Waves lapped along a coast littered with broken-backed boats that had been thrown ashore after coming free of their moorings. There were sea-softened corpses that lay pale and fat on the pebbles. A pack of dogs was tearing at one such piece of the war’s debris, surrounded by a patient audience of gulls and crows. A bone-thin grey hound tensed and growled when Kanin reined in his horse to watch.
There were few of the living left in this ruined land. A handful of sick Gyre warriors who had taken refuge to recover or die in a mill looked on with rheumy eyes as Kanin passed by. A solitary woman stumbled along beside his horse for a way, until she tripped and fell to her hands and knees in the snow. She said not a word, but laughed feverishly, desperately. In a field, a dozen or more enslaved villagers scrabbled in the snow and soil for half-rotted vegetables that should have been harvested long ago, watched over by grim-faced men who stared suspiciously at Kanin’s company.
And Kyrinin. Three times Kanin saw woodwights. They roamed the higher ground inland from the coast, falling away behind the shelter of ridge lines almost as soon as he caught sight of them. Had they been closer, he might have led his warriors in pursuit of them, hunted them. When his father had agreed to the alliance between his Blood and the White Owls what felt like a lifetime ago, it had been meant to last only as long as did the Kyrinin’s usefulness. That they still lingered, with impunity, in the lands the Black Road had reconquered was an insult. A corruption of what should have been. A sign of how thoroughly Aeglyss had twisted everything.
Amidst all this emptiness, Hommen itself was an island of life. As he drew near, Kanin could see the smoke of scores of cooking fires. There were countless tents amongst the houses, ranks of tethered horses being fed and watered, crowds of men and women from every Blood. And to Kanin it was still more hateful, and reeked still more pungently of death, than the desolation that surrounded it.
He left Igris to find shelter and food for his band of warriors and walked down through the crowds to the crude wooden quay. The masses of men and women who thronged Hommen’s streets barely intruded upon his awareness. He recognised no one. He heard the babble of voices as the empty noise of birds. He felt no bonds of faith or purpose or intent with these people.
He stood on the planks of the quay, close to the spot he had been standing when the rumour of Wain’s death first found him. He looked west, across the grey, dead expanse of the estuary towards the limitless sea. And so bright was the sinking sun that lay white and cold on the horizon, so piercing its light, that he had to close his eyes. He heard seagulls overhead, laughing.
“What happened to my sister, Shraeve? You were there, in Kan Avor, when she died. You must know what happened.”
“She was fortunate enough to leave this world. That is what happened. She will wake in a better one, and you will see her there, Thane.”
Shraeve and Kanin stood outside the little hall that lay beside the main road through Hommen. It was an island of comparative calm, the space in front of the hall’s doors, for Shraeve’s ravens had cleared it. Twenty of them stood in a wide half-circle, keeping back any who sought to draw near without permission. Onlookers were clustered beyond that silent cordon, eager to catch sight of the great and the powerful who were gathering here.
“Not good enough,” Kanin hissed. He took hold of the Inkallim’s upper arm as she walked away from him. It was like grasping rock. He turned her to face him, and she met him with cold contempt.
“I am Banner-captain of the Battle Inkall, Thane,” Shraeve said softly. She glanced at his restraining hand, and he let it fall away from her; not through fear, or respect, but because his purposes would not be served by fighting with her today. Shraeve would have to die as well as Aeglyss, he realised with new clarity, but not now. Not yet.
“I want to know what happened to my sister,” he said. “There is no shame in such a desire.”
“Shame? No, perhaps not. But it serves no purpose. Mourning is but self-pity. You know it as well as I do.”
Once he had known it. Now, it sounded like a hollow platitude, vindictively crafted by the lips of an enemy.
“Let the dead go, Thane,” Shraeve said. “We will join them soon enough, in the better world.”
Men and women were filing past them into the hall. Leaders from the Gyre and Gaven and Fane Bloods; Lore Inkallim, led by the shuffling, hunched, black-lipped figure of Goedellin; Cannek, who studiously avoided Kanin’s gaze as he settled his two hounds down to await his return from the council.
“It’s time,” Shraeve said, and turned away from Kanin.
He followed her into the musty gloom of the hall. It was empty save for a single table at its centre, lined with chairs. Serving girls-whether brought from the north with the armies or prisoners pressed into service, Kanin could not say-were lighting torches along the walls and setting out beakers of wine and ale and plates. At the far end of the hall, standing by small doors that must lead to the kitchens or other antechambers, were White Owl Kyrinin. They were hateful in Kanin’s sight, and he averted his eyes from them.
One or two of those already seated regarded him with curiosity, perhaps even suspicion, as he took his place at the table. He ignored them. They were nothing to him, these latecomers to the war his family had started. Not one of them had offered his father any support; not one of them had crossed the Stone Vale until they, or their masters, caught the scent of victories already won, and of spoils and glory to be claimed. He clasped his hands in his lap and stared fixedly down at them, watching his fingertips redden as the tension within him tightened its grip.
He heard the wide doors of the hall scrape shut. The last of the daylight was excluded and they were left with the yellow flamelight and the scent of smoke. The servants went out, one by one, past the woodwight sentinels, and a heavy silence descended.
“Where’s the halfbreed?” a man asked at length. Kanin had met him once or twice before, long ago: Talark, Captain of a castle on the southern borders of the Gyre Blood. A relative, by marriage, to Ragnor oc Gyre himself.
“He will join us shortly,” Shraeve said placidly. She had taken her twin swords from her back. They rested in their scabbards against the side of her chair. “He is preparing himself.”
“For what, I wonder?” Cannek asked, almost mirthful, as if some unuttered jest was pleasing him.
Shraeve ignored the Hunt Inkallim. “There are other matters to talk of first. Kilvale. Kolkyre.”
“Food, if you’ve any sense,” Talark muttered irritably. “Half my warriors are starving. Most of my horses have gone into their bellies.”
“All the more reason to keep moving on. Conquest will feed our armies. Every town we take, every village, has stores laid in for winter. That promise, and the strength of their faith must keep them — ”
“They have stores only if they don’t burn them or empty them before we get there,” Talark interrupted her. “And if the farmers and villagers who flee before us haven’t already eaten them.”
“The Battle has arranged for supplies to be brought down through the Stone Vale,” Shraeve replied. “A hundred mules, all fully laden, reached Anduran only two days ago.”
“Mules!” Talark scoffed. “It’s wagons we need, and oceans of them. Not a few mules.”
“Perhaps if the High Thane, your master, gave more than half his heart in support of us, you could have those wagons.”
The Gyre warrior glowered at Shraeve. “It’s difficult to get wagons across the Vale at this time of year. You know that.”