‘And maybe do the same to the next family they come across?’
‘Maybe. Now that we’re here, I’d be glad to see them dead. We need them outside, though. If we go rushing in, it’s as likely to be us that’s buzzard food as it is them.’
Varryn whispered to his sister. She nodded, and he was gone, running in a low crouch up the line of the ridge. Ess’yr took an arrow from her quiver and ran its fletching between her lips, smoothing the feathers. It was a delicate, almost sensual, movement. Rothe looked alarmed.
‘What’s happening?’ he demanded in a hiss.
‘They must be under the sky, yes? To kill them?’ Ess’yr said. She began to crawl up towards the spot from where they had been watching the cabin.
Rothe unsheathed his sword and raised his eyebrows at Orisian before following her.
The voices had quietened. The clearing around the cabin was quite still. A slight wind brushed the highest twigs in the trees. It touched the broken door and creaked it on its one surviving hinge. Orisian realised he was holding his breath.
‘What’s happening?’ asked Rothe again. He was getting close to anger.
Ess’yr pointed. Varryn was there, crouched against the nearest wall of the cottage. Ess’yr rose to one knee and put the arrow to her bowstring. Rothe gave a low growl of irritation, but half-rose himself and hefted his sword. The Inkallim’s knife was still in Orisian’s belt. He fingered its hilt. As he set himself on his knees his side gave a twinge of protest and he winced.
Varryn stood and walked forwards. He carried his spear loosely. His bow was still across his back. He went out twenty paces into the space in front of the cabin.
‘This is not how I’d do it,’ muttered Rothe.
Varryn shot a quick glance up towards them. Ess’yr drew back the bowstring and held it. Varryn took a few steps sideways, and put himself in the line of sight from the open doorway. He rested the butt of his spear on the ground and stood there.
‘Don’t forget, stay back,’ Rothe whispered in Orisian’s ear.
There was a chorus of shouts from inside the cabin. Varryn sprinted towards Orisian and the others. The Tarbains spilled out behind him, howling and almost falling over one another in their haste. They saw only a single Kyrinin flying away, and they came after him. There were six of them. Orisian saw teeth bared, cudgels and spears flailing.
The arrow was gone and homed before Orisian even realised Ess’yr had released it. It took the rearmost Tarbain square in the chest. He tumbled over his own feet. Rothe sprang up and ran forwards, crying out like a madman, ‘Lannis! Lannis!’
Another arrow thrummed across the air and found a shoulder. It spun a second man around, but he did not fall. Orisian stood and pulled his knife free. Two of the Tarbains were slowing, realising that they faced more than a single foe. Two more came on, though, too frenzied to care what was happening. Varryn turned to meet them, halfway up the slope. The first Tarbain to reach him was the one they had seen outside the cabin before. He swung his spiked cudgel. The Kyrinin slipped beneath it and put his spear into the man’s belly. It took him off the ground, punching through furs and flesh and stabbing out through his lower back. Varryn let body and weapon fall and met the next Tarbain with a kick to the knee. The two men rolled together, each grappling for an advantage.
The one Ess’yr had shot in the shoulder was fleeing. She put another arrow in his back. Rothe was on top of the last two. He bore one backwards with the weight of his charge. The other froze, poised upon the boundary between courage and flight. Then as Ess’yr sighted on him her bowstring snapped. The arrow tumbled to the ground. The Tarbain looked up. He stared straight at her for a fraction of a second, and made his choice. He came bounding up towards her and Orisian, his spear levelled. Ess’yr dropped her bow and stooped to pick up her own spear. The Tarbain came on. Orisian took a step back. The tribesman had no eyes for him; he might have been invisible.
Ess’yr met the Tarbain with a lunge that made him lurch to one side and come to a slithering halt. Fast as a falcon’s strike, the butt of her spear came round and cracked into the small of his back. He grunted, but he was strong and the blow barely rocked him. He feinted towards Ess’yr and she backed up. The Tarbain was making a strange noise, half growl, half groan. There were strands of leather and hide twisted into his hair; they shook as he rolled his head this way and that. Orisian rushed at him.
He came from behind and to one side, almost out of sight. The Tarbain’s reaction was late. His spear swept round in a flat plane. Orisian ducked it and hit the man around the waist, staggering him. He would not fall and somehow Orisian could not get his knife turned the right way to stab him. Then there was a solid thud and a piercing shriek as Ess’yr’s spear sank a foot deep into the tribesman’s thigh. Blood flooded out, more than Orisian had ever seen except when a sheep’s throat was cut. The Tarbain tried to turn and tripped. Orisian landed on top of him, and drove his knife into the man’s chest with every shred of strength he had. The impact made his hand slip off the hilt. There was blood everywhere, all over his fingers, over the knife and on his clothing. The blade stayed where he had put it, though. There was a roar, or perhaps a scream, in Orisian’s head, crowding out any thought, bearing him away from himself on a cresting wave of fury and grief. He gripped the knife and pulled it from the man’s flesh, stabbed it in again, and then again.
The Tarbain did not move. He was still making strange noises, but they were soft and fading now. The grass all around was a dark, liquid red. Ess’yr was running, sprinting towards the cabin. Orisian did not want to be left alone with the dying man, and went after her.
Rothe had killed his man. Varryn had managed to pin the last and was straddling his chest. As they came near, he whipped an arrow out of his quiver and plunged it into the tribesman’s neck. The first man Ess’yr had put an arrow into was crawling on his hands and knees back towards the cabin. He was speaking very quickly in his unintelligible language. For all that the words were senseless, the current of terror that flowed through them was clear. Rothe walked up to him and raised his sword above the back of his neck. Orisian looked away.
They found the boy’s father, mother and two sisters in the cabin. They were all dead.
Afterwards, Orisian sat on the grass a little way from the cottage. He had his back to it, and was gazing out into the forest. When he looked in that direction, everything appeared normal, as if nothing had happened. The trees were as they had always been. The lichen on their trunks had not changed.
The knife was in his hands. Rothe had retrieved it for him and washed it in a bucket of water they found inside the door of the cabin. Orisian had cleaned himself as best he could. He doubted whether the stains would ever come out of his jacket, though.
His shieldman came and sat beside him.
‘You all right?’
‘It’s not the same as practice, is it?’ Orisian said.
‘No. You did well, though. Showed no fear, stayed alive; can’t ask for much more.’
Ess’yr was a short distance away, testing the spare string she had fitted to her bow. Orisian gestured towards her.
‘She killed him, really. There was so much blood coming out from where she stabbed him he would have bled to death in no time.’ Even as he said it he wondered. Whether it was true or not, it did nothing to shift the hollowness in his stomach.
‘Probably. Still, you made sure he wasn’t getting up again. That’s important, Orisian. Leave it only half done and one day you’ll be the one doing the dying.’
‘I thought it might feel better,’ said Orisian.
‘Better?’
‘I thought it might even the scales a bit. For Winterbirth. For my father.’