Godless World 3 - Fall of Thanes

by Brian Ruckley

  "That sounds like Inurian," Orisian said, and though once he might have regretted reminding her of her lost lover, now that hardly seemed to matter.

  She said nothing at first, and they strode on, side by side, beneath the leaning, leafless trees of Anlane.

  Then: "It does."

  "Do you think of him often?" Orisian asked. "I do, now."

  "Yes," she said very softly.

  Orisian felt gentle sorrow walking between them, like a friend: not separating them but linking them.

  "He would not want us to remember only the ending of him, I suppose," said Orisian. "It was the movement that came before that mattered. And the manner of it."

  "Yes," said Ess'yr again after a few heartbeats, a few paces.

  And then she lifted her head and looked towards the sun, and lengthened her stride and moved on ahead of him, returning to Anlane's embrace. Orisian watched her go this time without any pangs of regret or trepidation. This did not feel--as so many such moments had in the past--like a parting.

  IX

  Disaster came upon them slowly, revealing itself by increments as it emerged from the shadows and the wilds. It came first in the last dregs of the twilight, in the form of tracks through the mud at the side of a stream, that Varryn leaned close to, and tested with his fingers, and proclaimed half a day old at most. A White Owl family, with children, he said, moving north and west.

  It came again, betraying a little more of its shape in the gathering darkness, as the scent of a distant fire that none save Ess'yr or Varryn could detect. None doubted their inhuman senses, though, and all followed the Kyrinin as they bent their course away from the unseen, fearful beacon and led their stumbling, blundering charges through the night-thronged thickets. Some of the warriors muttered mutinously at the unwisdom of traversing wight-haunted lands by nothing more than moonlight, but Orisian could read the urgency and unease taking root in Ess'yr and her brother, and he kept them moving.

  They did halt, in time, if only briefly. A taut, restless interlude in which they blindly passed morsels of food from hand to hand to mouth and rubbed aching feet in vain attempts to soothe them. Ess'yr and Varryn went out into the night, of course, remorseless in their suspicious quartering of this untrustworthy ground.

  While they were gone, K'rina began to moan softly. It was a troubling sound, like the mournful voice of the darkness itself.

  "Keep her quiet," someone hissed in sibilant anger.

  "I'm trying," Yvane muttered, and though he could not see her clearly, Orisian could hear her slight shifting movements as she reached for K'rina. Whether to comfort her or cover her mouth, he did not know.

  "She's unsettled," Yvane whispered as the other na'kyrim's restlessness diminished. "Agitated. Feels something or knows something. Because we're getting closer, maybe."

  Ess'yr returned suddenly, as if stepping out from one of the grey tree trunks into their midst. She brought with her another fragment of threat, another traced portion of disaster's outline.

  "Someone is killed, far behind us," she said into Orisian's ear, so close he could feel the warmth of her breath. "We hear him dying. A Kyrinin. We must move. Death runs through the forest. We must run faster."

  But they could not run, for Anlane would not so easily open itself to humankind, or any kind perhaps. Not in the sombre darkness, not when its soils were soaked with meltwater, its streams swollen. They could only struggle on, none of them--Orisian least of all--knowing whether what lay before or behind them was more deserving of their fear. Ess'yr stayed close, guiding their every pace with inexhaustible patience. For all her efforts, they slipped and tripped and fell. But they kept moving, as if by moving they might hasten the departure of the treacherous darkness and eventually leave the night behind.

  Orisian dreamed without sleeping, even as he staggered along, of Inurian, and of Rothe and others. They were formless dreams composed of nothing but the presence of the lost. He dreamed, or thought he did, of Aeglyss. He had no other name to give to that pitiless black fog he imagined drifting through the forest all around him. There was no malice in it, just a cold and bitter accusation of futility that sapped his strength and his will. He could feel not just his legs but his heart and his hope growing sluggish and torpid.

  By the time dawn came, he had forgotten its possibility. All but a last, small stubborn part of him had surrendered, and accepted that the night and the forest had consumed all the world, and would be its entirety for ever. When the light came, wan and hesitant, he disbelieved it at first, and thought it only an illusory trick of his failing mind. But it was a true light. It brought no relief, though. Instead it brought a slow nightmare, shuffling in their wake out of the darkness, gathering itself, closing on them.

  "We've lost someone," Taim Narran said grimly.

  They stood in bleary, numb assembly beneath a lightning-split oak. The great wound in the tree's trunk was darkened by age, the exposed heartwood softened by rot. A gnarled knoll of rock and earth and thin grass stood nearby, a knuckled clenching of the forest floor.

  "Kellach's gone," said Taim. "Did no one hear anything? No one see anything?"

  There was only a shaking of heads, a casting down of eyes. Taim's anguish was raw, sharpened by his exhaustion. It hurt Orisian to see it. He wanted to tell the warrior not to blame himself, but it would do no good. It was not the kind of guilt Taim could put aside, even when it belonged to his Thane, not him.

  One of the warriors was weeping. His comrades watched him. They said nothing, showed nothing: no sympathy, no understanding, no contempt, no judgement. They merely watched, as if tears were now as natural and inevitable a thing as the clouds drifting above them. He did not weep for their lost companion, Orisian knew; he wept for everything. Because there was something rising in him that demanded the shedding of tears. Something that might, before long, demand the shedding of blood.

  "We cannot go back," Ess'yr said flatly.

  No one looked at her.

  Then Varryn was running down towards them, swinging around the shoulder of that bare knoll. He leaped from a boulder to land lightly at his sister's side, already hissing something to her in the Fox tongue as he hit the ground. Tension sprang into her shoulders.

  "The enemy," she said.

  And with nothing more than that, no more warning, there were White Owls amongst them. Figures spilled over the knoll and came rushing down like a loose flock of great pale birds. Orisian had time only to lift his shield and snap his sword free of its scabbard before there was movement and noise all about him, a storm of it. A solid blow on the face of his shield knocked him back a couple of paces, but the Kyrinin who had struck him swept on by. Orisian had a glimpse of wide grey eyes, the dark and swirling kin'thyn, a rictus of a mouth. He was not sure the White Owl had even seen him.

  The next assuredly did, for a spear darted at Orisian's thigh. He knocked it down and aside and its tip punched into the mossy earth. The Kyrinin who wielded it dropped it and ran on, bounding past the wild flash of a warrior's blade. They had not come to fight, Orisian realised. The White Owls were pouring through the thin rank his men had prepared to meet this supposed charge, not pausing to offer anything more than the most cursory of assaults. In two and threes, they came leaping over the crest of the knoll, sped down its flank and danced their lithe way through the cordon of slow and clumsy humans, and then were gone, plunging back into the forest. It was like the dolphins that breached sometimes in the Glas estuary: emerging for only the briefest of instants into the world of light and air, then gone again, back into the limitless blank ocean.

  Not all those making up that bewildered, impotent cordon were human, though. And one of them at least was fast enough, and impassioned enough, to weave a furious dance of his own. In a single sideways glance, Orisian saw Varryn, a fervent smile upon his face, moving with impossible, lethal agility. The Kyrinin flicked out his arm, and his spear punched a neat hole in a White Owl's neck, and was withdrawn before the victim had even begun to s
tagger. Varryn lunged to his side and caught another on the forehead with the spear's butt, streaking a red split across the white skin; he spun and the spear was suddenly in flight, blurring up the slope and into the stomach of a third descending White Owl.

  A flicker in the corner of his eye had Orisian ducking and lurching away from a shadow, but the Kyrinin who cast it was past him and gone in the same moment. He looked after the disappearing woman, and saw Yvane crouching down, her back to him, protective arms enclosing K'rina's hunched form. And Taim Narran standing in front of the two na'kyrim, making a wall of his body and sword and shield. The warrior did not reach for any of the White Owls as they sprinted by; he let them pass. He saw Orisian looking at him.

  "Get over here," Taim snapped, and Orisian obeyed instinctively.

  He stood at Taim's side, a fraction behind him, and they watched the Kyrinin flowing around and beyond them. In every face that passed Orisian saw the same thing: some strange admixture of panic and confusion and fear. It was so far from the measured composure he associated with Kyrinin that he found it almost repellent.

  As suddenly as it had begun, it was over. But Varryn was unwilling to let it end. He sent an arrow skimming between the tree trunks in pursuit of the last of the receding figures, ran forward a few paces and set another to his bowstring, then another. He sped into the dappled forest without a backwards glance.

  There were a handful of dead White Owls, and one of Taim's men. A spear was embedded in the warrior's chest, broken off halfway down its length. It must have been almost an accident, Orisian thought, staring down at the youth's corpse. They were not even trying to kill us, and still someone had to die. He knelt and gently closed the open, blank eyes.

  Ess'yr climbed to the top of the knoll and crouched there, turning and lifting her head this way and that.

  Orisian returned to Yvane and K'rina. They were rising carefully to their feet, the one supported and guided by the other.

  "Are you all right?" he asked Yvane.

  She looked at him, and for the first time he saw in her eyes the same empty despair that he felt lodged patiently and watchfully at the back of his mind. In Yvane it had come into its full, bleak flowering.

  "This can't go on," she said. "Did you see them? Did you feel it in them?"

  "What?" asked Orisian cautiously.

  "Out of their minds. Didn't know who they were, what they were doing. The weight of him, of what he's done, too much for them."

  Orisian nodded, for the want of anything to say.

  Yvane swallowed and seemed to recover herself a little.

  "The White Owl clan is older than any of your Bloods. It's older than the Kingship that came before, even. There were people who called themselves White Owls when the Whreinin still hunted through these forest, in the Age before this one."

  "When there were still Gods," Orisian murmured.

  "Perhaps. And you see? You see what they have come to? Slaughtering one another like maddened beasts. Running about, senseless. Lost children."

  "It's what we're all coming to, isn't it?" said Orisian quietly. "We're halfway there already. That's why we have to go on."

  Ess'yr came down from the knoll. There was blood on the tip of her spear, Orisian noted. A glutinous smear of it, already drying.

  "We must move," she said.

  The unfamiliar strain in her voice, as much as her words, alarmed Orisian. Her face was as elegantly expressionless as ever, but something was tightening within her.

  "More come," she said.

  As if summoned up by that single terse statement, there were cries in the forest. Looping, bounding cries, like the voices of birds. Distant, Orisian thought, but drawing nearer. The sound was unearthly, a disordered, jumbled melody of stretched and falling notes. It could have been Anlane itself, the mind of that vast place, calling out. Or announcing its waking. Announcing its joining of battle.

  "They hunt," Ess'yr said. "We must go. Now."

  She led them on, moving now with insistent haste that they struggled to match.

  "What about Varryn?" Orisian called after her.

  "He will find his way," she told him.

  Yet another of the babbling streams that crossed Anlane like veins in its vast body blocked their path. Too wide to leap across, they would have to wade.

  Ess'yr paused upon its bank, looking up and down its writhing rocky length.

  "In the water," she said, and stepped into the flow. She turned and began to splash down-stream, picking a nimble course between weed-clothed stones.

  There was an instant of hesitation amongst those who followed her. Some of the men exchanged doubting, reluctant glances. But those calls were still in the air behind them, bounding through the treetops.

  "Hurry," said Orisian, and went after her.

  His boots filled at once with the brutally cold water, as if seized by hands of ice. The current pushed at his heels, piling water up against the back of his legs. Sensation retreated, withdrawing up through his limbs, leaving his feet deadened to all save the dull pain of intense cold. He stumbled, constantly fearful of losing his footing on some slick and slimy stone. Behind him, he could hear the others following. Though in truth he did not know whether they followed him or fled those haunting voices that filled the forest.

  The brook led them where it willed, cutting a more or less northerly course over gently sloping ground. The notion settled upon Orisian that he walked in waters that would soon be part of the Glas. He was carried homeward by some fragment of the single titanic movement that joined stream, and great river, and ocean. This stream down which he laboured might soon be waves lapping at the walls of Castle Kolglas. And with that thought, he realised that he was not moving homeward at all, for his home was gone. Whatever he was returning to, it was not home but something else.

  He heard a splash and breathless, gasping curses behind him, and turned. Yvane was struggling to raise K'rina from where she had fallen. Water churned about them. Taim stopped to help, waving the rest of the men on. Orisian waded back against the force of the water, but K'rina was on her feet by the time he reached them.

  "Is she all right?" he asked Yvane, but the na'kyrim did not hear, or ignored him.

  As they moved away from him, a fleeting glimpse of something pale drew his eyes back up the stream. He looked that way, and saw nothing. Only the drooping trees that lined the banks. The water murmuring busily along. Clumps of rushes nodding at its edge.

  Then something: a single movement from left to right, as of an indistinct figure passing a distant window. And another. White Owls, he realised, darting across the stream. They were at the furthest limit of sight that the dense forest and the wandering stream's course would permit. The only sound was at his back, as his companions made their sodden way along the bed of the brook. He saw these silent, wan instants of motion as the Kyrinin crossed one by one, and it seemed to be happening in another place entirely, without connection to him.

  Until one of them stopped, halfway across, and stared directly at him. Even at that distance, Orisian knew their eyes met. He could envisage precisely that intent grey gaze, and feel its questioning touch upon him. He was already turning as a second figure joined the first, and as a flurry of fluting bird calls came down towards him, riding the cold air that hung above the stream between the overhanging trees.

  "They've seen us," he shouted. "They're coming."

  The waters were hateful now, thickening about his legs, hampering every desperate surging stride.

  "Out of the water!" he shouted, but Ess'yr already had them clambering up onto the bank.

  Orisian's feet throbbed as he staggered onto the grass, his sodden, heavy leggings plastered to his skin.

  "We need some clear ground," Taim was muttering. "Can't win against Kyrinin if we get spread out, scattered amongst the trees."

  Ess'yr was listening intently to the calls cascading through the forest.

  "They gather first," she said.

  "Not mad, these
ones, then," said Yvane bleakly. "They know what they're doing."

  K'rina was leaning against her, shivering. Looking at the frail na'kyrim, a wave of weariness and feebleness ran through Orisian. All he had achieved here, following instincts that had seemed so sure and certain, was to deliver them all to a futile death.

  Ess'yr was not finished yet, though. She led them on, away from the stream. The warriors followed without urging, their fear rendering them at last pliant. Orisian could see in their slumping shoulders and their gaunt, empty faces that the forest, its rigours, its accumulation of threat, had defeated them and left them willing to cleave to any guide who appeared to grasp its subtle horrors.

  So they came to a place where a great oak, its girth the token of its agedness, had created about itself a wide ring of ground untrammelled by briars or shrubs. When in leaf, its sprawling branches must have cast such shade that nothing but moss and the most meagre of grasses would grow there. Pigeons rattled out of its crown. Beneath it, Ess'yr turned and stood. Taim Narran looked about with a frown.

  "Not much," the warrior growled. "But if it's the best we can do..."

  "No more time," Ess'yr said. She leaned on her bow, forcing its notched limb down towards the looped end of the string.

  "You two get down," Taim said to Yvane and K'rina, jabbing the point of his sword groundward. "Lie flat, and we'll shield you as best we can."

  Yvane sank down onto her haunches. She had to tug at K'rina's arm to bring the other na'kyrim down.

  "We keep between them and the arrows," Taim told the remaining warriors. "And keep as much of ourselves behind our shields as we can. Depending on what sort of mood they're in, they may lose interest if they see arrows aren't going to do the job. Happens sometimes, with Kyrinin."

  Not this time, Orisian thought. No one fights with only half their heart any more. He took his place with the others in that feeble shield wall beside Taim. Just seven of them altogether, each sunk down onto his heels, shrinking himself into a knot of tension behind his shield. They arrayed themselves in half a circle, with the two na'kyrim lying at its heart, and behind them the great bulk of the oak. Orisian could smell the wood of his shield, and the dry leather of the grip to which his hand clung with such desperate rigidity. He looked back. Ess'yr was kneeling over Yvane. The Kyrinin's face was a mask of perfect concentration as she brushed the flights of her arrows with careful fingers, seeking flaws. Deciding, perhaps, in which order to let them fly. The very stillness of her features in such moments gave the branching, curving tattoos of her kin'thyn an almost painted beauty, Orisian thought. He saw Yvane watching him with narrowed eyes, and he turned back into his shield and flexed his fingers about the hilt of his sword.