*

The Bloodheir was gone. Summoned back to Vaymouth by the Thane of Thanes, it was said. Malloc cared nothing for the two thousand men who had marched with him; it was the departure of Aewult nan Haig himself that weighed upon him. Some, Malloc knew, would welcome the Bloodheir’s departure. There were those—all but traitors to his way of thinking—who thought Aewult’s leadership a factor in their recent defeats. In the night just ended, by the glare of their campfire’s flames, Malloc and his companions had killed one such, a man who slighted the Bloodheir’s courage, his merit. The others had held him down and covered his mouth, and Malloc himself slipped a blade twice, thrice, between his ribs. They had dragged the body to a ditch and hidden it amongst reeds there. None could reasonably punish them for their deed, but it would be for the best if the question never arose. There had been a certain comfort in the killing, a small confirmation that the world retained some semblance of sense and balance. Strangely sweeter to him than the taking of any of the other lives he had claimed in his long service of his Blood, it gave Malloc a memory to set in the scales against his disappointment at the Bloodheir’s departure. He stood now, with Garrent and the others at his side, by the banks of a wide, shallow stream, and remembered the feel of that disloyal, foul-mouthed fool dying beneath his knife. The man had been a Taral-Haig archer, somehow separated from his company in the darkness. In the new day’s half-light, the waters of this stream looked darker and more turbid than they had any right to be. There were many such brown waterways scurrying down towards the sea from the northern fringes of the Ayth-Haig moors. It galled Malloc to find himself in such a peripheral posting, when any battle—if there was even to be such a thing—would be decided nearer the coast, beside the road that pointed the way south. That was where most of the remaining Haig forces were gathered. None defended Kilvale itself. The town would stand or fall by the strength of its own inhabitants and the warriors of its own Blood. There had been killings traded between Kilkry and Haig. Only word of the Black Road’s approach and the withdrawal of every Haig sword from the town had stilled them. In truth, Malloc doubted the rumours of impending combat that had drifted through the army, with the smoke of its hundreds of campfires, in the evening and night just passed. He had long ago learned to distrust the misshapen guesses that infested any assemblage of fighting men like madly breeding cockroaches. The whispered reports of Black Road companies massing half a day to the north of Kilvale seemed to him no more reliable than any of the hundred other tales he had heard in recent weeks. Some clearly gave them more credence, though, so he found himself here in the misty morning, staring across the chattering waters at rough, undulating ground studded with countless clumps of low trees and shrubs. For all his conviction that this would come to nothing, Malloc clung to a faint hope that he might have the chance to draw his sword today. The waiting, the indolence, had become insupportable. He had never known any body of men so in need of bloodshed. He revelled in the tightening of his own chest at the thought that he might, at last, have the chance to make amends for the defeats inflicted by the Black Road. This was supposedly the only fordable stretch of the river above Kilvale that the Black Road might reach in a single day. Malloc had no idea whether that was true, but it offered at least the possibility that there would be fighting to be done, so he chose to believe it. He chose to hope. What breeze there was on this sluggish morning was out of the west, and it suddenly carried upon it the faintest, most tantalising hint of battle. The damp air brought a murmur out of the furthest mists: the muted song of war. Malloc’s heart thumped, as if fed by the distant sound. He firmed his grip upon the shaft of his spear, shifted his weight from foot to foot. Nobody spoke, in all the ranks of men. Their mood was expressed not in words, but in the creaking of leather, the rasp of swords being drawn, the soft settling of helms onto heads. Malloc saw figures far out beyond the river, imprecise movements at the limit of his mist-curbed vision. The Black Road came in loose array, slowly, spread out amongst the scattered trees, and they came armoured in mounting noise. Voices merged into a rising clamour, forming a fierce, disembodied chorus of intent that seemed almost to come from the hidden sky, descending upon Malloc and his companions from above. There was hunger in that sound, an impersonal pledge of savagery. And as it drew nearer, and as the figures came closer and solidified, Malloc felt sudden fear stealing through his mind. It rose up from within him and ran cold needles over his scalp, sent a tremor running through his arm so that his spear shook. It changed him in a moment, as if he had stepped across a threshold, entering a chilling shadow, becoming someone else. His every thought was smothered by a mounting, absolute dread, a crippling fear of what might—what would—happen with his next heartbeat, or the next. In the last vestigial corner of his former mind, he remembered this. He had felt it before, on the day of this army’s humiliation beyond Kolkyre. Then, as now, all strength had leached from his arms and legs, all reason and courage fled from him. But this was deeper, this was reaching for the core of him, crushing what lay behind his eyes beneath an overwhelming despair. Malloc gasped, feeling his breath clog in his throat. He looked sideways, and saw Garrent, close by, anguish tugging at his face, mouth opening, lips trembling. Malloc’s hand shook once more, and his spear toppled from his numb grip. “Stand firm!” he heard someone shout behind him, but the voice was wild, desperate, fully aware of its own futility. Malloc could see the men and women coming towards him clearly now. He could see their lips moving, and the noise buffeted him, the baying of hounds, the cry of a thousand crows, promising to pick the flesh from his bones. Another few moments, another few agonising beats of his tumbling heart, and they would be at the river, setting their feet into its waters. There were riders here and there amongst the throng, towering in Malloc’s sight, their mounts great beasts with blood falling from their fanged mouths. He moaned, felt his legs quiver. Those on either side of him were backing away. Garrent was turning, letting fall his own spear just as Malloc had done. The first of them was in the river: a woman, leaning forward in anticipation, the water breaking around her ankles, a feral grin upon her face, fire in her eyes. She was staring, it seemed to Malloc, right at him, into him. He saw her sword and knew, with utter precision, what it would feel like when that blade pierced his bowels and twisted there, tearing his guts, opening him. Then the whole host of the Black Road was running at him, howling, the horses pounding in curtains of spray across the ford, and Malloc wailed and fled. They all did. There was nothing but flight, a great jostling crowd pounding away over the rough grass. Malloc knew he was already doomed, already dead; he knew it with a certainty he had never felt before in his life. Still he fled, for his body would permit nothing else. Crossbow bolts came whipping past him. Someone fell across his path and he trampled them. A horse came thundering up beside him, and another man went down, speared. He felt a blow on his back, and pain, but ran on. He pushed others from his path. He stumbled and went down onto hands and knees. His own terror pulled him to his feet and drove him on. Black Roaders were flowing around him, ahead of him, in amongst the fleeing warriors. Malloc heard their wild joy, saw an axe come down in a great arc onto a skull, saw a mounted swordsman laughing as he hacked again and again. Malloc ran as if in a fell dream. He was weeping, he knew. He could hear his own voice, though he did not know what he was saying. Blood spattered his face and he tasted it. There were bodies all over the ground, like boulders, like logs. He clawed at the air before him, wanting to tear his way out of this place, this world, to whatever lay beyond, for he could not endure another moment of this. Someone battered against his shoulder and spun him. He staggered back, facing the enemy now and seeing them pouring towards him in limitless numbers, a vast, mindless dark flood engulfing the land. A man hit Malloc across the throat with his sword, not pausing but running on in search of further prey. Malloc slumped to his knees. Blood bubbled in his mouth. He could see a woman running at him, spear levelled. He lifted his hands, but they were heavy and limp, parting as they rose as if in welcome. The spear hit him high on the chest and knocked him onto his back. He glimpsed grey mist above. He did not remember who he was or what he was doing here. His form contained nothing but fear. It was all of him. Then that mist was blotted out by figures clustering about and above him, and they were stabbing him and kicking him. The blows rained down, and he felt them as a stooping flock of birds plunging into his body. Something was coming towards his face, towards his eyes. His heart stopped, and the descending shape made itself the blade of a sword, falling slowly like a piece of the sky come loose. It grew until he could see nothing else. And then it gathered him into its darkness and took him away.