V

Taim Narran could feel sweat slick on his back and shoulders beneath his shirt. Exertion made his face burn against the bitter air. Fatigue was building in his thighs. Yet still Orisian came at him. His Thane, less than half his age, battled on and on. Taim retreated, a few quick steps back across the training ground, blocking sword blows with his shield as he went. Orisian came after him, on the very borders of control. It was often this way when the two of them fought. The longer the training bouts went on—and Orisian always insisted on extending them, pushing himself to his limits and beyond—the more aggressive the young Thane became, the more violent and unrestrained grew his attacks. Taim let Orisian bear down on him, and twisted aside. Orisian went stumbling through and Taim gave him a smack on the side of his head with the flat of his blade as he went. To his credit, Orisian managed to keep his feet, staggering down almost to his knees before whirling about and surging up again. The two of them battled back and forth. Servants had swept the training square free of snow, but the ground was still frozen, almost rock-like. Orisian’s knuckles, even his cheek, were grazed from earlier falls. Nothing dimmed his willingness to come forward again and again, but exhaustion was at last blunting the ferocity of his attacks. His shield was drifting low, his feet becoming a touch sluggish. Enough, Taim thought. He dropped his own guard just enough to offer temptation. Orisian lunged. Taim sidestepped, and brought his own shield up in a slicing arc. He opened Orisian’s forehead with its rim. Orisian reeled, blood streaking down his face. Taim hooked a foot around the back of his knee, and sent him sprawling. “We’re done for today,” Taim said, kicking his Thane’s sword away. “You’re not learning now, only exhausting yourself.” Orisian struggled to his feet, wiping blood from his brow. “I can carry on,” he said breathlessly. He looked around for his sword. “Your mind’s not clear enough,” Taim said. He sheathed his own sword. “You told me once I had to fight by instinct, not by thinking.” “True enough, but that only works with the right instincts. Anger fouls them up. Fight angry, and you won’t fight long.” Orisian looked downcast. “I know. I try.” “You do. And for as long as you concentrate and keep calm, you fight well. But something happens. You start fighting something more than just me.” Orisian stooped to retrieve his blade. He made a clumsy effort to return it to its scabbard, missing at the first attempt. “You must get that wound cleaned and bound,” Taim said. “Yes,” murmured Orisian. He grimaced at his Captain. “Did you have to hit me so hard?” “Thought it might clear your head. It’s not much more than a touch. It’ll clean up fine.” Orisian grunted, and walked slowly off towards the barracks. As Taim watched him go, he felt sorrow for the young man. He could not call it pity, for that was a sentiment Orisian would utterly refuse. Sorrow fitted better, in any case. Taim was not certain what it was that came over Orisian when they trained. Some formless fury woke in him. Perhaps he became lost in the punishing rhythm of strike and counter-strike, parry and sidestep, and found himself battling against memories, or fears, or death itself. Perhaps each blow he aimed at Taim’s shield was, for him, aimed rather at the whole array of enemies, and of misfortunes, that had taken his father from him, and Inurian. And Rothe. That last death had been the one that finally and fatally weakened the child in Orisian, Taim reflected as he stamped smooth a few of the deeper marks they had gouged into the hard surface of the training ground during their bout. The second shieldman to die in Orisian’s defence, and someone he had been wholly unready to lose. Nothing had been quite the same since then. Taim shook the shield free from his left arm and took it towards the armoury. He walked slowly, for he was weary. And now that there were none to see, he allowed himself to limp. His thigh ached. Beneath his leggings, tight bandages covered the puncture marks and the prodigious bruise inflicted by that bone-encrusted Tarbain club. His weariness was not, though, so much of the body as of the mind and spirit. Though he hid it meticulously from those around him, Orisian most of all, the days were taking a heavy toll. The fighting, the almost sleepless nights, the pervasive and insidious mood of despairing aggression. It all sapped his strength. And there was the sickening worry for his wife and his daughter, left behind in besieged Kolkyre. He had promised Jaen he would be there at her side when their grandchild was born. It would break his heart, and shame him, to fail in that promise. Ranks of shields greeted him as he entered the armoury. They hung from the wall in overlapping rows. To call the place an armoury was overgenerous, in truth. It was little more than a storeroom, and a poorly ordered one at that. The shields might be neatly displayed, but spears were piled lazily and loosely against one wall. There were quivers of arrows in one corner, their flights frayed and broken. Taim hung his shield with the others. He closed the door behind him and made for the barracks. What he wanted, with all his heart, was to be with his family, in front of a warming fire, talking of idle and foolish matters. But no matter how fervent that desire, Taim could contain it—much of the time, at least—within a sealed and silent chamber deep within himself. There were other promises that bound him, and even at the cost of a broken heart, he could not turn aside from them. He had pledged his life to the Blood, to the service of its Thane. For Taim that remained the greater part of what gave his life meaning. There was a blinding white sun in the sky, unfettered by clouds for the first time in days. But its light seemed more to expose the world than to illuminate it. It sharpened every edge, bared everything beneath its cold wash. As Taim walked along Ive’s main street his nostrils were filled with the smell of wet ash. He passed by a long stretch of houses gutted and tumbled by the recent fires. Every detail, every seam and stain of the charred timbers, every smoke scar smearing across the stonework, was clear, precisely delineated by this acute winter light. He could hear an argument somewhere, a man and woman raging at one another. He could hear a baby crying too, off in another direction. In the raw, despairing need of that wail he sensed the expression of something deep. Something of the tune to which the world now danced. He found Torcaill at the town’s edge, standing with a dozen of his men. They were watching a band of townsfolk struggling eastwards across a field, leading a pair of mules that bore huge packs. “There are scores of them leaving now,” Torcaill muttered. “They think Ive’s finished.” “They’re right,” Taim said. “Where are they going?” “I don’t think they know that themselves. Most head east, hoping to lose themselves in the mountains or the woods.” “They’ll have a hard time of it out there. Bad weather, not enough food.” “They will. Worse than hard, a lot of them. But it’s their choice. If they lack the spirit to fight for their town, their Blood, they must bear the consequences.” Taim glanced sideways at the younger man. Torcaill’s vehemence was striking, and his eyes as he watched the departing townsfolk gleamed with a cold contempt. That anger that lurked beneath so many surfaces now was there, unforgiving, judging. “They want to live,” Taim murmured. “Keep their families, their children, alive. There’s no shame in that. They’ve already seen indisputable proof that we can’t keep the Black Road out of their town. If I wore their clothes, I’d do the same.” A flock of birds shot up from a copse beyond the field. They sprayed out in all directions from the treetops, then veered back together and went arrowing together out of sight into the east. “How’s your leg?” Torcaill asked. Taim shrugged. “Wound’s not gone bad so far. Any word from the scouts?” “Half of them have disappeared,” sighed Torcaill. “Killed somewhere out there, or fled perhaps. As for the rest… there’re Tarbains burning farms half a day west of here. The army you fought on the south road is still there, camped at some village. There’s another, bigger, in the hills to the west. My men saw their fires last night. They could be on us tomorrow, if they choose.” Taim nodded. “We’re finished, then. Here, at least. If we stay, we’re done.” “Perhaps.” Torcaill’s assent was grudging. He wanted to fight. “Have you talked to Orisian about it?” “He knows it as well as we do. He wants to meet with us, all of us, this afternoon. After the oath-taking. I think he’ll tell us then what he means to do.” Torcaill pushed forefinger and thumb into his eyes, grinding away the tiredness Taim knew must be lodged there. Nobody was sleeping well. “They’re to go ahead with that, then?” the younger man asked heavily. “The oath-taking, I mean?” “Why not?” Taim said. Torcaill shrugged, but made no reply. “Orisian is Thane of our Blood.” Taim turned away, heading back into the town’s heart. “Those who wish to take the oath in his name have the right. The duty.” “But we’ve no Oathmen, have we?” Torcaill called after him. “They’re all dead. Or lost.” “I’m to do it,” Taim said as he walked, perhaps too softly for the other man to hear. “I’m to wield the knife.” The boy was eight years old. Small and nervous. Perhaps more than nervous, for he paled as his gaze settled upon the knife held in his mother’s open palm. “In the name of Sirian and Powll, Anvar and Gahan and Tavan and Croesan, the Thanes who have been; of Orisian oc Lannis-Haig, the Thane who is now; and of the Thanes yet to come, I command you all to hear the bloodoath taken,” Taim intoned. The words sat strangely in his mouth. They were ancient, weighty words that only Oathmen should speak. “I am Thane and Blood, past and future, and this life will be bound to mine. I command you all to mark it.” The boy was looking up at him now, eyes wide. Taim tried to smile at him, but found the expression difficult, as if it knew it did not truly belong in this moment. He turned instead to the mother, and held out his hand. “The blade is fresh-forged?” he asked her. “Unbloodied? Unmarked?” “Never used,” she murmured, and passed the short simple knife to him. Behind him, Taim could hear feet scraping on the floor as someone shifted position. Not Orisian, he suspected. The Thane had worn a solemn demeanour from the moment this woman first came to him asking that her son should take the bloodoath. The first time his name would be at the centre of this, the ritual heart of his Blood, and it was happening in exile from their rightful lands, in a hall borrowed for the occasion, with a mere warrior playing the makeshift role of Oathman. In the shadow of uncounted deaths. Not how any of them would have wished it to be, yet there was a weight to it, an importance. Taim felt it as much anyone, perhaps more than most. He tightened his grip upon the blade, and moistened his lips. He took hold of the boy’s wrist and gently twisted it to expose the white skin of his underarm. “You will give of your blood to seal this oath?” he asked the child. A moment’s silence, and then the boy whispered, “I will.” “Speak up, boy,” Taim said softly. “Let them hear you.” “I will.” Louder this time, but still tremulous. Good enough, Taim thought. “By this oath your life is bound to mine,” he said. “The word of the Thane of Lannis is your law and rule…” His tongue stumbled to a halt. Something had gone awry, and after a moment he realised what it was. Lannis-Haig, of course. It should have been Lannis-Haig. But something hardened in him, and he went on. “Your law and rule, as the word of a father is to a child. Your life is the life of the Lannis Blood.” He heard the softest of murmurs amongst the onlookers. Some, at least, had noticed his omission. None raised any protest. Such was the nature of the times. Taim drew the blade across the boy’s arm. He felt the briefest, instinctive tensing of the muscles, the slight tug against his firm grip. The child looked away. It was a shallow cut, and clean. A neat line of blood swelled out, but did not run. “You pledge your life to the Lannis Blood?” Taim asked. The boy nodded once, still averting his eyes. “You must say it,” Taim murmured. “Yes.” “You bend the knee to the Thane, who is the Blood?” Taim released the boy’s arm. He set his thumb against the flat of the knife, smearing a trace of the child’s blood across it. “I do.” “Then none may come between you and this oath.” Taim stared at the thick fluid smudged across the dull metal. Such small things, this deed, these words, yet containing so much. Containing within their narrow bounds as much of his own life, as much of his history and meaning, as anything could. The mother must have thought the same, to seek out this moment for her son. Fleeing from horrors, she had found herself in an unknown town, destitute, amidst chaos; yet there too she happened to find her Thane, and from that turn of fortune she sought to give her child this boon. Perhaps the boy would not recognise it for the gift it was. Perhaps that would only come later; perhaps never. “None may come between you and this oath,” Taim said. “By it you set aside all other allegiances. The Blood shall sustain you and bear you up. You shall sustain the Blood. Speak your oath.” The boy looked up from his wound. And Taim found he could smile at him now, an honest smile of reassurance and encouragement. “I am Tollen Lanan dar Lannis-Haig… dar Lannis… son of Cammenech and Inossa. By my blood I pledge my life to Lannis. The word of the Thane is my law and rule; it is the root and… and staff of my life. The enemy of the Blood is my enemy. My enemy is the enemy of the Blood. Unto death.” “Unto death,” Taim said. He pressed the hilt of the oathknife into the boy’s hand, and watched those thin fingers close about it. “Unto death.”