Bloodheir

IV

Four men died in the night. A hard frost had come, brittling the grass and casting its white sheen over everything. The ground crackled beneath Orisian’s feet. He left a trail of dark prints behind him, pressed into the cold dusting. He shivered and sniffed as he walked.

Rothe showed him the bodies. One — a guard — lay at the foot of a shallow slope, stretched out against the thick base of a tree. The other three lay where they had settled down for the night. In the evening they, like everyone else, had wandered about beneath the trees, pursing their lips and weighing up the options. They had chosen a place where the ground seemed even, the grass dry, and they had unrolled their sleeping mats, made a pillow of their jacket or shield or a rock. They had lain down and pulled their blankets tight about them. And they had died there, silently, in the darkness. Their throats had been cut. Their blood had made puddles on the forest floor.

Orisian looked into the face of the corpse nearest him. He looked away again quickly, repelled by that too-familiar vision of death, but he had time to see the bruises on the man’s face where someone had roughly clamped a hand over his mouth.

“They killed the sentry first,” muttered Rothe. “Then these three, just because they were within reach, on the edge of the camp.”

“Kyrinin?” Orisian asked dully.

“Beyond doubt. I’ve seen this kind of thing before, in Anlane.”

“They could have killed us all.”

“There may only be a handful of them. Perhaps someone stirred while they were about their work; perhaps they thought they were about to be discovered. They’d always rather be cutting throats in the darkness than facing up to a real fight.”

“It’s a pity Varryn and Ess’yr were sleeping on the other side of the camp. They might have heard something.”

“Perhaps.”

Torcaill was going from corpse to corpse, collecting swords. He paused beside Orisian.

“We should turn back, Thane,” he said. “There’ll be more dead if we don’t. I can’t put outriders ahead of us now. They’d not survive half the day.”

Orisian took one of the sheathed blades from the warrior and turned it in his hands. There were notches and crude patterns scratched into the scabbard; the metal cap on its end had a simple design of dots punched into it. An incongruous little strand of red-dyed string was tied about the hilt.

“What’s this?” Orisian asked, running a fingertip over the string. “Do you know why he had this on his sword?”

Torcaill frowned at it. “No, sire. A token from some girl, perhaps. Or a reminder of some enemy he had killed. I don’t know.”

“What was his name?”

“Dorvadain. Dorvadain Emmen.”

Orisian glanced over his shoulder. Varryn and Ess’yr were there. They had come silently across the frosted grass and now stared at the dead men. Orisian looked back to the sword in his hands for a moment, then returned it to Torcaill.

“Will you do something for me?” he asked Varryn quietly.

The Kyrinin waited.

“I want to know how many White Owls there are. Where they are, where they are going. I don’t want to be surprised by them again. You can move faster than we can; see things we cannot. And you know them better than we do.”

Varryn regarded him with the usual still, unreadable eyes. Yvane walked up behind the two Kyrinin, peering over their shoulders and wincing a little when she saw the bodies.

“Of course he’ll go,” the na’kyrim said. “Never known a Fox that’d pass up the chance to stick a spear into a White Owl.”

That brought no more response from Varryn than Orisian’s question had, but the Kyrinin warrior did turn to Ess’yr and murmur a few fluid words in the Fox tongue. Yvane brushed past him and pointed at the frost-blighted ground around the corpse of the guard.

“They left enough of a trail for even a human to follow, I should think,” she said to Orisian.

Orisian noticed Torcaill’s scowl at that, but ignored it.

“If we all go running off into the forest after them, we’ll end up dead,” he said to Yvane. “You know that as well as I do. They might not even know Varryn is on their trail.”

She shrugged, and blew out a breath that steamed into the chill air. “Probably true. I’m not so sure we won’t end up dead anyway, mind you.”

“Did you sleep badly?” Rothe muttered. “You’re in a foul mood this morning.”

Yvane glared at the shieldman, who smiled as innocently as Orisian had ever seen him manage. The na’kyrim stalked away. Orisian gave Rothe a prod on the shoulder as they watched her receding back.

“You wouldn’t be trying to pick a fight, would you?” he asked. “Quality of sleep’s not the best subject to discuss, these days.”

Rothe muttered a half-hearted apology, and went to help Torcaill move the bodies.

Orisian found Eshenna rolling up her thin sleeping mat. The skin beneath her eyes had a dark, almost bruised tinge to it. Little sleep, and less rest, he assumed. He squatted down beside her. She did not look up, concentrating on tying up the mat with a loop of cord. There was the very slightest tremor in her hands as she worked, he thought. It might have always been there, but if so he had never noticed it before.

“I cannot go on much further,” he said quietly to her. “I have to turn back, head for Kolglas soon. Perhaps I’ve already come too far. Everyone else seems to think so.”

“I don’t. Nor does Yvane.”

“No. But you are only two. Men are dying now, Eshenna.”

“We are the only two who understand even a little of what is happening.” She looked him in the eyes then, and her gaze was strong and firm. “You know that. It makes a difference.”

“It makes some difference,” he murmured. “But you have to tell me she’s close, Eshenna. I can’t just keep marching deeper into the forest.”

The na’kyrim returned her attention to her rolled mat, slinging it across her shoulder.

“She is close. Today, we’ll have her. Tomorrow, perhaps.”

Varryn and Ess’yr trotted past, spears in hand. They wove their way between the trees and disappeared, vanishing in an instant into the forest as if they had stepped across some intangible, impenetrable barrier. Orisian stared after them briefly, then rose and went to tell Torcaill to prepare his men for the march.

They went quickly now. Anxiety gnawed at Orisian, fraying the edges of his temper and patience. An emptiness, almost a hunger, had settled into the pit of his stomach that he somehow knew could only be relieved by finishing this; by finding K’rina, or finding White Owls, or death, even. What form the culmination took mattered less to him than that it came soon. He disliked that feeling, and mistrusted its origins. There was something in its texture that felt not wholly his own.

The ancient road that had brought them this far had lost its struggle against the suffocating forest. It was gone, buried beneath layers of leaf, moss, root and soil. Nothing was left to mark its course save the occasional worked stone poking up through the green and brown sward, and once a cluster of low ruins of to one side, draped in ivy, crowded with saplings.

Yvane was persuaded to share Rothe’s horse for a time. The na’kyrim glowered, and every now and again shot dark looks in Orisian’s direction, as if accusing him of some kind of betrayal, but she made less protest than he had expected. Eshenna rode near the front. Her head hung low, and bobbed in time with her mount’s tread. She did not sleep, though; merely suffered. Whenever Orisian glimpsed her face, it was crunched up in a shifting mix of pain and concentration. Now and again she would grunt, sometimes wince. Late in the morning, she grew still. Her horse drifted to one side of the column and dropped its head to tug at a clump of long grasses.

“That way,” she murmured, when Orisian and Torcaill flanked her in consternation. She waved an arm imprecisely. What remained of the road they had been following curved away; Eshenna was pointing into deep forest.

Torcaill looked doubtful, at best.

“You’re sure?” Orisian asked quietly. It was too late to refuse this woman’s guidance now, after they had come so far.

“She’s that way,” Eshenna insisted dully.

So they drove into the wild wood. Branches scratched at their faces, fallen timber blocked their way. Tangled, leafless bushes caught in their stirrups and snagged their horses’ tails. Birds scattered from their path, chattering alarm calls into the stillness of the forest. Their pace slowed, even as the oppressive sense of fear and foreboding grew.

They found another trail, and followed it. It was wide enough for two or three to ride abreast, but no more. They ate in the saddle, passing biscuits and waterskins from one to another. It left Orisian still hungry. His eyelids grew heavy as the day turned past its midpoint. His thoughts wandered, shapeless.

He recognised the sudden sound as soon as he heard it, but could not name it: that snapping, hissing flutter like a score of breaths abruptly expelled. He turned in time to see a flock of arrows darting out from the forest along the track. They rattled in on the column of men and horses. Someone cried out. A horse reared. He looked for their attackers, but there was nothing save the dark thicket of tree trunks. And now another scattered flight of arrows flashing through the crowd of his men. One rider slumped out of his saddle.

“Go!” Torcaill was shouting close by. “Ride on, ride on!”

Orisian’s horse sprang into a gallop. He was not certain whether he had kicked it into motion or whether it was just carried along by the sudden rush of all the other riders. They surged down the track. Orisian felt and heard an arrow smacking into the shield slung across his back. The horse ahead of him veered to one side, stumbling and faltering on suddenly flimsy legs. Orisian glimpsed the fletching of an arrow protruding from its neck. Thundering on by, he turned his head to see the animal crashing through a bush and falling, spilling its rider. He lost sight of both the man and his mount.

The forest seemed to press ever more closely along the path. Orisian expected the lithe figures of Kyrinin to emerge at any moment. The horses stretched their legs, though, and hammered on and on, until the forest thinned a little and the trail opened out.

Rothe reined in his mount next to Orisian and reached across to pull at the arrow embedded in his shield. Yvane, clinging to the burly warrior like a limpet, looked queasy.

“Are you wounded?” Rothe demanded. “Were you hit?”

Orisian shook his head. “You?”

“No.” Rothe grunted as he finally freed the arrow. He snapped its shaft and threw the two pieces to the ground.

Orisian looked around for Torcaill. It was hard to tell, amidst the throng of riders milling about, how many might have fallen. He glimpsed the young man at the rear of the company, sword in hand, expression grim and angry.

“Torcaill,” Orisian shouted. “Are they coming after us?”

“I can’t tell. We should put more ground between us and them, anyway.”

Orisian hauled his horse’s head around. The animal resisted, almost as if it too dreaded what lay behind them, and he had to dig his heels into its flanks to move it. He worked his way to Torcaill’s side. The two of them stared back down the path. It looked like any other woodland trail: a muddy stretch of wiry grass, bare overhanging branches and twigs bobbing in the faintest of breezes. There was no sign of life.

“How many men did we lose?” Orisian asked.

“I’m not sure. Two, I think. We’ve others injured, though, and some of the horses. Still, we were lucky.”

“They’re only playing with us,” rumbled Rothe, coming up behind them. “Chipping away. Come, Orisian. You shouldn’t linger in the open like this. There must be bodies between you and any arrow’s flight.”

“He’s right, sire,” Torcaill said, sheathing his sword. “You should stay in the midst of us. We won’t see them coming next time, either, unless we’re luckier than we’ve any right to expect.”

Orisian allowed himself to be shepherded into the centre of the column, like some prized lamb kept in the heart of the herd.

“We could use your Fox friends now,” Torcaill muttered as they moved on down the trail. “Will we be seeing them again, do you think?”

“Yes,” said Orisian tightly. “Yes. We’ll see them again.”

Kanin oc Horin-Gyre had discovered depths of exhaustion such as he had never before imagined. He bore half a dozen small wounds — cuts and many-hued bruises — but it was lack of sleep that had sapped his strength, and the emptiness that came in the aftermath of battle. He was limping heavily: he had torn, or strained, something in his knee during the battle, leaping from the back of his dying horse. It hardly hurt, but the joint was enfeebled.

His Shield followed behind him through the streets of Glasbridge. Igris still carried, like a fool, the stick that he had tried to persuade Kanin to lean upon. A Thane, the victor in savage battle, should not be seen humbled by such a minor injury. The streets were soft with slush and treacherous underfoot, but Kanin would rather fall than hobble along like an old man.

After the battles he had won at Grive and Anduran, he had felt a dazed exultation, a lifting up of his heart and a sublime affirmation of the rightness of his deeds. No such exalted feelings attended upon the brutal victory won in the snowstorm on the road to Kolglas. The struggle had been unlike anything Kanin had previously experienced: desperate, seemingly never-ending. Wreathed by snow and cloud, there had been no time, no location to the slaughter. It had simply existed, a world unto itself, and all purpose had been lost save the imperative to slay one man, and then the next, and the next.

Driven back from the earthen wall that the Inkallim had raised across the road, almost overrun by the hordes of the Haig Bloods, he and his dwindling and scattering companies had fallen back towards Glasbridge, turning again and again to face another charge, to die. Eventually, lost, adrift in the blizzard, they had turned for the last time and stood in the calf-deep snow to await fate’s resolution. And there had been enough blood shed there to leave them wading in it. Kanin had known he was going to die then, and had felt no great sorrow at the thought. But he had not died, and the enemy had instead faltered and then fled. The battle was won, by the snowstorm and by the army Fiallic the Inkallim and Temegrin the Eagle had brought down upon the flank and the rear of their enemy.

There had been ravens of the Battle Inkall fighting and dying at Kanin’s side all through the long day, with Shraeve at the forefront; there had been scores of commonfolk from the north, come across the Vale of Stones to stand with Horin-Gyre. All these had been there in the fields of snow, but not Wain. His sister had insisted on remaining in Glasbridge with the vile halfbreed who, impossibly, she had brought back with her from Anduran.

Wain was, in manner and character, unrecognisable. Kanin’s heart ached to think of it. Her face and voice were as they had always been, but what lay behind them had changed. Since her return, she spoke only of things that Kanin did not wish to understand: Aeglyss, the Kall, storms, all-consuming fires and terrible, wondrous fates. Half of what she said was incoherent, little better than the ravings of some mind-addled crone; all of it was spoken with a strange intensity.

As far as he could tell, nothing Kanin said reached her any more. She would not be parted from Aeglyss; she would not participate in any calm, reasoned conversation that Kanin attempted. That part of her that had always burned fiercely, with faith and hard certainty, now seemed to have overwhelmed all her sense, all her restraint. The sister Kanin loved, and respected above all others, had been taken away from him by these strange changes. And he was all but certain, in his deepest instincts, that Aeglyss was in some way responsible.

At the very thought of the man, Kanin let out a wordless snarl of anger and contempt. For want of any other way to release his frustration, he slapped his thigh with an open palm as he strode along. Nothing, it seemed, would keep that half-human wretch from interfering. Now, when Kanin had almost started to believe that he was lying dead in some distant ditch or copse, here he was again, poisoning everything with his presence. And when Kanin had argued that the halfbreed should be killed, Wain had stared at him as if he was a petulant child, and turned away from him. She had set her back to him; dismissed him. Nothing could have caused him greater pain than that.

Even Kanin could tell, though, that Aeglyss was not quite the same man he had been when last they met. Now the na’kyrim stank of confidence and capability. He had not only some kind of woodwight honour guard, but also Wain, her Shield and another few dozen warriors who seemed inexplicably intrigued by him. Even Shraeve and her company of ravens had been seen coming and going from the huge house where Aeglyss had settled himself.

And then there were the dreams. Kanin had not slept well for several nights. His slumber was disturbed by dreams that he could not clearly remember, but which he always felt had involved Aeglyss. And if he ever did secure a long spell of sleep he would invariably awake filled with inexplicable anger, or with his heart racing, or fear twisting in his stomach.

A twinge of pain shot through Kanin’s knee as he limped up a gently sloping street. He winced and, reluctantly, reached out to Igris for the walking stick. The shieldman handed it over without comment.

A woodwight came darting around the corner. Kanin was so astonished that he did not react. Igris was more alert, and more governed by deeply ingrained instincts. The shieldman swept his sword from its scabbard and lashed out at the speeding figure. The Kyrinin leaped and spun, evading the blow with barely a break in his stride. He sprang away down the street. Bemused, Kanin glanced around to find two more White Owls appearing, arrows already at their bowstrings. They took aim, and in no more time than it took Kanin to turn his head, the fleeing figure was reeling, two feathered shafts standing in his back. He fell into a puddle of melt-water.

The two who had killed him retreated back around the corner, slipping fresh arrows free from their quivers as they went.

“The whole world is going mad,” Kanin muttered.

He limped forwards and beheld a startling scene. White Owl Kyrinin were killing one another. A brutal, dazzlingly fast struggle played itself out. There were already several bodies lying in the mud and slush. As Kanin watched, two more wights broke away and tried to flee. They were shot down just as the first had been. Whatever the argument had been about, it was clear that one side had won. The last of the defeated was pinned down to the road, stabbed with many spears. She writhed there for a moment or two. A muscular warrior with the most dramatic facial tattoos Kanin had ever seen on a woodwight leaned down and stabbed her in the chest. As the woman’s convulsions stilled, her killer straightened and looked towards Kanin.

The Thane of the Horin Blood had no intention of showing any interest in the doings of these Kyrinin intruders. Had Wain not insisted upon it, he would never have allowed them — or Aeglyss — to enter the town. He led his Shield past the White Owls, through a gate and into the wide cobbled courtyard beyond. This was the extensive house that Wain and Aeglyss and all their companions now occupied. Previously the possession of some senior official in the Woollers’ Craft, it was an elaborate conglomeration of courtyards, workshops and apartments. The place still had the smell of wool and hides and oils lingering about it.

“Wain!” he shouted, standing in the centre of the courtyard. He turned around, pivoting on the stick, shouting her name again.

He saw her at a window. She peered out from under the eaves. Drops of water were falling from the lip of the tiles.

“With me,” Kanin snapped at Igris. “The rest of you remain here. Keep clear of the woodwights. I don’t want any trouble.”

He was disgusted, but not surprised, to find Wain in a bedchamber, watching over the slumbering form of Aeglyss. Kanin had thrown the door back with a clatter, but the na’kyrim did not stir. A single glance was enough to convince Kanin that the halfbreed was sick. His skin had a sheen of sweat, though its pallor was cold. He had thinned in the time since he had disappeared from Anduran, as if gripped by some wasting affliction. Kanin could see the shape of his bones across his brow, in his cheeks and jaw.

“There are woodwights slaughtering each other in the streets,” the Thane said to his sister. “What’s happening?”

“A dispute to be settled,” she said flatly. “There was an incident at Sirian’s Dyke, involving the Anain. Some of the White Owls wavered in their loyalty. It seems it became necessary to come to a final decision on the matter. It is best not to let doubts linger.”

Kanin stood in silence for a heartbeat or two. He was frightened. The sister he had loved and relied upon all his life was as unfamiliar to him now as the most distant stranger. Once they barely needed to speak to understand one another’s intent; now when they talked it was as if they did so in different languages. He had lost his only true friend here, and was bereft.

“Wain, listen to me. This is all wrong. What are you doing here, amongst woodwights and…” he stabbed a finger towards Aeglyss “.. and halfbreeds? This is no place for you, sister. We’ve won. The way to Kolglas is open to us now. We don’t need all this.”

She set herself between him and the bed, a resolute wall. Kanin stared at her in anguished confusion.

“You don’t understand,” she said. “We need him.”

“What are you doing? Wain, what are you doing? You’ll put yourself between me and this creature?”

His passion washed over her, finding no purchase.

“He is important to us. To everything,” she said placidly.

“This is madness.” In his desperation, Kanin cast about in vain for words that might rouse her from whatever torpor had taken hold of her mind. He wanted to seize her and shake her, but was terribly afraid that she would fight him if he did so.

“Not madness,” Wain insisted. “This is fate, revealing itself to us. You will see, I promise you. We are only at the beginning of things, Kanin. Great, wonderful things.” There was at last some emotion in her voice, but it was only a pained need for him to understand. “We draw near to the unmaking of the world, don’t you see? He is the herald of all that. The key to it.”

“Him?” Kanin shouted, surrendering to fury. He pointed again at the pallid, emaciated na’kyrim lying on the bed. “Look at him, Wain! He’s barely even alive.”

“You see only the least part of him there. There is one he wants at his side. He has gone in search of her, to guide her to him. He swims in oceans we cannot imagine, brother. He becomes them. I will watch over him until he wakes.”

Kanin cried out in disbelief. He could feel his face reddening, could feel anger shaking his hand.

“Come with me,” he implored her. “You need rest. We’ll go back to Anduran. We’ve done all that could be asked of us here.”

“I cannot leave him now,” Wain said, quite calm and soft but obdurate. “Do you not feel it? Sleeping or waking, he is spreading his shadow across us all. His will colours every thought, every mood now. It forces… change. Movement. Why do you suppose the Kyrinin have come to such strife amongst themselves? Why do you suppose our army fights with such vigour; is so hungry for death’s embrace? Because Aeglyss has changed, and changes all of us now.”

Kanin stepped to one side, thinking to pass around his sister. He did not know quite what he would do if he could reach Aeglyss: kill him, or merely wake him? He did not care.

Wain shifted to block his way again.

“I am to watch over him until he wakes.”

Kanin hung his head. He was unused to the kind of impotent uncertainty that filled him. Whatever doubts or hesitations might occasionally have beset him in the past, he had always been able to draw upon the reserves of his faith, or upon the support of Wain herself, to find a path. Now he felt bereaved, and the one he would otherwise have turned to for aid was the one he had lost.

“There is to be a council, Wain,” he murmured. “Fiallic, and the Eagle, and Goedellin and all the captains are gathering on the southern edge of the town. We should be there. There are decisions to be made. Fiallic wants to drive on to Kolglas and beyond as fast as the weather will allow. Temegrin resists.”

“Fiallic will have his way,” Wain said placidly. “You go. I will remain here. Our victory in this war — and we will have victory, brother — will not be shaped in the council tents of the Inkallim or the Gyre Blood. You will see, in time.”

Kanin left, desolate. Going down the stairs, his knee almost betrayed him. He slumped against the wall. Igris tried to help him down the last few steps, but Kanin pushed him off.

In the courtyard, he found his Shield clustered around a water barrel. They passed around overflowing cups as they watched the Kyrinin dragging the bodies of their fallen comrades in from the street. The dead were piled against a wall, beneath the overhanging eaves. Kanin angrily gathered his warriors and led them out.

Shraeve was arriving just as he left, at the head of a dozen or more mounted ravens of the Battle. Several bore fresh wounds. The Inkallim had fought savagely. Shraeve nodded down at Kanin as he hobbled past her horse.

“You’re going to the Eagle’s council, Thane?”

He nodded without looking at her, angry now — at himself and at Igris — for the presence of the walking stick upon which he leaned. The Inkallim had proved themselves valuable allies at last, but in Kanin’s mind their past betrayals of his Blood were not undone. And Shraeve was still an arrogant, abrasive presence.

“I thought you might be there too,” he muttered.

“I am not needed there. Fiallic is Banner-captain. He is the will of the Battle here. And I am interested in whatever your sister has got herself involved in. That halfbreed of yours really has proved to be remarkably surprising, don’t you think?”

At that, Kanin could not help but glare up at the woman.

“He’s mad,” he snapped. “And dying. You waste your interest, raven, by spending it on him.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. My instincts tell me otherwise. You might find, Thane, that a great and terrible fate is unfolding itself here. We will see, no doubt. We will see.”