Bloodheir

II

Thirty men from the Nar Vay shore — hard men once, who had been born to fishermen and strand gleaners, grown up with the salt smell of the sea and the feel of a boat beneath them — were huddled together on hard ground. They were shoremen no longer, but warriors, and defeated ones at that. They were cold, for it was night, it had been snowing for some time and their captors would not allow them to make a fire, or even to move around. They sat, wrapped in whatever cloaks or banners or tent canvas they had managed to scavenge from the wasteland of corpses that now surrounded Kolkyre, and the snow built up on their shoulders and their backs. They crowded close together, a hot press of bodies, so close that they breathed on one another’s faces. One man, wounded in the battle they had lost, had already died this night, in the midst of that huddle. They had pushed and passed the dead man out to the edge and he lay there still, stiff, disappearing incrementally beneath snowflakes. Their guards showed no more interest in the corpse than they would in a long-fallen tree or a rock.

These Haig men had been taken soon after the battle was done. Fleeing south, racing for Kolkyre even though they knew that city was no friend to their Blood, they were encircled by mounted spearmen, who killed a few of them and herded the rest back northwards, made chattels of them. They expected to die in time, for that was what they had always been told to expect of the Black Road. The lethargic apathy of the humbled kept them docile. They had surrendered much of their pride and their resilience in those moments of panic when they broke and scattered from the battle line, undone by a strange, compulsive terror that none of them now spoke of, for they did not understand it, and were ashamed of it. They spoke of nothing at all. There was nothing to say. They merely waited. They did not know whether it was the cold they waited for, or a spear, or starvation, but they believed it was one of those.

Horses came out of the darkness, soft and slow. One or two of the prisoners looked up. They turned away again at once, hid their faces. Inkallim had come, black-haired, grim, astride huge horses that blew gouts of steam from their noses. Guards drifted from their fires to speak with these newcomers. Few words were exchanged.

One of the Inkallim — a sinewy woman with two swords sheathed across her back — jumped down, thumping into the deepening snow. She walked, limping slightly, to the cluster of captives and stood over them. She surveyed them with contempt. They made themselves small, hoping to avoid her gaze.

“Fate smiles upon you tonight,” she said, and her voice made some of them shiver. “A task falls to you that will earn you the gratitude of your Thane. Stand up.”

No one moved.

“Stand up!” the Inkallim shouted, and they did, one by one. They rose clumsily. Some had to hold their neighbours to keep them from falling. One man dropped the threadbare cloak from his shoulders and bent to pick it up again.

The Inkallim turned and beckoned someone forwards from amongst the riders. A horse stepped carefully over the snow. It bore a hunched figure, enclosed in a hooded cape. The horse came close. Some of the prisoners shuffled back, intimidated by its dark size.

“Let them see you,” the Inkallim said quietly.

The rider straightened a little, not enough to take the bend entirely out of his spine, and slipped back his hood with one hand. The revealed face was pale and angular. He stared down at the Nar Vay men. There was silence and then, haltingly, a few murmurs of surprise, of recognition.

“Some of you know him,” the Inkallim said, and smiled bleakly. “Those who do not: this is your High Thane’s Chancellor. This is Mordyn Jerain. And you are his escort. We give you your freedom, that you may return this man to Vaymouth, and to his place at the side of Gryvan oc Haig.”

The prisoners looked at one another, uncertain and hesitant. This was too out of line with the fatalism that had mastered them, too unexpected. They thought they had misheard her.

“You will be renowned,” she said, “as the men who brought back the Shadowhand.”

They looked up at the sickly, bent figure on the horse. And Mordyn Jerain smiled down at them. It was an unnerving, lifeless smile.

“Take me to Vaymouth. There are many things I must discuss with the Thane of Thanes. Many things.”