Bloodheir tgw-2

by Brian Ruckley

  At length, Mar’athoin halted and the three of them gathered on the huge rotting trunk of a wind-thrown tree. He pointed ahead and then at his ear. Cynyn and Sithvyr frowned in concentration, cocked their heads at an angle. After a few heartbeats they both nodded. They could hear the na’kyrim ’s laboured breathing, a few dozen paces away. She was no longer moving.

  A part of Mar’athoin — the larger part — hoped that this might be the na’kyrim ’s end. He was glad to have walked in the Hymyr Ot’tryn, and glad for the story he would be able to tell when they returned to their homes, but each step further into the forest’s dank heart felt like trespass. He felt unwelcome here. It was not a giving land such as the marshes where the Heron dwelled; it was unknowable, belonging only to itself.

  Sithvyr was signing to him. She thought they had come far enough, seen enough. She thought, as Mar’athoin did himself, that they were unwanted here. Cynyn would be disappointed, but the time had come to turn back.

  A faint crack turned all their heads. It was a soft-edged sound, as if some rotten bough had been gently snapped. In its wake there came a vanishingly quiet rustling: the sound of leaf-heavy twigs in a breeze. Yet there was no breeze.

  Mar’athoin rose. He began to move towards the source of the sounds. He could no longer hear the na’kyrim ’s breathing. Cynyn and Sithvyr looked unsure but they followed him, hanging back. In this land of clouds he could see no more than a few paces ahead. The mist hung thick amongst the trees.

  He smelled broken earth; a sharp, green hint of new leaves; a hard edge of water sprung from underground. It all spoke to him of a rising, a breaking of buds, a stirring of insects among the loam. None of it belonged here in the winter.

  With each step his heart beat faster and a new prickling wave of unease ran through his skin. He risked a glance back over his shoulder. Cynyn and Sithvyr had stopped. He saw in their faces what he felt in himself: hesitation, uncertainty, the germ of fear. One more step, he told himself, and then again, and another. But his throat was tightening, his chest aching as if the very mist was squeezing him. The scents assailing his nose grew stronger and more potent until he could almost see their colours. And was there a sound? A wet shifting, a slithering of mud?

  One more step and there was something at the limit of his sight: a slow roll in the undergrowth as if some great slumbering beast had turned over in its sleep. Mar’athoin paused, feeling the cold sweat across his forehead. His mind was reeling, spinning. At the base of a great tree there was a thickening of creepers and twisted bushes, a swelling in the moss-covered earth. He narrowed his eyes. The mists thinned. He saw a forearm, wrapped in a thorny bramble stem that tightened its twisting grip as he watched. He saw a face held between two sodden pillows of moss that pressed slowly, slowly together. He saw the grey eyes of the na’kyrim drift towards him, and the minute movements of her lips.

  “Help me,” Mar’athoin heard K’rina whisper. And even as he heard the words, he saw a coil of dead, brittle creeper unfurl itself and flex bright leaves.

  He fled. He ran without care or caution, back the way they had come. Only one thought was clear and hard in his mind: their journey was done, for here in the Hymyr Ot’tryn they had come to the very extremity of the world a Kyrinin could know. Nothing remained now but to fly back to the safety of the vo’an.

  Cynyn and Sithvyr sped after him, silent. They must taste the horrors on the air as well as he could, but they had not seen what he had.

  “Anain,” Mar’athoin shouted to them as he ran. “The Anain have taken her.”

  “I’ve lost her,” Eshenna murmured.

  “What do you mean?” Orisian asked, frowning at the na’kyrim.

  “She’s… gone. I can’t feel her mind any more.”

  Orisian shot a questioning glance at Yvane, who shrugged.

  “I can’t tell. The Shared’s become too loud for me to think straight. I barely know where I am, let alone anyone else.”

  “You can’t lose her now,” Orisian snapped at Eshenna in exasperation. “We’ve come too far. You said we were close; within reach.”

  They were sitting in the open, on the northern slope of a ridge of high, grassy ground that hunched up above the surrounding forests. Chains of low hills stretched off into the distance. The Karkyre Peaks, distant and cloudy, thronged the western horizon. Torcaill and his warriors were tending to their horses, and to their own wounds. Twice in this long afternoon they had been beset by the arrows of invisible enemies. Three men lay dead somewhere back along the trail they had followed through the forest and out onto this bare ridge. All of it in answer to Eshenna’s insistence that K’rina was so close that they need press on only a little further.

  The na’kyrim had an anguished expression on her face now. Her eyelids were fluttering, her head rocking back. Orisian was suddenly afraid that she was going to faint away. He seized her arm, holding her upright.

  “Eshenna! What’s happening?”

  “The Anain,” she breathed. “There’s terrible power, all around. I can’t see anything else. Gods, we’re too small to be in the midst of all this.”

  Orisian shook her, overcome by a surge of fear and frustration.

  “It’s too late! We’re here! Tell me where the woman is, Eshenna.”

  She recovered herself for a moment, met his gaze steadily, then grimaced and closed her eyes. She gestured towards the summit of the ridge behind them.

  “Over there. She was close, beyond the rise, but then… I don’t know. She disappeared.”

  There was a chorus of shouts. Orisian glanced round. Men were hauling themselves onto their horses. Others were pointing back down the slope towards the treeline.

  “It’s a false alarm,” Yvane muttered.

  For a moment Orisian did not know what she meant, then he saw the two lean figures jogging out from amongst the trees. He recognised them at once: Ess’yr and Varryn.

  “It’s all right,” he shouted at Torcaill.

  The warrior had already reached the same conclusion himself. He calmed his men, stood expectantly watching the two Kyrinin coming up the slope towards them. Ess’yr and Varryn passed him by, ignoring every curious gaze as they made straight for Orisian. He stood up to meet them. Ess’yr had a bow again, he saw at once. Someone — some White Owl — must have died to give her that.

  “The enemy fill the forest like deer,” Varryn said curtly. “We could not kill so many in five days of hunting.”

  “Where?” Orisian asked. He could not take his eyes off Ess’yr. She was breathing deeply, a faint flush of exertion colouring her cheeks. She looked alive, full of renewed energy. There was dried blood on the arm of her jacket, but it looked to be someone else’s, not hers.

  “Behind you,” Varryn said, “and beside you. All around. They are searching.”

  “For K’rina. As we do.”

  “Perhaps for her. For us, now. And for you.”

  Torcaill and Rothe came striding up, urgent questions evident in their expressions.

  “They will be on you here very soon,” Varryn continued.

  “How many?” Torcaill demanded.

  Varryn did not look round at the warrior, but down at the spear he held lightly in his hand.

  “As many bows as you have swords,” he said. “Perhaps more.”

  “At least in the open we can see them coming,” Rothe muttered.

  Orisian knelt again at Eshenna’s side. The na’kyrim was more composed now, though she still seemed distressed.

  “How close is she?” he asked her gently. “Can we reach her? We have no more time.”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps. She was very near, before I lost my sense of her. If we could find her trail, or some sign of her… perhaps. Your Fox are good trackers, aren’t they?”

  Orisian looked up at Rothe, and then at Torcaill.

  “We have to try. There’s still a chance to do what we came here to do.”

  He could see the doubt in Torcaill’s face. It went unvoiced, but it
was there. There was no instinct of obedience, Orisian thought. No immediate recognition of the authority of a Thane. It would have been better to have gone to Kolglas, to face what had to be faced there. But that was an old choice, taken and fixed. There could be no turning aside from this road now, only a race to its ending.

  “Get the men mounted,” he said dully. “We have to move on quickly.”

  They crested the ridge, and beheld a strange sight. Beneath them, stretching away into a haze of mist, stood a sea of dark treetops. Here, surrounded by hills, was a forest where no wind stirred. Strands of fog hung over and amongst the branches, like impaled fragments of soft, translucent cloth.

  “The Veiled Woods,” Yvane murmured in Orisian’s ear. She rode with him once more now, to free Rothe for any fighting that might come. “That’s not what I would have hoped for.”

  “If that’s where she is…” Orisian let the sentence trail away. Nothing he could say would make the forest below appear any less threatening, or decrease the apprehension that filled him at the sight of it.

  “Best to tread lightly, when the Anain are stirring,” Yvane said. “If we can.”

  Rothe drew his horse to a halt beside them.

  “Not seen anywhere less inviting in a long time,” the shieldman observed gruffly.

  “That, we can agree on,” muttered Yvane.

  Torcaill’s warriors were strung out along the ridge top, almost as if they were drawing up in formation to charge down upon the army of mist-armoured trees. Torcaill himself was twisted in his saddle, looking not at the Veiled Woods but back down the slope they had climbed. Ess’yr and Varryn, standing close by, were facing that way too. They were speaking softly but urgently in their own language.

  With Yvane pressed up behind him, Orisian could not easily turn or see over his shoulder. He had to wrestle his horse around in a tight half-circle. He saw at once what the others had. Shapes were moving at the edge of the forest: indistinct flickers of movement in that boundary between the light of open ground and the gloom of the woods. Insubstantial things, at this distance, but there could be no doubt what they were.

  Torcaill came riding down the line of horsemen.

  “Do you mean to press on, sire? Into those woods?”

  Orisian nodded.

  “Very well,” Torcaill said without hesitation. “Get your Kyrinin to lead the way. They’re our best hope of finding the woman. I’ll leave a dozen men here, to delay pursuit. They’ll have the slope to favour their charge, if the woodwights come out from amongst those trees.”

  They went steadily down towards the Veiled Woods. Ess’yr and Varryn ran on ahead. No one spoke. The mists settled about them, and the trees closed over their heads.

  VII

  The Veiled Woods quickly defeated the horses. Before they had gone more than a few dozen paces in from the edge, a thick mass of looping bramble stems and contorted undergrowth blocked their path. There was no track to follow here, not even a suggestion of one. Ess’yr and her brother darted easily through the thicket and disappeared. The horses baulked. The ground was uneven, rippled by rocks, roots and dead wood half-hidden by wet grass. The trees, which had seemed tall and stately from the distance of the ridge crest, were in fact crowded, twisted and misshapen, thrusting their branches out at odd, low angles to obstruct any man on horseback.

  “Get down,” Orisian told Yvane. Once she had done so, he dismounted too, and stood by his horse’s head, patting the bridge of its nose.

  “We have to go on foot,” he said to Rothe. “It’ll take far too long if we try to ride.”

  “We can lead the horses.”

  Orisian shook his head. “Too slow.”

  Torcaill rode over to them, his horse picking its way carefully, setting down each hoof as if it did not trust the ground.

  “No way through for horses,” Rothe told him.

  “No.”

  “We’ll lose touch with Ess’yr if we don’t keep up,” Orisian said, feeling the first intimation of desperation.

  There was a sudden sound: a muffled, rising rumble like far-off thunder. All of them looked back the way they had come, but the trees and low fogs blocked any view.

  “They’re charging,” Torcaill said, tense. “So soon. I thought it’d take longer. Or that the wights would turn aside and look for a way round.”

  “The White Owls are in a hurry,” Orisian said. “Just like us. This isn’t just some raid they’re on. It’s more important to them — to Aeglyss — than that. They won’t turn aside, or hide away.”

  Somewhere at the rear of the weary bunch of riders, someone shouted out, “I see them! Wights coming!”

  “Go, if you must,” Torcaill snapped down at Orisian, already turning his horse. “I’ll send some men with you on foot, and come after, if we can curb the pursuit here. I’ll not just abandon our horses to the wights. We’ll need them yet.”

  Orisian saw no point in arguing.

  “Stay with Torcaill,” he said to Yvane, and then, “You too, Eshenna. Rothe?”

  With that, he started to run, fearful of being unable to find any sign of Ess’yr or Varryn beyond the thicket. He barged through the tangled undergrowth, feeling it rip at his clothes and snag his hair, but not caring. Rothe came blundering after him.

  “Slow down, Orisian,” the shieldman shouted at him. “Wait for the others.”

  Orisian waded on, fighting the resistant vegetation like the current of some fierce river that he was trying to cross. He burst free of its tenacious grip at last, and stumbled on over the scattered debris of a giant tree that had long ago fallen and been eaten into fragments. He could hear Rothe’s heavy tread close behind him. Further back, someone — one of Torcaill’s warriors — was cursing the brambles.

  Orisian ran around a stagnant pond of murky water, sprang over a rotted, split stump. Still he could not see Ess’yr or Varryn, or any sign of their passing.

  “Ess’yr,” he shouted, and regretted it instantly. The cry sounded far louder, in the limp, damp air that lay beneath the trees, than he had expected. He imagined it ringing out through the forest, turning the head of every living thing. He told himself that any White Owls would not need his voice to find him, but it was small comfort.

  Then he saw Ess’yr up ahead, standing beside a moss-wrapped tree, and relief washed through him.

  “Come,” she said as he reached her. “Quickly. There is scent. Perhaps it is her.”

  And with that she was already spinning on her heel and running on, deeper into the Veiled Woods. Rothe drew level with Orisian and laid a hand on his shoulder.

  “I think I heard fighting, perhaps. Back behind us. Not sure.”

  “They’ve got her trail,” Orisian said — hoping, believing, that it was true.

  He set off after Ess’yr.

  There was a dark scar across the forest floor, running up to the base of an ancient tree, where the turf and moss and leaf litter had split — or been torn — apart and peeled back to expose the earth. Orisian crouched down next to it and dug his fingers into the loose soil. It had a warm, wet smell.

  “It seems fresh,” he said. There were still insects crawling across the loam, still worms writhing in it.

  Varryn went on a few paces and bent to examine the grass.

  “Not long,” Ess’yr said. “We are very close behind her.”

  “She was here? Is this to do with her?” Orisian asked, wiping his hand on some moss.

  Ess’yr was watching her brother. “With her. There is the smell of na’kyrim here. Or with the Anain. We walk in their sight. They are awake, in this place. Can you not feel it?”

  Orisian frowned. He felt the age, the eeriness of the Veiled Woods, but surely that was just to do with the old, twisted trees, the moist air. He looked again, with more careful eyes, and saw the moss — rich and luminously green — that clothed rocks and fallen timber, saw the leaves, some brown, some yellow, some even a blotched green, that still clung to twigs. He breathed in deeply, and felt t
he softness of the air in his chest. It all felt like a place out of its season.

  Rothe was at his side, breathing heavily.

  “You must stay closer to me,” the shieldman grumbled. “The White Owls’ll be fast enough to flank us, get ahead of us even, however hard Torcaill tries. This is not the kind of place I’d choose to go up against Kyrinin. Where are those men who’re supposed to be with us?”

  He glared around, as if to blame or accuse the forest itself as the origin of all their woes. There was, behind them, perhaps the sound of someone crashing through the forest. It might be one or more of Torcaill’s warriors. Orisian was not sure how long they had been running for, how far behind his supposed escort might have fallen. It seemed improbable that any White Owl would make so much noise, but he was nevertheless disinclined to shout out to whoever it was.

  “I don’t think Kyrinin are the only things we’ve got to worry about here,” he murmured.

  Rothe looked at him, troubled. “What does that mean?”

  Orisian shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.” And it didn’t. There was nothing that Rothe, or Torcaill, or any of them, could do about Anain. He straightened himself and turned round. “Come on — we have to keep up with Ess’yr and Varryn.”

  The two Fox were trotting away, heads down like hunting dogs following a scent. Rothe stared after them.

  “We need those men,” he said. “If we get too strung out in here, we’ll never find each other again. None of us can match those two’s pace.” He nodded after the disappearing Kyrinin.

  Orisian sighed, looking first after Ess’yr and then back the way they had come, searching for any sign that Torcaill and the others were approaching. Somewhere, distantly in that direction, he thought he heard shouting. A few small birds were hopping, chattering, through the canopy above.

  “What we came for is close,” he said. “Ess’yr and Varryn are certain of it. If the White Owls reach the woman before we do, everything has been for nothing. Come on.”