“No choice but to press on, unless you mean to stand and fight,” Yvane muttered.
Orisian said nothing. He gazed up at those lofty slopes. He could almost imagine what it would be like to be up there — high and fresh, washed by the cold winds, with wide-open views — instead of here, trapped in the suffocating woodland.
“I doubt if the White Owls will keep chasing us all the way across the Peaks,” Yvane said. “Not really their sort of hunt, out in the open like that. Mind you, I’d never have believed they’d come all the way through the Hymyr Ot’tryn. Kyrinin’d usually rather lose a finger off their bowstring hand than risk disturbing the Anain. Whatever — whoever — is driving them, it must be strong. Hard.” She paused. “Where do you mean to go, then?”
Orisian lowered his eyes. “Once we’ve shaken off the White Owls, then we’ll see. Kolkyre, at first, I should think.”
He glanced across at K’rina. The mute na’kyrim was sitting with her back against a grassy bank, turning her head this way and that in an effort to avoid the waterskin that Eshenna insisted upon holding to her lips.
“I’ll have to find Taim,” he said. “I’ve let him down.”
“You think so?”
“I should have gone to Kolglas. We gained nothing at Highfast, and nothing out here.” Again, that quick, surreptitious flick of the eyes towards K’rina. “Rothe’s died, and the others, for nothing.”
Yvane sniffed. She gave up gnawing at the biscuit and put it back into the folded square of burlap from which it had come. “I don’t think so. Not at all. Whatever’s happening here, it matters. The Anain have put their mark on this woman. I can’t tell you what it means, but I can tell you it matters.”
“Enough for Rothe to pay for it with his life?”
“He chose how he died. That’s the best any of us can ever hope for, that choice.”
“You think he chose that?”
“Maybe he chose it the day he took whatever oath it is you make them take. Your shieldmen. He took that oath willingly, I imagine? You didn’t have to force him?”
“Of course not.”
“Then he chose the possibility, at least. Accepted it.”
Orisian almost hated Yvane in that moment; hated the ease with which she talked of such things. But he lacked the will to take issue with her.
“Don’t let it harden your heart too much,” Yvane murmured. “Don’t let it cloud your vision. Hatred, anger: those are the commonest offspring of loss. Doesn’t mean they’re the best. You Huanin are always making the past master of the present. You make yourselves willing heirs to every grievance of your forefathers; let the burden of every loss or sorrow bend your back. It’s the choices you make for yourself in the future that matter, not those you inherit from the past. That’s all I’m saying.”
“My vision’s not clouded,” Orisian muttered, wincing and sighing in pain as his tongue faltered over the ruin of his jaw. He put a hand to his cheek, feeling the stitches there and the angry, swollen crust of the wound.
“You think not. But you should be careful of your feelings. We all should be. The Shared is untrustworthy now. It’s thick with rage, bitterness. Give it space, and it’ll take root in your head, feed off your own feelings. Twist them. None of us is beyond its reach.”
Orisian let his hand fall back into his lap. He was so tired, in heart as well as body. He could not see how any of this could come to any good, how there could be healing at the end of this. Too many people had died, now, and too many wounds had been inflicted for there to be any dawn at the end of this night. He had never understood, while his father lived, quite what afflicted Kennet after Lairis and Fariel died. Now, he thought he could glimpse a little of it. It had been absences. The absence of hope, the absence of meaning and sense from the world around him.
“Rothe was a good man,” Yvane said. Her voice was heavy. For the first time since he had met her, Orisian thought he heard true, deep grief there. He looked at her.
“I don’t think he would regret having died in your defence,” she said.
K’rina coughed, spluttering out the water Eshenna had trickled into her mouth. Orisian looked across towards the two na’kyrim. Eshenna was distressed. She edged away from K’rina, defeated.
“No,” Orisian murmured. “He wouldn’t have regretted it.”
They came to the edge of the Veiled Woods amidst a misty rain that hid the mountains ahead of them. Everyone climbed up out of the forest onto open hillside with a collective sense of relief. For the first time in days Orisian heard something close to laughter in the voices of Torcaill’s men. Torcaill himself had an air of renewed determination.
“Where now?” the warrior asked Orisian.
Orisian looked back at the thicket from which they had emerged. Ess’yr and Varryn were still in there somewhere. There had been no sign of White Owls since dawn, and none of the Fox either.
“Eshenna,” Orisian called out. “Do you know where we are?”
She shook her head.
“Closest food and shelter is likely to be Stone,” Yvane muttered. “Never been there, but it’s on the Kyre, high on the western side of the Peaks.”
“We’ll try for there, then,” Orisian said to Torcaill. “And then Kolkyre, as fast as we can. Give the men a little rest, and food.”
“Might be best to put some more ground between us and the woods,” Torcaill suggested. “We could climb higher before resting.”
“No. Once we’re moving I don’t want us stopping until we have to. We’ll rest here for a little while.”
They settled on the damp grass just beyond an arrow’s reach from the trees. Torcaill shared out food and water amongst his men. Both were running low. No one had eaten as much as their hunger demanded since the day they had entered the Veiled Woods. Orisian sat facing down towards the forest, watching its edge through the drizzle. He waited as long as he thought he dared, then a fraction longer. He could hear the warriors behind him, further up the slope, growing restive. Just as he rose reluctantly to his feet, he saw what he had been hoping for: Ess’yr and Varryn coming out from amongst the trees. They loped up, heads angled away from the rain.
Varryn was injured, Orisian saw. A strip of hide was tied about his shoulder, holding a wad of moss or herbs over a wound. It did not seem to hamper him.
“The enemy falter,” Ess’yr said. “They have not enough heart for the chase. If they come further, it will only be few.”
“Good,” Orisian said, and smiled. “Good. We mean to go on, across the Peaks.”
Ess’yr nodded. “We will follow your trail. Guard your heels. Fox know high ground better than White Owl.”
Varryn spoke quickly and sharply to his sister in their own tongue. Orisian caught the tone, even if he could understand none of the words: argumentative, contradictory. Ess’yr murmured a soft reply. Varryn turned his gaze upon Orisian. There were flecks of blood laid over the warrior’s tattoos, tiny dark, dry spots across his cheek. There was no way to tell whether it was his own or someone else’s.
“I ask something of you,” Varryn said.
“What?” Orisian asked. Ess’yr was turning away, moving off across the fall of the slope. Orisian watched her go.
“Tell my sister you need us no more,” said Varryn. “Tell her it is done. There is no promise to hold her. No need.”
“You want to leave?” Orisian asked him, still unable to tear his eyes away from Ess’yr’s retreating back.
“You go where we are not welcome. Our fight is with the White Owl.”
Ess’yr squatted down, laying her bow and spear out on the grass. Orisian looked at Varryn. The Kyrinin’s gaze was intense and demanding.
“And Ess’yr does not want to go?” Orisian asked. “Is it the ra’tyn? The promise she made to Inurian?”
“Tell her there is no need,” Varryn said.
“I don’t think your fight is only with the White Owl, any more than mine is only with Horin-Gyre,” Orisian said. “Things have c
hanged. We’re not just fighting the old battles any more.”
“Nevertheless. I ask you to release my sister. She does not see clearly in this. She sees in you the… child, the memory, of the na’kyrim she loved.”
“Inurian,” Orisian snapped. “His name was Inurian.” He knew Varryn had never been fond of Inurian, had undoubtedly disapproved of his sister’s involvement with him. His temper was too easily stirred to let such things go unchallenged now.
“Will you speak to her?” Varryn asked, unmoved.
Orisian looked at Ess’yr once more. Could she hear what they were saying? He was not sure. She gave no sign of it, but he had grown used to a paucity of signs where the Kyrinin were concerned. She was balanced on her haunches, unstringing her bow, or replacing the string. She did it, as she did everything, with delicate, careful hands.
Nothing good had come out of all that had happened since Winterbirth, save perhaps this, Orisian thought. Save Ess’yr. He did not know whether she only saw in him a reminder of Inurian and, he found, he did not care. A multitude of thoughts jostled for his attention, each momentary and passing. If Varryn and Ess’yr went alone back into the Veiled Woods, or tried to make their way north, they would surely die. The distances were too great, the dangers too numerous. And he did not want this parting. He was selfishly afraid of it, of the loss it would entail.
“No,” he said. “We’re all fighting the same battle, even if you don’t believe it. I won’t send her away. I’ll not tell her — or you — either to stay or to go. She can make her own choices in this. We all do.”
Varryn stalked away from him without another word. Orisian hung his head for a moment, and then turned to tell Torcaill to ready the company for the mountains. He found Yvane staring at him. The na ’kyrim was sitting cross-legged, absently scratching the back of her hand and watching him with rare intensity.
“What?” he asked her.
She shook her head, and dropped her gaze to her hands. “Nothing.”
II
As they struggled through the Karkyre Peaks, Orisian was constantly beset by images and memories of the Car Criagar. Now, as then, there was snow and biting winds, though the cold was not quite as deep and his clothes offered more protection. Now, as then, he fought as much against grief and fear as he did against the elements and the brutal terrain. This time, though, he was possessed of an anger that had not been in him before. It was a hard and uncomfortable sensation, lodged like a splinter in his mind. He distrusted it, and doubted it, but could not — or did not want to — rid himself of it. He thought he had learned that vengeance could not heal his wounds, yet now he found himself craving it. The desire crept up on his weary thoughts every now and then, twisted them into the certainty that what was required was death, and yet more death. Every time he lapsed into such bitter reverie, he had to shake himself free of it. And every time he felt a little more distanced from himself, as if he was becoming a stranger inside his own skull.
They followed goat trails through the stone wilderness of the Peaks, and saw no one. They moved slowly. The paths were narrow and often little more than scratches on the sheer flanks of the mountains. Two of Torcaill’s warriors were carrying wounds that hampered them, and K’rina had to be helped and herded like a weak child. Eshenna too was tiring. They had to stop often, and rest as best they could on the exposed slopes.
There was little talk. It was not just weariness, Orisian suspected, but apprehension at the thought of what might await them once they left the Peaks behind. He felt like a sailor returning from a long voyage, without word of what to expect on his return, but filled with presentiments of ill tidings. He told himself that he would most likely find Aewult nan Haig triumphant, the Black Road driven back from Glasbridge and Anduran. He tried to believe it. And in any case, he wondered, if that was indeed what they found, what then would Rothe and the others have died for? Nothing more than the faulty instincts of their Thane?
Every night, there was the threat of a renewed assault by White Owls. Each night it did not come, and slowly the fear of it dwindled. Ess’yr and Varryn still hung back, disappearing from sight for as much as half a day at times. They — or Ess’yr, at least, for Varryn had not spoken to him since the day they left the Veiled Woods — brought no word of pursuit when they returned from their wanderings. The relief Orisian felt at that was muted and sour. It was too late for Rothe. He asked himself again and again whether he would have followed Eshenna out from Highfast, had he known what would come of it, and never found an answer.
Stone lived up to its name. It was a broad sprawl of rock-built cottages above the gorge of the Kyre river. There was a quarry full of massive stone blocks and boulders beside it, as if some giant of the One Race had taken a huge bite out of the mountainside and spat out the shattered remnants. They came to the village from the north, crossing a saddle between two jagged peaks in the teeth of a bitter wind. The roaring river lay between them and Stone, and swaying over the foamy waters was a fragile-looking bridge of rope and planking.
Even reaching the bridge was an unnerving task, for the trail cut its way back and forth down an almost sheer cliff. It was littered with loose pebbles and riven with cracks. Every moment of their descent seemed laden with the possibility of disaster. His first few tentative paces onto the bridge convinced Orisian that it was at least as full of unfortunate potential. It swung and shifted beneath him like a living thing, responding to every surge of the wind. He grasped the rough rope tightly and kept his eyes fixed on the cluster of houses ahead.
People were gathering there: a small, curious crowd of onlookers. Orisian could guess how cautious and uncertain he and all the others must appear as they crept across the flimsy span. He did not care. Stone looked bleak, and rough, and impoverished, but it was a welcome sight. Only now, seeing those low, solid huts and the lights burning in the windows and the woodsmoke being whipped away by the gale, did the Veiled Woods and the White Owls and even the Anain feel as though they were at last falling away behind him. As he stepped off the last wet wooden plank and set his foot down on rock, it was like crossing a boundary, returning to a world more familiar.
He turned to watch Torcaill and Yvane and the rest struggling across the bridge. Eshenna had to coax and edge K’rina across, the two women almost embracing. Orisian was assailed by the image of the two of them toppling and plunging into the torrent, carrying with them the last vestige of sense to all that had happened. Only Ess’yr and Varryn, bringing up the rear, were casual, striding nonchalantly without so much as a glance down.
Torcaill stood at his side, clearly relieved at having survived the crossing.
“Here comes the welcoming party,” the warrior grunted.
Four men were tramping down towards them, led by one who looked like he had been hewn from the fabric of mountains himself: burly, grey-bearded, rough-skinned and carrying a long spear. He rested its butt on the ground and stood tall before Orisian.
“Don’t get many strangers coming that way,” he observed gruffly.
“I’m not surprised.” Orisian grimaced. “That bridge isn’t the most easy of approaches.”
“I am Captain of the Guard here,” the old warrior said. He was looking beyond Orisian, and his surprise at what he saw — fighting men, na’kyrim, Kyrinin — was obvious. He shifted his weight uneasily, tightened his grip upon his spear. “I’ll need to know who you are, and what your business is here.”
“We’ve no business here, save the hope of a night’s shelter, and of some supplies for our journey. My name’s Orisian.” That did not sound enough, and he hesitated for only an instant before adding: “I am the Thane of the Lannis-Haig Blood.”
The man smiled, and opened his mouth to make some scoffing retort. His certainty faltered as he saw Orisian’s expression, and as Torcaill leaned a little closer. He narrowed his eyes.
“You don’t have the look of a Thane.”
Orisian put a self-conscious hand to the great welt of a wound that disfigu
red his cheek. The stitches were gone, cut agonisingly out that morning. It was still swollen, though, and tender.
“What’s your name, Captain?” Orisian asked him softly.
“Kollen.”
“Very well, Kollen. I am Orisian oc Lannis-Haig. And I am tired and cold and hungry. I would be grateful if you could tell us where we can find some food and drink and a fire to warm ourselves at.”
They were ushered into a wide, circular hut and settled around the open fire burning in its centre. There were animal hides stretched across the stone walls, picks and hammers leaning against them. The wind gusted across the smoke-hole in the roof, but the air within was hot and close.
Kollen remained doubtful. He said nothing to challenge Orisian’s claim, but he and a few of his Guard stood there, wary, while villagers brought food. Children clustered in the doorway, staring curiously at these newcomers; wide-eyed and murmuring at the sight of two Kyrinin sitting cross-legged in the gloom.
“What news is there?” Orisian asked between mouthfuls of stew. “Have you heard whether the fighting’s done, in the north?”
“No, the fighting’s not done,” said Kollen. “Not last we heard. We don’t hear much up here, and what we do hear’s not much sense. Got a message to arm two dozen fighting men and send them to Kolkyre, then two days later a message saying not. Then rumour is that the army’s gathering after all…” He waved his hands helplessly. “Who can say?”
“If the fighting’s not done, your men should march,” Orisian said. “You have to wait to be told to march against the Black Road?” It took so little now to wake his anger. The slightest breath upon its glowing embers could summon up a small flame.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Torcaill stiffen.
“You shouldn’t let others do the dying on your behalf,” Orisian muttered. Then, faintly: “You shouldn’t stand aside. That’s all.”
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