‘I will do as you ask, then join you when it is done.’
‘Good. And in doing so, hunt down this Corban. Perhaps he is the Black Sun, perhaps he is not. But if you have the opportunity, kill him. Just in case.’ He smiled at Veradis and raised his drink.
They all touched cups, Veradis trying to smile back at Nathair. All he could think of was Cywen’s face, her tear-stained, dirty, grimy face, framed with black curls. Nathair had just ordered him to kill her brother. He felt a wave of sympathy for her.
So be it, a voice said in his head.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
CORALEN
Coralen slid and moved, spinning around Corban as he swung his practice sword at her head. He doesn’t hold back any more. She liked that, knew that when she had first challenged him in the weapons court he had not tried his hardest, had held back because she was not a man.
A few falls on his arse had soon served to disabuse him of that notion. And now he sparred against her with the same intensity that she saw in him when he fought against Gar.
Corban’s sword glanced off her shoulder, knocking her off balance.
Focus, you idiot, she scolded herself, but before she was able to she was on her back, staring up at a cold sky, Corban’s sword-tip hovering against her chest.
Did he just use my move against me?
He held out a hand for her, grinning, but she slapped it away and rolled fluidly to her feet. She saw men staring, various expressions of shock and surprise on their faces. It was not often that she was knocked on her backside in the weapons court.
‘Again,’ she said, wiping the smile from his face.
When she left the weapons court later with Baird, they encountered her half-sister Maeve hovering near the entrance, casting cow eyes in Corban’s direction, her face painted up like her mam’s. Coralen glared as she walked past.
Gods, she hated Dun Taras. It was the bedrock of all of her earliest memories, of her mam and da, King Eremon, when she thought the world revolved around them both, when her mam was the most beautiful woman in the world. Or so she thought. Eremon seemed to think so as well, if only for a little while. Then the spurning had come, the constant tears and wailing from her mam as Eremon had tired and moved on to different fields to sow. At the time Coralen had felt as if her world was collapsing, imploding in upon itself, a constant of destruction and misery.
Never shall I be like my mam. Reliant on a man’s good will. Giving myself up for a few smiles and some time under a dry roof. A man’s plaything to be tossed away when he gets bored. She felt herself scowling as the memories bubbled up inside her.
She saw the wolven come stalking out of the weapons court, all muscle, teeth and power. She had to admit, it was quite something, seeing a full-grown wolven prowling around the fortress. Corban and his friends followed behind. Well, at least Corban was good with a blade, she had to concede. Better than her, perhaps, if you took out the dirty moves she specialized in: a score of tricks that Conall had taught her, for when a fight got up close and personal.
Maeve dropped something on the road, a piece of linen, and Corban bent to pick it up.
Maeve said something and touched Corban’s arm, smiling at him. Coralen couldn’t hear the words but she saw Corban’s face flush red, then saw Maeve lean forwards and kiss his cheek.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ Baird asked her.
‘What? Nothing,’ Coralen snapped. ‘Can we go now?’
‘Of course.’
She saw Corban’s friend, the big one with the hammer, staring at her. She scowled at him for good measure before she walked away.
Baird caught up with her and together they walked to the feast-hall. She was starving hungry, ready to eat her weight in food. She lost some of her appetite when she walked into the hall, though, seeing Quinn and Lorcan sitting close to the entrance.
Quinn smiled at her. She hated that. Hated the way that he looked at her: like she had seen men look at her mam, so many times.
‘Come over here, lass,’ Quinn called out. He patted his knee.
‘If I do it’ll only be to cut your stones off,’ she said.
‘I’ll take the risk,’ Quinn said, his smile growing broader.
She changed her direction but Baird held her arm.
‘He’s not worth it,’ Baird said to her.
She paused a moment, then saw someone else whom she wanted to talk to — Halion. She strode to him instead, sitting down opposite him. He was with a warrior, the one who had lost a hand.
‘Cora,’ Halion said.
Baird slipped onto the bench beside her.
‘I’ve waited long enough. Tell me about Conall,’ she said to Halion.
Halion’s expression grew guarded. She’d seen that face before, a thousand times, and understood that he would not be telling her much.
‘There’s not much to tell, Cora. There was a battle, Conall fell.’ Grief travelled across his face, a ragged cloud skimming the sun on a summer’s day, then it was gone, replaced with the cold face that he had taught her so well.
‘There’s more to it than that,’ Coralen pressed. ‘Were you together?’
‘No, we were not.’
‘Why not? You were always together. Inseparable. Had you argued?’
Halion rubbed his face. ‘It was a battle, Cora. Chaos. Enemies had broken into the fortress; there were people fighting everywhere.’
‘So how do you know he’s dead?’ Coralen said, a spark of hope flaring in her belly. She had loved Conall fiercely.
‘I saw him die,’ the warrior beside Halion said.
‘You are?’
‘Marrock. I was fighting on the walls above Dun Carreg’s gates. Conall was there too.’
‘What else did you see?’
The warrior’s eyes flickered to Halion, something passing between them. With the palm of his remaining hand he rubbed the stump of his other wrist, capped now with leather.
‘He was fighting; we all were. He fell.’ Marrock shrugged.
‘But he may have survived.’
‘No. It’s a long drop.’
Coralen leaned back, studying them both. There’s more they’re not telling me. It’s in their eyes.
‘You are sure? Did you see-’
‘Enough,’ Halion said, his voice fraying with anger. His face softened. ‘Conall is gone, Cora. It is a hard fact, one I don’t want to accept myself, but it’s the truth. Accept it. Let him go.’
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
TUKUL
Tukul grinned with the joy of being on horseback again. His legs and backside ached as if he’d been kicked by an auroch, but he didn’t care. The wind in his face, the rhythmic drum of hooves at a canter, the bunching and expanding of muscle, the sense of power in the horse he was riding.
It was wonderful.
They had stayed at Gramm’s for two nights. The arrival of the child-king Haelan and his guardian had set a fire in Meical. They had stayed long enough for Gramm to gift them with horses and provisions and then left. Finding seventy-two horses for warriors as fussy as his Jehar was no easy task but they were wonderful animals. Gramm had given them free choice from both of his herds — the pure bloods and the cross-breeds. Many of Tukul’s people had chosen the pure-bloods, he suspected out of a sense of nostalgia, a reminder of home, the white-walled city of Telassar. He had chosen one of the cross-breeds, a powerful piebald mare, because he was riding to war, and if ever he had seen horses made for war, these were it. Daria, he had called her, after his wife. She wouldn’t have minded — horses were almost family to the Jehar.
There was one other gift that he had been given whilst at Gramm’s, but not from Gramm. It was an axe, presented by Gramm’s son, Wulf.