Bloodheir

I

Mar’athoin of the Heron Kyrinin sniffed at the feather. It had been tied to a twig on the stream-facing side of an alder tree. The path Mar’athoin and his two companions were following crossed the stream here, and the feather had been positioned so that no one — no Kyrinin, at least — could fail to see it as they made the crossing. It was a finger-feather, from the wing-tip of a forest hawk. A single thin strand of birch bark had been used to attach it.

Mar’athoin made a guttural coughing sound in the back of his throat. It brought the other two drifting out of the undergrowth. He nodded at the feather and his fellow warriors examined it closely.

“It must be ettanaryn, yes?” Mar’athoin said.

Cynyn, the youngest of the three by only a few days, straightened and ran a finger along his upper lip. It was a gesture copied from his elders, Mar’athoin knew. Cynyn no doubt thought it signified careful consideration of a problem. He had always been over-keen to credit anyone more than a few summers older than him with great wisdom.

“It must be,” Cynyn pronounced.

Mar’athoin nodded. Like the other two, he had never seen Snake sign before, but there was nothing else this could be: ettanaryn, marking the furthermost extremity of the Snake clan’s range. The Snake, like most of the northern clans, kept to old ways of summer wandering, winter gathering. Some a’an had set this marker here at the furthest point of their journeys back when the sun was high and the days long. Mar’athoin’s own people, the Heron, were less wedded to the old cycle of a’an and vo’an, living as they did amidst the constant bounty of the marshes. Nevertheless, foraging bands did cover long distances in the height of summer, and they still sometimes left their own ettanaryn. Where the Snake used feathers, the Heron used split, notched bog-willow stakes.

Sithvyr leaned closer and sniffed at the feather as Mar’athoin had done.

“Not fresh,” she observed. “There is no hand-scent on it.”

“I thought the same,” said Mar’athoin, relieved to be able to agree with her. He desired her, and would have been pained had she contradicted his own instincts.

“Should we make pause, then?” Cynyn asked.

“We should,” Mar’athoin confirmed. He set out back across the stream. The other two followed him without comment. He was pleased with the way they had so readily accepted him as the leader of their little band. Before they had set out, seven nights ago now, it had not been certain whether he or Sithvyr would have the greater authority. Mar’athoin had hoped it would be him from the start. He had, after all, won his first kin’thyn in the fighting with the Hawk clan two summers gone — the youngest of the clan’s warriors to have done so that year — and that was an honour Sithvyr could not yet boast.

“Lacklaugh would understand,” Mar’athoin said as they retraced their steps a short way and squatted down to wait. “He carried spears with my father when they were younger. He knows our ways almost as well as we do.”

He was almost certain he was right. Lacklaugh had urged them to keep a close watch on the other na’kyrim, the female whose mind was cracked, but he would understand the need to hesitate before crossing into Snake lands. It was an old rule, and not one to be lightly broken, that only a spear a’an offering battle would enter another clan’s homelands without first pausing and reflecting on their action. So the three of them would wait here until the sun had turned another quarter of the sky in its endless journey. Only then would they follow the wandering na’kyrim woman into the lands of the Snake Kyrinin.

They went quickly through the evening, meaning to catch up with the na’kyrim before night fell. The darkness held no fears for them, but it would be harder to track her on a moonless night such as this promised to be. The forest path their quarry seemed to be following was far too obvious to be Kyrinin-made. Mar’athoin knew the Snake traded as well as fought with the Huanin lords to the south and west. It seemed likely to him that this was a traders’ way; there were a few old and stale signs of horse or mule.

That she kept to such a clear trail made their task at once simple — the na’kyrim was clearly not trying to lose or conceal herself — and potentially harder. She was more likely to wander into trouble if she kept to what must be a well-used route. Mar’athoin and his companions had promised Lacklaugh only that they would follow her as far as seemed fit to them, and guard her against harm only if they could do so without endangering themselves or their people. Should the na’kyrim fall foul of the clan on whose domain she now trespassed, Mar’athoin could do nothing to protect her: the Heron had no quarrel with the Snake. Equally, if she stumbled across some rough Huanin trader who took against her, she would have to look after herself. Killing such a man within their territory, and without their permission, might well antagonise the Snake.

The trackway was running along the side of a steep valley. It was only lightly wooded, and great stretches of bog were visible beside the river below them. After the first day and night of their journey, they had settled — by silent consent — on what the Heron called their trytavyr: their way of going. Mar’athoin ran ahead of the others because his eyes and ears and nose were a fraction sharper than theirs. Next came Cynyn, keeping a good two dozen strides behind Mar’athoin so that he would have time to react to any signal. Last, close on Cynyn’s heels, came Sithvyr. She had shown herself to be the fastest of all of them, at least over uneven ground. If Mar’athoin found trouble up ahead, she had the best chance of escaping to carry word back to their vo’an in the great marshes.

As they came to a thicker sweep of scrubby birch trees, and just as his instincts began to sing to Mar’athoin that the na’kyrim was close now, he threw himself into a crouch and snapped out a flat arm to halt the other two. Cynyn and Sithvyr grounded themselves silently. Mar’athoin remained motionless, his head bowed. It was not for him to speak first.

“You walk on land promised to others,” came a gentle female voice from amongst the trees ahead. The Snake tongue was close cousin to that of the Heron; Mar’athoin had no difficulty in understanding it.

“This I know,” he replied without looking up. “We made pause at your ettanaryn. We are Heron-born, and mean to pass only.”

There was movement. A flock of little birds scattered, twittering in consternation. On the periphery of his vision, Mar’athoin detected two, perhaps three, figures drifting amongst the pale birches. There were at least four others, unseen, somewhere out there, if the scents and sounds on the breeze spoke truly to him.

“Where do you go?” the woman asked. Judging by her voice, she had moved closer.

“We seek a na’kyrim. We follow where she leads.”

“Do you mean to bathe your spears?”

“No. We act on behalf of another, a Kyrinin-friend. He asked us to follow this one and see to her safety.”

“Why? We have put our eyes on her, the one you seek. She is flawed. She speaks to the wind. She walks like a child, without care or sense. Do you mean to haul her out when she falls into a river, or catch her when she steps over a cliff?”

“If we can,” replied Mar’athoin.

The unseen woman laughed. “Life must be good for the Heron. Your fowl-traps must be thick with birds, your smoking sheds full of fish and your borders empty of enemies, if you can send three on such a foolish errand.”

“It is foolish,” agreed Mar’athoin placidly.

“And what clan does she spring from, this half-human you trail? Whose fires does she call her own?”

“She was born of a Heron mother.”

“Well, she rests up ahead. She made herself a bed of grass, in a bad place. She will be cold and wet in the morning. This night and two more, then she will be beyond our lands, if she keeps to this course. Keep to her track, do not stray, and you may pass with our goodwill. The Snake have no argument with the Heron.”

“Nor the Heron with the Snake.”

Mar’athin did not rise until he was sure all of the Snake had moved away. They would not go far, he knew. He brushed moss from his knees as Cynyn and Sithvyr came up to his shoulder.

“I counted six,” Cynyn said.

Mar’athoin sniffed and strode on. “Eight.”

They found K’rina huddled on the ground in the lee of a great rock. She had indeed torn up thick handfuls of grasses and rushes to make a bed of sorts for herself. She was already asleep, even though the sun had not yet touched the western horizon. Her slumber was punctuated by frequent mumbles and shivers.

The three Heron Kyrinin stood some distance downwind of her and watched. Remembering the words of the Snake woman, Mar’athoin felt a brief stirring of contempt for this useless na’kyrim. That her mind was misshapen, damaged, had been obvious from the start. It was only a matter of time before she fell victim to some misfortune. It was indeed foolish to waste time on her. But, he reminded himself, Lacklaugh had asked it as a favour. And if nothing else they would be able to return home and say they had made a good journey.

The question of just how far they would follow K’rina remained, though. Lacklaugh had not told them where she was going, if he even knew, but that she had some goal was beyond dispute: ever since she had left the marshes, her path had been straight, constant. Mar’athoin was not sure exactly what — or who — lay beyond Snake lands to the north or west. Huanin probably, he thought, and almost certainly the White Owls, though how far away they were he did not know. He had no desire to meet either of them. It might be that the time to turn back was drawing close.

He cast around for a suitable place to rest.

“I will be the first of my family to sleep on Snake ground,” he said with a faint smile.

For the first time in what felt like weeks, the sun was shining on the Glas valley. A bright, sharp light bathed the fields. The ground was slick and soft, bloated with rain and melt-water. The herdsmen’s trails and farm tracks that Wain nan Horin-Gyre chose to follow were muddy. Still, they were passable and better than the alternative: the main road up the valley, running on the northern bank of the river, had been almost obliterated when Sirian’s Dyke broke. In places it was still ankle-deep in sucking, half-liquid silt that made travel both exhausting and slow. These fields south of the river had suffered less lasting damage. There was a slim chance that Wain and the hundred warriors at her back might even reach Grive by nightfall, having left Glasbridge before dawn. If not, there was no shortage of abandoned farmsteads to serve as overnight quarters.

Wain’s horse was restless and irritable. Every so often it would bend its head back to snap at her knees. Her original mount — a fine animal, a sturdy survivor of the long march through Anlane all those weeks ago — had broken its leg during the furious assault on Glasbridge. This replacement was proving a disappointment. She and it had yet to find an accommodation with one another. Wain was minded to give it up and find a more amenable partner when they reached Anduran.

She felt less joyful or excited at the prospect of what awaited her in Anduran than she would have liked. This was, after all, what she and Kanin, and Angain their father, had hoped for all along: the Black Road was on the move, pouring through the hole Horin-Gyre had punched in the defences of the True Bloods. There was now at least a chance that everything they had gained might be held, that new and greater victories might yet be won for the creed. Puzzles remained, however, and they were troubling. By all accounts, it was not Ragnor oc Gyre’s armies that had marched but the Battle Inkall, and thousands of the common folk. Where was the High Thane? Where were the other Bloods? Wain, and Kanin for that matter, would willingly have handed over leadership of this undertaking, and all the lands they had recovered, to Ragnor. The Thane of Thanes had a natural right to put himself at the head of this war. To surrender everything to Nyve’s bloody ravens was not such an easy thought. Wain sighed and glanced up, narrowing her eyes against the piercing glare of the sun. There was no warmth in it.

She should not concern herself with what was yet to come, she knew. There remained much uncertainty about what she would actually find in Anduran, and until that uncertainty was dispelled there was nothing to be gained by stirring possibilities in her head. The only clear facts the messengers rushing to find her and Kanin in Glasbridge had been able to convey were that Tanwrye had at last fallen — and there was one piece of news, at least, that was nothing but good — and that the Children of the Hundred were leading a huge army down the valley, their van already taking up quarters in Anduran. Wain had left Glasbridge almost at once. Even so, she would not be the first to reach Anduran. Shraeve and her Inkallim were somewhere ahead, might even already be there.

Her horse nipped again at her leg, its teeth cracking together. She snapped the reins, flicking one towards its eye in discouragement. They were coming up to the edge of what had once been the Glas Water now. That great marshy lake had drained when Sirian’s Dyke gave way, leaving a huge expanse of shrinking pools, rushes and sodden bare earth that lay like a dark sore across the centre of the valley. Somewhere out there the river had returned to its natural course, slumping back into the channel it had swollen out of when Sirian built his great dam. On a day as clear as this the eye could see far across the flat, treeless valley floor. And Wain’s eye caught something unexpected.

Kan Avor was a black and grey mass out near the river, like the stump of some titanic fallen tree. The ruined city, freed from its watery bonds after more than a hundred years, had outlasted the dam built to drown it. Now, Wain saw dark strands of smoke strung out from amongst Kan Avor’s ruins by the wind. Someone had lit fires there; someone had claimed the ancestral home of the Gyre Blood itself as their campsite. She turned her horse towards the dead city.

It was difficult going, their way constantly obstructed by stagnant pools and seemingly bottomless mud, but Wain picked out a winding path over ground that was almost solid. Here and there, exposed by the retreat of the Glas Water, bones jutted up out of the silt. The empty eye sockets of a half-buried skull stared at her. Many of the faithful had died on this ground, two and a half centuries ago.

The warriors behind her became widely separated. Most of them were on foot, and this was no place for marching. She ignored their difficulties. A score or so of riders kept up with her, including all six of her Shield, and that was enough. As they drew close to Kan Avor, its crumbling walls and shattered towers loomed over them. More grim than the sight of those walls themselves was the burden they bore. High up on what little remained of the city’s great outer rampart hung bodies, dangling like the carcasses of slaughtered animals. Crows hopped along the top of the walls, calling to one another. The dead were not warriors. They bore the clothes of farmers or villagers.

Wain and her company rode on through the desolate outer parts of the city. The buildings here were poised halfway between being the work of men and of nature, so long had they been subject to the moulding of wind and water. Clumps of waterweeds were rotting in the streets. With each pace of their horses they came closer to the cluster of great buildings that had once dominated the city’s heart, until at last they rode into the shadow of a derelict tower. It stood the height of six men above them, and in its heyday must have been much taller, for it had been decapitated by time. Rubble was strewn across the approach to the palace from which it rose. The base of the walls had a greenish-blackish tint where the water had lapped against them year after year. A statue lay half-shattered before the wide gateway. Since its descent from the heights above it had acquired a patina of moss and weed. The gates themselves were long gone, perhaps salvaged before Kan Avor was finally abandoned. The smoke of half a dozen fires rose from somewhere within.

Wain halted her horse beneath the arch of the gate, pausing there in the shadow to stare at the scene within the precincts of the collapsed palace. In a wide courtyard, amidst the mud and tumbled stones, arrayed around their fires, were fifty or more Kyrinin. Every pair of eyes, every grey gaze, was locked on her. There was a moment of perfect silence, save for the wind above them and the crackle of a fire above which a dog was spitted.

She looked back over her shoulder, mindful now of how few warriors were within easy reach of her call.

“The Bloodheir’s sister.”

A thrill of recognition ran through her at the sound of that voice, an instant shiver that carried a whole host of sentiments in its wake: anger, alarm, surprise… anticipation, was it? Excitement? She turned slowly — deliberately so — and saw Aeglyss rising from beside one of the fires. As he stood and languidly stretched his back, a cluster of Kyrinin close by him rose too.

Wain kept her eyes on the na’kyrim, gesturing for her Shield to draw up behind her.

“He is Thane now, halfbreed,” she said. “Not Bloodheir any more.”

Aeglyss nodded and ran both hands through his pale hair, pulling it back from his face. It was longer than it had been the last time Wain saw him. He held it there behind his head and then let it fall across his shoulders.

“Thane,” he repeated, savouring the word as if it were a morsel of food. “Thane, then. It is, I suppose, in the nature of Bloodheirs to become Thanes sooner or later.” He glanced at the dog roasting over the fire. “Can I offer you some meat, Thane’s sister? We are not prepared for visitors, but what is mine is yours.”

“I believe my brother made it clear to you that we had no wish to see you, or your friends, on our lands again.” Wain nudged her horse a few paces into the courtyard, opening a space for her warriors to advance and spread themselves on her flanks. The animal was uneasy. Perhaps it had never smelled Kyrinin before.

“Did he?” Aeglyss murmured, with a little shrug of his shoulders. “I confess my memory is not all it was. I find myself much more drawn to the future now than to the past. Such a bitter thing, the past. So full of disappointments, don’t you think?”

Wain’s mind was racing. Aeglyss had disappeared some time ago, after Kanin had confronted him outside Anduran. The breach then had seemed irreversible; the breakdown of any alliance with the White Owls unquestionable. Yet here he was, the halfbreed her brother so detested, camped at the very heart, the home, of the Gyre Bloods with his little warband. And there were changes in him. His skin, always pallid, was now waxen. There were dark blotches pouched beneath his eyes, a wasted fragility about his frame. And yet his voice had a stronger spine of arrogance, a fuller, deeper timbre, than it did before. His gaze — those piercing, transfixing inhuman eyes — held Wain; she felt it on her skin, her body, like hands. Her heart was beating faster. A hollowness was in her stomach, almost fear, almost.. something she could not quite name.

“Are you responsible for the dead on the walls?”

Aeglyss frowned, angled his head to squint up at her against the sharp light.

“Ah, not entirely. They didn’t die by my hand, at least. White Owl spears did the deed. It can’t trouble you, surely? They’re nothing: Lannis strays, hiding away amongst these ruins when we arrived. I’d thought to find you and your brother here, not unhomed farmers.”

“These are not your walls to decorate as you see fit. Kan Avor is the rightful possession of Ragnor oc Gyre. We hold it empty, ready for him to claim and occupy.”

Aeglyss shrugged. “If you won’t eat with me, you might at least dismount. We should talk, you and I. There are things you should know.”

He held out his hands to her. She noticed for the first time that there were bandages around his wrists. And she felt as though those outstretched hands had taken hold of her, had laid themselves on her arms and were drawing her towards him: drawing her into a gentle, warm, firm embrace. To dispel the sensation, she kicked her horse forwards. It trotted to the edge of one of the fires, stirring up ash and dirt before it shied away from the flames. Every one of the Kyrinin had stood up now. They gathered beside and behind Aeglyss.

The na’kyrim laughed, and the laugh flowed over Wain like water. It was a living, liquid thing. An unnatural thing, she thought, not remotely human. Not remotely mirthful.

“I am so very tired of being refused,” Aeglyss said. He hung his head, letting his arms fall back to his sides. “So long I had nothing else…” he jerked his head sideways, wincing, like a man beset by a stinging insect “… nothing else.”

Wain glanced at the warriors who flanked her. On every face she saw some intimation of the confusion, the disquiet, that writhed beneath. She knew it was in them because it was in her too; it was in the very walls of this decrepit courtyard. Aeglyss was breathing it out with the spent air from his lungs, breathing it over them.

“Get down,” she heard him say, and her legs and arms were already obeying him. For a sluggish moment she was an observer, watching her body as it swung out of the saddle to the ground. She shook herself, and was standing there by her horse’s head, holding its reins.

Aeglyss swayed a little. One of the Kyrinin beside him put a hand under the na’kyrim ’s elbow until he had steadied himself. Wain considering climbing back onto her horse, but she feared how that might appear to the warriors she led. She kicked wet earth over the campfire burning by her feet. The flames hissed and died almost at once. The sunlight was strong here in the stone-enclosed space of the courtyard, undiluted by the wind. It was even a little warm on the side of her face. There was a stench on the air, of dank decay, rotten vegetation. She glared at Aeglyss.

“Oh,” he said quietly. “I don’t want to argue with you, Wain. You were always less cold than your brother. Life, possibilities, always burned more strongly in you. Even when you were children.” He was looking at her out of the corner of his eye now, a harsh little smile curling his mouth. “Ha. Where did that come from, I wonder? There’s so much that… comes to me now, and I don’t know how, or why. I was always afraid of madness. Always. Is this it, do you think?”

“There’s nothing new…” Wain began to say, but cut herself short as Aeglyss took a long stride forwards.

“No!” he cried. “Not madness. Just the woodworker, learning the use of a new tool; an archer learning the bend of a new bow. And no,” softly now, soft in Wain’s mind, “everything’s new, that’s what you should say. Nothing’s the same, not ever. I’m not the same, Wain. This blunted blade you cast away has been sharpened. Do you doubt me?”

“I don’t doubt that you are… different.” And that much was true. His sheer presence, his mere proximity, set such thoughts and doubts crawling around in her mind, like ants nesting in the back of her skull. He had never had this kind of effect on her — on anyone, as far as she knew — before.

Some of her warriors had dismounted. Others were pressing in through the gateway behind her. They wanted to fight, she knew. They were afraid of Aeglyss, of this invisible cloud of potency that enveloped him. She had enough strength here, perhaps, to overcome the halfbreed and all his woodwights. If Kanin had been at her side, he would not have hesitated. And yet something in her quailed at the image of such slaughter, as if it would be a betrayal of a gift offered up to her by fate.

“No, you don’t,” Aeglyss said. “I can see it in you, I can smell it on you. You think there is something here.”

He turned and pointed to one of the White Owl warriors: a muscular man with a mass of writhing lines tattooed on his face.

“See? The son of the Voice herself. He and his a’an — my spear a’an now. The White Owls accept me as one of their own. The whole clan is my spear a’an, my beloved people. But I am Horin-Gyre too, not just White Owl. By my father, I am of your Blood, Wain.”

“That means nothing. What is it you want here? Have you come to offer us another alliance with your tame savages? You know the time for that has passed.”

“Oh, I offer that. That, but much more.” To her astonishment, Aeglyss knelt then, and bowed before her. It was so unexpected that she could only stand and stare at the crown of his head, the long hair that fell forwards and hid his face.

“I am become a new man,” he murmured. “Servant of all desires. There are thousands coming. I can feel their footsteps in my mind, I can catch the scent of their ardour on the wind. War is to follow, war beyond all reason; unending, unmaking. And I will ride its currents like a bird on the storm. Let me bear us all up on my wings, Wain.”

And in her heart then she felt a great hunger stir, a longing for the future and all its tumultuous possibilities. She saw the Black Road rushing like a living thing out from this shattered city and bearing them all on its broad back into a vast and endless plain, lit by a glorious fiery light, strewn with the corpses of the faithless. So, she wondered, is this how it is to be? Is this the shape of our fate? And a small, faint voice within her, not entirely her own, whispered, Yes, yes, this is how it is to be.