Godless World 2 - Bloodheir

by Brian Ruckley

  In the dawn, while he still slept, she had lain beside him and watched him. His face was at peace, by then. His eyes were moving beneath their lids, his breathing was heavy and slow. There was nothing left of the repulsion she had once felt at his inhuman features. It was a distant memory, the legacy of a different person. Instead, she saw a rigorous beauty in the way his bones shaped his skin and in the graceful white-nailed fingers lying upon the sheet.

  He had passed in an instant from seemingly deep sleep to wakefulness. His grey eyes flicked open and met her own with a clear, alert gaze. A thrill of fear ran through her in that instant, as if she was a child caught observing some forbidden scene. He said nothing. He barely acknowledged her, in fact, beyond that first, piercing stare. He rose, doused his head and face with cold water and dressed.

  Wain had sat naked on the bed and watched him moving about the room. She did not need him to speak to her. He was there, already, behind her eyes. Only when he was about to leave had he looked at her. He regarded her dispassionately. He crossed to her and turned her so that he could see the marks he had left on her back.

  "Someone told me once that I had a dog's heart," he said. For some reason that made him laugh, bitter and pained. "But he underestimated me. I've a bit of the wolf in me, at least, from the look of you. I have been broken, and remade. He would not recognise me now."

  "You had bad dreams," she said.

  He took his hand away from her shoulder, but remained standing behind her. She did not dare to turn around.

  "What is in me is never still," Aeglyss said. "I always dream. Of more things than you can imagine. I dreamed K'rina." There was a note of longing in his voice. Wain could hear his breathing. She wanted to look at him now, but was afraid of what she might see. He was too potent, too unbounded, for the eye to bear.

  "She loved me, I think. Not as you do, my beloved. Not as you. But in her way." He sighed. "We'll see. I'll have her with me, and we'll see. My hounds are on her trail."

  He kissed the nape of Wain's neck. Ice ran through her body, caressed her.

  "Wait for me here," he whispered. "I need to talk with the White Owls. They must be made to understand what happened. If not . . . these savages, they live in awe of the Anain. I can't have them running back into Anlane telling tales of . . . I must . . . they must trust me. They must submit."

  Wain felt his fingernail slipping down her back, tracing her spine. It was a cold, transfixing sensation.

  "I must set my hand firmly upon them. There can be no trust between me and them without that. There cannot be trust . . . except you. You I can trust, Wain, for you are mine. We are one, now. It was the only way I could be certain. Do you understand?"

  "Yes," she had breathed, and then, soundlessly, he was gone.

  She watched him now, and felt herself to be perched atop a towering cliff, gazing down from some unimaginable height upon that slight figure. Slight, yet wreathed about with terrible glory that none save she could see; radiant with the promise of power, utter and complete.

  CHAPTER 3

  Anain

  When the One Race was no more, and the Gods resolved to make five to fill the void its destruction had left, the Gatekeeper first made the Huanin. Next The God Who Laughed made the Kyrinin, and the Light, who sang, made the Saolin. Then the fell Wildling, The Spear, made the Whreinin.

  The maker of the last of the five was to be The Goddess. More than any save The God Who Laughed, she loved the green places of the world. More than any save The Raven she saw what lay beneath the world they had made, and saw that not everything that mattered could be touched or held in the hand. Thus she made the Anain, who have no substance save what they borrow from tree and leaf, who dwell in all places and none. And when he saw what she had done The God Who Laughed was pleased and said, "This is a good thing, for you have put life into that which is most beautiful in our creation."

  But the Gatekeeper said, "This is a fell thing you have done. These you have made are too potent and too deep. They will not love these others we have made, for all life save their own will seem to them a small and brief thing. They will know too little of death and of failings, and too much of things that are hidden from the others. This is not a gentle thought you have breathed into the mind of the world."

  The Goddess was not angry at these words. "These my children will be gentle in their way and in their own manner. But none can be always gentle. Your Huanin, Gatekeeper, will be sometimes fierce. The Kyrinin will be sometimes cold, the Saolin sometimes foolish. The Wildling's wolfenkind will be sometimes most cruel. And my Anain, they will sometimes be more terrible and wondrous than all the others. For every world must have terrors and wonders in it, just as much as gentleness."

  from First Tales, transcribed by Quenquane the Simple

  I

  Kolglas was an even more distressing sight than Taim Narran had expected. All through the long march from Kolkyre he had been steeling himself to withstand whatever might await him here, but those preparations made little difference. The town was in turmoil. Hundreds upon hundreds of people were crammed into its streets, its houses and barns. They had come from every corner of the Glas valley; from tiny villages and from lonely cottages in Anlane and the Car Criagar. Some were only passing through, their flight from the Black Road not yet done, and even those who meant to remain here in Kolglas carried fear on their faces. The joy with which many greeted the arrival of Taim and his six hundred men had a strained undercurrent of desperation, of hesitant hope. Ragged, cheering townsfolk clustered along the roadside as Taim led his little army in.

  The worst sight was that of Castle Kolglas itself. It stood like a massive, sullen outcast on its tiny island. The causeway running out to it from the harbour was covered by the choppy sea, and Taim was glad of that. From this distance there was little outward sign of the fate that had befallen the castle, but he had no great desire to set foot within those abandoned walls. He knew the keep had been almost gutted and its roof ruined by fire after the Inkallim had finished their slaughter; he knew that the stables, and the barracks where the castle's meagre garrison had slept, were wrecked. And he knew that if he entered the castle's courtyard he would only be beset by images of the horrors of Winterbirth. He had heard more than enough reports of that savage night to satisfy any curiosity, and to feed his guilt at being so far away when his Blood had needed him.

  The market square was crowded with wagons, makeshift shelters and rootless families, making it impossible to find a path through. Taim sent most of his men back to make camp on the south edge of the town, and went in search of someone who could tell him how things stood.

  The man he found was Elach Mell, an old warrior who had been quietly seeing out the twilight of his life in the garrison of Kolglas for at least a dozen years. The tone of the few reports he had sent to Taim in the past week or two had been steadfast, resolute. Only now, in the cramped quarters the old man kept next to the square, could Taim see the true extent of Elach's decline. He had never known the man well, and it had been years since they had last met, but his exhaustion was clear. His shoulders were slack, his eyes sluggish. Only the embers of whatever determination had sustained him thus far now remained, insufficient to oppose the persistent weight of all that had happened.

  "There's not enough food," Elach said. His voice was flat. "The barns are almost empty. All but a few of the cattle and goats have been slaughtered. We're trying to move people on to Stryne, or to Hommen. Some go willingly, others are reluctant."

  Taim nodded slowly. "How many men do you have fit for battle?" he asked.

  "Two hundred, if you mean those with any training. A week ago, it would have been three, but . . . well, there're coughs and agues in the town now that winter's taken hold. I've lost fifteen or twenty in skirmishing up the road to Glasbridge. They've thrown some kind of wall across the road, you know, between here and there. Can't get anyone beyond it. And I had to send three dozen to Drinan."

  "Drinan? Why?"


  "Woodwights. So the folk there claim, anyway. They're convinced there's White Owls on the move." Elach shrugged. "I don't know what to believe these days. There's been some barns burned, some cattle stolen; that much is certain."

  Taim stared at the back of his clasped hands in thought. He had hoped for more than two hundred. His Blood had always thought itself strong. Had they been so deluded in that? Where had all that imagined strength gone, to leave them with fewer than a thousand warriors to take the field? He knew where it had gone, of course: it had been whittled away by a few too many years of peace, gnawed at by the Heart Fever, caged and slaughtered at Tanwrye, cut down at Grive, at Anduran and Glasbridge. And in pursuit of Gryvan's victory over Igryn oc Dargannan-Haig.

  "We could muster hundreds more from amongst the townsfolk," Elach murmured. He sounded almost reluctant, as if he said such things only because it was expected of him. Taim hid a momentary frown of annoyance behind a hand raised to brush his brow. He had hoped for more in many ways.

  "Only those who know which end of a sword to hold," he said. "Fishermen and farmers who've never felt a spear in their hand'll be worse than useless against the Black Road. We'd do well to get whatever hunters and woodsmen there are here organised, though. Get them out into Anlane, to watch our flanks and hunt for woodwights. Send fifty of them to Drinan; get your three dozen men back from there."

  Elach shook his head: despondent, rather than disagreeing. "We've lost a lot of them already. The woodfolk, I mean. They've been going out of their own accord, looking for survivors, or for someone to kill. We found the bodies of five yesterday, just inside the forest. I don't know whether or not there're woodwights out there, like folk say, but I do know there's Hunt Inkallim. They've been seen."

  "The Hunt?" Taim repeated, unable to keep the surprise from his voice. "I thought . . . we were told it was only Horin-Gyre, and a few of the Battle. You're sure the Hunt's here?"

  Elach grimaced. "My scouts have seen their dogs, and heard them. I've stopped sending men up the road. The few that don't die come running back here like frightened hens. But the Hunt's the least of our worries, Taim. Maybe it was only Horin-Gyre when all this started - I don't know about that - but there's a lot more than that come across the Stone Vale now."

  The old warrior rose to his feet and stretched his back.

  "We're still getting a few stragglers who manage to sneak out through the forest. Some even paddle down the coast holding on to driftwood, but most of those ones drown before they get here, I think. Anyway, they all say there's thousands more Black Roaders coming down from the north. Every Blood, not just Horin; armies at Targlas and Grive, as well as Anduran and Glasbridge. One girl said she'd seen hundreds - hundreds, mind you - of Battle Inkallim marching down past Anduran."

  Taim watched in silence as Elach went to the window and stared up at the sky. In the space of a few sentences, the older man had undercut the foundations of all Taim's half-formed plans. Had it only been the exhausted, diminished forces of the Horin-Gyre Blood he faced, he - and Orisian - might have been able to turn them back without any aid from Aewult nan Haig and his host. Now . . . now a multitude of dangers presented themselves to his imagination. Aewult had close to ten thousand men, but he thought he was marching against a far weaker foe. If the Battle itself was indeed fielding hundreds of its ravens, what lay ahead would be far bloodier, far more savage, than any of them had anticipated.

  "It's true, is it, that Orisian's our Thane now?" Elach asked, still standing by the window. "You saw him in Kolkyre?"

  "It's true. He went by a different road, but he will be here within a few days."

  "What times, to have a child as Thane."

  "He's no child," Taim growled. "And he's Thane by right, and by duty."

  Elach grunted and returned to his chair. "So he is. I pity him as much as the rest of us. His family gone, our lands lost. We'll be lucky if there's more than splinters left of us once the High Thane and the Black Road have hammered away at each other for a while."

  Taim slapped the table. "Enough, Elach." He rose and took his scabbarded sword up from where he had leaned it against the wall. "You have a wife, if I remember rightly. Where is she?"

  "Stryne. I sent her to Stryne, after Glasbridge fell."

  Taim buckled his belt and settled his sword on his hip. "Go and join her. You've done what you can here. Clear whatever you want to take with you out of this place by nightfall. I'll sleep here tonight."

  Elach's expression lurched from alarm to relief and back again. He started to protest, without conviction. Taim pulled the door open.

  "Don't argue, Elach. The burden you've shouldered here is mine to bear now. Go. Take care of your wife."

  Taim Narran slept little that night, and not at all the one that followed. Instead, he laboured. He laboured to put back together what he could of his Blood, and to build for it some defences against whatever lay ahead.

  In an inn by the waterfront, he found an Oathman - the only one, it appeared, to have escaped the chaos beyond Kolglas. The man, a little drunk and extremely shocked, was told he was now the Master Oathman of the Lannis Blood. The Naming of infants, the taking of the Bloodoath, the burning and mourning of the dead, all these things must continue. Taim Narran made it clear to the newly elevated Master Oathman that it was his responsibility to ensure they did so.

  Men were sent to retrieve everything of value that survived within Castle Kolglas, and Taim had it stored under guard in the town's gaol. He gathered all the merchants to be found in the town together and instructed them in what their Blood required of them in such times. Their consequent generosity swelled the nascent treasury in the gaol a little further. Taim ordered that the size of the town Guard be doubled, and tasked them with ensuring that there was no hoarding of food. He emptied part of the garrison's barracks - sending the warriors to camp outside the town - and had all the sick brought there to be cared for. Fifty volunteers were armed with spears and knives from the garrison's stores and dispatched to Drinan. They carried orders summoning the warriors Elach Mell had sent there back to Kolglas, and commanding them to bring with them all the cattle and grain that Drinan could spare.

  Taim himself took thirty of his men along the coast towards Glasbridge. They got less than halfway before they found a pack of Tarbain tribesmen looting and burning an abandoned mill. A few of the northerners escaped; most of them did not. Soon afterwards figures could be seen moving along the forest's edge. Ahead, far up the road, riders were visible. Taim turned his men around and returned to Kolglas. That night he set more than a hundred sentries along the town's northern boundary, and went himself to every one of them in the rain-filled darkness to ensure that none doubted the importance of wakefulness.

  He did all this while secretly dreading what would happen if the Black Road came pouring down the coast; knowing that if they did come, his hundreds of men were unlikely to be enough. There would be nothing he could do save stand and die with them, and hope to give the people of Kolglas enough time to escape. He did it all while longing with every fibre of his being to return to his wife and his daughter and to take them in his arms and await with them the birth of his grandchild.

  And then, at dusk on the third day, when the Black Road still had not come, a moment Taim had both hoped for and feared arrived. He went with apprehension clenched in his chest and two dozen of his veteran warriors at his side to the southern edge of Kolglas and stood looking down the coast towards the distant sunset. His exertions, and the paucity of sleep, had left his head heavy, his neck stiff, his legs aching. He felt, standing in that gloaming, watching the waves sighing up along the shore, as old as he had ever done. He did not have to wait long. Out of the gathering gloom, coming like a dark, roiling river beneath clouds turned orange and red by the sinking sun, Aewult nan Haig's army arrived.

  Abeh oc Haig brought an unexpected and unwelcome guest with her to the Palace of Red Stone. She was wife to the Thane of Thanes and thus beyond the reach of any disappro
val, but Tara Jerain was in any case too well schooled in Vaymouth's manners to betray her irritation. One could not prosper in the ants' nest of aspiration and competition that the city had become without learning to speak only with a smile in Abeh's presence. For Abeh, the world and her life within it were glittering things, filled with glory, fine food and pleasures of every kind. Her husband and sons were flawless, loved by all; their wealth was limitless and resented by no one; every gift that was pressed upon her was born of affection, sired by admiration. Anything contrary to her vision was hurtful, a personal insult. And one did not insult Abeh oc Haig.

  Tara Jerain's smile never faltered as she greeted Abeh on the steps outside the palace. The inevitable crowd of maids and attendants bunched behind the High Thane's wife. The line of carriages and horses that had brought them filled the street, amongst them a strange box-like contraption from which the source of Tara's annoyance was being roughly removed: Igryn oc Dargannan-Haig. The former Thane of the Dargannan-Haig Blood was dressed in a fine lace bodice and skirt. His hair and beard, both grown long during his imprisonment, had little silken bows in them. His hands were tied behind his back with a cord of soft velvet, his empty eye sockets - emptied on Gryvan oc Haig's orders when Igryn was captured - were hidden by a band of flowery cloth wrapped around his head.

  The sight was as surprising and distasteful as anything Tara Jerain had seen in a long time. Yet her face as she embraced Abeh oc Haig was a study in delight, her voice a smooth melody. Her husband the Shadowhand would have been proud of her.

  "You are most welcome, my lady," Tara said. "I am quite delighted, quite delighted."

  "Well, it has been too long since I came to one of your gatherings," beamed Abeh.

  Her pleasure in her own cleverness was bubbling up, too vigorous to be restrained. She glanced over her shoulder, her chin quivering with anticipation.