Winterbirth

by Brian Ruckley

  'Be still,' hissed the Inkallim.

  'Let me go,' she shouted.

  Then she was being lifted, her arms locked behind her. Her nostrils were filled with the scents of burning, of blood, of sweat. The second Inkallim came up in front of her and grasped her face between thumb and fingers. He turned her head from side to side, examining her. He grunted and said something that Anyara did not catch. Her captor might have been made of stone for all the impression her struggles made. The two men exchanged a few more, almost whispered, words then wrestled her towards the door of the keep. They checked the stairway. The shadows were still. The second warrior lifted the bar on the door, and Inkallim poured into the building. They darted up the stairs, bearing slaughter with them in their grim eyes and already bloodied blades.

  Anyara was thrown out into the courtyard. She tumbled down the steps and lay upon the cobbles, fearing to move lest her body should fail to support her. Someone seized her and raised her roughly to her feet. She narrowed her eyes against the glare of the flames that were consuming the stables. There were bodies scattered all around the castle's courtyard. Pools of blood shone blackly, each alive with reflections of the fires. Smoke writhed around between the castle's confining walls. The few horses had been brought out from their stalls, and Inkallim were wrestling to control them. The animals stamped and reared, shying away from the conflagration and throwing wild flame-cast shadows. At the foot of the far wall, a small cluster of corpses was gathered. Hunched at their heart, not quite fallen but slumped and bowed on his knees, was her father. Even as she watched, he seemed to be sinking, slipping down to the ground.

  'Father,' she cried out. The hands that held her arm tightened painfully.

  A group of Inkallim were coming towards her, blocking her view. They were dragging Inurian by the arms. With them came a lean na'kyrim Anyara had never seen before.

  She kicked and struggled. Inurian looked up. Blood was pouring from a wound on his head and he could not stand.

  'Anyara,' he said.

  'Quiet,' the other na'kyrim snapped.

  They hauled Inurian and Anyara to the horses. Inkallim were emerging once again from the keep, moving purposefully but without urgency. Anyara glanced up at the windows. They were all dark. She and Inurian were bound and thrown across the necks of two horses, warriors settling into the saddles behind them. A gust of wind spun sparks and smoke around the courtyard, searing her eyes. The horse skittered to one side and she almost slid off. A firm hand held her in place.

  In moments the Inkallim had gathered. They were fewer than they had been at the start of the battle, but not by many. One of the women was shouting curt commands Anyara could not catch. Half a dozen of the Inkallim mounted the other horses, and they led the way out through the gate. The rest jogged in tight formation alongside the animals bearing Inurian and Anyara.

  As they emerged on to the causeway, Anyara felt the sea breeze on her face. She strove to raise her head, but she was bouncing up and down with the horse's trot and the strain on her neck was too great.

  She glimpsed the town ahead, though. It was brightly lit, not just by the torches and bonfires of Winterbirth but also by still greater blazes. Houses were burning. Above the splashing clatter of the horse's hoofs upon the part-exposed causeway, the sound of screaming and shouting reached her ears.

  There was fighting in the town.

  The dash up from the seafront was a chaos of cries, of plunging figures, of clashing blades. The Inkallim never broke stride, pounding up the narrow street towards the square, battering aside any townsfolk who blocked their path. Some of the town's garrison, drawn by the sound of fighting in the castle and the faint sight of smoke rising from its battlements, had begun to make their way down towards the causeway.

  They were too few and taken too unawares to stand against the Inkallim. Even so, Anyara thought, the raiding party would emerge at any moment into the square, there to be surrounded and cut down. But they turned down a side street. Some of the Inkallim peeled off to hinder pursuit, and she heard screams and the ring of blades.

  It grew darker as they moved away from the centre of Kolglas, then they passed by the beacon of a burning cottage and Anyara felt waves of heat washing over her and smoke rasping down into her lungs.

  She turned her face away. When she looked up again they had come to the very edge of the town, emerging on to the main road that ran south along the coast. Without any signal she could detect, the band of warriors broke away from the track and plunged into the black forest.

  The fringes of the forest were open, kept clear of undergrowth by the town's stock. As they went on the wildwood closed in about them. Twigs and tendrils clawed at Anyara's cheeks. She pressed her face into the horse's neck, feeling the massive muscles working rhythmically beneath its skin. In the last instant before she sealed her eyes, shutting out the horrors of the night if not those within her own mind, she caught sight of half-hidden figures running alongside them; no Inkallim these - lither, paler - but they moved too fast and the night-bound forest was too dark for her to tell quite what new piece of nightmare had risen up to join their flight.

  That first night in the Forest of Anlane seemed to last an eternity. After an age, they paused and Anyara was set upright on the horse. Her bonds had torn tracks of stinging pain around her wrists. It was too dark for her to see clearly. The wind was rising, shivering through the leafless canopy of the forest above her. She looked around for Inurian, and saw a hunched figure seated in front of a rider a few yards away.

  Then the massive arms of her Inkallim captor embraced her as he took up the reins once more and nudged the horse on. She felt his chest pressing against her shoulders and tried to ease herself forwards.

  As the horse got into its stride she slid back and could not help but rest her weight against the warrior.

  They kept a steady pace, weaving through the ever-thickening forest. To Anyara, peering out over the horse's bobbing head, it seemed that they were travelling blind. Trees loomed up out of the darkness, boughs leapt at her. Now and again at the very edge of her vision she saw people running ahead. Some were Inkallim, judging by their bulk. Others, more distant, were those same less substantial figures she had noticed before, lean and rangy shapes that ghosted silently through the woods. The realisation came that these were Kyrinin: woodwights of the White Owl clan were guiding the Inkallim through Anlane.

  Perhaps they too had set the fires in Kolglas that kept help from coming to the castle. The thought put an icy needle into her heart. She was in the hands not only of the enemies of her Blood, but of her very race.

  As dawn's first light began to bleed through the roof of the forest, the trees solidified out of darkness.

  They sloughed the night and gradually took on form and substance. Anyara's thoughts had run off on pathways all their own, and she came to herself with a start as if roused from a waking sleep. She swayed on the horse. Her eyes, her back, her throat all ached and she feared she might fall at any moment. She looked about her. They were following a narrow, almost overgrown trail. Ahead of her, Inkallim were running in single file, keeping a steady, careful pace. She could see no sign of the Kyrinin.

  She craned her neck to try to see behind, and glimpsed other horses and riders before her captor slapped at her face.

  After an hour or so, when the grey shades of dawn had become the clear light of day, the relentless pace slowed a little. The path widened. Anyara felt exhaustion and cold settled deep inside her. Although it was warmer now, the night's chill had taken root in her body and would not relinquish its hold.

  Another horse came up beside her and she turned to see Inurian seated in front of a smoke-blackened warrior. He looked pale and drawn. Blood had crusted his forehead and laid dark stains down his left cheek. Anyara started to say something, then bit her lip at the sound of a third horse coming up behind them. It drew level and she recognised the na'kyrim who had appeared after the fighting in the castle was over. He was a good deal y
ounger than Inurian and to Anyara's eyes his skin had a hungry pallor about it. His pale hair hung lifelessly to his shoulders.

  There was excitement in the newcomer's face as he leaned towards Inurian, as if the dawn, the flight and the warriors all around brought forth in him a feral joy.

  'My name is Aeglyss,' he said.

  Inurian fixed his eyes upon the path ahead.

  'You did not sense me, did you?' Aeglyss said. 'Nor did you get inside the minds of those Inkallim. I wasn't certain I could hide their intent from you, you know. You, the great na'kyrim who can see a man's thoughts. I promised the ravens I would do it, let them play out their little charade, but in my heart I didn't know. But, see! I was the stronger, was I not? My gifts proved the greater.'

  Still Inurian ignored him. Aeglyss seemed to relax a little, sinking back into his saddle and adjusting his hands upon the reins.

  'How old are you?' he asked after a moment or two, his voice calmer now, more measured.

  'Old enough to have seen your kind before,' Inurian responded. There was ice in his voice.

  'And what kind is that?'

  'Dogs that think they are wolves.'

  Aeglyss laughed at that. There was a ragged edge to the sound, as of a man laughing at word of some disaster.

  'They would have killed you but for me, little man. The Children of the Hundred have no great liking for na'kyrim. They tolerate me only because they know I can help them. I saved you from their tender mercies, and you should not forget it. We will have much to discuss later.'

  He glanced dismissively at Anyara, then kicked at his horse. It lurched forwards, trotting up the trail to the head of the column.

  'What a . . .' Anyara started to say, but a sudden tensing of her guard's arm warned her to hold her tongue. She looked across to Inurian and he had time to nod before the horses parted once more and he was carried ahead and out of sight.

  They followed paths that Anyara often could not make out. The tracks wove through what seemed to be impenetrable under-growth. They went fast, the Inkallim jogging along, the horses grouped in the middle of the column. The Kyrinin reappeared in the mid-morning. They drifted in and out of sight, running figures passing amongst the trees on either side without a rustle or a footfall. Haunting birdcalls, which Anyara did not think were made by any bird, ran through the forest every so often.

  They stopped without warning, in early afternoon as far as Anyara could tell from the sun's angled rays, beside a forest stream close-fringed by willows and alder. She and Inurian sat against rocks while their Inkallim guards drank from the stream. The warriors who had been acrobats bowed their heads into the water and rinsed the dye from their hair. It made Anyara think, absurdly, of villagers washing clothes by a mill-stream. Eddying clouds of amber and red swirled away down the current. Then began the meticulous task of re-dyeing. The warriors produced packets of powder from their belts and pouches. Mixed with water, it made a thick paste that they worked through their hair. It took some time. When they straightened, every man and woman had sleek black locks. Anyara looked away. The Inkallim, she remembered being told, wore their hair black in token of the birds that once accompanied the God called The Raven: Death.

  A few Kyrinin came in and squatted with Aeglyss and some of the Inkallim, talking in hushed tones.

  Anyara could not help but catch her breath at their closeness. She had only seen Kyrinin once before, and they had been dead, brought out of the forest by the warriors her father had sent to hunt them down.

  The skin of these strange, fearful figures was so colourless it seemed almost translucent to her. The characteristics that Inurian had inherited from his Kyrinin ancestors were here before her in their purest form: fingers long and precise, tipped by uniform white nails; eyes of a flat, unnerving grey; fine, sharp-featured faces; pale hair that had an almost luminous sheen. Two of them bore markings she had heard described in stories. Thin blue lines ran in great, whorling spirals and curves across their faces like ferocious masks. If the tales were true, these were the tattoos worn as badges of honour by the most savage warriors of the Kyrinin. Only now, seeing them in soft conversation just a few yards away, did Anyara understand how truly unhuman these people were. As much as anything, the difference resided in their air of detachment and self-assured grace; the way in which they held themselves and the unspoken language of their movements and gestures.

  After a minute or two the Kyrinin rose and headed back the way they had come, vanishing from sight.

  'Gone to check for pursuit,' muttered Inurian. He seemed less haggard and drained than he had in the early morning.

  'They'll not find any,' he continued, talking as much to himself as to Anyara. 'We've come too far and fast. None but other Kyrinin could keep to this trail and match our pace.' He chewed at his bottom lip.

  'Where are we going, though?'

  An Inkallim swordsman loomed up before them. He gestured towards Anyara with a deerskin pouch of water. She resisted the urge to shake her head. She was thirsty, and would gain nothing by denying it.

  The warrior held the pouch as she took a few sips. He offered it to Inurian as well, but the na'kyrim ignored it.

  'Not to a White Owl vo'an, surely?' Inurian mused as the Inkallim strode away. 'And not all the way to Kan Dredar?'

  'We'll find out sooner than I'd like,' said Anyara glumly.

  Inurian glanced at her, as if only reminded by her voice that she was there.

  'That is true,' he said. 'That is true.'

  'Do you know where we are?' Anyara asked him.

  Inurian frowned. 'Not with any certainty. We have been heading deeper into Anlane all the while, north and east. We crossed the track from Kolglas to Drinan in the night. It makes little sense, unless they mean to spend the winter here and I think even the Inkallim, with Kyrinin aid, would not choose to do that.'

  Anyara sighed. She caught the eye of one their guards, who was glowering at her, and lowered her gaze.

  'They must be mad to even attempt this,' she muttered. 'Whatever it is they're attempting.'

  'Not mad,' said Inurian. 'It makes sense, if you believe what they do. They have nothing to lose, after all.

  Failure only means death, and they cannot reach the world they crave without dying first. This world is hateful to them.'

  'Why are the White Owls helping them?'

  'That, I would be interested to know,' muttered Inurian, 'but I think our unpleasant friend Aeglyss will be a part of the answer.'

  They were quiet for a little time.

  'Inurian . . .' Anyara said after a while, 'my father...'

  His arms tugged the bonds that held them, and she thought he wanted to reach out to her. The cords would not yield.

  'I am sorry, Anyara. We tried to guard him, but there were too many.'

  'Orisian?'

  'I don't know. I would have given anything to prevent this, but I was too slow, too mistrusting of my own instincts. What gifts I have were not enough. I knew something was amiss, but. . . somehow Aeglyss blunted the edge of my perceptions. I've never before wished for a greater, or different, strength in the Shared, Anyara. Now I wish for nothing else.'

  He hung his head. Anyara almost wanted to turn away, so clear an echo did his pain find in her.

  'And it is only days ago that I warned your brother against wishing for what is not,' Inurian said quietly.

  They sat together in silence, each of them longing in their own way for the world to be other than it was.

  They slept that night in a narrow clearing, stopping long after dusk had fallen. Anyara and Inurian were kept apart. She huddled down, resting her head against a grassy tussock. Grief and despair were writhing in her and she felt close to tears. That she would lock in. They would not hear her cry. A coarse blanket was thrown over her, but it did little to obstruct the mounting cold. She thought that the numbing pain in her wrists and hands, the hard ground and damp grass, the creaking of the trees all around, would keep her from sleep. Instead, her exh
austion flooded up from within and carried her off in minutes.

  Time and again she came partway awake, shifting to ease some building pain in her back or arms.

  Strange sounds, filtered through the veil of drowsiness, reached her: the plaintive call of an owl; the flap of wings above the trees, and once the lilt of soft, unintelligible voices whispering close by. When someone kicked her awake, before dawn had even begun to erode the darkness, the blanket had slid away from her and she could hardly move, so stiff and sore was her body. She felt as if she had closed her eyes mere moments ago.

  They made Anyara and Inurian walk for a while that morning. A rider - one of the female Inkallim - went before them, leading them by ropes. Whenever they tried to talk to one another she would tug at their bonds. Anyara felt as weak as she had in the first days after the Fever had broken. They had been given nothing save water since being seized from the castle, and her head was light. She stumbled along, and fell now and again. Each time she was dragged along the trail a short distance and Inurian shouted at the rider ahead until she reined in her horse and allowed Anyara to struggle back to her feet.

  Aeglyss came and rode behind them for a stretch.

  'Did you sleep well?' he asked.

  Inurian straightened his back and walked on. Anyara looked over her shoulder.