Brian Ruckley - Winterbirth

Hammarn cocked his head. Cries and screams were still rising up through the rain.

‘Perhaps so,’ Hammarn grunted. ‘Maybe so. Better gather myself.’ He ducked back inside.

‘Hammarn . . .’ Yvane started to say.

‘Let him get what he wants,’ Orisian said. ‘We’ll wait for Rothe as long as we can. And for Varryn.’

Yvane looked back the way they had come.

‘That would not be wise,’ she said.

Orisian faced her without a moment’s uncertainty. ‘Wise or not, I will give them the chance.’

He darted around the side of the house, hunching his shoulders fruitlessly against the downpour. The sea was a great shiver of ripples and impacts beneath the rain’s assault. Edryn Delyne’s ship had its sails set. Figures were moving about on the deck. Orisian waved and shouted, but there was no sign that anyone saw him. He glanced along the storm-swept, muddy shore. There was a long, low rowboat tied up at the nearest of the crude jetties. He returned to the others. They were gathered just inside the doorway. Hammarn was rummaging deep in a pile of driftwood, muttering softly to himself.

‘There’s a boat we can take,’ Orisian reported, ‘but we don’t have much time. Delyne’s making ready to sail.’

He looked at Ess’yr. An unfocused glaze had settled over her eyes. A blurring sheen of rainwater overlay her tattoos, making them seem damaged, impotent.

‘What of the vo’an ?’ he asked her.

She gave the slightest shake of her head. ‘The enemy have come. Many of them.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Orisian felt a hand upon his arm. Anyara was at his side. Her face was mournful. He tried to smile for her.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘No more time. We can’t wait.’

Hammarn had collected nothing but woodtwines. He bound a scrap of cloth around the little bundle of carvings and clutched them to his chest like a baby.

‘Got it,’ he said to no one.

Orisian led the way out and made for the shore. He had gone only a few paces when he saw Rothe and Varryn burst out from a side street and come running towards them. The Kyrinin was limping a fraction. Rothe’s left arm hung with an ominous looseness. It had taken no mere numbing blow this time: there was blood sluicing away in the rain.

Orisian felt a tremendous surge of relief rush through him.

‘Is it bad?’ he asked as the shieldman came up to him.

‘Not as bad as it could have been,’ Rothe said with a lopsided smile. ‘Lucky there’s plenty of places too narrow for horses in this dismal town.’

When they reached the shore, water running out from the town was cutting channels for itself down the beach. Shells and stones were appearing, eroded out of the mud by the hard rain. They slipped and slithered to the jetty and ran out along its uneven length. The boarding felt treacherous.

Two ropes held the boat. Yvane went to one, Orisian the other. The swollen knot felt huge and solid beneath his numb fingers. He could not get any purchase. He pulled the knife out from where he had tucked it into his belt and began to saw at the sodden fibres. He shot a glance at the ship. Men had gathered at its rail and were gesturing towards them.

‘Let me cut it,’ Rothe said, raising his sword. ‘Blade’s not the sharpest, but it’ll do.’

Orisian backed away. Rothe’s first blow went partway through the rope.

‘We go now,’ Varryn said quietly.

Orisian turned to him. The Kyrinin warrior was impassive, looking not at Orisian but Ess’yr. She did not reply at once. Orisian sought for the words he needed. This once, this one time, he wanted to say the right thing to her.

‘Kanin!’ Anyara cried. ‘It’s Kanin.’

There were riders pounding along the shore, ten or twelve of them. Orisian wiped rain from his eyes. Kanin was to the fore, driving his horse on with wild energy. Orisian heard the chop of another sword blow from behind him.

‘It’s free,’ Rothe said. ‘I’ll cut the other.’

Yvane gave up her unequal struggle with the second rope. She stood at Orisian’s side. The Black Road warriors were close. Fountains of mud and sand erupted at their horses’ feet. Orisian could hear the wet thumps of the hoofs.

‘Quickly, Rothe,’ he said.

He watched Kanin coming. He could see the fury in the man’s face now, and the great bloody wound Ess’yr had put there with her bow. Orisian was strangely aware of the leaden weight of his soaking clothes. He squeezed the hilt of the knife. Rothe’s sword smacked against the rope. The shieldman cursed. Kanin hauled at his reins. His horse came to a ragged halt at the base of the jetty.

The other riders gathered around him. They looked as if they had ridden out of the rain-riven sky itself, a wild expression of the storm. Kanin held out his sword, pointing it at Orisian.

‘Hold,’ he cried. ‘Hold there.’

Warriors were dismounting. Orisian could see crossbows being readied.

‘Rothe?’ asked Orisian without looking round.

‘Done!’

A crossbow bolt snapped out, flashing darkly through the rain and past them, out over the sea. An answering arrow sprang from Varryn’s bow. It darted past Kanin, thudded into the warrior behind him.

‘Get into the boat,’ said Orisian. ‘Everyone.’

‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ Hammarn was muttering over and over again.

He and Yvane, then Anyara scrambled into the boat. A flurry of bolts hissed down the length of the jetty. Orisian flung himself at the rowboat. Rothe, there beside him, gasped as one quarrel found his shoulder. The boat rocked as the shieldman slumped into it. Orisian struggled to his feet. Yvane was fumbling with an oar; she was staring, as if in surprise, at the crossbow bolt transfixing her upper arm. Varryn, still standing with Ess’yr on the end of the jetty, loosed another arrow.

‘Come on,’ Orisian shouted at the Kyrinin. ‘Get in.’

‘Pull, pull,’ Anyara was screaming at Hammarn as the two of them hauled at oars. The boat jerked away from the jetty. Orisian reached for Ess’yr.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ he shouted. ‘You can’t stay here.’ Kanin was rushing down the jetty, his warriors coming behind him like a dark flock of crows stooping out of the rain-lashed sky. Orisian heard Kanin’s inarticulate scream of fury. Varryn and Ess’yr looked silently at one another for an instant and then leapt from the jetty. They landed together in the rowboat’s stern, so lightly and precisely that it hardly bucked.

Orisian scrambled over Rothe’s prostrate form. The warrior was moaning softly. Orisian saw the blood soaking through his shieldman’s shirt, but would not allow the sight to touch him. Not yet. There were four oars. Hammarn and Anyara were pulling at two, Yvane struggling with a third.

‘No,’ Kanin was shouting as the boat took another unsteady lunge away from the shore.

More bolts: dark flickers darting out to the boat, slicing through the rain.

‘Get down,’ shouted Orisian, and hunched over his oar. A couple of the quarrels thudded into the hull, the stern; another flew over their heads. He felt his oar shiver and saw a bolt stuck in it, next to his hand. Then nothing. The warriors on the jetty were hurrying to reload. Kanin stood at the furthest point, arms and sword upraised as if to threaten the thick, grey sky itself.

Waves, dragged up by the storm, were slapping at the rowboat’s prow. Water sluiced over the sides and around their feet. Spray misted around their heads.

Gasping, spitting salt water from his mouth, Orisian hauled at the oar with all the strength he had left. As they drew clear of Koldihrve he could see, through the teeming rain, the vague shape of Kanin standing impotent and dark over the water, staring out. The Horin-Gyre Thane watched them all the way.