“No,” said Orisian firmly. “Mordyn Jerain has no business with me that I know of. You must forgive me, Captain, but I cannot stay. I have duties elsewhere. I leave tonight. As soon as our horses can be readied.”
The downcast expression that settled upon Herraic’s face at that made Orisian feel a twinge of guilt. The poor man’s quiet, settled world was being shaken to bits. But it would take more than that to induce Orisian to wait placidly for Mordyn Jerain to appear. Whatever freedom of action Orisian had won for himself by leaving Kolkyre was unlikely to survive the Shadowhand’s presence.
He went quickly, wholly possessed now by the desire to be gone from this place. As he walked, he heard some of Herraic’s warriors talking excitedly in the doorway of their kitchens.
“The Shadowhand’s coming,” one was saying, his voice all awe and trepidation. “The Shadowhand’s coming.”
XI
Sirian’s Dyke was a changed village. The last time Wain had been here, she had witnessed the destruction by Shraeve and her Inkallim of the great dam that gave the place its name. Parts of that dam still stood, but they were now only pointless reminders of the hubris of a long-dead Thane. The Glas Water, the marshy lake the dam had retained in order to drown Kan Avor, was gone. The river now flowed unimpeded. Its banks were indistinct: huge expanses of waterlogged mud and debris laid down in the flood of the dam’s breaking.
The village itself had lost its purpose in the moment of the dam’s ruin. Its people had, for years, been employed in the maintenance of the dyke and in serving the needs of travellers on the road from Anduran to Glasbridge. The dyke was gone, and there were no travellers on the road, only warriors. Bereft of purpose, Sirian’s Dyke was now bereft too of its inhabitants. Not a single man, woman or child of the Lannis Blood remained. Those who had not been killed when the Black Road first overran the village, or had not fled of their own accord, had been dispersed: the adults pressed into service in Anduran or Glasbridge, the children most likely seized by the Inkallim and sent north.
In place of the original villagers, Sirian’s Dyke now housed a few Inkallim and the dozens of eager followers they had gathered to themselves. They were only passing through, making for the battle everyone knew was imminent, at Glasbridge or beyond. Fiallic was taking the bulk of the army along the southern side of the valley, intending to fall upon the flank or rear of any force that marched against Glasbridge. Those, like Wain, who had chosen to follow the road down the river’s northern bank faced a more trying journey. Beyond Sirian’s Dyke, she knew, the way through the flood-wrecked landscape would be difficult. But it would take her back to Kanin’s side, and that was where she meant to stand and fight. It had, too, the advantage of keeping Aeglyss and his Kyrinin away from the great mass of the faithful, and from the wrath of Temegrin the Eagle.
Satisfied that her horse was suitably settled for the night, Wain backed out of the stall, slapping the beast’s haunches as she went. The gesture was part irritation and part grudging respect for the animal’s obstinacy; it had been stubborn and obstreperous all day. It looked back at her with what she suspected was contempt.
In the yard outside, her warriors were making arrangements for their own horses, tying them to a long rope stretched along the side of the stable block. Beyond them, out in the damp dusk where the village gave way to open fields and copses, Wain could see the indistinct shapes of the White Owls, pitching their own camp. Aeglyss would be with them. His mood had been foul ever since Anduran, his presence so brooding and surly that it had unsettled everyone, including Wain. He had not uttered a single word to her – or to anyone, as far as she could tell – for more than a day. Sometimes when she looked at the halfbreed, she felt as though she was looking upon the greatest hope for their cause. Sometimes she was only afraid.
The inn was already crowded. Thirty or forty commoners of the Gaven-Gyre Blood had taken it over. Wain had her warriors turn them out. She meant to shut herself away in a room, and sleep for as long as her restless mind and body would permit. Such was her hope, but nothing came of it. Her thoughts were too turbulent to submit to slumber. She lay in the darkness with her eyes open for a while, then rose and pulled on her boots and jerkin and leggings, and went out into the yard.
It was a still night, and quiet, but it spoke to her of a change in the weather. She had grown up in Castle Hakkan, where every winter brought intensive tuition in the art of reading the air and the wind and the sky. Snow was coming, she thought. That would be a good thing. No one chose to fight in this season willingly, but if it must be done, it would surely favour the cause of the Black Road. The enemy they were to face could not know winter quite as intimately as did the Gyre Bloods.
The guards attending to the horses noticed her presence and busied themselves, taking on an air of exaggerated alertness. She gazed up. The clouds that would bring the snow were not here yet. The night sky glittered with innumerable stars, strewn across the firmament like grains of luminous sand. The moon was bright. Wain’s breath plumed mistily upwards and dispersed onto the chill air. A fox barked once, out near the river. Drunken laughter, good-humoured, was drifting out from one of the cottages. Then she heard another sound, at first unclear. She turned. It was Kyrinin voices, high and sharp on the clear air, but meaningless to her. For a moment she imagined it to be an argument amongst dogs, a dispute amongst birds. Then she caught the tone of alarm, the anger and fear that animated the incomprehensible words.
Wain hesitated. She did not know quite what held her back. It was an imprecise trepidation. She shook it off and strode out into the moon-washed field. A handful of warriors straggled after her. The White Owl camp was in tumult. Some of the Kyrinin warriors had already scattered out from amongst the crude tents and now stood some distance away, staring back, taut like dogs sensing danger but not yet understanding it. A knot of White Owls remained at the centre of the encampment, milling about in a way she had never seen amongst Kyrinin before. Some were shouting, their voices strained. None seemed even to notice Wain’s arrival.
She pushed her way through, and still none of the Kyrinin paid her any heed. Their attention was fixed upon the small patch of ground they had encircled. Aeglyss was lying there, half-curled on his side, one arm stretched out. His hand shook, jerking back and forth over the grass. His eyes were clamped shut. A low groan forced its way out between his teeth. Wain took a step forwards, intending to lift him bodily, but stopped short. Even in the flattening, colourless moonlight, and with the flickering shadows cast by small campfires, it was clear that something was wrong.
Aeglyss lay on a great disc of dead grass: a near-perfect circle much paler than the rest of the field. Within that circle, the grass was not only dead but unnaturally long, sprawling in great matted swathes. It was as if a great clump of whip-like stalks had come surging up out of the ground, and then died back in almost the same instant. And as her eyes picked out more detail, Wain saw that there were tendrils of now-dead and brittle grass wrapped around the wrist of the na’kyrim ’s outstretched arm; another hung about his neck like some rustic ornament, a third spiralled around his leg. There was soil smeared across his face and through his hair. A slick of blood, black by the light of the moon, had spread from the wound in his wrist. He jerked convulsively. There was a strange, warm smell on the night air that Wain could not place. It was redolent of ploughed fields, wet logs. It did not belong.