Winterbirth

Chapter 1 Winterbirth

A horn sounded clear and sharp across the blue autumnal sky. The baying of hounds wound itself around the note like ivy on a tree. Orisian nan Lannis-Haig turned his head this way and that, trying to fix the source of the summons. His cousin Naradin was ahead of him.

‘That way,’ Naradin said, twisting in his saddle and pointing east. ‘They have something.’

‘Some distance away,’ Orisian said.

Naradin’s horse was stirring beneath him, stepping sideways and stretching its neck. It knew what the sound meant. It was bred to the hunt, and the horn pulled at it. Naradin jabbed the butt of his boar spear at the ground in frustration.

‘Where are the cursed dogs we were following?’ he demanded. ‘Those useless beasts have led us nowhere.’

‘They must have had some scent to bring us this way,’ said Rothe placidly. The elder of Orisian’s two shieldmen was the only one to have kept pace with him and his cousin over the last mile or so. The forest of Anlane was open in these parts—good hunting country—but still it was forest enough to scatter a party once the chase was on.

If the hounds had stayed on a single course it would have been different, Orisian reflected. Instead, the pack had divided. It was only bad luck that he and Naradin had followed the wrong dogs. Orisian could not summon up much regret. He knew his cousin would feel otherwise, though. As of four days ago Naradin was a father, and tradition said he must put meat killed with his own hand on the table on the occasion of the baby’s first Winterbirth. For a farmer or herder that might mean killing one of his stock. For Naradin, heir to the Thane of the Lannis-Haig Blood, something more was called for.

‘Well, let’s answer the call,’ Naradin said, tightening his horse’s reins. ‘They might keep the quarry for me, if we can get there quickly.’

Orisian started to turn his mount, struggling to couch the huge spear he had been given for the hunt. The Lannis boar spear was a weapon for a grown man, and though he was sixteen he did not yet quite have the strength to handle it as deftly as did Rothe or his cousin.

‘A moment,’ said Rothe.

Naradin glanced at the ageing warrior with something approaching irritation. ‘We must be off,’ he insisted.

‘I thought I heard something, sire,’ the shieldman said.

The Bloodheir did not look inclined to pay any heed, but before he could reply there came the distinct cry of a hound from the south. It was a cry of sighting, not scenting.

‘It’s closer than the others,’ Orisian observed.

Naradin looked at him for a moment or two, wrestling to control his horse. Then he gave a quick nod and dug his heels into the beast’s flank. Orisian and Rothe went after him.

The turf flowed beneath them. The fallen leaves clothing the ground shivered and shook. Birds burst from the treetops: crows, a raucous clamber into the sky. Orisian trusted his horse to find its own way through the maze of trees. It was a hunter, trained in the stables of his uncle, the Thane, and it knew more than he did of this kind of business. Over the crashing of their progress he could hear the hounds up ahead, not just one now but several.

They found the dogs at a thicket of hazel and holly. The animals were gathered where the undergrowth was thickest, jostling and snapping in feverish excitement. They bounded this way and that, lunging sometimes towards the bushes without ever venturing too close. Naradin gave a cry of delight.

‘They have something, for certain,’ he shouted.

‘Sound your horn,’ Rothe called to him. ‘We need more spears.’

‘They’ll have answered the other call. We can’t wait or we might lose it.’

Rothe scratched at his dark beard and shot a glare at Orisian, who in his turn felt a twist of unease. Naradin’s enthusiasm could get the better of his judgement at times. Boars did not come small or meek in Anlane.

‘You hold here,’ Naradin said. ‘Give me a couple of minutes to work around and then set the dogs in. And if something comes out this side, don’t kill it. It’s mine today!’

He urged his horse onward without waiting for an answer.

The boar came through the dogs like a hawk flashing through a flock of pigeons. It scattered them, some leaping high and twisting from its path, others darting aside. The beast was huge, its forequarters great grinding slabs of muscle, its tusks yellow-white blades the length of a man’s hand. It ploughed after one of the hounds as the others snatched at its haunches.

Naradin spun his horse. ‘Mine!’ he cried.

The point of his spear swung towards the boar as it shook itself free of dogs and came towards him. It was an old, forest-wise creature and turned at the last minute, going for the horse’s belly. The spear blade skidded off its shoulder, slicing through hide to bone. Naradin’s mount sprang over the boar’s head. It almost made the leap. A tusk brushed its leg and it reeled on the soft ground. It kept its feet, but Naradin was snapped forwards. He lost his left stirrup and was thrown around the horse’s neck. He hauled on the reins, the strength of his arms the only thing keeping him from falling. His weight twisted the horse’s head around and it began to stagger sideways. It would go to ground in a moment. The boar closed again. The dogs were coming, furious and bloodthirsty, but too late.

Orisian and Rothe were side by side as they charged in. It was impossible to say which of their spears struck home first, Orisian’s on the beast’s hip, Rothe’s parting its ribs. The impact jarred the spear out of Orisian’s inexpert grasp. Rothe was better prepared. His lance knocked the boar on to its side and he put his own and his horse’s weight behind it. For a few breaths he held it there, grimacing with exertion as the haft of the spear bucked in his hands.

Naradin had slipped out of his saddle. He drew a long knife from his belt.

‘Quickly,’ Rothe said through gritted teeth.

The Bloodheir did not hesitate. The boar reached for him. Its great, desperate jaws almost had his arm as he drove the knife into its barrel chest. He sought, and found, its heart.

Afterwards, as they sat on the ground beside the huge corpse with the hounds dancing around them, Naradin laughed. Orisian could see the joy in his cousin’s eyes, and it made him laugh as well.

‘That’s one to remember,’ Naradin said. ‘See its tusks. That’s an old master, that one. A lord of the forest.’

‘I thought we were in trouble for a moment,’ said Orisian.

‘I would have been, if you two had not been here.’ Naradin drank from his waterskin, then spilled a little on his hands to wash the boar’s blood from them. He offered the skin to Orisian. The water was cold and sharp, drawn from a forest stream only an hour or two ago. It had all the chilled clarity of the autumn day in it.

‘Luck rode with us all today,’ said Rothe. Orisian knew his shieldman well enough—they had been together for six years—to hear the words Rothe did not speak. The warrior would not presume to tell the Bloodheir what he thought of taking on an old boar with too few dogs and only three spears.

‘We should call the others,’ Orisian said. ‘They’ll want to see this.’

‘In a moment, in a moment,’ Naradin said as he got to his feet. The dogs milled about him. He went over to the boar and knelt. He laid a hand, in near-reverence, upon its flank. Something took his eye then.

‘Look here. There’s another wound. None of us put this mark on it, did we?’

Rothe and Orisian knelt beside him. There was a puncture wound in the boar’s side, behind its shoulder. Blood was caked on the rigid hairs around it. Rothe crumbled some away between his fingers.

‘That’s a day or two old, I’d say.’

‘I thought it strange it should stand and fight like that,’ Naradin mused.

Orisian leaned closer. He could see something nestled there in the flesh. He slipped a knife into the wound and twisted, feeling the resistance of something harder than muscle. Another turn of the knife brought it close to the surface, where he could draw it out and drop it into his palm: an arrowhead, flat and sleek.

‘It was in deep,’ he said.

‘Can I see that?’ Rothe asked, and when Orisian nodded he took the little piece of metal and held it up, frowning as he turned it. The lines crossing the backs of the shieldman’s fingers were a first premonition of old age, but he held the arrowhead precisely, delicately.

Naradin looked a touch disappointed. ‘It’s not quite the same, to know he was carrying that in him already,’ he said.

Rothe returned it to Orisian.

‘That,’ he said, ‘is Kyrinin-made. It’s a woodwight’s arrow.’

‘Woodwights?’ exclaimed Naradin. ‘Hunting here?’

Rothe only nodded. He looked around, surveying the silent trees, the still undergrowth. His mood had changed. He stood up.

‘The White Owls have been causing trouble this last year, haven’t they?’ Orisian said to his cousin.

Yes, but we’re not a day’s ride from Anduran. They would not dare to come so close.’ He examined the arrowhead himself. ‘He’s right, though. That’s White Owl.’

Orisian had not doubted it. Rothe had fought the Kyrinin of Anlane often enough to know their weapons. He looked up at his shieldman. There was a rare tension in the big man’s stance.

‘Time for the horn, I think,’ Rothe said without breaking the roving passage of his eyes across the forest. ‘We should not stay here any longer than we must.’

Naradin did not demur. He put the horn to his lips and sent out a long, low call, summoning the hunters to the kill.

The next morning Orisian gazed out from the battlements of Castle Anduran, watching the grey clouds gather around the Car Criagar to the north-west. The great mountain ridge loomed over the valley of the Glas River, though it was but foothills to the vast uplands that lay invisibly beyond. There were the remnants of ancient towns up there, long abandoned by their forgotten inhabitants. Now no one lived amongst the rocks and the clouds.

He had been here in his uncle’s castle for a fortnight, and the weather had changed even in that short time. The sky had grown heavier. The land, the fields and forests, had darkened beneath it. The earth and the sky knew what was coming and eased themselves into it, shedding the gentle sentiments of autumn. There would be snow, even here on the valley floor, in a few weeks. Winterbirth was close.

It was not the most auspicious time for a birth, but that had not dimmed the celebrations attendant upon the arrival of the Thane’s first grandson. They had lasted for days, capped by the hunt to find Naradin his boar. Now that all was done, an air of contented exhaustion had settled over the castle and the town that lay beside it. It was a lull between storms, for the imminent revels of Winterbirth would match those just gone in intensity, if not in duration.

With the approach of that festival the time had come for Orisian to go home to Kolglas, to the castle in the waves. A flight of geese passed over, honking to one another as they tracked the valley seaward, preceding Orisian on his way. His gaze followed them for a while. He had come to this high place for a last look at the broad vista, with the valley his uncle ruled stretching out beyond his eye’s reach. Kolglas had more limited horizons, in more ways than one.

The sound of footsteps drew his attention back. Rothe emerged from the narrow stairwell beside him.

‘The horses are ready,’ said the shieldman in his ever-gruff voice. It always made Orisian imagine that stones were grinding together somewhere in his throat. ‘Your uncle is in the courtyard to bid you farewell.’

‘Time to go, then,’ said Orisian. ‘It will be a cold ride back to Kolglas.’

Rothe smiled. ‘Just as well that fire and food await us on the way.’

They descended the spiralling stairway and emerged on to a wide, cobbled courtyard. By the gatehouse on the far side, grooms held three horses that blew out clouds of steaming breath into the morning air. Kylane, Orisian’s second shieldman, was meticulously checking the horses’ hoofs, oblivious of any offence the implied lack of faith might cause to the grooms. Orisian’s uncle, the Thane Croesan oc Lannis-Haig, stood close by.

Croesan took Orisian’s hand in his. He was more than a head taller than the youth and grinned down at him.

‘Two weeks is too short a visit, Orisian.’

‘I’d gladly stay, but I must be back at Kolglas for Winterbirth. My father should be out of his sickbed soon.’

Croesan’s smile faltered for a moment and he nodded.

‘Doom and gloom are deep-rooted in my brother’s guts. Still, Winterbirth may lift his mood. In any case, do not let Kennet’s ills cloud the festival for you, Orisian.’

‘I won’t,’ Orisian said, knowing that it was a promise he might not be able to keep.

Croesan clapped him on the back. ‘Good. And tell him to visit us soon. It might light a fire under him to see how things are changing here.’

‘I will tell him. Where’s Naradin?’

The question brought a broad grin back to Croesan’s face in an instant, and the grand and grave Thane of the Blood was nothing but a proud father and grandfather.

‘He will be here in a moment. He told me to keep you here until they come, to make sure my grandson has the chance to say farewell.’

‘Well, I am glad we found him his boar,’ Orisian smiled. ‘I hope the baby appreciates it.’

‘Indeed. Naradin will bore the boy with tales of its killing when he’s old enough to understand, I’m sure. He’ll grow up thinking you and Naradin great heroes, and the finest hunters the Glas valley has ever seen.’

The thought made Orisian laugh. ‘He’ll be disappointed, then, if he ever sees me at the hunt.’

Croesan shrugged. ‘Don’t be so sure. By the time he’s old enough to know the difference, you’ll be a match for most of my huntsmen. Anyway, you’ll return for the child’s Naming, since you were here for the birth?’

‘If I can,’ said Orisian, and meant it sincerely. The Naming of an infant destined one day to be Thane was an event that would embody all the history, all the bonds that made the Lannis Blood what it was. Nothing could more strongly signify a long history and a hopeful future, and after the depredations of the Heart Fever and the sufferings of his father, Orisian was learning to value both of those.

Naradin and his wife Eilan emerged from the keep. The Bloodheir was carrying his baby son in his arms, and walked with almost comical care and precision. He had not yet learned how to relax around a life that seemed so fragile.

Croesan leaned close to Orisian and murmured conspiratorially, ‘Can you believe they have made me a grandfather, Orisian? A grandfather!’

‘I can hardly believe Naradin is a father, let alone you a grand-father,’ smiled Orisian. That, he reflected, was a half-truth, though an innocent one. Naradin had, for as long as he could remember, seemed ready and hungry for fatherhood. Nothing less was expected of one who bore the future of the Blood upon his shoulders.

Eilan embraced Orisian. She was a beautiful woman, but it was for her gentle and generous spirit that he loved her; and for the way those attributes reminded him of his own mother.

‘Journey well, Orisian,’ she murmured in his ear. ‘Take my love to your sister.’

Naradin inclined the baby towards Orisian.

‘Now, little one,’ the Bloodheir said, ‘say goodbye to Orisian.’

The tiny face gazed blankly out from the nest of thick blankets, lips working moistly and soundlessly. A pink tongue gestured vaguely in Orisian’s direction.

‘There,’ said Naradin with satisfaction. ‘I could not have said it better myself.’

‘Probably not,’ agreed Orisian. ‘Look after him well, and salt some of his boar for me. I will see you at the Naming.’

Orisian swung up into his saddle, patting the horse’s muscular neck in greeting. Rothe and Kylane flanked him as he rode out through the massive gatehouse. When Orisian glanced back over his shoulder, Croesan, Naradin and Eilan still stood together, each one raising a hand in farewell. With a last wave, Orisian and his shieldmen turned south through Anduran’s crowded streets towards the road that would carry them down the valley and on to Kolglas and home.

By the time the three riders were beyond the city’s edge, almost vanished into the distance, Croesan oc Lannis-Haig was watching them go from one of the highest windows of Castle Anduran’s keep. As he often did, he felt a twinge of sorrow for Orisian, and that brought forth the familiar mixture of feelings for the boy’s father, Kennet: the bond of love that brotherhood instilled, coloured by frustration and pain. The sadness in Kennet’s heart seemed only to have deepened and grown blacker in the five years since the fevered deaths of Lairis and Fariel, his wife and elder son. It kept Kolglas and all who lived there under a burden of loss. Croesan had lost his own wife many years ago, and thus knew something of what afflicted Kennet, but he had given up any hope of salving the grief that sometimes made itself his brother’s master, and it pained him that the past weighed so upon those he loved. Orisian and his sister Anyara had, after all, lost as much as Kennet, and still found the strength to bear that loss upon shoulders much younger and less sturdy than those of the lord of Castle Kolglas. The Thane sighed and set those thoughts aside as he turned away from the window.

A manservant was waiting by the door. Croesan glanced at him.

‘Find the Steward,’ he said, unable to keep a hint of weariness out of his voice. ‘Ask him to come.’

The servant nodded and left the chamber. Croesan ran a hand through his thick hair. He gazed around the room. A huge table, made in one of Anduran’s finest woodshops fifty years ago by order of his great-uncle Gahan, ran most of its length. The walls bore three broad tapestries. Time and sunlight had faded them somewhat, but they still showed the delicacy of touch that marked them as the work of Kolkyre craftsmen. They had been commissioned by Sirian the Great himself, the first Lannis Thane, and showed scenes from the battle that forged the Blood. Croesan regarded the images for a little while. They were, perhaps, not inappropriate as a backdrop for the conversation he was about to have.

Hard upon the heels of the servant trying to announce his arrival, the Steward swept in: Behomun Tole dar Haig, emissary of the Thane of Thanes within Croesan’s lands. He gave a casual bow and Croesan gestured him towards a chair, simultaneously dismissing the servant with a curt nod. Behomun’s sharp, clever features and ill-concealed arrogance never failed to aggravate Croesan. The man had the satisfied air of one who knew things others did not. A sneer lived surreptitiously at the corner of his mouth, eagerly awaiting any opportunity to creep out of hiding and cavort upon his lips. He was, however, the eyes and ears of Gryvan oc Haig, the High Thane, to whom Croesan had pledged allegiance, and as such he had to be treated with a degree of care. He was like an itch Croesan could reach but was not permitted to scratch.

‘I gather young Orisian has left,’ said Behomun, his tone solicitous. ‘It was remiss of me ... I meant to enquire after his father’s health. Have you heard how your brother fares?’

‘I had word from the south yesterday,’ Croesan said levelly. ‘I am told the battles have not gone well for Igryn; that the Dargannan Blood will soon be subdued.’

‘I have had the same word,’ agreed Behomun, unperturbed by Croesan’s disregard for his question. ‘It seems the rebels will be brought to heel before winter is far advanced, and the Haig Bloods will be united once more.’

‘I am also told,’ continued Croesan, ‘that the men of Lannis have acquitted themselves with honour in those battles. So much honour, I believe, that barely a handful will return to their homes.’

‘Your Blood has always produced warriors of the greatest courage, sire.’

Croesan arched an eyebrow and stared at Gryvan oc Haig’s envoy. ‘Honour and courage will not feed the orphans of Anduran or Glasbridge through the coming winter. They will not guard my lands from the woodwights or from the Gyre Bloods. I have near one in six of all my people dead from the Heart Fever just five years ago, and the best quarter of the fighting strength I had left taken south, on the High Thane’s command, to die so bravely.

‘The last time we sent so many men south we had the armies of Horin-Gyre marching on our frontier within weeks. We won then. Who is to say what will happen if the Black Road comes across the Vale of Stones again? You know as well as I, Behomun, that there has been more skirmishing in the Vale these last few weeks than for many a year. And my own son killed a boar with a woodwight arrow in it not a day’s ride from this castle. When have the White Owls strayed so far into my lands before?’

‘The woodwights can hardly threaten a Blood as versed in the arts of war as yours. Kyrinin bows and spears are no match for the swords of Lannis-Haig. And as for the Bloods of the Black Road, I am certain that if they were to come against you, your strength would turn them back as it has always done, Thane.’

‘Oh, spare me your flattery, Steward,’ said Croesan in exasperation. ‘This is not Vaymouth. You can save your velvet tongue for Gryvan’s court. I’d hate for you to wear it out for my benefit.’

Behomun’s manner changed. That sneer was close, testing its leash. ‘As you wish. Perhaps a different response will find more favour: that your troubles are not to be laid at the door of Gryvan oc Haig. The White Owl Kyrinin hunt your woodcutters and herders because you set your people to clear the forests of Anlane. You must have known that would stir up trouble as surely as a stick poked into a wasp nest.

‘And if your northern borders are less well guarded against the Black Road than you would wish, you should have agreed to the High Thane’s requests for land to settle his veterans upon. An army of proven warriors would now fill the very farms that the Fever emptied, if you had found a place for them. In any case, if you believed there was a serious threat, you would surely not have allowed Taim Narran and the others to go south at all. It would not be the first time you defied a command of your High Thane.’

‘The warriors Gryvan wanted to settle here would take no oath of loyalty to me. To my Blood,’ Croesan snapped.

The Steward snorted and waved a hand. ‘Every one of them loyal to the Haig Bloods, already bound to Gryvan oc Haig himself. As are you and your Blood, lest you have forgotten. Why put them through your old rituals?’

Croesan paused, his gaze lifting for a moment from the Steward’s face to the tapestry on the wall behind him. Sirian was there, riding down the fleeing forces of the Gyre Bloods. Croesan felt old, almost too tired to engage in futile arguments with this man who cared nothing for the past. When the tapestry was made, little more than a century ago, none would have questioned the worth of oaths. None would have thought them to be empty rituals. But Kilkry had been the highest amongst the True Bloods in those days, and many things had been different. Now Lheanor, the Kilkry Thane, bent the knee to Gryvan oc Haig as the rest of them did.

‘Had I known,’ Croesan said at length, ‘that Gryvan would punish my refusal by taking the lives of my men, I might have thought longer.’ Behomun started to protest, spreading his hands in denial of what Croesan said. The Thane spoke over him. ‘But my answer would not have changed. Any man who would be a warrior for the Lannis Blood must swear fealty. It is not so long since the same law was kept in Haig lands, Behomun, though your master seems to have forgotten it.’

‘Times change.’

Croesan sighed. ‘They do, though there are few truly new things in the world. We had Kings once before. Rats and dogs have inherited their palaces in Dun Aygll. I am told the new mansions in Vaymouth rival that lost glory.’

‘The High Thane has no wish to make himself a king.’

‘As you say. But it is of no matter now. I am sending word south to Taim Narran that he is to return with those of my men who still live as soon as Igryn oc Dargannan-Haig is taken. I wished only to tell you that. I would not want a hurried departure to be taken amiss.’

The Steward nodded. ‘Narran is yours to command, of course. I am sure the High Thane will not wish to delay his return.’

‘I hope he will neither wish it nor do it,’ replied Croesan.

Behomun smiled.

The road south from Anduran was a well-travelled one. Orisian, Rothe and Kylane passed cattle herders and farmers, as well as carts carrying fleeces, furs and carved furniture from Anduran’s workshops down to the harbour at Glasbridge. Late in the morning they overtook a line of half a dozen timber-laden wagons, the gigantic workhorses raised by Lannis woodsmen labouring in their harnesses.

They had crossed the Glas River not long after leaving Anduran, and the road now followed close by its northern bank, protected by a low dyke. Though the river was high, fed by rains in the uplands beyond Lannis-Haig’s borders, it was still a long way from over-topping the bund and threatening the road. The open fields to its south had no such protection and they were patterned with pools, the harbingers of winter floods.

After a time the track began to skirt round to the north of the Glas Water. The great wetland swallowed the river, hiding its course amidst a maze of pools, channels and marshes. In a month or two, there would be an unbroken sheet of pale water covering a great sweep of the valley floor. Riding along the fringes of this wild place, Orisian could see, faint in its misty heart, the ruined towers of old Kan Avor. The broken turrets and spires of the drowned city rose above the waters like a ghostly ship on the sea’s horizon. The sight, as it always did, stirred a faint unease in him. He had gone there once, as a child, with his brother Fariel. It had been high summer, exceptionally dry, and the waters were low enough for them to ride through some of the city’s desolate streets. The muck- and weed-crusted ruins loomed over them, obscuring the sun. Orisian had thought it a haunted, ugly place and he had not been back, for all Fariel’s good-natured taunts at his fearfulness. Fariel had never been one to pay much heed to fear.

‘They should tear it down,’ said Kylane, seeing the line of Orisian’s gaze. ‘Does no good to have that foul place rotting there. And fine farmland sunk along with it, too.’

‘People need reminding,’ muttered Rothe. ‘The Black Road is still there, in the north. Without those ruins to remind them, how soon would people forget? There’s too many have done that already.’

Kylane shrugged. ‘You can’t fault people for enjoying peace. It’s better than thirty years since the last battle.’

‘You can fault them if they start to believe peace is forever. Every day, those beyond the Vale of Stones wake up thinking the Gods will return if only they could subject us all to their precious creed. You don’t imagine they’ve stopped wanting to get these lands back just because they haven’t tried in the last thirty years, do you?’

Here, close upon the edge of the Glas Water, the road was in poorer repair and stretches of deeply rutted mud often blocked their way. As they worked around one such obstruction Kylane gave a cry of surprise and reached precariously down from his saddle. When he hauled himself upright again, he was brandishing a trophy: a human jaw bone.

‘One of the Glas Water’s treasures,’ he grinned at Orisian. ‘You know some of the farmers say it’s good fortune to unearth one of these?’

Orisian grimaced. ‘I’ve heard it,’ he acknowledged. ‘I don’t think we need good fortune that badly at the moment, though.’

The ancient bone was pitted and stained the colour of soil. Kylane examined it with mock curiosity.

‘Hero or villain, do you think?’ he asked.

Beneath the mists and sullen pools of the Glas Water lay the graves of thousands who had died on Kan Avor Field, the final battle in the war that drove the followers of the Black Road—led by the Gyre Blood, whose stronghold Kan Avor had been in those days—north beyond the Stone Vale. The fires had burned day and night across this land afterwards, yet still had not been enough to consume all the corpses.

After the exile of Gyre, Kan Avor had slowly declined under uncaring masters but its final ruin came later, when the Lannis Blood was created and granted rule over the Glas Valley . One of the first commands of Sirian, the new Thane, had been for the burning and flooding of the city. Kan Avor’s slow, waterlogged decay was a permanent reminder of his determination to stamp his authority upon his new domain.

‘Villain, I say,’ decided Kylane in answer to his own question. ‘Black Road through and through, this one.’ He sent the bone spinning away with a flick of his wrist. ‘No fit travelling companion for the nephew to the Lannis Thane.’

Daylight was fading as they came towards the Glas Water’s southern end. A clutch of low houses came in sight through the thin drizzle that was beginning to fall.

‘We’ll pass the night at Sirian’s Dyke?’ Kylane asked.

‘Why not?’ agreed Orisian. ‘It’ll be a short day to Glasbridge tomorrow. Try not to lose too much sleep in the name of drink and dice, though.’

Kylane laid a hand upon his chest. ‘Why, Orisian, you know I’m not one to surrender to such temptations.’

Rothe, riding a little ahead of them, snorted in derision but said nothing.

Sirian’s Dyke, Orisian had always thought, was a gloomy village. Thirty or forty small cottages clustered together, surrounded by dank stands of spindly trees. The only structure of any size was the resthouse.

The lights at its windows provided at least some promise of warmth and cheer. Its outbuildings—stable, smithy and wheelwright’s shop—clung to its walls like children seeking protection at the skirt of a nursemaid. All was dominated by the great, harsh line of Sirian’s Dyke itself. The massive dam of timber, stone and earth, standing higher than a man, stretched out from the edge of the village and vanished into the twilight. Here was the means by which Sirian had drowned Kan Avor. In all the years since its construction, most of the village’s inhabitants had worked in the pay of successive Lannis Thanes to maintain this bulwark against the will of the river and keep Kan Avor bound in its watery chains.

With their horses stabled for the night, Orisian, Rothe and Kylane entered the inn. The landlord appeared at their side before they had even found a table. He bowed to Orisian.

‘Welcome, welcome. It is an honour to have you as a guest, my lord.’

The inn was half-full with a mixture of villagers and travellers. A hush fell across the room as Orisian and his shieldmen settled at a table, but it did not last: the Thane’s kinsfolk were not such a rare sight in this place.

Orisian slumped in his seat, savouring the warm air upon his skin and the rich smell, of food. He pulled his boots off and flexed his feet. He was trying unsuccessfully to remember what he had eaten the last time he stayed in this inn—it had been good, and he was hungry—when a serving girl came over and bobbed in front of him. She gave him a smile as warm as a thick bed. He smiled back and waited for her to ask him what he wanted. She said nothing, and for a couple of seconds the two of them regarded one another thus. Her smile grew only more expansive, her eyes more liquid as she stood there. Kylane laughed.

‘Ale and food,’ said Rothe firmly, ‘whatever you have that is good.’

The girl looked at him as if puzzled by his words, and her smile slipped a fraction without quite losing its hold upon her mouth.

‘Yes, sire,’ she said, and departed with another nod of her head to Orisian.

‘And wine and water, please,’ he called after her, and was granted another glimpse of her radiant face over her shoulder.

Kylane was still chuckling. ‘Terrible effect you have on women,’ the shieldman observed.

Rothe glowered at his younger comrade in arms. His disapproval was wasted, since Kylane was already casting around the inn, seeking a game or perhaps a companionable-looking woman of his own.

Orisian kicked amiably at Kylane’s shin. ‘It’s not me,’ he said, ‘it’s whose nephew I am.’

‘You give yourself too little of your due,’ said Kylane distractedly. ‘No tavern girl would think you ugly, even if you’d a goatherd for an uncle.’

Orisian smiled, as much at the furrowing of Rothe’s brow as anything. The older man often gave the impression that he despaired of Kylane’s levity, but Orisian knew the two of them shared a deep-rooted mutual respect. Rothe had been his shieldman since his tenth birthday. Kylane had only taken up the task this last summer—an ominous sign, Orisian suspected, that the ageing Rothe was grooming a successor—but even so it earned him the right to a familiarity few others would dare. Being shieldman to a nephew of the Thane did not bring with it the responsibilities of guarding Croesan himself, but still it was no mere ceremonial role. Kylane had made a promise, just like Rothe before him, that set Orisian’s life at a higher value than his own.

They drank and ate well, the landlord accepting payment from Rothe only after a show of reluctance. They were given the best rooms in the house. Former residents, Orisian guiltily suspected, had been evicted at short notice. As his thoughts flirted with slumber Orisian found them, to his vague surprise, drifting toward Kolglas. In his mind’s eye he gazed upon the castle in the sea and realised that he would be happier to be back home than he had expected. Sleep came quickly and he could not linger upon the realisation.

Lekan Tirane dar Lannis-Haig was running faster than he had ever run before. Terror drove his pounding legs. He flew through the forest as if a pack of wolfenkind were on his trail. He bounded over the uneven ground, staggering but never quite losing his footing. He thrashed through bushes, bramble stems tearing at his clothes. Some large animal, startled by his careering approach, crashed away. He barely noticed. The fear of what was behind him beat down upon his back like a hammer.

The light was failing. Soon darkness would swallow the forest and then he would be finished, for those who came after him needed the light less than he. Still there was a sliver of hope. He was not certain where he was, or how far he had come, but the track from Kolglas to Drinan could not be much further. If he could reach that road there might be travellers to give him aid. Failing that perhaps he could still make the safety of Kolglas, flying down a clear and known path. The town must be no more than a few miles to the north. And that, in its way, was a part of his terror: that his pursuers should be so keen for human blood that they would come this close to the garrison of Kolglas. The wood-wights had not been this brave, or foolhardy, in many years.

It had never crossed Lekan’s mind, as he set out the day before in search of forest meat for his family’s Winterbirth celebration, that anything more dangerous than boar or bear could be awaiting him. There had been no Kyrinin in the lands around Kolglas since before his father’s days, and though it was common knowledge that the White Owls were raiding in strength through the woods of Anlane further to the east, there had been no strife here save a few horses stolen from hamlets near Drinan.

He had been standing beneath a great ash tree, unbreathing and still as he searched for sign of the deer he had tracked through half a mile of thickets and groves. A mark in the earth, perhaps the faintest imprint of a hind’s foot, caught his eye and he bent to look more closely. The sound was so sudden and unexpected that at first he could not put a cause to it, and when he saw the arrow shivering in the tree trunk his incredulous mind instinctively denied its meaning. Yet it was, beyond doubting, a Kyrinin shaft. And then he was off, casting bow and quiver aside, flinging his backpack away to lend speed to his flight. There had been no sign save the arrow itself, no sound but its hissing flight and sharp crack into the wood. Still he knew they were behind him, and close, and that he had no hope save the strength of his legs.

He swept past a tree, a great gnarled oak that seemed familiar. He had not been this way for a long time but it was, he was sure, a tree he had climbed in as a child. If he was right, the track, the longed-for path that might carry him to safety, was only two or three hundred paces further on. The thought lent new life to his tiring muscles and he leapt forwards with still greater urgency. The hope burned stronger.

He felt no pain, just a solid blow in the square of his back as if someone had thrown a stone. No pain, yet his legs were no longer his own and he sprawled face-down into the damp leaf litter. He clawed at the earth, struggling to rise. His legs would not obey him. He reached behind to finger the arrow buried in his back. He felt something rising in his throat.

Then there was a powerful grip upon his arm and he was turned over. The arrow snapped and sent a lance of pain clean through him, transfixing sternum and spine. He cried out and crushed his eyes tight shut against it. When he opened them again, blinking through the mist of tears, there was one last surprise. It was not into the pale face of a Kyrinin that he looked, as he had expected. Instead, he met the gaze of one of his own kind: a black-haired woman, clad in dark leather, with a sword sheathed crossways on her back.

‘The woodwights have brought you down, but it is fitting that the killing blow should come from a truer enemy,’ she said in a harsh, rough-edged accent Lekan did not recognise.

There were other figures gathering behind her. Lekan could not see them clearly. The warrior languidly drew her sword over her shoulder. She saw the confusion in Lekan’s eyes.

‘You should know why you die,’ she said, ‘so know this: the Children of the Hundred have come for you, for all of you. The Bloods of the Black Road will take back that which is ours, and where you go now, all of Lannis-Haig will follow.’

Lekan’s mouth moved. There was no sound. The blow fell, and he plunged towards the Sleeping Dark.

The second day’s ride was easy going and Orisian and his shieldmen made good time. From the Dyke down to Glasbridge the road was well maintained. The flat ground close by the river was good cropland, and there were countless small farms. A chilling rain that fell for most of the day kept all save a few people off the road, though. Two or three riverboats drifted by. Orisian and the others could easily have found a boat to carry them down to Glasbridge, but few horses tolerated such a journey with equanimity and Orisian preferred, in any case, to stay in the saddle.

By mid-afternoon they were approaching the northern gate of Glasbridge, Lannis-Haig’s second town. It was a bustling port, and the scent of the sea and the screeching of gulls filled the air as they rode down towards the harbour. The quayside was swarming with people. Kylane grew animated at the sight of the largest of the dozen boats berthed along its length: a long, fat sailship riding high in the water.

‘Look,’ he said, patting Orisian on the arm. ‘She’s a merchant-man out of Tal Dyre.’

The young shieldman had once told Orisian, when somewhat the worse for drink, that he had dreamed as a boy of taking service with the ships of Tal Dyre. Fanciful tales were told of the exploits of that island’s sea captains and of the wealth of its merchant lords. Orisian was disinclined to believe such stories now, but three or four years ago they had stirred in him the same yearnings Kylane described. There had been times when he would have given anything to escape the confines of Castle Kolglas and the memories it embodied. Then, as he had looked out over the great expanse of the estuary from his high bedchamber, to ride the waves as the Tal Dyreens did, to leave everything behind, had seemed an enticing prospect.

‘The harbourmaster is waving to us,’ Rothe said with a touch of despondency.

Orisian looked towards the harbourmaster’s rather ostentatious residence a short way down the waterfront. Renairan Tair dar Lannis-Haig was indeed leaning—somewhat recklessly, given his girth—over the edge of a balcony, waving vigorously and hailing them. Passing through Glasbridge on his way to Anduran a fortnight before, Orisian had promised to visit with the harbourmaster on his return. He would have preferred to pass the night quietly in the fine house Croesan kept here, but the harbourmaster was a difficult man to refuse. Given time, his remorseless jollity could have ground down the most obstinately doleful rock.

‘Orisian!’ Renairan was shouting. ‘Here, here!’

‘I suppose we cannot pretend we did not hear him,’ murmured Rothe as scores of heads amongst the crowds turned towards the harbourmaster.

‘This’ll be a long evening,’ said Kylane under his breath.

Kylane’s prediction turned out to be accurate, though not for him and Rothe. Orisian was respectfully paraded before the guests Renairan had invited to dine with them, like a trophy from some polite hunt. The harbourmaster hardly needed to prove his importance—his line had long carried great influence in Glasbridge—but the presence of a member of the Thane’s family in his house had been too great a temptation to resist. Orisian’s two shieldmen, much to their relief, had not been expected to attend. There was a trace of vanity in Renairan that excluded mere fighting men—even the guardians of his Thane’s nephew—from a gathering such as this. Rothe had protested, but even he could not credibly claim that Orisian might be in danger amidst the great and good of Glasbridge.

The dining hall was decked out with holly, juniper and sprigs of pine: traditional decorations for the coming Winterbirth celebrations. In the grate at one end of the hall, pine logs were burning, filling the air with their sharp scent. The smell touched upon raw memories for Orisian, and cast a shadow across his mood. Some of his clearest recollections of his mother Lairis were of her glowing presence at the Winterbirth feasts in Castle Kolglas. Those images were wreathed about in his mind with the poignant scent of pine. She had been the heart of those festivals, her voice their sweetest music.

Orisian did his best to play the honoured guest. He gave a report of the festivities surrounding the birth of the Thane’s grand-son, and Naradin’s killing of his boar. Curiosity satisfied, the conversation drifted to the sort of matters that always preoccupied the people of Glasbridge: the fishermen’s catches in the last week, the promise of storms on the season’s breath, and the prices obtained by the last merchant to sail south to Kolkyre. They were things, in the main, that Orisian knew little about. He had to concentrate to avoid overlooking any of the moments when a smile, a nod or some approving remark was required of him. Before long he was wishing he was with Rothe and Kylane, hidden away in the kitchens or wherever they had found themselves.

As the evening progressed Orisian became convinced that Renairan’s wife, Carienna, and his young daughter were talking about him. Now and again, across the landscape of wine jugs and meat and bread, he noticed Carienna watching him with an unguarded, penetrating gaze. For no reason he could name, it made him uncomfortable and he tried to keep his eyes on other things.

The one guest who caught Orisian’s interest was the captain of the Tal Dyre merchant ship, Edryn Delyne. He had met Tal Dyreens before, when they stopped off at Kolglas and paid courtesy visits to his father, but this man was the most impressive of the breed he had ever seen. He was tall and fair-haired and boasted the short, pointed beard that, in the tales at least, was the mark of every Tal Dyre adventurer.

Delyne regaled the party with stories of the fighting far away in the south. Many men of Lannis were there, fighting under Gryvan oc Haig’s command against the rebellious Dargannan Blood, and the interest around the table was keen. Delyne assured his audience that the fighting would soon be over and Igryn, the recalcitrant Thane, dead or taken. Renairan and his guests, Orisian included, received this news with only muted enthusiasm. There was no love lost between the Lannis Blood and that of Haig. Orisian had heard it said more than once that the two thousand men Taim Narran had led south in answer to the High Thane’s summons would be doing better service if they were marching against Gryvan’s palace in Vaymouth, rather than the mountain forts of Igryn oc Dargannan-Haig.

Orisian’s eyes grew ever more heavy-lidded as the evening crept on. Though he watered his wine carefully, the heat of the fire and the heavy scent in the air combined with it to lull him towards sleep. Renairan’s booming voice caught him unawares. He attempted an alert expression. The harbourmaster’s laughter told him that his efforts were in vain.

‘Too much good food and wine for our young guest, I think!’ Renairan said.

Orisian smiled apologetically.

‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘Two days’ riding takes its toll.’

‘Of course, of course,’ cried Renairan. ‘You must retire, Orisian. You have another day in the saddle tomorrow.’

‘Thank you for a fine meal,’ said Orisian as he rose. The other guests stood up as well, acknowledging his departure with small bows or nods. He found Renairan’s wife and daughter closing upon him as he headed for the door, and he had to resist a powerful urge to spring forwards and make a dash for the sanctuary of his bedchamber. As the meal was noisily resumed behind them, Orisian was held by Carienna’s cheerful, yet somehow insistent, gaze.

‘Such a shame that we did not have a proper chance to speak,’ she said, ‘but you must spare a word for my daughter Lynna before you retire.’

She eased the young girl forwards.

‘Lynna!’ prompted Carienna, and the somewhat flustered girl cleared her throat.

‘It was a very great pleasure to meet you, master Orisian,’ she said, giving him a delicate smile and a practised curtsey.

‘Ah,’ said Orisian.

‘Lynna is almost fifteen,’ said Carienna in a voice that spilled implications from its edges like honey from an over-full beescomb.

‘Really,’ said Orisian, ‘I’m . . .’ He realised that he had forgotten how old he was.

‘Sixteen, I believe,’ said Carienna happily.

It took Orisian a while to find a kind form of words to take his leave. Rothe was waiting outside his room. The shieldman smiled sympathetically when Orisian told him what had happened.

‘Sixteen is a perilous age for the only available man in the Thane’s family.’

Kylane was quiet the next morning, nursing the aftereffects of drink and what had evidently been a costly gaming session with members of the harbourmaster’s household. Rothe, cheered by the prospect of being back at Kolglas by nightfall, and perhaps by his comrade’s misfortune, was livelier. He and Orisian talked happily of hunting, of Croesan and of the growing grandeur of Anduran as they passed along Glasbridge’s streets, over the broad river running through its heart and out through the western gate of the town.

They followed the stone-surfaced track along the southern shore of the Glas estuary. This was a well-populated stretch, with many farmhouses and hamlets lining the way. Little watermills, their wheels creaking round, stood astride the streams flowing down to the sea. Here and there small fishing boats were drawn up on the rocks. At one roadside house they stopped to buy some oatcakes and goat’s cheese, and ate them as they rode onwards. Kylane’s mood lifted a little, his spirits renewed by the food. He recounted tales, harvested over dice the night before, of bawdy goings-on in the harbourmaster’s house.

In the late afternoon they rounded a small headland and came within sight of Kolglas. The town lay on the far shore of a shallow bay studded with rocky islets, closely hemmed in by the forest. Castle Kolglas stood tall on its isle a hundred yards offshore: a weathered stone bastion so old that it seemed as much a part of the natural landscape as the rocks breaking waves beneath its walls. The tide was out, so the narrow causeway running from the town to the castle was exposed. They could see a small cart moving along it, carrying firewood to feed the castle’s hearths. A broad smile came to Orisian’s face.

‘A race back!’ he cried, and kicked his horse into a headlong gallop along the track.

He heard Rothe’s exasperated cry, and then the pounding of hoofs as the two shieldmen came rushing after him. The dash around the curving shore did not take long, but the horses were blowing hard as they slowed at the edge of Kolglas.

The main street and most of the little tracks that ran off on either side were busy. Kolglas always sucked people in at Winterbirth, as surely as a full-laden fishing boat drew gulls. The stalls around the edge of the market square were doing a roaring trade in everything from candles to snowboots, and so much money changing hands had created an infectious air of good humour. Some of the stallholders called out and waved as Orisian went by.

The area around the cairn in the heart of the square, by contrast, was almost empty, with only a screaming gang of children chasing one another round and round the small tower of stones. The monument was a memorial to the Battle of Kolglas. Sirian had been only master of Kolglas then, holding it in the name of the Kilkry Thane at a time when the exile of the Gyre Blood and its followers was still young, their hunger to return still raw and urgent. It had fallen to Sirian to turn back the armies of the Black Road when they poured south across the Vale of Stones and down the length of the Glas valley. His reward for the victory: the right to found his own Blood, to rule over the valley he had defended, and to hold it in perpetuity against the exiles in the north.

The cairn had stood here, with children playing around it and travellers resting by it, for well over a century. Despite its long familiarity it retained a powerful symbolic meaning for the whole Lannis Blood. None who journeyed out from Kolglas could say they had truly returned until they had been to it. First Orisian, then Rothe and Kylane, leaned down to lay a hand upon the round, aged stone that surmounted the cairn. It had been smoothed by the brushing of countless fingertips.

‘To the castle, then?’ Rothe asked, and Orisian nodded.

They went down towards the sea. As they rode out on to the causeway the clouds parted for the first time that day, and the low, late sun cast the faintest of shadows out across the tranquil water. The castle’s sheer walls looked almost warm in the light. The gate was open and as they passed into the courtyard beyond, Orisian found himself smiling again. It was, after all, good to be home.

There were few people about: a small group stacking firewood by the stables, and a handful of warriors sharpening swords on a grinding stone outside their sleeping quarters. Half the fighting men of castle and town had gone south to join the war against Dargannan-Haig almost a year ago. The place had been subdued ever since.

Orisian and his shieldmen crossed to the stable block and dismounted. Bair, the youngest of the stablehands, scampered out to take their horses.

‘Take good care of them, Bair,’ said Orisian, ‘they have been gentle with us.’

Some of those taken ill with the Heart Fever had survived its scourges, Orisian’s own sister Anyara amongst them. She had been fortunate and was unmarred by the sickness. Other survivors, like Bair, had been damaged. The young boy was mute. Nevertheless, he had one of the most lively and expressive faces Orisian had ever seen, and a nature as unfailingly merry as anyone he knew. With a grin, Bair gathered up the reins and led the horses towards their stables.

‘Back to the quiet life, then,’ said Rothe, feigning disappointment.

‘Only for a day or two,’ Orisian said. ‘Winterbirth should bring all the excitement you could wish for.’

The two shieldmen said their farewells, shouldered their packs and headed for the guards’ bunkhouse.

Orisian looked up at the keep. The windows were dark and blank, and the building had a lifeless air. With a slight, belated twinge of foreboding, he hefted his travelling pack and headed for the main stairway.

From the forest above the road, eyes that were not human had watched the three riders gallop that last stretch to the edge of the town. The light would fail soon. The watcher’s sight was sharp, but even he would not be able to make out any movement on the road from this distance once night had fallen. Although the Huanin in the cottages and farmhouses scattered along the coast were as good as blind in the darkness there would still be some small chance of discovery if he went closer, out of the loving embrace of the forest. There was little to be gained from such a risk; it was clear the enemy did not suspect what was about to befall them. They went about their crude, loud lives just as they always did.

The watcher rose. He had been crouched motionless for half the day, yet there was no stiffness in his lithe limbs. He adjusted the position of his bow and quiver on his back and picked up his spear. For a moment he laid his long, tapering fingers upon its point. It would be good to bathe it in Huanin blood. His heart sang at the thought.

He turned away from the feeble necklace of lights springing up in the cottages along the shore and the forest’s shadows enfolded him.

Orisian’s bedchamber was cold, but there was comfort in its familiarity. A knock at the door just as he finished changing announced the arrival of Ilain, the keep’s oldest chambermaid.

‘We were not sure when you would get back, or we could have had some food waiting for you.’ Warmth and severity rubbed shoulders in her voice. She worked as she talked, gathering up his discarded riding clothes and clutching them to her chest.

‘Sorry, Ilain. But I’m not hungry, in any case. We ate as we rode.’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘that will foul up your stomach sure as fish are wet. No matter. You’ll want a rest?’

‘No. Really, I’m fine.’

The chambermaid frowned. ‘You’ll have a fire lit, at least.’

‘Yes, please,’ responded Orisian promptly, knowing better than to refuse her again.

She turned, still carrying his clothes, to go and fetch a taper.

‘Where is everyone, Ilain?’ asked Orisian.

‘I think Anyara is with your father. He is still unwell.’

‘And Inurian?’

Ilain rolled her eyes skywards, and Orisian felt a twinge of instinctive guilt at her displeasure. He had never quite shaken off the childhood memory of Ilain’s scoldings. More often than not Anyara or Fariel had been at the root of whatever misadventure incurred the chambermaid’s wrath; nevertheless, it had usually been Orisian who was left to face the consequences, never quite as adept as the other two at identifying the ideal moment to disappear. He was too old now for her to scold, but when Ilain disapproved of something it was not well concealed. Inurian was counsellor to Orisian’s father, and the closest thing to a friend Kennet nan Lannis-Haig had. That was not enough to make everyone in the castle comfortable with his presence.

‘He is in his rooms, no doubt,’ Ilain said, and swept out.

Orisian hesitated. He knew he should visit his father, but he had a strong urge to put that off a while longer. It was a much easier thought to go to Inurian. That at least would be a meeting that had only uncomplicated feelings attached to it.

The door to Inurian’s chambers, which lay on the top floor of the keep, was closed as always. Orisian listened for a moment. There was no sound from within. He knocked.

‘Come in, Orisian.’

As he entered he at once caught the unique scent that always greeted him here: a tantalising, rich mixture of parchment, leather and herbs. The room was small and crowded. Book-lined shelves filled one wall; racks of jars and pots packed with herbs, powders, spices, even soils, another. An ancient, scored table held a scattering of papers, maps and a neatly arranged collection of dried and wizened mushrooms. To one side, a curtain concealed the tiny bed-chamber in which Inurian slept. In the narrow window Idrin the crow was bobbing up and down on his perch.

A handful of carved wooden figurines and a small pile of manuscripts cluttered the desk. Inurian himself was sitting behind it, leaning back with his arms folded across his chest. He was a small man of middle years, with a mop of pale brown hair interspersed here and there with grey strands like threads of silver. The one thing that anyone meeting him for the first time would notice, however, was that he was a na’kyrim: a child of two races. In him, Huanin and Kyrinin were blended. His Kyrinin father had given him penetrating eyes of a pure flinty grey and the fine features and thin, almost colourless, lips of his inhuman kind. When he came from behind the desk and reached out to greet Orisian, his lean, long fingers and clouded nails also betrayed his mixed parentage.

There were other, invisible, marks too. Inurian would never have children; no na’kyrim could. And there was the Shared, that mysterious, intangible realm lying beneath the surface of existence. It was beyond the reach, and the understanding, of pure-bred Huanin and Kyrinin, yet the intermixing of their blood sometimes gave a na’kyrim child access to its secrets and powers. Those in whom that contact with the Shared flowered were named the waking. Inurian was one such.

Orisian could not remember a time when Inurian had not been here, in his little rooms at the summit of the castle. He had come to Kolglas before Orisian was born, finding in Kennet nan Lannis-Haig a rare thing in these days: a human who would offer friendship to a na’kyrim. It was not a sentiment all in the castle could share. The War of the Tainted had ended forever the days when Huanin and Kyrinin walked side by side; there was little goodwill for the offspring of any union that defied the weight of that history, and even less for those woken into the Shared. Still, Inurian had stood loyally at the side of the lord of Kolglas for years. And since the deaths of Lairis and Fariel, and Kennet’s decline into misery, he had become steadily more important to Orisian as well.

‘How was your journey?’ Inurian asked, his voice smooth and warm.

‘Cold. A little damp.’

Idrin croaked in the window, and Inurian chuckled.

‘Well, we are both pleased to see you in any case. Is Croesan well? And Naradin’s child safely born?’

Orisian bent over the table, peering at the mushrooms arrayed there and prodding one. ‘Yes, to both. Croesan has a very healthy grandson. What are these for, Inurian?’

The na’kyrim waved a dismissive hand. ‘Curiosity. One eases the birthing of calves, another soothes aching joints and so on. Nothing of great consequence.’

‘You’ve been into the forests again, then.’

‘Indeed. The slopes of the Car Anagais hold many secrets for those who know where to look.’

‘When can I come with you?’ asked Orisian.

Inurian shrugged. ‘We’ll see,’ he said. ‘Soon, perhaps.’ It was what he always said.

Orisian went to stroke Idrin’s glossy breast. The crow blinked and ducked his head in the hope that Orisian would pet the nape of his neck.

‘I cling to the slender hope that if I search long and hard enough I may yet find a cure for disobedience in crows,’ muttered Inurian.

‘But an obedient Idrin would not be Idrin,’ said Orisian.

‘True.’

Orisian sat on the corner of the desk.

‘My father?’ he asked quietly.

Inurian returned to his seat with a sigh. ‘For him I have no cures, I’m afraid. Not that I could administer them even if I did, as he will see no one save your sister. She has tended him ever since you left for Anduran. His grief must run its course, Orisian. He will remember himself soon.’

‘He’ll come to the feast?’

‘I’m sure. You know these moods pass.’

‘I do. It seems they take longer each time, though. I am afraid that some day one will come that does not leave him.’

Inurian regarded the youth for a moment, sadness tweaking at the corners of his mouth.

‘Shall we go hunting on the first day of winter?’ he asked.

Orisian brightened a little at the suggestion.

‘We could. I’ve missed the hawks while I was at Anduran. Uncle Croesan prefers crashing through the forest with packs of hounds. I had to go along with him, but it’s not really my idea of hunting.’

‘A fact of life: Thanes must make more noise about their business than ordinary folk, whatever that business is.’

‘What is planned for Winterbirth, then?’ asked Orisian.

‘Oh, I would be the wrong person to ask,’ said Inurian. ‘You know half of what goes on here is a mystery to me.’

‘Hardly.’

‘Well, in any case, I have not been paying much attention. There will be all the usual gluttony, of course. I heard something about entertainers as well. There’s a troupe of acrobats or something similar coming to town. Masterless men.’

Orisian raised his eyebrows in surprise. Masterless men, those who owed no allegiance to any Blood, were not an unknown sight in these parts, but most of them were solitary traders or hunters from the hills and mountains to the north. They entered Lannis-Haig lands only to ply their wares in Glasbridge or Anduran. He could not remember ever having heard of more than two or three travelling together.

‘I imagine I will be called upon as well,’ continued Inurian, ‘since there will probably be the usual granting of boons.’

‘No doubt,’ said Orisian. He understood little of the strange, unpredictable gifts some na’kyrim possessed—the Shared was something Inurian did not talk about—but he did know that Inurian disliked ostentatious displays of his talents. They would be to the fore in any granting of boons.

‘Your father likes it,’ Inurian said. ‘At least he has in the past. It may... cheer him a little.’

Orisian nodded. ‘I suppose I should go to see him.’

‘You should,’ agreed Inurian. ‘He will be glad of it. Never forget that he loves you, Orisian. Sometimes he may forget himself, but the real Kennet loves you dearly. You know that I, of all people, could not be wrong about that.’

That much, Orisian recognised as the truth. There were no secrets from a na’kyrim with the gift of seeing what was within. Inurian always knew what lay in the heart.

‘I know you’re right,’ said Orisian. ‘But it is hard to remember, sometimes.’

‘Come to me when you need reminding,’ smiled Inurian gently.

‘I always do, don’t I?’

‘Do you want me to come with you?’ Inurian asked him.

Orisian was tempted only for a moment. He shook his head resolutely. Whatever burdens there were, they were for him and his father to bear. He could not expect others to shoulder them on his behalf; not even Inurian, who he knew would willingly try.

He paused outside his father’s room. This door, unlike that guarding Inurian’s secrets, was old and grand, with patterns of flowing ivy carved into its panels. The torches that lined the spiral stairway had stained its timbers over the years so that to Orisian it had always seemed to project a glowering presence. He laid his hand flat upon the door, feeling its grain under his fingertips. The wood was cold.

A gust of chill air greeted him as he entered. A window was wide open. The room was gloomy, and the only sound was the shifting of the sea outside. His father lay in the great bed against the far wall. Kennet’s grey-haired head rested on pillows; his arms lay limp across the bed cover. His eyes were closed. There were deep lines in his face as if his skin had folded in upon itself beneath the weight of sorrow, and heavy shadows lurked beneath his eyes. His visage had gathered at least another decade to itself in the last few years.

Anyara, Orisian’s elder sister, was sitting by the bed and looked up as he came in. She was tired, he could see, and her long auburn locks were lifeless. She put a finger to her lips and mouthed, ‘He’s sleeping.’

Orisian hesitated, mid-way between door and bed. He could have left, absolved of some responsibility by his father’s slumber. He went instead to close the window. Kennet stirred at the sound of his footsteps.

‘Leave it.’

‘I thought it was cold,’ said Orisian. His father’s eyes were red and empty.

‘I prefer it.’

Orisian came to stand at Anyara’s side.

‘You’ve come back,’ said Kennet.

‘Barely an hour ago.’

Kennet grunted. Speaking seemed an effort for him. His eyelids fluttered, and closed. Anyara laid a soft hand on Orisian’s arm and looked up at him. She squeezed gently.

‘Croesan wished you well,’ said Orisian. ‘He wants you to visit him. I think he would like to show you how Anduran is growing.’

‘Ah,’ said Kennet without opening his eyes.

‘Will you be well for the Winterbirth feast?’ asked Orisian, the question sounding hasty and harsh even to his own ears. He did not know what he could say that would reach the father he remembered, and loved.

His father turned his head on the pillow to look at him. ‘When is it?’ he asked.

‘Father, we were talking about it only this afternoon,’ said Anyara. ‘It’s the day after tomorrow. Remember? There will be acrobats and songs and stones. You remember?’

Kennet’s gaze became unfocused, as if he was looking no longer upon the here and now but on memories more real to him than the present.

‘Inurian told me that the acrobats are masterless men,’ said Orisian, knowing from his own heart that remembrance of Winterbirths past could bring as much pain as warmth. It was often this way between the three of them: conversations skirted around dangerous territory. As much was unsaid as was said. Knowing the pattern made it no easier to break.

Kennet sighed, which prompted a shallow, dry cough that shook him.

‘The day after tomorrow,’ he said after the coughing had sub-sided. ‘Well, I must be there, I suppose.’

‘Of course,’ said Anyara. ‘It will do you good.’

Kennet smiled at his daughter, and the sight of that weakened, shallow-rooted expression was almost enough to make Orisian turn away. ‘Go with Orisian,’ he said to her. ‘You should not be always at my bedside. Have someone light some candles here, though. I do not want the darkness. Not yet.’

‘He is no better,’ said Orisian as he and Anyara made their way down the stairs. ‘I had hoped he might be, by now.’

‘Not much better,’ agreed Anyara. ‘But still, he will be there for Winterbirth. That’s something. He did miss you, you know. It’s good for him that you’re back.’

Orisian hoped that might be true. His father’s affliction touched upon painful places within him. In the months after the Fever had taken them, the absence of his mother and brother had been an aching, unbridgeable emptiness in Orisian’s life. It was a wound that had not healed, but had at least become something he could bear. So too it had seemed with his father, for the first year: the sadness deep and immovable, yet accommodated as it had to be if life was to continue. The change had come with the first anniversary of their deaths. After that, these black moods had descended with growing frequency, shutting Kennet off from all around him.

Orisian felt deep sorrow for his father, and a nagging guilt at his own inability to ease his pain. But he had other, less kind, feelings too and they brought with them a different kind of guilt. He sometimes had to battle against bursts of resentment at the strength of his father’s attachment to the dead. It was an attachment so intense that it both robbed Kennet of any strength he might have shared with the living and seemed to overshadow—to dismiss—the grief and loss that were lodged in Orisian’s own breast. Often, when his father looked at him, Orisian had the sense that he was seeing, or perhaps longing to see, his dead brother Fariel; and Fariel had been so strong, so clever, so fast of hand and eye, that Orisian could never match the man he would now have been.

He and his sister went out into the courtyard. Night was coming on fast, and the temperature had fallen. The clouds of earlier had dissipated, unveiling a sky in which countless faint stars were already glimmering. Soon, that moon would turn, and winter would be born. Brother and sister stood in the centre of the yard, gazing upward. Anyara soon lost interest.

‘How was Anduran, then?’ she asked, rubbing her arms against the cold.

‘Thriving,’ said Orisian. ‘Uncle Croesan is full of plans.’

‘As always.’

‘He’s built a great hall on the square and new barns near the castle. All the forests to the south are being cleared for farmsteads and grazing lands. Everyone is busy.’

‘Well, it’s not before time. The Fever’s long gone,’ said Anyara in a matter-of-fact tone, as if she had never been touched by it. Orisian had not forgotten how it felt, when his sister lay at the very brink of death, to think that he was going to lose her as well. Perhaps it had been easier, in a way, to pass those long, terrible days inside delirium than to watch it from without.

Anyara sniffed. ‘It’s cold out here. Are you hungry?’

‘A little.’

Anyara pulled him along by the arm.

‘Let’s go to the kitchens, see what’s cooking.’

‘Anyara,’ protested Orisian, ‘we’ll only get in trouble.’

‘Old woman!’ grinned his sister.

The kitchens filled most of the ground floor of the keep. They were, as always at this time in the evening, a hive of activity. Young boys carried pots and pans from table to stove and back again, while cooks chopped and stirred, pounded and chattered in a frenzy of organised chaos. A row of fat forest grouse were hanging from hooks along one of the roof beams. On one of the tables, a dozen loaves stood cooling, filling the air with their delicious aroma. At first no one seemed to notice that Orisian and Anyara had arrived. A moment later Etha the head cook was hobbling over, wiping her hands on her apron. She was a small, ageing woman, whose joints were seizing up and giving her a clumsy stride as time went by. Her spirit, however, was uncowed by such assaults. She clapped Orisian on the arm with a crooked hand.

‘Back at last,’ she said. ‘Just in time, too. It’ll be a fine feast this year. Wouldn’t do to miss it.’

‘I wouldn’t want to,’ he said seriously, and waved at the black-feathered birds above their heads. ‘Looks like we’ll be eating well.’

‘Yes, yes. And plenty more.’

She was interrupted by an angry shout from behind her. Anyara darted past, juggling a still-hot loaf of bread from hand to hand. One of the other cooks was waving a soup ladle after her, flicking thick drops of broth in all directions.

‘Why, that girl,’ muttered Etha. ‘Still acting the child.’ She turned on Orisian and poked a stiff finger into his chest. ‘And you, young man. A year or two younger, but no better excuse than she. You’ve not been back a day and already the pair of you acting like a brace of thieves!’

Orisian retreated, trying to look abashed. He found Anyara sitting outside, chuckling to herself and tearing off chunks of bread. He joined her, and they devoured half the loaf in silence. It was warm and comforting and tasted wonderful. They chatted for a while, almost shivering in the night air. They could have been children once more, teasing one another and whispering together as their breath formed little plumes of mist between them. Then one of the kitchen boys came out into the yard, banging a big copper pot with a spoon to signal that the night’s meal was ready, and they joined the soldiers and stablehands, maids and servants filing into the common hall.

Beyond the walls, the tide had come in. The waves, dusted with moonlight, closed over the causeway, and the castle was alone on its isle of rock.

Gryvan oc Haig, High Thane of the Haig Bloods, was roused from a shallow, fitful slumber by his footman’s voice. He rolled over and shielded his eyes from the light of the oil lamp the man carried.

‘A messenger, my lord,’ said the footman, ‘from the fort.’

Gryvan pressed finger and thumb into his eyes.

‘What’s the hour?’ he asked.

‘Three from dawn, my lord.’

The Thane of Thanes grunted and sat up. He moistened his lips, finding his mouth dry and stale from the wine he had drunk the night before.

‘Fetch me some water,’ he said.

His attendant turned and went out of the great tent. The light went with him. For a moment Gryvan sat with his eyes closed, listening to the heavy shifting of the canvas in the night breeze. He felt himself slipping back towards sleep. In the darkness he wrapped his sheet about him and rose, a little unsteadily, to his feet. He was standing thus when the footman returned, seeming more nervous than he had before; knowing, perhaps, that he would have done better to leave the lamp. He held out a tankard of water. Gryvan drained it.

‘Give me my cloak,’ he said.

The footman hurried to gather the thick fur cape from where it lay by the High Thane’s mattress. They were high in the mountains here in Dargannan-Haig lands, and the altitude lent the autumn nights a cold edge even this far south. Gryvan settled the cloak on his shoulders. He took its gold-trimmed edges in his hands and crossed his arms. A brief, involuntary shiver ran through him and he puffed out his cheeks. Feeling clumsy, he hauled on his boots. Their leather was cold and stiff.

‘So, where is this messenger?’

‘He waits outside your council tent.’

‘Light my way, then.’

Hann nodded and Gryvan followed him out on to the hillside.

The High Thane shivered again as if to shake off the weight of sleep. When he had been young, sleep had fallen easily from him. In his sixth decade it seemed to settle ever deeper into his bones. Cold nights far from the comforts of his court taxed him.

The small fires of his army dotted the rocky slopes around him. Faint voices rose here and there from amongst the host of tents. He glanced up at the dark outline of the besieged An Caman fort far above. There were few lights there.

Outside the council tent, flanking the opening, two torches stood in tall metal holders, their flames snapping to and fro in the wind. Guards stood beside them, erect and alert though they were deep into their watches. Kale, Master of the High Thane’s Shield, was there too, and a tall, dark-haired man who must be the messenger. Gryvan ignored them as he went inside. He settled himself into a high-backed wooden chair.

‘Bring them in, then,’ he said to his footman.

Kale was first to enter, looking gaunt in the flickering light. His features could have been cut from the granitic hills of Ayth-Haig. Behind him came the messenger: a young man, Gryvan could see now, perhaps no more than twenty-five. The red badge on his breast—a sword and spear crossed—marked him as a mercenary out of the Dornach Kingship.

Gryvan scratched his chin and yawned. The messenger stood before him, some uncertainty betraying itself in the darting movement of his eyes. Kale, as always, was a model of silent, still observation.

‘So,’ said Gryvan, ‘you’ve brought me from my bed, when my old limbs crave rest. The urgency must be great, the import of your message truly overwhelming. Let me hear it.’

The mercenary ducked his head a fraction. ‘I am Jain T’erin, captain of one hundred men of Dornach. I speak for them alone, and am here without the knowledge of the Dargannan men in the fort.’

‘Dargannan-Haig,’ corrected Gryvan smoothly. ‘They owe me obeisance still, even if they have forgotten it.’

‘As you say. They fight for their reasons, my men and I for ours. We have held the fort against you for three weeks, and might do so for another three, but it seems a needless fight. Your armies to the south seek the Dargannan-Haig Thane, and though he is kept from the coast for the time being, he may yet slip away across the water. You would no doubt prefer the men you have encamped here to join the hunt. Our interests may both be served by an understanding?’

Gryvan raised his eyebrows. ‘So you seek what? Safe passage back to your own lands? Or to exchange Dargannan-Haig gold for mine?’

Jain T’erin smiled slightly, the nervousness all but gone from him now.

‘If I have your word on the safety of my men in what would follow, I will deliver the fort to you. After that, we would take service with you if that was your wish. Or return to our homeland.’

‘Igryn’s judgement was ever poor. He cannot even buy loyalty, it seems.’ Gryvan regarded the messenger for a moment. ‘You are young to lead a warrior band. Old enough, at least, to see how this battle must fall out, and old enough to try to bring your men safe out of it. There is some courage in venturing out to stand before me, I suppose.’

The High Thane closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, he fixed T’erin with a cold glare, his face now stern.

‘I will tell you my answer,’ said Gryvan. ‘You took the coin of my enemy and your men stand alongside his behind walls I have sworn to bring down. Igryn oc Dargannan-Haig mistook himself when he disavowed his oath to me and sought to set aside the obligations his Blood owes mine. He kept for himself taxes that are rightfully mine, for no better reason than greed. He gives sanctuary to pirates and brigands who prey upon the merchants of Vaymouth and Tal Dyre, and the goods they have stolen find their way into his treasury. And when I demand recompense, he imprisons my Steward and denies my authority. The gold Igryn has bought you and your warriors with is mine, little whore-soldier.

‘Whatever cave or hovel he is hiding in, my armies will have him soon and he will learn the price of betrayal. As will all who stand against me. Not one stone of the fort above us here will stand. Not one of those within its walls will see another dawn after I have torn them down, and you will be brought before me with your hands struck off and your eyes put out. I will gut you myself and send your head back to your kingling in Dornach.’

‘But . . .’ stammered T’erin, ‘I will give you An Caman. You need spend no more of your people’s blood upon it . . .’

Gryvan laughed harshly.

‘You think a High Thane is so feeble a thing, so fearful or soft, that the sight of blood would concern him? Has Dornach forgotten so easily the mettle of the True Bloods? If I have to swim through the spilled blood of my own men to do it, I will see every living thing within those walls dead and laid out at my feet. Go back and tell your people they can expect nothing from me but a swift journey to the Sleeping Dark.’

The mercenary held out his hands and started to speak. Before he could do so, Kale seized his arms and pushed him from the tent. The High Thane sighed and sank a little deeper into his chair as his bodyguard returned. He sent the footman away with a flick of his wrist.

Gryvan beckoned Kale closer and the warrior stepped forwards, inclining his head a touch that he might hear the Thane’s soft-spoken words.

‘Our friend from Dornach is unfortunate to find himself in a more tightly woven web than he knew. In other times his would have been a welcome offer, but Dargannan is not the only Blood with lessons to learn. I am not done with Kilkry and Lannis. I will see their strength spent and broken on these slopes yet.’

‘That strength is all but gone, my lord,’ said Kale. ‘They sent two thousand men apiece to campaign with you. Less than half that number could now take the field.’

‘Still, that is more than I will send back to them. They may conceal them better than Igryn, but their instincts are still those of rebels.’

The Thane pressed the palms of his hands into his eyes.

‘Ah, Kale,’ he said, ‘my bones are too old for plotting in the depth of the night. I long to be back in Vaymouth. It’s been too long this time.’

‘Your bones are not so old,’ said his bodyguard unsmilingly, ‘and to be always plotting is the fate of the Thane of all the Bloods. Igryn is almost finished. He cannot hide forever. We could be back in Vaymouth in a month, I think.’

Gryvan yawned, putting his hand to Kale’s shoulder for a moment.

‘No doubt,’ he said. ‘Well, I’ll not sleep again now I’ve been woken. Slumber’s an unreliable companion as the years go by: irresistible when you’re in its embrace, then irrecoverable when you’re parted from it for a while. Send for our loyal northern captains, and have someone bring me clothes more fitting to receive them in.’

Kale gave a shallow bow as he backed away, then turned and passed out into the night.

Taim Narran dar Lannis-Haig, captain of Castle Anduran, was ushered into the council tent by Kale. The two exchanged a loveless glance. Close behind him came Roaric nan Kilkry-Haig, the younger son of Lheanor, Thane of the Kilkry Blood. Gryvan awaited them on his wooden throne, now wearing a fine ceremonial cape and with his sheathed sword across his knees. On either side of him stood Shield guards, resplendent in formal dress as they stared ahead.

‘A cold night to be making plans,’ said Gryvan, ‘but war makes harsh demands upon us all.’

Taim said nothing. Roaric shifted uncomfortably at his side.

‘Too cold for pleasantries, I see. So,’ continued the High Thane, ‘when light returns, we attempt the walls again. Your companies shall lead the assault.’

Taim lowered his eyes, his teeth clenched and his knuckles showing white as he gripped the hilt of his sword. The faintest of winces crossed his face as he heard Roaric draw breath at his side. Taim knew only too well how loosely Lheanor’s son held his temper when it stirred within him. The younger man let anger colour his voice as he spoke.

‘My father gave me two thousand of our finest men to bring in answer to your summons to war,’ Roaric said, ‘and hundreds of them have surrendered their lives in your cause. More than half a thousand dead from plagues and fevers or on the battlefield, the same again unable to rise from their sleeping mats. In every battle, and now in every attempt upon the walls of this petty castle, it is Kilkry and Lannis that must be to the fore. Am I to leave every one of my men dead in these hills? When will the other Bloods lead the charge?’

‘The hunger for glory of our northern brothers is not what it once was, I see,’ said the High Thane in a level voice.

Roaric started to reply. Gryvan cut him off. ‘You should choose your words with more care when addressing your High Thane. It is a long time since yours was first amongst the Bloods. Your father took an oath to me, as did Croesan, the master of our friend Taim here. You stand now under that oath. You are young, and for the sake of your father I will overlook it, but you speak poorly when you call this my cause. It is in the cause of all the Bloods and all the Thanes that one who forgets his duties, as Igryn oc Dargannan-Haig has done, must be brought to heel. There can be no order if such as he go unrestrained. You do not desire chaos, I assume?’

There was a flush of colour in Roaric’s cheeks and his eyes showed a wildness for an instant before he mastered himself. ‘We have not the engines to break An Caman,’ he said tightly.

Gryvan gave a half-laugh. ‘This is no Highfast, to shatter armies upon its walls. It is fit only to frighten bandits and robbers. You have scaling ladders, and the courage of your men: take an arm’s width of the battlements and the army will be a flood following in your wake.’ He turned to Taim Narran. ‘And does our captain of Lannis-Haig share your fears?’

Taim looked up. His face bore deeper lines and darker shades than did Roaric’s. His short hair was fading to grey from the black of its forgotten youth. Nothing about his expression betrayed his thoughts save for his eyes. There was a measured, deep-rooted strength about them as he met the High Thane’s gaze.

‘Neither I nor any of my men fear to die,’ he said, ‘though I, and they, would rather have a better reason to greet the Sleeping Dark. They lack the stores within the fort to last another month, and if we waited they would come out of their own accord. Igryn himself is beaten, a fugitive with only the mountains themselves to keep him from capture. You have half a dozen companies out hunting him in the mountains south of here. He will be yours in a day, or a week, and then again this fastness will mean nothing.’

Gryvan oc Haig spoke slowly and clearly.

‘Perhaps you speak the truth, Taim Narran. I do not care. Understand me well: it is my will that the walls above be broken and that Lannis and Kilkry lead the way. And here and now, my will rules. Your domain is the precincts of Castle Anduran, and they lie very far from here. My domain runs from the Glas to these very hills. I am Thane of Thanes, lord of your lord. Every one of your men who can walk and hold a sword will stand ready at dawn.’

‘I understand you well, my lord,’ said Taim, bowing his head. Roaric once again started to speak. Taim touched his arm and turned him away. He liked Roaric despite his youthful failings, and had no wish to see him harm himself still more in the High Thane’s eyes. They walked out of the tent, to wake their men and await the day.

Gryvan grunted and glanced at Kale.

‘Roaric is a fool,’ he said. ‘It’s as well there’s another between him and his father’s high seat. Our friend Taim Narran is of better stuff, I think.’

Kale shrugged. ‘He knows no loyalty save to Lannis-Haig, lord. Let me set a knifeman on him. It could be done with no finger to point at us afterwards, and his loss would wound Croesan to the quick.’

‘Indeed,’ laughed Gryvan, ‘but you allow your dislike of the man to cloud your judgement. My Shadowhand back in Vaymouth would never forgive such impulsiveness. No, we need not take so hasty a step. Taim will lead his men to slaughter tomorrow, though in his heart he would rather strike my head from my shoulders. We should be thankful that the old traditions bind them still in Lannis and Kilkry. Because Croesan has bent the knee to me, Taim will in his turn do my bidding. It would strain his precious honour beyond the breaking point to do otherwise.’

The Thane of Thanes rubbed his hands together. ‘This cold could crack a mountain pine. Have a brazier brought in here. And bread. I must be strong and hearty if I am to savour what the morning will bring.’

Orisian woke late, from a dream that slipped away before he could grasp it. In those first bleary instants of wakefulness there was a fleeting memory of his brother’s face. He sat up in his bed and looked about the room. He had shared it with Fariel when his brother lived. While the sickness had been stalking the passages and chambers of the castle, this was where Fariel had lain: sweating, muttering, drifting in and out of violent sleep. During those awful weeks Orisian had slept instead in Anyara’s room, until she too had fallen sick. Then he had gone with Ilain to the chamber-maids’ quarters.

For months after his brother was wrapped in a sheet and carried away to The Grave on a black-sailed boat, Orisian had refused to return to this bedchamber. When at last he had found the courage to come back, it had been unexpectedly comforting. He often dreamed of his brother in this bed, and they were almost always fond dreams. His mother Lairis too seemed to have left something of her presence in the room, though Orisian’s memories of her had a specificity that those of Fariel never possessed. His image of his mother had turned over the years into a mosaic of details: the smell and feel of her hair upon his face; the warm, strengthening clasp of her hand about his; the sound of her singing. These things infiltrated his dreams, and there were times when he awoke to discover in momentary surprise and confusion that she was not with him. They were lonely times, but soothing in their way, too.

He had just shaken sleep off when Ilain bustled in, bringing water and a cloth. She hardly spoke beyond wishing him a good morning. Her thoughts on the subject of late risers were almost palpable. By the time she left, Orisian was reproaching himself for his laziness.

The day passed quickly. In the morning, he went with Anyara over the causeway into town. They wandered about the market, jostling their way through the amiable crowd. They came across Jienna, the daughter of the merchant who owned fully a quarter of the stall plots. She was the same age as Orisian, and pretty. She and Anyara gossiped gaily, more or less ignoring Orisian. When he did steal into a gap in their conversation to compliment her on her dress, she laughed. Thankfully, it was a friendly, grateful laugh.

Afterwards, Anyara poked him in the back and teased him. He reddened and cursed her without conviction. She soon tired of the game and they turned back to idle talk: how many guests would come to the feast in the castle, who would be the Winter King at the celebration, which of the market traders was doing the most business.

They found a stall selling little honey-coated cakes, a delicacy their father had always loved. When they had been children he would often return from visits to Drinan or Glasbridge with packets of them hidden away in his baggage. It had been a regular game for Orisian, Anyara and Fariel to dig through Kennet’s belongings in search of the sticky treasures which he, until the very moment of discovery, would deny the existence of. The passage of time had shuffled roles and relationships. Now, Orisian and Anyara bought a small box of the cakes to take back to their father.

Later, Orisian went looking for Inurian. He searched the castle without success. Eventually he was directed out through the tiny postern gate at the rear of the stables. A passageway burrowed through the castle walls and gave out, through a heavy steel-banded door, on to the rocks of the isle’s seaward flank. There was a crude jetty, and alongside it a little sailboat: Inurian’s, which he must have left there after his most recent crossing to the far shore of the estuary. It was a simple, fast boat, sturdy enough for short trips when the weather was kind. It would not survive in such an exposed berth if caught by high wind or wave, though, and Orisian guessed that it must soon be moved to the town’s quay-side. He always enjoyed those rare occasions when Inurian took him out on the water, skimming along so close to the surface that an outstretched hand could plough a sparkling furrow through the waves. The short journey from castle to harbour might be a last chance to have a trip in the boat before the winter took hold.

With his back to the great bulk of the castle, not a sign of human life or habitation disturbed Orisian’s view north across the Glas estuary to the heights beyond. There was almost no wind and the great bay was as near to stillness as it could come. He stood for a moment watching the distant white shapes of seabirds chasing one another low across the water. The Car Anagais, a rugged ridge of bare mountain tops skirted by dark forests, dominated the northern shore. The summits succeeded one another in a jagged line stretching off in either direction. To the north, he knew, they ran all the way up towards Glasbridge where they merged into the greater ramparts of the Car Criagar, and far to the south they marched down to the blasted headland of Dol Harigaig, where the ridge collapsed into the sea in a welter of broken, jumbled rock. Far beyond Orisian’s sight, a bleak island lay there, lashed by the ocean. It skulked off the point of Dol Harigaig, as if the last of the mountains had slid intact into the water and left only its peak above the breakers.

An old story said the isle was the body of a giant, one of the First Race, cast into the sea. It had a more acute meaning for the people of Kolglas now. Dozens of their kinsfolk had found their final, fiery rest there during the Fever, their bodies carried to its huge pyres by boats with black sails. That had been the last journey Orisian’s brother and mother had made, bound up in linen winding sheets and crowded in with the other dead upon the deck of a corpse ship. Until that grim year, the island had been called Il Dromnone, an ancient name. Now, everyone knew it as The Grave.

Orisian slipped and slithered along the rocks at the foot of the wall to where he could see Inurian crouching by the water’s edge, poking around amongst the stones with a stick. The hem of the na’kyrim’s dark robe was trailing in the sea.

Orisian called to him. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Looking for sea urchins.’

‘Why?’

Inurian sat back on a convenient boulder. ‘Well, firstly because if you dry them and crush them to a powder they are said to prevent dampness on the chest when taken in broth. I doubt it myself, but who knows? Secondly, because I had a good amount ground up, at which point Idrin chose to knock the bowl over. Most of it disappeared between the floorboards.’

‘Ah.’

Inurian tossed the stick into the water disconsolately. ‘There are none here, though,’ he said.

Orisian sat beside him. They gazed out towards the hills. Inurian at last noticed that his robe was sodden and began to wring it out, muttering under his breath.

After a minute, Orisian narrowed his eyes and cocked his head to one side. He thought he could see, so faint that it might be nothing, a hair-thin thread of smoke rising from amongst the trees on the distant shore.

‘Can you see smoke?’ he asked, knowing that Inurian’s half-Kyrinin eyes were a good deal sharper than his own.

‘Indeed,’ said Inurian without looking up. ‘It has been there for some time. Quite careless.’

For a moment Orisian was puzzled, then he understood and glanced at the na’kyrim.

‘Kyrinin? A Kyrinin camp?’

Inurian nodded.

‘Fox, then?’ pressed Orisian. ‘There’s only the Fox clan over there, isn’t there?’

Inurian’s Kyrinin father had been of the Fox clan. Other than that, Orisian knew almost nothing of the inhuman side of his heritage. Though he had never dared to ask, he was almost certain that Inurian went into the hills and forests of the Car Anagais not just in search of mushrooms or herbs but also to visit the camps of the Fox. Much of his longing to accompany the na’kyrim on one of those journeys was rooted in the wish to see such a camp. Whatever others of his kind might think of them, Orisian felt more curiosity than anything else about the Kyrinin who lived upon the fringes of his homeland.

‘Only the Fox,’ agreed Inurian. ‘I suppose they are right to think themselves safe in such an inaccessible spot. Myself, I would still call it careless to give so clear a sign. I would have thought better of her.’

‘Who?’ asked Orisian.

Inurian blinked. ‘Whoever’s camp it is,’ he said. ‘Them.’

‘There’s no danger to them there, surely?’ Orisian said.

Inurian shrugged. ‘Your uncle claims that land, even if no one lives there. Now is not the best time for Kyrinin to be so visible within Lannis-Haig borders.’

‘But if they’re Fox . . . it’s the White Owls in Anlane who are causing trouble.’

Inurian regarded his young companion with an arched eyebrow. ‘Do you really believe that is a distinction all your countrymen would make, Orisian? You know better than that, or you’ve not the wit I credit you with. Not everyone thinks of these things the way you do; very few, in fact. Fox and White Owl have been at each other’s throats since long before your Blood was even imagined, but to your fellow Huanin they are all woodwights and that is an end to it.’

Orisian could not deny it. The War of the Tainted had put a chasm between the two races. The three kingships of the Huanin race—Aygll, Alsire and Adravane—had stood together against the united strength of the Kyrinin clans. For all the savagery of the centuries since, nothing had matched the slaughter done in that vast conflict. The dead had thronged the fields until their stench choked even the carrion-eaters and it was said a man could walk for a day upon the backs of corpses. The Kyrinin city of Tane, the most wondrous city there had ever been, was destroyed. The war had ended only when the Anain, the most potent and secret of all the races, stirred from their unknowable rest to take possession of ruined Tane and raise the vast Deep Rove to engulf it and all its surrounds.

For the victorious kingships there had been no reward. Alsire declined in sad disarray until it was reborn as the lesser Kingship of Dornach, and Adravane began its long retreat into decadence, madness and isolation. Aygll tore itself apart from within and was extinguished in the bloodletting of the Storm Years, its lands inherited by the Bloods that rose from its ashes. All of that marred history was there beneath the surface of the moment in which Orisian gazed out towards the distant campfire of a people he could never know.

‘I didn’t tell you about Naradin’s boar, did I?’ Orisian asked. ‘It had a White Owl arrowhead in it, a fresh wound. And it was no distance from Anduran. No Kyrinin have been seen so close to the city for years, Rothe said.’

‘Now that is strange,’ Inurian said. A frown flickered across his gentle features.

‘Croesan thought it was just some young hunters, flaunting their bravery by coming so far into our lands.’

Inurian shook his head. ‘The Thane misreads it. This is not a time of year when hunting parties range far. No, that tastes wrong. Whatever the reason is, it’s not youths showing off. Croesan would do well to pay more heed to such signs.’

The na’kyrim’s frown deepened. He sank into thought, his eyes locked unseeingly on the rocks at his feet.

Orisian looked back towards the northern shore.

‘They should be going to their winter quarters, shouldn’t they?’ he asked, a trace of wistfulness in his voice.

‘Yes,’ Inurian said, rousing himself. ‘They’re on the move. All the a’ans scattered through the forests will be coming together at the vo’ans, the winter camps, to wait for spring. A small a’an, that one. Ten or twenty people.’

Orisian stared at the thin trail of smoke. However impossible it might be, his longing to see for himself what it signified would not go away. Somewhere out there was a world in which the past did not weigh so heavily, where there were no dark, grief-laden walls to loom over him and no reminders of what might have been. If that world did not reside on the pitching deck of a Tal Dyre ship, perhaps it lay in the wandering, forest-bound life of the Kyrinin. Even as he watched, the firesign faded away, until there was no hint that it had ever been. He looked at Inurian.

‘Inurian, do you ever wish—’

Inurian interrupted him. ‘It’s unwise to dance with wishes unless you’ve the mettle for it. Wishing for what is not is a fast way to poison your heart.’ The na’kyrim tousled Orisian’s hair with rough affection. ‘Your heart’s a lot less poisoned than most I’ve known, Orisian. I like it that way.’

Orisian held his tongue. A vague sense of longing stayed with him.

‘Once Winterbirth is out of the way, I must move my boat to a safer berth,’ said Inurian. ‘Would you perhaps help me with that?’

Orisian smiled.

The sun rose upon the last day of autumn. Its pale touch brushed the snowfields and peaks of the high Tan Dihrin, and then swept down towards the valley of the Glas. It fell first of all upon the fortified town of Tanwrye, nestled at the foot of the Vale of Stones, marking the northernmost border of Lannis-Haig. Behind the walls, weary men were leaving their watches and bowls of gruel and bread were being passed out from steaming pots.

The grey light flowed on, south and west, over the reeds and rushes of rough grazing land towards Targlas. Cattle roused themselves from sleep, and snipe and plovers stirred amongst the tussocks. Reaching Targlas, the sun picked out columns of smoke rising from a hundred hearths as the drovers, herders and trappers warmed their cold and drowsy bones. A flock of sheep was being driven out, their shepherd shouting at his dogs. The great River Glas wove its way past the town, and the sun followed until it found Anduran.

The city was already half-woken. Traders were setting up their stalls in the square and dogs chased one another down side streets. The great castle by the Glas opened its gates even as the first hint of dawn fell upon it. Torches upon its battlements were doused and a flock of crows clattered up into the lightening sky. Beyond Anduran, the dawn reached the flat pools and misty islands of the Glas Water, lifting the marshes from their slumber. The ruins of old Kan Avor came sluggishly and reluctantly out of the night. Herons fell away from those broken walls on outstretched wings, heading out over the water to hunt. The day’s first light found men already at work on Sirian’s Dyke, repairing sections of the great dam that might not hold through the coming season.

At last the sun came to Glasbridge, and to the sea. The docks were alive and bustling as fishing boats opened their holds and crowds gathered to haggle over the best of the catch. The Glas poured its waters into the sea, and the light rushed on over the widening bay, picking out the foamy wave crests. To the north it played across the rocky ridge of the Car Anagais and rippled over the treetops of the dark forests along the shore. To the south, it chased the darkness from the hamlets and farmsteads along the coast, until finally it fell upon Kolglas. Like a great granite hillock, the castle on its island was lit by the day, and the lamps burning in its windows were one by one extinguished.

When this new day had run its course and passed into night, winter would be born.

In that bright morning the Thane of the Lannis-Haig Blood rode out from his castle and into the heart of Anduran. Half his household came with him. Croesan’s Shield marched at the head of the procession, bearing pennants. The Thane himself rode just behind them, flanked by a dozen crossbowmen. His mount was a magnificent grey charger bedecked with silver armour and trailing ribbons from its halter and saddle. Behind Croesan came Naradin the Bloodheir and his wife Eilan, riding side by side and waving to those who lined the streets. In their wake followed a succession of retainers, officials and distinguished visitors from Glasbridge and Targlas. All were extravagantly dressed, as if they were some luxuriant pageant fresh come to town, and with the flags and banners snapping in a fresh wind it was a spectacle as fine as any Anduran had seen since the Bloodheir’s wedding two summers gone.

The street running down from the castle through the Crafts’ Quarter to the wide square in the middle of the town was packed with people, all cheering their Thane to the echo. The new Feast Hall was an imposing presence on the western side of the square: a great timber edifice that dwarfed the houses clustered on either side of it. Its heavy doors sat in a carved frame, surmounted by the Lannis crest. Before the building a wooden stage had been set up. Croesan drew to a halt and dismounted. As his Shield hurried to form ranks on the platform, he went alone with Naradin and Eilan into the great hall.

Despite the excitement outside there was a quiet grandeur about the deserted chamber. Its vaulting oaken beams, its walls and the very air they enclosed seemed imbued with expectancy.

Croesan turned to the young couple and smiled.

‘It will be the happiest Winterbirth Anduran has seen in many years,’ he said. He put his arms around their shoulders, holding them tight against him. ‘To be a grandfather must be the finest thing in the world,’ he chuckled.

‘Even for a Thane?’ asked Eilan.

‘Especially for a Thane. At this moment my grandson means more to me than all our lands and castles put together.’

‘Have a care,’ said Naradin, ‘someone might hear you.’

Croesan laughed and released his son, who eased himself down into the nearest chair. Eilan kissed the Thane on his cheek.

‘You’ll be the finest grandfather any boy could wish for,’ she said.

‘Thank you,’ said Croesan. ‘I hope you are right.’

‘Of course she is,’ said Naradin.

Croesan walked towards the high table. He stood beside the immense chair that would be his seat during the night’s revels and laid his hand upon it.

‘It is a strange thing, to feel you have arrived somewhere that you have been travelling towards without knowing it. Anduran thrives, my grandson sleeps in the castle. I can see the future through his eyes. He will sit in this chair years from now, surrounded by his people, and by his own children. For tonight at least, I can imagine that there is nothing more for me to do.’

‘Until tomorrow,’ said Eilan wryly.

‘Until tomorrow,’ agreed Croesan. He sighed, a momentary distraction from his pleasure. ‘Your mother would have been so proud of you,’ he said to Naradin.

The Bloodheir had never known his mother—she had died in his birthing—but still a grave expression came across his face. ‘And of you,’ he said.

Croesan shrugged that off. ‘I have only done what was required of me,’ he said. The smile came bursting back upon his face. ‘None of it has given me half the joy of becoming a grandfather. I have the liberty of imagining I have nothing more to do, but the same cannot be said of the pair of you.’

Eilan raised her eyebrows at him.

‘I will want a granddaughter next,’ Croesan continued. ‘And more after that. I wish to be plagued by boisterous children in my dotage. I require a throng of them to pull at my beard and play tricks upon my failing eyesight and disturb my rest with laughter. Now that truly would be a happiness beyond measure.’

Eilan laughed. Naradin put on a face of mock horror.

‘You will allow us some time to recover from the first, I hope,’ he muttered.

He received a hefty jab in the ribs from his wife for that.

‘Us? What have you to recover from?’ she demanded. ‘The effort was mostly mine, as I recall.’

‘Enough, enough,’ said the Thane. ‘No arguments.’

He looked around him once more, and made a deep, satisfied sound somewhere at the back of his throat.

‘I am not done with building yet,’ he said. T would give you, and your son, a gift. A house, fit for future Thanes, where you can spend the summers. No, humour an old man. We will build you a grand house in Grive, close enough that I can come and stay when the years weigh so heavily that I need a few days’ rest away from Anduran. We will make gardens where your children can play, and stables and kennels for your horses and hunting hounds.’

‘That is a happy thought,’ said Naradin. ‘Thank you.’

Eilan embraced the Thane and kissed him once again. Croesan smiled contentedly and ran a hand through her fine hair.

‘Will you give me a little time with my son, Eilan? Perhaps you could keep our guests outside amused for a few minutes more. I am sure they would rather have your company than mine, in any case.’

As the Bloodheir’s wife left the hall, there was a resurgence of excited cries from the crowds.

‘They love her almost as well as you or I,’ observed Croesan.

‘Not as well as I,’ said Naradin. ‘Anyway, they would cheer a well-dressed donkey today. It has been a good year; they’re ready to celebrate.’

Croesan nodded. ‘The best year in a long time. There’s one shadow I can’t quite escape, though, even now. I wish with all my heart that Taim Narran was here to share all of this with us. Winterbirth will not feel right without that man here. I should not have let him go south.’

‘What else could you do?’ his son asked. ‘You could hardly refuse the High Thane’s direct command in such a matter: we might argue over tithes and levies and the settlement of his warriors on our lands, but a call to arms is different. And Taim would never have allowed you to send so many of his men without him. You know what he’s like.’

‘Better than he knows himself. He hasn’t the heart for the life of the sword any more. It’s only his loyalty that’s kept him from seeing it. This bloodletting in Dargannan-Haig will have been hard for him.’

‘One more mark in the ledger against Gryvan oc Haig,’ said Naradin.

Croesan ran his hand over the arm of the great chair and glanced across at his son. ‘As you say. One more amongst many. Do not forget them. I hate to speak of such things on what should be a joyful day, but you should know that I fear Gryvan is not done with us yet. From the Steward’s hints, I think our High Thane is about to demand extra tribute, to meet the costs of subduing Igryn.’

‘The blood of our warriors is not enough for him, then,’ muttered Naradin.

‘Apparently not. A part of me would long to refuse him if he does make the demand, but I would have your counsel on it. These decisions are no longer mine to make alone. The safety of our Blood will fall to you before very many more years have passed.’

‘Do you know where Lheanor stands?’ asked Naradin. ‘If Gryvan means to grind us down still further, he will have the same in mind for Kilkry.’

‘He will,’ agreed Croesan. ‘He sees no difference between Lannis and Kilkry, and I would have it no other way. I have sent word to Lheanor. It is time he and I met again, in any case.’

Naradin shook his head. ‘Has Gryvan really become so blind that he sees no danger in driving such wedges between the True Bloods? Does he no longer care that we are the ones guarding his borders against the Black Road ?’

‘Ah well, there is the nub of it, isn’t it? The Gyre Bloods have not bestirred themselves for thirty years. It seems they’re more interested in arguing amongst themselves than in renewing their feuds with us. Only Horin-Gyre out of all of them even bothers to send scouts and raiders over the Vale of Stones any more. I keep reminding Behomun that there are still skirmishes being fought up there, but I fear his master Gryvan knows as well as we do that—for the time being at least—the threat from the north is not what it once was. Thus he feels free to play his games. After all, with Kilkry at our side we could still turn back the entire Horin-Gyre Blood; Haig is a different matter. If it came to open war, Gryvan could count on Ayth and Taral to join him against us. We would last a few months at best.’

‘So,’ said Naradin, ‘however we might long to defy Gryvan oc Haig, we will bite our tongues and do enough at least to avoid an open breach.’

‘Yes,’ Croesan sighed. ‘I pledged loyalty to Haig when I became Thane, as you will no doubt have to do when my time is done and yours arrives. Gryvan may not put much store by that promise, but I hope we can hold to it even in the face of his provocations.’

The Thane clasped his hands together and shook himself, as if to shed such unwelcome thoughts.

‘Let’s not dwell on such things any more than we must,’ he said. ‘There are celebrations to get started, and I mean to enjoy them.’

Naradin rose from his seat and took his father’s hands in his own.

‘One day, your grandson will love you just as I do, and as Eilan does. Even the High Thane cannot deprive us of that.’

Croesan clapped Naradin on the shoulder.

‘That is true, that is true. Now let us go and save your beloved wife from all the excitement.’

Rothe came to find Orisian in his chambers. During their stay at Anduran their routine of regular practice had all but lapsed, and the shieldman was insistent that it should now be resumed. Thus Orisian found himself out in the castle’s courtyard, parrying the big man’s weighty blows as they circled each other. They used wooden practice swords, but still the impacts sent stinging shivers through Orisian’s hand.

When he had been younger he had found such exercises embarrassing. They all too often attracted a small audience of onlookers. He had little instinct for swordplay, and it had been a long and sometimes painful learning process. He was at least good enough now that his work did not provoke outright mirth amongst any observers. Today, in any case, everyone was busy with preparations for Winterbirth and hardly a glance was spared for the two mismatched sparring partners. The one exception was Kylane, who paused to watch as he wandered past. His presence distracted Orisian, who at once received a cracking blow on the back of his knuckles. Kylane strolled off, chuckling under his breath and shaking his head; perhaps, thought Orisian, lamenting the ineptitude of his future charge.

At the end, as Orisian sat breathless on the cobblestones, flexing and massaging his sword hand, Rothe grunted in muted approval.

‘You’ll be a swordsman yet.’

‘If my arm doesn’t fall off first,’ replied Orisian.

Rothe offered him a broad hand. As Orisian took it and hauled himself upright, he could feel the hard ridges that scarred the warrior’s skin. Rothe had spent most of his life with a sword in his hand, fighting Kyrinin in Anlane or Black Road raiders in the Vale of Stones, and had been marked by the weapon. He had never married; Kylane said—always out of Rothe’s hearing—that his sword was too jealous of his company to allow anyone to come between them. Though it was not a life Orisian would choose he had never seen any sign of regret in Rothe.

‘What would you be if not a shieldman, Rothe?’ he asked on impulse.

A crude smile formed in Rothe’s beard and the great man shrugged in a small, almost vulnerable way.

‘There are other things of worth,’ he said, ‘but none I know any-thing of. How could I say what else I might be than what I am?’

Late in the afternoon of that day, Orisian looked down from a window in the keep upon a strange scene. The acrobats who were to perform at the feast were filing through the castle gates and into the courtyard. They were big men, their bulk accentuated by rough fur jackets and capes. They wore leather boots and trousers, and each carried a small pack over his shoulder. The last few to enter were laden with small chests, barrels and cloths and a pair of long, thick poles that looked freshly cut.

There were perhaps a dozen in the company. Orisian had never seen so many masterless folk together. All were long-haired, their locks tied back and dyed in exotic hues of rust and gold. They walked lightly despite their size. When Orisian looked more closely he realised that there were a few women amongst them, a trifle smaller than the men but dressed just the same and looking no less powerful.

He found Anyara loitering in the doorway at the foot of the keep, watching the new arrivals with frank fascination.

‘They’re very . . . big, aren’t they?’ she said.

‘I suppose. They all look the same.’

‘Well, perhaps they’re all related,’ smirked Anyara. ‘You know what they say about the breeding habits of masterless folk. Still, they look well enough put together to me.’

A few of the castle’s guardsmen were gathered outside their quarters. Muffled laughter every now and again suggested some coarse discussion of the female newcomers, yet not one of the acrobats so much as glanced across. They worked with practised efficiency, in silence, as they arranged their equipment on the cobblestones and checked over it.

‘It must be a good show, with so many of them,’ mused Orisian. ‘Where are they going to perform?’

‘Ilain said they were going to give a show inside the hall, then do some tricks out here in the yard later.’

‘Where do you suppose they’re from? It must be Koldihrve, or somewhere near there, for there to be so many. Don’t you think?’

Anyara shrugged. ‘Or somewhere on the Kilkry coast. There are still masterless villages there, aren’t there?’

As they watched, Bair the stablehand wandered across to peer at the collection of wares arrayed in the courtyard. He reached out to touch a coil of thick rope, but one of the acrobats flashed out a hand to seize his wrist. Surprise flung Bair’s eyes and mouth wide, and had he not been mute he would surely have cried out. The man shook his head a little before gesturing Bair away. The boy edged backwards, continuing to watch with wondering eyes from one of the stalls in the stable block.

Orisian glanced up at the sky. It had darkened in the last half hour as the sun sank away. The castle yard was falling into shadow. Torches would be brought out soon, for Winterbirth was a night when darkness must be held at bay.

‘We should be getting ready,’ he said to Anyara. ‘The feast will be starting before long.’

She nodded, turning to follow him into the keep with an almost wistful glance back over her shoulder towards the party of acrobats.

Inside, early arrivals for the night’s feasting had begun to assemble, gathering in small knots in the great hall. There were bundles here and there of the gifts they had brought for the Thane. Already the mood was jovial. Animated conversations filled the hall with sound. Etha was moving along the tables, checking the trays of bread and flasks of ale and wine that had been set out. She was oblivious of the crowds around her as she muttered under her breath, no doubt compiling a list of reprimands for those who had laid the tables.

‘It’ll be a long night,’ said Orisian, remembering Kylane’s words at Glasbridge with a slight smile.

‘Of course it will,’ said Anyara. ‘It always is.’

Inurian intercepted them as they made their way up to their rooms to change.

‘There you are, there you are,’ said the na’kyrim.

‘Here we are indeed,’ Anyara agreed with great gravity.

‘Your father asked to see you both,’ Inurian said. ‘He sent me to find you.’

‘He’s up, then?’ Orisian asked, feeling a little surge of hope. Perhaps the clouds had lifted at last.

‘Come and see,’ Inurian told him, beckoning them to follow as he set off up the stairs.

They found Kennet standing in the middle of his bedchamber, frowning in concentration as he examined the fur of the heavy cloak he wore. He looked up as the three of them entered, and even in that first glimpse Orisian could see that his father had come back at least some way to himself. His eyes had a focus and life that had not been there for a long time.

‘This cloak is not what it once was,’ the lord of Castle Kolglas said glumly.

Anyara ducked under his arms and hugged him around the chest. Kennet swayed fractionally and for a moment seemed unsure what to do; then he returned the embrace.

‘There are plenty of furs in the market,’ Anyara said as she stepped back. ‘We’ll buy you a new one.’

Kennet smiled at his daughter and cupped her face for a moment in his broad hand. ‘Very well, then. That’s what we’ll we do.’

As Orisian watched him, he could not help but think how old Kennet looked. He might have hauled himself out from under the shadows once again, but there was a price to be paid. However much brighter his eyes were, the skin beneath them was dark, the lids above them limp and heavy. When Kennet smiled, as he did now, turning to Orisian, the expression had to work its way up from some deep place where it had been left, forgotten and unused, for many weeks.

‘Orisian,’ Kennet said, ‘come here and let me see you.’

He regarded his son with gently appraising eyes.

‘You look well,’ he said.

‘And you look better,’ Orisian replied. He felt a familiar relief settling into him, tension easing. It was what he always felt when his father recovered from one of his dark moods: the lifting of the fear that one day the paralysing grief would not retreat, but would settle forever into Kennet’s heart and bones.

‘I am,’ Kennet said. ‘Perhaps it was those honey cakes you bought for me that did it, eh?’

‘Or the promise of eating and drinking to wild excess tonight, perhaps?’ suggested Inurian.

‘Be still,’ Kennet chided the na’kyrim. ‘Just because you do not share our human failings is no reason to spoil our enjoyment of them, old friend.’

He cast an arm around Orisian’s shoulder, and reached out to draw Anyara close on the other side.

‘Will you forgive me my weakness this last little while?’ he asked them softly.

‘There’s nothing to forgive,’ murmured Orisian.

‘And it is not a weakness to be sad,’ Anyara added emphatically.

Their father squeezed them tighter for a moment and then released them.

‘Whether it’s a weakness or not, you should know I am sorry for it. I would spare you it if I could. I love you both dearly, and you deserve better . . .’ His voice faltered, and for the briefest of moments a kind of anguish was in his face. He shook his head sharply, almost angrily. ‘I must rest a little before the feast. Just a little. But listen, first let us make a plan. Once Winterbirth is done, we will make a journey. It’s been too long since we were out-side these walls together, the three of us.’

‘Where to?’ asked Anyara. ‘Anduran?’

‘No,’ said Kennet a fraction too quickly. ‘There will be time enough to see my brother later. Just the three of us.’

‘Let’s go to Kolkyre,’ Orisian said quietly. ‘To the markets, and the harbour.’ He had visited the seat of the Kilkry Thanes only a couple of times himself—he liked it for its vigour—but he knew his father loved it. Kennet had always said the winds there came clean from beyond the western horizon: the air you breathed there was new, without a past.

‘Yes,’ smiled Kennet. ‘Kolkyre. That’s a fine city.’

Far away in the north, beyond the Vale of Stones, a sprawling, gargantuan castle—a labyrinth of angular walls, towers and rough stone—lay across the bare rocky slopes of a mountain. Points of fiery light stood out where torches burned against the impending night, their flames tossed to and fro by the wind. Flecks of snow spun around the fortress. Here on the northern flanks of the vast Tan Dihrin, winter’s cold breath had begun to blow many days ago. But still, by ancient lore this was the night of Winterbirth, and only with the new moon could the season of ice truly be said to have arrived.

Deep in the castle’s guts, in a chamber draped with wolfskins and tapestries, stood a great bed. Posts as thick as a warrior’s thigh supported a pendulous canopy and beneath it lay a shrunken, frail old man who while he dreamed had gathered his sheets and blankets about him like a cocoon. At the foot of the bed, stretched out upon a bearskin rug, lay a dog: an ageing hunting hound with a dense coat of wiry, grizzled hair.

The door to the chamber eased open and a boy stepped in, bearing a lamp that he shaded with his hand. The dog raised its head but made no sound. The boy went soft-footed to the bed. The man lying there gave a groan and rolled. The boy took a startled step backwards and the light flickered at the shaking of his hand. There was a rattle in the sleeping man’s throat. He coughed and his rheumy eyes opened. His jaw worked as he moistened cracked lips.

‘Forgive me, my lord,’ murmured the boy. ‘You told me to wake you.’

The man brought a thin hand out from beneath the covers and laid it upon his face, tracing the sunken hollow of his cheek as if searching for the memory of who he was.

‘The healers forbade it, but they did not see me come,’ the boy said. ‘Nor did your lady.’

‘You did well,’ croaked the man, and let his hand fall away. ‘The healers are fools. They know as well as I that all their fretting won’t stay my death if my Road’s run its course.’ The dog stirred at the sound of its master’s voice and came to nuzzle at his dangling fingers.

‘It is Winterbirth, my lord. The night will shortly turn.’

‘Lift me up,’ the man told him, and the boy raised him into a sitting position and slid a pillow behind his back. The man was light, as if life had already begun to release him from beneath its weight.

‘Winterbirth,’ he breathed. ‘Tonight and tomorrow will tell all, then. Fate’s favour falls upon us or upon our enemies.’

Winding its way down the convoluted passages and stairwells, the sound of merriment came from some distant hall.

‘Fetch me something to drink, boy,’ said the old man. ‘Tonight I must toast the strength of my son and my daughter, who carry our dreams upon the Black Road . There will be no warmth for them this Winterbirth. Only battle and blood.’

The boy set his lamp down upon a table and hurried out. The man’s eyes closed and his head sank forwards a little upon his chest. The dog sat, quite still and patient, and watched him. The Thane Angain oc Horin-Gyre, dying in his vast, wind-scoured fortress of Hakkan, would be asleep once more by the time the boy returned, carrying an overflowing beaker.

The great hall of Castle Kolglas was livelier and noisier than it had been in a long time. Many torches burned high on the stone walls, throwing dancing shadows off the garlands of holly and ivy and pine strung between them. A fire blazed in the massive grate and braziers glowed in the corners of the hall. Tables lined with crowded benches ran down its length. Closest to the fire stood the high table where Kennet nan Lannis-Haig sat with Orisian, Anyara and Inurian. There were two chairs—those immediately to the right and the left of Kennet—that stood empty. Plates and cups filled with wine were set out before them as if they waited only for some tardy guests, but those for whom these seats were reserved would never come to claim them. At Winterbirth the dead were uneasy in their eternal sleep, and there was an old custom still kept in some houses of laying places for them at the feast. In Castle Kolglas, though, the table was arranged thus on every night of the year. Kennet sat as he always did, flanked by memory and loss.

The rest of the tables were packed with people from both castle and town. The great and the lowly of Kolglas came together on this night. The feast had begun at sunset, and would continue all through the night until the first dawn of winter. Already, with no more than an hour gone by, the free-flowing ale and wine had raised a hubbub of shouts and laughter. Servants rushed up and down bearing drinks and platters of bread and meats. Those of the guests who had most thoroughly slaked their thirst were thumping tankards on the tables to drive the servers to greater efforts. One of the youngest kitchen maids tumbled over a hunting dog that yelped and darted away. A cheer went up, and cries of dismay as the pitcher of ale she had been carrying shattered. The roar stirred Idrin the crow from his perch on one of the great roof beams and he flapped across to the next, croaking irritably.

Kennet laughed with the rest as the flustered girl struggled to her feet. He was buried in his great fur cloak like some hoary old trapper caught out by the snow. He had been complaining of the cold ever since entering the hall, but he seemed well enough.

‘You should speak, Kennet,’ said Inurian, ‘before the throng is too rowdy to listen.’

Kennet rose to his feet and pounded the table with a clenched fist. The revellers fell quiet, and every face was turned towards the lord of Castle Kolglas. He cleared his throat and took a mouthful of ale.

‘I shall keep you from your food only for a few moments,’ he called out, drawing a muffled chorus of approval, ‘but there are things that must be said on this night.’

His voice moved to a new, slower rhythm, and an absolute hush settled across the hall.

‘Tonight is the night of Winterbirth,’ said Kennet, ‘and for this one night there shall be no darkness in this place. I bid you keep the fires burning and hold the dark, and the winter, at bay. In the cold months that are to come, let this night of fire and good cheer be a warm memory in your hearts. When the Gods left this world much that was bright and good went with them. But the healing cycle of the seasons remains, and is not the least of the boons left to us. Rest heals many ills, for the earth beneath our feet as for us. Even in deepest winter, summer lies in the roots and in the ever-green and it will return. So let us mourn the slipping of the year into sleep and celebrate the promise of its waking, renewed.’

He lowered his head, and when he looked up again his voice had returned to its natural tones.

‘There is food and drink enough for twice your number, and there will be songs, and tales, and acrobats and music. But remember while you clear your plates and drain your mugs that many who should be with us here tonight are not. We are not what our forefathers were in the days of the Gods—the world breeds no heroes now—but still we are a hardy folk. Even the hardiest of us may regret our parting from those we hold dear, though. Some who cannot share our tables tonight rest in the Sleeping Dark, taken from us before their time was full; others may yet return. Many of the best of us are far away in the mountains of Dargannan, where they serve the oath that binds our Blood to that of Haig. I know many of you would wish it otherwise, and your misgivings are mine.

‘Nevertheless, our honour—the honour of the Lannis Blood—is upheld by their service. Without the Gods to guide and watch over us, we must find other things in the world to hold fast to. Honour is not the worst to choose. Therefore I bid you keep in your thoughts those honourable men who fight in the south as we celebrate the year’s turning. Let us hope that they, like the spring, shall soon return.’

There was a great cheer at that. The noise roused Idrin once more and as Kennet sank back into his chair, the black bird swept down and alighted upon Inurian’s shoulder. Kennet glanced across.

‘Can you not keep that bird under control, Inurian?’ he asked above the din. ‘Put it out of the hall or tie it down. Must we have it flapping about?’

‘I am sure Idrin would no more wish to miss the evening’s entertainments than the rest of us, my lord,’ Inurian said, passing a titbit from his plate to the crow, ‘and his sulking would be a sore trial to me if he was denied.’

Kennet looked doubtful. ‘Well, keep it away from me, then, if its delicate feelings will allow that much at least.’

A faint smile at the corner of Kennet’s mouth belied the harshness of his words. Inurian shrugged to dislodge Idrin and the crow flapped back into the roof. Orisian turned his gaze to the hall’s door. Almost in that instant, the figure he awaited bounded in to a howled reception that mixed welcome and mock horror, raising the din to new and deafening heights. The Winter King had arrived at the feast.

A tiny, dancing figure trailing a cloak of pine needles and crowned with holly and mistletoe capered about in the middle of the hall. It was Bair. His face twitched in imitation of lunacy as he essayed a wild dance. He had been well coached by Etha and the other staff to whom the selection of the Winter King fell each year.

Bair darted along one of the tables, snatching scraps of food from the guests’ plates, upsetting beakers and tankards as he went. Whatever morsels he managed to purloin he stuffed into his mouth so that his cheeks bulged. The victims of his thievery made a pretence of trying to seize him. He worked his way thus around the hall until he eventually leapt up on to one of the tables with an extravagant sweep of his pine cloak that sent dishes spinning. The guests spattered with food and drink cried out in good-natured protest as Bair vaulted to the floor in front of the high table where Kennet, Orisian and the others sat. Orisian could not help but laugh to see the excitement shining in the stablehand’s eyes. Anyara threw a chunk of bread at the Winter King, and was on the point of following it with the contents of her goblet when Kennet rose and leaned across the broad table. Bair, his eyes still dancing with merriment, stepped forwards and bowed his head that the lord of Kolglas might more easily take hold of him. Kennet laid one hand on the boy’s shoulder and with the other lifted the green crown from his head, taking care to ease it free from his lank hair. Then Bair turned about and Kennet took the cloak of pine needles from him. He folded it and laid it upon the table, resting the wreath of holly and mistletoe atop it. Bair scuttled away. The Winter King was no more.

Kennet raised his arms. ‘Burn the Winter King’s robes,’ he called out. One of the shieldmen sitting closest to the high table sprang from his place. Taking up the cloak and crown, he carried them with due ceremony to the broad, roaring fire in the hearth. There he paused and looked back to Kennet.

‘Burn them,’ came the repeated command, and it was taken up by all those in the hall. Orisian shouted out with the rest and cheered as the shieldman cast his burden on to the fire. The pine cloak hissed as gouts of smoke billowed out. The fire was so fierce that it was cowed only for a few moments, and it spat and crackled with vigour as it consumed the Winter King’s vestments.

The annual game, played out in one form or another in halls across the Glas valley and beyond since before there had been such a thing as Bloods, was done and gradually the guests settled into the comfortable chatter of any great feast.

Trays of food—more than Orisian could remember seeing at any Winterbirth before—came and went until he lost all track of what he had been offered. The servants, ever more red-faced and wild-eyed, rushed from kitchen to hall and back again. Their own celebrations would come afterwards, when none in the great hall could force down another scrap. For the time being they were at the beck and call of an ever more demanding and drunken horde. Orisian’s eyes were growing wine-weary and a pleasant warmth was running through his face, when he heard Kennet say to Inurian, ‘It is time for the boons, my friend. If we wait any longer it will be impossible to hear ourselves think.’

Orisian stirred himself and sat up straight in his chair. Inurian went to stand a little behind Kennet. Shieldmen were marshalling a small group of guests at the far end of the hall. These were the petitioners whose names had been drawn by lot, winning them the right to seek one favour from their lord on this tradition-steeped night.

The first to approach the high table was a small, slight man. Orisian knew him: Lomas, who lived on the fringe between town and forest and grazed a small herd of cattle on the wood pastures. Lomas bowed to Kennet and, with exaggerated care, laid a hide parchment case bound with a red cord on the table. The case was empty: it was no more than a symbol of the petition he wished to present.

‘You seek a boon of me?’ Kennet asked, and Lomas stammeringly confirmed it was so.

‘And if I hear your case, will you undertake, on the strength of the oath you swore to the Blood, to accept any response I make whether it be in your favour or not?’

‘I will,’ the cattle herder said and Kennet, satisfied, took up the parchment case. ‘Speak, then,’ he told Lomas.

The petition was a simple one, much to the disappointment of the audience. There was always the hope that some scandalous dispute would enliven proceedings and give the gossips something to warm their tongues with in the long, dark evenings to come. All Lomas wished was to be excused from the Bloodtithe for a year, since several of his cattle had died with the hoof rot. When the herder had finished, Kennet nodded and beckoned Inurian forwards. He consulted with his na’kyrim counsellor in whispers too soft to reach those thronging the other tables. Orisian caught most of it, however.

‘He speaks truly,’ Inurian was murmuring. ‘He is afraid, but only of the occasion and of the chance that you might deny him. There is no deceit in him, I think.’

There must have been many times down the ages when a benevolent lord had been tricked into granting an undeserved boon. None who came before Kennet nan Lannis-Haig would even make the attempt, not since Inurian had come to Kolglas. At every granting he stood at Kennet’s side, and every petitioner knew that their true intent could not be concealed from the na’kyrim.

‘Very well,’ Kennet said to Lomas. ‘Your tithe is remitted for one year. I suggest you spend the time reminding yourself of the rules of proper husbandry, since the hoof rot is easily avoided if you give the beasts the care and attention they might expect.’

Lomas, abashed and relieved in equal measure, retreated back down the hall, offering profuse thanks as he went. Good-natured catcalls accompanied him all the way. Someone shouted advice on the prevention of the hoof rot in cattle.

One by one the rest of the petitioners advanced, presented their red-bound cases to Kennet and made their requests. Each time, Inurian leaned forward to whisper into his lord’s ear. Orisian watched Inurian with avid attention, seeking without success for any outward sign of the powers the na’kyrim was employing. The mysterious gifts of those who carried both Huanin and Kyrinin blood in their veins might be a source of wonder, fear, curiosity or envy, depending upon the observer’s temperament. For Orisian, it was fascination that stirred. Even so there was, at the back of his mind, the knowledge that this divining of truth sprang from the same source—the Shared—as had the awful powers wielded in the years before and during the War of the Tainted. Na’kyrim of now unimaginable capacities had fought alongside both human and Kyrinin during that long bloodletting. In its final months, doomed Tarcene, the Aygll King, had been possessed and enslaved by one such: Orlane Kingbinder, the greatest of all the fell na’kyrim lords of those times. Tarcene’s own daughter, in despair, had cut his throat with a hunting knife.

The days when na’kyrim made and unmade kings were long gone now. There were few na’kyrim left in the world and none with the strength of the olden days. Yet mere centuries could not quench the memories of what had been, and there were, amongst the attentive faces in the hall of Castle Kolglas, more than a few that betrayed unease. For those inclined to see it, a touch of the dark past lingered in Inurian’s benign divinations.

The mood was too merry, however, and the wine too abundant, for many to dwell on such concerns for long. One of the petitioners—Amelia Tirane, who tearfully begged that the forests be scoured for her missing husband, who had failed to return from a hunting trip—drew a subdued chorus of sympathy; the others gave more cause for amusement than sorrow. In the fifth and final case Marien, a widow of notoriously short temper and sharp tongue, asked Kennet to intercede in a dispute with her neighbours. Ignoring the mounting hilarity in the hall, Kennet listened as she described the sleepless nights she had spent as a result of the noises coming from the adjoining cottage; noises, she declared with all the gravity of her years, that a man and wife were entitled to make, but not every night and not with such abandon that they kept others from rest.

Orisian did not hear whatever advice Inurian offered to Kennet. His father explained to Marien that however much he sympathised with her distress, he could not bring himself to interfere in the matter of a marriage bed. The widow returned to her seat exuding disgruntlement.

Only after the mirth had died down did Orisian, alone of all those in the hall, note the sad, weary expression that was on Inurian’s face, and wonder what the na’kyrim had seen in Marien’s heart to put it there.

The business of feasting resumed in earnest. Orisian drank deeply from his cup and it was refilled by one of the serving girls as soon as he set it down. He felt warm and happy. His father seemed at peace in a way he had not been for weeks, and for tonight at least the good humour of the moment was enough to keep memories of the past at arm’s length. Orisian slouched in his chair, allowing a sense of contentment to settle over him.

Kennet leaned towards him.

‘When we go to Kolkyre, we shall have a sword made for you, Orisian. They have the best weaponsmiths north of Vaymouth there, you know. My father had one made for me, in the year he became Thane.’

‘I’d be proud to have it,’ Orisian said, aware in a distant sort of way that the wine had rubbed the precision off his voice. ‘Mind you, you might want to ask Rothe if I deserve it. I don’t think I’m the best pupil he’s ever had.’

Kennet dismissed the suggestion with a wry smile. ‘If you think that man’d ever say a word against you, you’ve not got the measure of him yet. Anyway, he told me months ago that you’d be a fine swordsman one day. Once you stopped worrying about not being good enough.’

‘I . . .’ Orisian started to say. He was cut short by a flurry of activity at the far end of the hall. The acrobats had entered, and the cheers that greeted them made conversation impossible for the moment.

Like an exploding flock of great birds, they spread around the hall and immediately set balls and clubs flying in spectacular cascades. The guests whooped and clapped as the patterns the jugglers conjured into being grew ever more complex and intricate. The tempo rose inexorably. Two of them leapt up on to opposite tables and spun a flurry of clubs between them, across almost the whole breadth of the hall. Others lit brands from the fire. The flames whipped through the air.

Orisian was impressed. This was not what came to mind when he thought of masterless folk. The lone hunters and traders who drifted into Lannis lands tended to be ragged and wild-looking, fitting the common image of the masterless as lost, bereft of the bonds a Blood bestowed. Whenever he had seen such folk, they had struck him as fragments of the wilderness itself come loose, ill at ease with the order of town or village. These acrobats were altogether different: strong, focused upon their art, exuding confidence.

One came to the fore. He carried small glass orbs in his hands; when he began to juggle them they glinted and flashed and became a shimmering arc of reflected firelight. At first faintly and then louder, there was a rapid clinking as he adjusted the flight of the globes so that they clipped one another on their way through the air. There were appreciative gasps from the watchers. Orisian almost laughed in pleasure, and glanced around at those beside him. Anyara and Kennet were as entranced as he, their eyes fixed upon the dancing, flickering spheres. Only Inurian wore a different expression. He too was watching intently, but puzzlement had scored thin furrows across his brow.

Orisian turned back to the show in time to watch as one of the orbs plunged towards the flagstones, only to be delicately caught upon the top of the juggler’s soft hide boot even as the groans of disappointment started. He bowed amidst the acclamation that followed, then raised his arms for quiet. As the noise subsided he spoke in a soft, oddly accented voice that sounded somehow as if it did not fit in his mouth.

‘We need more space than this hall can offer. Please join us outside, for it is not so cold, the night is still young and the best tricks are yet to come.’

With this he spun about, and led the rest of the company trotting out through the hall’s main door. At once, people leapt to their feet to follow, upsetting more than a few tankards and platters in their haste.

Inurian rose more slowly. He was frowning, almost wincing, as if afflicted by a sharp headache.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Orisian.

The na’kyrim blinked and smiled, plucked out of distraction by the question.

‘I feel a little . . . odd,’ he said. ‘I am not sure: something . . . out of place. Perhaps the granting of boons taxed me.’

‘Come on,’ said Orisian, taking his friend’s arm and feeling sharply in that moment the strength of his affection for the na’kyrim. ‘Let’s not miss the rest of the show.’

‘No,’ said Inurian, ‘let’s not.’ But there was still more concern than enthusiasm in his voice.

The crowd spilled out into the courtyard, their misting breath and excited voices filling the confined space.

Atop the southern corner of the castle’s walls, two warriors stood watch. The circular tower they looked out from was open to the elements, but they could shelter from the night breeze by ducking down behind the battlements and warming their hands at a small brazier. The flames did not help their night sight, but at Winterbirth it was more important to have light and heat than to worry overmuch about such things.

A while ago, a serving girl had brought them bread and thick, fatty slices of beef from the kitchen. The emptied tray lay on the stone floor. The men were content enough. They were well fed and it was not as cold as it might have been. From down below in the courtyard they heard the shouts and cheers of the crowd as the celebration moved out from the great hall. They did not pay much attention to it. Their watch was over the shores of the bay south of Kolglas, though there was little to see save the dark, looming outline of forested slopes.

The sound of the trapdoor creaking open snapped their eyes away from the coastline. A figure emerged from the darkened stairwell beneath. It was one of the performers: a woman dressed in leather boots and breeches and a dark hide jacket.

‘What are you doing here?’ demanded one of the watchmen, his hand going by reflex towards his polearm where it leaned against the battlements.

The newcomer smiled thinly.

‘I have brought the show to you,’ she said in a deep voice.

There were already glass spheres in her hands, appearing as if formed from the substance of the night air. In a second she was weaving the orbs in a sinuous pattern. They caught the yellow flamelight of the brazier and worked it into glinting arcs. The guards’ objections faded as their eyes followed the extraordinary dance of light.

The juggler took a step closer to them. ‘Watch with care,’ she said softly.

‘Very clever,’ one of the men said, ‘but still . . .’

She darted forwards, her arms flashing out. The tiny blades she had slipped from her jacket cuffs sliced across the throats of the two men. Her glass juggling balls fell to the ground and shattered. The watchmen slumped to the ground, their eyes wide, reaching to staunch the blood that erupted from their necks. She followed them down, kneeling and punching both knives home beneath the angle of their jawbones. The men died all but silently.

The juggler rose cautiously. She checked around the castle walls for any sign of alarm. There was no hint of movement: Kolglas kept only a skeleton guard on this night, and those unlucky enough to have drawn the duty had their eyes turned outwards and their ears filled with the cheers and applause from the courtyard. The woman moved to the brazier, stepping over the spreading slick of blood. She produced leather gloves from inside her jacket and pulled them on. Without hesitation, she reached into the heart of the brazier and lifted out a double handful of red-hot charcoal. She cast a final quick glance around. Satisfied that she remained unobserved, she leaned over the battlements and opened her hands. A scatter of yellow and orange motes fell away from the tower, tumbling and fading and vanishing into the water and rocks below.

The woman crossed to the trapdoor, slipped into the body of the turret and set off down the spiralling stairway that would bring her out once more into the courtyard.

South of Kolglas, the road followed the rocky shoreline. A few hundred yards beyond the town’s edge, scrub and trees pressed close, squeezing the track between them and the sea. The darkness was intense. The town itself was out of sight, hidden by a low knoll, its presence betrayed only by the glow of its bonfires tingeing the sky. The castle offshore was marked by the light spilling from its windows. There was no sound save the slapping of gentle waves upon the shore, the slight shifting of autumn’s last few leaves in the breeze and the low murmur of celebration that drifted across the water from the castle.

A great stag came out into the open and walked a short way down the track. It paused and lifted its heavy-antlered head, testing the night air for scents. Tension came at once into its frame, and it looked uneasily at the forest. It bounded down the track a distance before plunging back amongst the trees and disappearing.

There was no movement for long minutes. Then, out across the water, a shower of tiny lights fell from the near corner of the castle’s battlements like failing fireflies. They were there for no more than two heartbeats, faint, and then they were gone, leaving only a rapidly fading afterimage in the eyes of those who had been watching for them. The undergrowth shivered and they emerged on to the roadway. Darker shapes amidst the shadows of the night, they moved across the track in silence: warriors, men and women, with swords strapped across their backs. One by one they came to the shore, waded into the chill water for a few strides and then struck out with powerful, measured strokes. In a few moments thirty of them had crossed from forest to sea and were swimming out towards the castle’s looming form. They were virtually invisible in the darkness, but in any case the only guards upon the walls who might have seen their approach lay dead beside a brazier atop the corner tower.

They came out of the water crouching, moving across the jumble of rocks to sink into the deepest dark at the foot of the castle’s walls. In single file they began to make their way along the wall, pressing themselves against its cold stone, sure-footed on the wet, uneven surface. At the next corner they paused. A single man eased his way out on his belly over the shell-crusted rocks to look towards the castle’s closed gate. The tide was falling fast now, and here and there the rough surface of the causeway broke the water between castle and shore. The town was awash with torches and the light of bonfires. There was no one at the water’s edge. The scout slipped back to join his companions, free his sword from its bindings and wait in the shadow of the ancient castle.

In the courtyard of Castle Kolglas, all was fire and movement. The audience was crowded along the front of the keep and around to the stables, shouting and cheering to encourage the acrobats to ever greater feats. Kennet himself stood at the top of the short stairway leading up to the keep’s main entrance. Orisian stood before him, and felt his father’s hands resting upon his shoulders. There was pleasure in that sensation.

The throng of people was boisterous as they jostled good-heartedly for position. From the steps Orisian could see clear over their heads to the broad flame-lit space where the acrobats tumbled. They spun across the cobblestones, flinging burning brands from one to another. The two long poles he had seen them carrying into the castle were brought to the centre of the yard, and men held them upright while a woman scampered barefoot up each one. At the top of the poles, the women tensed themselves for a moment, then in the same instant sprang free, twisting as they passed each other in mid-leap. The poles swayed violently as they landed but they clung on with ease, and acknowledged the roar of approval that rose up from the crowd.

Orisian heard his father give a short cry of wonder.

‘A fine show, is it not?’ Kennet shouted in his ear, squeezing his shoulders.

Orisian nodded vigorously. Anyara, who was at his side, glanced at him and smiled, and he felt a lightening of his heart. This, at last, was a Winterbirth to savour.

Torches were tossed up to the women atop the poles, who threw them back and forth at reckless speed. When they were done they let the brands fall, to be caught by men below. As some of those on the ground launched themselves into another spate of dazzling tumbling, the men supporting the poles hoisted them off the ground, taking their full weight upon their clasped hands. Their faces taut with effort and concentration, they moved, step by cautious step, towards the gatehouse.

‘What are they doing?’ asked Inurian, coming up to Orisian’s side. Idrin sat on the na’kyrim’s shoulder, his head cocked to one side as he blinked at Orisian.

‘I don’t know,’ Orisian said, keeping his eyes on the spectacle.

‘Something is wrong,’ muttered Inurian.

One of the acrobats was hoisting a great barrel above his head now, his face rigid with effort. Orisian dragged his gaze away to look at Inurian.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know. I can’t focus. There’s something about these people . . . but I can’t reach it.’

The crow launched itself from Inurian’s shoulder and flapped up, a fragment of darkness ascending into the black canopy of the night.

‘Oh, don’t worry so,’ laughed Anyara. ‘Enjoy the show!’

Inurian grunted and shook his head slightly. Orisian’s mood dimmed. Inurian could feel the texture of the thoughts in a man’s head. There was no one Orisian trusted more, and if the na’kyrim was troubled there must be some reason for it.

A chorus of gasps snapped his eyes momentarily back to the acrobats. He was just in time to see the two women spring from the poles and vault over the battlements on to the top of the gatehouse. A guard had come to the edge there, to see what was happening. One of the women seemed to crash into him and they both fell back out of sight. It was clumsy, out of place. Orisian half-turned to say something to his father.

The men who had been holding the poles aloft suddenly released them and they toppled, at first slowly and then very fast, towards the spectators, who cried out in alarm and began struggling to get out of the way. The man raising the barrel in the centre of the courtyard gave a great cry and flung it down. It smashed on to the cobblestones, splintering apart. Short swords spilled out between the broken staves. Two of the acrobats were throwing burning torches, arcing them into the crowd. Everyone was shouting, and there were screams of shock.

‘What is this?’ Orisian heard his father say in a puzzled, uncomprehending voice.

The poles crashed down to the ground. A dark shape came tumbling from the top of the gatehouse, thumping on to the cobblestones. It was the guard. In a flash of torchlight, Orisian glimpsed the unnatural angle of his neck and his open, lifeless eyes. The men who had dropped the poles were at the gate now, lifting its great bar and pulling it open. The swords that had been concealed in the barrel were being snatched up by male and female acrobats alike. They turned upon those who moments ago had been acclaiming them. In an instant, the courtyard was filled with chaos and battle.

The warriors outside the walls rose from their hiding place at the sound of the gate creaking open. They bounded forwards. In the same moment a rider came splashing out on the causeway from the town: a young man, thrashing at his horse’s hindquarters.

‘Awake the castle!’ he was crying, ‘awake the castle! Wights attacking the town! A White Owl raid!’

As his fellows poured through the open gate to join the melee inside, one man turned and crouched to meet the rider. He reached up over his shoulder and smoothly brought his sword out of its sheath. The messenger came on without slowing, still crying the alarm. In the second before he would have been trampled, the warrior stepped aside and slashed across the horse’s front legs. The impact sent the sword spinning out of his hands, but the animal screamed and crashed down, throwing its rider. The young man tried to get up. His arm had been broken in the fall and it would not take his weight. The warrior slipped a knife out of his boot and cut the man’s throat. Ignoring the writhing horse’s screams, he retrieved his sword and walked through the castle’s gateway, blades held loosely on either side.

Within, all was tumult. The folk who had gathered to celebrate Winterbirth were scattering, struggling over one another in a vain attempt to find safety. Those who had been acrobats joined with the warriors now spilling in through the gate and moved purposefully through the panicking throng. They paid little heed to the townsfolk and castle staff, hacking at them as they might undergrowth that obstructed a forest path. Their quarry was the fighting men of Castle Kolglas.

Here and there amongst the crowd, blades clashed. It was an unequal fight. The warriors of Lannis-Haig were more numerous, but they were unprepared and half of them were at least part-drunk. Even when they came to blows with their enemy, it was like fighting shadows. The invaders were as fast as thought, each swordstroke flung against them finding nothing but air or being met by a deflecting sweep that flowed seamlessly into a killing thrust.

Orisian’s disbelieving eyes followed a warrior as he hacked one of Kennet’s shieldmen down. The man’s heavy shirt had been torn asunder in the fighting, and hung in tatters. Beneath the beads of seawater still clinging to that taut back, Orisian saw a dark, menacing shape stretched across his shoulder blades and spine. A tattoo: the image of a raven, its wings widespread. Orisian’s mind went numb at that sight, and what it meant.

In the same moment the cry went up from somewhere in the crowd, giving voice to Orisian’s thought: ‘Inkallim! Inkallim!’

Orisian’s father brushed past him, descending the stairway. A sword was in his hand, and a terrible black rage in his eyes.

‘Inkallim,’ Orisian heard him say as he plunged into the fray and was swept out of sight.

Inkallim: the ravens of the Gyre Bloods. They were the elite warriors of the Black Road, serving the creed itself rather than any Thane, and they bore a fearsome reputation. Orisian shook himself out of his shock. Anyara was close by him, clutching his arm with fingers of iron and staring in horror at the carnage before them. A group of men and women—Orisian recognised merchants from the Kolglas market—broke up the steps, desperate to reach the sanctuary of the keep. They surged forwards, oblivious of Orisian and Anyara.

‘Wait!’ cried Orisian uselessly. He and his sister were brushed aside and fell together from the stairs. They landed in a heap, Anyara’s weight slamming Orisian against the stone of the courtyard. His vision spun and his chest seized so that he could not draw breath.

Somewhere far away he heard a voice, perhaps Rothe’s, raised above the noise of battle and terror. ‘Lannis! Lannis! Guard your lord!’

Then there were strong hands lifting Orisian up. He blinked, and looked into Kylane’s face.

‘Are you hurt?’ his young shieldman demanded.

Orisian shook his head. He still could not breathe.

‘Anyara,’ shouted Kylane, ‘are you hurt?’

‘I’m fine,’ she said, staggering to her feet. ‘Just bruised.’

Air filled Orisian’s lungs in a great rush and he reeled at the relief of it.

‘Where’s my father?’ he gasped.

‘In the thick of it somewhere. We must get you to safety,’ said Kylane. ‘Are you armed?’

Orisian showed his empty hands, and Kylane pushed a knife into one. As he felt the weapon’s hilt in his palm, another question occurred to him.

‘Inurian, where’s Inurian?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Kylane said. ‘Forget that now. The two of you are what matters.’

Anyara started to cry a warning but somehow Kylane was already moving, responding to a threat felt rather than heard or seen. He ducked low and spun, catching the Inkallim warrior darting towards them across the right knee with his sword and shattering the joint. The man half-fell and Kylane hacked at his neck. He pulled the blade free and glanced back at Orisian and Anyara.

‘Stay close to me, behind me. We’ll hide you in the keep.’

They nodded.

Kylane led them around to the front of the steps, and the horror that had befallen the castle flooded their senses. The courtyard was littered with bodies. Unarmed townsfolk lay dead alongside warriors. The cobbles ran with dark rivulets of blood. Close by the front of the bunkhouse a knot of Lannis men was ringed by Inkallim. In the gateway, five Inkallim were standing, some watching the slaughter impassively, others staring out towards the causeway. To the left, at the far end of the courtyard, a more open battle was ebbing and flowing. His heart lurching, Orisian saw his father, Rothe and half a dozen others fighting with quiet desperation to keep an equal number of Inkallim at bay. He stumbled to a halt, impaled by the sight. One of the Lannis warriors went down, clubbed to his knees. Kennet took a stunning blow to the side of his head and staggered as if drunk. Instinctively, Orisian rushed across the courtyard, tightening his grip upon the dagger.

‘Orisian,’ cried Kylane in desperation from halfway up the steps. ‘Stay with me!’

But it was too late. Orisian’s mind was roaring and his feet carried him towards the melee. Two of the Inkallim who had been guarding the gate—one man, one woman—broke away from their fellows and sprinted towards him. Orisian jerked to a halt and half-turned. In a detached way, he recognised that he could reach neither his father nor the sanctuary of the keep. The warriors closed on him. The cries of the battle faded and he heard, deep within his ears, the drumbeat of his heart.

Kylane flew past Orisian to come between him and the onrushing Inkallim. The shieldman managed to get his sword up to block the first blow. The impact knocked his own blade down, too far out of position to fend off the strike the female warrior delivered to his exposed flank. He thrust his left arm into the path of the sword and took its full strength between wrist and elbow. The blade almost severed Kylane’s arm, leaving a ragged protrusion of bone as his hand snapped back. He lurched to one side. He slashed out, putting a shallow red furrow across his assailant’s thigh. Her face did not register the blow. She calmly followed Kylane as he reeled sideways, and cut the shieldman’s head from his shoulders with a single, two-handed swing.

Bile burned in Orisian’s throat, and he cried out as he lunged forwards. He heard Anyara shouting something at him from the door of the keep. He flung himself at the Inkallim who had killed Kylane. The woman swept him aside with an elbow. Orisian sprawled to the ground. He felt a thudding smack in his midriff and he was spinning through the air, lifted bodily by the force of the kick. His vision was blurring.

‘Is it the boy?’ he thought he heard the woman ask.

Orisian struggled to rise. The pain that lanced through his ribcage pinned him down. His eyesight cleared and he saw a sword being raised.

Rothe came then. The great shieldman rushed down upon them. The two Inkallim spun away from Orisian, stepping apart. Groaning at the agony it cost him, Orisian stretched and planted his dagger firmly in a heel. The blade was snatched from his hand as the warrior kicked out in surprise. It was enough to unbalance the Inkallim, and Rothe’s sudden lunge knocked him flat. Orisian scrambled for the fallen man’s sword arm, clinging to it with all the despairing strength of someone clutching a branch in a flood. Rothe parried a blow from the woman, turning the point of her sword down. He carried a long-bladed knife in his left hand, and in the blink of an eye he had driven it twice, to the hilt, into her stomach. She fell. Even as Rothe turned, the second Inkallim broke Orisian’s weakening hold and rose to one knee. Rothe’s sword almost took the man’s jawbone from his face.

Rothe pulled Orisian to his feet. The female warrior was still alive, curled up and making strange coughing sounds as she clasped her hands over her stomach.

‘Kylane . . .’ murmured Orisian. That sent waves of fire across his chest and he could say no more. Rothe ignored him.

Leaning against his shieldman’s side, Orisian saw that the door of the keep was closed. There was no sign of Anyara. He looked around. The battle was almost over. A handful of Lannis men were left by the sleeping quarters, stumbling over the dead as they fought with quiet, vain desperation. To the left, a solid rank of Inkallim had hemmed Kennet and his few remaining defenders, including Inurian, tight against the castle wall. Rothe had left his father’s side to come to him, Orisian realised, not knowing what to make of the thought.

He glanced towards the castle gate, half-expecting the garrison from the town to pour in and save them. If this were anything other than a nightmare, they would surely do so. Figures were indeed moving beneath the gatehouse, coming in from the causeway, but they were not Lannis men. More Inkallim, a few on horses, and at the head of them a man whose appearance added yet another layer of unreality to the scene: a na’kyrim. Much younger than Inurian, taller and more lithe, but unmistakably a child of two races.

Then Rothe was dragging him across the courtyard towards the stables.

‘Keep’s closed,’ Rothe snapped. ‘We’ve got to get you out.’

‘Father . . .’ Orisian gasped.

Inkallim were coming for them. Rothe threw Orisian into the stables. He sprawled amongst the straw, knocking a bucket of water flying. His nostrils were filled with the smell of the place, and with the scent of smoke. Somewhere out of sight a fire had started. The horses were stamping and snorting. A small body was lying in the straw, its blank eyes staring into Orisian’s: Bair. The side of the boy’s face had been cut open, exposing bone. Orisian struggled to his feet, leaning on the flank of a horse that heaved against him as it slipped towards panic.

Looking out into the courtyard, he saw Inurian struck down, caught on the side of the head by the hilt of a sword. The newly arrived na’kyrim was riding forwards, crying, ‘Keep him alive. That one is mine.’

The last shieldman at Kennet’s side stepped in front of his lord to intercept a swordstroke, and died. Kennet, shouting wordlessly, his face contorted by rage, cut down one more of the Inkallim before he was overwhelmed and pinned up against the wall. He was held, his arms pressed upon the stone, and the sword was pulled from his hand. He kicked out at his attackers. They were beyond his reach.

Orisian started forwards, aware that he had no weapon but not caring. His path was blocked as a horse lurched across in front of him. Rothe was belabouring it with the flat of his sword, driving it and the others out from the stables towards their pursuers. Without pause, the shieldman swept around, gathering Orisian with his free arm and bearing him backwards into the shadows.

‘No!’ Orisian could hear himself crying.

Over his shieldman’s shoulder, he saw Kennet spitting curses at his captors. Then one of the Inkallim stepped forwards and sank a knife deep into Kennet’s chest. Orisian howled. His view was cut off as Rothe brought him to the postern gate at the back of the stables. He struggled to break free of his shieldman’s grip. Rothe tore the bar from the door and dragged Orisian through the short tunnel to the outer portal.

They emerged on the brink of the sea, where there was no smoke and no light and the night air was shocking. Orisian stumbled over the rocks, slipped and fell. He staggered to his feet. Then Rothe was at his shoulder again, steering him towards the jetty and the dark shape of Inurian’s boat.

‘No!’ shouted Orisian. ‘We have to go back!’

Rothe threw him bodily into the boat and tossed his sword after him. He tore at the mooring rope and, gasping at the exertion, pushed the boat from the jetty.

Orisian stood unsteadily.

‘Rothe, no!’ he shouted.

He felt a solid thump in his side. Strength fled from his legs and he slumped down. He clutched at the hilt of the throwing knife that was embedded in him. He stared at it. There was no pain.

There were figures rushing over the rocks. The Inkallim moved fast, as if in full daylight.

The boat surged out on to the water. Rothe vaulted in. He knelt by Orisian and paddled with a single oar. They eased out from beneath the towering walls of the castle and into the open expanse of the bay.

Orisian lay back, feeling the world slipping away from him. He looked up at a sky scattered with a thousand tiny cold stars. Water lying in the bottom of the boat soaked the back of his head. He could feel blood flowing over his hand where it lay on the knife in his side. He heard waves slapping at the boat’s prow. He heard Rothe’s laboured breathing. And he saw his father’s face.

He closed his eyes.