A Sword from Red Ice (Book 3)

by J. V. Jones

  Ignoring the squire waiting with his sword, Marafice Eye spun his massive warhorse and looked out upon the sea of tents that spread across the wooded upland north of the river.

  It was a quarter past dawn and the strange mists had gone, but there was still something not to his liking about the light. The grangelords had claimed the best and safest ground, hard along the rocky cliffs of the Wolf, and their fancy silk and linen tents reflected the unlovely color of the sky. Breakfast was being cooked, and from the looks of things the grangelords weren’t denying themselves one bit. Servants were stirring pots, plucking game birds, toasting cheese, and grinding peppercorns. Some fool had built a smokefire and was cranking an entire side of lamb. What did they think this was, a day at the tourney field?

  Grimacing in disgust, the Knife began to turn his horse, but at that moment his attention was caught by a single figure standing in front of the farthest silk tent.

  Ready, that was Marafice’s first thought. Unlike most of his fellow grangelords, Garric Hews of House Hews, heir to the vast holdings of the Eastern Granges, was armed and armored. His chest piece was simply fashioned, with rolled edges around the neck and waist, and a reinforced plate above the heart. It had probably cost more than a house. Marafice knew subtle workmanship when he saw it. The enameling alone would have taken an armorer three months. Contrasting bands of white and silver ran along the turning edges and cloak pommels, and a coin-size decoration on the right shoulder had been jeweled and enameled in the shape of a rampant boar. The Whitehog of House Hews.

  Garric Hews returned Marafice’s stare. His war helm was tucked under his arm, revealing a soldier’s close-cropped hair. He was nineteen. Yet it wasn’t a normal nineteen. Being a grangelord bred arrogance. Being heir to the greatest house in Spire Vanis bred something more. Twenty-three surlords had called themselves Hews, and Garric Hews’ desire to make himself the twenty-fourth could be read in the muscle mass beneath his face. The Knife had observed him on the practice court and in the barracks; he was a savage fighter and a cool-headed controller of men. A company of seven hundred hideclads rode under him. They were the best-equipped men in the entire army; each and every one of them horsed, and chain-mailed, and armed with dagger, horse sword and pike. Hews trained them daily in formation, and Marafice had to admit he did a good job of it. He knew the value of well-trained men.

  They both did. Shifting a muscle close to his mouth, Hews showed a cold smile to his rival. Marafice received all the information delivered in the smile, and then turned his horse sharply and rode away. He would give the Whitehog nothing back.

  The game trail ran southeast, following the river as it bow-curved upstream and Marafice took it through the camp. Jon Burden was crouching by the red fire, drinking breakfast. It was likely there was ale in his pewter tankard, but Marafice wasn’t worried about that. The first captain of the newly formed Rive Company knew how to carry his drink. He and his second-in-command Tat Mackelroy, known as Mackerel, stood as Marafice rode toward them, but Marafice waved them down. He would parley with them later. Right now he needed to be alone.

  The camp was spread over half a league, and it was already starting to smell. Horse shit, man sweat, woodsmoke, and lamb grease had combined to form a sharp-sweet scent that the Knife had come to associate with war. Here in the Rive section it was especially bad. For some bloody-minded reason known only to themselves, Rive Company had taken to burning horse turds as fuel. Rive Company had been formed three months earlier in Spire Vanis from volunteers and veterans of the city’s Rive Watch. Through no coincidence whatsoever they numbered seven hundred. Marafice Eye hadn’t been present when the decision to burn horse turds had been taken, but he guessed it had little to do with a shortage of fuel and more to do with camp politics.

  Rive Company was directly upwind of the grangelords’ encampment, and they gifted the grangelords with the smell. It was the way it had always been in Spire Vanis: that old, bitter rivalry between the grangelords and the watch. The grangelords held and sheriffed the land outside the city and the watch policed it within. Nothing, not one wormy apple or tin spoon, entered Spire Vanis without passing the inspection of the watch. And no one, not even Garric Hews or the High Examiner himself, could gain access to the Surlord without being escorted into his presence by the watch.

  The grangelords resented those two facts with such intensity they all but frothed at the mouth like rabid dogs. Power was theirs. They were the ones with the wealth, the land, the titles and the private armies so misleadingly named hideclads. Outside the city they were as good as kings. Within it they were reduced to supplicants—by baseborn, low-bred thugs, no less. That was what galled them the most.

  Marafice stretched his lips into a tight smile. They were his men, the watch. Good men, hard-fighting, hard-playing, down-to-earth. They weren’t having roasted game bird for breakfast, that was for sure. It would be porridge with a dollop of lamb’s grease—and a chunk of blood sausage if they were lucky. They were well-equipped though. Marafice himself had made sure of that. He wasn’t about to send his brothers-in-the-watch to war unprepared. All seven hundred had Rive Blades, the blood-tinted swords fired in the Red Forge. The Knife had wrung money from the Surlord to pay for their pikes, and when he hadn’t been able to wring more he had paid for their plate armor himself. It had cost him the entire dowry he had received from Roland Stornoway for the pleasure of marrying his eldest daughter. That, and half the savings he had on account with the tight-lipped priests of the Bone Temple. It wasn’t fancy stuff like the Whitehog’s, but it was solid, and if a lance blow landed just right it might make the difference between broken ribs and disembowelment.

  Reaching the edge of the cliff, Marafice reined in his horse and dismounted. He was free of the camp now, hidden from hostile glances by a crop of spindly weed trees and some evil-looking thorns. Below him lay the great expanse of the Wolf River, its waters brown with tannin. Trees and bushes uprooted by an earlier thaw had logjammed to form an island midstream. Some kind of waterfowl perched atop one of the upturned root balls, but Marafice didn’t know enough about birds to identify the breed. Abruptly he turned. The updraft funneling along the cliff had chilled his dead eye.

  Cover it, advised the very few people who dared speak to him about the loss of his right eye. Have a bridle maker cut out a patch and strap it over the socket. He had nearly done just that, but something had stopped him. Some kind of fool pigheaded-ness that he had come to regret but would not now reverse. For better or worse it had become who he was. The hollow socket repulsed him, and he had not willingly looked in a glass in three months. On his worst nights he suspected that his exterior now accurately reflected what lay within. People had always thought him a monster. Now he had become one.

  The strange thing was that sometimes he thought he could see through his missing eye. In his dreams he saw further. The colors were deeper and the edges as crisp as a line drawing. Even after he woke he was sure the eye was still in place . . . right until the moment when he reached for the water pitcher and poured himself a cup. It spilled. It always spilled. He could see well enough over distance, but those small judgments close to the body betrayed him every time.

  Marafice rubbed the socket with his gloved fist. The coldness was hard to get used to, the chill so close it could freeze his thoughts. Damn Asarhia March. Her foul sorceries had robbed him of the skin of his foot and an eye. She had killed his brothers-in-the-watch, too. Five of them, blasted against the hard granite of the Bitter Hills . . .

  Enough, he told himself. What was done was done. He was Marafice Eye, Protector General of the Rive Watch, the Surlord’s declared successor, and husband to Liona Stornoway, Daughter of the High Granges. He had gained more than he’d lost, and you could not say that about most men.

  True enough his new wife was a high-strung slattern whose belly was currently swelling with another man’s brat. But she was rich beyond reckoning and she had the very great fortune of being born into one of the five Great
Houses of Spire Vanis.

  Stornoway could give Hews a run for its money. It was older than Hews, claiming an ancestor of the Bastard Lord himself Torny Fyfe, and although it could not match the sheer number of surlords spawned by House Hews, it more than made up for it in wealth. Stornoway held the two most important high passes south of the city, and all goods coming north across the mountains were subject to its tariffs. That, canny management of its holdings and rumors of Sull gold made Stornoway a byword for untold riches in Spire Vanis. The scale of the wealth took some getting used to. What did a butcher’s son know of baudekin, emeralds, ambergris, perfumed cushions, and gilded prayer books? What did he care? Power was what counted. That Stornoway gold would need to work. Arms, fortifications, horses, guards, bribes: those were the only things it was good for.

  Marafice squinted into the eastern sky. Behind the storm-heads the sun was rising. It was time to move out.

  He returned to camp quickly, signaling to the hornsman to call arms. Jon Burden rode to meet him and together they inspected Rive Company as it formed ranks.

  Helmets, Marafice thought dryly. I should have forked out for some matching sets.

  The men of Rive Company were lean and hard and cloaked in red. Those who were wearing birdhelms looked frightening enough to appear in children’s nightmares. With their faces entirely covered by steel likenesses of the Killhound of Spire Vanis, they could no longer fully rotate their necks and moved like beings awakened from the dead. A good third of the seven hundred did not possess birdhelms and wore whatever they could beg, borrow or scavenge. Many wore standard pothelms forged from black iron. Others had full visored helms complete with crests they had no rights to and feathers they had no need for. One man sported a helm with two enormous bullhorns forged to the sides, and another wore something that looked suspiciously like a wooden bowl.

  “Weadie,” Marafice called out to the man.

  Will Weadie was in the process of binding his horse’s tail to prevent it from flaying in the charge. Tall and veiny with a nose that was beginning to wart, Weadie was pushing fifty. Marafice remembered training under him as a new recruit. Weadie had been second to the master-at-arms, Andrew Perish, who was also amongst the seven hundred here today.

  “Sir.” Weadie rubbed his nose with the back of his hand.

  “Is that a wooden bowl on your head?”

  “Aye, sir.” Weadie knocked on the crown, producing a hollow rap. “I drilled the holes meself and me sister made the straps.”

  “You should have come to me. I would have seen you got something better.”

  Weadie shook his head. “Wouldn’t want it. After thirty years in the watch I’m done wearing the bird skulls. Call me reckless, but I’d rather take my chances with a flying ax than ride around with nine pounds of metal on my head.”

  Marafice believed him. He also believed that Will Weadie, like many men retired from the watch, was sorely in need of funds. The annual pension of ten silver coins barely stretched to a hot dinner every night. They needed plunder, and Marafice was going to make sure they got it. First spoils were theirs, by order of the Surlord, Penthero Iss. Marafice had insisted upon it, but he was no fool and they were a long way from Spire Vanis and the Surlord’s words were no longer law.

  The wrangling had already begun. Farms, mills, cottages, smiths and stovehouses had been plundered on the journey. Only yesterday they had raided a mining camp upriver. It was the only time Marafice could recall attending a raid where the fighting was worse after than during it. He’d been glad of his reputation then. Both the hideclads and mercenaries feared him in equal measure, and just the word that he was riding in to break up the feuding was enough to excite a spontaneous laying down of arms.

  God only knew how the spoils had been divvied, but judging from the zealousness of the guards posted outside Rive Company’s supply tent, his brothers-in-the-watch hadn’t fared too badly.

  To Weadie he said, “Put some metal under there. Now!”

  Weadie jumped at the force of his voice. “Aye, sir.”

  Marafice turned away as the aging armsman ran toward the red fire in search of an iron pot or anything else that would do the job. Damn fool. Didn’t he know they’d be shot from above with longbows? Those clannish arrowheads hit like axes.

  “Jon,” he said to the commander of Rive Company. “We split the men, fifty-fifty. Have them form shield walls on either side of Hog Company. Hews is taking the center.”

  “Aye.”

  The word conveyed all that Jon Burden did not like about this plan. They’d discussed most of it last night, but only today as he’d looked into Garric Hews’ face and seen all the arrogance and challenge there had Marafice decided firm. Rive Company would flank Whitehog Company like a pair of armed guards. Marafice trusted Garric Hews about as much as he trusted a whore with open sores.

  “I am better than you. I am harder and more cunning, and one day when you hear the hiss of wind in your chest it will be me sliding out the knife.”

  That was what Garric Hews had said earlier with his cool, superior smile. They were rivals for the lordship of Spire Vanis, and this—this godforsaken wasteland ruled by animal-skinned clansmen—was where they would fight it out. Penthero Iss had named his successor, and Garric Hews did not like the sound of Marafice Eye, Surlord, one bit. What Iss had done was unprecedented, and not likely to stick once he was dead and gone, but that wasn’t the point. Marafice had publicly declared himself for Surlord. Anyone who fancied that position for himself would have to deal with seven feet, twenty stone of Eye.

  “I still say we keep our men together,” Jon Burden said. “Take the left flank. Stay out of the river.”

  Marafice shook his head once, hard. They were riding between rows of open-fronted rawhide tents, their horses’ hoofs sinking deep into the mud. Camp priests had been busy before dawn, spreading the sacred ash. The strange tingly odor of burned nightshade was released with every step. “If the gate falls the Whitehog could cut us off. A dozen horsemen placed just right, and he could hold us back while Hog Company rides through. This way we’ll be on him. Garric Hews will be seeing so much red he’ll think his head’s split open.”

  Jon Burden grunted. He was a stocky, powerfully built man with thick blond hair and a full beard that was showing gray. The killhound brooch that fastened his battle cloak boasted two mosquito-size rubies for eyes. Those rubies denoted twenty years service as a captain of the watch. In his time Jon Burden had expelled the Forsworn from the city, quelled the hunger riots during the bitter winter following Penthero Iss’ ascension to Surlord, led the force that rode against Hound’s Mire at Choke Creek, crushed the Nine-Day Rebellion led by the Lord of the Mercury Granges, and foiled numerous assassination attempts on Iss. Jon Burden knew what it took to win. He had argued to take the center, and Marafice had nearly let him have it, but a conversation he’d had with Penthero Iss ten weeks ago in Spire Vanis had stopped him.

  “How do I lead this army of misfits?” Marafice had demanded of Iss, his voice echoing across the marble-entombed space of the Blackvault. “The grangelords, the darkcloaks, the watch?”

  “You have been Lord Protector of Spire Vanis for eighteen years,” Iss had replied, cool as well water. “You already know how to lead. Now you must learn how to use.”

  Marafice shivered as he remembered his Surlord’s words. Iss’ brand of cold calculation was foreign to him, but of all the men he knew Penthero Iss had risen the farthest and stayed put the longest. That meant something to the Knife. Iss was the son of an onion farmer from Trance Vor; it served a butcher’s son well to listen and learn.

  So he would use Garric Hews and Whitehog Company by giving them the honor of taking the center during the assault. The greatest danger lay in the center—it was the spearhead of the attack, open to the worst Ganmiddich could fire at them—and Marafice’s first instinct had been similar to Jon Burden’s: we will take this peril as our own. Yet when he had asked himself Would Iss have done this? he had
paused and changed his course.

  The simple fact was that Whitehog had superior training and weaponry. Marafice knew it. Hews knew it. Doubtless Jon Burden knew it too but his pride got in the way. Whitehog Company had been training in battle formation for years. They were tight. Their captains had decades of experience patrolling the southern border against the Glaive, and their leader was sharp and aggressive. Rive Company were fine men, but a good third were over forty—and a high portion of that number hadn’t seen active service in years. Much though he would have liked to cherry-pick the best seven hundred from the watch, Marafice had taken only those who had volunteered. The result was a motley band of seasoned fighters, thrill-seekers, zealots, old men dreaming of recapturing their glory days and scroungers in need of cash. It wasn’t an ideal force by any reckoning, but Marafice took some pride in the fact that none were here against their will.

  Besides, it was in his interest to keep Spire Vanis secure in his absence. Deplete the watch too badly and he put the Surlord’s security at risk. An assassination while he was here, a thousand leagues and twenty-one days’ hard travel from the city, was the last thing Marafice wanted. If anything ever happened to the Surlord he needed to be close to claim his prize.

  “Lead an army for me, Knife,” Iss had murmured all those months ago in the Blackvault, “and in return I will name you as my successor.”

  Marafice blew air from his mouth. While he’d stood here thinking, mud had turned to chalk on his horse’s hooves.

  “Jon,” he said brusquely. “I will hear no more arguments. Split the men. We ride within the quarter.”

  He waited until Jon Burden met his gaze and nodded, and then kicked his horse toward Mud Camp, where the mercenary companies were forming ranks. This business of surlording won no friends. Even though Jon Burden had no love for Garric Hews and Whitehog Company, he could not be told the second reason Marafice had let them take the center. Hews would be leading his men. He had ridden at the head of the line on every raid and sortie Hog Company had undertaken since leaving Spire Vanis. Today that placed him at the center of the center—bull’s-eye by Marafice’s reckoning.