A Sword from Red Ice (Book 3)

by J. V. Jones

  Merritt wrinkled her nose as Jebb dragged away the carcass. “We’ve taken a vote,” she said to Raina, wasting no time. “The widows have decided to give up their hearth—but only for use by Hailsmen, mind. We won’t have no Scarpes near the wall.”

  And so it continues. Raina took a deep breath, orienting herself to deal with this newly delivered problem. Dagro had once told her that in cities they had halls of learning where men could study ancient histories, languages, astronomy, mathematics and other wondrous things. He said it could take a decade to master a discipline. Raina had thought it rather long at the time. Right now she’d like to go there, and take all ten years to learn to be a chief.

  I will be chief. Two months ago she had spoken those words out loud in the gameroom, and even though only two people in the clan had heard them—Anwyn Bird and Orwin Shank—it did not lessen their meaning. She had spoken treason against her husband and chief, and when she thought of it now her skin flushed with fear. Yet she could not and would not take it back.

  Mace Blackhail was Dagro’s foster son, brought from Scarpe as an eleven-year-old boy. Dagro’s first wife, Norala, had been barren and a chief was always anxious to have sons. Yelma Scarpe, the Weasel chief, had sent him one. Raina had never liked him. She saw flaws in her new foster son that her husband had been blind to. Mace was secretive, he arranged for others to take the blame for his misdemeanors, and he had never given up being a Scarpe. Dagro saw it differently. To him Mace could do no wrong. Mace was the best young swordsman, the most promising strategist and a faithful son. That blindness had killed Dagro in the end. Mace Blackhail had planned the murder of his father and chief. Even now Raina did not know what happened that day in the Badlands, but two things were certain. Mace had ridden home from the slaughter and lied about the outcome, and one month later named himself chief.

  She would not think about the other wrongs he had done. Not here, with Merritt Ganlow’s sharp green eyes inspecting her. Think too long about that day in the Oldwood and everything she had worked for might come undone.

  Making an effort, Raina said, “When I spoke with Biddie about using the widows’ hearth to house clansmen I recall no talk of barring Scarpes.”

  “Well you wouldn’t, Raina,” Merritt replied, cool as milk, “as it was my idea to bar them.”

  Of course it was. Raina had known Merritt Ganlow for twenty years. Her husband, Meth, had shared a tent with Dagro on that last fateful longhunt, and the two men had been friends since childhood. Merritt had a sharp mind to go with her green eyes, and a prickly way about her. She had taken to widowhood with both zeal and resentment, and had made no secret of the fact that she disapproved of Raina’s hasty marriage to Mace.

  “You have a habit of putting me in a difficult position, Merritt Ganlow,” Raina said to her.

  “You have a habit of being in a difficult position, Raina Blackhail. All I do is point it out.”

  She was right, of course. The damage to the roundhouse meant that both Hailish families and Scarpe ones needed new places to stay. The widows’ hearth was, in Raina’s opinion, the finest hall in the entire building. Housed at the pinnacle of the great dome, it had half a dozen windows that let in light. Someone had painted the walls with yellow distemper and someone else had thought to lay wooden boards across the floor. It was a pretty chamber, airy and full of sunlight. Unlike any other room in this dour, lamp-lit place.

  Take a hold of yourself, Raina warned herself. It was too late to do anything about where she lived now. The Blackhail roundhouse had been built for defense, not beauty, and she had known that from the moment she first spied its hard, drum-shaped walls all those years ago when riding across the Wedge on the journey from Dregg. What she needed to concentrate on now was space. Families had taken to setting down their bedrolls in corridors and storage areas, and lighting cookfires and oil lamps wherever they pleased.

  Raina glanced around the great half-moon of the entrance hall. A scrawny boy was chasing an even scrawnier chicken up the stairs, two Scarpewives dressed in black tunics and black leather aprons were fussing around a vat full of potash and lye, a handful of tied Hailsmen had claimed the space under the stair as a gaming room and were lounging in a circle, downing flat ale and throwing dice. On either side of the greatdoor, burlap sacks stuffed with bedclothes, pots and pans and other household items had been stacked ten feet high against the wall.

  It would not do. Merritt and her sisterhood of widows knew that too, and when Raina had approached them about giving up their hearth they had expressed willingness to do so. Only now, two days later, Merritt Ganlow had tied some strings to the deal.

  “You like the thought of Scarpes in the widows’ hearth as much as I do,” Merritt said, her voice creeping higher. “The widows’ wall used to mean something in this clan. You needed a bracelet of scarred flesh to stand there.” Yanking up the sleeve of her work dress, Merritt thrust out her left wrist toward Raina. The widows’ weals were plain to see. Ugly purple scars that would not be allowed to heal for a year. Every woman who lost a husband in Blackhail cut herself, scoring a circle around each wrist with a ritual knife known as a grieveblade. Raina had always thought it a barbaric practice, hailing back to the Time of the First Clans, yet when Dagro had died she had begun to understand it. The pain of cutting her flesh had been nothing—nothing—compared with losing Dagro. Strangely, it had helped. When the blood pumped from her veins and rolled around her wrists she had felt some measure of relief.

  To Merritt she said, “You cannot blame Scarpe widows for not practicing the same rituals as we do. Their pain is still the same.”

  Merritt was contemptuous. “They tattoo the weals—dainty little lines inked in red. And they heal within a week. Then what? They’re like bitches in heat. Run off and remarry so fast it’s as if they never gave a damn for their first husbands all along. And I tell you another thing—”

  “Hold your tongue,” Raina hissed. She was shaking, frightened by how close she had come to slapping Merritt Ganlow. He raped me! she wanted to scream. That’s why I remarried so fast. Mace Blackhail took me by force and told everyone I agreed to it. They believed him. And if I hadn’t married him I would have forsaken my reputation and my place in this clan.

  Merritt glanced around nervously. Too late she realized her raised voice had drawn unwanted attention her way. The men under the stairs had halted their gaming and were looking with some interest at the head widow and the chief’s wife. The two Scarpewives, pale women with dyed-black hair and lips stained red with mercury, stared at Merritt and Raina with unconcealed dislike.

  “Open up! Warriors returning.”

  Three hard, deep raps against the greatdoor followed the shouted command, and all attention shifted from Raina and Merritt to the half-ton of force-hardened rootwood that barred the Hailhold’s primary entrance. Straightaway, things started happening. Mull Shank appeared out of nowhere and together he and one of the young Tanner boys began lifting the iron bars from their cradles. The cry “Warriors returning!” was relayed through the entrance hall and up the stairs toward the greathearth. Anwyn Bird, who had the ears of a deer and the uncanny ability to know exactly when her strong beer was needed, emerged from the kitchen cellar, hoisting a two-gallon keg on her shoulder.

  As the door was pushed back on its greased track, Raina turned to Merritt Ganlow. “So you’re set on opening the widows’ hearth solely to Hailsmen?”

  Merritt’s face had slackened somewhat during all the excitement, and for a moment Raina hoped that it might stay that way. It wasn’t to be. Merritt’s mouth tightened and her chin came up. “I’m sorry, Raina, but I won’t change my mind. This is the Hailhold, not the Scarpehold, and if someone doesn’t make a stand against it we’ll all be wearing the weasel pelts before we’re through.” With that, the clan widow stalked away, staring down the two Scarpewives as she passed them.

  She was bold and she was right. Raina raised a hand and rubbed her temples. Her head was beginning to hurt. Of cour
se she agreed with Merritt. How could she not? As she stood here waiting to see who would come through the door, she could smell the foreign cookery, see the weasel-pelted Scarpe warriors gathering to discover who had returned and why, and feel the oily smoke from their pine-resin cook stoves passing through the membranes in her lungs. Now was not the time to take action against them, though. Why couldn’t Merritt see that? The Hailstone had exploded, taking the heart of the clan with it. The Hailhouse was no longer secure. There was no clan guide. Blackhail was at war with Bludd and Dhoone, and right now, like it or not, most warriors were loyal to their chief.

  Realizing she was pressing her head when she should have been rubbing, Raina flung her arm up and out. If Dagro had taught her one thing it was caution, and caution told her to wait for a better time to show her hand. It was all very well for Merritt to play at making a stand. In reality she wouldn’t have the nerve to repeat to Mace what she just said. No, she was banking on Raina Blackhail doing the dirty work for her, delivering a nasty little message to the chief.

  Well I won’t do it, dammit. Raina stamped her foot, crunching debris from the Sundering beneath the heel of her boot. Now all she had to do was come up with a plan. Surely the tenth one she’d needed this week.

  Raina’s mind slid from her problems as she saw who walked through the doorway. Arlec Byce and Cleg Trotter, two of the original Ganmiddich eleven who had held the Crab Gate for over a week whilst the Crab chief returned from Croser, entered the roundhouse. Saddle-bowed and weary, the two men shied back when the smoke from the cookfires reached them. Arlec’s twin brother had been dead for many months, killed by the Bludd chief himself on Bannen Field, and Raina still wasn’t used to seeing him alone. He was wearing his betrothed’s token around his throat: a gray wool scarf, knitted lovingly if rather hastily, by Biddie Byce. When Arlec noticed Raina’s gaze upon him, he bowed his head wearily and said, “Lady.”

  Raina smiled gently at him, knowing better than to inquire at his return. Whatever news he held must be first revealed to his chief. Ullic Scarpe and Wracker Fox, two of the Scarpe warriors crowding around the door, knew no such discretion and began blasting the pair with questions. Big Cleg Trotter, son to gentle-mannered Paille and the first-ever warrior in his family, had no experience with interrogation and after frowning several times and trying unsuccessfully to ignore the Scarpes, he blurted it all out.

  “Drey sent us with word. He needs reinforcements. Ganmiddich’s under attack—by city men!”

  An excited murmur passed through and then beyond the room. Within exactly a minute, Raina reckoned, everyone in the entire roundhouse would know the news. Ganmiddich under attack by city men. Would the ill tidings never stop?

  “Arlec. Cleg.”

  Gooseflesh erupted on Raina’s arms and shoulders at the sound of her husband’s voice. Mace Blackhail, the Hail Wolf, had emerged from his parley in the greathearth. Dressed in a Scarpe-dyed suede tunic embossed with wolf fangs, he took the stone stairs swiftly, without sound. Already aware that the chance for secrecy had been lost, he fired off his first question.

  “Which city?”

  Cleg swallowed nervously. Arlec spoke. “Spire Vanis.”

  A murmur of fear darkened the room. This was not the answer any had expected. It was no secret that Ille Glaive, the City on the Lake, had long had its eye on the wealthy border clans, but Spire Vanis? What were the Spire King and his army doing so far north?

  If Mace was surprised he did not show it. Nodding once he said, “And their numbers?”

  Cleg swallowed again. His lore was the red-footed goose and he wore what might have been one of their desiccated feet, hooked through a ring in his ear. “We counted eleven thousand before we left.”

  This time Mace raised a pale hand, halting the murmur before it started. He was wearing the Clansword, Raina realized, the weapon forged from the crown of the Dhoone kings. Someone had made him a scabbard for it; a finely glazed strip of silverized leather with a she-wolf tail trailing from its tip. “We have five hundred warriors there. Ax- and hammermen. Ten dozen bowmen. And there is the Crab’s own army. Once rallied he can command two thousand.”

  Arlec nodded. “And there’s a half-dozen Crosermen who once wore the cowls.”

  Cowlmen. Raina shivered; she was not the only one to do so. Cowlmen were legend in the clanholds, and the border clans east of Ganmiddich were known to have the best of them. Trained assassins, siegebreakers, crack bowmen, spies, and masters of concealment, they were named after the gray hooded cloaks they swathed themselves in on their missions. As far as Raina knew Blackhail had none of them. The big northern giants—Blackhail, Dhoone and Bludd—traditionally preferred might over ambushes, snares and assassinations. Smaller border clans could not afford the luxury of clannish pride. They were threatened by rival clans to the north and the Mountain Cities to the south, and had fewer numbers with which to defend themselves. Cowlmen were their way of evening the odds. According to the ranger Angus Lok their numbers were in decline and few young men were being trained to the cowl. Yet strangely enough this only added to their mystique. One glance around this hallway was enough to see that.

  “Good,” Mace said. “So the Crab heeded my advice.”

  Scarpemen and Hailsmen nodded judiciously, and Raina could tell that implication of Mace’s remark—that he had been the one to advise Crab Ganmiddich to bring cowlmen into his house—sat well with them. Their chief was always thinking that extra step ahead.

  For some reason Mace chose to look Raina’s way just then. Wife, he mouthed for her eyes alone. She met his gaze, but it cost her. Instantly information passed between them. He was aware that she alone knew that everything he said here was a manipulation of the truth, including his remark about the cowlmen. He had never told any such thing to the Crab chief. How could he? They had never met man-to-man. To counter this damning knowledge, he simply let his memories of what happened in the Oldwood dwell for the briefest moment in his eyes. It was a weapon she had no defense against, that pleasure he took in what he had done to her, and she was first to break contact and look away. Every time they shared a moment like this it robbed a part of her soul.

  He knew it too, and it was as if whatever vitality she lost he gained. Turning back to Arlec he asked, “And the repairs to the Crab Gate?”

  “Done. But the riverwall needs—”

  “The riverwall is of little consequence,” Mace said, cutting the young hammerman short. “Drey and the Crab are sitting well. They should be able to hold out until we arrive with more men.”

  Several things happened to Arlec’s face as he listened to his chief speak. First he had wanted to interrupt him, Raina was sure of it, point out that his chief was mistaken, and that the riverwall did indeed count and here was why. Second, he had begun to nod in agreement when Mace said that Drey and the Crab were currently secure. And third, his cheeks had flushed with excitement at the words “until we arrive with more men.”

  All around the entrance hall men uncradled their hammers and axes and unsheathed their swords. Someone—perhaps old and crotchety Turby Flapp—cried, “Kill Spire!” and then the thudding began. Hammer and ax butts were struck against the walls and floor with force. After a few seconds all the impacts fell in time and a single, thumping war charge echoed through the Hailhouse.

  “Kill Spire! Kill Spire! Kill Spire!”

  Feeling weak at the knees, Raina withdrew the few steps necessary to steady herself against the endwall. She had seen a similar thing happen six months ago, when Raif and Drey Sevrance had returned from the Badlands and the Dog Lord had been blamed for Dagro’s death. Kill Bludd! they had cried then. A lot of good that had done, plunging the clan into war with Dhoone and Bludd.

  Yet she could not deny that they needed this. For a week she had looked into the eyes of men and women who were lost. The Hailstone lay shattered and in pieces, and without it they were set adrift. Raina felt it, too, that feeling of no longer being anchored to earth and clan. The gods no
longer lived here; the implications were too much to comprehend.

  Here, though, was something Hailsmen could understand: war. Joy and rage and comradeship had come alive in this room. Mace Blackhail had turned a situation that was cause for despair into a rallying cry for the clan. It was, Raina realized with deeply mixed feelings, something she could learn from. Her husband had flawless instincts as a warlord.

  Already the makeshift war parley was starting to head upstairs to the primary hall in the roundhouse, the warriors’ chamber known as the greathearth. Bev Shank and his father Orwin passed Raina with barely a sideways glance. Orwin had his great bell-bladed war ax out and his swollen, arthritic knuckle joints were stretched white where they grasped the limewood handle. His oldest son, Mull, was at Ganmiddich. Ullic Scarpe, one of the many cousins of the Weasel chief, was brandishing his ugly black-tinted broadsword, making mock swipes at his companion Wracker Fox. Both men sneered at Raina, pushing closer to her than was necessary as they made their way toward the stairs.

  Meanwhile, Ballic the Red was quietly pulling Arlec Byce and Cleg Trotter to one side and Raina could tell from the brevity of Ballic’s expression that the master bowman had taken it up himself to explain to them the fate of the Hailstone. Raina was glad they would hear the news from a decent man.

  Mace was in the midst of a huddle of hammermen intent on escorting their chief up the stairs. As he drew closer Raina steeled herself. “Husband,” she said. “If I might have a word.”

  He always marked her, even when his attention was pulled a dozen ways. His head whipped around and his strange yellow-brown eyes pinned her. “Corbie. Derric,” he said to the two nearest men. “Go on without me. The war party will leave within five days.”