Godless World 1 - Winterbirth

by Brian Ruckley

  So much time passed that she almost started to believe they were not going to kill her after all. She resisted that thought. The hope she needed to find was a strong one, not one based on an illusion that the world was going to change its nature and become kind and merciful. She had to look after herself. It was what she had always done.

  III

  A FAMILY - MOTHER, father and two young boys - was being executed in Anduran's main square. Kanin nan Horin-Gyre was there to witness it. They had tried to hide food from one of the Bloodheir's foraging parties. A poorly relaid section of boarding in the floor of their house betrayed a few bags of flour and dried meats, and condemned them all to death. None disputed the order that the children must die as well as their parents. The reasoning was common currency amongst the northern Bloods: if a life must to be taken, take those of any who might avenge it at the same time. Still, Kanin had commanded that the family should have quick deaths, their throats cut with sharp knives as they knelt blindfolded upon the cobbles of the square. Cruelty would not have added to the message their deaths were meant to send.

  It was not the sullen resistance of these common folk that had brought a black mood down upon the Horin-Gyre Bloodheir. He expected little else; had expected more of it than he had found, in fact. Rather, it was the mere fact that he was standing here in the miserable drizzle watching them die while his true foes were ensconced behind unyielding walls. He had dared to imagine, as he struggled through the seemingly unending wilderness of Anlane with his army, that fate would be kind to them. He had hoped that the head of the Lannis Thane might be on a spike over the castle gatehouse by now. Instead he faced the prospect of a wearing siege, with time as great an enemy as the warriors on Castle Anduran's walls. He strove for the humble acceptance of fate's course his faith demanded, but it was hard.

  This war had been a desperate enterprise from the start, conceived in the hope that fate would favour the bold. The border stronghold of Tanwrye was too stern an obstacle to be easily overcome, as the Horin-Gyre Blood had learned to its cost in the past, but when the halfbreed Aeglyss had appeared at the Horin-Gyre fortress of Hakkan, promising that he could deliver the aid of the White Owl Kyrinin, Kanin's father Angain had glimpsed opportunity. Although Kanin felt nothing but contempt for the progeny of such obscene interbreeding -- and Aeglyss had struck him from the start as a particularly distasteful and self-serving example of his kind - even he had been exhilarated by the possibility the na'kyrim offered up: an entire Horin-Gyre army smuggled through Anlane deep into enemy lands, reducing Tanwrye to an irrelevance. Before Kanin was born, when Angain himself was Bloodheir, the finest of the Horin-Gyre Blood had been slaughtered at Tanwrye by the army of Lannis-Haig. Angain's younger brother had died there while Angain lay in his sickbed, prostrated by a wound taken in a bear hunt. Aeglyss offered the Thane not just vengeance but a kind of healing when he promised that he could open a path to the heart of Lannis-Haig.

  Out in the centre of the square one of Kanin's shieldmen was reading aloud the sentence. There was not much of an audience. Aside from the Bloodheir and some of his Shield, the only onlookers were a few groups of warriors huddled in their cloaks and a dozen or so residents of the city who had been dragged out to watch. They were poor folk, clad in ragged clothes and keeping their eyes down. They gave every sign of indifference to what was happening in front of them. Kanin knew, though, that they would spread word of Horin-Gyre justice through the small population left in Anduran.

  The other Bloods of the Black Road had mocked Angain's proposal at first, not least because the very idea of alliance with a Kyrinin clan was repellent to them. Even when grudging assent was granted, no more than a thousand Gyre swords had been lent, and those only in support of the feint against Tanwrye. More would come, the High Thane pledged, if fortune showed the way; it was obvious what he thought the likelihood of that was. And a hundred or so warriors of the Battle Inkall had come forward, of course, with Shraeve at their head. The thought still twisted a barb in Kanin's guts. The Inkallim had betrayed his family all those years ago at Tanwrye, watching from a knoll while the Horin-Gyre warriors were overwhelmed, and he did not trust them now. Shraeve, though, had been the one who suggested that not just the Thane but all the ruling line of Lannis-Haig should die, and volunteered some of her warriors for an assault on Kolglas. Aeglyss had again delivered White Owl aid for that attack. However much Kanin despised the na'kyrim, his value was beyond dispute. Without the food and guides provided by the woodwights, he might have lost half his warriors on the march through Anlane; the other half would probably have been killed in skirmishing if the White Owls had been actively hostile.

  Fate had played a cruel trick in the last days before the army was to march. Life began to loosen its grip upon Angain oc Horin-Gyre. His strength slipped away and all his desire was not enough to let him take the field. So when the time had come, Kanin and his sister Wain had knelt at the side of their father's bed, the scent of his sickness filling their nostrils, and promised to put an end to Lannis-Haig for him.

  The executioners were tying back their victims' hair. One of the boys -- the younger one to judge by his size -- was struggling against fear. His lips were shaking, convulsed by the half-strangled sobs that filled his throat. Kanin saw but did not note it. His thoughts had strayed far from what his eyes observed.

  They had come so close to success. The attack across the Vale of Stones had trapped most of Lannis-Haig's strength to the north; the castle at Kolglas was fired and the Thane's brother killed; the town of Anduran itself had fallen pitifully easily. Yet it had not been quite enough. The castle held, and the Thane within waited for his allies to come to him. If Tanwrye had been assaulted a few hours earlier, or Kanin himself been a single day later in emerging from Anlane, there might have been hardly a warrior left in Anduran to man the castle. Croesan might have been caught exposed upon the road between his capital and Tanwrye. That had been the intention; the hope. On such fine margins did fate work its will.

  Out on the square, blades cut through flesh. Four bodies toppled forward. Legs kicked; heads jerked in time to a slowing beat. Blood poured over the ground, running in intricate patterns along the countless channels between the cobblestones. Kanin wheeled his horse about and nudged it towards the merchant's house he and Wain had made their own.

  Wain. His other half; his stronger half, he sometimes thought. He knew very well that the majority of warriors they commanded feared her far more than they did him. The fervour of Wain's belief in the Black Road, and in the Blood, was a beacon for all of them. Those things burned in Kanin's breast too, but in Wain they were informed by a passion so ferocious its light could blind.

  Angain had often tried to make his son marry. None of the brides Kanin had been offered - the fawning daughters of great landowners, even the mesmerisingly beautiful niece of Orinn oc Wyn-Gyre - had been a match for his sister. Kanin could not imagine himself marrying until he found a woman who could be measured against Wain and withstand the comparison.

  He found her upstairs in what had once been quite a grand bedroom. The merchant whose family had lived here must have been a gifted trader, for the house was as finely fitted out as any Kanin had seen in his homeland save the homes of Thanes and their kin. Wooden panels carved with hunting scenes covered the walls. Ornate iron stands held flickering candles. There were wolf and bear skins laid out on the floor. They had been found in the loft, with dozens of others forgotten or abandoned by the fleeing family.

  Wain was seated before a long, narrow table. She had set a burnished shield up on it and was grimacing at her distorted reflection as she ran an antler comb through her hair.

  'Done?' she asked, without looking round.

  'It is done. I would rather have had them working on the walls.'

  'Four more pairs of hands will not make the city any more fit to meet an assault,' said Wain. 'Four cut throats may yield a good deal more food.'

  'Indeed.' Wearily, Kanin unbuckled his lea
ther tunic and cast it to the floor. The light shirt he wore beneath was soaked through.

  'I'll have someone light a fire,' his sister said.

  He crossed the room and took the comb from her hands. 'In a while. Let me do that. You'll pull your hair out before you straighten it.'

  He stood in silence for a few minutes, unteasing her hair with methodical persistence. Concentrating upon the task distracted him from his troubled thoughts. Her locks were beautiful, even dirty and knotted as they were. He could smell smoke and grime and sweat on her.

  'You've been labouring?' he asked.

  'With the machine-makers. There's enough timber and rope here to make a hundred war engines. It's the hands skilled in the making that we lack; we lost some of our best back in the forest. Still, another few days and we'll be throwing the ruins of their precious city down their throats.'

  'Another few days. And a week after that to break down the walls or the gate. Or two weeks? Or six? Have we got that long, Wain?'

  She shrugged. Looking down at her hands resting in her lap, Kanin could see that she was toying with her rings. It made him smile. The habit had been with her as long as he could remember, and he could summon with perfect clarity the sight of her, an ungovernable, independent child sitting in her night robes and doing the same thing: turning, always turning, the ring on her finger. It happened when her mind was working, as if her thoughts moved with such force that they had to have some external echo. She had long since stopped noticing when she did it, and if ever Kanin pointed it out - which he sometimes did, with a studied air of innocence - she would glare at him with such annoyance that he laughed. That too reminded him of when she was young, of her severe expression whenever she had observed something that offended her child's sense of what was right.

  'The guards told me you went to see our prisoners the other day,' he said to diffuse the temptation of teasing her.

  'I did.'

  'And?'

  'The girl has more strength than I expected. Not as feeble as most of them seem. She is afraid, though, like all of them. They live in fear.'

  'What about the halfbreed?'

  Wain's reflection showed her lack of interest. 'I don't think he's said a word since he was locked up. The guards stay out of his way. We should kill him and have done with it.'

  Patience had never been a part of Wain's armoury. When they had been children she had always been the one to court a scolding by loosing her dogs too soon on a hunt or venturing out on the ice too early in the season, before the adults judged it thick enough. Kanin knew it was hard for her, this inactivity. That was why she had gone to bait the Lannis-Haig girl. It was why she drove the workers making the siege engines so hard.

  'You never know when even a rat is going to have its use,' Kanin said. 'Look at Aeglyss. He's served a purpose. Still, we'll see. After they've stewed a little longer in the castle we can let them watch while we finish the girl. Maybe we should kill the halfbreed at the same time.'

  Wain's hands had become still. As a rule, it meant she had reached some conclusion. Kanin met her reflected eyes. She was excited.

  'It's coming soon,' Wain said. 'I can feel it in my bones. The Road is going to turn, one way or the other. What do you think? Light or darkness for us?'

  'One or the other, Wain,' he said. 'One or the other. Aid will come to us from the north, or to Croesan from the south. This is a horse we can only stay astride. We cannot lead it where we will.'

  'Yes, yes,' and he heard that fierce certainty in her voice that he knew so well, 'but still I say something is coming. One way or the other.'

  A huge man, all muscular bulk, appeared in the doorway: Igris, chief of Kanin's shieldmen. He waited in silence, staring rigidly ahead. Kanin set aside the comb.

  'What is it?' he asked.

  'The halfbreed asked for an audience. We told him you would not see him.' The man's voice was deep and strong.

  'Very well,' said Kanin. Wain rose and began buckling on her sword belt.

  'He's insistent, though,' Igris said. 'He still waits outside. He asks that he be allowed to speak with the other halfbreed, the one from Kolglas. The guards turned him away when he tried to get in to the gaol.'

  Kanin sighed in irritation. 'So he has you running around as his messenger, does he?'

  For the first time, the shieldman glanced at his master. His face was impassive, but there might have been the faintest flicker of doubt in his eyes.

  'Perhaps he charmed you with that voice of his?' Kanin suggested. 'Perhaps you listened a little too closely when he suggested you should pass on his request?'

  'No, my lord. I do not think so.'

  'Well you wouldn't, would you? What do you think, Wain? Perhaps we should rid ourselves of Aeglyss.'

  His sister was testing her blade's edge with her thumb.

  'He's obsessed with Kennet's tame halfbreed. Let them talk to each other. What harm can it do? It might keep Aeglyss quiet for a while, at least.'

  *

  There was room in the Shared for Inurian to find peace. By stilling the chatter of his senses and freeing his mind of all contact with the world about him, he could sink back through deep strata of silence and darkness. He could bring about dissolution. It was a feeling none save another na'kyrim could hope to understand, and even amongst them precious few could attain it as he did. Time lost its meaning there, in the abyssal places, and the mind could find solace. It was a respite he needed during his incarceration in Anduran.

  On the fifth night of his imprisonment he lay down upon the floor. He let his awareness of the cold and of the stone beneath him fall away. He shut out the harsh voices in the yard outside and the whispering rivulets of rainwater trickling down the walls of his prison. His breathing shallowed, taking on a steady trance-rhythm. His thoughts slipped away behind him, like eddies in the wake of a ship. His mind was smoke, attenuating. He was thousands, thousands of thousands. He was Huanin, Kyrinin, even joyful Saolin. He ran within Kyrinin hunters, felt the lovestruck awe of every Huanin mother, the abandoned exultation of the Saolin's shapeshifting.

  Even the Whreinin had left their traces in the eternity of the Shared. Although the wolfenkind were long gone, they had once walked the world and the Shared would never forget it. He could sense the wolfenkind's savage cruelty, that had finally driven the Tainted Races to hound them to extinction, but there was no judgement in the sensing of it. The Shared was all things, and there was no good or evil in it, no right and wrong. There was only existence, or the memory of existence.

  The Anain alone lay beyond him. They were there, like the rest - theirs was an immeasurable, illimitable presence - but their nature was of a different kind, and not something any na'kyrim could comprehend or taste.

  Inurian faded, dispersing into the seamless unity that underlay thought and life. He had surrendered himself thus to the Shared many times in his life, but on this occasion the experience was marred. Something tugged at his awareness, refusing to allow its cleansing dissolution. It was as if the last flimsy threads of his mind caught upon some snag and were held. For a moment he strove to dissipate those final elements of his self. The focus grew stronger. The sensation of his thoughts recoalescing was almost physical. It grieved him to be thus denied release. As he ascended towards consciousness, he felt that which had prevented his escape drawing closer: a turbulent shadow casting itself over him and wrapping the sharp stench of corruption around him. Like a drop falling upon the still surface of a pool, something had marred the perfection of the Shared.

  He opened his eyes to find Aeglyss standing before him.

  'I am not sure what you were doing, but I would like to learn the way of it,' Aeglyss said quietly. A faint smile was playing across his pale, thin lips.

  Inurian rose and flexed his right knee to ease its protests. The long walk through Anlane, and the damp and cold of his miserable cell, had reminded the joint of a twisting fall long ago on the rough slopes of the Car Anagais. He returned his visitor's gaze unre
sponsively, burying his surprise and the sudden presentiment of horror that accompanied it. It was clear that Aeglyss was the cause of the turbulence in the Shared; what that implied about the man's potential potency put a sliver of fear into Inurian's heart.

  'Can we not even talk to one another?' Aeglyss persisted. 'I wish only to learn from you. I need your help - your guidance - to harness the strength I know I possess.'

  He took a short step closer to Inurian. 'Our interests run in the same channel. These people would kill you without a second thought: I have been arguing on your behalf ever since we arrived here.'

  'That's a lie,' Inurian said evenly.

  'Ah, so you're interested enough to go scrabbling about inside my head. What do you see there? I could keep you out - I did at Kolglas - but there's no need to. You must know I mean you no harm.'

  'I don't need the Shared to tell me that you are no friend of mine,' replied Inurian. It was true only in part. He was not prepared to give even a hint of how unsettling the things he sensed in Aeglyss were. The younger man carried such a roiling knot of anger and resentment in him that Inurian could almost taste it.

  'Use me, then, if you refuse my friendship,' snapped Aeglyss. 'I hoped for more from another na'kyrim, but I should have known better. I've had no better from na'kyrim than from anyone else. Why should you be any different?'

  It took an effort of will for Inurian not to wince at the sharp, sudden pain that flared in Aeglyss as he spoke. That was what underlay all the more ferocious emotions that burned in Aeglyss. Beneath the bitterness was pain: a deep-rooted hurt, profound and lonely.