Bloodheir (50 page)

“You cannot refuse,” Aewult said quietly. “You know that, of course. I speak for my father in all things.

And I wish you kept close to my Blood, lady, henceforth. Until matters become clearer, at least. I have already sent to the Tower of Thrones to have everything you might need brought out. I am sure Roaric will understand that you choose to be the guest of the Haig Blood for a little while.”

And I, thought Anyara, am not at all sure that he will.

Like an immense shoal of fish seething in the shallows of some cold ocean, the great army of the Black Road swirled over the snow-blanketed lower reaches of the Glas valley. It was hungry, and eager, and incapable of remaining still. More companies kept coming south across the Vale of Stones, many of them now the trained warriors of the other Bloods, whose Thanes scented triumph and did not wish to see it solely claimed by Horin and by the Inkallim. As every new band arrived it was swept up into the army, and caught up in the frenzy of anticipation.

Kanin had taken part in every discussion amongst the supposed masters of this ever-growing force, but he had said little. There were too many people, and too much hunger both physical and spiritual, assembled here for any conclusion to have been reached other than the obvious: to rush on down the coast, give battle at every opportunity, pursue their collective fate to its utmost limits. An unspoken consensus had been reached, that no culmination was any longer possible save one that was vast and violent. Temegrin the Eagle had whined and obstructed, raised objections and reservations, all to no avail. He alone imagined that events could any longer be the subject of reasoned debate. The Black Road had hold of them, and would carry them helplessly into whatever future lay ahead.

Many tributaries were feeding the rising flood of enthusiasm. Kolglas had been overrun and sacked.

Drinan had been burned, its inhabitants slaughtered, by White Owl Kyrinin. The vanguard of the Black Road army was already on the borders of Kilkry-Haig territory, poised to sweep on past the little town of Hommen. And nowhere in all this frenzied, impulsive advance had they encountered more than token, delaying resistance. The great army of the Haig Bloods they had faced, and beaten, in the snow outside Glasbridge had crumbled away.

All these victories served to stoke the fire that burned in every heart, but none had greater impact than the news from further south: Lheanor oc Kilkry-Haig was dead, cut down in his own feasting hall by the Hunt Inkall. The Battle was fighting side by side with the commonfolk; the Hunt was killing the greatest foes of the Black Road; the Lore marched amongst the warriors, lending their authority to the struggle.

Temegrin, the timorous Eagle, could vacillate all he wished, Kanin reflected as he marshalled the meagre remnants of his own Blood’s army on the fields outside Glasbridge. His solitary counsel of restraint would be drowned out. Futile.

There were only a few hundred swords left for Kanin to command. Such was the price his Blood had paid to open the way. He had heard that Vana his mother had dispatched another two or three hundred warriors – the very last that could be spared – but they were not here yet, and there was no time to wait.

The Glas valley was emptying, disgorging its conquerors on down the coast towards greater prizes.

Kanin rode along the front rank of his spearmen, drawn up with admirable precision across the grass.

They were hungry, like everyone else, and tired. He could see that in their faces. But they made no complaint, showed no reluctance. Many hundreds of their comrades had died since they had marched out from Hakkan all those weeks ago. Perhaps more than any other company in this great patchwork army, they desired an ending – clear, dramatic – to all of this that made sense of what had gone before.

There were even a few dozen Tarbains: dishevelled and subdued, clustered behind their glowering chieftain. Their desires, no doubt, revolved around loot more than glory or fate’s vindication. Still, they would serve. Every spear that marched behind Kanin made his Blood’s place in this war a fraction less tenuous and inconsequential.

He looked around for Igris. The shieldman was hanging back, muttering something to another of Kanin’s escort.

“Igris! We’re still short, are we not? I thought another hundred at least.”

“Some . . .” The shieldman looked uneasy, fumbling for words.

“Come on,” Kanin snapped. “Where are they?”

“With your sister, sire. Eighty of them, I was told.”

“Eighty?”

“Yes, sire. The . . . the halfbreed is awake again. Your sister and him have come out of the city. They’re by the river.” The shieldman gestured in a vague northerly direction.

Kanin was incredulous.

“Why wasn’t I told?”

“We only got word . . .” Igris began, but Kanin was already wheeling his horse away and digging his heels into its flanks.

His path through the chaotic army was constantly obstructed. Here it was a wagon of charcoal, bogged down in a slick of deep mud; there a mule driver furiously beating one of his animals that had fallen, exhausted or injured; next a column of Lannis captives – mostly women – being marched for no obvious reason from one place to another. In places there were thick forests of tents sprouting from the fields, and hundreds upon hundreds of people swarming about them. Kanin rode past a gigantic, roaring fire, around which Tarbains were shouting and gesticulating while a small group of Inkallim looked on.

As he drew closer to the Glas River, and to Glasbridge itself, Kanin found his path becoming clearer.

There were still little encampments scattered about the fields, and small companies moving back and forth, but here, so far to the rear, he was amongst the dregs and detritus of the army. Many of these people would be going no further. They were the injured, the enfeebled, the mad or the predatory. He saw one man sprawled half in and half out of a ditch, insensible through drink or sickness. Dark water reached to his thighs. He might be dead come nightfall, unless someone dragged him out. No one was likely to, Kanin guessed.

There were plangent cries from the sky above. Kanin looked up, and saw vast, straggling arrowheads of seagulls passing overhead. They were coming down the line of the river, making for the open sea.

He brought his gaze back down and saw what he had come searching for. Out of place amongst the disorder all around, an organised column was moving northwards along a faint track that ran parallel to the river. Kanin kicked his horse on and as he drew nearer he could see that the company was a strange mixture. There were dozens of ragged figures – commonfolk of the Gyre Bloods who had come across the Stone Vale on their own initiative – and plenty of warriors too. Some, Kanin saw in disgust, were indeed drawn from his own Blood. And leading the way were twenty or thirty Kyrinin, with two figures riding at their head: Wain and Aeglyss.

The mere sight of his sister riding alongside the halfbreed was enough to reawaken Kanin’s anger, never far beneath the surface these days. Every morning he woke to find his mind already teeming with bitter thoughts of Aeglyss. At any moment during the day when there was nothing to distract him, he could be seized by a surge of despair at the thought of losing Wain. For he had lost her, in all meaningful senses.

Ever since her return to Glasbridge, she had chosen to incarcerate herself, never leaving the
na’kyrim
’s side while he lay insensible. Again and again Kanin had sought her out; always, when he did so, she was distant and uninterested. It was as if everything they had shared since they were children, all the connections and understanding they had accumulated between them, had never been. Nothing had ever caused him quite such pain.

He walked his horse into the ranks of marching White Owls without a moment’s hesitation, using its strength to barge them aside and plough through to his sister. He heard what he imagined were hissed curses directed at him, and felt his horse start at a blow across its haunches, but he ignored them. He had eyes only for Wain.

She looked round as he fell in beside her. Her expression was blank. She was neither pleased nor perturbed by his arrival.

“What is happening?” he asked her.

Aeglyss, a little way ahead, spoke without looking round.

“Please don’t delay us, Thane. We have important matters to attend to.”

Kanin bit back his fury and contempt, keeping himself focused upon Wain.

“Where are you going?” he asked her.

“To Kan Avor,” she said flatly.

“Why?”

“Because it is the heart of things,” Aeglyss called back over his shoulder. “Because it is empty, and should be filled. Because others are coming to meet me there, with a precious cargo.”

“Kan Avor is empty because it waits for Ragnor oc Gyre to take his rightful place there,” Kanin snapped, “not so that some deranged half-wight can foul it with his presence.”

“Come with us, brother,” Wain urged. There was almost some life in her voice with those words. They carried need in them, but not affection.

“No. You come with me.” He reached out for the reins of her horse. She did not resist as he steered her out from amongst the files of Kyrinin. Aeglyss, though, turned his own mount – a thin, miserable-looking animal – towards them. Kanin saw the halfbreed’s face for the first time then, and it was an unpleasant sight. He might have risen from his sickbed, but he still looked like a man upon the very threshold of death. His eyes had sunk back into his skull, pouched in dark pits.

“Do not try to impose your will here, Thane,” Aeglyss said. In the same moment, Kanin felt a shaft of piercing pain flash through his head and lodge there like a hot blade driven into his temple. He winced and involuntarily closed his eyes for a moment.

“Let her go,” he heard Aeglyss saying, and found that both his hands were back on his own reins. He blinked, still beset by throbbing pain, and saw Wain turning back to rejoin the column. They were all marching on, as if nothing had happened. Even, Kanin saw, the dozens of warriors of his own Blood.

“Stand aside,” he shouted at them. Some looked up at him, and he saw doubt, fear perhaps, on many faces. Several faltered and even halted, sending disruptive ripples through the column.

“Come away from there, all of you,” Kanin cried. First one or two, then ten and twenty, fell out of their marching order and came across the muddy grass towards their Thane. Aeglyss was still there, watching with a cruel smile on his face.

“Pay him no heed,” the
na’kyrim
said to the warriors. “You know where we are going, and why. You know where fate’s course will be decided.” He almost whispered it, yet Kanin heard the words clearly above the tramp of feet. He felt the immense weight of command they carried, the overwhelming will that informed them. He understood for the first time that Aeglyss truly had changed into something more than he had once been.

“Stand still,” Kanin shouted, aware of the edge of alarm that distorted his voice. “You will not defy your Thane in this!”

Some of the warriors were already turning away from him. Others hesitated, looking in confusion at him or at Aeglyss or their comrades. Growling, enraged, Kanin side-stepped his horse towards Aeglyss.

“If you think you can usurp my authority . . .” he began, but the
na’kyrim
was already returning to the head of the column.

“The authority here is your sister’s, Thane, not mine. Wain! Let him see.”

The dullness he saw in Wain’s eyes as she halted her horse and stared back was enough to break Kanin’s determination. Never had she seemed so lifeless to him, so empty.

“Get back in line,” she shouted. “We march to Kan Avor.”

The warriors did as she commanded them, and Kanin lacked the will to challenge Wain’s command in their presence. He watched the motley band snaking past him for only a few moments, then spun his horse about. The pain his head was subsiding, but not that in his heart.

Igris and others of his Shield had caught up with him, but he ignored them as he rode back towards the army. He saw Shraeve and two dozen of her ravens watching, like a flock of their namesake birds attending a carcass. And he did feel as though something was dying, though he did not know what it was.

As he drew near to them, the Inkallim moved off, following after Aeglyss, Wain and their motley company. Shraeve gave Kanin a wry smile and nod of her head as she rode by, but he barely registered it. One figure remained behind, standing in Kanin’s path: Cannek, the Hunt Inkallim, with two massive hounds sitting motionless on either side of him.

“A moment of your time, sire?” Cannek said.

“Not now.” Kanin twitched his reins, keeping his uneasy mount beyond reach of those dogs. There was nothing, at this moment, that he had to say to one of the Inkallim.

“Ah, a pity,” Cannek called. “Just this, then: if you ever want to discuss the halfbreed, you might find me an attentive audience. Remember that.”

Kanin glanced, reluctantly, down at the man. “What does that mean?”

“Only that he might prove an interesting subject for discussion. Shraeve, our fierce raven, certainly seems to think him of interest.” Cannek gazed after her disappearing form. “I do too, though perhaps in different ways.”

“Now is not the moment to play games, and talk in fogs.”

“Oh, this is no game, Thane. Not at all. I find some things strange, that is all. And I am not alone in that.

It seems to me the mood has changed since that
na’kyrim
appeared. Do you not think so? There’s a certain bloody hunger, a certain shortness of temper, in the air; more than we might expect even from such an army as this. A certain disturbance of dreams, by all account. We – Fiallic, wise Goedellin himself – understood that the halfbreed’s place in things was to keep the woodwights in step with our purposes. That your sister had him harnessed. Yet now . . . well, it’s less clear who wears the harness.

And I hear his unnatural talents are not quite so meagre as we once thought they were. He humiliated Temegrin quite thoroughly, by all accounts.”