A Sword From Red Ice (88 page)

Blackhail never buried its dead. They were left to
rot on open ground, often in full view of hunting tracks, roads,
rivers and lakes. Children who played in the woods and fields might
stumble upon the hollowed-out basswoods and receive a lesson in
death. No matter how beautifully a corpse was prepared, how it was
rubbed with poisons and packed with precious metals, the flesh always
corrupted in the end.

Raina recalled a nasty trick played on her the
first summer she was here. She had befriended a handful of clan
maids, Ellie Horn was one of them, and it had been decided they would
go to the Oldwood to collect the wood violets that were in bloom and
could be brought home and pressed into oil to make unctions. The
girls were high-spirited that day, their voices sharp, their
whispers theatrical and broken off by sudden gales of laugher. Raina
recalled Ellie Horn complimenting her most particularly on her
dove-gray wool dress, "So pretty," she had said. "What
would you call the color? Mouse? Mud?" The rest of the girls had
giggled wildly while Ellie just looked at Raina with big
fake-innocent eyes. Raina remembered the skin on her face pulling
tight. She had been unsure of herself in such new company and had
said nothing in her own defense. They had reached the first stand of
trees by then and it seemed easier to go along and pick violets.

After they had spent an hour or so in the woods
Ellie Horn had sought her out. "I'm sorry for what I said about
your dress. It was mean of me." There was such candor in Ellie's
voice, such appeal in her bright blue eyes, that Raina had
immediately believed her. "Look," Ellie had continued,
moving closer, "I just found the best, most purply violets
growing out of that downed log over there. I was going to take them
myself, but then I started feeling bad about what happened and I
thought to myself, I'll let Raina pick them." Raina had
hesitated. Ellie nodded vigorously toward the old felled log. "Go
on. You'll be surprised by how fine they smell."

That was the first time in her life Raina had seen
a dead body. She had approached the log hopeful, not about the
violets as much as about the prospect of friendship with Ellie Horn.
Ellie was the important girl in the clan. The prettiest, the most
smartly dressed, the ringleader. Raina recalled seeing something
black and burned-looking and not understanding what it was. She had
moved closer—smelled the sickly foulness of rank meat, and then
recognized the contours of a face. The blackened skin was floating
above the skull, suspended on a sea of maggots.

She had not screamed. That must have disappointed
Ellie Horn and the other three girls who were hiding in the shadows
behind the yews. The girls had broken into nervous, excited laughter
and it was only then that Raina fled.

It had been one of the many hard lessons she'd had
to learn at Blackhail. This was not an easy clan. Its roundhouse lay
the farthest north of any in the clanholds, and had not been designed
to keep out the cold or take advantage of the bright northern sun. It
had been built solely for defense. The main structure had so few
windows that there was only one chamber in the entire building where
you could be sure to feel sunlight on a cloudless day. The winters
were long here, and springs came late. Raina had learned to set aside
the light and airy pleasures of Dregg—the dancing, the hot-wall
gardening, the embroidering with city-bought silks—and had
replaced them with more earthly ones instead. There was the pleasure
of a sprung trap with a mink in it, the delight of being recognized
by a herd of milk cows and the satisfaction of building a hot blazing
fire against the cold.

She had learned to love Blackhail, and its proud,
grim ways. She had even become proud and grim herself, and when
friends or kin visited from Dregg she would feel superior to them.
We are the first amongst clans, she would remind herself as she
tolerated their frivolities. That claim was Blackhail's alone. Dregg
might be brighter and better situated, but it would never be first.

Raina stared at the cart rolling across the graze
and the crowd of people walking behind it and tried to hold on to
some of that old and deeply held pride. She had the sense that if she
could it might anchor her. She feared that she, Raina Blackhail, was
drifting free of this clan. How much could a person lose and remain
whole? A husband, peace of mind, a dear friend? What was left? Dagro
was gone. Effie was gone. Now Anwyn. She lived in a house full of
strangers, some of whom wished her harm. Since Dagro had died her
life had been this clan. But this clan had changed. The Hailstone had
shattered and the gods had fled. Stannig Beade had wheeled in half of
the Scarpestone to lure them back, but no god would enter such an
ill-begot stone. Blackhail was cursed. Its chief had murdered its
chief, its guide was a man who would stop at nothing to gain power,
and the guidestone at its heart was as dead and useless as Anwyn
Bird's corpse.

Breathing hard, Raina turned her back on the
procession. She found herself staring directly at the Scarpestone
that stood on its tarnished silver plinth at the center of the
greacourt. Work had just been completed on a wooden canopy that would
be hung with skins to protect the narrow hunk of granite from rain
and snow. Raina's lip twitched as she looked at it. At first she had
wondered why the gods didn't simply destroy it as they had the first
Hailstone. It would be an easy thing for a god—an exhalation.
Now she realized the god didn't care.

So why should I?

Tugging her shawl across her shoulders, Raina
crossed the short distance to the roundhouse. People walking in the
opposite direction minded her then looked away. Some elbowed their
companions and whispers were exchanged. She could guess what they
were saying: Why is she not attending Anwyn Bird's death march and
laying?

Because the man who murdered her will lead the
ceremony. And if I were forced to watch it there would be no telling
what I would do.

Perhaps some of this answer was showing in her
face, for clan maids and children seemed afraid of her and were quick
to step out of her way. Raina felt an odd and bitter smile come to
her face and she let it stay there as she made her way through the
roundhouse.

Anwyn Bird's throat had been slit so deeply that
the bone at the back of her neck had been exposed. Laida Moon had
told Raina that the clan matron would have died instantly. Was that
statement supposed to bring comfort? Sheela Cobbin, one of the
bakers, had found her.

Anwyn's absence had been noted for several hours
but no one was too concerned—the clan matron had other
responsibilities beside running the kitchens—and it wasn't
until it was time to prepare the pork legs for supper that people
began to wonder where she was. Anwyn was known to be fussy about pork
and she had left no instructions regarding its preparation. One of
the cooks thought they should parboil the legs to speed cooking.
Another said you shouldn't parboil a leg that had been brined—it'd
boil out all the taste. A heated argument erupted and Sheela Cobbin,
who had been listening with growing impatience by the bread ovens,
said they could both stop their hollering as she was off to fetch
Anwyn Bird.

Everyone in the kitchen heard her scream two
minutes later. Anwyn was found slumped by the little box pallet she
used as a bed in her cell beneath the kitchen. There was so much
blood it had seeped through the blanket, sheets and mattress and onto
the rush matting that covered the stone floor. The last anyone had
seen or heard of her was when she was seen heading down the stairs
from the widows' wall and stopped to tell Gat Murdock that she'd meet
him in the stillroom in a quarter to discuss the latest malt they
were aiming to distill. Apparently Gat Murdock had gone to the
stillroom, grown impatient with being kept waiting, taken more than a
few tipples of the low wines, and then wandered off to dice with the
old-timers in the greathearth. In fairness he was in a terrible state
about it later, telling anyone who listened that Anwyn was the finest
girl in the clan and that he'd give up his one remaining arm to have
her back.

Raina had expected to feel sorry for him. But
didn't.

Something had happened to her when she caught
sight of the body and now she was something other instead. She could
look back and recall the old Raina and know exactly how she would
feel and act in any given situation, but she could no longer feel and
act that way herself. The old Raina had gone the way of the gods.
And the new one didn't even know if she was sane.

Orwin Shank had been the first to perceive the
change in her. He had held her in a mighty bear hug and rocked her
back and forth as they stood in Anwyn's cell. "It's all right,
my sweet lamb," he kept repeating softly. Quite suddenly she
could not stand the raw-beef smell of blood.

"Unhand me," she had said.

Orwin had paused, surprised. Deciding that her
tone was a symptom of grief he had continued rocking her. She had
raised a hand and slammed him hard in the ribs. "I said unhand
me." He had released her immediately and she left the room. It
was the strangest night she could ever recall spending in Blackhail's
roundhouse. Dagro's death had not caused the disruption that Anwyn's
did. The shattering of the Hailstone had not left the clan as
purposeless and bereft. She had always been the rallying point, the
one who marched into the middle of a crisis, issued orders, served
beer, put a lid on unnecessary fussing, made sure everyone was well
fed. They had needed an Anwyn Bird or someone like her to cope with
Anwyn's death. Instead they had a chief's wife who left them to their
misery, a kitchen staff who would have roused themselves to make hot
food and bring cool beer if anyone had thought to direct them, a
chief who was afield at war, and a clan guide who had spent much of
the evening locked up in the greathearth with the elder warriors.

Raina had seen the great oaken doors barred by
yearmen with crossed spears and had not cared enough to force entry.
She understood that some manipulation was happening behind them and
that she would learn soon enough its nature.

Cowlmen was the word that came out of the
greathearth later in that long night. Hailsmen were tense, their
hands returning often to the hilts of their swords as they descended
their stairs, their gazes flickering around the groups of people who
had gathered in the entrance hall below them.

Robbie Dun Dhoone had sent an assassin into the
Hailhouse to spread terror and strike at the heart of clan. The Thorn
King had surveyed the strength of the Hailish armies camped on
Bannen Field and had judged them too great a threat to Dhoone's
reclaiming of Ganmiddich. He was a chief known to have no
scruples—look how he had dealt with his rival and uncle Skinner
Dhoone—and now he had employed the kind of vicious tactics you
would expect from such a man. His plan was to cause sufficient terror
to force Mace Blackhail into ordering half of his army home.

"We should expect more strikes," Stannig
Beade had warned the sworn clansmen. "The death of our beloved
Anwyn is just the start."

He had not addressed these words to the clan, and
Raina had only heard them repeated second-hand later. Corbie Meese
had given her a brief account of what had happened behind closed
doors. "Raina," he had said, his voice low and filled with
strong emotion, "Stannig believes there may be a cowlman
concealed in this house."

Raina had simply stared at him. How could it be
possible that a good man like Corbie could believe such lies?
Cowlmen? Did he not recall the last time there were rumors of cowlmen
in the Hailhold—how they supposedly killed Shor Gormalin and
then left never to be heard of again? How was it possible that both
she and the hammerman had lived through that time and come out with
two separate experiences of the truth?

She had said one thing to him, because it was the
only solid truth she possessed. "Skinner Dhoone was not Robbie's
uncle, Robbie was a Cormac who named himself Dhoone after he'd
decided that if he looked far enough back into his mother's lineage
he would find her related to the Dhoone kings."

Corbie had looked at her strangely. "Stannig
said it only as a figure of speech."

She bet he did. She damn well bet he did.

Sworn clansmen had mounted a torch party that
night, riding out from the Hailhouse with long flaming firebrands
housed in their spear horns. Raina could not discern its purpose,
beyond the need of decent men to take action against evil. Stannig
Beade had ridden at the party's head, and it appeared that no one
else beside herself questioned whether this was fitting behavior for
a guide.

The woman with the greatest respect in the clan
was dead. He was guide. Didn't he have to grind some bones?

Two days later, whilst Laida Moon and Merritt
Ganlow were preparing Anwyn's body with milk of mercury, two
Scarpemen had found Jani Gaylo dead. Her throat had been slit from
ear to ear and her body had been dumped down the old wellshaft in the
kaleyard. It was frozen solid.

If there had been any doubt in Raina's mind, that
cleared it up. Stannig Beade had murdered both women. Anwyn Bird had
been a threat to him. Her status in the clan was high and she wielded
her influence with subtlety, and the day she had decided to take
overt action against him was the day she'd ended up dead. "Stannig
Beade is no clan guide and must he shown as such. We are many. We can
send him back to Scarpe." Those were close to Anwyn's last
words, doubtless repeated imperfectly by pretty little Jani Gaylo not
much longer after they were originally spoken.

Poor, silly girl. She had probably not been much
older than seventeen. Too young to be killed for telling tales. As
there were only two people in the roundhouse who understood the
relationship between Anwyn and Jani, the maid's death was taken as
further evidence of cowlmen. The girl had been tilling the onion beds
in the kaleyard, the story went, when she had been jumped from behind
by her assassin. He was growing bolder now, people whispered. It was
the closest thing to the truth that had been said.