Fall of Thanes

*

“I see them,” Igris said from the window. Kanin oc Horin-Gyre set down the bowl of cold broth he had been holding to his lips and twisted in his chair. “You’re sure?” he said to his shieldman. Igris nodded. He was staring out over a street on the very south-eastern fringe of Glasbridge. This part of the town had been beset by both flood and fire when the town fell to the Black Road. The house in which they waited, and in which Kanin took a hasty meal, had no roof to it. The floorboards were charred; the shutters at the window from which Igris looked out hung split and smoke-blackened and broken. There was even now, long since the floodwaters had receded, a damp stink of rot to the place. Kanin had had to sweep a thin crust of snow from the table when they first entered. He wiped soup from his lips with the back of his hand. “How many?” he asked without getting up. “Can’t tell yet, sire,” Igris replied. “Eska said there were twenty, when she saw them on the road this morning.” “Might be twenty. Or they might have seen her. Perhaps they split up.” “They didn’t see her,” said Kanin scornfully. “She’s of the Hunt, man. You think they get themselves seen except by choice?” Igris shrugged. There was weary defeat in that sluggish movement. “We’d best go down to greet them, then,” Kanin said, pushing back his chair and getting to his feet. He lifted his chain shirt from where it lay on the table and shrugged it over his head. “Are you sure?” Igris murmured. Such a small sound, so frail, to come from such a man. It was resigned yet perhaps still carried the faintest thread of hope that his master might turn aside from his chosen course. Kanin glared at his shieldman’s back. “You question me? Doubt me?” Igris said nothing. Kanin took a heavy cloak down from a hook on the wall. “Just do what I require of you,” he said. “Do as your Thane requires. You’ve enough honour, enough memory of who you are, to do that, I hope.” His shieldman followed him out onto the street. The man stank of reluctance, and Kanin despised him for that. The slush outside was almost ankle deep. The night before had been the first in a long time that had not frozen. As a result, Glasbridge’s white covering was softening, turning grey, melting into its ruins and its mud. Kanin splashed out into the centre of the road and stood there, feet spaced enough to give him a firm stance, cloak flicked back clear of his sword. He waited. The riders came around the corner in single file. The horses moved very slowly. One by one they came into sight: six, ten, twelve, then fifteen, twenty. All black-haired. All tall and upright. All clad in dark leather with iron studwork or buckles or hilts glinting softly here and there. Ravens, riding into Glasbridge. Kanin smiled to himself. Then, still fifty or more paces distant, the lead rider halted her horse with the merest rolling of her wrist to tighten the reins. She stared down the street towards Kanin. Others of the riders came sedately forward and conferred with their leader. The muted exchange was curt. She nodded once, and two men peeled themselves away from the rest, easing their mounts round and heading, just as unhurriedly as they had come, back out towards the fields beyond the town. Kanin’s smile died on his lips. His disappointment was far more bitter than he would have expected. It did not, in truth, matter greatly. After today, everything would rush onwards. The end—whatever its form, whatever its nature—would come quickly, and nothing and no one could change that. But he had hoped that this begi