothing. He was beginning to realize just how clever Mace Blackhail was with words.
“Well,” Ballic the Red said, stepping forward into the cleared space in the center of the room. “Mace is right. We must decide upon a clan chief and quickly. Dhoone is weak, and its sworn clans are suffering from want of protection. We all know the Dog Lord’s been sniffing around the Dhoonehouse like the hound that he is—the man has seven sons, and each one of them craves a clanhold of his own. Yet now it seems to me as if the Bludd chief craves more. I think the man has each and every one of us in his sights. I think he has a fancy to call himself Lord of the Clans. And if we sit on arses and do nothing, then it’ll only be a matter of time before his Bluddsmen come calling with swords.”
Shouts of “Aye!” chorused around the Great Hearth. Corbie Meese took his hammer from his back and pounded the wooden butt against the floor. Several yearmen, Drey included, began pummeling their fists against the bench. Many clansmen stamped their feet or hammered ale jugs against the walls. Mace Blackhail waited until the noise was at its greatest before speaking.
Raising an open hand, he shouted over the clamor, “Aye! Ballic has the right of it! The Dog Lord would have our land, our women, and our roundhouse. And when he’s done he’d turn around and shatter our guidestone to dust. He slaughtered our chief in cold blood, in the no-man’s-land of the camp. What worse will he do when he comes west to raid our clan?”
Mace Blackhail curled his hand to a fist. The noise had died now, and the only person moving was the luntwoman Nellie Moss, who was busy carrying shredded sprucebark from torch to torch. The fire in the Great Hearth roared like wind from the north, and all around the room bloodwood beams creaked and shuddered like timbers in a storm.
Raif felt the heat leave his face. The world was shifting beneath everyone’s feet on the word of just one man. He couldn’t believe how quickly it was happening. It was like watching a dog round up a herd.
“My father died at Vaylo Bludd’s hand,” Mace Blackhail said, letting his voice tremble along with his fist, “killed by a hell-forged sword, left to rot on frozen earth. I say the Dog Lord must pay long and hard for what he did. We are not Clan Dhoone to stand by and let someone steal our guidestone while we lie in bed with our women atop us. We are Clan Blackhail, the first of all clans. We do not hide and we do not cower. And we will have our revenge.”
The clan thundered to life. Everyone stood. Axmen and hammermen pounded their weapons against the stone floor, yearmen began chanting “Kill Bludd! Kill Bludd!” and those standing by tables took out their handswords and thrust the blades into the wood. The women tore the sleeves from their dresses, baring their widow’s weals for all to see. Corbie Meese hefted a skin of hard liquor over his head and sent it crashing into the fire. The skin exploded in a ball of pure white flame, scorching the hair of all who stood close and sending out a wave of heat that hit everyone in the room.
As smoke rolled from the hearth in black storm clouds, Ballic the Red aimed his bow. Shaped from a single piece of heartwood yew, strengthened with plates of horn, then curve-dried over sinew, the longbow drew as smoothly as the setting sun. Ballic held the string to his cheek, kissed his arrow’s fletchings, and let it fly. The arrow parted smoke like a knife slitting throats. Shooting into the red heart of the fire, it severed the tops of flames and shattered the glowing embers like a rock smashed into ice. Hot coals rained onto the hearthstone, dark and ashy, their red eyes flashing.
“That’s for the Dog Lord,” Ballic the Red shouted above the uproar, tapping imagined dust from his bow.
Even as Raif found himself envying the sheer force of Ballic’s shot, his gaze was drawn away to the opposite end of the chamber, where Drey stood chanting at the top of his voice. He and smooth-cheeked Rory Cleet were shouldering and pushing each o
ther, seeing who could shout the loudest. Drey had his hammer in his hand and kept turning to pound the bench behind him. Briefly he met Raif’s gaze, then quickly looked away. A muscle twisted in Raif’s gut. That wasn’t Drey. His face was so red, it didn’t even look like him.
Kill Bludd! Kill Bludd!
Edging back against the door frame for support, Raif looked away. He felt physically sick. Noises pushed against his face like blows. We don’t know Clan Bludd did it, he wanted to shout. But Mace Blackhail had ensured that anything he said would be dismissed as the immature rantings of a boy who had lost his da. Raif scored his fist along the door frame, daring the splinters to draw blood. Why couldn’t anyone see Mace Blackhail for the wolf that he was?
As he raised his knuckles from the wood, he was aware of someone’s gaze upon his back. Assuming it was Mace Blackhail, he spun around to face him. But it wasn’t Mace; it was his foster mother, Raina. Raif let his fist fall to his side. In a roomful of people straining, shouting, and clamoring to be heard, Raina Blackhail was an island of quiet calm. The bandages around her widow’s weals had been torn away, revealing the fierce red flesh of new wounds. No scabs would be allowed to form over the cuts as they healed. Instead her skin would be held together by tightly bound sinew, until bands of hard flesh had been raised around her wrists. These she would carry with her until death.
For the first time, Raif realized what Raina was wearing over her shoulders: the black bear pelt that Dagro Blackhail had died scraping. Yet the pelt looked clean and newly washed, and the flesh side was creamy and bloodless. Raif felt the ground shift beneath his feet one more time. Drey must have carried it back. He must have bundled it into his pack, brought it home from the badlands, finished scraping the flesh, then lime-washed and softened the inner hide. All done quietly and without fuss, so Raina Blackhail could have her husband’s last token.
Sobered, Raif unclenched his fist. Sometimes he hardly knew his brother at all.