THIRTY-NINE Spire Vanis
Marafice Eye squinted at the horseman riding at full gallop from his slowly advancing army and thought, If I had any sense I would kill him. Order a mercenary or one-in-seven to loose a nice thick quarrel at the back of his leather-capped head. Whoever had said "Don't kill the messenger" was a fool of the highest order. Kill all messengers and stop all messages: that was wisdom to live by.
"Should I?" Tat Mackelray asked, tapping the small and wicked-looking crossbow that he had taken to wearing in a sling at his waist.
Marafice grunted the word "No." At this point they were so damn close to the city that if they set out to kill everyone who intended to dash ahead of them with news and details of their arrival it would take a considerable toll on the population. Not to mention be a waste of good cross bolts.
News had to have arrived by now. An army with foot soldiers, carts and walking wounded moved at a snails pace. Any codger with a cane could outrun it. Word had probably arrived days back, passing from village to village, tavern to tavern, relayed by teams of professional messengers who'd likely have fresh horses ready at each post. Information like this could earn good money in the Spire. Off the top of his head Maraficc could think of at least six people who would pay gold for it. Exact position, number makeup, condition every detail was worth to own separate purse.
Marafice had ordered the killing of dozens of suspicious — looking everyone, looked and the more futile the whole endeavor became. Even doing it for sport had become boring. Runners were another thing entirely. Anyone who slunk away from his army meaning to trade inside information for personal gain was a dead man. Marafice killed them himself. It was a phenomenon which had genuinely surprised him. No one from Rive Company had attempted it yet, but these past few nights they'd had their hands full with deserting mercenaries. Steffan Grimes, who led the mercenary contingent, had told Marafice that such derelictions were not uncommon when an army was this close to home and that a good portion of these men wanted nothing more than to get back wives and children. Marafice had listened politely—he was getting good at that—and then killed the deserters anyway. In his experience reasons just clouded things. What you did, not why you did it, was what counted.
It had caused some dissension, but no one, including Steffan Grimes, had said anything to his face. Andrew Perish, the former master-at-arms of the Rive Watch, had backed him up like a rock. "We've been abandoned on the field, won a roundhouse then lost it to a fresh army, been stranded on the wrong side of the Wolf, and sat through one of the worst storms God in his Garden ever created. If a mercenary can't wait a few more days to get home then I don't see why we should wait to discover his motives." Disloyalty of any kind was intolerable to Perish. He was a man of God, but also a man of fighting men.
Marafice didn't know what he himself was anymore. Protector General of the Rive Watch? Surlord-in-waiting? Commander of a ragtag army of mercenaries, old-timers, religious fanatics, machinists without machines and walking—and lying—wounded? One thing was certain though. He was a man finished with the clanholds. It was a dog-eat-dog world full of wild-eyed warriors and cunning chiefs, and the day he'd crossed the Wolf and left it was the day he vowed to himself he'd never go back. "Will you call a halt?" Tat asked, breaking through his thoughts. It was a good question and one Marafice had minded all day. Did he stop north of the city and approach Spire Vanis in the morning, refreshed, or march on and arrive by night? They were approaching the town of Oxbow in the Vale of Spires and it was growing late. Men who had been on their feet since dawn were weary. Marafice was weary, but it was not the kind of weariness that would let him sleep. The nearer they drew to the city the more tense he became. He did not know what he would meet at the gate, couldn't even be sure if they would let him in.
The journey south from the Wolf had been hard and slow. Ille Glaive had to be avoided, which had meant a detour through the Bitter Hills. Hill country was cold and barren, policed by sharp winds and thick snowfalls. Food had been hard to come by and they'd had to mount raids. Sheep were not afield, and farms had to be struck. It had not been pretty. There might have been rapings; Marafice did not get involved in what went on. He had three thousand men, a thousand horses, and two hundred pack mules to feed: pretty was seldom possible.
The hardest thing to bear had been the weather. Storms had hit in succession; great whiteouts where they had been forced to overtake barns and farm buildings and bed downpi the manure and hay. The worst storm had hit after they'd left hill country and entered the great floodplains of the Black Spill. It had acted strangely, that storm, everyone had agreed so later; the way it had seemed to pass overhead and then thought better of it, and turned right back for a second swipe. Its length and ferocity had caught them off-guard, and when the whiteout came it was so sudden and complete that it had left them stranded. These were grasslands and there were no woods to look to for protection. No farms either, at least none that could be found irmhurry. The winds were so high they couldife erect the tents, and they'd had to dig themselves into snowbanks, an experience so miserable Sd back-breaking that men had died with shovels in their hands.
Perish had made a killing that night. Men scared that if they fell asleep in the snow they would not wake up, were ripe for religious con-version. He had them chanting the pieties like ten-year-old boys. Marafice would have none of it—his balls might be freezing to hailstones but he wasn't crazy. Yet he could see that in this instance it had worth. Men were comforted in a place where there had been no comfort. It was something to be grateful for, Perish's makeshift church in the snow.
Two days had been lost. The greatest number of deaths were amongst the horses. Marafice had detected some relation between the fanciness of a horse—the length and skinniness of its legs and the shininess of its coat—to its ability to withstand cold. Fancy died faster. Men and mules fared better, though pretty much everyone and everything had ended up with chilblains, frostbite, dead skin, shed hair and snow blindness. Marafice's left foot, which had been badly frostbitten once before, had been paining him ever since. He would not put weight on it and spent all his days in the saddle, atop his decidedly unfancy stallion.
His eye socket had had to be stuffed with balled horse mane and sword grease. After the first few hours in the snowbank it had begun to smell. Men would not look at him, he'd noticed. Marafice One Eye, at the best of times, was rarely an appealing sight. Strange how you could forget all about how you looked. Spend months on end imagining imt your appearance did not matter and that you were being judged solely on your actions, only to be reminded with a shock that it wasn't true. A man with an ugly face was set apart. A man with only one eye in that ugly face was judged a monster.
Marafice told himself it was of no consequence, and mostly it was not, yet there were times, such as in the snowbank, where he felt filled with layers of hard-to-place resentment. Those men chanting their crazy pieties with Andrew Perish could all go to hell.
"Well call a halt when we reach the rocks," Marafice said to Tat Mackelroy, guiding his horse around a pothole filled with frozen mud. 'There's open ground. We'll make camp there."
Tat nodded slowly, thoughtful. They were riding eight abreast along a wide, unpaved road that led through closely spaced goose and pig farms. It was late afternoon, and the air was cool and clear and reeked of animal foulness. "Some in the company won't like it."