He heard a voice, deep in his bones: “Who are you? This is not your place. You do not belong here.”
And he woke, crying out. Drenched in cold sweat. Shaking.
Theor struggled upright in his bed. As he fumbled to pour water from the beaker at his bedside, it was all he could do not to vomit. It had been worse, this time. Much worse. He wanted to believe, with all his heart, that these things which the seerstem was showing him were the signs of the world twisting itself into a new shape; that they presaged the delivery of all humankind out of its long solitude. And he did feel a powerful sense of great change, an anticipation as if the world was poised upon the brink of a wholly new season, unlike anything it had seen before. But if that was so, why did he feel so unclean, so run through with sickness and corruption? Why was it fear that lay like a stone in the pit of his stomach, not hope?
V
From his vantage point atop a low hillock at the eastern end of the Haig lines, Taim Narran watched arrows climb and then descend like rain upon the ranks of the Black Road army. They were too distant for him to see any bodies falling. The host of the Gyre Bloods was a great grey lake into which the arrows fell and disappeared. He knew what it would be like down there, amongst the torrential shafts. He could imagine the sound of arrowheads thudding into shields and the earth and flesh.
Since first light, the two armies had faced one another, each strung out across the road that led down towards Kolkyre. The great city was only an hour or two’s march south of them. If Aewult failed today, the Kilkry Blood would be besieged by the next dawn. The Haig Bloodheir had more than ten thousand men arrayed to block the approach to Kolkyre, his losses at Glasbridge and since more than made good by the fresh companies that had come up from the south. It was as great a host as any the True Bloods had fielded since Gryvan came to power. And it was matched — exceeded, Taim’s experienced eye suggested — by the forces of the Black Road.
The northerners were coming forwards now, along their whole line. The grassy expanse between the two armies gradually disappeared beneath the slow and ominous advance. The air was full of arrows, their flight constant, their effect negligible.
Taim was behind a triple line of Haig warriors. His hands were bound, his horse’s reins securely held by one of his half-dozen guards. The scabbard at his side remained empty. He was only a spectator, brought here to witness, not to fight. Taim feared what he might witness, though. He mistrusted this day, and what it might bring. There were a hundred or more Taral-Haig riders close behind him, scattered across the top of the little hill, and he could hear them talking. They sounded almost eager for the bloodshed to begin. Most of them had young voices; callow.
The centre of the Black Road army halted. Its wings came on, closing on the higher ground that flanked the road. Taim stretched up out of his saddle, gazing across towards the low ridge to the west where Aewult had stationed himself. He could make out no detail save a thicket of pennants, and the pale glimmer of Palace Shield breastplates. The first blows would fall there, Taim thought, and here where he himself was trapped. The enemy chose to test itself on rising ground, against prepared defenders. It was foolish, but typical of the Black Road: a charge across the low ground where the road pierced the centre of the Haig lines would have been easier, but offered less reward for success, so they chose the harder course, in the hope of a greater prize. They would not care what price they had to pay.
“They’ll learn a hard lesson today,” he heard one of his guards say.
He could see over the heads of the warriors lined up to the meet the assault. The companies coming rushing up towards them were incoherent, lightly armed. Yet here and there amongst the disordered mass, Taim could see Inkallim, and there were clusters of more disciplined warriors. The Black Road roared with a single voice as it came boiling up the north face of the hillock and crashed into the Haig lines. Taim tugged instinctively against his bonds. They were secure, he already knew, but his body cried out for freedom of movement, now that battle was joined so close. For all his weariness with the brutal business of the warrior’s craft, still it was his calling and his life, and it was not in his nature to stand by while others died at the hands of his Blood’s oldest enemies.
The Taral-Haig horsemen were caught up in the moment too, and they closed up into a tighter formation. Some of them were shouting out. Other voices crowded the air: cries of the wounded and dying. Taim saw a single Inkallim burst through the ranks of Haig spearmen. Isolated, she blurred into flashing movement as she was surrounded. She shattered spears and ducked and rolled; took the legs from under one man, cut up into the armpit of a second. An axe came down on her shoulder blade. She staggered, spun and landed a fatal blow. Her shield turned aside another attack, her sword stove in the side of a helmet. They killed her eventually, but not before she had slain or crippled six.
The struggle along the hilltop burned fierce and furious and then faltered. The Black Road flood receded. Their warriors fell back, running and tumbling and slipping down the slope. Cheers rang out, and spears were shaken aloft and rattled against shields. A rider came cantering up and called the company of Taral-Haig horsemen off down the line to where battle was still joined. They went gladly. Too gladly, Taim thought, too hopeful of a speedy end to a struggle that had not yet run its course.
The dead and injured were dragged out from the front line. Men shifted themselves, closing up gaps. Taim looked westward. The far flank of the Haig army was still intact too. Aewult held the ridge beyond the road, and there was a dense speckling of the fallen strewn across the grass before and beneath it.
“They’re coming again,” someone said, and Taim turned back to the still-living enemy closer at hand.
A dark line, tight-packed, was forming across the front rank of the Black Road at the foot of the hill. It came fragment by fragment, out from amongst the mass, flecks of charcoal drifting to the fore and thickening into a wall. It was a soundless thing, and its silence spread, quieting the field, quieting even, it seemed to Taim, the Haig warriors arrayed before him. They were bloodied but undefeated, these spearmen from Nar Vay and the woods of Dramain, yet they grew soft and still. Like a black fog clinging to the ground that line was coming on, far away and thus slow, across the trampled grass; hundreds of warriors, moving at a steady trot. The sound of their feet on the slope swelled, it rumbled. But still no cry came from a single throat. There was only the building, deep, rhythmic roar of their footfalls.
“Send to get your horsemen back,” Taim hissed at the nearest of his guards.
The man turned reluctantly, his eyes lingering upon the scene unfolding before him.
“Don’t try to give any orders here,” he snapped.
Taim too found himself unable to look away from the approaching storm. They were close enough now that he could make out individual figures, all of them smooth and flowing in their movements, not one of them breaking rank, falling behind. He was filled with a kind of awe, and a numb surprise that he should be here, on this day, to see this.
“If you can’t put horses on their flank, you’re done.” he persisted. “Your line’s too thin.”
The guard snorted in disgust. “Maybe if it was Lannis men in it. Three’s deep enough when it’s Haig.”
Three ranks: shield-bearers with short stabbing spears kneeling, and behind them a second row brandishing longer pole-spears; then fierce moorsmen from the high ground between Dramain and Dun Aygll, with axes and hammers and short swords. It was a spiny nut for any attacker to seek to grasp. But not enough, Taim knew in the pit of his stomach. He knew it with the certainty of every year he had spent in the warrior’s craft, and every winter he had spent upon his Blood’s northern border, staring out across the Vale of Stones and knowing what kind of enemy might one day come across it.
“They’re Inkallim, you fool,” he said, wearily, knowing it was too late. “All of them. Six might not be deep enough, let alone three.”
The guard glared at him, then snapped his gaze back to the mass of warriors now pounding up the slope, only a few shallow breaths from impact. They wore dark leather breastplates, or studded jerkins, leggings with black greaves, shields with carved ravens, and black hair streaming out. Taim heard the guard’s sudden intake of breath.
“So many?” the man murmured.
The moment elongated itself, as if the whole world shared in that sucking-in of breath, holding it, poised, as the rolling thunder of the charge resounded through the earth and shook the roots of the hill and built and built until the Inkallim plunged in amongst the spears and there was nothing save the vast crashing clamour of slaughter. The
