The Winter Road

by Adrian Selby

  I step back down the slope, beckon them all to join me. We clasp arms and look on each other. There’s tears of course, for we have suffered together since Crimore and we don’t want each other dying, but there’s odds on us the dead wouldn’t take.

  “I’m after Nazz once this is done,” says Salia with a wink.

  Caryd clasps arms with me. She didn’t need to stay.

  “Think I might have signed up for your guild, Captain, had we got a bit longer. You give me something I hadn’t ever understood wanting till now.”

  “You ready, Cherry?” I says.

  “Captain.” Her hair’s foaming out of the rim of the helmet she’s got on, brings a smile to my face, but she’s dealing with her nerves and can’t say much more than that.

  Yame just clasps arms before returning to her horse to retrieve the rest of what she needs for her belts. They’re all too young to be looking at the end of it all. It’s never easy, though you somehow manage to tuck it down until the brew comes on and burns the fear away.

  “Amo.”

  Ru’s hand pretty much circles my forearm, and mine don’t make it about his. I look up at him, steady and warm like a tree in the sun.

  “I still wish you hadn’t come, Ru. Would give me some peace knowing you were out on the farm with Bridie and the children, not dying here with me.”

  “Don’t be stupid, girl. I couldn’t be anywhere else and live with myself. Don’t think this Khiese knows what he’s up against. Just keep the brew stoned; you burned a bit back at Faldon.”

  “Stay close, Ru. Khiese will work whatever he can so’s he can get to me and make a show of it. Both of us I hope is too much for him.”

  We hardly got to work pairing to smear the skin rub and fix the leathers when Caryd whistles.

  “Brews!”

  The Mash has been salted to help with how bad it is. It’s threaded into guira, which I haven’t seen before, and that helps a bit with the swallowing. While it’s getting in us we pair and switch for the luta. I hear the hooves, the rumble building as I unshoulder my bow and step up the rise a bit to push my arrows in the ground. We only got five or so each, the rest going with Caryd and Salia.

  My eye’s been waxed, feels hot in the socket, like a coal put there to warm my head. I see the vapours then, clearer outlines of the Oskoro, who must be bare-skinned, for their natural colour is as the grasses about us, though it’s mixed with bark and moss, even stone. There’s more of them than I could have hoped, but I can’t tell if it’s enough. The rise keeps building as I begin humming to stone it. It’s a cleaner brew for sure.

  Whistles start up all around us, closer than Khiese’s crew, a strange sound. From the ridge I’m on I see two groups of horses coming at us, Khiese staying back a bit, but also moving in. They’re fanning out further left and right, cautious about what might be behind this rise, taking no chances. The whistling gets louder between us and the whiteboys, and then I see arms rise out of the long grasses, spinning what look like lengths of bone, holes in them, and the whistling becomes its own kind of screaming, a calling to the earth and sky, louder and louder as they are spun faster, a blur. Khiese’s horses rear up, though ours can be settled at this distance. Salia and Caryd wait on my command to ride out. Khiese’s whiteboys dismount as their steeds throw them or buck and turn. The horns that they’ve been blowing fall quiet under this strange and haunting cry, which seems to grow with the wind, tones that blend and fade, confusing the ear, like the air is being wound about my head, making me dizzy.

  It stops so suddenly the land seems to hold its breath. We all feel that beat of stillness, though many of the whiteboys’ horses have gone, running free, the letnants shouting for order, settling lines. I sign for Caryd and Salia to ride out, expose their bowmen, give us a read of their range. Me and Ru stay on the ridge, I have to tempt Khiese in, and I’m better with a bow than a sword. Yame and Cherry move forward, low into the grasses.

  There’s a cry then, far off, bows are raised, arrows loosed. Khiese’s group brings its remaining horses under control and they move down the middle while his flanking groups shoot. They’re communicating in whistles, blasts on horns, and the group coming at our left start running at Salia, shooting as they come. Four horse remain on that flank after the Oskoro’s whistling bones, and they ride after her as she turns away, screeching and laughing at them, readying her bow to shoot. Those on the right now inch forward, using the swirling grasses. Caryd returns arrows to those bows she sees raised at her, whiteboys standing out of the grass, aiming, missing her and being dropped in turn. Soon there’s screaming as she gets our first kills, the poison finishing the wounded. She is remarkable. Then others start screaming on our forward left flank with the poisons from our arrows. Salia is leading their horse towards us, goading them on. Figures then seem to form from the air, the grass shifting into the shapes of Oskoro, who wield slings, hurling what I think are stones into the grasses near where the whiteboys must be advancing. They choke and retch, and I can see the dust of each slingshot puff a moment before it clears away. The whiteboys stand straighter to get in the breeze above the grasses, clawing at their throats, on the edge of our range. Yame lets loose an arrow, but I see there’s no need, these whiteboys are choking to death. Khiese shouts, points at these Oskoro that have begun their own assault, and the rest on that flank run or ride straight for them though they are suffering with what I have to think is spores.

  “Shoot, now!” I shout. Cherry and Yame stand and pick their targets as they close on us. The powders from the Oskoro work quick, many of Khiese’s crew dropping before a count of ten. This is fierce drudhanry. Shortly the Oskoro there, eight in all, stand and hurl more of their powders at the incoming whiteboys, but they’re masked, they’ll be holding their breath, and then they are on them. These Oskoro are not fighters or soldiers. Why would they be? But they are out here killing Khiese’s men, and I’m grateful.

  Salia’s now riding at the four horsemen on that flank as they close in on the Oskoro there, spear at her side, a supreme rider. Cherry and Yame are putting arrows where the whiteboys advance beyond the Oskoro, who must have killed near fifteen. The Oskoro on the right, where Caryd rides, I count five or six, retreat as they sling their stones, forcing the whiteboys to slow, Caryd harassing them, killing a man with every other arrow it seems. Still Khiese’s main group moves forward, most on horse, and six break from the group to ride down the Oskoro who have now stood up between us. They manage to throw some of their stones and take the horsemen out, but volleys of arrows, twenty at a time, catch them as they run back towards us. I see then as I ready my own bow for a shot that the volleys have changed direction, are higher.

  “Get down, down!” We drop back on our side of the ridge, a cry nearby, Yame it must be, hit with one or more. She’s calling out to Cherry. I run to the edge of the slope, look over and she’s looking back at me, thigh and belly hit. There’s screaming all over now as the powders work around the field. The Oskoro are getting cut down, whiteboys hacking at their bodies and throwing arms and heads in the air towards us as they advance, wild and lost on their brews, but many more whiteboys are dropping dead, the powder stones spread far and wide and too refined for their masks, the mixes too potent perhaps. Still there’s too many coming for us, scritching and screaming and mad for blood. Now the arrows have stopped, Khiese realising they have to get closer to us to get away from the spores.

  Cherry’s closer to Yame than me, looks back at me and signs her position, her wounds, then runs over to fix her up.

  “No!” It’s Ru, who’s looking over at Caryd, her horse hit by arrows. She leaps from it, drawing her staff from its loop on the saddle as she does. Nazz was right about her: she’s assured and, familiar with the brew, she engages eight or nine of them that side. I nudge Ru to run out, to put some arrows among them, help her out. I cover him from the crest of the slope, use all but one of my own arrows as he moves out low into the grasses. I don’t miss.

  We’re not enou
gh of course. Then one of the letnants, next to Khiese, breaks and gallops to our left, towards Salia, whose shield has taken seven or eight arrows though she’s killed the horsemen there. Salia begins riding back to the slope, not knowing Yame’s dying. A handful of Oskoro remain in the middle, nearer to us. They must be out of their slingshots for they’re whirling the bones again to scare back the horses that advance, breaking Khiese’s line up. Khiese raises a hand quickly and his crew dismount, running at these last Oskoro on foot. I can see him better now, his drudha to his right.

  I shout out to Salia, who sees the letnant riding towards her. She wheels about and rides for her, spear ready. The letnant’s posture is strong, steady. Salia’s spear misses, she twists and bends back, the letnant’s spear glancing off her shield. Salia can’t stay on with the force of the hit, jumps up and back, letting the horse run on, dropping into the grass, ready.

  “Cherry, Salia!” I yell, for she’s out of my range. Cherry stands, sees the letnant wheeling about to charge Salia. Cherry’s quick with her bow, nocks the arrow, aims, looses, sends it ahead of the charging horse, but it’s close, the horse’s head turns, leads it off line. Salia, on a better brew, tracks the line and plunges her spear into the horse’s flank, sending the letnant off into the grass. I’m confident Salia can kill her, but Cherry and I see three other whiteboys emerge from the grasses, so Cherry runs for Salia. I realise a moment later it’s because she’s out of arrows. I run down to Yame. Cherry’s done her belly, not a great job, but she hasn’t had a chance to start on the leg. I go in my belt, look for the bark and the leaf mash ready for binding the leg, but she stops me, hand on mine as I go for the arrow. She squeezes my hand, gestures with her thumb back behind where she lies, where Khiese is. She’s gasping with the pain of it, there’s blood all over her leathers and in the grass about her, the arrow in the thigh has done her, caught her in the main vein. She was dead the moment it hit. I lean forward and kiss her, then stand as she falls still.

  Caryd’s over on the right flank, fifty or so yards off. She has the balance of a master, but with so many on her there’s inevitably a moment’s mistake and I see her run through. There’s dead all around her, it’s just a matter of time for her. I can only see the top of Ru’s helm from the grasses now, but he’s no longer shooting, out of arrows.

  Then it’s over. All at once. Cherry’s killed a few as she made her way to where Salia is, but she’s taken a sword or something, and now she’s working at a wound in her side. Salia and the letnant are circling. I see her shield drop, her arm hanging there but still strapped in. An arrow must have punched through it. One-handed, poison in her, she can’t keep the letnant off her, and she takes two jabs to the chest from her spear. But Salia is calm as stone, she’s the kind who can talk you through the dressing of a wound as you stitch her up, and had. Salia drops her spear as the letnant pauses to watch her die, whips a knife from a sheath on her back and with an instructor’s precision throws it hard into the letnant’s face. She falls before Salia, who has time enough to turn to me, looking into my eyes as she reaches for the pouches to staunch a fatal wound, her training taking over her hands as she nods me a goodbye. She drops to the ground. Khiese and his drudha walk towards Cherry. She looks up, then back at me, and I start running towards her. I feel tremors in the earth, the stone beneath, waves running through it. Thunder?

  “Fight me, Khiese!” I shout, looking to save Cherry. Salia never took back her sword; she took another, and I have it now. I won’t reach Cherry though, we both know it, so she readies herself, her own sword held out, hand on her side, holding some bark in place, unable to gum it in. Khiese has a two-hander, his drudha retrieves a bag, powders. Taking no chances. He opens the strings as Khiese closes on Cherry. Just as he flings the powders he jerks, an arrow through his temple. I can smell Ru behind me, who must have taken my last arrow that I had left on the slope, but the line he had meant the drudha must have blocked sight of Khiese. Now Khiese has let Cherry, in her fear, thrust at him. He steps to the side and in, a savage slash across her belly opens her guts, then a thrust into her throat, driving it in as he turns to see his drudha fall, to see where me and Ru are.

  The roar grows, the song of the earth crackling and booming, like a mountain being dragged by Sillindar himself. Something’s wrong with the world, and I’ve been too close to this fight to notice it building.

  “Teyr, buffalo! Fucking buffalo! Far as the eye can see and coming right at us!”

  Khiese sheathes his sword to refresh its poison, drawing it again.

  Three of us left, it seems. There’s some crying out, some dying where Caryd was. I look over and don’t see her. She’s gone down as well.

  Ru comes to stand next to me. “It’s death to stay here; we have to get to the trees!”

  “All those horns, Teyr,” says Khiese, closing the distance between us, thirty yards, twenty. “The horns of those tree animals, those Oskoro, they’ve called the buffalo on us all.”

  “Yet they only killed your clan.”

  “Some allies, if they have brought a stampede on you.”

  “Suppose we’ll not find out, though I expect your own horns had as much to do with it. You find your brother? My gift?”

  He doesn’t flinch, might have been talking of the weather. “Yes. She thought she was brave, Thruun’s keep. You know, she stood before the gates of Amondell alone as we rode in, Gruma’s head in her hands. She told me you’d be heading here, that you would avenge Thruun, Mosa.”

  “You killed her, killed Drun?”

  “No. She expected it of course. But your Family did not wrong me, did not kill my brother. You did. I kill in order to assert order in these lands, to bring the clans to heel, no more. I make a spectacle of it because it promotes order. If I killed all of those Amondsens who would farm that land and give tithe for my soldiers …? I found them cowering in the tunnel hidden at the back of your longhouse. The children were scared of the dark in there, and they also feared for their lives. But they did not wrong me, as the Seikkersons did not wrong me, nor the Auksens. They all live because they obeyed.”

  I have no clever words for this. I’m happy that Drun and Skershe live.

  Ru’s hand goes to my shoulder, squeezes it. “Don’t think we’re going to make the trees, Amo.” He looks over at Khiese: “Least you won’t either, you cunt.” Khiese looks west, the cloud of dust rising with the buffalo. He’s thinking, like he knows there might be a way out of this. “Shall we get on with it, then?” he says. “None here would be satisfied with just waiting it out, would we?”

  Ru and I split. Khiese goes straight for Ru, as I thought he would, confident he’ll kill us both. Ru’s form is good, a clash of swords and I move in, forcing Khiese back to engage me as Ru steps to his side again. He attacks Khiese again, a fast and savage bind, Ru slightly stiff. Khiese softens, rolls the bind and stabs Ru in the guts, just under his right ribs. I close on him, Khiese brings his sword up, stepping away from Ru. Ru is working his belt, closing up the wound while I cover him.

  “I fancy you see well with that strange eye. You do not prefer the other in your posture.” Khiese thrusts, doesn’t know how much this eye sees, the script of his lips, his shape, doesn’t know either the supremacy of this brew over that which filled me in Crimore. I smash his sword away, quick steps forward, watching him move, his positioning. He’s moving back towards Ru.

  “Get back, Ru, he’s mine.”

  “It’s no tourney, Teyr, we give him no advantage.” He has to shout to be heard over the thunder of the charging buffalo, tremors through our legs. He forces Khiese back, pushing him, looking hard for an opening. Khiese blocks twice, comes back at him as I move in. Their swords come together, Khiese’s wrist rolls his blade off Ru and he leaps in, sword thrust down deep into Ru’s shoulder before swinging back at me to meet my own blade. He steps away from Ru again, who’s bent over, drops his sword to better get at his belt, still thinking, using the time I’ve given him.

  Khie
se glances at the buffalo then, I read his face, the brows knitting a moment as he realises perhaps that he won’t escape the vast and wide wall of the herd as it bears down on us. He takes a deep breath, sets himself and gives me his full attention. In another life he would have been a feared but successful king.

  “I will fulfil my promise, Teyr, though it may be my last.”

  He tries to bring me on, tease an overreach, but I can feel the pressure of the air itself on my skin, feel the fractional breath of its movement as the steel of his blade comes sharp at me. I see it with the eye as much as I see the anticipation written in his own, a glance down, an intention to slap my blade forming in his muscle, to twist his shoulder and thrust at my leg. I step back, pivot, meet his blade as he thrusts, leaning, putting his body into it. His blade goes past, just enough. If I was on a lesser brew he would have had a chance to correct himself, raise the edge of his sword, but I’m already driving my blade under his arms, through his ribs, the jolt stilling him, each inch of steel passing into his body bringing me closer to him. The tip punches through the leather on his back, lifts the chainmail up an inch before I draw the sword back, swing and take his right leg off at the knee.

  He looks at me, his eyes wide with shock, for I have moved as thought itself moves. He is becoming aware of his death as I bring my face close to his. He drops his sword, instinctively reaches for my shoulder to hold himself up without his leg, trembling and gritting his teeth with hate.

  “Mosa’s with his ma and his da. I put him in the ground myself so he could find them. And I will join them, Khiese, for these are my bloodlands. Their gate will be closed to you.”

  He falls dead at my feet.

  I turn to see Ru on his knees. “War Crow,” he shouts with a grin on his face. I look behind him at the buffalo, a roiling black wall of them in their tens of thousands beyond sight to left and right. I’m about to drop to my knees to hold him, but he holds up a hand.