Torches were tossed up to the women atop the poles, who threw them back and forth at reckless speed. When they were done they let the brands fall, to be caught by men below. As some of those on the ground launched themselves into another spate of dazzling tumbling, the men supporting the poles hoisted them off the ground, taking their full weight upon their clasped hands. Their faces taut with effort and concentration, they moved, step by cautious step, towards the gatehouse.
‘What are they doing?’ asked Inurian, coming up to Orisian’s side. Idrin sat on the na’kyrim’s shoulder, his head cocked to one side as he blinked at Orisian.
‘I don’t know,’ Orisian said, keeping his eyes on the spectacle.
‘Something is wrong,’ muttered Inurian.
One of the acrobats was hoisting a great barrel above his head now, his face rigid with effort. Orisian dragged his gaze away to look at Inurian.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. I can’t focus. There’s something about these people . . . but I can’t reach it.’
The crow launched itself from Inurian’s shoulder and flapped up, a fragment of darkness ascending into the black canopy of the night.
‘Oh, don’t worry so,’ laughed Anyara. ‘Enjoy the show!’
Inurian grunted and shook his head slightly. Orisian’s mood dimmed. Inurian could feel the texture of the thoughts in a man’s head. There was no one Orisian trusted more, and if the na’kyrim was troubled there must be some reason for it.
A chorus of gasps snapped his eyes momentarily back to the acrobats. He was just in time to see the two women spring from the poles and vault over the battlements on to the top of the gatehouse. A guard had come to the edge there, to see what was happening. One of the women seemed to crash into him and they both fell back out of sight. It was clumsy, out of place. Orisian half-turned to say something to his father.
The men who had been holding the poles aloft suddenly released them and they toppled, at first slowly and then very fast, towards the spectators, who cried out in alarm and began struggling to get out of the way. The man raising the barrel in the centre of the courtyard gave a great cry and flung it down. It smashed on to the cobblestones, splintering apart. Short swords spilled out between the broken staves. Two of the acrobats were throwing burning torches, arcing them into the crowd. Everyone was shouting, and there were screams of shock.
‘What is this?’ Orisian heard his father say in a puzzled, uncomprehending voice.
The poles crashed down to the ground. A dark shape came tumbling from the top of the gatehouse, thumping on to the cobblestones. It was the guard. In a flash of torchlight, Orisian glimpsed the unnatural angle of his neck and his open, lifeless eyes. The men who had dropped the poles were at the gate now, lifting its great bar and pulling it open. The swords that had been concealed in the barrel were being snatched up by male and female acrobats alike. They turned upon those who moments ago had been acclaiming them. In an instant, the courtyard was filled with chaos and battle.
The warriors outside the walls rose from their hiding place at the sound of the gate creaking open. They bounded forwards. In the same moment a rider came splashing out on the causeway from the town: a young man, thrashing at his horse’s hindquarters.
‘Awake the castle!’ he was crying, ‘awake the castle! Wights attacking the town! A White Owl raid!’
As his fellows poured through the open gate to join the melee inside, one man turned and crouched to meet the rider. He reached up over his shoulder and smoothly brought his sword out of its sheath. The messenger came on without slowing, still crying the alarm. In the second before he would have been trampled, the warrior stepped aside and slashed across the horse’s front legs. The impact sent the sword spinning out of his hands, but the animal screamed and crashed down, throwing its rider. The young man tried to get up. His arm had been broken in the fall and it would not take his weight. The warrior slipped a knife out of his boot and cut the man’s throat. Ignoring the writhing horse’s screams, he retrieved his sword and walked through the castle’s gateway, blades held loosely on either side.
Within, all was tumult. The folk who had gathered to celebrate Winterbirth were scattering, struggling over one another in a vain attempt to find safety. Those who had been acrobats joined with the warriors now spilling in through the gate and moved purposefully through the panicking throng. They paid little heed to the townsfolk and castle staff, hacking at them as they might undergrowth that obstructed a forest path. Their quarry was the fighting men of Castle Kolglas.
Here and there amongst the crowd, blades clashed. It was an unequal fight. The warriors of Lannis-Haig were more numerous, but they were unprepared and half of them were at least part-drunk. Even when they came to blows with their enemy, it was like fighting shadows. The invaders were as fast as thought, each swordstroke flung against them finding nothing but air or being met by a deflecting sweep that flowed seamlessly into a killing thrust.
Orisian’s disbelieving eyes followed a warrior as he hacked one of Kennet’s shieldmen down. The man’s heavy shirt had been torn asunder in the fighting, and hung in tatters. Beneath the beads of seawater still clinging to that taut back, Orisian saw a dark, menacing shape stretched across his shoulder blades and spine. A tattoo: the image of a raven, its wings widespread. Orisian’s mind went numb at that sight, and what it meant.
In the same moment the cry went up from somewhere in the crowd, giving voice to Orisian’s thought: ‘Inkallim! Inkallim!’
Orisian’s father brushed past him, descending the stairway. A sword was in his hand, and a terrible black rage in his eyes.
‘Inkallim,’ Orisian heard him say as he plunged into the fray and was swept out of sight.
Inkallim: the ravens of the Gyre Bloods. They were the elite warriors of the Black Road, serving the creed itself rather than any Thane, and they bore a fearsome reputation. Orisian shook himself out of his shock. Anyara was close by him, clutching his arm with fingers of iron and staring in horror at the carnage before them. A group of men and women—Orisian recognised merchants from the Kolglas market—broke up the steps, desperate to reach the sanctuary of the keep. They surged forwards, oblivious of Orisian and Anyara.
‘Wait!’ cried Orisian uselessly. He and his sister were brushed aside and fell together from the stairs. They landed in a heap, Anyara’s weight slamming Orisian against the stone of the courtyard. His vision spun and his chest seized so that he could not draw breath.
Somewhere far away he heard a voice, perhaps Rothe’s, raised above the noise of battle and terror. ‘Lannis! Lannis! Guard your lord!’
Then there were strong hands lifting Orisian up. He blinked, and looked into Kylane’s face.
‘Are you hurt?’ his young shieldman demanded.
Orisian shook his head. He still could not breathe.
‘Anyara,’ shouted Kylane, ‘are you hurt?’
‘I’m fine,’ she said, staggering to her feet. ‘Just bruised.’
Air filled Orisian’s lungs in a great rush and he reeled at the relief of it.
‘Where’s my father?’ he gasped.
‘In the thick of it somewhere. We must get you to safety,’ said Kylane. ‘Are you armed?’
Orisian showed his empty hands, and Kylane pushed a knife into one. As he felt the weapon’s hilt in his palm, another question occurred to him.
‘Inurian, where’s Inurian?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Kylane said. ‘Forget that now. The two of you are what matters.’
Anyara started to cry a warning but somehow Kylane was already moving, responding to a threat felt rather than heard or seen. He ducked low and spun, catching the Inkallim warrior darting towards them across the right knee with his sword and shattering the joint. The man half-fell and Kylane hacked at his neck. He pulled the blade free and glanced back at Orisian and Anyara.