A Sword From Red Ice (20 page)

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 faces 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 birdhelms and wore whatever they could beg, borrow or
scavenge. Many wore standard 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," Marafice 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.

"Is that a wooden bowl on your head?"

"Aye, sir." Weadie knocked on the crown,
producing a hollow rap. "I drilled the holes meself and me
sister made the straps."

"You should have come to me. I would have
seen you got something better."

Weadie shook his head. "Wouldn't want it.
After thirty years in the watch I'm done wearing the bird skulls.
Call me reckless, but I'd rather take my chances with a flying ax
than ride around with nine pounds of metal on my head."

Marafice believed him. He also believed that Will
Weadie, like many men retired from the watch, was sorely in need of
funds. The annual pension of ten silver coins barely stretched to a
hot dinner every night. They needed plunder, and Marafice was going
to make sure they got it. First spoils were theirs, by order of the
Surlord, Penthero Iss. Marafice had insisted upon it, but he was no
fool and they were a long way from Spire Vanis and the Surlord's
words were no longer law.

The wangling had already begun. Farms, mills,
cottage, smiths and stovehouses had been plundered on the journey.
Only Marafice [missing] they had raided a mining camp upriver. It was
the only time Marafice could recall attending a raid where the
fighting was worse after than during it. He'd been glad of his
reputation then. Both the hideclads and mercenaries feared him in
equal measure, and just the word that he was riding in to break up
the feuding was enough to excite a spontaneous laying down of arms.

God only knew how the spoils had been divvied, but
judging from the zealousness of the guards posted outside Rive
Company's supply tent, his brothers-in-the-watch hadn't fared too
badly.

To Weadie he said, "Put some metal under
there. Now!"

Weadie jumped at the force of his voice. "Aye,
sir."

Marafice turned away as the aging armsman ran
toward the red fire in search of an iron pot or anything else that
would do the job. Damn fool. Didn't he know they'd be shot from above
with longbows? Those clannish arrowheads hit like axes.

"Jon," he said to the commander of Rive
Company. "We split the men, fifty-fifty. Have them form shield
walls on either side of Hog Company. Hews is taking the center."

The word conveyed all that Jon Burden did not like
about this plan. They'd discussed most of it last night, but only
today as he'd looked into Garric Hews' face and seen all the
arrogance and challenge there had Marafice decided to be firm. Rive
Company would flank Whitehog Company like a pair of armed guards.
Marafice trusted Garric Hews about as much as he trusted a whore with
open sores.

"I am better than you. I am harder and more
cunning, and one day when you hear the hiss of wind in your chest it
will be me sliding out the knife."

That was what Garric Hews had said earlier with
his cool, superior smile. They were rivals for the lordship of Spire
Vanis, and this—this godforsaken wasteland ruled by
animal-skinned clansmen—was where they would fight it out.
Penthero Iss had named his successor, and Garric Hews did not like
the sound of Marafice Eye, Surlord, one bit. What Iss had done was
unprecedented, and not likely to stick once he was dead and gone, but
that wasn't the point. Marafice had publicly declared himself for
surlord. Anyone who fancied that position for himself would have to
deal with seven feet, twenty stone of Eye.

"I still say we keep our men together,"
Jon Burden said. "Take the left flank. Stay out of the river."

Marafice shook his head once, hard. They were
riding between rows of open-fronted rawhide tents, their horses'
hoofs sinking deep into the mud. Camp priests had been busy before
dawn, spreading the sacred ash. The strange tingly odor of burned
nightshade was released with every step. "If the gate falls the
Whitehog could cut us off. A dozen horsemen placed just right, and he
could hold us back while Hog Company rides through. This way we'll be
on him. Garric Hews will be seeing so much red he'll think his head's
split open."

Jon Burden grunted. He was a stocky, powerfully
built man with thick blond hair and a full beard that was showing
gray. The killhound brooch that fastened his battle cloak boasted two
mosquito-size rubies for eyes. Those rubies denoted twenty years
service as a captain of the watch. In his time Jon Burden had
expelled the Forsworn from the city, quelled the hunger riots during
the bitter winter following Penthero Iss' ascension to Surlord, led
the force that rode against Hound's Mire at Choke Creek, crushed the
Nine-Day Rebellion led by the Lord of the Mercury Granges, and foiled
numerous assassination attempts on Iss. Jon Burden knew what it took
to win. He had argued to take the center, and Marafice had nearly let
him have it, but a conversation he'd had with Penthero Iss ten weeks
ago in Spire Vanis had stopped him.

"How do I lead this army of misfits?"
Marafice had demanded of Iss, his voice echoing across the
marble-entombed space of the Blackvault. "The grangelords, the
darkcloaks, the watch?"

"You have been Lord Protector of Spire Vanis
for eighteen years," Iss had replied, cool as well water. "You
already know how to lead. Now you must learn how to use."

Marafice shivered as he remembered his surlord's
words. Iss' brand of cold calculation was foreign to him, but of all
the men he knew Penthero Iss had risen the farthest and stayed put
the longest. That meant something to the Knife. Iss was the son of an
onion farmer from Trance Vor; it served a butcher's son well to
listen and learn.

So he would use Garric Hews and Whitehog Company
by giving them the honor of taking the center during the assault. The
greatest danger lay in the center—it was the spearhead of the
attack, open to the worst Ganmiddich could fire at them—and
Marafice's first instinct had been similar to Jon Burden's: We will
take this peril as our own. Yet when he had asked himself, Would Iss
have done this? he had paused and changed his course.

The simple fact was that Whitehog had superior
training and weaponry. Marafice knew it. Hews knew it. Doubtless Jon
Burden knew it too but his pride got in the way. Whitehog Company had
been training in battle formation for years. They were tight. Their
captains had decades of experience patrolling the southern border
against the Glaive, and their leader was sharp and aggressive. Rive
Company were fine men, but a good third were over forty—and a
high portion of that number hadn't seen active service in years. Much
though he would have liked to cherry-pick the best seven hundred from
the watch Marafice had taken only those who had volunteered. The
result was a motley band of seasoned fighters, thrill-seekers,
zealots, old men dreaming of recapturing their glory days and
scroungers in need of cash. It wasn't an ideal force by any
reckoning, but Marafice took some pride in the fact that none were
here against their will.

Besides, it was in his interest to keep Spire
Vanis secure in his absence. Deplete the watch too badly and he put
the Surlord's security at risk. An assassination while he was here, a
thousand leagues and twenty-one days' hard travel from the city, was
the last thing Marafice wanted. If anything ever happened to the
Surlord he needed to be close to claim his prize.

"Lead an army for me, Knife," Iss had
murmured all those months ago in the Blackvault, "and in return
I will name you as my successor."

Marafice blew air from his mouth. While he'd stood
here thinking, mud had turned to chalk on his horse's hooves.

"Jon," he said brusquely. "I will
hear no more arguments. Split the men. We ride within the quarter."

He waited until Jon Burden met his gaze and
nodded, and then kicked his horse toward Mud Camp, where the
mercenary companies were forming ranks. This business of surlording
won no friends. Even though Jon Burden had no love for Garric Hews
and Whitehog Company, he could not be told the second reason Marafice
had let them take the center. Hews would be leading his men. He had
ridden at the head of the line on every raid and sortie Hog Company
had undertaken since leaving Spire Vanis. Today that placed him at
the center of the center—bull's-eye by Marafice's reckoning.

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 fire, 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, table hands, 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 highland-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.