The Horin-Gyre warriors shed all restraint, and a savage melee began.
Anyara spun about, looking for Inurian. The na’kyrim stood a few paces away beside a female warrior whose attention was fixed upon her comrades’ struggle. Even as Anyara turned to look, Inurian was sliding a belt knife out of its sheath at the woman’s waist. Anyara’s attention alerted the warrior and she swung around, grabbing at Inurian. The na’kyrim was faster. He stabbed into her throat and she fell, dragging the knife from his hand as she went.
Anyara leapt over the fallen woman. Inurian pulled her through the doorway of a fire-gutted house.
‘Run,’ was all he said as they crashed over blackened timbers in the hallway and stumbled past a ruined flight of stairs. Behind them, there were urgent shouts. Inurian thumped aside a door that hung loose and then they were spilling out into a black, tight alleyway. Inurian had hold of her wrist and she could only follow as he turned right and rushed a few strides along the cobbled alley before diving through another doorway. The voices behind them felt imminent. An open window led them out into another passage. A foul stench said there was an abandoned slaughterhouse somewhere near. Small shadows scattered as rats took flight.
Inurian closed his hand over Anyara’s mouth and pulled her down, pressing her into the blackness that had pooled at the angle of walls and ground. She stirred uncomfortably, but he whispered in her ear, ‘Still.’
She could hear his deep, even breathing. The sound of pursuit grew louder. Feet hammered into the alley; muttered curses and urgent exchanges. Some of the hunters ran off. Other, softer treads came closer, and there was the startling crash of doors being thrown open as they peered inside the buildings that lined the passage.
She pressed her eyes tight shut, as if it would in some way mar the sight of those who searched for them. Inurian was as still as a corpse beside her. Someone standing nearby shouted out. Then they were moving away, their voices receding, their footsteps fading into the night. Inurian exhaled and Anyara opened her eyes. Inurian rose to a crouch, glancing up and down the alleyway.
‘Quickly,’ he whispered, ‘they’ll think we are ahead of them for a little while yet. We must get out of the town if we can. I don’t know if there are any Hunt Inkallim here, but if there are we’ll not be able to hide from them or their dogs. We need to get over the walls.’
They scurried along the back streets of Anduran, darting from doorway to doorway and shadow to shadow, seeking always the deepest dark. Where burned-out ruins had replaced buildings they scrambled over and through the rubble, finding shelter in its nooks and crannies. Twice the groups of warriors criss-crossing the city almost had them, and each time they huddled down as small as they could, holding their breath while their pursuers went past.
The minutes stretched as they worked their way closer to the western edge of Anduran. Once there was, from some little distance away, the sound of barking dogs and they glanced at one another. It could mean nothing, but it put the same thought in both of their minds: the Hunt was to be feared at least as much as the Battle Inkall. Assassins and torturers, hunters and trackers, the Inkallim who served in it were said to be an elite amongst the elite. Once marked by the Hunt Inkall, a life had no more value than a Whreinin’s promise.
‘We must get across the river,’ said Inurian. ‘If we can reach the forest, there are Kyrinin tracks I know. We might be able to lose ourselves for a time.’
Anyara nodded dumbly. She knew Anduran well, but in the darkness, with the enemy upon them and so much of the town disfigured by fire and battle, she had little idea where they were. Inurian seemed confident of his route, though. She followed without hesitation, trusting in his instincts.
They came to a place where the city wall was crumbling and half-fallen. For a few, tense seconds, they crouched in a doorway, straining their ears and eyes for any sign of watchers. There was only the faint sound of voices far behind them. They clambered up a pile of rubble, grabbing at stems of ivy that had colonised the city’s fortifications, and then they were up and through the breach and tumbling into the ditch outside the wall. Anyara could have laughed as she rolled, filled with the heady sense of escape. Inurian was on his feet again in an instant, scanning the night.
‘Stay close,’ he said to her, and he was off before she could reply, racing up and out of the ditch and into the fields beyond.
The moonlight was stronger here, with no buildings to cast their shadows. It made the bushes and trees, barns and distant farmhouses into sinister shapes somehow filled with threat. They waded along a water-filled field drain. When at last they clambered out, Anyara’s legs felt numbed to the bone. Her ragged skirt clung to her skin. She was about to ask if they could rest for a moment when Inurian crouched and gestured at her to follow suit.
‘See?’ he asked, pointing out across the flat fields. At first Anyara did not understand what he meant, but then she picked out the yellow pinpricks of firelight in the darkness.
‘Kyrinin fires, I’d say,’ murmured Inurian. ‘A White Owl war party, and a huge one.’ He turned to Anyara and whispered with steely intensity. ‘The world is turned upside down for them to be out here in such numbers. Aeglyss has a great deal to answer for. He could be as great a threat as the Black Road, Anyara: the more so because he’s unstable, unpredictable. Remember that.’
‘I will,’ she whispered, taken aback.
‘One more thing,’ Inurian said. He was pressing something into her hand. ‘It’s a foolish thing, but I would be grateful. Take this.’
She closed her fingers about the knotted lace.
‘If something happens to me,’ the na’kyrim was saying, ‘and you have the chance, afterwards, bury this somewhere where the earth is wet, and plant a willow stake over it. Will you do that?’
Anyara nodded. She might have asked him what it meant, but that did not seem like the right question.
‘What do we do now?’ she asked him.
‘Make for the river. I think ... ah, I wish I could be sure. I can’t be certain. There might be someone, beyond the river, who can help us. I think I can feel her . . . perhaps.’ There was a wistfulness, almost an ache, in the na’kyrim’s voice. ‘I’m not sure. But we must go quickly, anyway. If they put White Owls on our tracks we’ll need a big start to have any hope of shaking them off.’
‘We had best keep moving, then,’ said Anyara with a resolution she did not feel. Inurian squeezed her shoulder.
‘We had,’ he said. ‘Stay close and quiet.’
The Inurian who led her through the farmland was one Anyara did not know. It was, perhaps, the Kyrinin part of him that had been hidden through all his years at Castle Kolglas. His steps were careful but swift, his movements silent. He found concealing ditches and hedgelines, even low undulations in the apparently flat ground, where Anyara saw nothing. When he paused, becoming so still that he faded into the greys and blacks of the night, she could have believed that she was alone. She fought to calm her thumping heart and the voice in her head that urged wild, abandoned flight. All she could do was focus on Inurian and follow his lead.
There was a sharp barking from somewhere out in the darkness. Anyara knew it was only a fox, but the sound had a chilling edge on this night. Muddy ground clawed at her feet as they skirted a little stand of trees, and she stumbled, her hands sinking deep into the wet earth. As she struggled upright a few pigeons erupted from the branches above. Inurian took her arm in his hand.
‘We must run for the river,’ he hissed, and his urgency clutched at her throat.
‘Why?’ she gasped. ‘Because of the birds?’ but already he had spun about and was dashing on into the darkness. She flew after him, the thought of losing sight of him filling her with dread.