Bloodheir

III

Like an immense shoal of fish seething in the shallows of some cold ocean, the great army of the Black Road swirled over the snow-blanketed lower reaches of the Glas valley. It was hungry, and eager, and incapable of remaining still. More companies kept coming south across the Vale of Stones, many of them now the trained warriors of the other Bloods, whose Thanes scented triumph and did not wish to see it solely claimed by Horin and by the Inkallim. As every new band arrived it was swept up into the army, and caught up in the frenzy of anticipation.

Kanin had taken part in every discussion amongst the supposed masters of this ever-growing force, but he had said little. There were too many people, and too much hunger both physical and spiritual, assembled here for any conclusion to have been reached other than the obvious: to rush on down the coast, give battle at every opportunity, pursue their collective fate to its utmost limits. An unspoken consensus had been reached, that no culmination was any longer possible save one that was vast and violent. Temegrin the Eagle had whined and obstructed, raised objections and reservations, all to no avail. He alone imagined that events could any longer be the subject of reasoned debate. The Black Road had hold of them, and would carry them helplessly into whatever future lay ahead.

Many tributaries were feeding the rising flood of enthusiasm. Kolglas had been overrun and sacked. Drinan had been burned, its inhabitants slaughtered, by White Owl Kyrinin. The vanguard of the Black Road army was already on the borders of Kilkry-Haig territory, poised to sweep on past the little town of Hommen. And nowhere in all this frenzied, impulsive advance had they encountered more than token, delaying resistance. The great army of the Haig Bloods they had faced, and beaten, in the snow outside Glasbridge had crumbled away.

All these victories served to stoke the fire that burned in every heart, but none had greater impact than the news from further south: Lheanor oc Kilkry-Haig was dead, cut down in his own feasting hall by the Hunt Inkall. The Battle was fighting side by side with the commonfolk; the Hunt was killing the greatest foes of the Black Road; the Lore marched amongst the warriors, lending their authority to the struggle. Temegrin, the timorous Eagle, could vacillate all he wished, Kanin reflected as he marshalled the meagre remnants of his own Blood’s army on the fields outside Glasbridge. His solitary counsel of restraint would be drowned out. Futile.

There were only a few hundred swords left for Kanin to command. Such was the price his Blood had paid to open the way. He had heard that Vana his mother had dispatched another two or three hundred warriors — the very last that could be spared — but they were not here yet, and there was no time to wait. The Glas valley was emptying, disgorging its conquerors on down the coast towards greater prizes.

Kanin rode along the front rank of his spearmen, drawn up with admirable precision across the grass. They were hungry, like everyone else, and tired. He could see that in their faces. But they made no complaint, showed no reluctance. Many hundreds of their comrades had died since they had marched out from Hakkan all those weeks ago. Perhaps more than any other company in this great patchwork army, they desired an ending — clear, dramatic — to all of this that made sense of what had gone before. There were even a few dozen Tarbains: dishevelled and subdued, clustered behind their glowering chieftain. Their desires, no doubt, revolved around loot more than glory or fate’s vindication. Still, they would serve. Every spear that marched behind Kanin made his Blood’s place in this war a fraction less tenuous and inconsequential.

He looked around for Igris. The shieldman was hanging back, muttering something to another of Kanin’s escort.

“Igris! We’re still short, are we not? I thought another hundred at least.”

“Some…” The shieldman looked uneasy, fumbling for words.

“Come on,” Kanin snapped. “Where are they?”

“With your sister, sire. Eighty of them, I was told.”

“Eighty?”

“Yes, sire. The… the halfbreed is awake again. Your sister and him have come out of the city. They’re by the river.” The shieldman gestured in a vague northerly direction.

Kanin was incredulous.

“Why wasn’t I told?”

“We only got word…” Igris began, but Kanin was already wheeling his horse away and digging his heels into its flanks.

His path through the chaotic army was constantly obstructed. Here it was a wagon of charcoal, bogged down in a slick of deep mud; there a mule driver furiously beating one of his animals that had fallen, exhausted or injured; next a column of Lannis captives — mostly women — being marched for no obvious reason from one place to another. In places there were thick forests of tents sprouting from the fields, and hundreds upon hundreds of people swarming about them. Kanin rode past a gigantic, roaring fire, around which Tarbains were shouting and gesticulating while a small group of Inkallim looked on.

As he drew closer to the Glas River, and to Glasbridge itself, Kanin found his path becoming clearer. There were still little encampments scattered about the fields, and small companies moving back and forth, but here, so far to the rear, he was amongst the dregs and detritus of the army. Many of these people would be going no further. They were the injured, the enfeebled, the mad or the predatory. He saw one man sprawled half in and half out of a ditch, insensible through drink or sickness. Dark water reached to his thighs. He might be dead come nightfall, unless someone dragged him out. No one was likely to, Kanin guessed.

There were plangent cries from the sky above. Kanin looked up, and saw vast, straggling arrowheads of seagulls passing overhead. They were coming down the line of the river, making for the open sea.

He brought his gaze back down and saw what he had come searching for. Out of place amongst the disorder all around, an organised column was moving northwards along a faint track that ran parallel to the river. Kanin kicked his horse on and as he drew nearer he could see that the company was a strange mixture. There were dozens of ragged figures — commonfolk of the Gyre Bloods who had come across the Stone Vale on their own initiative — and plenty of warriors too. Some, Kanin saw in disgust, were indeed drawn from his own Blood. And leading the way were twenty or thirty Kyrinin, with two figures riding at their head: Wain and Aeglyss.

The mere sight of his sister riding alongside the halfbreed was enough to reawaken Kanin’s anger, never far beneath the surface these days. Every morning he woke to find his mind already teeming with bitter thoughts of Aeglyss. At any moment during the day when there was nothing to distract him, he could be seized by a surge of despair at the thought of losing Wain. For he had lost her, in all meaningful senses. Ever since her return to Glasbridge, she had chosen to incarcerate herself, never leaving the na’kyrim ’s side while he lay insensible. Again and again Kanin had sought her out; always, when he did so, she was distant and uninterested. It was as if everything they had shared since they were children, all the connections and understanding they had accumulated between them, had never been. Nothing had ever caused him quite such pain.

He walked his horse into the ranks of marching White Owls without a moment’s hesitation, using its strength to barge them aside and plough through to his sister. He heard what he imagined were hissed curses directed at him, and felt his horse start at a blow across its haunches, but he ignored them. He had eyes only for Wain.

She looked round as he fell in beside her. Her expression was blank. She was neither pleased nor perturbed by his arrival.

“What is happening?” he asked her.

Aeglyss, a little way ahead, spoke without looking round.

“Please don’t delay us, Thane. We have important matters to attend to.”

Kanin bit back his fury and contempt, keeping himself focused upon Wain.

“Where are you going?” he asked her.

“To Kan Avor,” she said flatly.

“Why?”

“Because it is the heart of things,” Aeglyss called back over his shoulder. “Because it is empty, and should be filled. Because others are coming to meet me there, with a precious cargo.”

“Kan Avor is empty because it waits for Ragnor oc Gyre to take his rightful place there,” Kanin snapped, “not so that some deranged half-wight can foul it with his presence.”

“Come with us, brother,” Wain urged. There was almost some life in her voice with those words. They carried need in them, but not affection.

“No. You come with me.” He reached out for the reins of her horse. She did not resist as he steered her out from amongst the files of Kyrinin. Aeglyss, though, turned his own mount — a thin, miserable-looking animal — towards them. Kanin saw the halfbreed’s face for the first time then, and it was an unpleasant sight. He might have risen from his sickbed, but he still looked like a man upon the very threshold of death. His eyes had sunk back into his skull, pouched in dark pits.

“Do not try to impose your will here, Thane,” Aeglyss said. In the same moment, Kanin felt a shaft of piercing pain flash through his head and lodge there like a hot blade driven into his temple. He winced and involuntarily closed his eyes for a moment.

“Let her go,” he heard Aeglyss saying, and found that both his hands were back on his own reins. He blinked, still beset by throbbing pain, and saw Wain turning back to rejoin the column. They were all marching on, as if nothing had happened. Even, Kanin saw, the dozens of warriors of his own Blood.

“Stand aside,” he shouted at them. Some looked up at him, and he saw doubt, fear perhaps, on many faces. Several faltered and even halted, sending disruptive ripples through the column.

“Come away from there, all of you,” Kanin cried. First one or two, then ten and twenty, fell out of their marching order and came across the muddy grass towards their Thane. Aeglyss was still there, watching with a cruel smile on his face.

“Pay him no heed,” the na’kyrim said to the warriors. “You know where we are going, and why. You know where fate’s course will be decided.” He almost whispered it, yet Kanin heard the words clearly above the tramp of feet. He felt the immense weight of command they carried, the overwhelming will that informed them. He understood for the first time that Aeglyss truly had changed into something more than he had once been.

“Stand still,” Kanin shouted, aware of the edge of alarm that distorted his voice. “You will not defy your Thane in this!”

Some of the warriors were already turning away from him. Others hesitated, looking in confusion at him or at Aeglyss or their comrades. Growling, enraged, Kanin side-stepped his horse towards Aeglyss.

“If you think you can usurp my authority…” he began, but the na’kyrim was already returning to the head of the column.

“The authority here is your sister’s, Thane, not mine. Wain! Let him see.”

The dullness he saw in Wain’s eyes as she halted her horse and stared back was enough to break Kanin’s determination. Never had she seemed so lifeless to him, so empty.

“Get back in line,” she shouted. “We march to Kan Avor.”

The warriors did as she commanded them, and Kanin lacked the will to challenge Wain’s command in their presence. He watched the motley band snaking past him for only a few moments, then spun his horse about. The pain his head was subsiding, but not that in his heart.

Igris and others of his Shield had caught up with him, but he ignored them as he rode back towards the army. He saw Shraeve and two dozen of her ravens watching, like a flock of their namesake birds attending a carcass. And he did feel as though something was dying, though he did not know what it was.

As he drew near to them, the Inkallim moved off, following after Aeglyss, Wain and their motley company. Shraeve gave Kanin a wry smile and nod of her head as she rode by, but he barely registered it. One figure remained behind, standing in Kanin’s path: Cannek, the Hunt Inkallim, with two massive hounds sitting motionless on either side of him.

“A moment of your time, sire?” Cannek said.

“Not now.” Kanin twitched his reins, keeping his uneasy mount beyond reach of those dogs. There was nothing, at this moment, that he had to say to one of the Inkallim.

“Ah, a pity,” Cannek called. “Just this, then: if you ever want to discuss the halfbreed, you might find me an attentive audience. Remember that.”

Kanin glanced, reluctantly, down at the man. “What does that mean?”

“Only that he might prove an interesting subject for discussion. Shraeve, our fierce raven, certainly seems to think him of interest.” Cannek gazed after her disappearing form. “I do too, though perhaps in different ways.”

“Now is not the moment to play games, and talk in fogs.”

“Oh, this is no game, Thane. Not at all. I find some things strange, that is all. And I am not alone in that. It seems to me the mood has changed since that na’kyrim appeared. Do you not think so? There’s a certain bloody hunger, a certain shortness of temper, in the air; more than we might expect even from such an army as this. A certain disturbance of dreams, by all account. We — Fiallic, wise Goedellin himself — understood that the halfbreed’s place in things was to keep the woodwights in step with our purposes. That your sister had him harnessed. Yet now… well, it’s less clear who wears the harness. And I hear his unnatural talents are not quite so meagre as we once thought they were. He humiliated Temegrin quite thoroughly, by all accounts.”

Kanin stared at the Inkallim. Cannek had folded his arms, his hands embracing the knives that lay sheathed along his wrists. The man looked self-satisfied, smug almost; yet his gaze was serious.

“I am of the Hunt, Thane. It is in my nature, my upbringing, to see things that might not be there, to fear betrayals, conspiracies. Dissent. Tell me, am I seeing things that are not there?”

“Where is Shraeve going?” Kanin asked quietly.

Cannek flicked a brief glance after the receding Battle Inkallim.

“She is tasked with keeping a watch on the halfbreed. And — forgive me — on your sister. You are not alone in wishing to see Wain safe, you know. Our masters are curious; less certain than they were, just a few short days ago, of whether Aeglyss… matters or not. Perhaps Shraeve has her own interests, too. She has always, I think, been plagued by an enthusiasm for the most extreme twists and turns in fate’s path.”

Kanin eased his horse onwards. Cannek’s two hounds turned their heads to watch him move away, all feral, predatory attention.

“I am not in the mood for discussion,” Kanin muttered.

“As you wish,” he heard Cannek say behind him, lightly, as if it was a matter of little consequence. “Should you find the mood upon you, no doubt you will be able to find me.”

Kanin moved through the day in dreamlike detachment. Around him, the army roused itself into fragmentary motion. It moved, company by company, away from Glasbridge, tearing up the fields and tracks with its feet and wheels and hoofs as it went. Kanin allowed it to carry him with it. He rode amongst his warriors like flotsam on the current of war. He noted only in the most distant of ways the hamlets, cottages and mills they passed as they made their way down the coast, as shapes signifying nothing. He barely heard the pulsing sighs of waves on the rocky shore or the cries of gulls overhead.

He was moving away from Wain, and though it felt like disaster he did not know what else he could do. It was fate that bore his sister off down whatever path she was following: ineluctable, remorseless. It was fate bearing her away, just as it had cheated him of the chance to put an end to the Lannis line for ever. He knew it was fruitless to rage against the insensate force of the Black Road, but he could know that without feeling it, instinctively, in his heart. He found it impossible to accept that fate would enact itself through a halfbreed, through one who was himself surely faithless, empty of any urge save his own inhuman survival. Aeglyss. That was the rock around which the tides of Kanin’s thoughts surged. He could not free himself of the image of the na’kyrim, the memory of his vile voice.

They reached Kolglas in darkness. There were still bodies in the streets, still ruins smouldering. The town was in chaos. Houses were being emptied of goods, and cattle slaughtered in the main square. Kanin hated it, as on this day he hated everything. There was battle to be had, somewhere further on and further south, and what he wanted now was battle: the clarity of slaughter. He ignored the muted protests of his warriors, and marched them on into the night.

The boy was screaming, each lash eliciting a howl more piercing than the last. And each howl, Theor noticed, caused a faint twitch at the corner of Ragnor oc Gyre’s mouth. The two men — First of the Lore Inkall and High Thane of the Gyre Bloods — sat opposite each other across the dining table and did not speak. The sound of the punishment going on outside made conversation difficult. Ragnor sought to conceal his evident discomfort by concentrating upon the food, but it was a thin pretence.

The Lore Inkall did not indulge in excess, whether of food or drink or anything else, no matter how elevated the guest. Only salted fish, nut bread and apples had been served, on simple wooden platters, with a watery ale to wash it down. It was, no doubt, not much more to the High Thane’s taste than the beating outside was, but he would have known what to expect. He had chosen to invite himself to the Lore’s Sanctuary, after all. Had he wanted luxury, he could have asked Theor to attend upon him in his own halls in the city down below.

The sounds of distress subsided to a more muted sobbing, and then fell away altogether. Theor pushed his half-emptied plate to one side and leaned back in his chair.

“The boy was a thief and a hoarder of food. And worse, perhaps.”

“Worse?” the High Thane asked through a mouthful of ale-soaked bread.

“A would-be stealer of secrets, we think. He had coins hidden in his chambers that came, most likely, from Wyn-Gyre coffers.”

Ragnor smiled. He had recovered much of his composure, now that his ears were not being so harshly assaulted. “You accuse Orinn oc Wyn-Gyre of seeking to spy upon the Lore Inkall, First?”

Theor gave a consciously nonchalant shrug. “The Thane might have known nothing of it. The boy may be innocent of anything more than thievery. It does not matter. He has been punished. He will either learn from it, or not.”

“I imagine it matters to him,” Ragnor muttered.

“If he has the mettle required of a Lore Inkallim, he will come to understand that fate is blind to his innocence or otherwise, as it is to his suffering. He was whipped. It is in the past now, and of no consequence. He will resume his candidacy, and we will see in due course what fate has in store for him. Should he fail the creed again, he will die.”

The High Thane belched. Theor grimaced in distaste and looked away. Ragnor had never pretended to graces he had not been born with. Just as he did not, in recent years at least, pretend affection for the Inkallim that he did not feel.

Ragnor drained his tankard of ale, and peered into the empty vessel as if it contained some noisome dregs.

“Your ale matches your food in quality,” the High Thane observed.

“Perhaps you should have visited Nyve,” Theor suggested. “He would have served you narqan there. It might have been more to your taste.”

Ragnor set his tankard down and shrugged. “ Narqan ’s drinkable. I don’t find it as… repellent as some. But I don’t think it’s the Battle I need to be talking to, is it, First?”

“I do not know.”

“Of course you do.” Ragnor let a little of his irritation show: a momentary tightening of his brow, a curl of his lip. He is angry, then, Theor thought. He had suspected as much, but until now the High Thane had concealed it well, by his standards.

“I want to show you something,” Ragnor said. He pushed his chair back and stood, brushing crumbs from his chest. “Come with me, would you?”

Theor frowned. “Where? I thought we were to talk here.”

“Just to your gates.”

“I am an old man, High Thane. I am not given to taking strolls in the snow.”

“Don’t be difficult, First,” sighed Ragnor. “The High Thane of the Gyre Bloods invites you to walk with him a little way, so that he might show you something of interest. You can humour him, can’t you? Or is even that beyond the Lore Inkall these days?”

Theor complied. He followed Ragnor out. Snow was falling on the Lore’s Sanctuary, as it had been now for more than two days. Big, buoyant flakes drifted down in thick flocks. The pine trees amongst which the buildings clustered were heavily burdened with snow; now and again, some branch would spill its white cargo in a soft, tumbling collapse. The paths along which First and High Thane walked had been cleared by candidates, otherwise they would have been almost impassable. This, for Theor, was one of two times of year when the Sanctuary was at its most restful and peaceful. The snow made it a silent, still place. As did, in other ways, the hot, windless days of midsummer, when warm air pooled beneath the pines and all was languid and lethargic.

The two men tramped along the stone path, between dirty banks of snow piled up on either side. The High Thane’s Shield, and Theor’s attendants, came behind them, but not so close as to hear what passed between them. The wooden gates in the encircling wall of the Sanctuary stood open. Ragnor planted himself in the centre of the gateway, facing out. The land fell away beyond him, sweeping down in a long, pine-clad slope to the valley floor and the great sprawl of Kan Dredar. The High Thane’s city was all but obscured by the teeming snowflakes.

“You cannot see as well as I hoped,” Ragnor grunted.

“I can hardly see a thing.” Theor made no effort to disguise his ill humour at being brought out here.

“You can see the one thing that matters, I think. Look. No, there: the road south.”

“A somewhat darker area of the blizzard, perhaps.”

“Close to four thousand of my warriors marching south. That’s what you see, as well you know.”

“I knew they were gathered. I was not aware they had started their march. It hardly seems the weather for it.”

“It’s not.” The High Thane’s patience was thinning out. “It’s not even close to the weather for it. Half a thousand of them might be dead of cold or exhaustion or hunger, or lost, by the time they reach Anduran. But I have little choice in the matter, do I?”

Theor looked sideways at the High Thane and shrugged. He turned and walked back into the Sanctuary. A candidate — a young girl he vaguely recognised but could not have named — had appeared from somewhere with a birch broom. She shuffled along backwards in front of him, sweeping the freshly fallen snow from the path.

“Look where you’re going, child. You’ll only fall over if you do it like that.”

He could hear Ragnor stamping after him.

“I could hardly keep my warriors sitting around Kan Dredar idly sharpening their swords,” the Thane of Thanes growled. “Not while half my people march off into the south of their own accord. Did you know one of my iron workings has closed, because there’s not enough workers left?”

“I did not know that, no,” Theor said.

The First led the High Thane back into the little courtyard around which the offices of the Lore were arrayed. Cord shackles still hung from the whipping post in its centre. The snow around it was flecked with red, like dye spilled on linen.

“Nyve has left me little choice but to send my army south. No choice at all, I’d say. Not once the Battle marched.”

“I do not interfere in the doings of the Battle, High Thane. I am not in a position to question his actions. No one is, unless you can find one of his own captains willing to challenge him for his rank. The Lore’s territory is…”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Don’t insult me.”

Theor ignored the High Thane’s anger. Over to one side of the courtyard, beneath a wooden awning, steam was drifting out from a serving hatch in the wall. A couple of young Lore Inkallim were standing there, their hands wrapped around hot cups.

“Look.” Theor pointed. “They’ve got some milk heating there. It’s years since I had hot honeyed milk. Shall we?”

Ragnor made an indeterminate sound — half-groan, half-growl, not remotely enthusiastic — but followed Theor, crunching across the snow. The two Inkallim shuffled away at a flick of Theor’s hand. A serving woman ladled the thick white liquid into cups and handed them to the First and the High Thane, then sank back into the musty darkness within and disappeared.

Theor watched the fat snowflakes bobbing down as he drank. He really did like honeyed milk. The reality did not quite match the remembered delight of it, but it was good enough. A slab of snow slipped from the roof and rushed down into the courtyard, making a soft thump as it landed. Ragnor oc Gyre was not drinking.

“The Haig Bloods can field twice as many warriors as we can,” he said quietly. “More.”

“Warriors, yes.” Theor nodded. “I’m sure that’s true. But will their commonfolk take the field? Can they match our thousands, with their hot hearts, their faith burning in them, that rush to serve the creed in battle?”

Ragnor sniffed at his steaming cup, and took a hesitant sip of its contents. He grimaced and emptied it out onto the snow at their feet.

“They’re soft. We all know that. But they’re too strong, Theor. You underestimate Gryvan oc Haig. He may be soft and slow, but only like a bear, fresh out of its winter sleep. If you prod him hard enough, he’ll have your arm off. What was the Hunt thinking, to kill a Thane? Gryvan may have been no admirer of Lheanor’s, but he’ll not sit by while we merrily cut down his liegemen like that. If you — if Nyve, and Avenn, and all these thousands of commonfolk you’re so pleased with — force us into unrestrained war with the Haig Bloods, we will end up with his foot on our throats, sooner or later.”

“You do not know that.”

“No, of course I don’t know it. But I think it. I apply a little sense, a little thought, to the world as I see it, and I find it to be a reasonable expectation.”

“The future is not a matter of reason.” Theor smiled, wearily. He, and his fellow Firsts, had known that Ragnor’s commitment to the rigours of the creed was not all it might be. They had known, ever since Vana oc Horin-Gyre intercepted his messenger, that the High Thane had long ago lapsed into the mistaken view that some kind of accommodation was possible with the Haig Bloods. Now he heard Ragnor condemning himself out of his own mouth.

“What seems reasonable is of no consequence,” the First continued. “You know that. Fate can overturn, disregard, discard reason as it sees fit. The course of the Black Road is not set by reason, or by the judgement of men, or by what we in our narrow way call sense or thought. It is set by the tales inscribed in the Last God’s book. It is set by what he reads there.”

The High Thane, his lips pursed, regarded his fine leather boots. He was, Theor knew, not stupid enough to attempt to debate the elements of the faith. Ragnor had never been stupid. And when he had been young he had been full of energy, hunger. That he had become something else as he grew older was a source of regret rather than resentment or anger. It was as it must be. Fate had decreed that for this little time, the Gyre Blood and the Inkallim would follow paths that diverged a fraction. It did not matter. One day — this year, next, a thousand years from now — everyone, everywhere would be walking in one path, that of the Black Road.

“Call off your ravens, First,” Ragnor said. “That is all I ask. For the good of us all. Temegrin complains that the Battle and the Lore are making themselves masters of the army in his place. Anything that draws Gyre and the Inkallim apart serves the creed ill, does it not?”

“Temegrin’s counsel has been found wanting, I hear. He has tried, at every turn, to curb the ambition of your people, whose hearts cry out not for such timidity but for fate’s cleansing judgement. Perhaps you should have sent another of your captains, one more… eager. Unless you approve of his caution, of course.”

“I would put every sword I have in the field to prevent Gryvan coming north across the Vale of Stones, but if you try to force me — to shame me — into fighting a war in the Glas valley, and outside Kolkyre, and beneath the walls of Vaymouth, you will fail. You can have these few thousand to feed into whatever slaughterhouse it is Nyve means to build for our people down there, but I will not see our Bloods throw away every last life in pursuit of the impossible.”

“The impossible?” Theor murmured. “We do not know what is or is not possible, High Thane. We can never know that. It is in the nature of fate to surprise us.”