Winterbirth (38 page)

'I didn't know you liked your comforts so much,' said Orisian with a smile.

'It's nothing but sense, to wish to be elsewhere than under the stars when winter's come. I've had my full share of rocks for pillows and trees for a roof. The years chip away at a man's patience for such things.

Still, I shouldn't be hankering after comforts, meagre or otherwise. It's not feasting and sleeping we're headed for.'

'No,' murmured Orisian. One way or another, it could only be war they were travelling towards; something he felt unready for, something he was not sure he would be able to meet in the way he should.

Yet a part of him felt that only war could make sense of the horrors of Winterbirth. Orisian was feeling something he never had before: a desire for blood to wash away blood. The thought felt like a tapeworm lodged in the gut of his mind. He could almost see Inurian shaking his gentle head in disapproval.

Rothe sensed his distracted gloom, and patted him upon the shoulder. It was a soft touch, from those calloused, blunt hands.

'We'll come safe through this, Orisian. You'll see. The Blood is strong. And I'll not leave your side, whatever comes.'

'I'll be safer than anyone in the valley, then.'

'Of course. I've killed an Inkallim. Not even Taim Narran could claim that.'

Having Rothe with him was a source of strength to Orisian. In one way alone did the precious shieldman's presence make for a less easy journey, and that was in the tension between him and Varryn.

Rothe's frustration - fury, almost — at having to follow where the Kyrinin led was never far from the surface. It showed in the rigidity of his jaw and the way he would sometimes tug distractedly at his beard while he stared ahead.

It was clear that Varryn was not inclined to make the experience any easier. He made no concessions to the humans' lesser agility or surefootedness in the routes he took, and offered no explanations for anything he did. Even to Orisian, whose instinct, however hesitant, was to trust these two Kyrinin, there appeared to be a cold arrogance in Varryn. And his tattoos, the
kin'thyn
that swirled over his face like the dance of blue fireflies, did nothing to soften the impression. Though he felt a pang of disloyalty at the thought, Orisian suspected that even Rothe might not be a match for the Kyrinin, on this ground at least.

Perhaps that was part of what lay between the two men; perhaps such warriors instinctively weighed each other's worth, played out some confrontation in their minds to see who would emerge the victor.

Varryn's arrogance might be that of the one who had triumphed, in both his own imagination and Rothe's.

Several times, when he lost his footing upon some slick patch of moss or broke a twig with his tread,

Orisian heard a muttered
'Ulyin,'
from Varryn. Once, Rothe caught the word as well.

'What do you think
ulyin
means, anyway?' he asked Orisian darkly.

'I don't know,' Orisian lied. 'Probably "be careful".'

As they worked their way along the flank of the mountains it was sometimes hard to believe that they were still within the lands claimed by Croesan's uncle. Once or twice they did come across a path that was too crude and obvious to be the work of Kyrinin. Varryn would not let them follow such routes.

Sometimes, too, there were clearings where they saw signs of grazing by cattle, or could make out the scars left by some woodsman's or hunter's camp. None of these marks his people had left upon the forest struck Orisian as anything other than transient. He saw nothing that would not be healed.

He thought of the face of the Anain that watched over In'hynyr's
vo'an.
Ess'yr had said that the Anain were here, even if they did not show themselves. Orisian found himself glancing at flickering shadows, and at the movement of branches stirred by the wind. He started at the clattering eruption of pigeons out of the trees. The sharp barking of foxes in the dusk took on a shivery quality in his ear.

His unease was reinforced by the small rituals Ess'yr and Varryn followed. They never made a fire until darkness had fallen, and then only a small one that they ringed with a makeshift low screen of branches to muffle the light. When the time came, as her brother was decanting the embers of the previous night's fire from the birch bark container he carried and sustained them in, Ess'yr would find a flat stone. She set it at the new fire's side and placed a few scraps of food on it. In an almost inaudible voice, she murmured a few words. After she was done, Varryn would bow his head over the food and whisper the same incantation. In the morning they left the food behind them as they made their way onwards.

Orisian hesitated to ask Ess'yr what the act signified. His curiosity must have been poorly concealed, for on the third evening Ess'yr sat beside him at the fire.

'The food is for restless dead. Those who walk. No
anhyne
to guard us here. If one of the restless comes in the night, they will take the food. Leave us.'

'The restless dead,' echoed Orisian, feeling the stirring of the darkness beyond the reach of the fire's frail light. The unburied dead.

'You fear the dead,' he murmured.

'Not fear. Pity. Only those who do not rest.'

Orisian was not sure how to behave with Ess'yr. He felt she was less at ease with him now than when they had been in the
vo'an.
It might be because of Varryn's presence, or the fact that she was no longer his healer but his guard, guide and escort. Still, she did not mock him as Varryn did. She would talk to him and tell him things, if not with as much freedom as she had on occasion back in the camp. More often than her brother, she would wait for him and Rothe to catch up when they fell behind.

They came to a stream that bubbled along between moss-covered rocks. There was a pool where the water paused, gathering itself before rushing on down towards the valley that summoned it. While Varryn and Rothe sat in silence, Ess'yr took Orisian to the water's edge and made him kneel down beside her.

He did so gingerly, trying to protect his side. The wound had been hurting more for the last day or so.

She pulled up the sleeve of her hide jacket, exposing the pale, sculpted length of her forearm. He watched as she flexed her long fingers. She slipped her hand into the water with seamless delicacy, leaving barely a hint of its passing upon the surface. As she reached beneath the lip of the bank, she looked not at the water or at her arm but at Orisian. He could not look away from those utterly grey eyes.

Her face betrayed nothing: no expectation, no concentration. Its surface was no more ruffled than that of the pool. Her hand emerged, and cupped in it was a small, glistening fish. It was a mountain trout, its flanks speckled with red dots. Orisian laughed, and for a moment there was a smile on Ess'yr's lips as if the sun had touched her.

'You,' she said.

He obeyed, sinking his hand into the water. He moved his hand along the bank, feeling the earth, brushing his fingertips over pebbles. He touched something alive and cold and smooth. Closing his hand with all the care he could muster, he raised the fish. As soon as he brought it within a breath of the air it gave a single, contemptuous twist and flicked out of his grasp and away.

His disappointment showed. Ess'yr smiled again.

They caught no more fish, and shared the meagre flesh of the one between the four of them. It was enough to make it the best meal they had eaten since leaving the
vo'an.

Rothe pursed his lips as he peered at the wound in Orisian's flank. Orisian was lying on the ground, his jacket hitched up.

'How does it look?' he asked.

Rothe gave a noncommittal shrug. 'It matters more how it feels.'

'Not bad. It itches sometimes. Is it healed?'

'Will be soon, if you treat it gentle. Still red.' He sniffed at the paste-smeared bandage he had removed from over the wound. 'Wish I knew what it was they've used on it, though.'

'Whatever it is, it's worked. I'll settle for that.'

Rothe grunted and straightened.

Orisian pulled his jacket down and carefully righted himself, still wary of jarring the muscles in his side.

'I'm sure they knew what they were doing,' he said. 'They are Kyrinin cures, all those medicines Inurian has. He never did anyone any harm with them, did he?'

'No, but he didn't cure all the ones he tried, either,' said Rothe.

'Well, anyway, this has worked.'

Rothe frowned at the poultice in his hand. Orisian glanced over to where Ess'yr sat further up the slope with her back to them. She had said it would be all right to take the dressing off, but shown no further interest. Varryn had disappeared some little while ago: scouting ahead, or hunting. As usual, he had not seen fit to explain what he was doing.

Rothe leaned close, fixing Orisian with a serious gaze.

'We should go,' the shieldman whispered. 'Leave them. We are not their prisoners now, whatever they may think.'

Orisian shook his head, but Rothe was insistent. 'This is taking too long. Anduran cannot be far. If we go straight downhill we would surely be in the valley in an hour or two. Orisian, these wights are no friends of ours. We don't need them.'

Orisian shot a nervous look towards Ess'yr, afraid that she would hear what Rothe was saying. She had not moved.

'They were told to take us, Rothe. I would get there faster if I could, but their
vo'an'tyr
told them to escort us, to see us out of their lands. They won't let us go off on our own.'

'We don't need their permission,' hissed Rothe urgently. 'And this isn't their land. It's ours; yours. Now is the time to do it. You're almost healed. Her brother isn't here. She can't deal with both of us alone.'

Again, Orisian shot a worried glance towards Ess'yr. Her head and shoulders remained as motionless and relaxed as ever. Yet he saw that her right hand rested upon her spear where it lay beside her, and he could not remember if it had been there before. He had a sudden taste of fear and a glimpse of something awful waiting a few paces into the future.

'No, Rothe,' he insisted as quietly as he could. 'No. Stop now. We stay with them.'

The words felt unfamiliar and ungainly on his tongue as he uttered them. He knew why: he had never, in any sense that mattered, commanded Rothe before. He had never had to. His shieldman blinked, and for just a moment Orisian saw in his eyes the instinct to keep arguing. It was snuffed out. The tension vanished from the warrior's face.

'As you say,' Rothe said, and Orisian could not hear in his voice a single trace of frustration or disagreement.

Shortly afterwards, Varryn returned and sat silently beside his sister. A squall of rain swept over them. It came down the valley from the north, drenching the forest and rattling the trees for half an hour. In the sodden aftermath, the Kyrinin shook their heads like animals to shed rainwater. Ess'yr leaned forwards so that her long hair hung in a curtain and ran tight fingers through it. Orisian watched her squeeze out droplets of water with a few long sweeps of her hand.

The child's body was twisted where it had fallen, one arm bent and pinned beneath the torso. Rothe laid his hand on the dead boy's shoulder and rolled him over. The limbs moved sluggishly. Death's grip had been on him for just a little while, stiffening his joints but not yet locking them. Orisian glimpsed a ruined face — split skin flecked with fragments of tooth or bone, a lot of blood — before Rothe, kneeling down, blocked his view.

The corpse was shod with crude hide slippers. The leggings were of undyed wool. It was the clothing of a poor household: shepherds, perhaps, or woodsmen. The boy lay in a slight hollow. Trees leaned over him. The grass was lushly green and wet from recent rain.

The two Kyrinin were standing back, resting on their spears. They watched as Rothe closed the child's eyes. He had to clean his hand on the grass afterwards. He turned the body over again to hide the face.

'Not long dead,' said the shieldman. He stood up. He looked tired, Orisian thought.

They could be no more than a day's walk from Anduran, in a fold of the hills that hid the Glas valley from sight. For the last couple of hours they had been walking through parts of the forest that had been well grazed in the summer. Most of the trees were young and spindly; only stumps remained of those that had offered good timber.

'This was in the wound,' Rothe said, holding out his hand. In his palm lay a thin piece of horn, worked to a sharp point.

'What is it?' asked Orisian.

'The Tarbains from the north set them into their clubs. That's who killed him: Tarbains.' He cast a glance towards Ess'yr and Varryn. 'Savages. They're barely human.'

'Tarbains,' said Orisian quietly. 'Then it's bad, isn't it?'

Rothe nodded. He flicked the sliver of horn away. It disappeared into the grass as if it had never been.

'Yes,' he said. 'If Tarbains are roaming free this far south, it's very bad. They could only have got here with a Black Road army. I'd not have believed it if it was any eyes but my own doing the seeing.'

'We should take care of the body,' Orisian said.

'The ones who did this cannot be far away. It's not safe to stay.'

Orisian looked at the dead boy. Once it had departed, life left no trace. The body had a shapeless quality. It was difficult to imagine it had ever been inhabited. As far as he could tell, all his family had come to this: certainly Fariel and Lairis, perhaps Kennet and Anyara. All of them. He wanted to look away, but could not lift his eyes from a patch on the back of the boy's jacket where some old tear had been carefully repaired.

'How old is he, do you think?'

'I couldn't be sure,' Rothe murmured.

'How old, though, do you think?' Orisian repeated, and heard the strange insistence in his voice as if it was someone else speaking.

'Perhaps twelve. Thirteen.'

'We should find the ones who did this,' Orisian said.

'I don't think...' began Rothe.

Orisian pointed to the lip of the hollow. The grass there was trodden flat. 'Even I can see the tracks,' he said.