It was a hard, frightening dash. Every hump and hollow in the ground, every unseen ditch and tangle of bushes or brambles became a trap. Anyara lost all sense of direction and distance. She ran onwards, her breath growing ever shorter and her heart straining to burst out from her chest.
They blundered through a bed of nettles. The grass was longer now, and tugged at their ankles. By some unconscious hint of sound or smell, Anyara could tell that they had reached the Glas before it was visible. The riverbank was studded by low bushes and fringed by a narrow strip of tall reeds and rushes. Beyond, the water moved thickly in the moonlight. They came to a halt and looked back, listening for a moment. The night was silent.
‘We swim,’ said Inurian breathlessly. Anyara turned to regard the black, silent river with some trepidation. There was no time for doubt, though. Inurian was already pulling her into the water.
‘Swim downstream, across the current,’ he said, and struck out from the bank. She followed. The cold embrace of the river compressed her chest and made her skin feel hard. The current pushed at her. Inurian seemed to be moving away from her and she had to bite back a rush of panic. She concentrated on her stroke, fighting to keep a rhythm against the weight of her clothes and the river’s remorseless tug. At last more reeds loomed up out of the darkness, and a pale hand was reaching for her. Inurian hauled her out and she slipped and slithered through mud and up on to grass. She lay there gasping.
‘No time to rest,’ urged Inurian, dragging her to her feet.
She risked a glance back, but could see nothing.
‘We have to hurry,’ insisted Inurian. ‘We have to run.’
‘Are they coming?’ asked Anyara as she rushed after him, away from the riverbank.
‘I think she’s here. I think I can find her.’
They made less than fifty paces. Anyara fell. Inurian helped her up. All she heard was a soft thud and a tiny, surprised sound from Inurian, and then the na’kyrim was slumping to his knees, his hand slipping from her shoulder and sliding down the length of her arm.
‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured as he went.
She grabbed at him, trying to hold him up, and looked around. Still she saw nothing. As she scrabbled for a grip on his tunic, Anyara felt the shaft of an arrow sunk deep into Inurian’s back. She wanted to cry with frustration. He was too heavy for her to lift.
‘Get up!’ she shouted at him. ‘Get up, Inurian! We have to keep going.’
She heard something: it might be the splash of somebody entering the river.
He did get up, leaning on her. His head was hanging low. She managed to move him forwards and they began a lurching progress through the fields. She had no idea where they were going, but knew that it was movement that mattered. If they did not keep moving they were dead. Nothing else mattered.
‘She’s close,’ Inurian said weakly, and he breathed a name that Anyara did not catch.
‘Keep moving,’ she begged him. His weight was increasing. She was not sure how much longer she could bear him up.
She twisted her neck to look back, and she saw them. They were coming: Kyrinin coming out of the night. She took another step. Don’t stop, she thought.
She almost screamed when, without a sound, two shapes rose up a few paces in front of her: a man and a woman. Kyrinin, not human. White Owls, she thought, somehow ahead of them and waiting here. A flurry of impressions told her something was wrong, though. The cut and shape of their clothes was different from what she had seen on the White Owls in Anlane; their eyes, as they lifted bows with arrows already nestled against the strings, were not upon Anyara and Inurian but upon the hunters behind them.
‘Down,’ the woman said. Anyara fell, taking Inurian with her, as arrows hissed by in both directions. The two Kyrinin sprang forwards, going to meet her pursuers. She could hear someone else moving closer.
‘Anyara?’ someone was saying. She could not believe the name that went with the voice. She looked up. A big man was rushing past, naked sword in his hand, and in his wake came a smaller figure. She cried out in a potent mix of release and relief, and rose to embrace Orisian.
Kanin nan Horin-Gyre’s hands, so recently trembling with wonder at the victory he had won, shook now with anger. He strove to contain it. At this moment he should have been in the hall of Castle Anduran: they should all have been there, rejoicing in the destruction of the creed’s foes, marking the day when the Black Road was at last restored to the lands that had once been Avann oc Gyre’s. To feast in the halls of Anduran would realise the hopes of Tegric and his hundred when they sacrificed themselves on the march into exile; the hopes of generations of the faithful; most of all, the hopes of Kanin’s father. On the foundations of this day, new and greater hopes could be fashioned. It might not be the end of their journey to the Kall, but they had taken a great stride down the path that led to the creed’s dominion and the unmaking of the world.
Instead . . . instead, Kanin stood and glared at the nervous warrior who stood before him. She was one of the best of his Shield, and had been charged with bringing Anyara and the na’kyrim from the gaol to the castle. It was no distance: the work of minutes.
‘You hold the Tarbains?’ Kanin asked. The words had to force their way out past the rigidity of his jaw.
‘We killed two. We have the others.’ She spoke quietly, with downcast eyes.
‘I want their heads on spikes above the gaol by dawn,’ Kanin hissed. ‘But others can see to that. You . . . you are dismissed, from my Shield, my army. You will walk back to Hakkan and kneel before my mother and tell her that I have commanded you to serve her as chambermaid and washerwoman.’
The woman did not need to be told to leave. She backed silently out of the room.
Kanin sat heavily in a chair. This room, a small one in the heart of Castle Anduran’s keep, had little left by way of furnishings. Most had been stripped out. Only a chair and table remained. The Bloodheir thumped his fist on the table. It did little to dispel his anger. Restless, he sprang to his feet again. He had promised his father that he would destroy the Lannis Blood, or die in the attempt. Now some girl, and the idiocy of his own people, was making it a lie.
‘Where is Cannek?’ he demanded of Igris, who stood unobtrusively in the corner. The woman who had failed Kanin so grievously was his responsibility, and Igris knew it as well as Kanin did.
The Hunt Inkallim entered even as his name was uttered. If Igris was relieved at the opportunity to stay silent, he did not show it.
‘You wished to see me?’ Cannek said. He glanced quickly around the room and, seeing only one chair and the Bloodheir pacing up and down, he stood where he was.
‘Every tracker you have, every dog, is to be on the trail. Find them for me.’
‘Yes. It is being done even as we speak, Bloodheir. They will not get far: a girl and a na’kyrim are not likely to escape the Hunt.’
‘Shraeve told me none would escape the Battle at Kolglas, but one did. They say the boy was mortally wounded but they can’t show me the body, can they? See that the Hunt does better, Cannek. I want to see that girl’s body.’
The Inkallim was unmoved by the bitterness in Kanin’s voice. He smiled: a faint, equable gesture.
‘If fate favours us,’ he murmured. ‘You may be interested to know others are already abroad. The woodwights are busy emptying their camp: dozens of them are making for the river. Quite why they’re so agitated, I don’t know. They are good trackers, though. It may help us.’
Kanin ceased his pacing and stared at the Inkallim.
‘Woodwights!’ he spat. I’ll not have them interfering. This is nothing to do with them.’