Winterbirth

by Brian Ruckley

  Rothe stroked his beard.

  'I will do it, Rothe. I am nephew to the Thane,' said Orisian quietly. Never before had he truly thought that his uncle's position made a difference to who he was, in his heart; perhaps it did, after all.

  The shieldman held Orisian's gaze for a moment or two, then knelt and began to examine the ground.

  Orisian glanced over towards Ess'yr. She and her brother had not stirred. They showed no great interest in what was happening.

  'We are going to find this boy's family,' he said to them. Ess'yr gave a slight nod. He had no idea what it meant, beyond the fact that she understood his words.

  'There were three or four of them,' Rothe said. 'They ran him down and killed him with clubs and spears.

  It's easy to say, Orisian, but you understand that if they see us we have to kill them? All of them, if we can. If one escapes, he might come back with more.'

  'Of course.' Orisian heard the coldness in his own voice.

  Rothe stood up and faced Ess'yr and Varryn. When he spoke it was still to Orisian, though.

  'You've only a knife. The few who did this might not be the only ones around. We may need help.'

  Orisian looked to the Kyrinin. Both of them were watching him, not Rothe.

  'Ess'yr, if there is a fight we may need your help. Please?'

  It was Varryn who said, 'We have no quarrel here.'

  'Perhaps not. I will understand if you do not come with us. But if the Tarbains have come this far, they can go further. They will kill Kyrinin as willingly as Huanin.'

  'We will come,' Ess'yr said. 'We must take you to the forest edge. We are not there yet.'

  As they set out along the trail left by the boy and his pursuers, Rothe muttered to Orisian, 'I am your shieldman, and you will allow me to keep you safe. Stay back if there is trouble. If you have to fight, show no fear. Whatever happens, do not run. Tarbains are dangerous but they're cowards, too. They're like wolves: quick to turn tail if they decide you have sharper teeth than they do. If you face one, let him see your teeth. And let's hope your friends know how to use those bows.'

  The boy had not come far. He had crossed a little stream, run beneath the spreading branches of a huge oak that had been spared the axe for some reason, crossed a glade that must be full of flowers in the spring. Not far.

  They lay in the damp grass atop a rise, looking down between scattered trees towards the cabin a few score paces away. It was the kind of dwelling hundreds of Lannis folk lived in: square, made of timber and stone, with a little woodshed close by. There were snares hanging on the wall, sheltered beneath the eaves. A pile of unsplit logs lay in front of the woodshed, as if at any moment a man might come out from the cabin with his axe. He might be a charcoal-burner or a fur trapper, or even a honey-maker with hives somewhere out of sight.

  The door of the cottage hung open, leaning at a broken angle, and the voices that Orisian could hear were not those of a woods-man and his family. They were crude, abrasive, and shouting in a language he had never heard before. Orisian was tense. It had been so clear, standing over that body in the hollow, that this was the right thing to do; a brief moment of clarity, when things for once had seemed simple.

  Now, faced with the consequence of his will, he was not so certain. Rothe had been right, of course. It would be wiser to pass by. Yet he was the Thane's nephew, and those who lived here were people of his Blood. Orisian had taken the oath. The enemy of the Blood was his enemy. If it was to mean anything, surely it was this?

  Then a figure came out of the cabin. It was a man, but one unlike any Orisian had seen before. He was tall, rangy like a lean dog. His heir was filthy and tangled in knots and mats. Dozens of splinters of bone were sewn into the fur jerkin he wore, a speckling of morbid ornament. His arms were naked but for two leather armlets, one at the wrist, one just below his shoulder. The great weapon he rested across his shoulder was vicious-looking: a long cudgel with a thick head from which five or six spikes protruded.

  The man loitered in front of the doorway. He spat and scratched at his face. He looked around, and though his eyes drifted over the place where Orisian and the others lay he did not see them. He was relaxed, careless.

  The Tarbain went inside again. There was a renewed chorus of loud voices, raised in what sounded like argument. Rothe eased himself back from the crest of the rise. The four of them squatted in a tight group once they were hidden from the cabin.

  'Can't say how many are in there,' Rothe whispered. 'It doesn't sound to be more than four or five, though.'

  'There's no sign of the boy's family,' said Orisian. 'They might be inside, do you think?'

  Rothe shrugged. 'If they are, they're dead, or worse. Tarbains don't take prisoners, Orisian. They'll probably stay here a while, eat and drink as much as they can and then carry off everything else.'

  'And maybe do the same to the next family they come across?'

  'Maybe. Now that we're here, I'd be glad to see them dead. We need them outside, though. If we go rushing in, it's as likely to be us that's buzzard food as it is them.'

  Varryn whispered to his sister. She nodded, and he was gone, running in a low crouch up the line of the ridge. Ess'yr took an arrow from her quiver and ran its fletching between her lips, smoothing the feathers.

  It was a delicate, almost sensual, movement. Rothe looked alarmed.

  'What's happening?' he demanded in a hiss.

  'They must be under the sky, yes? To kill them?' Ess'yr said. She began to crawl up towards the spot from where they had been watching the cabin.

  Rothe unsheathed his sword and raised his eyebrows at Orisian before following her.

  The voices had quietened. The clearing around the cabin was quite still. A slight wind brushed the highest twigs in the trees. It touched the broken door and creaked it on its one surviving hinge. Orisian realised he was holding his breath.

  'What's happening?' asked Rothe again. He was getting close to anger.

  Ess'yr pointed. Varryn was there, crouched against the nearest wall of the cottage. Ess'yr rose to one knee and put the arrow to her bowstring. Rothe gave a low growl of irritation, but half-rose himself and hefted his sword. The Inkallim's knife was still in Orisian's belt. He fingered its hilt. As he set himself on his knees his side gave a twinge of protest and he winced.

  Varryn stood and walked forwards. He carried his spear loosely. His bow was still across his back. He went out twenty paces into the space in front of the cabin.

  'This is not how I'd do it,' muttered Rothe.

  Varryn shot a quick glance up towards them. Ess'yr drew back the bowstring and held it. Varryn took a few steps sideways, and put himself in the line of sight from the open doorway. He rested the butt of his spear on the ground and stood there.

  'Don't forget, stay back,' Rothe whispered in Orisian's ear.

  There was a chorus of shouts from inside the cabin. Varryn sprinted towards Orisian and the others. The Tarbains spilled out behind him, howling and almost falling over one another in their haste. They saw only a single Kyrinin flying away, and they came after him. There were six of them. Orisian saw teeth bared, cudgels and spears flailing.

  The arrow was gone and homed before Orisian even realised Ess'yr had released it. It took the rearmost Tarbain square in the chest. He tumbled over his own feet. Rothe sprang up and ran forwards, crying out like a madman, 'Lannis! Lannis!'

  Another arrow thrummed across the air and found a shoulder. It spun a second man around, but he did not fall. Orisian stood and pulled his knife free. Two of the Tarbains were slowing, realising that they faced more than a single foe. Two more came on, though, too frenzied to care what was happening.

  Varryn turned to meet them, halfway up the slope. The first Tarbain to reach him was the one they had seen outside the cabin before. He swung his spiked cudgel. The Kyrinin slipped beneath it and put his spear into the man's belly. It took him off the ground, punching through furs and flesh and stabbing out through his lower back. Varryn
let body and weapon fall and met the next Tarbain with a kick to the knee. The two men rolled together, each grappling for an advantage.

  The one Ess'yr had shot in the shoulder was fleeing. She put another arrow in his back. Rothe was on top of the last two. He bore one backwards with the weight of his charge. The other froze, poised upon the boundary between courage and flight. Then as Ess'yr sighted on him her bowstring snapped. The arrow tumbled to the ground. The Tarbain looked up. He stared straight at her for a fraction of a second, and made his choice. He came bounding up towards her and Orisian, his spear levelled. Ess'yr dropped her bow and stooped to pick up her own spear. The Tarbain came on. Orisian took a step back. The tribesman had no eyes for him; he might have been invisible.

  Ess'yr met the Tarbain with a lunge that made him lurch to one side and come to a slithering halt. Fast as a falcon's strike, the butt of her spear came round and cracked into the small of his back. He grunted, but he was strong and the blow barely rocked him. He feinted towards Ess'yr and she backed up. The Tarbain was making a strange noise, half growl, half groan. There were strands of leather and hide twisted into his hair; they shook as he rolled his head this way and that. Orisian rushed at him.

  He came from behind and to one side, almost out of sight. The Tarbain's reaction was late. His spear swept round in a flat plane. Orisian ducked it and hit the man around the waist, staggering him. He would not fall and somehow Orisian could not get his knife turned the right way to stab him. Then there was a solid thud and a piercing shriek as Ess'yr's spear sank a foot deep into the tribesman's thigh. Blood flooded out, more than Orisian had ever seen except when a sheep's throat was cut. The Tarbain tried to turn and tripped. Orisian landed on top of him, and drove his knife into the man's chest with every shred of strength he had. The impact made his hand slip off the hilt. There was blood everywhere, all over his fingers, over the knife and on his clothing. The blade stayed where he had put it, though. There was a roar, or perhaps a scream, in Orisian's head, crowding out any thought, bearing him away from himself on a cresting wave of fury and grief. He gripped the knife and pulled it from the man's flesh, stabbed it in again, and then again.

  The Tarbain did not move. He was still making strange noises, but they were soft and fading now. The grass all around was a dark, liquid red. Ess'yr was running, sprinting towards the cabin. Orisian did not want to be left alone with the dying man, and went after her.

  Rothe had killed his man. Varryn had managed to pin the last and was straddling his chest. As they came near, he whipped an arrow out of his quiver and plunged it into the tribesman's neck. The first man Ess'yr had put an arrow into was crawling on his hands and knees back towards the cabin. He was speaking very quickly in his unintelligible language. For all that the words were senseless, the current of terror that flowed through them was clear. Rothe walked up to him and raised his sword above the back of his neck. Orisian looked away.

  They found the boy's father, mother and two sisters in the cabin. They were all dead.

  Afterwards, Orisian sat on the grass a little way from the cottage. He had his back to it, and was gazing out into the forest. When he looked in that direction, everything appeared normal, as if nothing had happened. The trees were as they had always been. The lichen on their trunks had not changed.

  The knife was in his hands. Rothe had retrieved it for him and washed it in a bucket of water they found inside the door of the cabin. Orisian had cleaned himself as best he could. He doubted whether the stains would ever come out of his jacket, though.

  His shieldman came and sat beside him.

  'You all right?'

  'It's not the same as practice, is it?' Orisian said.

  'No. You did well, though. Showed no fear, stayed alive; can't ask for much more.'

  Ess'yr was a short distance away, testing the spare string she had fitted to her bow. Orisian gestured towards her.

  'She killed him, really. There was so much blood coming out from where she stabbed him he would have bled to death in no time.' Even as he said it he wondered. Whether it was true or not, it did nothing to shift the hollowness in his stomach.

  'Probably. Still, you made sure he wasn't getting up again. That's important, Orisian. Leave it only half done and one day you'll be the one doing the dying.'

  'I thought it might feel better,' said Orisian.

  'Better?'

  'I thought it might even the scales a bit. For Winterbirth. For my father.'

  'Butit didn't.'

  'No.'

  'It's a start. Only a start. These men we killed, they were enemies of our Blood.'

  Orisian was no longer certain that any amount of killing would balance the scales of Winterbirth. What had just happened felt as though it had nothing to do with Kolglas. And if it happened a thousand times it would not give Orisian the chance he wanted to tell his father that he had loved him, despite everything.

  Ess'yr loosed an arrow into the trunk of a birch tree. It smacked into the wood and shivered there.

  'She does know how to use a bow, though, doesn't she?' Orisian said.

  'She does. There's no doubting that.'

  They left the Tarbains for the scavengers. They fetched the boy and put him with the rest of his family into a shallow grave in front of their home. It was a poor kind of end, against the Blood's traditions, but there was no question of making a pyre. There was no knowing who might see the smoke. They ate well, too, and gathered as much food as they could easily carry to take with them. It made Orisian uncomfortable.

  'It's food for rats if we leave it,' Rothe said. 'We've done the best we can for them. They'd not begrudge us it.'

  They walked in silence through the afternoon. As the first greying of evening had begun they came to the edge of the woods and the Glas valley was before them: a few rolling, sinking slopes shorn of trees, and then the flat lands of the valley floor. It was a huge plain laid out like a blanket of green patchwork.

  Farmhouses were scattered across it, and a few cattle could be seen here and there, but it was a lifeless view. There were no people in sight, and no smoke rose from any of the buildings. Orisian had a fleeting sense of apprehension. Now, the forest felt safe and concealing compared to that open, exposed ground.

  Anduran was out in the centre of the valley, couched in a lazy curve of the Glas some way to the east of where they stood. The river still had a faint shine to it even though the sun had almost fallen from the sky.

  The castle stood tight up against the riverside. The town it guarded lay to its south, a dark discoloration upon the valley. Orisian did not experience the surge of relief he had expected.

  Rothe was standing beside him.

  'What do you think?' Orisian asked.

  Rothe frowned in concentration as his narrowed eyes swept over the landscape.

  'A camp,' Ess'yr said. 'There.'

  Rothe and Orisian looked. Orisian thought he could see what she was talking about: an indistinct, pale shape sprawled around a darker point at its centre, not far from Anduran. It might have been a camp of tents radiating out from a big farmhouse. Certainly, whatever it was, it had not been there when he and Rothe had ridden out from Anduran all those days ago.

  'Now what is that?' Rothe was murmuring.

  'The enemy,' Ess'yr said.

  'White Owl,' said her brother, and for once there was clear emotion in his voice. He spoke the words as if they tasted vile.

  Rothe almost laughed. 'White Owls? There'd have to be hundreds for such a camp, and out in the middle of the valley, right next to Anduran? You're mad.'

  'No,' was all Ess'yr said.

  'It's impossible,' insisted Rothe. 'Inkallim at Kolglas and Tarbains here are strange enough, but White Owls at Anduran?'

  Orisian was frowning. 'It was impossible for Inkallim to reach Kolglas, but they did it. The White Owls helped them do it. In'hynyr said as much, back in the vo'an.'

  Varryn had squatted down. He was no longer paying any attention to the discussion. He stare
d rigidly out at the camp on the valley floor. Orisian turned to Ess'yr.

  'Are you sure?'

  'Yes,' she said.

  Rothe gave an exasperated snort. Orisian ignored him.

  'How many?' he asked Ess'yr.

  'Many.'

  'Well, I won't turn back now. We'll just have to go carefully, and see what we find.'

  'Wait for dark,' Ess'yr said. 'We go too. We must know what the enemy does. Where you are blind, we can see.'

  VIII

  THE CATAPULT'S ARM snapped forwards and an arc of fire vaulted the wall of Castle Anduran. The barrel of oil and pitch roared as it blazed through the air. The thump of its impact somewhere within the fortress was heard by the besiegers. It brought a ragged cheer from the warriors who hid amongst the crude siegeworks facing the castle. They shouted encouragement to the men straining to crank back the throwing arm. There were three catapults in all, and they had been at their work for some time. The smoky stink of their missiles had settled over the whole area. For a time, the castle's defenders had attempted to pick off the men working the machine with arrows, but the range was too long for accuracy and there were shieldbearers standing guard. Now the burning barrels, the rocks, the severed heads went unanswered as the day sank into dusk.

  In the streets and houses that faced the castle across the killing ground, there was a subdued bustle of activity. Small bands of warriors, their feet muffled with cloth, moved along alleyways, gathered in abandoned houses and taverns. Their captains silenced any murmur of conversation with murderous gazes. They carried no torches, and in the deepening dark there were trips and falls and strangled curses.

  Beakers of bracing grain spirit were passed around, one swallow only for each. Some of the warriors slept, some did not. Some murmured in the shadows: 'My feet are on the Road. My feet are on the Road.' And on and on into the night the catapults kept up their thumping rhythm and threw ribbons of fiery gold into the black sky.

  In the last few hours before dawn, the temperature fell. The day's first light brought with it a bitter chill.