A Sword From Red Ice (55 page)

He had assumed that the Dog Lord would be leading
the Bludd army. He was wrong. That wrongness was why his army of
three thousand men was alive today. If he hadn't felt such fear of
the Dog Lord he might have been ambivalent about retreat. Certainly
Andrew Perish and his God-fearing nine hundred had wanted to stay and
fight. They held the gate. Almost. It may have been possible to
secure it. They had the number. Even with those bastard grangelords
stealing away with half the army, superior manpower was theirs. Two
factors were not in their favor though. One, they were unfamiliar
with the Crabhouse, and it would have taken time and trial to secure
it. And two, they had been fighting from noon to sundown and were
flat-out spent. Even Andrew Perish, whose zeal gave new meaning to
the phrase 'second wind' had been forced to admit that his men were
flagging. That last hard fight with Hailsmen for the gate had been
devastating. Many of Perish's faithful had fallen.

At least it had doused their God fires, and made
it less of a fight to call a retreat.

It was hard to know how many had died in the rout.
Numbers had been fluid, bodies already strewn across the roundhouse
steps and its river hill. Marafice could not take such matters
lightly, and he had played the retreat over and over again in his
head. It was a hard thing for a warlord, a retreat. Did you command
the front or bring up the rear?

He had brought up the rear, because that seemed
like the way he had lived his life. When you were born a butcher's
son in Spire Vanis you started at the back.

Still, even if the retreat had not gone as well as
it might, Marafice believed the men who marched with him this day
would live longer lives because of it. Bludd, Blackhail, Dhoone: all
three northern giants had their eyes on Ganmiddich. It would have
turned into a killing field. Three thousand city men holed up in the
most bitterly contested clanhold in the north? How long before the
real might of Blackhail turned up? And what about the self-crowned
Thorn King, Robbie Dhoone?

Marafice shook his head as he shortened the reins
and encouraged his mount to take the shore. They would not have been
supported.

Who the hell in Spire Vanis cared about this
rabble of fanatics, mercenaries, and aging brothers-in-the-watch? No
one now that the grangelords had upped stakes and headed south.
Indeed it would suit most of the high-and-mighties in Spire Vanis if
the Protector General of Spire Vanis simply never returned home.

The Rive Watch was always a tricky proposition for
an aspiring surlord. The eager candidate would almost certainly be a
grangelord, reared from birth to be hostile to the Rive's power and
the rough-necked men who wielded it. A swallowing of pride was
usually called for. Some were smart about it—Iss, a grangelord
by fosterage, had planned ahead, and joined the watch as a young man.
Marafice had respected him as a leader, but he had always known Iss
held him in contempt. Brothers-in-the-watch might be lacking in
finery and titles but that did not make them stupid. They controlled
Mask Fortress itself: the seat of the Surlord's power. Some courting
was called for if you fancied calling that fortress home. No one
could take it without the Rive Watch's support.

Now that the watch's leader was a thousand leagues
away from home, stuck on the wrong side of the Wolf for fear of
making a crossing, that courting had suddenly got easier. Some
bright and ambitious brother-in-the-watch had doubtless declared
himself in command while Marafice was away. He would be insecure, not
wholly supported by men who were loyal to the Eye. That meant the
aspiring grangelord could play a hand of divide and conquer; set one
faction against the other, whisper promises to both and keep none of
them. Marafice knew how it would go down. He had seen the same kind
of dealings several times before.

That was why he should have been there. If he'd
been in the city the day that Iss died no one could have matched him.
The watch was his. Thanks to a quick marriage to the Lord of the High
Grange's sluttish daughter, a grange and its titles were as good as
his own. Even Iss himself had declared Marafice Eye as his
successor. It was a rock-strong foundation that had now been rendered
worthless.

First come, first take: that was the law of Spire
Vanis. Mask Fortress did not hold open its doors until all contenders
had been assembled and accounted for. It wasn't a tourney, governed
by the rules of polite engagement. The doors were closed the instant
someone claimed the surlordship for his own. Prising those doors open
again was a long, bloody and frequently futile task. It was the
difference between rolling a boulder down a hill and carrying it up
again. You needed a hundred times the force.

What am I doing even thinking of it? Marafice
chastised himself. Here he was, stuck in the godforsaken clanholds,
in some wild river territory eight days west of Ganmiddich, with
three cartloads of badly injured men on his hands and another two
hundred walking wounded, unable to find a safe place to cross the
high and swift-moving Wolf, all the while constantly having to check
over his shoulder lest crews of heathen clansmen attack his rear.

Marafice frowned at the sky. At least there was
some sun about, not like yesterday when the thunderheads blew in from
the south and turned the Wolf into a chop field of flying branches
and jagged water. Damn the river to hell. They had tried to take the
same crossing that they'd used coming over, but the ferryman had
upped and gone and taken his ropes with him. Iss had arranged the
crossing, and Marafice hadn't taken much interest in it at the time.
The only thing he recalled for certain was that Clan Scarpe was
somehow involved.

It had been a very stupid mistake, not insuring
that the retreat to the city hold was properly covered. It made
Marafice angry with himself just to think of it. Who knew or cared
how the grangelords had crossed the river? They didn't have
injured—anyone not able-bodied had been thoughtfully abandoned
on the field—nor did they have carts, tents or supplies.
Mounted men, all of them, they had probably used the dozen boats that
were tied up back at the camp and swam across the horses. The boats
had been scuttled, of course. That order would have given the
Whitehog no end of delight.

There was the bridge of boats at Bannen, but
Marafice knew no welcome would be offered to city men there.
Bannenmen had fought with Blackhail for Ganmiddich, and Marafice had
felt nothing but anxiety during the two days they spent crossing
Bannen lands. Ban scouts had watched them as they headed west along
the rivershore. Potshots had been taken, and there was a short
exchange of fire. About two hundred swordsmen had appeared on the
river cliff above Marafice's column the next day. The Bannenmen had
sat their horses, gray cloaks blowing in the wind, mighty longswords
holstered at their backs, and sent Marafice a message he received
loud and clear. Keep walking.

It was another piece of luck, Marafice reckoned.
That Ganmiddich roundhouse was like honey to the bees. Word of Bludd
seizing it had doubtless mobilized the might of Bannen, and the
forces that remained behind were safe-keepers, insufficient in number
to mount an attack on three thousand city men.

"God is good," Perish had claimed the
next night as they made a light and nervous camp on the Wolf. "He
will see us home."

Marafice had declined to tell Andrew Perish
exactly what he thought of that. Home for God was heaven and to get
there you had to be dead. Instead he had told Perish of his
still-evolving plan to approach Scarpe.

When not talking about the One True God, Andrew
Perish was as sharp as an iron tack. The white-haired former
master-at-arms had leant in toward the fire so that that the crackle
of burning pine needles stopped his words from traveling where he did
not want them. "Iss had friends at Scarpe. He paid them good
coin to secure that crossing. They must have pulled those barges all
the way east to Ganmiddich—upriver, no less—and that's
the kind of service that doesn't come cheap."

Marafice nodded. He had already worked out some of
this for himself. "Scarpe's sworn to Blackhail—one of
their former sons is the new Hail chief. How will it sit with them to
aid the army that attacked Blackhail at Ganmiddich?"

Perish pushed his lips together and breathed
deeply through his nose. Slowly and gravely he began to shake his
head. "Not nearly as bad as it should. Do not forget they let us
cross in the first place. What did they think we were going to do?
Make parlor visits? Someone at Scarpe knew what we were about, and
either wasn't much concerned, or even worse it suited them."
Perish's cataract-burdened gaze rested long on Marafice Eye. "If
you're asking me is it worth making overtures at Scarpe my answer is
yes. If you're asking me how to go about it I say use caution and be
prepared to move out quickly. No clansman fears our God and all are
damned, but some move in deeper hells than others."

Marafice stood. The heat from the fire was hot
upon his face and the blackening pine needles suddenly smelled like
embalmer's fluid. At that instant he wished he had something to crush
between his fists, so deeply and completely did he hate the
grangelords who had abandoned this army. How dare they? How dare
they leave these men injured, unsupported, and cut off?

Aware that he was pacing and that his fists were
pumping, Marafice made an effort to calm himself. Not for Perish's
sake—the man had taught him how to protect his balls from sword
thrusts when he was seventeen; there was little room for pretense
between them—but for the sake of others who were standing and
sitting close by, marking the conversation between their commander
and the former master-at-arms.

Finally, Marafice had been able to speak. "I
hear your warning," he told Perish. "We'll be there in a
couple of days. We will see how Scarpe lies."

Looking around, Marafice reckoned there was a very
good chance they were in Scarpe-held territory right now. He could
see smoke in the not far distance, rising above ugly purplish pines
that looked half burned. The river was not bonnie here. Dozens of
streams and creaks drained the headlands, and the waters they
transported ranged in color from gray and scummy, to tarlike black.
Upshore, an abandoned and improperly sealed mine head leaked yellow
fluid into a shallow river pool that had a dead raven floating on the
surface. Everyone had to be careful with their horses, for the ground
was littered with sharp-edged slate and seeded with devil's thorns.

Down column, they were having difficulty pulling
one of the carts up the stream bank and Marafice rode down the line
to help them, nodding once to Jon Burden along the way. The command
is yours.

The carts had originally been designed to
transport those dozens of little luxuries that grangelords deemed
necessary to life; silk pillows, perfumed oil, wooden salt scrapers,
beeswax candles, back itchers, preserved fruit, field armor, war
armor, riding armor, red wine, white wine, fine liquors and all
manner of cured and exotic meats. A lot of that stuff had been left
behind and it made for poor eating but good comradeship. Fruit fights
had occurred. Pillows had been commandeered as targets; and the salt
scrapers had found a brief but deeply satisfying use as firewood. The
alcohol had run out three days back: it was the only taste his men
and the grangelords shared.

Seeing that one of the rear cartwheels was wedged
in the crack between two hunks of slate, Marafice ordered the horses
to be unhitched. Forward was not going to work here: the cart needed
to roll back. As the driver and others close by set to work on the
horses, Marafice and a dozen other men dismounted to brace the rear.
The driver had a steady hand and was able to warn those in the water
the instant the hitch was released. Marafice accepted the great
weight of the cart, and began barking out orders. Shoulder muscles
shaking in intensive bursts, he and the other men controlled the
backward roll into the stream.

It was the smallest of the three carts, he was
grateful for that. They'd padded it with blankets and a decent pile
of sword-shredded silk cushions, but it was not an easy ride for the
twenty-five men within it. As he looked over the tailgate he saw this
was the cart containing the clansmen they'd taken as captives. Two
Hailsmen and two Crabmen, all wounded and chained to the posts. It
wasn't much of a headcount, but Marafice was close to glad there were
no more. Captives were a headache. They needed to be watched, fed,
doctored, and, in this particular case, protected from the zealous
tendencies of Perish and his faithful who would like to see them
burn.

The Hailsmen stared at Marafice with proud and
wary faces. The two hammermen were big men with silvery stretch marks
across the skin of their arm and shoulder muscles. One of them had
been responsible for the deaths of a dozen brothers-in-the-watch;
Marafice knew this to be so because he had watched the man fight with
his own eye. He was young, with an unscarred face and clear brown
eyes, yet Marafice had the feeling that he had been the one in
command at the gate. He had been an untiring fighter and good rallier
of men. Marafice doubted if they would have been able to take him if
one of Steffan Grimes' crossbowmen hadn't softened him with a quarrel
to the ribs.

All five of the clansmen had turned stone-cold in
protest when Tat Mackelroy had tried to remove their pouches of
powdered guidestone. Marafice himself had issued the order to remove
all weapons and personal effects from the captives, but seeing
something akin to desperation in the eyes of the clansmen as Tat cut
away the first man's powder pouch, Marafice had modified the order.
He knew fighting men and he knew desperate men. Let the five keep
their clannish tokens: it would go easier on everyone that way.