Half of the soldiers had the golden eyes of the Eldrossi. Others had faces like hers and the dark eyes of Inis Morra.
The food on the carts would feed their village for weeks. Instead, the village was left scrounging for scraps. Surely the empire didn’t know how bad things were. They couldn’t. She feared they wouldn’t make it through the winter, any of them. No one would meet their quotas then.
In the distance, a crow called, harsh and lonely. It carried across the fields like a warning. The Athraith had long ago vanished into the woods, but its shadow lingered in her mind. A sign of something to come, but what, she didn’t yet know.
Chapter 2
As she approached the village, the well-worn field paths became roads of hard-packed earth. Up ahead, she spotted two figures stumbling along, one struggling under the weight of the other.
She took several paces before she could identify them. Cormac was half supporting, half dragging Jory. She closed the gap and slipped Jory’s free arm over her shoulder.
“What happened?” she asked Cormac.
“Found him passed out on the road.”
Jory turned to face her then, and she caught a waft of his breath. It stank of whiskey, and she pulled away.
His eyes were wet with drink, with apology, with memories of what he once was. Aoife didn’t know him well; he hadn’t been around when she was growing up. Until recently he’d worked as the estate manager at Blackthorn Hall. It was the seat of the Prefect of Briartha, a county of eighty settlements. Its most recent inhabitant was Lord Halverton. He’d been there a few years but rarely left the estate. Jory had only returned to the village when Lord Halverton had fired him.
After that, he had moved in with his daughter and her husband.
They walked in silence for a minute. Aoife adjusted Jory’s arm to support him better as he stumbled. The height difference between her and Cormac was less than a blade of grass, making the task of dragging a man between them slightly easier.
Cormac was broader than she was, but still lean; hunger had pared him down. His strength came from work at the tannery: shoulders thickened from lifting hides, lungs touched by the acrid fumes of bark and lime. The raw patches on his hands came from scraping hides, the faint burn marks where caustic liquid had splashed. Today he smelt of the tannery more than was usual in recent weeks. His constant odour of ash bark and wet leather was now layered with the sharp sting of piss and undercut with the sour rot of hides left to soak in the vats.
“Does your da have a new commission?” she asked.
Cormac nodded. He didn’t bother to ask how she knew. “A lord from the next county wants kid leather gloves for his daughters,” he said. “He’s going to pay with a goat.”
A goat meant milk, and meat if things grew desperate.
“Da’s promised I can share the milk with you and your family,” he said. In a season when most kept what little they had, Cormac shared. Hunger had made people hard. Not him. Not with her.
If they survived this famine, it would be together, but she couldn’t imagine how. There would be more wailing this winter.
“Did you hear the banshee?” she asked him.
Cormac nodded
“It was loud,” Aoife said. “A hundred voices or more.”
“I noticed that, too. There must be something we can do to stop it. The empire has to be behind it. That many people dying at once?” He ran a hand through his hair. “It can’t be chance.”
Aoife was no fan of the Eldrossi empire, but Cormac seemed to look for reasons to fight them, though it would do none of them any good.
“Banshee foretell death. Once they’ve wailed, there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it.”
“You sound like my mam. She says they’re not a curse. They’re a kindness. No one’s passing should go unmarked.” Helooked at her then, eyes uncertain. “But what if it’s our families they’re crying for?”
It wouldn’t be the first time.
She wanted to tell him it wasn’t. She wanted to promise safety, but the words wouldn’t come. “Then we face it when it comes.”
He exhaled, shoulders sinking, the tension easing. It was a sign of their long friendship, the way she could ground him when he was angry.
They reached Jory’s house. He lived in the same style of two-room, mud-walled cottage that comprised most of the village. The thatched roof had seen better days. It had been patched with rushes in places, and the whitewashed walls were now flaking and damp-stained. No one had the time or energy for repairs these days.
Aoife rapped on the door. No answer.
