Kollen remained doubtful. He said nothing to challenge Orisian’s claim, but he and a few of his Guard stood there, wary, while villagers brought food. Children clustered in the doorway, staring curiously at these newcomers; wide-eyed and murmuring at the sight of two Kyrinin sitting cross-legged in the gloom.
“What news is there?” Orisian asked between mouthfuls of stew. “Have you heard whether the fighting’s done, in the north?”
“No, the fighting’s not done,” said Kollen. “Not last we heard. We don’t hear much up here, and what we do hear’s not much sense. Got a message to arm two dozen fighting men and send them to Kolkyre, then two days later a message saying not. Then rumour is that the army’s gathering after all…” He waved his hands helplessly. “Who can say?”
“If the fighting’s not done, your men should march,” Orisian said. “You have to wait to be told to march against the Black Road?” It took so little now to wake his anger. The slightest breath upon its glowing embers could summon up a small flame.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Torcaill stiffen.
“You shouldn’t let others do the dying on your behalf,” Orisian muttered. Then, faintly: “You shouldn’t stand aside. That’s all.”
“I do as my Thane commands me,” the Captain growled darkly.
“Yes. I’d not question Lheanor’s-”
“Roaric, now,” Kollen interrupted him. “Lheanor’s dead.”
Orisian set down his bowl. “How?”
“Black Road, they say. Inside the Tower of Thrones.”
“I’m sorry. We did not now. Was there… do you know if anyone else was killed? Hurt?”
Kollen shook his head. On the far side of the fire, K’rina groaned a little. She was hunched up, wrapped in a shawl that Eshenna had found in a corner. Kollen looked sharply at the na’kyrim.
“Is she sick? If she’s sick…”
“It’s nothing,” said Orisian. “Nothing she can pass to anyone else, at least. We only want a place to sleep. We’ll be gone in the morning.”
Kollen stared at him. He scratched his chin, fingers raking through his beard. The gesture reminded Orisian of Rothe.
“What’s the Thane of the Lannis Blood doing wandering around the Karkyre Peaks, then?” Kollen asked.
Orisian took up the steaming bowl of stew again, and frowned down into it. “Just trying to get home. That’s all.”
In the morning there was a dusting of snow across Stone. The wind had swept it from the exposed stretches of ground and packed it up against walls and into crevices. The village came alive before dawn. Orisian was already out, sitting on a huge square-cut slab of rock, when the eastern sky began to lighten behind the Peaks. He watched a pair of young boys drive a little flock of goats, vague shapes in the half-light, out across the mountainside, and wondered what pasture they could possibly find in this bare place. Some of the animals wore little bells at their necks. They rang and clattered their way through the village.
A little way further down towards the bridge, Torcaill and his men were gathered, talking quietly, preparing for the renewal of their march. Kollen had given them two men to act as guides, down through the foothills until they reached the road between Ive and Kolkyre. He had done it grudgingly, and Orisian blamed himself for that fact. He had spoken without thought, and without care.
The valley of the Kyre ran away, seemingly endless, into the north and west, sinking all the time. At the outermost limit of his sight, Orisian could see sunlight on summits. They shone. Here in Stone, though, the greatest heights of the Peaks still stood between him and the sun. A woman emerged in the doorway of a nearby hut, shaking out a blanket. It was an action that belonged so wholly and utterly to the mundane world of daily life that it transfixed Orisian. He stared at the woman’s blunt outline, the snapping flurry of the blanket, as if seeing something wondrous, something he had never before witnessed. She looked up at him. He could not make out her features in the gloom. She turned and disappeared into the hut.
And Orisian sobbed. Just once: an abrupt, convulsive sob that burst up from within him and shook his shoulders and squeezed water from his eyes. He sniffed and blinked and pressed his sleeve against his eyes, drew it across his nose. His jaw ached, and he feared for a moment that he might have split open his cheek.
Ess’yr was there, on the fringe’s of Torcaill’s huddle of warriors. Beside those burly figures, she was lean and lithe, standing straight, and looking up at Orisian. He wanted to hide in that moment, wanted to take his terrible smallness and fragility and burrow it down into some safe cranny where he could close his eyes and sleep away this bitter winter. But he returned her gaze; held it for what felt like an age. When at last she turned away, he rose and went down to join them.
III
The Inkallim came to Hommen out of fog. On such heavy air there was no sound to warn of their coming. They emerged, a dark mass, silently; scores of them. Hundreds, perhaps. Fiallic the Banner-captain rode at the head of the long column. Amongst the marching warriors were small groups of captive children, stumbling along in tight, frightened knots, herded by Hunt Inkallim and their dogs. Even those beasts were silent, their baleful presence alone enough to cow the children into terrified obedience.
Kanin oc Horin-Gyre was bitterly disappointed to see them come, for he was planning slaughter, and feared that their arrival would deprive him of it. He had his whole little army ready for battle, taut like a drawn bowstring. The battle he hoped for was not with the Haig Bloods, though. His spears and shields faced not south or west, but east. The enemy approaching was Aeglyss and those — hundreds, by all accounts — who marched with him.
Kanin had been ready to march himself within hours of hearing of Wain’s death. He meant, in the towering, agonised fury that mastered him then, to sweep up the coast and on to Kan Avor, and to turn that ruined city into a slaughterhouse. The orders for assembly had been given, the plans made. But word came that Aeglyss was on the move himself, descending the Glas valley, marching to join the army of the Black Road, beyond Hommen. As soon as he heard that news, Kanin thought he glimpsed an inevitable future: fate would deliver Aeglyss into his arms, onto his swords. He need only wait, and ready himself, and brood, rehearsing endlessly in his imagination the death of the halfbreed.
That hope was snatched away by the emergence of the Inkallim from the wintry mists. Fiallic and Goedellin of the Lore came to him, but he already knew what they would say. He could read the denial of his desires in the old man’s hobble, and in the warrior’s grave face.
“Word reached us of your sister’s death,” Goedellin said. “Killed in the struggle against Temegrin’s company, when the Eagle assailed Kan Avor in pursuit of Gryvan’s Shadowhand. Such is the tale that reached us.”
“I heard the same. I do not believe it.”
“No,” Goedellin said. “I did not expect that you would. We doubt it ourselves, though the truth remains obscure. It has proved… difficult to obtain reliable information on what has taken place at Kan Avor. Even Cannek has not been able to sift fact from rumour.”
“I don’t need the Hunt to tell me what happened,” Kanin growled. “My sister is dead. The Eagle is dead. Whose hand wielded the blade does not matter. Aeglyss is responsible.”
“And what do you intend to do about it?”
“I mean to destroy the halfbreed, and any who stand at his side.”
Goedellin nodded. He smiled. Kanin saw sympathy in that smile, but he was beyond its reach.
“You burn, Thane. The fires of grief burn in you, to be quenched only by blood. Hold fast to your faith, though. Your sister has passed from this world, and now awaits her birth in another, better one. She feels no sorrow, or pain, and must no longer suffer the miseries that we who remain are subject to. The grief you feel is not for her, but for yourself, deprived of her company.”
For the first time in his life, Kanin felt the urge to decry such pieties, even those uttered by an Inner Servant of the Lore himself. No, he thought. No, this is not a selfish grief, and it is not a deluded one. Wain was betrayed, and it is not fate that bears the responsibility, but one man. If the creed would deny that, I choose what my own heart tells me over the creed. As soon as that thought was in his mind, he was shamed by it. Nothing he had been
