"What?" snapped Ochan without looking up. He disliked interruption.
"Urik's here," the cousin reported. "He wants to see you."
"What does that mudhead want?"
"He won't tell us. Says he needs to talk to you. Says there'll not be another chance if you won't talk to him now."
With a snarl of displeasure Ochan let a copper brooch fall from his hands.
"I pay that man so I never have to see him, not so that he can visit me in my house. It looks bad to have a Wardcaptain of the Guard showing up on my doorstep. Attracts attention."
"Well, he was hooded when he came. And he did come to the kitchen door, not--"
"Enough, enough," Ochan grunted. "Get him in here."
The man who entered was short and broad-shouldered, a stocky little bull. He wore a voluminous rain-cape that concealed any hint of his standing as a member of Kolkyre's Guard. Narrow, dark eyes darted from side to side as he edged into Ochan's presence.
"Look at that, look at that," said Ochan to his son. "Our very own Wardcaptain come to test our hospitality."
Ammen smiled, and then tried to fill the gaze he turned on Urik with suitable contempt. He knew this man was useful - important, even - to his father, but knew as well that he merited nothing in the way of respect.
"Don't puff yourself up too much, Ochan," Urik growled. "I've come here to warn you, not amuse you."
"Warn me? Warn me?" Ammen felt a shiver of anticipation at the tone in his father's voice. He knew it well. It presaged anger, danger, violence. When he was younger, Ammen had soon learned its perilous implications. Urik evidently did not recognise it, or did not care.
"Yes, warn you," he snapped. "And I needn't have come, so don't think you can--"
Ochan was up and out of his seat in a single smooth movement, lashing a long arm across the table to seize the collar of Urik's cape. He pulled the Guardsman's face close to his own.
"I think I can do as I like in my own house, don't you, Urik?"
Urik hesitated for only a moment before nodding. Ochan released him and sank back into his chair. He had knocked some of his piled trinkets to the ground, and flicked a finger at them.
"Pick 'em up, boy," he said to Ammen, who obeyed at once, going down beneath the table on his hands and knees.
"What is it you think you're warning me about, then?" he heard his father asking.
"That your luck's run out, that's what. You've been named for taking. The Guard'll be looking for you tomorrow. It'll be me, as like as not."
"You?" roared Ochan. He sprang to his feet once more. His chair tumbled backwards, one of the legs rapping Ammen's hip as it went. "You? Is it that I'm not paying you enough, Urik? Is that it? You've got yourself a hunger for more of my hard-won coin. That's what this is about, is it?"
Ammen stuck his head up above the level of the table, not wanting to miss such excitement. Urik had shrunk back towards the door, holding up both his hands as if he could fend off Ochan's anger.
"No, no," the Wardcaptain insisted. "It's nothing to do with that. I don't want a thing more from you, Ochan. Not now, not ever. You don't understand. This isn't us, it's not the Guard. The word's come down from higher places, from the Tower of Thrones itself. You're to be taken and there's nothing I can do to stop it. Nothing."
"Then what use are you to me?" hissed Ochan as he edged around the table. "I'll have back every coin I've passed into your stinking, fat little hands all these years."
"But I'm here, I'm here, aren't I? I'm here to give you the chance to disappear."
"Oh, yes, you'd like that, wouldn't you? If they take me, your name'll be the first to spill from these lips, Urik. You'll join me in whatever cell they've got in mind for me, or under the headtaker's axe."
"Ochan, please . . ." Ammen grinned to hear such a note of pleading in the voice of this man who held high office in the city's Guard. "Please don't think such things. I've taken my life in my hands just coming here to warn you. If I could turn them aside from your trail, don't you think I'd do it? Haven't I done it often enough before? No, this is beyond me, far beyond me. Your only chance is to take yourself off somewhere you'll not be found."
Ochan the Cook rushed forward and drove the Wardcaptain back against the wall. He pinned the small man's shoulders to the stone.
"It's the Shadowhand," Urik cried. "They say it's his command that you be taken. Sweet Gods, what could I do in the face of that? Nothing! Nothing!"
Ammen rose quietly to his feet. His father was silent and still, staring into Urik's fearful face. Ammen had heard of the Shadowhand, of course: the Tal Dyreen who whispered in the High Thane's ear.
Ochan released his grip on Urik's shoulders and stepped back, deep in thought. The Wardcaptain shook himself and resettled his cape about him.
"You must find a hiding place, Ochan. Take yourself away from here. You've family in Ive, haven't you? Or better yet, you could take to the Vare: no one would find you there."
"You want me to hide away amongst masterless men like some common cutpurse?" Ochan growled. "Don't insult me. You must be wrong, anyway. Why would the Shadowhand care about me?"
"How would I know?" snapped Urik in exasperation. "I'm only telling you what I've been told. The order came through the High Thane's Steward, but I heard he used the Shadowhand's name to nail it in place. That's all I know, and if you've any sense it'll be enough. Disappear, for a while at least. Maybe the clouds will clear once all this trouble with the Black Road is done and the Shadowhand is back in Vaymouth."
"Get out," muttered Ochan, turning his back on the Wardcaptain. Urik did not hesitate to obey.
Ochan righted his chair and slumped back onto it, his eyes fixed on the knotted surface of the table. He ignored his son, and the heap of baubles that had so recently been the subject of such close scrutiny. Ammen drifted towards the door on soft feet.
"Time to visit your cousins in Skeil Anchor, perhaps," Ochan said quietly. "Better there than anywhere Urik might think of. But the Shadowhand can't truly be after my blood, can he? I can't have trodden on feet big enough to set him after me."
He beckoned Ammen closer. He draped a strong, long arm around the boy's shoulders.
"A miserable place, Skeil Anchor; wet and windy. But we'd not be looked for there. Not for a while, anyway. You'll come with me, boy."
Ammen grinned.
"But you tell everyone we're going to Ive," warned Ochan, jabbing a wet finger at him. "Your mother, your sisters, anyone who asks. You understand?"
Ammen nodded eagerly.
"The Shadowhand?" Ochan muttered. "Can't be right. I'll have that Urik's guts if he's lying about this. But then . . . there was . . . what was his name? Can't remember. The one I got Urik to pick up. He was from Vaymouth, wasn't he?" He looked up abruptly, his stare fixing on the wall in front of him. His arm fell away from Ochan's shoulder. "Gods, he couldn't have been Torquentine's man, could he? It couldn't be that fat slug who's . . ." He lapsed into a pensive silence.
"Are we going now?" Ammen asked cautiously.
"Tomorrow, early. There's one or two men I'll need to talk to before we go. No telling how long we might be gone. But we'll not stay here tonight. I know the watchmen on Polochain's warehouse by the quay. You head down there after dark. Tell them I sent you. I'll find you there, once I've done what needs doing."
Ammen Sharp packed a travelling bag, and while he did so a smile broke unbidden across his face again and again. Tomorrow he and his father would be on the road together. Ammen was pleased and proud: his sisters would never be invited to share in this part of Ochan's life. When his mother asked what was happening, Ammen told her they were going to Ive, and thought nothing of the lie.
He put his precious knife on his belt; crammed his wooden whistle into the pack, and his steel and flint, waterskin, stubby candles and the little crossbow he used to shoot seagulls from the rooftops.
It would be at least a full day's journey to Skeil Anchor, more likely two now that the nights w
ere stretching. If he was lucky, there might be bad weather to delay them, force them to hole up in a wayside inn; give him more time to be alone with his father, his sole companion in adventure.
V
Glasbridge was a carcass of a town, its heart torn out by the flood waters of the Glas. The river had shrunk back into its old channel many days ago but there were still slicks of filthy water, knee-deep mud and piles of debris all through the once-busy streets. Most of the houses closest to the river had been cast down by the torrent; only a few that had been built of stone survived and even they were gutted and crumbling. The waves along the seafront lapped heavily, burdened by the flotsam that had been spewed out into the sea by the flood. And by bodies. Even now, the sea was still returning a few corpses each day to the city. They bobbed like bloated sacks along the harbour, pale and putrid.
Most of what the waters had not ruined, fire had claimed. Everywhere the black shells of buildings and their smoke-stained walls told a tale of destruction. The Black Road conquerors of Glasbridge had been too few in number to control the inferno once they had set it loose, and had been disinclined to make the effort. The town could be rebuilt if fate and fortune allowed them the opportunity. For now, all that mattered was that the remnants of the Lannis Blood's warriors could not gather here, and the other Haig Bloods could not use the harbour to bring spear-forested ships ashore.
Few people - the old, the very young, the sick and infirm - could be seen out on the ravaged streets, scrabbling amidst the rubble in search of food, clothing or lost relatives. They shared their search with the dogs and seagulls and crows that fought over every scrap of food. Many bodies were still hidden beneath the wreckage. Packs of dogs dug them out; they and the carrion birds and rats consumed them.
It was snowing as Kanin oc Horin-Gyre rode into Glasbridge. Big, fat flakes drifted like the seed-heads of countless winter flowers. They were blanketing the whole Glas valley, concealing its scars. Without any wind to drive them the flakes bobbed down in a lazy dance.
Kanin's horse trod carefully along the city street, stepping over the shattered remains of a trader's barrow. Like every one of the forty warriors who rode behind him, the Horin-Gyre Thane was hunched down against the weather. He wore a thick woollen cloak, looted from Koldihrve. The snow had piled up on his shoulders. Only his hands, protected by thick gauntlets, emerged from beneath the cloak to clutch the reins. The band of warriors came into Glasbridge silently. This had been the home of their Horin forebears before the Black Road's exile, yet they showed no jubilation at its recapture after so long. Kanin's mood defined that of those who followed him, and his had been grim for many days now.
The riders came to the place where a fine stone bridge had, until the town's ruin, vaulted across the broad channel of the Glas. Now only the stubs of the bridge remained, jutting out from either bank. The water flowing between those banks was turbid and dark. The river was still carrying vast amounts of soil that it had stripped from the fields upstream of Glasbridge. Workers had already thrown a makeshift crossing over it, laying rows of planks across a series of small, flat barges.
Half a dozen spearmen appeared from out of the snow. They challenged the riders. Kanin shrugged back the hood of his cloak, scattering snowflakes, and scowled at them.
"Do you not know your own Thane?" he growled.
The spearmen bowed their heads, begged forgiveness.
"Where is my sister?" Kanin asked.
Reunion with Wain lifted Kanin's spirits for a time at least. He embraced her, held her shoulders with his great gloved hands. Around them, in the yard of a wheelwright's abandoned workshop, his weary band dismounted and stood by their horses. The thick snow was crusting the animals' manes.
"I'd not thought to see you for a time yet," Wain said to her brother.
"We rode hard," he replied, examining her features with a keen eye. "I looked for you at Sirian's Dyke. I did not think you would be camped in Glasbridge already."
Wain glanced away. "The Dyke was broken. That eased our path."
Kanin already knew the tale of the breaking of Sirian's Dyke, and the flood that had swept the road to Glasbridge clean of Lannis warriors and cracked open the town's defences; it had been on the lips of everyone they had met since they had descended out of the Car Criagar. He did not need to hear Wain say it to know that she resented the glory Shraeve and her Inkallim had won for themselves by destroying that great dam. Horin-Gyre and the Battle Inkall would never be the easiest of allies, and in the case of Wain and Shraeve mistrust was sharpened to active dislike.
"Let's get out of this," Kanin said, gesturing towards the snow-filled sky. "It's been snowing or raining on me from the moment I left Koldihrve. I've had enough of it."
"What happened, then?" Wain asked once they had settled in front of the fire in the absent wheelwright's house. "I know it cannot have been all that you hoped, or you'd have told me already."
A young girl - orphaned or abandoned in the chaos of Glasbridge's fall and now pressed into service by Wain - brought them bread and bowls of mutton stew. There were ugly burns on the backs of her hands, a legacy of the conflagration that had come after the flood. Kanin tore the bread into chunks and dipped them in the unappetising stew.
"We cornered the Lannis children in Koldihrve. The boy and the girl were both there. I had . . ." He stretched a hand out towards Wain, closing his fist on air. "I had him within my reach, as close as you are now. But they escaped us. A Tal Dyreen trading ship carried them away."
"You've got yourself a trophy, I see," Wain said with a nod at Kanin's brow.
The Thane put a hand to the long, half-healed cut there.
"A woodwight broke her bow on my head," he muttered. "I'd've had the Lannis-Haig brat otherwise. I was so close, Wain. So close." He shook his head.
"It's done," his sister said. "There's no point in regretting fate's path."
Kanin made a vague effort at a smile. Wain's resilience, her steadfast adherence to the creed, had always been a staff he could lean on. He knew she was right, and that he should mimic her calmness in the face of misfortune, but it had never come as easily to him. He had promised his father that the Lannis-Haig line would be extinguished. If fate would not permit him to fulfil that promise, he could not help but regret the fact.
"What of the White Owls?" Wain asked. "Cannek claims his Hunt Inkallim have seen bands of them coming back out of the Car Criagar these last few nights, crossing the valley."
Kanin shrugged. "I stayed clear of the wights as much as I could. They fought the Fox at Koldihrve. Won, I think, but I didn't linger. How do things stand here?"
"At our high tide. We've reached the outermost limit of what is possible. I've less than a thousand swords left."
Kanin rubbed his eyes. It had been far too long since he had slept properly. Even now, beside a vigorous fire, he could still feel the cold and damp of the Dihrve valley and the high Car Criagar in his limbs; in his heart, almost.
"No word from Tanwrye?"
"It is held against us still."
"And Ragnor oc Gyre has not seen fit to march to our aid?"
"There has been no reply to our messages."
"We're spent, then." Kanin set aside his bowl and stared at the dancing flames. "As you say, it's the high tide of our good fortune."
"Shraeve has set the townsfolk to building a ditch and dyke across the road from Kolglas."
Kanin grunted. "She thinks we can hold the road against all the armies of Kilkry-Haig? With a thousand swords?"
"Who knows what she thinks? She tells me nothing any more. It hardly matters. Fate has given us this much; no more or less." Wain's eyes, as she regarded her brother, were clear, placid. "It would not break my heart to come to the end of my Road here, like this. The Book of Lives has been as kind to us as we could have hoped, has it not? And we have followed the course it laid out for us willingly. Nothing more could be asked of us."
Kanin had wanted more. He had wanted their victories to b
e only the first, opening the way for all the armies of the other Bloods; he had wanted the Lannis line extinguished, in the name of his father. He had wanted to be able to die without regrets. Was that desire truly such a failing?
Wain put more wood on the fire: the spokes of a cartwheel that would never be made.
"I am minded to wait here," she said quietly. "Wait for our enemies to come and face us. I do not think we are fated, you and I, to limp back to Hakkan and die in our beds. If I'm right in that, I will die content."
Kanin stared at the orange heart of the fire. He had no great longing to see Hakkan again. It would be a poor kind of ending to struggle back across the Vale of Stones, defeated. More life would be no great boon after that.
"Yes," he murmured. "Content."
He wanted it to be true, but his heart remained uneasy.
The next morning was overcast. The snow had stopped in the night, and soon after dawn a thaw of sorts had begun. Kanin and Wain went out on the road south along the coast, at the head of thirty riders. Puddles lay all along the track. The sea lapped against the rocks and stony strands that lined the shore. Streams ran gurgling through culverts under the road, hastened by melt water.
They found Shraeve a little way outside Glasbridge. She and two dozen of her Inkallim were watching while enslaved townsfolk laboured. A ditch had been cut from the top of a shingle beach, across the road and on for two hundred or more paces inland to a rocky, wooded spur.
Running his eyes over the crowds of sullen labourers, and the low bund they were piling up with spoil from the ditch, Kanin recognised that Shraeve had chosen a good place for her works. Inland, low wooded hills and hummocks - outliers of the great mass of Anlane, further to the south - would hamper any marching army and provide ample opportunities for ambush. Anyone seeking to enter the Glas valley would have no choice but to attempt that rough ground or fight their way over Shraeve's barrier.
"It's as good a place as any to make a stand," Igris, leader of Kanin's Shield, muttered.
"It would be, if we had the strength to hold it," Kanin said, and nudged his horse on.
Shraeve herself was standing atop the rampart of sodden earth. She had her back to them as Kanin and his company drew near, her two sheathed swords crossed over her spine. He noticed that Wain drifted away, allowing her horse to slow and veer down onto the shore. Another sign, he assumed, that her patience with the ravens of the Battle was exhausted.
Godless World 2 - Bloodheir Page 7