'We only have to keep them happy until tomorrow. Nothing else matters but getting safely on that ship.'
Ame returned. He had shed his helmet and swapped his spear for a hunk of fat-soaked bread. He gestured at Orisian with it. 'The First Watchman'll see you.'
Rothe rose as well, but Ame waved him back. 'The guard dog can stay here, I'd say.'
'I don't think so,' said Rothe.
'I'll talk to him,' Orisian told him. He was surprised at the still calm he felt within. This all felt unimportant, a small detail in the journey to Delyne's ship; just something that had to be shuffled aside to clear their path. 'Wait for me here.'
Rothe looked doubtful, but settled back on to the bench.
The First Watchman's chamber was simple and sparsely furnished. Tomas himself was a wiry, knotted man who sat low in his chair and regarded Orisian with a sharp eye. There was a wolf's pelt stretched on the wall behind him. Tomas pointed at a stool.
'Way I hear it, there's trouble in the mountains,' Tomas said as Orisian was sitting down. His breathing had an uneven edge to it, the air pushed out from his lungs through bubbling phlegm. 'White Owl and Fox at each other like stoats. That's no great surprise, but what I hear is it's different this time. Humans up there, too. Now the Fox don't know much about such things, but I'm First Watchman, and I know a thing or two. So when they tell me there's Huanin out there, with women marching alongside men, I think Black Road to myself. Strange times, that the lords of Kan Dredar are wandering in the Car Criagar, seems to me.'
'We fled from them,' said Orisian, unwilling to say any more than he had to. 'It's only luck and chance have brought us here. Some Fox Kyrinin guided us. We would have been finished without them.'
He added the last as an afterthought, hoping that it might carry some weight here, where Huanin and Kyrinin lived with only a river between them. The First Watchman ignored it.
'You've the voice of a Lannis boy.'
'My name is Orisian. I'm from Kolglas.'
Tomas nodded slowly, as if he had already known as much. It was bluff, Orisian decided; a self-important gesture. It seemed very unlikely that Tomas would know the name of Croesan's nephew.
'Not just Kyrinin you travel with,' the First Watchman continued. 'Yvane, my Watch tells me.'
'We met her in the mountains,' Orisian said.
'Poor company you keep. But I always say the oathbound're short on judgement.'
Orisian started to reply, but Tomas ignored him and continued.
'So who else? Fox, na'kyrim; what about the others? A girl, I heard, and a man big enough to be half bear.'
'My sister,' Orisian said. 'And the man's a woodcutter. He was working for my father.' With each passing moment he was less inclined to tell Tomas exactly who he was; the worst of the man's hostility was kept just out of sight, but Orisian could see more than enough of it to make him cautious.
'Oh, yes? Well, if you say so. We keep out of other folk's business here. No one'll trouble you if you give us no cause.'
He coughed and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
'Each of your Thanes, when he's fresh come into his rule, sends messengers trying to persuade us to take his oath. We pay them little heed, and they don't stay long. One sent gifts a while ago; Tavan, if I remember right. I've still got the sword my great-uncle had from his men. Pretty enough on the wall, though I'd have more use for a good bear trap, truth be told. Man who brought it went away with a ringing in his ears. My great-uncle wasn't a man to play pretty with words.'
Tomas chuckled, then hawked and spat into a battered tin pot at his feet. The mess accumulated there suggested it had never been cleaned.
'Oaths make men slaves, I reckon,' said Tomas. 'No place for 'em here.'
'You might find a use for that sword, though, if the Black Road comes this way,' said Orisian.
Tomas shrugged at that and drummed his fingers on the table-top.
'We can bend with the wind,' he said. 'Black Road or your lot makes little odds to us. It's the oath, and what comes with it, that takes a man's freedom. What difference who he's given it to? You're all the same deep down. Oaths like yours only lead to killing and the like, one way or the other.'
Orisian bit his lip rather than respond.
'So it's war, is it?' Tomas asked. 'On the Glas? Must be, if you've the Black Road up in the hills.'
'Fighting, yes. It won't last.'
'If you say so,' said Tomas with a crooked smile. He was missing at least a couple of teeth. 'Bound to run out of people to kill sooner or later, I suppose. I'd not want your troubles in Koldihrve, though.'
'There'll be no trouble,' Orisian said firmly. 'We're taking ship with the Tal Dyreens tomorrow and you'll not see us again.'
'Not short of coin, if you've tempted that one into carrying you around. You taking the na'kyrim with you?' His voice was thickening all the time, the words rattling in his throat.
'Yvane? Yes, she's coming with us.'
'Good enough,' Tomas said. 'I find you, or her, still here after that boat's gone and I'll want to know why, mind. I look after this town, and I've plenty men'll help me do it. We don't want Lannis folk here any time, but doubly not if the Black Road's rooting around.'
'We're gone tomorrow. You won't have to worry about that.'
Tomas nodded. He was shaken by a liquid-sounding cough even as he waved Orisian away. Orisian retreated, as if the sound itself might carry disease into his own chest. As soon as he was outside, breathing the cold night air, he set to forgetting the conversation. It did not matter that Tomas seemed a fraction more threatening - perhaps even dangerous -- than he had expected. Soon, soon they would be away from this town, and Orisian was confident he would never return.
They slept in Hammarn's hut, all crammed together on the floor with furs and cloth spread over them. The boards were rough on the back, but Orisian slept well. Even when Rothe began to snore - a rumbling, rasping sound vigorous enough to rouse half the town -- Orisian woke no more than was needed to prod at his shieldman's shoulder. Rothe shuffled on to his side with an irritated mutter, and the snoring stopped.
Once or twice more, Orisian brushed against the surface of wakefulness. The sighing of tiny waves on the beach infiltrated his sleep, and later the patter of rain on the roof. He heard boat timbers creak, and he heard the breathing of his companions, and pressed in tight in that small hut he was warm. He rested, and though his dreams were troubled they did not disturb him, and in the morning they sank away and he forgot them.
In that half-hearted dawn, Kanin could see the lights of Koldihrve. They flickered in the grey blur of land, sea and cloud, a feeble and fragile cluster beneath the rain that was starting to fall. The Horin-Gyre Thane glanced upwards. An immense host of fat, dark clouds was massing there. A downpour was coming.
He and five of his Shield had outpaced the rest of his company. They waited here, within sight of the town, for the others to catch them up. They should be here, Kanin thought angrily. It would still take a good two hours to reach Koldihrve. The going had been slower than he hoped, across this sodden, empty landscape. Every moment of delay cut at him, plunging him deeper and deeper into a black mood.
His mount could sense his temper, and shook its mane uneasily. There was a boggy stream a few paces away; Kanin nudged the horse over to it and loosened the reins to allow it to drink. He patted its neck. It was not the same animal he had picked from his stables all those months ago. But then, none of them could be the same, after such a journey: through Anlane, to Anduran, across the Car Criagar. Its coat had lost its lustre, the definition of its muscles had faded. He remembered how it had tossed its head and stamped its feet that morning when he rode out from Hakkan's gate, with Wain at his side. That magnificent arrogance was all but gone now.
'We're not what we were, are we?' he whispered to it.
Igris eased his own mount up alongside the Thane.
'The others are here, lord,' the shieldman said.
Kanin glanced around. The rem
aining forty or so of his warriors were indeed arriving, one by one. They came in an extended line, all looking drained and damp. Their horses were exhausted.
'No sign of that messenger we sent ahead?' Kanin asked.
'Not yet. But he cannot be more than an hour or two ahead of us.'
'Very well. We'll pause here, but only long enough to feed and water the horses. We can rest once we've got what we came here for.'
Igris nodded curtly.
Kanin dismounted and led his horse gently to a patch of lush grass. They had run out of the oats they had brought as feed the day before, just as they had almost exhausted their own food supplies. Whatever happened in the day now begun, Koldihrve was going to have to provide everything they needed to return over the Car Criagar. And what would they find when they got back to Anduran, Kanin wondered. He spared himself only that one moment to think of Wain. He would see her soon enough.
His horse tore at the grass. The rain was getting heavier; great fat drops pattered down upon them. Kanin shivered. He preferred the clean, dry snow of his homeland to this dank kind of winter.
'Lord,' someone shouted. 'Wights.'
Kanin ducked around behind his horse and followed the pointing arm of the warrior.
There were Kyrinin moving, rushing out from a woodland and on to the flat fields and bogs of the valley. Dozens, then scores. They spilled out in a great wave that flowed over the rushes and through the scrub towards the great River Dihrve. Towards its mouth, and Koldihrve.
'Is it White Owls, or Fox?' Kanin demanded.
No one replied. At this distance, they could not tell.
'Woodwights!' cried Kanin in frustration. Even now, when he had thought himself rid of them, the petty games that Aeglyss and his savages had set in motion were plaguing him.
'It must be the White Owls,' suggested Igris, peering through the sheets of rain now crashing down. 'They're making for that Fox camp by the river mouth.'
Kanin swung up into the saddle. Rain pelted his head and back. Everyone was rushing, filling the air with cries and the clatter of weapons. He did not hear it. He turned his horse in the direction of Koldihrve. The future was there, waiting for him, and he could only advance into it. His sword was naked in his hand.
'The slaughterhouse calls us,' he shouted. 'We ride!'
VIII
BEHIND THE TENT where the Voice of the White Owls dwelled, in a stone-lined pit beneath a roof of oak beams that had been turned hard as rock by time and smoke and heat, the torkyr burned. Through day and night, snow and wind, the clan fire would burn all winter long, tended by the chosen guardians who fed it and watched over it. When spring came, and the Voice had chanted over the flames, and the people began to disperse, each a'an would take away a single burning brand, so that in all the campfires of their summer wanderings through the furthest reaches of Anlane they carried with them a fraction of the clan's bright soul.
It was to the Voice's tent that the band of warriors brought Aeglyss the na'kyrim, bound and gagged by thongs of leather. They tied him to a song staff rising from the ground outside the Voice's tent, and sat cross-legged to wait. They waited for many hours. The sun walked across the sky. Clouds, the scattered raiment of the Walking God, came and went. The na'kyrim moaned and bled from his wrists and from the corners of his mouth where the gag had cut his skin. At length a small child, her hair dyed berry-red and holes pierced in her cheeks, came out from the tent and beckoned one of the warriors to come inside. After an hour he re-emerged and gave a slow nod. The na'kyrim was untied and ungagged and brought into the presence of the Voice.
She was an ageing woman, with skin creased and folded by the years and hair the colour of the moon on water. There were others within - the wise, the a'an chiefs of last summer, the singers and chanters and buriers of the dead and the kakyrin with their necklaces of bone -- but it was the Voice alone who spoke with the na'kyrim.
They talked for a long time, the old woman and the halfbreed, and of many things. They talked of the clan's history and of its struggles against the Huanin in the War of the Tainted and the centuries since. They talked of the evil done by those who ruled in the city in the valley, their axes and fire that cleared the trees from White Owl lands, and their herds of cattle that reached ever further into Anlane; of the na'kyrim's life, his flight from the White Owl as a child and eventual return, bearing gifts and promises from the cold men of the north. Through it all, the judgement was being formed, built out of the threads of the past that led to the present. Only at the end did they talk of alliances forged in necessity, and of hopes and expectations betrayed.
The Voice asked him, softly, why the lord whose army had passed through the White Owl's forest now turned away his friends and forgot them. Why the promises of friendship the na'kyrim had made on that lord's behalf were now so much dust. The na'kyrim had no answer to that, but spoke instead in the evil way he had. He spoke, as the White Owls now understood that he had so often before, with a tongue that made truth out of lies, that corrupted the mind's strength and turned judgements inside out.
Had there not been so many of them there in the Voice's tent, they might have been deceived, but they had prepared themselves for the dangers of this na'kyrim. Some cried out and sang to drown his poisonous words; others belaboured him with sticks.
He begged and pleaded but there had, in the end, to be a reckoning. However long his absence, he had been one of the people once, and he was theirs to do with as they would. The Voice gave her judgement and he was dragged out of her presence.
The na'kyrim struggled and shouted as they bore him away from the vo'an, and spoke in a way that threatened to lay wreaths of mist around the thoughts of the warriors. They beat him with the hafts of spears until he was still and silent. Then they carried him up above the valley. Up and up they climbed, until the trees grew windbent and the grass beneath their feet became coarse and rough. They climbed into the afternoon, until they pierced the roof of Anlane and came out upon the moors that formed a borderland between forest and sky. And still they went on amongst the rocky ridges and ravines. In time they began to descend again, and at last, upon a promontory of rock that was closely fringed by trees, they came to the Breaking Stone.
The great boulder -- the height of two men - stood alone, resting where the Walking God had left it. The Breaking Stone was patterned by lichens older than the clan, older than the Kyrinin. Over and amongst their innumerable pale green and grey shades lay darker stains. Black streaks that would never now be washed away, they scarred the great rock, running down like the tracks of midnight tears from two neat, smooth-sided sockets high upon its face.
The warriors laid the na'kyrim on the ground and stripped his clothes from his body. In that muted evening light his skin looked fragile, ashen. He stirred, but they held him firm. They gagged him with a stone wrapped in a strip of cloth. One of them brought out two sharpened, hardened shafts of willow, each the length of an arm and thicker than a man's thumb. The na'kyrim writhed. The Kyrinin worked quickly lest he should attempt some trick upon them using his secret skills. They raised his arms and held them tightly as the shafts, twisted and turned to force their way, were driven through his wrists. The na'kyrim screamed around his gag and fell into unconsciousness.
Two warriors climbed atop the Breaking Stone and, using ropes of plaited grass tied around his chest, raised him up its face. They held him there while a third reached down and manipulated the willow stakes until they slotted into the sockets in the stone. They slid in, the stone welcoming them as it had dozens of their like before, and the na'kyrim hung there, crucified upon the Breaking Stone.
IX
HUNCHING DOWN AGAINST the rain, Orisian and the others crossed the long boardwalk across the mouth of the River Dihrve. Weed and barnacles coated the walkway's supports below the waterline; rot was at work on the parts above. It felt safe enough -- the Dihrve was a sluggish, unthreatening thing here at its mouth - but Orisian wondered how much of a life it had left to it.<
br />
They had woken to dark skies and miserable rain that gathered strength with every minute. When Orisian said that he was going to find Ess'yr and Varryn, he had half-hoped he could go alone; instead Yvane, Anyara and Rothe all accompanied him. He did not feel he could refuse them.
As they made their way along the shore to the river crossing, he had asked Yvane if an unannounced visit would cause a problem. The na'kyrim dismissed the idea.
'They're not so stiff about such things here,' she said. 'There'd not be so many na'kyrim around if they were.'
'Ten, Hammarn said,' Orisian remembered. 'We haven't see any. Are they hiding?'
'It can't have escaped your notice that everyone keeps themselves to themselves around here. They're all on edge now: everybody's nervous, smells trouble on the wind.'
She was right about the ease of entering the vo'an. No one tried to stop them as they came off the rickety bridge and walked amongst the tents. It was not, in fact, as disconcerting a place to enter as Koldihrve had been the day before. There was none of the boot-sucking mud that greeted a visitor to the human settlement - rush matting was spread in broad pathways -- and none of the dark glares or muttered asides. It felt safer than the human town, at least to Orisian. The feeling did not last for long.
There was a crowd gathered in the centre of the vo'an, in a space where the bare earth had been trodden over countless years into the consistency of rock. As they approached the back of the crowd Yvane nudged Orisian with her elbow and pointed discreetly at a pole planted a few paces away. It was bedecked with horns, strings of threaded teeth and animal skulls. The bones looked fresh and unweathered.
'That's bad,' Yvane whispered. 'A war pole. Means they're expecting deaths.'
The Kyrinin crowd stirred gently at their arrival. There was a foul smell, Orisian realised, foul enough to make him almost gag. The crowd thinned a little before them; it let them see what stood at its centre.
A wooden frame was there, of the sort used to suspend a carcass while it was butchered. Upon the frame was bound a naked, lifeless Kyrinin. His head hung forwards and his white hair had fallen across his face like a shroud. From shoulder to hip, long thin strips of skin had been peeled back, wound on sticks. The flaying had left livid, gory bands of raw flesh exposed. He had been disembowelled, so that his entrails spilled forth to pile upon the ground beneath him. His groin was a bloody mess. An ordurous stench hung suffocatingly in the air and Orisian felt bile in his mouth as his stomach twisted itself. He heard Anyara's faint moan of disgust even as he turned away. Three young Fox children were standing close by. They watched him with bland curiosity. One had a bow and quiver - little more than toys - in his tiny, fine hands.
Godless World 1 - Winterbirth Page 52
