The Winter Road Read online

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 by Adrian Selby

  Excerpt from Snakewood copyright © 2016 by Adrian Selby

  Excerpt from Senlin Ascends copyright © 2013 by Josiah Bancroft

  Cover design by Lauren Panepinto

  Cover illustration by Jaime Jones

  Cover copyright © 2018 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Orbit

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10104

  orbitbooks.net

  Simultaneously published in Great Britain and in the U.S. by Orbit in 2018

  First Edition: November 2018

  Orbit is an imprint of Hachette Book Group.

  The Orbit name and logo are trademarks of Little, Brown Book Group Limited.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for speaking events. To find out more, go to www.hachettespeakersbureau.com or call (866) 376-6591.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018949726

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-46588-5 (paperback), 978-0-316-46586-1 (ebook)

  E3-20181004-JV-Pc

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2: A Year Before

  Chapter 3: Now

  Chapter 4: Then

  Chapter 5: Now

  Chapter 6: Then

  Chapter 7: Now

  Chapter 8: Then

  Part Two

  Chapter 9: Now

  Chapter 10

  Faldon Ridge

  Ablitch

  Crimore

  The Shield

  Amondell

  The Almet

  Part Three

  Aude

  Letters

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Extras

  Meet the Author

  A Preview of Snakewood

  A Preview of Senlin Ascends

  By Adrian Selby

  Orbit Newsletter

  To Martha, Will and Molly. I love you beyond all measure.

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  You will fail, Teyr Amondsen.

  My eyes open. The truth wakes me.

  You will fail.

  I had slept against a tree to keep the weight off my arm, off my face. My tongue runs over the abscesses in my mouth, the many holes there. My left eye is swollen shut, my cheek broken again, three days ago, falling from a narrow trail after a deer I’d stuck with my only spear.

  I close my eyes and listen, desperate to confirm my solitude. A river, quick and throaty over rocks and stones. A grebe’s whinnying screech.

  I take off one of the boots I’d stolen, see again the face of the man who’d worn them as I strangled him. I feel my toes, my soles, assess the damage. Numb, blisters weeping. My toes are swelling like my fingers, burning like my face. I need a fire, cicely root, fireweed. I have to be grateful my nose was broken clean. A smashed-up nose is a death sentence in the hinterlands. If you can’t sniff for plant you’re a bag of fresh walking meat. You need plant to heal, plant to kill.

  If I keep on after this river I can maybe steal a knife, some plant and warmer clothes. These are Carlessen clan lands, the coast is beyond them. I’m going to live there, get Aude’s screaming out of my head, the horns of the whiteboys, the whisperings of the Oskoro who would not, despite a thousand fuck offs and thrown stones in the black forests and blue frozen mountains, let be their debt to me.

  The grebe screeches again. Eggs!

  I pull on the boot with my right arm, my left strapped against me and healing, itself broken again in my fall.

  I pick up my spade and the small sack that I’d put Mosa’s shirt in, the spade something of a walking stick to help me along the mossy banks and wretched tracks. Snow was making a last stand among the roots of birch trees, a few weeks yet from thawing out. A few handfuls ease my gums.

  The sky is violet and pink ahead of the sun, the woods and banks blue black, snow and earth. I stumble towards the river, a chance to wash my wounds once I’ve found some nests and broken a few branches for a fire.

  The grebes screech at me as I crack their eggs and drink the yolks. I find five in all and they ease my hunger. If a grebe gets close enough I’ll eat well. The sun edges over the hills to the east and I am glad to see better, through my one good eye. The river is strong up here, my ears will miss much.

  I drop the deerskins I use for a cloak and unbutton my shirt. I didn’t have to kill the man I stole that from. I loosen the threads to the discreet pockets that are sewn shut and take a pinch of snuff from one. It’s good plant, good for sniffing out what I need. Feels like I’ve jammed two shards of ice into my nose and I gasp like I’m drowning, cry a bit and then press another pinch to my tongue, pulling the thread on the pocket tight after. Now the scents and smells of the world are as clear to me as my seeing it. For a short while I can sniff plant like a wolf smells prey.

  I forget my pains. Now I’m back in woodland I have to find some cicely. The sharp aniseed smell leads me to it, as I’d hoped. I dig some up, chopping around the roots with the spade to protect them. Around me a leaden, tarry smell of birch trees, moss warming on stones, but also wild onion, birch belets. Food for another day or so.

  I wash the cicely roots and I’m packing my mouth with them when I hear bells and the throaty grunts of reindeer. Herders. The river had obscured the sounds, and on the bank I have no cover to hide myself in. I cuss and fight to keep some control of myself. No good comes of people out here.

  The reindeer come out through the trees and towards the river. Four men, walking. Nokes—by which I mean their skin is clear and free of the colours that mark out soldiers who use the gifts of plant heavily, the strong and dangerous fightbrews. Three have spears, whips for the deer, one bowman. There’s a dog led by one of them, gets a nose of me and starts barking to be let free. Man holding him’s smoking a pipe, and a golden beard thick and long as a scarf can’t hide a smirk as he measures me up. The herd start fanning out on the bank. Forty feet. Thirty feet.

  “Hail!” I shout, spitting out my cicely roots to do it. My broken cheek and swelling make it hard for me to form the greeting. I try to stand a bit more upright, to not look like I need the spade to support my weight.

  “Hail. Ir vuttu nask mae?” Carlessen lingo. I don’t know it.

  I shake my head, speaking Abra lingo. “Auksen clan. Have you got woollens to spare? I’m frostbitten.” I hold up my good hand, my fingertips silver grey.

  He speaks to the others. There’s some laughter. I recognise a word amid their own tongue, they’re talking about my colour, for I was a soldier once, my skin coloured to an iron rust and grey veins from years of fightbrews. One of them isn’t so sure, knowing I must know how to fight, but I reckon the rest of me isn’t ex
actly putting them off thoughts of some games. Colour alone isn’t going to settle it. Shit. I reach inside my shirt for some of the small white amony flowers I’d picked in the passes above us to the north.

  “No no no. Drop.” He gestures for me to drop the spade and the amony. He lets a little of the dog’s lead go as well. The bowman unshoulders his bow.

  At least the stakes are clear, and I feel calmer for it. He has to be fucked if he thinks I’m going to do a word he says, let alone think his dog could hurt me.

  He has nothing that can hurt me, only kill me.

  “No, no, no,” I says, mimicking him before swallowing a mouthful of the amony and lifting the spade up from the ground to get a grip closer to its middle. I edge back to the river, feeling best I can for some solid flat earth among the pebbles and reeds.

  He smiles and nods to the bowman, like this is the way he was hoping it would go, but that isn’t true. The bowman looses an arrow. Fool could’ve stepped forward twenty feet and made sure of me but I throw myself forward. Not quick enough, the amony hadn’t got going. Arrow hits my left shoulder. It stops me a moment, the shock of it. He’s readying another arrow, so I scream and run at the reindeer that strayed near me, the one with the bell, the one they all follow. It startles and leaps away, heading downstream, the herd give chase.

  Time and again I made ready to die these last nine months. I’m ready now, and glad to take some rapists with me. I run forward while they’re distracted by how much harder their day is now going to be chasing down the herd. The one with the pipe swears and lets his dog go at me while one of the spears fumbles in his pockets for a whistle to call the herd, running off after them.

  Dogs are predictable. It runs up, makes ready to leap and I catch it hard with the spade. It falls, howling, and I get the edge of the spade deep into its neck. I look at the three men left before me.

  “Reindeer! You’ll lose them, you sad fuckers!” They’ll understand “reindeer” at least.

  The pipe smoker draws a sword, just as my amony beats its drum. I don’t know how much I took but it hits me like a horse just then. I shudder, lose control of myself, my piss running down my legs as my teeth start grinding. I gasp for air, the sun peeling open my eyes, rays bleaching my bones. My new strength is giddying, the amony fills me with fire.

  He moves in and swings. He’s not very good at this. The flat of my spade sends his thrust past me and I flip it to a reverse grip and drive it hard into his head, opening his mouth both sides back to his ears. I kick him out of my way and run at the bowman behind him. He looses an arrow, and it shears the skin from my skull as it flies past, almost pulling my good eyeball out with it, the blood blinding me instantly. He doesn’t know how to fight close, but I’m blind in both eyes now and I’m relying on the sense the amony gives me, half my training done blind all my life for moments like this. I kick him in the gut, drop the spade and put my fist into his head, my hearing, smell exquisite in detail. He falls and I get down on his chest and my good hand seeks his face, shoving it into the earth to stop its writhing, drive my one good thumb through an eye far as it’ll go. A shout behind me, I twist to jump clear but the spear goes through me. Out my front it comes, clean out of my guts. I hold the shaft at my belly and spin about, ripping the spear out of his hands, his grip no doubt weakened a moment with the flush of his success. I hear him backing away, jabbering in his lingo “Ildesmur! Ildesmur!” I know this name well enough, he speaks of the ghostly mothers of vengeance, the tale of the War Crows. I scream, a high, foul scritching that sends him running into the trees.

  My blood rolls down my belly into my leggings. There’s too much of it. Killed by a bunch of fucking nokes. No more than I deserve. I fall to my knees as I realise, fully, that it’s over. The river sounds close, an arm’s length away maybe. I fall forward, put my arm out, but it gives and I push both the spearhead and the end of the arrow that’s in my shoulder back through me a bit. A freezing spike of pain. My senses lighten to wisps, I fall away from the ground, my chest fit to burst, my blood warming my belly and the dirt under me. Why am I angry that it’s all over? The sun keeps climbing, the pebbles rattle and hum as the song of the earth runs through me—beating hooves, distant cries, roots of trees stretching and drinking. I hum to quieten the pain. It’s my part in the song but I was always part of the song, I just haven’t been listening. The birch trees shush me. Snowy peaks crack like thunder in the distance. The sky is blue like his eyes, fathomless.

  “I’m coming,” I says. He knows I’m coming. I just have to hold out my hand.

  Chapter 2

  A Year Before

  “You will fail, Teyr Amondsen.”

  “I will not. I cannot.”

  I was standing before the chief of Citadel Hillfast, Chief Othbutter. We was in his chamber of justice. He has a simple wooden chair up on a modest dais he believes gives his people the right impression of his priorities. His gut and the jewels braided into his beard speak otherwise. The jug of wine, red as his fat spud of a nose, also speaks otherwise.

  Stood next to him his high cleark, Tobber, a beech-coloured broom brought to life, long narrow face and smooth bald head. Tobber has told me I will fail. He stood as a master of an academy would stand before his class, for he had an audience, mostly the merchants that make up my competition along with representatives of Othbutter’s favoured clans. A king and courtiers in all but name, crowding the room so it was hot and thick with the smoke of pipes and whispers.

  “I think she’s far more prepared than you think, Tob,” said Othbutter. “She takes my captain, an escort of my best men, she has employed an excellent drudha to mix her plant and your most capable cleark, she takes my brother here as well, to do my justice. Our clans in the Circle need our support from the bandits that terrorise them. Master Amondsen presents us with an interesting solution.” Othbutter had a table to his left, on which stood his jug and a plate, from which he picked and folded two big slices of beef into his mouth.

  “She has not the trust of any of the clans who live in the Circle,” said the high cleark to the room. Othbutter’s brother Crogan muttered a “Hear, hear.”

  “One of Khiedsen’s sons, Samma Khiese, now terrorises the Sedgeway and the Gospeaks and claims himself lord of the Circle and all its clans, including her clan, the one she abandoned. Steel, not tribute or errant daughters, is what they require.”

  Chief Othbutter looked at me, expecting me to continue the rebuttal, defend my honour.

  “We will clear out whatever bandits we find,” I said. “I’ve done it all my life as a soldier. But this expedition isn’t just signing some contracts and trading plant, it’s about spending profit, my profit, towards strengthening our rule of law. It’s about reconnecting the Circle to all of us, so that my clan and all the clans there have good reason to bury those enmities that lead them now to blood. The routes through to Elder Hill, before even we reach the Sedgeway and the Circle beyond, are difficult if not impossible half the year for want of work to drain land or build cord roads and rip raps and keep them. I aim to forge a proper road beyond Elder Hill, right across the Circle as far as Stockson and the busy markets your fathers will no doubt have fondly remembered to you. Citadel Hillfast might then rekindle the good relations with Citadel Forontir that we once enjoyed.”

  Tob paused for effect as my words were met with murmurings of disbelief. “Yes, Amondsen, I hear that you will build forts from your own chests of gold, drive out bandits, keep hundreds of miles of road maintained from here to Stockson and yet charge nothing for it. You would do what our chief it seems cannot, with but a handful of men and a few wagons. Maybe somebody here not already hired by you or sleeping with you would offer a wager as to your success?”

  Before a silence could burnish his point I spoke. “The chief has many more responsibilities than I, problems up north with the Larchlands and Kreigh Moors biggest among them. I’ll set an example to all the merchants.” I cursed myself the moment I spoke these words, for they did m
e no favours with those assembled, for all that I spoke true. “The merchants of Hillfast have responsibilities other than filling our purses and lining our cloaks with fur and silk. These forts, this road that my people are building, will further my own prosperity, you can bet on that, but they will help the people of the Circle, grow the common purse through taxes and in so doing raise us all up.”

  A peal of laughter then that Tobber allowed before saying, “I look forward to seeing all our beggars and slaves bedecked in the silk and ermine that will fall behind your bountiful wagons!” This made the nokes laugh harder and even Othbutter smiled, though in looking on me his eyes pleaded innocence.

  “A man as travelled as yourself, Cleark Tobber,” I continued, the irony of that sending further ripples of laughter through the crowd, “would have seen Farlsgrad’s Post Houses for himself and seen what service they do for the people, easily triple the distance walked or ridden in a day.” Fuck him, he’d get seasick crossing a stream and he knew it. “And tell me, Tobber, what else should I do with my coin if not empower Hillfast in its trade? Do you know any good whores I should go piss it all on?”

  That got a lot more laughs, and it infuriated that sad old prick for we all knew enough what his pleasure was with girls. I could never weave words as well as others though, that’s as good as it got from me. I’m more used to giving orders than winning people over.

  I looked behind me to Aude. He smiled and winked. He was still worried there might be some move to stop this dream of mine at the final hour, but the chief had signed and sealed commendations and proposals for the clan chiefs, giving my caravan his authority.

  Then Tobber started up again. “Did you know, Chief Othbutter, that she means to take this caravan to the Almet, the dark forest at the heart of the Circle? She means to get the monsters living there, the Oskoro, to swear fealty to your staff. Is that right, Amondsen? But will you recognise them amid the other trees? Will you get within a mile of them before their spores put you to sleep and they feast on your flesh?”