Marafice's gaze became less admiring as he scanned the lower tiers of Mud Camp. Professional mercenary companies were one thing. Freelancers were another entirely. Motley bands of ill-equipped foot soldiers were milling around the cook fire, sucking on sparrow bones, oiling spear heads with filthy rags, fastening on buckled and peeling body armor, scratching their flea bites, swilling from tin flasks filled with crude grain alcohol, and spitting with feeling into thee dirt. Chicken farmers, street vendors, tallow makegstablehands, fish pick-lers, lime boys, pot boys, bath boys, outlaws, thieves: they were all here and nervous as hens around the smell of fox. Their contracts promised one silver piece a tenday and a "just and equitable portion of all common spoils won during the campaign." Which meant they would probably get nothing at all.
Marafice felt some sympathy for them, but his disgust at their unpre-paredness and the state of their camp was stronger. What sort of men let their animals stand in a lagoon of their own filth?
He was not pleasant as he gave his final orders.
Steffan Grimes. captain of the largest professional outfit and acting commander of the entire mercenary contingent, rode forward to dis-cuss the last-minute changes. Born from scratch-farming stock on the brush flats east of Hound's Mire, Grimes had propelled himself far for a man who was still a good five years under thirty When the Knife looked into Grimes' blunt, ice-tanned face he saw himself Younger. Coarser. Still intimidated by the highland-mighty grangelords.
"They have arseholes just the same as you and I," he had said to Grimes at the start of the campaign, "the only difference is with all the duck livers, lark tongues, and raw oysters they eat, they use theirs a lot more."
It had been exactly what he wished someone had said to him at that age, yet Grimes had not been ready to hear it. He was still unsure of himself around Garric Hews and his high-stepping brethren. When a grangelord barked an order, Steffan Grimes' first instinct was to obey. It was a problem. Grangelords came in all varieties, from shrewd, to middling, to full-blown raving idiocy, yet each and every one of them believed he had a God-given right to lead men.
That was where Andrew Perish came in. Marafice clasped Grimes' forearm and wished him "Profit on the battlefield," and then turned to meet his former master-at-arms.
Andrew Perish had removed himself from the bustle of the camp and was standing on the cliff edge, gazing south at the hazy purple mounds of the Bitter Hills. Smoke rising from a fist-size iron crucible at his feet warned mortals to leave him well alone. Andrew Perish was speaking with God.
The master-at-arms of the Rive Watch was sixty-one years old, yet he had the spread-legged, straight-backed stance of a man half his age. His hair was soldier-short and perfectly white. A shiny rash on his jaw and neck told of his habit of shaving twice a day. That same unbending self-discipline made him rise in the darkness of predawn every morning to prepare his kit, wash his small linens, cook his breakfast and tamp his own fire. He was a forty-year veteran of the Rive Watch, a man of fierce faith, and once long ago in a separate lifetime he'd been the second son of the Lord of the Wild Spire Granges.
In Marafice Eye's opinion he was the most valuable man in the camp.
The Knife waited for the communion to be done. He was little used to waiting and it made him grumpy. Watchful eyes marked the deference and judged it. That made him even grumpier. After a time he dismounted. Pain shot along his damaged foot as his weight hit the ground. He ignored it.
"It will snow and it will be bloody," Perish said at last, stamping his heel on the crucible and driving it deep into the mud, "but His work will be done."
Andrew Perish turned to face his commander-in-chief. Cataracts were beginning to whiten his brown eyes, yet it only made his gaze seem sharper It had the force of a fist punching through a wall. "Every clansman we kill will be a prayer: See how we love thee Sweet God " Marafice made his face like stone. True belief disturbed him. His experiences during the Expulsions had taught him to be wary of men who had the fuel of God burning in their eyes. You couldn't always control them. There had to be close to a thousand here today who had come for no other reason than to slay heretics. They were good men, hardworking, ordinarily loyal, yet you could not predict what would happen if their God fuel was ignited. The Knife had a strong memory of sitting his horse and looking on as his fellow brothers-in-the-watch hacked off the hands and feet of Forsworn knights. He had not fore-stalled that unnecessary cruelty, but it did not mean he had liked it.
He was all business as he spoke with Perish. "Inform Hews he'll be taking the center. We're splitting Rive—we'll flank him. I'll be leading the east flank. Burden will head the west."
Andrew Perish bit this off and chewed on it. As battle plans went it wasn't the brightest, but Perish wasn't the sort to quibble over details. He was the liaison, the bridge between the grangelords and their armies and the great unlanded rest of them. Perish could talk to the most foulmouthed, foul-smelling swine herder, in Mud Camp and then turn around and parley with a pride of perfumed grangelords reposing in their silk tents. All respected him. He had foot soldier's muck on his boots and the blood of lords in his veins.
The Knife knew he could command the grangelords without Perish's help, but this way it was easier. Smoother. Tempers were held in check on both sides. The grangelords didn't have to receive orders directly from a butcher's son, and everyone else was spared the aggravation of dealing with the grangelords firsthand.
"Watch him." Perish's voice was iron hard. Between them there was no need to name names. "Once the battle is met he will abide by his own rules."
Marafice glanced east toward the river bend that concealed the green traprock walls of Ganmiddich. The first snow had begun to fall sleek and heavy flakes that entered the water like diving birds. "I have my own rule in this battle,"he said. "Dog eat Hog."
EIGHT A Cart Pulled by Twelve Horses
"Raina. What d'you make of that?"
Raina Blackhail followed Anwyn Bird's gaze south across the Blackhail clanhold. They were standing on the ancient bowman's gallery that jutted from the roundhouses southern wall. Longhead said no one had been up here in decades, and Raina could see why. The gallery had been built on to the exterior dome by the War chief, Ewan Blackhail. Ewan's son had slain the last of the Dhoone kings, and Ewan had feared retaliation. Amongst his many hastily built defenses was a ringwall that circled the roundhouse at a distance of two hundred feet, a six-story watchtower built atop Peck's Hill in the eastern pinewall, and a series of booby-trapped wells and earthworks that ran along the Dhoone-Blackhail border and that, as far as Raina knew, had killed a whole lot of sheep. Five hundred years later and few of Ewan's creations were still standing. Judging from the cracked stonework and faint rocking motion of the ledge this one didn't have long to go.
Still. It was good to be here. The strange eastern wind was blowing, snapping the blackstone pines in the graze and pushing around the last of the snow. A red-tailed hawk was riding the thermals, scanning for weasels and other small prey through the bare branches of Oldwood. The sky was clear, and a cold and a brilliant sun was shining. Standing high atop the roundhouse you could see for leagues.
And no one but the person standing next to you could hear you speak. Raina glanced at her old friend, the clan matron Anwyn Bird. Anwyn was getting old. Her ice-tanned face was deeply lined, and her eyes had extra water in them. Not for the first time Raina found herself wondering why Anwyn drove herself so hard. She had never married, had no family that Raina was aware of, yet she had more strength of purpose than anyone in the entire clan. When she wasn't baking bread for two thousand, she was butchering winter kills in the gameroom milking ewes in the dairy, gutting eels in the kitchen yard, plucking geese on the poultry shed, distilling hard liquor in the stillroom, or fletching arrows in her workshop. Clan was her life. Comparing Anwyn s dedication with her own, Raina found herself wanting. Yet it was she, Raina Blackhail, who had spoken up in the gameroom.