Blood of Heirs

by Alicia Wanstall-Burke

  Blood of Heirs

  Book One of The Coraidic Sagas

  Alicia Wanstall-Burke

  Copyright© 2018 by Alicia Wanstall-Burke

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without the prior written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover art by Pen Astridge

  Table of Contents

  Map

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  For Hadrian

  Of all the things I have ever created,

  you are the most spectacular

  In loving memory of Percy Wheatcroft and Keith Bickley

  — I wish you were both here to see this

  Map

  Chapter One

  The Caine, Tolak Range, the South Lands

  The thunder of hooves hammered in Lidan’s ears and she ran.

  Her feet pounded the earth; hard, rocky soil slipping under the soles of her boots, her bow and quiver bouncing against her back. She pumped her arms and sucked in ragged breaths, racing, stretching out her stride. Long leaves on low hanging branches slapped against her arms, and she ducked around the trunk of a soaring ghost bark.

  She had to clear the bush before the riders, had to be there when they reached the valley.

  The deafening thunder grew until it was closer, more insistent, louder and deeper, vibrating in her chest, drumming against her bones.

  She ran: harder, faster, leaping over a dry creek bed and clearing the gully. She slammed into the ground on the far side and stumbled, scrambling to regain her footing and her speed.

  They’re here they’re back they’re coming.

  Her thoughts repeated, faster and faster, until the words ran together into incomprehensible babble.

  They’re here. They’re back. They’re coming

  She broke through the tree line and staggered to a stop, her hand coming up to shield against the blinding sunlight. The tablelands loomed to the north, a dark line of cliffs rising in the distance from the valley floor. The shallow valley between here and there waved with pale, wind-swept grass, parched and suffering in the dry season. Several hundred feet away to her left, the thunder of hooves emerged from the bush, dozens of mounted rangers teeming from the trees towards the foot of the Caine.

  Lidan’s breath caught in her throat. They’re back.

  She set off at a jog, mirroring the rangers eastward advance as they hurried their horses from the bush. It had been weeks since they left the village of Hummel, working their way west to scour the border between Tolak and Namjin, hunting for raiders too stupid to heed her father’s warnings.

  Her father should be there, somewhere among the crush of trail-weary horses and rangers. She scanned the crowd, her gaze darting across faces and features. She recognised many, but could not see her da anywhere.

  The rangers followed a wide creek into the lowest reach of the valley, fording the trickle of water where the track cut south towards her and the village at her back. She could see their faces clearly now; men and women with their hair pulled back in tails or cut short to their heads, their shirts, jerkins and trousers filthy with dust, grime and blood. Sacks hung from the saddles, surrounded by swarming flies, darkened from within by foul stains.

  Heads.

  Lidan smirked. Had they found the raiders who attacked Malmerrin before last moon? Or perhaps they stumbled across some other pack of fools who’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. She stopped on the incline beside the trackway and watched the riders approach, her chest rising and falling as she fought to catch her breath, horses filing past on their way up to the village gate. Her legs shivered and her skin tingled, blood rushing in nervous anticipation. Surely they would not all look so damn calm if something had happened to her father.

  Rangers nodded at her as they passed. They knew her face—knew who she was. Daari Erlon Tolak’s eldest daughter. His heir.

  Some frowned, probably wondering what she was doing out here, beyond the confines of the village walls. Some shook their heads, no doubt imagining the rage Dana Sellan would fly into if she discovered her daughter had once again slipped away to explore the Caine—the massive stone monolith behind the village—and the valley at its foot, painted faded green and brown, orange and gold, drained of its brilliance by the dry season.

  Lidan didn’t care.

  She’d been out here every day for a week waiting for the ranging party to return—watching the trees, the place where the western track snaked off into the bush along the face of the tablelands, listening for the thunder of hooves and the shouts of riders returning home. One day she would be allowed to go with them. One day…

  The daari’s face appeared within the crush of rangers and horses, and Lidan darted forwards. Erlon Tolak was a mountain of a man who filled every hall and hut with his presence from the moment he entered to the second he departed. With his words, he commanded the ear of every man, the eye of every woman and the rapt attention of every child. And at this very moment, he was painted head to foot in several weeks’ worth of trail dirt and a decent amount of old blood.

  ‘Da!’ she shouted over the clamour of horses, the creaking of leather tack and the rumble of conversation coursing up towards the village gate.

  ‘Liddy?’ Her father frowned down from Titon’s saddle. His boots strained in the leather stirrups as he guided his huge black horse out of the stream of mounted rangers and towards his daughter. ‘Does your mother know you’re out here?’

  Her excitement at seeing him staggered, punched out by the thought of her mother scouring the village under a raging storm cloud. She glanced over her shoulder at the wall of the village. ‘Probably not, but I wanted to talk to you before she had a chance to…’

  She turned back as the enormous Titon snuffled his soft nose into her hand. Her father raised a brow and she sighed.

  ‘You know she has the final say, Lidan,’ Erlon said, anticipating her question, and the air of resignation in his voice blew out the last spark of hope she’d been sheltering in her chest. It was the same answer he’d given her when he left with the border patrol.

  ‘Da, please talk to her? She doesn’t
understand!’

  ‘Liddy, she’s your mother. She decides what skills you learn. It was only through the sheer power of nagging that she let you learn to shoot. I can’t see that she’s ever going to relent and let you train as a ranger.’

  ‘But the other girls—’

  Her protest died when he pressed his lips into a thin line. ‘The other girls have their mothers’ permission to train. You don’t.’

  Lidan scowled down at the long blades of grass dancing in the chill wind. At twelve years old, she was well and truly of an age to begin her training, but her mother had other ideas. ‘She said she would let me if the horse was broken in…’

  Erlon’s gaze softened despite the glare of the afternoon. ‘Only the rider can break the horse, Lidan. It’s clan Law and it’s to keep you safe. Until she lets you break him in yourself, you can’t ride him.’

  Lidan sighed through her nose. She’d be a hundred summers old before she was allowed to even sit in a saddle by herself.

  ‘Come on, we’ll take Titon back together, eh?’

  If anything could brighten an afternoon, it was a ride on the back of her father’s saddle. She put her foot on his boot and he pulled her up to sit behind him, arrows bouncing quietly in the saddle-quiver as he guided Titon up the hill towards the gate.

  The sun began to slip behind the tablelands in the west and cold shadows crept out to strangle the valley. The only warmth lay in the village, Hummel; the centre of her world. A horn blew from Hummel’s wall to signal the end of another day, calling the clan’s people in from foraging and grazing their stock in the valley. They wandered back to the gates in clusters, women carrying tired children on one hip and their day’s gathering or weaving on the other, men with braces of birds or hoppers slung over their shoulders. Lidan scanned for her mother’s auburn hair and milk pale face in the crowd that had gathered to watch the rangers from the top of the wall, but she was nowhere to be seen.

  Lucky… she thought.

  It would be a quieter evening if she wasn’t seen on Titon’s back. Learning to ride was the very last thing her mother planned for her and she was certain to cop a tongue-lashing if discovered even sitting on Titon.

  According to her mother, she wasn’t going to do anything with her life except match to another daari’s son and make babies, and leading the clan when the day came that her father passed into the realm of the ancestors. She was a girl, and the first daughter of a daari. She knew it now at twelve-years-old, and she would know it for sure when she was eighteen and old enough to match. She just didn’t understand why it meant she couldn’t train as a ranger like everyone else. Training was important—something she had to learn if she had any hope of earning her people’s respect and loyalty. But her mother said such pursuits were far too dangerous for so precious a child.

  Behind the village, the Caine loomed high, carved by wind and rain to the shape of a wild dog’s tooth, glowing orange in the light of the setting sun. Hummel lay at its base, a settlement where grassland met rock in a collection of a hundred or so grey and brown buildings, stone and timber, most with lilac smoke rising from their thatched roofs.

  Only one small building stood apart, a few hundred feet away from the village proper at the very foot of the Caine. It appeared to be such an unkempt hovel neither man nor beast could stomach living in it, but Lidan knew better. The hut’s single occupant stood concealed in shadow by the woodpile, perfectly hidden unless you knew what to look for; a pair of sharp grey eyes watching Lidan with unwavering intensity while the rest of the body remained still.

  Lidan hated those eyes. Sometimes they tracked her from dawn ‘til dusk for no reason at all, then vanished for days at a time. They watched her as if they knew her intimately while they’d never come within spitting distance of each other. She ignored them but they remained, always present, never truly gone though they might be out of sight.

  She shivered and buried her face in her father’s back. One day she hoped to wake and know those eyes weren’t watching from the shadows of the hut, because the old woman they called the Crone had done everyone the favour of dropping dead.

  As the high timber wall of Hummel rose before them, its gates yawning wide, a tall, fair-haired ranger rode up beside them and broke her thoughts with a smile. Her father slapped the man’s shoulder in the silent greeting men often preferred and they continued on. Siman Jarrah, the leader of the daari’s rangers and her father’s close confidant, was so familiar he could almost be her uncle. His light hair and skin hinted at the northern heritage in his blood, but he was neither as pale as Lidan, nor as dark as her father. He spent his time guarding the daari’s back or discussing whatever clan leaders discuss over ale and meat, hardly leaving the daari’s side, much less his sight.

  ‘You get any raiders this time, Siman? Or just lose more arrows?’ A gateman called from the wall with his bow resting casually in his crossed arms. He was a wide lump of a man, old muscle turned to fat with an ale belly hidden behind the parapet.

  ‘Got more than you ever did, old man!’ Siman gestured to the collection of bulging sacks tied to his saddle. The heads inside would soon decorate a line of pikes beyond the wall—a reminder to any outsiders of the price paid for encroaching on Tolak land.

  The gateman dismissed Siman’s sourness with a wave and vanished from sight as Erlon urged Titon under the lintel of the gate and into Hummel’s common. An enormous cheer erupted as they entered, clan’s people waving and shouting their congratulations to the daari and the rangers for a successful patrol.

  Lidan couldn’t help grinning, a rush of pride coursing down her limbs. But she didn’t dare linger. She jumped from behind the saddle before anyone could alert her mother and ran into the crowd. She owed her unbroken horse his dinner and he was likely to be unimpressed if she turned up late. Again.

  *

  By the time she finished cleaning out her colt’s wide stall and dragging in a fresh bag of feed, the night’s first stars sparkled in the eastern sky. The horse, who she had named Theus, baulked at the clunk of the closing timber gate and threw his head. Lidan stood where he could see her face and shrugged in the dim light of the wall torches.

  ‘I know it’s not the high country, but isn’t this better than running from wild dogs all night?’ The horse pawed the ground. Lidan chuckled and waved a handful of feed under the animal’s nose. ‘Eat your food.’

  A few sniffs had him eating happily from the bag, the confinement of the pen forgotten. In his distraction, she reached tentative fingers towards his nose and he tossed his black head to flick her away. Undeterred, she reached for him again and the horse threw his head higher.

  ‘Don’t be a fool!’ Lidan slapped his neck and cursed. ‘Do that again and I’ll boil your bones for dog food.’ She jerked the bag away to hang it on a peg and the horse snorted. Two steps forwards and he had his head back in in the feedbag, chomping and snuffling like a bush-boar gouging a root from the ground. ‘You’re a smart one; I’ll give you that.’

  Lidan left the wild-born animal to settle for the night, easing the side door shut to trap some of the day’s warmth behind the clay and timber walls. Dinner waited in her father’s hall and if she dallied, she’d be left with nothing but scraps.

  ‘It might be kinder to let the poor beast go,’ a voice spoke from the darkness and Lidan squealed with fright.

  ‘Oh, petal!’ Her mother darted forwards and pulled her into a suffocating embrace against her breasts. More than ample for an otherwise slender woman, it was like being shoved between two fleshy, pale pillows. Sellan knew well enough that her daughter spent each evening in the stable, but Lidan wondered why the woman had sought her out. Had she heard about Lidan’s earlier adventure around the Caine? Or was it something else? ‘Don’t fret. I’m sure your father will let you ride it one day.’

  ‘He said you said I couldn’t!’ Her words were lost in the depths of her mam’s cleavage. Confusion and hope warred in Lidan’s chest. Would the dana relent and let h
er break the horse in, if she had her father’s permission?

  Her mother withdrew slowly and held Lidan’s arms tight, her emerald eyes narrowed, scanning her daughters face. Lidan felt herself shrink under the glare. ‘Your father likes to twist the truth, Lidan.’

  ‘But Mam, he says it’s up to you if I start my training—’

  Fingernails bit into her arm and she jammed her lip between her teeth to stifle a scream. Stupid girl! She knew better than to talk back to her mother.

  ‘Lidan, you were born of a dana and a daari.’ Her voice was calm, even kind, but the pressure of her fine hands and her unflinching scowl left Lidan in no doubt. Sellan never made threats—she made promises. ‘You are not some shit-flecked horse herder. You are not a scrub digger. You are not a rider or a fighter. No daughter of mine will ever be a ranger, be they a first or minor daughter.’

  ‘Mam, please,’ Lidan wheezed, wincing away from the pain. ‘You said you want me to lead one day. Da said ranging is—’

  ‘There are other ways, Lidan,’ Sellan growled between clenched teeth. ‘There are safer ways. Ways that don’t end up with you trampled under the hooves of one of those beasts or gutted by a Namjin axe. Your position is too precarious, too important to risk.’

  ‘But they won’t let me lead if I haven’t trained!’ Lidan tried to twist out of her mother’s clawing grip, but the dana held tight. Why couldn’t she understand? She just wanted to—

  ‘Oi, Sellan! Lidan!’ Erlon’s voice boomed across the darkened common from the door that led to the hall’s kitchen and he waved. It was time to eat.

  A dazzling smile instantly broke across Dana Sellan’s face and she returned the gesture enthusiastically. As Erlon returned inside Lidan jerked away but her mother snatched her arm and yanked down, her features hard in the fractured light from the torches on the outside of the stable walls.

  ‘They will let you lead, child, but you must let me guide you. No more talk of ranging, do you understand? Or that precious horse of yours might find his next meal to be his last.’