Raina Blackhail ordered the halved pig's carcass to be hauled from the dairy shed to the wetroom. Two days it had lain there, exposed to the warm and fragrant air, and the flies must have done their job by now. Besides, the smell was making her sick.
Jebb Onnacre, one of the stablehands and a Shank by marriage, was quick to nod. "Aye, lady. Couple of days in the wetroom and you'll have some fine maggots to spare."
Raina showed a brief smile. It was the best she could manage this cold midmorning. She liked Jebb, he was a good man and he bore his injuries stoically, but the night the Hailstone exploded, destroying the guidehouse, stable block, and east wall of the roundhouse, it seemed the weight of those structures had fallen upon her shoulders. And she had been bearing it now for a week.
"I'll rig up a platform. Give it a little air along with the damp." Jebb had lifted the carcass onto a sheet of oiled tarp in preparation for dragging it through the hay. Raina could tell from his hopeful expression that he wanted to please her, that by offering to do more than was necessary he was showing his support.
She was grateful for that. It gave her what she needed for a genuine smile. Thank you, Jebb. I'd forgotten the maggots need good ventilation to grow."
Jebb cinched the end of the tarp in his wrist. "Aye, lady. Makes you wonder what else we've forgotten as a clan." With that, he jerked the carcass into motion and began dragging it toward the door.
Raina watched him go. His words had given her a little chill and she pulled her mohair shawl snug across her shoulders. The air in the shed was dusty with hay and the mites that fed on it made her throat itch Gloomy gray light flooded the dimness as Jebb flung back the doors.
The stablehand's head was still wrapped in bandages. Jebb had been sleeping on a box pallet in one of the horse stalls when the Sundering happened, and had ended up with a chunk of granite embedded in his skull. He'd bled for two whole days. Only the gods knew why he wasn't dead. Laida Moon, the clan healer, had pronounced it to be a miracle of "the thick Onnacre head." Jebb had embraced this diagnosis with such enthusiasm that he'd started referring to himself as "Old Thickey.
Wearing one's injuries with pride had become a way of life in the Hailhouse. Gat Murdock had lost an arm. Lansa Tanner was still abed with injuries too numerous to mention; it was likely she would lose an eye. Quiet, big-boned Hatty Hare had suffered burns on the right side of her face and shoulders. Duggen Harris, the little hay boy, had been burned even worse. Noddie Drook, whom everyone called the Noddler, had been slammed so hard against the wall of the Dry Run that he'd smashed six ribs and punctured a lung. And so the list went on: Stanner Hawk, Jamie Perch, Arlan Perch … Raina shook her head gently. There were too many injured to name.
The dead, though, they had to be named. She could not call herself chief's wife if she did not catalogue the dead.
Bessie Flapp. Gone. The shock of the explosion had stopped her heart. The new luntman, Mornie Dabb, had been lighting torches in the tunnelway. His body was found three days later, blown all the way to the kaleyard. Mog Willey, Effie's childhood friend. He'd been on his way to the guidehouse to deliver Inigar's morning milk. His body was found in two pieces. Joshua Honeycut and Wilbur Peamouth, two stablehands like Jebb, only they were up and about that morning, preparing breakfast and scouring the workbenches for Jon Crickle, the stablemaster. Also dead. Craw Bannering's head had been severed. Vernon Murdock, brother to Gat, hung on for four days before succumbing to his injuries. And it was a mercy the little milkmaid, Elsa Doe, had just lived out the day.
Inigar's body had not been found, and Raina had an instinct that even when work crews cleared the rubble heap that had once been the guidehouse it would still be missing. Oh, he had died along with the Hailstone, she did not doubt it. But it would be just like Inigar to confound people in death. He had never been an easy man to get along with, and he was not going to be an easy corpse to find.
Stop it, Raina chided herself. What am I doing, making light of the dead? Shamed, she continued to name the ones lost. It was a long list: thirty-nine clansmen and women as of this morning. Not counting the tied clansmen, those who farmed and worked their trades in the Hailhold but did not live in the roundhouse year-round and had not spoken oaths to defend it. Many of the tied clansmen who had died had been camped against the great fold's eastern wall. Part of the floor above had collapsed upon them. Poor souls. They had come to the roundhouse seeking protection during the war.
And then there were the Scarpemen. Raina's mouth tightened as she made her way toward the stable door. She was not going to count those. They had no business being here, had sworn oaths to a foreign clan. What was Mace thinking, to invite close to a thousand warriors and their families to stay indefinitely in the Hailhouse? True enough, Scarpe's own roundhouse had been destroyed by fire, but let them build a new one—and stay within the Scarpehold while they did it.
Scarpe losses during the Sundering had been high. Many had taken to camping in the old grain store that lay hard against the eastern wall. The bell-shaped structure had been letting in rainwater for years, and the mortar was black and rotted. When the guidestone exploded, the walls and ceiling had caved in. Children had died; and perhaps if she looked deep enough inside herself she could find some sympathy for them.
But today she wasn't going to try. Nodding her farewell to the new stablemaster, Cyril Blunt, she left the old dairy shed that was being used as a temporary stable. The cold of outside shocked her. Strange unseasonable winds were blowing stormclouds west. A wet snow had begun to fall and already the pines around the greatcourt were dusted white. People had begun to whisper that when the guidestone had exploded it had blasted away spring along with the roundhouse's eastern wall. Normally Raina had no patience with such superstitious nonsense. But it had been unseasonably cold this past week, and if the gods could split a guidestone into a million separate pieces then they could surely rob a clanhold of its spring.
Raina Btackhail, take ahold of yourself. There are already enough doomsayers in this roundhouse. We don't need one more.
Breaking into a run, she followed Jebb's draglines toward the hole in the eastern wall. The sound of work crews hammering and sawing assaulted her ears. Nothing was more frightening to a clansman than a breach in his roundhouse wall and the rebuild went on day and night After sunset, huge oil-burning torches were lit and the night crews took over. The night crews wore pot helms with candies fixed above their visors with blob of wax. If was a strange thing to see. Strange and good. Every able-bodied Hailsman and Hailwife in the roundhouse-either with an oath or without-worked toward the reconstruction in some way. Longhead, who for as long as Raina could remember had been head keep of the Hailhold, had come into his own. The man was a wonder. Even with an inch of flesh missing from his left leg.
He came toward her now, hobbling with the aid of a bent stick Never a man to waste words on greeting he got straight to the point. "Raina, I need to know when I can start clearing the guidehouse. We can't seal the wall till it's done,"
Raina took a breath to steady herself, then another to give herself more time. Dagro, her first husband, had taught her many things Think before you speak was one of them. Seven days had passed since the Sundering. Seven days where the remains of the gtisdehouse had been left untouched. Raina could view the rubble from where she stood: a two-story heap of dust and jagged rock punctured by hunks of broken wall. Even though she'd seen it over a dozen times before, the still had to stop herself from reaching toward her measure of powdered guidestone for comfort. The Hailstone was dead.
As she looked on, the wind picked up, sending snow skirling and blowing plumes of dark gray powder from the rubble. Once men had treasured that powder; carried it into battle, borne it across continents, dipped it beneath their tongues as they spoke oaths, rubbed it on the bellies of their newborns, and sprinkled it over the closed eyes of their dead. It had been used as sparingly as gold. Now it was blowing in the wind.