*

The Inkallim came on and up. She lacked the room for elegant and deceptive swings in the tight confines of the stairwell, but still she was fast, and in her hands those swords could stab and probe with all the speed of daggers. Again and again, a rain of blows aimed at his chest and shoulders would draw Taim’s shield up, and then she would somehow have changed her grip on a sword and it was lancing down towards his feet. Each time he had to yield another step, and together they climbed, in that fierce dance, slowly towards whatever lay above. At length, inevitably, Taim was too slow, and she laid a deep cut through the side of his boot into his calf. He felt the blood at once, even as he was steadying himself. His strength was flowing out, through that and his other wounds. He could not hope to sustain this effort for long. Already, he was breathing hard, and his shield was beginning to feel heavy on his arm. If he permitted this struggle to continue, he would die, and so would Orisian. There would be, he knew, no more than a hint of an opening, so that was all he sought. When it came, he was not even confident it was so much as a hint. She was moving up and forward, both blades lunging up but a little way behind the rising of her body. His feet were as they had to be, his back heel braced against the riser of the next step. The natural flow of his weight was taking him forward. He launched himself, flung himself as high and hard as he could, aiming to pass over her shoulder. And he let his sword fall, for he needed his hand. He made a club of his shield and punched it into her shoulder, driving the stub of the arrow still deeper into flesh. He reached for the strapping that held her scabbards crossways on her back with his free hand, locked his fingers under it, and rolled himself over her, surrendering his body to the plummeting fall beyond. Her twin swords darted up more quickly than he had expected, and he felt another slicing pain across his leg, but his weight had hit her by then, and he was falling into the open spiral of the stairwell beyond her, and taking her with him. They fell entwined, clattering and flailing their way down. Taim felt a finger breaking as his hand was twisted free from its grip on the strapping, a blinding blow on his cheekbone that split the skin, bruises being hammered into his legs and flanks by the steps and the walls. His shield almost broke his nose. He could hear metal clanging off the stonework. The final impact was punishing. Taim landed on his side, with his shield beneath him. A searing pain made him think for a moment he had snapped a bone in the arm pinned under him; there was no sound of breakage, though. He sucked in a chestful of air, lifting his dazed head and looking blearily about for the Inkallim. She was lying on her front beside him, blood streaming from a gash in her forehead. He could not see her swords. Her eyes were already blinking open, staring out at him through the blood coursing over them and through the lashes. Taim’s body was a welter of small agonies and expansive aches. It screamed and spasmed in protest as he willed it to move. The Inkallim planted her hands and pushed herself up. Taim caught the hiss of pain as she did so, and took heart from it. He struggled to get his knees under him so that he could rise. The Inkallim was halfway up, but her injured shoulder, with that arrowhead buried deep inside it, buckled and dipped, and had her swaying. Taim hit her backhanded across the mouth with the ball of his gloved fist. She rolled onto her side, into the base of the wall. Taim staggered to his feet, but lost his balance and had to put out a hand to stop himself falling back onto the stairs. A sudden stave of fire impaled his thigh, and he looked down to find her fingers clawing into the wound she had put there earlier. It was her weaker arm, for with her good one she was hauling herself upright, scraping herself up against the wall. Taim howled, and hammered the edge of his shield down on her extended shoulder. Her bloody fingers were ripped free from his leg. Taim thought he heard something snapping or tearing in the shoulder joint. He whipped the shield back up and hit her in the face with it. She slumped. He hit her again and again, putting all his weight behind the shield, pounding it at her head until he felt her skull break. Chest heaving, propped against the wall on one straight arm, trembling, he shook the shield free. It rolled out into the street, spun a wobbling circle there and fell flat. Taim took one short look at the dead Inkallim and climbed the steps. Each small rise felt like torment, and he had to hold on to the walls to keep himself from falling. He found his sword halfway up. His broken finger was in his sword hand, so he had to hold it in the other. The hilt felt thick there, clumsy and unfamiliar. He found an open door at the top of the stairs and stumbled into a hall. His feet were loud on the rotten floorboards, but there was none there able to react. He walked heavily forward to where K’rina and Orisian lay together in some strange embrace, in the centre of the hall. Orisian’s sword had transfixed the na’kyrim. A twisted, tortured strand of sound drew Taim’s attention to one of the pillars. A battered, dishevelled man was slumped there, with dead ruins for hands. Taim did not recognise him. He was laughing, but it was a sick, choking kind of laughter. He was staring down towards the far end of the hall. Taim looked that way, and saw perched on a low stone bench, a small, pale cadaver. It looked almost as if someone had arranged it there: set the hands together neatly in its lap, placed the bare, blistered, decaying feet side by side, perfectly aligned. It was a frail thing. A sad, pathetic thing. And then Taim realised it was not dead. Its chest shivered with faint breath. He walked slowly towards it. It did not move save for that tremor in its ribcage. It made no sound save for the rustle in and out of fresh and spent air. Taim stood over it. His mind was clear, he realised. For the first time in… weeks, perhaps, there was a flawless unity: he was whole, and entire, and only himself. He heard nothing save the slow, calm turning of his own thoughts. He felt nothing save weariness and sadness. He put a hand under the horror’s chin and lifted its face. It was ravaged by disease and injury. But the eyes were open. Taim looked into them. They were full of blood, only the smallest flecks of their original slaty grey showing through here and there. And they were empty. Utterly unresponsive. Taim ran his sword through the centre of that fluttering chest. There was almost no resistance. It was like cutting through parchment. The corpse fell sideways and lay there on the bench. Taim turned away and walked back to stand over Orisian. The man propped against the pillar was still laughing, though it was softer, fading slowly. He was looking at Taim now, watching him with an unreadable expression. Taim wondered briefly whether to kill him. But he did not know who he was, or what he deserved. His injuries would surely put an end to him soon enough. And, most powerfully of all, Taim had had enough of killing. He sheathed his sword and went down on one knee. Taim raised his dead Thane in his arms, and bore the body away from that hall. He was surprised at how light it was.

X

Winter’s end came amidst a series of damp days, with cloud and winds that ran boisterously up the Glas Valley. Some few eager trees brought forth the very first tender leaves of the new season, as luminously green as the most radiant of gems. White blushes of delicate flowers spread through the forest floor. Birds rediscovered their songs. This resurgence went uncelebrated, even by those for whom this movement of the world out of slumber and into renewed wakefulness would normally be cause for festivity. There had in past years been garlands of the earliest flowers worn by the girls, flocks of sheep or cattle driven through the streets of towns with all the children running alongside and feasting, of course. Few hearts were light enough for such things this year. Many were fearful, bewildered. Some were still engaged in the business of bloodshed. Some were waiting, still hoping, for certainty that the awful shadow beneath which they had suffered, and to which they had lost a precious fraction of themselves, had truly lifted. And some were yet making hard journeys toward unknown futures. Eska of the Hunt and Kanin oc Horin-Gyre descended into the lands of the Horin Blood down an old, long-disused drover’s road. He leaned on her, for he was still weak and seldom had the strength to walk unaided for very far. That he had any strength at all was a source of no little surprise to Eska. She had thought him to be doomed when she found him in the hall in Kan Avor, slumped on the floor close to the wasted corpse of Aeglyss and that of another na’kyrim, a woman Eska did not recognise. The Thane’s hands had been black with corruption. Useless appendages already, she suspected, rotting on the inside. She had cut them off and sealed the stumps with fire. It was necessary, but she had expected such treatment to kill him. As it transpired, Kanin was more resilient than she had imagined. He had not died then, and she was beginning to believe that he would not be dying soon. The long walk through the mountains had been brutal, for she had kept them well clear of the Vale of Stones, disinclined to follow what she adjudged was likely to be a dangerous, if much easier, path. The flood of the faithful that had come south across the Vale was now reversed, but in different form. Now, it was a trickle, a meagre, desultory flow of broken and lost people. Most of those Eska had seen were dazed, so defeated by the memory of what they had seen and felt and done that they made themselves easy victims of the vengeful people of the Glas Valley. There were even fewer of those than there were survivors of the Black Road army, but their anger burned the brighter, and they hunted the retreating companies mercilessly. So Eska had chosen a rougher, narrower trail, winding its way through higher valleys and around colder peaks. There had been bad weather and driving winds, but Kanin had not succumbed. Nor had she, and her own wound was no small burden. It had been a prolonged and agonising business extracting her own barbed spear from her flank. She had made several unsuccessful attempts at breaking the shaft, and pulling it through her body before she achieved it, and in the course of her struggles had several times been rendered senseless by the pain. She still could not walk without considerable suffering, and bending or stretching or twisting were entirely beyond her. The weight of Kanin oc Horin-Gyre across her shoulders made it worse. But she said nothing. The Thane had said no more than a few words to her all through their long march. He talked sometimes in his troubled sleep, but it was seldom comprehensible. When they rested, he would simply sit and stare out across the blasted snowscape. Silent. Lost in memory, or imagining, or thought. Sometimes he would look down at the blunt, bandaged stumps of his wrists. If he despaired at the sight of his maiming, he hid it well. And now they at last descended. There was still snow, but it was melting quickly. On the lower slopes Eska could see people moving, and further down the valley a little village. Distantly, she could hear the lowing of cattle cooped up in some shed. “It’s done, then,” she said to Kanin. And to her surprise he took his arm away from her shoulders and slumped down into the snow and sat there weeping. His face crumpled as thoroughly as would that of any distraught child. Eska stood at a respectful distance and waited. It took a long time. When he was emptied of it, he looked across to her and lifted his arms from his knees. “Do you think a man can still be Thane, with…” He could not finish the question. Eska shrugged. “I do not know. I saw a man once, in Kan Dredar, who had lost his hand. To a bear, I think. He had a carver make him a wooden one. It was crude. Of little use, and he could not wear it all the time for it rubbed his… skin raw. But he looked whole.” “Ha. I would settle for that. To look whole. If I had my hands, still all I would hope for was to look whole. Some wounds never close up, no matter how carefully they are tended. But a man need not be whole to be Thane. Come, help me up. Let us see what welcome awaits us.”