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.''And then you will be a hundred against what, five thousand? Six?' Avann grunted.'At least,' smiled Tegric.An old man fell in the crowds that surrounded them.He cried out as a stone opened his knee.A grey-haired woman - perhaps his wife — hurried to help him to his feet, murmuring 'Get up, get up.' A score of people, including the Thane and Tegric, flowed past before she managed to raise him.She wept silently as the man hobbled onwards.'Many people have already died in defence of our creed,' Avann oc Gyre said, lowering his head once more and closing his eyes.He seemed to shrink as he hunched forward in his saddle.'If you give us half a day - if it has been so written in the Last God's book — you and your hundred will be remembered.When the lands that have been taken from us are ours again, you will be named first and noblest amongst the dead.And when this bitter world is unmade and we have returned into the love of the Gods I will look for you, to give you the honour that will be your due.'Tegric nodded.'I will see you once again in the reborn world, my Thane.'He turned his horse and nudged it back against the current of humanity.Tegric rested against a great boulder.He had removed his tunic, and was methodically stitching up a split seam.His mail shirt was neatly spread upon a rock, his shield and scabbarded sword lying beside it, his helm resting at his feet.These were all that remained to him, everything he had need of.He had given his horse to a lame woman who had been struggling along in the wake of the main column.His small pouch of coins had gone to a child, a boy mute from shock or injury.Above, buzzards were calling as they circled lower, descending towards the corpses that Tegric knew lay just out of sight.His presence, and that of his hundred men, might deter the scavengers for a while longer, but he did not begrudge them a meal.Those who once dwelled in those bodies had no further need of them: when the Gods returned - as they would once all peoples of the world had learned the humility of the Black Road - they would have new bodies, in a new world.From where he sat, Tegric could see down a long, sloping sweep of the Stone Vale.Every so often he glanced up from his stitching to cast his eyes back the way they had come.Far off in that direction lay Grive, where he had lived most of his life: a place of soft green fields, well-fed cattle, as different from this punishing Vale of Stones as any place could be.The memory of it summoned up no particular emotion in him.The rest of his family had not seen the truth of the creed as he had.When Avann oc Gyre, their Thane, had declared for the Black Road they had fled from Grive, disappearing out of Tegric's life.In every Blood, even Kilkry itself, the blossoming of the Black Road had sundered countless families, broken ties and bonds that had held firm for generations.To Tegric's mind it was a cause for neither regret nor surprise.A truth as profound as that of the Black Road could not help but have consequences.An old man, dressed in a ragged brown robe and leaning on a staff, came limping up the Vale.He was, perhaps, the very last of the fleeing thousands.Though they were close to the highest point of the pass, the sun, burning out of a cloudless sky, still had strength.The man's forehead was beaded with sweat.He paused before Tegric, resting all his weight upon his staff and breathing heavily.The warrior looked up at the man, squinting slightly against the sunlight.'Am I far behind the rest?' the man asked between laboured breaths.Tegric noted the bandaged feet, the trembling hands.'Some way,' he said softly.The man nodded, unsurprised and seemingly unperturbed.He wiped his brow with the hem of his robe; the material came away sweaty and duty.'You are waiting here?' he asked Tegric, who nodded in reply.The man cast around, scanning the warriors scattered amongst the great boulders all around him.'How many of you are there?''A hundred,' Tegric told him.The old man chuckled, though it was a cold and humourless kind of laugh.'You have come to the end of your Roads then, you hundred.I had best press on, and discover where my own fate runs out.''Do so,' said Tegric levelly.He watched the man make his unsteady way along the path already trodden by so many thousands.There had been, in the gentle edges of his accent, no hint of the Gyre Blood or the Glas valley where Avann had ruled.'Where are you from, old father?' Tegric called after him.'Kilvale, in Kilkry lands,' the man replied.'Did you know the Fisherwoman, then?' Tegric asked, unable to keep the edge of wonder from his voice.The old man paused and carefully turned to look back at the warrior.'I heard her speak.I knew her a little, before they killed her.''There will be a day, you know, when the Black Road marches through this pass again,' Tegric said.'But then we will be marching out of the north, not into it.And we will march all the way to Kilvale and beyond.'Again the man laughed his rough laugh.'You are right.They've driven us from our homes, cast even your Thane out from his castle, but the creed survives.You and I are not fated to see it, friend, but the Black Road will rule in the hearts of all men one day, and all things will come to their end.This is a war that will not be done until the world itself is unmade.'Tegric gazed after the receding figure for a time.Then he returned to his sewing.A while later, his hand paused in its rhythmic motion, the needle poised in mid-descent.There was something moving amongst the rocks, back down the pass to the south.He carefully set aside his tunic and half-rose, leaning forward on one knee.'Kilkry,' he heard one of his warriors muttering off to his left.And the shape coalescing out of the rock and the bright light did indeed look to be a rider.Nor was it alone.At least a score of horsemen were picking their way up the Vale of Stones.Tegric laid a hand instinctively on the cool metal of his chain vest.He could feel the dried blood, the legacy of a week's almost constant battle, beneath his fingertips.He was not afraid to die.That was one fear the Black Road lifted from a man's back.If he feared anything, it was that he should fail in his determination to face, both willingly and humbly, whatever was to come.'Ready yourselves,' he said, loud enough for only the few nearest men to hear.They passed the word along.Tegric snapped the needle from the end of its thread and slipped his tunic back on.He lifted his mail shirt above his head and dropped its familiar weight on to his shoulders.Like smoke rising from a newly caught fire, the line of riders below was lengthening, curling and curving its way up the pass [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]