Marafice Eye shrugged shoulders the size of full-grown sheep. A
man could always hope.
Mud Camp was situated at the north of the encampment hard against the treeline. Two creeks, which the mercenaries had named the Ooze and the Pisser, ran like open drains through the ranks of tents. Within the camp the mercenaries had formed clans The pro-fessional companies had chosen the most defensible ground backing onto thick stands of stone pine. Upstream of the other mercenaries they had the fresher water and higher ground. Their cover consisted of giant sheets of waxed canvas hung over birch poles. Sourwoods, uprooted for use as windbreakers, had been lashed into lines in place of walls. Marafice admired the design. It was trim and economical, and had the advantage of leaving the mercenary companies light on their feet. They didn't haul a dozen cartloads of tent supplies from camp to camp like the grangelords. They carried everything they needed on eight packhorses.
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."