‘Look here. There’s another wound. None of us put this mark on it, did we?’
Rothe and Orisian knelt beside him. There was a puncture wound in the boar’s side, behind its shoulder. Blood was caked on the rigid hairs around it. Rothe crumbled some away between his fingers.
‘That’s a day or two old, I’d say.’
‘I thought it strange it should stand and fight like that,’ Naradin mused.
Orisian leaned closer. He could see something nestled there in the flesh. He slipped a knife into the wound and twisted, feeling the resistance of something harder than muscle. Another turn of the knife brought it close to the surface, where he could draw it out and drop it into his palm: an arrowhead, flat and sleek.
‘It was in deep,’ he said.
‘Can I see that?’ Rothe asked, and when Orisian nodded he took the little piece of metal and held it up, frowning as he turned it. The lines crossing the backs of the shieldman’s fingers were a first premonition of old age, but he held the arrowhead precisely, delicately.
Naradin looked a touch disappointed. ‘It’s not quite the same, to know he was carrying that in him already,’ he said.
Rothe returned it to Orisian.
‘That,’ he said, ‘is Kyrinin-made. It’s a woodwight’s arrow.’
‘Woodwights?’ exclaimed Naradin. ‘Hunting here?’
Rothe only nodded. He looked around, surveying the silent trees, the still undergrowth. His mood had changed. He stood up.
‘The White Owls have been causing trouble this last year, haven’t they?’ Orisian said to his cousin.
Yes, but we’re not a day’s ride from Anduran. They would not dare to come so close.’ He examined the arrowhead himself. ‘He’s right, though. That’s White Owl.’
Orisian had not doubted it. Rothe had fought the Kyrinin of Anlane often enough to know their weapons. He looked up at his shieldman. There was a rare tension in the big man’s stance.
‘Time for the horn, I think,’ Rothe said without breaking the roving passage of his eyes across the forest. ‘We should not stay here any longer than we must.’
Naradin did not demur. He put the horn to his lips and sent out a long, low call, summoning the hunters to the kill.
The next morning Orisian gazed out from the battlements of Castle Anduran, watching the grey clouds gather around the Car Criagar to the north-west. The great mountain ridge loomed over the valley of the Glas River, though it was but foothills to the vast uplands that lay invisibly beyond. There were the remnants of ancient towns up there, long abandoned by their forgotten inhabitants. Now no one lived amongst the rocks and the clouds.
He had been here in his uncle’s castle for a fortnight, and the weather had changed even in that short time. The sky had grown heavier. The land, the fields and forests, had darkened beneath it. The earth and the sky knew what was coming and eased themselves into it, shedding the gentle sentiments of autumn. There would be snow, even here on the valley floor, in a few weeks. Winterbirth was close.
It was not the most auspicious time for a birth, but that had not dimmed the celebrations attendant upon the arrival of the Thane’s first grandson. They had lasted for days, capped by the hunt to find Naradin his boar. Now that all was done, an air of contented exhaustion had settled over the castle and the town that lay beside it. It was a lull between storms, for the imminent revels of Winterbirth would match those just gone in intensity, if not in duration.
With the approach of that festival the time had come for Orisian to go home to Kolglas, to the castle in the waves. A flight of geese passed over, honking to one another as they tracked the valley seaward, preceding Orisian on his way. His gaze followed them for a while. He had come to this high place for a last look at the broad vista, with the valley his uncle ruled stretching out beyond his eye’s reach. Kolglas had more limited horizons, in more ways than one.
The sound of footsteps drew his attention back. Rothe emerged from the narrow stairwell beside him.
‘The horses are ready,’ said the shieldman in his ever-gruff voice. It always made Orisian imagine that stones were grinding together somewhere in his throat. ‘Your uncle is in the courtyard to bid you farewell.’
‘Time to go, then,’ said Orisian. ‘It will be a cold ride back to Kolglas.’
Rothe smiled. ‘Just as well that fire and food await us on the way.’
They descended the spiralling stairway and emerged on to a wide, cobbled courtyard. By the gatehouse on the far side, grooms held three horses that blew out clouds of steaming breath into the morning air. Kylane, Orisian’s second shieldman, was meticulously checking the horses’ hoofs, oblivious of any offence the implied lack of faith might cause to the grooms. Orisian’s uncle, the Thane Croesan oc Lannis-Haig, stood close by.
Croesan took Orisian’s hand in his. He was more than a head taller than the youth and grinned down at him.
‘Two weeks is too short a visit, Orisian.’
‘I’d gladly stay, but I must be back at Kolglas for Winterbirth. My father should be out of his sickbed soon.’
Croesan’s smile faltered for a moment and he nodded.
‘Doom and gloom are deep-rooted in my brother’s guts. Still, Winterbirth may lift his mood. In any case, do not let Kennet’s ills cloud the festival for you, Orisian.’
‘I won’t,’ Orisian said, knowing that it was a promise he might not be able to keep.
Croesan clapped him on the back. ‘Good. And tell him to visit us soon. It might light a fire under him to see how things are changing here.’
‘I will tell him. Where’s Naradin?’
The question brought a broad grin back to Croesan’s face in an instant, and the grand and grave Thane of the Blood was nothing but a proud father and grandfather.
‘He will be here in a moment. He told me to keep you here until they come, to make sure my grandson has the chance to say farewell.’
‘Well, I am glad we found him his boar,’ Orisian smiled. ‘I hope the baby appreciates it.’
‘Indeed. Naradin will bore the boy with tales of its killing when he’s old enough to understand, I’m sure. He’ll grow up thinking you and Naradin great heroes, and the finest hunters the Glas valley has ever seen.’
The thought made Orisian laugh. ‘He’ll be disappointed, then, if he ever sees me at the hunt.’
Croesan shrugged. ‘Don’t be so sure. By the time he’s old enough to know the difference, you’ll be a match for most of my huntsmen. Anyway, you’ll return for the child’s Naming, since you were here for the birth?’
‘If I can,’ said Orisian, and meant it sincerely. The Naming of an infant destined one day to be Thane was an event that would embody all the history, all the bonds that made the Lannis Blood what it was. Nothing could more strongly signify a long history and a hopeful future, and after the depredations of the Heart Fever and the sufferings of his father, Orisian was learning to value both of those.
Naradin and his wife Eilan emerged from the keep. The Bloodheir was carrying his baby son in his arms, and walked with almost comical care and precision. He had not yet learned how to relax around a life that seemed so fragile.
Croesan leaned close to Orisian and murmured conspiratorially, ‘Can you believe they have made me a grandfather, Orisian? A grandfather!’
‘I can hardly believe Naradin is a father, let alone you a grand-father,’ smiled Orisian. That, he reflected, was a half-truth, though an innocent one. Naradin had, for as long as he could remember, seemed ready and hungry for fatherhood. Nothing less was expected of one who bore the future of the Blood upon his shoulders.
Eilan embraced Orisian. She was a beautiful woman, but it was for her gentle and generous spirit that he loved her; and for the way those attributes reminded him of his own mother.
‘Journey well, Orisian,’ she murmured in his ear. ‘Take my love to your sister.’
Naradin inclined the baby towards Orisian.