Fall of Thanes

III

“You’ve never heard of it before?” Orisian asked.

Yvane shook her head. “I’d never have believed it possible. I hardly believe it is possible, even now.”

She was walking alongside Orisian’s horse, trudging up the long, bleak track to Highfast. Her tolerance for riding had been thoroughly exhausted, and no one made any protest at her refusal, for she did not slow their progress. All of them, horses included, were bleary and sluggish. It had been two nights now since any of them had had any meaningful rest. Above, clouds spun and churned about the Karkyre Peaks. Gusts of eye-watering wind came tumbling down from the heights to sting their faces. Slabs of snow were scattered all across the mountains, clinging to whatever seams in the rocks gave them purchase and shelter. Most of the snow had been scoured from the track, but sometimes, when they were in the lee of some huge ridge or cliff, there were drifts deep enough to make progress painfully slow.

“We saw it, though,” Orisian said.

“We did. We saw something done for the first time, as far as I know, in all the world, in all its history. Myself, I was happier when I thought such a thing impossible. He is stronger than the Anain. He-one man, one na’kyrim-has killed…”

She splayed her hands, as if pushing away words, or thoughts, that she could not accommodate.

“It doesn’t change anything,” Orisian said.

“No?” Yvane grunted. “Tell your Fox friends that. They may disagree.”

Orisian glanced ahead towards Ess’yr and Varryn. They were thirty or forty paces further up the track, pushing on, heads down, with more stubborn resilience than anyone else could manage. Neither of them had spoken of what they had seen in those woods, when the Anain had appeared before them, and died. They alone had seen it killing the Black Roaders, and Orisian could barely imagine what that must have meant for them, to witness first the waking of the forest, and then its destruction; to see one of the beings they considered tutelary spirits of their lands, their lives, snuffed out like the feeblest of candle flames. Who, Orisian wondered, did the Kyrinin imagine would protect them from their restless dead, if the Anain could no longer safely venture near the surface of the world?

“But still,” Orisian said quietly, “it doesn’t change anything.”

Yvane looked at him. He met her gaze without flinching, and saw nothing in her of the fire, the challenge and argument that had so often been there. She was instead thoughtful and grave. After a time, she pursed her lips and looked away.

“The Anain know now that they can’t oppose him. If they thought to use K’rina against him… Now they cannot even protect her, or guide her, for if they rise up, Aeglyss has proved he can kill them. Ha.” Her curt laugh was sad, mournful. “They raised a forest once, to still a war. Now this one man is too much for them. And no; I suppose it doesn’t really change anything. We merely go from dark to darker.”

The doors of Highfast were closed. They stood tall and narrow, ancient but firm. Thick snow was falling as Orisian led his company across the arching stone bridge that tenuously wedded the mountain to the pinnacle from which Highfast clambered in mounting buttresses and walls and towers into the sky. Orisian had his collar high and tight about his neck, but still meltwater trickled down from his numb face and spread its chill beneath his jerkin. Snow layered every flat surface of the fortress, a succession of white ramparts stepping towards cloud.

The guards-disembodied voices crying out from hidden windows or battlements-refused to open the great doors. That angered Orisian.

“Bring your Captain here,” he shouted into the blizzard, standing in his stirrups as if that would strengthen his voice. “Herraic still lives, doesn’t he?”

They had to wait then, hunched down in their saddles, heads turned away from the wind-blown snowflakes. No one spoke. The ride up from Ive Bridge had been a miserable, punishing journey. To be denied shelter now that they stood at the very gate of their destination was unbearably, unacceptably bitter.

“I’d not thought to see you here again, sire,” came Herraic’s familiar voice from above, stretched and buffeted by the wind.

“Open the gates, Herraic. You know me well enough. I’ve forty men here needing shelter, half a dozen of them wounded or sick.”

“But it’s not just men, is it, sire? Forgive me, forgive me, but I see woodwights and na’kyrim there in your ranks. It’s ill fortune, ill-timed, that you bring them to our door.”

Orisian looked round. His warriors lined the bridge, stretching back in double file, the last few all but obscured by sheets of snows. He could see Yvane and Eshenna, uncomfortably sheltering between horses in the midst of the column, and K’rina, tiny, tied tight to Taim’s back. Ess’yr and Varryn were almost hidden, standing at the rear. It must have taken a keen eye to find them. Or a suspicious one.

“They ride with me, Herraic,” Orisian shouted angrily up at the invisible Captain of Highfast. “You’ve seen them all before, save one. You know they’re no threat.”

“Things change.” There was regret in his words, though he still shouted them into the storm. “I like it no better than you, sire, but things change for the worse. Trust’s too rare, the dangers too great, for any chances to be taken now. Since you left… there’s been too much blood shed since you last came to my gate, sire.”

Orisian slapped his thigh in exasperation.

“Herraic!” he shouted, his ire swelling his voice and bearing it up against the walls of the fortress. “Do you truly mean to bar your doors against the Thane of a Blood that’s fought and suffered alongside your own for more than a hundred years?”

“There’d be few more welcome than you, sire. But Kyrinin and na’kyrim… no, I cannot. Not now, not after all that’s happened. If you’d been here, if you’d seen…”

Orisian stopped listening, let the wind bellow over the Captain’s words. He dismounted and trudged through ankle-deep snow to stand at the head of Taim’s horse. Holding the animal’s bridle, he glanced at K’rina. The na’kyrim seemed to be sleeping, her cheek pressing into the warrior’s broad back, though it was difficult to tell with her what was sleep and what daze, what simple absence.

“You can untie her now. Send five men back up the track with Ess’yr and Varryn and the na’kyrim. Tell them to get well out of sight but go no further than they need to. We’ll send for them soon.”

“We’ll have a roof over our head tonight after all, then?” Taim grunted.

“Without doubt.”

Taim stood at Orisian’s side as he hammered on Highfast’s great doors with the hilt of his sword.

“You’ve got what you want, Herraic,” Orisian cried. “Let us in.”

The doors groaned and rasped as they swung slowly open, protesting at such disturbance of their cold-stiffened bones of wood and iron. Herraic and four of his warriors waited within, a few paces along the stone tunnel that lay beyond the entrance. The Captain of Highfast was a short and stout man who had struck Orisian as somewhat nervous and fragile of spirit even on their first meeting. He had shed some weight since then, and the shadows beneath his eyes and the hesitancy of his movement gave him the air of a beaten man. Orisian strode up to him and stood face to face.

“I’d expected a warmer welcome.”

Herraic looked anguished. “I offer all I can, sire. There’s little warmth for any of us within these walls.”

“How many swords have you got left?” Orisian asked, waving his own warriors forward. They advanced on foot, leading their horses noisily up the long passageway. Swarms of snowflakes came billowing in around them.

“Less than twenty,” Herraic stammered. “And a few willing men amongst the foresters and villagers who’ve found refuge here.”

“Good,” said Orisian curtly. He looked beyond Herraic, saw that the first of his warriors was entering the deep, high-walled yard beyond the passageway. He nodded to Taim. The warrior moved more quickly than even Orisian had expected, driving Herraic back against the wall in a single lunge; grasping the Captain’s throat with one wide hand, with the other freeing his sword and touching its point to Herraic’s belly.

“Yield your castle, Captain,” Taim said quite softly and calmly.

One of Herraic’s men started forward, but Orisian interposed himself, sword and shield readied. He felt no hesitation, no uncertainty. Exhaustion had emptied him of everything save a sickening kind of desperation. He had no talking, no reasoning, left in him; neither the patience nor the strength for anything other than a swift resolution. The advancing warrior must have seen something in his face or his eyes, for the man hesitated. The wind surged down the passageway. Orisian could hear and dimly see his men dispersing to confront and disarm Highfast’s garrison. His eyes were failing, though, crippled by weariness. Snowflakes boiled in the air between him and the warrior he faced, streaking white blurs across his vision.

“Herraic…” he said.

And behind him, choked out through Taim’s crushing grasp: “Yes… yes, sire. I yield Highfast to you. Please.” It was the voice of a broken man, and as Orisian carefully lowered his sword and shield, he could hear Herraic begin to weep.

There was no fighting. None of Highfast’s defenders had the appetite for resistance. At Herraic’s command they laid down their arms with apparent relief, and though they were sullen and resentful, all permitted themselves to be herded into the largest of the dining halls. A dozen families were assembled there too. They huddled in the corner, watching Orisian and Taim and the rest. The parents hugged their children close, as if guarding them against some fearful sight. As if some avatar of the terrible outside world had breached the walls of their sanctuary and now stood before them clothed in threat.

Standing there, surveying this miserable gathering, Orisian was for a moment struck breathless by overpowering shame that he could instil such fear in mothers and fathers and children. He closed his eyes, bit his lower lip and turned away. He was not to blame. He did only what was necessary.

“Give them food and drink, if you can find some,” he murmured to one of his men.

He drew in a deep breath and blew it out again. It trembled in his throat and chest. He did not know how much longer he could bear this. He needed sleep, craved it as a starving man might crave food.

Herraic was sitting, elbows on knees, head in hands, on a bench. Taim stood over him. Orisian saw sympathy in Taim’s face as he regarded the fallen Captain, and somehow the sight of that gave him a fragment of strength. There remained some little space, some capacity, for something other than anger, or fear, or exhaustion, even now.

“What happened, to so poison this place?” Orisian asked Herraic.

Highfast’s Captain slowly lifted his head, blinking

“The Dreamer woke, and… and I don’t know. The na’kyrim fell to slaughtering one another. Woodwights came; there was madness. A madness in the air, in the heart. It was a horror, sire. If you could have seen…”

“Where are the na’kyrim?” Orisian demanded. “They can’t all be dead, can they?”

Herraic winced, as if struck.

“Where are they?” Orisian asked again, taking a step closer to the portly Captain.

“There’s an old cellar, once for wine and ale. We keep them there.”

“Show us,” Orisian said quietly

The stench was startling: ordure and sweat and mould and misery, all hot in Orisian’s face as the cellar exhaled a gout of its vile breath. He stood only for a moment on the threshold; saw in the sickly candlelight the hunched forms of men and women crowded into corners, lying asleep or unconscious or dead along the walls, two or three coming unsteadily towards the faint light admitted by the opening of the door. A moment was enough to see all this, and to feel the unreasoning anger boiling up in him, to feel tears burning in his eyes, not knowing whether they were born of the acrid stink, or despair, or pure, perfect rage.

He spun about and lunged for Herraic. The Captain gave a yelp of surprise and raised his hands in defence, but Orisian rode a ferocious wave and would not be denied. He slapped Herraic’s hands aside, seized a bunch of his jerkin and punched the man back against the wall. Herraic stumbled at the impact, and Orisian bore him down to the floor of the passageway.

“Orisian!” he heard someone shouting. The cry was distant, coming from far outside the narrow, choking ambit of his attention. He pressed a knee onto Herraic’s chest. The Captain of Highfast struggled, but was pinned into the angle between floor and wall. Orisian tugged at the hilt of his sword. The wall hindered him: his knuckles jarred against the stonework. He felt no pain, but the delay saved Herraic.

“Orisian!” someone shouted again. Taim Narran, he knew, though the knowledge had no purchase upon him, no meaning that could penetrate his inundating fury. He twisted to free his sword. Herraic was pushing at him, the Captain’s eyes stretched in alarm.

Then an arm was about Orisian’s chest, drawing him calmly but irresistibly up and away. Herraic rolled out from beneath him and scrambled to his feet. Orisian bucked for a moment against Taim’s restraining grasp, then ceased his struggles.

“We’ve foes enough already, sire,” Taim murmured as he withdrew his arms.

Orisian said nothing. He stared bitterly at Herraic, who had backed himself up against the opposite side of the passage, quivering like a hunted and cornered fawn.

“It had to be done,” Herraic gasped. “It had to be done. You don’t know what it was like. The safety of my men… We couldn’t be sure of anything.”

“Where are the rest of them?” Orisian asked.

“Dead,” said Herraic, then hurriedly: “Killed by the Dreamer, or the wights that came. You don’t know what it was like. Please…”

Orisian ground his right hand into a fist, clenching his fingernails into the palm of his hand. Only thus could he master the desire to reach again for his sword. The dancing shadows thrown by the torchlight surged and pulsed at the edge of his vision, a mocking chorus that seemed to urge him on and demand violence of him. The floor rocked beneath his feet. Herraic clearly saw something of the battle raging between instinct and restraint.

“They’re safe here,” the Captain of Highfast cried, imploring. “Tempers are running hot and hard, too much for me to control. If I’d let them wander about, I couldn’t be certain of keeping them alive. I couldn’t be sure of their safety.”

“Feared for your own, more likely,” Taim Narran said levelly. He had a hand on Orisian’s arm again, gently drawing him back round towards the cellar doorway.

“Are you all right, sire?” he asked.

Orisian puffed out his cheeks and nodded. He turned his back on Herraic. Standing in the doorway, short and pale and blinking, with his hands clasped up by his chin, was Hammarn of Koldihrve. The old na’kyrim looked with faint curiosity at Orisian.

“I know you, I think.” He smiled, pleased by the acuity of his own memory. “Yes, yes. Rode a ship with you, and walked a road. Though you were prettier then.”

Orisian brushed a reflexive fingertip along the line the scar on his cheek. Hammarn looked from side to side, his face twitching into anticipation, both alarmed and excited. “Is the lady with you? The one with the nettlesome tongue?”

Orisian gave a sad, gentle grunt. “Yvane? Yes, she’ll be here, Hammarn. Come, I’ll take you to her.”