Icefall (26 page)

‘No, said Braon. ‘Beyond the treeline.'

‘Here!' a fighter yelled from the edge of the machair. He stood on a fringe of scrubby sandbank, his dirk indicating the beach below.

‘This is absurd,' muttered Seth. He pushed aside Orach's defensive blade and walked towards the kelpies. Rory's filly had the same idea; she galloped past Seth, heading for the reassuring company of her kin. As she halted beside the roan it gave her a sharp bossy bite on the neck, then shouldered her into its shadow and raised its head, and screamed at the invisible threat. Then it swung its head and screamed another challenge, in the opposite direction.

The black did not scream. Its head was high, its nostrils flared, its lip peeled back, but it was very still.

‘Are we surrounded or what?' said Iolaire. ‘Where the hell are they?'

Seth was up on the roan by now, turning its head towards the treeline, but it backed a few paces, resisting. It shied to the right, its flanks bumping against the grey filly.

‘It doesn't know either,' shouted Seth. The roan had stopped its aggressive squealing now, and the only sound was the rustle of stiff grasses in the light breeze.

They waited a breathless age, till hilts began to tremble in tense fists, but the sound of hoofbeats had died away. Seth shook his head impatiently.

‘Let's call that a mass hallucination, shall we?'

‘If you like,' growled Grian, still eyeing the pines. ‘But I suggest we move.'

‘Fine.' Seth sheathed his sword on his back. ‘If anyone fancies joining me, I'm off to Faragaig.'

*   *   *

Rory knew Faragaig. He'd always liked it and his father had visited it often when he was a boy: negotiating trade deals, adjudicating arguments (or trying to), keeping its temperamental Captain onside. It nestled very comfortably in the crescent of a white-sand bay, protected by two long headlands; to its landward side rose low green hills thick with bramble and wild raspberry and rhododendron. They approached the place on foot, through cultivated fields of barley and oats, potatoes and kale. A blowing, stamping herd of fat bullocks thundered close to a fence to watch them pass, puffing inquisitive steamy breaths, earning an evilly hungry glare from all three kelpies. In a smaller paddock the sun shone on the glossy flanks of pregnant mares; others had foals at foot already. Rory noticed his father having a good look at those.

‘Faragaig always bred good horses,' Seth remarked to Jed.

‘I wonder why there's any still here.' Iolaire had already climbed to the crest of a grassy slope, and he turned back with a warning look. ~
Seeing as they've been raided lately.

‘Raiders?' said Seth, his brow furrowing. ‘They didn't steal much.'

He hoisted himself onto the blue roan and rode it to Iolaire's side. The roan shied violently as soon as it crested the ridge, and Seth put his hand to his nose and mouth and swore. He was silent while the rest of the clann caught up. When Rory reached the hill's crest and the sea breeze caught him, the stench came with it like something solid, and he recoiled and gagged.

‘They may not have taken anything.' Grian cleared his throat and spat. ‘But they left a lot of dule trees.'

A track of gritty sand wound from the ridge down into the outskirts of the village. The first houses weren't far away, but the zigzag of the path down into its streets must have been three-quarters of a mile long. In dips and hollows it meandered out of sight, but it was very clearly marked now: they could see the line of it all the way, punctuated at fifty-metre intervals with gibbets.

Not particularly sophisticated ones. The dule trees themselves weren't much more than wooden spikes hammered into the ground, no more than fifteen feet tall, and sharpened at the tip. An upright body was impaled on every one, arms pinned against its sides with an iron band. The closest corpses were definitely the newest; further down the track towards the village, some of them were barely recognisable as human. Those ones were staked much closer together; the executioners must have been busier in the first days of whatever had happened in Faragaig. Crows flapped up as they passed, but lazily; it wasn't as if there was a shortage of meat. The flies were more industrious.

‘God, Faramach, don't,' whispered Finn at Rory's side as her raven took off from her arm. He rose on the wind and swooped between the gibbets, provoking the crows to defensive cawing, but he didn't settle on any of the bodies. Rory could make out his distinctive ragged shadow on the track as he flew far ahead towards Faragaig. Finn shut her eyes and exhaled with relief.

Seth had remained on horseback, letting the roan find its own feet down the windblown grit of the track. He stared at every corpse as he passed it; the last one had fallen from its spike and collapsed into a pathetic pile of bones and flesh-rags. He halted by that one, gazing with his head tilted, as the roan snorted and snarled and struck up sand-flurries with a hoof. Seth had the look of a man who was passing the time, waiting for something, and in no more than a minute they heard hoofbeats again.

It was easy enough this time to tell where they came from. Six riders came out of Faragaig at a canter, the late sun glowing on polished flanks and glinting off tack buckles. When the first animal was almost within biting distance of the roan, its rider yanked on its reins. He and Seth stared at one another for long seconds.

‘I'm a little surprised to see your face, Glanadair,' said Seth at last. He nodded at the nearest gibbeted corpse. ‘Especially looking as good as you do.'

The man didn't answer at once. His lips tightened; there were red patches high on his cheekbones.

‘And where were you, Murlainn? I haven't seen you and your principles around here for, ooh … four years, at least.'

‘You know fine why.'

‘Of course I do. You scuttled off to the otherworld with your son and your lover and your well-honed sense of self-preservation, and good luck to you.' The corner of Glanadair's lip lifted. ‘But some of us stayed.'

‘I'm not surprised. You've done very well for yourself. Nice horse.' Seth studied first the animal, then his fingernails. ‘I thought for a minute there you'd been attacked.'

Rory had to admire Glanadair, though he'd never let on to his father. He could feel the anger radiating off the man in waves, but Glanadair stayed perfectly calm.

‘In a sense we were, Murlainn. From within. Seems I'd been breeding a right nest of rebels. They must have thought I'd be suicidal enough to support them.'

‘Instead of which you sold them off to Kate, I take it?'

‘Kate asked for them. You didn't.' Glanadair cocked his head to examine the rickle of bones left on one of the gibbets. The way the skull was, all twisted and gaping, suggested the man—or woman, maybe—hadn't died very well; but maybe that was just the ravages of time and weather. ‘I mean, you weren't here to do any asking, but that wasn't my problem, was it?'

‘Not at that point,' said Seth.

‘Are you threatening me, Murlainn?'

‘Gods, no. I don't do idle threats.'

Glanadair shrugged. ‘We're a small community. Kate treats us remarkably well, considering what was simmering here for a whole year. She gives us advantageous trade, she gives us protection; she accepts counsel and she gives a hearing to any request we care to make.'

The fair-haired, sharp-faced man behind Glanadair nudged his horse forward; must be his lieutenant, Rory realised. Jed mirrored the man's movement, walking forward to stand at the roan's shoulder. He hadn't drawn a blade yet but his fingers were twitchy.

‘We hear a lot of bad things about Kate,' said the lieutenant. ‘She wipes out resistance if they won't negotiate. She makes free with her Lammyr and she likes to keep them well content; she'll let them destroy entire communities if they're selfish enough to disrupt the Queen's Peace.' He lifted a shoulder. ‘She's never done that to us. We've never given her reason.'

‘No, Leoghar.' said Jed. ‘She let you do it to yourselves.'

‘Hello, Cuilean.' Leoghar gave him a thin smile. ‘I would've thought you of all people would sympathise. I thought you and the Lammyr had a special relationship going.'

Rory's breath stuck in his throat, but Jed didn't rise to it, and he was dizzy with gratitude. His brother just smiled at Leoghar.

‘Well. It's like you say. Some communities are just asking for it.'

‘I've heard enough from you and your warmongers, Murlainn.' Glanadair turned his horse, then twisted on its back to face Seth again. ‘You came here for support. You came for horses and weapons, maybe even fighters. It should be obvious that isn't going to happen.'

‘Oh, believe me, it's obvious,' said Seth; but Glanadair was already riding away.

Leoghar hesitated. He looked up at the line of stinking corpses, then back at Rory's father, with a faint smirk. ‘Sorry we can't help, Murlainn. Try Howedale: I'm sure they'd be more your type. Or who knows? They might do you an even bigger favour. They might convince you that you're wasting your time.'

‘Nobody's going to do that,' gritted Seth. ‘The bitch-queen has my brother's daughter and she has my lieutenant.'

‘Then kiss them both goodbye.' Leoghar's expression was suddenly full of hatred. ‘You lose two? That's nothing. Call them casualties of exile. And then go back into it, and drink yourself to death while you still have a soul. I see you, and I See what's nearly gone. You're out of time, Murlainn, in
so many
ways.'

Nobody spoke as Leoghar turned and rode casually back down the trail. All they heard was his voice, drifting on the suddenly still air.

‘Abandon a world long enough, Murlainn, and it'll abandon you.'

 

Finn

Howedale must have waited a long time to teach us its lesson. The salt breezes had blown through its ruins for months, if not years. There were no people here, no horses, no cattle, except for their charred and crumbling bone-houses. What hadn't been taken by the crows and the insects had been desiccated by dry winds and time. Even the smell of death had deserted the place.

Seth separated the clann into small detachments and sent them out through houses, store-rooms, stables and bakeries, hunting for life; but it was a formality. I was assigned with Grian, but I had to drift away from him because I couldn't bear the buffeting of his tormented mind. He didn't mean to do it; he didn't know he was doing it. I certainly wasn't going to confess to him how much of it I could feel. I just reached out and squeezed his healer's fingers, and left him in the middle of a burnt out kitchen, staring into shrivelled humanoid cinders, lost in his helpless impotency.

As I picked my way through a shattered doorway into the yard beyond, my boots crunched on what might have been burnt wood or broken shells or much worse; I didn't want to look down. A twig gusted past me, caught by the breeze, bouncing across the rough overgrown beds till it was brought to a stop by a crumbling dyke. I picked it up, then flung it in the air to let it blow away across the fields towards the machair. Irrational, sentimental, but if anything wanted out of this place, it should go.

There was a compact two-storey barn on the right of the field; maybe it had been a stable or a byre. I didn't expect to find anything in it, not really, but I wanted to do something, or look as if I was. Anything to avoid the awful churning horror that was Grian's mind, anything to kill the time till we could leave here.

I pushed through waist-high weeds, feeling with my feet for the hidden raised rigs—God, if I tripped and fell I might land on something terrible—and tugged at the broken door of the outbuilding. It resisted for seconds, then collapsed outwards in a clatter of rotten wood, and I stepped quickly back.

The wind moaned around me, rattled a loose plank, but no life stirred. I shivered. Inside the barn the quietness was complete, and the air was dim and cool. A shaft of sunlight caught swirling dust-motes like a tiny galaxy. My steps echoed on the bare floor, hideously loud.

The stairs to the hayloft were intact. Above them a hatch lay open, the blackness beyond it forming a square of absolute night in the dusty indoor twilight. I couldn't not go. I
wanted
not to go, but I didn't seem to have a choice.

So I climbed. At the top of the stairs I felt inside the loft with my fingertips, heart crashing with dread. I didn't want to touch a body, if there was one. I didn't want to touch a fat spider, gorged on fat contented flies. I didn't know which would be worse.

I blinked. There was light after all, just enough of it: cracks in the roof beams let in the tiniest shards of sun. Hoisting myself up, I fell onto all fours on the rotting plank floor and stared at the children.

Dead, of course. The bigger one was curled round the little one, its arms tight; partly protectiveness, I guessed, partly the contractions of death and rigor. I couldn't tell the sex of either one. I couldn't tell its sex even when it raised its blackened cratered head and spoke to me.

~ Where were you? it said.

I stayed where I was, crouched on the floor. It wasn't as if I could move. My eyes were wide and the light in them crackled with terror. It hurt. Flakes of charred skin fell from the little corpse's lips.

~ We waited and we waited and you didn't come, it said.

I opened my mouth but the excuses wouldn't form. Even if they had, my throat muscles had contracted. Speak? I could barely breathe.

~ We were sure you were coming, it said. ~ You never did.

And the little one, the one in its arms that had maybe not lived long enough to learn how to speak, raised its head as well, and there were fresh live tears streaking its charred skin.

That was when I screamed. I crossed my filthy arms across my eyes and screamed, and it wasn't just terror; I knew that if I shrieked loud enough, and the child spoke again, I at least wouldn't be able to hear it. Running out of breath was one of the worst prospects of my life, and I thought that when the scream stopped, and I heard the child's voice, I would die.