Taim howled, and hammered the edge of his shield down on her extended shoulder. Her bloody fingers were ripped free from his leg. Taim thought he heard something snapping or tearing in the shoulder joint. He whipped the shield back up and hit her in the face with it. She slumped. He hit her again and again, putting all his weight behind the shield, pounding it at her head until he felt her skull break.
Chest heaving, propped against the wall on one straight arm, trembling, he shook the shield free. It rolled out into the street, spun a wobbling circle there and fell flat. Taim took one short look at the dead Inkallim and climbed the steps. Each small rise felt like torment, and he had to hold on to the walls to keep himself from falling. He found his sword halfway up. His broken finger was in his sword hand, so he had to hold it in the other. The hilt felt thick there, clumsy and unfamiliar.
He found an open door at the top of the stairs and stumbled into a hall. His feet were loud on the rotten floorboards, but there was none there able to react. He walked heavily forward to where K’rina and Orisian lay together in some strange embrace, in the centre of the hall. Orisian’s sword had transfixed the na’kyrim.
A twisted, tortured strand of sound drew Taim’s attention to one of the pillars. A battered, dishevelled man was slumped there, with dead ruins for hands. Taim did not recognise him. He was laughing, but it was a sick, choking kind of laughter. He was staring down towards the far end of the hall.
Taim looked that way, and saw perched on a low stone bench, a small, pale cadaver. It looked almost as if someone had arranged it there: set the hands together neatly in its lap, placed the bare, blistered, decaying feet side by side, perfectly aligned. It was a frail thing. A sad, pathetic thing.
And then Taim realised it was not dead. Its chest shivered with faint breath. He walked slowly towards it. It did not move save for that tremor in its ribcage. It made no sound save for the rustle in and out of fresh and spent air. Taim stood over it. His mind was clear, he realised. For the first time in… weeks, perhaps, there was a flawless unity: he was whole, and entire, and only himself. He heard nothing save the slow, calm turning of his own thoughts. He felt nothing save weariness and sadness.
He put a hand under the horror’s chin and lifted its face. It was ravaged by disease and injury. But the eyes were open. Taim looked into them. They were full of blood, only the smallest flecks of their original slaty grey showing through here and there. And they were empty. Utterly unresponsive.
Taim ran his sword through the centre of that fluttering chest. There was almost no resistance. It was like cutting through parchment. The corpse fell sideways and lay there on the bench. Taim turned away and walked back to stand over Orisian. The man propped against the pillar was still laughing, though it was softer, fading slowly. He was looking at Taim now, watching him with an unreadable expression.
Taim wondered briefly whether to kill him. But he did not know who he was, or what he deserved. His injuries would surely put an end to him soon enough. And, most powerfully of all, Taim had had enough of killing. He sheathed his sword and went down on one knee.
Taim raised his dead Thane in his arms, and bore the body away from that hall. He was surprised at how light it was.
X
Winter’s end came amidst a series of damp days, with cloud and winds that ran boisterously up the Glas Valley. Some few eager trees brought forth the very first tender leaves of the new season, as luminously green as the most radiant of gems. White blushes of delicate flowers spread through the forest floor. Birds rediscovered their songs.
This resurgence went uncelebrated, even by those for whom this movement of the world out of slumber and into renewed wakefulness would normally be cause for festivity. There had in past years been garlands of the earliest flowers worn by the girls, flocks of sheep or cattle driven through the streets of towns with all the children running alongside and feasting, of course.
Few hearts were light enough for such things this year. Many were fearful, bewildered. Some were still engaged in the business of bloodshed. Some were waiting, still hoping, for certainty that the awful shadow beneath which they had suffered, and to which they had lost a precious fraction of themselves, had truly lifted. And some were yet making hard journeys toward unknown futures.
Eska of the Hunt and Kanin oc Horin-Gyre descended into the lands of the Horin Blood down an old, long-disused drover’s road. He leaned on her, for he was still weak and seldom had the strength to walk unaided for very far.
That he had any strength at all was a source of no little surprise to Eska. She had thought him to be doomed when she found him in the hall in Kan Avor, slumped on the floor close to the wasted corpse of Aeglyss and that of another na’kyrim, a woman Eska did not recognise.
The Thane’s hands had been black with corruption. Useless appendages already, she suspected, rotting on the inside. She had cut them off and sealed the stumps with fire. It was necessary, but she had expected such treatment to kill him. As it transpired, Kanin was more resilient than she had imagined. He had not died then, and she was beginning to believe that he would not be dying soon.
The long walk through the mountains had been brutal, for she had kept them well clear of the Vale of Stones, disinclined to follow what she adjudged was likely to be a dangerous, if much easier, path. The flood of the faithful that had come south across the Vale was now reversed, but in different form. Now, it was a trickle, a meagre, desultory flow of broken and lost people. Most of those Eska had seen were dazed, so defeated by the memory of what they had seen and felt and done that they made themselves easy victims of the vengeful people of the Glas Valley. There were even fewer of those than there were survivors of the Black Road army, but their anger burned the brighter, and they hunted the retreating companies mercilessly.
So Eska had chosen a rougher, narrower trail, winding its way through higher valleys and around colder peaks. There had been bad weather and driving winds, but Kanin had not succumbed. Nor had she, and her own wound was no small burden. It had been a prolonged and agonising business extracting her own barbed spear from her flank. She had made several unsuccessful attempts at breaking the shaft, and pulling it through her body before she achieved it, and in the course of her struggles had several times been rendered senseless by the pain. She still could not walk without considerable suffering, and bending or stretching or twisting were entirely beyond her.
The weight of Kanin oc Horin-Gyre across her shoulders made it worse. But she said nothing.
The Thane had said no more than a few words to her all through their long march. He talked sometimes in his troubled sleep, but it was seldom comprehensible. When they rested, he would simply sit and stare out across the blasted snowscape. Silent. Lost in memory, or imagining, or thought. Sometimes he would look down at the blunt, bandaged stumps of his wrists. If he despaired at the sight of his maiming, he hid it well.
And now they at last descended. There was still snow, but it was melting quickly. On the lower slopes Eska could see people moving, and further down the valley a little village. Distantly, she could hear the lowing of cattle cooped up in some shed.
“It’s done, then,” she said to Kanin.
And to her surprise he took his arm away from her shoulders and slumped down into the snow and sat there weeping. His face crumpled as thoroughly as would that of any distraught child. Eska stood at a respectful distance and waited. It took a long time.
When he was emptied of it, he looked across to her and lifted his arms from his knees.
“Do you think a man can still be Thane, with…” He could not finish the question.
Eska shrugged.
“I do not know. I saw a man once, in Kan Dredar, who had lost his hand. To a bear, I think. He had a carver make him a wooden one. It was crude. Of little use, and he could not wear it all the time for it rubbed his… skin raw. But he looked whole.”
“Ha. I would settle for that. To look whole. If I had my hands, still all I would hope for was to look
whole. Some wounds never close up, no matter how carefully they are tended. But a man need not be whole to be Thane. Come, help me up. Let us see what welcome awaits us.”
*
Anyara stood with Ilessa oc Kilkry on the quayside of Kolglas, watching the crew ready the ship. They worked in silence. The crowd assembled all along the harbour watched in silence. The seagulls wheeled overhead, screeching.
“I am grateful that you came,” Anyara said to the older woman.
“Of course. Our Bloods spring from the same root. And now, it seems, we are greatly in your debt. Your brother’s debt. Of course I came.”
Anyara smiled and nodded her thanks. There was a faint warmth in the sun on her face. It felt like an entirely new thing: a sensation she had never before experienced in all her life. As if it were a new kind of warmth in a new world.
“You must have a great many demands upon your time, though,” she said. “And it cannot have been an easy journey.”
“Are any journeys easy now? And there is too little time, no matter where I am, how hard I labour. Repairs. Rebuilding. Finding food for the unhomed and the orphaned. The Tal Dyreens bring shiploads of grain and require us to empty our treasury in exchange for it. The Black Road still lurks in distant corners of our lands. We will be fighting bandits for years, I think. Many fled into the Vare Waste, many beyond the Karkyre Peaks, where by all rumours’ account they are not welcomed by what remains of the White Owls. Not welcomed at all.”
“And Highfast?”
“It might be again as it was once was. Perhaps. There are some prepared to try. A few. There was a message from one of them-a man called Hammarn-for the na’kyrim… for Yvane. I gave it to her last night. It seemed to please her, though it was difficult to be sure.”
Anyara looked along the quayside a little way. Someone was moving through the crowd, handing out oatmeal biscuits and offering ale. It seemed a strange fragment of normality amidst so much that felt unreal. Impossible.
“Your son…?” she asked quietly.
Dismay perturbed Ilessa’s features, just briefly. She mastered herself.
“Unchanged. Roaric is lost to us, I fear. He moves and breathes, and speaks even at times. But his sense has fled him. He is Thane, but… but the reins must stay in my hands. For as long as I can hold them.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry. Yes. It will not be easy for either of us, I think. The Bloods are not accustomed to the rule of a woman.”
Anyara grunted. “To say the least of it. They will accustom themselves to it in time. But not yet: every day I am asked when I intend to marry and put a Thane on the throne beside me.”
“You should,” Ilessa said, too quickly, too forcefully. It was gentler when she repeated it: “You should. Not to please others, not to silence doubters. Because you will not want to be alone. Not for long. Do not make yourself alone.”
“No,” murmured Anyara. And then asked, “What do you suppose will happen?”
“We can’t know that. We will have to wait and see. And hope we meet it well.”
The crowd at the far end of the harbour shifted and parted, and a small group came through. Yvane, and Coinach, and Taim Narran with his arm about his wife Jaen. That was a good sight, those two in such an embrace. It made Anyara smile. The first time she had smiled today. She was still smiling as her eyes met Coinach’s, and his own lips caught the warmth and reflected it.
“My lady,” her shieldman said, dipping his head respectfully as they drew near.
He took such pleasure in flouting her command to call her by her name. It was a game between them now. A gentle, affectionate game.
Yvane looked the most despondent of all of them. Her gaze was on the lidded clay vase Anyara clutched to her breast. Anyara tightened her grip on the vessel.
“It will soon be done,” she said to the na’kyrim, and Yvane nodded sadly.
“They look to be ready, my lady,” Taim said.
Anyara turned to the long, low boat. The oarsmen were at their posts. The helmsman stood at the tiller. That smile was gone already, but it could not have survived this moment in any case.
“Let’s go then,” she said.
Taim hugged his wife, and kissed her forehead, and whispered in her ear. She touched her hand to his cheek and backed away. The rest of them descended into the corpse-ship.
The oarsmen edged it slowly out of the harbour. Castle Kolglas, standing on its rocky outpost amidst the waves, watched them pass; and Anyara watched it, awash with memories, with regrets and sorrow. The place was still empty, still a ruin. She did not know when-or if-it would be habitable once more.
There was a rare, light wind from the south today, and Anyara was glad of that, for she wanted this outward journey to be a quick one. Once beyond the harbour’s embrace, the single square sail was soon raised, and it flapped and creaked and then caught the wind and tightened, and the prow of the ship began to punch its way through the waves, out into the Glas Estuary.
Anyara sat alone on a bench, with that vase held tight, and closed her eyes. She surrendered herself to the sound of the sea on the hull, the voices of the seagulls that escorted them, the sun on her face. It was not peace, but there was a secret stillness in those sensations she could draw upon.
Dimly, she could hear Taim talking with Ilessa oc Kilkry behind her. Their voices were low.
“And Haig?” Taim was asking.
Ilessa snorted. “Chaos, from what I hear. They lost thousands in the battles, and now they’re fighting Dornach and Dargannan in the south. It’s going badly, evidently. Not that anyone seems to know who is giving the orders. One day I’m told it’s the Crafts, the next someone says Stravan has turned up and taken the throne. Whoever it is, they’re in no position to try to drag Kilkry and Lannis back under their yoke.”
“Perhaps there’s no Haig Blood left at all,” Taim mused.
“There’s Abeh. But they say she lost her mind when her husband was killed, and hasn’t recovered. Foul woman. I’d not wish such… horrors on anyone, but she… no, not even her perhaps. What about the Black Road?”
“Oh, it’s…” Anyara could hear Taim’s shrug. “Mystifying. We had a message from Ragnor oc Gyre himself-meant for Gryvan, but we took it-pledging immediate peace, lasting peace. We questioned the messenger, sent one or two scouts north across the Vale ourselves, and it’s as if the madness hasn’t ended up there, as far as we can tell. The Inkallim have been all but destroyed, but whatever’s left of them is fighting Ragnor, along with half his own people. Horin-Gyre seems to be the only Blood that hasn’t taken up arms against one of the others.”
“Well, it gives us time, at least.”
“It does. But I leave as much of the plotting as I can to others now. I’ve hung up my sword. There’s a new Captain in Castle Anduran: Torcaill. He’s…”
Anyara let the voices fade from her awareness. Time. There was never enough of that.
They stepped onto The Grave. A wind-scoured, bare isle beneath the rugged headland of Dol Harigaig. Anyara could feel the spray from the waves breaking along the island’s western shore. The wind cast her hair across her face.
It was called Il Dromnone first, and people said it was the body of a fallen giant. It became The Grave during the Heart Fever, when the harboursides of Kolglas and Glasbridge filled every day with bodies wrapped in cerements, and the corpse-ships ploughed back and forth with cruel regularity. Lairis and Fariel had come here. Now she had brought Orisian to join them, certain in her heart that it was what he would have chosen.
She cradled the clay pot containing his ashes in her arms as she walked over The Grave’s uneven, slick rocks. Taim had carried Orisian out of Kan Avor through a day and long night, without stopping, to a cottage on the edge of Anlane where others waited. They had built a pyre amongst tree stumps, looking out over the valley, and consigned him to the flames. Afterwards, Anyara knew-though the na’kyrim would not speak of it-Yvane had gone back into Kan Avor with Taim. And w
hat, she wondered, must it have cost the warrior to return to that place, having once escaped it? They had gone back and found K’rina’s body, and buried it out in the marshlands by the River Glas.
But Anyara had not been there, for any of it. Now she would mourn in her way. Yvane, Coinach and Taim stood by the boat on flat rocks. She walked away from them, going alone across the naked isle, buffeted by the wind, tasting the sea on her lips. When she came to what she thought was the highest point in The Grave’s low emergence above the waves, she stopped and stood, and savoured for a moment this wild and free place. The wind was bringing tears to her eyes. It was not grief. Not yet.
She held the urn in both hands and lifted it up, showed it to that little group gathered back at the water’s edge. Then she turned and showed it to two more watchers.
High up, on the precipitous slope above the cliffs of Dol Harigaig, two pale and distant figures stood. They were too far away for Anyara to see clearly, but she knew that Varryn and Ess’yr had eyes much sharper than her own. She was not sure, but she thought one at least of them raised an arm in acknowledgement of her gesture.
Anyara hugged the urn to her and knelt down. She did cry then, briefly. She folded herself over that hard clay vase, and was angry, and sad, and frightened. She let those feelings go, on the wind; imagined them tumbling and skimming away over the foaming crests of the waves into the north.
She took the lid from the urn, and let the wind take her brother’s ashes too.
“Forgiven,” she whispered as she watched it clouding away, dusting itself over the rocks, spinning on gusts into the sky.
“Forgiven, of course. But there was nothing to forgive.”
As the corpse-ship readied itself to depart from The Grave, a small rowboat was lowered noisily over the side. Yvane climbed down into it, and a single oarsman-the strongest of the crew. He flailed his way across the waves and the wind to a narrow gravel beach nestled among gigantic black boulders on the southern flank of Dol Harigaig. He drove his tiny craft up onto that beach, the pebbles hissing as the keel ploughed into them.
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