"Jones, J V - Sword Of Shadows 02 - A Fortress Of Gray Ice V2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jones J. V)
“Grangelords!” Iss commanded the hundred men on the steps. “What is your decision: freedom or sword?”
The grangelords stared at Iss with fury. They were trapped, and they knew it. Only grangelords could stand in judgment of high treason, and here they were forced to judge one of their own. They did not like it. Most surlords would have taken justice into their own hands and had their attempted assassin summarily executed. But not Iss. He would make a show out of this. The whole of Spire Vanis would learn just what they risked if they lifted a finger against him.
Ballon Troak, Lord of Almsgate, stepped forward from the grangelords’ ranks. Troak was grossly fat and dressed in sparkling green samite. He held one of the oldest granges within the city, and was not so easily intimidated by angry mobs. “Surlord,” he said in his high, nasal voice. “Surely you know we need more evidence before we condemn a man to the sword. Where is this bowman, Black Dan? Bring him forth. Let him be examined before the city.”
Iss let his face show no emotion. The crowd had grown settled again, and the chant of Kill Boice! was nearly lost to the wind. Pointedly, Iss let his gaze rise to the nearest of the six gibbets, where the headless remains of a man were strung. “There’s your bowman, Lord of Almsgate. Perhaps you should ask him how he lost his head.”
Uneasy laughter rippled through the crowd. Blood rushed to Ballon Troak’s cheeks. “You dare to take—”
“I dare much,” Iss hissed, directing his voice solely to the grangelords. “Be grateful I don’t dare more.” Then, to one of the pages. “Bring the bowman’s weapon. Hold it up for all to see.”
The weapon, a fine crossbow made from costly limewood varnished to a high sheen, drew murmurs of appreciation from the crowd. When a second page lofted the arrows, they went wild. Ten deadly points, barbed and of Glaivish design, just as the whore had said. Stronger than ever the chant was renewed. “Kill Boice! Kill Boice!”
He’s mine now. Satisfied but unsmiling, Iss returned his attention to the grangelords. “I ask again. How find you? Freedom or sword?”
“Sword! Sword! Sword!” screamed the crowd.
The grangelords moved to form a rough circle on the steps. Fergus Hurd, Lord of the Fire River Granges, and appointed Speaker, went from man to man, collecting pieces of killhound bone from each. White for freedom. Red for the sword. Iss could hear them rattle in the Speaker’s silk pouch, watched as the Whitehog unclenched his fist and added his bird bone to the tally. When the hundred lords had cast their ballots, the Speaker descended the steps and came to stand before the accused.
Maskill Boice’s head was high, but there was fear in his pale blue eyes. The rubies set into his doublet glittered in time to the pumping of his heart. Fergus Hurd was old and white-haired, yet he still had power in him . . . and he would not look Maskill Boice in the eye.
As the Speaker shook the silk pouch the city stilled. The mob ceased chanting and the dogs stopped barking. Even the wind died. Fergus Hurd spoke into the silence, his voice sharp and bitter as he repeated the old words. “The grangelords are servants of the Surlord, and the Surlord is servant of the city. We speak in the voice of our forebears and we mete justice on behalf of Spire Vanis.” With that he pulled the pouch open and cast its contents at the prisoner’s feet. Bones rattled and jumped. The crowd pushed forward to see. “Look you, Maskill Boice,” directed the Speaker. “Count the bones that speak your fate.”
Red, all red. Iss let out a heavy sigh of relief. Strange he had not realized he had been holding his breath. He had known all along the grangelords would not dare defy him before an angry and indignant mob. But still. You could not be surlord in Spire Vanis without knowing uncertainty. It was a quicksilver city, and its loyalties ran with the wind.
“Sword! Sword! Sword!” shrieked the crowd.
Iss shivered. The triumph had gone out of him, and all that was left was the need to see this thing through. “Examiner!” he commanded. “Bring forth the mask.”
Hearing the command Maskill Boice began to scream. Awkwardly, with movements hampered by his leg-irons, he kicked at the bones at his feet. “Cowards!” he screamed at the grangelords. “Spineless fools! You’ll be next!”
Iss barely heard him. His eye had been caught by one of the bones that Maskill had sent flying toward the Surlord’s platform. White, not red; it must have been buried beneath the rest. Immediately Iss looked up to see Garric Hews watching him. The man who named himself the Whitehog was dark and compact, with hair cropped to a soldier’s shortness, and the unjeweled fingers of a man who expected to use his sword at short notice. Almost the name did not fit him . . . until you saw the craving in his small black eyes. With an elegant gesture, he bowed low to the Surlord, acknowledging the white bone to be his.
So he has declared himself against me. Iss returned the man’s gaze coolly, not bothering to return the bow. Danger upon danger. First Marafice Eye, now the young princeling: Both thought they could take his place. Was this how it was for Borhis Horgo, that year before he was slain on the icy steps of the Horn? Enemies closing rank around him. The thought chilled Iss. Fourteen years ago he had stood on those same steps, and had looked at the aging surlord with the same keen ambition. Anything was possible in this city of spires and Bastard Lords, and a surlord had to remember that and give his rivals reason to fear.
John Rullion approached the platform, bearing the hideously carved Killhound Mask beneath a sheet of plain white linen. The High Examiner retained all the instincts of a priest and he knew how to awe a crowd. He held the mask high, enabling all to see it, before pulling back the cloth. A collective breath was drawn as the mask’s blackened metals caught the light. It was the likeness of no living bird, warped and fanged and scaled like a dragon: the Killhound of Spire Vanis.
It weighed as much as a child. Even though Iss had handled the mask many times before, he was shocked anew by its heft and coldness. The last killhound had fled Spire Vanis fifty years ago, and no one but madmen had seen one since. Their likenesses were carved on gate arches and corbels around the city, and the Surlord’s seal was a killhound rampant. It was said the great bird of prey could kill an elk with its foot-long claws and bear it aloft to its mountain eyrie. Iss thought of the creature’s power as he fitted the mask over his face and felt the cold-forged iron encase his cheeks. Wearing it, Iss knew what it would be like to be sealed inside a tomb.
It filled him with the desire to live. Raising his masked face to the crowd, Iss pronounced sentence on the condemned man. “Maskill Boice, Lord of the Hunted Granges and Master of the River Crossing at Stye, you have been found guilty of high treason, and I hereby sentence you to death by the sword. May the One True God forgive you.”
The crowd cheered. Priests in the viewers’ gallery made the sign of redemption. A woman watching from one of the Quartercourts’ many balconies fainted; by the dress and look of her, Iss guessed it to be Boice’s wife. Boice himself now stood silent and unmoving, finding his dignity at last. Quite unexpectedly Iss remembered that the man had two young sons. Too bad their father had a liking for loose talk.
Boice had talked for years of assassinating the Surlord, always when in his cups. It had been easy to conspire against him, create an offense from his drunken boasting. Caydis Zerbina had seen to the details. Black Dan, the Ille Glaive crossbow, the meeting at the Dog’s Head: all fiction. God only knew whose corpse swung from the gibbet. The only thing real had been the whore. And Caydis would slip poison into her milk ale tonight. A pity really, as she had put on such an excellent show.
Iss gave the matter no more thought. The executioner—brought overland from Hanatta in the Far South at great cost—was taking his place by the block. The man’s skin was dark as night and his bared arms were wider than most men’s thighs. Still, it wasn’t his strength that made him famous; it was the fact he had no eyes. Barbossa Assati needed no executioner’s hood to shield him from the sight of death. The exotic gods of the Far South had done that for him, bringing him into the world with two empty sockets where most men had eyes. Watching him, Iss wondered what Marafice Eye must be thinking. The Knife had lost an eye himself, and surely upon seeing the hollow orbits dominating Barbossa Assati’s striking face, he must value his one eye all the more.
Iss watched the Knife with interest. Marafice Eye was growing in confidence. He had always commanded the respect of his redcloaks, but now he was commanding the respect of the mob. The crowd deferred to him; edging back when he stepped toward them, leaning forward when he spoke to better hear what he had to say. He cut an imposing figure, Iss had to give him that. Bull-shouldered and six foot tall, with fists the size of wolf skulls. If you looked closely you could see the raw ambition in his eyes.
He wants my place. Iss suppressed a shiver as he recalled the agreement they had reached eight weeks earlier in the Blackvault. In return for raising an army to invade the clanholds, Iss had agreed to elevate Marafice Eye’s stature in the city, and make it be known that he favored the Knife as his successor. They were playing the great game of power, and Spire Vanis was the ultimate prize.
And punishment. You could control but not possess it. Stand still and it would move from under you. Ille Glaive, Trance Vor, and Morning Star were its rivals, but not its biggest threat. The greatest danger lay in the balance of power within the city itself. A hundred grangelords vied for dominance, each controlling his own private army. Ten thousand redcloaks mobilized on Marafice Eye’s word, whilst John Rullion commanded the devout: The Surlord of Spire Vanis ruled a city that rested on quicksand. The only way to hold on to power was to weaken, destroy or distract one’s enemies.
Iss nodded softly to himself. Today he weakened the grangelords. In the coming months he would distract Marafice Eye by sending him to make war on the clanholds, and soon he would destroy the Whitehog by whatever means were closest at hand.
Calmed by those thoughts, Iss turned his attention back to the execution. Maskill Boice had been delivered to the block. The block was hewn from a hundred-year oak, rectangular in shape and cut with a curved depression for the laying of a head. As Iss looked on, some aging grange widow brought forth a cloth of gold and draped it over the wood. When the prisoner drew close she held out a hand and named him, “Son.”
The crowd was so quiet now, Iss could hear the breath wheeze in their throats. Barbossa Assati had drawn his sword from its felt-lined scabbard, and the sight of the heavy fern-curved blade sent a ripple of excitement through all present.
Maskill Boice would not look at it, though he did press something—a gold coin or jewel—into the executioner’s hands. “Take me in one stroke,” he murmured.
Barbossa Assati spoke one word in his beautiful, strangely accented voice. Iss thought it sounded like “Always.”
And then Boice knelt on the black-stained cobbles of the Quartercourts, and laid his head upon the block. As his hands reached out to steady himself against the cloth-draped wood, his throat moved in prayer. Grange ladies, viewing from the safe distance of the Quartercourts’ balconies, sighed at the tragedy of it all.
Barbossa Assati found his place and settled his weight evenly between his legs. One powerful black hand came down to bare Maskill Boice’s neck, and then the sword was raised with two hands, and dropped. Steel chunked into wood. Blood fountained. The head rolled, for no one had thought to lay out a basket to catch it. The crowd aahed. Maskill Boice’s torso jerked once, then slumped at the executioner’s feet. The great dark blind man spoke words over it before hefting his sword free of the block.
Within his mask of black iron, Iss felt curiously removed from the scene. He saw the looks of horror in the grangelords’ faces, watched as the little beetle-like gallows master retrieved Boice’s head and dipped the stump into a pan of salt before impaling it upon a pole. All around women were wailing and wringing their hands, yet the men in the crowd seemed strangely restless, exchanging glances and short words as if they had expected more.
Very well. I shall give you one last thing.
Iss turned to face Marafice Eye and commanded, “Bring out the traitor’s gravegoods and distribute them amongst the crowd.”
A huge cheer shook the crowd. They had not expected to share in the grangelord’s wealth and this was unheard-of bounty. Jostling for positions close to the front, they shouted Iss’ name in praise.
On the Knife’s word, four pages struggled down the steps of the Quartercourts, bearing a heavy litter suspended between two poles. Armor and jewels and fine silks were heaped upon it, glittering gold and crimson in the failing afternoon light. Cries of outrage united the grangelords: How dare Iss send a nobleman’s wealth to the crowd! It was unthinkable. Yet one look at the front ranks of men, faces dark with greed, hands twitching in readiness to seize bounty, was enough to know that it could not be stopped. Even before the four pages had set down the litter, the crowd surged forward.
What happened next was ugly and bloody, as grown men fought tooth and nail over scraps. People slid in Maskill Boice’s blood, kicking and screaming, beating each other in their frenzy to grab gilt cups and bolts of cloth. One man seized a sword and ran into the crowd, running through a small child in his haste to get away. Iss stood above it all in the Killhound Mask, holding everyone—Marafice Eye and his redcloaks, John Rullion, the priests in the viewers’ gallery, the women on the balconies, and the Whitehog on the Quartercourts’ steps—in their places. None could leave until he dismissed them, and it suited him to have them watch.
He held power in this city, and as the weeks wore on and he lost influence in other spheres, it was important to demonstrate that power for all to see. Asarhia, his almost-daughter, had gone, fled to the north and taken her Reach strength with her. The Nameless One was growing weak and had withdrawn to the dark spaces inside himself where beatings and isolation could not reach him. More and more it was growing harder to use him, and Iss knew that the day was fast approaching when he would smother the Nameless One with a soft cushion and take the life from him. A bound sorcerer was only useful as long as he had strength to steal. And this one in his weakness and madness was keeping every last drop for himself. It had been many weeks since Iss had visited the twilight world of the Gray Marches, and he no longer had sway over what happened there. Influence had been lost. Knowledge had been denied him. He knew the Blindwall had been breached, but after that nothing.
Iss took a breath. He had lost much since the beginning of winter. There had been a time when anything looked possible; when his actions had tied the clanholds in knots, when the Nameless One’s power rested like a honed sword at his side, and the promise of Asarhia’s Reach strength lay spread before him like a field of grain.
I could have commanded the clanholds, Ille Glaive, the entire Northern Territories. Now I must fight to retain control of Spire Vanis.
If only the Nameless One hadn’t begun to fail. The bound sorcerer’s skill had helped Bludd conquer Dhoone and made the slaughter of Dagro Blackhail in the Badlands as easy as spearing eels in a tub. Such power was intoxicating—a man could crush a continent so armed. Once one had wielded the full force of a sorcerer’s craft it was hard to return to earthly means.
Iss straightened his shoulders. But that was what he must do.
The future was uncertain once more, and the only advantages he had left were earthly ones. Today was a demonstration of those powers, and a warning to his enemies. Dark times were coming and land would be lost and claimed, and great lords and clan chiefs would fall and be made. Marafice Eye thought to make himself surlord by winning success in the clanwars; Garric Hews thought to do the same by treachery. Well, let them both look upon this ravenous mob . . . and know who knew it best.
Stepping down from the platform, Iss walked into the heart of the looting. Men ceased fighting as he passed, jeweled buckles and silver boxes in hand. One old man bowed, and then another, and then the entire crowd fell to their knees. Iss moved through them, feeling no fear. He was wearing the Killhound of Spire Vanis and he was filled with the great bird’s power.
The mob closed around him as he made his return to Mask Fortress, letting no one else through.
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