Fall of Thanes

VII

The scout came back into the copse on a lame horse. There was a bloody welt across its hamstring.

“Crossbow,” the rider said by way of explanation as he swung out of the saddle.

In the gathering darkness it was difficult to see much, but the man’s voice sounded strained to Orisian.

“And you?” he asked. “Are you hurt?”

“Nothing serious, sire. The woman with the crossbow: my knee met her helmet when I rode her down.”

“Were you followed?” Taim demanded. He was holding the horse’s reins, stroking its neck while another warrior examined its wound.

“No.” The scout shook his head emphatically. “It was just the two of them stumbled across me. Both dead. They were careless, wandering around looking for a deer or hare for the pot, I think, not someone to fight.”

“And Ive Bridge?” Orisian asked.

“Not more than three score spears to hold it, sire, as far as I could see. And only half of those look to be trained warriors.”

“No Inkallim?” asked Taim.

“None that I could see. Couldn’t go too close, but no, I don’t think so.”

“Good enough,” Taim grunted. “We’ve likely got them overmatched, then.”

“We should wait until the night’s got a firm hold,” said Orisian quietly. “Let them get bleary with sleep. K’rina and Eshenna and Yvane can stay hidden here, with a dozen men.”

He half-expected Taim to demur, to try to persuade him to remain behind with the na’kyrim, but the warrior said nothing. Orisian glanced up through the leafless branches towards the bruised sky. The cloud was thin; the moon, risen long ago, a diffuse disc.

“There should be enough light to see by. And if there isn’t, we’ll have Kyrinin with us. They won’t.”

They had not made camp in the little patch of woodland. No tents were set up, no fires were lit, despite the searing cold. They merely sheltered there, from the desultory snow and from the revelatory daylight. Men and horses were crowded into the heart of the copse, all made listless and irritable by the enervating tension. Some sat on the damp ground, dicing or muttering softly to one another, or chewing on cured meats and oatcakes. Most stood by their horses, keeping them quiet.

Sentries were scattered through the fringes of the thicket, watching the snow-dusted fields and rough slopes all around. Low hills rolled their way westwards, sinking into the huge coastal plain. There were scattered farms and villages, fading in the distance into a flat haze of grey. Snow showers had come and gone all day, by turns revealing and obscuring grim signs of unrest and ruin. For a time a dark smear of smoke marked the site of some burning barn or farmhouse; later a dozen twisting, frail columns rose elsewhere, betraying the campfires of some roving band of reavers; once a great company of riders could be seen, sweeping across the very lowest slopes.

All within that concealing stand of trees felt the calm and quiet that currently embraced them to be a treacherously fragile, even deceptive, thing. A lie, told by a world that had turned into a savage and cruel mockery of itself, and could betray at any moment those who forgot how much had changed.

Orisian squatted down beside Ess’yr, holding his water pouch out to her. She blinked the offer away.

“We’ll be moving soon,” he said quietly. “Once it’s as dark as it’s going to get.”

The Kyrinin rolled her head, stretching her long neck.

“When you choose,” she said.

“I’m grateful for your aid in this,” Orisian murmured. Grateful for many things, in truth, few of which he could easily put into words.

“This opens the way north, yes?” Ess’yr said. “We move closer now, to the place we belong. To the war we must fight.”

She meant the White Owls, he knew. She and her brother believed they were travelling towards their own personal renewal of the brutal contest between Fox and White Owl; towards the discharge of a lethal duty that had been upon them ever since the fighting at Koldihrve. Vengeance, Yvane would no doubt dismissively call it, as Orisian himself might once have called it. He thought-he felt-a little differently now, though those feelings were imprecise, as hard to grasp and examine as vapours.

“Where did it come from?” he asked. “The hatred between Fox and White Owl, I mean.”

“From the beginning,” Ess’yr said softly, without inflection. “From the shape of things. From the pattern the Walking God made. He spoke with many animals, not one, as he walked. Without difference, there is no pattern at all.”

It was an answer that gave him nothing, but he had not really expected otherwise. To his surprise, though, Ess’yr had a little more to offer.

“It is not thought amongst my people,” she murmured, “that strife, and pain, and hate came to us only with the leaving of the Gods. These things have always been in the world, in its differences. They are part of what was made. When the Gods left, it was balance that was lost; not suffering that was found.”

Orisian nodded, though Ess’yr was not looking at him, and though her words gave rise to an inchoate sorrow in him.

“But there was no balance, even before the Gods departed, was there?” he said. “We killed the wolfenkind. Every one of them.”

“Still, it was balance the Gods sought,” Ess’yr said. She sat there cross-legged, straight-backed, with her hands upon her knees and now she did fix him with a steady gaze. “They chose to make us many, not one. They chose to put unlikeness into the world, where before there had been none. It must be, I think, that they believed such difference could bring balance. If it brings strife also, it must be that they thought that a fair price.”

Her eyes held him. The richness of her voice held him. He felt himself drawing nearer to her, to her life and her people. It took him, for a moment, out of the chill, fearful present; took him somewhere safer, better.

“My dreams have lost their balance,” he said, as much to himself as to Ess’yr. “When I manage to sleep at all. It’s cruel to find sleep so hard when the nights are at their longest.”

“They become shorter.”

“The nights? Do they?” He fell silent for a moment. Grief came up in him, rising in his throat, through his cheeks, touching his eyes. “Winter grows old, then. I missed its turning.”

Ess’yr said nothing. The last fading light that reached into the heart of the copse caught the tattoos that crossed her cheekbone, set the slightest glint in her soft grey eyes.

“We used to celebrate on the longest night,” Orisian said thickly. “In Kolglas. It’s the night when winter’s strongest, but also when it begins to lose its grip. There was feasting and dancing. And my mother sang.”

The immediacy of the memories was frightening, their intricate weight-grief and comfort too inextricably entwined to tell one from the other-so great that he felt himself buckling. But her voice was there, in his mind, coming to him across an impassable chasm of loss. He heard it, and at once it was gone, melting away into the sounds of the cold dusk, the accumulating darkness. The losing of it robbed him of whatever comfort it had offered; left him only with the grief. The bitter anger.

“Time to go,” he said through trembling lips.

Ive Bridge huddled in stony silence on the south bank of the river. Orisian remembered passing it as he made his first journey to Highfast, and he had thought it an unappealing place then. Now, it appeared ominous in its bleak isolation: squat houses crowded in on what little flat ground the terrain offered, and the bridge itself, hooking over the river like a bent finger. All of it was indistinct and menacing in the darkness, with only the faintest of moonlight to pick out its inanimate forms. A few lamps or torches burned in windows, but most of the village was all greys and blacks and imagined danger. He could just catch the soft scent of woodsmoke on the breeze. That smell too spoke to him with a threatening cadence these days.

Orisian could hear the River Ive down there in the crevasse it had made for itself on the far side of the houses, grinding and foaming in its mountain bed under the bridge. Somewhere beyond that noise, out in the utterly impenetrable darkness, lay the road that led on and up into the Karkyre Peaks, to Highfast. If he thought of that too clearly or carefully, doubt came crowding in upon him. He did not know how much trust to put in his own thoughts and instincts now, and chose instead-as much as he could-to hold his attention upon the present, the immediate.

Figures were moving down the rugged slope towards Ive Bridge: Ess’yr and Varryn, and a dozen warriors led by Torcaill. They did not follow the main trail that snaked its way into the village, but descended instead over steep, boulder-strewn ground, creeping from moonshadow to moonshadow. It would not be long before they reached the first outlying cottage.

Orisian rolled away and scuttled like a beetle-bent almost double, with his shield strapped across his back-to join Taim and the others. They waited in a cutting through which the trail passed before it began its descent into Ive Bridge. A fell sight: dark forms with a dusting of moonlight upon them, gouts of steaming breath rising from the horses, bared blades. Orisian hauled himself up astride his mount.

“They’re almost there,” he said quietly to Taim Narran.

The warrior nodded, and eased his way to the front of the column.

“Go carefully,” Taim said as he rode on. “Keep your reins tight until you’re told otherwise.”

The horses were wary at first, distrusting the dark road. It made them careful and quiet, at least, but still Orisian felt the tension of possible discovery. The slightest rattle of harness or slip of hoof on a loose pebble sounded loud, punctuating the background rumble of the river. No new lights were lit in Ive Bridge, though. No alarm went up. He could see no sign of movement down there. Even Ess’yr and the others had disappeared from sight, as if they had been swallowed by the rock or the shadows.

They covered perhaps half the way down to the village before a sudden strangulated cry broke the night’s skin. Even as its last anguished echo trailed away, Taim Narran was kicking his horse on. The long blade of his sword flashed once, a shaft of captured moonlight, as he flourished it, and then he was pounding off down the road. Orisian and the others followed. After that, it was a chaos of thudding hoofs, a jolting, jarring charge in which Orisian saw almost nothing but his horse’s neck pumping up and down before him.

They burst into the heart of Ive Bridge before anticipation or fear had any chance to take root in him. The darkness made everything sudden and bewildering. Figures-men and horses-jostled all about him. Shouts and the clatter of hoofs and ringing of blades echoed from every stone surface, shivering back and forth on the cold still air until they lost all form and became a single raucous accompaniment to the slaughter. And slaughter it was, rather than battle.

Orisian glimpsed Torcaill’s little band of warriors spilling from the door and windows of one of the cottages, rushing on without pause, breaking into another house to slay those asleep-or coming blearily awake-within. Spearmen came stumbling out from a long, low building into the roadway, half-dressed, bare-headed, fumbling with weapons and shields as if still all but blinded by sleep. Someone rode straight into them, not even bothering to swing with his sword, using the weight and strength of his horse to batter them aside. Others, already dismounted, darted in behind and set to work with blades.

There was a fast and fierce efficiency to the bloody work of Taim’s men. The killing went on all around Orisian, and he felt himself strangely divorced from it, like an uncomprehending spectator at some mad and cruel revels. Indistinct forms lurched this way and that all around him. His horse turned itself about in a tight circle, tossing its head in agitation. He let it carry him, and carry his gaze in a sweeping arc.

He saw Varryn and Ess’yr, improbably perched atop the slate roof of a hut. Their Kyrinin faces seemed bright in the moonlight, almost shining, the blue swirls of their tattoos almost luminous. The arrows that left their bows were so fast that they vanished into the darkness as if snapping out of existence in the very moment they were loosed. And as his horse swung Orisian about, cloud must have taken the moon, for the darkness deepened. He saw a knot of figures running for the bridge: Torcaill, he hoped, going as intended to block any escape. He saw an unmounted horse staggering, something trailing from beneath it, and only after a moment did he realise that it had been disembowelled. He saw two men rolling across the cobblestones, punching or stabbing one another in a frenzy.

Then the moon was unveiled once more, and in its sudden, muted light he saw the point of a spear lancing up towards his face. He instinctively knocked it aside with his sword, turning it across his horse’s shoulders, then jerked his arm back to cut his assailant across the side of the head. It was a woman, he realised as she fell silently and limply away. Another figure veered towards him, another spear coming in at hip height, but then there was a wet thud and the spear was falling aside, the Black Roader pawing at an arrow in his neck. Orisian knocked him down with a single blow. He looked up. Ess’yr was there on the roof, already reaching to her quiver for another arrow. She turned away as soon as their eyes met.

Orisian kicked his horse towards the largest of the buildings. It must, he thought, be a tavern of some sort. His warriors were rushing in as he drew up before it. He heard screams and feet pounding on wooden stairs. There was a crash of splintering wood and a figure tumbled from one of the upper, shuttered windows, blurring down and hitting the ground a few paces from Orisian. He heard the crack of leg bones break in the impact. The man howled, but began to crawl at once, seeking shadows. Orisian dismounted and walked over to him. The man rolled onto his back. His face was contorted by pain, but he had strength and sense enough to curse Orisian in a northern accent so thick the words were almost unintelligible. There was venom in the voice, hatred and bile. Orisian hefted his sword, began to raise it. The man did not shrink away. He bared his teeth through his short dark beard and spat out vitriolic contempt.

Orisian hesitated, suddenly thinking of Ive. There had been an abandoned, almost accusatory, air about Erval as the Guard Captain had watched them ride out. The town had been a shell by then, all but empty. Only a few dozen left behind, likely to soon follow all the others who had already scattered into the east, into the frigid wilds. If they had been too slow to flee, this same terrible thing might be happening in Ive even now, Orisian thought. Killings in the street, the abrupt, unthinking ending of lives.

Someone came in from the side and planted a spear firmly into the chest of the Black Roader, who growled and cursed and coughed as he died.

It did not last long. Those who had held Ive Bridge were not, it turned out, the ferocious, faith-inspired warriors Orisian had expected. They were instead the drunk, the sick and the hungry; gaunt and frail many of them, others injured. All dead, soon enough.

“I’ll take Ess’yr and Varryn, Torcaill and three men back to fetch Yvane and the others,” Orisian said, watching with Taim as his men dragged the corpses to the river’s edge and heaved them into the torrent.

“Be quick,” Taim said. “These were just deserters or looters, but it doesn’t mean there’s nothing worse around.”

“I doubt it,” Orisian murmured. “There’s nothing here for anyone. The lowlands, the towns; that’s what they’ll want. But yes. I’ll be quick. Don’t let anyone get too settled. We should press on as soon as I’m back.”

“Nothing to settle with,” Taim grunted. “There’s hardly enough food here for a quarter our number.”

They went more slowly back up the trail, Ess’yr and Varryn running ahead, disappearing into the darkness. Orisian watched them go with a twinge of regret. He had wanted to thank Ess’yr for her arrow, but there was a strange lassitude in him now. He felt faintly dizzy, and when he blinked saw inside his eyes the spittle-flecked lips of that hate-filled, broken-legged man working over crooked teeth.

He rode beside Torcaill. The warrior’s head dipped lower, bit by bit. His hands rested loosely on his horse’s neck. The animal began to slow.

“There’s something I want to ask of you,” Orisian said quietly.

Torcaill jerked upright and blew out his cheeks.

“Forgive me, sire,” he said.

“It’s all right. We’re all tired. Listen, there’s something I’d like you to do for me.”

“Whatever you command, of course.”

“No,” Orisian shook his head. “I’ll not command you in this. Only ask. It’s… it will be difficult. I’d like you to try to reach Vaymouth. Just you and a couple of men: whoever you’d want to choose. If you stay away from the main roads until you get into Ayth-Haig lands…”

The words trailed away as he became guiltily aware of how inadequate they were; how blandly unequal they were to the magnitude of what he was asking.

“Of course, sire,” Torcaill said levelly. “If it’s what you wish.”

“I want… I’d like you to try to find my sister, if you can. I’m not sure what’s going to happen here, to me, but I think… I think Anyara might need help. Protect her. Get her out of Vaymouth, if you can. And give her a message from me.”

“I’ll do everything — ”

“Rider!” someone shouted, and a moment later Orisian could hear it too: the hammering of hoofs coming wildly, dangerously up the road towards them.

“Spread out,” Torcaill hissed, drawing his sword.

“It’s all right,” Orisian said. “Whoever it is, I doubt they would have got past Ess’yr and Varryn if they were a threat.”

It was one of the warriors who had remained hidden in the copse. He was fraught and dishevelled. There were wounds on his face, the blood black in the gloom. Orisian felt a dull dread in his gut.

“We were attacked, sire,” the man gasped as he hauled his mount to an ungainly halt in the middle of the road. “Tarbains, just a handful.”

Orisian hung his head. “Who’s dead?” he asked quietly.

“Four men, sire. We killed all of the savages, though.”

“And the na’kyrim?”

“There was much confusion. We… Some of the horses ran wild. We were scattered, for a time, all of us. In the darkness…”

“The na’kyrim?” Orisian asked again, that dread now a hard, cold fist rising in his chest, making it difficult to breathe.

“Two of them are safe, sire. We found them. But the mute one, the mad one: she’s gone. Not killed, but gone. In the confusion, she slipped away.”

Beyond the man, the two Kyrinin were drifting back out of the night, pale shapes slowly coalescing amongst the silent boulders on either side of the road. Orisian slumped in his saddle, abruptly and profoundly exhausted.