It was another piece of luck, Marafice reckoned. That Ganmiddich roundhouse was like honey to the bees. Word of Bludd seizing it had doubtless mobilized the might of Bannen, and the forces that remained behind were safe-keepers, insufficient in number to mount an attack on three thousand city men.
"God is good," Perish had claimed the next night as they made a light and nervous camp on the Wolf. "He will see us home"
Marafice had declined to tell Andrew Perish exactly what he thought of that. Home for God was heaven and to get there you had to be dead. Instead he had told Perish of his still-evolving plan to approach Scarpe.
When not talking about the One True Cod, Andrew Perish was as sharp as an iron tack. The white-haired former master-at-arms had leant in toward the fire so that that the crackle of burning pine needles stopped his words from traveling where he did not want them. "Iss had friends at Scarpe. He paid them good coin to secure that crossing. They must have pulled those barges all the way east to Ganmiddich— upriver, no less—and that's the kind of service that doesn't come cheap."
Marafice nodded. He had already worked out some of this for himself. "Scarpe's sworn to Blackhail—one of their former sons is the new Hail chief. How will it sit with them to aid the army that attacked Blackhail at Ganmiddich?"
Perish pushed his lips together and breathed deeply through his nose. Slowly and gravely he began to shake his head. "Not nearly as bad as it should. Do not forget they let us cross in the first place. What did they think we were going to do? Make parlor visits? Someone at Scarpe knew what we were about, and either wasn't much concerned, or even worse it suited them." Perish's cataract-burdened gaze rested long on Marafice Eye. "If you're asking me is it worth making overtures at Scarpe my answer is yes. If you're asking me how to go about it I say use caution and be prepared to move out quickly. No clansman fears our God and all are damned, but some move in deeper hells than others."
Marafice stood. The heat from the fire was hot upon his face and the blackening pine needles suddenly smelled like embalmer's fluid. At that instant he wished he had something to crush between his fists, so deeply and completely did he hate the grangelords who had abandoned this army. How dare they? How dare they leave these men injured, unsupported, and cut off?
Aware that he was pacing and that his fists were pumping, Marafice made an effort to calm himself. Not for Perish's sake—the man had taught him how to protect his balls from sword thrusts when he was seventeen; there was little room for pretense between them—but for the sake of others who were standing and sitting close by, marking the conversation between their commander and the former master-at-arms.
Finally, Marafice had been able to speak. "I hear your warning," he told Perish. "We'll be there in a couple of days. We will see how Scarpe lies."
Looking around, Marafice reckoned there was a very good chance they were in Scarpe-held territory right now. He could see smoke in the not far distance, rising above ugly purplish pines that looked half burned. The river was not bonnie here. Dozens of streams and creaks drained the headlands, and the waters they transported ranged in color from gray and scummy, to tarlike black. Upshore, an abandoned and improperly sealed mine head leaked yellow fluid into a shallow river pool that had a dead raven floating on the surface. Everyone had to be careful with their horses, for the ground was littered with sharp-edged slate and seeded with devil's thorns.
Down column, they were having difficulty pulling one of the carts up the stream bank and Marafice rode down the line to help them, nodding once to Jon Burden along the way. The command is yours.
The carts had originally been designed to transport those dozens of little luxuries that grangelords deemed necessary to life; silk pillows, perfumed oil, wooden salt scrapers, beeswax candles, back itchers, preserved fruit, field armor, war armor, riding armor, red wine, white wine, fine liquors and all manner of cured and exotic meats. A lot of that stuff had been left behind and it made for poor eating but good comradeship. Fruit fights had occurred. Pillows had been commandeered as targets; and the salt scrapers had found a brief but deeply satisfying use as firewood. The alcohol had run out three days back: it was the only taste his men and the grangelords shared.
Seeing that one of the rear cartwheels was wedged in the crack between two hunks of slate, Marafice ordered the horses to be unhitched. Forward was not going to work here: the cart needed to roll back. As the driver and others close by set to work on the horses, Marafice and a dozen other men dismounted to brace the rear. The driver had a steady hand and was able to warn those in the water the instant the hitch was released. Marafice accepted the great weight of the cart, and began barking out orders. Shoulder muscles shaking in intensive bursts, he and the other men controlled the backward roll into the stream.
It was smallest of the three carts, he was grateful for that. They'd padded it with blankets and a decent pile of sword-shredded silk cushions, but it was not an easy ride for the twenty-five men within it. As he looked over the tailgate he saw this was the cart containing the clansmen they'd taken as captives. Two Hailsman and two Crabman, all wounded and chained to the posts. It wasn't much of a headcount, but Marafice was close to glad there were no more. Captives were a headache. They needed to be watched, fed, doctored, and, in the par ticular case, protected from the zealous tendencies of Perish and his faithful who would like to see them burn.
The Hailsmen stared at Marafice with proud and wary faces. The two hammermen were big men with silvery stretch marks across the skin of their arm and shoulder muscles. One of them had been responsible for the deaths of a dozen brothers-in-the-wateh; Marafice knew this to be so because he had watched the man fight with his own eye. He was young, with an unscarred face and clear brown eyes, yet Marafice had the feeling that he had been the one in command at the gate. He had been an untiring fighter and good rallier of men. Marafice doubted if they would have been able to take him if one of Steffan Grimes' crossbowmen hadn't softened him with a quarrel to the ribs.
All five of the clansmen had turned stone cold in protest when Tat Mackelroy had tried to remove their pouches of powdered guidestone. Marafice himself had issued the order to remove all weapons and personal effects from the captives, but seeing something akin to desperation in the eyes of the clansmen as Tat cut away the first man's powder pouch, Marafice had modified the order. He knew fighting men and he knew desperate men. Let the five keep their clannish tokens: it would go easier on everyone that way.
Later Marafice had had to battle the point with Perish who counted it as an offense against God that men in this column were carrying, how did he put it? The ashes of pretender gods. It had not been a comfortable conversation for Marafice, for at some point he realized he was dead set on having his way. To tell the man who had first taught you how to correctly balance a sword that you were favoring an enemy at his expense was hard. Yet something deep down in Marafice would not move. Strange enough, Perish had let it be and had not referred to the matter since.
It had been Jon Burden who brought up the subject of interrogating the captives. The commander of Rive Company had rightly pointed out that they needed to know the names and ranks of the five men. Marafice had allowed him to question them without use of force but that had yielded nothing. Burden now wanted to be free to rough them up and scare them. Marafice agreed that such measures were necessary, but told him to hold off until the worst of their wounds had healed. Who cared about clannish ranking anyway? They had chiefs, but not much else.
"Driver! Hitch the horses!" Marafice wanted to be gone. He and the other men had made the small adjustment necessary to take the cart on a different course up the bank and now they held it steady while the driver positioned the team and fastened the cinches and chest bare. Rusty water ran over the toes of Marafice's black bonis, Some got in. A clannish sword had pierced the leather during the final charge on the gate.