Jin picked her way amongst the dead, crows rising in a squawking, protesting mass from their feast.
The sun was not long risen, tall shadows stretching across the gully. Jin had ridden hard upon realizing she had been tricked yet again. But by the time she and Tark had led her warband out of their own ravine and back to the valley, darkness had settled and the sounds of distant battle had long since fallen silent. She had made the frustratingly difficult decision to make camp for the night and to rise before first light.
By that time Jin’s other captains had all returned to the valley, only Medek and his warriors were missing. As the sun had crested the peaks, Jin and Tark had led their reunited warband into the gully Medek had taken.
And now she had found him.
Or at least, she thought it was him. His skull had been caved in, most of his face missing, the rest pulped.
“What happened?” Gerel muttered, shifting another Cheren corpse with his boot.
They had found the battleground quickly enough. The ravine was thick with the dead. Men, women, horses, all lying still and twisted, most with empty, red-staring sockets where their eyes had been, taken by the crows. Tark had set his scouts to searching the area; so far, no survivors had been found.
“There are Sirak here,” Cheren said, crouching beside a dead warrior in a grey deel. She was lying on the ground, legs twisted unnaturally beneath her, two Cheren arrows protruding from her chest.
“Aye, there are,” Jin said.
“But not enough,” Tark grunted, dropping Medek’s bow upon his corpse and moving on, picking his way through the corpse field.
“Find Bleda,” Jin said. “Check every body.”
“Aye, if he is here, I will find him.” Tark nodded, but Jin knew the huntsman did not expect to find Bleda’s body. Because she didn’t, either.
He is making a fool of me.
Jin sipped from a water bottle in the shade of a boulder, the sun hot in the gully. Gerel stood close by, a dozen of her honour guard about her. Everyone else was working at the task before them.
Bodies were being piled, Cheren and Sirak, weapons and war gear stripped from the dead, anything valuable. There were things here that Jin did not understand.
“Report,” she said, as Tark approached her.
“Five hundred Cheren dead. Eighty Sirak.”
That staggered Jin for a moment. The dead had been so tangled and intertwined that it had been impossible to tell numbers or Clan.
How has this happened?
“And Bleda? Where is he?”
“Bleda is not amongst the dead,” Tark said. There were others with him, a handful of his best scouts, and Jin’s captains, Hulan, Jargal, Vachir and Essen, all of them lords of large families within the Cheren.
“Where is he then?” Jin asked, trying to keep her voice even and calm, suppressing the rage that was churning within her, a pressure building in her chest.
“I do not know,” Tark said, a frown knitting his brows. “Perhaps over those rocks.” He gestured to a tumble of boulders that blocked the gully. “Though I can see no tracks that way. He would have had to go on foot, no way for horses to get through.”
Jin drew in a long breath.
“Tark, what happened here?”
The scout looked at her, confusion, uncertainty in his eyes.
“All right,” Jin said. “Tell me what you do know.”
“There was clearly a fierce battle fought,” he said. “A charge from both sides; you can see where the lines met.” He pointed to the gully, to a point where the corpses of warriors and horses had been piled thickest, the stony ground still dark with their blood.
“But battle spread all along this part of the gully. And then, there were more Cheren dead there.” He pointed again. “As if they were attacked on the flank.”
“An ambush?” Jin said. She shrugged. “Bleda is proving to be cunning.”
“Aye, that he is,” Tark replied. “And yes, it looks like a flanking attack, but where from? There is no cover to hide such a force.” He looked at the cliffs and boulders whose shade they were standing in. “And then there are the wounds. Only on our Cheren.”
“Go on,” Jin said.
“They are… unnatural,” Tark said. “There are many Sirak arrows amongst the dead, sword and spear wounds. But there are others as well. Men and women crushed. Dismembered. Wounds too big for Sirak sword or spear.”
Jin just looked at Tark. “It is strange,” she admitted. “How, then, do you explain these things? Who gave these wounds and death blows to my people?”
“I do not know,” Tark said.
You are saying that a lot. Too much, for my liking.
“Giants?” Jin said. She had seen old Balur One-Eye training in the weapons-field at Drassil. He could have made wounds like this, with his war-hammer.
“Giants do not live in Arcona,” Tark grunted.
“The Night-Walkers,” a voice muttered, Vachir, one of Jin’s captains.
“What?” Jin said.
Vachir looked away. He was an older warrior, grey streaks in his warrior braid, and wore a fine coat of mail, edged with leather and gold wire.
“Creatures of campfire tales,” Tark said, with a frown. “Mountain-dwellers, cave-lurkers that come out in the dead of night and steal our goats and children.”
“Monsters,” Vachir said.
“Huh.” Jin snorted. “I believe in monsters, but only the ones I can see.”
“Believe or not,” Vachir said, looking at a huge gaping wound in a dead Cheren warrior’s chest, “the dead tell no lies.”
“And where are the horses? Our horses,” Jin said. “Five hundred Cheren rode into this ravine. Their bodies are here, but I only see a hundred or so dead horses. Where are the rest? The way ahead is blocked by rockfall, and we came up the gully this morning. Where are they, Tark?”
He opened his mouth to speak.
“Do not say I don’t know,” Jin snapped. “You swore to me that you would guide me, that you would lead me to Bleda. That is what I do, you said to me. So, find him.”
Tark looked at her, then looked away.
“Where are my horses, Tark?”
“Lining a monster’s belly?” Vachir said, quietly, but loud enough for Jin to hear.
“And where did this monster gut and skin our horses, quarter them, cook them?” Jin snapped.
Vachir shrugged. “You lead us, you tell me,” he said, a twist of his lips. He looked at her then. “Or can you not? We have followed you; sixty leagues from the Cheren Heartland, been tricked, lost a warband of our kin.” He gestured to the piled dead. Then he hawked and spat.
“You question my leadership, Vachir?” Jin said quietly.
He stared into her eyes, looked about at Cheren warriors, working at stripping the dead, but listening. He stood straighter.
“The leader of the Cheren must be able to do more than slaughter a bound prisoner,” he said loudly. “Skilled with bow, blade and wits, that is what the Clan requires in their king, or queen.”
A silence settled between them.
“Aye, that is how you slew Erdene, is it not? A sword-thrust from behind, Erdene bound and beaten, on her knees.” He sneered. “My youngest bairn could do such a thing. No great honour in that. No great skill.”
Others were listening now, Cheren warriors up and down the valley, pausing at their tasks.
“And now you lead us blindly, following this Bleda like an auroch bull with a ring through your nose. Tricked, our kin slaughtered.” Vachir looked at the Cheren dead. “Where are your wits? Where is your skill?”
Gerel took a step forwards, hand rising for his sword hilt.
“Hold,” Jin said, a gesture at Gerel.
“I will show you my skill,” she said quietly, resting a hand on the bow in its case at her hip, “if you wish. If you challenge me.”
He stared at her, silence thick and heavy around him.
Then he was reaching for his bow, his other hand grasping a fistful of arrows.
Jin’s bow slipped into her hand, her other hovering over her quiver. She waited, aware of the gradient, the wind, the ground about her feet.
Vachir’s first arrow was nocked, drawing back to his ear.
Jin moved as he loosed. She grabbed three arrows, dropped to her left, tucked her shoulder and rolled, right hand in her quiver. Vachir’s first arrow hissed through the space she had been standing in, came out of the roll as the second arrow crunched into the stony ground a handspan from where she knelt. Her first and second arrows nocked, drawn, loosed in quick succession. She rolled again, Vachir’s third arrow skimming her shoulder, mail links tearing.
A yell, a thud.
She came out of her roll with her last arrow aimed.
She didn’t need it.
Vachir was on the ground.
She stood and strode up to him, her heart pounding, chest heaving, the thrill of violence and the closeness of death surging through her veins. Gerel was a shadow at her shoulder, Tark and the others following behind.
Vachir had one arrow in his hip and another between shoulder and neck. It had punched deep, through mail, wool and linen into flesh, just below his clavicle. Blood pulsed from both wounds.
“I lead the Cheren,” Jin said, standing over Vachir. “I have earned that right.” She drew her bow, aimed her arrow into Vachir’s face, her blood yearning for his death.
He stared back at her, a brave man facing his end with a snarl.
She blew out a long breath, loosened the tension on her bow.
“Your life is mine,” she said to Vachir. “Mine to take, mine to give. Death or life, your choice. Will you follow me?”
He looked up at her, mastering his pain, a change in his eyes, the slow realization that he could live, if he wanted to.
“I will follow you,” he grunted.
She slipped her arrow back into its quiver and offered him her hand, pulled him upright. He grunted with the effort, but stood beside her.
“You were close,” she said, showing him the split links on her mail coat.
“Not close enough,” he breathed, then bowed his head to her.
“My Cheren people,” Jin called out, turning to look at her warriors. Thousands of faces, shaven-haired, long warrior braids, a hard, strong people. Her people. “I have slain our enemy’s queen, led you into the Sirak lands, crushed and burned every hold, turned their Heartland to ashes. All that remains is to destroy their homeless king and his handful of vagabond followers.”
She saw pride fill Cheren faces, shoulders straighten and chests puff out.
“I do not know where Bleda has gone,” she cried, “but I do know where he is going. To the Tethys Pass and then Ripa, to meet with his puppet-masters and his half-breed whore. That is where I am going to lead you. And if he has reached there first, then we shall follow him, to the ends of the earth if needs be. Until our victory is complete, until he and his followers are dead, and the Sirak name is nothing more than a bloodstain at our feet.”
“HAI!” cheered the Cheren.