A Sword from Red Ice

He returned to camp quickly, signaling to the hornsman to call arms. Jon Burden rode to meet him and together they inspected Rive Company as it formed ranks.

Helmets, Marafice thought dryly. I should have forked out for some matching sets.

The men of Rive Company were lean and hard and cloaked in red. Those who were wearing birdhelms looked frightening enough to appear in children's nightmares. With their feces entirely covered by steel likenesses of the Killhound of Spire Vanis they could no longer fully rotate their necks and moved like being, awakened from the dead. A good third of the seven hundred did not possess birddhelms and wore whatever they could beg, borrow or scavenge. Many wore stan-dard pothelms forged from black iron. Others had full visored helms complete with crests they had no rights to and leathers they had no need for. One man sported a helm with two enormous bullhorns forged to the sides, and another wore something that looked suspiciously like a wooden bowl.

"Weadie," Marafiea called out to the man.

Will Weadie was in the process of binding his horse's tail to prevent it from flaying in the charge. Tall and veiny with a nose that was beginning to wart, Weadie was pushing fifty. Marafice remembered training under him as a new recruit. Weadie had been second to the master-at-arms, Andrew Perish, who was also amongst the seven hundred here today.

"Sir." Weadie rubbed his nose with the back of his hand.

"Is that a wooden bowl on your head?"

"Aye, sir." Weadie knocked on the crown, producing a hollow rap. "I drilled the holes meself and me sister made the straps."

''You should have come to me. I would have seen you got something better."

Weadie shook his head. "Wouldn't want it. After thirty years in the watch I'm done wearing the bird skulls. Call me reckless, but I'd rather take my chances with a flying ax than ride around with nine pounds of metal on my head."

Marafice believed him. He also believed that Will Weadie, like many men retired from the watch, was sorely in need of funds. annual pension of ten silver coins barely stretched to a hot dinner every night They needed plunder, and Marafice was going to make sure they got it. First spoils were theirs, by order of the Surlord, Penthero Iss. Marafice had insisted upon it, but he was no fool and they were a long way from Spire Vanis and the Surlord's words were no longer law.

The wangling had already begun. Farms, mills, cottage, smiths and stovehouses had been plundered on the journey. Only Marafice they had raided a mining camp upriver. It was the only time Marafice could recall attending a raid where the fighting was worse after than during it. He'd been glad of his reputation then. Both the hideclads and mercenaries feared him in equal measure, and just the word that he was riding in to break up the feuding was enough to excite a spontaneous laying down of arms.

God only knew how the spoils had been divvied, but judging from the zealousness of the guards posted outside Rive Company's supply tent, his brothers-in-the-watch hadn't fared too badly.

To Weadie he said, "Put some metal under there. Nowl"

Weadie jumped at the force of his voice. "Aye, sir"

Marafice turned away as the aging armsman ran toward the red fire in search of an iron pot or anything else that would do the job. Damn fool. Didn't he know they'd be shot from above with longbows? Those clannish arrowheads hit like axes.

"Jon," he said to the commander of Rive Company. "We split the men, fifty-fifty. Have them form shield walls on either side of Hog Company. Hews is taking the center."

The word conveyed all that Jon Burden did not like about this plan. They'd discussed most of it last night, but only today as he'd looked into Garric Hews' face and seen all the arrogance and challenge there had Marafice decided firm. Rive Company would flank Whitehog Company like a pair of armed guards. Marafice trusted Garric Hews about as much as he trusted a whore with open sores.

"I am better than you. I am harder and more cunning, and one day when you hear the hiss of wind in your chest it will be me sliding out the knife"

That was what Garric Hews had said earlier with his cool, superior smile. They were rivals for the lordship of Spire Vanis, and this—this godforsaken wasteland ruled by animal-skinned clansmen—was where they would fight it out. Penthero Iss had named his successor, and Garric Hews did not like the sound of Marafice Eye, Surlord, one bit. What Iss had done was unprecedented, and not likely to stick once he was dead and gone, but that wasn't the point. Marafice had publicly declared himself for surlord. Anyone who fancied that position for himself would have to deal with seven feet, twenty stone of Eye.

"I still say we keep our men together," Jon Burden said. "Take the left flank. Stay out of the river"