“There’d be few more welcome than you, sire. But Kyrinin and na’kyrim… no, I cannot. Not now, not after all that’s happened. If you’d been here, if you’d seen…”
Orisian stopped listening, let the wind bellow over the Captain’s words. He dismounted and trudged through ankle-deep snow to stand at the head of Taim’s horse. Holding the animal’s bridle, he glanced at K’rina. The na’kyrim seemed to be sleeping, her cheek pressing into the warrior’s broad back, though it was difficult to tell with her what was sleep and what daze, what simple absence.
“You can untie her now. Send five men back up the track with Ess’yr and Varryn and the na’kyrim. Tell them to get well out of sight but go no further than they need to. We’ll send for them soon.”
“We’ll have a roof over our head tonight after all, then?” Taim grunted.
“Without doubt.”
Taim stood at Orisian’s side as he hammered on Highfast’s great doors with the hilt of his sword.
“You’ve got what you want, Herraic,” Orisian cried. “Let us in.”
The doors groaned and rasped as they swung slowly open, protesting at such disturbance of their cold-stiffened bones of wood and iron. Herraic and four of his warriors waited within, a few paces along the stone tunnel that lay beyond the entrance. The Captain of Highfast was a short and stout man who had struck Orisian as somewhat nervous and fragile of spirit even on their first meeting. He had shed some weight since then, and the shadows beneath his eyes and the hesitancy of his movement gave him the air of a beaten man. Orisian strode up to him and stood face to face.
“I’d expected a warmer welcome.”
Herraic looked anguished. “I offer all I can, sire. There’s little warmth for any of us within these walls.”
“How many swords have you got left?” Orisian asked, waving his own warriors forward. They advanced on foot, leading their horses noisily up the long passageway. Swarms of snowflakes came billowing in around them.
“Less than twenty,” Herraic stammered. “And a few willing men amongst the foresters and villagers who’ve found refuge here.”
“Good,” said Orisian curtly. He looked beyond Herraic, saw that the first of his warriors was entering the deep, high-walled yard beyond the passageway. He nodded to Taim. The warrior moved more quickly than even Orisian had expected, driving Herraic back against the wall in a single lunge; grasping the Captain’s throat with one wide hand, with the other freeing his sword and touching its point to Herraic’s belly.
“Yield your castle, Captain,” Taim said quite softly and calmly.
One of Herraic’s men started forward, but Orisian interposed himself, sword and shield readied. He felt no hesitation, no uncertainty. Exhaustion had emptied him of everything save a sickening kind of desperation. He had no talking, no reasoning, left in him; neither the patience nor the strength for anything other than a swift resolution. The advancing warrior must have seen something in his face or his eyes, for the man hesitated. The wind surged down the passageway. Orisian could hear and dimly see his men dispersing to confront and disarm Highfast’s garrison. His eyes were failing, though, crippled by weariness. Snowflakes boiled in the air between him and the warrior he faced, streaking white blurs across his vision.
“Herraic…” he said.
And behind him, choked out through Taim’s crushing grasp: “Yes… yes, sire. I yield Highfast to you. Please.” It was the voice of a broken man, and as Orisian carefully lowered his sword and shield, he could hear Herraic begin to weep.
There was no fighting. None of Highfast’s defenders had the appetite for resistance. At Herraic’s command they laid down their arms with apparent relief, and though they were sullen and resentful, all permitted themselves to be herded into the largest of the dining halls. A dozen families were assembled there too. They huddled in the corner, watching Orisian and Taim and the rest. The parents hugged their children close, as if guarding them against some fearful sight. As if some avatar of the terrible outside world had breached the walls of their sanctuary and now stood before them clothed in threat.
Standing there, surveying this miserable gathering, Orisian was for a moment struck breathless by overpowering shame that he could instil such fear in mothers and fathers and children. He closed his eyes, bit his lower lip and turned away. He was not to blame. He did only what was necessary.
“Give them food and drink, if you can find some,” he murmured to one of his men.
He drew in a deep breath and blew it out again. It trembled in his throat and chest. He did not know how much longer he could bear this. He needed sleep, craved it as a starving man might crave food.
Herraic was sitting, elbows on knees, head in hands, on a bench. Taim stood over him. Orisian saw sympathy in Taim’s face as he regarded the fallen Captain, and somehow the sight of that gave him a fragment of strength. There remained some little space, some capacity, for something other than anger, or fear, or exhaustion, even now.
“What happened, to so poison this place?” Orisian asked Herraic.
Highfast’s Captain slowly lifted his head, blinking
“The Dreamer woke, and… and I don’t know. The na’kyrim fell to slaughtering one another. Woodwights came; there was madness. A madness in the air, in the heart. It was a horror, sire. If you could have seen…”
“Where are the na’kyrim?” Orisian demanded. “They can’t all be dead, can they?”
Herraic winced, as if struck.
“Where are they?” Orisian asked again, taking a step closer to the portly Captain.
“There’s an old cellar, once for wine and ale. We keep them there.”
“Show us,” Orisian said quietly
The stench was startling: ordure and sweat and mould and misery, all hot in Orisian’s face as the cellar exhaled a gout of its vile breath. He stood only for a moment on the threshold; saw in the sickly candlelight the hunched forms of men and women crowded into corners, lying asleep or unconscious or dead along the walls, two or three coming unsteadily towards the faint light admitted by the opening of the door. A moment was enough to see all this, and to feel the unreasoning anger boiling up in him, to feel tears burning in his eyes, not knowing whether they were born of the acrid stink, or despair, or pure, perfect rage.
He spun about and lunged for Herraic. The Captain gave a yelp of surprise and raised his hands in defence, but Orisian rode a ferocious wave and would not be denied. He slapped Herraic’s hands aside, seized a bunch of his jerkin and punched the man back against the wall. Herraic stumbled at the impact, and Orisian bore him down to the floor of the passageway.
“Orisian!” he heard someone shouting. The cry was distant, coming from far outside the narrow, choking ambit of his attention. He pressed a knee onto Herraic’s chest. The Captain of Highfast struggled, but was pinned into the angle between floor and wall. Orisian tugged at the hilt of his sword. The wall hindered him: his knuckles jarred against the stonework. He felt no pain, but the delay saved Herraic.
“Orisian!” someone shouted again. Taim Narran, he knew, though the knowledge had no purchase upon him, no meaning that could penetrate his inundating fury. He twisted to free his sword. Herraic was pushing at him, the Captain’s eyes stretched in alarm.
Then an arm was about Orisian’s chest, drawing him calmly but irresistibly up and away. Herraic rolled out from beneath him and scrambled to his feet. Orisian bucked for a moment against Taim’s restraining grasp, then ceased his struggles.
“We’ve foes enough already, sire,” Taim murmured as he withdrew his arms.
Orisian said nothing. He stared bitterly at Herraic, who had backed himself up against the opposite side of the passage, quivering like a hunted and cornered fawn.
“It had to be done,” Herraic gasped. “It had to be done. You don’t know what it was like. The safety of my men… We couldn’t be sure of anything.”