Gorred looked from Orisian to the gateway. Some of the Guards were dragging a man into the compound and beating him with their clubs. Another of them was on his knees, pressing his hand to a bloody scalp wound. Aewult nan Haig’s messenger pondered for the space of a few heartbeats, and the fight leached out of him.
“Very well,” he said curtly. At a single, sharp gesture his companions and escorts began to mount their horses. He glanced almost dismissively at Orisian. “You have the messages, Thane. The Bloodheir will anticipate an early reply, to both of them. Or better yet, your presence, and that of Taim Narran.”
The ten horses clattered over the cobblestones towards the gate. Erval ran ahead of them, shouting at his Guards to clear a path for the Haig party. Orisian and his men followed more slowly in their wake. It all felt unpleasantly like disaster to Orisian. A chasm was opening up between the Haig Blood and those of Lannis and Kilkry, yawning ever wider with each defeat and humiliation visited upon them by the Black Road.
The Guardsmen pushed out into the street, and Orisian saw for the first time just how large and frenzied a crowd of townsfolk had assembled. There were scores of them, of every age and kind. They choked the street. They fell back before the determined advance of Erval’s men, but it was only the crowd reshaping itself, yielding in one place to thicken in another. Not a retreat. More figures came rushing from side streets and houses, like bees plunging in to join a furious swarm.
The Haig riders ventured out onto the muddy roadway. Their horses were skittish, catching the feral mood of the throng. People were falling, crushed between the lines of Guardsmen and the mass of townsfolk surging up, howling abuse at Gorred and the others. On every face Orisian saw visceral hatred, an instinctive yearning for bloodshed.
“Gods,” he heard Erval muttering at his side, “it’s bad.”
A stick came tumbling end over end through the air, blurring past Gorred’s shoulder. The envoy ducked and scowled. His horse tossed its head. Slowly, edgily, the beleaguered company moved down the street.
“You need more men,” Orisian said to Erval. The Captain of the Guard looked bewildered, almost lost, in the face of the savagery that had taken hold of his town and his people.
“Send for more men!” Orisian shouted at him, and this shook Erval from his daze. One of the nearest Guardsmen was dispatched to find reinforcements.
It was too late. The townsfolk of Ive were possessed by a terrible fury, one that would brook no restraint and had purged them of any doubt or sense. Events rushed, like avalanching snow, towards their conclusion, as if that very conclusion had reached back and dragged everything irresistibly into its hungry maw.
One of the Guardsmen facing the multitude was knocked down. The space around Gorred and the others was abruptly constricted. Someone flailed at one of the Haig messengers with a hoe. A flurry of missiles came tumbling in: sticks, earth, stones, even a clattering pot. A Haig warrior was struck and reeled in his saddle, almost falling. His horse lurched sideways. Its mass ruptured the protective ring of Guardsmen. Townsfolk boiled into the gaps.
“Stop them!” Orisian shouted at Erval. The Captain was shaking his head, not in denial but impotence. He took two leaden paces out into the street and shouted angry commands. His voice was drowned in the flood of rage-bloated cries and howls.
The mob thickened around the horses. Here and there, like helpless flotsam on a surging sea, Guardsmen struggled against the crowd, but they were too few, and the ire of the townsfolk was far too fierce to be dampened by half-hearted blows from clubs or staves. The horses were rearing, their riders now slashing about them with swords and spears. Stones and chunks of wood were raining down on them.
A couple of men had climbed onto the roof of one of the houses and were stripping its tiles; the slate squares sliced through the air, spinning straight and true. Even as Orisian watched, one hammered into the forehead of Gorred’s horse. The animal screamed and staggered. As it stumbled, eager hands reached up from the crowd and grabbed its mane, clawed at the rider’s legs, tore at the saddle. Man and horse went crashing down and were instantly swallowed up.
Orisian started forward, but Torcaill held him back.
“If they kill them, Aewult will blame us!” Orisian cried. “Lannis, Kilkry, all of us.”
“I know,” Torcaill said, “but we can’t stop it now. Look at them. It’s not safe to even try.”
Horrified, Orisian turned back to the street in time to see one of the Haig men leaning low to jab his spear into a youth’s belly, and then in his turn being hooked out of his saddle and dragged down. The riderless horse went charging off through the mob, battering a path clear, trampling bodies as it went.
Torcaill was pulling Orisian back from the gateway. A stunned Erval retreated alongside them. Someone was screaming amidst the chaos. It was a raw, unrestrained sound. Another horse, its saddle empty, came pounding back into the courtyard, wild-eyed and bleeding from cuts to its neck. It ran in great circles, shaking.
It did not take long, once that peak of violence had been reached. The awful sounds surged and merged and then gradually fell away. Men spilled out from the barracks in some numbers, too late: Guards, and warriors, and Orisian’s own men, with Taim Narran at their head. Careful, cautious, they advanced out into the street, and found there only the dead and the injured and the debris. And shocked and shivering townsfolk, left feeble by the ebbing of their fury, staring at their bloody handiwork, murmuring in unsteady voices, trying to drag the wounded away to shelter or aid.
Orisian and Torcaill and Taim walked numbly among the bodies. The corpses of the Haig party were easy enough to find. Fur cloaks were bloodied and soiled and trampled, velvet gloves torn.
Torcaill prodded Gorred’s body with the toe of his boot. The messenger’s head rolled to one side. His face was broken in, the cheekbone and orbit of his eye shattered. The one eye that remained intact stared up at Orisian. He felt the cold, accusatory weight of that dead gaze, and turned away.
“The day’s hardly begun, and already it’s decided to be a bad one,” Taim said. “Our troubles breed faster than mice.”
Torcaill stood looking up and down the street, his gaze drifting over the dead and the dazed. “I count eight Haig dead. Two short. They must have broken out. This’ll foster no friendship for us if word reaches Aewult,” he said.
“Soon we’ll have nothing but enemies left,” murmured Orisian.
IV
Kanin oc Horin-Gyre ran. The snow was thick on the ground here on the western fringe of the Karkyre Peaks, but still he ran, and took a bitter pleasure in the burning of his lungs and the aching of his legs. He pounded through the drifts, not caring whether his warriors kept pace with him, barely even remembering that they were there behind him somewhere. Past and future were gone from his mind, and only this momentary present existed for him; only the straining of his muscles, the heaving of his chest. And that small group of fleeing figures just ahead: the men he meant to kill.
One of them glanced back and staggered to a halt, shouting something Kanin could not make out. Several of the men kept running, but as many stopped and turned. It must mean, of course, that Kanin had left his Shield behind. These Kilkry peasants thought they had him outnumbered. Outmatched. He rushed on. They did not know him; did not know what cold passion burned in him. They could not see the embracing shadow of death that he felt all about him now, in his every waking moment.
He brushed aside a spearpoint with the face of his shield, slashed an arm with his sword. Snow sprayed up. Shouts crowded the still air. It was only noise, without meaning, to Kanin. Figures closed upon him. He did not see faces, only bodies to be cut at, dark forms to be broken. A second went down beneath his blade. A spear thrust glanced harmlessly off his mailed shoulder. His opponents seemed slow and clumsy to him. He, by contrast, rode a cresting wave of death-hunger. It sped his limbs, sharpened his eyes and mind. It made sense of the senseless world for him.