The Cry of the Marwing Read online

  Instinctively Kira cringed, expecting a blow, but the Guard’s voices rang out and metal rasped as swords were drawn.

  ‘Stand back!’ they ordered.

  Rosham’s glare swung to a point behind her. ‘I am the Lord Rosham. Do not dare to –’

  ‘Stand back or feel our swords!’

  Passers-by gaped and Rosham bowed his head. Kira thought he’d bowed to her, but instead he spat, the gob of spittle landing at her feet. Then, with a final glare, he strode off.

  A shocked murmur passed through the onlookers, but no one offered words of apology or regret. The Guard sheathed their swords and Kira’s feet started again, but she felt wooden.

  Raise your head, a voice inside demanded. You’re a Healer! You’re the Tremen Feailner! You’re Kasheron’s seed. Raise your head! But Kira couldn’t raise her head. The hatred in Rosham’s eyes was like a corrosive fluid, filling the void left by her saving of Tresen, burning away the fragile flicker of happiness, and any hope for a future without fighting and dying.

  At the mouth of the Rehan Valley, Tierken held Kalos steady as he waited for battle. Adris was to his right, but Tierken didn’t look that way, turning to the brilliant Silvercades instead. He wished he was there, with Kira, but was glad things were drawing to an end. The Shargh were gathered just beyond the western rise, and this day and those that followed would be long and filled with blood.

  To the south-east of them, the Ashmiri waited also.

  ‘They’ll join the fight only if they see us broken,’ Caledon had predicted – maintaining their ‘honour’ whichever way things turned, thought Tierken bitterly.

  The tension of the waiting men stained the air and Tierken rolled his shoulders to ease his own. Adris’s mount began to dance, as ready for battle as its rider, but all Tierken felt was a savage determination to obliterate the Shargh and, with them, every future threat to his peoples and lands.

  Scouts screamed warning but there was no need – the sound of the Shargh horses was like thunder. They came in a solid line, their riders shrieking and shouting, Shargh on foot streaming in their wake. Tierken and Adris’s men loosed arrows as spears sliced the air, then drew swords as the gap between them and the mounted Shargh narrowed. But instead of spurring forward to meet their enemy, at the last moment, they jerked their horses sideways.

  The Shargh’s momentum carried them through the mounted Terak–Tain lines, the Terak and Tain hacking and slashing as they passed, but making no attempt to follow. Behind the lines of mounted Terak and Tain, Tain on foot loosed more arrows, many finding their targets, but the main force of the mounted Shargh surged onward, up the Rehan Valley.

  Tierken and Adris’s men galloped to meet the Shargh advancing on foot. There were close to two hundred, Tierken calculated swiftly, to their fifty. On Adris’s signal the Terak and Tain split to form a swiftly moving circle around their enemy. Their aim was not to overpower the Shargh, but to drive them like goats. They kept out of spear range, but stayed close enough to pick targets. Tierken guided Kalos with his knees as he loosed arrow after arrow into their midst.

  Gradually the moving circle of horsemen forced the Shargh west, back towards the Rehan River. A wedge of Shargh broke through and ran north after their comrades, but there were still close to a hundred and fifty in the encircled group by the time they neared the Rehan. The last few days of fine weather had sped the Silvercades’ snow-melt, and the river roared in its bed.

  When Adris and Tierken’s men were about twenty lengths from the river, they dissolved the circle into a line, drew their swords and charged.

  The result was as Caledon had foreseen. Unaccustomed to facing a solid wall of screaming, sword-wielding men on horseback, the Shargh broke and ran. Some fled northward along the bank, but most were forced into the water, the bank soon empty of all but the dead and dying. The river would claim some, but many would struggle ashore downstream.

  Tierken and Adris’s men paused only to haul their own wounded onto horses before they sped north again. They stayed out of spear range of the Shargh who’d broken along the banks or escaped their encirclement earlier. The Terak and Tain who carried wounded kept east, but the main force streaked towards the Rehan Valley. Already smoke billowed ahead.

  They swept past the place of the initial clash, and dead horses came into view. The mounted Terak and Tain aimed at the Ashmiri horses because they were easier targets, and their slaughter forced the Shargh back onto the ground. Their loss would also send a potent warning to the Ashmiri.

  As they galloped deeper into the Rehan Valley, there were so many dead horses, or wounded riderless ones, that they were forced to slow. Tierken kept his gaze on the pall of smoke, knowing that if their strategy proved successful, the main Shargh force would soon come flying back. If it didn’t, the entire valley could burn.

  His heart pounded and, despite the carnage, he urged Kalos to greater speed once more, passing the first of the flaming houses the Shargh had ignited. The southern settlements had had to be sacrificed to lure the Shargh to where the valley narrowed. Here Caledon waited with the Tremen, the Tain troopsmen and five Terak patrols commanded by Jonred. The fighting would be fiercest here as the Shargh would be desperate to force a way through.

  Tierken had reluctantly placed the Tremen here, due to their skill and practice in fighting under trees. The defenders would have the advantage of the rocky slopes to either side, as well as a barricade of burning timber. Horses feared fire, and would also be driven back by swords and arrows. But if this failed, and the Shargh broke through, Tierken and Adris would be forced to chase them through the devastated Rehan Valley, all the way to Sarnia.

  Time seemed to slow, then a single horse bolted from the smoke, Adris bringing it down with an arrow. Tierken wrenched Kalos to a halt, heart smashing against his ribs. Smoke billowed from the valley but no more horses appeared. The rest of the Terak and Tain caught up and formed a line, but still nothing happened. Caledon had failed, thought Tierken in panic – then a stampede of wild-eyed horses thundered from the murk.

  Tierken shouted in jubilation.

  The Terak and Tain line again jerked their horses clear of the mounted Shargh at the last moment, slashing at them before spurring after them.

  The plan had succeeded. Now the Tain troopsmen and Tremen would drive the unhorsed Shargh out of the Rehan’s mouth and then remain there under Caledon’s command to guard the entrance. In the meantime, Tierken and Adris’s men would use their momentum to chase the mounted Shargh south until nightfall. Jonred’s men would follow, pursuing the Shargh who were on foot. Once the Ashmiri saw this, Tierken thought it unlikely they would enter the fray.

  There would be a tag-team of relentless hunting. Jonred’s men would chase and kill, while Tierken and Adris’s men rested and trapped their food, then they’d change places. Day and night, the latter aided by torches, they’d hound the Shargh south across the Sarsalin. There’d be no rest and no food for their quarry.

  Any who survived would be pursued over the Azurcades until claimed by hunger and exhaustion.

  It was just after nightfall when the first of the wounded from the Rehan Valley fighting reached Sarnia, and they had scarcely found pallets enough for them when the next wave arrived. Kira and Laryia cleaned and laved wounds with fireweed, stitched and bandaged, or set bones and dulled the shock of the injured with sickleseed. They worked through the night, aided by servers.

  Kira spoke only to instruct Laryia or the servers, and it was dawn before there was enough of a lull for Laryia to return to the Domain. She found Farid asleep in the Meeting Hall, head resting on his arms, surrounded by message scrolls. Laryia collapsed beside him, picked up a piece of fruit and ate mechanically. After a while, Farid woke and stared at her in surprise, his face pale against the stubble of his jaw.

  ‘How goes it in the Haelen?’ he asked.

  ‘Twenty-three dead and forty-one wounded, half of whom might also die.’

  ‘The fighting was ferocious in th
e Rehan Valley,’ said Farid. ‘But I think the worst is over. Tierken and the Tain King will push the Shargh south and the Lord Caledon will hold the Rehan. You can expect more wounded until they’re south of Cover-cape, then they’ll take them to the Tain’s Haelen.’

  ‘I don’t know if I can stand any more wounded,’ admitted Laryia.

  ‘You need rest. Go to your rooms and sleep.’

  ‘I can’t. Kira’s alone in the Haelen.’

  ‘Aren’t there servers?’ said Farid.

  ‘Servers aren’t Healers, not like Kira. In fact, no one’s like Kira. She doesn’t fear the blood like I do, nor holding gaping wounds together to be stitched, nor . . .’ Laryia’s voiced cracked and Farid rose and went to her, gathering her into his arms and holding her while she wept.

  ‘Kira’s seen this before, in her own lands and in Maraschin,’ he said, stroking Laryia’s hair. ‘She’s used to it, that’s all.’

  ‘I now understand her hatred of metal,’ sobbed Laryia.

  ‘Without swords, we’d be slaughtered like the Tremen.’

  Laryia’s sobs quieted and she wiped her face dry.

  ‘Does Healer Tresen continue to recover?’ asked Farid.

  ‘Yes. Does Tierken ask after him?’

  ‘Tierken asks after you, and Kira of course, but I wonder whether I should speak of Healer Tresen now every time I speak of you.’

  ‘He’s just one of the wounded, Farid. Would you name them all?’

  ‘Perhaps I’ll just speak of you then – for the time being.’

  Laryia managed a smile. ‘I thank you.’

  ‘But we both know it’s best for Tierken’s safety that his mind stays on the fighting,’ cautioned Farid. ‘I’ve no doubt Kira’s welfare proves enough of a distraction for him. I don’t want to add you to his concerns as well.’

  ‘He has nothing to fear for me,’ said Laryia. ‘I know my own heart.’

  ‘And Healer Tresen’s?’

  ‘I know that too.’

  Farid picked up a message cylinder, and turned it over in his hands. ‘You also know that gossip flies swifter than the wind, and certainly swifter than any of my messages.’

  ‘It will tell nothing more than that the Lady Laryia works in the Haelen with the Lady Kira, and that both labour in the care of the wounded. And it follows that when Healer Tresen is well enough to be moved, he will join his kin, the Lady Kira, in the Domain, and continue his recovery there.’

  ‘That I will have to tell Tierken,’ said Farid.

  ‘By all means, Domain Keeper,’ said Laryia. ‘I would expect no less.’

  16

  Thunder rumbled across the Braghans but Tarkenda barely heard it, her thoughts taken up with what Ormadon had told her: the ebis herds thinned, and while the wolf numbers had grown, the absence of gnawed skulls and torn hides suggested it was not only wolves who raided the herds at night, but warriors from the Grounds. There was hunger among the old, and among the join-wives and children of Arkendrin’s followers. If left unchecked, she knew, it would not only seed theft, but murder.

  Drops of rain started, building quickly until they drummed against the sorcha like ebis on the run. Tarkenda was glad of the rain, for it washed the air clean of the funeral smoke blowing from beyond the Braghans, and the smell of charred bones that rode upon its back. The Northerners’ custom was to burn their dead too, but Tarkenda knew from her visions that it wasn’t the Northerners’ spirit-selves the flames loosed to the sky, but the Shargh’s.

  Tarkenda knew Palansa hoped that Arkendrin was among those who burned, and so did Tarkenda, despite having birthed Arkendrin and nursed him at her breast. Her care was for the young Chief now, not for the one who hoped to destroy him. But the Sky Chiefs had long favoured Arkendrin over those who fought at his side, and there was nothing in her mother’s heart that told her her second son was dead.

  The rain that sluiced off the sorchas on the Grounds drenched the northern foothills of the Braghans too, where Arkendrin had crawled under a tangle of shrubs. He hated the wall of trees hemming him in, the groaning branches and the stagnant pools of air. But at least they hid him from the filthy horsemen. On the plain, gobs of orange light moved inexorably closer, but he stayed where he was.

  It was fitting that he was alone – only the true and rightful Chief having had the strength and courage to endure. One way or another, his blood-ties had failed him. Many, including Irdodun, had thrown themselves into the water before the stinking northern horses. Others, like the Weshargh Chief, had turned tail and galloped away, seeking to save their cowardly skins. But the Sky Chiefs didn’t favour those who insulted them. That had been clear since they’d snatched the earth from beneath the Soushargh’s feet.

  The rain dwindled and Arkendrin strained into the darkness with his one functioning eye. Then, when he felt safe, he pulled a hunk of meat out from under his shirt, tearing off chunks and swallowing them whole. The Grounds had cheeses and smoked meats, meats roasted over warming fires, milk and sherat, the softness of pelts and hides. To reclaim these things, he must fill his belly and fuel his legs, and seek the Sky Chiefs’ indulgence.

  The horsemen held the plain, and if he were to survive he must first journey up towards the Sky Chiefs. He searched the darkness, then placed a portion of his precious meat next to the trees in recompense for the breach he must now commit. Then, palming his forehead, he hauled himself upright and limped away into the shadows of the Braghans.

  In her alcove in the Haelen, Kira sat hunched in a ball, too frightened to sleep. It was quiet beyond the curtain, but giving in to sleep meant enduring terrifying dreams of Kandor’s death mixed with the agony of the fiery tunnel. And sometimes, now, Kandor stared at her as he died and his face became Tierken’s.

  She knew the dreams were triggered by the unrelenting taking of pain, but she had no choice but to continue to do so. The wounded now suffered a journey of almost four days to reach the Haelen, arriving far too late for sickleseed to be of use, or anything else. The only thing Kira could offer was a peaceful death, and that meant enduring the burning tunnel with them.

  Farid had said that once Tierken was south of Cover-cape Crest, the wounded would go to Maraschin, but Kira couldn’t recall when he’d said it. Night and day had become a blur of taking pain, cleaning, stitching, binding and holding those who died.

  A door slammed, making her start violently, and sounds of sobbing and groaning penetrated the alcove. Kira forced herself upright and her legs to function.

  ‘You’re not telling me you’ve slept,’ said Laryia, busy cutting a putrid bandage from a man’s thigh while a server hovered with a bowl of water. Kira made no response, simply bringing her hands down over the man’s chest. Fortunately his pain wasn’t severe and her stay in the tunnel was mercifully brief.

  ‘And no doubt you’ve not eaten either,’ went on Laryia, waiting with fireweed while the helper bathed the wound.

  Laryia had become adept at haranguing, as well as healing, thought Kira dully, as she slipped her hands under the shirt of a second man. He looked Tremen but was probably Kessomi. The Tremen were safe with Caledon, less than a day away – if there were such a thing as safety.

  A hand gripped her arm and it was a moment before Kira had the wit to realise it was Laryia. ‘No more,’ hissed Laryia.

  ‘One more,’ said Kira.

  ‘No more!’

  Kira tried to shrug her off, but Laryia’s grip was surprisingly strong as she dragged Kira out of earshot of the server.

  ‘Have you seen yourself of late, Kira? No, I know you haven’t. You haven’t left the Haelen since this began. That’s almost a moon, Kira! You barely eat and I know you don’t sleep, and this taking of pain . . .’

  Kira stared at her dumbly, distracted by the fact that Laryia looked different, her face honed, her eyes darker against her flawless skin.

  ‘Are you listening, Kira?’

  ‘One more,’ repeated Kira, not having the strength to say anything further.
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  ‘Only if you agree to go back to the Domain and rest – for at least three days.’

  Kira nodded, finding it easier to let her head fall backward and forward than to move it from side to side.

  The last of the wounded men was almost to the wall of flame at the tunnel’s end and Kira had an overwhelming urge to journey on past him into death. Kandor was there, and rest and peace, but then her Healer-self roused, and dragged her shivering and sweating back to the Haelen.

  Laryia held her upright with one hand, and managed to fill a cup with beesblest and hand it to her. ‘Drink,’ she ordered.

  Kira gulped it down obediently.

  ‘Now, up to the Domain,’ said Laryia firmly.

  Kira came out of the Haelen into the sunshine and blinked. Things were too bright, as if the sky had lost a layer of skin. The Domain path was also steeper and longer than she remembered. She kept her eyes down and watched the movement of her feet and of other feet disappearing to either side, like water flowing round a rock. She barely noticed that passers-by stopped to stare at the Healer that had saved so many lives. Then the bottom of the Domain gate came into view, swung away and clanged shut behind her.

  Kira raised her head. The Silvercades gleamed against the brilliant sky and memories of Eris’s last words surged back, as bright as candle flame: You know where I am if you need me.

  For a moment Kira was unable to move forward or backwards, then she stumbled towards the stables, heaved the saddle onto her mare, and watched her hands buckle the harness as if they belonged to someone else. Then she was mounted, and at the Domain gate.

  ‘Where is it you would go, Lady?’ said one of the Guard.