Fall of Thanes

I

The main gates of the Battle Inkall’s sprawling compound were closed and barred. Theor of the Lore leaned out from his rocking litter as the bearers stumbled through the snow towards the imposing and entirely unwelcoming facade. The low wall stretching away on either side of the gate was lined with Inkallim: statues of black leather, each with a tall spear held perfectly erect.

And, outside the gates, a still more numerous host. Seventy or more of Ragnor oc Gyre’s warriors. His Shield, in polished chain mail that borrowed a dull gleam from the grey sky; mounted spearmen, whose horses bore metal plates across their brows and cheeks. And the High Thane himself, massive and magnificent in a huge cloak of sable fur that spread back over the haunches of his own great mount.

Theor’s litter-bearers struggled along the front of this martial array, and came to a panting, trembling halt before Ragnor. The High Thane stared down silently as Theor clambered stiffly out. The First’s feet crunched into the snow, and he felt its cold pressure even through the down-lined hide of his boots. He straightened, and ground his fingers into the small of his back where the muscles had tightened.

“What are you doing here, First?” the High Thane asked. Blunt. Confrontational, unless Theor misread him entirely.

“I heard there was some difficulty,” Theor said. “I thought I might be of assistance in resolving any misunderstanding that may have arisen.”

“No misunderstanding.”

A breeze ruffled the High Thane’s hair and spun his horse’s steaming breath away. Theor winced up at him, narrowing his eyes. It was not easy to see details of his expression, silhouetted as he was against the sun-lightened afternoon clouds. His voice was giving little away now, only a steely determination.

“Ah.” Theor nodded. He glanced towards the Inkallim studding the top of the wall, and then back to Ragnor. “I will confer with those within, High Thane.”

Ragnor said nothing. Theor turned and trudged towards the gates, beckoning his exhausted bearers to follow him with their burden. It was not far from the Lore’s Sanctuary, further along the slopes above Kan Dredar, but they had covered the distance quickly. Theor had understood the need for haste as soon as word of what was happening reached him. He had not wanted to come. The Sanctuary he had left behind him was in a ferment of dismay and alarm. Two Lore Inkallim had inexplicably died, on successive nights, while dreaming their seerstem dreams. And they had died not peacefully, but screaming, convulsing.

“I told you what I wanted,” he heard Ragnor saying behind him, in measured tones. “And that my patience was at an end.”

Theor paused. He angled his head a fraction towards his shoulder but did not look round. One of the gates creaked open, just wide enough to admit him and his attendants, and he entered the domain of the Battle.

“I did not know you were here,” Theor said to Avenn, First of the Hunt.

He strove to disguise his unease but could not hide from himself the bitter twist of suspicion, distrust even, he felt. It was rare for the Firsts to meet; rarer still for the Hunt and Battle to consort without the presence of the Lore. In such febrile, fragile times, it lit an unreasoning flame of resentment in Theor to find Nyve and Avenn together. He should be too old, too secure in his authority, to succumb to such sentiments, yet both security and the wisdom of age were states he felt ever more thoroughly exiled from.

Avenn smiled thinly. Her long black hair had a lifeless, leaden quality to it. The pinprick scars of a childhood pox that marred her cheeks gave her a faintly aged, damaged look. But there was vigour, almost delight, in her eyes.

“Interesting times,” she said.

She would, of course, think so, Theor reflected. She had been born for moments such as this: tumult and contest. Opportunity, as she would see it. For whatever reason, the Hunt had always chosen such as she for its leader. A passing thought, like a beam of light glimpsed through scudding cloud: Shraeve should have been of the Hunt not the Battle. Her ferocity, her passion, would have found a better home there. Theor grunted, and let the insight go.

“Narqan?” Nyve asked.

The First of the Battle was seated by a roaring fire, a pitcher and cup of the vile liquor on a table by his side.

“No,” muttered Theor. He moistened his stained lips. The dry heat of Nyve’s chambers had rendered them brittle.

“He wants all the children,” Nyve said, pouring himself another draught of the fermented milk. “Two hundred or so have reached us, this last day or two. Spoils from the Glas Valley.”

“Has he said what he wants them for?” Theor asked wearily as he sank into a chair opposite Nyve.

“What does it matter what he says?” said Avenn, but he ignored her.

Nyve took a thoughtful sip from his cup, lifting it between the knuckles of his crippled hands, and bared his teeth as the liquid burned its way down his throat. Theor knew that feeling well enough, and gave a faint grimace of his own at the memory.

“He claims he wants them to tend his herds, mine his ores, carry his stones,” the First of the Battle said. “All the tasks he says go undone because our war has called so many of the faithful into its embrace. Foolishness, of course. What help would a few score children be? They’re the strong ones, true enough. Those who survived the winnowing of the march up through the Stone Vale. But children, still.”

Theor nodded. “He wants them because if he leaves them here, they will become Inkallim one day. Those who live; those who can be brought into the faith. He wants them because in taking them he thinks to prove a point to us, to the people, to himself.”

“Because we will not abase ourselves before him and do as he bids us,” muttered Avenn.

“Indeed,” Theor agreed. Still he kept his attention upon Nyve rather than the mistress of the Hunt. His old friend was the crux of things here; he was certain.

A log slipped from the fire and shed sparking embers across the hearth. Nyve extended a foot and pushed it back into the heart of the flames.

“How long has he been waiting at your gate?” Theor asked.

Nyve lifted his eyes towards the ceiling as if in thought.

“Since midday or thereabouts. His pride, his stubbornness will not permit him to depart just yet, it appears.”

Dread was tightening its icy fingers about Theor’s heart. Here, amidst this warmth, in the company of those who should be his most comforting allies, ensconced in this soft and soothing chair, he felt the ground beneath his feet crumbling away, tipping him towards a dizzying chasm. Did neither of these two feel it? No, he knew. Other extremities had mastered their hearts.

“It serves no purpose to taunt him so,” he said. “Give him this small victory.”

“No,” said Avenn at once. She pushed herself away from the window frame against which she had been leaning. “He will not be satisfied. He has turned against us, against the creed. Three loyal servants of the Hunt have been executed, on his command, this last week. Now is not the moment to shirk our responsibilities, when the eyes of the Last God are upon us, when the Kall — ”

“Do not dare!” cried Theor, snapping his head around and fixing the rangy woman with a ferocious glare. “Do not claim the authority of the Lore as your own!”

Avenn inclined her head in submission. It was a thin sheen, though. Theor could see that quite clearly. She was not in the least cowed. How had it come to this? How had everything, every past certainty, become so unclear and unstable? How had fear, and the fury it engendered, become so deeply rooted in him?

“I do need the children,” Nyve said quietly. “We have lost a great many of the Battle in the south. And here, for that matter. Ten killed in fighting on the border between Gaven and Wyn only two days ago. Time was, our mere presence was enough to quell the most recalcitrant of troublemakers. No longer. Now it requires our blood, our lives. And it has all left me with fewer of my ravens here than for many, many years. I am disinclined to concede our weakness by yielding to his demands.”

Everything about the old Inkallim was calm and composed. His clubbed hands rested on the arms of the chair. His head was cocked at a relaxed, friendly angle. A trace of a smile even passed across his lips. Yet Theor looked at him and almost despaired. He could see it behind those sparkling eyes, he could hear it in the silent corners of the flame-lit room: the beating of the raven’s wing. His friend had crossed some inner threshold. And Theor, for reasons he did not entirely understand, could not follow him.

“Not yet,” Theor murmured, and then, more clearly, lifting his chin: “The breach is not irretrievable yet.”

“No?” said Nyve. “We are too far down this road to turn back. I will not recall the Battle from beyond the Vale. Perhaps I could not, even if I wished it. What is happening there is out of our hands. I cannot give Ragnor what he wants. Fate determines all now.”

“As always.” It was easy, instinctive, to utter those two words, but Theor wondered if they sounded as hollow to the others as they did to him. Almost certainly not. “But give him this one, small thing, and we create the space for something to change. We allow for the possibility that fate may choose another course. Do not assume that we must part company with the Gyre Blood now. Today. That is all I ask.”

“We cannot ignore what is happening,” muttered Avenn. “Better to reach for the inevitable future than turn our backs on it, and enter it blindly.”

But Nyve pursed his lips and thought, staring all the time into Theor’s eyes.

“Very well,” he said at length. “He can have his children today. But no more. The Inkalls are nothing if they submit to the will and whim of a Thane. What we serve is greater than Ragnor, than his line. We have always known that. All of us.”

He smiled sadly as he spoke, and in that smile Theor saw their parting. They both knew, in their different ways, that something was ending. And they both saw, he suspected, other, harder endings drawing near, closing upon them from the horizon of the coming days.

“You’re drooling,” Torquentine said.

Igryn oc Dargannan-Haig sucked spittle back from his lips.

“Untie my hands, if it offends you,” the blind Thane growled. He sat hunched upon an upholstered bench. He straightened, pressing his back against the stone wall. It would not last, Torquentine knew. Twice already Igryn had gathered himself, put some dignity into his spine, and each time something in him-or some absence in him, perhaps-gradually bent his back down again, twisted his mouth into a leer, laced his words with venom and turned his measured breathing into panting, rasping gasps. It was as if there was a beast within him that could be resisted only for so long before it began to reshape him. It put Torquentine in mind of the long dead wolfenkind.

“I’ll keep your hands bounds for the time being, if it’s all the same to you,” he said. “Or even if it’s not, of course. Wipe the man’s chin for him, would you, my dear?”

This last he spoke to Magrayn, and she went at once to gently swipe a cloth over the Thane’s bearded chin. She was not the only one of Torquentine’s attendants present. This was one of those rare occasions on which he had felt it wise to invite men of violence down into his buried lair. Two of them stood close by Igryn: muscular, their faces battered by a lifetime’s rough usage. They were good, both of them, at performing the more brutal kinds of tasks. Between them, they had killed five men by Torquentine’s command over the years. And more on their own initiative, no doubt. It was not only to keep a wary watch upon Igryn that Torquentine wanted them close, though. The streets of Ash Pit-and of all Vaymouth-were unpredictably tumultuous; the whole city was turbid with distrust, suspicion, accusation. Mayhem simmered, and burst erratically into the open. These burly clubmen offered some small reassurance that such disturbance would be resisted should it seek to reach down into Torquentine’s abode.

Both of them had been amongst the band that had seized the disgraced Dargannan Thane on the road to In’Vay. And never had Torquentine taken less pleasure from the successful outcome of one of his endeavours. The very presence of Igryn here in his secret sanctuary would have been enough to set him squirming in distress, had his great bulk not argued against such physical expression of his inner turmoil. He settled for tugging absently at loose threads in the seams of the great cushions upon which he reclined.

“I have but one eye myself, you know,” he told Igryn.

“No, I do not know. I know your appearance no more than I do your name, or your intent.”

“Oh, my appearance is magnificent, I assure you,” Torquentine grunted. “But, since the Thane of Thanes saw fit to take your eyes, you will just have to imagine it for yourself. And let us leave my name similarly obscured. As for my intent… that, that is a good question.

“But tarry on the subject of eyes for a moment. You know how I lost the one that is, I assure you, absent? No, of course you don’t. It was in fact laid open by the blade of a dockside ruffian. I too, in those days, was something of a dockside ruffian, so I describe him thus without malice or disapproval. This was before Gryvan was Thane, you understand. I’m sorry. Does his name offend you?”

Igryn was grimacing once more, his lips straining slowly back to reveal clenched teeth. At the mention of the High Thane, a snarl had begun to form at the corner of his mouth, and was poised there still, half-born.

“In any case,” Torquentine continued, carefully burying his unease beneath a casual tone, “this man of whom I speak, he was, as it turned out, of unusual descent: father a Tal Dyreen, mother from the Free Coast. He’d been living a rat’s life in and around Vaymouth for years, but it did not teach him much love or respect for the Haig Blood in whose house-whose lands-he was a guest. Indeed, he made that lack of affection for his hosts abundantly clear, at tedious length, one night in a tavern down by the dockyards. I listened as long as I could, but in time I felt compelled to challenge his views. I did so with a knife, and he defended them similarly. In due course, the matter was resolved in my favour. It cost me an eye, but it cost him his life, so I have always been mindful that I paid much the lower price that night.”

Torquentine fluttered his bloated fingers in Magrayn’s direction. She pulled a clean, fresh cloth free from her waistband and laid it across his palm. He carefully mopped sweat from his cheeks and brow. So many breathing bodies within this confined space had made it moist and warm.

“Are you still listening, Thane?” he asked.

Igryn was hunching forward once more. He had begun to work his jaw as if chewing some resistant matter. Strands of his hair were hanging down across the bandage that covered his eye sockets.

“Straighten him up, would you?” Torquentine muttered to his men, who were staring distastefully at the Thane. One of them planted a broad hand firmly on Igryn’s shoulder and pushed him, a little more roughly than was necessary, erect. Igryn’s head cracked against the stonework, but he did not seem to notice.

“I hear an idiot dribbling nonsense. Is that you talking?” Igryn ground his chin into the notch between neck and shoulder. “My beard itches.”

“If you’ve brought fleas into my home, I’ll be sorely disappointed,” Torquentine muttered. “But to return to my point. I was a different man in those days, you understand. And not only in my possession of two eyes. I was somewhat… more modestly proportioned, shall we say? More germanely, I was somewhat hotter of temper and fiercer in my adherence to the Blood of my birth and upbringing. But-and this is the important part, Thane, so I hope you are listening-though the fires of my loyal ardour may have been damped down a little by the years, they are far from extinguished.

“I am a part of my Blood. A part many might wish to excise, I suppose, but a part nevertheless. I belong. And I believe, in my deeply buried heart, that the Bloods are a boon to this world. I believe that without them, and without my Blood in particular, we would sink back into the self-mutilation that has so often afflicted us as a people, as a race. As a godless world. You will therefore understand, Thane, that it troubles me greatly to see the Haig Blood convulsed, as it is now, by a multitude of difficulties.”

“You’ll find no sympathy in me,” Igryn sneered. He turned his blind head towards Torquentine. The smile upon his bruised and misused face was ugly. Mad. “I’d like nothing better than to eat your Thane’s warm heart out of the bowl of his broken chest.”

“Unfortunately, I do not doubt the sincerity of your desire in that regard. And therein lies my dilemma, for I find myself at a loss to know what to do with you. Quite aside from my instinctive wish to do no more harm than is strictly necessary to the Blood of my birth, change is something I find distinctly undesirable at the best of times. I would go so far as to say, in fact, that I am thoroughly averse to it, for reasons both temperamental and professional. And there is altogether too much of it in the air at the moment. Wanton, egregious change for no better reason than that everyone seems to have forgotten the limits of appropriate behaviour. Do you know who commissioned me to bring about your removal from the custody of Gryvan’s men, Thane?”

“No,” hissed Igryn through gritted teeth. “And I don’t care.”

“How ungrateful of you. What would you do if I were to return you to your own lands?”

“Make you rich. Raise an army. Avenge myself upon your Blood and render as many of your women sonless, brotherless and husbandless as I could.”

Torquentine emitted a curtailed, stifled laugh. He glanced over to Magrayn. She was as impassive, as quietly observant as ever.

“Surely he would have been dead long ago, were he as guilelessly stupid as he appears?” he said to her.

Magrayn frowned. It was an expression that made the exposed, corrupted flesh of her rotted face stir in interesting ways.

“He is sick,” she suggested. “Deranged.”

“Quite possibly,” Torquentine said. “I have not left this chamber for some time, Thane, yet I have a thousand eyes, a thousand ears, spread all through this city, all through the lands of this Blood, and others. I see, and I hear, everything. All of that knowledge flows back to this chamber, and pools here in me. And what do I glean from it? What do I discern of the shape of the world?”

He waited for a response from Igryn, but the Thane was silent, his head turning very slowly, very slightly, from side to side.

“I see the Crafts and the Moon Palace edging towards outright war,” Torquentine continued. “I see your own lands rent by unrest. Not mere banditry but utter lawlessness, and rumours of Dornach ships already scouting your shores with half a mind to land an army by all accounts. I see the Black Road seething across the borders of the Ayth Blood like a swarm of wolves, consuming and destroying. I see murderous mobs rampaging in the streets above us here, battling the Guard. Everywhere I see unreason and savagery and disintegration. It is as if every desire, every ambition now runs unbridled. The fetters of restraint have been cast off by all those upon whom they served a most valuable purpose.”

He sighed. Even as he spoke, he could feel the creeping anxiety that had nested, of late, in his chest. He was a man who craved, who needed, order and control and organisation. Everything, in fact, that the world now seemed determined to slough like some redundant skin.

“And all of it growing worse. Each part of it feeding off the rest, each brutality precipitating another, each stupidity exceeding the one that went before. I have even crept my eyes and my ears into the very house of the man who decided you should be free, Thane. I watch him, I eavesdrop upon him. And I mislike what I see and what I hear. Things have changed in strange and unreadable ways. In that house and everywhere. This puts me in a sorely testing position.”

Igryn laughed. A cackle, like a crow.

“I will eat his heart,” the Thane of the Dargannan Blood murmured.

Torquentine raised his eyebrows and scratched disconsolately at his folded throat.

“As you say, Magrayn: sick. He surrenders himself all too willingly, I think, to the malady that besets the whole world. Ah well. As I was about to explain, I find myself unwilling to comply with my instructions. Returning him to his homeland would only feed a fire that already rages beyond control. I have no wish to play the part of midwife at the birthing of a world given over to unreason and chaos. I just cannot bring myself to do it.”

“Shall I return him to the storeroom?” Magrayn asked.

“Indeed. And make sure there’s nothing there he can hurt himself with. Until I decide what to do with him, it’s rather important he stays alive.”

The two guards unceremoniously hooked their hands under Igryn’s armpits and hoisted him up from the bench. He did not resist, but seemed unable to support his own weight. His legs buckled at the knee and he hung like an ancient, infirm greybeard propped up on a fence.

“Seems like nothing much, doesn’t he?” Torquentine reflected sadly. “Yet because of him, I invite the wrath of the Shadowhand. I all but betroth myself to catastrophe. Constantly surprising, the way things turn out, isn’t it? And I never took much pleasure in surprises.”