Godless World 2 - Bloodheir

by Brian Ruckley

  The Lannis-Haig men broke through to what remained of Aewult's Palace Shield. Many of the shieldmen were already dead, crumpled in the snow, their breastplates smeared with dirt and blood. The survivors were fighting desperately to keep the teeming masses of the Black Road from their master.

  At first Taim was not certain whether Aewult recognised him. The Bloodheir's eyes were wild.

  "Sire, come away," Taim shouted. His horse was tossing its head, shaking. He could not tell how badly it was injured; how much longer he had before it fell again.

  "We can't keep you safe here," Taim cried. "There's already fighting far behind us. We must fall back to Kolglas."

  Taim saw such loathing, such visceral hatred, in Aewult's face then that he feared the Bloodheir was about to attack him. Instead, Aewult wheeled his massive horse and made for safety. Most of his Palace Shield broke away and followed in his wake, barging through the ranks of Taim's men. A few of the huge armour-clad warriors were too entangled in the fray to escape so easily. Even as Taim watched, one of them went down, a long-handled axe hooking his neck and hauling him backwards out of his saddle.

  Aewult was instantly out of sight, vanished into the white void that surrounded them. Taim swept snowflakes from his brow with the back of his sword hand. There was nothing to be gained by fighting on here. The Black Road warriors were too numerous, and dozens of them were already spilling out over the snowfield in pursuit of the Bloodheir.

  "With me, Lannis!" Taim cried, and drove his horse after Aewult.

  One of his own men crashed to the ground in a spray of snow and earth. Taim turned to help him, but was too late. Half a dozen Black Roaders fell upon the Lannis man like hounds on a stricken boar. Taim battered them aside and killed one with a single blow to his head. The dead rider's horse struggled to its feet and hobbled a few paces before slumping down again.

  "Inkallim!" Taim heard someone shouting.

  He looked. The last of the Bloodheir's Palace Shield to have remained behind was unmounted, standing with his feet widely spaced and both hands on the hilt of his upraised sword. It was a stupid pose, Taim though. Either the man was ill-trained, or his mind had been clouded by shock or fear. Blinking through the falling snow, Taim saw the mass of the enemy back away. Inexplicably, a space opened, a moment of silence stretched itself out. Then a figure was coming, out of the crowd, out of the snow: a tall, rangy woman with hair as black as ink tied tightly back. She came with long strides. Snowflakes spun about her, tumbling in her wake. She wore a rigid dark cuirass of hard leather. Two swords were sheathed on her back. As she came up to the shieldman she reached back over her shoulders and swept the blades free.

  Taim was held, gripped by this most awful of sights: a fell raven of the Battle, come like the very animating spirit of this gelid killing ground to mark his flight. Aewult's abandoned shieldman steadied himself, prepared to meet this new opponent. He was huge, at least a head taller than her, and as broad-shouldered as she was lean. His sword snapped down, beginning its killing arc. And then there was only an instant's blurred movement and the Inkallim was beyond him. She was lowering her twin blades, and she was staring at Taim. Behind her, the shieldman toppled.

  Light blades, one a fraction shorter than the other, the old, appraising part of Taim's mind noted. Single-edged, they had to be wickedly sharp to fell a man in such a way. And she must be a rare talent to wield them with such precision: one of those blades had opened the shieldman's throat as it passed. Taim felt a cold challenge in the gaze that the woman fixed on him. Once, when he had been younger, it might have lit an answering anger in him; he might have sprung forwards to meet that challenge, whether it was imagined or real. Not now, though. He hauled his horse around and kicked it into a gallop.

  The Lannis-Haig riders pounded through the ever-deepening snow. It was chaotic, dangerous. They could not see what lay before them, nor what came after them. They rode down several of the Black Roaders who were pursuing Aewult, but of the Bloodheir and his surviving Palace Shield there was no sign. As he charged along, forcing his way to the head of his straggling company, Taim locked his mind onto a single, sharp idea. He had done what he could for Aewult, discharged his duty; now all he cared about was bringing as many of his men as possible back to Kolglas. Whatever battles were still being fought out in the snowstorm, there would be no resolution. Friend and foe alike were blind, lost. The most anyone could hope for on this bloody, white day was to live, and see tomorrow.

  He slowed his men to a walk, reordered them into a column. Their losses were not desperate, but enough to pain him; enough to hollow him out a little with premonitions of guilt, of sleeplessness. Then, allowing, just briefly, his head to hang down and his eyes to close, he grasped for the first time the full extent of his heart-sick weariness. He was, in a way that did not befit the highest warrior of his Blood, tired to his very bones of leading men to their deaths. He had thought it would be easier now that he faced the Black Road, a true and lasting enemy of his Blood, but it seemed even that salve for his uneasy heart was inadequate.

  Taim lifted his head once more. A fresh wind was picking up, coming in off the estuary and swirling the snowflakes in a fiercer dance. The cold was numbing his face. He could hear the sea on the rocky shore off to his right, and that was enough for him to cling to. So long as they kept moving, and kept that sound close upon their flank, Kolglas was within reach. He laid a hand on his horse's neck, and could feel the unsteadiness of its stride, the faltering of its muscles. It did not have long left, he thought.

  They had to fight more than once. The blizzard had taken the battle and twisted it, crumbled it into the chaos of a hundred grim, brutal little struggles. Small bands of warriors stumbled back and forth through the blinding storm, flailing about in knee-deep snowdrifts, crashing up against one another, killing, dying. When Taim led his dwindling company back to the ditch and dyke that they had found covered with the dead and wounded on their journey out, fresh slaughter was being done there. New layers of corpses were being laid down over those - already snow-covered - that had fallen earlier.

  Taim and his men cut their way through. He lashed out all around him, in a kind of surfeited stupor. Again and again he felt his sword jarring in his hand as it met flesh, armour or shield, but he hardly knew whether he struck friend or enemy. He constantly expected his horse to die beneath him, to pitch him down into the dark red slush. Somehow, it did not, and it bore him through the battle, up over the bund and across the ditch beyond. And then there was no one left to oppose them. There was only the snowstorm, and the long march back to Kolglas, and the hundreds or thousands of others, stunned and exhausted, lost and empty-eyed, who were trudging back in that same direction through the last dwindling light of the day.

  At last there came a time when Taim was in a stable in Kolglas, and the blizzard was outside, beyond wooden walls, and he was hauling his saddle from his horse's back with aching arms. The great animal shook. He went to fetch water and feed for it, but when he returned it had collapsed. So as night fell and the snow kept spinning down out of the darkness, he sent the stablehands away and stood in the light of a guttering oil lamp and watched his horse die there on the straw.

  III

  Beyond Highfast, the road that Orisian and the others followed soon sank into decrepitude. It snaked across a saddle between two rocky peaks, then down a steep valley. As it went, it crumbled. Its surface grew ever more pitted and broken. Water and frosts and rock falls had eaten its fabric away over the years, reducing what must once have been a great highway to an uneven, unreliable track. Once, in the time of the Kingship, there would have been many traders and travellers following this route through the Karkyre Peaks and on towards Drandar. Now the hamlets and inns that lined the way were ruins; the road stumbled pointlessly in its decay towards a wilderness of hills, forests and Kyrinin lands.

  Orisian rode at the head of the column with Rothe and Torcaill. The band of warriors that followed was somewhat reduced. Orisian ha
d ordered four of them sent north by way of Hent to find Taim Narran at Kolglas and tell him what was happening; Torcaill had picked out another half-dozen and sent them ahead as outriders. Though an undisputed part of Lheanor oc Kilkry-Haig's domain, these were wild lands. Orisian did not ask whether it was Kyrinin or human bandits that Torcaill feared, but it hardly mattered. They saw no living thing save birds and occasional wild goats silhouetted on the ridges high above the road.

  They made good time on the first day. Only once were they delayed: a cascade of water plunging down from the heights had cut away a swathe of the road, turning it for some little distance into the bed of a churning mountain stream. The horses crossed easily, if hesitantly, enough. Yvane, still obstinately refusing to ride, grumbled and moaned about her wet feet.

  By the time dusk was coming on, they had almost escaped the Peaks. The valley that carried the roadway down had opened out. Trees and shrubs now lined the gentled river. Grass and rushes sprouted amongst the rocks, even in the midst of the road. Ahead, dark in the faltering light, woodlands could be seen scattered across lower ground.

  They camped on the valley floor, far enough from the river's course that no sudden flood would catch them unawares but close enough that spindly alders could give them some shelter from the wind that had followed them from the Peaks. While Torcaill's men set up their few simple tents - not enough to shelter everyone - and lit fires, Orisian went to find Ess'yr and Varryn. They were filling waterskins from the river. As Orisian drew near, Ess'yr threw back her head and poured a stream of water into her mouth. It splashed across her chin and ran down the smooth sweep of her neck. She wiped her lips and held the skin out to Orisian. He shook his head.

  "No, thank you."

  The two Kyrinin had their spears with them, and Varryn his bow.

  "You don't plan to rest tonight," Orisian said, disappointed. He had hoped to speak with Ess'yr, share food with her perhaps as he had done before, when they crossed the Car Criagar. Catch fish, he thought, as they had once done at a tiny stream in those distant forests.

  "We need less rest than Huanin," Varryn said, standing up. He tied the fat waterskin to his belt. "And the enemy may be near."

  "I don't think so," murmured Orisian, still watching Ess'yr. There was a life, an energy, in her now that he had not seen for some time. That part of her that had been so oppressed by confinement in Kolkyre and Highfast was stirring again, remembering itself. She moved quickly, precisely, as she sank the mouth of her waterskin below the surface, then raised and stoppered it.

  "But you cannot know," Varryn said. "We will know, because we will see with our own eyes."

  Orisian smiled, despite himself. "Of course. I'd sooner trust your eyes than those of Torcaill's scouts, in any case."

  Ess'yr stood up, pushing the hair back from her face with both hands.

  "You'll be back before morning?" Orisian asked. "We plan to move on as soon as there's any light."

  Ess'yr nodded. "Long before."

  "Good." Orisian gestured at the river. "I'll see if I can trick some fish out of there, the way you showed me."

  Ess'yr glanced at the water slipping by. She gave Orisian a smile - a momentary, faint thing - and bent to pick up her spear. "It is good to break a fast on fish," she said.

  After the two Kyrinin had drifted off into the deepening darkness, Orisian did make a brief attempt to feel out some fish lurking under the soft bank of the river. The icy-cold water was discouraging, and he very soon began to feel foolish. Here he was, a supposed Thane, scrambling about on a river-bank trying, and failing, to catch fish to please a woman who probably thought of him as nothing more than a chance companion. He sat on a hummock of wiry grass and silently berated himself.

  "Feeling a bit solitary?" Yvane said behind him, making him jump.

  "I'm fine." He stood up and brushed dirt and fragments of grass from his legs. "How are your feet?"

  "Warm. I toasted them by one of the fires. You might want to come and join us. Eshenna and your man Torcaill are liable to be calling each other names soon. Not good for the harmony of the camp."

  "Harmony doesn't seem to be anyone's first concern these days," Orisian muttered as he followed her back to the tents.

  In the midst of the encampment, around the largest of the fires, twenty or more men were sitting cross-legged. They were quietly consuming their meagre rations while Torcaill and Eshenna argued across the flames. Rothe, standing at the very edge of the pool of yellow firelight, looked almost amused.

  "Enough," Orisian said without waiting to hear what the subject of the disagreement was.

  Torcaill clamped his mouth shut. Eshenna looked more inclined to continue the dispute but satisfied herself with taking a mouthful of hard biscuit.

  "What are you arguing about?" Orisian asked Torcaill.

  "She says we are moving too slowly," the warrior replied. "I say it's not safe to move faster. Not during the day and certainly not at night."

  Orisian glanced at Eshenna. The na'kyrim returned his gaze but said nothing.

  "Will you walk with me?" he asked her, and led her away from the fire. Yvane followed, as did Rothe a little way back.

  "It's not easy for some of these men, you know," Orisian said once they were out at the furthest limit of the fire's light. "They have never known a na'kyrim, never had to trust anyone not of their own kind. Most of them would rather be heading north, to fight for their homes and families."

  "You are their lord, are you not?" Eshenna asked. "It should not matter to them what is easy and what is not."

  Orisian shook his head. "They know me little better than they do you, and they've not much more reason to trust me. No one ever thought I would be Thane, Eshenna. Not them, not me."

  The na'kyrim shrugged and folded her arms across her chest. "I only wanted them to understand," she said. It was no apology, but her tone was subdued.

  "Understand what?"

  "That there is urgency here. K'rina is not far. I can hear the sound of her mind, close. But if there are White Owls hunting her too, they will not stop in the night. They will not rest. If they reach her first, and take her back to Aeglyss, all this effort will have been wasted."

  "I know." Orisian sighed. "For these men, these are difficult things to understand. They know nothing of the Shared, had never heard of Aeglyss until they left Highfast. It's not the world they live in."

  "It is now," muttered Yvane behind him. "They just don't know it yet."

  Orisian glanced at her over his shoulder. "That might be true but, if so, they'll have to learn it for themselves. I can't make them believe it just by telling them it's so."

  "The Shared is in chaos," Eshenna whispered. "It shudders at the movement of the Anain. And Aeglyss himself is there, not just the stain of his corruption, but his mind itself: reaching out. K'rina is at the centre of this. I know it."

  "Is that true?" Orisian asked Yvane.

  She shrugged. "Couldn't say for certain. I've no great talent for sifting out the patterns. If you're asking me whether my head aches worse every day, whether I feel a shadow spreading, then the answer's yes. If you're asking me whether I think I should have stayed behind in Highfast, the answer's maybe. That should tell you something."

  "Whatever the truth is," Rothe said from out of the darkness, "you'll not persuade Torcaill to move any further now. Not at night. If there are White Owls out there, we'd all be feathered with arrows by dawn. The blacker the night, the more numerous the arrows."

  Orisian regarded his shieldman for a moment: a dark mass with the flames of the fires leaping behind him. He was right. Even Orisian knew that only the direst, most overwhelming need would persuade warriors of his Blood to confront Kyrinin at night, when human eyes and ears were at such a disadvantage. They had been skirmishing with the White Owls in Anlane, and even with the Fox, for generations, and had learned the lessons such experience taught.

  "I'll speak to Torcaill at dawn," he said to Eshenna. "We'll make as much speed as
we can tomorrow. That's the best we can do."

  In such poor light, he could not see her face clearly, but he did not doubt there was frustration there.

  Orisian was awake when Ess'yr and Varryn returned. He had hardly slept at all, disturbed by the hard ground beneath him, the intermittent patter of rain on the tent and Rothe's snoring. When at last he drifted off into shallow sleep he was soon awoken, startled by the piping calls of some birds flying over. Unable to recover the threads of slumber, he struggled out stiffly from beneath the coarse blanket and left the tent on his hands and knees. Rothe stirred behind him, but did not fully wake.

  Outside, the slight lightening of the eastern sky said dawn was near but not yet breaking. Others - a few weary warriors - were also awake, shuffling through the near-darkness, trying to restart fires, or just standing in the fine misty drizzle with blankets and cloaks wrapped about them. There was no sound save an occasional cough, the crackle and hiss of wet wood resisting feeble flames, the soft voice of the invisible river.

  Orisian drank from a waterskin hanging outside his tent. He was standing there, wondering whether to get back beneath the shelter of canvas, when the Kyrinin came out of the gloom. They appeared amongst the tall, thin alder trees as sudden and silent as deer emerging on the edge of a forest. Both of them were soaking wet, their hair matted down and heavy, their clothes darkened by the rain and covered in muddy stains.

  Varryn went straight to the large fire at the heart of the camp and squatted down beside it. The warrior who was feeding twigs and kindling into the faltering flames regarded this Kyrinin newcomer uneasily, perhaps suspiciously, but said nothing. Ess'yr paused at Orisian's side.