see the texture of their sunlit eastern slopes, and of the clouds around their summits. The snow, white strands laid down in the crannies and crevices of the high rock faces.
“No choice but to press on, unless you mean to stand and fight,” Yvane muttered.
Orisian said nothing. He gazed up at those lofty slopes. He could almost imagine what it would be like to be up there — high and fresh, washed by the cold winds, with wide-open views — instead of here, trapped in the suffocating woodland.
“I doubt if the White Owls will keep chasing us all the way across the Peaks,” Yvane said. “Not really their sort of hunt, out in the open like that. Mind you, I’d never have believed they’d come all the way through the Hymyr Ot’tryn. Kyrinin’d usually rather lose a finger off their bowstring hand than risk disturbing the Anain. Whatever — whoever — is driving them, it must be strong. Hard.” She paused. “Where do you mean to go, then?”
Orisian lowered his eyes. “Once we’ve shaken off the White Owls, then we’ll see. Kolkyre, at first, I should think.”
He glanced across at K’rina. The mute na’kyrim was sitting with her back against a grassy bank, turning her head this way and that in an effort to avoid the waterskin that Eshenna insisted upon holding to her lips.
“I’ll have to find Taim,” he said. “I’ve let him down.”
“You think so?”
“I should have gone to Kolglas. We gained nothing at Highfast, and nothing out here.” Again, that quick, surreptitious flick of the eyes towards K’rina. “Rothe’s died, and the others, for nothing.”
Yvane sniffed. She gave up gnawing at the biscuit and put it back into the folded square of burlap from which it had come. “I don’t think so. Not at all. Whatever’s happening here, it matters. The Anain have put their mark on this woman. I can’t tell you what it means, but I can tell you it matters.”
“Enough for Rothe to pay for it with his life?”
“He chose how he died. That’s the best any of us can ever hope for, that choice.”
“You think he chose that?”
“Maybe he chose it the day he took whatever oath it is you make them take. Your shieldmen. He took that oath willingly, I imagine? You didn’t have to force him?”
“Of course not.”
“Then he chose the possibility, at least. Accepted it.”
Orisian almost hated Yvane in that moment; hated the ease with which she talked of such things. But he lacked the will to take issue with her.
“Don’t let it harden your heart too much,” Yvane murmured. “Don’t let it cloud your vision. Hatred, anger: those are the commonest offspring of loss. Doesn’t mean they’re the best. You Huanin are always making the past master of the present. You make yourselves willing heirs to every grievance of your forefathers; let the burden of every loss or sorrow bend your back. It’s the choices you make for yourself in the future that matter, not those you inherit from the past. That’s all I’m saying.”
“My vision’s not clouded,” Orisian muttered, wincing and sighing in pain as his tongue faltered over the ruin of his jaw. He put a hand to his cheek, feeling the stitches there and the angry, swollen crust of the wound.
“You think not. But you should be careful of your feelings. We all should be. The Shared is untrustworthy now. It’s thick with rage, bitterness. Give it space, and it’ll take root in your head, feed off your own feelings. Twist them. None of us is beyond its reach.”
Orisian let his hand fall back into his lap. He was so tired, in heart as well as body. He could not see how any of this could come to any good, how there could be healing at the end of this. Too many people had died, now, and too many wounds had been inflicted for there to be any dawn at the end of this night. He had never understood, while his father lived, quite what afflicted Kennet after Lairis and Fariel died. Now, he thought he could glimpse a little of it. It had been absences. The absence of hope, the absence of meaning and sense from the world around him.
“Rothe was a good man,” Yvane said. Her voice was heavy. For the first time since he had met her, Orisian thought he heard true, deep grief there. He looked at her.
“I don’t think he would regret having died in your defence,” she said.
K’rina coughed, spluttering out the water Eshenna had trickled into her mouth. Orisian looked across towards the two na’kyrim. Eshenna was distressed. She edged away from K’rina, defeated.
“No,” Orisian murmured. “He wouldn’t have regretted it.”
They came to the edge of the Veiled Woods amidst a misty rain that hid the mountains ahead of them. Everyone climbed up out of the forest onto open hillside with a collective sense of relief. For the first time in days Orisian heard something close to laughter in the voices of Torcaill’s men. Torcaill himself had an air of renewed determination.
“Where now?” the warrior asked Orisian.
Orisian looked back at the thicket from which they had emerged. Ess’yr and Varryn were still in there somewhere. There had been no sign of White Owls since dawn, and none of the Fox either.
“Eshenna,” Orisian called out. “Do you know where we are?”
She shook her head.
“Closest food and shelter is likely to be Stone,” Yvane muttered. “Never been there, but it’s on the Kyre, high on the western side of the Peaks.”
“We’ll try for there, then,” Orisian said to Torcaill. “And then Kolkyre, as fast as we can. Give the men a little rest, and food.”
“Might be best to put some more ground between us and the woods,” Torcaill suggested. “We could climb higher before resting.”
“No. Once we’re moving I don’t want us stopping until we have to. We’ll rest here for a little while.”
They settled on the damp grass just beyond an arrow’s reach from the trees. Torcaill shared out food and water amongst his men. Both were running low. No one had eaten as much as their hunger demanded since the day they had entered the Veiled Woods. Orisian sat facing down towards the forest, watching its edge through the drizzle. He waited as long as he thought he dared, then a fraction longer. He could hear the warriors behind him, further up the slope, growing restive. Just as he rose reluctantly to his feet, he saw what he had been hoping for: Ess’yr and Varryn coming out from amongst the trees. They loped up, heads angled away from the rain.
Varryn was injured, Orisian saw. A strip of hide was tied about his shoulder, holding a wad of moss or herbs over a wound. It did not seem to hamper him.
“The enemy falter,” Ess’yr said. “They have not enough heart for the chase. If they come further, it will only be few.”
“Good,” Orisian said, and smiled. “Good. We mean to go on, across the Peaks.”
Ess’yr nodded. “We will follow your trail. Guard your heels. Fox know high ground better than White Owl.”
Varryn spoke quickly and sharply to his sister in their own tongue. Orisian caught the tone, even if he could understand none of the words: argumentative, contradictory. Ess’yr murmured a soft reply. Varryn turned his gaze upon Orisian. There were flecks of blood laid over the warrior’s tattoos, tiny dark, dry spots across his cheek. There was no way to tell whether it was his own or someone else’s.
“I ask something of you,” Varryn said.
“What?” Orisian asked. Ess’yr was turning away, moving off across the fall of the slope. Orisian watched her go.
“Tell my sister you need us no more,” said Varryn. “Tell her it is done. There is no promise to hold her. No need.”
“You want to leave?” Orisian asked him, still unable to tear his eyes away from Ess’yr’s retreating back.
“You go where we are not welcome. Our fight is with the White Owl.”
Ess’yr squatted down, laying her bow and spear out on the grass. Orisian looked at Varryn. The Kyrinin’s gaze was intense and demanding.
“And Ess’yr does not want to go?” Orisian asked. “Is it the ra’tyn? The promise she made to Inurian?”
“Tell her there is no need,” Varryn said.
“I don’t think your fight is only with the White Owl, any more than mine is only with Horin-Gyre,” Orisian said. “Things have changed. We’re not just fighting the old battles any more.”
“Nevertheless. I ask you to release my sister. She does not see clearly in this. She sees in you the… child, the
