‘But it didn’t.’
‘No.’
‘It’s a start. Only a start. These men we killed, they were enemies of our Blood.’
Orisian was no longer certain that any amount of killing would balance the scales of Winterbirth. What had just happened felt as though it had nothing to do with Kolglas. And if it happened a thousand times it would not give Orisian the chance he wanted to tell his father that he had loved him, despite everything. Ess’yr loosed an arrow into the trunk of a birch tree. It smacked into the wood and shivered there.
‘She does know how to use a bow, though, doesn’t she?’ Orisian said.
‘She does. There’s no doubting that.’
They left the Tarbains for the scavengers. They fetched the boy and put him with the rest of his family into a shallow grave in front of their home. It was a poor kind of end, against the Blood’s traditions, but there was no question of making a pyre. There was no knowing who might see the smoke. They ate well, too, and gathered as much food as they could easily carry to take with them. It made Orisian uncomfortable.
‘It’s food for rats if we leave it,’ Rothe said. ‘We’ve done the best we can for them. They’d not begrudge us it.’
They walked in silence through the afternoon. As the first greying of evening had begun they came to the edge of the woods and the Glas valley was before them: a few rolling, sinking slopes shorn of trees, and then the flat lands of the valley floor. It was a huge plain laid out like a blanket of green patchwork. Farmhouses were scattered across it, and a few cattle could be seen here and there, but it was a lifeless view. There were no people in sight, and no smoke rose from any of the buildings. Orisian had a fleeting sense of apprehension. Now, the forest felt safe and concealing compared to that open, exposed ground.
Anduran was out in the centre of the valley, couched in a lazy curve of the Glas some way to the east of where they stood. The river still had a faint shine to it even though the sun had almost fallen from the sky. The castle stood tight up against the riverside. The town it guarded lay to its south, a dark discoloration upon the valley. Orisian did not experience the surge of relief he had expected.
Rothe was standing beside him.
‘What do you think?’ Orisian asked.
Rothe frowned in concentration as his narrowed eyes swept over the landscape.
‘A camp,’ Ess’yr said. ‘There.’
Rothe and Orisian looked. Orisian thought he could see what she was talking about: an indistinct, pale shape sprawled around a darker point at its centre, not far from Anduran. It might have been a camp of tents radiating out from a big farmhouse. Certainly, whatever it was, it had not been there when he and Rothe had ridden out from Anduran all those days ago.
‘Now what is that?’ Rothe was murmuring.
‘The enemy,’ Ess’yr said.
‘White Owl,’ said her brother, and for once there was clear emotion in his voice. He spoke the words as if they tasted vile.
Rothe almost laughed. ‘White Owls? There’d have to be hundreds for such a camp, and out in the middle of the valley, right next to Anduran? You’re mad.’
‘No,’ was all Ess’yr said.
‘It’s impossible,’ insisted Rothe. ‘Inkallim at Kolglas and Tarbains here are strange enough, but White Owls at Anduran?’
Orisian was frowning. ‘It was impossible for Inkallim to reach Kolglas, but they did it. The White Owls helped them do it. In’hynyr said as much, back in the vo’an.’
Varryn had squatted down. He was no longer paying any attention to the discussion. He stared rigidly out at the camp on the valley floor. Orisian turned to Ess’yr.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
Rothe gave an exasperated snort. Orisian ignored him.
‘How many?’ he asked Ess’yr.
‘Many.’
‘Well, I won’t turn back now. We’ll just have to go carefully, and see what we find.’
‘Wait for dark,’ Ess’yr said. ‘We go too. We must know what the enemy does. Where you are blind, we can see.’
The catapult’s arm snapped forwards and an arc of fire vaulted the wall of Castle Anduran. The barrel of oil and pitch roared as it blazed through the air. The thump of its impact somewhere within the fortress was heard by the besiegers. It brought a ragged cheer from the warriors who hid amongst the crude siegeworks facing the castle. They shouted encouragement to the men straining to crank back the throwing arm. There were three catapults in all, and they had been at their work for some time. The smoky stink of their missiles had settled over the whole area. For a time, the castle’s defenders had attempted to pick off the men working the machine with arrows, but the range was too long for accuracy and there were shieldbearers standing guard. Now the burning barrels, the rocks, the severed heads went unanswered as the day sank into dusk.
In the streets and houses that faced the castle across the killing ground, there was a subdued bustle of activity. Small bands of warriors, their feet muffled with cloth, moved along alleyways, gathered in abandoned houses and taverns. Their captains silenced any murmur of conversation with murderous gazes. They carried no torches, and in the deepening dark there were trips and falls and strangled curses. Beakers of bracing grain spirit were passed around, one swallow only for each. Some of the warriors slept, some did not. Some murmured in the shadows: ‘My feet are on the Road. My feet are on the Road.’ And on and on into the night the catapults kept up their thumping rhythm and threw ribbons of fiery gold into the black sky.
In the last few hours before dawn, the temperature fell. The day’s first light brought with it a bitter chill. Clouds piled up around the summits of the Car Criagar to the north. The men atop the battlements shivered and peered out over the town as it emerged from the darkness. The catapults had fallen still, and there was no sign of movement around them. Here and there in Anduran the odd light glimmered. Somewhere a fire-weakened timber gave with a resounding crack.
It was a calm scene, until the eye looked closer. Amongst the barricades and low earthworks that had been thrown up beneath the walls, crowds of Tarbain tribesmen were packed more thickly than ever before. They thronged the ground, pressing themselves down and jostling for any scrap of protection. A few arrows flashed down from the walls, until hurried commands were shouted to save them. Figures were moving amongst the houses that fronted on to the castle; not many, but they moved with haste and purpose. The sentries looked more closely, and they saw spears and polearms. They saw more figures, pressed in beneath overhanging eaves. The Black Road had gathered its full strength.
Word ran through the castle like wildfire. ‘They’re attempting the walls,’ some cried; ‘They’ll force the gate,’ others. Most of the shouts were nothing more than: ‘To arms, to arms!’
Warriors and farmers, shieldmen and townsfolk took up whatever weapon they had to hand and went to the walls. They were hungry and cold. They were tired, for the bombardment had denied many sleep. But they went to the walls and they promised one another the Black Road would be bloodied today.
Croesan and Naradin, Thane and Bloodheir, stood together atop the gatehouse. They risked no more than the briefest of glances out over the grim scene.
‘They grow impatient,’ murmured Naradin. ‘That’s a pity.’
Croesan grunted. He wore polished mail; a gleaming silver shield hung on his arm.
‘They’ll not find us easy,’ said the Thane.
Naradin looked around and back, over the courtyard of the castle. Most of the wooden outbuildings by the keep—stables, blacksmith’s forge, hay store—were ruins, burned out during the night’s incendiary bombardment. A new fire was being kindled even now: a pyre, on to which the bodies of men and horses had been piled, along with the heads thrown into the castle by the catapults. The keep itself was intact, though it bore the scars of several impacts. A fire had started on one of the upper floors in the night, but it had been quickly extinguished. Naradin cast his gaze along the walls that flanked the gatehouse. More than half of those now gathered to defend them were not warriors at all. They were townsfolk trapped here and left with no choice but to take up arms: apprehensive, exhausted.