A Sword From Red Ice (84 page)

Greenslade was a small fox-like man, outfitted to
look like a trapper. He had the red and flaky skin of someone who was
out in the woods all day skinning weasels and foxes, but his eyes
were city-cold and sharp. "I pass along nothing that has not
been confirmed by two sources. Three days after Iss went missing,
whilst workers were still digging through the rubble for his remains,
Roland Stornoway entered the fortress with a small force of hideclads
and seized control of it."

"Are you sure it was not his son?"
Roland Stornoway was an old dry stick of a man who walked with the
aid of two canes. Marafice had marked his father-in-law as both
shrewd and greedy. He had not marked him as a man capable of such a
bold and surprising move.

"Roland Stornoway's son, also named Roland,
stands within the fortress with him. But it was the father, not the
son, who entered first."

Marafice thought a long while on this information,
and could not for the life of him decide if it was good or bad. "Is
my wife within the fortress?" he asked finally. The phrase "my
wife" did not come easy from his lips; it made him spit.

Greenslade pretended not to notice. "She is
with her father and brother, and has delivered a healthy boy."

Dear God of Mercy it just got stranger. Married
under three months and the happy couple now had a baby. Tactfully,
the darkcloak had avoided using the word son. Marafice reckoned he'd
be hard-pressed to find a single soul in the north who believed the
boy to be his. It had been a marriage of convenience. She was a rich
slut who had bedded some starving scholar—a bookbinder's son if
he wasn't mistaken—and he, Marafice Eye, was the man who had
agreed to wed her once she'd reached the point where she could no
longer conceal her pregnancy from prying eyes.

Liona, her name was. Marafice feared she wasn't
right in the head. The one night they'd spent together as man and
wife had been challenging to say the least. Legally he had to fuck
her. So legally he did. The hair she'd ripped off his legs still
hadn't grown back. Now she was standing by in Mask Fortress with her
newborn son, who was lawfully and in the eyes of God an Eye. Marafice
could not begin to comprehend what it meant.

He and Greenslade had been standing at the back of
the supply tent, the usual place for such assignations. It was long
after midnight and the darkcloak's breath smelled of cheap,
overhopped beer. He had been in the alehouse of a village the army
would pass tomorrow at noon; a lone trapper looking for company and
some free warmth from the stove. Marafice could imagine what the man
did, how cleverly he engaged local farmers and road-weary travelers
in conversation. Armed with silver pieces from Marafice's own purse
he could afford to grease throats and buy goodwill.

Marafice had not intended to use the darkcloaks
again, but the nearer he drew to the city the more pressing his need
for information. At first he had thought he could just enter such a
tavern himself and demand people tell him things. He was Marafice
Eye, Protector General, the Knife. He had not counted on the very
real fear his motley army and his motley self generated in such
places. Entire villages would board themselves up as he passed. When
he and Tat Mackelroy had ridden ahead of the front line at Natural
Bridge and entered the town a good two hours before the army, they
had found the people who lived there in a state of panic. A cattle
auction had been due to take place in the market square, and drovers
and farmers were beating bony steers with sticks to get them to move
along the streets in haste. The smith was barricading his shop with
metal bars and an alekeep was burying two wooden barrels in the snow
outside his alehouse. Marafice had ordered Tat to rough up the man
and slash both barrels with his sword. The alekeep's behavior was an
insult to men who had gone to war.

On their way out they had taken a steer. It was an
odd thing, but Marafice could not recall such ill regard on the
journey north. They had pursued a more direct route, one that took
them predominately over fields and pasture, but even so the farmers
had not trembled to see them. Had the presence of the grand and shiny
grangelords been such a reassuring sight? Or was it just that
everyone was leaner and hungrier after two additional months of
winter?

One thing was certain: No one in these places was
going to talk to him. Town and village folk assumed, correctly, that
Marafice Eye and his army were going to rob them.

That was where Greenslade and his fellows came in.
They had swift horses, and little problem with riding through the
night to gain a crucial half-day advantage on the army. Sometimes
they fell back. Other times they spotted the smoke of farms or cabins
in the distance and simply took off over fields. They were good at
their work and discovered information to the army's advantage. It
was Greenslade's advice that had led to Marafice's decision to pursue
a more easterly route. The roads were better and there had been few
reports of trouble upon them.

It also seemed the Whitehog had taken a succession
of blows, God bless his small and porcine heart. According to
Greenslade the army that had deserted the Crab Gate had quickly
fragmented. Various grangelords including Alistair Sperling and
Tranter Lennix had split from the main body of the army, believing
they could steal a march on Garric Hews and reach Spire Vanis before
him. A dog-and-pony race had ensued with a whole fistful of
grangelords racing to take the prize. Alistair Sperling had arrived
first only to find all gates dropped and barred. Lisereth Hews was
outside Almsgate with an army of two thousand, trying to ram her way
in. When the good lady spotted Sperling she ordered her hideclads to
attack.

"Attacked him herself, by all accounts,"
Greenslade had told Marafice, "ahorse and armed with her late
husband's sword."

That one fact had genuinely frightened Marafice
Eye. He found it surprisingly easy to picture Lisereth Hews armed and
worked up into a tooth-and-nail frenzy. She had been daughter and
granddaughter to surlords; she knew what it took to seize power.

"Lisereth Hews' hideclads trounced Sperling,"
Greenslade had continued easily, confident in his facts. "His
men were exhausted; saddle sores burning holes in their arses, horses
falling beneath them. Sperling could barely raise a defense. Took a
spear to the gut and fell. Lisereth wasted no time and used her
momentum to make another strike on the gate. That's when the storm
hit. Twice." The smallest upward lilt in Greenslade's voice had
suggested unnatural events. His green eyes had glittered knowingly
as he awaited the next question. He was a darkcloak, master of tricks
and illusions. The cloak he wore could conceal him from dusk to dawn.
He could compel a man to look at him in a crowd, draw smoke away from
a fire, and project his voice into the bustling spaces of public
halls and squares whilst concealing its origin. Marafice did not wish
to know how he did these things. He had learned his lesson at
Ganmiddich, and would not involve himself in anything that had the
taint of sorcery about it. His name was Eye. Not Iss.

Pointedly he had directed the conversation away
from the strangeness of the storm. "What happened to Lisereth
Hews?"

"As her hideclads rammed the gate, word came
that her son was just to the north. The storm was raging by then,
temperature dropping, wind whipping up the snow, but she waited for
him. Meantime Garric Hews has called a halt. He knows what's been
happening five leagues to the south at Almsgate but he imagines his
mother will have withdrawn. She imagines he will force his way
through, and refuses to abandon the gate. Hideclads start deserting
her and she orders them shot. Large-scale mutiny breaks out and Hews
is fighting Hews in the whiteout. The temperature falls so low that
timbers in the gate roof start exploding and tiles begin flying like
axes. When it's all over and done four hundred hideclads lie dead.
Most were wounded then frozen alive. Lisereth Hews survived the
fighting but not the cold. Garric had to dig his mother's body out of
the snow two days later. It was said her husband's sword was frozen
in her fist."

Marafice had shuddered. "What of the
Whitehog?"

"He retired to his grange. Some believe he
should have pushed that last five leagues to meet his mother and he's
lost some support over it. His momentum's gone, his remaining
hideclads are disheartened, the ground's still too hard to bury the
dead. Word is that he'll rally but it'll take time." Again the
green eyes had glittered. "All due to a storm."

Marafice had dismissed the man, and resolved then
and there to never use him again.

It was three days later and he knew he would break
that resolve and call Greenslade into his presence tonight.
Information was his lifeblood. If he intended to approach Hoargate
tomorrow he needed to know what to expect.

His father-in-law held Mask Fortress, yet as of
three days ago Roland Stornoway had not declared himself surlord.
Marafice could not imagine a stranger turn of events. Spire Vanis
without a surlord for a month? He did not know the histories and
perhaps such a thing had happened before. But he doubted it. He had
lived in Spire Vanis all his life, spent twenty-two years close to
surlords—first Borhis Horgo and then Penthero Iss. This was not
a city that could tolerate a vacuum. Something was happening, but he
was not a scholar or a politician; he needed Greenslade and his
brethren to help him figure it out.

"All halt!" Tat Mackelroy cried,
standing in his stirrups and bellowing down the ranks. "Make
camp. All halt!"

Marafice was surprised to see they had arrived at
the Vale of Spires. Hours had passed where he had left his progress
in the hoofs of his big black warhorse. The sun was failing, dipping
into bands of red and silver clouds at the edge of the sky. All farm
stench had gone and the air was crisp and gusting. They had
approached the granite spires from the east and Marafice wondered how
long he had ridden in their long, needle-like shadows and not known
it.

Most people believed the spires had been formed by
God, given as both gift and warning to the people of Spire Vanis. See
my power. A few claimed they had been raised by ancient sorcerer
kings who had died in the War of Blood and Shadow, long before the
city at the foot of Mount Slain existed. Marafice could not
understand the need to explain such things. They were there, you
could see them, why invent fancies to turn them into things they were
not? What they were was a rough circle of granite fangs that thrust
straight out of the bedrock at the center of a grassy plain. Some
were as tall as a hundred and twenty feet and others less than
thirty. The granite was a dirty off-white color, streaked and
potholed with black. To Marafice's mind they looked like rotting
shark's teeth. He supposed they might be an alarming sight to those
who had never seen them before, especially the taller ones that had
edges like serrated knives, but he had always found them oddly
pleasing.

And it pleased him to make camp here this night.
He dismounted and started issuing orders. Anyone who looked even
remotely afraid or doubtful was given latrine duty. Marafice had
found it worked as well as anything when it came to reassuring a
man's mind; feeling full of energy, he hammered posts with the
mercenaries and raised tents. Cook fires were a problem as they had
run out of timber two days back and had not been able to forage or
strip much since. All trees had long since gone from this part of the
country, felled to make way for pasture and farms. Marafice thought a
fire would be a good thing for the men. "Chop down the small
cart," he commanded Tat Mackelroy on impulse. "There's no
reasons why the captives can't walk to the city tomorrow. The wounded
can be jammed into the remaining two."

This turned out to be a spectacularly popular
order. Mercenaries and men of Rive Company came together to hack the
wooden cart into sticks. One of the old Rive men fetched his
stringboard and started plucking out a tune, some outrageously lewd
song about a woman who went up a mountain and ended up getting fucked
by a bear. Pretty much everyone joined in the chorus. Ale kegs were
tapped. The cartbed was reduced to chips. Work began on the wheels.
Perish frowned at all the ungodly activity, but had the sense to let
it be. He knew the value of such releases to men who had been away
from home for too long.

"What should we do with the captives?"
Jon Burden was the one sober presence in the camp. As commander of
Rive Company, the four clansmen who remained alive were his
responsibility.

"Lash them to one of the fangs,"
Marafice said. "Take off their boots and razor the soles of
their feet. Lightly, but enough to keep them from running. Those men
aren't fools. They would have figured out by now that tonight's their
last chance to escape before we enter the city."

"Aye," Jon Burden said, glancing south
toward the mountains and Spire Vanis. From here you could just see
the haze of gray smoke the city created billowing above the ice
fields of Mount Slain. "Always supposing we are allowed entry."

Marafice had known Jon Burden for as long as he
had been in the Rive Watch. They had trained together under Perish;
pulled themselves up from lowly brothers to captains, learned how to
eat in the grand banquet halls of Mask Fortress without causing
grange ladies to faint in disgust, and discovered hard truths about
the city they guarded. Marafice would not lie to him. "We'll see
what we see."

Jon Burden pulled air into his thick powerful
chest. The rubies in the killhound brooch at his throat fired in the
setting sun. "A pity we had to trade the ram."

Marafice barked out a laugh. Clapping Burden hard
on the shoulder, he said, "Count yourself lucky you never had
the pleasure of meeting the Weasel chief firsthand. She's been
figuring in my dreams ever since—and God help me, sometimes
she's naked."