A Sword From Red Ice (85 page)

Burden snorted. "I'll see to the clansmen."

Carefully avoiding favoring his left foot,
Marafice left the campsite and walked amongst the granite spires. It
was colder here, the air still. Odd bits of debris littered the
ground surrounding the stones: incense burners, lamb-gut sheaths,
glass vials, ale cups, moldering lumps of food. Something that looked
a lot like blood had been sprayed against the base of the tallest
spire. Marafice frowned at it, deeply disgusted.

"Protector General." It was Greenslade,
slipping between the fangs. Always it was difficult to keep your gaze
on his cloak. Somehow it kept sliding off. "You wanted to see
me?"

Marafice glanced back at the camp. Walking deep
into the thick of the stone spires, he said, "What is the latest
news from the city?"

Greenslade was not a man to waste time. "Roland
Stornoway still controls the fortress. As he's yet to make a formal
announcement about the surlordship word is that he's holding it for
his son-in-law."

"The watch?"

"They've been with him right from the start.
It's my guess he's been telling the captains that by supporting him
they're supporting you."

It would certainly explain how easy it had been
for Roland Stornoway to control Mask Fortress and the city gates. You
needed the watch on your side for that. Marafice reached out and
touched the closest stone spire. The edges were sharp enough to open
skin. "What's the status of the gates?"

"Hoargate and Almsgate are still closed.
Wrathgate remains open for limited hours each day. Stornoway has
forbidden the breaks to be put on the gear shanks, so the gate can be
dropped at a moment's notice."

It made sense. "Who polices them?"

"The watch, though I've heard rumors that
Stornoway has hideclads garrisoned in all the gate towers."

Marafice took his hand from the stone. Skin along
his index finger had split but not bled. He did not find much comfort
in these facts. What was Roland Stornoway up to? The old nutgall was
no friend of his. Yet how better to gain access to power than to have
a son-in-law as surlord? Stornoway could never have managed such a
coup without the Rive Watch. He must have taken power in Marafice's
name. "My lord. It may be possible to rig the gate."

"No," Marafice blasted at him. He would
have no tricks and sorceries. He'd had his fill of such foulness at
Ganmiddich. The weird green lights, the bad-eggs smell. He would not
use unnatural forces ever again.

Greenslade appraised his Protector General and
seemed to find him wanting. "As you wish. Tonight my brethren
and I go on ahead. We will await you in the city."

Before Marafice Eye could even begin to frame a
reply Greenslade took his leave, the fabric of his cloak swirling
around him like dark water. It was dusk now and his figure was lost
to the eye within the space of five seconds.

Marafice cursed softly and with feeling. His foot
was throbbing and the coldness in his eye socket seemed to freeze
half his brain. The good half, the one he needed to make sense of
what was happening in the city. Stornoway in Mask Fortress. It was a
puzzle he could not solve.

As he made his way back to the camp he passed the
granite fang the clansmen had been roped against. They formed a rough
circle, one on each compass point. Their feet were bare and bleeding,
though not badly. They would survive. Burden had a clean blade. The
young one with the brown eyes marked Marafice in silence. He had a
couple of fresh bruises on his face and a nasty gash across the
bridge of his nose. Jon Burden and Tat Mackelroy had interrogated all
four men some days back, and the brown-eyed one had fought back like
a demon.

Marafice reminded himself to ask Burden what, if
anything, he had discovered. For now, though, he wanted nothing but
the peace of his tent. It seemed Greenslade had performed an
unwitting service. The darkcloak had succeeded in tiring him out
sufficiently to the point where he believed it was possible to sleep.

Small cook fires dotted the camp, and the smell of
charring pork fat and onions wetted his mouth. He was pleased to see
a large central bonfire had been built as a gathering point. A
wrestling match was under way—a member of Rive Company against
one of Steffan Grimes' professional mercenaries—and the
cheering and booing was raucous. Marafice watched the match for a
while—Rive was looking like dead meat—and then found
himself a plate of food and retired to his tent.

He ate methodically in the darkness. He couldn't
be bothered lighting a lamp. Before he slept it occurred to him that
the day he'd spent fighting at the Crab Gate had not left him as
mentally exhausted as he felt right now. How had Iss managed it, all
the intrigue and uncertainty?

An hour before dawn he awoke and gave the order
for camp to be struck. Tat Mackelroy helped him into full war armor,
snapping latches, strapping buckles and shoving down great wads of
linen padding. Marafice looked south toward Spire Vanis and spied the
suggestion of light on the edge of mountains and sky. He had been
moving toward this moment for years, decades even, yet he had never
thought it would come in circumstances such as these. What did Iss
use to say? "You cannot plan for the strangeness of being
surlord." Much wisdom seemed to exist in those words.

Mist washed through the granite fangs as Jon
Burden, Andrew Perish and Steffan Grimes formed up ranks. The spires
towered above them, stone sentinels thousands of years older than the
city the army went to claim. Men were quiet. Formally armed and
armored, most needed mounting stools to bestride their horses. The
foot soldiers—there were a hundred and fifty extra thanks to
Yelma Scarpe—stamped their feet restlessly as the cavalry took
its own good time to close ranks.

Marafice waited. He found himself not impatient.
The stars were fading in a clear sky. Crows were calling in the
fields, gathering in readiness to pick through the remains of the
camp. When the carts were loaded and the ranks evenly formed,
Marafice gave the order to the drummers to sound the slow march. As
the booms of the kettledrums synchronized, he trotted his horse to
the center of the front line.

"To Wrathgate," he bellowed. "South!"

An army of three thousand moved out on his order.

Progress was slow for the first hour. Marafice
kept both hands on the reins and did not think. Keeping his head
forward to avoid his neck piece chafing, he watched the sun rise.
When they rejoined the road he caught his first glimpse of the city
walls in the distance. A small shock of remembrance charged the sheet
of muscle beneath his lungs. The Splinter had gone. The pale
limestone tower that had risen six hundred feet above the earth no
longer existed. He had been told that it had fallen, but Iss' death
had seized his attention and he had not spared a thought for the
city's tallest tower. Its absence was shocking, the unobstructed view
of Mount Slain's northern face.

Every man in the party felt it. Andrew Perish, who
was riding two lines back, cried out the third piety. "God
brings destruction so that we as men can restore His order to the
world."

Marafice did not believe in God, but the ancient
words pulled at him all the same. Restore order: that would not be a
bad thing. Calling out to the drummers he commanded a quick march.
They were on the road now; the mules and foot soldiers could keep
pace.

The villages they passed through were deserted,
and all healthy animals were gone from the fields. When they reached
the fork in the road that led east to Wrathgate Marafice took it
without hesitation. He could see the great iron edifice of Almsgate,
flanked by its twin towers. Tat said the double portcullises were
down and they looked like they'd taken a few bashes. A chunk of the
gate roof had collapsed and there was a big bald patch without tiles.
All was as Greenslade had said.

Marafice's heart began to pound as they neared the
city's eastern gate. The kettledrums were booming, combining with the
clatter of hooves and armor to create a wall of sound. Red and silver
pennants flying from Spire Vanis' limestone walls ripped and darted
in the mountain winds. Men were patrolling the ramparts; you could
see their heads and the top three feet of their spears. No one was at
the gate. No merchants, farmers, tradesmen, scholars. No one.
Everyone within the city and without must know that Marafice Eye had
come home.

"Is it open?" he asked Tat, his voice
wild.

Tat squinted. Wrathgate was built from granite
blocks as big as horse stalls. It was a square and bulky gate, the
least elegant of the city's four gates, and it was guarded by two
four-sided towers and a stone hood. The gate itself was deeply
overhung.

"Portcullis is down," Tat said quietly.

Marafice felt the state of his body change. Things
that had been slack tightened, and others that had been tight
loosened in unpleasant ways. "We keep going," he said, his
voice suddenly calm.

When the front line drew within two hundred feet
of the gate, the sound of horns blasted forth from the eastern wall.
Hundreds of red cloaks stepped into view. Rive Watch. His men. As he
looked on they drew their swords in salute. Red steel flashed in the
sunlight. The cast-iron portcullis juddered into motion with a great
rattling of chains. Clods of snow and turf fell from its spikes.

And there, waiting in the courtyard on the other
side, was his father-in-law Roland Stornoway, dressed in
fantastically gilded armor that was too big for his small and bony
frame, and flanked by a double guard. Hideclads and red cloaks.
Marafice had not realized until now that the old goat was still
capable of sitting a horse. Seeing Stornoway's cold and rheumy eyes,
Marafice suddenly understood several things.

Of course the old man would welcome him back. If
he didn't the red cloaks would turn on him. Today, right at this
moment, they would turn. Marafice Eye had been their leader for
seventeen years, and hard fighting men like the red cloaks did not
easily set aside such loyalties. Stornoway's plan would be to support
his son-in-law until the poor soul died a sudden but natural-seeming
death. Poison, if Marafice wasn't mistaken. Then Stornoway could
simply step into place as Surlord and the red cloaks would stand by
him.

With his scrawny neck and baldy head sticking out
from the carapace of dress armor, Stornoway looked like a vulture.
He was putting on a fine show, Marafice had to give him that. He had
to be nervous. This was the tricky bit; waiting to see how his
son-in-law and his son-in-law's army would react. Yet Stornoway
didn't look nervous. Stornoway looked sour and bloody-minded.
Marafice blew air through his lips in frustration. His brain wasn't
large enough to cope with all this double-dealing.

Yet if he wanted to be lord of this city he didn't
really have a choice. A show was called for. Stornoway had set the
stage, betting heavily that his son-in-law would play his assigned
part. Spire Vanis was watching and Marafice knew it would not serve
his cause to look confused. He must be seen to be in control and
armed with foreknowledge; pretend that he and the old goat had
hatched this plan together. The Surlord and his father-in-law.
Stornoway and his new son.

They both knew it. They both needed it. It was a
perfectly executed deadlock.

Iss would have figured it out a lot sooner,
Marafice reckoned, raising a fist in greeting to the man who almost
certainly intended to kill him.

To keep himself calm he addressed Tat Mackelroy,
making a necessary show of nonchalance. Reveal surprise and he also
revealed weakness. "What did you learn from the hostages?"
he asked, saying the first thing that sprang into his head.

Tat, God love him, went right along with the game,
squaring his shoulders and keeping eyes front as he said, "The
young one, the ringleader, is called Drey Sevrance. Wouldn't give me
the name himself, but I beat it from one of the others."

"Good, good," Marafice replied, barely
listening. His father-in-law was riding forth to meet him. Marafice
had thought Stornoway to be greedy but harmless, and he wondered how
he could have been so thoroughly wrong. The man was a cold and
calculating opportunist.

"Welcome," Stornoway hailed as Marafice
Eye rode through the gate, "Lord Commander, Surlord. And son."

Marafice entered Spire Vanis as its one hundred
and forty-second Surlord, with the man who intended to be its one
hundred and forty-third raising his dry and wrinkly cheek to be
kissed by him.

The Cursed Clan

The river smelled different at night, older and
deeper, black with tar. Insects hunted its surfaces, black flies and
phantom crane flies, mosquitoes and biting midges. Effie wondered if
they hatched from the snow. Mist slid along the sides of the boat
keeping close to its breeding ground, the water. The alders and water
willows were quiet, unmoved by wind, and the only sounds beyond the
splash of poles breaking the surface were the hollow cry of the night
heron and the shriek of wild dogs far to the north.

It was a bleak and uncertain landscape filled with
traps for the boat. The Curseway, Waker had called it. The watery
path that led to Clan Gray. Effie swallowed and tried not to think
about what Eggtooth the pirate had said about the Cursed Clan. She
tried, but did not succeed. Know what they do to young 'uns there?
Tie stones to their chest and sink 'em." Effie began shivering
and could not stop. She really should have learned how to swim.

Waker Stone and his father had taken to poling
after sunset and often struck camp during the bright hours of the
day. Until today this had suited Effie Sevrance well enough, for in
all her eight-almost-nine-year life she could never recall being
afraid of the dark. Tonight was different, though. Cold and
strange-smelling. And she couldn't get Eggtooth's words out of her
head.