*

The two women were together, on the walls of Vaymouth, to watch events unfold. Jaen had argued against it, fearful for Ilessa’s heart. But the Thane’s mother had only murmured, “I need to see. I need to see for myself. I won’t have someone else coming to me, bringing me that news.” So they were on the walls watching when the horns sounded all round the rim of the city. They were there when Vaymouth opened its gates and poured its men, by the thousand, out onto the fields. Warriors and townsfolk, seamen and exiles, all came flooding out in thick dark streams. The noise of their advance reverberated through the stones of those walls. Jaen felt it, in her feet, in her breastbone, the deep rumble of imminent carnage. The Black Roaders were not unprepared, but nor were they capable of ordered movement. Their companies massed in tardy disarray, some not at all. Bands of horsemen galloped up and down behind their dishevelled lines, as if maddened and disorientated. Campfires, inadvertently kicked apart in the rush for weapons and armour, spread and soon flames were flickering up from tents and from piles of stores. Jaen stared out as both armies began to come apart almost at once. From either side, while the hosts churned back and forth in confusion, knots of warriors would break free, like swirling bees separating from a greater swarm, and rush forward to throw themselves futilely against their enemy. Jaen had never seen such a conflict before, but she had been wedded to her Blood’s greatest warrior for many years, and she knew a little of how battles were meant to be fought. And she knew a good deal of how precious life was, and how reluctantly it should be given up. This was a new time, though. New rules governed the waging of war and the value of life alike. The two armies never mustered a coordinated advance; they simply bled into one another as more and more of their numbers flung themselves into the fray. The open ground between the two forces was gradually whittled away, contracting into little islands of stillness in a sea of furious motion, finally disappearing altogether as the waves of strife and death closed over them. Jaen and Ilessa now gazed out over a single tempestuous form that swayed over the land, surging first here and then there, drifting slowly south and leaving the trampled ground strewn with hundreds of bodies. “There is my son,” Ilessa said quietly. She pointed, and Jaen saw Roaric, atop his great horse, leading his Shield in a wild charge through the heart of the battle. They cut a swathe through the vast throng, though whether it was foes or friends who were going down beneath their flashing blades and pounding hoofs it was not possible to tell. On and on they rode, and a multitude of deaths attended their passage. In time a denser knot of figures took them in its grip, and the waves of that cruel sea lapped ever higher about them, and seemed about to overwhelm them. Jaen could feel Ilessa tensing by her side, and could only wonder at the woman’s stubborn, dignified determination to witness her son’s fate. It would have been beyond Jaen to stand here and watch Taim fight for his life in this way. The horsemen were obscured for a few moments, swamped by the throngs of bodies pressing in against them. Then the host thinned itself again, and they could still see Roaric, unhorsed now, fighting with his Shield about him, laying down whole drifts of corpses before them. Set to drown in blood, Jaen thought gloomily. Set to cede dominion over the world to death itself. And so it went, for a long time. The tides of battle ebbed and flowed; the dead crowded the field, coalescing amongst the grass into a single smooth bruise on the surface of the land. Long after it seemed that the fallen must outnumber the living, an end came. It was a stuttering, hesitant ending, imprecise. In some places on the field warriors found there was no one left to kill. In others the forces of the Black Road began to straggle away, scattering in any and all directions. Weary cheers went up along the walls. Not from Jaen or Ilessa. The two of them went down and waited inside the city’s greatest gate. Roaric’s army came trickling back in. The men stumbled and fell; stared about them with wide, uncomprehending eyes. Few were capable of celebration or of responding to the approbation of those who had watched their victory from afar. Several staggered in through the gate and, as if they had been sustained only by the driving imperative to attain that goal, fell in the roadway, dead or unconscious. At last the Thane returned to his city. He came not on his mighty warhorse, but carried on a litter by his Shield. Ilessa drew them aside and leaned over her son. “He took no wound, my lady,” one of the massive warriors carrying the litter said. “He simply fell, and we found him thus.” The Thane of the Kilkry Blood laughed and wept at the same time. Tears streamed from his eyes. “Roaric,” Ilessa whispered. “Roaric.” All too clearly Jaen caught the pleading in those words, the all-consuming desire for her son to return to her from whatever place he had become lost in. But he did not respond. His jaw moved, but no words emerged. “Take him to the Tower,” Ilessa said, defeated. “Time will heal him, or nothing will.” Gryvan oc Haig stared in disbelief at the figure kneeling before him. “At the gate?” he said. “Yes, sire.” Kale’s intonation was typically flat and dispassionate, but even he was regarding Igryn oc Dargannan-Haig with a certain puzzled fascination. “Trussed and bound, just as you see him.” “And no one saw how he came to be there?” “There was a crowd milling about. When it cleared, he remained. With a burlap sack over his head. And a message. A parchment tucked inside his jacket.” “Message?” Gryvan could feel his anger building. He was heartily sick of surprises, even ones as relatively benign as the unexpected return of something he had thought lost. Each new instance of the unanticipated merely fed his conviction that he was conspired against. Mocked. “What message?” “That we should, if we want to know where Igryn oc Dargannan-Haig has been these last few days, consult with our Chancellor.” Gryvan roared, and swept the wine ewer and goblets from the table at his side. They skittered across the marble floor, spinning and decorating the polished slabs with a spray of red liquid. “Send for him! I want to see my Shadowhand here now.” The word reached Gryvan some time later that his Chancellor was indisposed and unable to come to the Moon Palace. The message had been delayed in its journey between the two palaces because the first man dispatched to convey the summons to the Chancellor had been swept up in a running street fight between two very extensive families in the Meddock Ward and been knifed in the heart. Both the contents of the message and the reason for its tardiness infuriated Gryvan. He could assert control over neither his city nor the chief official of his court. The High Thane went through his palace like a gale. Its disorder, the frantic demeanour of its inhabitants, further stoked up the fire in him. He bellowed at the servants milling pointlessly about in the corridors. He kicked aside the hunting hounds that had somehow got loose in one of the stairwells. The thunder of his rage preceded him through the palace, and all who heard it scattered at his approach. He found the Bloodheir in his chambers, playing some dicing game with the slatternly girl he had been spending so much time with recently. Gryvan could not remember her name, but he remembered very well that Abeh had forbidden her to enter the Moon Palace. “Get the whore out of here,” the High Thane growled as he stalked into the room. Aewult bridled at that. “There’s no —” he began, but Gryvan was in no mood for debate. “You prefer to stay here rather than in your own palace while the unrest continues, so be it. But while you do, you’ll obey our… my rules. Get the whore out.” “Go, Ishbel,” Aewult said grudgingly to her. When she was gone, Gryvan slumped heavily onto one of the cushioned benches that flanked the fireplace. “Where’s your brother?” he asked wearily. Aewult smiled bitterly. “Stravan is… indisposed. He found a stock of exceptionally fine Drandar wine this morning. And a number of young ladies eager to share it with him.” Gryvan shook his head. Stravan was a sot, and a wastrel, and a burden of a son. Unworthy of his distinguished lineage. “He is not the only one indisposed,” he sighed. “Get yourself ready. You and I are going to the Palace of Red Stone. There are answers there, and I mean to have them. You might learn something. To have one son fit to succeed me should at least be possible, surely.”