Brian Ruckley - Fall of Thanes

“Nothing is as I wanted it to be,” Aeglyss said thickly. “I never asked for all this death. Hers least of all. Don’t you understand? What has happened is… I didn’t choose this. Why can’t you see that? Give me your forgiveness, Thane. Give me her forgiveness.”

“Forgive?” Kanin murmured. His thoughts were softening, losing their shape.

“It was my weakness.” Aeglyss hung his head. “I could not sustain her love for me and still take hold of the Shadowhand. I would have done, if I could. Oh, nothing would have been sweeter. But I am too weak, too feeble; and I had to have the Shadowhand.” He looked suddenly at Shraeve, and then to Kanin, beseeching. “We had to have the Shadowhand, did we not? We needed him? I gave up so much-Wain, K’rina-but the sacrifice was necessary, wasn’t it?”

Kanin pitied the halfbreed in that moment, and could easily have reached out to him in comfort, offered the forgiveness and agreement that he craved. Yet nothing, no bewilderment of his mind, could wholly extinguish the murderous flame that persisted in the deepest, most fortified, refuge of his self. It flickered there still, and through all the fogs that beset him, its light remained a beacon he could follow.

“No path worth following is without sacrifice,” he heard Shraeve saying beside him.

“No,” whispered Aeglyss. “No. And she knew that. Wain knew that.” He looked up, and there was a new chill in the gaze he laid upon Kanin. “Others know it. Yet you do not, Thane. You are like ice, on which none of this can find purchase. There is something in you that resists me. Denies me.

“Why is it that you cannot share in this understanding? The Battle sees the shape of things, the Lore, and the White Owls. The Bloods fall in at my side, for they understand what it is I offer, what I can give to those who walk with me. All I ask for is loyalty. Trust. If those things had been there from the start-if you had offered them to me, Thane-none of this need have happened. Yet here we are. By choice or not, wondrous events begin to unfold, and I allow even those who have betrayed me to share in them. Why can you not be a part of this?”

Stubborn contempt rose within Kanin.

“Do you really not know?” he asked the halfbreed. “Do you really understand so little of people?”

Aeglyss said nothing, but Kanin could see in his face genuine uncertainty, infantile hurt.

“If you wanted me to walk at your side,” Kanin said flatly, “you should not have taken my sister from me.”

A twist of some violent emotion distorted Aeglyss’ features for a moment. He bared his teeth.

“From you?” he hissed. “You think the loss only yours? You don’t know! What it cost me…”

He faltered. A tremor ran through his feeble frame, twisting his head to one side, tugging at his eyelids. Spittle bubbled out onto his chin.

The soft deadening of Kanin’s senses abruptly cleared. He blinked. Aeglyss slumped down onto one knee, coughing. Sudden hope blossomed within Kanin. The halfbreed’s head was bowed, jerking as he spat out phlegm from his lungs. Kanin’s hand went to his sword. The blade began to sigh out of its scabbard. He stepped forward, possessed by a vision of what was about to happen, what he could do in the next moment.

And Shraeve lashed her forearm across his throat. He staggered, choking. Shraeve stepped in front of him, shielding Aeglyss from his sight, and his intent. She reached up and lightly grasped the hilts of the two swords sheathed across her back.

“It is my belief, Thane, that this man serves fate, and our creed. I do not know if you could harm him, but I will not permit the attempt.”

Kanin gasped for air, croaking incoherently, clasping a hand to his throat. He took hold once again of his own sword. Breath came at last, ragged and rough. Aeglyss was only now rising unsteadily to his feet. He was still enfeebled. Vulnerable. But there was Shraeve, quite still and calm.

“I would regret killing a Thane,” she said softly. “It would be a fell deed. But the end of the world must be a time for fell deeds, if needed, don’t you think?”

Kanin did not believe he could overcome her. Perhaps if Igris was here, the two of them together might have a chance against this raven, but Kanin knew what would happen if he challenged her alone. She was too fast, too skilled. He could hear, in his memory, the sound of Cannek’s spine breaking. Once he had believed that fate could be generous to those who dared; now he was uncertain whether such laws still governed-had ever governed-the twisted world. Daring felt like recklessness, when the goal he sought was so all-consumingly crucial. He would be permitted only one attempt upon Aeglyss, and to fail in it would be to fail in everything, his entire life.

He coughed, and folded his arms across his chest.

“Your master seems unwell,” he said. “Perhaps I should leave the two of you alone.”

He spun on his heel and walked briskly away, his heart racing, his cheeks burning with the backwash of tension and fear and anger that was now released in him. He could hear Aeglyss groaning, but did not look round. He went out into the light.

Nyve’s skin was old, with the hue of worn and faded hide. It had loosened as the years slackened the muscles beneath it and narrowed his shoulders. But still the First of the Battle had an air of resilient strength. There was enough breadth to him, and just enough firmness left in his skin, to give life to the raven tattoo that spread its wings across his shoulder blades. Theor, master of the Lore Inkallim, watched that black bird stir and ripple as a manservant drew a cloth slowly across Nyve’s back.

The First of the Battle sat naked on a low stool in the centre of the stone wash-house floor. The servant went silently about his duties, pausing occasionally to rinse his cloth in a pail of hot water. Now and again Nyve grunted at the pressure of firm fingers on some sore joint, but he made no other complaint.

The servant carefully lifted the First’s arm and stretched it out, and ran the cloth down it from shoulder to wrist. Drops of water pattered onto the stone tiles.

“I cannot undo what fate has decreed,” Nyve said softly.

“Of course,” said Theor. “I would never ask such a thing. You know how much it pains me to even raise with you matters that are internal to the Battle.”

“Yet you do.” Theor could not see his friend’s face, but heard the wry smile in Nyve’s voice.

“I do. It cannot be avoided. Such are the tempestuous times in which we live. Don’t pretend you don’t share my concerns.”

Nyve lowered his arm. The servant charged the cloth with water and then twisted it into a tight cord above the First’s head. Water splashed across his scalp and shoulders. It ran down over the great welt where his ear had once been.

“We set this horse running,” Nyve said. He gave his head a single dipping shake, scattering droplets. “Too late to try to rein it in.”

“The Thane of Thanes disagrees,” Theor muttered. He walked round to the stone bench that ran along one wall of the wash house and tested its surface with the palm of his hand. It was warm: hot charcoal could be fed into a hidden compartment. Carefully, he settled himself onto the bench. The seductive warmth spread through his thighs and buttocks. Outside, the snow was knee-deep. Every stream ran beneath a skin of ice. Even down in the valley, in Kan Dredar, there had been no night without a hard frost, no day without at least some snow, for two weeks.

“When was the last time he agreed with us?” Nyve asked.

Theor rested his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. He truly was getting old, he thought, for how else to explain the intoxicating delight of such a simple thing? Luxuriant warmth in winter had never meant so much to him when he was young. Now, this warm stone bench filled his bones with delight, answering a need in them he had not known existed. Such were the seductions of comfort.