Within an hour of the messenger’s arrival, two hundred men—half of those garrisoned in the city—had marched out from Anduran’s northern gate and Croesan’s riders were spreading through the farmland around the city, raising his people to arms. In a couple of days, he could have another half a thousand men ready to make for Tanwrye. But it was not to be.
In the depth of the night, one of his shieldmen had come to find the Thane. He was shut in a high room of the keep, talking with Naradin and with his captains. They were making plans that would never be enacted.
‘There is a farmer outside, my lord,’ the shieldman said gravely. ‘We sent him away at first but he came back, and has others with him now, telling the same story. Otherwise we would not have…’
‘What are you talking about?’ Croesan demanded. His earlier good humour was long gone, swept away.
A dishevelled man with matted hair and a scrawny beard pushed partway through the door, restrained by shieldmen.
‘The Black Road, sire!’ he shouted. ‘It’s marching out of Anlane! Thousands, burning farms, burning homes.’
There were mutters of disbelief around the table. The Thane’s shieldmen were bodily lifting the farmer from his feet and bearing him backwards, out of the chamber.
‘My own farm, there on the forest’s edge, is gone, lord!’ the man cried.
‘You say there are others who tell the same story?’ Croesan asked.
And soon enough all believed it. Farmworkers and herders, woodsmen and hunters were arriving in Anduran, all of them flying from the destruction of their homes and lands. In the first few hours of darkness, an army had come out from beneath the forest’s silent canopy on to the open fields. Somehow, by some unimaginable means, the enemy had crossed all the wild and trackless immensity of Anlane, through the domain of the savage White Owl Kyrinin, and brought an army to within reach of Anduran itself: an impossibility had come to pass.
Whole families poured into the city through the night, loaded on to carts or riding on scrawny horses, fleeing their homes and seeking safety. In the darkness, fear worked its way into hearts. Rich and poor, mighty and humble alike came to the conclusion that their best hope lay in flight. By winter’s first dawn the road south to Glasbridge was in its turn filled with a steady stream of townsfolk. And by that same dawn there was an army in sight from the walls of the castle.
Croesan had known then that the town at least was lost. Tanwrye was his Blood’s great bulwark against the Black Road : its strength had always been relied upon to block the route through the Vale of Stones. Anduran’s own walls were in poor repair, half of its garrison—already reduced by the demands of Gryvan oc Haig—was on the road for Tanwrye. Croesan’s castle might be held against assault; Anduran itself could not.
That too was when he understood that he, and his Blood, had after all unlearned things they once knew. Peace had worked a malign flaw into their memories. They had forgotten that to stand against the implacable Black Road required a fire in the heart and in the blood to match that which burned in the northerners; that their guard could never be dropped. Croesan had thought himself mindful of the dangers. Now, breathing in the ashes of Anduran, knowing that half the inhabitants of the city had fled in terror before the enemy was even sighted, he tasted the cost of misjudgement.
The Thane was roused from his black reverie by the sound of someone coming up behind him.
‘You should not stand so exposed within sight of your enemy,’ said Behomun Tole dar Haig. ‘I saw crossbows down there earlier.’
Croesan grunted. ‘They’re too busy setting fires,’ he said.
Behomun stood beside him for a moment, gazing out across the rooftops, through the haze. ‘They will regret their actions when the rain and cold come.’
‘They are not foolish,’ muttered Croesan. ‘They have spared the barns, and many of the houses. They know what they are doing.’
‘I came to see if you would return to the council. It is becoming a trifle overwrought below. Your people would benefit from a firm hand to guide them.’
‘My people once more, I see. They belong to Gryvan when he needs them to fight for him in the south, but they are mine again now.’
Behomun shrugged. Since the siege began, something of his insouciant arrogance had left him. ‘That was no part of my meaning,’ he said softly.
‘Perhaps. But this should never have happened. The High Thane thinks of the south, always the south. He drools over the riches of the Free Coast and Tal Dyre like a fox in a lambing field. When Kilkry ruled, the other Bloods sent men here, to our lands, to guard against the Black Road . Now it’s our warriors who are summoned to the south. There’s the result: a sky filled with the smoke of our homes.’
‘There’s no point in you and I debating the rights and wrongs of it, and in all honesty I would have little heart for it. My own family is trapped here just like yours. What’s done is done.’
‘It is done,’ echoed Croesan distantly.
‘The town could not be defended,’ Behomun said, guessing the Thane’s thoughts. ‘We would likely all be dead if you had made your stand upon the walls instead of here in the castle.’
‘I know that well enough. Too many are dead in any case, though.’
‘You could not have taken more in. Every corridor is choked with families. There are more people than horses sleeping in the stables.’
Croesan nodded. It was a strange thing, to find Gryvan’s Steward so devoid of argument and conflict.
‘You could have left,’ he said, looking Behomun in the eye.
‘True, but I am Steward of the Thane of Thanes here. I had some notion of duty.’ Behomun glanced wistfully towards the west. ‘It was probably a foolish choice. Now I must trust to your walls to keep my wife and children safe.’
‘I hope they do so,’ said Croesan.
‘It cannot be long before relief comes. Lheanor will come from Kolkyre, or your own people from Glasbridge and Kolglas. The Black Roaders have over-reached themselves, however much they preach humility. There are no more than a few thousand of them in the city. So long as Tanwrye holds, and we do the same here, they will go no further south.’
‘Oh, yes. They will lose this war. But my Blood has already paid too high a price for the victory.’ Croesan shook himself as a shiver ran through his back. ‘Come, we had best go down. I have indulged myself by remaining here. I have duties too.’
As they made their way northwards, down from the high ground through the ever-thickening forest, Anyara found herself watching the back of the female Inkallim walking in front of the horse. She had never dreamed that she would set eyes upon one of them. The Inkallim—warriors and acolytes, executioners and assassins—were the stuff of whispered childhood tales. Lack of sure knowledge about them had allowed such an accumulation of rumour and myth that they had become, in the minds of those living south of the Stone Vale, colossal, gore-drenched incarnations of death itself.
Anyara wondered how many this lean, wiry woman who marched before her had killed. Women did not take up arms amongst the Haig Bloods. Her father had once told her that necessity had made it commonplace throughout the Bloods of the Black Road, not just amongst the Inkallim: they needed every warrior they could find in the early years of their exile beyond the Vale of Stones, when there had been wild Tarbain tribesmen to subdue and pursuing armies of the Kilkry High Thane to repel. Whatever the reason, it was proof of the cruel demands the Black Road made of its followers.
They halted for a while and Anyara sat with her back against a tree. She and Inurian were kept apart. One of the Inkallim brought her some dry biscuits. He freed her hands so that she could eat. When he was gone she turned them this way and that, examining the raw weals about her wrists. They hurt, but it was nothing she could not bear.