Orisian stood unsteadily.
‘Rothe, no!’ he shouted.
He felt a solid thump in his side. Strength fled from his legs and he slumped down. He clutched at the hilt of the throwing knife that was embedded in him. He stared at it. There was no pain.
There were figures rushing over the rocks. The Inkallim moved fast, as if in full daylight.
The boat surged out on to the water. Rothe vaulted in. He knelt by Orisian and paddled with a single oar. They eased out from beneath the towering walls of the castle and into the open expanse of the bay.
Orisian lay back, feeling the world slipping away from him. He looked up at a sky scattered with a thousand tiny cold stars. Water lying in the bottom of the boat soaked the back of his head. He could feel blood flowing over his hand where it lay on the knife in his side. He heard waves slapping at the boat’s prow. He heard Rothe’s laboured breathing. And he saw his father’s face.
He closed his eyes.
Chapter 2
Kyrinin
Huanin scribes will tell you that the Kyrinin are all one; that their likeness one to another binds them together and sets them in opposition to all humankind. These scribes are blind to that which they do not understand. When the Walking God, the God Who Laughed, made the Kyrinin, when he strode across the world calling them into being, he made not one clan but many. Huanin and Kyrinin fell to slaughtering one another only long after the Gods had left the world; the Kyrinin clans have been shedding one another’s blood since the first dawn of their existence. And few have bathed their spears more often than White Owl and Fox.
The White Owl babe learns hatred of the Fox with the taste of its mother’s milk. The child of the Fox knows that the White Owl are its enemy before it has the words to express the knowledge. When the Kyrinin clans were in their greatest glory, before the War of the Tainted and before Tane, that wondrous city of every heart’s desire, fell and was submerged beneath the Anain’s Deep Rove, Fox and White Owl knew no peace. Much changed in the reordering of things that followed the defeat of their kind by the Huanin, but each preserved their hatred of the other, guarding it as jealously as they guard the ever-burning fires of their winter camps. To be of the Fox is to be the White Owl’s foe, and to be of the White Owl is to be, from first breath to last, the foe of the Fox. Stone is less enduring than their enmity.
The army had made camp in a high valley. A sea of a thousand tents covered the grass, rock outcrops rising above it here and there. Hundreds of war-horses were tethered on the shallow lower slopes of the surrounding peaks. The sun stood above the head of the valley. Eagles and ravens drifted across its glare as they surveyed this vast intrusion upon their mountainous domain.
Gryvan oc Haig stood before the greatest of all the tents. He was resplendent in his finest garb: the crimson cloak of the Thane of Thanes, a cuirass of shining metal beneath it; a scabbard studded with gemstones at his side and his great-grandfather’s golden chain about his neck. His hands rested on the hilt of his sword. The point of the blade was pressed into the earth at his feet, as if to signify that the land itself had submitted to him. Kale and others of the High Thane’s Shield stood to either side. Hundreds of warriors were gathered before them in a gigantic semicircle. At its focus, kneeling before Gryvan, was Igryn oc Dargannan-Haig. The defeated Thane was yoked to a heavy log, rough ropes fixing his arms to it at the wrist. The skin there was rubbed away. Another rope held his neck more loosely.
Gryvan was regarding his prisoner with undisguised satisfaction. ‘Where is your pride now, Igryn?’ he asked.
Igryn made no reply. His head hung low.
‘Trussed like a common thief,’ mocked Gryvan. ‘A fate fit for atraitor, do you agree? For a faithless dog? For one who knows less of duty than the least of the masterless?’
There were cries of agreement and jeering from the ranks of the assembled army. Gryvan stilled the voices with a raised hand, and looked around the close-pressed warriors before him. He swept his gaze over them, and let them see in his eyes that he was one with them.
‘See what your enemy has come to,’ he cried out. ‘See the fruits of his arrogance. He is laid low by the strength of your arms.’
That brought forth enthusiastic cheering.
‘Lift up his head,’ Gryvan said to Kale.
Kale stepped forwards and seized Igryn’s thick red hair in a tight knot, wrenching his head back so that his battered face angled up towards the Thane of Thanes. His beard was matted and discoloured by dried blood. A recent wound stretched from temple to jawbone on one side of his face, the skin at its edges ragged and raw.
‘Your family came to my grandfather to beg his aid against the armies of Dornach, when you were nothing more than pirates and cutthroats,’ said Gryvan. ‘The price of that aid—of raising you up to be Thanes in your own right, of turning your little fiefdom of bandits into a Blood—was your pledge of loyalty to Haig and to Vaymouth. Better men than you, of Bloods that had a long history before yours was even a dream, see fit to honour that pledge. Yet you broke it, and thought to cast it off as if it were nothing more than a shawl. You have withheld the tithes that are owed to me, and given sanctuary to pirates, and imprisoned my Steward. Worse, we now find that you have so far forgotten your proper state as to buy Dornach men to serve in your armies against me. Have you nothing to say for yourself, Igryn? Are you impervious to shame?’
The captive Thane parted his lips in a crude smile. There was blood in his mouth.
‘Nothing,’ he said.
If Gryvan was disappointed he did not show it. ‘Very well. It is a long journey back to Vaymouth. Perhaps you will rediscover your tongue by the time we get there. Then we can discuss who might make a fitting replacement for you as Thane of these misbegotten lands.’
The High Thane lifted his sword and slid it back into its ornate scabbard, turning his back upon the kneeling figure. Kale released his grip on the man’s hair, and Igryn’s head fell forwards as he swayed upon his knees.
Gryvan beckoned Kale to him. He spoke softly, his words meant only for the master of his Shield.
‘I do not wish him dead. It will be useful to have a living reminder for those others who chafe at my bit in their mouth. The thought of Igryn rotting in a gaol may give them pause, at least for a time. But even a prisoner can be troublesome if he has some claim to a throne, so he must live yet be unfit to rule. The Kings knew the way of these things. Their Mercy served well in the past. It is time to renew that tradition. See to it tonight.’
As Igryn oc Dargannan-Haig was dragged away, the mood amongst the dispersing crowds was buoyant. Taim Narran kept his eyes down as he wove through the throng. He did not want to meet the gaze of some jubilant Haig warrior and be forced to pretend to feelings he could not share. He had come to see the humiliation of the captured Thane only out of a sense that he ought to witness the moment that so many of his men had died to bring about. Now all he wanted was the solitude of his own tent; failing that, if he must have company, let it be that of his surviving comrades. The men of Lannis had camped out on the fringes of the assembled army, keeping a wary distance from the far more numerous bands of Haig, Ayth and Taral warriors that made up the bulk of Gryvan’s force.
Passing by a row of great wagons, Taim was dragged out of his reverie by a familiar, irate voice. He looked up to see Roaric nan Kilkry-Haig berating the master of the wagon train. The Kilkry Thane’s son was shouting furiously, his face blushing with anger. The target of his fury maintained an impassive calm, and showed no obvious sign of being intimidated by Roaric’s status.