Winterbirth

by Brian Ruckley

  The spear wall was not dense enough to deter all the horses, and the charge swept up and crashed against the footsoldiers. In moments, the right flank of the line was in chaos. Horses lunged through the mud and over bodies as their riders slashed around them. Tarbain tribesmen were already beginning to stream away in terror, flying back past Kanin's position. Knots of Horin-Gyre warriors formed, the cavalry swirling about them. Swordsmen and spearmen hacked and stabbed at the horses, while crossbowmen struggled to pick off the riders. The screams of animals and men flowed together into a single, high cacophony.

  Kanin glanced along the rest of his line. Everywhere the Tarbains were wavering, groups of them edging back from their positions, jostling and arguing with the Horin-Gyre troops along-side them. They had been taught to fear cavalry charges by the Gyre Bloods themselves and, unlike the mail-shirted warriors of the Black Road , had only small wicker shields for protection against the arrows that were still cascading down. Kanin swore.

  Wain came cantering up. Her face was spattered with dirt, but there was a kind of exultation in her eyes.

  'They'll turn our flank soon,' she shouted above the din.

  'Get down the line,' the Bloodheir cried, gesturing to his left. 'Keep the savages in their places. I'll hold the right.'

  Kanin turned his horse about. Behind him, his Shield — a score of his Blood's finest warriors — were waiting in motionless, silent ranks. Igris, their captain and the most stony-faced of them all, was gently stroking his horse's mane. His eyes were fixed upon Kanin. Beyond the Shield, Kanin's few precious cavalry were watching him expectantly. They wanted blood and, in the way it often was with warriors of the Road caught up in the fierce anticipation of battle, it mattered little to them whether it was their enemy's or their own. Fate called for a host of deaths today; those who fell would be answering a call that had been sounded at their birth.

  'With me,' was all Kanin cried, and then he was off, galloping at their head towards the raging battle on the right flank. A wild freedom filled him as he pounded into the melee. Here, he was just one amongst the many, and this would be a good way for his first life to end. The Horin-Gyre riders plunged in amongst those of Kilkry-Haig, the weight of their charge carrying them on and on. Horse lurched against horse, blade clashed with blade. Crossbow bolts hissed through the air. There was, for long minutes, only blood, and tumult, and death. Then Kanin found there was no enemy before him. The Kilkry horsemen were streaming back towards their own lines. The footsoldiers spilled out from their little clusters, falling upon the wounded and unhorsed. Kanin brought his mount to a protesting, rearing halt. He looked around. The ground was black with bodies. Here and there a crippled horse struggled to rise from the mud. There were despairing cries for help from amongst the corpses. Kanin almost laughed out loud.

  He made his way back to where Wain was waiting, his jubilant company of horsemen following behind.

  Many of them had fallen. The survivors did not care.

  'What now?' asked Wain.

  'A moment,' said Kanin. His heart was hammering and his face was flushed. He mastered himself, setting aside the red lust of combat. He looked across to the enemy, and that helped to calm him. There were still too many. The disciplined Kilkry riders were regrouping, and the archers continued their methodical, relentless work. Companies of spearmen were forming up to advance across the centre.

  'So close,' he murmured.

  Wain looked at him questioningly.

  'We can only stand and fight,' he said.

  'These Tarbains are no more use for this kind of work than goats,' muttered Wain.

  There was a renewed chorus of cries and horns. Across the field, rank after rank of warriors began to move forwards. Somewhere, a drum was beating.

  'Let us see what is to become of us, then,' Wain cried and spun her horse away.

  The army of Lannis and Kilkry came on across the grass. The going was difficult in the centre of the field and their lines began to break up as men stumbled, the wet earth sucking at their feet. The cavalry came charging up again, tearing the ground to pieces. Kanin led his own riders to meet them. Arrows and bolts whipped between the closing lines. The banner of Glasbridge town fell and was snatched up in a second.

  A burgeoning bellow filled the air as the armies sprang together, closing the last few yards in a sudden rush. In that first savage fury of contact it seemed for a moment as if the Horin-Gyre line would break at once, but it held. Just.

  Kanin lashed out at any figure that came within reach. He wanted to find Gerain, the Kilkry-Haig Bloodheir whose banner he had seen, but in the chaos of the struggle he had no chance to seek him out.

  An arrow skimmed off his mail-clad shoulder. He ducked beneath a sweeping sword and hacked at the exposed thigh of its wielder. His blade cut through leather and there was a spray of blood that soaked his glove. His horse stumbled and carried him a few lurching steps sideways before it recovered its footing.

  Kanin steadied himself and glanced around. His warriors were outnumbered and though they were taking a heavy toll of the enemy it was only a matter of time before they gave way. Yet even as the thought occurred to him, a great shudder passed through the mass of combatants as if a wave had broken over them. He turned and saw the Inkallim cutting through the fray, a black-clad tempest.

  Shraeve was in the heart of it, her swords dancing like light. She barged aside a Tarbain, crouched and sprang to bear a Kilkry warrior down from his saddle. The man was dying - his stomach opened - before he hit the ground, and Shraeve was spinning away to slash the legs from beneath a second horse.

  None of those on the field, save a handful who had been at Kolglas on the night of Winterbirth, had ever met the Children of the Hundred in combat. They knew of them only by terrible rumour. Now they saw them: leaping, spinning, dancing a bloody path through the battle with all the ease of birds playing on stormy currents of air. In the first few minutes of carnage as the ravens swept out of imagination into reality, and man after man fell beneath their blades, the will of the Kilkry and Lannis warriors who faced them shook, hesitated and broke. First one, then a dozen, then a hundred turned and poured back the way they had come. They trampled their comrades in their urgent desire to escape. Some of the Horin-Gyre riders, wild at the sudden turn in their fortunes, spilled after their foes. Tarbains too rushed forwards, eager for slaughter now that they saw their enemies' heels.

  The Inkallim halted as soon as their opponents were broken. Their fury was cold, controlled. Kanin shouted, gathering to him all of his warriors that would listen. He knew as well as Shraeve and her ravens that the battle was not won. The flank might be saved but most of the line was a surging maelstrom.

  Enemy archers, not caring what home their arrows found, were still raining shafts down upon the fight.

  The centre of the Horin-Gyre position was buckling. It was not just Tarbains who were falling back.

  All that was left of Kanin's Shield had come to him, and he rallied another forty or fifty warriors. He looked at them, raised his sword in the air and without a word kicked at his horse's flanks and made for the place where the fighting was fiercest. The Inkallim ran alongside him. The world fell into the space between two breaths. Blood and mud were one; the formless howl of battle filled the air, drawing every other sound into itself. Bodies came up against one another and were cut, broken, pierced. The fallen were ground into the earth by the feet of the living.

  Kanin found himself for a moment in a patch of clear ground with no opponent to face him. A severed hand lay in a deep hoof-print. There was a broken, abandoned spear. His chest heaved and burned. He knew there was blood on his face because he could taste it. He had no idea whose it was. His horse was shaking. Then Wain was before him, shouting. He frowned. He could see her lips moving, but heard only the cries of the dying and the clash of swords coming out from her mouth.

  'See!' he heard at last. 'From the forest.'

  She was pointing with her sword, and he followed its
line. He saw a sight that was at first beyond his understanding. Beyond the battle, out across the flat farmlands to the south where there was still grass and sky and quiet, more warriors were coming. It was a company without banners, or horses, and it came in an unordered mass: two or three hundred figures walking in silence.

  'What...?' said Kanin in confusion.

  'Kyrinin,' cried Wain. 'White Owls.'

  She was right, he saw. Even in the dull light of this day, and across the distance that separated them, he could see that this was no human army. It was a sight to astonish any onlooker. The few Kyrinin great clans left in the far east and south were said to still have the will to give battle on open ground, but Kanin would hardly have believed it of the White Owl. That they would do so on behalf of the Black Road - knowingly or not - filled him with a fierce kind of rapture.

  The men of Kilkry and Lannis looked with different eyes. They saw a new enemy, hundreds strong, descending upon their flank and rear. A flash of uncertainty sparked through their ranks. Some tried to break free from the melee to face the threat. The archers who had kept themselves back from the main battle suddenly sensed their exposure and vulnerability and began to waver. The Horin-Gyre warriors knew nothing save that the men before them hesitated. They drew in a breath of renewed hope and pushed forwards.

  The White Owls, still far from the heat of battle, halted. Hundreds of bows were silently drawn. A flock of arrows took to the air, vaulting a huge distance. The second cascade of shafts was loosed before the first had fallen. They lanced down amongst the Lannis rearguard and bowmen.

  Shraeve and her Inkallim carved their way through the ranks of the enemy.

  'On! On!' cried Kanin. Igris charged at his side.

  It became a rout in minutes. Floundering in ever-deepening mud, scores fell: warriors from Kolglas, Glasbridge and Kilkry lands; townsfolk and villagers fighting for their Blood. Their bodies piled up in drifts like heaps of dung waiting to be ploughed into the earth. The survivors streamed in panic-stricken disarray southwards, pursued by the few mounted Horin-Gyre warriors. Gerain nan Kilkry-Haig died, unrecognised, crushed by his great horse as it fell, hamstrung and gutted by deftly wielded knives.

  Groups of Tarbains were capering about the field, looting the fallen and killing the wounded. Kanin watched as his own casualties were carried in from around the field. There were many Tarbain tribesmen amongst those borne past him. They groaned and writhed, fought against their pain. His Blood, like all those of the Black Road , had carved itsnorthern territories out only after a long struggle with these wild tribesfolk. They were, as far as Kanin was concerned, little better than woodwights. Most were now Saved, their eyes opened to the truth of the Black Road , yet he could see, in the way their wounds and suffering afflicted them, how shallowly the creed was rooted in them. His own people, the warriors of Horin-Gyre, were silent as they were carried in. They bore their fates well and it pleased Kanin to see it.

  There was a strength to be found in acceptance; in knowing the nature of the world. Those whose wounds were too severe would meet the Healer's Blade - the fine knife designed to slip between ribs into the heart that every Black Road healer carried — with dignity, and go gladly towards a new life in the renewed world.

  Wain came to fetch him away from them. Several men were with her, bulging sacks slung across their shoulders. They had been collecting heads to be thrown into Castle Anduran.

  The Kyrinin had not moved since the end of the battle. Now a small group had separated from the main band of White Owls. They came across the grass, picking their way between and around bodies: a dozen warriors, their faces blurred by sweeping, spiralling tattoos, walking in a loose band with a tall, unarmed figure at its centre. It took Kanin a few moments to recognise who it was. Wain was a moment ahead of him.

  'Aeglyss,' she murmured.

  As the party of Kyrinin drew closer, they passed between knots of warriors who fixed them with hostile glares. The White Owls did not seem to notice. Kanin could see an amused expression playing upon Aeglyss' face. It broke into a narrow smile as the na'kyrim came up to him.

  'You don't seem pleased to see me,' said Aeglyss before Kanin could speak. 'I hoped for a warmer welcome.'

  'I am surprised, that is all.'

  Aeglyss gave a sharp, short laugh at that. 'I do not doubt it. But pleasantly surprised, I hope?'

  Kanin frowned. It was as if the halfbreed's fawning, obsequious manner of only a day ago had never been. Now, the man reeked of arrogance and self-satisfaction, perhaps even thinking himself some kind of hero. He was as unpredictable and inconsistent as a child.

  'You should thank me,' said Aeglyss, indicating the battlefield with a sweep of his arm. 'If we had not arrived when we did, things might have gone differently.'

  Kanin followed the gesture with his eyes, taking in the bodies of men and women and horses; the gouged, broken earth, stripped of any hint of green; the Tarbains crossing and recrossing the scene in their search for bounty. It looked ugly to him, now that Aeglyss had come. 'I suppose so,' he muttered.

  'Graciously done,' said Aeglyss, his voice weighed down by sarcasm. Kanin made to reply, but the na'kyrim was already holding up a conciliatory hand.

  'Let us not argue,' Aeglyss said. 'We are reunited in victory. It would be a shame to sour the moment.'

  'Indeed,' said Kanin.

  'I will not trouble you further now,' Aeglyss pressed on, 'but perhaps we shall have more time to talk once we have returned to Anduran.'

  There was a silvery, soothing undertone to the na'kyrim’ s voice with his final words. Kanin felt light-headed, and closed his eyes momentarily. When he opened them again, Aeglyss was already turning and heading back with his Kyrinin escort.

  'Wait,' shouted Kanin.

  'We will follow you to the city, Bloodheir,' called Aeglyss without looking back. 'I will come to you there.'

  The Bloodheir stared after the na'kyrim and his inhuman companions.

  'He seems to think he will now be a favourite of yours,' Wain said at his side. She sounded almost amused.

  Kanin shook his head. 'The man is mad,' he muttered.

  V

  THE CRAFTMASTERS WERE bringing gifts to the Thane of Thanes. In the Great Hall of the Moon Palace in Vaymouth, a succession of bearers deposited treasures before Gryvan's throne. It had been the way of things ever since Haig replaced Kilkry as chief amongst the Bloods: a High Thane returning victorious from battle received the tribute of the Crafts, in gratitude for his restoration of peace and prosperity.

  The day before, the ordinary folk of Vaymouth had thronged the streets to hail the triumphal progress of Gryvan oc Haig all the way from the Gold Gate to his Palace. The journey had taken two hours, such had been the jubilant press, so urgent the collective need to greet the returning army with their train of yoked prisoners. Now Vaymouth's greater powers made obeisance in their turn.

  In the presence of the full assembled court, the Weaponers gave to Gryvan pikes and maces set with gold, the Armourers a helm of solid silver. The Vintners laid before him jars of the best Taral-Haig wines and the Furriers the pelt of a great white bear. One after another, each of the sixteen Crafts paid homage, and Gryvan oc Haig acknowledged each gift with a gracious nod and smile.

  Standing a little behind the throne, Mordyn Jerain watched impassively. The Shadowhand had received gifts of his own from some of the Craftmasters - those who took the keenest interest in the fate of the now Thaneless Dargannan-Haig Blood - these last few days. Dargannan was a young Blood, without tradition and history to fall back on at a time of crisis, and Igryn had no son; fighting had broken out amongst his relations as soon as he was taken. With each gift had come a murmured suggestion of how stability might best be restored, which of Igryn's diffuse family might best be suited to replacing him as ruler of Dargannan lands. For all the courtesy and humility the Craftmasters affected, their pride grew year by year. The time might soon come, Mordyn felt, when it would be necessary to remind them
that it was still the High Thane who wielded the greater power.

  Seated upon the steps that led up to the Throne Dais was a living demonstration of that power. Igryn, the fallen Dargannan Thane, was an eyeless mockery of his former self. His hair and beard had been trimmed and combed, new clothes provided and his empty eye sockets hidden behind a black silken band to make him fit to appear amidst the splendours of the court. Still, he was left to sit upon the cold marble steps like a child or an idiot.

  Mordyn did not imagine that the message of humbled power Igryn embodied would discomfit the Craftmasters. They would assume that their ways were too subtle, their ambitions too narrowly defined, to merit such a violent response. Gryvan had meant the blinding for another audience: Igryn's successor, and the troublesome - though now beset by troubles of their own - Thanes of Lannis and Kilkry. The High Thane's instincts had always run towards blunt gestures. Mordyn would have prevented this one if he had been there in the wilds of Dargannan-Haig. The sudden revival of the Mercy of Kings drew too clear a link between Gryvan and those long-dead monarchs of Dun Aygll. It would have been better to kill Igryn outright.

  As the Chancellor watched, a servant in the raiment of the Goldsmiths approached Gryvan oc Haig and, kneeling, unfolded a velvet-wrapped bundle upon the floor. He revealed a necklace woven from hair-thin threads of spun gold. The servant lifted it to display its beauty to the assembled throng before respectfully setting it back upon its velvet bed.

  Mordyn suppressed a smile and glanced up.Tara was there, in the crowd lining the hall. The Chancellor savoured the familiar feeling of surprise that he should be loved by a woman of such astounding beauty and gifts. So many years of marriage, and still he hardly believed that he deserved such fortune. It was the discreet droplets of gold hanging from her ears that he was looking for now, though. Lammain, Master of the Goldsmiths, had delivered them personally into Tara 's hands only two nights gone, expressing the hope that they might be a fitting ornament for such a lady on this day. Later, in one of the more private rooms of Mordyn's Palace of Red Stone, as they lingered over cups of aromatic wine, the Craftmaster had wondered aloud if Gann nan Dargannan-Haig, a cousin of Igryn's, might not be fitted for the Thaneship. Mordyn knew Gann to be a crude blowhard, and knew as well that the Goldsmiths had been secretly enriching the young man for several years. They probably all but owned him by now. The hills of Dargannan-Haig were thickly veined with gold in places, and the idea of a compliant Thane no doubt appealed to the Goldsmiths.