“I counted six,” Cynyn said.
Mar’athoin sniffed and strode on. “Eight.”
They found K’rina huddled on the ground in the lee of a great rock. She had indeed torn up thick handfuls of grasses and rushes to make a bed of sorts for herself. She was already asleep, even though the sun had not yet touched the western horizon. Her slumber was punctuated by frequent mumbles and shivers.
The three Heron Kyrinin stood some distance downwind of her and watched. Remembering the words of the Snake woman, Mar’athoin felt a brief stirring of contempt for this useless na’kyrim. That her mind was misshapen, damaged, had been obvious from the start. It was only a matter of time before she fell victim to some misfortune. It was indeed foolish to waste time on her. But, he reminded himself, Lacklaugh had asked it as a favour. And if nothing else they would be able to return home and say they had made a good journey.
The question of just how far they would follow K’rina remained, though. Lacklaugh had not told them where she was going, if he even knew, but that she had some goal was beyond dispute: ever since she had left the marshes, her path had been straight, constant. Mar’athoin was not sure exactly what — or who — lay beyond Snake lands to the north or west. Huanin probably, he thought, and almost certainly the White Owls, though how far away they were he did not know. He had no desire to meet either of them. It might be that the time to turn back was drawing close.
He cast around for a suitable place to rest.
“I will be the first of my family to sleep on Snake ground,” he said with a faint smile.
For the first time in what felt like weeks, the sun was shining on the Glas valley. A bright, sharp light bathed the fields. The ground was slick and soft, bloated with rain and melt-water. The herdsmen’s trails and farm tracks that Wain nan Horin-Gyre chose to follow were muddy. Still, they were passable and better than the alternative: the main road up the valley, running on the northern bank of the river, had been almost obliterated when Sirian’s Dyke broke. In places it was still ankle-deep in sucking, half-liquid silt that made travel both exhausting and slow. These fields south of the river had suffered less lasting damage. There was a slim chance that Wain and the hundred warriors at her back might even reach Grive by nightfall, having left Glasbridge before dawn. If not, there was no shortage of abandoned farmsteads to serve as overnight quarters.
Wain’s horse was restless and irritable. Every so often it would bend its head back to snap at her knees. Her original mount — a fine animal, a sturdy survivor of the long march through Anlane all those weeks ago — had broken its leg during the furious assault on Glasbridge. This replacement was proving a disappointment. She and it had yet to find an accommodation with one another. Wain was minded to give it up and find a more amenable partner when they reached Anduran.
She felt less joyful or excited at the prospect of what awaited her in Anduran than she would have liked. This was, after all, what she and Kanin, and Angain their father, had hoped for all along: the Black Road was on the move, pouring through the hole Horin-Gyre had punched in the defences of the True Bloods. There was now at least a chance that everything they had gained might be held, that new and greater victories might yet be won for the creed. Puzzles remained, however, and they were troubling. By all accounts, it was not Ragnor oc Gyre’s armies that had marched but the Battle Inkall, and thousands of the common folk. Where was the High Thane? Where were the other Bloods? Wain, and Kanin for that matter, would willingly have handed over leadership of this undertaking, and all the lands they had recovered, to Ragnor. The Thane of Thanes had a natural right to put himself at the head of this war. To surrender everything to Nyve’s bloody ravens was not such an easy thought. Wain sighed and glanced up, narrowing her eyes against the piercing glare of the sun. There was no warmth in it.
She should not concern herself with what was yet to come, she knew. There remained much uncertainty about what she would actually find in Anduran, and until that uncertainty was dispelled there was nothing to be gained by stirring possibilities in her head. The only clear facts the messengers rushing to find her and Kanin in Glasbridge had been able to convey were that Tanwrye had at last fallen — and there was one piece of news, at least, that was nothing but good — and that the Children of the Hundred were leading a huge army down the valley, their van already taking up quarters in Anduran. Wain had left Glasbridge almost at once. Even so, she would not be the first to reach Anduran. Shraeve and her Inkallim were somewhere ahead, might even already be there.
Her horse nipped again at her leg, its teeth cracking together. She snapped the reins, flicking one towards its eye in discouragement. They were coming up to the edge of what had once been the Glas Water now. That great marshy lake had drained when Sirian’s Dyke gave way, leaving a huge expanse of shrinking pools, rushes and sodden bare earth that lay like a dark sore across the centre of the valley. Somewhere out there the river had returned to its natural course, slumping back into the channel it had swollen out of when Sirian built his great dam. On a day as clear as this the eye could see far across the flat, treeless valley floor. And Wain’s eye caught something unexpected.
Kan Avor was a black and grey mass out near the river, like the stump of some titanic fallen tree. The ruined city, freed from its watery bonds after more than a hundred years, had outlasted the dam built to drown it. Now, Wain saw dark strands of smoke strung out from amongst Kan Avor’s ruins by the wind. Someone had lit fires there; someone had claimed the ancestral home of the Gyre Blood itself as their campsite. She turned her horse towards the dead city.
It was difficult going, their way constantly obstructed by stagnant pools and seemingly bottomless mud, but Wain picked out a winding path over ground that was almost solid. Here and there, exposed by the retreat of the Glas Water, bones jutted up out of the silt. The empty eye sockets of a half-buried skull stared at her. Many of the faithful had died on this ground, two and a half centuries ago.
The warriors behind her became widely separated. Most of them were on foot, and this was no place for marching. She ignored their difficulties. A score or so of riders kept up with her, including all six of her Shield, and that was enough. As they drew close to Kan Avor, its crumbling walls and shattered towers loomed over them. More grim than the sight of those walls themselves was the burden they bore. High up on what little remained of the city’s great outer rampart hung bodies, dangling like the carcasses of slaughtered animals. Crows hopped along the top of the walls, calling to one another. The dead were not warriors. They bore the clothes of farmers or villagers.
Wain and her company rode on through the desolate outer parts of the city. The buildings here were poised halfway between being the work of men and of nature, so long had they been subject to the moulding of wind and water. Clumps of waterweeds were rotting in the streets. With each pace of their horses they came closer to the cluster of great buildings that had once dominated the city’s heart, until at last they rode into the shadow of a derelict tower. It stood the height of six men above them, and in its heyday must have been much taller, for it had been decapitated by time. Rubble was strewn across the approach to the palace from which it rose. The base of the walls had a greenish-blackish tint where the water had lapped against them year after year. A statue lay half- shattered before the wide gateway. Since its descent from the heights above it had acquired a patina of moss and weed. The gates themselves were long gone, perhaps salvaged before Kan Avor was finally abandoned. The smoke of half a dozen fires rose from somewhere within.
Wain halted her horse beneath the arch of the gate, pausing there in the shadow to stare at the scene within the precincts of the collapsed palace. In a wide courtyard, amidst the mud and tumbled stones, arrayed around their fires, were fifty or more Kyrinin. Every pair of eyes, every grey gaze, was locked on her. There was a moment of perfect silence, save for the wind above them and the crackle of a fire above which a dog was spitted.
She looked back over her shoulder, mindful now of how few warriors were within easy reach of her call.
“The Bloodheir’s sister.”
A thrill of recognition ran through her at the sound of that voice, an instant shiver that carried a whole host of sentiments in its wake: anger, alarm, surprise… anticipation, was it? Excitement? She turned slowly — deliberately so — and saw Aeglyss rising from beside one of the fires. As he stood and languidly stretched his back, a cluster of Kyrinin close by him rose too.
Wain kept her eyes on the na’kyrim, gesturing for her Shield to draw up behind her.
“He is Thane now, halfbreed,” she said. “Not Bloodheir any more.”
Aeglyss nodded and ran both hands through his pale hair, pulling it back from his face. It was longer than it had been the last time Wain saw him. He held it there behind his head and then let it fall across his shoulders.
“Thane,” he repeated, savouring the word as if it were a morsel of food. “Thane, then. It is, I suppose, in the nature of Bloodheirs to become Thanes sooner or later.” He glanced at the dog roasting over the fire. “Can I offer you some meat, Thane’s sister? We are not prepared for visitors, but what is mine is yours.”
“I believe my brother made it clear to you that we had no wish to see you, or your friends, on our lands
