Anyara and Coinach were sitting cross-legged on the planked floor. He was showing her how to sharpen the knife he had given her. She glanced up, then turned her attention back to the blade.
“I’ve seen much worse,” she said.
Ishbel said nothing for a moment or two, but Anyara could feel her presence, and her self-satisfied smile. She concentrated on the weight of the whetstone in her hand, and the movement of the knife across it.
“Should I lend you some of my maids?” Ishbel asked. “Or some clothes, perhaps? I know how the subject of rain capes interests you. I have some I could spare you, to keep the cold and the wet off.”
“I’m sure,” Anyara muttered. “Your master has provided what servants I need, though, and I’ve cloaks enough.”
“He’s not my master.”
“No?” Anyara looked up and smiled thinly. “My mistake.”
Ishbel left with a frown on her face, stamping her feet as she went.
“Needs to learn some manners,” Coinach observed.
“I don’t suppose she needs them, so long as she’s got the Bloodheir’s favour to wrap herself up in.”
Boredom, and the excess of thinking time that came with it, was Anyara’s greatest discomfort. She asked more than once to meet with Aewult, hoping against hope that she might be able to soften him, but the message always came back that he was too busy. She practised knifework with Coinach. He was a patient teacher, hiding well whatever reservations he felt about the exercise. The nights were the worst. The camp was never quiet, and all through the hours of darkness she could hear voices and the creaking of wagon wheels and the movement of canvas on the breeze. She dreamed — when she slept at all — in indistinct patterns of shadow and fear.
No one could, or would, tell her what was to happen. Every morning she woke half-expecting that there would be a battle, or that she would be sent off to Vaymouth. Each day those expectations went unfulfilled, until Anyara began to feel as if there was nothing to the world save this great encampment with the city silent and sealed beyond it, and that it could continue like this indefinitely.
Then they brought Taim Narran to see her. The Captain of Anduran was grimy and battered. There were rents in his tunic, bruises on his face. He was clearly exhausted. Two of Aewult’s Palace Shield escorted him and stood there, all armour and pride, as he greeted Anyara.
“Leave us,” she said to them. Both of them looked at her, but neither moved. For the first time in days her anger surged. “Get out. I am sister to a Thane, and I will talk to this man in private. Get out!”
The two huge shieldmen glanced at one another, and after a moment’s silent consideration they retired from the tent.
“What’s happening?” asked Taim as soon as they were out of earshot. “Has Aewult gone mad?”
“Who can say? I’m safe enough, I think. But where’s Orisian, Taim? That’s what matters.”
“I don’t know,” he said, anguished. “I don’t know. I’m sorry. He never reached Kolglas. I hoped… I hoped he might be here. Or still at Highfast, perhaps?”
Anyara shook her head. The thought came to her, as it often did now, that the last time she had seen her brother she had been angry with him, frustrated at being left behind in Kolkyre. She dreaded the possibility of that being their last parting, and of anger being its tone. Somehow, it left her feeling that she owed him all the courage and discipline she could muster to face Aewult, and his father, and the whole Haig Blood if needed.
“Gods, everything’s coming apart,” Taim muttered. “What does Roaric think he’s doing, picking fights with the Bloodheir? The Black Road’s stopped, for some reason, between here and Hommen, but when they come south, every man — every sword — will be needed if there’s to be any chance of turning them back.”
“Perhaps they’ve come as far as they can,” Anyara said, her mind still tangled up in thoughts of Orisian.
“No,” Taim said firmly. “They’ve overrun every obstacle put in their path. We stood for a day or two at Hommen, but we had to retire as soon as they brought up their full numbers. If Aewult hadn’t fallen all the way back here, his whole army’d have been destroyed by now. No, they’ve some reason of their own for pausing. But it’s only a pause. They’ll be here before long, and Aewult will be lucky if he’s not outnumbered when they do reach him. There’s more of them than we ever imagined was possible.”
Anyara nodded, hardly listening. Her eyes drifted down. Where was Orisian? If the Black Road reached Kolkyre before… something pierced the veil of her preoccupation. She blinked.
“Where’s you sword, Taim?” she asked.
He looked down at the empty scabbard on his hip. When he lifted his head again, Anyara was not sure what she was seeing in his expression. It might almost have been shame.
“I am a prisoner, my lady. It has been taken from me.”
At that Coinach, who had been a silent observer thus far, stepped forwards.
“Aewult would not dare-” he began, but Taim Narran cut him short with a sharp look.
“The Bloodheir dares to issue commands to our Thane’s sister. Why should he hesitate to make a mere warrior his prisoner?”
“On what grounds?” Anyara asked.
“That I failed him at Glasbridge; brought too few men, and too late, to his aid in battle.” Taim spoke the words without inflection, as if reporting the dry details of some dull conversation. “After we retreated from Hommen, I meant to stand again, but Aewult summoned me. And took my sword from me when I arrived.”
One of the shieldmen outside pushed aside the flap at the tent’s entrance. He bent and stared in.
“Enough,” he said. “Come away. The Bloodheir said a brief visit only.”
Taim Narran did not hesitate. He gave Anyara a shallow bow, and turned to submit himself to the custody of the Palace Shield. Coinach growled in pure anger.
“This cannot be,” he said.
“Look to your charge, shieldman,” Taim snapped at him. “That is where your duty lies. Do not fail in it.”
Aewult’s huge shieldman put a rough hand on Taim’s shoulder and hurried him out of the tent. Anyara followed and faced the armoured giant.
“Listen to me,” she said as calmly and clearly as her ire would allow. “This man is an honoured warrior of my Blood, and valued by his Thane. You will treat him with respect and leave him his dignity. If not, I’ll make such trouble and noise that you will have to bind me, and put me in shackles at his side. Tell your Bloodheir that.”
Hommen was a strange place: two distinct settlements, living uncomfortably side by side. Down on the sea’s edge, a fishing village, with a harbour wall of boulders and a short wooden quay that stood on pole-legs crusted with barnacles and weed. Up on the hillock to the south, an abandoned stone watchtower with a slate roof, and a flock of two dozen cottages clustered around it in memory of the protection it must once have offered. Linking the two, a short, straight track flanked by drystone walls. Where that track crossed the main coast road, there were gates and a toll-house for tithe-collectors, a little barracks and a hall, hay barns and a wayfarers’ inn.
A few days ago, Kanin oc Horin-Gyre guessed, there were probably a good three hundred people who called Hommen home. Now, none. Most had already fled by the time the Black Road arrived. Those who had remained, out of sickness, or despair, or determination to defend their homes, were dead. No one had been spared this time, no prisoners taken. The army that had descended upon Hommen was a more furious beast than that which had taken Anduran or Glasbridge.
Kanin had been at the forefront of the slaughter, cutting his way up to the base of the leaning watchtower, with his Shield about him and a hundred or more Tarbains howling up behind. It had been unwise, perhaps, with his knee still unreliable and sore, but he had needed that violence and danger. Several of the enemy had taken refuge in the little tower, and barricaded it against him. He burned them out, and those that did not emerge to die on the waiting blades and spears were choked by the smoke or consumed by the flames. The charred tower now had a drunken angle that suggested its life was almost done.
Much of the army had pressed on, and was further along the coast pursuing, or destroying, the scattered warriors of the True Bloods who made repeated, if half-hearted, attempts to block the road. Kanin, spent and tired, had let it rush on without him. He and his weary company remained in Hommen, stripping it of every supply it could offer. The forces under his command were larger now than they had been before the battle. Many commonfolk of his Blood had emerged from the ranks of the greater host, especially after his reckless display during the fighting. He had armed them as best he could; given them captains and at least a semblance of discipline.
Kanin could not fully explain, even to himself, his reluctance to follow the main body of the army in its rush onwards. When asked, he pointed at his knee and said it needed time to heal, which was at least partly true. It would have been more wholly true to admit that there was something he found untrustworthy in the mad fervour
