Brian Ruckley - Winterbirth

With their horses stabled for the night, Orisian, Rothe and Kylane entered the inn. The landlord appeared at their side before they had even found a table. He bowed to Orisian.

‘Welcome, welcome. It is an honour to have you as a guest, my lord.’

The inn was half-full with a mixture of villagers and travellers. A hush fell across the room as Orisian and his shieldmen settled at a table, but it did not last: the Thane’s kinsfolk were not such a rare sight in this place.

Orisian slumped in his seat, savouring the warm air upon his skin and the rich smell, of food. He pulled his boots off and flexed his feet. He was trying unsuccessfully to remember what he had eaten the last time he stayed in this inn—it had been good, and he was hungry—when a serving girl came over and bobbed in front of him. She gave him a smile as warm as a thick bed. He smiled back and waited for her to ask him what he wanted. She said nothing, and for a couple of seconds the two of them regarded one another thus. Her smile grew only more expansive, her eyes more liquid as she stood there. Kylane laughed.

‘Ale and food,’ said Rothe firmly, ‘whatever you have that is good.’

The girl looked at him as if puzzled by his words, and her smile slipped a fraction without quite losing its hold upon her mouth.

‘Yes, sire,’ she said, and departed with another nod of her head to Orisian.

‘And wine and water, please,’ he called after her, and was granted another glimpse of her radiant face over her shoulder.

Kylane was still chuckling. ‘Terrible effect you have on women,’ the shieldman observed.

Rothe glowered at his younger comrade in arms. His disapproval was wasted, since Kylane was already casting around the inn, seeking a game or perhaps a companionable-looking woman of his own.

Orisian kicked amiably at Kylane’s shin. ‘It’s not me,’ he said, ‘it’s whose nephew I am.’

‘You give yourself too little of your due,’ said Kylane distractedly. ‘No tavern girl would think you ugly, even if you’d a goatherd for an uncle.’

Orisian smiled, as much at the furrowing of Rothe’s brow as anything. The older man often gave the impression that he despaired of Kylane’s levity, but Orisian knew the two of them shared a deep-rooted mutual respect. Rothe had been his shieldman since his tenth birthday. Kylane had only taken up the task this last summer—an ominous sign, Orisian suspected, that the ageing Rothe was grooming a successor—but even so it earned him the right to a familiarity few others would dare. Being shieldman to a nephew of the Thane did not bring with it the responsibilities of guarding Croesan himself, but still it was no mere ceremonial role. Kylane had made a promise, just like Rothe before him, that set Orisian’s life at a higher value than his own.

They drank and ate well, the landlord accepting payment from Rothe only after a show of reluctance. They were given the best rooms in the house. Former residents, Orisian guiltily suspected, had been evicted at short notice. As his thoughts flirted with slumber Orisian found them, to his vague surprise, drifting toward Kolglas. In his mind’s eye he gazed upon the castle in the sea and realised that he would be happier to be back home than he had expected. Sleep came quickly and he could not linger upon the realisation.

Lekan Tirane dar Lannis-Haig was running faster than he had ever run before. Terror drove his pounding legs. He flew through the forest as if a pack of wolfenkind were on his trail. He bounded over the uneven ground, staggering but never quite losing his footing. He thrashed through bushes, bramble stems tearing at his clothes. Some large animal, startled by his careering approach, crashed away. He barely noticed. The fear of what was behind him beat down upon his back like a hammer.

The light was failing. Soon darkness would swallow the forest and then he would be finished, for those who came after him needed the light less than he. Still there was a sliver of hope. He was not certain where he was, or how far he had come, but the track from Kolglas to Drinan could not be much further. If he could reach that road there might be travellers to give him aid. Failing that perhaps he could still make the safety of Kolglas, flying down a clear and known path. The town must be no more than a few miles to the north. And that, in its way, was a part of his terror: that his pursuers should be so keen for human blood that they would come this close to the garrison of Kolglas. The wood-wights had not been this brave, or foolhardy, in many years.

It had never crossed Lekan’s mind, as he set out the day before in search of forest meat for his family’s Winterbirth celebration, that anything more dangerous than boar or bear could be awaiting him. There had been no Kyrinin in the lands around Kolglas since before his father’s days, and though it was common knowledge that the White Owls were raiding in strength through the woods of Anlane further to the east, there had been no strife here save a few horses stolen from hamlets near Drinan.

He had been standing beneath a great ash tree, unbreathing and still as he searched for sign of the deer he had tracked through half a mile of thickets and groves. A mark in the earth, perhaps the faintest imprint of a hind’s foot, caught his eye and he bent to look more closely. The sound was so sudden and unexpected that at first he could not put a cause to it, and when he saw the arrow shivering in the tree trunk his incredulous mind instinctively denied its meaning. Yet it was, beyond doubting, a Kyrinin shaft. And then he was off, casting bow and quiver aside, flinging his backpack away to lend speed to his flight. There had been no sign save the arrow itself, no sound but its hissing flight and sharp crack into the wood. Still he knew they were behind him, and close, and that he had no hope save the strength of his legs.

He swept past a tree, a great gnarled oak that seemed familiar. He had not been this way for a long time but it was, he was sure, a tree he had climbed in as a child. If he was right, the track, the longed-for path that might carry him to safety, was only two or three hundred paces further on. The thought lent new life to his tiring muscles and he leapt forwards with still greater urgency. The hope burned stronger.

He felt no pain, just a solid blow in the square of his back as if someone had thrown a stone. No pain, yet his legs were no longer his own and he sprawled face-down into the damp leaf litter. He clawed at the earth, struggling to rise. His legs would not obey him. He reached behind to finger the arrow buried in his back. He felt something rising in his throat.

Then there was a powerful grip upon his arm and he was turned over. The arrow snapped and sent a lance of pain clean through him, transfixing sternum and spine. He cried out and crushed his eyes tight shut against it. When he opened them again, blinking through the mist of tears, there was one last surprise. It was not into the pale face of a Kyrinin that he looked, as he had expected. Instead, he met the gaze of one of his own kind: a black-haired woman, clad in dark leather, with a sword sheathed crossways on her back.

‘The woodwights have brought you down, but it is fitting that the killing blow should come from a truer enemy,’ she said in a harsh, rough-edged accent Lekan did not recognise.

There were other figures gathering behind her. Lekan could not see them clearly. The warrior languidly drew her sword over her shoulder. She saw the confusion in Lekan’s eyes.

‘You should know why you die,’ she said, ‘so know this: the Children of the Hundred have come for you, for all of you. The Bloods of the Black Road will take back that which is ours, and where you go now, all of Lannis-Haig will follow.’