The Winter Road

by Adrian Selby

  I’m about to move on to the gate, Talley passing me to get to Helsen, when I catch a movement to my left, a slithering shadow from the back of the same tent away into the grasses. I turn and run at the figure. He hears me, turns, sword and knife in hand, in stance.

  Jeife.

  Some light from the tents burning nearby makes me out clear enough. He stares, wide-eyed.

  “Teyr! How? Khiese said … He said …”

  “He said he had killed me. But I have not died. This red drum in my breast beats and beats without mercy, there is no end to its beating though I am killed twice. Khiese is not the man you think he is.”

  “There was no choice, not for our people. There is still no choice. You’ll die.” He stands up straight. He knows his chances, his options, have vanished. “Enough of you for an unready camp, but did you mean to also take the fort from Khiese with this number?”

  “What does it matter to you? Your rope is severed, a new high clan will be sworn.”

  “Wait, Teyr! You don’t need to—” He lunges at me, thrusts his sword, moving forward, filling the space and hoping to force me back. But I move and bend quickly and unnaturally on this brew, I am almost able to pick my spot as I win the bind, throw his balance off, a neat thrust to his belly. He sighs softly, as though he’s just tasted a fine wine. I didn’t get much in him, he’s wearing chain over leather. Recovers his stance, waits, seeing some advantage as Khiese did in using my brew against me. But he’s no Khiese. My strength, balance and movement, my eye’s knowledge of him, it feels like a story I’ve read before. He might as well tell me what he’s going to do, his intent filling the air around him, as though it’s leading his body. Another exchange, another puncture, his side, another wound like the mouth of a purse. He’s breathing hard, trying to maintain his form, trembling as the poison starts in.

  “Drop your sword and knife, Jeife. There’s no honour for you in this.”

  He does as he’s told, looks very old then, his easy confidence dried out in him, emaciating him.

  Tears fill his eyes and he spits out at me, “You mean to revenge Mosa’s death and kill Khiese because there’s nothing left of you, is there? You lost it all for your greed. Now you stand there with that unnatural eye, like one of the Ildesmur returned, like a War Crow, ‘risen for revenge, bringer of woe.’ But it was just a story to scare duts.” He winces, falls to his knees as he weakens. “I’ve no more fine words for you now, War Crow. At least I’m on my bloodlands. Get it done. I’ll join my brother in his rest, who himself did too little in life.”

  His head comes off clean, his body falls forward. I pick his head up, blood pouring from it. At the gate I hear shouting. Nazz and the others are standing out of bowshot. They’re blowing on the horns that the whiteboys use to terrorise the nokes, letting out their noisies, the lust spent on a field full of dead. Whiteboys line the walls around the main gate to the outer bailey. They’re waiting, still and silent, ten, twenty of them lining up, but the gates stay closed. The smoke from corpses that have fallen into fires is thickened by and stinks of them. A breeze then moves a thick plume and reveals Khiese standing over the gate as it reveals me to him, my movement catching his eye. Bows rise for I am within range. He raises a hand to still his guards, says something to them in his Khiedsen lingo.

  Nazz’s crew, my crew, quieten as I move closer to the main gate. They’re wondering if I’ll be shot until Khiese’s hand goes up.

  I stand twenty feet from the gate, the smell of guts, of fat burning, is in my nose, coats my face, thrills me on this brew.

  “The Seikkerson line is ended, as Othbutter commanded.” I hold up Jeife’s head. “Ildesmur he called me, War Crow, come back to doom the living that took their children.” I throw Jeife’s head high over the wall. “They will see his head for themselves, this Family.”

  Khiese doesn’t watch it as it flies over him and into the settle. “You’ll die by my hand, Teyr. Not some arrow, nor the winter. I do good work with my hands, work few others are capable of.”

  “I’m here, Khiese. Let your men see their great leader fight a woman in single combat.”

  A roar from behind me, Nazz and the others. His men look to him. He gives me a weak and polite smile, the smile a teacher gives a junior who’s said something stupid.

  “I am not on a fightbrew, and I have no need to step into your arena. I’m not so weak I would dance to your goading words.”

  He turns. There must be whiteboys behind the gate, the Seikkerson Family there too of course, wondering at their fate. He looks to them to focus their attention, then turns back to face me and the crew behind me. “I decide how this ends. You are all in the Circle and the Circle is mine. You cannot outrun me for I know its face, every bitter line.”

  “You don’t have its heart, Khiese, you sad fuck. Fear shackles these people to you, it don’t bind them.”

  “Your fine words are wasted on me, Amondsen. I’m the runt of Khiedsen’s litter, remember? You should leave.” He turns and walks along the wall, a handful of guards with him, descending inside the walls without a glance back.

  I walk back to the crew. They’ve gone over to Talley, who’s bent over Helsen. He’s got a stick in his teeth and he’s blowing hard as she tries to pack broadleaf into the vicious wound on his leg, a deep hole and cut. The pike must have been twisted to open it up further. Strips of wool are soaking, slipping in his fingers as he tries to hold them against it, and she’s cussing.

  He sees me, spits out the stick.

  “Poison’s in, Master. I …” He snaps rigid, howls.

  “We need to make ground, Teyr,” whispers Nazz, leaning close to me. “We walked into camp and one of them was saying Gruma’s in Amondell. Where’s Salia and Cherry?”

  “They’re out, heading back to camp.” I kneel next to Helsen. “We just need to bind it, Helsen. I’ve got some betony’ll keep you still.”

  He clutches my arm, shaking his head, he’s wheezing. We have some protection from Circle poisons like henbane, but not against a good amount, not if it gets right in.

  “It hurts, oh magists, it hurts! Finish me, Master. Don’t make me slowing you down the reason we didn’t get to kill him.” He cries out. “You have to move quick, as Nazz says.”

  Every moment going by was putting us back in Khiese’s pocket, now the surprise was gone. I’m not proud to be thinking that, but I’ve been here before with good men who don’t deserve this shit.

  Helsen takes from his neck a leather necklace with a small piece of iron shaped as a droplet. He drops it before he can put it in my hand. He’s got the spasms starting.

  “It brought me luck to this point, might be it brings you some. It was a privilege, Master.” He nods, barely a gesture, but the command is in his eyes, my black eye sees it, him settling with the earth, like they’re one in this moment.

  I do it sudden, drive the sword into his chest, into the heart before he can feel any fear. Nazz steps back, Ruifsen makes a sound, shocked. I can barely hope for such a quick death. Helsen was brave, a rare vanner that knew the weight of the purse.

  “Teyr …” says Nazz.

  “As you said, and as he knew, we have to go now.”

  I run, away from Helsen who’s died for me in this field, skipping over the bodies lying about and onto plain grass. I was always a good runner, a good way to ease the pain as the time comes to pay the colour, as the muscles shrink and the bones get sore. I hear the others and on the breeze, Khiese, shouting.

  Up through the pines, luta and brew revealing the earth, the knotted roots, the pine needles a slick carpet; all can twist and break a runner’s feet, a horse’s hoof. Salia and Cherry are there, horses ready.

  “Helsen didn’t make it. We ride west for the Shield and Amondell. Gruma’s there,” says Nazz. There’s nothing said to that. We’re going to have to pay the colour so every hour matters while we have the advantage of horses. There’s a moment that’s curious as we mount. Salia makes a fuss over Caryd, checking she’s
all right. I can’t see why. Nazz nudges his horse forward to where Salia is standing, helping Caryd onto her horse, trying to get between them. Caryd’s trying to shrug off Salia’s attentions.

  “Salia, we have to go,” he says. I look over at Ru, who shrugs, but it’s clear he’s seen this and wonders too what it’s about.

  The Shield

  The Shield is one of two stretches of woods between Crimore and Amondell and marks the boundary of the Seikkerson and Amondsen bloodlands. We rode a steady trot, hard on the horses for the hours we was riding, stopping at a small river late the following day when the pain got too much for even our bacca and mixes to cope with. Talley was forced to look out for us, forage and see to the horses, while we paid and while Yame was busy with the cuts and bruises we had. Nothing we could have done if whiteboys had come at us right then. I killed a lot of men and women that was found paying the colour after their brews and in their pain and suffering hardly knew they was being killed.

  Following few days, with the chalk on our faces, I’m sorry to say we took kuksas, cheese, even some rough uisge from the two theits we come across. Khiese, coming across them, might think to ask them if we had the manners they wouldn’t expect of his own whiteboys, so we give them no sense of our identities on that count.

  We figured Khiese would have to send men out to the theits around Crimore, get their horses so’s they could follow us. There’d be too few for a proper force to come at us.

  We found a clearing where a couple of old larch had fallen, ferns having the run. Talley risked a fire after Caryd and Salia brought down an elk earlier in the evening, their shrill whistling calls the beginning of their rutting season. Ruifsen it was who made the cuts of top round and loins. He’d hunted much more than most of us, and proved his worth to us with his read of the land, its treasures and traps. With large measures of a heavy wine that Nazz passed about, our first cheer for what we had done to Khiese since we left Crimore, Nazz’s crew set up first watch.

  You might say it was our mistake, mine, that I didn’t give more thought to the things I saw with Nazz that didn’t add up.

  I opened my eyes, and the sun was already high in the sky.

  In the hinterland if you’re opening your eyes to strong daylight you’re lucky to be alive, there’s always too much to do in land that rarely gives you what you need without a struggle, without work, and you need whatever daylight you can get for that.

  The woods are full of life about us. Elks have moved on, but we hear enough birds, quick sharp rustling of what might be stoats or hares. I try to sit up but my belly turns over and I’m sick on the grass, getting onto my knees to better get it up, two soft twigs for legs.

  The horses have gone. I look about and see Nazz at least gone, then Talley, Caryd, Threeboots and Heddirn, it goes without saying.

  “Cunt chose a good wine for that sleeper,” says Drogg, trying to stand but like a drunk he can’t accept he’s unable to.

  “Wake up!” I shout. “And sit down, Drogg, give it a bit. Get an emetic out of your belt, or something to give you the shits.”

  The shout brought them awake. They all stir, roll about and realise they’ve been poisoned too.

  “Least he didn’t kill us,” I says, though it upsets me bad, what he’s done. I can’t believe it though it might seem obvious he was capable given our past.

  “We have to shit this out or bring it up, I don’t mind which. Nazz has fucked off and left us in the way of Khiese but I got no idea why. We have to go hard for Amondell because I know the land better than Khiese. It’ll give us a chance to regroup a bit more safely, figure out the next step. It’s also where Nazz said he was going, and any chance to find him again I’d be happy to take.”

  “I know why he’s gone,” says Salia after she’d put her fingers down her throat and thrown up. She’s led back, propped up on her elbows. “Yame noticed it first, was watching Talley put the fightbrews out for Crimore and saw how she set aside Nazz and his crew’s. She wondered why they were in two lots, why they all had theirs together first, then we had ours. So I embraced Caryd, as we left Crimore, and she smelled different, different to us—her breath, her skin. It wasn’t the same fightbrew. And I know because I tried it once before, six months ago. The reason I was in Hillfast, the reason I’m here, with Yame, is that we work for King Crusica.” Crusica is the king of Eastern Farlsgrad, the great power around the northern Sar and Sardanna Strait.

  “Nazz’s girl Caryd was quite easy to bet against in the singletons at the Hillfast tourneys a few months back. She doesn’t give the appearance of a good fighter, does she? One of King Crusica’s nobles thought his champion was so much better than her he put down state secrets on a side bet, a fightbrew recipe called Gaddy’s Mash.” The side bets was always where the real action was at any tourney, and Hillfast’s was making a name for itself in that regard. I recalled then what the guard said to me when I was dragged off the boat in Hillfast. Salia was the one Farlsgrad had sent to find who had got hold of the recipes.

  “We was on Crumper’s Rot when I was taking a purse in their army,” I says. “I take it that’s Gaddy who’s made it, a second to Drudharch Crumper back then.”

  “He’s drudharch now. His mash resists horse chestnut and datura preps better than the Rot, and gives a clearer song.” By this she meant that the song of the earth, the sense of what is and will happen, must somehow be sharper.

  “They fought well, quick to us even on Talley’s prep, and Threeboots was a piper, quite the storm of steel, and moved as fast as I’ve ever seen her move. It was nothing like at Faldon Ridge. I knew Nazz had the recipe when I found out he owned Caryd, but I couldn’t be sure what Nazz would do with it, whether Othbutter had some part to play, and I had to know—well, the king has to know—because of what it could mean for Hillfast and Farlsgrad. Then Nazz takes this purse to come out here to kill Khiese, so Othbutter’s involved in some way.”

  “That could mean war, if you’re right,” says Ru, mixing something up in a cup for his belly.

  “Farlsgrad and Hillfast haven’t ever been at war, but with Othbutter looking likely to be dropped as the high clan chief by the council of clans, this Khiese’s threat has almost done him. I had to find out why Nazz was making a trip he’s rather too rich to need to risk. It makes me wonder whether Othbutter has a cut of Nazz’s little empire in return for going easy on his gang.”

  “We left Khiese behind. Makes no sense going deeper into the Circle, even after his brother. Where’s he going, if he’s got this recipe? He must have the cyca?” says Agura, by which she meant the key for understanding the recipe, for all recipes are written in a drudha’s code so they can’t be stolen and understood easily.

  “He’d be mad to bring the recipe itself out here, never mind the cyca, given it’s the Circle,” says Yame. “What he does have are flasks of the brew. A drudha with enough of the mix in question stands a chance of working out what the recipe is from working out what’s in it. Might be that there’s a drudha in Forontir or Argir good enough to do it.”

  “What do you think, Teyr?” says Salia.

  She’s guessed at it, wants confirmation, I suppose.

  “It makes good sense. We’ve come east. If he has the recipe and it isn’t about some appeasement of Khiese then he’s looking to get to Stockson, Forontir at least, maybe Argir. Going against Khiese in Crimore would confirm it, for Othbutter rightly don’t see appeasement or a pact with Khiese working, and it would ruin his and Nazz’s arrangement on the docks besides. The gift of a brew like that might bring an army back through the Circle and solve Othbutter’s problems at a cut. Makes sense if you’ve seen them meeting a lot in the last few weeks. It would give Nazz some hold over him as well, strengthen his position on the docks. Clever game he hoped to play, only like me he was thinking that Khiese can’t be as bad as all that. Seems clear, on that reading, why he’s gone now, don’t it.”

  It was plausible to the others given their quiet.

  “Be
st we don’t lie here then,” says Cherry, who seems a bit better than us, strong enough she can get up and move about. “I can help with the rubs and mixes so we can move on. Not wiping your arses, my gredda needed enough of that at the end of his life. I’m done with shitty leggings.”

  She’s got a sure touch, better than Ru’s when it comes to waxing my eye, given how his former drooping’s left him with the tremors. She finds it easy, the small things you say that settles people, while she’s helping Agura and Drogg, who would normally never have let her go near them to help with their belts and leathers. They do their best to move themselves about for her, despite the weakness in their bodies. They’re old enough, I can tell, to have a sense of this being life or death now. They can see nobody’s mocking them for needing help; nobody out here in the wild can be proud and alone at the same time. Makes me smile, seeing Agura thank her, but she’s been on vans most of her life, she knows the rituals, unlike Drogg.

  The horns start the following night, robbing us of all but snatches of sleep, hour after relentless hour they wailed. Our trail’s been picked up. We’re doing our best to run, some struggling more than others, but death follows us. We keep to scrubland, spread out so’s tracks are harder to see and we’re pissing and shitting in any water we find, on dung too if we can find it, to hamper their sniffers. We’re headed for the Shield, straight line to Amondell. Our only chance on foot. Land gets hillier, harder at least to spot us, easier to counter ambush, though we’re not prepared for it, being tired from running and we’d be against mounted soldiers as well.