Winterbirth

by Brian Ruckley

  Taim said nothing. Roaric shifted uncomfortably at his side.

  'Too cold for pleasantries, I see. So,' continued the High Thane, 'when light returns, we attempt the walls again. Your companies shall lead the assault.'

  Taim lowered his eyes, his teeth clenched and his knuckles showing white as he gripped the hilt of his sword. The faintest of winces crossed his face as he heard Roaric draw breath at his side. Taim knew only too well how loosely Lheanor's son held his temper when it stirred within him. The younger man let anger colour his voice as he spoke.

  'My father gave me two thousand of our finest men to bring in answer to your summons to war,' Roaric said, 'and hundreds of them have surrendered their lives in your cause. More than half a thousand dead from plagues and fevers or on the battlefield, the same again unable to rise from their sleeping mats. In every battle, and now in every attempt upon the walls of this petty castle, it is Kilkry and Lannis that must be to the fore. Am I to leave every one of my men dead in these hills? When will the other Bloods lead the charge?'

  'The hunger for glory of our northern brothers is not what it once was, I see,' said the High Thane in a level voice.

  Roaric started to reply. Gryvan cut him off. 'You should choose your words with more care when addressing your High Thane. It is a long time since yours was first amongst the Bloods. Your father took an oath to me, as did Croesan, the master of our friend Taim here. You stand now under that oath. You are young, and for the sake of your father I will overlook it, but you speak poorly when you call this my cause. It is in the cause of all the Bloods and all the Thanes that one who forgets his duties, as Igryn oc Dargannan-Haig has done, must be brought to heel. There can be no order if such as he go unrestrained.

  You do not desire chaos, I assume?'

  There was a flush of colour in Roaric's cheeks and his eyes showed a wildness for an instant before he mastered himself. 'We have not the engines to break An Caman,' he said tightly.

  Gryvan gave a half-laugh. 'This is no Highfast, to shatter armies upon its walls. It is fit only to frighten bandits and robbers. You have scaling ladders, and the courage of your men: take an arm's width of the battlements and the army will be a flood following in your wake.' He turned to Taim Narran. 'And does our captain of Lannis-Haig share your fears?'

  Taim looked up. His face bore deeper lines and darker shades than did Roaric's. His short hair was fading to grey from the black of its forgotten youth. Nothing about his expression betrayed his thoughts save for his eyes. There was a measured, deep-rooted strength about them as he met the High Thane's gaze.

  'Neither I nor any of my men fear to die,' he said, 'though I, and they, would rather have a better reason to greet the Sleeping Dark. They lack the stores within the fort to last another month, and if we waited they would come out of their own accord. Igryn himself is beaten, a fugitive with only the mountains themselves to keep him from capture. You have half a dozen companies out hunting him in the mountains south of here. He will be yours in a day, or a week, and then again this fastness will mean nothing.'

  Gryvan oc Haig spoke slowly and clearly.

  'Perhaps you speak the truth, Taim Narran. I do not care. Understand me well: it is my will that the walls above be broken and that Lannis and Kilkry lead the way. And here and now, my will rules. Your domain is the precincts of Castle Anduran, and they lie very far from here. My domain runs from the Glas to these very hills. I am Thane of Thanes, lord of your lord. Every one of your men who can walk and hold a sword will stand ready at dawn.'

  'I understand you well, my lord,' said Taim, bowing his head. Roaric once again started to speak. Taim touched his arm and turned him away. He liked Roaric despite his youthful failings, and had no wish to see him harm himself still more in the High Thane's eyes. They walked out of the tent, to wake their men and await the day.

  Gryvan grunted and glanced at Kale.

  'Roaric is a fool,' he said. 'It's as well there's another between him and his father's high seat. Our friend Taim Narran is of better stuff, I think.'

  Kale shrugged. 'He knows no loyalty save to Lannis-Haig, lord. Let me set a knifeman on him. It could be done with no finger to point at us afterwards, and his loss would wound Croesan to the quick.'

  'Indeed,' laughed Gryvan, 'but you allow your dislike of the man to cloud your judgement. My Shadowhand back in Vaymouth would never forgive such impulsiveness. No, we need not take so hasty a step. Taim will lead his men to slaughter tomorrow, though in his heart he would rather strike my head from my shoulders. We should be thankful that the old traditions bind them still in Lannis and Kilkry.

  Because Croesan has bent the knee to me, Taim will in his turn do my bidding. It would strain his precious honour beyond the breaking point to do otherwise.'

  The Thane of Thanes rubbed his hands together. 'This cold could crack a mountain pine. Have a brazier brought in here. And bread. I must be strong and hearty if I am to savour what the morning will bring.'

  IV

  ORISIAN WOKE LATE, from a dream that slipped away before he could grasp it. In those first bleary instants of wakefulness there was a fleeting memory of his brother's face. He sat up in his bed and looked about the room. He had shared it with Fariel when his brother lived. While the sickness had been stalking the passages and chambers of the castle, this was where Fariel had lain: sweating, muttering, drifting in and out of violent sleep. During those awful weeks Orisian had slept instead in Anyara's room, until she too had fallen sick. Then he had gone with Ilain to the chamber-maids' quarters.

  For months after his brother was wrapped in a sheet and carried away to The Grave on a black-sailed boat, Orisian had refused to return to this bedchamber. When at last he had found the courage to come back, it had been unexpectedly comforting. He often dreamed of his brother in this bed, and they were almost always fond dreams. His mother Lairis too seemed to have left something of her presence in the room, though Orisian's memories of her had a specificity that those of Fariel never possessed. His image of his mother had turned over the years into a mosaic of details: the smell and feel of her hair upon his face; the warm, strengthening clasp of her hand about his; the sound of her singing. These things infiltrated his dreams, and there were times when he awoke to discover in momentary surprise and confusion that she was not with him. They were lonely times, but soothing in their way, too.

  He had just shaken sleep off when Ilain bustled in, bringing water and a cloth. She hardly spoke beyond wishing him a good morning. Her thoughts on the subject of late risers were almost palpable. By the time she left, Orisian was reproaching himself for his laziness.

  The day passed quickly. In the morning, he went with Anyara over the causeway into town. They wandered about the market, jostling their way through the amiable crowd. They came across Jienna, the daughter of the merchant who owned fully a quarter of the stall plots. She was the same age as Orisian, and pretty. She and Anyara gossiped gaily, more or less ignoring Orisian. When he did steal into a gap in their conversation to compliment her on her dress, she laughed. Thankfully, it was a friendly, grateful laugh.

  Afterwards, Anyara poked him in the back and teased him. He reddened and cursed her without conviction. She soon tired of the game and they turned back to idle talk: how many guests would come to the feast in the castle, who would be the Winter King at the celebration, which of the market traders was doing the most business.

  They found a stall selling little honey-coated cakes, a delicacy their father had always loved. When they had been children he would often return from visits to Drinan or Glasbridge with packets of them hidden away in his baggage. It had been a regular game for Orisian, Anyara and Fariel to dig through Kennet's belongings in search of the sticky treasures which he, until the very moment of discovery, would deny the existence of. The passage of time had shuffled roles and relationships. Now, Orisian and Anyara bought a small box of the cakes to take back to their father.

  Later, Orisian went looking for Inurian. He searched the
castle without success. Eventually he was directed out through the tiny postern gate at the rear of the stables. A passageway burrowed through the castle walls and gave out, through a heavy steel-banded door, on to the rocks of the isle's seaward flank.

  There was a crude jetty, and alongside it a little sailboat: Inurian's, which he must have left there after his most recent crossing to the far shore of the estuary. It was a simple, fast boat, sturdy enough for short trips when the weather was kind. It would not survive in such an exposed berth if caught by high wind or wave, though, and Orisian guessed that it must soon be moved to the town's quayside. He always enjoyed those rare occasions when Inurian took him out on the water, skimming along so close to the surface that an outstretched hand could plough a sparkling furrow through the waves. The short journey from castle to harbour might be a last chance to have a trip in the boat before the winter took hold.

  With his back to the great bulk of the castle, not a sign of human life or habitation disturbed Orisian's view north across the Glas estuary to the heights beyond. There was almost no wind and the great bay was as near to stillness as it could come. He stood for a moment watching the distant white shapes of seabirds chasing one another low across the water. The Car Anagais, a rugged ridge of bare mountain tops skirted by dark forests, dominated the northern shore. The summits succeeded one another in a jagged line stretching off in either direction. To the north, he knew, they ran all the way up towards Glasbridge where they merged into the greater ramparts of the Car Criagar, and far to the south they marched down to the blasted headland of Dol Harigaig, where the ridge collapsed into the sea in a welter of broken, jumbled rock. Far beyond Orisian's sight, a bleak island lay there, lashed by the ocean. It skulked off the point of Dol Harigaig, as if the last of the mountains had slid intact into the water and left only its peak above the breakers.

  An old story said the isle was the body of a giant, one of the First Race, cast into the sea. It had a more acute meaning for the people of Kolglas now. Dozens of their kinsfolk had found their final, fiery rest there during the Fever, their bodies carried to its huge pyres by boats with black sails. That had been the last journey Orisian's brother and mother had made, bound up in linen winding sheets and crowded in with the other dead upon the deck of a corpse ship. Until that grim year, the island had been called Il

  Dromnone, an ancient name. Now, everyone knew it as The Grave.

  Orisian slipped and slithered along the rocks at the foot of the wall to where he could see Inurian crouching by the water's edge, poking around amongst the stones with a stick. The hem of the na'kyrim's dark robe was trailing in the sea.

  Orisian called to him. 'What are you doing?'

  'Looking for sea urchins.'

  'Why?'

  Inurian sat back on a convenient boulder. 'Well, firstly because if you dry them and crush them to a powder they are said to prevent dampness on the chest when taken in broth. I doubt it myself, but who knows? Secondly, because I had a good amount ground up, at which point Idrin chose to knock the bowl over. Most of it disappeared between the floorboards.'

  'Ah.'

  Inurian tossed the stick into the water disconsolately. 'There are none here, though,' he said.

  Orisian sat beside him. They gazed out towards the hills. Inurian at last noticed that his robe was sodden and began to wring it out, muttering under his breath.

  After a minute, Orisian narrowed his eyes and cocked his head to one side. He thought he could see, so faint that it might be nothing, a hair-thin thread of smoke rising from amongst the trees on the distant shore.

  'Can you see smoke?' he asked, knowing that Inurian's half-Kyrinin eyes were a good deal sharper than his own.

  'Indeed,' said Inurian without looking up. 'It has been there for some time. Quite careless.'

  For a moment Orisian was puzzled, then he understood and glanced at the na'kyrim.

  'Kyrinin? A Kyrinin camp?'

  Inurian nodded.

  'Fox, then?' pressed Orisian. 'There's only the Fox clan over there, isn't there?'

  Inurian's Kyrinin father had been of the Fox clan. Other than that, Orisian knew almost nothing of the inhuman side of his heritage. Though he had never dared to ask, he was almost certain that Inurian went into the hills and forests of the Car Anagais not just in search of mushrooms or herbs but also to visit the camps of the Fox. Much of his longing to accompany the na'kyrim on one of those journeys was rooted in the wish to see such a camp. Whatever others of his kind might think of them, Orisian felt more curiosity than anything else about the Kyrinin who lived upon the fringes of his homeland.

  'Only the Fox,' agreed Inurian. ‘I suppose they are right to think themselves safe in such an inaccessible spot. Myself, I would still call it careless to give so clear a sign. I would have thought better of her.'

  'Who?' asked Orisian.

  Inurian blinked. 'Whoever's camp it is,' he said. 'Them.'

  'There's no danger to them there, surely?' Orisian said.

  Inurian shrugged. 'Your uncle claims that land, even if no one lives there. Now is not the best time for Kyrinin to be so visible within Lannis-Haig borders.'

  'But if they're Fox . . . it's the White Owls in Anlane who are causing trouble.'

  Inurian regarded his young companion with an arched eyebrow. 'Do you really believe that is a distinction all your countrymen would make, Orisian? You know better than that, or you've not the wit I credit you with. Not everyone thinks of these things the way you do; very few, in fact. Fox and White Owl have been at each other's throats since long before your Blood was even imagined, but to your fellow Huanin they are all woodwights and that is an end to it.'

  Orisian could not deny it. The War of the Tainted had put a chasm between the two races. The three kingships of the Huanin race - Aygll, Alsire and Adravane - had stood together against the united strength of the Kyrinin clans. For all the savagery of the centuries since, nothing had matched the slaughter done in that vast conflict. The dead had thronged the fields until their stench choked even the carrion-eaters and it was said a man could walk for a day upon the backs of corpses. The Kyrinin city of Tane, the most wondrous city there had ever been, was destroyed. The war had ended only when the Anain, the most potent and secret of all the races, stirred from their unknowable rest to take possession of ruined Tane and raise the vast Deep Rove to engulf it and all its surrounds.

  For the victorious kingships there had been no reward. Alsire declined in sad disarray until it was reborn as the lesser Kingship of Dornach, and Adravane began its long retreat into decadence, madness and isolation. Aygll tore itself apart from within and was extinguished in the bloodletting of the Storm Years, its lands inherited by the Bloods that rose from its ashes. All of that marred history was there beneath the surface of the moment in which Orisian gazed out towards the distant campfire of a people he could never know.

  'I didn't tell you about Naradin's boar, did I?' Orisian asked. 'It had a White Owl arrowhead in it, a fresh wound. And it was no distance from Anduran. No Kyrinin have been seen so close to the city for years, Rothe said.'

  'Now that is strange,' Inurian said. A frown flickered across his gentle features.

  'Croesan thought it was just some young hunters, flaunting their bravery by coming so far into our lands.'

  Inurian shook his head. 'The Thane misreads it. This is not a time of year when hunting parties range far.

  No, that tastes wrong. Whatever the reason is, it's not youths showing off. Croesan would do well to pay more heed to such signs.'

  The na'kyrim's frown deepened. He sank into thought, his eyes locked unseeingly on the rocks at his feet.

  Orisian looked back towards the northern shore.

  'They should be going to their winter quarters, shouldn't they?' he asked, a trace of wistfulness in his voice.

  'Yes,' Inurian said, rousing himself. 'They're on the move. All the a'ans scattered through the forests will be coming together at the vo'ans, the winter camps, to wait for s
pring. A small a'an, that one. Ten or twenty people.'

  Orisian stared at the thin trail of smoke. However impossible it might be, his longing to see for himself what it signified would not go away. Somewhere out there was a world in which the past did not weigh so heavily, where there were no dark, grief-laden walls to loom over him and no reminders of what might have been. If that world did not reside on the pitching deck of a Tal Dyre ship, perhaps it lay in the wandering, forest-bound life of the Kyrinin. Even as he watched, the firesign faded away, until there was no hint that it had ever been. He looked at Inurian.

  'Inurian, do you ever wish

  Inurian interrupted him. 'It's unwise to dance with wishes unless you've the mettle for it. Wishing for what is not is a fast way to poison your heart.' The na'kyrim tousled Orisian's hair with rough affection. 'Your heart's a lot less poisoned than most I've known, Orisian. I like it that way.'

  Orisian held his tongue. A vague sense of longing stayed with him.

  'Once Winterbirth is out of the way, I must move my boat to a safer berth,' said Inurian. 'Would you perhaps help me with that?'

  Orisian smiled.

  The sun rose upon the last day of autumn. Its pale touch brushed the snowfields and peaks of the high Tan Dihrin, and then swept down towards the valley of the Glas. It fell first of all upon the fortified town of Tanwrye, nestled at the foot of the Vale of Stones, marking the northernmost border of Lannis-Haig.

  Behind the walls, weary men were leaving their watches and bowls of gruel and bread were being passed out from steaming pots.

  The grey light flowed on, south and west, over the reeds and rushes of rough grazing land towards Targlas. Cattle roused themselves from sleep, and snipe and plovers stirred amongst the tussocks.

  Reaching Targlas, the sun picked out columns of smoke rising from a hundred hearths as the drovers, herders and trappers warmed their cold and drowsy bones. A flock of sheep was being driven out, their shepherd shouting at his dogs. The great River Glas wove its way past the town, and the sun followed until it found Anduran.