Bloodheir (51 page)

Kanin stared at the Inkallim. Cannek had folded his arms, his hands embracing the knives that lay sheathed along his wrists. The man looked self-satisfied, smug almost; yet his gaze was serious.

“I am of the Hunt, Thane. It is in my nature, my upbringing, to see things that might not be there, to fear betrayals, conspiracies. Dissent. Tell me, am I seeing things that are not there?”

“Where is Shraeve going?” Kanin asked quietly.

Cannek flicked a brief glance after the receding Battle Inkallim.

“She is tasked with keeping a watch on the halfbreed. And – forgive me – on your sister. You are not alone in wishing to see Wain safe, you know. Our masters are curious; less certain than they were, just a few short days ago, of whether Aeglyss . . . matters or not. Perhaps Shraeve has her own interests, too.

She has always, I think, been plagued by an enthusiasm for the most extreme twists and turns in fate’s path.”

Kanin eased his horse onwards. Cannek’s two hounds turned their heads to watch him move away, all feral, predatory attention.

“I am not in the mood for discussion,” Kanin muttered.

“As you wish,” he heard Cannek say behind him, lightly, as if it was a matter of little consequence.

“Should you find the mood upon you, no doubt you will be able to find me.”

Kanin moved through the day in dreamlike detachment. Around him, the army roused itself into fragmentary motion. It moved, company by company, away from Glasbridge, tearing up the fields and tracks with its feet and wheels and hoofs as it went. Kanin allowed it to carry him with it. He rode amongst his warriors like flotsam on the current of war. He noted only in the most distant of ways the hamlets, cottages and mills they passed as they made their way down the coast, as shapes signifying nothing. He barely heard the pulsing sighs of waves on the rocky shore or the cries of gulls overhead.

He was moving away from Wain, and though it felt like disaster he did not know what else he could do.

It was fate that bore his sister off down whatever path she was following: ineluctable, remorseless. It was fate bearing her away, just as it had cheated him of the chance to put an end to the Lannis line for ever.

He knew it was fruitless to rage against the insensate force of the Black Road, but he could know that without feeling it, instinctively, in his heart. He found it impossible to accept that fate would enact itself through a halfbreed, through one who was himself surely faithless, empty of any urge save his own inhuman survival. Aeglyss. That was the rock around which the tides of Kanin’s thoughts surged. He could not free himself of the image of the
na’kyrim
, the memory of his vile voice.

They reached Kolglas in darkness. There were still bodies in the streets, still ruins smouldering. The town was in chaos. Houses were being emptied of goods, and cattle slaughtered in the main square. Kanin hated it, as on this day he hated everything. There was battle to be had, somewhere further on and further south, and what he wanted now was battle: the clarity of slaughter. He ignored the muted protests of his warriors, and marched them on into the night.

The boy was screaming, each lash eliciting a howl more piercing than the last. And each howl, Theor noticed, caused a faint twitch at the corner of Ragnor oc Gyre’s mouth. The two men – First of the Lore Inkall and High Thane of the Gyre Bloods – sat opposite each other across the dining table and did not speak. The sound of the punishment going on outside made conversation difficult. Ragnor sought to conceal his evident discomfort by concentrating upon the food, but it was a thin pretence.

The Lore Inkall did not indulge in excess, whether of food or drink or anything else, no matter how elevated the guest. Only salted fish, nut bread and apples had been served, on simple wooden platters, with a watery ale to wash it down. It was, no doubt, not much more to the High Thane’s taste than the beating outside was, but he would have known what to expect. He had chosen to invite himself to the Lore’s Sanctuary, after all. Had he wanted luxury, he could have asked Theor to attend upon him in his own halls in the city down below.

The sounds of distress subsided to a more muted sobbing, and then fell away altogether. Theor pushed his half-emptied plate to one side and leaned back in his chair.

“The boy was a thief and a hoarder of food. And worse, perhaps.”

“Worse?” the High Thane asked through a mouthful of ale-soaked bread.

“A would-be stealer of secrets, we think. He had coins hidden in his chambers that came, most likely, from Wyn-Gyre coffers.”

Ragnor smiled. He had recovered much of his composure, now that his ears were not being so harshly assaulted. “You accuse Orinn oc Wyn-Gyre of seeking to spy upon the Lore Inkall, First?”

Theor gave a consciously nonchalant shrug. “The Thane might have known nothing of it. The boy may be innocent of anything more than thievery. It does not matter. He has been punished. He will either learn from it, or not.”

“I imagine it matters to him,” Ragnor muttered.

“If he has the mettle required of a Lore Inkallim, he will come to understand that fate is blind to his innocence or otherwise, as it is to his suffering. He was whipped. It is in the past now, and of no consequence. He will resume his candidacy, and we will see in due course what fate has in store for him.

Should he fail the creed again, he will die.”

The High Thane belched. Theor grimaced in distaste and looked away. Ragnor had never pretended to graces he had not been born with. Just as he did not, in recent years at least, pretend affection for the Inkallim that he did not feel.

Ragnor drained his tankard of ale, and peered into the empty vessel as if it contained some noisome dregs.

“Your ale matches your food in quality,” the High Thane observed.

“Perhaps you should have visited Nyve,” Theor suggested. “He would have served you
narqan
there. It might have been more to your taste.”

Ragnor set his tankard down and shrugged. “
Narqan
’s drinkable. I don’t find it as . . . repellent as some. But I don’t think it’s the Battle I need to be talking to, is it, First?”

“I do not know.”

“Of course you do.” Ragnor let a little of his irritation show: a momentary tightening of his brow, a curl of his lip. He is angry, then, Theor thought. He had suspected as much, but until now the High Thane had concealed it well, by his standards.

“I want to show you something,” Ragnor said. He pushed his chair back and stood, brushing crumbs from his chest. “Come with me, would you?”

Theor frowned. “Where? I thought we were to talk here.”

“Just to your gates.”

“I am an old man, High Thane. I am not given to taking strolls in the snow.”

“Don’t be difficult, First,” sighed Ragnor. “The High Thane of the Gyre Bloods invites you to walk with him a little way, so that he might show you something of interest. You can humour him, can’t you? Or is even that beyond the Lore Inkall these days?”

Theor complied. He followed Ragnor out. Snow was falling on the Lore’s Sanctuary, as it had been now for more than two days. Big, buoyant flakes drifted down in thick flocks. The pine trees amongst which the buildings clustered were heavily burdened with snow; now and again, some branch would spill its white cargo in a soft, tumbling collapse. The paths along which First and High Thane walked had been cleared by candidates, otherwise they would have been almost impassable. This, for Theor, was one of two times of year when the Sanctuary was at its most restful and peaceful. The snow made it a silent, still place. As did, in other ways, the hot, windless days of midsummer, when warm air pooled beneath the pines and all was languid and lethargic.

The two men tramped along the stone path, between dirty banks of snow piled up on either side. The High Thane’s Shield, and Theor’s attendants, came behind them, but not so close as to hear what passed between them. The wooden gates in the encircling wall of the Sanctuary stood open. Ragnor planted himself in the centre of the gateway, facing out. The land fell away beyond him, sweeping down in a long, pine-clad slope to the valley floor and the great sprawl of Kan Dredar. The High Thane’s city was all but obscured by the teeming snowflakes.

“You cannot see as well as I hoped,” Ragnor grunted.

“I can hardly see a thing.” Theor made no effort to disguise his ill humour at being brought out here.

“You can see the one thing that matters, I think. Look. No, there: the road south.”

“A somewhat darker area of the blizzard, perhaps.”

“Close to four thousand of my warriors marching south. That’s what you see, as well you know.”

“I knew they were gathered. I was not aware they had started their march. It hardly seems the weather for it.”

“It’s not.” The High Thane’s patience was thinning out. “It’s not even close to the weather for it. Half a thousand of them might be dead of cold or exhaustion or hunger, or lost, by the time they reach Anduran.

But I have little choice in the matter, do I?”

Theor looked sideways at the High Thane and shrugged. He turned and walked back into the Sanctuary.

A candidate – a young girl he vaguely recognised but could not have named – had appeared from somewhere with a birch broom. She shuffled along backwards in front of him, sweeping the freshly fallen snow from the path.

“Look where you’re going, child. You’ll only fall over if you do it like that.”

He could hear Ragnor stamping after him.

“I could hardly keep my warriors sitting around Kan Dredar idly sharpening their swords,” the Thane of Thanes growled. “Not while half my people march off into the south of their own accord. Did you know one of my iron workings has closed, because there’s not enough workers left?”

“I did not know that, no,” Theor said.

The First led the High Thane back into the little courtyard around which the offices of the Lore were arrayed. Cord shackles still hung from the whipping post in its centre. The snow around it was flecked with red, like dye spilled on linen.

“Nyve has left me little choice but to send my army south. No choice at all, I’d say. Not once the Battle marched.”

“I do not interfere in the doings of the Battle, High Thane. I am not in a position to question his actions.

No one is, unless you can find one of his own captains willing to challenge him for his rank. The Lore’s territory is . . .”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Don’t insult me.”

Theor ignored the High Thane’s anger. Over to one side of the courtyard, beneath a wooden awning, steam was drifting out from a serving hatch in the wall. A couple of young Lore Inkallim were standing there, their hands wrapped around hot cups.

“Look.” Theor pointed. “They’ve got some milk heating there. It’s years since I had hot honeyed milk.

Shall we?”

Ragnor made an indeterminate sound – half-groan, half-growl, not remotely enthusiastic – but followed Theor, crunching across the snow. The two Inkallim shuffled away at a flick of Theor’s hand. A serving woman ladled the thick white liquid into cups and handed them to the First and the High Thane, then sank back into the musty darkness within and disappeared.

Theor watched the fat snowflakes bobbing down as he drank. He really did like honeyed milk. The reality did not quite match the remembered delight of it, but it was good enough. A slab of snow slipped from the roof and rushed down into the courtyard, making a soft thump as it landed. Ragnor oc Gyre was not drinking.

“The Haig Bloods can field twice as many warriors as we can,” he said quietly. “More.”

“Warriors, yes.” Theor nodded. “I’m sure that’s true. But will their commonfolk take the field? Can they match our thousands, with their hot hearts, their faith burning in them, that rush to serve the creed in battle?”

Ragnor sniffed at his steaming cup, and took a hesitant sip of its contents. He grimaced and emptied it out onto the snow at their feet.

“They’re soft. We all know that. But they’re too strong, Theor. You underestimate Gryvan oc Haig. He may be soft and slow, but only like a bear, fresh out of its winter sleep. If you prod him hard enough, he’ll have your arm off. What was the Hunt thinking, to kill a Thane? Gryvan may have been no admirer of Lheanor’s, but he’ll not sit by while we merrily cut down his liegemen like that. If you – if Nyve, and Avenn, and all these thousands of commonfolk you’re so pleased with – force us into unrestrained war with the Haig Bloods, we will end up with his foot on our throats, sooner or later.”

“You do not know that.”

“No, of course I don’t
know
it. But I
think
it. I apply a little sense, a little thought, to the world as I see it, and I find it to be a reasonable expectation.”

“The future is not a matter of reason.” Theor smiled, wearily. He, and his fellow Firsts, had known that Ragnor’s commitment to the rigours of the creed was not all it might be. They had known, ever since Vana oc Horin-Gyre intercepted his messenger, that the High Thane had long ago lapsed into the mistaken view that some kind of accommodation was possible with the Haig Bloods. Now he heard Ragnor condemning himself out of his own mouth.

“What seems reasonable is of no consequence,” the First continued. “You know that. Fate can overturn, disregard, discard reason as it sees fit. The course of the Black Road is not set by reason, or by the judgement of men, or by what we in our narrow way call sense or thought. It is set by the tales inscribed in the Last God’s book. It is set by what he reads there.”

The High Thane, his lips pursed, regarded his fine leather boots. He was, Theor knew, not stupid enough to attempt to debate the elements of the faith. Ragnor had never been stupid. And when he had been young he had been full of energy, hunger. That he had become something else as he grew older was a source of regret rather than resentment or anger. It was as it must be. Fate had decreed that for this little time, the Gyre Blood and the Inkallim would follow paths that diverged a fraction. It did not matter. One day – this year, next, a thousand years from now – everyone, everywhere would be walking in one path, that of the Black Road.