She grinned at him. “You are an old woman, Coinach. I suspected as much. Doesn’t this lift your spirits? Don’t you feel better for some clean air? It’s put a fine blush on your cheeks.”
The shieldman half-raised a gloved hand to his face in surprise, but snatched it back down again. Anyara laughed again and nudged her horse on, turning up the slope.
“Look,” she said, “we’ll go to that barn up there, see what’s over the rise. We can rest then, if you like.”
The building was empty, though in good order. The lands around Kolkyre had been feeding fine horses and sheep and cattle for centuries, making their owners wealthy, their Thanes powerful.
Anyara dismounted in the lee of the barn and tousled her horse’s mane.
“Thank you for that,” she whispered in its ear.
Coinach had a couple of the other warriors quickly search the barn, and did not descend from his own mount’s back until he was assured that they were alone on this lofty ridge. He brought some bread and cheese and a flask of wine to Anyara.
She sat on the edge of a stone watering trough and ate. The view was not as dramatic as some she had seen — in the high Car Criagar or even from the rocking deck of the Tal Dyreen ship — but it felt amply vast enough for her today. The waters of Anaron’s Bay were a soft grey mass beyond Kolkyre. They looked calm and peaceful. The grassy humps and hollows that rolled down towards the coast were gentle, tamed. Even the farmhouses and barns and stables scattered across the landscape had, in her eyes, a solid, safe look to them.
“I never really knew that Kilkry had such rich grazing lands,” she reflected.
Coinach, loitering nearby, took a step closer.
“They’ve always bred the best horses here, lady. So they claim, anyway. You know what they say: the Storm Years were ended from the back of Kolkyre’s horses.”
“I know. I’d just never really thought about it. Are you not eating?”
The shieldman shook his head.
“Sit, then,” said Anyara.
He hesitated, but did settle himself onto the rim of the trough, keeping a respectful distance from his charge.
“When we visited Kolkyre before… when my father was alive.. we never went outside the city walls,” Anyara mused. “It’s a pity. He would have liked a ride like this.”
“It will be better to ride out from Anduran, along the banks of the Glas.”
“I suppose so. You’re so sure we’ll be back there, then?”
“Of course,” Coinach said. “The fishing boats will be sailing from Glasbridge again. The drovers and shepherds will be grumbling in Targlas. The Thane and his family will ride to the hunt in Anlane. Everything will be as it was before, one day. You’ll see.”
“I hope you’re right.” But she knew better. Whatever happened, nothing would be quite as it was before. Her father would not be there, nor Inurian. She and Orisian would never be children again. And she would never be able to look upon Castle Kolglas without seeing death, or Anduran without feeling fear, or the distant peaks of the Car Criagar without feeling cold.
“I hope you’re right,” she said again. “It’s the waiting that’s so hard. I feel trapped. I did not want to stay here. I should have gone with Orisian, or with Taim Narran. I should have made them take me.”
“We cannot always do as we want. Sometimes we must do what is required of us.”
Anyara frowned at him, and the shieldman looked abashed.
“I am sorry, my lady. I speak out of turn.” He averted his eyes.
“Don’t worry,” Anyara said. “I expect you’re right. But didn’t we agree you were to call me by my name?”
He nodded.
“I don’t suppose you wanted to be shieldman to a woman, did you?” Anyara asked. “You’re better at doing what is required of you than I am, clearly.”
“I serve the Blood. I think guarding your back is good service. You and your brother are all we have left.”
Anyara stared off over the undulating lowlands. Where moments ago she had seen escape in these huge spaces, now she felt small and exposed. It was absurd, unfair, that such burdens should have fallen upon Orisian’s shoulders. Armies moved, Thanes jostled for power, cities burned, and somehow amidst all of that her brother, and she, had become important. The boy and girl who stole bread from the kitchens of Kolglas, chased one another up and down its stairwells, played tricks on Ilain and the other maids: those people were no more, in the eyes of the world.
Far off to the north, where distance blurred and muted everything, a stain was spreading across the land. Like a trickle of dark water, a mass of figures was slowly flowing down the road. Anyara narrowed her eyes. She could make out no detail.
“Look,” she said.
Coinach followed her pointing finger.
“The Bloodheir. It must be.”
“That or the Black Road,” Anyara muttered.
The shieldman shook his head once, emphatically. “No. We would have heard long before now if it was them. It must be Aewult.”
“Either way, it’s not likely to be good tidings. We’d have heard before now if Aewult had won a great victory, too. Wouldn’t we?”
Coinach did not reply. Anyara was not even sure he had heard her question. He stared out, from that quiet rise of grassy ground, towards the distant, indistinct army moving down the road towards Kolkyre.
“We should get back to the city,” he said. “Whatever’s happened, now’s not the time to be out here.”
For an instant Anyara was in the grip of a child’s frustration at being deprived of some treasured possession. She did not want to return to Kolkyre. She wanted to stay here, with the grass and sky and the horses, and recover that brief feeling of freedom. She wanted to know nothing of armies and Bloodheirs and battles won or lost. The feeling subsided as soon as she told herself how foolish it was, but it left traces: a soft sorrow, a fragment of apprehension.
She turned, heavy-hearted, back towards her horse.
“Come, then. But we’ll go slowly. I want a little more of this air yet.”
The mutual loathing that seethed between Aewult nan Haig and Roaric oc Kilkry-Haig was so potent as to be almost visible, like a sickly miasma staining the air. It made Anyara want to turn away or shrink back amongst the small crowd of officials and warriors that had gathered to witness the confrontation. Had the two men been lowly townsfolk, confronting one another on the street, their acid tones and blatant contempt would have presaged certain violence.
Aewult was seated on a wooden bench outside his huge white tent in the midst of his army’s encampment. The Bloodheir’s refusal to enter Kolkyre had unsettled both the city and the Tower of Thrones. For the last day and night Anyara had heard many servants and officials muttering in consternation, asking one another whether Aewult’s rejection of Kilkry hospitality was studied insult, veiled threat or careless oversight. Or, perhaps, admission of shame; for everyone knew, by know, that the Bloodheir had been humbled by the Black Road. The story of the disastrous battle in the snowstorm was on everyone’s lips.
It was not the state of Aewult’s mind that occupied Anyara’s thoughts, though, but the consequences of his failure; his betrayal, she was inclined to think, whether caused by incompetence or malice. Kolglas was gone, she heard. Drinan overrun by White Owls. Hundreds of Lannis folk dead or captive or unhomed. The battles still to be fought would not even be fought on Lannis ground now. It was too late for that. The Black Road had swallowed up her Blood, in its entirety. And of Orisian there was no word.
Pennants flew from the poles at each corner of Aewult’s sprawling tent. They cracked in the wind. The heavy canvas walls shook and strained against the pegs and ropes that held them down. Anyara wished she had tied her hair back. It kept straying across her face.
“I left a thousand men to stand at Hommen,” Aewult nan Haig was saying, “and twice that many stand astride the road between there and here. They will hold our enemy until I have the fresh companies I need. Nothing has been abandoned, Thane, and you’ll not speak such an accusation again in my presence.”
“What makes you think a thousand men can hold back the Black Road at Hommen when you failed with ten
