Snow fell as the army of Spire Vanis advanced at slow march. The wind was from the east and it channeled along the river and through the bluffs. The Wolf ran shallow here, boulders and gravel banks slowing the flow. Birches and willows choked the water margin, and evidence of recent high water could be seen in uprooted trees, undercut banks and newly exposed stone. The frost that begun in the early hours of the morning had claimed shallow pools and slow meanders, coating them with opaque crusts of ice.
Close to midday now, the temperature was barely warmer. Marafice felt his plate armor sucking away his body heat and did not much like the thought of donning the birdhelm. Like many in the lines he was putting it off until they were within fire range.
Shifting in the saddle, Marafice looked back over the ranks. The rear guard, led by the improbably named Lord of the Glacier Granges, had cleared the bend and was forming ranks. Hideclads, Marafice thought with some heat, a man could be blinded looking at so much steel. Which damn-fool surlord had been responsible for repealing the Hide Laws, that's what he wanted to know. The Hide Laws had prohibited private armies from wearing chain mail and metal plate unless directly under the command of the surlord. The law had given the hideclads their name. For hundreds of years the armies maintained by the grangelords to defend their granges were allowed to armor themselves only in hardened hide. It had been, as far as Marafice Eye was concerned, a very fine law, and one which he wouldn't think twice about reinstating. Nothing wrong with a surlord having the best army. Nothing wrong at all.
Facing forward, Marafice gave the command to sound the drums. Tat Mackelroy, who was Jon Burden second-in-command but today was riding at Marafice's right hand, stood in his stirrups and bellowed the order down the ranks. Seconds passed, and then the kettledrums began to sound. Slowly, rhythmically, forty drumbeats fell in time. The deep hollow booms sent waterfowl into flight and spooked the horses. Some shied and broke the line. One reared and threw its rider into a rank of foot soldiers. The teams pulling the scorpions and the battering ram were unaffected by the noise: they had been brought in from the south and were trained to stillness in battle. Marafice had thought his own mount trained, but training and experience were different things and the great black warhorse was unsettled.
Da-dum. Da-dum. Da-dum. The noise hurt Marafice's ears.
"Shall I call horns?" Tat Mackelroy asked. He was a six-year veteran of the watch, an expert broadswordsman who'd been promoted so quickly through the ranks that some resented him for it. Mackelroy didn't care. He was too busy doing his job.
"No horns. Not yet." Marafice glanced east at the Ganmiddich Tower, perched atop the inch. Old beyond knowing, it was the tallest standing structure in the clanholds. On clear nights some said you could see the fire burning in its top-floor gallery from the far side of the Bitter Hills. Marafice didn't know about that. He looked and saw a five-sided tower erected on an overgrown rock in the middle of the Wolf. It was not constructed from the same traprock as the roundhouse and it did not resemble any structure built by clansmen. It was occupied, the darkcloaks had informed him of that. Close to a hundred long-bowmen, mostly Hailsmen, lived in and patrolled the three upper floors.
Today, for them, there would be no going back to the roundhouse. Last night the darkcloaks had sabotaged their boats. Marafice could see the boats from where he sat, their keels drawn up high on the rocky beach. They looked fine, but they weren't. That was the way the darkcloaks liked to work.
"I won't have them," Marafice had roared at Iss two months back in Spire Vanis. "They're sly, skulking. They cannot be trusted. And the men won't stomach them."
"Don't be a fool," Iss had replied. "Stop thinking like a butcher's son from Hoargate and think like a man with something to lose. You'll be commanding an army in excess often thousand. You'll be responsible for their food, safety, lives. You cannot afford to indulge your backwoods notions of what is and isn't right. Take the darkcloaks and use them. Put them to work, let them be your ears in the ranks and your eyes in the field. The things they know can tip the balance; tricks with fire and smoke, snares, bluffcraft, sabotage. They're trained to see what is hidden: weaknesses in buildings, concealed doors, animal tracks, strategies, men. If you must, use them only to gather intelligence. It will be little, but it may be enough."
"They are sorcerers!" Marafice had cried, punching his fist against the Blackvault's door. "How can I look my men in the eye knowing I countenance such foulness?"
Iss waived a pale hand, unconcerned. "Do not look them in the eye then. A surlord does what is best for a surlord, not what the majority of his acquaintances decree acceptable. You are going into Ganmiddich blind, with your enemies beskfe you. I'd say you need all the help vou can get."
Even then Marafice had not relented. Fear of the old skills ran deep. There was a dirtiness to them, a sense that once you used them their stench clung to you and you were lessened in some essential way. It was only a week later, when Iss had visited him at the Red Forge and casually thrown a curl of parchment on the table, that Marafice had changed his mind. "What is that?" he had barked, unnerved at having the surlord interrupt him as he ate his dinner of ham and beans.
Again, there had been a wave of the pale hand. "Read it," Iss had said, knowing full well that Marafice was barely capable of writing his own name.
Angry, Marafice had pushed away his plate. "Just tell me what it says."
"It says that last night Garric Hews met with Alistair Sperling, Lord of the Salt Mine Granges, in the back room of a small tavern south of the Quartercourts. They discussed you. Hews knew Sperling had just committed to riding to Ganmiddich with three hundred men, and he sought to discover how the esteemed lord might react to a possible mutiny on the road."
Marafice had stood. "What was Sperling's response?"
"Oh he was for it, bless his salty little soul."
"Then I do not want him or his men."
Iss had laughed then, a superior sound that did not let Marafice in on the joke. "You cannot exclude everyone who does not like you. You'll end up with an army of one. The questions to ask are these: How did my surlord receive this information? And: How can I stay one step ahead of those who mean me harm?" Iss had paused, more for effect than to allow Marafice the opportunity to reply. "The answer to both questions is dark cloaks. These are men who love to spy."
So Marafice had taken them, a half-dozen in all, perhaps more. Their numbers were hard to pin down.
Already they had earned their keep. Most evenings he met with one of them in the privacy of his tent. Usually it was the man named Greenslade, a thin trapper with elaborately queued hair. That was another detail he'd learned about the darkcloaks: they often masqueraded as other things. Greenslade kept him well informed about loyalties in the camp. A day south of the Wolf, Hews had arranged something Greenslade called a tester. Hews' plan had been to separate Marafice from his brothers-in-the-watch during the river crossing, then stand back and observe if any other factions in the army of eleven thousand would step forward to protect their leader when it appeared he might be vulnerable. Knowing that one simple fact about the river crossing had been enough to foil the plan. Marafice had simply ordered the Whitehog to cross the river first and it was done. Even arranged to have one of the guide ropes break so the whole damn lot of them got a soaking.