Godless World 2 - Bloodheir

by Brian Ruckley

  "We've all got the dead to deal with. All of us."

  "Yes. Of course."

  On Anyara's third day in Aewult's camp, Ishbel came to see her. Anyara was surprised at her own indifference to the intrusion. The woman, standing smug and sneering in the great tent's entrance, clearly had no purpose there except to gloat, yet Anyara found herself unmoved.

  "Not as comfortable for you as the Tower of Thrones, I imagine," Ishbel said. She had a little flock of maids fluttering about behind her. They laughed.

  Anyara and Coinach were sitting cross-legged on the planked floor. He was showing her how to sharpen the knife he had given her. She glanced up, then turned her attention back to the blade.

  "I've seen much worse," she said.

  Ishbel said nothing for a moment or two, but Anyara could feel her presence, and her self-satisfied smile. She concentrated on the weight of the whetstone in her hand, and the movement of the knife across it.

  "Should I lend you some of my maids?" Ishbel asked. "Or some clothes, perhaps? I know how the subject of rain capes interests you. I have some I could spare you, to keep the cold and the wet off."

  "I'm sure," Anyara muttered. "Your master has provided what servants I need, though, and I've cloaks enough."

  "He's not my master."

  "No?" Anyara looked up and smiled thinly. "My mistake."

  Ishbel left with a frown on her face, stamping her feet as she went.

  "Needs to learn some manners," Coinach observed.

  "I don't suppose she needs them, so long as she's got the Bloodheir's favour to wrap herself up in."

  Boredom, and the excess of thinking time that came with it, was Anyara's greatest discomfort. She asked more than once to meet with Aewult, hoping against hope that she might be able to soften him, but the message always came back that he was too busy. She practised knifework with Coinach. He was a patient teacher, hiding well whatever reservations he felt about the exercise. The nights were the worst. The camp was never quiet, and all through the hours of darkness she could hear voices and the creaking of wagon wheels and the movement of canvas on the breeze. She dreamed - when she slept at all - in indistinct patterns of shadow and fear.

  No one could, or would, tell her what was to happen. Every morning she woke half-expecting that there would be a battle, or that she would be sent off to Vaymouth. Each day those expectations went unfulfilled, until Anyara began to feel as if there was nothing to the world save this great encampment with the city silent and sealed beyond it, and that it could continue like this indefinitely.

  Then they brought Taim Narran to see her. The Captain of Anduran was grimy and battered. There were rents in his tunic, bruises on his face. He was clearly exhausted. Two of Aewult's Palace Shield escorted him and stood there, all armour and pride, as he greeted Anyara.

  "Leave us," she said to them. Both of them looked at her, but neither moved. For the first time in days her anger surged. "Get out. I am sister to a Thane, and I will talk to this man in private. Get out!"

  The two huge shieldmen glanced at one another, and after a moment's silent consideration they retired from the tent.

  "What's happening?" asked Taim as soon as they were out of earshot. "Has Aewult gone mad?"

  "Who can say? I'm safe enough, I think. But where's Orisian, Taim? That's what matters."

  "I don't know," he said, anguished. "I don't know. I'm sorry. He never reached Kolglas. I hoped . . . I hoped he might be here. Or still at Highfast, perhaps?"

  Anyara shook her head. The thought came to her, as it often did now, that the last time she had seen her brother she had been angry with him, frustrated at being left behind in Kolkyre. She dreaded the possibility of that being their last parting, and of anger being its tone. Somehow, it left her feeling that she owed him all the courage and discipline she could muster to face Aewult, and his father, and the whole Haig Blood if needed.

  "Gods, everything's coming apart," Taim muttered. "What does Roaric think he's doing, picking fights with the Bloodheir? The Black Road's stopped, for some reason, between here and Hommen, but when they come south, every man - every sword - will be needed if there's to be any chance of turning them back."

  "Perhaps they've come as far as they can," Anyara said, her mind still tangled up in thoughts of Orisian.

  "No," Taim said firmly. "They've overrun every obstacle put in their path. We stood for a day or two at Hommen, but we had to retire as soon as they brought up their full numbers. If Aewult hadn't fallen all the way back here, his whole army'd have been destroyed by now. No, they've some reason of their own for pausing. But it's only a pause. They'll be here before long, and Aewult will be lucky if he's not outnumbered when they do reach him. There's more of them than we ever imagined was possible."

  Anyara nodded, hardly listening. Her eyes drifted down. Where was Orisian? If the Black Road reached Kolkyre before . . . something pierced the veil of her preoccupation. She blinked.

  "Where's you sword, Taim?" she asked.

  He looked down at the empty scabbard on his hip. When he lifted his head again, Anyara was not sure what she was seeing in his expression. It might almost have been shame.

  "I am a prisoner, my lady. It has been taken from me."

  At that Coinach, who had been a silent observer thus far, stepped forwards.

  "Aewult would not dare--" he began, but Taim Narran cut him short with a sharp look.

  "The Bloodheir dares to issue commands to our Thane's sister. Why should he hesitate to make a mere warrior his prisoner?"

  "On what grounds?" Anyara asked.

  "That I failed him at Glasbridge; brought too few men, and too late, to his aid in battle." Taim spoke the words without inflection, as if reporting the dry details of some dull conversation. "After we retreated from Hommen, I meant to stand again, but Aewult summoned me. And took my sword from me when I arrived."

  One of the shieldmen outside pushed aside the flap at the tent's entrance. He bent and stared in.

  "Enough," he said. "Come away. The Bloodheir said a brief visit only."

  Taim Narran did not hesitate. He gave Anyara a shallow bow, and turned to submit himself to the custody of the Palace Shield. Coinach growled in pure anger.

  "This cannot be," he said.

  "Look to your charge, shieldman," Taim snapped at him. "That is where your duty lies. Do not fail in it."

  Aewult's huge shieldman put a rough hand on Taim's shoulder and hurried him out of the tent. Anyara followed and faced the armoured giant.

  "Listen to me," she said as calmly and clearly as her ire would allow. "This man is an honoured warrior of my Blood, and valued by his Thane. You will treat him with respect and leave him his dignity. If not, I'll make such trouble and noise that you will have to bind me, and put me in shackles at his side. Tell your Bloodheir that."

  Hommen was a strange place: two distinct settlements, living uncomfortably side by side. Down on the sea's edge, a fishing village, with a harbour wall of boulders and a short wooden quay that stood on pole-legs crusted with barnacles and weed. Up on the hillock to the south, an abandoned stone watchtower with a slate roof, and a flock of two dozen cottages clustered around it in memory of the protection it must once have offered. Linking the two, a short, straight track flanked by drystone walls. Where that track crossed the main coast road, there were gates and a toll-house for tithe-collectors, a little barracks and a hall, hay barns and a wayfarers' inn.

  A few days ago, Kanin oc Horin-Gyre guessed, there were probably a good three hundred people who called Hommen home. Now, none. Most had already fled by the time the Black Road arrived. Those who had remained, out of sickness, or despair, or determination to defend their homes, were dead. No one had been spared this time, no prisoners taken. The army that had descended upon Hommen was a more furious beast than that which had taken Anduran or Glasbridge.

  Kanin had been at the forefront of the slaughter, cutting his way up to the base of the leaning watchtower, with his Shield about him a
nd a hundred or more Tarbains howling up behind. It had been unwise, perhaps, with his knee still unreliable and sore, but he had needed that violence and danger. Several of the enemy had taken refuge in the little tower, and barricaded it against him. He burned them out, and those that did not emerge to die on the waiting blades and spears were choked by the smoke or consumed by the flames. The charred tower now had a drunken angle that suggested its life was almost done.

  Much of the army had pressed on, and was further along the coast pursuing, or destroying, the scattered warriors of the True Bloods who made repeated, if half-hearted, attempts to block the road. Kanin, spent and tired, had let it rush on without him. He and his weary company remained in Hommen, stripping it of every supply it could offer. The forces under his command were larger now than they had been before the battle. Many commonfolk of his Blood had emerged from the ranks of the greater host, especially after his reckless display during the fighting. He had armed them as best he could; given them captains and at least a semblance of discipline.

  Kanin could not fully explain, even to himself, his reluctance to follow the main body of the army in its rush onwards. When asked, he pointed at his knee and said it needed time to heal, which was at least partly true. It would have been more wholly true to admit that there was something he found untrustworthy in the mad fervour that had taken hold of almost everyone. It was not just a result of the domination that the Inkallim had achieved over the multitude; there was a kind of frenzy that seemed to him to have taken root of its own accord, and was now feeding on itself. He could catch hints of it in his own black moods and his hunger - sated, for now at least - for bloodshed.

  There was another strand to Kanin's reluctance that he shied away from examining too closely. Each stride he made down this long road - so long that he knew if he followed it far enough it could carry him to the gates of Vaymouth, and beyond - each stride took him further from Wain, and that felt, at some basic, instinctive level, wrong. Whatever delusion she had slipped into, whatever strange hold she had granted the na'kyrim over her, she remained the most important thing in Kanin's life. They had begun this war together, and no matter what triumphs might lie ahead down the coast road, he became more certain with every passing day that they could only be hollow and meaningless for him without Wain at his side.

  So Kanin lingered, and slept in a fisherman's house on the quayside, where he could breathe the cold sea air. Snows fell. Hoar frosts cloaked the quay. Ice lay in sheets on the paths. In the north, he realised, up on the furthest coasts, in the inlets and bays, the sea would be frozen now: great flat plains of ice over which snow like dust would spin and twirl in the biting wind. The thought made him long, for the first time since he had left Castle Hakkan, to be marching home. There were others who could fight this war that his father had sired, through him and Wain. He was Thane now. He had a Blood to lead, lands to secure. A widowed mother to greet.

  They were thoughts ill-suited to one supposedly faithful, above all things, to the creed. The Black Road was on the brink of its greatest victories in centuries. It was a time when the faithful should be exultant, eager for further glories, determined to test fate's sympathies to their utmost limits. But Kanin did not feel these things. Not any more. It was failure - cowardice, perhaps - but all he truly wanted was to turn back, gather his sister into his company once more, and march away over the Vale of Stones and back to Castle Hakkan. He hung there, in Hommen, suspended; unable to bring himself to march on, unable to commit himself to retreat.

  Bands of warriors and stragglers, and beggars and the wounded, moved back and forth up the road like shoals of fish caught in powerful tides. Much of the movement seemed aimless. There were occasional bursts of violence: small slaughters, petty murders. One day, Temegrin the Eagle came pounding up the coast at the head of a column, thundering through the snowbound village in a cloud of steaming breath. Kanin watched him pass with little interest.

  Kanin gathered about himself a makeshift household of cooks and servants, grooms and messengers. He had thirty or more women and old men brought down from Glasbridge - slaves - and set them to work gathering food, filling Hommen's barns with stores against the deepening winter. He was standing on the wooden quay, watching some of those sullen Lannis labourers casting weighted nets out along the shore when Igris brought a filthy, sickly-looking woman before him.

  The shieldman had a firm grip on the collar of the woman's worn hide jacket, holding her up so that she had to walk on the balls of her feet. She appeared to be terrified. As Kanin regarded her, her eyes widened and she struggled half-heartedly.

  "Tell him," Igris hissed. "Repeat what you said to me."

  Kanin raised his eyebrows expectantly.

  The woman groaned and tried to look away. Igris shook her, like a huge doll. She was limp and defeated.

  "Tell him!" the shieldman shouted.

  "What is it?" Kanin asked quietly.

  "I heard - I heard," the woman stammered. She was Wyn-Gyre, Kanin thought, by her accent. She hesitated, and he saw that she was weeping. Then it came out in a torrent: "Dead, sire. Dead in Kan Avor. Temegrin the Eagle and . . . and your sister. Both dead. It's become a mad place. But they're dead . . ."

  Kanin had hold of her shoulders then, and she wailed at his crushing hands. He took her from Igris, lifted her bodily from the quay and held her there in front of him. He could see, in inexplicable detail, every stain and smear of grime on her face, every lash aound her eyes, every crease in her trembling lips.

  "Wain?" he asked.

  "Dead," cried the woman, flinging the word out as if to rid herself of it.

  Kanin could not move. His limbs were stone. He stared into those frantic eyes and did not understand what he saw there, or what he heard.

  "Sire . . ." someone - Igris? - said.

  The sound freed Kanin. He turned and took one pace, carrying the woman by her shoulders. She hung slack. A slab of meat in his iron grip. But she was light, lighter than flesh; just skin. He threw her. She tumbled, screaming, out and away, down to crash into the thick, dark water. The sea parted and vomited up a plume of spray and closed, rocking, over her.

  "Find out if it's true," Kanin said to Igris as he watched the pale form struggling to regain the surface. He could see her mouth opening and closing, her frail hands clawing at the water.

  "It may be," the shieldman murmured. "Others came with her. They told the same tale."

  "Find out," Kanin repeated, the words dead on the air as they fell from his lips.

  Igris turned and went, crunching up the snowy track. The woman's head broke the surface. She gasped and flailed about. Her face was white now, corpse-pale. Kanin looked along the shore. The fisherfolk were standing still, watching, their nets in their hands. When his gaze touched them, they shook themselves and turned away and cast their nets once more. Down below the quay, the woman was crying for help. He could hear her fingernails on one of the stanchions.

  "Aeglyss," Kanin whispered.

  CHAPTER 5

  Thane

  What, then, is a Thane? Some will tell you that a Thane is a proud or greedy man who makes himself a lord over others the better to satisfy his basest hungers. I tell you, my beloved son, that this is not so. Rather, a Thane is a servant. He serves his people, and all people, by standing between them and the darkness.

  There is an impulse in this world, and in we its peoples, towards destruction and decay. Ungoverned, we will always, sooner or later, tear down whatever we have built, unlearn whatever we have learned. If there are to be no Gods to give us order, we must impose order upon ourselves lest we sink for ever into a chaos of cruelty and suffering. Such was the darkness we fell into at the departure of the Gods. The Three Kingships lit our way out of that shadow, but only for a time. The War of the Tainted, the Storm Years that came after it: the ruin of that thin pretence that we were anything more than the corrupt inhabitants of a failed world.

  Now we have made the Bloods, and we have made Thanes,
and we do not yet know whether this will be more than another thin pretence. You will be Thane after me, dear son. You will be heir to whatever I build. For good or ill, you must take what I pass on and shape it and hand it on yourself to those who come after. Such is the burden of Thanes: to take what is bequeathed to them by the past and make of it the present; to hold the present in their hands and shape from it a future for their heirs.

  Some may love you, but others will curse you and defame you and be jealous of you. Pay no heed to those who berate you. Pity them, rather, for the failure of their memories, their wilful ignorance of the fallibilities, the vast imperfections, at the root of our kind. Take comfort that you fulfil a noble duty. There must be laws, and Thanes, and order. They are our only armour against our own malignant instincts.

  from To My Son and His Sons Thereafter by Kulkain oc Kilkry

  I

  Orisian left a trail of dead men behind him on the journey out of the Veiled Woods. One of those corpses weighed more heavily upon him than all the others combined, but each added its small burden. The White Owls harried them, like wolves at the heels of a dying stag, coming close enough to snap and wound, but never committing to a final, fatal struggle. Men died with arrows in their back, or with their throats cut while they stood watch in darkness.

  Torcaill did his best to keep the battered company moving, resting only briefly, never straying out of one another's sight. Orisian's respect for the man grew. He was tireless, resolute. But for all his efforts, everyone knew that it was upon Ess'yr and Varryn that their best hopes of survival rested. The two Kyrinin ranged through the Veiled Woods without pause, ahead and behind, day and night. They moved soundlessly through the misty forest, quartering the ground in search of scents and sign. No one - Orisian least of all - tried to give them any commands. They were fighting their own war, generations old, against their clan's enemy, and they knew its methods and necessities better than anyone. This was, in a way, what they had been seeking ever since Koldihrve, and now that it had come they went about their work with silent, bloody intensity.