Valour (26 page)

Then he felt Storm tense, a vibration deep in her belly, the beginnings of a growl.

‘Be ready,’ Gar’s voice whispered from the darkness.

It was Vonn. He lurched towards them, then snagged his foot on something and staggered forwards, something falling from his cloak and hitting the ground with a thud. Vonn dropped to the floor,
hands scrabbling to retrieve the object as behind him the sound of pursuit grew louder, a figure appearing, moving furtively through the undergrowth.

The plan had worked, then. Halion and Camlin were to kill the camp’s guards, all except one, who was to be lured into the woods by Vonn. Lured to this point. To Storm.

The figure moved up behind Vonn, stood over him, sword raised.

Get out of the way!
Corban’s mind yelled, one hand clasping Storm’s fur tight. She was growling low and deep, her body quivering.

Vonn picked up the thing he had dropped and shoved it back inside his cloak –
some kind of box, or book?
– and leaped forwards, running past Corban. The warrior made to
follow, then Storm materialized before him, lips pulled back in a snarl, showing her long teeth. The warrior froze, eyes growing wide.

Corban stared at the warrior before him. His enemy, yet he felt a surge of sympathy for the man, and guilt at what he was about to do.

He is hunting me, would kill me, kill my kin, my friends
. Still he hesitated.

The warrior opened his mouth, sucked in a great breath, about to scream, to call for help, or perhaps beg for mercy, Corban did not know.

‘Foe,’ Corban whispered in Storm’s ear and in a blur of fur and muscle she leaped at the startled man.

He had an instant to raise his weapon, a half-formed cry escaping his lips as she smashed into him, then they were on the ground, his arms and legs flailing. Storm lunged forward, her weight
pinning him to the ground. There was crunching, bones breaking, and the warrior’s scream rose in pitch, then was cut short as black blood and gore splattered trees and foliage.

‘I’m glad she’s on our side,’ muttered Camlin.

In the distance they heard the first sounds of the camp stirring, a dog barking, a voice calling.

Storm was standing with one paw on her kill, her muzzle dripping. She raised her head and howled.

Coralen sat at her mam’s table, picking dirt from her nails with her hunting knife.

‘How long are you back for?’ her mam asked.

‘I don’t know, Mam. A day, a few days. Rath didn’t say.’

‘I don’t know what you get out of riding around the countryside with those savages,’ her mam said.

Coralen bit back the immediate response on her lips.
Because I don’t want to end up like you.
She felt a rush of guilt at that. Her mam was sitting close to a window, studying
herself in a polished bronze mirror, daubing her face with rouge and kohl.

She had been beautiful once and a shadow of that lingered still, though her hair had thinned and lost its copper lustre, and her figure had expanded. It was more than that, though, something
deeper than the simple passage of time. Coralen noticed it so clearly because she was rarely home.
Home? This is not my home. Just timber and thatch in the empty northlands of Domhain.
There
was a pervasive weariness about her mam that leaked into everything she did, every word or glance.

‘You should try some,’ her mam said, offering her the pot of rouge.

‘No thanks.’

‘You need to be making more of an effort; you won’t have your looks forever.’ Her mam looked at her, and frowned. ‘Look at you, in your prime, and all wrapped in leather
and iron. You’ve more sharp edges on you than the knives in my kitchen.’

Coralen smiled at that. ‘Mam, I’m eighteen summers. And all of that –’ she waved at the pot of rouge, as if it summed up an entire way of life – ‘it
doesn’t matter to me. I’m happy riding around with a bunch of savages.’

Happy? Well, that’s probably an exaggeration. But it’s better than the alternative.

Her mam sighed and shook her head as if to say,
You poor, deluded child.

There was a knock at the door; a figure pushed in, not waiting to be invited. It was a big man, tall, a belly folding over his belt. He smelled of earth and sweat.

‘Hearne,’ Coralen’s mam said, brightening, something of her old aura fluttering into life.

‘Nara,’ the big man said, his eyes settling on Coralen. He nodded to her. He had small eyes, pinpricks in a large face.

‘Take yourself off for a walk,’ Coralen’s mam said to her as she rose and walked away, crossing into the shadows of another room.

Coralen stood, her chair scraping on the floor.

‘No need to leave on my account,’ Hearne said. ‘You could wait for me, or join us, if you like.’ He reached out a big hand, touching Coralen’s hip.

Without thinking, she burst into movement, sliding around him, twisting his arm behind his back. In heartbeats he was pressed against the wall, Coralen’s knife resting just below his
eye.

‘I don’t think so, you fat, stinking pig,’ she hissed. A bead of sweat rolled down Hearne’s forehead, around his eye, onto the tip of Coralen’s knife.

Hooves drummed outside, stopping close by.

‘Cora, get out here. Rath says we’re leaving.’

‘Be nice to my mam,’ Coralen said as she stepped away, sheathing her knife.

Hearne hurried away, following her mam.

Coralen took a deep breath, felt her racing pulse begin to slow. As she left she placed a bag of coins on the table.

‘What happened here?’ Rath said. He was old, his hair white, streaked with iron, but he was as strong and sharp witted as anyone Coralen had ever met. She loved him
fiercely, this old man before her, uncle, protector, friend.
Not that I’ve ever told him.
That was beyond imagination in this group of hard men.

She had become one of them slowly, something within her rebelling against the life that had surrounded her mam. So she had taken to following Rath and her half-brothers about. Six years old,
never speaking, just following, watching. Rath had ignored her at first, then told her to get back to her mam’s skirts, then scolded her, eventually clumping her. None of it had made any
difference; she had just continued to sneak out, following him whenever he was there. Soon she had become his shadow, accepted, almost invisible, and so she had watched him training with his men,
sparring, eating, drinking. She had a vivid memory: eight years old, lifting a practice sword from a wicker basket in the weapons court, of men laughing – all except Rath. He had measured her
with his serious eyes, told her to hit him. She’d tried, but ended up on her arse quickly enough. Rath had told her to get up and try again. She smiled at the thought.

It had been Baird who had fetched her from her mam’s house; he was a warrior who had served with Rath for more years than Coralen had drawn breath. He had lost both his family and an eye
to the giants of Benoth. Rath’s score or so of warriors had been gathered swiftly. Once they were all together, Rath told them why. Word had come back that a patrol was overdue.

Now they knew the reason.

Bodies littered the ground, spread around a burned-out fire, twisted and ungainly in death. Their heads had been hacked from their bodies. Nearby a cairn had been raised, stones piled high.
Around its base were the heads of the warriors, placed like some decoration. Coralen shared a look with Baird. He slipped from his saddle and began pulling rocks from the cairn. Coralen and a few
others joined him. It was not long before a huge body was revealed, laid flat with a war-hammer resting upon its chest. Baird lifted the giant’s severed head by its hair.

‘The Benothi are loose in Domhain,’ Rath said. ‘Think we’d better do something about that.’

Cywen woke suddenly, her heart pounding as loud as war-drums in her head. She was curled in a chair in the kitchen, embers in the fire burned down to a red glow.
What woke
me?
Had she dreamed? Then she heard Buddai growling.

She sat up quickly, reaching for a knife. It was dark, but she could tell there were people on the other side of the door; she could hear them whispering. Then the door handle turned.

‘Don’t go throwing anything sharp at me,’ someone said. Cywen’s memory fumbled to put a face to the familiar voice. Conall.

‘Get out,’ Cywen replied. Buddai was snarling now, only her hand in his fur stopping him from leaping at the intruder.

‘You’ve got visitors, girl,’ Conall said. ‘They were all for putting a sack over your head and carrying you to the keep, but I told them you’d wake all of Dun
Carreg, and most likely every demon in the Otherworld as well. So I told them if we asked you polite you’d see sense and be reasonable.’

‘What time is it?’ Cywen asked, blinking as someone behind Conall lit a torch. ‘What visitors?’

‘It’s nighttime,’ Conall said with a shrug, stepping into the kitchen, his gaze flitting between the knife in Cywen’s hand and Buddai’s bared teeth. ‘Got
anything to drink?’ he asked.

Figures crowded the door behind him, spilling into the room. The first Cywen recognized: Nathair, King of Tenebral, and his shadow, Sumur. Behind them was an old man, silver-haired but somehow
youthful; he was looking at her intently.

Buddai whined, tail tucking between his legs, ears going flat to his head, and the old man frowned, then something huge followed behind him, a man’s shape, though taller and wider, small
black eyes peering out from beneath a thick jutting brow. A giant, a black axe slung across his back.

Conall stepped before her, seeing her knife hand move. ‘Be calm, lass. Don’t do it, they’ve just come to talk.’

Cywen froze, fear making her pulse race.
I must still be asleep. Please let me still be asleep
. Her instinct was to throw first and talk later. Then another figure entered the room
wearing a black cuirass, the silver eagle of Tenebral embossed upon it, two swords at his hip, one long, one short; a young man, stern faced, with serious, searching eyes. He looked at her and
smiled apologetically.

She lowered her knife.

Behind this serious warrior one last man came, shutting the door behind him. Metal rings were woven into his braided beard, clinking as he moved.

‘How about that drink?’ Conall asked.

‘There’s mead in the cold room,’ Cywen said, waving her hand, and Conall fetched a skin, unstoppered it and took a swig. Nathair shook his head when Conall offered him the
skin.

‘I’ll have some,’ the man with rings in his beard said.

‘Why are you all here?’ Cywen said.

The silver-haired man dragged a chair over and sat before Cywen. ‘I need to talk to you about your brother.’

The sky was a searing blue, wisps of cloud doing little to block the heat of the sun as Cywen rode to the paddocks beyond Havan. Over two thousand horses were roaming here,
more than she had ever seen in her life – the war mounts of Owain’s warband mixing with Brenin’s herds. She was on Shield, could feel his barely controlled energy, his yearning to
gallop reflected in how he lifted his hooves, how he held his tail straight and proud.

She was in the company of a dozen other stablehands, all ordered by the warrior Drust to bring back mounts from Brenin’s herd considered suitable for training in the Rowan Field. She
rounded up half a dozen, Gar’s piebald stallion, Hammer, amongst them, and roped them in a line behind Shield. As she was leaving, a memory tugged at her and she changed direction, rode to a
small copse of alders and followed a track, now overgrown.

She pulled up before Brina’s cottage, or what was left of it. It had been burned out, the charred framework still standing, the open doorway leading to a pile of rubble and ash. Brina
would have a lot to say to the man that had put fire to her home. Even the herb garden was overgrown, a mass of weeds and grass gone to seed. Then she was remembering the night that Corban had
sneaked into this cottage and stolen a comb, to prove his courage. She felt her breath catch in her chest. A tear rolled down her cheek and she brushed it away.
Strange, how a memory from the
past can sneak up so quietly.