A Sword from Red Ice

The pleasure of that small exchange stayed with her as she hiked up the ladder and landed in the hayloft. The air was warm here and it had some of the same itchiness as the grain drum. Blue smoke rose in bands from two brass smudgers. Longhead was crouching amongst the bales, plucking drugged bats from the hay. With an efficient twist of both wrists he broke their necks and threw them in a steel bucket. As Raina walked toward him a bat dropped right in front of her, landing at her feet. Its leathery wings trembled as its tiny red eyes rolled back in its head. It had a snout like a pig, she noticed, stepping around it, and ears the size and shape of mussels.

"Is it all right to breathe the smoke?" she asked Longhead.

Longhead spun around to face her, and for the second time that day Raina realized she shouldn't be inhaling the air. The head keep of Blackhail was wearing a black felt mask. He shook his head, chucked another bat in the bucket and then picked something from the nearest hay bale and threw it toward her.

It was a mask just like his, and she slipped it over her nose and mouth and tied it tightly.

"Nightshade. It'll make you sleep," the keep said, his voice muffled by the felt.

Raina came and knelt close to him, trying hard not to look at the dead bats in the bucket.

"They'll go to the Scarpes," he said flatly. "They eat them."

Hay pricked jfer knees through the fabric of her dress. "Was it true they wanted the horses?"

Longhead nodded. The black mask made his long pale face seem even paler and longer. Bat's blood was drying beneath his thumbnails. "They came to me, seeing if I could stop the burials. Said it was a waste of good meat."

A dozen horses had died when the Hailstone exploded and five more had to be destroyed because of their injuries. Raina had arranged the burials. She had heard a rumor that the Scarpes wanted the carcasses, but had given it little credit. Butchering horses reared for meat was one thing, but eating riding horses was a practice abhorrent to Hailsmen. She was glad now that she'd had the carcasses carted to the Wedge-she wouldn't have put it past Scarpes to dig up the graves.

Another bat dropped from the overhead rafters as Raina leant in to the keep. "What's happening with the eastern wall? I thought it was being shored." Distorted by the mask her voice snaked over the «s» sounds.

Longhead glanced over his shoulder, checking the long dim roof-space, before answering. "Beade stopped the work ten days back. Says there's no point in sealing the hole as he intends to build a guidehouse and a ward to house the Scarpes off the eastern hall."

Raina pulled down her mask and sucked in drugged air. "He's guide. He has no right to direct the making of this house." You should have told him exactly where to stick his plans.

Longhead's bunion-knuckled hand came up in self-defense. "He says he discussed it with Mace Blackhail before he left. Says the chief gave the go-ahead."

Realizing she was starting to feel dizzy, Raina planted the mask back in place. "Why did you not come to me?"

The head keep puffed air into his body and then let it deflate. "He said not to bother you with it, that you already had enough on your hands …" Longhead hesitated, reluctant to continue speaking. After frowning hard, he spat it out. "Said you might start fussing and putting your foot where it had no place."

Raina sat back, letting her butt sink into the hay. Dagro had once told her about the time Ille Glaive besieged Bannen. The city men had set their tents in bold sight of the Banhouse, and then spent the next ten days building cookfires, holding tourneys and mounting curiously halfhearted attacks. All the while their miners were digging a tunnel beneath the roundhouse. One of the tents had masked the mine head, and when the city men were ready they lit fires in the tunnel and collapsed Bannen's western wall. Undermining it was called, and Stannig Beade was doing it to her.

Knowing better than to reproach Longhead, she said simply, "I am never too busy to hear what happens in this house."

Blackhail's head keep pulled down his mask. He looked older and more serious without it. "I hear you."

She hoped it was a promise to come to her next time Stannig Beade tried to force one of his schemes. Pushing herself onto her feet she bid him farewell. As she took the ladder down through the hayloft floor and into the newly boxed stable space she was aware of a little giddiness a looseness in her joints and a delay in her vision. The Lye boy offered his arm to help her down the last steps.

"A messenger has arrived from Ganmiddich," he told her, full to bursting with the news. 'The guide is meeting with him on the great-court."

Raina knew she disappointed the boy by not responding, but she dared not move a muscle on her face. Stannig Beade overstepped his office. If the chief was away the most senior warrior met with messengers. That meant Orwin Shank, not Scarpe's clan guide.