A hand tapped his back. He was emptying a bowl of blood for Brina. He turned and saw Rath, blood spattered, a cut grazing his forehead.
‘Brina will see you soon,’ Corban said.
‘I’ve come to see you, Corban. Come, step outside now.’
Corban followed him out of the tent, felt a presence behind him and saw his mam had followed. Gar was leaning against a tent post.
‘We’re winning this battle,’ Rath said. ‘I think we could end it with you and your wolven’s help.’
Corban looked past him, saw Rath’s giant-killers lined behind him. Coralen nodded to him. She was already wearing her wolven pelt.
‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked Rath.
Corban buckled on the clawed gauntlet and drew his sword.
‘I’m ready,’ he said.
He was standing with Rath, Coralen, Farrell and Baird, all of them in their wolven skins. Storm stood beside him. At their back were the rest of Rath’s giant-killers, ten men, and Corban’s companions: Gar, Dath, Camlin, Marrock and Vonn. His mam was there as well, wearing a leather cuirass and clutching her spear. Knives were belted across her chest. Gar had told her she wasn’t coming.
‘You’ll not be stopping me,’ she had said, giving Gar a look that silenced any reply. She was still angry from last night, that she had not been told about the raid. She had been in a state of fear and rage combined when Corban had returned to their tents, and she had wept and scolded both Corban and Gar.
‘Come on then,’ Rath said, and they set off.
It was dusk. Rath’s plan was to launch an attack on one of the flanks of Rhin’s warband. They had already been pushed back, were tired and faltering. Seeing a pack of wolven and changelings attacking them might start a rout. That was Rath’s hope.
They skirted the battle at a distance, looping out wide. The sky was purple, an orange flush on the horizon the last of the sun. Then Rath signalled and they ran at a cluster of Rhin’s warriors.
They saw Storm first, her bone-white fur drawing the eye, then the rest of them, fur and blood covered. They must have been an eerie sight in the half-light of dusk. Corban saw men slapping each other and pointing, some scrabbling away, slipping and falling. One stood and stared in horror. He was the one that Storm leaped upon, her jaws latching onto his neck and shoulder, her momentum flipping him through the air and slamming him to the ground.
Corban and the others were only heartbeats behind her, carving into any who were wavering between fight and flight. Corban slashed a warrior across his gut, ripping into chainmail, and stabbed him in the throat with his sword; the warrior collapsed in a spray of arterial blood. Marrock ran past him, punching a warrior in the face with his buckler, the iron spike piercing the man’s eye. He collapsed into a boneless heap.
They cut down all resistance within moments and then moved on, carving deeper into Rhin’s warband. Coralen was close to Corban and he saw her raise her head and let out a keening, wordless war cry.
Corban echoed her, the rest of them following suit. They howled as they killed, and wherever they trod, men ran. First in ones and twos, but soon knots of warriors were breaking away, heading back towards the mountains. Then the trickle became a flood, and the whole of Rhin’s left flank was in flight. Geraint must have realized that the day was done, for horn blasts rang out, and the centre retreated slowly, fighting as they went.
Rath ordered the signal to break from the battle, and soon the field was full of men standing, exhausted, watching their enemy flee back to the hills. A ragged cheer went up, Corban and his wolven pack howling as euphoria swept them — relief at being alive, the mad joy of victory. Then Corban heard the screaming, men dying about him on the battlefield, the stench of blood and excrement. How can we do this to one another? For a sickening moment he felt overwhelmed with shame. Look what we have done. Then his mind flew back to the Darkwood, where Queen Alona had been kidnapped and killed, a spark that had started a chain reaction of death. Started by Rhin, and still happening, even here. He felt something harden inside, a resolve to see this through. I cannot run forever. To stop her we must fight her. And we have won. Today, at least.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
CORALEN
Coralen prodded her sword into the back of a prisoner, making him increase his pace.
The battle had been won, but she had not stopped to celebrate, or rest. Rath had sent her with a band of others back into the foothills to patrol for stragglers or surprise attacks.
‘Just because we did it last night, doesn’t mean they can’t do the same to us,’ the old warrior had said. Coralen didn’t mind, anyway. She’d rather keep busy — less time to brood about all that Corban had told her of Conall.
Horses appeared out of the gloom as she approached their makeshift camp. She handed over the man — a blacksmith by the look of his scarred and pitted features — she had found creeping through the undergrowth to Baird. Without a word, she slipped back into the woodland, heading for the slopes that led down to the giants’ road. That would be where deserters or raiders would appear, climbing up from the camps below.
She moved silently through the woodland, gliding from tree to tree, using the shadows, a lifetime’s worth of training just habit now, an automatic response bypassing conscious thought, like fighting. Without realizing, she found Conall hovering in her mind’s eye, the expression on his face a mixture of insolence and humour, daring the world to throw all it could at him. She felt a physical pain at the thought of him, a knife twisting in her gut. Con, betraying Halion. One thing she knew about Halion: he would do the right thing, or at least what he considered to be the right thing, no matter how hard it was to see it through. And he was a peacemaker. He would not have driven any dispute with Conall. No matter how she looked at it, she came back to the same conclusion. Corban had told her the truth.
And I am grateful for that. He had treated her like an equal, not a bairn, which was what Halion had done. She knew now that Halion had kept the truth from her out of an effort to spare her pain and to save Conall’s name, his reputation, but she’d rather have the truth, no matter how unpleasant.
Corban. Regarding her with his dark, serious eyes. Waiting for a kiss. Why did I ask him that? What an idiot I am. She liked him, she was coming to realize. He was certainly good to have around in a scrap, him and his wolven and Gar. Between them they could put the fear of Asroth into most that faced them, and she respected that. But it was more than that. She liked the way he spoke to her. Open, genuine, nothing hidden.
Something caught her eye and she paused, squatting. She was close to the edge of the woodland now, where the slope suddenly dropped down to the camps far below.
Spoor, scattered about, as if it had been kicked to hide it. From a big animal, not big enough for a wolven, but not deer or anything else she would expect to see up here. She lifted it and broke some off, sniffing.
Hounds. No question. And more than one. But what are hounds doing up here, and where are they now? It was drying, but still moist at its centre. Half a day old, no more.
There was a rustling to her left. She dropped the spoor and moved closer to a tree, merging with its shadow.
A figure appeared, climbing the slope, breathing heavily. He staggered upright, looking about. A young man, fair haired, a warrior.
She stepped out of the shadows.
He stumbled back a pace, reaching for his sword hilt, then paused.