Marafice shuddered as he forced his great black warhorse down into the rocky stream. That moment after the horn sounded and the front line of the strange new army broke free from the woods behind the roundhouse, the Knife had known fear so concentrated it had stopped his heart. Clan Bludd. He had recognized their colors and their trappings straightaway and he knew instantly that he must call a retreat He had met the Dog Lord man-to-man, looked into his eyes, and heard the timbre of his voice. Marafice Eye, with twenty years spent in the Rive Watch protecting three successive surlords, had never met anyone who had impressed him like Vaylo Bludd.
He had assumed that the Dog Lord would he leading the Bludd army. He was wrong. That wrongness was why his army of three thousand men was alive today. If he hadn't felt such fear of the Dog Lord he might have been ambivalent about retreat Certainly Andrew Perish and his God-fearing nine hundred had wanted to stay and fight. They held the gate. Almost. It may have been possible to secure it They had the number. Even with those bastard grangelords stealing away with half the army, superior manpower was theirs.Two factors were not in their favor though. One, they were unfamiliar with the Crabhouse, and it would have taken time and trial to secure it. And two, they had been fighting from noon to sundown and were flat-out spent. Even Andrew Perish, whose zeal gave new meaning to the phrase 'second wind' had been forced to admit that his men were flagging. That last hard fight with Hailsmen for the gate had been devastating. Many of Perish's faithful had fallen.
At least it had doused their God fires, and made it less of a fight to call a retreat.
It was hard to know how many had died in the rout. Numbers had been fluid, bodies already strewn across the roundhouse steps and its river hill. Marafice could not take such matters lightly, and he had played the retreat over and over again in his head. It was a hard thing for a warlord, a retreat. Did you command the front or bring up the rear?
He had brought up the rear, because that seemed like the way he had lived his life. When you were bom a butcher's son in Spire Vanis you started at the back.
Still, even if the retreat had not gone as well as it might, Marafice believed the men who marched with him this day would live longer lives because of it. Bludd, Blackhail, Dhoone: all three northern giants had their eyes on Ganmiddich. It would have turned into a killing field. Three thousand city men holed up in the the most bitterly contested clanhold in the north? How long before the real might of Blackhail turned up? And what about the self-crowned Thorn King, Robbie Dhoone?
Marafice shook his bead as he shortened the reins and encouraged his mount to take the shore. They would not have been supported.
Who the hell in Spire Vanis cared about this rabble of fanatics mercenaries, and aging brothers-in-the-watch? No one now that the grangelords had upped stakes and headed south. Indeed it would suit most of the high-and-mighties in Spire Vanis if the Protector General of Spire Vanis simply never returned home.
The Rive Watch was always a tricky proposition for an aspiring sur-lord. The eager candidate would almost certainly be a grangelord, reared from birth to be hostile to the Rive's power and the rough-necked men who wielded it. A swallowing of pride was usually called for. Some were smart about it—Iss, a grangelord by fosterage, had planned ahead, and joined the watch as a young man. Marafice had respected him as a leader, but he had always known Iss held him in contempt. Brothers-in-the-watch might be lacking in finery and titles but that did not make them stupid. They controlled Mask Fortress itself: the seat of the Surlord's power. Some courting was called for if you fancied calling that fortress home. No one could take it without the Rive Watch's support.
Now that the watch's leader was a thousand leagues away from home, stuck on the wrong side of the Wolf for fear of making a crossing, that courting had suddenly got easier. Some bright and ambitious brother-in-the-watch had doubtless declared himself in command while Marafice was away. He would be insecure, not wholly supported by men who were loyal to the Eye. That meant the aspiring grangelord could play a hand of divide and conquer; set one faction against the other, whisper promises to both and keep none of them. Marafice knew how it would go down. He had seen the same kind of dealings several times before.
That was why he should have been there. If he'd been in the city the day that Iss died no one could have matched him. The watch was his. Thanks to a quick marriage to the Lord of the High Grange's sluttish daughter, a grange and its titles were as good as his own. Even Iss himself had declared Marafice Eye as his successor. It was a rock-strong foundation that had now been rendered worthless.
First come, first take: that was the law of Spire Vanis. Mask Fortress did not hold open its doors until all contenders had been assembled and accounted for. It wasn't a tourney, governed by the rules of polite engagement The doors were closed the instant someone claimed the surlordship for his own. Prising those doors open again was a long, bloody and frequently futile task. It was the difference between rolling a boulder down a hill and carrying it up again. You needed a hundred times the force.
What am I doing even thinking of it? Marafice chastised himself. Here he was, stuck in the godforsaken clanholds, in some wild river territory eight days west of Ganmiddich, with three cartloads of badly injured men on his hands and another two hundred walking wounded, unable to find a safe place to cross the high and swift-moving Wolf, all the while constantly having to check over his shoulder lest crews of heathen clansmen attack his rear.
Marafice frowned at the sky. At least there was some sun about, not like yesterday when the thunderheads blew in from the south and turned the Wolf into a chop field of flying branches and jagged water. Damn the river to hell. They had tried to take the same crossing that they'd used coming over, but the ferryman had upped and gone and taken his ropes with him. Iss had arranged the crossing, and Marafice hadn't taken much interest in it at the time. The only thing he recalled for certain was that Clan Scarpe was somehow involved.
It had been a very stupid mistake, not insuring that the retreat to the city hold was properly covered. It made Marafice angry with himself just to think of it. Who knew or cared how the grangelords had crossed the river? They didn't have injured—anyone not able-bodied had been thoughtfully abandoned on the field—nor did they have carts, tents or supplies. Mounted men, all of them, they had probably used the dozen boats that were tied up back at the camp and swam across the horses. The boats had been scuttled, of course. That order would have given the Whitehog no end of delight.
There was the bridge of boats at Bannen, but Marafice knew no welcome would be offered to city men there. Bannenmen had fought with Blackhail for Ganmiddich, and Marafice had felt nothing but anxiety during the two days they spent crossing Bannen lands. Ban scouts had watched them as they headed west along the rivershore. Potshots had been taken, and there was a short exchange of fire. About two hundred swordsmen had appeared on the river cliff above Marafice's column the next day. The Bannenmen had sat their horses, gray cloaks blowing in the wind, mighty longswords holstered at their backs, and sent Marafice a message he received loud and clear. Keep walking.