He threw open the portal and gestured, beckoning some unseen attendants beyond it. Theor glanced sideways at Vana, but the woman maintained a stern and dignified stillness, gazing ahead impassively. If she was troubled or distressed, she concealed it well.
In answer to the High Thane's summons, three prisoners were hauled out onto the dais by guards: two men and a woman. They were forced to kneel in a line, facing Theor and Vana. Theor frowned, and then raised his eyebrows in startled anticipation of might follow.
"This man," said Ragnor, jabbing a finger at the first of the dishevelled captives, "was passing through Kan Dredar on his way to the Stone Vale. He's one of yours, lady. He took it upon himself to knife two men in a tavern brawl, and then to attempt the same upon the Guards sent to arrest him.
"This --" he advanced down the line, and indicated the second kneeling prisoner "--is the ringleader of a mob from Ramarok on the coast. They were hungry because the seal hunters have gone south. They thought a family was hoarding food, so they burned them out of their house and slaughtered them--husband, wife, children--in the street. Clubbed them to death. Then they set upon one another. Killed another dozen."
The High Thane stood behind the last of them: a long-haired young woman who was calmly watching Theor. The First returned her gaze, sensing that there was some meaning or intent in it, but unable to tease it out. Ragnor looked down at the woman, curling his lip in contempt. He grabbed a handful of her hair and shook her head roughly.
"This," he snarled, "this one I am not sure of. She might be a mere tool, a mere agent. Or perhaps she is the thing itself: one of Avenn's shadow-haunters. I don't know, and I don't care." He shot a meaningful glance at Theor. "If she's of the Hunt itself, I don't care. She was rousing the villagers in the lands around Effen, preaching the coming of the Kall, filling them with the fire they needed to send them off across the Vale of Stones. All but emptied three villages, she did, and when she was commanded to cease, she disappeared, only to be found repeating her game two days later."
Ragnor released the woman, slapping her hard across the back of the head as he stepped away. Guards moved into place behind each of the prisoners. They held cords in their hands.
"Ragnor, wait," Theor said, taking a pace forward. He did not know if the woman was one of the Hunt, but if she was...
"No," Ragnor said flatly. "I have no patience left, First. I will not wait any longer, for anything or anyone." He nodded to the guards.
Theor stepped back. Vana, he realised, was not watching; she was staring up at a ram's skull mounted high on the wall, pouring her attention into the polished bone, the curled horn. The cords slipped around necks. They were twisted tight at once. They dug into skin. Mouths stretched open, tongues fluttered. Eyes gaped. The woman struggled to rise, but the guard behind her kicked the back of her knee and pushed her down again. On each of the three throats a red blush spread; muscles and sinews stood despairingly taut. Something collapsed with a soft crunch.
A distorted rattle escaped the woman's throat. Her executioner redoubled his efforts, tightening, crushing. One of the men--the one from Ramarok--died first. Then the woman, then the Horin man. They fell, or were pushed, forward, and lay crumpled on the dais.
Ragnor oc Gyre scuffed the woman's long hair away from her face, exposing her protruding tongue and the string of saliva loosed from her mouth.
"Do you see?" the Thane of Thanes murmured. "Do you understand? I have gibbets and stakes and pyres aplenty. If I have to fill them all, use every one of them, I will have an end to this. However many have to die, I mean to cure us of this madness. This disease. I have had enough."
Theor's litter-bearers hurried to take up their positions, and watched him expectantly as he emerged onto the steps outside the Great Hall. It was snowing once more. The hundred Battle Inkallim were still spread across the yard in a great arc. Theor stood just outside the doors, rubbing his hands together. They tingled uncomfortably at the sudden transition from the warmth of the hall into the day's bitter chill.
Vana oc Horin-Gyre appeared at his side. She paused, pulling up the seal-trimmed hood of her cloak. Her attendants hurried to fetch their horses from wherever they had been stabled.
"I saw a bear slain on the day of your husband's interment," Theor said quietly. "Ragnor's own Shield quilled its breast with crossbow bolts. You saw it too. The High Thane himself laughed that it might be an omen, of the fall of a great lord or a sudden change in the order of things."
Angain's widow looked sharply at him, then returned her attention to the task of pulling on sleek calf-hide gloves.
"The Road does not grant us omens, of course," said Theor. "But still. There is change in the air, I think. I fear."
"Spare me any further involvement in your noble enterprises, First," said Vana, and now the bitterness in her voice was unmistakable. "I thought I had the mettle to succeed my husband, to match his fervour, his strength. I find I do not. I am weary, and I have no remaining interest in the creed, or omens, or the wars you choose to fight. My family has already paid a high enough price."
"It was never our intent, or desire, to do anything other than nurture the fire that your husband, alone amongst all the Thanes, kept alight. Many of the Inkallim who crossed the Vale were specifically tasked with keeping your children safe if --"
"Then they failed," Vana snapped. She flexed her fingers inside the gloves irritably. "You failed. Wain is dead. Kanin, by all accounts, is shunned by those now guiding the war. That vile halfbreed who first whispered thought of war in my husband's ear rules in Kan Avor, I hear, with this Shraeve of yours serving as his Shieldmaiden. That is not what my husband hoped for."
"There is much, I agree, that is unexpected in all of this --" Theor nodded sympathetically "--but it is not given to any of us to predict fate's course."
"No?" Vana said. She glared at him, but he saw more pain than anger in her eyes. He felt a sudden sympathy for this woman who found her strength unequal to the challenges the world presented. "I'll make a prediction for you: I will never have my son back, just as I will never see my daughter again. Ragnor wants me to summon him, as if anything I could say would change anything. I know my son, First. Wain is dead. Kanin would return only if there were none left to punish for that, deservingly or not. He will require a surfeit of blood, and still it will not heal him. In search of that healing he can never find, he will go on and on until he drowns in the blood of the dead."
"As will we all, eventually," Theor murmured as Vana walked away from him, descending the steps to where her grooms now waited with the horses. "It's the fate of this world to drown in blood, sooner or later."
III
"You've never heard of it before?" Orisian asked.
Yvane shook her head. "I'd never have believed it possible. I hardly believe it is possible, even now."
She was walking alongside Orisian's horse, trudging up the long, bleak track to Highfast. Her tolerance for riding had been thoroughly exhausted, and no one made any protest at her refusal, for she did not slow their progress. All of them, horses included, were bleary and sluggish. It had been two nights now since any of them had had any meaningful rest. Above, clouds spun and churned about the Karkyre Peaks. Gusts of eye-watering wind came tumbling down from the heights to sting their faces. Slabs of snow were scattered all across the mountains, clinging to whatever seams in the rocks gave them purchase and shelter. Most of the snow had been scoured from the track, but sometimes, when they were in the lee of some huge ridge or cliff, there were drifts deep enough to make progress painfully slow.
"We saw it, though," Orisian said.
"We did. We saw something done for the first time, as far as I know, in all the world, in all its history. Myself, I was happier when I thought such a thing impossible. He is stronger than the Anain. He--one man, one na'kyrim--has killed..."
She splayed her hands, as if pushing away words, or thoughts, that she could not accommodate.
"It doesn't change anything,"
Orisian said.
"No?" Yvane grunted. "Tell your Fox friends that. They may disagree."
Orisian glanced ahead towards Ess'yr and Varryn. They were thirty or forty paces further up the track, pushing on, heads down, with more stubborn resilience than anyone else could manage. Neither of them had spoken of what they had seen in those woods, when the Anain had appeared before them, and died. They alone had seen it killing the Black Roaders, and Orisian could barely imagine what that must have meant for them, to witness first the waking of the forest, and then its destruction; to see one of the beings they considered tutelary spirits of their lands, their lives, snuffed out like the feeblest of candle flames. Who, Orisian wondered, did the Kyrinin imagine would protect them from their restless dead, if the Anain could no longer safely venture near the surface of the world?
"But still," Orisian said quietly, "it doesn't change anything."
Yvane looked at him. He met her gaze without flinching, and saw nothing in her of the fire, the challenge and argument that had so often been there. She was instead thoughtful and grave. After a time, she pursed her lips and looked away.
"The Anain know now that they can't oppose him. If they thought to use K'rina against him... Now they cannot even protect her, or guide her, for if they rise up, Aeglyss has proved he can kill them. Ha." Her curt laugh was sad, mournful. "They raised a forest once, to still a war. Now this one man is too much for them. And no; I suppose it doesn't really change anything. We merely go from dark to darker."
*
The doors of Highfast were closed. They stood tall and narrow, ancient but firm. Thick snow was falling as Orisian led his company across the arching stone bridge that tenuously wedded the mountain to the pinnacle from which Highfast clambered in mounting buttresses and walls and towers into the sky. Orisian had his collar high and tight about his neck, but still meltwater trickled down from his numb face and spread its chill beneath his jerkin. Snow layered every flat surface of the fortress, a succession of white ramparts stepping towards cloud.
The guards--disembodied voices crying out from hidden windows or battlements--refused to open the great doors. That angered Orisian.
"Bring your Captain here," he shouted into the blizzard, standing in his stirrups as if that would strengthen his voice. "Herraic still lives, doesn't he?"
They had to wait then, hunched down in their saddles, heads turned away from the wind-blown snowflakes. No one spoke. The ride up from Ive Bridge had been a miserable, punishing journey. To be denied shelter now that they stood at the very gate of their destination was unbearably, unacceptably bitter.
"I'd not thought to see you here again, sire," came Herraic's familiar voice from above, stretched and buffeted by the wind.
"Open the gates, Herraic. You know me well enough. I've forty men here needing shelter, half a dozen of them wounded or sick."
"But it's not just men, is it, sire? Forgive me, forgive me, but I see woodwights and na'kyrim there in your ranks. It's ill fortune, ill-timed, that you bring them to our door."
Orisian looked round. His warriors lined the bridge, stretching back in double file, the last few all but obscured by sheets of snows. He could see Yvane and Eshenna, uncomfortably sheltering between horses in the midst of the column, and K'rina, tiny, tied tight to Taim's back. Ess'yr and Varryn were almost hidden, standing at the rear. It must have taken a keen eye to find them. Or a suspicious one.
"They ride with me, Herraic," Orisian shouted angrily up at the invisible Captain of Highfast. "You've seen them all before, save one. You know they're no threat."
"Things change." There was regret in his words, though he still shouted them into the storm. "I like it no better than you, sire, but things change for the worse. Trust's too rare, the dangers too great, for any chances to be taken now. Since you left... there's been too much blood shed since you last came to my gate, sire."
Orisian slapped his thigh in exasperation.
"Herraic!" he shouted, his ire swelling his voice and bearing it up against the walls of the fortress. "Do you truly mean to bar your doors against the Thane of a Blood that's fought and suffered alongside your own for more than a hundred years?"
"There'd be few more welcome than you, sire. But Kyrinin and na'kyrim... no, I cannot. Not now, not after all that's happened. If you'd been here, if you'd seen..."
Orisian stopped listening, let the wind bellow over the Captain's words. He dismounted and trudged through ankle-deep snow to stand at the head of Taim's horse. Holding the animal's bridle, he glanced at K'rina. The na'kyrim seemed to be sleeping, her cheek pressing into the warrior's broad back, though it was difficult to tell with her what was sleep and what daze, what simple absence.
"You can untie her now. Send five men back up the track with Ess'yr and Varryn and the na'kyrim. Tell them to get well out of sight but go no further than they need to. We'll send for them soon."
"We'll have a roof over our head tonight after all, then?" Taim grunted.
"Without doubt."
Taim stood at Orisian's side as he hammered on Highfast's great doors with the hilt of his sword.
"You've got what you want, Herraic," Orisian cried. "Let us in."
The doors groaned and rasped as they swung slowly open, protesting at such disturbance of their cold-stiffened bones of wood and iron. Herraic and four of his warriors waited within, a few paces along the stone tunnel that lay beyond the entrance. The Captain of Highfast was a short and stout man who had struck Orisian as somewhat nervous and fragile of spirit even on their first meeting. He had shed some weight since then, and the shadows beneath his eyes and the hesitancy of his movement gave him the air of a beaten man. Orisian strode up to him and stood face to face.
"I'd expected a warmer welcome."
Herraic looked anguished. "I offer all I can, sire. There's little warmth for any of us within these walls."
"How many swords have you got left?" Orisian asked, waving his own warriors forward. They advanced on foot, leading their horses noisily up the long passageway. Swarms of snowflakes came billowing in around them.
"Less than twenty," Herraic stammered. "And a few willing men amongst the foresters and villagers who've found refuge here."
"Good," said Orisian curtly. He looked beyond Herraic, saw that the first of his warriors was entering the deep, high-walled yard beyond the passageway. He nodded to Taim. The warrior moved more quickly than even Orisian had expected, driving Herraic back against the wall in a single lunge; grasping the Captain's throat with one wide hand, with the other freeing his sword and touching its point to Herraic's belly.
"Yield your castle, Captain," Taim said quite softly and calmly.
One of Herraic's men started forward, but Orisian interposed himself, sword and shield readied. He felt no hesitation, no uncertainty. Exhaustion had emptied him of everything save a sickening kind of desperation. He had no talking, no reasoning, left in him; neither the patience nor the strength for anything other than a swift resolution. The advancing warrior must have seen something in his face or his eyes, for the man hesitated. The wind surged down the passageway. Orisian could hear and dimly see his men dispersing to confront and disarm Highfast's garrison. His eyes were failing, though, crippled by weariness. Snowflakes boiled in the air between him and the warrior he faced, streaking white blurs across his vision.
"Herraic..." he said.
And behind him, choked out through Taim's crushing grasp: "Yes... yes, sire. I yield Highfast to you. Please." It was the voice of a broken man, and as Orisian carefully lowered his sword and shield, he could hear Herraic begin to weep.
There was no fighting. None of Highfast's defenders had the appetite for resistance. At Herraic's command they laid down their arms with apparent relief, and though they were sullen and resentful, all permitted themselves to be herded into the largest of the dining halls. A dozen families were assembled there too. They huddled in the corner, watching Orisian and Taim and the rest. The parents hugged their children close,
as if guarding them against some fearful sight. As if some avatar of the terrible outside world had breached the walls of their sanctuary and now stood before them clothed in threat.
Standing there, surveying this miserable gathering, Orisian was for a moment struck breathless by overpowering shame that he could instil such fear in mothers and fathers and children. He closed his eyes, bit his lower lip and turned away. He was not to blame. He did only what was necessary.
"Give them food and drink, if you can find some," he murmured to one of his men.
He drew in a deep breath and blew it out again. It trembled in his throat and chest. He did not know how much longer he could bear this. He needed sleep, craved it as a starving man might crave food.
Herraic was sitting, elbows on knees, head in hands, on a bench. Taim stood over him. Orisian saw sympathy in Taim's face as he regarded the fallen Captain, and somehow the sight of that gave him a fragment of strength. There remained some little space, some capacity, for something other than anger, or fear, or exhaustion, even now.
"What happened, to so poison this place?" Orisian asked Herraic.
Highfast's Captain slowly lifted his head, blinking
"The Dreamer woke, and... and I don't know. The na'kyrim fell to slaughtering one another. Woodwights came; there was madness. A madness in the air, in the heart. It was a horror, sire. If you could have seen..."
"Where are the na'kyrim?" Orisian demanded. "They can't all be dead, can they?"
Herraic winced, as if struck.
"Where are they?" Orisian asked again, taking a step closer to the portly Captain.
"There's an old cellar, once for wine and ale. We keep them there."
"Show us," Orisian said quietly
The stench was startling: ordure and sweat and mould and misery, all hot in Orisian's face as the cellar exhaled a gout of its vile breath. He stood only for a moment on the threshold; saw in the sickly candlelight the hunched forms of men and women crowded into corners, lying asleep or unconscious or dead along the walls, two or three coming unsteadily towards the faint light admitted by the opening of the door. A moment was enough to see all this, and to feel the unreasoning anger boiling up in him, to feel tears burning in his eyes, not knowing whether they were born of the acrid stink, or despair, or pure, perfect rage.
Godless World 3 - Fall of Thanes Page 21
