Winterbirth

by Brian Ruckley

  Anyara leapt over the fallen woman. Inurian pulled her through the doorway of a fire-gutted house.

  'Run,' was all he said as they crashed over blackened timbers in the hallway and stumbled past a ruined flight of stairs. Behind them, there were urgent shouts. Inurian thumped aside a door that hung loose and then they were spilling out into a black, tight alleyway. Inurian had hold of her wrist and she could only follow as he turned right and rushed a few strides along the cobbled alley before diving through another doorway. The voices behind them felt imminent. An open window led them out into another passage. A foul stench said there was an abandoned slaughterhouse somewhere near. Small shadows scattered as rats took flight.

  Inurian closed his hand over Anyara's mouth and pulled her down, pressing her into the blackness that had pooled at the angle of walls and ground. She stirred uncomfortably, but he whispered in her ear,

  'Still.'

  She could hear his deep, even breathing. The sound of pursuit grew louder. Feet hammered into the alley; muttered curses and urgent exchanges. Some of the hunters ran off. Other, softer treads came closer, and there was the startling crash of doors being thrown open as they peered inside the buildings that lined the passage.

  She pressed her eyes tight shut, as if it would in some way mar the sight of those who searched for them.

  Inurian was as still as a corpse beside her. Someone standing nearby shouted out. Then they were moving away, their voices receding, their footsteps fading into the night. Inurian exhaled and Anyara opened her eyes. Inurian rose to a crouch, glancing up and down the alleyway.

  'Quickly,' he whispered, 'they'll think we are ahead of them for a little while yet. We must get out of the town if we can. I don't know if there are any Hunt Inkallim here, but if there are we'll not be able to hide from them or their dogs. We need to get over the walls.'

  They scurried along the back streets of Anduran, darting from doorway to doorway and shadow to shadow, seeking always the deepest dark. Where burned-out ruins had replaced buildings they scrambled over and through the rubble, finding shelter in its nooks and crannies. Twice the groups of warriors criss-crossing the city almost had them, and each time they huddled down as small as they could, holding their breath while their pursuers went past.

  The minutes stretched as they worked their way closer to the western edge of Anduran. Once there was, from some little distance away, the sound of barking dogs and they glanced at one another. It could mean nothing, but it put the same thought in both of their minds: the Hunt was to be feared at least as much as the Battle Inkall. Assassins and torturers, hunters and trackers, the Inkallim who served in it were said to be an elite amongst the elite. Once marked by the Hunt Inkall, a life had no more value than a Whreinin's promise.

  'We must get across the river,' said Inurian. 'If we can reach the forest, there are Kyrinin tracks I know.

  We might be able to lose ourselves for a time.'

  Anyara nodded dumbly. She knew Anduran well, but in the darkness, with the enemy upon them and so much of the town disfigured by fire and battle, she had little idea where they were. Inurian seemed confident of his route, though. She followed without hesitation, trusting in his instincts.

  They came to a place where the city wall was crumbling and half-fallen. For a few, tense seconds, they crouched in a doorway, straining their ears and eyes for any sign of watchers. There was only the faint sound of voices far behind them. They clambered up a pile of rubble, grabbing at stems of ivy that had colonised the city's fortifications, and then they were up and through the breach and tumbling into the ditch outside the wall. Anyara could have laughed as she rolled, filled with the heady sense of escape.

  Inurian was on his feet again in an instant, scanning the night.

  'Stay close,' he said to her, and he was off before she could reply, racing up and out of the ditch and into the fields beyond.

  The moonlight was stronger here, with no buildings to cast their shadows. It made the bushes and trees, barns and distant farmhouses into sinister shapes somehow filled with threat. They waded along a water-filled field drain. When at last they clambered out, Anyara's legs felt numbed to the bone. Her ragged skirt clung to her skin. She was about to ask if they could rest for a moment when Inurian crouched and gestured at her to follow suit.

  'See?' he asked, pointing out across the flat fields. At first Anyara did not understand what he meant, but then she picked out the yellow pinpricks of firelight in the darkness.

  'Kyrinin fires, I'd say,' murmured Inurian. 'A White Owl war party, and a huge one.' He turned to Anyara and whispered with steely intensity. 'The world is turned upside down for them to be out here in such numbers. Aeglyss has a great deal to answer for. He could be as great a threat as the Black Road , Anyara: the more so because he's unstable, unpredictable. Remember that.'

  'I will,' she whispered, taken aback.

  'One more thing,' Inurian said. He was pressing something into her hand. 'It's a foolish thing, but I would be grateful. Take this.'

  She closed her fingers about the knotted lace.

  'If something happens to me,' the na'kyrim was saying, 'and you have the chance, afterwards, bury this somewhere where the earth is wet, and plant a willow stake over it. Will you do that?'

  Anyara nodded. She might have asked him what it meant, but that did not seem like the right question.

  'What do we do now?' she asked him.

  'Make for the river. I think ... ah, I wish I could be sure. I can't be certain. There might be someone, beyond the river, who can help us. I think I can feel her . . . perhaps.' There was a wistfulness, almost an ache, in the na'kyrim's voice. 'I'm not sure. But we must go quickly, anyway. If they put White Owls on our tracks we'll need a big start to have any hope of shaking them off.'

  'We had best keep moving, then,' said Anyara with a resolution she did not feel. Inurian squeezed her shoulder.

  'We had,' he said. 'Stay close and quiet.'

  The Inurian who led her through the farmland was one Anyara did not know. It was, perhaps, the Kyrinin part of him that had been hidden through all his years at Castle Kolglas. His steps were careful but swift, his movements silent. He found concealing ditches and hedgelines, even low undulations in the apparently flat ground, where Anyara saw nothing. When he paused, becoming so still that he faded into the greys and blacks of the night, she could have believed that she was alone. She fought to calm her thumping heart and the voice in her head that urged wild, abandoned flight. All she could do was focus on Inurian and follow his lead.

  There was a sharp barking from somewhere out in the darkness. Anyara knew it was only a fox, but the sound had a chilling edge on this night. Muddy ground clawed at her feet as they skirted a little stand of trees, and she stumbled, her hands sinking deep into the wet earth. As she struggled upright a few pigeons erupted from the branches above. Inurian took her arm in his hand.

  'We must run for the river,' he hissed, and his urgency clutched at her throat.

  'Why?' she gasped. 'Because of the birds?' but already he had spun about and was dashing on into the darkness. She flew after him, the thought of losing sight of him filling her with dread.

  It was a hard, frightening dash. Every hump and hollow in the ground, every unseen ditch and tangle of bushes or brambles became a trap. Anyara lost all sense of direction and distance. She ran onwards, her breath growing ever shorter and her heart straining to burst out from her chest.

  They blundered through a bed of nettles. The grass was longer now, and tugged at their ankles. By some unconscious hint of sound or smell, Anyara could tell that they had reached the Glas before it was visible.

  The riverbank was studded by low bushes and fringed by a narrow strip of tall reeds and rushes.

  Beyond, the water moved thickly in the moonlight. They came to a halt and looked back, listening for a moment. The night was silent.

  'We swim,' said Inurian breathlessly. Anyara turned to regard the black, silent river with some tre
pidation. There was no time for doubt, though. Inurian was already pulling her into the water.

  'Swim downstream, across the current,' he said, and struck out from the bank. She followed. The cold embrace of the river compressed her chest and made her skin feel hard. The current pushed at her.

  Inurian seemed to be moving away from her and she had to bite back a rush of panic. She concentrated on her stroke, fighting to keep a rhythm against the weight of her clothes and the river's remorseless tug.

  At last more reeds loomed up out of the darkness, and a pale hand was reaching for her. Inurian hauled her out and she slipped and slithered through mud and up on to grass. She lay there gasping.

  'No time to rest,' urged Inurian, dragging her to her feet.

  She risked a glance back, but could see nothing.

  'We have to hurry,' insisted Inurian. 'We have to run.'

  'Are they coming?' asked Anyara as she rushed after him, away from the riverbank.

  'I think she's here. I think I can find her.'

  They made less than fifty paces. Anyara fell. Inurian helped her up. All she heard was a soft thud and a tiny, surprised sound from Inurian, and then the na'kyrim was slumping to his knees, his hand slipping from her shoulder and sliding down the length of her arm.

  'I'm sorry,' he murmured as he went.

  She grabbed at him, trying to hold him up, and looked around. Still she saw nothing. As she scrabbled for a grip on his tunic, Anyara felt the shaft of an arrow sunk deep into Inurian's back. She wanted to cry with frustration. He was too heavy for her to lift.

  'Get up!' she shouted at him. 'Get up, Inurian! We have to keep going.'

  She heard something: it might be the splash of somebody entering the river.

  He did get up, leaning on her. His head was hanging low. She managed to move him forwards and they began a lurching progress through the fields. She had no idea where they were going, but knew that it was movement that mattered. If they did not keep moving they were dead. Nothing else mattered.

  'She's close,' Inurian said weakly, and he breathed a name that Anyara did not catch.

  'Keep moving,' she begged him. His weight was increasing. She was not sure how much longer she could bear him up.

  She twisted her neck to look back, and she saw them. They were coming: Kyrinin coming out of the night. She took another step. Don't stop, she thought.

  She almost screamed when, without a sound, two shapes rose up a few paces in front of her: a man and a woman. Kyrinin, not human. White Owls, she thought, somehow ahead of them and waiting here. A flurry of impressions told her something was wrong, though. The cut and shape of their clothes was different from what she had seen on the White Owls in Anlane; their eyes, as they lifted bows with arrows already nestled against the strings, were not upon Anyara and Inurian but upon the hunters behind them.

  'Down,' the woman said. Anyara fell, taking Inurian with her, as arrows hissed by in both directions. The two Kyrinin sprang forwards, going to meet her pursuers. She could hear someone else moving closer.

  'Anyara?' someone was saying. She could not believe the name that went with the voice. She looked up.

  A big man was rushing past, naked sword in his hand, and in his wake came a smaller figure. She cried out in a potent mix of release and relief, and rose to embrace Orisian.

  IX

  KANIN NAN HORIN-GYRE'S hands, so recently trembling with wonder at the victory he had won, shook now with anger. He strove to contain it. At this moment he should have been in the hall of Castle Anduran: they should all have been there, rejoicing in the destruction of the creed's foes, marking the day when the Black Road was at last restored to the lands that had once been Avann oc Gyre's. To feast in the halls of Anduran would realise the hopes of Tegric and his hundred when they sacrificed themselves on the march into exile; the hopes of generations of the faithful; most of all, the hopes of Kanin's father.

  On the foundations of this day, new and greater hopes could be fashioned. It might not be the end of their journey to the Kall, but they had taken a great stride down the path that led to the creed's dominion and the unmaking of the world.

  Instead . . . instead, Kanin stood and glared at the nervous warrior who stood before him. She was one of the best of his Shield, and had been charged with bringing Anyara and the na'kyrim from the gaol to the castle. It was no distance: the work of minutes.

  'You hold the Tarbains?' Kanin asked. The words had to force their way out past the rigidity of his jaw.

  'We killed two. We have the others.' She spoke quietly, with downcast eyes.

  'I want their heads on spikes above the gaol by dawn,' Kanin hissed. 'But others can see to that. You . . . you are dismissed, from my Shield, my army. You will walk back to Hakkan and kneel before my mother and tell her that I have commanded you to serve her as chambermaid and washerwoman.'

  The woman did not need to be told to leave. She backed silently out of the room.

  Kanin sat heavily in a chair. This room, a small one in the heart of Castle Anduran's keep, had little left by way of furnishings. Most had been stripped out. Only a chair and table remained. The Bloodheir thumped his fist on the table. It did little to dispel his anger. Restless, he sprang to his feet again. He had promised his father that he would destroy the Lannis Blood, or die in the attempt. Now some girl, and the idiocy of his own people, was making it a lie.

  'Where is Cannek?' he demanded of Igris, who stood unobtrusively in the corner. The woman who had failed Kanin so grievously was his responsibility, and Igris knew it as well as Kanin did.

  The Hunt Inkallim entered even as his name was uttered. If Igris was relieved at the opportunity to stay silent, he did not show it.

  'You wished to see me?' Cannek said. He glanced quickly around the room and, seeing only one chair and the Bloodheir pacing up and down, he stood where he was.

  'Every tracker you have, every dog, is to be on the trail. Find them for me.'

  'Yes. It is being done even as we speak, Bloodheir. They will not get far: a girl and a na'kyrim are not likely to escape the Hunt.'

  'Shraeve told me none would escape the Battle at Kolglas, but one did. They say the boy was mortally wounded but they can't show me the body, can they? See that the Hunt does better, Cannek. I want to see that girl's body.'

  The Inkallim was unmoved by the bitterness in Kanin's voice. He smiled: a faint, equable gesture.

  'If fate favours us,' he murmured. 'You may be interested to know others are already abroad. The woodwights are busy emptying their camp: dozens of them are making for the river. Quite why they're so agitated, I don't know. They are good trackers, though. It may help us.'

  Kanin ceased his pacing and stared at the Inkallim.

  'Woodwights!' he spat. I'll not have them interfering. This is nothing to do with them.'

  Cannek spread his hands in a gesture of impotence. The knives that lay along his forearms pointed out at an angle.

  'I am not sure you can prevent them, unless you wish to do so by force. As I say, they are already on the move. And... well, I dislike being the bearer of unwelcome news, but that na'kyrim of yours, who put on such a performance in the hall: he is with them.'

  'Aeglyss is not mine,' Kanin snapped. 'I thought he was in his sickbed.'

  'So he was,' agreed Cannek. 'The woodwights were caring for him, I believe. Anyway, he seems to have recovered. Enough to ride with them on the pursuit, at least.'

  Kanin kicked the chair and sent it spinning across the room. Cannek watched it go with a neutral expression.

  'He wants the other na'kyrim,' Kanin said. 'I want the girl. If Aeglyss gets in your way, kill him too.'

  * * *

  Orisian leaned against the bole of a great oak. He fought the urge to vomit. The wound in his flank was throbbing, and he feared he had torn the new flesh there. The pain, and the head-spinning exhaustion he felt, had brought on waves of nausea. Never in his life had he run so far and fast.

  Their flight from the river ha
d been punishing. Varryn set a stern pace. His features showed little hint of it, but Orisian knew the Kyrinin was frustrated at their slowness. There was nothing to be done about that. At the best of times, no human could match the night vision of a Kyrinin, or their speed through the darkness. As it was, Orisian was hampered by the imperfectly healed wound in his side, Anyara was already weary and, most of all, there was the fact that Rothe was carrying Inurian in his arms.

  The fighting by the river had been over quickly. Ess'yr and Varryn, with Rothe close behind them, had darted into the darkness. Orisian held Anyara. Even as he registered Inurian's slumped form at his feet, the indistinct sounds of struggle reached him. There were fierce impacts, stifled cries and grunts, then a fearful, leaden silence. Rothe reappeared first. He turned this way and that, his unbloodied sword ready.

  'I couldn't find them,' he muttered. 'Too dark for me.'

  Ess'yr and her brother returned. The two of them whispered to one another, and then Ess'yr gave a sharp nod.

  'To the forest,' she said. She was distracted in a way Orisian had not seen before, as if her thoughts were elsewhere. 'One escaped. Many spears will come soon.'

  'We must get to Anduran . . .' Rothe started to say.

  'You will die,' Varryn said.

  'There is nothing left in Anduran,' said Anyara, and that had been the end of it.

  Rothe stepped forwards to carry Inurian as soon as it was obvious that he could not stand, let alone run. Ess'yr snapped the shaft of the arrow in the na'kyrim's back. Inurian groaned. Orisian felt an awful emptiness at the sound.

  'Shouldn't we get the arrow out of him?' Anyara asked him.

  'Not now,' said Varryn before Orisian could reply. And with that he was off, plunging into the night.

  Orisian kept as close to Anyara as he could. He longed to speak with his sister, to ask her what had happened since that terrible night at Kolglas, but there was not a moment to catch breath. He could only stay by her, make sure she knew he was there.