staggering down almost to his knees before whirling about and surging up again.
The two of them battled back and forth. Servants had swept the training square free of snow, but the ground was still frozen, almost rock-like. Orisian’s knuckles, even his cheek, were grazed from earlier falls. Nothing dimmed his willingness to come forward again and again, but exhaustion was at last blunting the ferocity of his attacks. His shield was drifting low, his feet becoming a touch sluggish.
Enough, Taim thought. He dropped his own guard just enough to offer temptation. Orisian lunged. Taim sidestepped, and brought his own shield up in a slicing arc. He opened Orisian’s forehead with its rim. Orisian reeled, blood streaking down his face. Taim hooked a foot around the back of his knee, and sent him sprawling.
“We’re done for today,” Taim said, kicking his Thane’s sword away. “You’re not learning now, only exhausting yourself.”
Orisian struggled to his feet, wiping blood from his brow.
“I can carry on,” he said breathlessly. He looked around for his sword.
“Your mind’s not clear enough,” Taim said. He sheathed his own sword.
“You told me once I had to fight by instinct, not by thinking.”
“True enough, but that only works with the right instincts. Anger fouls them up. Fight angry, and you won’t fight long.”
Orisian looked downcast. “I know. I try.”
“You do. And for as long as you concentrate and keep calm, you fight well. But something happens. You start fighting something more than just me.”
Orisian stooped to retrieve his blade. He made a clumsy effort to return it to its scabbard, missing at the first attempt.
“You must get that wound cleaned and bound,” Taim said.
“Yes,” murmured Orisian. He grimaced at his Captain. “Did you have to hit me so hard?”
“Thought it might clear your head. It’s not much more than a touch. It’ll clean up fine.”
Orisian grunted, and walked slowly off towards the barracks. As Taim watched him go, he felt sorrow for the young man. He could not call it pity, for that was a sentiment Orisian would utterly refuse. Sorrow fitted better, in any case.
Taim was not certain what it was that came over Orisian when they trained. Some formless fury woke in him. Perhaps he became lost in the punishing rhythm of strike and counter-strike, parry and sidestep, and found himself battling against memories, or fears, or death itself. Perhaps each blow he aimed at Taim’s shield was, for him, aimed rather at the whole array of enemies, and of misfortunes, that had taken his father from him, and Inurian. And Rothe.
That last death had been the one that finally and fatally weakened the child in Orisian, Taim reflected as he stamped smooth a few of the deeper marks they had gouged into the hard surface of the training ground during their bout. The second shieldman to die in Orisian’s defence, and someone he had been wholly unready to lose. Nothing had been quite the same since then.
Taim shook the shield free from his left arm and took it towards the armoury. He walked slowly, for he was weary. And now that there were none to see, he allowed himself to limp. His thigh ached. Beneath his leggings, tight bandages covered the puncture marks and the prodigious bruise inflicted by that bone-encrusted Tarbain club. His weariness was not, though, so much of the body as of the mind and spirit.
Though he hid it meticulously from those around him, Orisian most of all, the days were taking a heavy toll. The fighting, the almost sleepless nights, the pervasive and insidious mood of despairing aggression. It all sapped his strength. And there was the sickening worry for his wife and his daughter, left behind in besieged Kolkyre. He had promised Jaen he would be there at her side when their grandchild was born. It would break his heart, and shame him, to fail in that promise.
Ranks of shields greeted him as he entered the armoury. They hung from the wall in overlapping rows. To call the place an armoury was overgenerous, in truth. It was little more than a storeroom, and a poorly ordered one at that. The shields might be neatly displayed, but spears were piled lazily and loosely against one wall. There were quivers of arrows in one corner, their flights frayed and broken. Taim hung his shield with the others. He closed the door behind him and made for the barracks.
What he wanted, with all his heart, was to be with his family, in front of a warming fire, talking of idle and foolish matters. But no matter how fervent that desire, Taim could contain it-much of the time, at least-within a sealed and silent chamber deep within himself. There were other promises that bound him, and even at the cost of a broken heart, he could not turn aside from them. He had pledged his life to the Blood, to the service of its Thane. For Taim that remained the greater part of what gave his life meaning.
There was a blinding white sun in the sky, unfettered by clouds for the first time in days. But its light seemed more to expose the world than to illuminate it. It sharpened every edge, bared everything beneath its cold wash.
As Taim walked along Ive’s main street his nostrils were filled with the smell of wet ash. He passed by a long stretch of houses gutted and tumbled by the recent fires. Every detail, every seam and stain of the charred timbers, every smoke scar smearing across the stonework, was clear, precisely delineated by this acute winter light. He could hear an argument somewhere, a man and woman raging at one another. He could hear a baby crying too, off in another direction. In the raw, despairing need of that wail he sensed the expression of something deep. Something of the tune to which the world now danced.
He found Torcaill at the town’s edge, standing with a dozen of his men. They were watching a band of townsfolk struggling eastwards across a field, leading a pair of mules that bore huge packs.
“There are scores of them leaving now,” Torcaill muttered. “They think Ive’s finished.”
“They’re right,” Taim said. “Where are they going?”
“I don’t think they know that themselves. Most head east, hoping to lose themselves in the mountains or the woods.”
“They’ll have a hard time of it out there. Bad weather, not enough food.”
“They will. Worse than hard, a lot of them. But it’s their choice. If they lack the spirit to fight for their town, their Blood, they must bear the consequences.”
Taim glanced sideways at the younger man. Torcaill’s vehemence was striking, and his eyes as he watched the departing townsfolk gleamed with a cold contempt. That anger that lurked beneath so many surfaces now was there, unforgiving, judging.
“They want to live,” Taim murmured. “Keep their families, their children, alive. There’s no shame in that. They’ve already seen indisputable proof that we can’t keep the Black Road out of their town. If I wore their clothes, I’d do the same.”
A flock of birds shot up from a copse beyond the field. They sprayed out in all directions from the treetops, then veered back together and went arrowing together out of sight into the east.
“How’s your leg?” Torcaill asked.
Taim shrugged. “Wound’s not gone bad so far. Any word from the scouts?”
“Half of them have disappeared,” sighed Torcaill. “Killed somewhere out there, or fled perhaps. As for the rest… there’re Tarbains burning farms half a day west of here. The army you fought on the south road is still there, camped at some village. There’s another, bigger, in the hills to the west. My men saw their fires last night. They could be on us tomorrow, if they choose.”
Taim nodded. “We’re finished, then. Here, at least. If we stay, we’re done.”
“Perhaps.” Torcaill’s assent was grudging. He wanted to fight. “Have you talked to Orisian about it?”
“He knows it as well as we do. He wants to meet with us, all of us, this afternoon. After the oath-taking. I think he’ll tell us then what he means to do.”
Torcaill pushed forefinger and thumb into his eyes, grinding away the tiredness Taim knew must be lodged there. Nobody was sleeping well.
“They’re to go ahead with that, then?” the younger man asked heavily. “The oath-taking, I mean?”
“Why not?” Taim said.
Torcaill shrugged, but made no reply.
“Orisian is Thane of our Blood.” Taim turned away, heading back into the town’s heart. “Those who wish to take the oath in his name have the right. The duty.”
