Rothe surged to his feet, spilling both Orisian and the hound’s corpse as he rose. The shieldman clasped a hand about his bloodstained wrist, and took a lurching step towards the Inkallim.
Varryn hissed: an inhuman, piercing sound. The Inkallim flicked his head round. Varryn was motionless. He was perfectly poised in the still moment a hunter would seek: unbreathing, feet firmly planted, bowstring taut, the fletching of the arrow brushing his face. The Inkallim began to move. The arrow was released. In an instant it crossed the space between Kyrinin and human, and cracked into the Inkallim’s cheek. The moment the bowstring snapped out of his hand, Varryn was rushing to Ess’yr.
‘My sword,’ Rothe cried.
‘I can’t see it,’ Orisian heard Anyara shout.
The Hunt Inkallim turned unsteadily back towards the shieldman. Varryn’s arrow stood rigid in his face, rooted in a nest of blood and bone. A mad, desperate grin split the man’s face. Blood was spilling out over his lips. Orisian threw his knife: he was unskilled in the art, but it was made for throwing and it found a home high on the Inkallim’s chest.
Rothe stretched out his uninjured arm towards Anyara.
‘Your staff,’ he said.
She passed it to him in silence. The Inkallim made to raise his own weapon, but all his strength and grace were gone. He was rocking on his feet. He watched limply as Rothe came up and struck him a great blow on the side of the head. The Inkallim fell. His legs kicked feebly as he lay face-down in the snow.
‘Leave him, leave him!’ Yvane was shouting. Already, she was heading off, straight down the slope. ‘He wasn’t alone.’
Varryn slung his sister’s bow across his shoulders with his own and lifted Ess’yr. Her arms and legs dangled limply. Carrying both her and his spear, Varryn began to run after Yvane.
Rothe was scrabbling clumsily in the snow. Blood falling from his wounds left pinpricks of red in the whiteness.
‘Where’s my sword?’ he cried, sounding grief-struck.
‘Leave it,’ shouted Orisian, hauling at his shieldman’s arm. Rothe resisted for a moment.
‘Rothe! Do as I say. Leave it.’ Even to his own ears, Orisian’s voice had an arresting edge of command to it.
Yvane cried, ‘We must go!’ back over her shoulder.
They took great leaping strides through the snow. Rothe held himself at the back, even though he had nothing now save a knife with which to defend Orisian and Anyara.
Their flight was wild, uncontrolled, but the attack they feared never came. When they broke free of the cloud’s embrace they found themselves rushing down towards a distant dark line of trees. The snow was thinning, the ground more even.
Though he could hardly raise his eyes from the point of his next footfall, Orisian was aware of a great vista spread out before them. They had come out on to the northern flank of the Car Criagar and the Dihrve valley lay ahead and below. Beyond that broad plain, like a magnified reflection of the mountains behind them, the immense heights of the Car Dine rose up.
At last, coming to the first scrawny trees, Yvane allowed them to pause. Even Varryn was breathing hard as he knelt and laid Ess’yr down. A look of concern emerged through the fierce tattoos on his face as he leaned over his sister and listened to her breathing. Delicately, he ran his fingers over her side, feeling for injuries. Then he sat back and gently brushed strands of hair from her forehead.
‘How is she?’ Orisian panted.
‘Broken,’ Varryn said. He gestured at his own ribcage. ‘Here.’
‘Lammanroot would be best,’ said Yvane distractedly. She was looking back up the slope, her eyes narrowed. ‘But we do not have the time to search for it now.’
Rothe was at her side, surveying the higher slopes just as she did. The distant banks of cloud that still cloaked the mountains were a blank, impenetrable wall. There was no hint of movement.
‘Perhaps they will give up the chase now we have bloodied them,’ he said.
‘Perhaps,’ murmured Yvane. ‘Will you allow a na’kyrim to bind that wrist for you?’
Rothe nodded in agreement. He turned and watched Varryn as Yvane began rooting somewhere beneath her cloak for bandage materials. ‘You have a keen aim,’ he said.
‘Kyrinin aim,’ was Varryn’s brusque reply, but after a moment he seemed to think better of his curtness, and he looked up at the shieldman. ‘Not so keen. I went for the eye.’
‘A good try, still,’ replied Rothe. ‘That arrow saved us a lot of trouble.’
Varryn shrugged; it was not as cold a gesture as once might have passed between the two. They rested only for a minute or two, and then resumed a more cautious descent. Ess’yr woke, grimacing in pain, her face whiter than ever it had been before. Varryn supported her as she hobbled down through the woods.
These forests were different to those of the Glas valley. Pines dominated them. Mostly they were small, cold- and wind-bent things, but in places they crowded so close together that they cast a black shade. The earth was carpeted with browned needles and wiry grass. Here and there tree roots had been forced to the surface by hidden rocks or stone faces. The place had a foreign feel, fit for the old tales of savage Kyrinin, watchful Anain or even the wolfish Whreinin.
They had crossed into a land where only masterless humans roamed, where the bloodoath or the concerns of Lannis and Horin meant nothing. Now more than ever, Orisian thought, they were in the hands of their inhuman companions. This was their land.
In the gathering dusk they made a camp of sorts amidst the trees. Varryn laid a fire against the foot of a sloping rock and then, once Ess’yr was settled by the flames, disappeared into the forest without a word of explanation. Orisian guessed he had gone to search for the root he needed to ease his sister’s pain.
There was a great dormant ant hill a few yards from their resting place, a smooth mound of pine needles that bulbed up from the ground. Yvane was crouched beside it, probing it with a thin twig. The image was strangely familiar to Orisian. It was some time before he could recall why: the last time he had been alone with Inurian, the na’kyrim had been searching for sea urchins beside Castle Kolglas with a long stick.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked her, as he had asked Inurian then.
‘Distracting myself from our difficulties. Ants make good food if you are hungry enough.’ She smiled at his involuntary grimace. ‘Though I suppose we’re not that hungry yet.’ She set aside the twig and rose a little stiffly to her feet.
‘I have not stretched my legs so vigorously for a long time,’ she muttered. There was a touch of irritation in her voice. She disliked her own weakness.
‘Mine are getting used to running,’ he said.
‘Well, we may be clear of trouble for now,’ said Yvane as she led him back towards the fire. ‘Hopefully we can walk the rest of the way to Koldihrve.’
Rothe was sitting on a stone, his unsheathed knife resting on his thigh, gazing into the fire. Orisian felt a twinge of sympathy for his shieldman. It would be a torment to Rothe to be without his sword; unable, as he would see it, to properly protect Orisian. And Orisian had, he glumly reflected, left his own knife—the Inkallim blade—behind, resting in the chest of their pursuer.
Anyara was already dozing, sitting against a tree trunk with her patchy fur jacket draped over her like a blanket. Her head nodded on her chest and every now and again she made a soft murmuring sound.
‘We all need some rest,’ said Yvane softly.
Orisian stretched out close to the fire. He should be afraid, he knew, of what might come in the night. It seemed he was too tired for fear, though, since he soon drifted off towards sleep with the soft crackling of the flames in his ears.