He heard the hard crack of a crossbow bolt against rock.
“It’ll take them a long time if they mean to finish us off like that,” a warrior hunched down beside Taim said.
“The longer the better,” Taim murmured. “I doubt they’ve got the patience for that, though. Black Road’s never been famous for patience.”
He ventured a snatched glance over the top of the sheltering boulder and saw three or four riders advancing at a walk, many more coming on foot after them. Another quarrel hissed over his head.
“No patience at all,” he observed as he ducked back down.
Hoofs on the road, picking up their pace. Cries of bloody intent. Feet running. Taim shifted onto the balls of his feet, crouched down, waiting.
“The horses mustn’t get through,” he called out. “Take them, if nothing else.”
The sun was on his back now. He could feel it through his jerkin. It was almost possible to believe that it was not winter at all.
He surged up, sword already back, two-handed. He cut the lead rider out of his saddle. The jarring impact shivered through his arms and down through his ribcage and he cried out in pain. Another horse flashed past. He tried to cut at its hindquarters but missed. He was out in the road now, and as he steadied himself he saw a score of Black Roaders descending upon him.
The first ran at Taim with a spear. He ducked under it and let the woman tumble over him, then sprang up and knocked another aside with a backhanded stroke against her shield. They came on like a swarm of wolves. One of his warriors, and then two, were at his side, fending off attacks. They hacked and swung. Taim could feel sweat beading across his forehead. He barely saw those he fought, those he killed. Body after body appeared before him and he cut them down, barged them aside, and each of them was only a shape, a danger. The pain in his flank soared but it was nothing that could reach him.
The man on his left went down, speared in the belly. Taim took a glancing blow on his hip that staggered him for a moment. A sword came darting in to pounce on his weakness. He turned it aside, and snapped his own blade round and up fast enough to open a wrist to the bone. He felt almost light, as if his feet could glide weightless over the cobbles of the road.
And then people were running. Fleeing. Someone hit him from behind and knocked him to his knees. Men came past him and the Black Roaders were falling away, going down beneath swords. He looked up, bleary-eyed, and saw a riderless horse galloping back, pounding down the road. And Torcaill. He saw Torcaill running, and tripping a Black Road warrior, standing on the man’s back and driving a swordpoint down into his spine.
Taim did not hear fighting all around him now. It was moving away, fading. Someone had their hand on his elbow and was hauling him up. He was unsteady on his feet. He had to hunch over a little to protect his ribs.
“Taim,” said Orisian.
Taim laughed, not wholly certain at that moment whether he could trust his eyes, and not caring.
“Sire. Can I lean on you, sire? I am not sure I can walk too well.”
He put his arm around Orisian’s shoulder and hobbled to the side of the road, where he could sit on a flat-topped rock. Those Black Roaders still alive were scattering, some back the way they had come, others out over the scrubby ground. Orisian’s two Kyrinin were standing in the roadway, methodically sending arrow after arrow skimming out, straight and true. Taim shook his head, trying to rid himself of the strange blurry feeling that was settling inside his skull. He looked at his Thane, and saw a small warrior: shield on one arm, sword in hand, a raw scar across the breadth of his cheek. And hard eyes.
There were bodies thick on the road. A hand was reaching up, opening and closing. Someone was whimpering, like a beaten child. A woman was crawling along on her hands and knees. She spilled blood from her stomach as she went. Torcaill and two of his men moved amongst the human debris. They stood over the woman. She put a hand on Torcaill’s boot. He looked over towards Taim and Orisian.
“We can’t care for them,” Taim heard Orisian say, and was surprised at the coldness of his voice. But he did not watch Torcaill killing the woman, Taim noted. Nor did he flinch at the sound of the blow falling.
“We will have to move on, sire,” Taim murmured. “There will be more of them before long.”
“I know. Is Aewult beaten, then?”
Taim nodded, wincing and pressing an arm against his chest.
“Where’s Anyara? Do you know?”
And Taim had to tell him, and that was perhaps the hardest thing he had done that day.
Epilogue
I
White Owl Kyrinin carried the na’kyrim on a litter made of birch saplings. His hand trailed over the side, brushing the grass for a little distance until someone noticed and lifted it and laid it across his stomach. A hundred woodwights walked in procession before and behind the litter. Battle Inkallim rode on either side of it. Like an honour guard, Kanin oc Horin-Gyre thought in disgust. Hundreds of warriors lined the path along which Aeglyss was borne. The silence was heavy.
Kanin watched from a distance, looking down on the scene from higher ground. The skin of the halfbreed’s hands and face almost shone, even at that remove. Ivory plaques, of the purest white, shining. It could have been a corpse that was carried with such reverential care through the serried ranks of the Black Road; a Thane being taken to his resting place. But it was not, and Kanin watched with attentive loathing. He wanted Aeglyss to live a little longer. Long enough to ensure that it could be Kanin’s own hand that ended his life, and that the ending was fittingly painful and prolonged.
Kolkyre was within sight, a grey bulk far off to the south. It was almost obscured by the greasy smoke of the many pyres burning between here and there: the meat and bone of the fallen smeared across the sky in vast grainy slicks. What breeze there was came from the south, and it carried the smell of the corpse fires on it. It filled Kanin’s nostrils with its noisome texture, and he did not find that unfitting. There was a truth in the conjoining of Aeglyss and that vile stench, a coincidental expression of the halfbreed’s essential nature. Kanin did not know, and did not care, whether he was the only one to recognise it. That he did was enough. It only took one man to kill another.
His Shield were about him, watching in silence as he did. He could not even be certain of them, he suspected. Their silence might be one of contempt, or fascination, or even awe. He could not tell. The litter and its foul burden drifted on. In its wake, the crowd of warriors closed up. Many stood gazing after it. Fools, one and all, Kanin thought. They think they see a sign of fate’s favour, and for that one delusion they’ll forgive all sins, any corruption. That was the flaw in the creed. That was the crack in its armour that Aeglyss would hammer his wedge into, and split open.
A movement at his feet caught Kanin’s eye. A great black dog loped past him, so close as to almost brush against his leg. It went out onto the grass and sat, its muscular back to him. He could hear it panting.
“They’re taking him back to Kan Avor, by all accounts.”
Kanin looked round at Cannek. The Inkallim’s approach had been soundless, but that was no great surprise for one of the Hunt.
“He’s spent, I gather,” Cannek continued. “Whatever influence he exerted on the battle has cost him almost his whole strength.”