Gryvan detached his gaze from the dancing girl for a moment, and waved the tattered joint of meat he held in Taim’s direction.
‘Our Captain of Lannis-Haig,’ he called above the sound of the music. ‘Join us.’
Taim shook his head. ‘No, thank you, sire,’ he said, shifting to one side as the dancer came between him and the Thane of Thanes.
Gryvan gestured at the girl. ‘Stop that,’ he snapped. ‘Enough.’
The musicians fell instantly silent. The dancing girl stepped to one side and squatted down. Taim moved forwards without thinking, as if sucked in by the void she had left. The carpet beneath his feet was richly patterned with flowing loops of flowers and foliage. It was a strange, incongruous sight here in the wild mountains of Dargannan-Haig.
‘Will you take a drink with us?’ asked the High Thane.
‘Forgive me, sire, but I only came to speak with you. I did not know you had guests.’
‘Ha!’ laughed Gryvan, setting down his food and wiping his fingers on one of the cushions. ‘Of course I have guests! What else should I be doing on such a night as this?’
‘Of course,’ said Taim. He was uncomfortable beneath so many attentive gazes. He knew he had no friends here. It had been a mistake to come, but he had been thinking less than clearly since the slaughter at An Caman Fort. The companies of Lannis and Kilkry had battered their way into that fastness eventually, at the cost of two hundred or more lives. What had followed—the methodical massacre of every prisoner taken—had seemed just as wasteful. All the more so since only days later word had come of Igryn’s capture.
The once mighty Thane of the Dargannan Blood had been cornered in an abandoned shepherd’s hovel, with nothing left of his Shield save a handful of famished, exhausted warriors.
‘Well,’ said Gryvan, ‘if you will not join us, you had best tell me what you came to say.’
‘Sire . . .’ began Taim. A sharp groan interrupted him. Behind the circle of feasting captains and courtiers, curled upon a straw mat like a child in frightened sleep, was Igryn oc Dargannan-Haig. His back was to Taim and his knees were clasped up against his chest. Even so, Taim could see that there was a dirty bandage about his head. As he looked, the defeated Thane’s shoulders shook, and a shiver ran through his great body.
Gryvan glanced at his prisoner.
‘Ah yes,’ he said lightly. ‘You see, even our disobedient friend Igryn has joined us this evening.’
‘He seems unwell,’ murmured Taim. He knew what he was looking at. They had called it the Mercy of Kings long ago: the fate of lords who reached for the throne and fell short.
‘Sadly, yes,’ said Gryvan. ‘He has been parted from his eyes, the better that he might reflect upon his folly. Tell me what you want, Narran.’
The edge in the High Thane’s voice drew Taim’s attention smartly back. He cleared his throat.
‘I would like to take my men away, sire. In the morning.’
Gryvan raised his eyebrows. ‘We march in two days’ time. You know that. Just today I have sent riders to Vaymouth, to prepare a triumphal reception for us all.’
An utter silence had come over the room. The High Thane’s guests watched in rapt attention. Taim felt a heat rising in his face.
‘My men long for their homes, sire. They have wives to return to. So do I. Winterbirth has come, and it is a month’s journey back; longer with the wounded and sick we must carry with us. The weather in Kilkry and Lannis will be worse each day we delay.’
‘But what of the celebrations here?’ asked Gryvan with apparent concern. ‘Do your men not deserve the chance to rest, and to mark the victory they have shared in?’
The words pricked Taim, and he felt, at last, a faint stirring of that anger that Kale had woken.
‘Neither they nor I have the heart for it,’ he said.
The High Thane regarded him for a few seconds. He seemed on the point of saying something. Instead, abruptly, he relaxed back into his voluminous cushion.
‘Ah, what matters it now? Go, if you must. Take your men off. I will not prevent it.’
Taim found himself exhaling with a relief that he struggled to conceal. He bowed to the Thane of Thanes and stepped backwards.
‘Thank you, my lord. We will be gone before dawn.’
He turned to lift the flap of the tent.
‘Narran,’ said the High Thane quietly behind him.
Taim paused, partway out into the night and the cleansing grip of its cold air, and looked back. Gryvan was staring at him with narrowed eyes.
‘How many men will return with you to Anduran?’
‘Eight hundred, if you count those who may yet die,’ said Taim in a flat voice.
Gryvan nodded thoughtfully without releasing Taim from his glare.
‘Tell Croesan I asked, will you?’ was all he said.
By the time the boat ground its keel up against rocks and lurched to a halt, Orisian could not rise. His shirt was plastered to his skin by blood. His head was pounding, as if his heartbeat was seated there rather than in his chest, and he could not draw breath without sending shards of pain darting through his body. He coughed agonisingly and felt thick liquid bubbling inside him. He heard Rothe springing from the boat, boots crunching on a stony beach.
‘We must get away from the shore,’ Rothe said.
Orisian tried to say that he could not move. Only a vague mumbling came from his lips. They felt dry and ready to split. He ran his tongue over them but found that too was desiccated. Then Rothe had him around the waist and was lifting him out of the boat. Orisian cried out in pain.
‘Forgive me,’ he heard Rothe whisper.
Orisian could see nothing now save blurred patches that ebbed and flowed at the edge of his vision in time with his heartbeat.
‘I can’t see,’ he croaked into the darkness.
Rothe did not reply. They were moving, but Orisian could not tell anything beyond that. His flank was hot and wet, yet there was a cold numbness stealing into his hands.
‘Stay with me,’ he heard someone say desperately, very far away. ‘Stay with me, Orisian.’
Then he was lying upon some soft, yielding surface. For a moment his vision cleared. Trees were arching over him, bending down out of the night as if to lay their outstretched twigs on his face. He would have turned away had there been any strength left in him. There was a strange, harsh sound, which after a moment or two he remembered as the bark of a fox.
‘A fox,’ he murmured, wanting to laugh.
A shape loomed up. It was Rothe, leaning close.
‘What?’ said the man.
Then Rothe sprang away. Orisian heard a gasp, a sighing sound as if a wind had run through long grass, and felt the jarring impact of something heavy hitting the ground. Figures leapt over him where he lay: pale shapes that seemed detached from the earth. Ghosts, he thought.
The last thing he felt before he fainted was many hands upon him, lifting him up.
The Fever had left dark corners in Anyara’s mind. Now, five years on, the memory of the hallucinatory dreams of her sickbed was not quite so strong as it had been in the first weeks of her recovery. Still she was sometimes seized in the late evening by a sudden fear of falling asleep: a fear that she might not wake, might be lost forever in that fierce borderland of death where all dreams were nightmares. It had never occurred to her that the stuff of fevered delirium might pursue her out from that territory into the waking world. On the night of Winterbirth the air was thick with it.
She fell when Kylane thrust her through the open door of the keep. She regained her feet in time to see him set himself between Orisian and the Inkallim, and in time to see him beheaded. A strangled cry died in her throat as she was hauled back from the door by a burly merchant. He slammed the door shut and barred it. Cries and the clash of weapons bled in through the wood.
‘Hide! We must hide!’ shouted the merchant.