A Sword from Red Ice

Orwin Shank had been the first to perceive the change in her. He had held her in a mighty bear hug and rocked her back and forth as they stood in Anwyn's cell. "It's all right, my sweet lamb," he kept repeating softly. Quite suddenly she could not stand the raw-beef smell of blood.

"Unhand me," she had said.

Orwin had paused, surprised. Deciding that her tone was a symptom of grief he had continued rocking her. She had raised a hand and slammed him hard in the ribs. "I said unhand me." He had released her immediately and she left the room. It was the strangest night she could ever recall spending in Blackhail's roundhouse. Dagro's death had not caused the disruption that Anwyn s did. The shattering of the Hailstone had not left the clan as purposeless and bereft. She had always been the rallying point, the one who marched into the middle of a crisis, issued orders, served beer, put a lid on unnecessary fussing, made sure everyone was well fed. They had needed an Anwyn Bird or someone like her to cope with Anwyn's death. Instead they had a chiefs wife who left them to their misery, a kitchen staff who would have roused themselves to make hot food and bring cool beer if anyone had thought to direct them, a chief who was afield at war, and a clan guide who had spent much of the evening locked up in the greathearth with the elder warriors.

Raina had seen the great oaken doors barred by yearmen with crossed spears and had not cared enough to force entry. She understood that some manipulation was happening behind them and that she would learn soon enough its nature.

Cowlmen was the word that came out of the greathearth later in that long night. Hailsmen were tense, their hands returning often to the hilts of their swords as they descended their stairs, their gazes flickering around the groups of people who had gathered in the entrance hall below them.

Robbie Dun Dhoone had sent an assassin into the Hailhouse to spread terror and strike at the heart of clan. The Thorn King had surveyed the strength of the Hailish armies camped on Bannen Field and had judged them too great a threat to Dhoone's reclaiming of Ganmiddich. He was a chief known to have no scruples—look how he had dealt with his rival and uncle Skinner Dhoone—and now he had employed the kind of vicious tactics you would expect from such a man. His plan was to cause sufficient terror to force Mace Blackhail into ordering half of his army home.

"We should expect more strikes," Stannig Beade had warned the sworn clansmen. "The death of our beloved Anwyn is just the start."

He had not addressed these words to the clan, and Raina had only heard them repeated secondhand later. Corbie Meese had given her a brief account of what had happened behind closed doors. "Raina," he had said, his voice low and filled with strong emotion, "Stannig believes there may be a cowhnan concealed in this house."

Raina had simply stared at him. How could it be possible that a good man like Corbie could believe such lies? Cowlmen? Did he not recall the last time there were rumors of cowlmen in the Hailhold how they supposedly killed Shor Gormalin and then left never to be heard of again? How was it possible that both she and the hammerman had lived through that time and come out with two separate experiences of the truth?

She had said one thing to him, because it was the only solid truth she possessed. "Skinner Dhoone was not Robbie's uncle, Robbie was a Cormac who named himself Dhoone after he'd decided that if he looked far enough back into his mother's lineage he would find her related to the Dhoone kings."

Corbie had looked at her strangely. "Stannig said it only as a figure of speech."

She bet he did. She damn well bet he did.

Sworn clansmen had mounted a torch party that night, riding out from the Hailhouse with long flaming firebrands housed in their spear horns. Raina could not discern its purpose, beyond the need of decent men to take action against evil. Stannig Beade had ridden at the party's head, and it appeared that no one else beside herself questioned whether this was fitting behavior for a guide.

The woman with the greatest respect in the clan was dead. He was guide. Didn't he have to grind some bones?

Two days later, whilst Laida Moon and Merritt Ganlow were preparing Anwyn's body with milk of mercury, two Scarpemen had found Jani Gaylo dead. Her throat had been slit from ear to ear and her body had been dumped down the old wellshaft in the kaleyard. It was frozen solid.