Fall of Thanes

VI

The heat of bodies and of breath warmed and moistened the air in the hall. Three hundred people, perhaps, crammed in, standing in expectant, reverent silence. Eska stood at the rear of the crush with her back to one of the gaping windows. She could feel the bitter wind that came up the Glas Valley on her neck, even as the warmth of the hall brushed her face. There was snow on that wind, and an occasional errant flake came tumbling over her shoulder to alight, and vanish into water, upon the hair or jacket of those in front of her.

The hall was gloomy, barely recovered from the deepest dark of night. Out to the east, Eska knew, the sky would have caught the first grimy smear of the new day’s approaching light, but here in Kan Avor it would be some time yet before true dawn would break. No lights burned, and in the near-darkness, with such a close-packed crowd, it was difficult to see the halfbreed seated on his stone slab of a throne at the far end of the chamber. When he spoke, his voice was all but disembodied, grating out from the columns, from the wooden floorboards.

“I killed one of the ghosts in the green. You could not understand what that means. You who hear nothing of the true thunder rolling beneath the world cannot know what it is to ride its storm winds, to master them thus. No matter. There’s none left, now… none left… who could describe even the outline of what I have become.”

The hush was profound. No one breathed, none stirred. Hundreds stood there in the dark, held by that strained voice stealing across the stonework, threading its way in amongst them, running its icy touch across their skin. It seemed, even to Eska, a thing not born of a living, limited throat, but rising from the matter and nature of the world itself: as innate, as inevitable as the breaking of waves on a wild shore, or the rushing of a stream through its mountain bed.

“I will give you more easily measurable wonders,” Aeglyss said.

Such a slight figure, Eska thought, so small and frail alone there on the bench. Yet so utterly dominant of every eye, every mind. There was, in these extended, rapt moments, nothing else of consequence in the hall.

“Because I know the course of your desires, because I know that what I demand of you must be earned by gifts, because it falls to me to shape all things now; because of all this, I will give you what no other could. You and your creed ascend now, on my wings.”

The halfbreed fell silent, and his silence took something out of the world, leaving all who had been listening bereaved and diminished. There was nothing that could fill the void his presence left as he drew it back into himself, bowed his head still more deeply into his chest and let out a long, dwindling breath. But light began to come, seeping in hesitantly, eroding the lingering darkness, putting grey accents on every form. And amidst that meagre brightening, they waited and watched.

*

The Bloodheir was gone. Summoned back to Vaymouth by the Thane of Thanes, it was said. Malloc cared nothing for the two thousand men who had marched with him; it was the departure of Aewult nan Haig himself that weighed upon him. Some, Malloc knew, would welcome the Bloodheir’s departure. There were those-all but traitors to his way of thinking-who thought Aewult’s leadership a factor in their recent defeats. In the night just ended, by the glare of their campfire’s flames, Malloc and his companions had killed one such, a man who slighted the Bloodheir’s courage, his merit. The others had held him down and covered his mouth, and Malloc himself slipped a blade twice, thrice, between his ribs. They had dragged the body to a ditch and hidden it amongst reeds there. None could reasonably punish them for their deed, but it would be for the best if the question never arose.

There had been a certain comfort in the killing, a small confirmation that the world retained some semblance of sense and balance. Strangely sweeter to him than the taking of any of the other lives he had claimed in his long service of his Blood, it gave Malloc a memory to set in the scales against his disappointment at the Bloodheir’s departure. He stood now, with Garrent and the others at his side, by the banks of a wide, shallow stream, and remembered the feel of that disloyal, foul-mouthed fool dying beneath his knife. The man had been a Taral-Haig archer, somehow separated from his company in the darkness.

In the new day’s half-light, the waters of this stream looked darker and more turbid than they had any right to be. There were many such brown waterways scurrying down towards the sea from the northern fringes of the Ayth-Haig moors. It galled Malloc to find himself in such a peripheral posting, when any battle-if there was even to be such a thing-would be decided nearer the coast, beside the road that pointed the way south. That was where most of the remaining Haig forces were gathered. None defended Kilvale itself. The town would stand or fall by the strength of its own inhabitants and the warriors of its own Blood. There had been killings traded between Kilkry and Haig. Only word of the Black Road’s approach and the withdrawal of every Haig sword from the town had stilled them.

In truth, Malloc doubted the rumours of impending combat that had drifted through the army, with the smoke of its hundreds of campfires, in the evening and night just passed. He had long ago learned to distrust the misshapen guesses that infested any assemblage of fighting men like madly breeding cockroaches. The whispered reports of Black Road companies massing half a day to the north of Kilvale seemed to him no more reliable than any of the hundred other tales he had heard in recent weeks. Some clearly gave them more credence, though, so he found himself here in the misty morning, staring across the chattering waters at rough, undulating ground studded with countless clumps of low trees and shrubs.

For all his conviction that this would come to nothing, Malloc clung to a faint hope that he might have the chance to draw his sword today. The waiting, the indolence, had become insupportable. He had never known any body of men so in need of bloodshed. He revelled in the tightening of his own chest at the thought that he might, at last, have the chance to make amends for the defeats inflicted by the Black Road. This was supposedly the only fordable stretch of the river above Kilvale that the Black Road might reach in a single day. Malloc had no idea whether that was true, but it offered at least the possibility that there would be fighting to be done, so he chose to believe it. He chose to hope.

What breeze there was on this sluggish morning was out of the west, and it suddenly carried upon it the faintest, most tantalising hint of battle. The damp air brought a murmur out of the furthest mists: the muted song of war. Malloc’s heart thumped, as if fed by the distant sound. He firmed his grip upon the shaft of his spear, shifted his weight from foot to foot. Nobody spoke, in all the ranks of men. Their mood was expressed not in words, but in the creaking of leather, the rasp of swords being drawn, the soft settling of helms onto heads.

Malloc saw figures far out beyond the river, imprecise movements at the limit of his mist-curbed vision. The Black Road came in loose array, slowly, spread out amongst the scattered trees, and they came armoured in mounting noise. Voices merged into a rising clamour, forming a fierce, disembodied chorus of intent that seemed almost to come from the hidden sky, descending upon Malloc and his companions from above.

There was hunger in that sound, an impersonal pledge of savagery. And as it drew nearer, and as the figures came closer and solidified, Malloc felt sudden fear stealing through his mind. It rose up from within him and ran cold needles over his scalp, sent a tremor running through his arm so that his spear shook. It changed him in a moment, as if he had stepped across a threshold, entering a chilling shadow, becoming someone else. His every thought was smothered by a mounting, absolute dread, a crippling fear of what might-what would-happen with his next heartbeat, or the next.

In the last vestigial corner of his former mind, he remembered this. He had felt it before, on the day of this army’s humiliation beyond Kolkyre. Then, as now, all strength had leached from his arms and legs, all reason and courage fled from him. But this was deeper, this was reaching for the core of him, crushing what lay behind his eyes beneath an overwhelming despair.

Malloc gasped, feeling his breath clog in his throat. He looked sideways, and saw Garrent, close by, anguish tugging at his face, mouth opening, lips trembling. Malloc’s hand shook once more, and his spear toppled from his numb grip.

“Stand firm!” he heard someone shout behind him, but the voice was wild, desperate, fully aware of its own futility.

Malloc could see the men and women coming towards him clearly now. He could see their lips moving, and the noise buffeted him, the baying of hounds, the cry of a thousand crows, promising to pick the flesh from his bones. Another few moments, another few agonising beats of his tumbling heart, and they would be at the river, setting their feet into its waters. There were riders here and there amongst the throng, towering in Malloc’s sight, their mounts great beasts with blood falling from their fanged mouths. He moaned, felt his legs quiver.

Those on either side of him were backing away. Garrent was turning, letting fall his own spear just as Malloc had done. The first of them was in the river: a woman, leaning forward in anticipation, the water breaking around her ankles, a feral grin upon her face, fire in her eyes. She was staring, it seemed to Malloc, right at him, into him. He saw her sword and knew, with utter precision, what it would feel like when that blade pierced his bowels and twisted there, tearing his guts, opening him.

Then the whole host of the Black Road was running at him, howling, the horses pounding in curtains of spray across the ford, and Malloc wailed and fled. They all did. There was nothing but flight, a great jostling crowd pounding away over the rough grass. Malloc knew he was already doomed, already dead; he knew it with a certainty he had never felt before in his life. Still he fled, for his body would permit nothing else.

Crossbow bolts came whipping past him. Someone fell across his path and he trampled them. A horse came thundering up beside him, and another man went down, speared. He felt a blow on his back, and pain, but ran on. He pushed others from his path. He stumbled and went down onto hands and knees. His own terror pulled him to his feet and drove him on. Black Roaders were flowing around him, ahead of him, in amongst the fleeing warriors. Malloc heard their wild joy, saw an axe come down in a great arc onto a skull, saw a mounted swordsman laughing as he hacked again and again.

Malloc ran as if in a fell dream. He was weeping, he knew. He could hear his own voice, though he did not know what he was saying. Blood spattered his face and he tasted it. There were bodies all over the ground, like boulders, like logs. He clawed at the air before him, wanting to tear his way out of this place, this world, to whatever lay beyond, for he could not endure another moment of this.

Someone battered against his shoulder and spun him. He staggered back, facing the enemy now and seeing them pouring towards him in limitless numbers, a vast, mindless dark flood engulfing the land. A man hit Malloc across the throat with his sword, not pausing but running on in search of further prey. Malloc slumped to his knees. Blood bubbled in his mouth. He could see a woman running at him, spear levelled. He lifted his hands, but they were heavy and limp, parting as they rose as if in welcome.

The spear hit him high on the chest and knocked him onto his back. He glimpsed grey mist above. He did not remember who he was or what he was doing here. His form contained nothing but fear. It was all of him. Then that mist was blotted out by figures clustering about and above him, and they were stabbing him and kicking him. The blows rained down, and he felt them as a stooping flock of birds plunging into his body. Something was coming towards his face, towards his eyes. His heart stopped, and the descending shape made itself the blade of a sword, falling slowly like a piece of the sky come loose. It grew until he could see nothing else. And then it gathered him into its darkness and took him away.

*

Light had come into the hall in Kan Avor as fully as it ever would on this grey day. Eska could feel stiffness and ache spreading in her legs. Others, their muscles less honed than hers, had long ago sunk to the floor, sitting cross-legged on the wet boards or leaning against walls or pillars. Eska glanced out of the window. Snow was billowing through the quiet streets outside, spilling over and through the shattered ruins of this once-great city.

The cold air set her face burning, chilling the beads of sweat that still studded her brow. Her heart had slowed now, returning to its normal leisurely pace, but the memory of the hammer beat it had raced to was there in the cage of her chest. They had been moments out of time, those, a waking dream that felt endless from within its embrace. A dream of exultant, elevatory violence and joy. It had come without any warning, plucking her away from this hall, this city, and bearing her up out of the dull confines of her own head. She had been blind and deaf, riding the fury of others, feeling the wind of countless lives howling away into nothingness, knowing what it was to be at once herself and thousands, an overpowering sense of omnipotence and inevitable triumph. In that timeless span, she had been part of something vast, glorious, and unstoppable.

Plunging back into the hall, looking out from behind her own eyes and becoming aware once more of the hundreds of separate, silent figures crowded in there with her, had been disorientating. She had felt a cavernous loss in the pit of her stomach. Some of those present were undone by their parting from such glories, and fell wailing to the floor. One began to claw frantically at the rough stone of one of the columns, as if trying to climb back to the heights from which he, and all of them, had been so abruptly torn. He tore his fingertips to bloody shreds before he calmed, and slipped down, unconscious.

Eska knew only one thing: a great victory had been won for the creed. The enemies of the faith had been consumed by a fearful storm. And she had been there, within that storm. Beyond that, nothing was clear to her. Was she in error to resist this delicious madness? Could this halfbreed, now slumped and shrunken and still, insensate upon his bench, truly be the incarnation of the Kall, come to destroy the world and release it from its long suffering? Kanin oc Horin-Gyre meant to bring Aeglyss down, but she doubted now whether that was anything more than a lone sailor proposing war upon the storm, the sky itself.

A pair of Battle Inkallim were approaching her through the crowd, one coming from the doors, the other from behind the stone bench where Aeglyss was still slumped, insensible and dormant. They came slowly, drifting almost casually between the close-pressed bodies. She should have sensed their movement long before. In her distraction she had missed what the rawest of trainees would have seen at once.

It seemed unlikely that the ravens meant to kill her here and now, but if they did it would be futile to fight them. Spear and crossbow had been left secreted amongst the ruins outside, for none save Battle Inkallim or White Owls were permitted to bring weapons into the halfbreed’s presence. She visualised the drop from the window behind her to the empty street below. The leap would almost certainly break her ankles or legs, but she readied herself for it. Cautious habit had placed her here, within reach of that last, desperate recourse, when she first entered the hall. It would be her only chance if blades were bared.

Her eyes and those of the closest Inkallim met as he edged to within a long arm’s reach of her. Neither blinked, neither betrayed any sign of emotion or concern.

“Shraeve would speak with you when this is done,” the man said. Quite without nuance or threat. “She requests that you remain behind when all the rest leave here.”

Eska thought for a moment, maintaining her steady gaze.

“I am required elsewhere,” she said, matching the man’s relaxed manner with her own.

“It will not take long,” he said, and turned his back on her as the second of the ravens settled in on the other side of her. The conversation was, she concluded, at an end.

Aeglyss grunted then, and every head turned towards him. An expectant murmur suffused the hall. Those who had been sitting or lying on the floor rose to their feet.

“It’s done, it’s done,” the na’kyrim breathed, pushing himself up from the bench with one hand. His voice still set the hairs on Eska’s arms and neck on end, but it was a hollow sound now, and rough-edged. She narrowed her eyes and saw, as he came, bent-kneed, to his feet, how his supporting arm trembled, how his head stayed low as if his neck no longer had the strength to lift it. How a single drop of dark red blood fell from his nose.

“Now you see…” he stammered, and then his whole form was shaking. More blood was flicked from his nose and mouth. His shoulders quivered, their bones visible through his thin gown. He took a single tortured step forward and his legs suddenly twisted. He fell and thrashed about, beating arms and legs against the floor.

Waves of nausea pulsed through Eska; beats of pain throbbed in her temples. She winced and felt her breath congeal in her chest. Groans and moans escaped a hundred throats. Many swayed on their feet, grabbing at those next to them to keep themselves upright.

“Clear the hall!” Shraeve cried as she knelt beside Aeglyss, trying ineffectually to restrain his flailing limbs.

The doors were thrown open and Inkallim and Kyrinin drove the throng out with fists and spears and threats. The people wept as they left, and wailed. Some fell to their hands and knees, vomiting, and were beaten and kicked until they roused themselves to struggle out. Eska made to follow the flow, but one of the Inkallim at her side held out an arm to bar her way.

“Wait,” he said. “You may still be required.”

She disliked his tone. Though she might grudgingly accede to the right of the Lore to issue instructions to the Hunt, there was no tradition of submission to the will of the Battle. More than that, her head was spinning, her vision blurring at the edges beneath the onslaught of whatever strange sickness of the mind was pouring from the na’kyrim. She longed to escape from this choking, stinking chamber. But she was unarmed and hardly capable of forcing the issue, so she remained.

As the last of the onlookers were herded out, Shraeve finally mastered Aeglyss’ convulsion. She held the na’kyrim down, pinning his arms. Aeglyss was panting, shallow breaths rushing in and out of him. His eyes were closed.

Goedellin came shuffling out of the shadows at the rear of the hall, the end of his twisted stick rapping on the wooden floor. He had been hidden until now from Eska’s sight. She was surprised, and troubled, to find him here.

“What ails him?” the old Lore Inkallim asked Shraeve.

“I do not know,” she said as she stood up.

The two of them stared down at the halfbreed. He was entirely unmoving now save for the fluttering of his chest. He looked like a strangely animated corpse. The White Owls edged nearer to him. Shraeve’s ravens drifted closer from all parts of the hall. The gaunt, senseless na’kyrim exerted a grim fascination upon them. Blood was flowing, Eska saw, from his wrists. The sleeves of his gown were soaked with it.

“I don’t understand,” said hook-backed Goedellin, almost plaintive to Eska’s ear. She curled her lip in momentary contempt at the man’s feebleness. What use was the Lore if it could offer no guidance in times such as these? It was no wonder the Battle had made itself master when the eldest Inkall so meekly lapsed into confusion and uncertainty.

“No,” muttered Shraeve. “That does not surprise me.” She was staring at Eska even as she curtly dismissed Goedellin from her attention.

Eska nodded slowly and slightly in acknowledgement of Shraeve’s gaze, and the Banner-captain of the Battle advanced towards her.

“You came here from Glasbridge, we think,” Shraeve said. The hilts of the two swords sheathed across her back rocked as she gave her shoulders a loosening shrug. Eska took comfort in the thought that even this formidable raven felt the tension, perhaps even the pain, the halfbreed spilled out from himself. She made no reply to Shraeve’s question, though. She would offer nothing willingly to Cannek’s killer.

“And presumably you mean to return there,” Shraeve continued, “since if killing Aeglyss was your plan, you would likely have made the attempt before now.”

“He would be dead,” Eska confirmed.

“Perhaps not.”

“It is difficult to defeat an assassin who places no value upon their own life.”

“Difficult,” said Shraeve with the thinnest of smiles, “but not impossible.”

Eska could see in her cold eyes that she meant Cannek, and despised that faint flicker of satisfaction she detected in the other woman. Cannek had willingly submitted himself to the judgement of fate. It ill became anyone to permit themselves more than transitory pleasure or regret at his death. Shraeve, it seemed, was less mindful than she should be of the creed’s warnings against the corrosive effects of pride.

“The Inner Servant — ” Shraeve gestured towards black-lipped Goedellin without taking her eyes from Eska “-wishes to travel to Glasbridge. I invite you to escort him. It would be for the best. Your presence here causes unwelcome disquiet.”

“Can I not come, as so many do, merely to witness for myself this man you claim as such a boon to the creed?” Eska could not help but play out in her imagination a deadly dance with Shraeve. She could picture those swords sweeping free of their scabbards, could see how her own spear-if she had it-might dart beneath or between them to pierce Shraeve’s carapace of black leather. There could be no certainty of how such a dance would end. Eska was sure of only one thing: it would be brief. The first faltering, however slight, would resolve it.

“There are many who fear the Hunt’s vision has become clouded,” Shraeve said. “That you have lost sight of what is important.”

“And that is?”

“That we-all of us-are rising to our final glory. That we have mastered two Bloods already, and today-even now-our armies hunt the fleeing host of a third. This is what Tegric and his hundred died for.” Shraeve’s voice rose as she spoke, acquiring a joyous vigour. “It is what the Fisherwoman herself died for, and all the thousands since then. This is the time that all those deaths have made possible. If you deny it, you deny them. Make them meaningless.”

“It sounds like a matter the Lore is better placed to judge than the Battle,” Eska said placidly. Her head was clearing now. Her nausea had subsided, leaving only a sour twist in her stomach.

Goedellin looked up at the mention of the Lore. His stained lips were pressed tight in a miserable pinch.

“There is time yet for…” Shraeve began, but then Aeglyss was rolling onto his stomach with a thick gurgling splutter. The White Owls and Inkallim who had gathered around him started back.

Aeglyss crawled on all fours. His hands flexed against the planking of the floor like frail white spiders. The open sores where his fingernails had once been split and leaked noisome fluid. His scabrous head bobbed up and down. Blood dripped from his face, hair fell from his scalp.

“Help me, Shraeve,” he sobbed. “Help me. Save me. I am lost.”

His gown hung limp from the bones of hip and shoulder and ribcage.

“Am I safe yet? Am I safe? I can’t tell; can’t tell anything any more. I don’t know.”

Eska saw unguarded confusion and distaste flutter for a moment on the faces of a few: several of the wood-wights, one or two of the Inkallim. There are flaws here still, she thought. There is room for doubt in some hearts, when the madness is not fully upon them.

“It’s killing me,” Aeglyss groaned. “Tearing me apart. It’s too much, too much for my body, my bones. Oh, what have they done to me?”

He crawled, jerking, across the floor like some demented child made of sticks and string. Shraeve went to him and knelt at his side. She shot a wildly hostile glare in Eska’s direction.

“Go,” she hissed. “Take Goedellin with you. Take him to that pathetic Thane of yours.”

Goedellin hobbled towards the door without further urging. He glanced uneasily, again and again, at the twitching na’kyrim as he went. Eska followed him without looking back. She heard Aeglyss muttering as she went.

“It’s not enough. This’ll eat me away unless I can see into the heart of it, see all of it. I need to go deeper. I need to go further.”

Shraeve’s whispered reply was too soft for Eska to hear. But Aeglyss shouted, and she could hear him still as she descended the stairway that carried her and Goedellin out into the derelict city.

“No,” the halfbreed cried. “I need more. I need to be more. It’s tearing me apart, unless I master it. I need to be made afresh. Again! Again!”