A Sword From Red Ice (65 page)

Raina knew the paths through the woods; knew where
the clan boys staked claims over fishing holes and swim holes, knew
the secret green pool where the clan maids bathed naked and obsessed
over boys, knew the hollows where the old women set their traps, and
knew the fruit trees where a hunter dressed in field gear might spend
a day, waiting for deer. She had been thirteen when she came here
from Dregg. Twenty years of her life had been spent here, and looking
back now she could not pinpoint the moment when she'd ceased being a
Dreggswoman and become Hail instead. Not her marriage to Dagro, for
she remembered wearing the hotwall roses in her hair and carrying her
portion of Dreggstone in a filigreed silver locket that overhung her
tightly laced breasts. Perhaps later then, when she became
established in her role of chief's wife and fell into the rhythm of
working hard and receiving respect. But no, if she were honest she
still held part of herself back. I will go home to Dregg when I am
old and widowed, she had told herself, and the thought had given her
comfort. Even when word of Dagro's death had come south from the
Badlands she had borne the ill news by making the sign of the rose.
So no. The most likely moment she had become a Hailsman to her core
was when she'd spoken the words in the gameroom. I will be chief.

Descending the steps Raina fought the wind's
desire to tug away her blue wool shawl. People had said that once the
storm was over the temperature would come up and the snow would melt
so quickly you'd hardly remember it had been here at all. People were
wrong. This was the fifth day the snow had failed to melt—and
spring planting was due.

Aware that it was as close to noon as it was ever
likely to be, Raina decided she'd go and check on the progress of the
east wall. She'd be damned if she were going to attend Stannig
Beade's parley as promptly as if she were an apprentice toolmaker the
first day on the job. The path that led east around the Hailhouse had
been cleared of snow by Longhead and his crew. The wooden gates of
the kaleyard had been flung open and a couple of men stood in the
large walled kitchen garden, digging soil or snow or both. Raina
waved at them and they waved back. The east face of the roundhouse
was where the majority of its outbuildings were located—dairy
sheds, hay barns, eel tanks, styes, the oats house, the remains of
the stables and guidehouse—and Raina encountered many clansmen
as she made her way toward the scaffolding.

The hole blasted in the east wall was visible as
she drew close, and it gave her an uneasy tick of surprise. Surely by
now they could have sealed it? Blackhail was not wanting in stone.
Approaching the frame of ladders and plank platforms, Raina hailed
the nearest man. Squatting at the top of the scaffolding, he was busy
carding mortar. His fingers were wet with slurry.

"When will it be finished?" she asked
him.

"Tomorrow," he said chopping the mortar
into squares and then flattening it. "Though it'll be a week
afore the curing's done and we can start the new ward."

Raina stared at him and then the hole, and had the
sense not to ask: What ward? Now that she was closer she could see
that the hole had been framed into an arch, enlarged in parts and
built up in others. A border of polished granite slabs rimmed this
new portal, and as she looked on the workman buttered another slab
and plugged it into place. When had this happened? Five days back she
had been out here and just seen a hole. Had she failed to look
properly? Leaving the man to his work, Raina went in search of
Longhead.

It took a while to locate the head keep, as he was
performing one of the more obscure tasks of his office: batting. Now
that the horses were housed in the dairysheds, the high lofts had to
be cleared of bats. Apparently the cows didn't mind the winged
rodents flitting around at night, or at least had grown used to them,
whereas the horses took fits and started bucking whenever one of the
little devils squeaked by. Raina was with the horses, and found
herself surprisingly reluctant to climb up the tall ladder to the
hayloft.

"He went up there an hour ago, lady,"
said one of the grooms helpfully. "You can smell the smoke."

Raina nodded doubtfully. She was having trouble
understanding what people were saying to her today.

"For the bats," the groom added, proving
that he was a smart young boy, capable of reading his chief's wife's
face. "He's making 'em drowsy."

Raina turned and smiled at him. He was one of the
Lyes, a cousin to slain Bannon, and you could see the family
similarities in his broad cheekbones and wide-set eyes. "Isn't
that something?"

"Yes, lady," he agreed. "It
certainly is."

The pleasure of that small exchange stayed with
her as she hiked up the ladder and landed in the hayloft. The air was
warm here and it had some of the same itchiness as the grain drum.
Blue smoke rose in bands from two brass smudgers. Longhead was
crouching amongst the bales, plucking drugged bats from the hay. With
an efficient twist of both wrists he broke their necks and threw them
in a steel bucket. As Raina walked toward him a bat dropped right in
front of her, landing at her feet. Its leathery wings trembled as its
tiny red eyes rolled back in its head. It had a snout like a pig, she
noticed, stepping around it, and ears the size and shape of mussels.

"Is it all right to breathe the smoke?"
she asked Longhead.

Longhead spun around to face her, and for the
second time that day Raina realized she shouldn't be inhaling the
air. The head keep of Blackhail was wearing a black felt mask. He
shook his head, chucked another bat in the bucket and then picked
something from the nearest hay bale and threw it toward her.

It was a mask just like his, and she slipped it
over her nose and mouth and tied it tightly.

"Nightshade. It'll make you sleep," the
keep said, his voice muffled by the felt.

Raina came and knelt close to him, trying hard not
to look at the dead bats in the bucket.

"They'll go to the Scarpes," he said
flatly. "They eat them."

Hay pricked her knees through the fabric of her
dress. "Was it true they wanted the horses?"

Longhead nodded. The black mask made his long pale
face seem even paler and longer. Bat's blood was drying beneath his
thumbnails. "They came to me, seeing if I could stop the
burials. Said it was a waste of good meat."

A dozen horses had died when the Hailstone
exploded and five more had to be destroyed because of their injuries.
Raina had arranged the burials. She had heard a rumor that the
Scarpes wanted the carcasses, but had given it little credit.
Butchering horses reared for meat was one thing, but eating riding
horses was a practice abhorrent to Hailsmen. She was glad now that
she'd had the carcasses carted to the Wedge—she wouldn't have
put it past Scarpes to dig up the graves.

Another bat dropped from the overhead rafters as
Raina leant in to the keep. "What's happening with the eastern
wall? I thought it was being shored." Distorted by the mask her
voice snaked over the "s" sounds.

Longhead glanced over his shoulder, checking the
long dim roof-space, before answering. "Beade stopped the work
ten days back. Says there's no point in sealing the hole as he
intends to build a guidehouse and a ward to house the Scarpes off the
eastern hall."

Raina pulled down her mask and sucked in drugged
air. "He's guide. He has no right to direct the making of this
house." You should have told him exactly where to stick his
plans.

Longhead's bunion-knuckled hand came up in
self-defense. "He says he discussed it with Mace Blackhail
before he left. Says the chief gave the go-ahead."

Realizing she was starting to feel dizzy, Raina
planted the mask back in place. "Why did you not come to me?"

The head keep puffed air into his body and then
let it deflate. "He said not to bother you with it, that you
already had enough on your hands . . ." Longhead hesitated,
reluctant to continue speaking. After frowning hard, he spat it out.
"Said you might start fussing and putting your foot where it had
no place."

Raina sat back, letting her butt sink into the
hay. Dagro had once told her about the time Ille Glaive besieged
Bannen. The city men had set their tents in bold sight of the
Banhouse, and then spent the next ten days building cookfires,
holding tourneys and mounting curiously halfhearted attacks. All the
while their miners were digging a tunnel beneath the roundhouse. One
of the tents had masked the mine head, and when the city men were
ready they lit fires in the tunnel and collapsed Bannen's western
wall. Undermining it was called, and Stannig Beade was doing it to
her.

Knowing better than to reproach Longhead, she said
simply, "I am never too busy to hear what happens in this
house."

Blackhail's head keep pulled down his mask. He
looked older and more serious without it. "I hear you."

She hoped it was a promise to come to her next
time Stannig Beade tried to force one of his schemes. Pushing herself
onto her feet she bid him farewell. As she took the ladder down
through the hayloft floor and into the newly boxed stable space she
was aware of a little giddiness, a looseness in her joints and a
delay in her vision. The Lye boy offered his arm to help her down the
last steps.

"A messenger has arrived from Ganmiddich,"
he told her, full to bursting with the news. "The guide is
meeting with him on the greatcourt."

Raina knew she disappointed the boy by not
responding, but she dared not move a muscle on her face. Stannig
Beade overstepped his office. If the chief was away the most senior
warrior met with messengers. That meant Orwin Shank, not Scarpe's
clan guide.

Raina left the dairy-turned-stables and made her
way to the roundhouse. Ever since the night of the Menhir Fire
Stannig Beade had slowly been claiming privileges in the clan. It was
as if he had been holding himself back until the tricky maneuver of
installing half the Scarpestone into the heart of Blackhail had been
successfully completed. He was guide now. He ruled the stone. Time
to show his teeth.

Raina was still finding singed hairs amongst her
tresses. Part of her left eyebrow had gone, crisped off by the flames
in the trench, and the metallic panel in her mohair dress had been
burnished black. She did not think the Stone Gods had come that
night, but a show worthy of their presence had been mounted. After
the stone had been unveiled people in the crowd spotted signs; a
series of green lights falling from the heavens, the sudden and
inexplicable smell of bitumen, the line of smoke rising from the
Menhir Fire, forking so as not to pass the drill hole, and the sound
of distant drums beating to the north, seeming to come from a place
beyond any seeable horizon. Tricks the lot of them—except
possibly the forking of the smoke—carefully stage-managed by
Stannig Beade to awe the crowd. He had worked assiduously to get the
new Hailstone, and therefore himself, established.

It had been a relief to most in the clan, Raina
realized later, to have all uncertainty about the guidestone ended. A
ceremony had taken place. The gods had been called. Stannig Beade had
done a decent job. Just yesterday in the kitchens Raina had heard
Sheela Cobbin say to another woman, "It's time we put it all
behind us."

Raina almost agreed with her. But she had walked
out on the greatcourt three times since the Hallowing, and each time
she touched a stone bereft of gods. Even when the old guidestone had
been dying you not could place your fingertips on its surface without
sensing the immense and ancient power withdrawing. Even when gods
were barely there you could feel them.

Right now, as she passed under the scaffold and
through the new archway to the east hall, she could feel the pull of
the charged metals they had deposited as they left. Her maiden's
helper, suspended from the leather stomacher at her waist, skipped
toward the wall. She put her hand on it, flattening the foot-long
knife against her hip. The gods had left Blackhail, and despite all
of Stannig Beade's fancy footwork they had not come back.

On the night of the Menhir Fire she had made the
mistake of imagining he was as concerned as she herself—without
a doubt he had been anxious during the ceremony—but now she
realized that anxiety had more to do with his desire that the
ceremony go well and the crowd be suitably impressed with eye-popping
spectacle, than any real care about the state of Blackhail's soul.
Stannig Beade might call himself a guide but Raina did not believe
he was a man of god.

Yelma Scarpe was probably laughing in the burned
shell of the Scarpehouse. Either she had rid herself of a rival for
her chiefdom, or sent a trusted agent to run Blackhail in the absence
of its chief.

Finding herself in the entrance hall, Raina headed
for the door. She could not say why she had chosen to travel through
the house rather than around it, other than a vague notion that she
did not want Stannig Beade watching her as she crossed open ground.
One of the clan widows hailed her from the great stairway, but Raina
waved her away. She could see them now, the small group on the
greatcourt, and it should have eased her mind that Orwin Shank's
fair, balding head was clearly visible amongst the other, darker
heads, but new worries sprang to life.

Word from Ganmiddich. Two thousand Hailsmen at
war. Had the army reached the Wolf yet? And what about the three
hundred Hailsmen who were entrenched at the Crab Gate?

She had meant to be commanding, serene, yet her
joints were still loose from the nightshade and her eyesight had not
fully corrected, and all she wanted to do was hear the news. "Orwin,"
she called, knowing she could count on him to make way for her.