Taim watched in silence as Elach went to the window and stared up at the sky. In the space of a few sentences, the older man had undercut the foundations of all Taim’s half-formed plans. Had it only been the exhausted, diminished forces of the Horin-Gyre Blood he faced, he – and Orisian – might have been able to turn them back without any aid from Aewult nan Haig and his host. Now… now a multitude of dangers presented themselves to his imagination. Aewult had close to ten thousand men, but he thought he was marching against a far weaker foe. If the Battle itself was indeed fielding hundreds of its ravens, what lay ahead would be far bloodier, far more savage, than any of them had anticipated.
“It’s true, is it, that Orisian’s our Thane now?” Elach asked, still standing by the window. “You saw him in Kolkyre?”
“It’s true. He went by a different road, but he will be here within a few days.”
“What times, to have a child as Thane.”
“He’s no child,” Taim growled. “And he’s Thane by right, and by duty.”
Elach grunted and returned to his chair. “So he is. I pity him as much as the rest of us. His family gone, our lands lost. We’ll be lucky if there’s more than splinters left of us once the High Thane and the Black Road have hammered away at each other for a while.”
Taim slapped the table. “Enough, Elach.” He rose and took his scabbarded sword up from where he had leaned it against the wall. “You have a wife, if I remember rightly. Where is she?”
“Stryne. I sent her to Stryne, after Glasbridge fell.”
Taim buckled his belt and settled his sword on his hip. “Go and join her. You’ve done what you can here. Clear whatever you want to take with you out of this place by nightfall. I’ll sleep here tonight.”
Elach’s expression lurched from alarm to relief and back again. He started to protest, without conviction. Taim pulled the door open.
“Don’t argue, Elach. The burden you’ve shouldered here is mine to bear now. Go. Take care of your wife.”
Taim Narran slept little that night, and not at all the one that followed. Instead, he laboured. He laboured to put back together what he could of his Blood, and to build for it some defences against whatever lay ahead.
In an inn by the waterfront, he found an Oathman – the only one, it appeared, to have escaped the chaos beyond Kolglas. The man, a little drunk and extremely shocked, was told he was now the Master Oathman of the Lannis Blood. The Naming of infants, the taking of the Bloodoath, the burning and mourning of the dead, all these things must continue. Taim Narran made it clear to the newly elevated Master Oathman that it was his responsibility to ensure they did so.
Men were sent to retrieve everything of value that survived within Castle Kolglas, and Taim had it stored under guard in the town’s gaol. He gathered all the merchants to be found in the town together and instructed them in what their Blood required of them in such times. Their consequent generosity swelled the nascent treasury in the gaol a little further. Taim ordered that the size of the town Guard be doubled, and tasked them with ensuring that there was no hoarding of food. He emptied part of the garrison’s barracks – sending the warriors to camp outside the town – and had all the sick brought there to be cared for. Fifty volunteers were armed with spears and knives from the garrison’s stores and dispatched to Drinan. They carried orders summoning the warriors Elach Mell had sent there back to Kolglas, and commanding them to bring with them all the cattle and grain that Drinan could spare.
Taim himself took thirty of his men along the coast towards Glasbridge. They got less than halfway before they found a pack of Tarbain tribesmen looting and burning an abandoned mill. A few of the northerners escaped; most of them did not. Soon afterwards figures could be seen moving along the forest’s edge. Ahead, far up the road, riders were visible. Taim turned his men around and returned to Kolglas. That night he set more than a hundred sentries along the town’s northern boundary, and went himself to every one of them in the rain-filled darkness to ensure that none doubted the importance of wakefulness.
He did all this while secretly dreading what would happen if the Black Road came pouring down the coast; knowing that if they did come, his hundreds of men were unlikely to be enough. There would be nothing he could do save stand and die with them, and hope to give the people of Kolglas enough time to escape. He did it all while longing with every fibre of his being to return to his wife and his daughter and to take them in his arms and await with them the birth of his grandchild.
And then, at dusk on the third day, when the Black Road still had not come, a moment Taim had both hoped for and feared arrived. He went with apprehension clenched in his chest and two dozen of his veteran warriors at his side to the southern edge of Kolglas and stood looking down the coast towards the distant sunset. His exertions, and the paucity of sleep, had left his head heavy, his neck stiff, his legs aching. He felt, standing in that gloaming, watching the waves sighing up along the shore, as old as he had ever done. He did not have to wait long. Out of the gathering gloom, coming like a dark, roiling river beneath clouds turned orange and red by the sinking sun, Aewult nan Haig’s army arrived.
Abeh oc Haig brought an unexpected and unwelcome guest with her to the Palace of Red Stone. She was wife to the Thane of Thanes and thus beyond the reach of any disapproval, but Tara Jerain was in any case too well schooled in Vaymouth’s manners to betray her irritation. One could not prosper in the ants’ nest of aspiration and competition that the city had become without learning to speak only with a smile in Abeh’s presence. For Abeh, the world and her life within it were glittering things, filled with glory, fine food and pleasures of every kind. Her husband and sons were flawless, loved by all; their wealth was limitless and resented by no one; every gift that was pressed upon her was born of affection, sired by admiration. Anything contrary to her vision was hurtful, a personal insult. And one did not insult Abeh oc Haig.
Tara Jerain’s smile never faltered as she greeted Abeh on the steps outside the palace. The inevitable crowd of maids and attendants bunched behind the High Thane’s wife. The line of carriages and horses that had brought them filled the street, amongst them a strange box-like contraption from which the source of Tara’s annoyance was being roughly removed: Igryn oc Dargannan-Haig. The former Thane of the Dargannan-Haig Blood was dressed in a fine lace bodice and skirt. His hair and beard, both grown long during his imprisonment, had little silken bows in them. His hands were tied behind his back with a cord of soft velvet, his empty eye sockets – emptied on Gryvan oc Haig’s orders when Igryn was captured – were hidden by a band of flowery cloth wrapped around his head.
The sight was as surprising and distasteful as anything Tara Jerain had seen in a long time. Yet her face as she embraced Abeh oc Haig was a study in delight, her voice a smooth melody. Her husband the Shadowhand would have been proud of her.
“You are most welcome, my lady,” Tara said. “I am quite delighted, quite delighted.”
“Well, it has been too long since I came to one of your gatherings,” beamed Abeh.
Her pleasure in her own cleverness was bubbling up, too vigorous to be restrained. She glanced over her shoulder, her chin quivering with anticipation.
“You see I have a new maidservant,” she breathed. “Quite ill-suited to her calling, but I was sure you and the other ladies would like to see her.”
Two guards were manhandling Igryn oc Dargannan-Haig up the first couple of steps. Abeh’s throng of servants laughed behind decorous hands and whispered to one another. Much as Tara would have liked to ignore the humbled Thane’s presence entirely, she gave a soft chuckle.