Bloodheir (39 page)

“We could use your Fox friends now,” Torcaill muttered as they moved on down the trail. “Will we be seeing them again, do you think?”

“Yes,” said Orisian tightly. “Yes. We’ll see them again.”

Kanin oc Horin-Gyre had discovered depths of exhaustion such as he had never before imagined. He bore half a dozen small wounds – cuts and many-hued bruises – but it was lack of sleep that had sapped his strength, and the emptiness that came in the aftermath of battle. He was limping heavily: he had torn, or strained, something in his knee during the battle, leaping from the back of his dying horse. It hardly hurt, but the joint was enfeebled.

His Shield followed behind him through the streets of Glasbridge. Igris still carried, like a fool, the stick that he had tried to persuade Kanin to lean upon. A Thane, the victor in savage battle, should not be seen humbled by such a minor injury. The streets were soft with slush and treacherous underfoot, but Kanin would rather fall than hobble along like an old man.

After the battles he had won at Grive and Anduran, he had felt a dazed exultation, a lifting up of his heart and a sublime affirmation of the rightness of his deeds. No such exalted feelings attended upon the brutal victory won in the snowstorm on the road to Kolglas. The struggle had been unlike anything Kanin had previously experienced: desperate, seemingly never-ending. Wreathed by snow and cloud, there had been no time, no location to the slaughter. It had simply existed, a world unto itself, and all purpose had been lost save the imperative to slay one man, and then the next, and the next.

Driven back from the earthen wall that the Inkallim had raised across the road, almost overrun by the hordes of the Haig Bloods, he and his dwindling and scattering companies had fallen back towards Glasbridge, turning again and again to face another charge, to die. Eventually, lost, adrift in the blizzard, they had turned for the last time and stood in the calf-deep snow to await fate’s resolution. And there had been enough blood shed there to leave them wading in it. Kanin had known he was going to die then, and had felt no great sorrow at the thought. But he had not died, and the enemy had instead faltered and then fled. The battle was won, by the snowstorm and by the army Fiallic the Inkallim and Temegrin the Eagle had brought down upon the flank and the rear of their enemy.

There had been ravens of the Battle Inkall fighting and dying at Kanin’s side all through the long day, with Shraeve at the forefront; there had been scores of commonfolk from the north, come across the Vale of Stones to stand with Horin-Gyre. All these had been there in the fields of snow, but not Wain.

His sister had insisted on remaining in Glasbridge with the vile halfbreed who, impossibly, she had brought back with her from Anduran.

Wain was, in manner and character, unrecognisable. Kanin’s heart ached to think of it. Her face and voice were as they had always been, but what lay behind them had changed. Since her return, she spoke only of things that Kanin did not wish to understand: Aeglyss, the Kall, storms, all-consuming fires and terrible, wondrous fates. Half of what she said was incoherent, little better than the ravings of some mind-addled crone; all of it was spoken with a strange intensity.

As far as he could tell, nothing Kanin said reached her any more. She would not be parted from Aeglyss; she would not participate in any calm, reasoned conversation that Kanin attempted. That part of her that had always burned fiercely, with faith and hard certainty, now seemed to have overwhelmed all her sense, all her restraint. The sister Kanin loved, and respected above all others, had been taken away from him by these strange changes. And he was all but certain, in his deepest instincts, that Aeglyss was in some way responsible.

At the very thought of the man, Kanin let out a wordless snarl of anger and contempt. For want of any other way to release his frustration, he slapped his thigh with an open palm as he strode along. Nothing, it seemed, would keep that half-human wretch from interfering. Now, when Kanin had almost started to believe that he was lying dead in some distant ditch or copse, here he was again, poisoning everything with his presence. And when Kanin had argued that the halfbreed should be killed, Wain had stared at him as if he was a petulant child, and turned away from him. She had set her back to him; dismissed him.

Nothing could have caused him greater pain than that.

Even Kanin could tell, though, that Aeglyss was not quite the same man he had been when last they met.

Now the
na’kyrim
stank of confidence and capability. He had not only some kind of woodwight honour guard, but also Wain, her Shield and another few dozen warriors who seemed inexplicably intrigued by him. Even Shraeve and her company of ravens had been seen coming and going from the huge house where Aeglyss had settled himself.

And then there were the dreams. Kanin had not slept well for several nights. His slumber was disturbed by dreams that he could not clearly remember, but which he always felt had involved Aeglyss. And if he ever did secure a long spell of sleep he would invariably awake filled with inexplicable anger, or with his heart racing, or fear twisting in his stomach.

A twinge of pain shot through Kanin’s knee as he limped up a gently sloping street. He winced and, reluctantly, reached out to Igris for the walking stick. The shieldman handed it over without comment.

A woodwight came darting around the corner. Kanin was so astonished that he did not react. Igris was more alert, and more governed by deeply ingrained instincts. The shieldman swept his sword from its scabbard and lashed out at the speeding figure. The Kyrinin leaped and spun, evading the blow with barely a break in his stride. He sprang away down the street. Bemused, Kanin glanced around to find two more White Owls appearing, arrows already at their bowstrings. They took aim, and in no more time than it took Kanin to turn his head, the fleeing figure was reeling, two feathered shafts standing in his back. He fell into a puddle of melt-water.

The two who had killed him retreated back around the corner, slipping fresh arrows free from their quivers as they went.

“The whole world is going mad,” Kanin muttered.

He limped forwards and beheld a startling scene. White Owl Kyrinin were killing one another. A brutal, dazzlingly fast struggle played itself out. There were already several bodies lying in the mud and slush. As Kanin watched, two more wights broke away and tried to flee. They were shot down just as the first had been. Whatever the argument had been about, it was clear that one side had won. The last of the defeated was pinned down to the road, stabbed with many spears. She writhed there for a moment or two. A muscular warrior with the most dramatic facial tattoos Kanin had ever seen on a woodwight leaned down and stabbed her in the chest. As the woman’s convulsions stilled, her killer straightened and looked towards Kanin.

The Thane of the Horin Blood had no intention of showing any interest in the doings of these Kyrinin intruders. Had Wain not insisted upon it, he would never have allowed them – or Aeglyss – to enter the town. He led his Shield past the White Owls, through a gate and into the wide cobbled courtyard beyond. This was the extensive house that Wain and Aeglyss and all their companions now occupied.

Previously the possession of some senior official in the Woollers’ Craft, it was an elaborate conglomeration of courtyards, workshops and apartments. The place still had the smell of wool and hides and oils lingering about it.

“Wain!” he shouted, standing in the centre of the courtyard. He turned around, pivoting on the stick, shouting her name again.

He saw her at a window. She peered out from under the eaves. Drops of water were falling from the lip of the tiles.

“With me,” Kanin snapped at Igris. “The rest of you remain here. Keep clear of the woodwights. I don’t want any trouble.”

He was disgusted, but not surprised, to find Wain in a bedchamber, watching over the slumbering form of Aeglyss. Kanin had thrown the door back with a clatter, but the
na’kyrim
did not stir. A single glance was enough to convince Kanin that the halfbreed was sick. His skin had a sheen of sweat, though its pallor was cold. He had thinned in the time since he had disappeared from Anduran, as if gripped by some wasting affliction. Kanin could see the shape of his bones across his brow, in his cheeks and jaw.

“There are woodwights slaughtering each other in the streets,” the Thane said to his sister. “What’s happening?”

“A dispute to be settled,” she said flatly. “There was an incident at Sirian’s Dyke, involving the Anain.

Some of the White Owls wavered in their loyalty. It seems it became necessary to come to a final decision on the matter. It is best not to let doubts linger.”

Kanin stood in silence for a heartbeat or two. He was frightened. The sister he had loved and relied upon all his life was as unfamiliar to him now as the most distant stranger. Once they barely needed to speak to understand one another’s intent; now when they talked it was as if they did so in different languages. He had lost his only true friend here, and was bereft.

“Wain, listen to me. This is all wrong. What are you doing here, amongst woodwights and . . .” he stabbed a finger towards Aeglyss “. . . and halfbreeds? This is no place for you, sister. We’ve won. The way to Kolglas is open to us now. We don’t need all this.”

She set herself between him and the bed, a resolute wall. Kanin stared at her in anguished confusion.

“You don’t understand,” she said. “We need him.”

“What are you doing? Wain, what are you doing? You’ll put yourself between me and this creature?”

His passion washed over her, finding no purchase.

“He is important to us. To everything,” she said placidly.

“This is madness.” In his desperation, Kanin cast about in vain for words that might rouse her from whatever torpor had taken hold of her mind. He wanted to seize her and shake her, but was terribly afraid that she would fight him if he did so.

“Not madness,” Wain insisted. “This is fate, revealing itself to us. You will see, I promise you. We are only at the beginning of things, Kanin. Great, wonderful things.” There was at last some emotion in her voice, but it was only a pained need for him to understand. “We draw near to the unmaking of the world, don’t you see? He is the herald of all that. The key to it.”

“Him?” Kanin shouted, surrendering to fury. He pointed again at the pallid, emaciated
na’kyrim
lying on the bed. “Look at him, Wain! He’s barely even alive.”

“You see only the least part of him there. There is one he wants at his side. He has gone in search of her, to guide her to him. He swims in oceans we cannot imagine, brother. He becomes them. I will watch over him until he wakes.”

Kanin cried out in disbelief. He could feel his face reddening, could feel anger shaking his hand.

“Come with me,” he implored her. “You need rest. We’ll go back to Anduran. We’ve done all that could be asked of us here.”

“I cannot leave him now,” Wain said, quite calm and soft but obdurate. “Do you not feel it? Sleeping or waking, he is spreading his shadow across us all. His will colours every thought, every mood now. It forces . . . change. Movement. Why do you suppose the Kyrinin have come to such strife amongst themselves? Why do you suppose our army fights with such vigour; is so hungry for death’s embrace?

Because Aeglyss has changed, and changes all of us now.”

Kanin stepped to one side, thinking to pass around his sister. He did not know quite what he would do if he could reach Aeglyss: kill him, or merely wake him? He did not care.

Wain shifted to block his way again.

“I am to watch over him until he wakes.”

Kanin hung his head. He was unused to the kind of impotent uncertainty that filled him. Whatever doubts or hesitations might occasionally have beset him in the past, he had always been able to draw upon the reserves of his faith, or upon the support of Wain herself, to find a path. Now he felt bereaved, and the one he would otherwise have turned to for aid was the one he had lost.

“There is to be a council, Wain,” he murmured. “Fiallic, and the Eagle, and Goedellin and all the captains are gathering on the southern edge of the town. We should be there. There are decisions to be made.

Fiallic wants to drive on to Kolglas and beyond as fast as the weather will allow. Temegrin resists.”

“Fiallic will have his way,” Wain said placidly. “You go. I will remain here. Our victory in this war – and we will have victory, brother – will not be shaped in the council tents of the Inkallim or the Gyre Blood.

You will see, in time.”

Kanin left, desolate. Going down the stairs, his knee almost betrayed him. He slumped against the wall.

Igris tried to help him down the last few steps, but Kanin pushed him off.

In the courtyard, he found his Shield clustered around a water barrel. They passed around overflowing cups as they watched the Kyrinin dragging the bodies of their fallen comrades in from the street. The dead were piled against a wall, beneath the overhanging eaves. Kanin angrily gathered his warriors and led them out.

Shraeve was arriving just as he left, at the head of a dozen or more mounted ravens of the Battle.

Several bore fresh wounds. The Inkallim had fought savagely. Shraeve nodded down at Kanin as he hobbled past her horse.

“You’re going to the Eagle’s council, Thane?”

He nodded without looking at her, angry now – at himself and at Igris – for the presence of the walking stick upon which he leaned. The Inkallim had proved themselves valuable allies at last, but in Kanin’s mind their past betrayals of his Blood were not undone. And Shraeve was still an arrogant, abrasive presence.

“I thought you might be there too,” he muttered.

“I am not needed there. Fiallic is Banner-captain. He is the will of the Battle here. And I am interested in whatever your sister has got herself involved in. That halfbreed of yours really has proved to be remarkably surprising, don’t you think?”

At that, Kanin could not help but glare up at the woman.