Jaen was watching him, the way she did when she was pondering whether to say something. Taim raised his eyebrows questioningly.
“She’d want to tell you herself,” Jaen murmured, “but perhaps the sooner you know, the better. Maira’s with child.”
Taim leaped to his feet so carelessly that his thighs cracked the edge of the table and set his bowl rocking.
“Truly? You’re sure?”
Jaen smiled up at him, joyful and sad in the same moment. “Truly,” she confirmed.
Taim came to her and threw his arms around her. She dropped her spoon.
“I didn’t think it possible,” he murmured in her ear.
“None of us did, did we?” said Jaen as she pushed him away so that she could rise. She cupped his face in her hands. “We thought the Fever’d barrened her, as it did others. But not so. You’re to be a grandfather, Taim Narran.”
The warrior laughed out loud and planted a firm kiss on his wife’s forehead.
“Ha!” he cried to himself. “Ha!”
“So you see,” Jaen said, sinking back into her seat, “you’ll be needed home and safe at the end of all this. There’s to be no doubts about it this time. No excuses, no delays. I want you at my side when our grandchild is born.”
She gazed at him and Taim could feel her love, and his for her, in his chest like a beat, like another heart.
Still so strong; as strong as it had ever been.
“I will be there,” he said. “I will.”
Old Cailla the kitchen maid had sharpened hundreds of knives in her life. No matter the purpose or value of the blade, she never did it with less than her full attention. In all things – choosing shellfish for the Thane’s table, sharpening a knife, seasoning a soup – she was precise, thorough.
The particular knife on which she lavished all her care now was unremarkable, save in one respect: it belonged not to the kitchens of the Tower of Thrones, but to her alone. It had a short, thin blade set in a stubby wooden handle. Someone leaning over her shoulder and examining it might think it a peeling knife, or one for cutting fruit. In truth, it had never been used for any purpose. Aside from the very rare occasions on which she took it out to check its edge, and refresh it if needed, it never left its plain leather sheath.
She was alone in the cramped quarters she shared with three other maids. She sat on the edge of the wooden cot where she slept, working by the light of a single whale-oil lamp. The blade of the knife rasped over the stone that rested on her knees. Her fingers were not as straight and strong as they had once been, nor as dexterous or quick. Still, they were skilled. When she was done, the blade would have as sharp an edge as it could ever hold.
As she hunched over the whetstone, stroking the knife smoothly back and forth, Cailla’s old, soft lips moved. They did so almost soundlessly, but not quite. Far too faint to be heard by any save the God for whom it was meant, she repeated over and over again a few short sentences: “My feet are on the Road. I go without fear. I know not pride.”
CHAPTER 2
Highfast
Next there is the mighty fortress Marain built amidst the Karkyre Peaks. No other Blood, nor even the Kingships of the far south, can claim such a stronghold as their own. The perdurable mountain itself, cut through by tunnels and chambers, is as much a part of the fastness as its walls and towers. Not Abremor, not the Red Hand of the Snake, not all the armies of Morvain’s Revolt could breach its defences, though each tried. Whatever use my lord may find for this great place, it will not fail through want of strength.
What use that may be, I know not. The road this place was built to guard is a ruin, for since the great war against the Kyrinin none make the journey through the Peaks to Drandar. That way grew thick with bandits and with Snake raiders in the Storm Years. The cobblestones were torn up and used to build sheep pens, the drains clogged, the inns and way stations were burned or abandoned. Thus there is now no fit path beyond Highfast to either east or south, and none to the north save a mule-driver’s track across the mountains to Hent. There was a village of quarrymen and drovers close by the castle once, but it is empty now. The airs here are cold and carry wild rains; the earth is thin, the rock is hard. It is a place fit only for the hardy or forgotten, for outcasts and exiles.
from A Survey of His Holdings
for Kulkain oc Kilkry
by Everrin Tosarch, Chancellor and Servant
I
Mar’athoin of the Heron Kyrinin sniffed at the feather. It had been tied to a twig on the stream-facing side of an alder tree. The path Mar’athoin and his two companions were following crossed the stream here, and the feather had been positioned so that no one – no Kyrinin, at least – could fail to see it as they made the crossing. It was a finger-feather, from the wing-tip of a forest hawk. A single thin strand of birch bark had been used to attach it.
Mar’athoin made a guttural coughing sound in the back of his throat. It brought the other two drifting out of the undergrowth. He nodded at the feather and his fellow warriors examined it closely.
“It must be ettanaryn , yes?” Mar’athoin said.
Cynyn, the youngest of the three by only a few days, straightened and ran a finger along his upper lip. It was a gesture copied from his elders, Mar’athoin knew. Cynyn no doubt thought it signified careful consideration of a problem. He had always been over-keen to credit anyone more than a few summers older than him with great wisdom.
“It must be,” Cynyn pronounced.
Mar’athoin nodded. Like the other two, he had never seen Snake sign before, but there was nothing else this could be: ettanaryn , marking the furthermost extremity of the Snake clan’s range. The Snake, like most of the northern clans, kept to old ways of summer wandering, winter gathering. Some a’an had set this marker here at the furthest point of their journeys back when the sun was high and the days long.
Mar’athoin’s own people, the Heron, were less wedded to the old cycle of a’an and vo’an , living as they did amidst the constant bounty of the marshes. Nevertheless, foraging bands did cover long distances in the height of summer, and they still sometimes left their own ettanaryn . Where the Snake used feathers, the Heron used split, notched bog-willow stakes.
Sithvyr leaned closer and sniffed at the feather as Mar’athoin had done.
“Not fresh,” she observed. “There is no hand-scent on it.”
“I thought the same,” said Mar’athoin, relieved to be able to agree with her. He desired her, and would have been pained had she contradicted his own instincts.
“Should we make pause, then?” Cynyn asked.
“We should,” Mar’athoin confirmed. He set out back across the stream. The other two followed him without comment. He was pleased with the way they had so readily accepted him as the leader of their little band. Before they had set out, seven nights ago now, it had not been certain whether he or Sithvyr would have the greater authority. Mar’athoin had hoped it would be him from the start. He had, after all, won his first kin’thyn in the fighting with the Hawk clan two summers gone – the youngest of the clan’s warriors to have done so that year – and that was an honour Sithvyr could not yet boast.
“Lacklaugh would understand,” Mar’athoin said as they retraced their steps a short way and squatted down to wait. “He carried spears with my father when they were younger. He knows our ways almost as well as we do.”
He was almost certain he was right. Lacklaugh had urged them to keep a close watch on the other na’kyrim , the female whose mind was cracked, but he would understand the need to hesitate before crossing into Snake lands. It was an old rule, and not one to be lightly broken, that only a spear a’an offering battle would enter another clan’s homelands without first pausing and reflecting on their action.
So the three of them would wait here until the sun had turned another quarter of the sky in its endless journey. Only then would they follow the wandering na’kyrim woman into the lands of the Snake Kyrinin.
They went quic
kly through the evening, meaning to catch up with the na’kyrim before night fell. The darkness held no fears for them, but it would be harder to track her on a moonless night such as this promised to be. The forest path their quarry seemed to be following was far too obvious to be Kyrinin-made. Mar’athoin knew the Snake traded as well as fought with the Huanin lords to the south and west. It seemed likely to him that this was a traders’ way; there were a few old and stale signs of horse or mule.
That she kept to such a clear trail made their task at once simple – the na’kyrim was clearly not trying to lose or conceal herself – and potentially harder. She was more likely to wander into trouble if she kept to what must be a well-used route. Mar’athoin and his companions had promised Lacklaugh only that they would follow her as far as seemed fit to them, and guard her against harm only if they could do so without endangering themselves or their people. Should the na’kyrim fall foul of the clan on whose domain she now trespassed, Mar’athoin could do nothing to protect her: the Heron had no quarrel with the Snake.
Equally, if she stumbled across some rough Huanin trader who took against her, she would have to look after herself. Killing such a man within their territory, and without their permission, might well antagonise the Snake.
The trackway was running along the side of a steep valley. It was only lightly wooded, and great stretches of bog were visible beside the river below them. After the first day and night of their journey, they had settled – by silent consent – on what the Heron called their trytavyr : their way of going.
Mar’athoin ran ahead of the others because his eyes and ears and nose were a fraction sharper than theirs. Next came Cynyn, keeping a good two dozen strides behind Mar’athoin so that he would have time to react to any signal. Last, close on Cynyn’s heels, came Sithvyr. She had shown herself to be the fastest of all of them, at least over uneven ground. If Mar’athoin found trouble up ahead, she had the best chance of escaping to carry word back to their vo’an in the great marshes.
As they came to a thicker sweep of scrubby birch trees, and just as his instincts began to sing to Mar’athoin that the na’kyrim was close now, he threw himself into a crouch and snapped out a flat arm to halt the other two. Cynyn and Sithvyr grounded themselves silently. Mar’athoin remained motionless, his head bowed. It was not for him to speak first.
“You walk on land promised to others,” came a gentle female voice from amongst the trees ahead. The Snake tongue was close cousin to that of the Heron; Mar’athoin had no difficulty in understanding it.
“This I know,” he replied without looking up. “We made pause at your ettanaryn . We are Heron-born, and mean to pass only.”
There was movement. A flock of little birds scattered, twittering in consternation. On the periphery of his vision, Mar’athoin detected two, perhaps three, figures drifting amongst the pale birches. There were at least four others, unseen, somewhere out there, if the scents and sounds on the breeze spoke truly to him.
“Where do you go?” the woman asked. Judging by her voice, she had moved closer.
“We seek a na’kyrim . We follow where she leads.”
“Do you mean to bathe your spears?”
“No. We act on behalf of another, a Kyrinin-friend. He asked us to follow this one and see to her safety.”
“Why? We have put our eyes on her, the one you seek. She is flawed. She speaks to the wind. She walks like a child, without care or sense. Do you mean to haul her out when she falls into a river, or catch her when she steps over a cliff?”
“If we can,” replied Mar’athoin.
The unseen woman laughed. “Life must be good for the Heron. Your fowl-traps must be thick with birds, your smoking sheds full of fish and your borders empty of enemies, if you can send three on such a foolish errand.”
“It is foolish,” agreed Mar’athoin placidly.
“And what clan does she spring from, this half-human you trail? Whose fires does she call her own?”
“She was born of a Heron mother.”
“Well, she rests up ahead. She made herself a bed of grass, in a bad place. She will be cold and wet in the morning. This night and two more, then she will be beyond our lands, if she keeps to this course.
Keep to her track, do not stray, and you may pass with our goodwill. The Snake have no argument with the Heron.”
“Nor the Heron with the Snake.”
Mar’athin did not rise until he was sure all of the Snake had moved away. They would not go far, he knew. He brushed moss from his knees as Cynyn and Sithvyr came up to his shoulder.
“I counted six,” Cynyn said.
Mar’athoin sniffed and strode on. “Eight.”
They found K’rina huddled on the ground in the lee of a great rock. She had indeed torn up thick handfuls of grasses and rushes to make a bed of sorts for herself. She was already asleep, even though the sun had not yet touched the western horizon. Her slumber was punctuated by frequent mumbles and shivers.
The three Heron Kyrinin stood some distance downwind of her and watched. Remembering the words of the Snake woman, Mar’athoin felt a brief stirring of contempt for this useless na’kyrim . That her mind was misshapen, damaged, had been obvious from the start. It was only a matter of time before she fell victim to some misfortune. It was indeed foolish to waste time on her. But, he reminded himself, Lacklaugh had asked it as a favour. And if nothing else they would be able to return home and say they had made a good journey.
The question of just how far they would follow K’rina remained, though. Lacklaugh had not told them where she was going, if he even knew, but that she had some goal was beyond dispute: ever since she had left the marshes, her path had been straight, constant. Mar’athoin was not sure exactly what – or who – lay beyond Snake lands to the north or west. Huanin probably, he thought, and almost certainly the White Owls, though how far away they were he did not know. He had no desire to meet either of them. It might be that the time to turn back was drawing close.
He cast around for a suitable place to rest.
“I will be the first of my family to sleep on Snake ground,” he said with a faint smile.
For the first time in what felt like weeks, the sun was shining on the Glas valley. A bright, sharp light bathed the fields. The ground was slick and soft, bloated with rain and melt-water. The herdsmen’s trails and farm tracks that Wain nan Horin-Gyre chose to follow were muddy. Still, they were passable and better than the alternative: the main road up the valley, running on the northern bank of the river, had been almost obliterated when Sirian’s Dyke broke. In places it was still ankle-deep in sucking, half-liquid silt that made travel both exhausting and slow. These fields south of the river had suffered less lasting damage. There was a slim chance that Wain and the hundred warriors at her back might even reach Grive by nightfall, having left Glasbridge before dawn. If not, there was no shortage of abandoned farmsteads to serve as overnight quarters.
Wain’s horse was restless and irritable. Every so often it would bend its head back to snap at her knees.
Her original mount – a fine animal, a sturdy survivor of the long march through Anlane all those weeks ago – had broken its leg during the furious assault on Glasbridge. This replacement was proving a disappointment. She and it had yet to find an accommodation with one another. Wain was minded to give it up and find a more amenable partner when they reached Anduran.
She felt less joyful or excited at the prospect of what awaited her in Anduran than she would have liked.
This was, after all, what she and Kanin, and Angain their father, had hoped for all along: the Black Road was on the move, pouring through the hole Horin-Gyre had punched in the defences of the True Bloods.
There was now at least a chance that everything they had gained might be held, that new and greater victories might yet be won for the creed. Puzzles remained, however, and they were troubling. By all accounts, it was not Ragnor oc Gyre’s armies that had marched but the Battle Inkall, and thousands of
the common folk. Where was the High Thane? Where were the other Bloods? Wain, and Kanin for that matter, would willingly have handed over leadership of this undertaking, and all the lands they had recovered, to Ragnor. The Thane of Thanes had a natural right to put himself at the head of this war. To surrender everything to Nyve’s bloody ravens was not such an easy thought. Wain sighed and glanced up, narrowing her eyes against the piercing glare of the sun. There was no warmth in it.
She should not concern herself with what was yet to come, she knew. There remained much uncertainty about what she would actually find in Anduran, and until that uncertainty was dispelled there was nothing to be gained by stirring possibilities in her head. The only clear facts the messengers rushing to find her and Kanin in Glasbridge had been able to convey were that Tanwrye had at last fallen – and there was one piece of news, at least, that was nothing but good – and that the Children of the Hundred were leading a huge army down the valley, their van already taking up quarters in Anduran. Wain had left Glasbridge almost at once. Even so, she would not be the first to reach Anduran. Shraeve and her Inkallim were somewhere ahead, might even already be there.
Her horse nipped again at her leg, its teeth cracking together. She snapped the reins, flicking one towards its eye in discouragement. They were coming up to the edge of what had once been the Glas Water now. That great marshy lake had drained when Sirian’s Dyke gave way, leaving a huge expanse of shrinking pools, rushes and sodden bare earth that lay like a dark sore across the centre of the valley.
Somewhere out there the river had returned to its natural course, slumping back into the channel it had swollen out of when Sirian built his great dam. On a day as clear as this the eye could see far across the flat, treeless valley floor. And Wain’s eye caught something unexpected.
Kan Avor was a black and grey mass out near the river, like the stump of some titanic fallen tree. The ruined city, freed from its watery bonds after more than a hundred years, had outlasted the dam built to drown it. Now, Wain saw dark strands of smoke strung out from amongst Kan Avor’s ruins by the wind.
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