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.They had been alive when she first came this way.Sick, probably dying, but alive.She had seen many such pathetic groupings as she picked her way through Kan Avor's dismal maze.Half the people of the city seemed to be in the grip of one affliction or another.The febrile suffering of these three in particular, she had chosen to end.It would have been intolerable to her to leave them there alive--even if only barely--across her chosen escape route.She paused only long enough to sling her crossbow across her back, roll one of the bodies aside and retrieve her spear from where she had left it, hidden beneath that dead flesh.She vaulted through what had once been a window, and splashed into the puddle of filthy water beyond.The ruins stretched out before her, the leaning, slumping carcasses of countless houses.She ran into that thicket of stone, more concerned with speed now than concealment.The Battle would come quickly, as was their wont.They seldom submitted themselves to the restraint of subtlety.It would have been easier had she not been left alone by the unpredictable tumult of Kan Avor.One of her fellow Inkallim she had heard die, overrun by the raving mob that he led away from her.The other had simply disappeared as if the city had opened and folded itself about him.Even now, the sounds of war hung over Kan Avor like a fell miasma.The fire Kanin oc Horin-Gyre had lit had taken on a life of its own, and Eska could feel for herself the creeping, persuasive seductions of its sole imperative.Its hunger for death and violence gnawed at the edges of her mind, trying to make her its own.There would be few save the dead left here by nightfall.Against the background murmur of slaughter, she caught a nearer sound: splashing footfalls behind her, the rattle of scabbards on belts.Too close to be ignored.It was not, then, to be easy.Still, she had one ally left to her.She turned in a narrow passageway floored with great square paving stones.The remnant walls that bounded it were high enough and narrow enough to make it ill-suited to swordplay; a spear, though, would work well.As she stood there, settling into a ready stance, she whistled: a long, keening note.The first of the ravens appeared at the end of the passage, shouted at the sight of her, and came straight at her.He was a big man, and broad.Behind him, she glimpsed one, two more, but his dark mass blocked her sight of them as he closed on her.She read his intent in his eyes and his pace: he would impale himself upon her spear, and keep it there, in his body, while his companions rushed over him to cut her down.Typical of the Battle.And likely to undo her, Eska judged.She whistled again, still louder.The Battle Inkallim was almost on her.She dipped into a crouch, bracing herself.The force of his charge onto her spear shook down through its shaft into her hands.She resisted only enough to be certain that mortal damage was done, and to hear the roaring, gasping bursting of the air out from his lungs, and then she dropped the spear, turned and ran.She could hear them coming after her, stamping over their dying fellow.But she could hear something else now, ahead of her rather than behind, and it was a sound that might yet save her.The hound came into the narrow gullet of constricting rubble at a pounding gallop, teeth already bared in a spittle-ornamented snarl, its massive shoulders pumping, its back flexing as it strained for every fragment of speed its frame could give.It came with fury, for that was what her call had demanded of it.This was the last of them--the others had died clearing her path in through the outskirts--and it was the best, for she had chosen to preserve it for just such a moment as this.She hurdled the beast as it bounded towards her, and it flowed beneath her without faltering.It had eyes only for those following in her wake.She landed and spun on her heels, already shrugging the crossbow free from her back.She watched the great dog fling itself up at the throat of the leading Inkallim, even as her hands dragged back the bow's string, as her fingers went to the quiver of bolts at her belt and plucked one out.Dog and raven went down, thrashing in a confusion of limbs.They battered themselves, both of them, against the stonework, against the ground.The kicking of the Inkallim's legs, and the thick, desperate cries, told her the hound's teeth had found a grip.The second of the ravens could not pass the flailing combatants.He hacked at them instead, raining ferocious indiscriminate blows down.His blade opened the dog's haunch, broke its hip, skinned its shoulder, and still it fought and shook its massive head, tearing at flesh.The woman beneath it had stopped struggling.The last of the Inkallim set both hands on the hilt of his sword and raised it before him, point down.He plunged it into the hound's body, just behind its neck, and the animal gave a gurgling whimper and went limp.The man looked up then, sword still buried deep in the dog, and his eyes met Eska's.She was sighting down the line of the quarrel.She saw his recognition of his fate.He tensed to withdraw his blade.She freed the bolt, and it was in his chest, and he fell silently back.His sword stood there, erect.It had gone through the dog and into the dead woman beneath.IVThe cottage smelled of abandonment.The outside, the winter, had seeped into its fabric, softened it and made it no longer habitation but incipient ruin.There were browned leaves on the floor, blown in through open windows.Dark stains tracked the invasive waters that had found their way in through an unmended roof.It was cold and empty in the way only a place that had long lacked a fire in its hearth, and voices around its table, could be.Orisian ran his fingers over the carved bowls that were still neatly stacked on a shelf and the bottles draped with cobwebs.The detritus of lives now lost or driven off.There were no bodies, at least.Orisian could remember all too clearly another woodsman's cottage, on the slopes of the Car Criagar, where a good deal of blood had been spilled.That place had smelled much worse.Ess'yr lay on a low, hard bed.Orisian saw in her something entirely new: a fragile vulnerability.Pangs of a powerful emotion swept through him, but it was no simple thing.He felt it acutely, but could not fully understand it.Guilt, longing, fear.All those things and perhaps more."Can I get you something?" he asked softly, not wanting to rouse K'rina from her torpor on the other side of the room."Water? Food?""Nothing," Ess'yr whispered.He sat on the edge of the bed; felt the lightest of contact between the small of his back and her thigh.She appeared to be on the brink of sleep or unconsciousness.Her eyes, as she looked up into his face, would lose their focus now and again, and drift, then return to him and be sharp and clear once more.Even her intricate tattoos, the token of the lives she had taken, seemed to have lost some of their colour and faded a little into the pallor of her skin."You would never have been here if you had not found me that night," Orisian said."Winterbirth."He could see in her eyes that she heard him, and understood him, but she said nothing.If she felt pain, she did not show it.Now, as ever, she drew upon reserves of calm and composure he had seen in no one else, calm that exceeded the capacity of the world to assail it.It was, he suddenly realised, something precious beyond limit to him: that there should be someone near at hand who had within them that imperturbable strength, that resilient self-possession and balance [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]