Trinity Rising: Book Two of the Wild Hunt (Wild Hunt Trilogy 2) (37 page)

There must be no room for doubt. Ytha lifted her chin, cooled her voice. ‘I am sure you do. As her mother, I would be surprised if you did else. But I have seen her so-called foretellings too, and she is wrong.’

Now the cavern fell silent.

‘I made bargain with one of the Eldest, and She promised us Her aid if we give Her ours. She sent these Hounds –’ she let her hands rest on their massive necks ‘– as proof of Her intent. What has Teia given us for proof? Only words. Only her fears.’

She paused to let that sink into their minds. Her timing here was key – possibly even more important than the speech itself. With the right cadence, the right inflection, the people would convince themselves that hers was the only logical conclusion to draw. Already she could see the doubts forming, in the way they looked at their neighbours, the lift of a shoulder here, a nod there. Yes. They would be wholly hers again.

‘I took Teia’s fears seriously. I cast her blood into the waters and read there what she had seen. She saw our victory. She saw the Wild Hunt unleashed, sweeping us to freedom, and the restoration of what was taken from us so long ago.’

‘That’s not true!’ Ana burst out. Her husband caught at her arm, trying to quiet her, but she shrugged him off. ‘Teia told me you refused to believe her visions!’

‘She misinterpreted what she saw.’ With a shrug, Ytha added, ‘Teia is a child. When the truth would make us think poorly of them, children lie.’

‘A child?’ the girl’s mother repeated, incredulous. ‘You thought she was old enough to warm his bed!’ Face pale with anger, she thrust out her arm to point across the cavern.

Drwyn was emerging from the passage leading up to the air, wiping his long dagger on his sleeve. For one giddy instant Ytha thought he’d used it, until the wet on the blade proved to be only water. A pity he hadn’t silenced the little bitch once and for all, but no matter. The winter would do it for them.

This was her moment. She could feel it, the moment in which all would be won or lost, tingling over her skin like a weaving. Now.

‘Your daughter was shown great honour by the chief. He gave her gifts as a sign of his esteem and made her his intended bride. And what has she repaid him with? Betrayal.’ The entire assembly caught its breath. A little fury crept into Ytha’s voice. ‘Yes, betrayal! She has flouted clan law, thrown the chief’s generosity back in his face, and now she rides south to warn the faithless that their doom is come upon them.’

‘But leaving in winter?’ exclaimed one of Drwyn’s captains, a grizzled knot of a man with a face that was more scars than whole skin. ‘She’ll never survive the snows – or the wolves will take her. You all saw what happened to Joren.’

Fresh voices murmured their agreement. They were almost hers again.

Ytha leaned on her staff, gathering the crowd up with a look. ‘If she cares so little for us, why should we care for her? I name her outcast. If any of you would mourn her, you have until the sun’s rise. After that, her name is not to be spoken. Teia is no longer a daughter of the Crainnh.’

Drwyn came to stand next to her, sheathing his dagger with a
snick
. In a lower voice, pitched so that only Ytha would hear, he said, ‘Speaker? A word.’

After the crowd dispersed to speculate amongst themselves, she joined him in his chamber. He had his shirtsleeve rolled up and was bathing the bloody scratches She had left across the back of his hand in a basin of water. Ytha let the curtain fall closed behind her, rings tinkling.

He glanced up and scowled. ‘I mean to go after her,’ he said. ‘I’ll take ten men, and have her back before dawn.’

By the Eldest, the man had barely the sense he was born with. ‘And make a liar of me in front of the whole clan? A clever move, my chief.’

‘I want my son!’ He threw the sodden washcloth back into the water so forcefully it splashed all over the carpet.

‘You don’t know what she’s carrying – it could be a girl, or a two-headed goat for all I know! I couldn’t delve the child. She masked its aura somehow – if I hadn’t been able to feel the fullness of her womb I’d barely have discerned she was in pup!’ That still grated, jagged as sawgrass. How had the girl known how to do that? Though it pained her to admit it, even in the privacy of her own mind, Ytha wasn’t sure she could do it herself.
What other skills had the deceitful little bitch acquired? What else could I have learned from her?

Grunting, Drwyn snatched up a towel and dried his hands. ‘She told me it was a girl, but I don’t believe her. I think she said that to make me leave off pursuing her.’

Yes, that was a likely deception. Ytha studied her chief with slightly less scorn.
You’re not entirely as stupid as you look, are you, Drwyn?

‘Her belly seems full for her progress, but I never saw her naked. How did she look?’

Drwyn blinked. ‘She looked pregnant.’

Men!
‘Did she carry it low, like this,’ curving her hands in front of her to illustrate, ‘or was it all out front, or up high?’

He considered, rolling down his sleeve. ‘Round,’ he said at last. ‘She looked round, like a fruit.’ His hands began to make a shape in front of his own stomach, then he caught himself and stopped, embarrassed. ‘Her hair was softer, too.’

Ytha pursed her lips. The signs were too mixed to be sure, plus it was always difficult to predict the first time, when the woman’s muscles were still firm and strong. She sighed. ‘Then I cannot say for certain. But you had best let her go, my chief.’

His fingers stilled on his shirt-laces and his expression hardened. ‘Why?’

‘For one, we are too close to the Scattering for you to take your eye from your goal,’ she said, irked that she was having to explain this to him yet again. After Teia’s defiance, daring to strike her like that, she would not stomach more of it from him. ‘And for two, you will not undermine me in front of the clan if you expect to be named Chief of Chiefs at the next full moon!’

Eyebrows raised, he stared at her. ‘I am still chief of the Crainnh.’

‘Only because I made you so!’ she fired back. ‘Don’t ever forget who put that torc around your neck!’

‘How can I, when you remind me of it every hour of the day?’ He reached for his coat and pulled it on with quick, angry jerks. ‘I am not your lapdog, Ytha, to roll over on command.’

‘Ingrate!’ In a heartbeat her power was in her hand and she flung out a fist of air that hit him squarely below the arch of his ribs. Whooping for breath, his knees weakened, then failed, and he crashed to the floor. She seized his chin and lifted his head.

‘Without me, you would still be waiting for your father to die,’ she snarled. Her fingers ground into his cheeks. ‘Without me, you are
nothing
. Remember that.’

He gurgled something unintelligible, leaking spittle over her hand.

‘The girl is gone, and good riddance. I will not see all my planning go for naught because of her. If an heir is so important to you, I’m sure you can find another willing
cuinh
to plough.’

She released him and he slumped onto his arm, coughing and gasping.

‘We go on. Tomorrow I will read the sky and if the weather will hold fair, we make preparations to ride for the Scattering.’ Picking up the discarded towel, she wiped her hand. ‘Clan law says I cannot lead the Crainnh home again because I am a woman, and a woman cannot be chief. For that I need a man.’ She dropped the towel in front of him. ‘I am not fussy who that man is.’

22

TRIAL-AT-ARMS

A stiff breeze whipped across the moors from the distant Laraig Anor, snapping the banners out from their poles behind the exhibition lists so they shone like painted metal in the pale spring sunshine. Ladies clutched their coifs as they made their way to their seats, whilst their men shouted greetings to folk in the opposite stands. Ansel wondered how many of those shining faces were due to blue skies and good humour and how many to the servers busy amongst the throng with their trays of refreshments.

‘A good day for it,’ Danilar said.

A gust of wind made the canvas awning boom overhead. Ansel grunted. ‘Aye. It’s rare to be so warm this early in the year.’

The steady southwesterly that had melted the snow on the shady side of the tors and thawed the greening turf enough to allow the tourney to go ahead had given him some relief from his killing cough, and made the pains in his joints a mite easier to bear, although he still required a number of thick down pillows to shield his hips from the hard wood of his seat in the pavilion. He shifted irritably, and the Chaplain shot him a concerned look.

‘Are you well, Ansel?’

‘Well enough, for a spavined old nag who should have been put out to pasture years ago.’

Danilar’s lips twitched as he hid a smile. ‘And how is our beloved Elder Goran?’

‘Frankly, I couldn’t care less – he’s the Lord Provost’s responsibility now. I just want to enjoy the day.’

Down in the lists, a herald appeared in white and gold livery, a large Oak worked in gold thread on the front of his tunic. The last few spectators scrambled to find their seats and a couple of latecomers in Curial scarlet hurried up the steps to the benches below Ansel just as the herald removed the ribbon from his scroll and began to read.

‘My Lord Preceptor, Elders, ladies and gentlemen, it is my great pleasure to welcome you all to the third and final day of the Grand Tourney, on which we shall see contested the final trials-at-arms for those novices of our Order now seeking to advance to Knighthood in the glory of our Goddess Eador.’

In the same clear voice, pitched to carry over the crack and snap of the banners, he announced the day’s programme of events. Ansel paid him scant attention, busy punching his pillows into a more comfortable arrangement. Not that it would last long; no matter what he did, in five minutes he’d have to do it again. Damn his age! Too many years in the saddle, and too few of them left. Anxiety didn’t help, nipping at him like lice in his drawers with no way to scratch until the tourney was over. Chewing on curses he didn’t dare utter, he shifted again.

Danilar chuckled. ‘Saints, you’re more anxious than Selsen is!’

‘I can’t help it,’ Ansel growled, then smiled benignly and nodded to acknowledge the polite smattering of applause that followed the herald’s announcement.

‘He’ll do fine, I’m sure of it. He’s top of his group for mounted sword and second for sword afoot. Even the grand mêlée didn’t faze him.’

‘But the joust is where the glory lies.’ Ansel thumped his pillows again.

‘Despite being the least useful of the Knightly disciplines,’ Danilar remarked, then patted Ansel’s arm. ‘Relax. I saw him in the novices’ tent this morning and he was cool as you please.’

‘Easy enough for you to say “relax”,’ Ansel muttered. ‘I haven’t been this nervous at a Grand Tourney since I was competing for my own spurs.’

In the lists the tilt-marshals were setting up the targets. Bright brass rings were hung from hooks on wooden carousels at either end of the lists for each pair of novices to tilt at, with the first to collect five rings on his spear and return to the start line declared the winner of the round.

In the first draw, Selsen competed in the sixth heat of eight, winning easily and brandishing the five rings on the start line before the other novice had collected his fourth. The citizens gathered on the lower slopes of Templemount roared their approval, whilst the more gently born in the banner-decked pavilions applauded – including those Elders who were actually paying attention to the contest. Most of them, however, appeared to be talking amongst themselves, with a degree of head-shaking and gesticulation that set Ansel’s ears to burning.

It was impossible to hear anything above the thunder of hooves and the panting of horses as pair after pair of novices strove to progress to the next round, and with the Elders’ backs to him he couldn’t even attempt to read their words from the shapes of their mouths. He fidgeted in his seat, frowning.

Danilar leaned over, voice pitched low. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘There’s too much talk.’ Ansel nodded at the rows of scarlet robes below him, from which came only scattered applause at the end of the next heat.

‘They’re still buzzing over what happened last month,’ said the Chaplain. ‘Don’t pay it any mind.’

Last month. Well, that had been enough to keep even a House of Eador in gossip. He had almost died, right there in the Rede-hall in front of those same scarlet robes, facing down Goran’s attempted coup and defeating it by the narrowest of margins. Despite the unseasonable sunshine, Ansel shivered.
Defeating it with the chill hand of death already on my shoulder
.

There was so little time left and so much still to accomplish. He – or more accurately, the young librarian, Alquist – still had to find Malthus’s missing journal and uncover the real reason Gwlach was defeated. If his suspicions proved true it would be a bitter pill for the Order to swallow, but if they could not face their own sins, what right did they have to castigate others for theirs?

With some effort, he forced his thoughts away from the journal. Vorgis was already suspicious; Ansel didn’t dare antagonise the Keeper of the Archives any further by intensifying the search or commandeering more staff. That precious book would come to light in its own time. Right at this moment he had to concentrate on the tourney. By the end of the day he would know whether or not all his careful planning had been in vain.