As they came to a thicker sweep of scrubby birch trees, and just as his instincts began to sing to Mar’athoin that the na’kyrim was close now, he threw himself into a crouch and snapped out a flat arm to halt the other two. Cynyn and Sithvyr grounded themselves silently. Mar’athoin remained motionless, his head bowed. It was not for him to speak first.
“You walk on land promised to others,” came a gentle female voice from amongst the trees ahead. The Snake tongue was close cousin to that of the Heron; Mar’athoin had no difficulty in understanding it.
“This I know,” he replied without looking up. “We made pause at your ettanaryn. We are Heron-born, and mean to pass only.”
There was movement. A flock of little birds scattered, twittering in consternation. On the periphery of his vision, Mar’athoin detected two, perhaps three, figures drifting amongst the pale birches. There were at least four others, unseen, somewhere out there, if the scents and sounds on the breeze spoke truly to him.
“Where do you go?” the woman asked. Judging by her voice, she had moved closer.
“We seek a na’kyrim. We follow where she leads.”
“Do you mean to bathe your spears?”
“No. We act on behalf of another, a Kyrinin-friend. He asked us to follow this one and see to her safety.”
“Why? We have put our eyes on her, the one you seek. She is flawed. She speaks to the wind. She walks like a child, without care or sense. Do you mean to haul her out when she falls into a river, or catch her when she steps over a cliff?”
“If we can,” replied Mar’athoin.
The unseen woman laughed. “Life must be good for the Heron. Your fowl-traps must be thick with birds, your smoking sheds full of fish and your borders empty of enemies, if you can send three on such a foolish errand.”
“It is foolish,” agreed Mar’athoin placidly.
“And what clan does she spring from, this half-human you trail? Whose fires does she call her own?”
“She was born of a Heron mother.”
“Well, she rests up ahead. She made herself a bed of grass, in a bad place. She will be cold and wet in the morning. This night and two more, then she will be beyond our lands, if she keeps to this course. Keep to her track, do not stray, and you may pass with our goodwill. The Snake have no argument with the Heron.”
“Nor the Heron with the Snake.”
Mar’athin did not rise until he was sure all of the Snake had moved away. They would not go far, he knew. He brushed moss from his knees as Cynyn and Sithvyr came up to his shoulder.
“I counted six,” Cynyn said.
Mar’athoin sniffed and strode on. “Eight.”
They found K’rina huddled on the ground in the lee of a great rock. She had indeed torn up thick handfuls of grasses and rushes to make a bed of sorts for herself. She was already asleep, even though the sun had not yet touched the western horizon. Her slumber was punctuated by frequent mumbles and shivers.
The three Heron Kyrinin stood some distance downwind of her and watched. Remembering the words of the Snake woman, Mar’athoin felt a brief stirring of contempt for this useless na’kyrim. That her mind was misshapen, damaged, had been obvious from the start. It was only a matter of time before she fell victim to some misfortune. It was indeed foolish to waste time on her. But, he reminded himself, Lacklaugh had asked it as a favour. And if nothing else they would be able to return home and say they had made a good journey.
The question of just how far they would follow K’rina remained, though. Lacklaugh had not told them where she was going, if he even knew, but that she had some goal was beyond dispute: ever since she had left the marshes, her path had been straight, constant. Mar’athoin was not sure exactly what — or who — lay beyond Snake lands to the north or west. Huanin probably, he thought, and almost certainly the White Owls, though how far away they were he did not know. He had no desire to meet either of them. It might be that the time to turn back was drawing close.
He cast around for a suitable place to rest.
“I will be the first of my family to sleep on Snake ground,” he said with a faint smile.
For the first time in what felt like weeks, the sun was shining on the Glas valley. A bright, sharp light bathed the fields. The ground was slick and soft, bloated with rain and melt-water. The herdsmen’s trails and farm tracks that Wain nan Horin-Gyre chose to follow were muddy. Still, they were passable and better than the alternative: the main road up the valley, running on the northern bank of the river, had been almost obliterated when Sirian’s Dyke broke. In places it was still ankle-deep in sucking, half-liquid silt that made travel both exhausting and slow. These fields south of the river had suffered less lasting damage. There was a slim chance that Wain and the hundred warriors at her back might even reach Grive by nightfall, having left Glasbridge before dawn. If not, there was no shortage of abandoned farmsteads to serve as overnight quarters.
Wain’s horse was restless and irritable. Every so often it would bend its head back to snap at her knees. Her original mount — a fine animal, a sturdy survivor of the long march through Anlane all those weeks ago — had broken its leg during the furious assault on Glasbridge. This replacement was proving a disappointment. She and it had yet to find an accommodation with one another. Wain was minded to give it up and find a more amenable partner when they reached Anduran.
She felt less joyful or excited at the prospect of what awaited her in Anduran than she would have liked. This was, after all, what she and Kanin, and Angain their father, had hoped for all along: the Black Road was on the move, pouring through the hole Horin-Gyre had punched in the defences of the True Bloods. There was now at least a chance that everything they had gained might be held, that new and greater victories might yet be won for the creed. Puzzles remained, however, and they were troubling. By all accounts, it was not Ragnor oc Gyre’s armies that had marched but the Battle Inkall, and thousands of the common folk. Where was the High Thane? Where were the other Bloods? Wain, and Kanin for that matter, would willingly have handed over leadership of this undertaking, and all the lands they had recovered, to Ragnor. The Thane of Thanes had a natural right to put himself at the head of this war. To surrender everything to Nyve’s bloody ravens was not such an easy thought. Wain sighed and glanced up, narrowing her eyes against the piercing glare of the sun. There was no warmth in it.
She should not concern herself with what was yet to come, she knew. There remained much uncertainty about what she would actually find in Anduran, and until that uncertainty was dispelled there was nothing to be gained by stirring possibilities in her head. The only clear facts the messengers rushing to find her and Kanin in Glasbridge had been able to convey were that Tanwrye had at last fallen — and there was one piece of news, at least, that was nothing but good — and that the Children of the Hundred were leading a huge army down the valley, their van already taking up quarters in Anduran. Wain had left Glasbridge almost at once. Even so, she would not be the first to reach Anduran. Shraeve and her Inkallim were somewhere ahead, might even already be there.
Her horse nipped again at her leg, its teeth cracking together. She snapped the reins, flicking one towards its eye in discouragement. They were coming up to the edge of what had once been the Glas Water now. That great marshy lake had drained when Sirian’s Dyke gave way, leaving a huge expanse of shrinking pools, rushes and sodden bare earth that lay like a dark sore across the centre of the valley. Somewhere out there the river had returned to its natural course, slumping back into the channel it had swollen out of when Sirian built his great dam. On a day as clear as this the eye could see far across the flat, treeless valley floor. And Wain’s eye caught something unexpected.