A Sword from Red Ice

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 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 familiesBnd 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 cook-fires 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"