Still. It was good to be here. The strange eastern wind was blowing, snapping the blackstone pines in the graze and pushing around the last of the snow. A red-tailed hawk was riding the thermals, scanning for weasels and other small prey through the bare branches of Oldwood. The sky was clear, and a cold and a brilliant sun was shining. Standing high atop the roundhouse you could see for leagues.
And no one but the person standing next to you could hear you speak. Raina glanced at her old friend, the clan matron Anwyn Bird. Anwyn was getting old. Her ice-tanned face was deeply lined, and her eyes had extra water in them. Not for the first time Raina found herself wondering why Anwyn drove herself so hard. She had never married, had no family that Raina was aware of, yet she had more strength of purpose than anyone in the entire clan. When she wasn't baking bread for two thousand, she was butchering winter kills in the gameroom milking ewes in the dairy, gutting eels in the kitchen yard, plucking geese on the poultry shed, distilling hard liquor in the stillroom, or fletching arrows in her workshop. Clan was her life. Comparing Anwyn s dedication with her own, Raina found herself wanting. Yet it was she, Raina Blackhail, who had spoken up in the gameroom.
I will be chief.
"Over there," Anwyn said, nodding her chin southwest. "At the tree-line."
Raina looked again and this time she saw something emerging from the black-green mass of the southern pines. A team of twelve horses was hauling a war earthward the roundhouse. The cart was built from whole glazed logs that shone red in the sun, and its weight was so great that it needed six wheel axles to support it. Black smoke gouted from a chimney built into the center of the roof. A pair of archers, crossbows loaded, prowled the roof's flat timbers, and a dozen heavily armed outriders formed a shield wall around the cart and team.
"Can you see their colors?"
Raina shook her head. "Dark, is all I can make out."
They watched in silence as the great, smoking behemoth lurched and rolled along the uneven surface of the graze road. Raina wondered if Anwyn was feeling the same level of unease as she was. Ever since the clanwars started all roads into the clanhold had been heavily patrolled. Redoubts had been built at key bends and crossings. Nothing could get this close to the roundhouse without sanction. So who had sanctioned this? And why hadn't she and Anwyn been informed?
"It's probably some war contraption brought in to defend the Crab Gate," Anwyn turned her back on the cart and looked Raina in the eye. The sudden movement made the fox lore suspended around her neck jump out from beneath the neckline of her dress. "The first thousand leave at dawn. Mace just told Orwin he intends to ride at the head."
Raina nodded sloMy, letting the news sink in. She had hoped her husband would lead the war party headed to Ganmiddich, but until now she hadn't been sure. Ever since Arlec Byce and Cleg Trotter had returned from the Crab Gate, the roundhouse had been gearing up for war. Weapons, armor, horses, mules, carts, supplies: all had to be assembled and coordinated. Mace had taken charge of the planning, but when asked if he intended to ride to defend Ganmiddich himself he had been evasive. He was a wolf, you could not forget that. Secrecy was one of his ploys. How could your enemies plot against you when they could not be sure of your plans?
"With Mace gone we should be able to restore some order to our house." It was the closest Anwyn had come to open criticism of the Hail chief since the night in the gameroom. She looked like she might say more, but Raina spoke to halt her.
"The repairs are going well. As soon as the remains of the Hailstone are removed we can seal the east wall."
"If they ever get removed," Anwyn retorted. "The one man who can decide the fate of the stone rides off into the sunrise at dawn. That's our soul, lying there and turning to dust. How can he stand by and watch as it blows away?"
"Hush," Raina whispered. Even out here she was nervous of her husband's spies. Little mice with weasels' tails. "If Mace rides tomorrow without reaching a decision it will suit us well enough. I will decide what will be done. I will see that the remains of the sixteenth Blackhail guidestone are laid to rest with proper dignity. Me, wife to two chiefs. And once it's done I'll send a party east to Trance Vor and command them to return with a new stone." Raina hardly knew where the words came from. Until the very moment she spoke them she had been dead set against interfering with the fate of the guidestone. That's how power works, she imagined. See an opportunity and seize it.
Muscles in Anwyn Bird's plump face tightened and Raina feared she had made a mistake. Yet the clan matron simply nodded. "Fair enough. Someone has to do it."
Raina searched Anwyn's gray eyes, but found them guarded. I will lose friends, she realized. Claim power and people will judge you. Suddenly Raina wanted very much to run through the roundhouse, finfcagro and crush him to her chest. It was so easy to conjure up his smelclass="underline" horses and tanned leather, and that fine earthy scent that was his own. Gods, how she missed him. She did not want this. Did Anwyn actually think that she wanted to be chief? She would give up everything to have her husband back, willingly go and live in a mountain cave with the wild clans and eat nothing but rabbit haunches and tree bark for the rest of her life. You couldn't turn back time though. As a child she'd been told stories of dragons and sorcery and giants stories where forest folk abducted children while they slept and dragged them into enchanted worlds, where men were turned to stone by angry necromancers, and where the gods crushed entire armies in their fists and the next day built walls with the bones. Not one of those fantastical, unbelievable stories had ever mentioned turning back time. None had dared offer that false hope.
Anwyn could read people's thoughts, Raina decided, for she said, 'The past months have not gone easy on any of us, Raina. Loved ones dead. War. Hardship. And now the stone. Yet we are Blackhail, the first amongst clans, and we do not hide and we do not cower and we will have our revenge."
Hairs on Raina's arms pricked upright. The clan boast. Sending out a hand to steady herself against the stone balustrade, she let the east wind roll over her face. She smelled pine resin and frozen earth. Yes, she wanted revenge. Her husband had been slain in cold blood. Her body had been violated. Shor Gormalin, the man who would have protected her, had been shot in the back of the head. And what had she, Raina Blackhail, done to right those wrongs? Nothing. She shared a bed with the man who had done them.
Sister of Gods what have I let myself become?
Letting out a long breath, Raina studied Anwyn. It was unusual to see the bleached cross section of fox bone. The clan matron normally kept her lore tucked away. People often made the mistake of assuming Anwyn's lore had to be some kind of bird—pheasant, turkey vulture, hawk—but it wasn't. Anwyn was a fox. Raina hadn't learned that fact for many years, for lores were private things and it was considered impertinent to ask someone outright what spirit claimed them. Instead you learned through friends and kin. The widows knew the most, keeping tally each night around the hearth. Bessie Flapp had been the one to tell Raina that Anwyn was a fox. "She's a queer one, is our Anny. All hustle and bustle on the surface, but quiet as a fox underneath." kBessie was dead now, killed during the sundering. Raina had never known her to speak a word that wasn't true.
"Why do you push me, Anny?" Raina asked, surprising herself again. "Out of a whole roundhouse of people why should I be the one to overthrow him?"