“Your ale matches your food in quality,” the High Thane observed.

“Perhaps you should have visited Nyve,” Theor suggested. “He would have served you narqan there. It might have been more to your taste.”

Ragnor set his tankard down and shrugged. “ Narqan ’s drinkable. I don’t find it as… repellent as some. But I don’t think it’s the Battle I need to be talking to, is it, First?”

“I do not know.”

“Of course you do.” Ragnor let a little of his irritation show: a momentary tightening of his brow, a curl of his lip. He is angry, then, Theor thought. He had suspected as much, but until now the High Thane had concealed it well, by his standards.

“I want to show you something,” Ragnor said. He pushed his chair back and stood, brushing crumbs from his chest. “Come with me, would you?”

Theor frowned. “Where? I thought we were to talk here.”

“Just to your gates.”

“I am an old man, High Thane. I am not given to taking strolls in the snow.”

“Don’t be difficult, First,” sighed Ragnor. “The High Thane of the Gyre Bloods invites you to walk with him a little way, so that he might show you something of interest. You can humour him, can’t you? Or is even that beyond the Lore Inkall these days?”

Theor complied. He followed Ragnor out. Snow was falling on the Lore’s Sanctuary, as it had been now for more than two days. Big, buoyant flakes drifted down in thick flocks. The pine trees amongst which the buildings clustered were heavily burdened with snow; now and again, some branch would spill its white cargo in a soft, tumbling collapse. The paths along which First and High Thane walked had been cleared by candidates, otherwise they would have been almost impassable. This, for Theor, was one of two times of year when the Sanctuary was at its most restful and peaceful. The snow made it a silent, still place. As did, in other ways, the hot, windless days of midsummer, when warm air pooled beneath the pines and all was languid and lethargic.

The two men tramped along the stone path, between dirty banks of snow piled up on either side. The High Thane’s Shield, and Theor’s attendants, came behind them, but not so close as to hear what passed between them. The wooden gates in the encircling wall of the Sanctuary stood open. Ragnor planted himself in the centre of the gateway, facing out. The land fell away beyond him, sweeping down in a long, pine-clad slope to the valley floor and the great sprawl of Kan Dredar. The High Thane’s city was all but obscured by the teeming snowflakes.

“You cannot see as well as I hoped,” Ragnor grunted.

“I can hardly see a thing.” Theor made no effort to disguise his ill humour at being brought out here.

“You can see the one thing that matters, I think. Look. No, there: the road south.”

“A somewhat darker area of the blizzard, perhaps.”

“Close to four thousand of my warriors marching south. That’s what you see, as well you know.”

“I knew they were gathered. I was not aware they had started their march. It hardly seems the weather for it.”

“It’s not.” The High Thane’s patience was thinning out. “It’s not even close to the weather for it. Half a thousand of them might be dead of cold or exhaustion or hunger, or lost, by the time they reach Anduran. But I have little choice in the matter, do I?”

Theor looked sideways at the High Thane and shrugged. He turned and walked back into the Sanctuary. A candidate – a young girl he vaguely recognised but could not have named – had appeared from somewhere with a birch broom. She shuffled along backwards in front of him, sweeping the freshly fallen snow from the path.

“Look where you’re going, child. You’ll only fall over if you do it like that.”

He could hear Ragnor stamping after him.

“I could hardly keep my warriors sitting around Kan Dredar idly sharpening their swords,” the Thane of Thanes growled. “Not while half my people march off into the south of their own accord. Did you know one of my iron workings has closed, because there’s not enough workers left?”

“I did not know that, no,” Theor said.

The First led the High Thane back into the little courtyard around which the offices of the Lore were arrayed. Cord shackles still hung from the whipping post in its centre. The snow around it was flecked with red, like dye spilled on linen.

“Nyve has left me little choice but to send my army south. No choice at all, I’d say. Not once the Battle marched.”

“I do not interfere in the doings of the Battle, High Thane. I am not in a position to question his actions. No one is, unless you can find one of his own captains willing to challenge him for his rank. The Lore’s territory is…”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Don’t insult me.”

Theor ignored the High Thane’s anger. Over to one side of the courtyard, beneath a wooden awning, steam was drifting out from a serving hatch in the wall. A couple of young Lore Inkallim were standing there, their hands wrapped around hot cups.

“Look.” Theor pointed. “They’ve got some milk heating there. It’s years since I had hot honeyed milk. Shall we?”

Ragnor made an indeterminate sound – half-groan, half-growl, not remotely enthusiastic – but followed Theor, crunching across the snow. The two Inkallim shuffled away at a flick of Theor’s hand. A serving woman ladled the thick white liquid into cups and handed them to the First and the High Thane, then sank back into the musty darkness within and disappeared.

Theor watched the fat snowflakes bobbing down as he drank. He really did like honeyed milk. The reality did not quite match the remembered delight of it, but it was good enough. A slab of snow slipped from the roof and rushed down into the courtyard, making a soft thump as it landed. Ragnor oc Gyre was not drinking.

“The Haig Bloods can field twice as many warriors as we can,” he said quietly. “More.”

“Warriors, yes.” Theor nodded. “I’m sure that’s true. But will their commonfolk take the field? Can they match our thousands, with their hot hearts, their faith burning in them, that rush to serve the creed in battle?”

Ragnor sniffed at his steaming cup, and took a hesitant sip of its contents. He grimaced and emptied it out onto the snow at their feet.

“They’re soft. We all know that. But they’re too strong, Theor. You underestimate Gryvan oc Haig. He may be soft and slow, but only like a bear, fresh out of its winter sleep. If you prod him hard enough, he’ll have your arm off. What was the Hunt thinking, to kill a Thane? Gryvan may have been no admirer of Lheanor’s, but he’ll not sit by while we merrily cut down his liegemen like that. If you – if Nyve, and Avenn, and all these thousands of commonfolk you’re so pleased with – force us into unrestrained war with the Haig Bloods, we will end up with his foot on our throats, sooner or later.”

“You do not know that.”

“No, of course I don’t know it. But I think it. I apply a little sense, a little thought, to the world as I see it, and I find it to be a reasonable expectation.”

“The future is not a matter of reason.” Theor smiled, wearily. He, and his fellow Firsts, had known that Ragnor’s commitment to the rigours of the creed was not all it might be. They had known, ever since Vana oc Horin-Gyre intercepted his messenger, that the High Thane had long ago lapsed into the mistaken view that some kind of accommodation was possible with the Haig Bloods. Now he heard Ragnor condemning himself out of his own mouth.

“What seems reasonable is of no consequence,” the First continued. “You know that. Fate can overturn, disregard, discard reason as it sees fit. The course of the Black Road is not set by reason, or by the judgement of men, or by what we in our narrow way call sense or thought. It is set by the tales inscribed in the Last God’s book. It is set by what he reads there.”

The High Thane, his lips pursed, regarded his fine leather boots. He was, Theor knew, not stupid enough to attempt to debate the elements of the faith. Ragnor had never been stupid. And when he had been young he had been full of energy, hunger. That he had become something else as he grew older was a source of regret rather than resentment or anger. It was as it must be. Fate had decreed that for this little time, the Gyre Blood and the Inkallim would follow paths that diverged a fraction. It did not matter. One day – this year, next, a thousand years from now – everyone, everywhere would be walking in one path, that of the Black Road.