Winterbirth

by Brian Ruckley

  THE MORNING IN the Car Criagar was bright and crisp and clear, as brazen as if no day there ever started differently. All through the night the winds had raged around the mountain tops, whipping snow and sleet over the rocks. The storm had blown itself out before dawn, calmed by the approaching sun.

  Standing on the wide ledge outside the entrance to Yvane's bolt-hole, Orisian gazed across the ruin-veined landscape before him. On days such as this, couched in the grandeur of the mountains, arrayed beneath a broad, blue sky, the city must have been a glorious sight when it lived. Whoever its inhabitants had been, they must have been stirred by the marvellous conspiracy of sky and rock that surrounded them.

  Rothe was crouched down at Orisian's side, trying to sharpen his sword with a whetstone Yvane had found for him. His efforts were punctuated by occasional, almost inaudible, curses at the inadequacy of the little stone. Varryn and Ess'yr were down below, cautiously scouting through the closest of the ruins.

  There had been no sign or sound of intruders in the long hours they had spent in the cave, but neither of the Kyrinin seemed reassured. Despite their reticence and restraint, Orisian suspected they would be as glad as anyone to leave this place. The only question that remained was whether Yvane would accompany them. The na'kyrim had gone off some time ago, promising to return with supplies for their journey.

  Anyara came to stand beside Orisian.

  'A strange place,' she said.

  'It is,' he agreed. 'It's amazing. I wish Inurian was here to see it. He could have told us more about it, I expect.'

  'Yes,' said Anyara softly. She looked down at her hands, loosely clasped before her. 'I miss him very much. I know I never spent as much time with him as you did, but after Winterbirth ... he did his best to look after me.'

  'He always did that,' Orisian said. 'You, Father, me; he looked after all of us, in different ways. You think you know how important someone is, but it's never real until they're gone.' He shook his head disconsolately. 'I thought I knew him well, you know. But with Ess'yr, Highfast, Yvane ... I feel like I know less about him now than I did a month ago.'

  'You know the most important thing: that he cared for you. That he cared for us all.'

  Orisian narrowed his eyes, staring into the distance.

  'He told me not to wish for things I couldn't have, but how can I not? I'd change everything if I could.

  Everything, right back to ... I want to see our father again. See him the way he was when everyone was alive. Is it so bad to wish for something like that?'

  Anyara put an arm about his shoulders. Grief was a dangerous territory for the two of them to share.

  Orisian always feared that if he or Anyara let the other see a fraction too much of the sorrows they had borne, neither would be able to hold back the rest.

  'I am afraid, Orisian.'

  It was not something he could ever remember her saying before. The Fever had taken her to the very edge of the Sleeping Dark; she had once come within moments of drowning in the harbour of Kolglas ; still further back, Orisian had a memory of watching her fall from high in a tree outside the town, bouncing and crashing through lower boughs on her way down. Yet she had never spoken of fear. He had learned, so young that he knew it in the same way he knew the trees would lose their leaves in autumn, that fear did not touch Anyara. Now that knowledge seemed, like many other things, an obviously childish thought to be set aside.

  'Afraid of what?' he asked.

  Anyara almost laughed. 'You choose,' she said. Then: 'Dying. Being alone. You, me, Rothe — we only have each other now.'

  'And we will not lose each other. But there may still be others, anyway. We have to hold on to that hope.'

  'Spoken like a true Thane,' Anyara said. He looked at her sharply, to find a sad smile upon her face.

  'Well, you are, aren't you? You must be.'

  'Oh, Anyara, I hope not.'

  She squeezed him tightly, all of a sudden the elder sister once more.

  'If you are, you will be a good one,' she said, releasing him from her grasp.

  He looked at her. 'Good or bad, I will have to try, won't I? All my wishes are only wishes. I wouldn't have chosen any of this — none of us would - but we are here nevertheless. If there is no one else, I will have to try.'

  She took his hand in hers and they stood together like that for a little while, brother and sister side by side, looking out over the wasteland where the ruins lay silently beneath the winter sun.

  When Yvane returned, she brought little deerskin packets of food, walking staffs and fur strips to bind around their boots.

  'Better than nothing,' she said as she dropped it all into a pile at her feet.

  'Are you coming with us?' Orisian asked her.

  'Yes, yes. Some of the way, at least. Perhaps all the way to Koldihrve.'

  'I'm glad.'

  The na'kyrim gave a little laugh and shot a sharp look at him.

  'You shouldn't be,' she said. 'It's a bad sign, if you'd the sense to read it.'

  He waited patiently for her to explain.

  'I don't know what those Fox have found,' Yvane said with a vague wave in the direction of Ess'yr and Varryn, still searching amongst the rubble below, 'but I've seen enough to know I'd do well to spend a little time away from here. There's tracks of dogs - big ones, too — and men in the freshest snow.

  Definitely been someone poking around in the night. And to have kept going through that storm, they must be very serious about their work.'

  Orisian looked uneasily out over the ruined city. Nothing moved. The broken walls and crumbling stonework lay silent beneath their cloak of snow.

  'If I stay behind, whoever it is might go off on your trail but then again they might not. And even if they do, perhaps they'd dig me out of one of my hideaways before leaving. However much I like my solitude, I'm not stupid. I'll take my chances with you.'

  Orisian nodded.

  'Of course,' Yvane added sharply, 'if you hadn't seen fit to turn up, all uninvited, I'd still have my nice quiet life to enjoy.'

  'The uninvited guests who came to my home cost me a good deal more than we've cost you,' Orisian snapped, and scrambled down from the platform. Fresh snow crunched beneath his feet as he made his way to join Ess'yr. The Kyrinin was crouching down beside a heap of building stones, letting her delicate fingertips drift almost randomly across their pitted, lichen-strewn surfaces. Orisian stood behind her, caught for a moment by the shimmer of the winter sun on her hair.

  'Dog,' she murmured. She turned her head and looked up at him with those clear grey eyes. She held a fingertip out, and he could just see a short, thick strand of hair on it.

  'Yvane says they've been in the ruins during the night. She's coming with us.'

  'Best if we go now,' said Ess'yr. She rose to her feet in a single flowing movement. 'We cannot hide from them, so best to be in the open. Then we see them coming.'

  They followed Yvane north along the base of the cliffs. All of them were tense, wary. Even Yvane seemed uneasy amongst the ruins. Orisian, for the first time in his life, longed for the feel of a sword at his hip, or any weapon better than the little knife he carried on his belt.

  They came out of Criagar Vyne with nothing to disturb the silence save the sound of ravens croaking on the rocky heights above them. This time, with the furs Yvane had given them and her staffs to lean on, they were better equipped to brave the bleak lands beyond. It was enough to keep them almost comfortable even when they came out from beneath the shelter of the cliffs and the wind picked up.

  On a day such as this — bright and wide - the mountains were a sight to behold. Orisian could imagine that the Car Criagar was asleep, resting in the lull before the next storm swept down from the Tan Dihrin.

  Great peaks surrounded them, studded by pinnacles and turrets of rock. The stillness was so deep that it was possible to believe they were the only living things to have trodden this path in innumerable years.

  All the vast age and patient
indifference of the mountains was there like a taste in the air as they made their way northward.

  Once the ruins were well behind them, the Kyrinin at least relaxed. The open slopes offered little chance of ambush. Even so, Varryn would now and then stand for a time looking back the way they had come.

  They rested a while in the early afternoon, quietly sharing food and water. The sun was almost hot upon their faces, but it did not last. Thin skeins of cloud appeared across the blue expanse of the sky and by the time they began to search for a suitable sleeping place, the Car Criagar was sinking back into the muffling grey light it seemed almost to crave. There was no rain or snow at least, and as Yvane led them to a notch in the hillside they could hope for a more comfortable night than some of those they had recently known.

  Yvane knew what she was doing in choosing that hollow for the night: reaching into a crack beneath a pitted boulder, she withdrew a sack of kindling and firewood.

  'Better to have no fire,' Varryn said.

  Yvane emptied the sack out and began sorting the wood.

  'You can have no fire if you like,' she said, 'but I don't like the cold. If anyone is following us, they'll know where we are well enough with or without a fire.'

  There was little talking after that. All of them were preoccupied by their own thoughts as the fire held their eyes and the night settled in, closing the world around them down into a small pocket of light.

  It was as they settled to sleep that the sound came, as startling as the shattering of glass in the darkness: a brief howl. Moments later a second answered it. They seemed distant, but it was hard to tell.

  'Might be glad we have a fire, if it comes to it,' was all Yvane said as the sound faded away and an unnerving silence descended.

  The last thing Orisian saw before he passed into a shallow sleep was Varryn sitting straight and alert, bathed in firelight, his face turned out towards the night and his hands resting upon bow and spear.

  In the morning Varryn was still seated where Orisian had last seen him, as if no more than a moment had passed. The weather had closed in. Yvane exchanged a few words with Varryn in the Fox tongue, but they said nothing to the others. At another time Orisian would have wanted to know what they discussed; now there seemed no point. There was, after all, nothing to do save press on, even if a score of Inkallim were treading in their footprints.

  Their path now lay downwards and away from the highest peaks, but the Car Criagar would not let them go without one last reminder of its true nature. Low cloud, a hard wind and wet snow accompanied them. The further north they went, and the further from the heart of the range, the more characterless the slopes became. The dramatic rocks and screes of the heights were replaced by great featureless snow fields.

  Orisian found himself striding along beside Yvane.

  'How long to get to Koldihrve?' he asked her. It was hard work, fighting through the deepening snow, and he was out of breath, but the relentless silence of the mountains had begun to seem oppressive to him.

  'Not long,' the na'kyrim said.

  'That's a Kyrinin answer,' Orisian observed.

  'Where is it you want to go, anyway? Not Koldihrve, I mean, but after that. What are you going to do?'

  'Go to Glasbridge, or to Kolglas, if we can find the boat we need at Koldihrve. I have to fight the Black Road ; restore my Blood. I have had enough of running, of hiding,' Orisian said. And of losing people, he thought.

  'Be careful not to dress revenge in finer clothes than it deserves. You can't always get back what's gone.

  I wouldn't try to, if I was you; disappointment can do strange things to people.'

  'You don't understand. The Black Road has destroyed my home, my family. They've taken our lands. I'm bound by oath to defend my Blood against its enemies.'

  'Who is it you think is watching you?' said Yvane irritably. 'There're no gods now, if there ever were, so they'll not be your judges. Is it the dead? Better to leave that to the Kyrinin. What will you do when you've killed all of those who killed your dead? Sit back and wait for your own victims' children to arrive, knife in hand, at your bedside one night? Blood for blood, life for life down through all the ages. That's a kind future you're planning for yourself and your kin. Think how much happier the world might be if people sought approval for what they do from their children instead of their ancestors.'

  'What would you have me do?' demanded Orisian. 'Run away? Hide in a cave somewhere?' He allowed anger to colour his voice.

  'In truth,' sighed Yvane, 'I don't much care. All your Thanes and warlords always think they are the ones making everything happen, making the decisions. As often as not, they're plain wrong. Life has its own patterns, its chances and fortunes: they trip up great lords just as surely as the commonfolk. Whatever plans you lay, like as not they'll twist and turn in your hands. Just be sure why you do what you do. I long ago wearied of people who spend all their time digging up old hatreds and polishing them up for fresh use. The past's like a maggot in the heart of the present; it fouls it.'

  Orisian looked down, watched his feet sweeping through the snow for a few strides.

  'It's not revenge I want,' he said. He had tasted a little of vengeance, when that Tarbain's blood had splashed out over his hands. It had not soothed the ache within him, and it had not brought back any of those who had died. It had not even saved the woodcutter's family. 'I want ... to end it. It's the future I want to see changed, not the past. If you can tell me how to stop what's happening . . . if you can tell me how to stop that without taking up a sword against the Black Road , I'll listen. But I don't think you can.

  And I know as well as you that nothing will make the dead live again, but that's not the same as wishing they had not died. How could I not wish that of people I loved?'

  Yvane smiled sadly. 'You couldn't. No one could ask you to.' She glanced up at the listless sky. 'We have to forgive ourselves for all the ways we failed the dead, you know. And forgive them for all the burdens they leave us; all the ways in which they failed us. Especially for dying.'

  Orisian felt a tightening in his throat, and had to close his eyes for a moment. They strode on without speaking.

  They had been walking for what seemed like hours when Rothe stopped. Orisian followed his shieldman's gaze and saw why. Above and behind them, on a low ridge they had crossed less than an hour ago, the wind had whipped the snow up into twisting curtains that danced along the crest. Through those veils, a vague figure could be seen. It flickered in and out of sight as the cloud and snow washed around it. Orisian narrowed his eyes. It might have been an outcrop of rock, but no ... it shifted slightly, parted. Up there on the ridge, a tall man was standing with a great hound at his side.

  'It's the Hunt,' Rothe murmured. 'It must be.'

  Yvane began striding with greater urgency through the ankle-deep snow.

  'Keep moving,' she shouted over her shoulder. 'It's not far to the tree line. There's no sense in trying to hide out here.'

  They fell in behind her, following a course diagonally down the slope. Rothe drew his sword. Low cloud came across the hillside, enclosing them in a dampening mist. They were alone again, struggling across the snow field in the midst of a grey sky. It was worse, in a way, to know what was behind them but not be able to see their hunters. Their pace picked up a little. The backward glances were more frequent, more urgent, but told them nothing.

  'Have a care, have a care,' muttered Rothe, as much to himself as to anyone else. The mist deadened his voice.

  'Faster,' Yvane called out, and stretched her stride. The snow hampered them, clinging to their legs as if it did not want them to leave its domain. Orisian wondered how long they could keep this up. He wanted to run, but knew that would only bring exhaustion. Without thinking about it, he pulled his knife from its sheath.

  'They are on us!' Ess'yr cried. She and Varryn spun around in the same moment, springing apart and hefting their spears.

  'The cloud's thinning,' Rothe said, and in that
same moment the beast was there.

  Orisian had only half a second to take in what he was seeing: a great hound, massive and wild as a boar.

  It erupted out of the concealing mists in a flurry of snow. Ess'yr was the closest, and it rushed straight down upon her. She sank a little lower at the hips, her thighs tensing. Varryn made no move to help his sister: he was staring fixedly back up the slope in the direction from which the dog had emerged.

  The hound sprang. Ess'yr swayed to one side and flung it aside with the butt of her spear. The animal drove a great furrow through the snow as it slithered on down the slope.

  'Get back,' Orisian shouted to Anyara.

  Rothe took a great bound forwards, seized Anyara's shoulder and threw her away as the hound rolled to its feet. It was far too agile, too quick, for its size, Orisian thought. Rothe lashed out with his sword. The hound shied away from the blade, gathered itself and leapt for Rothe all in the blink of an eye.

  Varryn shouted something in the language of the Fox. Orisian glanced at him, in time to see the Kyrinin duck his head a fraction to avoid a crossbow bolt that flashed out of the misty vapours and as quickly vanished back into them. Varryn dropped his spear and swung his own bow over his shoulder.

  Rothe was crying out in rage or pain. He was thrashing on the ground, the hound's jaw locked on the wrist of his arm. His sword was gone, flung away in the frenzy of shaking and pulling. Anyara was shouting too as she flailed at the dog with her walking staff. The crack of wood on bone said she found her mark more than once, but the beast ignored the blows as if they were gnat bites to a bull. Orisian threw himself across the hound's back. He felt the immense strength of its neck as it shook its head back and forth, smelled its musty, thick hair. He stabbed it in its ribcage, again and again, until it went limp.

  He looked up in a kind of numb surprise, and saw the Hunt Inkallim coming an instant before even the Kyrinin did. The man seemed to solidify out of the clouds, but did so at full speed, flying light-footed through the snow directly for Ess'yr, brandishing a quarter-staff that was bladed at both ends.

  A warning began to form on Orisian's lips but thought and voice could not hope to keep pace with a clash between Kyrinin and Hunt Inkallim. Even taken unawares, Ess'yr found the time to bring her spear up. Without slowing, the Inkallim veered sideways. The point of the spear went across his flank, caught in his deerskin jerkin and snapped him around. He leapt into a spin and his staff came in a huge arc, too quick for the eye to follow. Ess'yr was faster than any human could have been. Still, it was not enough; the blow took her below the sternum, flung her like a child's doll through the air to thump into the snow a few yards away. She lay still.