SONG OF DREAMING
FISHER
He came to us in the guise of a duke from an outlying border fastness-a place remote enough that none of us even thought to suspect him. And in his manner, his hard countenance and few words, he matched well our lazy preconceptions of such a man. None of us could argue that there was something about him, a kind of self-assurance rarely seen at court. In his eyes, like wolves straining at chains, there was a hint of the feral-the priestesses positively dripped.
‘But, they would find, his was a most potent seed. And it was not Tiste Andii.’
Silchas Ruin poked at the fire with a stick, reawakening flames. Sparks fled up into the dark. Rud watched the warrior’s cadaverous face, the mottled play of orange light that seemed to paint brief moments of life in it.
After a time, Silchas Ruin settled back and resumed. ‘Power was drawn to him like slivers of iron to a lodestone… it all seemed so… natural. His distant origins invited the notion of neutrality, and one might argue, in hindsight, that Draconus was indeed neutral. He would use any and every Tiste Andii to further his ambitions, and how were we to imagine that, at the very core of his desire, there was love?’
Rud’s gaze slid away from Silchas Ruin, up and over the Tiste Andii’s right shoulder, to the terrible slashes of jade in the night sky. He tried to think of something to say, a comment of any sort: something wry, perhaps, or knowing, or cynical. But what did he know of the love such as Silchas Ruin was describing? What, indeed, did he know of anything in this or any other world?
‘Consort to Mother Dark-he laid claim to that title, eventually, as if it was a role he had lost and had vowed to reacquire.’ The white-skinned warrior snorted, eyes fixed on the flickering flames. ‘Who were we to challenge that assertion? Mother’s children had by then ceased to speak with her. No matter. What son would not challenge his mother’s lover-new lover, old lover, whatever-’ and he looked up, offering Rud a faint grin. ‘Perhaps you’ve some understanding of that, at least. After all, Udinaas was not Menandore’s first and only love.’
Rud looked away again. ‘I am not certain love was involved.’
‘Perhaps not. Do you wish more tea, Rud Elalle?’
‘No, thank you. It is a potent brew.’
‘Necessary, for the journey to come.’
Rud frowned. ‘I do not understand.’
‘This night, we shall travel. There are things you must see. It is not enough that I simply lead you this way and that-I do not expect a loyal hound at my heel, I expect a comrade standing at my side. To witness is to approach comprehension, and you will need that, when you decide.’
‘Decide what?’
‘The side you will take in the war awaiting us, among other things.’
‘Other things. Such as?’
‘Where to make your stand, and when. Your mother chose a mortal for your father for a good reason, Rud. Unexpected strengths come from such mating: the offspring often exhibit the best traits from both.’
Rud started as a stone cracked in the fire. ‘You say you will lead me to places, Silchas Ruin, for you have no wish that I be naught but a loyal, mindless hound. Yet it may be that I shall not, in the end, choose to stand beside you at all. What then? What if I find myself opposite you in this war?’
‘Then one of us will die.’
‘My father left me in your care-and this is how you betray his trust?’
Silchas Ruin bared his teeth in a humourless smile. ‘Rud Elalle, your father gave you to my care not out of trust-he knows me too well for that. Consider this your first lesson. He shares your love for the Imass of the Refugium. That realm-and every living thing within it-is in danger of annihilation, should the war be lost-’
‘Starvald Demelain-but the gate was sealed!’
‘No seal is perfect. Will and desire gnaw like acid. Well. Hunger and ambition are perhaps more accurate descriptions of that which assails the gate.’ He collected the blackened pot from beside the coals and poured Rud’s cup full once more. ‘Drink. We have strayed from the path. I was speaking of the ancient forces-your kin, if you like. Among them, the Eleint. Was Draconus a true Eleint? Or was he something else? All I can say is, he wore the skin of a Tiste Andii for a time, perhaps as a sour joke, mocking our self-importance-who can know? In any case, it was inevitable that Anomander, my brother, would step into the Consort’s path, and all those opportunities for knowledge and truth came to a swift end. To this day,’ he added, sighing, ‘I wonder if Anomander regrets killing Draconus.’
Rud started. His mind was awhirl. ‘What of the Imass? This war-’
‘I told you,’ Silchas Ruin snapped, face betraying his irritation. ‘Wars are indifferent to the choice of victims. Innocence, guilt, such notions are irrelevant. Grasp hold of your thoughts and catch up. I wondered if Anomander has regrets. I know that I do not. Draconus was a cold, cold bastard-and with the awakening of Father Light, ah, well, we saw then the truth of his jealous rage. The Consort cast aside, see the malice of the spurned ignite a black fire in his eyes! When we speak of ancient times, Rud Elalle, we find in our words things far nearer to hand, and all those emotions we imagined new, blazing with our own youth, we find to be ancient beyond imagining.’ He spat into the coals. ‘And this is why poets never starve for things to sing about, though rare is the one who grows fat upon them.’
‘I will defend the Refugium,’ said Rud, hands clenching into fists.
‘We know that, and that is why you are here-’
‘But that makes no sense! I should be there, standing before the gate!’
‘Another lesson. Your father may love the Imass, but he loves you more.’
Rud surged to his feet. ‘I will return-’
‘No. Sit down. You have a better chance of saving them all by accompanying me.’
‘How?’
Silchas Ruin leaned forward and reached into the fire. He scooped up two handfuls of coals and embers. He held them up. ‘Tell me what you see, Rud Elalle, Ryadd Eleis-do you know those words, your true name? They are Tiste Andii-do you know what they mean?’
‘No.’
Silchas Ruin studied the embers cupped in his hands. ‘Just this. Your true name, Ryadd Eleis, means “Hands of Fire”. Your mother looked into the soul of her son, and saw all there was to see. She may well have cherished you, but she also feared you.’
‘She died because she chose betrayal.’
‘She was true to the Eleint blood within her-but you also possess the blood of your father, a mortal, and he is a man I came to know well, to understand as much as anyone could. A man I came to respect. He was the first to comprehend the girl’s purpose, the first to realize the task awaiting me-and he knew that I did not welcome the blood that would stain my hands. He chose not to stand in my way-I am not yet certain what happened at the gate, the clash with Wither, and poor Fear Sengar’s misplaced need to stand in Scabandari’s stead-but through it all, Kettle’s fate was sealed. She was the seed of the Azath, and a seed must find fertile soil.’ He dropped the embers-now cooled-back on to the fire. ‘She is young yet. She needs time, and unless we stand against the chaos to come, she will not have that time-and the Imass will die. Your father will die. They will all die.’ He rose and faced Rud. ‘We leave now. Korabas awaits.’
‘What is Korabas?’
‘For this we must veer. Kallor’s dead warren should suffice. Korabas is an Eleint, Ryadd. She is the Otataral Dragon. There is chaos in a human soul-it is your mortal gift, but be aware-like fire it can turn in your hands.’
‘Even to one named “Hands of Fire”?’
The Tiste Andii’s red eyes seemed to flatten. ‘My warning was precise.’
‘What do we seek in meeting this Korabas?’
Silchas slapped the ashes from his palms. ‘They will free her, and that we cannot stop. I mean to convince you that we should not even try.’
Rud found his fists were still clenched tight, aching at the ends of his arms. ‘You give me too little.’
‘Better than too much, Ryadd.’
‘Because like my mother, you fear me.’
‘Yes.’
‘Between you and your brothers, Silchas Ruin, who was the most honest?’
The Tiste Andii cocked his head, and then smiled.
A short time later, two dragons lifted into the darkness, one gleaming polished gold that slid in and out of the gloom in lurid smears; the other was bone white, the pallor of a corpse in the night-save for the twin embers of its eyes.
They rose high and higher still above the Wastelands, and then vanished from the world.
In their wake, in a nest of rocks, the small fire glowed fitfully in its bed of ashes, eating the last of itself. Until nothing was left.
Sandalath Drukorlat gave the hapless man one last shake that sent spittle whipping from his lips, and then threw him further up the shoreline. He scrambled to his feet, fell over, got up a second time and stumbled unsteadily away.
Withal cleared his throat. ‘Sweetness, you seem a little short of temper lately.’
‘Challenge yourself, husband. Find something to improve my mood.’
He glanced out at the crashing waves, licked salt from around his mouth. The three Nachts were sending the scrawny refugee off with hurled shells and dead crabs, although not a single missile managed to strike the fleeing man. ‘The horses have recovered, at least.’
‘Their misery has just begun.’
‘I couldn’t quite make out what happened, but I take it the Shake vanished through a gate. And, I suppose, we’re going to chase after them.’
‘And before they left, one of their own went and slaughtered almost all of the witches and warlocks-the very people I wanted to question!’
‘We could always go to Bluerose.’
She stood straight, almost visibly quivering. He’d heard, once, that lightning went from the ground up and not the other way round. Sandalath looked ready to ignite and split the heavy clouds overhead. Or cut a devastating path through the ramshackle, stretched-out camp of those islanders Yan Tovis had left behind-the poor fools lived in squalid driftwood huts and wind-torn tents, all along the highwater line like so much wave-tossed detritus. And though the water was ever rising, so that the spray of the tumultuous seas now drenched them, not one had the wherewithal to move.
Not that they had anywhere to go. The forest was a blackened wasteland of stumps and ash for as far as he could see.
Just outside Letheras, Sandalath had cut open a way into a warren, a place she called Rashan, and the ride through it had begun in terrifying darkness that quickly dulled to torrid monotony. Until it began falling apart. Chaos, she said. Inclusions, she said. Whatever that means. And the horses went mad.
They had emerged into the proper world on the slope facing this strand, the horses’ hoofs pounding up clouds of ash and cinders, his wife howling in frustration.
Things had eased up since then.
‘What in Hood’s name are you smiling about?’
Withal shook his head. ‘Smiling? Not me, beloved.’
‘Blind Gallan,’ she said.
There had been more and more of this lately. Incomprehensible expostulations, invisible sources of irritation and blistering fury. Face it, Withal, the honeymoon’s over.
‘In the habit of popping up like a nefarious weed. Spouting arcane nonsense impressing the locals. Never trust a nostalgic old man-or old woman, I suppose. Every tale they spin has a hidden agenda, a secret malice for the present. They make the past-their version of it-into a kind of magic potion. “Sip this, friends, and return to the old times, when everything was perfect.” Bah! If it’d been me doing the blinding, I wouldn’t have stopped there. I would have scooped out his entire skull.’
‘Wife, who is this Gallan?’
She bridled, jabbed a finger at him. ‘Did you think I hadn’t lived before meeting you? Oh, pity poor Gallan! And if he left a string of women in the wake of his wanderings, why, be so good as to indulge the sad creature-well, this is what comes of it, isn’t it?’
Withal scratched his head. See what happens when you marry an older woman? And face it, it doesn’t take a Tiste Andii to have about a hundred thousand years of history behind her. ‘All right,’ he said slowly, ‘what now, then?’
She gestured after the refugee she’d sent scampering. ‘He doesn’t know if Nimander and the others were with the Shake-there were thousands-the only time he saw Yan Tovis was at the landing, and she was three thousand paces away. But, then, who else could have managed to open the gate? And then keep it open to admit ten thousand people? Only Andii blood can open the Road, and only royal Andii blood could keep it open! By the Abyss, they must have bled one of their own dry!’
‘This road, Sand, where does it lead?’
‘Nowhere. Oh, I should never have left Nimander and his kin! The Shake not only listened to Blind Gallan, they then went and believed him!’ She stepped closer and raised a hand, as if to strike him.
Withal backed up a step.
‘Oh, gods, just get the horses, Withal.’
As he set off, he glanced-with odd longing-after the still-running refugee.
A short time later they sat mounted, pack-horses behind them, while Sandalath, motionless, seemed to study something in front of them that only she could see. The waves thrashed to their left, the burnt forest stank on their right. The Nachts fought over a thick, massive length of driftwood that probably weighed more than all three put together. That’d make a good club… for a damned Toblakai. Sink brace plugs, wrap the knobby end in hammered iron. Stud with beaten bronze rivets and maybe a spike or three. Draw wire down the length of the shaft, and then sink a deep and heavy counterweight butt-
‘It’s healing, but the skin is thin.’ She suddenly had a knife in her hand. ‘I can get us through, I think.’
‘Do you have royal blood then?’
‘Snap shut that trap or I’ll do it for you. I told you, it’s a huge wound-barely mended. In fact, it seems weaker on the other side, which isn’t good, isn’t right, in fact. Did they stay on the Road? They must have known that much at least. Withal, listen well. Ready a weapon-’
‘A weapon? What kind of weapon?’
‘Wrong choice. Find another one.’
‘What?’
‘Stupidity won’t work. Try that mace on your belt.’
‘That’s a smith’s hammer-’
‘And you’re a smith, so presumably you know how to use it.’
‘So long as my victim lays his head on an anvil, aye.’
‘Can’t you fight at all? What kind of husband are you? You Meckros-always fighting off pirates and such, or so you always said-’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Unless they were just big fat lies, trying to impress your new woman.’
‘I haven’t used a weapon in decades-I just make the damned things! And why do I need to anyway? If you wanted a bodyguard you should have said so in the first place, and I could have hired on to the first ship out of Lether Harbour!’
‘Abandon me, you mean! I knew it!’
He reached up to tear at his hair and then recalled that he didn’t have enough of it. Gods, life can be damned frustrating, can’t it just? ‘Fine.’ He tugged loose the hammer. ‘I’m ready.’
‘Now, remember, I died the first time because I don’t know anything about fighting, and I don’t want to die a second time-’
‘What’s all this talk about fighting and dying? It’s just a gate, isn’t it? What in Hood’s name is on the other side?’
‘I don’t know, you idiot! Just be ready!’
‘For what?’
‘For anything!’
Withal slipped his left foot out of its stirrup and swung down to the littered sand.
Sandalath stared. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m going to piss, and maybe whatever else I can manage. If we’re going to end up in a hoary mess, I don’t want fouled breeches, not stuck in a saddle, not riding with a horde of shrieking demons on my tail. Besides, I probably only have a few moments of living left to me. When I go I plan on doing it clean.’
‘Just blood and guts.’
‘Right.’
‘That’s pathetic. As if you’ll care.’
He went off to find somewhere private.
‘Don’t take too long!’ she shouted after him.
There was a time, aye, when I could take as damned well long as I pleased.
He returned and would have climbed back into the saddle, but Sandalath insisted he wash his hands in the sea. Once this was done, he collected up the hammer, brushed sand from it, and then mounted the horse.
‘Anything else needing doing?’ she asked. ‘A shave, perchance? Buff your boots, maybe?’
‘Good suggestions. I’ll just-’
With a snarl she slashed her left palm. The air split open before them, gaping red as the wound in her hand. ‘Ride!’ she yelled, kicking her horse into a lunge.
Cursing, Withal followed.
They emerged on to a blinding, blasted plain, the road beneath them glittering like crushed glass.
Sandalath’s horse squealed, hoofs skidding, slewing sideways as she sawed on the reins. Withal’s own beast made a strange grunting sound, then its head seemed to drop out of sight, front legs folding with sickening snaps-
Withal caught a glimpse of a pallid, overlong hand, slashing through the path where his horse’s head had been a moment earlier, and then a curtain of blood lifted before him, wrapped hot and thick over his face, neck and chest. Blinded, flaying empty air with his mace, he pitched forward, leaving the saddle, and struck the road’s savage surface. The cloth of his jerkin disintegrated, and the skin of his chest followed suit. The breath was knocked from his lungs. He vaguely heard the hammer bounce and skitter down the road.
Sudden bellowing roars, the impact of something huge against bare flesh and bone. Splintering blows drumming the road beneath him-the hot splash of something drenching his back-he clawed the blood from his eyes, managed to lift himself to his hands and knees-coughing, spewing vomit.
The thundering concussions continued, and then Sandalath was kneeling beside him. ‘Withal! My love! Are you hurt-oh, Abyss take me! Too much blood-I’m sorry, oh, I’m sorry, my love!’
‘My horse.’
‘What?’
He spat to clear his mouth. ‘Someone chopped off my horse’s head. With his hand.’
‘What? That’s your horse’s blood? All over you? You’re not even hurt?’ The hands that had been caressing him now shoved him away. ‘Don’t you dare do that again!’
Withal spat a second time, and then pushed himself to his feet, eyes fixing on Sandalath. ‘This is enough.’ As she opened her mouth for a retort he stepped close and set a filthy finger against her lips. ‘If I was a different kind of man, I’d be beating you senseless right about now-no, don’t give me that shocked look. I’m not here to be kicked around whenever your mood happens to turn foul. A little measure of respect-’
‘But you can’t even fight!’
‘Maybe not, and neither can you. What I can do, though, is make things. And something else, too, I can decide, at any time, when I’ve had enough. And I will tell you this right now, I’m damned close.’ He stepped back. ‘Now, what in Hood’s name just-gods below!’
This shout burst from him in shock-three enormous, hulking, black-skinned demons were on the road just beyond the dead horse. One of them held a club of driftwood that looked like a drummer’s baton in its huge hands, and was using it to pound down some more on a mangled, crushed corpse. The other two followed the blows as if gauging the effects of each and every crushing impact. Bluish blood had sprayed out on the road, along with other less identifiable discharges from the pulped ruin of their victim’s body.
In a low voice Sandalath said, ‘Your Nachts-the Jaghut were inveterate jokers. Hah hah. That was a Forkrul Assail. It seems the Shake stirred things up somewhat-they’re probably all dead, in fact, and this one was backtracking with the intention of cleaning up any stragglers-out through the gate, probably, to murder every refugee on that shoreline we’ve just left behind. Instead, he ran into us-and your Venath demons.’
Withal wiped blood from his eyes. ‘I’m, uh, starting to see the resemblances-they were ensorcelled before?’
‘In a manner of speaking. A geas, I suspect. They’re Soletaken… or maybe D’ivers. Either way, this particular realm forced a veering-or a sembling-who can say which species is the original, after all?’
‘Then what do the Jaghut have to do with any of this?’
‘They created the Nachts. Or so I gathered-the mage Obo in Malaz City seemed to be certain of that. Of course, if he’s right and they did, then what they managed to do was something no one else has ever managed-they found a way to chain the wild forces of Soletaken and D’ivers. Now, husband, get cleaned up and saddle a new horse-we can’t stay here long. We ride as far as we need to on this road to confirm the slaughter of the Shake, and then we ride back out the way we came.’ She paused. ‘Even with these Venath, we’ll be in danger-if there’s one Forkrul Assail, there’s bound to be more.’
The Venath demons had evidently decided they were done with the destruction of the Forkrul Assail, as they now bounded up the road a few paces to then huddle round the club and examine the damage to their lone weapon.
Gods, they’re still stupid Nachts. Only bigger.
What a horrid thought.
‘Withal.’
He faced her again.
‘I’m sorry.’
Withal shrugged. ‘It will be all right, Sand, if you don’t expect me to be what I’m not.’
‘I may have found them infuriating, but I fear for Nimander, Aranatha, Desra, all of them. I fear for them so.’
He grimaced, and then shook his head. ‘You underestimate them, I think, Sand.’ And may Phaed’s ghost forgive us all for that.
‘I hope so.’
He went to work loose the saddle, paused to pat the animal’s gore-soaked neck. ‘Should’ve given you a name, at least. You deserved that much.’
Her mind was free. It could slip down among the sharp knuckles of quartz studding the plain, where nothing lived on the surface. It could slide beneath the stone-hard clay to where the diamonds, rubies and opals hid from the cruel heat. All this land’s wealth. And deep into the crumbling marrow of living bones wrapped in withered meat, crouched in fever worlds where blood boiled. In the moments before the very end, she could hover behind hot, bright eyes-the brightness that was the final looking upon all the surrounding things-all the precious vistas-that announced saying goodbye. That look, she now knew, did not shine forth solely among old people, though perhaps they were the only ones to whom it belonged. No, here, in this gaunt, slow, slithery snake, it was the beacon blazing in the eyes of children.
But she could fly away from such things. She could wing high and higher still, to ride the fuzzy backs of capemoths, or the feathered tips of vultures’ wings. And look down wheeling round and round the crawling, dying worm far below, that red, scorched string winking with dull motion. Thread of food, knots of promise, the countless strands of salvation-and see all the bits and pieces falling off, left in its wake, and down and down low and lower still, to eat and pick at leather skin, pluck the brightness from eyes.
Her mind was free. Free to make beauty with a host of beautiful, terrible words. She could swim through the cool language of loss, rising to touch precious surfaces, diving into midnight depths where broken thoughts fluttered down, where the floor fashioned vast, intricate tales.
Tales, yes, of the fallen.
There was no pain in this place. Her untethered will recalled no aching joints, no crusting flies upon split, raw lips; no blackened, lacerated feet. It was free to float and then sing across hungry winds, and comfort was a most natural thing, reasonable, a proper state of being. Worries dwindled, the future threatened no alteration to what was and one could easily believe that what was would always be.
She could be an adult here, splashing water on to pretty flowers, dipping fingers into dreaming fountains, damming up rivers and devouring trees. Filling lakes and ponds with poison rubbish. Thickening the air with bitter smoke. And nothing would ever change and what changes came would never touch her adultness, her perfect preoccupation with petty extravagances and indulgences. The adults knew such a nice world, didn’t they?
And if the bony snake of their children now wandered dying in a glass wilderness, what of it? The adults don’t care. Even the moaners among them-their caring had sharp borders, not far, only a few steps away, patrolled borders with thick walls and bristling towers and on the outside there was agonizing sacrifice and inside there was convenience. Adults knew what to guard and they knew, too, how far to think, which wasn’t far, not far, not far at all.
Even words, especially words, could not penetrate those walls, could not overwhelm those towers. Words bounced off obstinate stupidity, brainless stupidity, breathtaking, appalling stupidity. Against the blank gaze, words are useless.
Her mind was free to luxuriate in adulthood, knowing as it did that she would never in truth reach it. And this was her own preoccupation, a modest one, not very extravagant, not much of an indulgence, but her own which meant that she owned it.
She wondered what adults owned, these days. Apart from this murderous legacy, of course. Great inventions beneath layers of sand and dust. Proud monuments that not even spiders could map, palaces empty as caves, sculptures announcing immortality to grinning white skulls, tapestries displaying grand moments to fill the guts of moths. All this, such a bold, joyous legacy.
Flying high, among the capemoths and vultures and rhinazan and swarms of Shards, she was free. And to look down was to see the disordered patterns writ large across the glass plain. Ancient causeways, avenues, enclosures, all marked out by nothing more than faint stains-and the broken glass was all that remained of some unknown civilization’s most wondrous chalice.
At the snake’s head and in front of it, the tiny flickering tongue that was Rutt and the baby he named Held in his arms.
She could descend, plummeting like truth, to shake the tiny swaddled form in Rutt’s twig-arms, force open the bright eyes to the glorious panorama of rotted cloth and layers of filtered sunlight, the blazing rippling heat from Rutt’s chest. Final visions to take into death-this was the meaning behind that brightness, after all.
Words held the magic of the breathless. But adults turn away.
They have no room in their heads for a suffering column of dying children, nor the heroes among them.
‘So many fallen,’ she said to Saddic who remembered everything. ‘I could list them. I could make them into a book ten thousand pages long. And people will read it, but only so far as their own private borders, and that’s not far. Only a few steps. Only a few steps.’
Saddic, who remembered everything, he nodded and he said, ‘One long scream of horror, Badalle. Ten thousand pages long. No one will hear it.’
‘No,’ she agreed. ‘No one will hear it.’
‘But you will write it anyway, won’t you?’
‘I am Badalle, and all I have is words.’
‘May the world choke on them,’ said Saddic, who remembered everything.
Her mind was free. Free to invent conversations. Free to assemble sharp knuckles of quartz into small boys walking beside her endless selves. Free to trap light and fold it in and in and in, until all the colours became one, and that one was so bright it blinded everyone and everything.
The last colour is the word. See it burn bright: that is what there is to see in a dying child’s eyes.
‘Badalle, your indulgence was too extravagant. They won’t listen, they won’t want to know.’
‘Well, now, isn’t that convenient?’
‘Badalle, do you still feel free?’
‘Saddic, I still feel free. Freer than ever before.’
‘Rutt holds Held and he will deliver Held.’
‘Yes, Saddic.’
‘He will deliver Held into an adult’s arms.’
‘Yes, Saddic.’
The last colour is the word. See it burn bright in a dying child’s eyes. See it, just this once, before you turn away.
‘I will, Badalle, when I am grown up. But not until then.’
‘No, Saddic, not until then.’
‘When I’ve done away with these things.’
‘When you’ve done away with these things.’
‘And freedom ends, Badalle.’
‘Yes, Saddic, when freedom ends.’
Kalyth dreamed she was in a place she had not yet reached. Overhead was a low ceiling of grey, turgid clouds, the kind that she had seen above the plains of the Elan, when the first snows came down from the north. The wind howled, cold as ice, but it was dry as a frozen tomb. Across the taiga, stunted trees rose from the permafrost like skeletal hands, and she could see sinkholes, here and there, in which dozens of some kind of four-legged beast had become mired, dying and freezing solid, and the wind tugged and tore at their matted hides, and frost painted white their curved horns and ringed the hollow pits of their eyes.
In the myths of the Elan, this vista belonged to the underworld of death; it was also the distant past, the very beginning place, where the heat of life first pushed back the bitter cold. The world began in darkness, devoid of warmth. It awakened, in time, to an ember that flared, ever so brief, before one day returning to where it had begun. And so, what she was seeing here before her could also belong to the future. Past or in the age to come, it was where life ceased.
But she was not alone.
A score of figures sat on gaunt horses along a ridge a hundred paces distant. Wrapped in black rain-capes, armoured and helmed, they seemed to be watching her, waiting for her. But terror held Kalyth rooted, as if knee-deep in frozen mud.
She wore a thin tunic, torn and half-rotted, and the cold was like the Reaper’s own hand, closing about her from all sides. She could not move within its intransigent grip, even had she wanted to. She would will the strangers away; she would scream at them, unleash sorcery to send them scattering. She would banish them utterly. But no such powers belonged to her. Kalyth felt as useless here as she felt in her own world. A vessel empty, longing to be filled by a hero’s bold fortitude.
The wind ripped at the grim figures, and now at last the snow came, cutting like shards of ice from the heavy clouds.
The riders stirred. The horses lifted their heads, and all at once they were descending the slope, hoofs cracking hard the frozen ground.
Kalyth huddled, arms tight about herself. The frost-rimed riders drew closer, and she could just make out that array of faces behind the serpentine nose-guards of their helms-deathly pale, bearing slashes gaping deep crimson but bloodless. They wore surcoats over chain, uniforms, she realized, to mark allegiance to some foreign army, grey and magenta beneath frozen bloodstains and crusted gore. One, she saw, was tattooed, bedecked with fetishes of claws, feathers and beads-huge, barbaric, perhaps not even human. But the others, they were of her own kind-she was certain of that.
They reined in before her and something drew Kalyth’s wide stare to one rider in particular, grey-bearded beneath the dangling crystals of ice, his grey eyes, set deep in shadowed sockets, reminding her of a bird’s fixed regard-cold and raptorial, bereft of all compassion.
When he spoke, in the language of the Elan, no breath plumed from his mouth. ‘Your Reaper’s time is coming to an end. Death shall surrender his face-’
‘Never was a welcoming one,’ cut in the heavy, round-faced soldier on the man’s right.
‘Enough of that, Mallet,’ snapped another horseman, one-armed, hunched with age. ‘You don’t even belong here yet. We’re waiting for the world to catch up-such are dreams and visions-they are indifferent to the ten thousand unerring steps in any given mortal’s life, much less the millions of useless ones. Learn patience, healer.’
‘Where one yields,’ continued the bearded soldier, ‘we shall stand in his stead.’
‘In times of war,’ growled the barbaric warrior-who seemed preoccupied with braiding the ratty tatters of his dead horse’s mane.
‘Life itself is a war, one it is doomed to lose,’ retorted the bearded man. ‘Do not think, Trotts, that our rest will come soon.’
‘He was a god!’ barked another soldier, baring teeth above a jet-black forked beard. ‘We’re just a company of chewed-up marines!’
Trotts laughed. ‘See how high you’ve climbed, Cage? At least you got your head back-I remember burying you in Black Dog-we looked for half the night and never found it.’
‘Got ett by a frog,’ another suggested.
The dead soldiers laughed, even Cage.
Kalyth saw the grey-bearded soldier’s faint smile and it transformed his falcon’s eyes into something that seemed capable of holding, without flinching, the compassion of an entire world. He leaned forward on his saddle, the horn creaking as it bent on its hinge. ‘Aye, we’re no gods, and we’re not going to attempt to replace him beneath that rotted cowl. We’re Bridgeburners, and we’ve been posted to Hood’s Gate-one last posting-’
‘When did we agree to that?’ Mallet demanded, eyes wide.
‘It’s coming. In any case, I was saying-and gods below you’re all getting damned insubordinate in your hoary deadness-we’re Bridgeburners. Why are any of you surprised to find that you’re still saluting? Still taking orders? Still marching out in every miserable kind of weather you can imagine?’ He glared left and right, but it was softened by the wry twist of his lips. ‘Hood knows, it’s what we do.’
Kalyth could hold back no longer. ‘What do you want with me?’
The grey eyes settled on her once more. ‘Destriant, by that title alone you must now consort with the likes of us-in Hood’s-your Reaper’s-stead. You see us as Guardians of the Gate, but we are more than that. We are-or will become-the new arbiters, for as long as is necessary. Among us there are fists, mailed gauntlets of hard violence. And healers, and mages. Assassins and skulkers, sappers and horse-archers, lancers and trackers. Cowards and brave, stolid warriors.’ He hitched a half-smile. ‘And we’ve found all manner of unexpected… allies. In all our guises, Destriant, we shall be more than the Reaper ever was. We are not distant. Not indifferent. You see, unlike Hood, we remember what it was to be alive. We remember each and every moment of yearning, of desperate need, the anguish that comes when no amount of beseeching earns a single instant’s reprieve, no pleading yields a moment’s mercy. We are here, Destriant. When no other choice remains, call upon us.’
The ice of this realm seemed to shatter all around Kalyth and she staggered as warmth flooded through her. Blessed-no, the blessing of warmth. Gasping, she stared up at the unnamed soldier as tears filled her eyes. ‘This… this is not the death I imagined.’
‘No, and I give you this. We are the Bridgeburners. We shall sustain. But not because we were greater in life than anyone else. Because, Destriant, we were no different. Now, answer me as a Destriant, Kalyth of Ampelas Rooted, do we suffice?’
Does anything suffice? No, that is too easy. Think on your answer, woman. He deserves that much at least. ‘It is a natural thing to fear death,’ she said.
‘It is.’
‘And so it should be,’ grunted the one named Cage. ‘It’s miserable-look at my company-I can’t get rid of these ugly dogs. The ones you leave behind, woman, they’re waiting for you.’
‘But without judgement,’ said the grey-eyed soldier.
The one-armed one was nodding, and he added, ‘Just don’t expect any of ’em to have lost their bad habits-like Cage and his eternally sour bile. It’s all what you knew-who you knew, I mean. It’s all that and nothing more.’
Kalyth did not know these people, yet already they felt closer to her than anyone she had ever known. ‘I am becoming a Destriant in truth,’ she said in wonder. And I no longer feel so… alone. ‘I fear death still, I think, but not as much as I once did.’ And I once flirted with suicide, but I have left that behind, for ever. I am not ready to embrace an end to things. I am the last Elan. And my people are waiting for me, not caring if I come now or a hundred years from now-it is no different to them.
The dead-my dead-will indulge me.
For as long as I need. For as long as I have.
The soldier gathered his reins. ‘You shall find your Mortal Sword and your Shield Anvil, Kalyth. Against the cold that slays, you must answer with fire. There will come to you a moment when you must cease following the K’Chain Che’Malle; when you must lead them. In you lies their last hope for survival.’
But are they worth preserving?
‘That judgement does not belong to you.’
‘No-no, I’m sorry. They are so… alien-’
‘As you are to them.’
‘Of course. I am sorry.’
The warmth was fading, the snow closing in.
The riders wheeled their lifeless mounts.
She watched them ride off, watched them vanish in the swirling white.
The white, how it burns the eyes, how it insists-
Kalyth opened her eyes to bright, blinding sunlight. I am having such strange dreams. But I still see their faces, each one. I see the barbarian with his filed teeth. I see scowling Cage, whom I adore because he could laugh at himself. And the one named Mallet, a healer, yes-it is easy to see the truth of that. The one-armed one, too.
And the one with the falcon’s eyes, my iron prophet, yes. I did not even learn his name. A Bridgeburner-such a strange name for soldiers, and yet… so perfect there in the chasm between the living and the dead.
Death’s guardians. Human faces in place of the Reaper’s shadowed skull. Oh, what a thought! What a relief!
She wiped her eyes and sat up. And a flood of memories returned. Her breath caught and she twisted about, finding the K’Chain Che’Malle. Sag’Churok, Rythok, Gunth Mach… ‘O spirits bless us.’
Yes, she would not find Kor Thuran, the K’ell Hunter’s stolid, impervious presence. The space beside Rythok howled its emptiness, shrieked his absence. The K’Chain Che’Malle was dead.
Scouting far to the west, out of sight-but they all felt the sudden explosive clash. Kor Thuran’s snarls filled their skulls, his rage and baffled defiance-his pain. She found she was shivering, as bitter recollections assailed her. He died. We could not see who killed him.
Our winged Assassin has vanished. Was it Gu’Rull? Had Kor Thuran committed a transgression? Was the Hunter fleeing us all and did the Assassin punish him? No, Kor Thuran did not flee. He fought and he died guarding our flank.
Enemies now hunt us. They know we are close. They mean to find us.
She rubbed at her face, forced out a broken sigh, the echoes of the K’ell Hunter’s terrible death still crowding her mind, leaving her feeling exhausted. And this day has only begun.
The K’Chain Che’Malle faced her, motionless, waiting. There would be no cookfire this morning. They had carried her through most of the night, and in her exhaustion she had slept like a fevered child in Gunth Mach’s arms. She wondered why they had set her down, why they had not kept going. She could feel their nervous impatience to be off-away-the disaster of failure stalked this quest now, closer than ever before. As huge and imposing as they were, she now saw them as vulnerable, insufficient to this task.
There are deadlier things out there. They brought down a K’ell Hunter in a score of heartbeats.
Yet, as she rose to her feet, a new assurance filled her-gift of her dreams, and though they might be nothing more than fanciful conjurations, false benedictions, they seemed to give her something solid, and she could feel her frailty falling away from her soul like a cracked seed husk. Her eyes hardened as she regarded the three K’Chain Che’Malle.
‘If they find us, they find us. We cannot run from… from ghosts. Nor can we trust in the protection of Gu’Rull. So, we drive south-straight as a lance. Gunth Mach, give me your back to ride. This will be a long day-there is so much, so much we must now leave behind us.’ She looked to Rythok. ‘Brother, I mean to honour Kor Thuran-we all must-by succeeding in our quest.’
The K’ell Hunter’s reptilian eyes remained fixed on her, cold, unyielding.
Sag’Churok and Gunth Mach rarely spoke to her these days, and when they did it seemed their voices were more distant, harder to make out. She did not think the fault was theirs. I am dwindling within myself. The world narrows-but how is it I even know this? What part within me is aware of its own measure?
No matter. We must do this.
‘It is time.’
Sag’Churok watched Gunth Mach force her own body into the configuration necessary to accommodate the Destriant. The heady, spice-drenched scents roiled from her in tendrils that spread like branches on the currents of air, and they carried to the K’ell Hunter echoes of Kor Thuran’s last moments of agony.
When the hunter became the hunted, every retort was reduced to a defiant snarl, a few primitive threat postures, and the body existed to absorb damage-to weather and withstand all it could as the soul that dwelt within it sought, if not escape, then a kind of comprehension. A recognition. That even the hunter must know fear. No matter how powerful, no matter how superior, how supreme, sooner or later forces it could not defeat or flee from would find it.
Domination was an illusion. Its coherence could only hold for so long.
This lesson was a seared brand upon the memories of the K’Chain Che’Malle. Its bitter taste soured the dust of the Wastelands, and eastward, on the vast plain that had once known great cities and the whisper of hundreds of thousands of K’Chain Che’Malle, now there was nothing but melted and crushed fragments, and what the winds sought they could not find, and so wandered for ever lost.
Kor Thuran had been young. No other crime belonged to the K’ell Hunter. He had made no foolish decisions. Had not fallen victim to his own arrogance or sense of invulnerability. He had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. And now so much was lost. And for all the Destriant’s noble words-her sudden, unwarranted confidence and determination-Sag’Churok, along with Rythok and Gunth Mach, knew that the quest had failed. Indeed, it was not likely that they would survive the day.
Sag’Churok shifted his gaze from Gunth Mach as she suffered her transformation in runnels of oil that dripped like blood.
Gu’Rull was gone, probably dead. Every effort to brush his thoughts had failed. Of course, the Shi’gal Assassin could shield his mind, but he had no reason to do so. No, two of the five protectors were gone. And still this puny human stood, her soft face set in an expression Sag’Churok had come to know as defiant, weak eyes fixed on the undulating horizon to the south as if her will alone could conjure into being her precious Shield Anvil and Mortal Sword. It was brave. It was… unexpected. For all that the Matron’s gifts were fading from the woman, she had indeed found some kind of inner strength.
All for naught. They would die, and soon. Their torn and broken bodies would lie scattered, lost, their great ambitions unheralded.
Sag’Churok lifted his head, drank in the air, and caught the taint of the enemy. Close. Drawing closer. Threat oils rising between his scales, he scanned the horizon, and finally settled on the west-where Kor Thuran had fallen.
Rythok had done the same, and even Gunth Mach’s head had swivelled round.
The Destriant was not blind to their sudden fixation. She bared her teeth. ‘Guardians,’ she said. ‘It seems we need your help-not some time in the future, but now. What can you send to us? Who among you can stand against that which my companions will not let me even see?’
Sag’Churok did not understand her meaning. He did not know whom she was addressing. Was this the Matron’s madness, or Kalyth’s very own?
The Destriant’s gait was stiff with fear as she walked up to Gunth Mach, who helped the woman on to the gnarled saddle of scales behind her shoulders.
Sag’Churok faced Rythok. Hunter. Slow them down.
Rythok stretched his jaws until they creaked, and then drew the edges of his blades against each other in a singing rasp. Tail lashing-spraying thick droplets of oil that pattered the ground-the K’ell Hunter set off at a run, head dipping in the attack posture. Westward.
‘Where is he going?’ Kalyth shouted. ‘Call him back! Sag’Churok-’
But he and Gunth Mach sprang into motion, side by side, legs scything the air, taloned feet snapping as they kicked them forward, ever swifter, the pace building until the broken ground blurred beneath them. South.
The Destriant shrieked-her mask of determination shattered and in its place the raw truth of comprehension and all the horror that followed. Her puny fists beat at Gunth Mach’s neck and shoulders, and for an instant it looked as if Kalyth would throw herself from the First Daughter’s back-but their speed was too great, the risk of broken limbs, or indeed, a broken neck, defeated the impulse and forced her to hold tightly to Gunth Mach’s neck.
They had gone a third of a league when Rythok’s savage hiss burst into their skulls-the blistering acid of sudden, frenzied battle. Blades striking home, impacts reverberating like thunder. A crackling, terrifying sound, and all at once blood was gushing from the K’ell Hunter. A piercing cry, a weaving stagger, burning pain and then baffled anguish as Rythok’s legs gave way.
Ribs cracked as he struck the ground. Sharp rocks tore and stabbed the softer hide of his belly as he skidded.
But Rythok was not yet done. Dying would have to wait.
He rolled, twisted round, blade lashing back into his wake. The edge struck armour, chopped through it, and bit deep into flesh.
Phlegm and blood spattered, stung like fire in Rythok’s eyes-a sudden image, brutal in its clarity, as a massive axe swung down, filling the Hunter’s vision on his left side.
An explosion of white.
And death made the two fleeing K’Chain Che’Malle stagger. A moment, and then, with unyielding will, they recovered. Glistening with grief, rank with battle oils.
The Destriant was weeping-shedding her own oil, thin, salty, all that she could muster.
She humbled Sag’Churok. Had his hide grown slick with sorrow when he killed Redmask? No, it had not. Bitter with disappointment, yes, he had known that. But greater the icy grip of intransigent judgement. He and Gunth Mach had been witness to humans slaughtering each other. The fire of battle had raged on all sides. Human life was, it was clear, of little value-even to the humans themselves. When the world is swarming with a hundred million orthen, what loss a few tens of thousands?
Yet, this frail alien creature wept. For Rythok.
In moments he would wheel. He would do as Rythok had done. But not precisely so. There was little point in attempting to kill. Maiming was a more useful tactic. He would wound as many as he could and so diminish the numbers capable of pursuing Gunth Mach and the Destriant.
He would employ skills Rythok had not yet learned and now never would. Sag’Churok might not be a Ve’Gath Soldier, but he would surprise them nonetheless.
Gunth Mach.
‘Yes, beloved.’
Sag’Churok whetted his blades.
‘No!’ Kalyth shrieked. ‘Do not dare leave us! Sag’Churok-I forbid it!’
Destriant. I shall succeed where Rythok failed. My life shall purchase you a day, perhaps two, and you must make it enough.
‘Stop! I have prayed! Do you not understand? They said they would answer!’
I do not know of whom you speak, Destriant. Listen well to my words. Acyl Nest shall die. The Matron is doomed, and all those within the Rooted. Gunth Mach carries my seed. She shall be a new Matron. Find your Shield Anvil and your Mortal Sword-the three of you shall be Gunth Mach’s J’an Sentinels, until such time as she breeds her own.
Then Gunth Mach shall free you.
This is not your war. This is not your end-it is ours.
‘Stop!’
Sag’Churok prepared to speak to her once more, despite the growing effort it entailed. He would tell her of his admiration. And his faith in her-and of his own astonishment at feeling such emotions for a human. They were paltry things, too weak to be considered gifts of any sort, but he would-
Figures in the distance ahead. Not the enemy. Not born and bred of matrons either. And not, Sag’Churok realized, human.
Standing, readying an array of weapons.
Fourteen in all. Details assembling as Sag’Churok and Gunth Mach raced ever closer. Gaunt despite the blackened, gnarled armour encasing their torsos and limbs. Strange helms with down-swept cheek-guards that projected below their chins. Ragged camails of black chain. Thick, tattered and stained cloaks that had once been dyed an intense, deep yellow, trimmed in silver fur.
Sag’Churok saw that seven of the strangers held in their gauntleted hands long, narrow-bladed swords of blued steel, basket-hilted with half-moon knuckle-guards, and ornate bucklers. He saw two others with heavier single-edged axes and embossed round shields covered in mottled hides. Three with broad-headed, iron-sheathed spears. And two more, standing behind the rest, preparing slings.
And, surrounding them all, spreading down from the faint rise on which they waited, frost sparkled on earth and stone.
Disbelief struck Sag’Churok like a hammer-blow.
This was not possible. This was… without precedent. Impossible-what cast these strangers? Foes or allies? But no, they cannot be allies.
Besides, as all know, Jaghut stand alone.
‘There!’ shouted Kalyth, pointing. ‘I prayed! There-run to them-quickly! Guardians of the Gate!’
Destriant-hear me. These ones will not help us. They will do nothing.
‘You’re wrong!’
Destriant. They are Jaghut. They are…
… impossible.
But Gunth Mach had altered her course, was closing directly upon the waiting warriors. Sag’Churok fell in beside her, still shocked, still confused, uncomprehending-
And then he and Gunth Mach caught the stench wafting from the Jaghut, gusting out from the frozen ground encircling them.
Destriant, beware! They are undead!
‘I know what they are,’ snapped Kalyth. ‘Stop, Gunth Mach-stop retreating-right here, don’t move.’ And then she slipped down from the Daughter’s back.
Destriant, we do not have time-
‘We do. Tell me, how many pursue us? Tell me!’
A Caste. Fifty. Forty-nine now. Four wield Kep’rah, weapons of sorcery. A Crown commands them, they flow as one.
She looked to the northwest. ‘How far away?’
Your eyes shall find them shortly. They are… mounted.
‘On what?’
Sag’Churok would have sent her an image, but she was beyond such things now. She was closed and closing. Wrought… legs. To match our own. Tireless.
He watched as the Destriant absorbed this information, and then she faced the Jaghut.
‘Guardians. I thought to see… familiar faces.’
One of the spear-wielders stepped forward. ‘Hood would not want us.’
‘If he had,’ said the swordswoman beside him, ‘he would have summoned us.’
‘He would not choose that,’ resumed the first Jaghut, ‘for he knew we would not likely accede.’
‘Hood abused our goodwill,’ the swordswoman said, tusks gleaming with frost, ‘at the first chaining. He knew enough to face away from us at the next one.’ An iron-sheathed finger pointed at the Destriant. ‘Instead, he abused you, child of the Imass. And made of one his deadliest enemy. We yield him no sorrow.’
‘No commiseration,’ said the spear-wielder.
‘No sympathy,’ added one of the slingers.
‘He will stand alone,’ the swordswoman said in a rasp. ‘A Jaghut in solitude.’
Sag’Churok twisted round, studied the glint of metal to the northwest. Not long now.
The swordswoman continued. ‘Human, you keep strange company. They will teach you nothing of value, these Che’Malle. It is their curse to repeat their mistakes, again and again, until they have destroyed themselves and everyone else. They have no gifts for you.’
‘It seems,’ said Kalyth of the Elan, ‘we humans have already learned all they could teach us, whether we ever knew it or not.’
A chilling sound, the rattling laughter of fourteen undead Jaghut.
Then the spear-wielder spoke. ‘Flee. Your hunters shall know the privilege of meeting the last soldiers of the only army the Jaghut ever possessed.’
‘The last to die,’ one added in a growl.
‘And should you see Hood,’ said the swordswoman, ‘remind him of how his soldiers never faltered. Even in his moment of betrayal. We never faltered.’
More laughter.
Pale, trembling, the Destriant returned to Gunth Mach. ‘We go. Leave them to this.’
Sag’Churok hesitated. They are too few, Destriant. I will stay with them.
Fourteen pairs of cold, lifeless eyes fixed on the K’ell Hunter, and, smiling, the swordswoman spoke. ‘There are enough of us. Kep’rah never amounted to much of a threat against Omtose Phellack. Still, you may stay. We appreciate an audience, because we are an arrogant people.’ The ghastly grin broadened. ‘Almost as arrogant as you, Che’Malle.’
‘I think,’ observed the spear-wielder, ‘this one is… humbled.’
His companion shrugged. ‘Into the twilight of a species comes humility, like an old woman who has just remembered she’s still a virgin. Too late to count for anything. I am not impressed.’ And the swordswoman attempted to spit, failed, and quietly cursed.
‘Sag’Churok,’ said the Destriant from Gunth Mach’s saddled back, ‘do not die here. Do you understand me? I need you still. Watch, if you must. See what there is to be seen, and then return to us.’
Very well, Kalyth of the Elan.
The K’ell Hunter watched his beloved carry the human away.
Battered armour rustled and clanked as the Jaghut warriors readied themselves, fanning out along the crest of the hill. As they did so, the frigid air crackled around them.
Sag’Churok spoke: Proud soldiers, do not fear they will pass you by. They pass by nothing they believe they can slay, or destroy.
‘We have observed your folly countless times,’ replied the swordswoman. ‘Nothing of what we are about to face will catch us unawares.’ She turned to her companions. ‘Is not Iskar Jarak a worthy leader?’
‘He is,’ answered a chorus of rough voices.
‘And what did he say to us, before he sent us here?’
And thirteen Jaghut voices answered: “ ‘Pretend they are T’lan Imass.’ ”
The last survivors of the only army of the Jaghut, who had not survived at all, then laughed once more. And that laughter clattered on, to greet the Caste, and on, through the entire vicious, stunning battle that followed.
Sag’Churok, watching from a hundred paces away, felt the oil sheathing his hide thicken in the bitter gusts of Omtose Phellack, as the ancient Hold of Ice trembled to the impacts of Kep’rah, as it in turn lashed out-bursting flesh, sending frozen pieces and fragments flying.
In the midst of the conflagration, iron spoke with iron in that oldest of tongues.
Sag’Churok watched. And listened. And when he had seen and heard enough, he did as the Destriant commanded. He left the battle behind. Knowing the outcome, knowing a yet deeper, still sharper bite of humility.
Jaghut. Though we shared your world, we never saw you as our foe. Jaghut, the T’lan Imass never understood-some people are simply too noble to be rivals. But then, perhaps it was that very nobility they so despised.
Iskar Jarak, you who commanded them… what manner of thing are you? And how did you know? I wish you could answer me that one question. How did you know precisely what to say to your soldiers?
Sag’Churok would never forget that laughter. The sound was carved into his very hide; it rode the swirls of his soul, danced light on the heady flavours of his relief and wonder. Such knowing amusement, both wry and sweet, such a cruel, breathtaking sound.
I have heard the dead laugh.
He knew he would ride that laughter through the course of his life. It would hold him up. Give him strength.
Now I understand, Kalyth of the Elan, what made your eyes so bright on this day.
Behind him, the earth shook. And the song of laughter went on and on.
The swollen trunks of segmented trees rose from the shallows of the swamp, so bloated that Grub thought they might split open at any moment, disgorging… what? He had no idea, but considering the horrific creatures they had seen thus far-mercifully from a distance-it was likely to be so ghastly it would haunt his nightmares for the rest of his life. He swatted at a gnat chewing on his knee and crouched further down behind the bushes.
The buzz and whine of insects, the slow lap of water on the sodden shoreline, and the deep, even breathing of something massive, each exhalation a sharp whistle that went on… and on.
Grub licked sweat from his lips. ‘It’s big,’ he whispered.
Kneeling at his side, Sinn had found a black leech and let each of its two suckers fasten on to the tip of a finger. She spread the fingers and watched how the slimy thing stretched. But it was getting fatter. ‘It’s a lizard,’ she said.
‘A dragon.’
‘Dragons don’t breathe, not like we do, anyway. That’s why they can travel between worlds. No, it’s a lizard.’
‘We lost the path-’
‘There never was a path, Grub,’ Sinn replied. ‘There was a trail, and we’re still on it.’
‘I preferred the desert.’
‘Times change,’ she said, and then grinned. ‘That’s a joke, by the way.’
‘I don’t get it.’
She made a face. ‘Time doesn’t change, Grub, just the things in it.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘This trail, of course. It’s as if we’re walking the track of someone’s life, and it was a long life.’ She waved with her free hand. ‘All this, it’s what’s given shape to the mess at the far end-which was where we started from.’
‘Then we’re going back in time?’
‘No. That would be the wrong direction, wouldn’t it?’
‘Get that thing off your fingers before it sucks you dry.’
She held it out and he tugged it loose, which wasn’t as easy as he would have liked. The puckered wounds at the ends of Sinn’s fingers bled freely. Grub tossed the creature away.
‘Think he’ll smell it?’ Sinn asked.
‘He who?’
‘The lizard. My blood.’
‘Gods below!’
Her eyes were bright. ‘Do you like this place? The air, it makes you drunk, doesn’t it? We’re back in the age when everything was raw. Unsettled. But maybe not, maybe we’re from the raw times. But here, I think, you could stay for ten thousand years and nothing would change, nothing at all. Long ago, time was slower.’
‘I thought you said-’
‘All right, change was slower. Not that anything living would sense that. Everything living just knows what it knows, and that never changes.’
She was easier when she never said anything, Grub decided, but he kept that thought to himself. Something was stirring, out in the swamp, and Grub’s eyes widened when he studied the waterline and realized that it had crept up by a full hand’s span. Whatever it was, it had just displaced a whole lot of water. ‘It’s coming,’ he said.
‘Which flickering eye,’ Sinn mused, ‘is us?’
‘Sinn-we got to get out of here-’
‘If we’re not even here,’ she continued, ‘where did we come from, except from something that is here? You can’t just say, “Oh, we come through a gate,” because, then, the question just shows up all over again.’
The breathing had stopped.
‘It’s coming!’
‘But you can breed horses-and you can see how they change-longer legs, even a different gait. Like turning a desert wolf into a hunting dog-it doesn’t take as long as you’d think. Did someone breed us to make us like we are?’
‘If they did,’ hissed Grub, ‘they should’ve given one of us more brains!’ Snatching her by the arm, he pulled her upright.
She laughed as they ran.
Behind them, water exploded, enormous jaws snapped on empty air, breath shrieking, and the ground trembled.
Grub did not look behind them-he could hear the monstrous thrash and whip of the huge lizard as it surged through the undergrowth, closing fast.
Then Sinn tore herself free.
His heels skidded on wet clay. Spinning round, he caught an instant’s glimpse of Sinn-her back to him-facing a lizard big as a Quon galley, its elongated jaws bristling with dagger-sized fangs. Opening wide and wider still.
Fire erupted. A conflagration that blinded Grub, made him reel away as a solid wall of heat struck him. He stumbled to his knees. It was raining-no, that was hail-no, bits of flesh, hide and bone. Blinking, gasping, he slowly lifted his head.
A crater gaped before Sinn, steaming.
He climbed to his feet and walked unevenly to her side. The pit was twenty or more paces across, deep as a man was tall. Murky water gurgled, filling the basin. In that basin, a piece of the lizard’s tail thrashed and twitched. Mouth dry, Grub asked, ‘Did you enjoy that, Sinn?’
‘None of it’s real, Grub.’
‘Looked real enough to me!’
She snorted. ‘Just a memory.’
‘Whose?’
‘Maybe mine.’ Sinn shrugged. ‘Maybe yours. Something buried so deep inside us, we would never have ever known about it, if we weren’t here.’
‘That makes no sense.’
Sinn held up her hands. The one that had been streaming blood looked scorched. ‘My blood,’ she whispered, ‘is on fire.’
They skirted the swamp, watched by a herd of scaly, long-necked beasts with flattened snouts. Bigger than any bhederin, but with the same dull, bovine eyes. Tiny winged lizards patrolled their ridged backs, picking at ticks and lice.
Beyond the swamp the land sloped upward, festooned with snake-leafed trees with pebbled boles and feathery crowns. There was no obvious way around the strange forest, so they entered it. In the humid shade beneath the canopy, iridescent-winged moths fluttered about like bats, and the soft, damp ground was crawling with toads that could swallow a man’s fist and seemed disinclined to move aside, forcing Grub to step carefully and Sinn to lash out with her bare feet, laughing with every meaty impact.
The slope levelled out and the trees grew denser, gloom closing in like a shroud. ‘This was a mistake,’ muttered Grub.
‘What was?’
‘All of it. The Azath House, the portal-Keneb must be worried sick. It wasn’t fair, us just leaving like that, telling no one. If I’d known it was going to take this long to find whatever it was you think we need to find, I’d probably have said “no” to the whole idea.’ He eyed the girl beside him. ‘You knew from the very start, didn’t you?’
‘We’re on the trail-we can’t leave it now. Besides, I need an ally. I need someone who can guard my back.’
‘With what, this stupid eat-knife in my belt?’
She made a face. ‘Tell me the truth. Where did you come from?’
‘I was a foundling in the Chain of Dogs. The Imperial Historian Duiker saved me. He picked me up outside Aren’s gate and put me into Keneb’s arms.’
‘Do you actually remember all of that?’
‘Of course.’
Her eyes had sharpened their study. ‘You remember walking in the Chain of Dogs?’
He nodded. ‘Walking, running. Being scared, hungry, thirsty. Seeing so many people die. I even remember seeing Coltaine once, although the only thing I can see in my head now, when I think of him, is crow-feathers. At least,’ he added, ‘I didn’t see him die.’
‘What city did you come from?’
‘That I can’t remember.’ He shrugged. ‘Anything before the Chain… is gone, like it never existed.’
‘It didn’t.’
‘What?’
‘The Chain of Dogs made you, Grub. It built you up out of dirt and sticks and rocks, and then it filled you with everything that happened. The heroes who fought and then died, the people who loved, then lost. The ones that starved and died of thirst. The ones whose hearts burst with terror. The ones that drowned, the ones that swallowed an arrow or a sword. The ones who rode spears. It took all of that and that became your soul.’
‘That’s ridiculous. There were lots of orphans. Some of us made it, some of us didn’t. That’s all.’
‘You were what, three years old? Four? Nobody remembers much from when they were that young. A handful of scenes, maybe. That’s it. But you remember the Chain of Dogs, Grub, because you’re its get.’
‘I had parents. A real father, a real mother!’
‘But you can’t remember them.’
‘Because they died before the Chain even started!’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because what you’re saying makes no sense!’
‘Grub, I know because you’re just like me.’
‘What? You got a real family-you even got a brother!’
‘Who looks at me and doesn’t know who or what he’s looking at. I’ll tell you who made me. An assassin named Kalam. He found me hiding with a bunch of bandits who were pretending to be rebels. He carved things on to my soul, and then he left. And then I was made a second time-I was added on to. At Y’Ghatan, where I found the fire that I took inside me, that now burns on and on like my very own sun. And after, there was Captain Faradan Sort, because she knew that I knew they were still alive-and I knew because the fire never went out-it was under the city, burning and burning. I knew-I could feel it.’ She stopped then, panting to catch her breath, her eyes wild as a wasp-stung cat’s.
Grub stared at her, not knowing whether he wanted to hug her or hit her. ‘You were born to a mother, just like I was.’
‘Then why are we so different?’
Moths fled at her shout, and sounds fell away on all sides.
‘I don’t know,’ he replied in a soft voice. ‘Maybe… maybe you did find something in Y’Ghatan. But nothing like that ever happened to me-’
‘Malaz City. You jumped ship. You went to find the Nachts. Why?’
‘I don’t know!’
She leapt away from him, rushed off into the wood. In moments he had lost sight of her. ‘Sinn? What are you doing? Where are you going?’
The gloom vanished. Fifty paces away a seething sphere of flames blossomed. Trees exploded in its path as it rolled straight towards Grub.
He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound emerged.
The blistering ball of fire heaved closer, huge, bristling-
Grub gestured. The ground lifted suddenly into the fire’s path, in a mass of roots, humus and mud, surging upward, toppling trees to the sides. A thousand twisted brown arms snaked out from the churning earth. The writhing wall engulfed the rolling sphere of fire, slapped it down as would a booted heel crush the life from a wayward ember. Thunder shook. The earth subsided, the arms vanishing, leaving nothing more than a slowly settling, chewed-up mound. Clouds of steam billowed and then drifted, thinning as the darkness returned once more.
He saw her walking calmly towards him, stepping over shattered trunks, brushing dirt from her plain tunic.
Sinn halted directly before him. ‘It doesn’t matter, Grub,’ she said. ‘You and me-we’re different.’
She set off, and after a moment he stumbled after her.
Never argue with a girl.
It was a day for strangers. One was beyond his reach, the other he knew well. Taxilian and Rautos had prised loose a panel to reveal a confused mass of metal coils, tubes and wire-wrapped cables. Muttering about finding the necessary hinge spells needed to unleash sorcerous power, thus awakening the city’s brain, Taxilian began poking and prodding the workings. Crowding behind him, sweat beading his brow, Rautos ran through a litany of cautions, none of which Taxilian heeded.
Last had devised a trap for the lizard-rats-the orthen-and had headed off to check it, Asane accompanying him.
At the top of a ramp and in a long but shallow antechamber, Nappet and Sheb had found a sealed door and were pounding at it with iron-headed sledges, each blow ringing like a tortured bell. Most of the damage they likely inflicted was to their ears, but since neither had anything to say to the other, they’d yet to discover it.
Breath was exploring the Nest itself, the now empty, abandoned abode of the Matron, finding nothing of interest, although unbeknownst to her residual flavours flowed in through her lungs and formed glistening minute droplets on her exposed skin. Vague dreams of producing children dogged her, successive scenes of labour and birth, tumbling one upon the next like a runaway nightmare. What had begun as a diffuse irritation was quickly building to an indefinable rage.
Breath had been living inside the Tiles since creating them, but even she could not find the meaning she sought in them. And now the outside world was seeping into her. Confusion swarmed.
And then there was the K’Chain Che’Malle drone. Climbing, drawing ever closer to this hapless collection of humans.
The ghost drifted amongst his family, haunted by a growing trepidation. His people were failing. In some ineffable, fundamental way, they were pulling apart. Even as he had wondered at their purpose, now each one-barring perhaps Taxilian-was doing the same. A crisis was upon them, and he could feel the growing turbulence. They would not be ready for Sulkit. They might even kill the drone. And then all would be lost.
He recalled-once, a thousand times?-standing on the deck of a ship, witness to the sea’s surface spreading out smooth as vitreous glass on all sides, a strange quality suffusing the still air, the light becoming uncanny, febrile. And around him faceless sailors scrambling, pale as motes-bloody propitiations to the Elder God, the bawling bleat of goats brought up from the hold, the flash of sea-dipped blades and twisted blankets of blood floating on the seas-all around him, such rising fear. And in answer to all of this, he heard his own laughter. Cruel as a demon’s, and wide eyes fixed on him, for they had found a monster in their midst. And he was that monster.
I called storms, didn’t I? Just to see the violence, to draw it round me like the warmest cloak. And even the cries of drowning mortals could not break my amusement.
Are these memories mine? What manner of beast was I?
The blood tasted… good. Propitiation? The fools-they simply fed my power.
I remember a tribe, corpses cooling beneath furs and blankets, and the stains of spite on my hands. I remember the empty hole I found myself in, the pit that was my crime. Too late to howl at its depth, its lifeless air, the deadness inside.
Betrayed by a wife. Everyone laughing behind my back. For that, all would die. So it must be, and so it was. And I fled that place, the home I destroyed in the span of a single night. But some holes cannot be climbed out of. I ran and ran, and each night, lying exhausted, I fell back into that hole, and I looked up at that mouth of light far above, and I watched it ever recede. Until it winked out.
When you see my eyes now, all you see is that deadness. You see the black, smooth walls. And you know that, though I look back at you, I see nothing that makes me feel… anything.
I am walking still, alone on the empty plain, and the edifice I approach looms ever bigger, a thing of stone and dried blood, a thing eager to awaken once more.
Come find me.
Asane came staggering back into the chamber where Taxilian and Rautos still crouched at the gutted wall. Gasping, frightened, she struggled to find her breath, as Rautos turned round.
‘Asane? What is it? Where is Last?’
‘A demon! One lives! It found us!’
They could hear sounds now on the ramp, leather soles and something else-the click of claws, the flicking hiss of a tail brushing stone.
Asane backed to the far wall. Rautos hissed, ‘Taxilian! Get Nappet and Sheb! Quickly!’
‘What?’ the man glanced back over his shoulder. ‘What is it?’
Last appeared, looking faintly bewildered, but otherwise unharmed. Two dead orthen hung from a string at his belt. Moments later, the K’Chain Che’Malle loomed into view. Gaunt, but no taller than a man, thin-limbed, a tail that lashed about as if possessing its own will.
The ghost felt the fear, in Asane and Rautos. But in Taxilian, who slowly straightened from the exposed machinery, there was wonder, curiosity. And then… excitement. He stepped forward.
The drone was studying the chamber, as if searching for something. At the incessant clanging from above, it cocked its head. A moment later there were shouts of triumph from Nappet and Sheb-the door had opened, but the ghost knew that the surrender of that barrier had not come beneath their sledges. Sulkit had simply unlocked it. A moment later, he wondered how he knew this.
Breath reappeared from a side passage. ‘Blueiron,’ she whispered, staring at the drone. ‘Like a… a Fulcrum. Taxilian, go to it-we need it.’
‘I know,’ he replied, licking dry lips. ‘Rautos, go up to Sheb and Nappet-keep them occupied up there. I don’t want them charging down here with swords out. Make them understand-’
‘Understand what?’ Rautos demanded.
‘That we’ve found an ally.’
Rautos’s eyes widened. He wiped sweat from his face. A moment later, he backed up, then turned and set off up the ramp.
Taxilian spoke to the drone. ‘Can you understand me? Nothing works. We need to fix it. We need your help-no, perhaps it’s the other way round. We’d like to help you bring all of this back to life.’
Silence. The K’Chain Che’Malle seemed to be ignoring everyone in the chamber, its tentacled fingers writhing like seagrass at the ends of its arms. The rows of fangs glistened in its broad slash of a mouth. After a moment, the drone blinked. Once, twice, three times, each lid distinct. Then it walked in a hitching gait to where Taxilian had been working. It picked up the panel and deftly replaced it. Straightening, it turned and faced the ghost, eyes fixing on his.
You can see me. The realization stunned him. And all at once he could feel something-my own body-and with it jarring pain in his hands, the ache of abuse. He could taste his own sweat, the acrid exhaustion of his muscles. And then it was gone.
He cried out.
Help me!
Sulkit’s reptilian eyes blinked again, and then the drone set off, quickly crossing the room and vanishing down the ramp that led to the domed carapace-the chamber that housed this city’s mind.
Taxilian barked a laugh. ‘Follow it!’ He hurried after the K’Chain Che’Malle. Breath fell in behind him.
Once the three were gone, Asane ran to Last and he took her in his arms.
Rautos, Sheb and Nappet arrived. ‘We got the door open,’ said Sheb, his voice overloud. ‘It just slid to one side. It leads outside, to a balcony-gods, we’re high up!’
‘Never mind that,’ growled Nappet. ‘We saw someone, way out on the plain. Walking. Seems we’ve found another wanderer.’
‘Maybe,’ said Rautos, ‘maybe he’ll know.’
‘Know what?’ snapped Sheb, baring his teeth.
Rautos gestured helplessly.
Nappet was glaring round, hefting the sledge in his hands. ‘So where’s the fucking demon?’
‘It means no harm,’ said Last.
‘Too bad for it.’
‘Don’t hurt it, Nappet.’
Nappet advanced on Last. ‘Look at the stupid farmer-found an animal to pet, did you? She’s not much-Breath looks a damned sight better.’
‘The demon isn’t even armed,’ said Last.
‘Then it’s stupid. Because if I was it, I’d be swinging the biggest damned axe I could find. I’d start by killing you and that hag you’re holding. Then fat, useless Rautos there, with the stupid questions.’
‘The first one it’d kill would be you, Nappet,’ laughed Sheb.
‘Because I’m the most dangerous one here, aye, it’d try. But I’d smash its skull in.’
‘Not the most dangerous,’ corrected Sheb, ‘just the stupidest. It’d kill you out of pity.’
‘Let’s go and prepare the meal,’ Last said to Asane, still guarding her with one thick, muscled arm. ‘Sorry, Nappet, there’s not enough for you.’
The man stepped closer. ‘Try and stop me-’
Last spun. His fist hammered into Nappet’s face, shattering the man’s nose. In a welter of blood he reeled back. Teeth bounced on the floor. The sledge fell from his hands. After a moment he fell down, and then curled up, covering his broken face.
The others stared at Last.
Then Sheb laughed, but it was a weak laugh.
‘Come on,’ said Last to Asane.
They left the chamber.
After a moment, Sheb said, ‘I’m heading back up to the balcony.’
Rautos went to his pack and rummaged within it until he found some rags and a flask. He then went over to crouch, grunting, beside Nappet. ‘Let’s see what we can do here, Nappet.’
Betrayal could lie dead, a cold heap of ashes, only to blaze alight in an instant. What drove me to such slaughter? They were kin. Companions. Loved ones. How could I have done that to them? My wife, she wanted to hurt me-why? What had I done? Gorim’s sister? That was nothing. Meaningless. Not worth all the screaming, she had to have seen that.
Hurting me like she did, but I won’t ever forget the look in her eyes-her face-when I took her life. And I’ll never understand why she looked like the one betrayed. Not me. Gorim’s sister, that wasn’t anything to do with her. I wasn’t out to hurt her. It just happened. But what she did, that was like a knife stabbed into my heart.
She had to know I wasn’t the kind of man to let that pass. I got my pride. And that’s why they all had to die, all of them who knew and laughed behind my back. I needed to deliver a lesson, but then, after it was all done, why, there was no one left to heed it. Just me, which didn’t work, because it made it into a different lesson. Didn’t it?
The dragon waits on the plain. It doesn’t even blink. It did, once, and everything disappeared. Everything and everyone. It won’t ever do that again.
You blink, you lose that time for ever. You can’t even be sure how long that blink lasted. A moment, a thousand years. You can’t even know for sure that what you see now is the same as what you saw before. You can’t. You think it is. You tell yourself that, convince yourself of that. Just a continuation of everything you knew before. What you see is still there. That’s what you tell yourself. That’s the game of reassurance your mind plays. To keep things sane.
But think on that one blink-you’ve all known it-when all that you thought was real suddenly changes. From one side of the blink to the other side. It comes with bad news. It comes with soul-plummeting horror and grief. How long was that blink?
Gods below, it was fucking eternity.
BROKEN NAIL’S LAMENT
FISHER
Someone was screaming in agony, but that was a sound warleader Gall had grown used to. Eyes stinging in the drifting smoke, he swung his horse round on the dirt track and unleashed a stream of curses. At least three raids were swarming out from the village in the valley, lances held high, grisly trophies bobbing and weaving. ‘Coltaine take those fools and crush them under his heel! Jarabb-ride down to that commander. He’s to form up his troop and resume scouting to the south-no more attacks-tell the fool, I’ll have his loot, his wives and his daughters, all of it, if he disobeys me again.’
Jarabb was squinting. ‘That is Shelemasa, Warleader.’
‘Fine. Her husband and her sons-I’ll take them as slaves and then sell them to a D’ras. Bult’s broken nose, she needs better control of her warriors!’
‘They’re just following her lead,’ Jarabb said. ‘She’s worse than a rabid she-wolf.’
‘Stop chewing my ear,’ Gall said, wanting to pull a foot out of the stirrup and drive it into the man’s chest-too familiar of late, too smug, too many Hood-damned words and too many knowing looks. After Shelemasa was dealt with, he’d send the pup yelping and turn a blind eye to all the wounded looks sure to follow.
Jarabb tried a smile which faltered as Gall’s scowl deepened. A moment later the young Tear Runner kicked his horse into motion and rode hard for the shouting, yipping raids.
Above the sickly smears of smoke the sky was cloudless, a canopy of saturated blue and a baleful sun that seemed to boil in the sky. Flocks of long-tailed birds swooped and cut in erratic patterns, too terrified to land as Khundryl warriors swarmed the ground in all directions. Fat, finger-long locusts crawled through the ruined fields.
The advance scout troop was returning from up the road, and Gall was pleased to see their disciplined, collected canter, lances shod and upright. Which officer was that one? Making out the leather-wound hoop dangling from the man’s weapon, he knew who it was. Vedith, who had crushed a town garrison early on in the campaign. Heavy losses to his raid, but then, hardly surprising. Young, in that stupid, foolhardy way, but worth taking note of-since he clearly had firm command of his warriors.
A gesture while they were still some distance away halted all the riders behind Vedith, who then rode up to Gall and reined in. ‘Warleader. A Bolkando army awaits us, two leagues distant. Ten thousand, two full legions, with a supply camp crawling with three times that number. Every stand of trees within a league of them has been cut down. I’d wager they’ve been in place for three or four days.’
‘Stupid Bolkando. What value fielding an army that crawls like a bhederin with its legs cut off? We could dance round it and strike straight for the capital. I could drag that King off his throne and plant myself in it sloppy as a drunk, and that would be that.’ He snorted. ‘Generals and commanders understand nothing. They think a battle answers everything, like fists in an alley. Coltaine knew better-war is the means, not the end-the goal is not to wage slaughter-it is to achieve domination in the bargaining that follows.’
Another scout was riding down from the north, her horse’s hoofs kicking up clods of dirt from the trampled plough-furrows. Hares scattered from her path as she cut through the trampled crops. Gall squinted at her for a moment, and then shifted round in his saddle to glare southward. Yes, there, another rider, in foaming gallop, shouting as he wove through Shelemasa’s whooping mob. The Warleader grunted.
Vedith had taken note of both riders. ‘We are flanked,’ he said.
‘What of it?’ Gall asked, eyes narrowing once more on this young, clever warrior.
The man shrugged. ‘Even should a fourth element march up our backsides, Warleader, we can slip through the gaps-they’re all on foot, after all.’
‘Like a slink between the claws of a hawk. But nothing here can even hope to pluck our tail. Vedith, I give you command of a thousand-yes, fifty raids. Take the north army-they’ll be on the march, dog-tired and choking on dust, likely in column. Give them no time. Sweep and cut, leave them in disarray, and then ride on to their baggage train. Take everything you can carry and burn the rest. Do not lose control of your warriors. Just cut off the enemy’s toes and leave them there, am I understood?’
Grinning, Vedith nodded. ‘I would hear from that scout,’ he said after a moment.
‘Of course you would.’
Gall saw that Jarabb had caught Shelemasa and both were now riding in the wake of the south scout. He spat to get the taste of the smoke out of his mouth. ‘Duiker’s eyes, what a sorry mess. No one ever learns, do they?’
‘Warleader?’
‘Would the Bolkando have been content if we had treated them as badly as they treated us? No. Of course not. So, how in their minds did they justify such abuse?’
‘They thought they could get away with it.’
Gall nodded. ‘Do you see the flaw in that thinking, warrior?’
‘It’s not hard, Warleader.’
‘Have you noticed that it’s the ones who think themselves so very clever that are the stupidest of the lot?’ He tilted in his saddle and loosed a loud, gassy fart. ‘Gods below, the spices they use round here have raised a typhoon in my bowels.’
The scout from the north arrived, the sweat on her face and forearms coated in dust. ‘Warleader!’
Gall unslung his own waterskin and tossed it to her. ‘How many and how far away?’
She paused to drink down a few mouthfuls, and then said above the heavy blows of her horse’s breath, ‘Perhaps two thousand, half of them levies, lightly armoured and ill-equipped. Two leagues away, in column on a too-narrow road.’
‘Baggage train?’
She smiled through all the grit. ‘Not in the middle and not flanked, Warleader. The rearguard’s about three hundred, mixed infantry-looks like the ones with the worst blisters on their feet.’
‘And they saw you?’
‘No, Warleader, I don’t think so. Their mounted scouts clung close, on the flat farmland to either side of the track. They know there’s raids out in the countryside and don’t want to get stung.’
‘Very good. Change mounts and get yourself ready to lead Vedith and his wing to them.’
Her dark eyes flicked to Vedith in open appraisal.
‘Something wrong?’ Gall asked.
‘No, Warleader.’
‘But he’s young, isn’t he?’
She shrugged.
‘Dismissed,’ Gall said.
The scout tossed the waterskin back and then rode off.
Gall and Vedith now awaited the riders from the south.
Vedith twisted to ease his back, and then said, ‘Warleader, who will lead the force against the southern jaw of this trap?’
‘Shelemasa.’
Seeing the young warrior’s brows lift, Gall said, ‘She needs her chance to mend her reputation-or do you question my generosity?’
‘I would not think to do that-’
‘You should, Vedith. That’s what the Malazans have taught us, if they’ve taught us anything. A smith’s hammer in the hand, or a sword-it’s all business, and each and every one of us is in it. The side with the most people using their brains is the side that wins.’
‘Unless they are betrayed.’
Gall grimaced. ‘Even then, Vedith, the crows-’
‘-give answer,’ Vedith finished. And both men made the gesture of the black wing, silently honouring Coltaine’s name, his deeds and his resolute stand against the worst that humans could do.
A moment later, Gall swung his horse round to face the scout riding in from the south, and the two warriors pelting to catch up behind him. ‘Shit of the Foolish Dog, look at those two.’
‘Are you done with me, Warleader?’
‘Yes. Go collect your raids.’ And he leaned out one more time to make wind. ‘Gods below.’
Still stinging from the Warleader’s tirade, Shelemasa rode hard at the head of her wing. Shouts from behind her measured out the raid sergeants struggling to collect their warriors as the ground grew ever more uneven. Deep furrows scarred the stony hills, and many of those hills had been gouged out-the Bolkando had been mining here, for what Shelemasa had no idea. They skirted steep-sided pits half-filled with tepid water mottled with algae blooms, narrow edges thick with reeds and rushes. Bucket winches slumped above overgrown trenches, their wooden frames grey and bowing and strangled in vines. Hummingbirds darted above the lush crimson flowers dangling from those vines, and everywhere iridescent six-winged insects spun and whirled.
She hated this place. The cruel colours made her think of poisons-after all, on the Khundryl Odhan it was the brightest snakes and lizards that were the deadliest. She had seen a jet-black, purple-eyed spider as big as her damned foot only the day before. It had been eating a hare. Nekeh had woken to find the skin of one leg, hip to ankle, completely peeled away by huge amber ants-she hadn’t felt a thing, and now she was raving with fever in the loot train. She’d heard that someone had smelled a flower only to have his nose rot off. No, they needed to be done with this, all of it. Marching with the Bonehunters was all very well, but the Adjunct wasn’t Coltaine, was she? She wasn’t Bult either, not even Duiker.
Shelemasa had heard about the goring the marines had suffered during the invasion. Like a desert cat thrown into a pit of starving wolves, if the tales were accurate. It was no wonder they’d been squatting in the capital for so long. The Adjunct had Mincer’s luck, that she did, and Shelemasa wanted no part of it.
They were coming up out of the mining works, and to the south the land levelled out in a floodplain, broken up by blockish stands of bamboo bordered by water-filled ditches and raised tracks. Beyond this ran another row of serried hills, these ones flat-topped and fortified by stone-walled redoubts. Between the fortifications a Bolkando army was forming up, but in obvious disorganization. They’d expected to be one of the trap’s jaws, arriving upon a battle already engaged, the Khundryl muzzle to muzzle with the main force. They’d been planning on driving into an exposed flank.
For all that, she could see they’d be hard to dislodge from those hills, especially with the enfilading forts. Even worse, she was outnumbered by at least two to one.
Shelemasa slowed her horse, and then reined in on the edge of the bamboo plantation. She waited for her officers to close on her.
Jarabb-who had been verbally flayed almost as fiercely as Shelemasa-was the first to arrive. ‘Commander, we won’t knock them off that, will we?’
Damned puffed-up messenger-boy. ‘When did you last ride to battle?’
She saw him flinch.
‘If you were my son,’ she said, ‘I would’ve dragged you out of the women’s huts long ago. I’ve got no problem with you wearing whatever it is you wear under that armour, it’s the fact that Gall cast a soft eye on you, Jarabb, and that’s not served you well. We are at war, you simpering coodle-ape.’ She turned as her six sub-wing captains rode up. ‘Hanab,’ she called to one, a veteran warrior whose bronze helm was a stylized crow’s head, ‘tell me what you see?’
‘An old border is what I see,’ the man said. ‘But the forts got dismantled everywhere but on those tels there. So long as the army stays where they are, they’re stuck like a knuckle under a rug. All we need to do is keep them put.’
Shelemasa looked to another captain, a tall, hunch-shouldered man with a vulpine face. ‘And how, Kastra, do we do that?’
The man slowly blinked. ‘We scare them so badly the hills they’re on start running brown.’
‘Draw up the horse-archers,’ Shelemasa ordered. ‘On to the slopes. Start bristling the fools. We’ll spend the day harrying them and piling up wounded-until those forts are nothing more than hospitals. Come the night, we send raids into their baggage camps, and maybe a few to fire the forts since those roofs I see inside are thatched.’ She scanned her officers. ‘Is anyone here satisfied with just pinning the idiots in place?’
Jarabb cleared his throat. ‘The Warleader wants the threat delayed long enough to stop being a threat, Commander.’
‘Half the army up there are levies,’ said Hanab. ‘Skirmishers. Deploying them against light cavalry would be suicide. Yet,’ he added with a sneer, ‘look at how they’re arrayed-five deep in front of the precious heavy infantry.’
‘To absorb our arrows, yes,’ Shelemasa said.
Kastra snorted. ‘The heavies don’t want to dirty their pretty armour.’
‘Bloody those skirmishers enough and they’ll break,’ Hanab predicted. ‘Then we can chew and nip the heavies for as long as we like.’
Shelemasa turned to regard Jarabb. ‘You stay at my side. When we return to the Warleader, you will be carrying the Bolkando commander’s head on your spear.’
Jarabb managed a sickly smile.
‘Look down there,’ Hanab pointed.
Sliming up from the ditch and on to the raised track was a yellow and black banded centipede, wide as a hand and as long as a sword. They watched it snake to the other side of the track and then vanish into the stand of bamboo.
Shelemasa spat and then said, ‘Hood take this hole and shit in it.’ After a moment she added, ‘But only after we leave.’
A thousand warriors at his back, and Vedith did not want to lose a single one of them. Memories of the garrison attack still dogged him. A triumphant victory, yes, but now he had but a handful of companions left with whom he’d shared it, every blistering moment-and even now, should he meet the eyes of one of those warriors, he would see in them the perfect reflection of his own faint disbelief, his own sense of guilt.
The crows alone chose who lived and who fell. Prayers meant nothing, deeds and vows, honour and dignity, not one weighed more than a mote of dust on fate’s scales. He even had his doubts about courage. Friends had fallen, one moment in his life and the next out of it, reduced to what memories he could conjure, all the incidental moments that had held little meaning until now.
Vedith didn’t know what to make of it. But he now knew one thing. The warrior’s life was in its essence a lonely one, and the loneliness only got worse, as one came to realize that it was best to hold back, to never draw too close to a companion. Yes, he would still give his life to save any one of them, whether he knew that warrior’s face or not, but he would also simply walk away should one fall. He would move on, and in his eyes the barest hint of lost worlds.
A thousand warriors behind him. He would send them into battle, and some would die, and he hated that knowledge, he railed against it, but for all that he knew he would not hesitate. Among all warriors, the commander was the loneliest by far, and he could feel that isolation thickening around him, hard as armour, cold as iron.
Gall. Adjunct Tavore. Coltaine of the Crow Clan. Even that Bolkando fool leading his or her unsuspecting column towards an afternoon of nightmarish horror. This is what we share. And it tastes bitter as blood on the tongue.
He wondered if the Bolkando King now regretted inviting this war. He wondered if the bastard even cared that his subjects were dying. Or was it just the wound of lost revenues from wasted farms, devoured livestock and the stolen hoards of wealth that stung him now? And the next strangers to camp on his borders? Would he treat them any differently? Would his successor heed the lessons carved out here in bone and flesh?
The Chain of Dogs had fallen at the foot of Aren. Pormqual’s ten thousand danced on trees. Leoman’s rebel army was destroyed at Y’Ghatan. It was clear-it could not be clearer-that for all there was to learn, no one ever bothered. Each new fool and tyrant to rise up from the mob simply set about repeating the whole fiasco, convinced that they were different, better, smarter. Until the earth drinks deep again.
He could see the scout riding back towards him.
It was about to begin. And, suddenly, each breath filling his lungs tasted sweeter than the last, and all that his eyes fixed upon seemed to throb with life. He looked upon things and thought that he had never before seen such colours, such textures-the world was made anew on all sides, but had he come too late to it? Only moments left to savour this gift of glory?
The day’s end would answer that question.
Vedith prepared to lead his first army into battle, and in that moment he hated Warleader Gall, who had forced this upon him. He did not want to command a thousand warriors. He did not want the weight of their gazes, the crushing awareness of their faith in him.
He wished he had the courage to flee.
But he did not.
For Gall had chosen well.
Parasols in their thousands, fan-wielding slaves in their tens of thousands, none of this could keep the sweat from the face of Chancellor Rava. He felt as if he was melting in the cauldron of history, one of his own making, alas, a realization that came to him again and again like a fresh heap of coals. He huddled shivering beneath sodden silks as the palanquin he was in tipped precipitously, the bearers struggling to descend this confounded goat track.
Dust had seeped in to coat every surface, dulling all the ornate gilt edging and deadening the vibrant colours of the plush padding. Dust mingled with the taste of his own sweat in his mouth. He even pissed grit, and worse. ‘Not there, you stupid woman,’ he snapped.
The D’rhasilhani slave flinched back, ducking her head.
There would be no stirring awake down below, not today. He understood her desperation to please, and this knowledge made things all the more irritating. Whatever happened to proper, old-fashioned affection? But no, he’d done away with that long ago, as soon as he realized that, as much as he wanted it, he wasn’t prepared to repay it with all that was expected in such an arrangement. Things such as loyalty, consideration, generosity. Those vile details that comprised the pathetic stupidity called reciprocity. He so disliked the notion of expectations-not the ones he held of others doing as they were supposed to do, but the expectations those others shackled upon Rava. Appalling, the nerve of some people.
The greatest skill one could achieve lay in evading such traps. He was Chancellor to the Realm, ostensibly in service to the King and (heavens forbid!) the Queen; but overriding even this, he stood to serve the kingdom itself, its myriad sources of wealth, prosperity and so on, not to mention its smelly, crab-faced masses of ignorant humanity. Of course, he knew that in truth such notions held all the gravity and import of a toddler’s birthday celebration, when all the effort going into it wouldn’t even be remembered by the child so indulged, and what of the mess afterward?
Never mind that Felash had made all the slaves drunk on suspiciously spiked punch, and that the chamber door’s lock was jammed, and he-Chancellor of Bolkando!-found himself trapped inside with no choice but to clear up the mess-if only to find somewhere to stand. And never mind that-
Rava scowled. What had he been thinking about? Ah, yes, the paucity of sincerity that was, ultimately, at the very heart of political triumph. He had long ago discovered that brazen lies could be uttered with impunity, because nothing would come of exposure-should that unlikely consequence ever occur-for even when such lies were indeed exposed, why, in a month or two the finger-pointers would wander off, distracted by something or someone else worthy of their facile outrage. A mien of proper belligerence could weather virtually anything his accusers might throw at him. As with so many battles on a multitude of fields, it was all a matter of nerve.
And, dammit, here and now-against this monstrous woman Krughava-it was Rava’s nerve that was failing, not hers.
Bested by a knuckle-browed barbarian! Outrageous!
But what had he been thinking about? His gaze fell on the slave woman who still crouched at his feet, wiping her chin, eyes downcast. Yes, love. And that obnoxious creature, Felash, to have so contemptuously spurned his advances, well now, she would pay for that. For the rest of her life, if Rava had his way-and, ultimately, he always did. Yes, he’d have her kneeling just the way this slave did, but the difference between the two would be the most delicious reward. Felash would not wear any visible shackles, after all. She would have enslaved herself. To him, to Rava, and she would find her only pleasure in servicing him, all his needs, every one of his desires. Now that was love.
Groans of relief from outside, and the palanquin levelled out. Rava drew a handkerchief and mopped at his face, and then tugged on the bell cord. The contrivance lurched to a merciful halt. ‘Open the damned door! Be quick!’ He tugged up his pantaloons and knotted the ties, and then half-rose, pushing the D’ras slave away.
Outside, he saw pretty much what he had expected to see. They were down from the pass. Before them spread somewhat more level land, strips and stands of deciduous forest broken up by meadows used for pasture by the local savages. This region had served as a buffer between the miserable hill tribes and Bolkando’s civilized population, but the buffer was shrinking, as the locals drifted away in both directions, into the cities or taking up banditry among the rock-dwellers. There would come a time, Rava knew, when his kingdom would simply engulf the region, which meant establishing forts and border posts and maintaining garrisons and patrols to hold back the blue-skinned savages, all of which would devour yet more of the treasury. Well, Rava considered, there’d be income from cutting down all the trees, at least to begin with, and thereafter from whatever crops the soil could yield.
Such thoughts comforted him, righted the world beneath his pinched feet. Wiping sweat from his face again, he cast about for signs of Conquestor Avalt and his entourage of messengers, lackeys, and so-called advisors. The military was a miserable necessity, despite all its inherent pitfalls. Put a sword in a person’s hands-and a few thousand others at their backs-and sooner or later the tip of that sword was going to lift to prick the necks of people like Rava. The Chancellor scowled, reminding himself to keep Avalt tightly bound to his belt, by way of that tangled skein of mutually rewarding interests he worked so hard to maintain.
Surrounding him, the column of the Bolkando Guard was spilling out, shaking loose over the swards to either side of the track. Oxen lowed, straining to reach the lush grasses, and from somewhere in the seething mob pigs were squealing. The air stank of human sweat and beastly dung and piss. This was worse than a D’ras trader camp.
After a moment Rava succeeded in picking out Avalt’s pennon, two hundred or so paces down the trail. He beckoned to one of his servants, pointing to the wavering standard. ‘I wish to speak with the Conquestor. Bring him to me.’
The old man plunged into the crowd.
This army was exhausted, desperate to camp right here though the day was barely two-thirds done. And as far as the Chancellor could tell, Avalt had halted the entire column. Rava craned but he could not even see the Perish legions-somewhere far ahead, marching brainless as millstones-they should have ambushed these fools after all-what army could fight after such a pace? In full armour barring shields, too, if that report held any truth. Ridiculous.
It was some time before he saw commotion in the crowd on the track, figures hastily shifting to either side; moments later Conquestor Avalt appeared, his face set in an uncharacteristic scowl. The gaze he fixed upon Rava as he drew nearer was something of a shock.
Even as the Chancellor opened his mouth to speak, Avalt stepped close and rasped, ‘Do you think I exist only to scuttle at your beck and call, Chancellor? If you haven’t noticed, my whole damned army here has fallen apart. I’ve had officers deserting, by the twenty pricks of Bellat. And now you want what? Another smug exchange of platitudes and reassurances?’
Rava’s eyes narrowed. ‘Careful, Conquestor. Be assured, when I summon you it is with good reason. I require an update, for as you can see my bearers were unable to maintain your vanguard’s pace. And now you have halted the entire army, and I want to know why.’
Avalt blinked, as if disbelieving. ‘Didn’t you just hear me, Rava? Half my legions can barely walk-their boots fell apart under them. The under-rigging for their breastplates has sawn into their shoulders-the manufacturers didn’t bother softening the leather. Bedrolls rot as soon as they get damp. Half the staples have gone foul and we’re out of salt. And if all of that is not enough, then I should add this: we are at least five leagues behind the Perish, and as for the army we’d left here to greet them, one messenger remained-to inform me that the Khundryl Burned Tears are, as of three days ago, within seven leagues of the capital. Now,’ he added in a snarl, ‘how many other blithe assumptions we made weeks back are about to turn out fatally askew?’ He pointed a gauntleted finger at the palanquin. ‘Climb back inside, Chancellor, and leave me to my business-’
‘A business you appear to be failing at, Conquestor,’ snapped Rava.
‘You want my resignation? You have it. Take over by all means, Chancellor. I’ll ride back up into the mountains and toss in with the hill bandits-at least they don’t pretend the world is just how they want it to be.’
‘Calm down, Conquestor-you are understandably overwrought. I have no wish to assume the burden of your responsibility. I am not a military man, after all. Thus, I do not accept your resignation. Repair this army, Avalt, and take as long doing so as is needed. If the army we left here has departed, clearly it is to meet the threat of the Khundryl. Presumably the threat has by now been taken care of, and either way, we here are in no position to affect the outcome, are we?’
‘I would imagine we’ve had enough of our affecting matters, don’t you think, Chancellor?’
‘Return to your command, Conquestor. We can speak again once safely ensconced in the palace.’ Where I can correct your misapprehensions about who serves whom.
Avalt stared at him long enough to make plain his disrespect, and then turned to retrace his route.
Rava watched him march back into the crowd, and then gestured for his servant-who had unwisely stood less than half a dozen paces away during the course of the Chancellor’s conversation with Avalt. ‘Find us a place to camp. Raise the tent-the smaller one-tonight I will maintain the minimum number of providers, no more than twenty. And find me some new women from the train-and no D’ras, I am done with their haphazard attentions. Go, quickly-and get me some wine!’
Head bobbing, the servant scurried off. Rava looked round until he found one of his assassins. The man was staring directly at him. The Chancellor flicked his eyes in the direction of the servant. The assassin nodded.
See what you have done, Conquestor? You have killed the poor old man. And I shall send you his salted head, so that we clearly understand one another.
Shield Anvil Tanakalian stepped into the tent and drew off his gloves. ‘I just took a look for myself, Mortal Sword. They are indeed done. I doubt they will even manage a march tomorrow, much less a fight any time in the next week or two.’
Krughava was intent on oiling her sword and did not look up from where she sat on the camp cot. ‘That was easier than expected. There is water atop the chest-help yourself.’
Tanakalian stepped over to the salt-stained trunk. ‘I have more news. We captured a Bolkando scout riding back through the dregs of the army that had been awaiting us. It would appear that Warleader Gall has done precisely what we anticipated, sir. He is probably even now within sight of the kingdom’s capital.’
The woman grunted. ‘Do we wait for the Chancellor to catch up, then, to inform him of the altered situation, or do we maintain our pace? As much as the Khundryl Warleader might wish to besiege the capital, he has but horse-soldiers at his disposal. One must assume that he will do nothing until we arrive. And that is at least three days from now.’
Tanakalian drank deep from the clay jug, then set it back down on the pitted lid of the chest. ‘Do you expect a fight, Mortal Sword?’
She grimaced. ‘Regardless of the unlikelihood that matters will deteriorate to that extreme, sir, we must anticipate every possibility. Even so,’ and she rose, seeming to fill the confines of the tent, ‘we will add a half-night march. There are times when achieving the unexpected well serves. I would rather we intimidate the King into submission. The very notion of losing a single brother or sister to this meaningless conflict with the Bolkando galls me. But we shall present to King Tarkulf a certain measure of short-tempered belligerence, as I am certain the Warleader has already done.’
Tanakalian considered her words, and then said, ‘Khundryl warriors have no doubt fallen in this uninvited war, Mortal Sword.’
‘Sometimes respect must be earned the hard way, Shield Anvil.’
‘I expect the Bolkando have had little choice but to reassess their contempt for the Burned Tears.’
She faced him, teeth bared, ‘Shield Anvil, they choke on it still. And we will ensure they continue to do so for a while longer. Tell me, have we availed ourselves of the supplies left behind by the fleeing army?’
‘We have, Mortal Sword. Their haste is our gain.’
She sheathed her sword and strapped it on. ‘Such are the spoils of war, sir. Now, let us make ourselves available to our sisters and brothers. They have done well and we should remind them of the measure of respect we hold for them.’
But Tanakalian hesitated. ‘Mortal Sword, are you any closer to your selection of a new Destriant?’
Something flickered in her hard eyes before she turned to the tent-flap. ‘Such matters will have to wait, Shield Anvil.’
He followed her out into the well-ordered, quiet camp. Cookfires were lit in rows, spaced between companies. Tents covered the clearings in precise, measured-out regularity. The heady scent of brewing tea filled the air.
As Tanakalian walked a step behind and to Krughava’s left, he gave thought to the suspicions assembling in his mind. The Mortal Sword was, perhaps, content to stand virtually alone. The triumvirate of the Grey Helms’ high command was, structurally, both incomplete and unbalanced. After all, Tanakalian was a very young Shield Anvil, and none would see him as the Mortal Sword’s equal. In essence, his responsibility was passive, whilst hers was front and foremost. She was both fist and gauntlet, and he could do naught but trail in her wake-as he was physically doing here, now.
How could this not please her? Let the legends born of this mythic quest find sharpest focus upon Krughava; she could afford to be magnanimous to those she would permit to stand in her shadow. Standing tallest of them all, her face would be first to receive the sun’s light, etching every detail of her heroic resolve.
But remember the words of Shield Anvil Exas a century ago. ‘Even the fiercest mask can crack in the heat.’ So, I will watch you, Mortal Sword Krughava, and yield you sole possession of this lofty dais. History waits for us, and all the creatures of our youth stand in our wake, to witness what their sacrifice has won.
And at that moment, it is the Shield Anvil who must stride to the fore, alone in the harsh glare of the sun, feeling the raw flames and flinching not. I shall be judgement’s crucible, and even Krughava must step back and await my pronouncement.
She was generous with her time and attention this evening, addressing every sister and brother as equals, but Tanakalian could see the cold deliberation in all this. He could see her knitting every strand of her own personal epic, could see those threads trailing out in her wake as she moved from one knot of soldiers to the next. It took a thousand eyes to weave a hero, a thousand tongues to fill out the songs of worth. It took, in short, the calculated gift of witnessing to work every detail of every scene upon this vast, sprawling tapestry that was the Mortal Sword Krughava of the Perish Grey Helms.
And he walked a step behind her, playing his part.
Because we are all creators of private hangings, depicting our own heroic existences. Alas, only the maddest among us weave in nothing but gold thread-while others among us, unafraid of truth, will work the fullest palette, the darker skeins, the shadows, the places where the bright light can never reach, where grow all the incondite things.
It is tragic, indeed, how few we are, we who are unafraid of truth.
In any crowd, he suspected, no matter how large, how teeming, if he looked hard enough, he would see naught but golden fires on all sides, so bright, so blazing in self-deception and wildest ego, until he alone stood with eyes burned blind, sockets gaping.
But will any of you hear my warning? I am the Shield Anvil. Once, my kind were cursed to embrace all-the lies with the truth-but I shall not be as the ones before me. I will take your pain, yes, each and every one of you, but in so doing, I will drag you into this crucible with me, until the fires scour your souls clean. And consider this one truth… of iron, silver, bronze and gold, it is the gold that melts first.
She walked ahead of him, sharing laughter and jests, teasing and teased in the manner of all beloved commanders, and the legend took shape, step by step.
And he walked, silent, smiling, so generous of regard, so seemingly at peace, so content to share the rewards of her indulgence.
Some masks broke in the sun and the heat. But his mask was neither fierce nor hard. It could, in fact, take any shape he pleased, soft as clay, slick and clear as the finest of pressed oils. Some masks, indeed, broke, but his would not, for he understood the real meaning beneath that long-dead Shield Anvil’s words.
It is not heat that breaks the mask, it is the face beneath it, when that mask no longer fits.
Remember well this day, Tanakalian. You are witness to the manufacture of delusion, the shaping of a time of heroes. Generations to come will sing of these lies built here, and there will be such fire in their eyes that all doubt is banished. They will hold up the masks of the past with dramatic fervour, and then bewail their present fallen state.
For this is the weapon of history when born of twisted roots. These are the lies that we are living, and they are all we will give to our children, to be passed down the generations, every catching edge of disbelief worn smooth as they move from hand to hand.
In the lie Krughava walks among her brothers and sisters, binding them with love to the fate awaiting them all. In the lie, this moment of history is pure, caged in the language of heroes. There is nothing to doubt here.
We heroes, after all, know when to don our masks. We know when the eyes of the unborn are upon us.
Show them the lies, all of you.
And so Shield Anvil Tanakalian smiled, and all the cynicism behind that smile stayed hidden from his brothers and sisters. It was not yet time for him. Not yet, but soon.
Warleader Gall drew his black feather cloak about his shoulders, and then strapped on his crow-beaked helm. He adjusted his over-weighted tulwar on to the point of his left hip as he strode to his horse. Insects whirred in the crepuscular air like flecks of winged dust. Gall hacked and spat out a lump of phlegm before swinging into the saddle.
‘Why does war always bring smoke?’
The two young Tear Runners facing him exchanged looks of incomprehension.
‘And not just regular smoke either,’ the Warleader continued, kicking his mount forward to ride between the two warriors. ‘No, it’s the foul kind. Cloth. Hair. Sits like tar on the tongue, eats into the back of your throat. It’s a Fall-damned mess, is what it is.’
Flanked now by the Tear Runners, Gall rode up the track. ‘Yelk, you say there are Barghast among them?’
The scout on his left nodded. ‘Two, maybe three legions, Warleader. They hold the left flank.’
Gall grunted. ‘I’ve never fought Barghast before-there weren’t many left in Seven Cities, and those ones were far to the north and east of our homelands, or so I recall. Do they seem formidable?’
‘Undisciplined is what they seemed,’ said Yelk. ‘Squatter than I’d expected, and wearing armour that looks as if it’s made of turtle shells. Their hair stands straight up, wedge-shaped, and with all the face paint they look half mad.’
Gall glanced over at the Tear Runner. ‘Do you know why you two are accompanying me to this parley, and not any of my officers?’
Yelk nodded. ‘We’re expendable, Warleader.’
‘As am I.’
‘There we do not agree with you.’
‘Glad to hear it. So, should they shit on the flag of peace, what will you and Ganap here do?’
‘We shall offer our bodies between you and their weapons, Warleader, and fight until you can win clear.’
‘Failing to save my life, what then?’
‘We kill their commander.’
‘Arrows?’
‘Knives.’
‘Good,’ said Gall, well pleased. ‘The young are fast. And you two are faster than most, which is why you’re Tear Runners. Perhaps,’ he added, ‘they will think you two my children, eh?’
The track lifted and then wound down over the ridge to converge with a broad cobbled road. At the junction three squat, square granaries plumed columns of black smoke. A waste-the locals had lit their own harvest rather than yield it to the Khundryl. Pernicious attitudes annoyed Gall, as if war was an excuse for anything. He recalled a story he’d heard from a Malazan-Fist Keneb, he believed-about a company of royal guard in the city of Bloor on Quon Tali, who, surrounded in a square, had used children as shields against the Emperor’s archers. Dassem Ultor’s face had darkened with disgust, and he’d had siege weapons brought in to fling nets instead of bolts, and once all the soldiers were tangled and brought down, the First Sword had sent in troops to extricate the children from their clutches. Among all the enemies of the Empire during Dassem Ultor’s command, those guards had been the only ones ever impaled and left to die slowly, in terrible agony. Some things were inexcusable. Gall would have skinned the bastards first.
Destroying perfectly good food wasn’t quite as atrocious, but the sentiment behind the gesture was little different from that of those Bloorian guards, as far as he was concerned. Without the crimes that had launched this war, the Khundryl would have paid good gold for that grain. This was how things fell apart when stupidity stole the crown. War was the ultimate disintegration of civility, and, for that matter, simple logic.
At the far end of the plain, perhaps a fifth of a league distant, the Bolkando army was arrayed across a rumpled range of low hills. Commanding the centre, straddling the road, was a legion of perhaps three thousand heavy infantry, their armour black but glinting with gold, matching the facing on their rectangular shields. A small forest of standards rose from the centre of this legion.
‘Ganap, your eyes are said to be sharpest among all Tear Runners-tell me what you see on those standards.’
The woman took a moment to dislodge the wad of rustleaf bulging one cheek, sent out a stream of brown juice, and then said, ‘I see a crown.’
Gall nodded. ‘So.’
The Barghast were presented on the left flank, as Yelk had noted. The ranks were uneven, with some of the mercenaries sitting, helms doffed and shields down. The tall standards rising above their companies were all adorned with human skulls and braids of hair.
Right of the centre legion earthworks mottled the crest and slope of the hills, and pikes were visible jutting above the trenches. Probably regulars, Gall surmised. Slippery discipline, ill-trained, but in numbers sufficient to fix any enemy they faced, long enough for the centre and left to wheel round after breaking whatever charge Gall might throw at them.
Behind all three elements and spilling out to the wings were archers and skirmishers.
‘Yelk, tell me how you would engage what you see here.’
‘I wouldn’t, Warleader.’
Gall glanced over, his eyes brightening. ‘Go on. Would you flap your tail in flight? Surrender? Cower in bulging breeches and sue for peace? Spill out endless concessions until the shackles close round the ankles of every living Khundryl?’
‘I’d present our own wings and face them for most of a day, Warleader.’
‘And then?’
‘With dusk, we would retire from the field. Wait until the sun was fully down, and then peel out to either side and ride round the enemy army. We’d strike just before dawn, from behind, with flaming arrows and madness. We’d burn their baggage camp, scatter their archers, and then chew up the backsides of the legions. We’d attack in waves, with half a bell between them. By noon we would be gone.’
‘Leaving them to crawl bloodied back to their city-’
‘We would hit them again and again on that retreat-’
‘And use up all your arrows?’
‘Yes. As if we had millions of them, Warleader, an unending supply. And once we’ve chased them through the city gate, they would be ready to beg for peace.’
‘The Khundryl are Coltaine’s children indeed! Hah! Well done, Yelk! Now, let us meet this Bolkando King, and gauge well the chagrin in his eyes!’
Six slaves brought out the weapons and armour. The gold filigree on the black iron scales of the breastplate gleamed like runnels of sun-fire. The helm’s matching bowl displayed writhing serpents with jaws stretched, while the elongated lobster tail was polished bright silver. The hinged cheek-guards, when swung forward, would click and lock against the iron nasal septum. The Bolkando Royal Crest adorned the vambraces, while the greaves were scaled black. The broad, straight-bladed, blunt-tipped sword rested in a lacquered scabbard of exquisite workmanship, belying the plain functionality of the weapon it embraced.
Every item was positioned with care upon a thick magenta carpet rolled out on the road, the slaves kneeling and waiting on three of the four sides.
Queen Abrastal walked up on the fourth side and stared down at the assemblage. After a moment she said, ‘This is ridiculous. Give me the helm, sword-belt and those gauntlets-if I have to wear the rest I won’t even be able to move, much less fight. Besides,’ she added, with a glare to her cadre of pallid advisors, ‘it hardly seems likely they’re planning betrayal-the presumed warleader and two pups… against my bodyguard of ten. They’d have to be suicidal and they’ve not shown such failings thus far, have they?’
Hethry, her third daughter, stepped forward and said, ‘It is your life that matters, Mother-’
‘Oh, eat my shit. If you could pull off the perfect disguise of a Khundryl to get a knife in my back, there’d be four of ’em riding up to our parley, not three. Go play with your brother, and tell me nothing about what you get up to with him. I’d like to keep my food down for a change.’ She held out her arms and slaves worked the gauntlets on. Another slave cinched the weapon belt round her solid, meaty hips, whilst a fourth one waited cradling the helm in gloved hands.
As Hethry retreated, after a few venomous darts at her mother, the Queen turned to the Gilk Warchief. ‘You coming along to see if they make you a better offer, Spax?’
The Barghast grinned, revealed filed teeth. ‘The Khundryl probably hold more of your treasury than you do, Firehair. But no, the Gilk are true to their word.’
Abastral grunted. ‘I imagine the one you call Tool might piss in laughter at hearing that.’
The Gilk’s broad, flat face lost all traces of humour. ‘If you were not a queen, woman, I’d have you hobbled for that.’
She stepped up to the warrior and slapped him on one shell-armoured shoulder. ‘Let’s see those pointies again, Spax, while you walk beside me and tell me all about this hobbling thing. If it’s as ugly as I suspect, I might adopt it for some of my daughters. Well, most of them, actually.’
Snagging the helm from the slave, she set out down the road, her bodyguard scrabbling to catch up and then flank her and Spax.
‘Your daughters need a whipping,’ the Gilk Warchief said. ‘Those I have met, anyway.’
‘Even Spultatha? You’ve been dimpling her thighs the last three nights straight-some kind of record for her, by the way. Must be she likes your barbarian ways.’
‘Especially her, Firehair. Wilful, demanding-any Barghast but a Gilk would have died of exhaustion by now.’ He barked a laugh. ‘I like you, and so I would never want to see you hobbled.’
‘But the wound that is named Tool is still raw, is it?’
He nodded. ‘Disappointment is a cancer, Queen.’
‘Tell me about it,’ she responded, thinking of her husband, and a few other things besides.
‘A woman hobbled has her feet chopped and can refuse no man or woman or, indeed, camp dog.’
‘I see. Use that word in the same sentence as my name again, Spax, and I’ll chop your cock off and feed it to my favourite corpse-rat.’
He grinned. ‘See these teeth?’
‘That’s better.’
The three Khundryl were waiting on the road, still in their saddles, but as the Bolkando contingent approached, the feather-cloaked warrior in the centre swung down and left his horse behind him as he stepped forward three paces. A moment later his two companions did the same.
‘Look at that,’ Abrastal observed under her breath. ‘Show me a Bolkando horse that just stands there once its reins are dropped.’
‘Horse-warriors,’ said Spax. ‘They are closer to their horses than they are to their wives, husbands and children. They are infuriating to fight against, Queen. Why, I recall the Rhivi-’
‘Not now, Spax. And stay back, among my soldiers. Watch. Listen. Say nothing.’
The Gilk shrugged. ‘As you like, Firehair.’
Despite herself, Abrastal was forced to admit that her first impression of Warleader Gall of the Burned Tears left her uneasy. He had the sharp, avid eyes of a hunting bird. He was well into his sixth decade, she judged, but he had the physique of a blacksmith. The black tattoos of tears tracked down his gaunt cheeks, vanishing into an iron-shot beard. The vast crow-feather cape was too heavy to ride out behind him as he strode towards her, instead flaring to the sides until it seemed he was perpetually emerging from a cavern mouth. The scales of his black-stained hauberk were tear-shaped across his broad chest, elongating into layered feathers on his shoulders.
His two bodyguards looked barely out of their teens, but they had the same predatory glint in their dark eyes. Abrastal had a sudden vision of taking the young men to her bed, and something delicious squirmed below her rounded belly. The young ones were best, not yet sunk into self-serving habits and whatnot, pliable to her domination, her measured techniques of training that some might call corruption. Well, her lovers never complained, did they?
The Queen blinked away the distraction and focused once more upon the Warleader. She had learned something of the cult binding these Khundryl. Struck to awe and then worship upon witnessing an enemy on the field of battle-an extraordinary notion, she had trouble believing it. So… foreign. In any case, whoever that commander was-who, in death, had found worshippers among his enemies-he must have possessed unusual virtues. One thing was undeniable, these savages had been fatally underestimated.
‘Warleader Gall,’ she said as the warrior halted two paces in front of her, ‘I am Abrastal, commander of the Evertine Legion and Queen of the Bolkando.’
There was amusement in his eyes as they flicked to scan the heavily armoured legion bodyguards arrayed behind her. ‘And these are the soldiers you command, Highness? These… tent-pegs. When the Khundryl whirlwind finds them, will they hold fast?’
‘You are welcome to find out, Warleader.’
He grunted, and then said: ‘They will hold, I’m sure, even as the tent you call a kingdom is torn to shreds behind them.’ He shrugged. ‘We’ll take care not to stumble upon them when we leave. No matter, it pleases me that the first title you gave yourself was that of commander. That you are also the Queen had the flavour of an afterthought. By this, am I to assume that this parley is to be between commanders?’
‘Not entirely,’ Abrastal replied.
‘So what you have to say this afternoon binds the kingdom itself, including your husband, the King?’
‘It does.’
He nodded. ‘Good.’
‘I will hear from you your list of grievances, Warleader.’
His bushy brows lifted. ‘Why? Are we to badger each other with matters of interpretation? Your merchants practised extortion on the Khundryl and clearly had the backing of the military. We took their contempt for us and rammed it up their backsides, and now we are but a day from the walls of your capital. And here you are, seeking to bar the way. Do we fight, or do you seek peace between us?’
Abrastal studied the man. ‘The city behind me has walls and fortifications, Warleader. Your horse-warriors cannot hope to take it. What then is left to you? Why, to ravage the countryside until there is nothing left.’
‘Easier to feed my warriors than for you to feed a city packed with tens of thousands of refugees.’
‘You would seek to starve us out?’
Gall shrugged. ‘Highness, Bolkando has lost this war. If we were so inclined, we could simply take over. Throw you and all of your bloodline into the nearest well and seal it up.’
Abrastal smiled. ‘Oh, dear. Now you show your hut-dwelling roots, Warleader Gall. Before I tell you of the overwhelming logistics of ruling a kingdom whose citizens consider conspiracy a religion, I need to avail you of some other details. Yes, your fleet warriors have given us a great deal of trouble, but we are far from defeated. My Evertine Legion-yes, it belongs to me, not to the King, not to the kingdom-has never been defeated. Indeed, it has never retreated a single step in battle. By all means, fling your braves against our iron wall; we will heap the dead two storeys high around us. But I do not think you will have the chance, alas. Should we come to battle here, Warleader, you will be annihilated. The Khundryl Burned Tears shall have ceased to exist, reduced to a few thousand slaves with quaint tattoos.’
After a moment, Gall hacked up phlegm, turned and spat. Then he wiped his mouth and said, ‘Highness, even as we stand here, your two flanking pincers are being filed down to stumps. Even should we lock jaws with your army, we’ll hardly remain so locked until such time as any other relieving force you manage to cough up arrives.’ He made a dismissive gesture with one scarred hand. ‘This posturing is pointless. How many days away are the Perish? They will take your Evertine Legion and melt it down for all the fancy gold on that armour.’ As she made to speak he held up his hand to forestall her. ‘I have yet to mention the worst you will face-the Bonehunters. Among my people, arguments and opinions are unending as to who are the greatest soldiers the world has ever known-ah, I see in your face that you think we strut about as one of those two, but we do not. No, we speak of the Wickans of Coltaine, versus the marines of the Malazan Empire.’ His teeth appeared in a hard smile. ‘Lucky for you that there are no longer any Wickans among the Bonehunters, but alas, there are plenty of marines.’
A long moment of silence followed his words. Eventually, Abrastal sighed. ‘What are your demands?’
‘We already have enough loot, Highness, so now we’re prepared to sell it back to you-for food, water, livestock and feed. But, for the cost of my warriors killed or maimed in this war, we will pay no more than a third of the true value of those supplies. Once these arrangements are completed to our satisfaction, and once we are reunited with the Perish Grey Helms, we shall leave your kingdom. For ever.’
‘That is it?’
Gall made a face. ‘We don’t want your kingdom. We never did.’
She knew she should feel offended by that, but the time for such indulgences would have to wait. ‘Warleader, understand. The pernicious acts of the merchant houses which led to this war were in themselves abuses of the King’s official policy-’
‘We made certain those thieves were the first to die, Highness.’
‘The ones you killed were but the tip of the poisoned knife.’ She half-turned and nodded to one of her guards. This officer led four other soldiers out from the squad, these ones carrying between them a leather satchel large enough to hold a Khundryl tipi. They set it down and untied the bound corners, and then pulled flat the edges.
A half-dozen bodies were revealed, although not much was left of them.
‘These are the principal agents,’ said Abrastal, ‘believing themselves safely ensconced in the capital. As you can see, only their skins remain-our Punishers are skilled in such matters. Consider them evidence of our acknowledgement of the injustices set upon you. They are yours if you want them.’
Gall’s raptor eyes fixed on her. ‘I am tempted,’ he said slowly, ‘to renege on my avowed lack of interest in taking over your kingdom, if only out of compassion for your people, Highness.’
‘We hold to justice,’ Abrastal snapped, ‘in our own way. I am frankly surprised at your sensitivity, Warleader. The stories I have heard about the habits of savages when it comes to inventing cruel tortures-’
‘Do not apply to us,’ Gall cut in, his voice hard as iron. After a moment he seemed to suddenly relax. ‘Unless we happen to get very angry. In any case, you misunderstood me, Highness. That your kingdom is home to citizens of any stripe who know no self-constraint-no, even worse, that they would treat with foreigners unmindful of the fact that they stand as representatives of their own people-and their kingdom-speaks to me of your self-hatred.’
‘Self-hatred. I see. And if you were the King of Bolkando, Warleader, what would you do?’
‘I would make lying the greatest crime of all.’
‘Interesting notion. Unfortunately, usually the biggest liars of all are the people at the top-it’s how they stay there, after all.’
‘Ah, then I am not to believe a word you say?’
‘You can believe me, for I can think of no lies that would win me anything.’
‘Because my sword hovers over your throat.’
‘Precisely. But the lies I was speaking of are the ones the elite use to maintain the necessary distinctions, if you see my point.’
‘I do,’ and now he regarded her with keen interest. ‘Highness, this has proved most interesting. But I must ask you one other thing-why are you here and not your husband the King?’
‘The role of my Evertine Legion is to be arbiter of control within the kingdom-and its own populace-as much as to confront external threats.’
He nodded. ‘Thus, your presence here serves dual purpose.’
‘And the message presented to our rivals in the palace is-and do not be offended by this-the more important of the two.’ And then she smiled and added, ‘Unless, of course, you were seeking actual conquest.’
‘Your husband holds great faith in you, Highness.’
He has no choice. ‘He does, and with reason.’
‘Do you accept our demands?’
‘I do, Warleader, with some modifications.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Name them.’
‘The water we provide you will be doubled, and it will be freely given. We shall also double the forage you require for your beasts, for we know far more about the Wastelands than you do, and we have no wish to make you into liars when you say you will never return to Bolkando.’ She paused, cocked her head. ‘Beyond the Wastelands you will find the dozen or so kingdoms of Kolanse. Warleader, I imagine you will not heed my advice, but I will give it anyway. You will find nothing of worth there. You will, in fact, find something terrible beyond imagining.’
‘Will you tell me more, Highness?’
‘If you like.’
‘Then may I request that you do not do so until such time as either the Mortal Sword Krughava or the Adjunct Tavore is present.’
‘Those you have named, they are both women, yes?’
‘They are.’
‘Will you feel… out of place, then?’
‘I will, but not for the reasons you might think, Highness.’
‘I shall then await this potent gathering with anticipation, Warleader.’
And for the first time, Gall bowed to her. ‘Queen Abrastal, it has been a pleasure.’
‘I am sure you feel so, and I do not begrudge you that. Are we now at peace?’
‘We are.’
She glanced down at the skins on the leather tarp. ‘And these?’
‘Oh,’ said Gall, ‘we’ll take them. My warriors will need to see them, to ease their rage. And for some, to soothe their grief over fallen kin.’
As he bowed again and turned away, Abrastal called out, ‘Warleader.’
He faced her again, a question in his eyes.
The Queen hesitated, and then said, ‘When you spoke of your people’s opinions… of these marines of the Malazan Empire, was there truth to your words?’
He straightened. ‘Highness, although the great Coltaine of the Crow Clan had many Wickans with him, he also possessed marines. Together, they escorted thirty thousand refugees across a third of a continent, and each step of the journey was war.’
‘Have I misunderstood then, Warleader? Did not Coltaine fail? Did he not die? And everyone with him?’
The warrior’s eyes were suddenly old. ‘He did. They all died-the Wickans, the marines.’
‘Then I do not-’
‘They died, Highness, even as they delivered those thirty thousand refugees to safety. They died, but they won.’
When she had nothing more to say, Gall nodded and resumed his march back to his horse. The two young bodyguards moved to edge past her to help with the defleshed and de-boned merchants. Abrastal caught the eye of the boy and winked. If he had been a Bolkando, his eyes would have widened in return. Instead, he grinned.
That dark thing came alive in her once again.
Spax was suddenly at her side, watching as Gall swung himself on to his horse and then sat motionless, presumably waiting for his two charges and the legionaries. ‘I well remember Malazan marines,’ he muttered.
‘And?’
‘Gall spoke true. A more stubborn lot this world has never seen.’
Abrastal thought of Kolanse. ‘They will need it.’
‘Firehair, will you escort them to the border?’
‘Who?’
‘All of them. The Khundryl, the Perish, the Bonehunters.’
‘I wasn’t even aware the Bonehunters were entering our territory.’
‘Perhaps they won’t now that the need is gone.’
‘The Evertine Legion shall accompany these Khundryl and the Perish. It seems, however, that some form of meeting of at least two of the three commanders is planned-and Gall seems to think it will be soon. I would like to speak with them. Accordingly, you and your Gilk will now attach to me-and if we have to march past the border, we shall.’
Spax showed his filed teeth. ‘You can make a request to the Warleader, Queen.’
‘I think I’ve already been invited-’
‘Not that.’ He jerked with his chin. ‘The pup.’
She scowled.
The Gilk Warchief grunted a laugh. ‘You told to me watch carefully, Firehair.’
Abrastal swung about and began marching back to her legion. ‘Rava is going to pay for all of this.’
‘He already has, I gather.’
‘Not enough. I’ll keep shaking him till he’s old and grey and shedding teeth and whiskers.’
‘Gall is disgusted by your people.’
‘So am I, Spax.’
He laughed again.
‘Stop sounding so smug,’ she said. ‘Hundreds, maybe thousands of Bolkando soldiers have died today. I had actually considered using your Gilk for one of the pincers-you would not be so pleased with yourself if I had.’
‘We would have just kept on marching, Firehair.’
‘Studded with arrows.’
‘Oh, we’d leave a trail of our own, yes, but we would have arrived when we were supposed to, ready to deliver vengeance.’
She considered that, and concluded he was not simply full of himself. We should have heeded what befell the Lether Empire. Dear Bolkando, the world beyond is very large indeed. And the sooner we send it on its way again the sooner we can get back to our orgy of sniping and backstabbing.
‘You’ve a nostalgic look in your eye, Firehair.’
‘Stop seeing so much, Spax.’
His third laugh made her want to punch her fist through the man’s ugly face.
Impatient, Gall left his two Tear Runners to deal with the gift of skins and rode back to the camp alone. A formidable woman, this Queen. Thick, long hair the hue of flames. Clever eyes, brown so deep as to be almost black. Stolid enough to give Krughava a tangle in the spit-circle with some lucky man the prize. And I’d like to see that match-why, they’re both enough to make me uncertain whether I was in bed with a woman or a man. The thought enlivened him and he shifted in the saddle. Bult’s balls, never mind that, you old fool.
They would not be quit of Abrastal and her Evertine Legion any time soon, he suspected. All the way to the border and perhaps even beyond. But he did not anticipate betrayal-the Khundryl had done enough to keep the fools honest-honest in that frightened, over-eager way that Gall so appreciated. Sometimes war did what was needed. Always easier-and lucrative-dealing with a reeling foe, after all.
He was well enough pleased with how the parley had played out, although some unease remained, like a yurt rat chewing on his toes. Kolanse. What do you know, Adjunct? What is it you are not telling us?
You’re moaning like an old man shivering under furs, Gall. The Khundryl, the Perish Grey Helms and the Bonehunters. No army can hope to stand against the three of us combined. Bolkando is small. Queen Abrastal rules a tiny, insignificant realm. And the only empire she knows is the one the marines shattered.
No, we have nothing to fear. Still, it will be good to learn what the Queen knows.
A cadre of wing and sub-wing officers awaited him at the edge of the encampment. He scowled at them as he rode up. ‘Seems they want to keep their kingdom after all. Send out word-hostilities are at an end. Recall all the raids.’
‘What of the wings attacking the flanking armies?’ one of the warriors asked.
‘Too late to do anything about that, but send Runners in case they’re still fighting. Order them to withdraw to the main camp-and no looting on the way!’
‘Warleader,’ said another warrior, ‘your wife has arrived and awaits you in your tent.’
Gall grunted, kicking his horse onward.
He found her sprawled on his cot, naked and heavy as only a pregnant woman could be. Eyeing her as he drew off his cape, he said, ‘Wife.’
She glanced up with lidded eyes. ‘Husband. How goes the killing?’
‘Over with, for now.’
‘Oh. How sad for you.’
‘I should have drowned you in a river long ago.’
‘You’d rather have my ghost haunting you than this all too solid flesh?’
‘Would you have? Haunted me?’
‘Not for long. I’d get bored.’
Gall began unstrapping his armour. ‘You still won’t tell whose it is?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘So it could still be mine.’
She blinked, and a sharper focus came to her regard. ‘Gall Inshikalan, you are fifty-six years old. You’ve been crushing your balls on a horse’s back for four and a half decades-no Khundryl man your age can seed a woman.’
He sighed. ‘That’s the problem. Everyone knows that.’
‘Are you humiliated, husband? I did not think that was possible.’
Humiliation. Well, though he’d never wanted it, he’d done his share of humiliating this woman, who had been his wife for most of his life. He had been fifteen. She had been ten. In the old days they would not lie together even when married, until she’d had her first bleed. He remembered the women’s celebration when that time finally arrived for his wife-they bundled the pale girl away for a night of secret truths, and what had been a frightened child at the beginning of that night came back to him the following dawn with a look of such knowing in her eyes that he was left… uncertain, feeling foolish for no reason, and from that day onward, that he was five years older than her had ceased to be relevant; in fact, it seemed as if she was the elder between them. Wiser, sure of herself, and stronger in every way.
He had worshipped that truth in all the years they had been together. In fact, he realized with a sudden flush, he still did.
Gall stood, looking down at his wife, trying to think of the words he lacked to tell her this. And other things besides.
In her eyes, as she studied him in turn… something-
A shout from outside the tent.
She looked away. ‘The Warleader is summoned.’
Just like that, the moment was gone, closed up tight. He turned away, stepped back outside.
The scout-the woman-he had sent with Vedith stood before him. Spattered in dried blood, dust, slick gore, stinking like a carcass. Gall frowned. ‘So soon?’
‘We crushed them, Warleader. But Vedith is dead.’
‘Did you take command?’
‘I did.’
He tried to recall her name, glancing away as she went on.
‘Warleader, he was leading the first charge-we were arrayed perfectly. His horse stepped into a snake hole, went down. Vedith was thrown. He landed poorly, breaking his neck. We saw how his body flopped as he rolled and we knew.’
Gall was nodding. Such things happened, yes. Unexpected, impossible to plan around. That hoof, those shadows on the uneven ground, the eyes of the horse, that hole, all converging into a single fatal moment. To think too much of such things could drive one mad, could tip one into an all-consuming rage. At the games of chance, the cruel, bitter games.
‘Warleader,’ the scout continued after a moment, ‘Vedith’s command of the ambush was absolute. Every raid set about its task though we all knew he had fallen-we did this for him, to honour him as we must. The enemy was broken. Fourteen hundred dead Bolkando, the rest weaponless and in flight across the countryside. We have nineteen dead and fifty-one wounded.’
His gaze returned to her. ‘Thank you, Rafala. The wing is now yours.’
‘It shall be named Vedith.’
He nodded. ‘See to your wounded.’
Gall stepped back inside the tent. He stood, not sure what to do next, where to go. Not sure why he was here at all.
‘I heard,’ said his wife in a low tone. ‘Vedith must have been a good warrior, a good commander.’
‘He was young,’ said Gall, as though that made a difference-as though saying it made a difference-but it didn’t.
‘Malak’s cousin Tharat has a son named Vedith.’
‘Not any more.’
‘He used to play with our Kyth Anar.’
‘Yes,’ Gall said suddenly, eyes bright as he looked upon her. ‘That is right. How could I have forgotten?’
‘Because that was fifteen years ago, husband. Because Kyth did not live past his seventh birthday. Because we agreed to bury our memories of him, our wondrous first son.’
‘I said no such thing and neither did you!’
‘No. We didn’t need to. An agreement? More like a blood vow.’ She sighed. ‘Warriors die. Children die-’
‘Stop it!’
She sat up, groaning with the effort. Seeing the tears he could not wipe away she reached out one hand. ‘Come here, husband.’
But he could not move. His legs were rooted tree-trunks beneath him.
She said, ‘Something new comes squalling into the world every moment of every day. Opening eyes that can barely see. And as they come, other things leave.’
‘I gave him that command. I did it myself.’
‘Such is a Warleader’s burden, husband.’
He fought back a sob. ‘I feel so alone.’
She was at his side, taking one of his hands. ‘That is the truth we all face,’ she said. ‘I have had seven children since then, and yes, most of them are yours. Do you ever wonder why I cannot give up? What it is that drives women to suffer this time and again? Listen well to this secret, Gall, it is because to carry a child is to be not alone. And to lose a child is to be so wretchedly alone that no man can know the same… except perhaps the heart of a ruler, a leader of warriors, a Warleader.’
He found he could meet her eyes once again. ‘You remind me,’ he said, voice rough.
She understood. ‘And you me, Gall. We forget too easily and too often these days.’
Yes. He felt her callused hand in his, and something of that loneliness crumbled away. Then he guided their hands down on to her rounded belly. ‘What awaits this one?’ he wondered aloud.
‘That we cannot say, husband.’
‘Tonight,’ he said, ‘we shall call all our children together. We shall eat as a family-what do you think?’
She laughed. ‘I can almost see their faces, all around us-the looks so dumbfounded, so confused. What will they make of such a thing?’
Gall shrugged, a sudden looseness to his limbs, the tightness of his chest vanishing in a single breath. ‘We call them not for them but for us, for you and me, Hanavat.’
‘Tonight,’ she said, nodding. ‘Vedith plays with our son once more. I can hear them shouting and laughing, and the sky is before them and it does not end.’
With genuine feeling-the first time in years-Gall took his wife into his arms.
UNWELCOME LAMENT
GEDESP, FIRST EMPIRE
He saw a different past. One that rolled out after choices not made. He saw the familiar trapped inside strangeness. Huddling round fires as winds howled and new things moved in the darkness beyond. The failure of opportunities haunted him and his kind. A dogged rival slipped serpent-like into the mossy cathedrals of needled forests, sliding along shadow streams, and life became a time of picking through long-dead kills, frowning at broken tools of stone different from anything ever seen before. This-all of this-he realized, was the slow failure that, in his own past, had been evaded.
By the Ritual of Tellann. The sealing of living souls inside lifeless bone and flesh, the trapping of sparks inside withered eyes.
Here, in this other past, in that other place, there had been no ritual. And the ice that was in his own realm the plaything of the Jaghut here lifted barriers unbidden. Everywhere the world shrank. Of course, such challenges had been faced before. People suffered, many died, but they struggled through and they survived. This time, however, it was different.
This time, there were strangers.
He did not know why he was being shown this. Some absurdly detailed false history to torment him? Too elaborate, too strained in its conceptualization. He had real wounds that could be torn open. Yes, the vision mocked him, but on a scale broader than that of his own personal failures. He was being shown the inherent weakness of his own kind-he was feeling the feelings of those last survivors in that other, bitter world, the muddy knowledge of things coming to an end. The end of families, the end of friends, the end of children. Nothing to follow.
The end, in fact, of the one thing never before questioned. Continuation. We tell ourselves that each of us must pass, but that our kind will live on. This is the deeply buried taproot feeding our very will to live. Cut that root, and living fades. Bleeding dry and colourless, it fades.
He was invited to weep one last time. To weep not for himself, but for his species.
When fell the last salty tear of the Imass? Did the soil that received it taste its difference from all those that came before? Was it bitterer? Was it sweeter? Did it sting the ground like acid?
He could see that tear, its deathly drop dragged into infinity, a journey too slow to measure. But he knew that what he was seeing was a conceit. The last to die had been dry-eyed-Onos Toolan had witnessed the moment here in this false past-the wretched brave lying bound and bleeding and awaiting the flint-toothed ivory blade in a stranger’s hand. They too were hungry, desperate, those strangers. And they would kill the Imass, the last of his kind, and they would eat him. Leave his cracked and cut bones scattered on the floor of this cave, with all the others, and then, in sudden superstitious terror, the strangers would flee this place, leaving nothing behind of themselves, lest wronged ghosts find them on the paths of haunting.
In that other world, the end of Tool’s kind came at the cut of a knife.
Someone was howling, flesh stretched to bursting by a surge of rage.
The children of the Imass, who were not children at all, but inheritors nevertheless, had flooded the world with the taste of Imass blood on their tongues. Just one more quarry hunted into oblivion, with nothing more than a vague unease lodged deep inside, the mark of sin, the horror of a first crime.
The son devours the father, heart of a thousand myths, a thousand half-forgotten tales.
Empathy was excoriated from him. The howl he heard was rising from his own throat. The rage battered like fists inside his body, a demonic thing eager to get out.
They will pay-
But no. Onos Toolan staggered onward, hide-bound feet crunching on frozen moss and lichen. He would walk out of this damning, vicious fate. Back to his own world’s paradise beyond death, where rituals delivered curse and salvation both. He would not turn. He was blind as a beast driven to the cliff’s edge, but it did not matter; what awaited him was a death better than this death-
He saw a rider ahead, a figure hunched and cowled as it waited astride a gaunt, grey horse from which no breath plumed. He saw a recurved Rhivi bow gripped in one bony hand, and Onos Toolan realized that he knew this rider.
This inheritor.
Tool halted twenty paces away. ‘You cannot be here.’
The head tilted slightly and the glitter of a single eye broke the blackness beneath the cowl. ‘Nor you, old friend, yet here we are.’
‘Move aside, Toc the Younger. Let me pass. What waits beyond is what I have earned. What I will return to-it is mine. I will see the herds again, the great ay and the ranag, the okral and agkor. I will see my kin and run in the shadow of the tusked tenag. I will throw a laughing child upon my knee. I will show the children their future, and tell them how all that we are shall continue, unending, for here I will find an eternity of wishes, for ever fulfilled.
‘Toc, my friend, do not take this from me. Do not take this, too, when you and your kind have taken everything else.’
‘I cannot let you pass, Tool.’
Tool’s scarred, battered hands closed into fists. ‘For the love between us, Toc the Younger, do not do this.’
An arrow appeared in Toc’s other hand, biting the bowstring and, faster than Tool could register, the barbed missile flashed out and stabbed the ground at his feet.
‘I am dead,’ said Tool. ‘You cannot hurt me.’
‘We’re both dead,’ Toc replied, his voice cold as a stranger’s. ‘I will take your legs out from under you and the wounds will be real-I will leave you bleeding, crippled, in terrible pain. You will not pass.’
Tool took a step forward. ‘Why?’
‘The rage burns bright within you, doesn’t it?’
‘Abyss take it-I am done with fighting! I am done with all of it!’
‘On my tongue, Onos Toolan, is the taste of Imass blood.’
‘You want me to fight you? I will-do you imagine your puny arrows can take down an Imass? I have snapped the neck of a bull ranag. I have been gored. Mauled by an okral. When my kind hunt, we bring down our quarry with our own hands, and that triumph is purchased in broken bones and pain.’
A second arrow thudded into the ground.
‘Toc-why are you doing this?’
‘You must not pass.’
‘I-I gifted you with an Imass name. Did you not realize the measure of that honour? Did you not know that no other of your kind has ever been given such a thing? I called you friend. When you died, I wept.’
‘I see you now, in flesh, all that once rode the bone.’
‘You have seen this before, Toc the Younger.’
‘I do not-’
‘You did not recognize me. Outside the walls of Black Coral. I found you, but even your face was not your own. We were changed, the both of us. Could I go back…’ He faltered, and then continued, ‘Could I go back, I would not have let you pass me by. I would have made you realize.’
‘It does not matter.’
Something broke inside Onos Toolan. He looked away. ‘No, perhaps it doesn’t.’
‘On the Awl’dan plain, you saw me fall.’
Tool staggered back as if struck a blow. ‘I did not know-’
‘Nor me, Tool. And so truths come round, full circle, with all the elegance of a curse. I did not know you outside Black Coral. You did not know me on the plain. Fates have a way of… of fitting together.’ Toc paused, and then hissed a bitter laugh. ‘And do you recall when we met at the foot of Morn? Look upon us now. I am the withered corpse, and you-’ He seemed to tremble, as if struck an invisible blow, and then recovered. ‘On the plain, Onos Toolan. What did I give my life for? Do you recall?’
The bitterness in Tool’s mouth was unbearable. He wanted to shriek, he wanted to tear out his own eyes. ‘The lives of children.’
‘Can you do the same?’
Deeper than any arrows, Toc struck with his terrible words. ‘You know I cannot,’ Tool said in a rasp.
‘You will not, you mean.’
‘They are not my children!’
‘You have found the rage of the Imass-the rage they escaped, Tool, with the Ritual. You have seen the truth of other pasts. And now you would flee-flee it all. Do you really believe, Onos Toolan, that you will find peace? Peace in self-deception? This world behind me, the one you so seek, you will infect with the lies you tell yourself. Every child’s laugh will sound hollow, and the look in every beast’s eye will tell you they see you truly.’
The third arrow struck his left shoulder, spun him round but did not knock him down. Righting himself, Tool reached to grip the shaft. He snapped it and drew out the fletched end. Behind him, the flint point and a hand’s-width of shaft fell to the ground. ‘What-what do you want of me?’
‘You must not pass.’
‘What do you want?’
‘I want nothing, Tool. I want nothing.’ And he nocked another arrow.
‘Then kill me.’
‘We’re dead,’ Toc said. ‘That I cannot do. But I can stop you. Turn round, Onos Toolan. Go back.’
‘To what?’
Toc the Younger hesitated, as if uncertain for the first time in this brutal meeting. ‘We are guilty,’ he said slowly, ‘of so many pasts. Will we ever be made to answer for any of them? I wait, you see, for the fates to fit together. I wait for the poisonous beauty.’
‘You want me to forgive you-your kind, Toc the Younger?’
‘Once, in the city of Mott, I wandered into a market and found myself in front of row upon row of squall apes, the swamp dwellers. I looked into their eyes, Tool, and I saw their suffering, their longing, their terrible crime of living. And for all that, I knew that they were simply not intelligent enough. To refuse forgiveness. You Imass, you are. So. Do not forgive us. Never forgive us!’
‘Am I to be the weapon of your self-hatred?’
‘I wish I knew.’
In those four words, Tool heard his friend, a man trapped, struggling to recall himself.
Toc resumed. ‘After the Ritual, well, you chose the wrong enemy for your endless war of vengeance. It would have been more just, don’t you think, to proclaim a war against us humans. Perhaps, one day, Silverfox will come to realize that, and choose for her undead armies a new enemy.’ He then shrugged. ‘If I believed in justice, that is… if I imagined that she was capable of seeing clearly enough. That you and you alone, T’lan Imass, are in the position to take on the necessary act of retribution-for those squall apes, for all the so-called lesser creatures that have fallen and ever fall to our slick desires.’
He speaks the words of the dead. His heart is cold. His single eye sees and does not shy away. He is… tormented. ‘Is this what you expected,’ Tool asked, ‘when you died? What of Hood’s Gate?’
Teeth gleamed. ‘Locked.’
‘How can that be?’
The next arrow split his right knee-cap. Bellowing in agony, Tool collapsed. He writhed, fire tearing up his leg. Pain… in so many layers, folding round and round-the wound, the murder of a friendship, the death of love, history skirling up in a plume of ashes.
Horse hoofs slowly thumped closer.
Blinking tears from his eyes, Tool stared up at the ravaged, half-rotted face of his old friend.
‘Onos Toolan, I am the lock.’
The pain was overwhelming. He could not speak. Sweat stung his eyes, more bitter than any tears. My friend. The one thing left in me-it is slain. You have murdered it.
‘Go back,’ said Toc in a tone of immeasurable weariness.
‘I-I cannot walk-’
‘That will ease, once you turn around. Once you retrace your route, the farther you get away… from me.’
With blood-smeared hands, Tool prised loose the arrow jutting from his knee. He almost passed out in the wave of agony that followed, and lay gasping.
‘Find your children, Onos Toolan. Not of the blood. Of the spirit.’
There are none, you bastard. As you said, you and your kind killed them all. Weeping, he struggled to stand, twisting as he turned to face the way he had come. Rock-studded, rolling hills, a grey lowering sky. You’ve taken it all-
‘And we’re far from finished,’ said Toc behind him.
I now cast away love. I embrace hate.
Toc said nothing to that.
Dragging his maimed leg, Tool set out.
Toc the Younger, who had once been Anaster First Born of the Dead Seed, who had once been a Malazan soldier, one-eyed and a son to a vanished father, sat on his undead horse and watched the broken warrior limp to the distant range of hills.
When, at long last, Tool edged over a ridge and then disappeared behind it, Toc dropped his gaze. His lone eye roved over the matted stains of blood on the dead grasses, the glistening arrows, one broken, the other not, and those jutting from the half-frozen earth. Arrows fashioned by Tool’s own hands, so long ago on a distant plain.
He suddenly pitched forward, curling up like a gut-stabbed child. A moment later a wretched sob broke loose. His body trembled, bones creaking in dried sockets, as he wept, tearless, leaking nothing but the sounds pushing past his withered throat.
A voice broke through from a few paces away, ‘Compelling you to such things, Herald, leaves me no pleasure.’
Collecting himself with a groan, Toc the Younger straightened in the saddle and fixed his eye upon the ancient bonecaster standing now in the place where Tool had been. He bared dull, dry teeth. ‘Your hand was colder than Hood’s own, witch. Do you imagine Hood is pleased at you stealing his Herald? At your using him as you will? This will not go unanswered-’
‘I have no reason to fear Hood-’
‘But you have reason to fear me, Olar Ethil!’
‘And how will you find me, Dead Rider? I stand here, yet not here. No, in the living world I am huddled beneath furs, sleeping under bright stars-’
‘You have no need of sleep.’
She laughed. ‘Guarded well by a young warrior-one you knew well, yes? One you chase at night, there behind his eyes-and yes, when I saw the truth of that, why, he proved my path to you. And you spoke to me, begging for his life, which I accepted into my care. It has all led… to this.’
‘And here,’ Toc muttered, ‘I’d given up believing in evil. How many others do you plan to abuse?’
‘As many as I need, Herald.’
‘I will find you. When my other tasks are finally done, I swear, I will find you.’
‘To achieve what? Onos Toolan is severed from you. And, more importantly, from your kind.’ She paused, and then added with a half-snarl, ‘I don’t know what you meant by that rubbish you managed to force out, about Tool finding his children. I need him for other things.’
‘I was fighting free of you, bonecaster. He saw-he heard-’
‘And failed to understand. Onos Toolan hates you now-think on that, think on the deepness of his love, and know that for an Imass hatred runs deeper still. Ask the Jaghut! It is done, and can never be mended. Ride away from this, Herald. I now release you.’
‘I look forward,’ said Toc, gathering the reins, ‘to the next time we meet, Olar Ethil.’
Torrent’s eyes snapped open. Stars in blurred, jade-tinged smears spun overhead. He drew a deep but ragged breath, shivered beneath his furs.
Olar Ethil’s crackling voice cut through the darkness. ‘Did he catch you?’
He was in no hurry to reply to that. Not this time. He could still smell the dry, musty aura of death, could still hear the drumbeat of hoofs.
The witch continued, ‘Less than half the night is done. Sleep. I will keep him from you now.’
He sat up. ‘Why would you do that, Olar Ethil? Besides,’ he added, ‘my dreams belong to me, not you.’
Rasping laughter drifted across to him. ‘Do you see his lone eye? How it glitters in darkness like a star? Do you hear the howl of wolves echoing out from the empty pit of the one he lost? What do the beasts want with him? Perhaps he will tell you, when at last he rides you down.’
Torrent bit down one reply, chose another: ‘I escape. I always do.’
She grunted. ‘Good. He is filled with lies. He would use you, as the dead are wont to do to mortals.’
In the night Torrent bared his teeth. ‘Like you?’
‘Like me, yes. There is no reason to deny it. But listen well, I must leave your side for a time. Continue southward on your journey. I have awakened ancient springs-your horse will find them. I will return to you.’
‘What is it you want, Olar Ethil? I am nothing. My people are gone. I wander without purpose, caring not if I live or die. And I will not serve you-nothing you can say can compel me.’
‘Do you believe me a Tyrant? I am not. I am a bonecaster-do you know what that is?’
‘No. A witch.’
‘Yes, that will do, for a start. Tell me, do you know what a Soletaken is? A D’ivers?’
‘No.’
‘What do you know of Elder Gods?’
‘Nothing.’
He heard something like a snarl, and then she said, ‘How can your kind live, so steeped in ignorance? What is history to you, warrior of the Awl’dan? A host of lies to win you glory. Why do you so fear the truth of things? The darker moments of your past-you, your tribe, all of humanity? There were thousands of my people who did not join the Ritual of Tellann-what happened to them? Why, you did. No matter where they hid, you found them. Oh, on rare occasions there was breeding, a fell admixture of blood, but most of the time such meetings ended in slaughter. You saw in our faces the strange and the familiar-which of the two frightened you the most? When you cut us down, when you carved the meat from our bones?’
‘You speak nonsense,’ Torrent said. ‘You tell me you are Imass, as if I should know what that means. I do not. Nor do I care. Peoples die. They vanish from the world. It is as it was and ever will be.’
‘You are a fool. From my ancient blood ran every stream of Soletaken and D’ivers. And my blood, ah, it was but half Imass, perhaps even less. I am old beyond your imagining, warrior. Older than this world. I lived in darkness, I walked in purest light, I cast curses upon shadow. My hands were chipped stone, my eyes spawned the first fires to huddle round, my legs spread to the first mortal child. I am known by so many names even I have forgotten most of them.’
She rose, her squat frame dangling rotted furs, her hair lifting like an aura of madness to surround her withered face, and advanced to stand over him.
A sudden chill gripped Torrent. He could not move. He struggled to breathe.
She spoke. ‘Parts of me sleep, tormented by sickness. Others rail in the fury of summer storms. I am the drinker of birth waters. And blood. And the rain of weeping and the oil of ordeal. I did not lie, mortal, when I told you that the spirits you worship are my children. I am the bringer of a land’s bounty. I am the cruel thief of want, the sower of suffering.
‘So many names… Eran’ishal, Mother to the Eres’al-my first and most sentimental of choices.’ She seemed to flinch. ‘Rath Evain to the Forkrul Assail. Stone Bitch to the Jaghut. I have had a face in darkness, a son in shadow, a bastard in light. I have been named the Mother Beneath the Mountain, Ayala Alalle who tends the Gardens of the Moon, for ever awaiting her lover. I am Burn the Sleeping Goddess, in whose dreams life flowers unending, even as those dreams twist into nightmares. I am scattered to the very edge of the Abyss, possessor of more faces than any other Elder.’ She snapped out a withered, bony hand, the nails long and splintered, and slowly curled her fingers. ‘And he thinks to hunt me down!’ Her head tilted back to the sky. ‘Chain down your servants, Hood!’ She fixed him once more with her eyes. ‘Tell me, mortal! Did he catch you?’
Torrent stared up at her. An old hag crackling with venom and rage. Her dead breath reeked of serpents among the rocks. The onyx knuckles of her eyes glistened with the mockery of life. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘you were once all those things, Olar Ethil. But not any more. It’s all torn away from you, isn’t it? Scattered and lost, when you gave up life-when you chose to become this thing of bones-’
That hand lunged down, closed about his neck. He was lifted from the ground as if he weighed less than an orthen, flung away. Slamming hard down on one shoulder, breath whooshing from his lungs, half-blinded and unable to move.
She appeared above him, rotted teeth glittering like stumps of smoky quartz. ‘I am promised! The Stone Bitch shall awaken once more, in plague winds and devouring locusts, in wildfires and drowning dust and sand! And you will fall upon each other, rending flesh with teeth and nails! You will choose evil in fullest knowledge of what you do-I am coming, mortal, the earth awakened to judgement! And you shall kneel, pleading, begging-your kind, human, shall make pathos your epitaph, for I will give you nothing, yield not a single instant of mercy!’ She was gasping now, a pointless bellows of unwarmed breath. She trembled in terrible rage. ‘Did he speak to you?’
Torrent sat up. ‘No,’ he said through gritted teeth. He reached up to the swollen bruises on his throat.
‘Good.’ And Olar Ethil turned away. ‘Sleep, then. You will awaken alone. But do not think you are rid of me, do not think that.’ A pause, and then, ‘He is filled with lies. Beware him.’
Torrent hunched forward, staring at the dew-speckled ground between his crooked legs. He closed his eyes. I will do as you ask. When the time comes, I will do as you ask.
She awoke to the howling of wolves. Setoc slowly sat up, ran a hand through the tangles of her matted hair, and then drew her bedroll closer about her body. False dawn was ebbing, almost drowned out by the glare of the jade slashes. As the echoes of those howls faded, Setoc cocked her head-had something else stirred her awake? She could not be certain. The stillness of night embraced them-she glanced across to the motionless form of Cafal. She’d run him into exhaustion. Each night since they’d begun this journey he’d fallen into deep sleep as soon as their paltry evening meal was done.
As her eyes adjusted, she could make out his face. It had grown gaunt, aged by deprivation. She knew he’d not yet reached his thirtieth year of life, but he seemed decades older. He lay like a dead man, yet she sensed from him troubled dreams. He was desperate to return to his tribe.
‘Something terrible is about to happen.’ These words had ground out from him again and again, a litany of dread, a chant riding out his tortured breaths as he ran.
She caught a scent, a sudden mustiness in the cool, dry air. Visions of strange fecundity fluttered across her eyes, as if the present was peeling away, revealing this landscape in ancient times.
An oasis, a natural garden rich with colour and life. Iridescent birds sang among palm fronds. Monkeys scampered, mouths stained with succulent fruit. A tiny world, but a complete one, seemingly changeless, untouched by her kind.
When she saw the grey cloud drifting closer, inexplicable bleak despair struck her and she gasped aloud. She saw the dust settling like rain, a dull patina coating the leaves, the globes of fruit, the once-clear pool of water. And everything began to die.
In moments there was nothing but blackened rot, dripping down the boles of the palms. The monkeys, covered in oozing sores, their hair falling away, curled up and died. The birds sought to flee but ended up on the grey ground, flapping and twitching, then falling still.
The oasis dried up. The winds blew away what was left and sands closed about the spring until it too vanished.
Setoc wept.
What had done this? Some natural force? Did some mountain erupt to fill the sky with poison ash? Or was it a god’s bitter breath? Had some wretched city burned, spewing acidic alchemies into the air? Was this desecration an accident, or was it deliberate? She had no answer to such questions; she had only their cruel yield of grief.
Until a suspicion lifted from beneath her sorrow, grisly and ghastly. It… it was a weapon. But who wages war upon all living things? Upon the very earth itself? What could possibly be won? Was it just… stupidity? Setoc shook herself. She did not like such thoughts.
But this anger I feel, does it belong to the wolves? To the beasts on their forgotten thrones? No, not just them. It is the rage of every unintended victim. It is the fury of the innocents. The god whose face is not human, but life itself.
She is coming…
Setoc caught a host of vague shapes in the darkness now, circling, edging closer. Curious in the manner of all wolves, yet cautious. Old memories left scars upon their souls, and they knew what the presence of these two-legged intruders meant for them, for their kind.
They could smell her tears. Their child was in pain, and so the wolves spun their spiral ever tighter. Bringing their heat, the solid truth of their existence-and they would bare fangs to any and every threat. They would, if needed, die in her stead.
And she knew she deserved none of this.
How did you find me? After this long? I see you, grey-nosed mother-was I the last one to suckle from your teats? Did I drink in all your strength until you were left with aching bones, failing muscles? I see the clouds in your eyes, but they cannot hide your love-and it is that love that breaks my heart.
Still, she held out her hand.
Moments later she felt that broad head rise beneath it.
The warm, familiar smells of old assailed her, stinging her eyes. ‘You must not stay,’ she whispered. ‘Where I go… you will be hunted down. Killed. Listen to me. Find the last of the wild places-hide there for ever more. Be free, my sweet ones…’
She heard Cafal awaken, heard his muffled grunt of shock. Seven wolves crowded their small camp, shy as uninvited children.
Her mother moved up closer, fur sliding the length of Setoc’s arm. ‘You must go,’ she whispered to the beast. ‘Please.’
‘Setoc,’ said Cafal. ‘They bring magic.’
‘What?’
‘Can’t you feel the power-so harsh, so untamed-but I think, yes, I can use it. A warren, close enough the barrier feels thin as a leaf. Listen, if we run within it, I think-’
‘I know,’ she said in a croak, leaning her weight against the she-wolf, so solid, so real, so sure. ‘I know, Cafal, the gift they bring.’
‘Perhaps,’ he said in growing excitement as he tugged aside his blankets, ‘we can get there in time. We can save-’
‘Cafal, none of this is for you. Don’t you understand anything? It’s not for you!’
He met her glare unblinking-the dawn was finally paling the sky-and then nodded. ‘Where will they lead you, then? Do you know?’
She turned away from his despair. ‘Oh, Cafal, you really are a fool. Of course we’re returning to your tribe’s camp. No other path is possible, not any more.’
‘I-I don’t understand.’
‘I know. Never mind. It’s time to leave.’
Destriant Kalyth scanned the south horizon, the blasted, unrelieved emptiness revealed in the toneless light of the rising sun. ‘Where then,’ she muttered, ‘are my hands of fire?’ She turned to her two exhausted companions. ‘You understand, don’t you? I cannot do this alone. To lead your kind, I need my own kind. I need to look into eyes little different from my own. I need to see their aches come the dawn, the sleep still in their faces-spirits fend, I need to see them cough the night loose and then piss a steaming river!’
The K’Chain Che’Malle regarded her with their reptilian eyes, unblinking, unhuman.
Kalyth’s beseeching frustration trickled away, and she fixed her attention on Sag’Churok, wondering what he had seen-those fourteen undead Jaghut, the battle that, it was now clear, completely eradicated their pursuers. This time, anyway. Was there something different in the K’ell Hunter? Something that might be… unease?
‘You wanted a Destriant,’ she snapped. ‘If you thought that meant a doe-eyed rodara, it must finally be clear just how wrong you were. What I am given, I intend to use-do you understand?’ Still, for all the bravado, she wished she had the power to bind those Jaghut to her will. She wished they were with them right now. Still not human, but, well, closer. Yes, getting closer. She snorted and turned back to study the south.
‘No point in waiting round here, is there? We continue on.’
‘Destriant,’ Sag’Churok whispered in her mind, ‘we are running out of time. Our enemy draws ever closer-no, not hunting the three of us. They hunt the Rooted, our final refuge in this world.’
‘We’re all the last of our kind,’ she said, ‘and you must have realized by now, in this world and in every other, there is no such thing as refuge.’ The world finds you. The world hunts you down.
Time, once more, to ride Gunth Mach as if she were nothing more than a beast, Sag’Churok lumbering at their side, massive iron blades catching glares from the sun in blinding spasms. To watch small creatures start from the knotted grasses and bound away in panic. Plunging through clouds of midges driven apart by the prows of reptilian heads and broad heaving chests.
To feel the wind’s touch as if it was a stranger’s caress, startling in its unwelcome familiarity, reminding her again and again that she still lived, that she was part of the world’s meat, forever fighting the decay dogging its trail. None of it seemed real, as if she was simply waiting for reality to catch up to her. Each day delivered the same message, and each day she met it with the same bemused confusion and diffident wariness.
These K’Chain Che’Malle felt none of that, she believed. They did not think as she did. Everything was a taste, a smell-thoughts and feelings, the sun’s very light, all flowing in a swarm of currents. Existence was an ocean. One could skate upon the surface, clinging to the shallows, or one could plunge into the depths, until the skull creaked with the pressure. She knew they saw her and her kind as timid, frightened by the mystery of unplumbed depths. Creatures floundering in fears, terrified of drowning knee-deep in truths.
But your Matron wants you to slide into the shallows, to find my world of vulnerabilities-to find out what we do to defeat them. You seek new strategies for living, you seek our secret of success. But you don’t understand, do you? Our secret is annihilation. We annihilate everyone else until none are left, and then we annihilate each other. Until we too are gone.
Such a wondrous secret. Well, she would give it to them, if she could. Her grand lessons of survival, and only she would hear the clamouring howl of the ghosts storming her soul.
Riding Gunth Mach’s back, Kalyth’s hands itched. Destinies were drawing close. I will find my hands of fire, and we will use you, Sag’Churok. You and Gunth Mach and all your kind. We will show you the horrors of the modern world you so want to be a part of.
She thought of their dread enemy, the faceless killers of the K’Chain Che’Malle. She wondered at this genocidal war, and suspected it was, in its essence, no different from the war humans had been engaged in for all time. It is the same, but it is also different. It is… naïve.
With what was coming, with what she would bring… Kalyth felt a deep, sickening stab.
Of pity.
In an unbroken line from each mother to every daughter, memory survived, perpetuating a continuous history of experience. Gunth Mach held in her mind generations of lives trapped in a succession of settings that portrayed the inexorable collapse, the decay, the failure of their civilization. This was unbearable. Knowledge was an unceasing scream in her soul.
Every Matron was eventually driven insane: no daughter, upon ascension to the role, could long withstand the deluge. Male K’Chain Che’Malle had no comprehension of this; their lives were perfectly contained, the flavours of their selves truncated and unsubtle. Their unswerving loyalty was sustained in ignorance.
She had sought to break this pattern, with Sag’Churok, and in so doing was betraying the inviolate isolation of the Matrons. But she did not care. All that had gone before had not worked.
She remembered half a continent pounded level and then made smooth as a frozen lake, on which cities sprawled in a scale distorted even to K’Chain Che’Malle eyes, as if grandeur and madness were one and the same. Domes large enough to swallow islands, curling towers and spires like the spikes riding the backs of dhenrabi. Buildings with single rooms so huge that clouds formed beneath the ceiling, and birds dwelt there in their thousands, oblivious to the cage that held them. She remembered entire mountain ranges preserved as if they were works of art, at least until their value as quarries for sky keeps was realized, in the times of the civil wars-when those mountains were carved down to stumps. She remembered looking upon her kind in league-wide columns twenty leagues long as they set out to found new colonies. She stood, creaking beneath her own weight, and watched as fifty legions of Ve’Gath Soldiers-each one five thousand strong-marched to wage war against the Tartheno Tel Akai. And she was there when they returned, decimated, leaving a trail of their own dead that stretched across the entire continent.
She recalled the birth pains of the Nah’ruk, and then the searing agony of their betrayal. Burning cities and corpses three-deep on vast fields of battle. Chaos and terror within the nests, the shriek of desperate births. And the sly mockery of the waves on the shores as a dying Matron loosed her eggs into the surf in the mad hope that something new would be made-a hybrid of virtues with all the flaws discarded.
And so much more… fleeing through darkness and blinding smoke… the slash of an Assassin’s talons. Cold, sudden adjudication. Life draining away, the blessed relief that followed. Flavours awakening cruel and bitter in the daughter who followed-for nothing was lost, nothing was ever lost.
There was a goddess of the K’Chain Che’Malle. Immortal, omniscient as such things were supposed to be. The goddess was the Matron, mahybe of the eternal oil. Once, that oil had been of such strength and volume that hundreds of Matrons were needed as holy vessels.
Now there was but one.
She could remember the pride, the power of what had once been. And the futile wars waged to give proof to that pride and that power, until both had been utterly obliterated. Cities gone. The birth of wastelands across half the world.
Gunth Mach knew that Gu’Rull still lived. She knew, too, that the Shi’gal Assassin was her adjudicator. Beyond this quest, there waited the moment of inheritance, when Acyl finally surrendered to death. Was Gunth Mach a worthy successor? The Shi’gal would decide. Even the enemy upon the Rooted, slaughter unleashed in the corridors and chambers, would have no bearing upon matters. She would surge through the panicked crowds, seeking somewhere to hide, with three Assassins stalking her.
The will to live was the sweetest flavour of all.
She carried the Destriant on her back, a woman who weighed virtually nothing, and Gunth Mach could feel the tension in her small muscles, her frail frame of bones. Even an orthen bares its fangs in its last moments of life.
Failure in this quest was unacceptable, but in Gunth Mach’s mind, it was also inevitable.
She would be the last Matron, and with her death so too would die the goddess of the K’Chain Che’Malle. The oil would drain into the dust, and all memory would be lost.
It was just as well.
Spirits of stone, what happened here?
Sceptre Irkullas slowly dismounted, staring aghast at the half-buried battlefield. As if the ground had lifted up to swallow them all, Barghast and Akrynnai both. Crushed bodies, broken limbs, faces scoured away as if blasted by a sandstorm. Others looked bloated, skin split and cracked open, as if the poor soldiers had been cooked from within.
Crows and vultures scampered about in frustrated cacophony, picking clean what wasn’t buried, whilst Akrynnai warriors wandered the buried valley, tugging free the corpses of dead kin.
Irkullas knew his daughter’s body was here, somewhere. The thought clenched in his stomach like a sickly knot leaching poison, weakening his limbs, tightening the breath in his throat. He dreaded the notion of sleep at this day’s end, the stalking return of anguish and despair. He would lie chilled beneath furs, chest aching, rushes of nausea squirming through him, his every breath harsh and strained-close to the clutch of panic.
Something unexpected, something unknown, had come to this petty war. As if the spirits of the earth and rock were convulsing in rage and, perhaps, disgust. Demanding peace. Yes, this is what the spirits have told me, with this here-this… horror. They have had enough of our stupid bloodletting.
We must make peace with the Barghast.
He felt old, exhausted.
A day ago vengeance seemed bright and pure. Retribution was sharp as a freshly honed knife. Four major battles, four successive victories. The Barghast clans were scattered, fleeing. Indeed, only one remained, the southernmost, largest clan, the Senan. Ruled by the one named Onos Toolan. The Akrynnai had three armies converging upon the Warleader and his encampment.
We have wagons creaking beneath Barghast weapons and armour. Chests filled with foreign coins. Heaps of strange furs. Trinkets, jewellery, woven rugs, gourd bowls and clumsy pots of barely tempered clay. We have everything the Barghast possessed. Just the bodies that owned them have been removed. Barring a score of broken prisoners.
We are a travelling museum of a people about to become extinct.
And yet I will plead for peace.
Upon hearing this, his officers would frown behind his back, thinking him an old man with a broken heart, and they would be right to think that. They would accept his commands, but this would be the last time. Once they rode home Sceptre Irkullas would be seen-would be known to all-as a ‘ruler in his grey dusk’. A man with no light of the future in his eyes, a man awaiting death. But it comes to us all. Everything we fear comes to us all.
Gafalk, who had been among the advance party, rode up and reined in near the Sceptre’s own horse. The warrior dismounted and walked to stand in front of Irkullas. ‘Sceptre, we have examined the western ridge of the valley-or what’s left of it. Old Yara,’ he continued, speaking of the Barghast spokesperson among the prisoners, ‘says he once fought outside some place called One-Eye Cat. He says the craters remind him of something called Moranth munitions, but not when those munitions are dropped from the sky as was done by the Moranth. Instead, the craters look like those made when the munitions are used by the Malazans. Buried in the ground, arranged to ignite all at once. Thus lifting the ground itself. Some kind of grenado. He called them cussers-’
‘We know there is a Malazan army in Lether,’ Irkullas said, musing. Then he shook his head. ‘Give me a reason for their being here-joining in a battle not of their making? Killing both Akrynnai and Barghast-’
‘The Barghast were once enemies of these Malazans, Sceptre. So claims Yara.’
‘Yet, have our scouts seen signs of their forces? Do any trails lead from this place? No. Are the Malazans ghosts, Gafalk?’
The warrior spread his hands in helpless dismay. ‘Then what struck here, Sceptre?’
The rage of gods. ‘Sorcery.’
A sudden flicker in Gafalk’s eyes. ‘Letherii-’
‘Who might well be pleased to see the Akrynnai and Barghast destroy each other.’
‘It is said the Malazans left them few mages, Sceptre. And their new Ceda is an old man who is also the Chancellor-not one to lead an army-’
But Irkullas was already shaking his head at his own suggestions. ‘Even a Letherii Ceda cannot hide an entire army. You are right to be sceptical, Gafalk.’
A conversation doomed to circle round and devour its own tail. Irkullas stepped past the warrior and looked upon the obliterated valley once more. ‘Dig out as many of our warriors as you can. At dusk we cease all such efforts-leaving the rest to the earth. We shall drive back the night with the pyre of our dead. And I shall stand vigil.’
‘Yes, Sceptre.’
The warrior returned to his horse.
Vigil, yes, that will do. A night without sleep-he would let the bright flames drive back the sickness in his soul.
It would be best, he decided, if he did not survive to return home. An uncle or cousin could play the bear to his grandchildren-someone else, in any case. Better, indeed, if he was denied the chance of sleep until the very instant of his death.
One final battle-against the Senan camp? Kill them all, and then fall myself. Bleed out in the red mud. And once dead, I can make my peace… with their ghosts. Hardly worth continuing this damned war on the ash plains of death, this stupid thing.
Dear daughter, you will not wander alone for long. I swear it. I will find your ghost, and I will protect you for ever more. As penance for my failure, and as proof of my love.
He glared about, as if in the day’s fading light he might see her floating spirit, a wraith with a dirt-smeared face and disbelieving eyes. No, eyes with the patience of the eternally freed. Freed from all this. Freed… from everything. In a new place. Where no sickness grows inside, where the body does not clench and writhe, flinching at the siren calls of every twinge, every ache.
Spirits of stone, give me peace!
Maral Eb’s army had doubled in size, as survivors from shattered encampments staggered in from all directions-shame-faced at living when wives, husbands and children had died beneath the iron of the treacherous Akrynnai. Many arrived bearing no weapons, shorn of armour, proof that they had been routed, had fled in waves of wide-eyed cowardice. Cold waters were known to wash upon warriors in the midst of battle, even Barghast warriors, and the tug of currents could lift into a raging flood where all reason drowned, where escape was a need that overwhelmed duty and honour. Cold waters left the faces of the survivors grey and bloated, stinking of guilt.
But Maral Eb had been sobered enough by the news of the defeats to cast no righteous judgement upon these refugees with their skittish eyes. Clearly, he understood he would need every warrior he could muster, although Bakal knew as well as anyone how such warriors, once drowned beneath panic, were now broken inside-worse, in the instant when a battle tottered on the fulcrum’s point, their terror could return. They could doom the battle, as their panic flooded out and infected everyone else.
No word had come from the Senan. It seemed that, thus far at least, the Akrynnai had yet to descend upon Bakal’s own clan. Soon, Maral Eb would grasp hold of the Senan army and claim it for himself. And then he would lead them all against the deceitful Sceptre Irkullas.
A thousand curses rode the breaths of the mass of warriors. It was obvious now that the Akryn had been planning this war for some time, trickling in and out their so-called merchants as spies, working towards the perfect moment for betrayal. How else could the Sceptre assemble such forces so quickly? For every refugee insisted that the enemy numbered in the tens of thousands.
Bakal believed none of it. This was the war Onos Toolan did not want. The wrong war. Maral Eb walked flanked by his two brothers, and surrounding these three was a mob of strutting idiots, each one vying to find the perfect words to please their new Warleader and his two hood-eyed, murderous siblings. Arguments sending the arrow of blame winging away. Onos Toolan was no longer alive and so less useful as a target, although some murky residue remained, like handfuls of shit awaiting any rivals among the Senan. Now it was the Akrynnai-Irkullas and his lying, cheating, spying horsemongers.
By the time this army arrived at the Senan camp, they would be blazing with the righteous fury of innocent victims.
‘whatever he needs,’ Strahl had said at the noon break. ‘Falsehoods cease being false when enough people believe them, Bakal. Instead, they blaze like eternal truths, and woe to the fool who tries pissing a stream on that. They’ll tear you to pieces.’
Strahl’s words were sound, ringing clear and true upon the anvil, leaving Bakal’s disgust to chew him on the inside with no way out. That ache warred with the one in his barely mended elbow, making his stride stiff and awkward. But neither one could assail the shame and self-hatred that closed a fist round his soul. Murderer of Onos Toolan. So fierce the thrust that he broke his arm. Look upon him, friends, and see a true White Face Barghast! He had heard as much from Maral Eb’s cronies. While behind him trudged his fellow Senan warriors, nothing like the triumphant slayers of Onos Toolan they pretended to be. Silent, grim as shoulderwomen at a funeral. Because we share this crime. He made us kill him to save our own lives. He made us cowards. He made me a coward.
Bakal felt like an old man, and each time his gaze caught upon those three broad backs arrayed like bonepicker birds at the head of the trail, it was another white-hot stone tossed into the cauldron. Soon to boil, yes, raging until the blackened pot boiled dry. All that useless steam.
What will you do with my people, Maral Eb? When Irkullas shatters us again, where will we run to? He needed to think. He needed to find a way out of this. Could he and his warriors convince the rest of the clan to refuse Maral Eb? Refuse this suicidal war? Teeth grating, Bakal began to understand the burdens under which Onos Toolan had laboured. The impossibility of things.
The real war is against stupidity. How could I not have understood that? Oh,an easy answer to that question. I was among the stupidest of the lot. And yet, Onos Toolan, you stood before me and met my eyes-you gave me what I did not deserve.
And look at me now. When Maral Eb stands before me, I choke at the very sight of him. His flush of triumph, his smirk, the drunken eyes. I am ready to spew into his face-and if I had any food in my guts I would probably do just that, unable to help myself.
Onos Toolan, you should have killed us-every warrior you brought with you. Be done with the stupid ones, be done with us all-instead, you leave us with the perfect legacy of our idiocy. Maral Eb. Precisely the leader we deserve.
And for our misplaced faith, he will kill everyone.
Bakal bared his teeth until the wind dried them like sun-baked stones. He would do nothing. He would defy even Strahl and his companions here. There would be justice after all. An ocean of it to feed the thirsty ground. So long as he did nothing, said nothing.
Lead us, Maral Eb-you are become the standard of Tool’s truth. You are his warning to us, which we refused to heed. So, warrior of the Imass, you shall have your vengeance after all.
Strahl spoke at his side. ‘I have seen such smiles, friend, upon the warrior I am about to slay-the brave ones who face their deaths unflinching. I see… crazed contempt, as if they say to me: “Do what you must. You cannot reach me-my flesh, yes, my life, but not my soul. Drive home your blade, warrior! The final joke is on you!’ ” His laugh was a low snarl. ‘And so it is, because it is a joke I will not get until I am in their place, facing down my own death.’
‘Then,’ said Bakal, ‘you will have to wait.’ But not for long. And when the time comes I too will laugh at this perfect jest.
The place belonged to Stolmen, but it was his wife who walked at the head of the Gadra column. And it was to Sekara the Vile that the scouts reported during the long march to the Senan encampment-which was now less than half a league away.
Her husband’s face was set in a scowl as he trudged three paces behind her. The expression did not belong to offended fury, however. Confusion and fear were the sources of his anger, the befuddled misery of the unintelligent man. Things were moving too fast. Essential details were being kept from him. He did not understand and this made him frightened. He had right to be. Sekara was beginning to realize that his usefulness was coming to an end-oh, there were advantages to ruling through him, should that opportunity arise in the aftermath of the imminent power struggle, but better a husband who actually comprehended his titular function-assuming it was even necessary, since many a past warleader had been a woman. Although, truth be said, such women were invariably warriors, possessing the status of experienced campaigners.
Sekara had fought many battles, of course, in her own style. She had laid sieges, in tents and in yurts. She had drawn blood beneath the furs in the armour of night, had driven knives-figurative and literal-into the hearts of scores of lovers. She had unleashed precision ambushes with utter ruthlessness, and had stared down seemingly insurmountable odds. Her list of triumphs was well nigh unending. But few would countenance any of that. They held to out-of-fashion notions of prowess and glory, and for Sekara this had proved and would ever prove the greatest obstacle to her ascension.
No, for now, she would need a man to prop up in front of her. Not that anyone would be fooled, but so long as propriety was observed, they would abide.
There were challenges ahead. Stolmen was not ready to be the Warleader of the White Faces. Not while in the throes of a vicious war. No, at the moment, the greatest need was to ensure the survival of the Barghast, and that demanded a capable commander. Someone clever in the ways of tactics and whatnot. Someone swollen with ambition, eager to be quickly pushed to the fore, arriving breathless and flush-quickly, yes, so that he’d no opportunity to grow wary, to begin to recognize the flimsy supports beneath him, the clever traps awaiting his first misstep.
Sekara had long pondered prospective candidates. And she had to admit that she was not entirely satisfied with her final choice, but the bones were cast. Alone, in the chill night at that first secret meeting, in the wake of a tumultuous gathering of warchiefs, Maral Eb had seemed perfect. His contempt for Onos Toolan had filled him with hatred that she slyly fed until it became a kind of fevered madness. Nothing difficult there, and his willingness to bind himself to her conspiracy had struck her, at the time, as almost comical. Like a puppy eager to lick whatever she offered.
He had been alone. And perhaps, in that, she had been careless. She had not considered, for even an instant, Maral Eb’s two brothers.
Three were harder to manage than one. Almost impossible, in fact. If they were left to consolidate their domination once the war was over, Sekara knew that her chance would be for ever lost. She knew, indeed, that Maral Eb would see her murdered, to silence all that she knew.
Well, his brothers would just have to die. In battle, to a stray arrow-these things, she had been told, happened all the time. Or some bad food, improperly cured, to strike with swift fever and terrible convulsions, until the heart burst. A lover’s tryst gone awry, some enraged rival. Charges of rape, a trial of shaming and a sentence of castration. Oh, the possibilities were countless.
For the moment, of course, such delights would have to wait. The Akrynnai must be defeated first, or at least driven back-one more battle awaited them, and this time Sceptre Irkullas would be facing the combined might of the Senan, Barahn and Gadra clans.
Two Barahn scouts had found her three days past, carrying with them the stunning news of Onos Toolan’s murder. The Gadra had already been on the march. Sekara had made certain that her people-a small clan, isolated and perilously close to Akryn lands-had not awaited the descent of thousands of enraged Akrynnai horsewarriors. Instead, Stolmen had announced the breaking of camp and this fast-paced retreat to the safety of the Senan, almost as soon as news of the war reached them.
Since then, Gadra scouts had twice sighted distant riders observing them, but nothing more; and as Sekara learned from an alarmingly steady arrival of refugees from other clans, a half-dozen battles had left the Barghast reeling. The sudden coyness of the victorious Akrynnai was disturbing. Unless they too sought one final clash. One that they were content to let the Gadra lead them to at a steady dogtrot.
Stolmen complained that his warriors were weary, barely fit for battle. Their nerves were twisted into taut knots by constant vigilance and a sickening sense of vulnerability. They were a small clan, after all. It made no tactical sense for the Sceptre to let them reach the Senan. The Akrynnai horde should have washed over them by now.
Well, that was for Maral Eb to worry about. Sekara had just this morning sent her own agents ahead to the Senan. Onos Toolan was dead. But his wife was not, nor his children, bloodkin and otherwise. The time had come for Sekara to unleash her long-awaited vengeance.
The day’s light was fading. Though she had exhorted her people with relentless impatience, they would not reach the Senan any time before midnight.
And by then the blood spilled would be as cold as the ground beneath it.
Stavi made a face. ‘He has a secret name,’ she said. ‘An Imass name.’
Storii’s brow knitted as she looked down upon the drooling toddler playing in the dirt. She twisted round on the stone she was sitting on. ‘But we can’t get it, can we? I mean, he doesn’t know it, that name, how can he? He can’t talk.’
‘Not true! I heard him talk!’
‘He says “blallablallablalla” and that’s all he says. That doesn’t sound Imass to me.’
Stavi tugged at the knots in her hair, unmindful of the midges swarming round her head. ‘But I heard Father talking-’
Storii’s head snapped up, eyes accusing. ‘When? You snuck off to be with him-without me! I knew it!’
Stavi grinned. ‘You were squatting over a hole. Besides, he wasn’t talking to me. He was talking to himself. Praying, maybe-’
‘Father never prays.’
‘Who else would he be talking to, except some five-headed Imass god?’
‘Really, which head?’
‘What?’
‘Which head was he talking to?’
‘How should I know? The one listening. It had ears on stalks and they turned. And then it popped out one eye and swallowed it-’
Storii leapt to her feet. ‘So it could look out its hole!’
‘Only way gods know how to aim.’
Storii squealed with laughter.
The dirt-faced runt looked up from his playing, eyes wide, and then he smiled and said, ‘Blallablallablalla!’
‘That’s the god’s name!’
‘But which head?’ Stavi asked.
‘The one with poop in his ears, of course. Listen, if we can really find out his secret name, we can curse him for ever and ever.’
‘That’s what I was saying. What kind of curses?’ ‘Good ones. He can only walk on his hands. He starts every sentence with blallablallablalla. Even when he’s twenty years old! As old as that, and even older.’
‘That’s pretty old. That’s grey-haired old. Let’s think of more curses.’
Sitting oblivious on the ground, the son of Onos Toolan and Hetan made curling patterns in the soft dust with one finger. Four squiggles in one particular pattern, trying again and again to get it just right. It was getting dark. Shadows walked out from stones. The shadows were part of the pattern.
The Imass possessed no written language. Something far more ancient was buried deep within them. It was liquid. It was stain on skin. It was the magic of shadows cast by nothing-nothing real. It was the gift of discord, the deception of unnatural things slipped into a natural world. It was cause in search of effect. When the sun was gone from the sky, fire rose in its stead, and fire was the maker of shadows, revealer of secrets.
The child had a secret name, and it was written in elusive, impermanent games of light and dark, a thing that could flicker into and out of existence in the dancing of flames, or, as now, at the moment of the sun’s death, with the air itself crumbling to grainy dust.
Absi Kire, a name gifted by a father struck with unexpected hope, long after the death of hopeful youth. It was a name striving for faith, when faith had departed the man’s world. It whispered like a chill wind, rising up from the Cavern of the Worm. Absi Kire. Its breath was dry, plucking at eyes that had forgotten how to close. Born of love, it was a cry of desperation.
Patterns in the dirt, fast sinking into formless gloom.
Absi Kire.
Autumn Promise.
Storii held up a hand, cutting short a list of curses grown past breathless, and cocked her head. ‘Some news,’ she said.
Nodding, Stavi reached down and snatched up the boy. He struggled, tilting his head back until it pressed hard against her chest. She blew down, stirring the hair atop his slightly elongated head, and he instantly settled.
‘Excited voices.’
‘Not happy excited.’
‘No,’ Stavi agreed, turning to look in the direction of the camp-just beyond a sweep of tilted rock outcroppings. The glow of fires was rising beneath a layer of woodsmoke.
‘We should get back.’
Hetan cursed under her breath. The girls had kidnapped their half-brother yet again, and no one had seen their escape. When they were out of her sight, the vast pit of her solitude opened its maw beneath her, and she could feel herself tumbling and spinning as she fell… and fell. So much darkness, so little hope that the plunge would end in a merciful snap of bones, the sudden bliss of oblivion.
Without her children, she was nothing. Sitting motionless, wandering inside her skull, dull-eyed and weaving like a hoof-kicked dog. Nose sniffing, claws scratching, but there was no way out. Without her children, the future vanished, a moth plunging into the fire. She blinked motes from her eyes, hands drawn together and thumbnails picking at the scabs and oozing slices left behind by the last assault on the ends of her fingers, the tender skin round the nails.
Frozen in place, sunken, in endless retreat.
Another bowl of rustleaf? Durhang? A resin bud of d’bayang? D’ras beer? Too much effort, every one of them. If she sat perfectly still, time would vanish.
Until the girls brought him back. Until she saw the twins pretending to smile but skittish and worried behind their eyes. And he would squirm in a girl’s arms, reaching for Hetan, who would see those strangely large, wide hands with their stubby fingers, clutching, straining, and a howl would rise within her, lifting out of that black maw, blazing like a skystone returning to the sky.
She would take him into a suffocating embrace, desperate sparks igniting within her, forcing her into animation.
Strings on the ends of those pudgy fingers, plucking her to life.
And she howled and she howled.
Heavy footsteps rushed past the entrance to the tent. Voices, a few shouts. A runner had entered the camp. The word was delivered, and the word was dead.
How could imagination hope to achieve the wonders of reality? The broken, deathly landscape stretched out on all sides, but the vista was shrinking as the day’s light faded. Yet more than darkness embraced the transformation. Domes of cracked bedrock appeared, skinned in lichen and moss. Shin-high trees with thick, twisted boles, branches fluttering with the last of the autumn leaves, like blackened layers of peeled skin. Bitter arctic wind rushing down from the northwest to herald winter’s eager arrival.
Cafal and Setoc ran through this new world. The frigid air bit in their lungs, yet it was richer and sweeter than anything they had breathed in their own realm, their own time.
How to describe the noise of a hundred thousand wolves running across the land? It filled Cafal’s skull with the immensity of an ocean. Padded footfalls delivered a pitch and rhythm unlike that of spaded hoofs. The brush of fur as shoulders rubbed was a seething whisper. The heat rising from bodies was thick as mist, the animal smell overwhelming-the smell of a world without cities, forges, charcoal burners, without battlefields, trenches filled with waste, without human sweat and perfumes, the smoke of rustleaf and durhang, the dust of frantic destruction.
Wolves. Before humans waged war upon them, before the millennia-long campaign of slaughter. Before the lands emptied.
He could almost see them. Every sense but sight was alive with the creatures. And he and Setoc were carried along on the ghostly tide.
All that was gone had returned. All this history, seeking a home.
They would not find it among his people. He did not understand why Setoc was leading them to the Barghast. He could hear her singing, but the words she used belonged to some other language. The tone was strangely fraught, as if warring forces were bound together. Curiosity and wariness, congress and terror-he could almost see the glint of bestial eyes as they watched the first band of humans from a distance. Did these two-legged strangers promise friendship? Cooperation? A recognition of brother-and sisterhood? Yes, to all of that. But this was no family at peace; this was a thing writhing with deceit, betrayal, black malice and cruelty.
The wolves were innocents. They stood no chance.
Flee the Barghast. Please, I beg you-
But his pleading rang hollow even to Cafal. He needed them-he needed this swift passage. Night had fallen. A wind was rising to tear at the torches and hearth-fires in the Senan camp. Rain spat with stinging fury and lightning ignited the horizon.
Eyes gleamed, iron licked the darkness-
The gods were showing him was what coming.
And he would not get there in time. Because, as has ever been known, the Barghast gods were bastards.
Heart thudding with anticipation, Sathand Gril slipped out from the light of the wind-whipped fires. He had watched the children and their furtive flight into the shattered hills northeast of the camp when the sun was still a hand’s breadth above the horizon. This had been his singular responsibility for weeks now-spying on the horrid little creatures-all leading to this moment, this reward.
He had killed the boy’s dog and now he would kill the boy. Plunging his knife into his belly with a hand over his mouth to stifle the shrieks. A large rock to crush the skull and destroy the face, because no one welcomed the face of a dead child, especially one frozen in twisted pain. He had no desire to look upon the half-lidded eyes that saw nothing, that had gone flat with the soul’s absence. No, he would destroy the thing utterly, and then fling it into a defile.
The twins were destined for something far more elaborate. He’d break their legs. Then tie their hands. He’d blood them both, but not cruelly, for Sathand was not one of those who hungered to rape, not women, not children. But he would give them his seed to carry to the gods.
This night of murder, it was for the Barghast. The righting of wrongs. The end of the usurper’s line and the eradication of Hetan’s shame. Onos Toolan was not of the clans of the White Face. He was not even Barghast.
No matter. Word had come. Onos Toolan was dead-murdered by Bakal, who had broken his own arm with the force of the knife-thrust he had driven into the Warleader’s heart. A power struggle was coming-Sathand Gril well knew that Sekara had decided on the Barahn warchief, Maral Eb. But to Sathand’s eyes-and to those of many others among the Senan-Bakal could make a surer claim, and that was one Sathand would back. More blood to be spilled before things settled out. Most were agreed on that.
Sekara the Vile. Her idiot husband, Stolmen. Maral Eb and his vicious brothers. The new Warleader would be Senan-no other clan was as powerful, after all, not even the Barahn.
It would have to be quick-all of it. The cursed Akrynnai army was on its way.
Sathand Gril padded through the darkness-the brats should be on their way back by now. Even they weren’t stupid enough to stay out once the sun set, what with both half-starved wolves and Akrynnai marauders on the hunt. So… where were they?
From the camp behind him, someone shrieked.
It had begun.
Three women entered the tent, and Hetan knew them all. She watched them advance on her, and suddenly everything became perfectly clear, perfectly understandable. Mysteries flitting away like veils of smoke on the wind. Now I join you, husband. She reached for her knife and found only the sheath at her hip-her eyes snapped to the flat-stone on which sat the remnants of her last meal, and there waited the knife-and Hetan lunged for the weapon.
She did not reach it in time. A knee slammed into her jaw, whipped her head round, blood spinning in threads. Hands snagged her wrists, dragged her round and pushed her to the ground.
Fists pummelled her face. Flares of light exploded behind her eyes. Stunned, suddenly too weak to struggle, she felt herself rolled on to her stomach. Rawhide bound her arms behind her. Fingers snarled a fist’s worth of hair and lifted her head up.
Balamit’s foul breath whispered across her cheek. ‘No easy way for you, whore. No, it’s hobbling for Hetan-and what’s so different about that? You’d rut with a dog if it knew how to kiss! May you live a hundred years!’
She was thrown on to her back, and then lifted up from behind, Jayviss’s nails digging deep into Hetan’s armpits.
Hega, burly, miserable Hega, swung the hatchet down.
Hetan shrieked as the front half of her right foot was chopped off. The leg jumped, spraying blood. She tried to pull the other one away, but a crack of the hatchet’s iron ball against her kneecap numbed the leg. The hatchet swung down again.
The pain rushed in a black flood. Balamit giggled.
Hetan passed out.
Krin, whose niece had married a Gadra warrior and was swollen with child, watched as Sekara’s bitch dogs dragged Hetan out from the tent. The whore was unconscious. Her stumped feet trailed wet streaks that seemed to flare as lightning flashed in the night.
They brought her to the nearest hearth-fire. Little Yedin was tending to the flat blade and it was pale hot when she lifted it from the coals. Meat sizzled and popped as the blade was pushed against Hetan’s left foot. The woman’s body jerked, her eyes starting open in shock. A second shriek shattered the air.
Nine-year-old Yedin stared, and then at an impatient snap from one of the bitches, she flipped the blade and seared Hetan’s other foot.
Krin hurried forward, scowling at the way Hetan’s eyes had rolled up, head lolling. ‘Wake her up, Hega. I’m first.’
His sister grinned, still holding the bloodied hatchet. ‘Your son?’
Krin looked away, disgusted. He was barely half her age. Then he jerked a nod. ‘Tonight’s the night for it,’ he said.
‘Widow’s gift!’ Hega cried in glee.
Jayviss brought over a gourd of water and threw its contents into Hetan’s bruised face.
She sputtered, coughed.
Krin advanced on her, mindful and delighted at how many people had gathered, and at how other men were arguing their place. ‘Keep her hands tied,’ he said. ‘For the first dozen or so. After that, there won’t be any need.’
It was true-no Barghast woman resisted by that point. And in a few days, she’d drop to her hands and knees at a glance, backside upthrust and ready.
‘Might be two dozen,’ someone in the crowd observed. ‘Hetan was a warrior, after all.’
Hega stepped up and kicked Hetan in the ribs. Spittle flew from the widow’s lips as she snarled and said, ‘What’s a warrior without a weapon? Bah, she’ll be licking her lips after five or so, you’ll see!’
Krin said nothing; nor did anyone else. The warriors knew their own, after all. Hega was an idiot, to think Hetan would break so easily. I remember you, Hega. My sister, too fat to fight. And who was the one licking her lips five times a day? Oh, we see where your hate lives-gods, I am giving my son to this thing? Well, just for one night. And I’ll give him my own knife, with leave to use it. No one will miss you, Hega. And no one will call out my boy, either.
The wind was howling-a storm had found them on this fateful night-he could hear rain in the distance. Guy ropes quivered and hummed. Hide walls thumped and rippled-Barghast warriors were pouring into the encampment as if the wild drumming had summoned them, and Krin caught word that Maral Eb had arrived, along with the Senan warriors Tool had taken with him. Bakal among them. Slayer, liberator of all the Barghast. Who would forget this night?
Who would forget, too, that it was Krin, firstborn son of Humbrall Taur’s own uncle, who was the first to fuck Hetan?
The thought hardened him. He stood above her, waiting until her wild eyes slanted across his own, and when that fevered gaze stuttered and then returned to lock with his, Krin smiled. He saw the shock, and then the hurt that was betrayal, and he nodded. ‘Allies, Hetan? You lost them all. When you proclaimed him as your husband. When you championed your father’s madness.’
Hega pushed back in. ‘Where are your children, Hetan? Shall I tell you? Dead and cold in the darkness-’
Krin backhanded her across the face. ‘Your time with her is over, widow! Go! Run and hide in your hut!’
Hega wiped blood from her lips, and then, eyes flashing, she wheeled, shouting, ‘Bavalt son of Krin! Tonight you are mine!’
Krin almost sent a knife her way as she pushed through the crowd. A knife, son, long before she wraps round you, long before you sink into that spider’s hole.
As the significance of Hega’s words worked through, there was laughter, and Krin was stung by the contempt he heard all round him. He looked down at Hetan-she was still staring up at him, eyes unwavering.
Shame flooded through him, stealing his hardness fast as a mother’s kiss.
‘Don’t think you can watch,’ he said in a growl, crouching to pull her on to her stomach. As he tugged down her leathers, excitement returned-awakened by anger as much as anything else. Oh, and triumph, for many men among the Senan had looked upon her with lust and desire, and they were even now arguing their turn with her. But I am the first. I will make you forget Onos Toolan. I will remind you of the manhood of the Barghast. He knelt, pushing with his knees to splay wide her legs. ‘Lift up to me, whore. Show them all how you accept your fate.’
Pain was a distant roar. Something cold and sharp now filled her skull, fixed like spears to her eyes, and every face she had looked upon since awakening once more had pierced her like lightning, arcing in from her eyes, igniting her brain. Faces-those expressions and all that they revealed-they were burned upon her soul now.
She had played with Hega’s younger sister-they had been so close-but that woman was somewhere in the crowd now, flat-eyed, walled-off. Jayviss had spun a fine horse blanket as a wedding gift, and Hetan remembered her bright, proud smile when Hetan singled her out in giving public thanks. Balamit, daughter of a shoulderwoman, had been her keeper on the Night of First Blood, when Hetan was barely twelve years old. She’d sat awake, holding her hand, until sleep finally took the child now a woman.
Yedin often played with the twins-
Husband, I have betrayed you! In my misery, in my pathetic self-pity-I knew, I knew this was coming, how could it not? My children-I have abandoned them.
They killed them, husband. They killed our children!
‘Lift up to meet me, whore.’
Krin, I used to laugh at your hunger for me, sick as it was. Does my father’s ghost wait for you, Krin? Does he witness this, and what you demand of me?
Does he understand my shame?
Krin now punishes me. He is only the first, but no matter how many there are, the punishment will never be enough.
Now… now I understand the mind of a hobbled woman. I understand.
And she lifted up to meet him.
The wretches saw him before he saw them, and they saw, too, the heavy knife in his hand.
None would deny that the twins were clever, nasty creatures, in the manner of newborn snakes, and so when they spun round and fled, Sathand Gril was not surprised. But one of them was burdened with a child, and that child was now screaming.
Oh, they might silence him in the only way possible-a suffocating hand over his mouth and nose, thus sparing Sathand the blood on his own hands-and he waited for that as he plunged in pursuit, but the shrieks went on.
He could run them down, and so he would, eventually. He was sure they knew that they were already dead. Well, if they would make it a game, he would play. One last gesture of childhood, before he took childhood away. Would they squeal when he caught them? An interesting question. If not immediately, then later, yes, later they would squeal indeed.
Scrabbling sounds ahead, at the slumped end of a rock-walled defile, and Sathand lumbered forward-yes, there was one of them, with that boy in her arms, trying to climb up the scree-
The boulder very nearly killed him, dropping down to hammer into his shoulder. He howled in pain, stumbled-caught the flash of the other twin up on the edge of the wall to his left. ‘You rotted piece of dung!’ he snarled. ‘You will pay for that!’
No longer a game. He would give them hurt for hurt, and then more. He would make them regret such stupid attempts.
Ahead, the girl with the boy had given up trying to climb the fan of sand and gravel, and had instead dropped down and to the right, vanishing into a crevasse. A moment later the other girl darted in after her sister.
The whole thing had been an act. A trap. So clever, weren’t they?
Mind blackening with fury, he bolted after them.
Setoc was tugging at his arms. ‘Cafal! Get up!’
It was too late. He was seeing all there was to see. Cursed by his own gods. Could he close hands about their necks, one by one, and choke the life from them, he vowed he would.
His beloved sister-he had screamed as the hatchet chopped down. He had fallen to his knees when Krin stepped up to her, and now he sought to claw out his own eyes-although the visions behind them proved indifferent to the damage done to them. Blood ran with tears-he would dig and dig until never again would he look upon the world-but it seemed that blindness would for ever elude him.
He watched Krin rape his bloodkin. He heard the exhortations from the hundreds of warriors gathered round. He saw Bakal, gaunt and his eyes luminous, stumble into view, saw the man’s horror as all the blood left his face, saw as the great slayer of Onos Toolan twisted round and fled, as if the Warleader’s ghostly hand was reaching for him. But it was just the rape of a hobbled woman-not even considered rape, in fact. Just… using.
And Sathand Gril, whom he had hunted beside in years past, was now hunting Stavi and Storii, and Absi who flailed in Stavi’s arms as if in full awareness that this new world he had found was crumbling around him, that death was coming to take him before he could as much as taste it. And the boy was outraged, indignant, defiant. Confused. Terrified.
Too much. No heart could withstand such visions.
Setoc tugged at his arms, fought to keep his hands from his face. ‘We must keep going! The wolves-’
‘Hood take the wolves!’
‘But he won’t, you fool! He won’t-but someone will! We must hurry, Cafal-’
His hand lashed out, caught her flush on the side of her head. The way her neck twisted round as she fell horrified him. Crying out, he crawled to her.
The wolves were ghosts no longer. Blood clouded his eyes, dripped down in a mockery of tears. ‘Setoc!’ She was still a child, still so young, so thin-
The wolves howled, a chorus that deafened him, that drove him face-first into the frozen dirt. Gods, my head! Stop! Stop, I beg you! If he screamed, he could not hear it. The beasts surged on all sides, closing in and in-they wanted him.
They wanted his blood.
From somewhere sounded a hunter’s horn.
Cafal leapt to his feet and ran. Ran from the world.
When her sister passed the wailing boy over, Stavi clutched him to her chest. Storii moved past her as they emerged from the fissure, grasping handfuls of tawny grasses to pull her way up the slope. This range of broken hills was narrow, an island of scoured limestone, and beyond it the land levelled out, flat, with nowhere to hide. She struggled up the tattered slope, gasping, the boy beating at her face with his tiny fists.
They were going to die. She knew that now. Their life in all its loose joy, its perfect security, was suddenly gone. She longed for yesterday, she longed for the solid presence that was her adopted father. Once more the sight of his face, a face wide and weathered, with every feature exaggerated, oversized, his soft eyes that had only ever looked upon his children with love-against the twins, it had seemed anger was impossible. Even disapproval wavered in a heartbeat. They had worked him like river clay, but they had known that beneath that clay there was a thing of iron, a thing of great power. He was a truth, resolute, unbreakable. They worked him because they knew that truth.
Where was he now? What had happened to their mother? Why was Sathand Gril hunting them? Why was he going to kill them?
Storii ran ahead, darting like a hare seeking cover, but there was none to be found. Ghoulish light painted the plain as the Slashes etched the night. A cruel wind cut into their faces, and the mass of storm clouds blotted out the north sky. The sight of her sister’s panic was like a knife in Stavi’s chest-the world was as broken as the hills behind them, as broken as the vicious look in Sathand’s eyes. She could have dropped that rock on his skull-she should have-but the thought of hurting him that much had horrified her. A part of her had wanted to believe that if she could manage to break his shoulder, he would give up, he would return to the camp. She knew now, bleak with despair, that such faith-that all of this could be so easily righted-was ridiculous. Her error in judgement was going to see them all killed.
Hearing Sathand climb out of the fissure, Stavi cried out, running as fast as her legs could carry her. All at once the boy she held went quiet, and his arms wrapped tight round her neck, hands clutching her hair.
He understood as well. Motionless as a doe in the grasses not ten paces from a hunting cat, his eyes wide, his breath panting and hot against the side of her neck.
Tears streamed down her cheeks-he clutched her in the belief that she could protect him, that she could defend his life. But she knew she couldn’t. She wasn’t old enough. She wasn’t fierce enough.
She saw Storii look back over a shoulder, saw her falter-
Sathand’s heavy footfalls were closing fast.
‘Go!’ Stavi shrieked at her sister. ‘Just go!’
Instead, Storii bent down, scooped up a rock, and then sprinted back towards them.
Fierce sister, brave sister. You fool.
They would die together then.
Stavi stumbled, fell to her knees, skinning them on the grasses. The burning pain loosed more tears, and everything blurred. The boy kicked himself free-now he would run, fast as his short legs could take him-
Instead, he stood and faced the charging warrior. The man was not a stranger, was he? No, he was kin. And in the shadow of a kinsman there was safety.
Stavi whispered, ‘Not this time.’
Sathand readied the knife in his hand, slowing now that the chase had come to an end-nowhere for them to go, was there?
His shoulder throbbed, and sharp bolts of pain shot out from his collar bone-he couldn’t even lift that arm-she’d broken it.
But the warrior’s rage was fading. They did not choose their parents-who does? They’re just… unlucky. But that is the way of the world. Spawn of rulers inherit more than power-they inherit what happens when that power collapses. When a night of blood is unleashed, and ambition floods black as locust ink.
He saw the stone gripped by one of the girls and nodded, pleased with her defiance. Only half her blood was Barghast, but it had awakened for this. He would have to take her down first.
‘What has happened?’ asked the girl standing beside the boy. ‘Sathand?’
He bared his teeth. The right words now could take the fight out of them. ‘You are orphans,’ he said. ‘Your par-’
The stone was a blur, catching him a glancing blow above his left eye. He cursed in pain and surprise, and then shook his head. Blood ran down into the eye, blinding it. ‘Spirits haunt you!’ He laughed. ‘I’ve taken fewer wounds in battle! But… one eye is enough. One working arm, too.’ Sathand edged forward.
The boy’s eyes were wide, uncomprehending. He suddenly smiled and held out his arms.
Sathand faltered. Yes, I’ve taken you up and swung you in the air. I’ve tickled you until you shrieked. But that is done now. He lifted the knife.
The twins stared, unmoving. Would they protect the boy? He suspected they would. With teeth and nails, they would.
We are as we are. ‘I am proud of you,’ he said. ‘Proud of you all. But this must be.’
The boy cried out as if in joy.
Something slammed into his back. He staggered. The knife fell from his hand. Sathand frowned down at it. Why would he drop his weapon? Why was his strength draining away? On his knees, his lone eye finding the boy’s, level at last. No, he’s not looking at me. He’s looking past me. Confusion, a roar of something rushing deep in his skull. The warrior twisted round.
The second arrow took him in the forehead, dead centre, punching through the bone and ploughing into the brain.
He never saw where it came from.
Stavi sank down on watery legs. Her sister ran to their brother and snatched him up. He yelped in delight.
In the greenish gloom, she could see the silhouette of a warrior astride a horse, sixty or more paces away. Something in that seemed unreal, and she struggled to track it down, and then gasped. That arrow. Sathand was turning round-in motion-and yet… sixty paces away! In this wind! Her gaze fell to Sathand’s corpse. She squinted at that arrow. I’ve seen the like before. I’ve-Stavi moaned and crawled forward until she could close a hand about the arrow’s shaft. ‘Father made this.’
The rider was closing at a loose canter.
Behind Stavi, her sister said, ‘That’s not Father.’
‘No-but look at the arrows!’
Storii set the boy down once more. ‘I see them. I see them, Stavi.’
As the warrior drew closer, they could see that something was wrong with him-and with his horse. The beast was too gaunt, its hide worn away in patches, its long, stained teeth gleaming, the holes of its eyes lightless, lifeless.
The rider was no better. But he held a horn bow, and within a saddle quiver a dozen or so of Onos Toolan’s arrows were visible. A cowl was draped over the warrior’s head, hiding what was left of his face and seemingly impervious to the gale. He let his horse slow to a walk, and then halted it ten paces away with a twitch of the reins.
He seemed to study them, and Stavi caught an instant’s blurred spark of a single eye. ‘The boy, yes,’ he said in Daru-but it was Daru with a Malazan accent. ‘But not you two.’
A chill crept over Stavi, and she felt her twin’s hand slip into hers.
‘That,’ he said after a moment, ‘perhaps came out wrong. What I meant was, I see him in the boy, but not in you two.’
‘You knew him,’ Storii accused. She pointed at the quiver. ‘He made those! You stole them!’
‘He made them, yes, as a gift to me. But that was long ago. Before you were born.’
‘Toc the Younger,’ whispered Stavi.
‘He spoke of me?’
That this warrior was undead did not matter. Both girls rushed forward, one to either side, to hug his withered thighs. At their touch, he might have flinched, but then he reached out with his hands. Hesitated, only to settle them on the heads of the girls.
As they wept in relief.
The son of Onos Toolan had not moved, but he watched, and he was still smiling.
Setoc’s eyes fluttered open. The instant she moved her head, blinding agony lanced through her skull. She groaned. The night was luminous, the familiar green tinge of her own world. She could feel the wolves, no longer as solid beasts surrounding her, but as ghosts once more. Ephemeral, hovering, pensive.
A cold wind was blowing, lightning flashing to the north. Shivering, nauseated, Setoc forced herself on to her knees. The dark plain spun round her. She tried to recall what had happened. Had she fallen?
‘Cafal?’
As if in answer thunder rumbled.
Blinking, she sat back on her haunches, looked round through bleared eyes. She found herself in the centre of a ring of half-buried boulders, the jade glow from the south adding a green hint to their silvery sheen. Whatever patterns had been carved upon them had long since weathered away to the barest of indentations. But there was power here. Old. As old as anything on this plain. Whispering sorrow to the empty land as the wind curled between the bleached humps.
The wolf ghosts slowly circled, as if drawn inward to this ring of stones and its mournful dirge.
There was no sign of Cafal. Had he been lost in the realm of the Beast Hold? If so, then he was lost for ever, falling back and back through the centuries, into times so ancient not a single human walked the world, where no blood-line was drawn to divide the hunter from the hunted-animals all. He would fall victim eventually, prey to some sharp-eyed predator. His death would be a lonely one, so lonely she suspected he would welcome it.
Even the will of the wolves in their hundreds of thousands could barely brush the immensity of the lost Hold’s power.
She huddled against the cold and the ache in her head.
The rain arrived with the rage of hornets.
Whipped by the wind and lashed by the rain, Cafal reached the edge of the encampment. Hearth-fires flared and dipped beneath the deluge, but even in the fitful light he could see huddled crowds and the smaller makeshift camps of the Barahn clustered round the edges. Figures hurried between the rows, hunched against the weather. He could see pickets here and there, haphazardly arranged with some of the posts abandoned.
When lightning lit the scene it seemed to seethe before his eyes.
Somewhere in there was his sister. Being used again and again. Warriors he had known all his life were pushing bloody paths into her, eager to join in the breaking of this once proud, beautiful and powerful woman. Cafal and Tool had spoken often of outlawing the tradition of hobbling, but too many resisted the casting away of traditions, even those as vicious as this one.
He could not change what had happened, all the damage already done, but he could steal her away, he could save her the months, even years, of horror that awaited her.
Cafal crouched, studying the Barghast camp.
Swathed in furs, Balamit made her way back to her yurt. Such a night! Too many years bowing to that bitch, too many years stepping from her path, eyes downcast as was demanded by Hetan’s position as wife to the Warleader. Well, the whore was paying the soul’s coin for that now, wasn’t she?
Balamit ran through her mind once more the fateful moment when Hega’s hatchet descended. The way Hetan’s whole body contorted in pain and shock, the deafening shriek cutting like a knife in the air. Some people lived as if privilege was something they were born to, as if everyone else was a lesser being, as if their domination was a natural truth. Well, there were other truths in nature, weren’t there? The gathering of the pack could bring down the fiercest wolf.
Balamit grinned as the rain spat icy against her face. Not just a pack, but a thousand of her kind! The pushed-down, the murky shapes that made up the common crowd, the ignored subjects of contempt. No, this was a worldly lesson, was it not? And, sweetest truth of all, we are far from finished.
Maral Eb was a fool, just another one of those superior bastards who thought their damned farts could buy a crown. Bakal was a much better choice-a Senan for one, and the Barahn were no match for her tribe-to think they could just step into the stirrup, when they’d not even had a hand in killing Onos Toolan, why, it was-
A huge shape stepped out from between two tarp-covered dung-piles, bulled into her hard enough to make her stagger. The figure reached out to right her even as she hissed a curse, and then the hand clutched tighter and snatched her close. A knife-blade sank between her ribs, the point slicing her heart in half.
Blinking in the sudden darkness, Balamit’s legs gave out beneath her, and she fell to the mud.
Her killer left her there without a backward glance.
Jayviss finally rose from her place close to the fire, as the flames had at last guttered out beneath the rain. Her bones ached terribly when the weather turned cold, and the injustice of that galled her. She was barely into her fifth decade, after all-but now that she was among the powerful, she could demand a ritual of healing to scour clean the rot in her joints, and she would have to pay nothing, nothing at all.
Sekara had promised. And Sekara knew the importance of favouring her allies.
Life would be good once again, as it had been in her youth. She could take as many men as she wanted. She could take for herself the finest furs to stay warm at night. She might even buy a D’ras slave or two, to work oils into her skin and make her supple once more. She’d heard they could take away stretch marks and make sagging breasts taut. They could smooth the wrinkles from her face, even the deep bird-track between her brows, where had gathered a lifetime of injustice and anger.
Seeing the last of the coals blacken at her feet, she turned away.
Two warriors stood before her. Barahn-one of them Kashat, Maral Eb’s brother. The other warrior she did not recognize.
‘What do you want?’ Jayviss demanded in sudden fear.
‘Just this,’ Kashat said, and he lashed out.
She caught the gleam of an etched blade. A sting against her throat, and suddenly heat poured down the front of her chest.
The ache in her bones vanished, and after a time the knot in her brow slowly relaxed, making her face, as the rain kissed it, almost young again.
Little Yedin crouched beside the body of Hega, staring at the pool of blood that still steamed even as raindrops pounded its surface. The nightmare would not end, and she could still feel the heat of the iron paddle she’d used to cauterize Hetan’s feet. It pulsed like fever up her arms, but could not reach the sickly chill wrapped about her heart.
So terrible a thing, and Hega had made her do it, because Hega had a way of making people do things, especially young people. She’d show them the dangerous thing in her eyes and nothing more would be needed. But Hetan had never been mean, had never been anything but nice, gentle, always ready with a wink. And Stavi and Storii, too. Always making Yedin laugh, the acts they put on, all their crazy ideas and plans.
The world ahead was suddenly dark, unknowable. And look here, someone had gone and killed Hega. The dangerous thing in her eyes hadn’t been enough, but then, what was?
What those men did to Hetan-
A hand grabbed the back of her collar and she was lifted from the ground.
A stranger’s face stared at her own.
From one side another voice spoke, ‘She won’t remember much of this, Sagal.’
‘One of Hega’s imps.’
‘Even so-’
Sagal set her down and she tottered on wobbly legs. He put his huge hands against the sides of her head. Their eyes met and Yedin saw a darkness come to life there, a dangerous thing-
Sagal snapped her neck, dropped the body on to Hega’s. ‘Find Befka. One more to go this night. For you.’
‘What of Sekara and Stolmen?’
Sagal grinned. ‘Kashat and me-we’re saving the best for last. Now go, Corit.’
The warrior nodded. ‘And then I get my turn with Hetan.’
‘She’s worth it, the way she squirms in the mud.’
Once Strahl had left, Bakal sat alone in his yurt. His wife would not return this night, he knew, and he admitted he would be not too upset if she did not return at all. Amazing, that surprises could come to a marriage after so many years. The skein of rules was torn apart this night, strands winging on the black wind. A thousand possibilities awakened in people’s souls. Long-buried feuds clawed up out of the ground and knives dripped. A warrior could look into a friend’s eyes and see a stranger, could look into a mate’s eyes and see the flare of wicked desires.
She wanted another man but Bakal was in the way. That man wanted her in turn, but his wife was in the way. Bakal’s wife had stood before him, a half-smile playing on her face, a living thing pleased to deliver pain-if pain was possible, which he’d found, to his own bemusement, it was not. The moment she’d realized that, her visage had transformed into hatred.
When she left, she was holding her knife. Between her and her new lover, a woman would die tonight.
Would he stop them?
He had not yet decided. Nothing raged inside him. Nothing smouldered an instant’s breath from bursting into flame. Even the effort of thinking exhausted him.
‘Blood runs down.’ An ancient saying among the Barghast. When a ruler is murdered, a thousand blades are drawn, and the weak become savage. We are in our night of madness. An enemy marches to find us, and we are locked in a frenzy of senseless slaughter, killing our own. He could hear faint screams cutting through the howling wind.
The image of his wife’s face, so ugly in its wants, rose before him.
No, I will not let it be. He rose, cast about until he found his coin-scaled hauberk. If he was too late to save the woman, he would kill both his wife and her lover. An act, he decided, devoid of madness.
‘Find him!’ exhorted Sekara. ‘His brothers are out-killing our allies! Maral Eb is alone-’
‘He is not,’ said Stolmen. ‘On this night, that would be insane.’
She glared at him. Huge in his armour, a heavy hook-knife in one gauntleted hand, a miserable look on his stolid face. ‘Tell him you would discuss the alliance of the Gadra Clan-just find a reason. Once you cut his throat-’
‘His brothers will hunt me down and kill me. Listen, woman, you told me you wanted Maral Eb to command the warriors-’
‘I did not expect him to move on us this very night! Hega is dead! Jayviss is nowhere to be found. Nor is Balamit. Don’t you understand what’s happening?’
‘It seems you don’t. If they’re all dead, then we are next.’
‘He’ll not dare touch us! I have a hundred slayers-I have spies in every clan! No, he still needs us-’
‘He won’t think that way when I try and kill him.’
‘Don’t just try, husband. Do it and be sure of it. Leave his fool brothers to me.’
The rain was hammering down on the thick hides humped over the sapling frame of the yurt’s ceiling. Someone shrieked nearby. Stolmen’s face was ashen.
Spirits below, he doesn’t even need the paint tonight. ‘Must I do this, too? Are you worth anything to me?’
‘Sekara, I stand here ready to give up my life-to protect you. Once this night is done, the madness will end. We need only survive-’
‘I’m not interested in just surviving!’
He stared at her, as if seeing her for the first time. Something in that look, so strange on his face, sent a tendril of disquiet through Sekara. She stepped closer, set a hand on his scaled chest. ‘I understand, husband. Know that I value what you are doing. I just don’t think it’s necessary, that’s all. Please, do this for me. Find Maral Eb-and if you see that he is surrounded by bodyguards, then return here. We will know that he fears for his life-we will have struck our first blow against him without even raising a hand.’
He sighed, turned to the entrance.
The wind gusted round him when he pushed aside the flap and stepped outside.
Sekara backed away from the chill.
A moment later she heard a heavy thump, and then something rolled into the tent wall before sliding to the ground.
Heart in her throat, hands to her mouth, Sekara froze.
Sagal was the first to enter the yurt. His brother Kashat came in behind him, a tulwar in one hand, the blade slick with watery blood.
‘Sekara the Vile,’ said Sagal, smiling. ‘’Tis a cruel night.’
‘I’m glad he’s dead,’ she replied, nodding to the dripping blade. ‘Useless. A burden upon my every ambition.’
‘Ambitions, yes,’ muttered Kashat, looking round. ‘You’ve done yourself well, I see.’
‘I have many, many friends.’
‘We know,’ said Sagal. ‘We’ve met with some of them this night.’
‘Maral Eb needs me-he needs what I know. My spies, my assassins. As a widow, I am no threat to you, any of you. Your brother shall be Warleader, and I will make certain he is unassailed.’
Sagal shrugged. ‘We’ll think on it.’
Licking her lips, she nodded. ‘Tell Maral Eb, I will come to him tomorrow. We have much to discuss. There will be rivals-what of Bakal? Have you thought of him? I can lead you straight to his yurt, let me get my cloak-’
‘No need for that,’ Sagal said. ‘Bakal is no longer a threat. A shame, the slayer of Onos Toolan dying so suddenly.’ He glanced across at Kashat. ‘Choked on something, wasn’t it?’
‘Something,’ Kashat replied.
Sekara said, ‘There will be others-ones that I know about that you don’t. Among the Senan and even my own people.’
‘Yes yes, you’ll sell them all, woman.’
‘I serve the Warleader.’
‘We’ll see, won’t we?’ At that Sagal swung round, left the yurt. Kashat paused to clean her husband’s blood from his tulwar, using a priceless banner hanging from the ridge-pole. He paused at the entrance, grinned at her, and then followed his brother.
Sekara staggered back a step, sank down on to a travel chest. Shivering gripped her, shook her, rattled her very bones. She struggled to swallow, but her mouth and throat were too dry. She laced together her hands on her lap, but they slipped free of each other-she could not take hold… of anything.
The wind buffeted the hide walls, cold air lancing in from the entrance flap, which had not settled properly back into place. She should get up, fix that. Instead, she sat, shaking, fighting her slippery hands. ‘Stolmen,’ she whispered. ‘Husband. You left me. Abandoned me. I almost’-she gasped-‘I almost died!’
She looked to where he had been standing, so big, so solid, and her eyes strayed to the banner and its horrid, wet stain. ‘Ruined it,’ she said in a mutter. ‘Ruined it.’ She used to run it through her hands. That silk. Through and through, like a stream of wealth that never wetted her palms. But no more. She would feel the crust of his blood, the dust speckling her hands.
‘He should have seen it coming. He should have.’
Bakal had just cinched on his weapon belt while sitting down, struggling one-handed with the clasp, when the two Barahn warriors rushed in. He surged upright. The hookblade hissed free of its scabbard and he caught the heavy slash of a descending tulwar. His lighter weapon’s blade snapped clean just above the hilt.
He leapt close and drove the jagged stub into the warrior’s throat. Blood poured on to his hand.
The other was coming round the brazier.
Bakal back-stepped from the warrior drowning in his own blood. He had nothing with which to defend himself.
Wife, it seems you win-
A shape loomed behind the Barahn who was readying his tulwar for a decapitating cut. Hookblades licked both sides of his throat. The brazier hissed and crackled as spatters struck it. Reeling, the Barahn stumbled to one side, fell over the armour chest, leaving one twitching foot visible from where stood Bakal.
Gasping, his arm in agony, he swung his gaze to the newcomer.
‘Cafal.’
‘I dreamed it,’ the priest said, face twisting. ‘Your hand, your knife-into his heart-’
‘Did you dream as well, Cafal, who delivered that blow?’
The burly warrior sagged, stepped clumsily away from the entrance, his eyes dropping to the weapons in his hands. ‘I’ve come for her.’
‘Not tonight.’
The hookblades snapped back into fighting position and Cafal made to advance on him, but Bakal raised his hand.
‘I will help you, but not tonight-she fell unconscious-two dozen men, maybe more, had used her. Any more and she would die and they won’t let that happen. The women have her, Cafal. They will tend to her, cackling like starlings-you know of what I speak. Until her flesh is healed-you cannot get into that hut. Those women will tear you to pieces. My-my wife went there first, before her other… tasks. To see, to join in-she, she laughed at me. At my horror. Cafal, she laughed.’
The priest’s visage was furrowed in cuts-he had been clawing at his own face, Bakal realized. ‘Your dreams,’ he whispered, eyes widening. ‘You saw.’
‘I saw.’
‘Cafal…’
‘But it’s not over. They don’t know that-none of them know that. Our gods are howling. In terror.’ He fixed wild eyes on Bakal. ‘Did they think they could get away with that? Did they forget what he was? Where he came from? He will take them into his hands and he will crush them!’ He bared his teeth. ‘And I will stand back-do you hear me? I will stand back, Bakal, and do nothing.’
‘Your sister-’
He started, as if Bakal had slapped him. ‘Yes. I will wait-’
‘You can’t hide here, Cafal. More of Maral Eb’s assassins will come for me-’
‘This night is almost spent,’ the priest said. ‘The madness is already blowing itself out. Find your allies, Bakal, gather them close.’
‘Come back in three days,’ Bakal said. ‘I will help you. We’ll get her out-away. But… Cafal, you must know-’
The man flinched. ‘It will be too late,’ he said in a wretched tone. ‘Yes, I know. I know.’
‘Go with the last of the night,’ Bakal said. He went to find one of his older weapons, and then paused, stared down at the two corpses crumpled on the floor. ‘I must do something now. One last thing.’ He lifted bleak eyes to the priest. ‘It seems the madness is not quite blown out.’
The rider emerged from the night with a child before him on the saddle. Two young girls flanked the horse, staggering with exhaustion.
As the storm’s ragged tail scudded south, taking the rain with it, Setoc watched the strangers approach. The man, she knew, was a revenant, an undead soldier of the Reaper. But, seated as she was in the centre of this ring of stones, she knew she had nothing to fear. This ancient power defied the hunger for blood-it was, she knew now, made for that very purpose. Against Elder Gods and their ceaseless thirst, it was a sanctuary, and was and would ever remain so.
He drew rein just outside the ring, as she knew he must.
Setoc rose to her feet, eyeing the girls. Dressed as Barghast, but neither was purely of that blood. Twins. Eyes dull with fading shock, and a kind of fearless calm rising in its place. The small boy, she saw, was smiling at her.
The revenant lifted the child with one hand, to which the boy clung like a Bolkando ape, and carefully set him down on the ground.
‘Take them,’ the revenant said to Setoc, and the undead eyes he fixed upon her blazed-one human and wrinkled in death, the other bright and amber-the eye of a wolf.
Setoc gasped. ‘You are not the Reaper’s servant!’
‘It’s my flaw,’ he replied.
‘What is?’
‘Cursed by… indecision. Take them, camp within the circle. Wait.’
‘For what?’
The rider collected the reins and drew the beast round. ‘For his war to end, Destriant.’ He hesitated, and then said, ‘We leave when I return.’
She watched him ride away, westward, as if fleeing the rising sun. The two girls closed on the boy and each took one of his hands. They edged warily closer.
Setoc sighed. ‘You are Hetan’s get?’
Nods.
‘I am a friend of your uncle. Cafal. No,’ she added wearily, ‘I do not know where he has gone. Perhaps,’ she added, thinking of the revenant’s last words, ‘he will return. For now, come closer, I will make a fire. You can eat, and then rest.’
Once inside the circle, the boy pulled loose from his sisters’ hands and walked to the southwestern edge of the ring, where he stared at seemingly nothing on the dark horizon, and then he began a strange, rhythmic babbling. Almost a song.
At the sound, Setoc shivered. When she turned to the twins, she saw that they had found her bedroll and were now wrapped together in its folds. Fast asleep.
Must have been a long walk.
The carrion eaters had picked away the last strip of meat. Jackals had chewed on the bones but found even their powerful jaws could not crush them sufficiently to swallow the splinters down, nor could they grind the ends as was their habit. In the end, they left the fragments scattered in the trampled grasses. Besides, there was more to be found, not only in this place, but in numerous others across the plain. It was proving a season for fly-swarmed muzzles and full bellies.
After a few days all the scavengers had left, abandoning the scene to the sun, wind and stars. The blades of grasses prickled free of dried-up blood, the roots thickened on enriched soil, and insects crawled like the teeth of the earth, devouring all they could.
On a night with a storm raging to the east and south, a night when foreign gods howled and ghost wolves raced like a tidal flood across an unseen landscape, when the campfires of armies whipped and stuttered, and the jackals ran first one way and then another, as the stench of spilled blood brushed them on all sides, the buried valley with its sprawl of boulders and bones and its ash heap of burnt remains began to move, here and there. Fragments drawing together. Forming into ribs, phalanges, leg bones, vertebrae-as if imbued with iron seeking a lodestone, they slid and rolled in fits and starts.
The wind that had begun in the southeast now rushed over the land, a gale like a hundred thousand voices rising, ever rising. Grasses whipped into frenzied motion. Dust swirled up and round and spun, filling the air with grit.
In the still cloudless sky overhead, the Slashes seemed to pulse and waver, as if seen through waves of heat.
Bones clattered together. From beneath the mass of boulders and crumpled armour in the valley, pieces of rotting flesh pulled free, tendons writhing like serpents, ligaments wriggling like worms, climbing free and crawling closer to the heap of bones-which were edging into a pattern, re-forming a recognizable shape-a skeleton, loosely assembled, but the bones were neither Akrynnai nor Barghast. These were thicker, with high ridges where heavy muscles once gripped tight. The skull that had been crushed was now complete once more, battered and scorched. It sat motionless, upper teeth on the ground, until the mandible clicked up against it, and then pushed beneath it, tilting the skull back, until the jaw’s hinges slipped into their joints.
Flesh and desiccated skin, random clumps of filthy hair. Ligaments gripped long bones, ends fusing to join them into limbs. Twisted coils of muscle found tendons and were pulled flat as the tendons grew taut. An arm was knitted together, scores of finger bones clumping at the end of the wrist.
Rotting meat bound the vertebrae into a serpentine curl. Ribs sank into indentations on the sides of the sternum and lifted it clear of the ground.
When the Slashes were gouging the horizon to the southeast, and the wind was dying in fitful gusts, a body lay on the grasses. Fragments of skin joined to enclose it, each seam knitting like a scar. Strands of hair found root on the pate of the skull.
As the wind fell away, there was the distant sound of singing. An old woman’s rough, enfeebled voice, and in the music of that song there were fists closed into tight knots, there was muscle building to terrible violence, and faces immune to the sun’s heat and life’s pity. The voice ensorcelled, drawing power from the land’s deepest memories.
Dawn crept to the horizon, bled colour into the sky.
And a T’lan Imass rose from the ground. Walked, with slow, unsteady strides, to the fire-annealed flint sword left lying close to the Barghast pyre. A withered but oversized hand reached down and closed about the grip, lifting the weapon clear.
Onos T’oolan faced southeast. And then set out.
He had a people to kill.
THE EASE OF SHADOWS (SIMPLE WORDS)
BEVELA DELIK
Desecration’s gift was silence. the once-blessed boulder, massive as a wagon, was shattered. Nearby was a sinkhole at the base of which a spring struggled to feed a small pool of black water. The bones of gazelle and rodents studded the grasses and the stones of the old stream bed that stretched down from the sinkhole’s edge, testament to the water’s poison.
This silence was crowded with truths, most of them so horrid in nature as to leave Sechul Lath trembling. Shoulders hunched, arms wrapped about his torso, he stared at the rising sun. Kilmandaros was picking through the broken rock, as if pleased to examine her own handiwork of millennia past. Errastas had collected a handful of pebbles and was tossing them into the pool one by one-each stone vanished without a sound, leaving no ripples. These details seemed to amuse the Errant, if the half-smile on his face was any indication.
Sechul Lath knew enough to not trust appearances when it came to an Elder God infamous for misdirection. He might be contemplating his satisfaction at the undeniable imperative of his summons, or he might be anticipating crushing the throat of an upstart god. Or someone less deserving. He was the Errant, after all. His temple was betrayal, his altar mocking mischance, and in that temple and upon that altar he sacrificed mortal souls, motivated solely by whim. And, perhaps, boredom. It was the luxury of his power that he so cherished, that he so wanted back.
But it’s done. Can’t you see that? Our time is over with. We cannot play thatgame again. The children have inherited this world, and all the others we once terrorized. We squandered all we had-we believed in our own omnipotence. This world-Errastas, you cannot get back what no longer exists.
‘I will have my throne,’ you said. And the thousand faces laying claim to it, each one momentarily bright and then fading, they all just blur together. Entire lives lost in an instant’s blink. If you win, you will have your throne, Errastas, and you will stand behind it, as you once did, and your presence will give the lie to mortal ambitions and dreams, to every aspiration of just rule, of equity. Of peace and prosperity.
You will turn it all into dust-every dream, nothing but dust, sifting down through their hands.
But, Elder God, these humans-they have left you behind. They don’t need you to turn to dust all their dreams. They don’t need anyone else to do that. ‘This,’ he said, facing Errastas, ‘is what we should intend.’
The Errant’s brows rose, his solitary eye bright. ‘What, pray tell?’
‘To stand before our children-the young gods-and tell them the truth.’
‘Which is?’
‘Everything they claim as their own can be found in the mortal soul. Those gods, Errastas, are not needed. Like us, they have no purpose. None at all. Like us, they are a waste of space. Irrelevant.’
The Errant’s hands twitched. He flung away the pebbles. ‘Is misery all we get from you, Knuckles? We have not yet launched our war and you’ve already surrendered.’
‘I have,’ agreed Sechul Lath, ‘but that is a notion you do not fully understand. There is more than one kind of surrender-’
‘Indeed,’ snapped the Errant, ‘yet the face of each one is the same-a coward’s face!’
Knuckles eyed him, amused.
Errastas made a fist. ‘What,’ he said in a low rasp, ‘is so funny?’
‘The one who surrenders to his own delusions is, by your terms, no less a coward than any other.’
Kilmandaros straightened. She had taken upon herself the body of a Tel Akai, still towering above them but not quite as massively as before. She smiled without humour at the Errant. ‘Play no games with this one, Errastas. Not bones, not words. He will tie your brain in knots and make your head ache.’
Errastas glared at her. ‘Do you think me a simpleton?’
The smile vanished. ‘Clearly, you think that of me.’
‘When you think with your fists, don’t complain when you appear to others as witless.’
‘But I complain with my fists as well,’ she replied. ‘And when I do, even you have no choice but to listen, Errastas. Now, best be careful, for I feel in the mood for complaining. We have stood here all night, whilst the ether beyond this place has stirred something to life-my nerves are on fire, even here, where all lies in lifeless ruin. You say you have summoned the others. Where are they?’
‘Coming,’ the Errant replied.
‘How many?’
‘Enough.’
Knuckles started. ‘Who defies you?’
‘It is not defiance! Rather-must I explain myself?’
‘It might help,’ said Sechul Lath.
‘I am not defied by choice. Draconus-within Dragnipur it’s not likely he hears anything. Grizzin Farl is, I think, dead. His corporeal flesh is no more.’ He hesitated, and then added with a scowl, ‘Ardata alone has managed to evade me, but she was never of much use anyway, was she?’
‘Then where-’
‘I see one,’ Kilmandaros said, pointing to the north. ‘Taste of the blood, she was wise to take that shape! But oh, I can smell the stench of Eleint upon her!’
‘Restrain yourself,’ Errastas said. ‘She’s been dead too long for you to smell anything.’
‘I said-’
‘You imagine, nothing more. Tiam’s daughter did not outlive her mother-this thing has embraced the Ritual of Tellann-she is less than she once was.’
‘Less,’ said Knuckles, ‘and more, I think.’
Errastas snorted, unaware of Sechul Lath’s deliberate mockery.
Kilmandaros was visibly shaking with her fury. ‘It was her,’ she hissed. ‘Last night. That singing-she awakened the ancient power! Olar Ethil!’
Sechul Lath could see sudden worry on the Errant’s face. Already, things were spiralling out of his control.
A voice spoke behind them. ‘I too felt as much.’
They turned to see Mael standing beside the sinkhole. He had an old man’s body and an old man’s face and the watery eyes he fixed on the Errant were cold. ‘This is already unravelling, Errant. War is like that-all the players lose control. “Chaos takes the sword.’ ”
Errastas snorted a second time. ‘Quoting Anomander Rake? Really, Mael. Besides he spoke that in prophecy. The other resonances came later.’
‘Yes,’ muttered Mael, ‘about that prophecy…’
Sechul Lath waited for him to continue but Mael fell silent, squinting now at Olar Ethil. She had long ago chosen the body of an Imass woman, wide-hipped, heavy-breasted. When Knuckles had last seen her, he recalled, she was still mortal. He remembered the strange headgear she had worn, for all the world like a woven corded basket. With no holes for her eyes, or her mouth. Matron of all the bonecasters, mother to an entire race. But even mothers have secrets.
She no longer wore the mask. Nor much in the way of flesh. Desiccated, little more than sinews and bone. A T’lan Imass. Snakeskin webbing hung from her shoulders, to which various mysterious objects had been tied-holed pebbles, nuggets of uncut gems, bone tubes that might be whistles or curse-traps, soul-catchers of hollowed antler, a knotted bundle of tiny dead birds. A roughly made obsidian knife was tucked in her cord belt.
Her smile was an inadvertent thing, the teeth oversized and stained deep amber. Nothing glittered from the sockets of her eyes.
‘How did it go again?’ Sechul asked her. ‘Your mother’s lover and child both? Just how did you beget yourself, Olar Ethil?’
‘Eleint!’ growled Kilmandaros.
Olar Ethil spoke: ‘I have travelled in the realm of birth-fires. I have sailed the dead sky of Kallor’s Curse. I have seen all I needed to see.’ Her neck creaked and made grinding noises as she turned her head until she faced the Errant. ‘You were nowhere to be found. You hid behind your pathetic throne, ever proving the illusion of power-the world has long ago grasped your message, though by nature it will not ever heed it. You, Errastas, are wasting your time.’
Sechul Lath was startled that her words so closely matched his own thoughts. Save it, Olar Ethil. He does not listen.
She then turned to Mael. ‘Your daughters run wild.’
The old man shrugged. ‘Daughters will do that. Rather, they should do that. I would be disappointed otherwise. It’s a poor father who does not nudge and then cut loose-as I am sure the Errant will eagerly chime, once he gathers what wits he has left. When that witch stole your eye, what else spilled out?’
Olar Ethil cackled.
Errastas straightened. ‘I have summoned you. You could not deny me, not one of you!’
‘Saved me hunting you down,’ said Mael. ‘You have much to answer for, Errant. Your eagerness to ruin mortal lives-’
‘It is what I do! What I have always done-and you should talk, Mael! How many millions of souls have you drowned? Hundreds of millions, all to feed your power. No, old man, do not dare chide me.’
‘What do you want?’ Mael asked. ‘You don’t really think we can win this war, do you?’
‘You have not been paying attention,’ Errastas replied. ‘The gods are gathering. Against the Fallen One-they don’t want to share this world-’
‘Nor, it seems, do you.’
‘We never denied any ascendant a place in our pantheon, Mael.’
‘Really?’
The Errant bared his teeth. ‘Was there ever the risk of running out of mortal blood? Our children betrayed us, by turning away from that source of power, by accepting what K’rul offered them. And in turn, they denied us our rightful place.’
‘So where is he, then?’ Sechul asked. ‘Brother K’rul? And the Sister of Cold Nights? What of the Wolves, who ruled this realm before humans even arrived? Errastas, did you reach some private decision to not invite them?’
‘K’rul deserves the fate awaiting the gods-his was the cruellest betrayal of all.’ The Errant gestured dismissively, ‘One could never reason with the Wolves-I have long given up trying. Leave them the Beast Throne, it’s where they belong.’
‘And,’ Mael added dryly, ‘ambition does not beset them. Lucky for you.’
‘For us.’
At the Errant’s correction, Mael simply shrugged.
Olar Ethil cackled again, and then said, ‘None of you understand anything. Too long hiding from the world. Things are coming back. Rising. The stupid humans have not even noticed.’ She paused, now that she had everyone’s attention, and something like breath rattled from her. ‘Kallor understood-he saw Silverfox for what she was. Is. Do any of you really think the time of the T’lan Imass is over? And though she made a youthful error in releasing the First Sword, I have forgiven her. Indeed, I have seen to his return.
‘And what of the Jaghut? Popping up like poison mushrooms! So comforting to believe they are incapable of working together-but then, lies can prove very comforting. What if I told you that in the Wastelands but a handful of days ago, fourteen undead Jaghut annihilated a hundred Nah’ruk? What if I told you that five thousand humans carrying the blood of the Tiste Andii have walked the Road of Gallan? That one with Royal Andiian blood has ridden through the gates of dead Kharkanas? And the Road of Gallan? Why, upon that path of blood hunt the Tiste Liosan. And,’ her head creaked as she regarded Kilmandaros, ‘something far worse. No, you are all blind. The Crippled God? He is nothing. Among the gods, his allies break and scatter. Among the mortals, corruption devours his cult, and his followers are the wasted and the lost-Kaminsod has no army to summon to his defence. His body lies in pieces scattered across seven continents. He is as good as dead.’ She jabbed a bony finger at the Errant. ‘Even the Deck of Dragons has a new Master, and I tell you this, Errastas. You cannot stand against him. You’re not enough.’
The wind moaned in the wake of her words.
None spoke. Even Errastas stood as one stunned.
Bones clattering, Olar Ethil walked to the shattered boulder. ‘Kilmandaros,’ she said, ‘you are a cow. A miserable, brainless cow. The Imass made this sanctuary in an act of love, as a place where not one of us could reach in to poison their souls.’
Kilmandaros clenched her fists, staring blankly at the old woman. ‘I don’t care,’ she said.
‘I can destroy the young gods,’ Errastas suddenly said. ‘Every one of them.’
‘And have you told Kilmandaros about your secret killer?’ Olar Ethil inquired. ‘Oh yes, I knew you were there. I understand what you’ve done. What you intend.’
Sechul Lath frowned. He’d lost this trail. Too soon after Olar Ethil’s speech, from which he still reeled. Secret killer?
‘Tell her,’ Olar Ethil went on, ‘of the Eleint.’
‘When the slayer has been unleashed, when it has done what it must,’ Errastas smiled, ‘then Kilmandaros shall receive a gift.’
‘She slays the slayer.’
‘So that, when all is done, we alone are left standing. Olar Ethil, all those things you spoke of, they are irrelevant. The Jaghut are too few, living or undead, to pose any sort of threat. The dust of the T’lan Imass has crossed the ocean and even now closes upon the shores of Assail, and we all know what awaits them there. And Kharkanas is dead, as you say. What matter that one of Royal Andiian blood has returned to it? Mother Dark is turned away from her children. As for the Tiste Liosan, they are leaderless and do any of us here actually think Osserc will go back to them?’
Sechul Lath hugged himself tighter. He would not look at Kilmandaros. Neither Olar Ethil nor Errastas had spoken of the Forkrul Assail. Were they ignorant? Was the knowledge that Sechul held within him-that Kilmandaros possessed, as well-truly a secret? Olar Ethil, we cannot trust you. Errastas should never have invited you here. You are worse than K’rul. More of a threat to us than Draconus, or Edgewalker. You are Eleint and you are T’lan Imass, and both were ever beyond our control.
‘The Master of the Deck,’ said Mael, ‘has an ally. One that even you, Olar Ethil, seem unaware of, and she is more of a wild knuckle than anything Sechul Lath was ever in the habit of casting.’ His cold eyes settled upon the Errant. ‘You would devour our children, but even that desire proves that you have lost touch, that you-we, all of us here-are nothing more than the spent forces of history. Errant, our children have grown up. Do you understand the significance of that?’
‘What stupidity are you-’
‘Old enough,’ cut in Sechul Lath, all at once comprehending, ‘to have children of their own.’ Abyss below!
Errastas blinked, and then gathered himself, waving a hand in dismissal. ‘Easily crushed once we have dealt with their parents, don’t you think?’
‘Crushed. As we were?’
Errastas glared at Mael.
Sechul Lath barked a wry laugh. ‘I see your point, Mael. Our killing the gods could simply clear the way for their children.’
‘This is ridiculous,’ said Errastas. ‘I have sensed nothing of… grandchildren. Nothing at all.’
‘Hood summons the dead,’ Olar Ethil said, as if Mael’s words had launched her down a track only she could see. ‘The fourteen undead Jaghut-they did not belong to him. He has no control over them. They were summoned by an ascendant who had been mortal only a few years ago.’ She faced Mael. ‘I have seen the dead. They march, not as some mindless mob, but as would an army. It is as if the world on the lifeless side of Hood’s Gates has changed.’
Mael nodded. ‘Prompting the question, what is Hood up to? He was once a Jaghut. Since when do Jaghut delegate? Olar Ethil, who was this recent ascendant?’
‘Twice brought into the world of worship. Once, by a tribal people, and named Iskar Jarak. A bringer of wisdom, a saviour. And the other time, as the commander of a company of soldiers-promised to ascension by a song woven by a Tanno Spiritwalker. Yes, the entire company ascended upon death.’
‘Soldiers?’ Errastas was frowning. ‘Ascended?’ Confused. Frightened by the notion.
‘And what name did he possess among these ascended soldiers?’ Mael asked.
‘Whiskeyjack. He was a Malazan.’
‘A Malazan.’ Mael nodded. ‘So too is the Master of the Deck. And so too is the Master’s unpredictable, unknowable ally-the Adjunct Tavore, who leads a Malazan army east, across the Wastelands. Leads them,’ he turned to Sechul Lath, ‘into Kolanse.’
The bastard knows! He understands the game we’re playing! It was a struggle not to betray everything with a glance to Kilmandaros. Seeing the quiet knowledge in Mael’s eyes chilled him.
Olar Ethil bestowed on them a third cackle, a gift no one welcomed.
Errastas was no fool. Suspicion glittered from his eye as he studied Sechul Lath. ‘Well now,’ he said in a low tone, ‘all those nights tossing the bones for Kilmandaros here… I suppose you found plenty of things to talk about, killing time as it were. Some plans, perhaps, Setch? Foolish of me, I see now, to imagine you were content with simply wasting away, leaving it all behind. It seems,’ and the smile he gave was dangerous, ‘you played me. Using all of your most impressive talents.’
‘This meeting,’ drawled Mael, ‘was premature. Errant, consider yourself banished from Letheras. If I sense your return, I will hunt you down and drown you as easily as you did Feather Witch.’
He walked to the spring, descended into the sinkhole and vanished from sight.
Olar Ethil pointed a finger at Kilmandaros, waggled it warningly, and then set off, northward. A miserable collection of skin and bones. The three remaining Elder Gods watched her walk away. When the T’lan Imass was perhaps fifty paces distant, she veered into her draconic form, dust billowing, and then lifted skyward.
A low growl came from Kilmandaros.
Sechul Lath rubbed at his face. He sighed. ‘The power you seek to bleed dry, Errastas,’ he said, facing the Errant, ‘well, it turns out we were all working to similar ends.’
‘You anticipated me.’
Sechul shrugged. ‘We had no expectation that you would just show up at the door.’
‘I do not appreciate being played, Setch. Do you see no value to my alliance?’
‘You have irrevocably altered the strategy. As Mael pointed out, though perhaps for different reasons, this meeting was premature. Now our enemies are awakened to us.’ He sighed again. ‘Had you stayed away, stayed quiet, why, Mother and I-we’d have stolen that power from beneath their very noses.’
‘To share solely between the two of you.’
‘To the victors the spoils.’ But none of this mad usurpation, this desire to return to what once was. ‘But, I dare say, had you come begging, we might well have proved magnanimous… for old times’ sake.’
‘I see.’
Kilmandaros faced him. ‘Do you, Master of the Holds? You summoned us here, only to find that you are the weakest, the most ignorant among us. You forced us all-Sechul, Mael, Olar Ethil, to put you in your place. To make you realize that you alone have been wallowing in self-pity and wasting away doing nothing. Perhaps Mael thinks our time is done, but then, why has he ensured that his worship is on the ascent? That a Jhistal Priest of Mael now rises to take the throne of the most powerful empire this world has seen since the time of Kallor and Dessimbelackis? Who among us has proved the witless one this day?’
With a snarl, Errastas swung away from them.
Sechul turned to his mother. ‘Mael was warning us, I think. This Adjunct Tavore he spoke of. These infernal Malazans.’
‘And the children of the gods. Yes, many warnings, Sechul. From Olar Ethil as well. Jaghut, T’lan Imass, Tiste Andii-bah!’
‘All subtlety is lost,’ agreed Sechul Lath. ‘Errastas, return to us, we have much to discuss. Come now, I will tell you of the path we have already prepared. I will tell you just how close we are to achieving all that we desire. And you, in turn, can tell us how you intend to release the Otataral Eleint. Such exchanges are the heart of an alliance, yes?’
His poor friend had been humiliated. Well, there was value in lessons. So long as it’s someone else receiving them.
Kilmandaros spoke: ‘Time has come to build anew the bridge, Errastas. Let us ensure that it is strong, immune to fire and all manner of threat. Tell me of how I will kill the Otataral Eleint-for that promise alone I will stand with you.’
He returned to them, eventually, as they had known he would.
‘They never burned the bridge behind them before finishing the one in front of them. But there then came a day when the bridges ran out. Nowhere ahead. The road’s end.’ Cuttle reached out and a clay jug was pressed into his hand. He drank down another mouthful, and would not look at the young soldiers with whom he shared the brazier. The rush of water under the flat-bottomed hull was an incessant wet scrape, far too close beneath the sapper for his liking. Silly, he reflected, being a marine who hated water. Rivers, lakes, seas and rain, he despised them all.
‘Black Coral,’ someone said in a low, almost reverent tone.
‘Like the ten thousand veins in a hand,’ Cuttle said sourly, ‘stories spread out. Not a single Malazan army out there doesn’t know about them. The Chain of Dogs, the Fall. The Aren Way. Blackdog. Pale. And… Black Coral, where died the Bridgeburners.’
‘They didn’t all die,’ objected that same soldier.
It was too dark to make out the speaker, and Cuttle didn’t recognize the voice. He shrugged. ‘High Mage Quick Ben. Dead Hedge-but he died there and that’s why we call him Dead Hedge, so that’s one who didn’t make it. Maybe a handful of others did. But the Bridgeburners were finished and that’s how the histories will tell it. Destroyed at Black Coral, at the close of the Pannion War. The few who crawl out of such things, well, they vanish like the last wisps of smoke.’ He drank down another mouthful. ‘It’s how things are.’
‘It’s said they were dropped into the city by the Black Moranth,’ another soldier said. ‘And they went and took the palace-went straight for the Pannion Domin himself. Was Whiskeyjack dead by then? Does anyone know? Why wasn’t he leading them? If he’d done that, maybe they wouldn’t have-’
‘Stupid, that kind of thinking.’ Cuttle shook his head. He could hear the faint sweeps from the other barges-the damned river was packed with them, with Letherii crews struggling day and night to avoid collisions and tangled lines. Bonehunters and Commander Brys’s escort-almost twenty thousand soldiers, support elements, pack animals-the whole lot, riding this river south. Better than walking. Better, and worse, reminding him of past landings, marines struggling beneath the hail of arrows and slingstones, dying and drowning. Barges raging with flames, the shrieks of burning men and women.
Not that they would be landing under fire. Not this time. This was a leisurely journey, surrounded by allies. It was all so civilized, so peaceful, that Cuttle’s nerves were shredded. ‘It’s just how it played out. Choices are made, accidents happen, the fates fall. Remember that, when our own falls on us.’
‘Nobody’s going to sing songs about us,’ the hidden speaker said. ‘We’re not the Bridgeburners. Not the Grey Swords. Not Coltaine’s Seventh. She said as much, the Adjunct did.’
‘Open that last jug,’ someone advised.
Cuttle finished the one in his hand. Three fast swallows. He sent the empty vessel over the side. ‘ “Bonehunters”,’ he said. ‘Was that Fiddler’s idea? Maybe. Can’t really remember.’ I just remember the desperation. I remember the Adjunct. And Aren’s quiet streets and empty walls. I remember being broken, and now I’m wondering if anything’s changed, anything at all. ‘Histories, they’re just what’s survived. But they’re not the whole story, because the whole story can never be known. Think of all the histories we’ve gone and lost. Not just kingdoms and empires, but the histories inside every one of us, every person who ever lived.’ As the new jug of peach rum came within reach Cuttle’s hand snapped out to snare it. ‘What do you want? Any of you? You want the fame of the Bridgeburners? Why? They’re all dead. You want a great cause to fight for? To die for? Show me something worth that.’
He finally looked up, glared at the half-circle of coal-lit faces, so young, so bleak now.
And from behind him, a new voice spoke. ‘Showing’s not enough, Cuttle. You need to see, you need to know. I’m standing here, listening to you, and I’m hearing the rum; it’s running through a soldier who thinks he’s at his end.’
Cuttle took another drink. ‘Just talk, Sergeant Gesler. That’s all.’
‘Bad talk,’ Gesler said, pushing in. Soldiers moved aside to make room as he settled down opposite the sapper. ‘They wanted stories, Cuttle. Not a reason to throw themselves over the side. Those are the cheapest reasons of all-you should know that.’
‘Speaking freely here, Sergeant, that’s how it was.’
‘I know. This ain’t no official dressing down. That’s for your own sergeant to do, and if he was here, he’d be tacking up your hide right about now. No, you and me, we’re just two old soldiers here.’
Cuttle gave a sharp nod. ‘Fine, then. I was just saying-’
‘I know. I heard. Glory’s expensive.’
‘Exactly.’
‘And it’s not worth it.’
‘Right.’
‘But that’s where you’re wrong, Cuttle.’
There was speaking freely and that’s what this was, but Cuttle wasn’t a fool. ‘If you say so.’
‘All those choices you complained about, the ones that take you to the place you can’t avoid, the place none of us can escape. You say it’s not worth it, Cuttle, that’s a choice, too. It’s the one you’ve decided to make. And maybe you want company, and that’s what all this is about. Personally, I think you’re a damned liability-not because you ain’t a good soldier. You are. And I know for a fact that when the iron sings, having you at my back makes no itch. But you keep pissing on the coals, Cuttle, and then complaining about the smell.’
‘I’m a sapper with a handful of munitions, Gesler. When they’re gone, then I step into the crossbow ranks, and I ain’t as fast a loader as I used to be.’
‘I already said it’s not your soldiering that worries me. Maybe you reload slower, but your shots will count and don’t try saying otherwise.’
Cuttle answered with a gruff nod. He’d asked for this, this dressing down that wasn’t supposed to happen. This speaking freely that was now nailing him like a rusty nail to the wooden deck. In front of a bunch of pups.
‘There were sappers,’ Gesler continued, ‘long before the munitions came along. In fact, the sappers will need veterans like you, the ones who remember those days.’ He paused, and then said, ‘I got you a question, Cuttle.’
‘Go on.’
‘Tell me the one thing that can rot an army.’
‘Time with nothing to do.’
‘Nothing to do but talk. Why is it the people with the least useful things to say do most of the talking?’
The unseen speaker from earlier spoke up behind Gesler, ‘Because their pile of shit never gets smaller, Sergeant. In fact, just keeps getting bigger.’
Cuttle heard the relief in the laughter that followed. His face was burning, but that might just be the coals, or the rum, or both. Could be he was just drunk. ‘All this talk of piss and shit,’ he muttered, forcing himself upright. He weaved, managed to find his balance, and then turned about and stumbled off in the direction of the stern.
As the sapper staggered away, Gesler said, ‘You that spoke, behind me-that you, Widdershins?’
‘Aye, Sergeant. Was wandering past when I heard the bleating.’
‘Go after him, make sure he doesn’t topple o’er the rail.’
‘Aye, Sergeant. And, uh, thanks, he was dragging even me down.’
Gesler rubbed at his face. His skin felt loose and slack, all suppleness long gone. Getting old, he decided, was miserable. ‘Needs a shaking awake,’ he said under his breath. ‘And don’t we all. Here, give me that jug, I’ve worked up a thirst.’
He didn’t recognize any of the faces he could make out round the brazier. They were young, foot-soldiers, the ones who’d barely known a fight since joining up. They’d watched the marines assault Y’Ghatan, and fight on the landing in Malaz City. They’d watched those marines set off to invade the Letherii mainland. They’d done a lot of watching. And no amount of marching, or drilling, or war-games could make a young soldier hungrier for glory than did all that watching.
He knew how they looked upon the marines. He knew how they bandied the names back and forth, the legends in the making. Throatslitter, Deadsmell, Hellian, Masan Gilani, Crump, Mayfly and all the rest. He knew how they damn-near worshipped Sergeant Fiddler. And gods forbid anything bad should happen to him.
Maybe Cuttle had a point with all that pushing down. On things like glory, the making of legends. Maybe he was undermining all those romantic notions for a good reason. Don’t hold to any faith. Even legends die. Gesler shivered, drank down a mouthful of rum.
Tasted like shit.
Bottle slipped away. He’d listened to Cuttle. He’d watched Gesler slide morosely into the sapper’s place, settling in for a night of drinking.
The entire army lounged on the open decks. Getting bored and lazy. After the eastward trek from Letheras, they’d crossed River Lether and marched through the rich lands to the south, finally reaching this river, known as the Gress. No shortage of food, drink, or whores the whole damned way. A sidling pace, a march that barely raised a sweat. League upon league of bickering, nasty hangovers and nobody having a clue what they were up to, where they were going, and what was waiting for them.
A joke ran through the ranks that, after this river journey ended at the city of Gress on the Dracons Sea, the entire army would simply swing back westward, come up round to Letheras again, and start the whole thing over, round and round, and round. Nobody laughed much. It was the kind of joke that wouldn’t go away, and when it no longer fitted the circumstances, why, it would twist a tad and start its run all over again. Like dysentery.
The forty-two barges that had been awaiting them south of the Bluerose Range, just beyond the Gress’s cataracts, were all new, built specifically for transporting the army downstream. Once at the journey’s end, with all the soldiers and supplies off-loaded, the barges would be dismantled and carried with the army overland to the West Kryn River, where they’d be rebuilt and sent on their way down to the Inside Hyacinth Reach, and from there on to the D’rhasilhani-who had purchased the wood. The Letherii were clever that way. If you could take something and make a profit from it once, why not twice? It was, Bottle supposed, an admirable trait. Maybe. He could imagine that such predilections could become a fever, a poison in the soul.
He walked to the nearest unoccupied rail and stared out over the jade-lit water. The hulk of another barge blocked the shoreline opposite. The night air was filled with flitting bats. He could make out a figure over there, doing what Bottle was doing, and he wondered if he knew him, or her. The squads were scattered. Probably someone’s bright idea about knitting new ties and friendships among the soldiery. Or, the even brighter realization that the squads needed a break from staring at each other’s ugly faces. Mix ’em up to keep ’em from killing each other. Hood knew, he wasn’t missing Koryk or even Smiles. Just damned bad luck finding himself on the same deck as Cuttle.
The man was a walking plague of the spirit. Almost as bad as Fist Blistig. But then, what army didn’t have them? Sour, stone-eyed, using their every breath to bitch. He used to admire soldiers like that, the ones who’d seen it all and were still waiting to be impressed. The ones who looked at a recruit’s face as if studying a death-mask. Now, he realized, he despised such soldiers.
Could be that was unfair, though. The misery and horror that got them to that cold, lifeless place was nothing to long for in one’s own life. Was it? What he and all the other younger soldiers had to live with, then, was the curse of the survivors, the veteran’s brand leaking like a septic wound. It stained. It fouled. It killed dreams.
He wasn’t one of them. Had no desire to join their ranks. And could not imagine an entire army consisting of such twisted, scarred creatures. But that was the Bridgeburners. That was Coltaine’s, by the end, anyway. Onearm’s Host. Greymane’s Stone. Dassem’s First Sword. Nothing but the dead-eyed. He shivered, drawing his rain-cape tighter. The Bonehunters was another army headed that way-if it didn’t tear itself apart first.
But wait, Bottle. You’ve forgotten Fiddler. He’s nothing like the rest. He still cares… doesn’t he? Even the question troubled him. His sergeant had been growing ever more distant of late. A generational thing? Maybe. The burden of rank? Possibly, since when he’d been a Bridgeburner, he’d had no responsibilities beyond that of a regular soldier. A sapper, in fact, and sappers were notorious for the threat they presented to their own comrades, never mind the enemy. So, not just a regular but an irresponsible one at that. But now Fid was a sergeant, and a whole lot more. Reader of the Deck of Dragons. Legendary survivor of the Bridgeburners. He was the iron stake driven deep into the ground, and no matter how fierce the raging winds, he held fast-and everyone in turn clung to him, the whole damned army, it seemed. We hold tight. Not to the Adjunct. Not to Quick Ben or Fist Keneb. We hold tight to Fiddler, a damned sergeant.
Hood’s breath. This sounds bad. I shouldn’t be thinking of things this way. Fid deserves better. He deserves to have his life back.
No wonder he ran when she wanted the reading.
The black water swirled past, oblivious to the maelstrom of his thoughts, carrying what it could down to the distant sea. Cold with the memories of snow and ice in the high mountains, slowing with the silts of overturned earth and stones worn down to dust. Huge turtles slid through the muck far below. Blood-drinking eels-little more than jaws and tail-slithered in the currents, seeking the soft bellies of massive carp and catfish. Silt blooms billowed and rolled over rounded stones and gravel banks. Bedded in muck, amphorae of fired clay, fragments of corroded metal-tools, fittings, weapons-and the smooth, vaguely furry long bones of countless animals-the floor of this river was crowded indeed, unfurled like a scroll, writing a history down to the sea.
He had already freed his mind to wander, sliding from spark to spark among the multitude of creatures beneath the spinning surface. It had become something of a habit. Wherever he found himself, he sent out tendrils, spreading like roots to expand his skein of awareness. Without it, he felt lost. And yet, such sensitivity was not always a gift. Even as he came to comprehend the vast interconnectedness of things, so too grew the suspicion that each life possessed its circle, closed-in, virtually blind to all that lay outside. No matter the scale, no matter the pretensions of the things within that circle, no matter even their beliefs, they travelled in profound ignorance of the vastness of the universe beyond.
The mind could do no better. It wasn’t built for profundity, and each time it touched upon the wondrous, it slid away, unable to find purchase. No, we do fine with wood-chips flying from the axe’s bite, the dowels we drive home, the seeds we scatter, the taste of ale in our mouths, the touch of love and desire at our fingertips. Comfort doesn’t lie in the mystery of the unknown and the unknowable. It lies in the home we dwell in, the faces we recognize, the past in our wake and the future we want for ourselves.
All this is what is solid. All this is what we grasp hold of. Even as we long for the other.
Was the definition of religion as simple as that? Longing for the other? Fuelling that wish with faith, emulating desires through rituals? That what we wish to be therefore is. That what we seek in truth exists. That in believing we create, and in creating we find.
By that argument, is not the opposite equally true? That what we reject ceases. That ‘truth’ is born in what we seek. That we create in order to believe. That we find only what we have created.
That wonder does not exist outside ourselves?
By our belief, we create the gods. And so, in turn, we can destroy them. With a single thought. A moment’s refusal, an instant’s denial.
Is this the real face of the war to come?
Chilled by the notion, Bottle contracted his senses, fled the indifferent sparks swirling through the river’s depths. He needed something… closer. Something human. He needed his rats in the hold.
Deadsmell coughed, and then dropped two coins into the trough. ‘You won’t get your cage, Throatslitter. You watch as four comes back to me.’ He looked up and scowled. ‘What’s wrong? Throw the bones, fool.’
‘You must be kidding. Ebron?’
‘Aye, he glamoured the trough.’
Throatslitter leaned forward. ‘You got yourself a problem, Deadsmell-and heed this too, Ebron, since you’re a mage and all-’
‘Hey! I just told you-’
‘And kindly, aye, you did. But listen anyway. Deadsmell, might be it’s a safe thing to be magicking the casts and whatnot, so long as you’re playing nitwits or fellow spooks or both. But, see, I’m Throatslitter, remember? I kill people for a living, in ways no reasonable, sane soldier could hope to imagine. Am I getting through here? You bring your talents to this game, maybe so will I.’
‘Gods below,’ Deadsmell said, ‘no need to get all riled.’
‘You cheated.’
‘So?’
‘With sorcery!’
‘I’m not quick enough for the other stuff, not any more. So maybe I was desperate.’
‘Maybe? Ebron-you got to agree here-a clean cheat, well, that’s expected. But a magicked one, that’s not acceptable. That’s knife-kissing stuff, and if I wasn’t so damned magnanimous, not to mention being sober enough to know that killing the squad healer’s probably not a good idea, why, there’d be blood running a’tween the boards right now.’
‘He’s got a point, Deadsmell. Here I figured on joining this game all clean like-’
Deadsmell’s snort cut him off. ‘You threw a web over the whole field when you sat down, Ebron. I was just giving it a twist.’
Throatslitter stared, and then held up the first polished bone. ‘See this, Ebron? Since you’re so happy to magic everything, let’s see how you do eating this. And the next one. In fact, how ’bout you eat them all?’
‘Not a chance-’
Throatslitter lunged over the chalked-out field on the deck. Ebron shrieked.
Things got ugly, and Bottle’s rat was lucky to escape unscathed.
Skulldeath sat huddled beneath blankets, staring morosely at the unconscious form of Hellian. She had passed out halfway through their love-making, which probably wasn’t unusual. Another soldier was sitting nearby, studying the Seven Cities prince with a knowing expression on his face.
The young man’s need for comfort and all the rest was not doomed this night, and in a short time he would slide over. It was a good thing that the only thing Hellian was possessive about was her rum and whatnot. She eyed a jug in someone else’s hand with all the fiery jealousy of a jilted lover. In any case, a drunk she might be, but she was no fool when it came to Skulldeath’s confused desires.
No, the real fool in the equation was sitting off to one side. Sergeant Urb, whose love for the woman glittered like the troubled waters of a spring, fed unceasingly from the bedrock of his childlike faith. A faith in the belief that one day her thoughts would clear, enough for her to see what was standing right in front of her. That the seduction of alcohol would suddenly sour.
The man was an idiot. But there were idiots aplenty in the world. An unending supply, in fact.
When Skulldeath finally stirred, Bottle edged out of the rat’s mind. Watching things like that-love-making-was too creepy. Besides, hadn’t his grandmother pounded into him the risk of deadly perversions offered by his talents? Oh, she had, she had indeed.
Skanarow moved up to stand alongside Captain Ruthan Gudd where he leaned on the rail.
‘Dark waters,’ she murmured.
‘It’s night.’
‘You like keeping things simple, don’t you?’
‘It’s because things are, Skanarow. All the complications we suffer through are hatched inside our own skulls.’
‘Really? Doesn’t make them any less real, though. Does it?’
He shrugged. ‘Something you want?’
‘Many things, Ruthan Gudd.’
He looked across at her-seemed startled to find how close she stood, almost as tall as he was, her Kanese eyes dark and gleaming-and then away again. ‘And what makes you think I can help you with any of them?’
She smiled, though the captain was not paying attention, and it was a lovely smile. ‘Who promoted you?’ she asked.
‘A raving lunatic.’
‘Where?’
He raked fingers through his beard, scowled. ‘And all this is in aid of what, precisely?’
‘Kindly was right, you know. We need to work together. You, I want to know more about, Ruthan Gudd.’
‘It’s not worth it.’
She leaned on the railing. ‘You’re hiding, Captain. But that’s all right. I’m good at finding things out. You were among the first list of officers for the Fourteenth. Meaning you were in Malaz City, already commissioned and awaiting attachment. Now, which armies washed up on Malaz Island too torn up to keep intact? The Eighth. The Thirteenth. Both from the Korelri Campaign. Now, the Eighth arrived at about the time the Fourteenth shipped out, but given the slow pace of the military ink-scratchers, it’s not likely you were from the Eighth-besides, Faradan Sort was, and she doesn’t know you. I asked. So, that leaves the Thirteenth. Which is rather… interesting. You served under Greymane-’
‘I’m afraid you got it all wrong,’ Ruthan Gudd cut in. ‘I came in on a transfer from Nok’s fleet, Skanarow. Wasn’t even a marine-’
‘Which ship did you serve on?’
‘The Dhenrabi-’
‘Which sank off the Strike Bight-’
‘Aye-’
‘About eighty years ago.’
He eyed her for a long moment. ‘Now, that kind of recall verges on the obsessive, don’t you think?’
‘As opposed to pathological lying, Captain?’
‘That was the first Dhenrabi. The second one slammed into the Wall at five knots. Of the two hundred and seventy-two on board, five of us were dragged out by the Stormguard.’
‘You stood the Wall?’
‘No, I was handed over in a prisoner exchange.’
‘Into the Thirteenth?’
‘Straight back to the fleet, Skanarow. We’d managed to capture four Mare triremes loaded with volunteers for the Wall-aye, hard to believe anyone would volunteer for that. In any case, the Stormguard were desperate for the new blood. So, you can put all your suspicions to rest, Captain. My history is dull and uneventful and far from heroic. Some mysteries, Skanarow, aren’t worth knowing.’
‘All sounds very convincing, I’ll grant you that.’
‘But?’
She gave him another bright smile, and this one he saw. ‘I still think you’re a liar.’
He pushed himself away from the railing. ‘Lots of rats on these barges, I’ve noticed.’
‘We could go hunting.’
Ruthan Gudd paused, combed his beard, and then shrugged. ‘Hardly worth the trouble, I should think.’
When he walked off, the Kanese woman hesitated, and then followed.
‘Gods below,’ Bottle muttered, ‘everyone’s getting it this night.’ He felt a stab somewhere deep within him, an old, familiar one. He’d not been the kind of man that women chased down. He’d had friends who rolled from one bed to the next, every one of those beds soft and warm. He’d had no such fortune. The irony of the thing that visited him in his dreams was that much sharper, in how it mocked the truths of his life.
Not that she’d been appearing of late, not for a month. Maybe she’d grown tired of him. Maybe she’d taken all she needed, whatever that was. But those last few times had been frightening in their desperation, the fear in her unhuman eyes. He’d awaken to the stench of grass fires on the savannah, the sting of smoke in his eyes and the thunder of fleeing herds ringing in his skull. Sickened by the overwhelming sense of dislocation, he would lie shivering beneath his threadbare blankets like a fevered child.
A month of peace, but why then did her absence fill him with foreboding?
The barge opposite had slipped ahead, riding some vagary of the current, and he could now see the eastern shore of the river. A low bank of boulders and reeds and beyond that rolling plains lit a luminous green by the jade slashes in the southern sky. Those grasslands should have been teeming with wildlife. Instead, they were empty.
This continent felt older than Quon Tali, older than Seven Cities. It was a land that had been fed on for too long.
On the western shore, farmland formed narrow strips with one end reaching down to the river and the other, a third of a league inland, debouching on to the network of roads crisscrossing the region. Without these farms, the Letherii would starve. Yet Bottle was troubled by the dilapidated condition of many of the homesteads, the sagging barns and weed-ringed silos. Not a single stand of trees remained; even the stumps had been pulled from the withered earth. The alder and aspen windbreaks surrounding the farm buildings looked skeletal, not parched but perhaps diseased. Broad fans of topsoil formed muddy islands just beyond drainage channels, making that side of the river treacherous. The rich earth was drifting away.
Better indeed, then, to be facing the eastern shoreline, desolate as it was.
Some soldier had been making the circuit, pacing the barge as if it was a cage, and he’d heard the footsteps pass behind him twice since he’d first settled at the railing. This time, those boots came opposite him, hesitated, and then clumped closer.
A midnight-skinned woman arrived on his left, setting hands down on the rail.
Bottle searched frantically for her name, gave up and sighed. ‘You’re one of those Badan Gruk thought drowned, right?’
She glanced over. ‘Sergeant Sinter.’
‘With the beautiful sister-oh, not that you’re not-’
‘With the beautiful sister, aye. Her name’s Kisswhere, which is a kind of knowing wink all on its own, isn’t it? Sometimes names find you, not the other way round. So it was with my sister.’
‘Not her original name, I take it.’
‘You’re Bottle. Fiddler’s mage, the one he doesn’t talk about-why’s that?’
‘Why doesn’t he talk about me? How should I know? What all you sergeants yak about is no business of mine anyway-so if you’re curious about something Fid’s saying or not saying, why don’t you just ask him?’
‘I would, only he’s not on this barge, is he?’
‘Bad luck.’
‘Bad luck, but then, there’s you. When Fiddler lists his, uh, assets, it’s like you don’t even exist. So, I’m wondering, is it that he doesn’t trust us? Or maybe it’s you he doesn’t trust? Two possibilities, two directions-unless you can think of another one?’
‘Fid’s been my only sergeant,’ Bottle said. ‘If he didn’t trust me, he’d have long since got rid of me, don’t you think?’
‘So it’s us he doesn’t trust.’
‘I don’t think trust has anything to do with it, Sergeant.’
‘Shaved knuckle, are you?’
‘Not much of one, I’m afraid. But I suppose I’m all he’s got. In his squad, I mean.’
She’d chopped short her hair, probably to cut down on the lice and whatnot-spending a few months in a foul cell had a way of making survivors neurotic about hygiene-and she now ran the fingers of both hands across her scalp. Her profile, Bottle noted with a start, was pretty much… perfect.
‘Anyway,’ Bottle said, even as his throat tightened, ‘when you first showed up, I thought you were your sister.’ And then he waited.
After a moment, she snorted. ‘Well now, that took some work, I’d wager. Feeling lonely, huh?’
He tried to think of something to say that wouldn’t sound pathetic. Came up with nothing. It all sounded pathetic.
Sinter leaned back down on the rail. She sighed. ‘The first raiding parties us Dal Honese assembled-long before we were conquered-were always a mess. Suicidal, in fact. You see, no way was a woman going to give up the chance to join in, so it was always both men and women forming the group. But then, all the marriages and betrothals started making for trouble-husbands and wives didn’t always join the same parties; sometimes one of them didn’t even go. But a week or two on a raid, well, fighting and lust suckle from the same tit, right? So, rather than the whole village tearing itself apart in feuds, jealous rages and all that, it was decided that once a warrior-male or female, married or betrothed-left the village on a raid, all pre-existing ties no longer applied.’
‘Ah. Seems a reasonable solution, I suppose.’
‘That depends. Before you knew it, ten or twelve raiding parties would set out all at once. Leaving the village mostly empty. With the choice between living inside rules-even comfortable ones-and escaping them for a time, well, what would you choose? And even worse, once word reached the other tribes and they all adopted the same practice, well, all those raiding parties started bumping into each other. We had our first full-scale war on our hands. Why be a miserable farmer or herder with one wife or one husband, when you can be a warrior drumming a new partner every night? The entire Dal Hon confederacy almost self-destructed.’
‘What saved it?’
‘Two things. Exhaustion-oh, well, three things, now that I think on it. Exhaustion. Another was the ugly fact that even free stuff isn’t for free. And finally, apart from imminent starvation, there were all those squalling babies showing up nine months later-a population explosion, in fact.’
Bottle was frowning. ‘Sinter, you could have just said “no”, you know. It’s not the first time I’ve heard that word.’
‘I gave up the Dal Honese life, Bottle, when I joined the Malazan marines.’
‘Are you deliberately trying to confuse me?’
‘No. Just saying that I’m being tugged two ways-I already got a man chasing me, but he’s a bad swimmer and who knows which barge he’s on right now. And I don’t think I made any special promises. But then, back at the stern-where all the fun is-there’s this soldier, a heavy, who looks like a marble statue-you know, the ones that show up at low tide off the Kanese coast. Like a god, but without all the seaweed-’
‘All right, Sergeant, I see where you’re going, or going back to, I mean. I’m no match for that, and if he’s offering-’
‘He is, but then, a drum with him might complicate things. I mean, I might get possessive.’
‘But that’s not likely with me.’
‘Just my thinking.’
Bottle eyed the dark waters roiling past below, wondering how fast he’d sink, and how long it took to drown when one wasn’t fighting it.
‘Oh,’ she murmured, ‘I guess that was a rather deflating invitation, wasn’t it?’
‘Well put, Sergeant.’
‘Okay, there’s more.’
‘More of what?’ He could always open his wrists before plunging in. Cut down on the panic and such.
‘I got senses about things, and sometimes people, too. Feelings. Curiosity. And I’ve learned it pays to follow up on that when I can. So, with you, I’m thinking it’s worth my while to get to know you better. Because you’re more than you first seem, and that’s why Fid’s not talking.’
‘Very generous, Sergeant. Tell you what, how about we share a meal or two over the next few days, and leave it at that. At least for now.’
‘I’ve made a mess of this, haven’t I? All right, we’ve got lots of time. See you later, Bottle.’
Paralt poison, maybe a vial’s worth, and then a knife to the heart to go with the slitted wrists, and then the drop over the side. Drowning? Nothing to it. He listened to the boots clump off, wondering if she’d pause at some point to wipe off what was left of him from her soles.
Some women were just out of reach. It was a fact. There were ones a man could get to, and then others he could only look at. And they in turn could do the calculations in the span of the barest flutter of an eye-walk up or walk over, or, if need be, run away from.
Apes did the same damned thing. And monkeys and parrots and flare snakes: the world was nothing but matches and mismatches, posturing and poses, the endless weighing of fitness. It’s a wonder the useless ones among us ever breed at all.
A roofed enclosure provided accommodation for the Adjunct and her staff of one, Lostara Yil, as well as her dubious guest, the once-priest Banaschar. Screened from the insects, cool in the heat of the day and warm at night when the mists lifted from the water. One room functioned as a mobile headquarters, although in truth there was little need for administration whilst the army traversed the river. The single table bore the tacked maps-sketchy as they were-for the Wastelands and a few scraps marking out the scattered territories of Kolanse. These latter ones were renditions of coastlines for the most part, pilot surveys made in the interests of trade. The vast gap in knowledge lay between the Wastelands and those distant coasts.
Banaschar made a point of studying the maps when no one else was in the room. He wasn’t interested in company, and conversations simply left him weary, often despondent. He could see the Adjunct’s growing impatience, the flicker in her eyes that might be desperation. She was in a hurry, and Banaschar thought he knew why, but sympathy was too rich a sentiment to muster, even for her and the Bonehunters who blindly followed her. Lostara Yil was perhaps more interesting. Certainly physically, not that he had any chance there. But it was the haunted shadow in her face that drew him to her, the stains of old guilt, the bitter flavours of regret and grievous loss. Such desires, of course, brought him face to face with his own perversions, his attraction to dissolution, the allure of the fallen. He would then tell himself that there was value in self-recognition. The challenge then was in measuring that value. A stack of gold coins? Three stacks? A handful of gems? A dusty burlap sack filled with dung? Value indeed, these unblinking eyes and their not-too-steady regard.
Fortunately, Lostara had little interest in him, relegating his hidden hungers to harmless imaginings, where the illusions served to gloss over the wretched realities. Dissolution palled in the details, even as blazing health and vigour could not but make a realist-like him-choke on irony. Death, after all, played against the odds with a cheating hand. It was a serious struggle to find righteous moralities in who lived and who died. He often thought of the bottle he reached for, and told himself: Well, at least I know what will kill me. What about that paragon of perfect living, cut down by a mole on his back he couldn’t even see? What about the glorious young giant who trips on his own sword in his first battle, bleeding out from a cut artery still thirty paces from the enemy? The idiot who falls down the stairs? Odds, don’t talk to me about odds-take a good look at the Hounds’ Toll if you don’t believe me.
Still, she wasn’t eager for his company so that conversation would have to wait. Her aversion was disappointing and somewhat baffling. He was educated, wasn’t he? And erudite, when sober and sometimes even when not sober. As capable of a good laugh as any defrocked priest with no future. And as for his own dissolution, well, he wasn’t so far along as to have lost the roguish qualities that accompanied that dissolution, was he?
He could walk the decks, he supposed, but then he would have no choice but to let the miasma of the living swirl over him with all the rank insistence that too many sweaty, unwashed bodies could achieve. Not to mention the snatches of miserable conversation assailing him as he threaded through the prostrate, steaming forms-nothing was uglier, in fact, than soldiers at rest. Nothing was more insipid, more degenerate, or more honest. Who needed reminding that most people were either stupid, lazy or both?
No, ever since the sudden disappearance of Telorast and Curdle-almost a month ago, now-he was better off with these maps, especially the blank places that so beckoned him. They should be feeding his imagination, even his sense of wonder, but that wasn’t why they so obsessed him. The unmarked spans of parchment and hide were like empty promises. The end of questions, the failure of the pursuit of knowledge. They were like forgotten dreams, ambitions abandoned to the pyres so long ago not a single fleck of ash remained.
He so wanted such blank spaces, spreading through the maps of his own history, the maps pinned to that curling table of bone that was the inside of his skull, the cave walls of his soul. Here be thy failures. Of resonance and mystery and truth. Here be the mountains vanishing in the mists, never to return. Here be the rivers sinking into the sands, and these are the sands that never rest. And the sky that looks down and sees nothing. Here, aye, is the world behind me, for I was never much of a map-maker, never much the surveyor of deeds.
Bleach out the faces, scour away the lives, scrape down the betrayals. Soak these maps until all the inks blur and float and wash away.
It is the task of priests to offer absolution, after all. And I shall begin by absolving myself.
It’s the lure, you see, of dissolution.
And so he studied the maps, all those empty spaces.
The river was a promise. That it could take the knife from Lostara’s hand. A glimmering flash and gone, for ever gone. The silts could then swallow everything up, making preservation and rot one and the same. The weight of the weapon would defy the current-that was the important thing, the way it would refuse to be carried along. Some things could do that. Some things possessed the necessary weight to acquire a will of their own.
She could follow the knife into the stream, but she knew she’d be tugged and pulled, spun and rolled onward, because no one was a knife, no one could stay in one place, no matter how hard they tried.
Lately, she had been thinking about the Red Blades, the faces and the life she had once known. It was clear to her now that what was past had stopped moving, but the sense of distance ever growing behind her was proving an illusion. Eddies drew her back, and all those mired memories waited to catch her like hidden snags.
A knife in hand, then, was sound wisdom. Best not surrender it to these troubled waters.
The Red Blades. She wondered if that elite company of fanatics still served the Empress. Who would have taken command? Well, there were plenty, enough of them to make the accession a bloody one. Had she been there, she too would have made a try. A knife in hand, then, was an answer to many things. The Adjunct’s irritation with it bordered on obsession, but she didn’t understand. A weapon needs to be maintained, after all. Honed, oiled, sliding quickly from the sheath. With that knife, Lostara could cut herself loose whenever she liked.
A little earlier, she had sat at the evening meal with Tavore, a ritual of theirs since leaving Letheras. Food and wine and not much in the way of conversation. Every effort Lostara made to draw the Adjunct out, to come to know her better-on a more personal level-had failed. For a long time, Lostara had concluded that the woman in command of the Bonehunters was simply incapable of revealing her vulnerable side. A flaw in her personality, as impossible to reject or change as the colour of one’s eyes. But Lostara was coming to believe that Tavore was afflicted with something else. She behaved as would a widow, the kind that then made mourning a way of life, a ritualized assembly of habits. The light of day had become a thing to turn away from. A gesture of invitation was answered with muttered regrets. And the sorrowing mask never left her face.
A widow should not be commanding an army, and the thought of Adjunct Tavore leading that army into a war left Lostara both disturbed and frightened. To wear the mask of the widow was to reject life itself, scattering ashes into one’s own path ahead, making the future as grey as the past. It was as if a pyre awaited them all, and at the moment of standing on the threshold of those murderous flames, she saw Tavore Paran stride forward, bold and resolute. And the army at her back would simply follow.
Two people seated across from one another, silent and trapped inside the world of their unspoken, private thoughts. The waters never blended, and the currents of the other were for ever strange and forbidding. There was no comfort in these suppers. They were, in fact, excruciating.
She quickly made her escape. Each night, retreating to the silk-walled chamber that was her bedroom. Where she sharpened and oiled her knife to drive away the red stain. Solitude could be an unwelcome place, but even the unwelcome could become habit.
Lostara had heard Banaschar’s footsteps as he headed for his temple of maps. They were steady this night, those footsteps, which meant he was more or less sober. Not often the case, alas, which was too bad-or perhaps not. Sometimes-his clear, sober times-the bleak horror in his eyes could overwhelm. What had it been like, worshipping the Worm of Autumn, that pale bitch of decay? It would take a particular person to be drawn to such a thing. One for whom abject terror meant facing the nightmare. Or, conversely, one who hungered for what could not be avoided, the breaking down of flesh and dreams, the knowledge of the multitude of carrion eaters that waited for him at life’s end.
But the Worm had cast him out. She had embraced all her other lovers, but not Banaschar. What did that mean to the man? The eaters would have to wait. The nightmare was not yet ready to meet his eyes. Obeisance to the inevitable was denied. Go away.
So, he would begin the rotting from the inside out. Spilling libations to drown the altar of his own soul. It was not desecration, it was worship.
The knife-edge went snick against the whetstone, steady as a heartbeat, each side in counter-beat as she flipped the blade in perfect rhythm. Snick snick snick…
Here in this cloth house, the others had their rituals. While she-she had her tasks of maintenance and preparedness. As befitted a soldier.
Stormy sat, back against the stepped rail that served as the barge’s gunwale, positioned just so. Opposite, the jade slashes loomed in the south sky, fierce and ominous, and to his eyes it seemed the heavens were coming for him, a personal and most private vendetta. He tried to think of a guilt worthy of the magnitude. That pouch of coins he’d once lifted from a drunk noble in Falar? He’d been able to buy a decent knife with that. How old had he been? Ten? Twelve?
Maybe that passed-out woman he’d groped? That friend of his aunt’s, easily twice his age-her tits had felt huge in his hands, heavy and wayward, and she’d moaned when he pinched her nipples, legs shifting and opening up-and what would a fifteen-year-old boy do with that? Well, the obvious, he supposed. In went his finger, and then a few more.
At some point she’d opened her eyes, frowned up at him, as if trying to place him. And then she’d sighed, the way a mother sighed when a wide-eyed son pressed her with awkward questions. And she took hold of that hand with all its probing fingers-he’d expected her to pull him out. Instead, she pushed the whole hand inside. He didn’t even think that was possible.
Drunk women still held a certain fascination for Stormy, but he never went after them, in case he heard that sigh again, the one that could turn him back into a nervous, lip-licking fifteen-year-old. Guilt, aye, it was a terrible thing. The world tilted, came back, eager to crush him flat. Because doing something wrong pushed it the other way, didn’t it? Keep pushing until you lose your footing and then wait for the sudden shadow, the huge thing blotting out the sky. Splat was another word for justice, as far as he was concerned. When it all comes back, aye.
He’d thrown his sister into a pond, once. But then, she’d been doing that to him for years, until that day when he realized he was bigger and stronger than she was. She’d hissed and spat her way back out, a look of outrage on her face. Recalling that, Stormy smiled. Justice by his own hand-no reason for feeling guilty about that one.
He’d killed plenty of people, of course, but only because they’d been trying to kill him and would have done just that if he’d let them. So that didn’t count. It was the soldier’s pact, after all, and for all the right decisions that kept one alive, a thousand things one could do nothing about could take a fool down. The enemy wasn’t just the one in front of you-it was the uncertain ground underfoot, the stray arrow, the flash of blinding sunlight, the gust of grit in the eye, the sudden muscle cramp or the snapped blade. A soldier fought against a world of enemies each and every time, and walking free of that was a glory to make the gods jealous. Maybe the guilt showed up, but that was later, like an aftertaste when you can’t even remember the taste itself. It was thin, not quite real, and to chew on it too long was just self-indulgence, as bad as probing a loose tooth.
He glared at the southern night sky. This celestial arbiter was indifferent to everything but the punishment it would deliver. Cut sharp as a gem, five jade swords were swinging down.
Of course they weren’t all aiming at him. It just felt that way, on this steamy night with the river full of glinting eyes from those damned crocodiles-and they wanted him too. He’d heard from the barge hands about how they’d tip a boat if they could and then swarm the hapless victims, tearing them to pieces. He shivered.
‘There’s a glamour about you, Adjutant.’
Stormy looked up. ‘I’m a corporal, High Mage.’
‘And I’m a squad mage, aye.’
‘You was a squad mage, just like I was maybe once an Adjutant, but now you’re a High Mage and I’m a corporal.’
Quick Ben shrugged beneath his rain-cape, which he’d drawn tight. ‘At first I thought it was just the Slashes, giving you that glow. But then, I saw how it flickered-like flames under your skin, Stormy.’
‘You’re seeing things. Go scare someone else.’
‘Where’s Gesler?’
‘How should I know? On some other barge.’
‘Fires are burning on the Wastelands.’
Stormy started, scowled up at Quick Ben. ‘What’s that?’
‘Sorry?’
‘What was that you were saying? About fires?’
‘The ones under your skin?’
‘No, the Wastelands.’
‘No idea, Adjutant.’ Quick Ben turned away, strangely ghostly, and then wandered off.
Stormy stared after him, chewing at his lower lip, and from the whiskers there he tasted bits of stew. His stomach rumbled.
They weren’t on any official list, which meant no ink-stained clerk had a chance to break them up for this voyage. Sergeant Sunrise thrice-blessed the Errant for that. He lounged on a mass of spare bedrolls, feeling half-drunk with all this freedom. And the camaraderie. He already loved all the soldiers in this company, and the thought that it was a continuation of a famous Malazan company made him proud and eager to prove himself, and he knew he wasn’t alone in that.
Dead Hedge was the perfect commander, as far as he was concerned. A man brimming with enthusiasm and boundless energy. Happy to be back, Sunrise surmised. From that dead place where the dead went after they were dead. It had been a long walk, or so Hedge had said when he’d been cajoling them all on the long march to the river. ‘You think this is bad? Try walking on a plain of bones that stretches to the damned horizon! Try being chased by Deragoth’-whatever they were, they sounded bad-‘and stalked by an evil T’lan Imass!’ Sunrise wasn’t sure what T’lan Imass were either, but Hedge had said they were evil so he was glad never to have met one.
‘Death, dear soldiers, is just another warren. Any of you know what a warren is?… Gods, you might as well be living in mud huts! A warren, friends, is like a row of jugs on a shelf behind the bar. Pick one, pull the stopper, and drink. That’s what mages do. Drink too much and it kills you. But just enough and you can use it to do magic. It’s fuel, but each jug is different-tastes different, does different magic. Now, there’s a few out there, like our High Mage, who can drink from ’em all, but that’s because he’s insane.’
Sunrise wondered where that bar was, because he’d like to try some of those jugs. But he was afraid to ask. You probably needed special permission to get in there. Of course, drinking always caused him trouble, so maybe it was just as well that the Warrens Bar was in some city in faraway Malaz. Besides, it’d be crowded with mages, and mages made Sunrise nervous. Especially High Mage Quick Ben, who seemed to be mad at Dead Hedge for some reason. Mad? More like furious. But Dead Hedge just laughed it off, because nothing could put him in a bad mood for very long.
Corporal Rumjugs waddled into view, sighing heavily as she seated herself on a bale. ‘What a workout! You’d think these soldiers never before held a decent woman.’
‘A good night then?’ Sunrise asked.
‘My money purse is bulging, Sunny, and I’m leaking every which way.’
She’d lost some weight, just like her friend, Sweetlard. That march had almost done them both in. But they were still big, big in that way of swallowing a man up and it sure seemed there were lots of men who liked that just fine. For himself, he preferred to make out a bit more of an actual body under all that fat. Another few months of marching and they’d be perfect.
‘I’m going to start charging them ones who like to watch, too. Why should that be free?’
‘You’re right in that, Rumjugs. Ain’t nothing should be for free. But that’s where us Letherii are different from the Malazans. We see the truth of that and it’s no problem. Malazans, they just complain.’
‘Worse is all the marriage offers I’m getting. They don’t want me to stop working, those ones, they just want to be married to me. Open-minded, I’ll grant you that. With Malazans, pretty much anything goes. It’s no wonder they conquered half the world.’
Sweetlard joined them from the other side of the deck. ‘Errant’s shrivelled cock, I can barely walk!’
‘Rest the slabs, sweetie,’ Rumjugs offered, waving a plump hand at a nearby bale close to the lantern.
‘Where’s Nose Stream?’ Sweetlard asked. ‘I’d heard he was going to talk to the Boss. About us trying some of them new missions-’
‘Munitions,’ corrected Rumjugs.
‘Right, munitions. I mean, that sword I got, what am I supposed to do with it? I was collared to clear an overgrown lot once when I was little, and I took one look at them machetes and I threw up all over the Penal Mistress. Sharp edges give me the shakes-I got too much that looks too easy to cut, if you know what I mean.’
‘We can’t do nothing with the ones Bavedict’s made up,’ said Sunrise. ‘Not until we’re off these barges. And even then, we got to work in secret. Boss doesn’t want anybody else knowing anything about them, you see?’
‘But why?’ Sweetlard demanded.
‘Cos, love,’ drawled Rumjugs, ‘there’s other sappers, right? In the Bonehunters. They see what Bavedict’s come up with and everyone will want ’em, and before you know it, all the powders and potions are used up and we got us nothing.’
‘The greedy bastards!’
‘So make sure you say nothing, right? Even when you’re working, I mean.’
‘I hear you, Rummy Cups. No worries in that regard-I can’t get a word in with all the marriage proposals.’
‘You too? Why’s they all so desperate, I wonder?’
‘Children,’ said Sunrise. ‘They want children and they want ’em quick.’
‘Why would they all want that?’ Sweetlard asked.
The only answer that came to Sunrise was a grim one, and he hesitated.
After a moment Rumjugs gusted out a loud sigh. ‘Errant’s balls. They’re all expectin’ to die.’
‘Not the best attitude,’ mused Sweetlard, as she pulled out a leaf stick and leaned in to the lantern slung close to her left shoulder. Once the end was smouldering, she drew it to a bright coal and then settled back. ‘Spirits below, I’m chafing.’
‘When did you last have a drink?’ Rumjugs asked her.
‘Weeks now. You?’
‘Same. Funny how things kind of clear up.’
‘Funny, aye.’
Sunrise smiled to himself at hearing Sweetlard try out that Malazan way of talking. ‘Aye.’ It’s a good word, I think. More a whole attitude than a word, really. With lots of meaning in it, too. A bit of ‘yes’ and a bit of ‘well, fuck’ and maybe some ‘we’re all in this mess together’. So, a word to sum up the Malazans. He uttered his own sigh and settled his head back. ‘Aye,’ he said.
And the others nodded. He knew they did, and he didn’t even have to look.
We’re tightening up. Just like Dead Hedge said we would. Just like that, aye.
‘Idle hands, soldier. Take hold of that chest there and follow me.’
‘I got an idea about what you can t-take hold of, Master Sergeant, and you don’t n-need my help at all.’
Pores wheeled on the man. ‘Impudence? Insubordination? Mutiny?’
‘K-keep going, sir, and we can end on r-r-r-regicide.’
‘Well now,’ Pores said, advancing to stand in front of the solid, scowling bastard. ‘I didn’t take you for a mouthy one, Corporal. What squad and who’s your sergeant?’
The man’s right cheek bulged with something foul-the Malazans were picking up disgusting local habits-and he worked it for a moment before saying, ‘Eighth Legion, Ninth c-c-c-company, Fourth su-su-squad. Sergeant F-F-F-Fiddler. Corporal Tarr, na-na-na-not at your service, Master Sergeant.’
‘Think you got spine, Corporal?’
‘Spine? I’m a f-f-f-fucking tree, and you ain’t the wind to b-b-b-blow me down. Now, as you can s-s-s-see, I’m trying to wake up here, since I’m c-c-c-coming on my watch. You want some fool to t-t-tote your ill-gotten spoils, find someone else.’
‘What’s that in your mouth?’
‘Rylig, it’s c-c-c-called. D’ras. You use it to wake you up shuh-shuh-shuh-sharp.’
Pores studied the man’s now glittering eyes, the sudden cascade of jumpy twitches on his face. ‘You sure you’re supposed to chew the whole wad, Corporal?’
‘You m-may huh-huh-have a p-p-p-point theh-theh-there.’
‘Spit that ow-ow-out, Corporal, before your head explodes.’
‘Ccccandoat, Mas-Mas-mmmmfuckface. Spenspenspensive-’
The idiot was starting to pop like a seed on a hot rock. Pores took Tarr by the throat and forced him half over the rail. ‘Spit it out, you fool!’
He heard gagging, and then ragged coughing. The corporal’s knees gave out, and Pores pulled hard to keep the man upright. He stared a long moment into Tarr’s eyes. ‘Next time, Corporal, be sure to listen when the locals tell you how to use it, right?’
‘H-H-Hood’s B-B-Breath!’
Pores stepped back as Tarr straightened, the corporal’s head snapping round at every sound. ‘Go on, then, do your twenty rounds for every two your partner does. But before you do,’ he added, ‘why not carry that chest for me.’
‘Aye sir, easy, easy. Watch.’
Fools who messed up their own heads, Pores reflected, were the easiest marks of all. Might be worth buying an interest in this Rylig stuff.
The two half-blood D’ras hands lounged near the starboard tiller.
‘The whole load?’ one asked, eyes wide with disbelief.
‘The whole load,’ the other confirmed. ‘Just jammed it into his mouth and walked off.’
‘So where is he now?’
‘Probably bailing the barge with a tin cup. The leaks ain’t got a hope of keeping up.’
They both laughed.
They were still laughing when Corporal Tarr found them. Coming up from behind. One hand to each man’s belt. They wailed as they were yanked from their feet, and wailed a second time as they went over the stern rail. Loud splashes, followed by shrieking.
Clear to Tarr’s unnaturally bright vision, the V wakes of maybe a dozen crocodiles fast closing in. He’d forgotten about those things. Too bad. He’d think about it later.
The alarms rang for a time, big brass bells that soon slowed their frantic call and settled into something more like a mourning dirge, before echoing to silence once again.
Life on the river was a nasty business, nasty as nasty could get but that’s just how it was. The giant lizards were horrible enough with all those toothy jaws but then the local hands started talking about the river cows waiting downstream, not that river cows sounded particularly frightening as far as Tarr was concerned, even ones with huge tusks and pig eyes. He’d heard a score of confusing descriptions on his rounds, but only fragmentary ones, as he was quickly past and into the next bizarre, disjointed conversation, quick as breaths, quick as the blur of his boots drumming the deck. Vigilant patrol, aye, no time for lingering, no time for all that unimportant stuff. Walk the rail and walk the rail, round and round, and this was decent exercise but he should have worn his chain and kit bag and maybe his folding shovel, and double time might be required, just so he could get to know all these sudden faces jumping up in front of him, know them inside and out and their names, too, and whether they liked smoked fish and chilled beer or proper piss-warm ale and so many bare feet what if someone attacked right here and now? they’d all have nails stuck in their tender soles and he’d be all alone leading the charge but that’d be fine since he could kill anything right now, even bats because they weren’t so fast were they? not as fast as those little burning sparks racing everywhere into his brain and back out again and in one ear out the other two and look at this! Marching on his knees, it was easy! Good thing since he’d worn his legs down to stumps and now the deck was coming up fast to knock on his nose and see if anyone was home but was anyone home? only the bats-
‘He going to live?’ Badan Gruk asked.
‘Eh? Egit primbly so, lurky bhagger.’
‘Good. Keep him under those blankets-I never seen a man sweat like that, he’s bound to chill himself to the bone, and keep forcing water down him.’
‘Dentellit meen bazness, Sornt! Eenit known eeler, eh?’
‘Fine then, just make sure you heal him. Sergeant Fiddler will not be pleased to hear his corporal went and died in your care.’
‘Fabbler kint shit ding! Ee nair feered im!’
‘Really? Then you’re an idiot, Nep.’
Badan Gruk frowned down at Tarr. Some new fever to chase them down? He hoped not. It looked particularly unpleasant, reminding him of the shaking fever, only worse. This place had almost as many miserable diseases and parasites as in the jungles of Dal Hon.
Feeling nostalgic, the sergeant left Tarr to Nep Furrow’s ministrations. He would have been happier if he’d been on the same barge as Sinter, even Kisswhere. Corporal Ruffle was around, but she’d discovered a bones and trough game with a few heavies and was either heading for a sharp rise in her income or a serious beating. No matter what, she’d make enemies. Ruffle was like that.
He still didn’t know what to make of this army, these Bonehunters. He could find nothing-no detail-that made them what they were. What we are. I’m one of them now. There were no great glories in the history of these legions-he’d been in the midst of the conquest of Lether and it had been a sordid thing. When the tooth’s rotten right down to its root, it’s no feat to tug it out. Maybe it was a just war. Maybe it wasn’t. Did it make any difference? A soldier takes orders and a soldier fights. The enemy wore a thousand masks but they all turned out the same. Just people determined to stand in their way. This was supposed to be enough. Was it? He didn’t know.
Surrounded by foreigners, friendly or otherwise, settled a kind of pressure on every Malazan soldier here. Demanding a shape to this army, and yet something was resisting it, something within the Bonehunters, as if hidden forces pushed back against that pressure. We are and we aren’t, we will and we won’t. Are we just hollow at the core? Does it start and end with the Adjunct? That notion felt uncharitable. People were just restless, uneasy with all this not knowing.
Who was the enemy awaiting them? What sort of mask would they see this time?
Badan Gruk could not remember ever knowing a person who deliberately chose to do the wrong thing, the evil thing-no doubt such people existed, the ones who simply didn’t care, and ones who, for all he knew, enjoyed wearing the dark trappings of malice. Armies served and sometimes they served tyrants-bloodthirsty bastards-and they fought against decent, right-minded folk out of fear and in the interests of self-preservation, and out of greed, too, come to that. Did they see themselves as evil? How could they not? But then, how many campaigns could you fight, if you were in that army? How many before you started feeling sick inside? In your gut. In your head. When the momentum of all those conquests starts to falter, aye, what then?
Or when your tyrant Empress betrays you?
No one talked much about that, and yet Badan Gruk suspected it was the sliver of jagged iron lodged in the heart of the Bonehunters, and the bleeding never slowed. We did everything she asked of us. The Adjunct followed her orders and got it done. The rebellion crushed, the leaders dead or scattered. Seven Cities brought under the imperial heel once again. In the name of order and law and smiling merchants. But none of it mattered. The Empress twitched a finger and the spikes were readied for our heads.
Anger burned for only so long. Enough to cut a messy path through the Empire of Lether. And then it was done. That ‘then’ was now. What did they have to take anger’s place? We are to be Unwitnessed, she said. We must fight for each other and ourselves and no one else. We must fight for survival, but that cannot hold us together-it’s just as likely to tear us apart.
The Adjunct held to an irrational faith-in her soldiers, in their resolve. We’re a fragile army and there are enough reasons for that being true. That sliver needs to be pulled, the wound needs to knit.
We’re far from the Malazan Empire now, but we carry its name with us. It’s even what we call ourselves. Malazans. Gods below, there’s no way out of this, is there?
He turned away from the inky river carrying them along, scanned the huddled, sleeping forms of his fellow soldiers. Covering every available space on the deck, motionless as corpses.
Badan Gruk fought off a shiver and turned back to the river, where nothing could resist the current for long.
It was an old fancy, so old he’d almost forgotten it. A grandfather-it hardly mattered whether he’d been a real one or some old man who’d thrown on that hat for the duration of the memory-had taken him to the Malaz docks, where they’d spent a sunny afternoon fishing for collar-gills and blue-tube eels. ‘Take a care on keeping the bait small, lad. There’s a demon at the bottom of this harbour. Sometimes it gets hungry or maybe just annoyed. I heard of fishers snapped right off this dock, so keep the bait small and keep an eye on the water.’ Old men lived for stories like that. Putting the fright into wide-eyed runts who sat with their little legs dangling off the edge of the pier, runts with all the hopes children have and wasn’t that what fishing was all about?
Fiddler couldn’t remember if they’d caught anything that day. Hopes had a way of sinking fast once you stepped out of childhood. In any case, escaping this motley throng of soldiers, he’d scrounged a decent line and a catfish-spine hook. Using a sliver of salted bhederin for bait and a bent, holed coin buffed to flash, he trailed the line out behind the barge. There was always the chance of snagging something ugly, like one of those crocodiles, but he didn’t think it likely. He did, however, make a point of not dangling his legs over the edge. Wrong bait.
Balm wandered up after a time and sat down beside him. ‘Catch anything?’
‘Make one of two guesses and you’ll be there,’ Fiddler replied.
‘Funny though, Fid, seen plenty jumping earlier.’
‘That was dusk-tomorrow round that time I’ll float something looking like a fly. Find any of your squad?’
‘No, not one. Feels like someone cut off my fingers. I’m actually looking forward to getting back on land.’
‘You always were a lousy marine, Balm.’
The Dal Honese nodded. ‘And a worse soldier.’
‘Now I didn’t say-’
‘Oh but I am. I lose myself. I get confused.’
‘You just need pointing in the right direction, and then you’re fine, Balm. A mean scrapper, in fact.’
‘Aye, fighting my way clear of all that fug. You was always lucky, Fid. You got that cold iron that makes thinking fast and clear easy for you. I ain’t neither hot or cold, you see. I’m more like lead or something.’
‘No one in your squad has ever complained, Balm.’
‘Well, I like them and all, but I can’t say that they’re the smartest people I know.’
‘Throatslitter? Deadsmell? They seem to have plenty of wits.’
‘Wits, aye. Smart, no. I remember when I was a young boy. In the village there was another boy, about my age. Was always smiling, even when there was nothing to smile about. And always getting into trouble-couldn’t keep his nose out of anything. Some of the older boys would pick on him-I saw him punched in the face once, and he stood there bleeding, that damned smile on his face. Anyway, one day he stuck his nose into the wrong thing-no one ever talked about what it was, but we found that boy lying dead behind a hut. Every bone broken. And on his face, all speckled in blood, there was that smile.’
‘Ever see a caged ape, Balm? You must have. That smile you kept seeing was fear.’
‘I know it now, Fid, you don’t need to tell me. The point is, Throatslitter and Deadsmell, they make me think of that boy, the way he always got into things he shouldn’t have. Wits enough to be curious, not smart enough to be cautious.’
Fiddler grunted. ‘I’m trying to think of any soldier in my squad who fits that description. It occurs to me that wits might be hard to find among ’em, barring maybe Bottle-but he’s smart enough to keep his head down. I think. So far, anyway. As for the rest of them, they like it simple and if it ain’t simple, why, they just get mad and break something.’
‘You got yourself a good squad there, Fid.’
‘They’ll do.’
A sudden tug. He began hitching the line back in. ‘Not much of a fight, can’t be very big.’ Moments later he drew the hook into view. They stared down at a fish not much bigger than the bait, but it had lots of teeth.
Balm snorted. ‘Look, it’s smiling!’
It was late and Brys Beddict was ready for bed, but the aide’s face was set, as if the young man had already weathered a tirade. ‘Very well, send her in.’
The aide bowed and backed away with evident relief, turning smartly at the silk curtain, slipping past to make his way to the outer midship deck. A short time later Brys heard boots thumping from bare boards to the rug-strewn corridor leading to his private chamber. Sighing, he rose from his camp chair and adjusted his cloak.
Atri-Ceda Aranict edged aside the curtain and stepped within. She was tall, somewhere in her late thirties, though the deep creases framing her mouth-from a lifetime of rustleaf-made her look older; although something about those lines suited her well. Her sun-faded brown hair was straight and hung loose, down to either side of her breasts. The uniform of her rank seemed an ill fit, as if she was yet to become accustomed to this new career. Bugg had found her in the most recent troll for potential cedas. She had been employed as a midwife in a household in the city of Trate, which had suffered terribly at the beginning of the Edur invasion. Her greatest talents were in healing, although Bugg had assured Brys that she possessed the potential for other magics.
To date, his impression of her was as a singularly dour and uncommunicative woman, so despite the lateness he found himself regarding her with genuine interest. ‘Atri-Ceda, what is it that is so urgent?’
She seemed momentarily at a loss, as if she had not expected to succeed in receiving this audience. She met his eyes in the briefest flicker, which seemed to fluster her even more, and then she cleared her throat. ‘Commander, it is best-I mean, you need to see for yourself. Will you permit me, sir?’
Bemused, Brys nodded.
‘I have been exploring the warrens-the Malazan way of sorcery. It’s so much more… elegant.’ As she was speaking she was rummaging inside the small leather pouch tied to her belt. She withdrew her hand and opened it, revealing a small amount of grainy dirt. ‘Do you see, sir?’
Brys tilted forward. ‘That would be dirt, Aranict?’
A quick frown of irritation that delighted him. ‘Look more carefully, sir.’
He did. Watching it settle, and then settle some more-no, the soil was in motion. ‘You have ensorcelled this handful of earth? Er, well done, Atri-Ceda.’
The woman snorted, and then her breath caught. ‘My apologies, Commander. It’s obvious I’ve not explained myself-’
‘As of yet you’ve not explained anything.’
‘Sorry sir. I thought, if I didn’t show you, you’d have no reason to believe me-’
‘Aranict, you are my Atri-Ceda. You would not serve me well if I viewed you with scepticism. Please, go on, and please relax-I did not mean to sound impatient. In truth, this restless soil is most remarkable.’
‘No sir, not in itself. Any Malazan mage could manage this with barely the twitch of a finger. The fact is, I’m not the source of this.’
‘Oh, then who is?’
‘I don’t know. Before we boarded, sir, I was standing down at the water’s edge-there’d been a hatching of watersnakes, and I was watching the little ones slither into the reeds-creatures interest me, sir. And I noticed something in the mud where the serpents had crawled. Parts of it were moving, shifting about, as you see here. Naturally, I suspected that some insect or mollusc was beneath the surface, so I probed-’
‘Bare-handed? Was that wise?’
‘Probably not, as the whole bank was full of mud-urchins, but I could see that this was different. In any case, sir, I found nothing. But the mud in my hand fairly seethed, as if it possessed a life of its own.’
Brys peered at the dirt cupped in her palm once more. ‘And is this the offending material?’
‘Yes, sir. And that’s where the Malazan warrens come into this. It’s called sympathetic linkage. Rather, with this bit of dirt, I can find others just like it.’
‘Along the river?’
Her eyes met his again, and once more they flitted away-and with a start Brys realized that Aranict was shy. The notion endeared her to him and he felt a wave of sympathy, warm as a caress. ‘Sir, it started there-since I’m new to working this kind of magic-but then it spread, inland, and I could sense the places of its greatest manifestation-this swarming power in the ground, I mean. In mud, in sands, the range, sir, is vast. But where you’ll find more than anywhere else, Commander, is in the Wastelands.’
‘I see. What, do you think, do these modest disturbances signify?’
‘That something’s just beginning, sir. But, I need to talk to some Malazan mages-they know so much more than I do. They can take it farther than I have managed.’
‘Atri-Ceda, you have only begun your explorations of the Malazan warrens, and yet you have extended your sensitivity all the way to the Wastelands. I see now why the Ceda held you in such high regard. However, come the morning we shall send you in a launch to a Malazan barge.’
‘Perhaps the one where Ebron will be found, or Widdershins-’
‘Squad mages? No, Atri-Ceda. Like it or not, you are my equivalent of High Mage. Accordingly, your appropriate contact among the Bonehunters is their High Mage, Adaephon Ben Delat.’
All colour drained from her face. Her knees buckled.
Brys had to move quickly to take her weight as she slumped in a dead faint. ‘Granthos! Get me a healer!’
He heard some muffled response in reply from the outer chamber.
The dirt had scattered on to the rug and Brys caught motion from the corner of his eye. It was gathering together, forming a roiling heap. He thought he could almost make out shapes within it, before everything fell away, only to re-form once more.
She was heavier than he’d expected. He looked down at her face, the parted lips, and then away again. ‘Granthos! Where in the Errant’s name are you?’
I have reached an age when youth itself is beauty.
A BRIEF ASSEMBLY OF UGLY THOUGHTS (INTERLUDE)
GOTHOS’ FOLLY
The bones of the rythen rested on a bed of glittering scales, as if in dying it had shed its carpet of reptilian skin, unfolding it upon the hard crystals of the Glass Desert’s lifeless floor: a place to lie down, the last nest of its last night. The lizard-wolf had died alone, and the stars that looked down upon the scene of this solitary surrender did not blink. Not once.
No wind had come to scatter the scales, and the relentless sun had eaten away the toxic meat from around the bones, and had then bleached and polished those bones to a fine golden lustre. There was something dangerous about them, and Badalle stood staring down at the hapless remains for some time, her only movement coming when she blew the flies away from the sores clustering her mouth. Bones like gold, a treasure assuredly cursed. ‘Greed invites death,’ she whispered, but the voice broke up and the sounds that came out were likely unintelligible, even to Saddic who stood close by her side.
Her wings were shrivelled, burnt down to stumps. Flying was but a memory finely dusted with ash, and she found nothing inside to justify brushing it clean. Past glories dwindled in the distance. Behind her, behind them, behind them all. But her descent was not over. Soon, she knew, she would crawl. And finally slither like a drying worm, writhing ineffectually, making grand gestures that won her nothing. Then would come the stillness of exhaustion.
She must have seen such a worm once. She must have knelt down beside it as children did, to better observe its pathetic struggles. Dragged up from its dark comforting world, by some cruel beak perhaps, and then lost on the fly, striking a hard and unyielding surface-a flagstone, yes-one making up the winding path in the garden. Injured, blind in the blazing sunlight, it could only pray to whatever gods it wanted to exist. The blessing of water, a stream to swim back into the soft soil, a sudden handful of sweet earth descending upon it, or the hand of some merciful godling reaching down, the pluck of salvation.
She had watched it struggle, she was certain she had. But she could not recall if she had done anything other than watch. Children understood at a very young age that doing nothing was an expression of power. Doing nothing was a choice swollen with omnipotence. It was, in fact, godly.
And this, she now realized, was the reason why the gods did nothing. Proof of their omniscience. After all, to act was to announce awful limitations, for it revealed that chance acted first, the accidents were just that-events beyond the will of the gods-and all they could do in answer was to attempt to remedy the consequences, to alter natural ends. To act, then, was an admission of fallibility.
Such ideas were complicated, but they were clean, too. Sharp as the crystals jutting from the ground at her feet. They were decisive in catching the rays of the sun and cutting them into perfect slices, proving that rainbows were not bridges in the sky. And that no salvation was forthcoming. The Snake had become a worm, and the worm was writhing on the hot stone.
Children withheld. Pretending to be gods. Fathers did the same, unblinking when the children begged for food, for water. They knew moments of nostalgia and so did nothing, and there was no food and no water and the sweet cool earth was a memory finely dusted with ash.
Brayderal had said that morning that she had seen tall strangers standing beneath the rising sun, standing, she said, on the ribby snake’s tail. But to look in that direction was to go blind. People could either believe Brayderal or not believe her. Badalle chose not to believe her. None of the Quitters had chased after them, even the Fathers were long gone, as were the ribbers and all the eaters of dead and dying meat except for the Shards-who could fly in from leagues away. No, the ribby snake was alone on the Glass Desert, and the gods watched down and did nothing, to show just how powerful they really were.
But she could answer with her own power. That was the delicious truth. She could see them writhing in the sky, shrivelling in the sun. And she chose not to pray to them. She chose to say nothing at all. When she had winged through the heavens, she had sailed close to those gods, fresh and free as a hatchling. She had seen the deep lines bracketing their worried eyes. She had seen the weathered tracks of their growing fear and dismay. But none of these sentiments was a gift to their worshippers. The faces and their expressions were the faces of the self-obsessed. Such knowledge was fire. Feathers ignited. She had spiralled in a half-wild descent, unravelling smoke in her wake. Flashes of pain, truths searing her flesh. She had plunged through clouds of Shards, deafened by the hissing roar of wings. She had seen the ribby snake stretched out across a glittering sea, had seen-with a shock-how short and thin it had grown.
She thought again of the gods now high above her. Those faces were no different from her own face. The gods were as broken as she was broken, inside and out. Like her, they wandered a wasteland with nowhere to go.
The Fathers drove us out. They were done with children. Now she believed the fathers and mothers of the gods had driven them out as well, pushed them out into the empty sky. And all the while and far below the people crawled in their circles and from high up no one could make sense of the patterns. The gods that sought to make sense of them were driven mad.
‘Badalle.’
She blinked in an effort to clear her eyes of the cloudy skins that floated in them, but they just swam back. Even the gods, she now knew, were half-blinded by the clouds. ‘Rutt.’
His face was an old man’s face, cracked lines through caked dust. Held was wrapped tight within the mottled blanket. Rutt’s eyes, which had been dull for so long that Badalle thought they had always been so, were suddenly glistening. As if someone had licked them. ‘Many died today,’ she said. ‘We can eat.’
‘Badalle.’
She blew at flies. ‘I have a poem.’
But he shook his head. ‘I-I can’t go on.’
‘Quitters never quit,
And that is the lie we live with
Now they walk us
To the end.
Eating our tail.
But we are shadows on glass
And the sun drags us onward.
The Quitters have questions
But we are the eaters
Of answers.’
He stared at her. ‘She was right, then.’
‘Brayderal was right. She has threads in her blood. Rutt, she will kill us all if we let her.’
He looked away, and she could see he was about to cry. ‘No, Rutt. Don’t.’
His face crumpled.
She took him as he sagged, took him and somehow found the strength to hold him up as he shuddered with sobs.
Now he too was broken. But they couldn’t let that happen. She couldn’t, because if he broke then the Quitters would get them all. ‘Rutt. Without you, Held is nothing. Listen. I have flown high-I had wings, like the gods. I went so high I could see how the world curves, like the old women used to tell us, and I saw-Rutt, listen-I saw the end of the Glass Desert.’
But he shook his head.
‘And I saw something else. A city, Rutt. A city of glass-we will find it tomorrow. The Quitters won’t go there-they are afraid of it. The city, it’s a city they know from their legends-but they’d stopped believing those legends. And now it’s invisible to them-we can escape them, Rutt.’
‘Badalle-’ his voice was muffled against the skin and bone of her neck. ‘Don’t give up on me. If you give up, I won’t-I can’t-’
She had given up long ago, but she wouldn’t tell him that. ‘I’m here, Rutt.’
‘No. No, I mean’-he pulled back, stared fixedly into her eyes-‘don’t go mad. Please.’
‘Rutt, I can’t fly any more. My wings burned off. It’s all right.’
‘Please. Promise me, Badalle. Promise!’
‘I promise, but only if you promise not to give up.’
His nod was shaky. His control, she could see, was thin and cracked as burnt skin. I won’t go mad, Rutt. Don’t you see? I have the power to do nothing. I have all the powers of a god.
This ribby snake will not die. We don’t have to do anything at all, just keep going. I have flown to where the sun sets, and I tell you, Rutt, we are marching into fire. Beautiful, perfect fire. ‘You’ll see,’ she said to him.
Beside them stood Saddic, watching, remembering. His enemy was dust.
What is, was. Illusions of change gathered windblown into hollows in hillsides, among stones and the exposed roots of long-dead trees. History swept along as it had always done, and all that is new finds shapes of old. Where stood towering masses of ice now waited scars in the earth. Valleys carried the currents of ghost rivers and the wind wandered paths of heat and cold to deliver the turn of every season.
Such knowledge was agony, like a molten blade thrust to the heart. Birth was but a repetition of what had gone before. Sudden light was a revisitation of the moment of death. The madness of struggle was without beginning and without end.
Awakening to such things loosed a rasping sob from the wretched, rotted figure that clambered out from the roots of a toppled cottonwood tree sprawled across an old oxbow. Lifting itself upright, it looked round, the grey hollows beneath the brow-ridges gathering the grainy details into shapes of meaning. A broad, shallow valley, distant ridges of sage and firebrush. Grey-winged birds darting down the slopes.
The air smelled of smoke and tasted of slaughter. Perhaps a herd had been driven over a bluff. Perhaps heaps of carcasses spawned maggots and flies and this was the source of the dreadful, incessant buzzing sound. Or was this something sweeter? Had the world won the argument? Was she now a ghost returned to mock the rightful failure of her kind? Would she find somewhere nearby the last putrid remnants of her people? She dearly hoped so.
She was named Bitterspring in the language of the Brold clan, Lera Epar, a name she had well earned for the terrible crimes she had committed. She had been the one flower among all the field’s flowers whose scent had been deadly. Men had cast away their own women to clutch her as their own. Each time, she had permitted herself to be plucked-seeing in his eyes what she had wanted to see, that he valued her above all others-even and especially the mate he had abandoned-and so their love would be unassailable. Before it went wrong, before it proved the weakest binding of all. And then another man would appear, with that same hungry fire in his eyes, and she would think, This time, it is different. This time, I am certain, our love is a thing of great power.
Everyone had agreed that she was the cleverest person in all the clans of the Brold Gathering. She was not a thing of the shallows, no, her mind plunged unlit depths. She was the delver into life’s perils, who spoke of the curse that was the alighting of reason’s spark. She found divination not in the fire-cracked shoulder-blades of caribou, but in the watery reflections of faces in pools, springs and gourd bowls-faces she knew well as kin. As kin, yes, and more. Such details as made one distinct from all others, she knew these to be illusions, serving for quick recognition but little else. Beneath those details, she understood, they were all the same. Their needs. Their wants, their fears.
She had been regarded as a formidable seer, a possessor of spirit-gifted power. But the truth was, and this she knew with absolute certainty, there was no magic in her percipience. Reason’s spark did not arise spontaneously amidst the dark waters of base emotion. No, and nor was each spark isolated from the others. Bitterspring understood all too well that the sparks were born of hidden fires-the soul’s own array of hearth-fires, each one devoted to simple, immutable truths. One for every need. One for every want. One for every fear.
Once this revelation found her, reading the futures of her kin was an easy task. Reason delivered the illusion of complexity, but behind it all, we are as simple as bhederin, simple as ay, as ranag. We rut and bare our teeth and expose our throats. Behind our eyes our thoughts can burn bright with love or blacken with jealous rot. We seek company to find our place in it, and unless that place is at the top, all we find dissatisfies us, poisons our hearts.
In company, we are capable of anything. Murder, betrayal. In company, we invent rituals to quench every spark, to ride the murky tide of emotion, to be once again as unseeing and uncaring as the beasts.
I was hated. I was worshipped. And, in the end, I am sure, I was murdered.
Lera Epar, why are you awake once more? Why have you returned?
I was the dust in the hollows, I was the memories lost.
I did terrible things, once. Now I stand here, ready to do them all again.
She was Bitterspring, of the Brold Imass, and her world of ice and white-furred creatures was gone. She set out, a chert and jawbone mace dangling from one hand, the yellowed skin of the white-furred bear trailing down from her shoulders.
She had been too beautiful, once. But history was never kind.
He rose from the mud ringing the waterhole, shedding black roots, fish scales and misshapen cakes of clay and coarse sand. Mouth open, jaws stretched wide, he howled without sound. He had been running straight for them. Three K’ell Hunters, whose heads turned to regard him. They had been standing over the corpses of his wife, his two children. The bodies would join the gutted carcasses of other beasts brought down on their hunt. An antelope, a mule deer. The mates of the felled beasts had not challenged the slayers. No, they had fled. But this one, this male Imass roaring out his battle-cry and rushing them with spear readied, he was clearly mad. He would give his life for nothing.
The K’ell Hunters did not understand.
They had met his charge with the flat of their blades. They had broken the spear and had then beaten him unconscious. They didn’t want his meat, tainted as it was with madness.
Thus ended his first life. In rebirth, he was a man emptied of love. And he had been among the first to step into the embrace of the Ritual of Tellann. To expunge the memories of past lives. Such was the gift, so precious, so perfect.
He had lifted himself from the mud, summoned once more-but this time was different. This time, he remembered everything.
Kalt Urmanal of the Orshayn T’lan Imass stood shin-deep in mud, head tilted back, howling without sound.
Rystalle Ev crouched on a mound of damp clay twenty paces from Kalt. Understanding him, understanding all that assailed him. She too had awakened, possessor of all that she had thought long lost, and so she looked upon Kalt, whom she loved and had always loved, even in the times when he walked as would a dead man, the ashes of his loss grey and thick upon his face; and in the times before, when she harboured jealous hatred for his wife, when she prayed to all the spirits for the woman’s death.
It was possible that his scream would never cease. It was possible that, as they all rose and gathered in their disbelief at their resurrection-as they sought out the one who so cruelly summoned the Orshayn-she would have to leave him here.
Though his howl was without voice, it deafened her mind. If he did not cease, his madness would infect all the others.
The last time the Orshayn had walked the earth had been in a place far away from this one. With but three broken clans remaining-a mere six hundred and twelve warriors left-and three damaged bonecasters, they had fled the Spires and fallen to dust. That dust had been lifted high on the winds, carried half a world away-there had been no thought of a return to bone and withered flesh-to finally settle in a scattered swath across scores of leagues.
This land, Rystalle Ev knew, was no stranger to the Imass. Nor-and Kalt’s torment made this plain-was it unknown to the K’Chain Che’Malle. What were they doing here?
Kalt Urmanal fell to his knees, his cry dying away, leaving a ringing echo in her skull. She straightened, leaning heavily on the solid comfort of her spear’s shaft of petrified wood. This return was unconscionable-a judgement she knew she would not have made without her memories-to that time of raw, wondrous mortality replete with its terrible crimes of love and desire. She could feel her own rage, rising like the molten blood of the earth.
Beyond the waterhole she spied three figures approaching. T’lan Imass of the Orshayn. Bonecasters. Perhaps now they would glean some answers.
Brolos Haran had always been a broad man, and even the bones of his frame, so visible beneath the taut, desiccated skin, looked abnormally robust. The clear, almost crystalline blue eyes that gave him his name were, of course, long gone; and in their place were the knotted remnants, gnarled and blackened and lifeless. His red hair drifted like bloodstained cobwebs out over the dun-hued emlava fur riding his shoulders. His lips had peeled back to reveal flat, thick teeth the colour of raw copper.
To his left was Ilm Absinos, her narrow, tall frame sheathed in the grey scales of the enkar’al, her long black hair knotted with snake-skins. The serpent staff in her bony hands seemed to writhe. She walked with a hitched gait, remnant of an injury to her hip.
Ulag Togtil was as wide as Brolos Haran yet taller than Ilm Absinos. He had ever been an outsider among the Orshayn clans. Born as a half-breed among the first tribes of the Trell, he had wandered into the camp of Kebralle Korish, the object of intense curiosity, especially among the women. It was the way of the Imass that strangers could come among them, and, if life was embraced and no violence was stirred awake, such strangers could make for themselves a home among the people, and so cease to be strangers. So it had been with Ulag.
In the wars with the Order of the Red Sash, he had proved the most formidable among all the Orshayn bonecasters. Seeing him now, Rystalle Ev felt comforted, reassured-as if he alone could make things as they once were.
He could not. He was as trapped within the Ritual as was everyone else.
Ulag was the first to speak. ‘Rystalle Ev, Kalt Urmanal. I am privileged to find two of my own clan at last.’ A huge hand gestured slightly. ‘Since dawn I have laboured mightily beneath the assault of these two cloud-dancers-their incessant joy has proved a terrible burden.’
Could she have smiled, Rystalle would have. The image of cloud-dancers was such an absurd fit to these two dour creatures, she might well have laughed. But she had forgotten how. ‘Ulag, do you know the truth of this?’
‘A most elusive hare. How it leaps and darts, skips free of every slingstone. How it sails over the snares and twitches an ear to every footfall. I have run in enough circles, failing to take the creature into my hands, to feel its pattering heart, its terrified trembling.’
Ilm Absinos spoke. ‘Inistral Ovan awaits us. We shall gather more on our return journey. It has not been so long since we last walked. Few, if any, will have lost themselves.’
Brolos Haran seemed to be staring into the south. Now he said, ‘The Ritual is broken. Yet we are not released. In this, I smell the foul breath of Olar Ethil.’
‘So you have said before,’ snapped Ilm Absinos. ‘And still, for all your chewing the same words, there remains no proof.’
‘We do not know,’ sighed Ulag, ‘who has summoned us. It is curious, but we are closed to her, or him. As if a wall of power stands between us, one that can only be breached from the other side. The summoner must choose. Until such time, we must simply wait.’
Kalt Urmanal spoke for the first time. ‘None of you understand anything. The waters are… crowded.’
To this, silence was the only reply.
Kalt snarled, as if impatient with them all. He was still kneeling and it seemed he had little interest in moving. Instead, he pointed. ‘There. Another approaches.’
Rystalle and the others turned.
The sudden disquiet was almost palpable.
She wore the yellow and white fur of the brold, the bear of the snows and ice. Her hair was black as pitch, her face wide and flat, the skin stained deep amber. The pits of her eyes were angled, tilted at the outer corners. The talons of some small creature had been threaded through her cheeks.
T’lan Imass, yes. But… not of our clans.
Three barbed harpoons were strapped to her back. The mace she carried in one hand was fashioned of some animal’s thighbone, inset with jagged blades of green rhyolite and white chert.
She halted fifteen paces away.
Ilm Absinos gestured with her staff. ‘You are a bonecaster, but I do not know you. How can this be? Our minds were joined at the Ritual. Our blood wove a thousand-upon-a-thousand threads. The Ritual claims you as kin, as T’lan Imass. What is your clan?’
‘I am Nom Kala-’
Brolos Haran cut in, ‘We do not know those words.’
That very admission was a shock to the Orshayn. It was, in fact, impossible. Our language is as dead as we are.
Nom Kala cocked her head, and then said, ‘You speak the Old Tongue, the secret language of the bonecasters. I am of the Brold T’lan Imass-’
‘There is no clan chief who claimed the name of the brold!’
She seemed to study Brolos for a moment, and then said, ‘There was no clan chief bearing the name of the brold. There was, indeed, no clan chief at all. Our people were ruled by the bonecasters. The Brold clans surrendered the Dark War. We Gathered. There was a Ritual-’
‘What!’ Ilm Absinos lurched forward, almost stumbling until her staff brought her up short. ‘Another Ritual of Tellann?’
‘We failed. We were camped beneath a wall of ice, a wall that reached to the very heavens. We were assailed-’
‘By the Jaghut?’ Brolos asked.
‘No-’
‘The K’Chain Che’Malle?’
Once more she cocked her head and was silent.
The wind moaned.
A grey fox wandered into their midst, stepping cautiously, nose testing the air. After a moment, it trotted down to the water’s edge. Pink tongue unfurled and the sounds of lapping water tickled the air.
Watching the fox, Kalt Urmanal put his hands to his face, covering his eyes. Seeing this, Rystalle turned away.
Nom Kala said, ‘No. The dominion of both was long past.’ She hesitated, and then added, ‘It was held among many of us that the enemy assailing our people were humans-our inheritors, our rivals in the ways of living. We bonecasters-the three of us who remained-knew that to be no more than a half-truth. No, we were assailed by ourselves. By the lies we told each other, by the false comforts of our legends, our stories, our very beliefs.’
‘Why, then,’ asked Ulag, ‘did you attempt the Ritual of Tellann?’
‘With but three bonecasters left, how could you have hoped to succeed?’ Ilm Absinos demanded, her voice brittle with outrage.
Nom Kala fixed her attention upon Ulag. ‘Trell-blood, you are welcome to my eyes. To answer your question: it is said that no memory survives the Ritual. We deemed this just. It is said, as well, that the Ritual delivers the curse of immortality. We saw this, too, as just.’
‘Then against whom did you wage war?’
‘No one. We were done with fighting, Trell-blood.’
‘Then why not simply choose death?’
‘We severed all allegiance to the spirits-we had been lying to them for too long.’
The fox lifted its head, eyes suddenly wide, ears pricked. It then trotted in its light-footed way along the rim of the pool. Slipped beneath some firebrush, and vanished inside a den.
How much time passed before another word was spoken? Rystalle could not be certain, but the fox reappeared, a marmot in its jaws, and bounded away, passing so close to Rystalle that she could have brushed its back with her hand. A flock of tiny birds descended to prance along the muddy verge. Somewhere in the shallows ruddered a carp.
Ilm Absinos said, in a whisper, ‘The spirits died when we died.’
‘A thing that dies to us is not necessarily dead,’ Nom Kala replied. ‘We do not have that power.’
‘What does your name mean?’ Ulag asked.
‘Knife Drip.’
‘How did the ritual fail?’
‘The wall of ice fell on us. We were all killed instantly. The Ritual was therefore uncompleted.’ She paused, and then added, ‘Given the oblivion that followed, failure seemed a safe assumption-were we capable of making assumptions. But now, it appears, we were in error.’
‘How long ago?’ Ulag asked her. ‘Do you know?’
She shrugged. ‘The Jaghut were gone a hundred generations. The K’Chain Che’Malle had journeyed to the eastern lands two hundred generations previously. We traded with the Jheck, and then with the Krynan Awl and the colonists of the Empire of Dessimbelackis. We followed the ice in its last retreat.’
‘How many of you will return, Knife Drip?’
‘The other two bonecasters have awakened and even now approach us. Lid Ger-Sourstone. And Lera Epar-Bitterspring. Of our people, we cannot yet say. Maybe all. Perhaps none.’
‘Who summoned us?’
One more time she cocked her head. ‘Trell-blood, this is our land. We have heard clear his cry. You cannot? We are summoned, T’lan Imass, by the First Sword. A legend among the Brold that, it seems, was not a lie.’
Ulag was rocked back as if struck a blow. ‘Onos T’oolan? But… why?’
‘He summons us beneath the banner of vengeance,’ she replied, ‘and in the name of death. My new friends, the T’lan Imass are going to war.’
The birds launched into the air like a tent torn loose of its tethers, leaving upon the soft clays nothing but a scattering of tiny tracks.
Bitterspring walked towards the other T’lan Imass. The emptiness of the land was a suffocating pressure. When everything goes, it is fitting that we are cursed to return, lifeless as the world we have made. Still… am I beyond betrayal? Have I ceased to be a slave to hope? Will I once again tread the old, worn trails?
Life is done, but the lessons remain. Life is done, but the trap still holds me tight. This is the meaning of legacy. This is the meaning of justice.
What was, is.
The wind was insistent, tugging at worn strips of cloth, the shredded ends of leather straps, loose strands of hair. It moaned as if in search of a voice. But the lifeless thing that was Toc the Younger held its silence, its immutability in the midst of the life surrounding it.
Setoc settled down on aching legs and waited. The two girls and the strange boy had huddled together nearby and were fast asleep.
Their saviour had carried them leagues from the territory of the Senan Barghast, north and east across the undulating prairie. The horse under them had made none of the normal sounds a horse should make. None of the grunting breaths, the snorts. It had not once sawed at the bit or dipped its head seeking a mouthful of grass. Its tattered hide remained dry, not once twitching to the frustrated deerflies, even as its ropy muscles worked steadily and its hoofs drummed the hard ground. Now it stood motionless beneath its motionless rider.
She rubbed at her face. They needed water. They needed food. She didn’t know where they were. Close to the Wastelands? Perhaps. She thought she could make out a range of hills or mountains far to the east, a dusty grimace of rock shimmering through the waves of heat. Lolling in the saddle behind Toc, she had been slipping into and out of strange dreams, fragmented visions of a squalid farmstead, the rank sweat of herds and small boys shouting. One boy with a face she thought she knew, but it was twisted with fear, and then hard with sudden resolve. A face that had transformed in an instant to one that awaited death. In one so young, nothing was more horrifying. Dreaming of children, but not these children here, not even Barghast children. At times, she found herself wheeling high above this lone warrior who rode with a girl in front, a girl behind, a girl and a boy in the crooks of his arms. She could smell scorched feathers, and all at once the land far below was a sea of diamonds, cut in two by a thin, wavering line.
She was fevered, or so she concluded now as she sat, mouth dry, eyes stinging with grit. Was this meant to be a rest? Something in her was resisting sleep. They needed water. They needed to eat.
A mound a short distance away caught her eye. Groaning, she stood, dragged herself closer.
A cairn, almost lost in the knee-high grasses. A wedge-shaped stone set atop a thinner slab, and beneath that a mound of angled rocks. The wedge was carved on its sides. Etching the eyes of a wolf. Mouth open with the slab forming the lower jaw, the scratchings of fangs and teeth. Worn down by centuries of wind and rain. She reached out a trembling hand, set her palm against the rough, warm stone.
‘We are being hunted.’
The rasping pronouncement drew her round. She saw Toc stringing his bow, heard the wind hum against the taut gut. A new voice in the air. She joined him, gazed westward. A dozen or more riders. ‘Akrynnai,’ she said. ‘They will see our Barghast clothing. They will seek to kill us. Then again,’ she added, ‘if you ride to them, they may change their minds.’
‘And why would that be?’ he asked, even as he kicked his horse forward.
She saw the Akrynnai horse-warriors fan out, saw lances being readied.
Toc rode straight for them, an arrow nocked to the bowstring.
As they drew closer, Setoc saw the Akrynnai falter, even as their lances lifted defensively. Moments later the warriors scattered, horses bucking beneath them. Within a few more heartbeats, all were in flight. Toc slowly wheeled his mount and rode back to where she stood.
‘It seems you were right.’
‘Their horses knew before they did.’
He halted his mount, returned the arrow to its quiver and deftly unstrung the bow.
‘Actually, you’ll need those,’ Setoc said. ‘We need food. We need water, too.’
It seemed he’d stopped listening, and his head was turned to the east.
‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘More hunters?’
‘She wasn’t satisfied,’ he muttered. ‘Of course not. What can one do better than an army can? Not much. But he won’t like it. He never did. In fact, he may turn them all away. Well now, Bonecaster, what would you do about that? If he releases them?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. She? Him? What army?’
His head turned to look past her. She swung round. The boy was on his feet, walking over to the wolf cairn. He sang, ‘Blalalalalalala…’
‘I wish he’d stop doing that,’ she said.
‘You are not alone in that, Setoc of the Wolves.’
She started, turned back to eye the undead warrior. ‘I see you now, Toc Anaster, and it seems you have but one eye-dead as it is. But that first night, I saw-’
‘What? What did you see?’
The eye of a wolf. She waved towards the cairn. ‘You brought us here.’
‘No. I took you away. Tell me, Setoc, are the beasts innocent?’
‘Innocent? Of what?’
‘Did they deserve their fate?’
‘No.’
‘Did it matter? Whether they deserved it or not?’
‘No.’
‘Setoc, what do the Wolves want?’
She knew by his intonation that he meant the god and the goddess-she knew they existed, even if she didn’t know their names, or if they even had ones. ‘They want us all to go away. To leave them alone. Them and their children.’
‘Will we?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
She struggled for an answer.
‘Because, Setoc, to live is to wage war. And it just happens that no other thing is as good at waging war as we are.’
‘I don’t believe you! Wolves don’t wage war against anything!’
‘A pack marks out its territory and that pack will drive off any other pack that seeks to encroach upon it. The pack defends its claim-to the land, and to the animals it preys upon in that land.’
‘But that’s not war!’
He shrugged. ‘Mostly, it’s just the threat of war, until threat alone proves insufficient. Every creature strives for dominance, among its own kind and within its territory. Even a pack of dogs will find its king, its queen, and they will rule by virtue of their strength and the threat their strength implies, until they are usurped by the next in line. What can we make of this? That politics belong to all social creatures? So it would seem. Setoc, could the Wolves kill us humans, every one of us, would they?’
‘If they understood it was them or us, yes! Why shouldn’t they?’
‘I was but asking questions,’ Toc replied. ‘I once knew a woman who could flatten a city with the arch of a single perfect eyebrow.’
‘Did she?’ Setoc asked, pleased to be the one asking questions.
‘Occasionally. But, not every city, not every time.’
‘Why not?’
The undead warrior smiled, the expression chilling her. ‘She liked a decent bath every now and then.’
After Toc had set off in search of food, Setoc set about building a hearth with whatever stones she could find. The boy was sitting in front of the cairn, still singing his song. The twins had awakened but neither seemed to have anything to say. Their eyes were glazed and Setoc knew it for shock.
‘Toc’ll be back soon,’ she told them. ‘Listen, can you make him stop that babbling? Please? It’s making my skin crawl. I mean, has he lost his mind, the little one? Or are they all like that? Barghast children aren’t, at least not that I remember. They stay quiet, just like you two are doing right now.’
Neither girl replied. They simply watched her.
The boy suddenly shouted.
At the cry the ground erupted twenty paces beyond the cairn. Stones spat through a cloud of dust.
And something clambered forth.
The twins shrieked. But the boy was laughing. Setoc stared. A huge wolf, long-limbed, with a long, flat head and heavy jaws bristling with fangs, stepped out from the dust, and then paused to shake its matted, tangled coat. The gesture cut away the last threads of fear in Setoc.
From the boy, a new song. ‘Ay ay ay ayayayayayayay!’
At its hunched shoulders, the creature was taller than Setoc. And it had died long, long ago.
Her eyes snapped to the boy. He summoned it. With that nonsense song, he summoned it.
Can-can I do the same? What is the boy to me? What is being made here?
One of the twins spoke: ‘He needs Toc. At his side. At our brother’s side. He needs Tool’s only friend. They have to be together.’
And the other girl, her gaze levelled on Setoc, said, ‘And they need you. But we have nothing. Nothing.’
‘I don’t understand you,’ Setoc said, irritated by the stab of irrational guilt she’d felt at the girl’s words.
‘What will happen,’ the girl asked, ‘when you raise one of your perfect eyebrows?’
‘What?’
‘ “Wherever you walk, someone’s stepped before you.” Our father used to say that.’
The enormous wolf stood close to the boy. Dust still streamed down its flanks. She had a sudden vision of this beast tearing out the throat of a horse. I saw these ones, but as ghosts. Ghosts of living things, not all rotted skin and bones. They kept their distance. They were never sure of me. Yet… I wept for them.
I can’t level cities.
Can I?
The apparitions rose suddenly, forming a circle around Toc. He slowly straightened from gutting the antelope he’d killed with an arrow to the heart. ‘If only Hood’s realm was smaller,’ he said, ‘I might know you all. But it isn’t and I don’t. What do you want?’
One of the undead Jaghut answered: ‘Nothing.’
The thirteen others laughed.
‘Nothing from you,’ the speaker amended. She had been female, once-when such distinctions meant something.
‘Then why have you surrounded me?’ Toc asked. ‘It can’t be that you’re hungry-’
More laughter, and weapons rattled back into sheaths and belt-loops. The woman approached. ‘A fine shot with that arrow, Herald. All the more remarkable for the lone eye you have left.’
Toc glared at the others. ‘Will you stop laughing, for Hood’s sake!’
The guffaws redoubled.
‘The wrong invocation, Herald,’ said the woman. ‘I am named Varandas. We do not serve Hood. We did Iskar Jarak a favour, and now we are free to do as we please.’
‘And what pleases you?’
Laughter from all sides.
Toc crouched back down, resumed gutting the antelope. Flies spun and buzzed. In the corner of his vision he could see one of the animal’s eyes, still liquid, still full, staring out at nothing. Iskar Jarak, when will you summon me? Soon, I think. It all draws in-but none of that belongs to the Wolves. Their interests lie elsewhere. What will happen? Will I simply tear in half? He paused, looked up to see the Jaghut still encircling him. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Wandering,’ Varandas replied.
Another added in a deep voice, ‘Looking for something to kill.’
Toc glanced again at the antelope’s sightless eye. ‘You picked the wrong continent. The T’lan Imass have awakened.’
All at once, the amusement surrounding him seemed to vanish, and a sudden chill gripped the air.
Toc set down his knife and dragged loose the antelope’s guts.
‘We never faced them,’ said Varandas. ‘We were dead long before their ritual of eternal un-life.’
A different Jaghut spoke. ‘K’Chain Nah’ruk, and now T’lan Imass. Doesn’t anyone ever go away?’
After a moment, all began laughing again.
Through the merriment Varandas stepped close to Toc and said, ‘Why have you killed this thing? You cannot eat it. And since that is true, I conclude that you must therefore hunt for others. Where are they?’
‘Not far,’ he replied, ‘and none are any threat to you.’
‘Too bad.’
‘Nah’ruk-were they Iskar Jarak’s favour?’
‘They were.’
‘What were they after?’
‘Not “what”. Who. But ask nothing more of that-we have discussed the matter and can make no sense of it. The world has lost its simplicity.’
‘The world was never simple, Jaghut, and if you believe it was, you’re deluding yourself.’
‘What would you know of the ancient times?’
He shrugged. ‘I only know recent times, but why should the ancient ones be any different? Our memories lie. We call it nostalgia and smile. But every lie has a purpose. And that includes falsifying our sense of the past-’
‘And what purpose would that serve, Herald?’
He wiped clean his knife in the grasses. ‘You shouldn’t need to ask.’
‘But I do ask.’
‘We lie about our past to make peace with the present. If we accepted the truth of our history, we would find no peace-our consciences would not permit it. Nor would our rage.’
Varandas was clearly amused. ‘Are you consumed with anger, Herald? Do you see too clearly with that lonely eye? Strong emotions are ever a barrier to perception, and this must be true of you.’
‘Meaning?’
‘You failed to detect my mocking tone when I spoke of the world’s loss of simplicity.’
‘I must have lost its distinction in the midst of the irony suffusing everything else you said. How stupid of me. Now, I am done with this beast.’ He sheathed his knife and lifted the carcass to settle it across his shoulders. ‘I could wish you all luck in finding something to kill,’ he said, ‘but you don’t need it.’
‘Do you think the T’lan Imass will be eager to challenge us, Herald?’
He levered the antelope on to the rump of his horse. The eyes, he saw, now swarmed with flies. Toc set a boot in the stirrup and, lifting wide with his leg to clear the carcass, lowered himself into the saddle. He gathered the reins. ‘I knew a T’lan Imass once,’ he said. ‘I taught him how to make jokes.’
‘He needed teaching?’
‘More like reminding, I think. Being un-alive for as long as he was will do that to the best of us, I suspect. In any case, I’m sure the T’lan Imass will find you very comforting, in all that dark armour and whatnot, even as they chop you to pieces. Unfortunately, and at the risk of deflating your bloated egos, they’re not here for you.’
‘Neither were the Nah’ruk. But,’ and Varandas cocked her helmed head, ‘what do you mean they will find us “comforting”?’
Toc studied her, and then scanned the others. Lifeless faces, so eager to laugh. Damned Jaghut. He shrugged, and then said, ‘Nostalgia.’
After the Herald and the lifeless antelope had ridden away on the lifeless horse, Varandas turned to her companions. ‘What think you, Haut?’
The thick-limbed warrior with the heavy voice shifted, armour clanking and shedding red dust, and then said, ‘I think, Captain, we need to make ourselves scarce.’
Suvalas snorted. ‘The Imass were pitiful-I doubt even un-living ones could cause us much trouble. Captain, let us find some of them and destroy them. I’d forgotten how much fun killing is.’
Varandas turned to one of her lieutenants. ‘Burrugast?’
‘A thought has occurred to me, Captain.’
She smiled. ‘Go on.’
‘If the T’lan Imass who waged war against the Jaghut were as pitiful as Suvalas suggests, why are there no Jaghut left?’
No one arrived at an answer. Moments passed.
‘We need to make ourselves scarce,’ Haut repeated. And then he laughed.
The others joined in. Even Suvalas.
Captain Varandas nodded. So many things were a delight, weren’t they? All these awkward emotions, such as humility, confusion and unease. To feel them again, to laugh at their inherent absurdity, mocking every survival instinct-as if she and her companions still lived. As if they still had something to lose. As if the past was worth recreating here in the present. ‘As if,’ she added mostly to herself, ‘old grudges were worth holding on to.’ She grunted, and then said, ‘We shall march east.’
‘Why east?’ Gedoran demanded.
‘Because I feel like it, lieutenant. Into the birth of the sun, the shadows on our trail, a new day ever ahead.’ She tilted back her head. ‘Hah hah hah hah hah!’
Toc the Younger saw the gaunt ay from some distance away. Standing with the boy clinging to one foreleg. If Toc had possessed a living heart, it would have beaten faster. If he could draw breath, it would have quickened. If his eye were swimming in a pool of tears, as living eyes did, he would weep.
Of course, it was not Baaljagg. The giant wolf was not-he realized as he rode closer-even alive. It had been summoned. Not from Hood’s Realm, for the souls of such beasts did not reside there. The Beast Hold, gift of the Wolves. An ay, to walk the mortal world once again, to guard the boy. And their chosen daughter.
Setoc, was this by your hand?
One-eyed he might be, but he was not blind to the patterns taking shape. Nor, in the dry dust of his mind, was he insensitive to the twisted nuances within those patterns, as if the distant forces of fate took ghastly pleasure in mocking all that he treasured-the memories he held on to as would a drowning man hold on to the last breath in his lungs.
I see you in his face, Tool. As if I could travel back to the times before the Ritual of Tellann, as if I could whisper in like a ghost to that small camp where you were born, and see you at but a few years of age, bundled against the cold, your breath pluming and your cheeks bright red-I had not thought such a journey possible.
But it is. I need only look upon your son, and I see you.
We are broken, you and me. I had to turn you away. I had to deny you what you wanted most. But, what I could not do for you, I will do for your son.
He knew he was a fool to make such vows. He was the Herald of Death. And soon Hood would summon him. He would be torn from the boy’s side. Unless the Wolves want me to stay. But no one can know what they want. They do not think anything like us. I have no control… over anything.
He reached the camp. Setoc had built a small fire. The twins had not moved from where they’d been earlier, but their eyes were fixed on Toc now, as if he could hold all their hopes in his arms. But I cannot. My life is gone, and what remains does not belong to me.
I dream I can hold to my vows. I dream I can be Toc the Younger, who knew how to smile, and love. Who knew what it was to desire a woman forever beyond his reach-gods, such delicious anguish! When the self would curl up, when longing overwhelmed with the sweetest flood.
Remember! You once wrote poems! You once crawled into your everythought, your every feeling, to see and touch and dismantle and, in the midst of putting it all back together, feel wonder. Awed, humbled by complexity, assailed by compassion. Uncomprehending in the face of cruelty, of indifference.
Remember how you thought: How can people think this way? How can they be so thoughtless, so vicious, so worshipful of death, so dismissive of suffering and misery?
He stared at the wolf. Baaljagg, not Baaljagg. A mocking reflection, a crafted simulacrum. A Hairlock. He met Setoc’s slightly wide eyes and saw that she had had nothing to do with this summoning. The boy. Of course. Tool made me arrows. His son finds me a companion as dead as I am. ‘It is named Baaljagg-’
‘Balalalalalalalalala!’
Sceptre Irkullas sat, shoulders hunched, barricaded from the world by his grief. His officers beseeched him, battering at the high walls. The enemy was within reach, the enemy was on the move-an entire people, suddenly on the march. Their outriders had discovered the Akrynnai forces. The giant many-headed beasts were jockeying for position, hackles raised, and soon would snap the jaws, soon the fangs would sink deep, and fate would fill the mouth bitter as iron.
A conviction had burrowed deep into his soul. He was about to tear out the throat of the wrong enemy. But there were no thorns to prick his conscience, nothing to stir to life the trembling dance of reason. Before too long, loved ones would weep. Children would voice cries unanswered. And ripples would spread outward, agitated, in a tumult, and nothing would be the same as it once was.
There were times when history curled into a fist, breaking all it held. He waited for the crushing embrace with all the hunger of a lover. His officers did not understand. When he rose, gesturing for his armour, he saw the relief in their eyes, as if a belligerent stream had once more found its destined path. But he knew they thought nothing of the crimson sea they now rushed towards. Their relief was found in the comfort of the familiar, these studied patterns preceding dread mayhem. They would face the time of blood when it arrived.
Used to be he envied the young. At this moment, as the sun’s bright morning light scythed the dust swirling above the restless horses, he looked upon those he could see-weapons flashing like winks from a thousand skulls-and he felt nothing but pity.
Great warleaders were, one and all, insane. They might stand as he was standing, here in the midst of the awakening machine, and see nothing but blades to cut a true path to his or her desire, as if desire alone was a virtue, a thing so pure and so righteous it could not be questioned, could not be challenged. This great warleader could throw a thousand warriors to their deaths and the oily surface of his or her conscience would reveal not the faintest swirl.
He had been a great warleader, once, his mouth full of iron shards, flames licking his fingertips. His chest swollen with unquestioned virtues.
‘If we pursue, Sceptre, we can meet them by dusk. Do you think they will want to close then? Or will they wait for next dawn? If we are swift…’
‘I will clench my jaws one more time,’ Irkullas said. ‘I will keep them fast and think nothing of the bite, the warm flow. You’d be surprised at what a man can swallow.’
They looked on, uncomprehending.
The Akrynnai army shook loose the camp of the night just past. It lifted itself up, broke into eager streams flowing into the wake of the wounded foe, and spread in a flood quickened to purpose.
The morning lost its gleam. Strange clouds gathered, and across the sky, flights of birds fled into the north. Sceptre Irkullas rode straight-backed on his horse, riding the sweaty palm, as the fist began to close.
‘Gatherer of skulls, where is the fool taking us?’
Strahl, Bakal observed, was in the habit of repeating himself, as if his questions were a siege weapon, flinging stones at what he hoped was a weak point in the solid wall of his ignorance. Sooner or later, through the dust and patter of crumbling mortar, he would catch his first glimpse of the answers he sought.
Bakal had no time for such things. If he had questions, he burned them to the ground where they stood, smiling through the drifting ashes. The wall awaiting them all would come toppling down before too long. To our regret.
‘We’ve left a bloody trail,’ Strahl then added, and Bakal knew the warrior’s eyes were fixed upon Hetan’s back, as she limped, tottered and stumbled a short distance ahead of them in the column. Early in the day, when the warriors were still fresh, their breaths acrid with the anticipation of battle-perhaps only a day away-one would drag her from the line and take her on the side of the path, with others shouting their encouragement. A dozen times since dawn, this had occurred. Now, everyone walked as slowly as she, and no one had the energy to use her. Of food there was plenty; their lack was water. This wretched land was an old hag, her tits dry and withered. Bakal could almost see her toothless grin through the waves of heat rising above the yellow grasses on all sides, the nubbed horizon with its rotten stumps of bedrock protruding here and there.
The bloody trail Strahl spoke of marked the brutal consolidation of power by Warchief Maral Eb and his two brothers, Sagal and Kashat. And the widow, Sekara the Vile. What a cosy family they made! He turned his head and spat, since he found the mere thought of them fouled the taste on his tongue.
There had been two more attempts on his life. If not for Strahl and the half-dozen other Senan who’d elected themselves his guardians, he would now be as dead as his wife and her would-be lover. A widow walked a few steps behind him. Estaral would have died by her husband’s hand if not for Bakal. Yet the truth was, his saving her life had been an accidental by-product of his bloodlust, even though he had told her otherwise. That night of storms had been like a fever coursing through the Barghast people. Such a night had been denied them all when Onos Toolan assumed command after Humbrall Taur’s drowning-he had drawn his stone sword before all the gathered clan chiefs and said, ‘The first murder this night will be answered by me. Take hold of your wants, your imagined needs, and crush the life from them.’ His will was not tested. As it turned out, too much was held back, and this time everyone had lunged into madness.
‘They won’t rest until you’re dead, you know.’
‘Then they’d best be quick,’ Bakal replied. ‘For tomorrow we do battle with the Akrynnai.’
Strahl grunted. ‘It’s said they have D’ras with them. And legions of Saphii Spears.’
‘Maral Eb will choose the place. That alone can decide the battle. Unlike our enemy, we are denied retreat. Either we win, or we fall.’
‘They think to take slaves.’
‘The Barghast kneel to no one. The grandmothers will slide knives across the throats of our children, and then sever the taproot of their own hearts.’
‘Our gods shall sing and so summon us all through the veil.’
Bakal bared his teeth. ‘Our gods would be wise to wear all the armour they own.’
Three paces behind the two warriors, Estaral stared at Bakal, the man who had killed her husband, the man who had saved her life. At times she felt as if she was walking the narrowest bridge over a depthless crevasse, a bridge reeled out behind Bakal. At other moments the world suddenly opened before her, vast as a flooding ocean, and she flailed in panic, even as, in a rush of breathless astonishment, she comprehended the truth of her freedom. Finding herself alone made raw the twin births of fear and excitement, and both sizzled to the touch. Estaral alternated between cursing and blessing the warrior striding before her. He was her shield, yes, behind which she could hide. He also haunted her with the memory of that terrible night when she’d looked into her husband’s eyes and saw only contempt-and then the dark desire to murder her.
Had she really been that useless to him? That disgusting? He could not have always seen her so, else he would never have married her-she remembered seeing smiles on his face, years ago now, it was true, but she could have sworn there had been no guile in his eyes. She measured out the seasons since those bright, rushing days, seeking signs of her failure, struggling to find the fatal threshold she had so unwittingly crossed. But the memories swirled round like a vortex, drawing her in, and everything blurred, spun past, and the only thing she could focus on was her recollection of his two faces: the smiling one, the one ugly with malice, flitting back and forth.
She was too old to be desired ever again, and even if she had not been so, it was clear now that she could not keep a man’s love alive. Weak, foolish, blind, and now widow to a husband who’d sought to kill her.
Bakal had not hesitated. He’d killed her man as she might wring the neck of a yurt rat. And then he had turned to his wife-she had stood defiant until his first step towards her, and then she had collapsed to her knees, begging for her life. But that night had been the night of Hetan’s hobbling. The beast of mercy had been gutted and its bloody skin staked to the ground. She’d begged even as he opened her throat.
Blood flows down. I saw it doing just that. Down their bodies, down and down. I thought he would turn to me then and do the same-I witnessed his shame, his rage. And he knew, if I had been a better wife, my husband would never have fixed his eyes upon his wife. And so, the failure and the crime was mine as well.
I would not have begged.
Instead, he had cleaned his knife and sheathed it. And when he looked upon her, she saw his fury fall away, and his eyes glistened. ‘I wish you had not seen this, Estaral.’
‘You wish he’d already killed me?’
‘No-I came here to stop them doing that.’
That had confused her. ‘But I am nothing to you, Bakal.’
‘But you are,’ he said. ‘Without you, I would have no choice but to see this night-to see what I have done here-as black vengeance. As the rage of a jealous man-but you see, I really didn’t care. She was welcome to whoever she wanted. But she had no right-nor your husband there-they had no right to kill you.’
‘You are the slayer of Onos Toolan.’ She still did not know why she had said that then. Had she meant that the night of blood was his and his alone?
He had flinched, and his face had drained. She’d thought then that he regretted sparing her life; indeed, that he might even change his mind. Instead, he turned away and an instant later he was gone.
Did she know that her words would wound him? Why should they? Was he not proud of his glorious deed?
Of course, Bakal had since failed to become the leader of the Barghast. Perhaps he had already seen the power slipping from his grasp, that night. So she followed him now. Had tethered herself to him, all with the intention of taking back her words, and yet not one step she took in pursuit found her any closer. Days now, nights of hovering like a ghost beyond the edge of his hearth-fire. She had witnessed the attempt on him by the first assassin, a Barahn warrior desperate for status-Strahl had cut him down five strides from Bakal. The next time it had been an arrow sent through the darkness, missing Bakal’s head by less than a hand’s-width. Strahl and three other warriors had rushed off after the archer but they had lost the would-be killer.
Upon returning, Strahl had muttered about Estaral’s spectral presence-calling her the Reaper’s eyes, wondering if she stayed close in order to witness Bakal’s death. It seemed Strahl believed she hated Bakal for killing her husband. But the notion of hate had never even occurred to her, not for him, anyway.
She wanted to speak with Bakal. She wanted to explain and if she could understand her own motivations from that night, why, she would do just that. Salve the wound, perhaps heal it completely. They shared something, the two of them, didn’t they? He must have understood, even if Strahl didn’t.
But now they spoke of a battle with the Akrynnai, a final clash to decide who would rule this land. Maral Eb would lead the Barghast, warriors in their tens of thousands. It had been one thing for the Akrynnai to strike clan camps-now at last all of the White Face Barghast were assembled and no tribe in the world could defeat such an army. Even so, Bakal might die in the battle-he would be commanding the Senan after all, and it was inconceivable to imagine Maral Eb being so arrogant as not to position the most powerful clan in the line’s centre. No, the Senan would form the jagged wedge and it would cut savage and deep.
She should approach him soon, perhaps this very night. If only to take back my words. He struck them down to save my life, after all. He said so. Even though I was the cause of so much-
She had missed something, and now Bakal had sent Strahl away and was dropping back to her side. Suddenly her mouth was dry.
‘Estaral, I must ask of you a favour.’
Something in his tone whispered darkness. No more death. Please. If she had other lovers-
‘Hetan,’ he said under his breath. ‘You are among the women who guard her at night.’
She blinked. ‘Not for much longer, Bakal,’ she said. ‘She is past the time of fleeing. There is nothing in her eyes. She is hobbled. Last night there were but two of us.’
‘And tonight there will be one.’
‘Perhaps not even that. Warriors will use her, likely through the night.’
‘Gods’ shit, I didn’t think of that!’
‘If you want her-’
‘I do not. Listen, with the sun’s fall, as warriors gather for their meals, can you be the one to feed her?’
‘The food just falls from her mouth,’ Estaral said. ‘We let the children do that-it entertains them, forcing it down as if she was a babe.’
‘Not tonight. Take it on yourself.’
‘Why?’ I want to speak with you. Take things back. I want to lie with you, Bakal, and take back so much more.
He fixed his eyes upon her own, searching for something-she quickly glanced away, in case he discovered her thoughts. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘Why are you women so eager to hobble another woman?’
‘I had no hand in that.’
‘That is not what I asked.’
She had never before considered such a thing. It was what was done. It had always been so. ‘Women have claws.’
‘I know-I’ve seen it often enough. I’ve seen it in battle. But hobbling-that’s different. Isn’t it?’
She refused to meet his eyes. ‘You don’t understand. I didn’t mean the claws of a warrior. I meant the claws we keep hidden, the ones we use only against other women.’
‘But why?’
‘You speak now in the way Onos Toolan did-all his questions about the things we’ve always done. Was it not this that saw him killed, Bakal? He kept questioning things that he had no right to question.’
She saw as he lifted his right hand. He seemed to be studying it.
His knife hand.
‘His blood,’ he whispered, ‘has poisoned me.’
‘When we turn on our own,’ she said, struggling to put her thoughts into words, ‘it is as water in a skin finds a hole. There is so much… weight-’
‘Pressure.’
‘Yes, that is the word. We turn on our own, to ease the pressure. All eyes are on her, not us. All desire-’ she stopped then, stifling a gasp.
But he’d caught it-he’d caught it all. ‘Are men the reason then? Is that what you’re saying?’
She felt a flush of anger, like knuckles rapping up her spine. ‘Answer me this, Bakal’-and she met his wide eyes unflinchingly-‘how many times was your touch truly tender? Upon your wife? Tell me, how often did you laugh with your friends when you saw a woman emerge from her home with blood crusting her lip, a welt beneath an eye? “Oh, the wild wolf rutted last night!” And then you grin and you laugh-do you think we do not hear? Do you think we do not see? Hobble her! Take her, all of you! And, for as long as she lifts to you, you leave us alone!’
Heads had turned at her venomous tone-even if they could not quite make out her words, as she had delivered them low, like the hiss of a dog-snake as it wraps tight the crushed body in its embrace. She saw a few mocking smiles, saw the muted swirls of unheard jests. ‘Bound tight in murder, those two, and already they spit at each other!’ ‘No wonder their mates leapt into each other’s arms!’
Bakal managed to hold her glare a moment longer, as if he could hold back her furious, bitter words, and then he looked ahead once more. A rough sigh escaped him. ‘I remember his nonsense-or so I thought it at the time. His tales of the Imass-he said the greatest proof of strength a male warrior could display was found in not once touching his mate with anything but tenderness.’
‘And you sneered.’
‘I saw women sneer at that, too.’
‘And if we hadn’t, Bakal? If you’d seen us with something else in our eyes?’
He grimaced and then nodded. ‘A night or two of the wild wolf-’
‘To beat out such treasonous ideas, yes. You did not understand-none of you did. If you hadn’t killed him, he would have changed us all.’
‘And women such as Sekara the Vile?’
She curled her lip. ‘What of them?’
He grunted. ‘Of course. Greed and power are her only lovers-in that, she is no different from us men.’
‘What do you want with Hetan?’
‘Nothing. Never mind.’
‘You no longer trust me. Perhaps you never did. It was only the pool of blood we’re both standing in.’
‘You follow me. You stand just beyond the firelight every night.’
I am alone. Can’t you see that? ‘Why did you murder him? I will tell you. It’s because you saw him as a threat, and he was surely that, wasn’t he?’
‘I-I did not-’ He halted, shook his head. ‘I want to steal her away. I want it to end.’
‘It’s too late. Hetan is dead inside. Long dead. You took away her husband. You took away her children. And then you-we-took away her body. A flower cut from its root quickly dies.’
‘Estaral.’
He was holding on to a secret, she realized.
Bakal glanced at her. ‘Cafal.’
She felt her throat tighten-was it panic? Or the promise of vengeance? Retribution? Even if it meant her own death? Oh, I see now. We’re still falling.
‘He is close,’ Bakal went on under his breath. ‘He wants her back. He wants me to steal her away. Estaral, I need your help-’
She searched his face. ‘You would do this for him? Do you hate him that much, Bakal?’
She might as well have struck him in the face.
‘He-he is a shaman, a healer-’
‘No Barghast shaman has ever healed one of the hobbled.’
‘None has tried!’
‘Perhaps it is as you say, Bakal. I see that you do not want to wound Cafal. You would do this to give to him what he seeks.’
He nodded once, as if unable to speak.
‘I will take her from the children,’ Estaral said. ‘I will lead her to the west end of the camp. But, Bakal, there will be pickets-we are at the eve of battle-’
‘I know. Leave the warriors to me.’
She didn’t know why she was doing this. Nor did she understand the man walking at her side. But what difference did knowing make? Just as easy to live in ignorance, scraped clean of expectation, emptied of beliefs and faith, even hopes. Hetan is hobbled. No different in the end from every other woman suffering the same fate. She’s been cut down inside, and the stem lies bruised and lifeless. She was once a great warrior. She was once proud, her wit sharp as a thorn, ever quick to laugh but never with cruelty. She was indeed a host of virtues, but they had availed her nothing. No strength of will survives hobbling. Not a single virtue. This is the secret of humiliation: the deadliest weapon the Barghast have.
She could see Hetan up ahead, her matted hair, her stumbles brought up by the crooked staff the hobbled were permitted when on the march. The daughter of Humbrall Taur was barely recognizable. Did her father’s spirit stand witness, there in the Reaper’s shadow? Or had he turned away?
No, he rides his last son’s soul. That must be what has so maddened Cafal.
Well, to honour Hetan’s father, she would do this. When the Barghast came to rest at this day’s end. She was tired. She was thirsty. She hoped it would be soon.
Kashat pointed. ‘See there, brother. The ridge forms half a circle.’
‘Not much of a slope,’ Sagal muttered.
‘Look around,’ Kashat said, snorting. ‘It’s about the best we can manage. This land is pocked, but those pocks are old and worn down. Anyway, that ridge marks the biggest of those pocks-you can see that for yourself. And the slope is rocky-they would lose horses charging up that.’
‘So they flank us instead.’
‘We make strongpoints at both ends, with crescents of archers positioned behind them to take any riders attempting an encirclement.’
‘With the rear barricaded by the wagons.’
‘Held by mixed archers and pike-wielders, yes, exactly. Listen, Sagal, by this time tomorrow we’ll be picking loot from heaps of corpses. The Akrynnai army will be shattered, their villages undefended-we can march into the heart of their territory and claim it for ourselves.’
‘An end to the Warleader, the rise of the first Barghast King.’
Kashat nodded. ‘And we shall be princes, and the King shall grant us provinces to rule. Our very own herds. Horses, bhederin, rodara. We shall have Akrynnai slaves, as many of their young women as we want, and we shall live in keeps-do you remember, Sagal? When we were young, our first war, marching down to Capustan-we saw the great stone keeps all in ruin along the river. We shall build ourselves those, one each.’
Sagal grinned at his brother. ‘Let us return to the host, and see if our great King is in any better mood than when we left him.’
They turned back, slinging their spears over their shoulders and jogging to rejoin the vanguard of the column. The sun glared through the dust above the glittering forest of barbed iron, transforming the cloud into a penumbra of gold. Vultures rode the deepening sky to either side. Barely two turns of the beaker before dusk arrived-the night ahead promised to be busy.
The half-dozen Akryn scouts rode between the narrow, twisting gullies and out on to the flats where the dust still drifted above the rubbish left behind by the Barghast. They cut across that churned-up trail and cantered southward. The sun had just left the sky, dropping behind a bank of clouds dark as a shadowed cliff-face on the western horizon, and dusk bled into the air.
When the drum of horse hoofs finally faded, Cafal edged out from the deeper of the two gullies. The bastards had held him back too long-the great cauldrons would be steaming in the Barghast camp, the foul reek of six parts animal blood to two parts water and sour wine, and all the uncured meat still rank with the taste of slaughter. Squads would be shaking out, amidst curses that they would have to eat salted strips of smoked bhederin, sharing a skin of warm water on their patrols between the pickets. The Barghast encampment would be seething with activity.
One of Bakal’s warriors had found him a short time earlier, delivering the details of the plan. It would probably fail, but Cafal did not care. If he died attempting to steal her back, then this torment would end. For one of them, at least. It was a selfish desire, but selfish desires were all he had left.
I am the last of Father’s children, the last not dead or broken. Father, you so struggled to become the great leader of the White Faces. And now I wonder, if you had turned away from the attempt, if you had quenched your ambition, where would you and your children be right now? Spirits reborn, would we even be here, on this cursed continent?
I know for a fact that Onos Toolan wanted a peaceful life, his head down beneath the winds that had once ravaged his soul. He was flesh, he was life-after so long-and what have we done? Did we embrace him? Did the White Face Barghast welcome him as a guest? Were we the honourable hosts we proclaim to be? Ah, such lies we tell ourselves. Our every comfort proves false in the end.
He moved cautiously along the battered trail. Already the glow from the cookfires stained the way ahead. He could not see the picket stations or the patrols-coming in from the west had disadvantaged him, but soon the darkness would paint them as silhouettes against the camp’s hearths. In any case, he did not have to draw too close. Bakal would deliver her, or so he claimed.
The face of Setoc rose in his mind, and behind it flashed the horrible scene of her body spinning away from his blow, the looseness of her neck-had he heard a snap? He didn’t know. But the way she fell. Her flopping limbs-yes, there was a crack, a sickening sound of bones breaking, a sound driving like a spike into his skull. He had heard it and he’d refused to hear it, but such refusal failed and so its dread echo reverberated through him. He had killed her. How could he face that?
He could not.
Hetan. Think of Hetan. You can save this one. The same hand that killed Setoc can save Hetan. Can you make that be enough, Cafal? Can you?
His contempt for himself was matched only by his contempt for the Barghast gods-he knew they were the cause behind all of this-another gift by my own hand. They had despised Onos Toolan. Unable to reach into his foreign blood, his foreign ideas, they had poisoned the hearts of every Barghast warrior against the Warleader. And now they held their mortal children in their hands, and every strange face was an enemy’s face, every unfamiliar notion was a deadly threat to the Barghast and their way of life.
But the only people safe from change are the ones lying inside sealed tombs. You drowned your fear in ambition and see where you’ve brought us? This is the eve of our annihilation.
I have seen the Akrynnai army, and I will voice no warning. I will not rush into the camp and exhort Maral Eb to seek peace. I will do nothing to save any of them, not even Bakal. He knows what comes, if not the details, and he does not flinch.
Remember him, Cafal. He will die true to the pure virtues so quickly abused by those who possess none of them. He will be used as his kind have been used for thousands of years, among thousands of civilizations. He is one among the bloody fodder for empty tyrants and their pathetic wants. Without him, the great scything blade of history sings through nothing but air.
Would that such virtue could face down the tyrants. That the weapon turn in their sweaty hands. Would that the only blood spilled belonged to them and them alone.
Go on, Maral Eb. Walk out on to the plain and cross swords with Irkullas. Kill each other and then the rest of us can just walk away. Swords? Why such formality? Why not just bare hands and teeth? Tear each other to pieces! Like two wolves fighting to rule the pack-whichever one limps away triumphant will be eyed by the next one in line. And on it goes, and really, do any of the rest of us give a fuck? At least wolves don’t make other wolves fight their battles for them. No, our tyrants are smarter than wolves, aren’t they?
He halted and crouched down. He was in the place he was supposed to be.
The jade talons raked up from the southern horizon, and from the plain to the west a fox loosed an eerie, piercing cry. Night had arrived.
Estaral grasped the girl by her braid and flung her back. They had been trying to force goat shit into Hetan’s mouth-her face was smeared from the cheeks down.
Spitting in rage, the girl scrambled to her feet, her cohorts closing round her. Eyes blazed. ‘My father will see you hobbled for that!’
‘I doubt it,’ Estaral replied. ‘What man wants to take a woman stinking of shit? You’ll be lucky to keep your hide, Faranda. Now, all of you, get away from here-I know you all, and I’ve not yet decided whether to tell your fathers about this.’
They bolted.
Estaral knelt before Hetan, pulling up handfuls of grass to wipe her mouth and chin. ‘Even the bad rules are breaking,’ she said. ‘We keep falling and falling, Hetan. Be glad you cannot see what has become of your people.’
But those words rang false. Be glad? Be glad they chopped off the fronts of your feet? Be glad they raped you so many times you couldn’t feel a damned bhederin pounding into you by now? No. And if the Akrynnai chop off our feet and rape us come tomorrow, who will weep for the White Faces?
Not Cafal. ‘Not you, either, Hetan.’ She flung the soiled grasses away and helped Hetan to stand. ‘Here, your staff, lean on it.’ She grasped a handful of filthy shirt and began guiding the woman through the camp.
‘Don’t keep her too long!’ She glanced back to see a warrior behind them-he had been coming to take her and now stood with a grin that hovered on the edge of something dark and cruel.
‘They fed her shit-I’m taking her to get properly cleaned up.’
A flicker of disgust. ‘The children? Who were they? A solid beating-’
‘They ran before I got close enough. Ask around.’
Estaral tugged Hetan into motion once again.
The warrior did not pursue, but she heard him cursing as he wandered off. She didn’t think she’d run into many more like him-everyone was crowding around their clan cookfires, hungry and parched and short-tempered as they jostled and fought for position. There’d be a few flick-blade duels this night, she expected. There always were, night before battle. Stupid, of course. Pointless. But, as Onos Toolan might say, the real meaning of ‘tradition’ was… what had he called it? ‘Stupidity on purpose’, that’s what he said. I think. I never much listened.
I should have. We all should have.
They neared the western edge of the camp, where the wagons were already being positioned to form a defensive barricade. Just beyond, drovers were busy slaughtering stock, and the bleating cries of hundreds of animals filled the night. The first bonfires for offal had been lit using rotted cloth, bound rushes, dung and liberal splashes of lamp oil. The flames lit up terrified eyes from within crowded pens. Chaos and horror had come to the beasts and the air was thick with death.
She almost halted. She’d never before seen things in such a way; she’d never before felt the echo of misery and suffering assailing her from all directions-every scene painted into life by the fires was like a vision of madness. We do this. We do this all the time. To all these creatures who look to us for protection. We do this and think nothing of it.
We say we are great thinkers, but I think now, that most of what we do each and every day-and night-is in fact thoughtless. We will ourselves empty to numb us to our cruelty. We stiffen our faces and say we have needs. But to be empty is to have no purchase, nothing to grasp on to, and so in the emptiness we slide and we slide.
We fall.
Oh, when will it end?
She pulled Hetan to a position behind a wagon, the plains stretching westward before them. Thirty paces ahead, limned by the deepening remnants of the sunset, three warriors were busy digging a picket. ‘Sit down-no, don’t lift. Just sit.’
‘Listen, Strahl-you have done enough. Leave this night to me.’
‘Bakal-’
‘Please, old friend. This is all by my hand-I stood alone before Onos Toolan. There must be the hope… the hope for balance. In my soul. Leave me this, I beg you.’
Strahl looked away and it was clear to Bakal that his words had been too honest, too raw. The warrior shifted nervously, his discomfort plain to see.
‘Go, Strahl. Go lie in your wife’s arms this night. Look past everything else-none of it matters. Find the faces of the ones you love. Your children, your wife.’
The man managed a nod, not meeting Bakal’s eyes, and then set off.
Bakal watched him leave, and then checked his weapons one last time, before setting off through the camp.
Belligerence was building, sizzling beneath the harsh voices. It lit fires inside the strutting warriors as they bellowed out their oaths among the hearth circles. It bared teeth in the midst of every harsh laugh. War was the face to be stared into, or fled from, but the camp on a night such as this one was a cage, a prison to them all. The darkness hid the ones with skittish eyes and twitching hands; the bold postures and wild glares masked icy terror. Fear and excitement had closed jaws upon each other’s throat and neither dared let go.
This was the ancient dance, this ritualized spitting into the eyes of fate, stoking the dark addiction. He had seen elders, warriors too old, too decrepit to do anything but sit or stand crooked over staffs, and he had seen their blazing eyes, had heard their cracking exhortations-but most of all, he had seen in their eyes the pain of their loss, as if they’d been forced to surrender their most precious love. It was no quaint conceit that warriors prayed to the spirits for the privilege of dying in battle. Thoughts of useless years stretching beyond the warrior’s life could freeze the heart of the bravest of the brave.
The Barghast were not soldiers, not like the Malazans or the Crimson Guard. A profession could be left behind, a new future found. But for the warrior, war was everything, the very reason to live. It was the maker of heroes and cowards, the one force that tested a soul in ways that could not be bargained round, that could not be corrupted by a handful of silver. War forged bonds closer knit than those of bloodkin. It painted the crypt’s wall behind every set of eyes-those of foe and friend both. It was, indeed, the purest, truest cult of all. What need for wonder, then, that so many youths so longed for such a life?
Bakal understood all this, for he was indeed a warrior. He understood, and yet his heart was bitter with disgust. No longer did he dream of inviting his sons and daughters into such a world. Embracing this addiction devoured too much, inside and out.
He-and so many others-had looked into the face of Onos Toolan and had seen his compassion, had seen it so clearly that the only response was to recoil. The Imass had been an eternal warrior. He had fought with the warrior’s blessing of immortality, given the gift of battles unending, and then he had willingly surrendered it. How could such a man, even one reborn, find so much of his humanity still alive within him?
I could not have. Even after but three decades of war… if I was this moment reborn, I could not find in myself… what? A battered tin cup half-filled with compassion, not enough to splash a dozen people closest to me.
Yet… yet he was a flood, an unending flood-how can that be?
Who did I kill? Shy from that question if you must, Bakal. But one truth you cannot deny: his compassion took hold of your arm, your knife, and showed you the strength of its will.
His steps slowed. He looked round, blearily. I am lost. Where am I? I don’t understand. Where am I? And what are all these broken things in my hands? Still crashing down-the roar is deafening! ‘Save her,’ he muttered. ‘Yes. Save her-the only one worth saving. May she live a thousand years, proof to all who see her, proof of who and what the Barghast were. The White Faces.’ We hobble ourselves and call it glory. We lift to meet drooling old men eager to fill us to bursting with their bitter poisons. Old men? No, warleaders and warchiefs. And our precious tradition of senseless self-destruction. Watch it fuck us dry.
He was railing, but it was in silence. Who would want to hear such things? See what happened to the last one who held out a compassionate hand? He imagined himself walking between heaving rows of his fellow warriors. He walked, trailing the gutted ropes of his messy arguments, and from both sides spit and curses rained down.
Truths bore the frightened mind. Are we bored? Yes! Where is the blood? Where are the flashing knives? Give us the unthinking dance! Charge our jaded hearts, you weeping slave! Piss on your difficult thoughts, your grim recognitions. Lift up your backside, fool, while I seek to pound feeling back into me.
Stand still while I hobble you-let’s see you walk now!
Bakal staggered out from the camp’s edge. Halting ten paces beyond the wagons, he tugged loose the straps binding the lance to his back. Rolled the shaft into his right hand. His shoulder ached-the tears of tendon and muscle were not yet mended. The pain would wake him up.
Ahead was the banked berm of the picket’s trench. Three helmed heads were visible as lumps projecting above the reddish heap of earth.
Bakal broke into a trot, silent on the grasses as he closed the distance.
He launched the lance from twelve paces behind the three warriors. Saw the iron point drive between the shoulders of the one on his left, punching the man’s body against the trench wall. As the other two jerked, heads snapping in that direction, he reached the trench-blades in hands-and leapt down between them. His cutlass bit through bronze skull-cap, split half the woman’s skull, and jammed there. The knife in his left hand slashed the back of the last warrior’s neck-but the man had twisted, enough to save his spinal cord, and spinning, he slammed a dagger deep into Bakal’s chest, just under his left arm.
Intimately close with his enemy in the cramped trench, he saw the warrior open his mouth to cry out the alarm. Bakal’s back-slash with his knife ripped out the man’s throat, even as the dagger sank a second time, the blade snapping as it snagged between two ribs.
Blood rushed up to fill Bakal’s throat and he fell against the dying warrior, coughing into the wool of the man’s cloak.
He was feeling so very tired now, but there were things still to be done. Find her. Save her. He crawled from the trench. He was having trouble breathing. A memory that had been lost for decades returned to him suddenly: the last time he’d been near death-the Drowning Fever had struck him down, his lungs filling up with phlegm. The thick poultices encasing his chest, the eye-stinging smell of ground mustard seeds-his mother’s face, a blurred thing, hovering, dread hardening to resignation behind her eyes. Crypt walls. We all have them, there inside-you don’t go there often, do you? It’s where you keep your dead. Dead relatives, dead dreams, dead promises. Dead selves, so many of those, so many. When you loot, you only take the best things. The things you can use, the things you can sell. And when you seal it all up again, the darkness remains.
It remains. Ah, Mother, it remains.
My crypt. My crypt walls.
He thought to regain his feet. Instead, he was lying on the ground, the trench pit almost within reach. Mother? Are you there? Father? Desorban, my son, oh precious son-I put that sword into your hand. I pretended to be proud, even as fear curled black talons round my heart. Later, when I looked down at your so-still face, when all the others were singing the glory of your brave moments-only moments, yes, all you had-I pretended that the music eased the hurt in my soul. I pretended, because to pretend was to comfort them in turn, for the time when they stood in my place, looking down on the face of their own beloved.
Son? Are you there?
Crypt walls. Scenes and faces.
In the dark, you can’t even see the paint.
Estaral struggled in the gloom to see that distant picket. Had something happened there? She wasn’t sure. From the camp behind the row of wagons at her back, she could hear a child shouting, something vicious and eager in the voice. A tremor of unease ran through her and she shot Hetan a glance. Sitting, staring at nothing.
This was taking too long. Warriors would be looking for their hobbled prize. Words would break loose-Estaral had been seen, dragging Hetan through the camp. Westward, yes. Out past the light of the fires.
She reached down and pulled Hetan to her feet. Took up the staff and pushed it into the woman’s hands. ‘Come!’
Estaral dragged her towards the picket. No movement from there. Something lying on this side, something that hadn’t been there earlier. Mouth dry, heart in her throat, she led Hetan closer.
The stench of faeces and urine and blood reached her. That shape-a body, lying still in death.
‘Bakal?’ she whispered.
Nothing. From the trench itself, a heavy silence. She crouched at the body, pulled it on to its back. She stared down at Bakal’s face: the frothy streaks of blood smearing his chin, the expression as of one lost, and finally, his staring, sightless eyes.
Another shout from the camp, closer this time. That’s Faranda-and that one, that’s Sekara. Spirits shit on them both!
Terror rushed through her. She crouched, like a hare with no cover in sight.
Hetan made to sink to her knees. ‘No!’ she hissed. ‘Stay up, damn you!’ She grasped the woman’s shirt again, tugged her stumbling round one end of the trench, out on to the plain.
Jade licked the grasses-a hundred paces ahead the ground rose, showing pieces of a ridge. The column had skirted round that, she recalled. ‘Hetan! Listen to me! Walk to that ridge-do you see it? Walk there. Just walk, do you understand? A man waits for you there-he’s impatient. He’s angry. Hurry to him or you’ll regret it. Hurry!’ She shoved her forward.
Hetan staggered, righted herself. For one terrible moment she simply stood where she was, and then the hobbled lurched into motion.
Estaral watched her for a dozen heartbeats-to be certain-and then she spun and ran back towards the camp. She could slip in unseen. Yes, she’d cleaned up Hetan’s face, and then had simply left her, close to the wagons-the bitch was dead behind the eyes, anyone could see that. She fled out on to the plain? Ridiculous, but if you want to go look, out where the Akrynnai are waiting, go right ahead.
She found shadows between two wagons, squeezed in. Figures were moving in and out of firelight. The shouts had stopped. If she avoided the hearths, she could thread her way back to where Strahl and the others were camped. She would have to tell him of Bakal’s death. Who would lead the Senan tomorrow? It would have to be Strahl. He would need to know, so he could ready his mind to command, to the weight of his clan’s destiny.
She edged forward.
Thirty paces on, they found her. Six women led by Sekara, with Faranda hovering in the background. Estaral saw them rushing to close and she drew her knife. She knew what they would do to her; she knew they weren’t interested in asking questions, weren’t interested in explanations. No, they will do to me what they did to Hetan. Bakal was gone, her protector was gone. There were, she realized, so many ways to be alone.
They saw her weapon. Avid desire lit their eyes-yes, they wanted blood. ‘I killed her!’ Estaral shrieked. ‘Bakal was using her-I killed them both!’
She lunged into their midst.
Blades flickered. Estaral staggered, spun even as she sank to her knees. Gleeful faces on all sides. Such bright hunger-oh, how alive they feel! She was bleeding out, four, maybe five wounds, heat leaking out from her body.
So stupid. All of it… so stupid. And with that thought she laughed out her last breath.
The massive bank of clouds on the western horizon now filled half the night sky, impenetrable and solid as a wall, building block by block to shut out the stars and the slashes of jade. Wind rustled the grasses, pulled from the east as if the storm was drawing breath. Yet no flashes lit the clouds, and not once had Cafal heard thunder. Despite this, his trepidation grew with every glance at the towering blackness.
Where was Bakal? Where was Hetan?
The bound grip of the hook-blade was slick in his hand. He had begun to shiver as the temperature plummeted.
He could save her. He was certain of it. He would demand the power from the Barghast gods. If they refused him, he vowed he would destroy them. No games, no bargains. I know it was your lust for blood that led to this. And I will make you pay.
Cafal dreaded the moment he first saw his sister, this mocking, twisted semblance of the woman he had known all his life. Would she even recognize him? Of course she would. She would lunge into his arms-an end to the torment, the rebirth of hope. Dread, yes, and then he would make it good again, all of it. They would flee west-all the way to Lether-
A faint sound behind him. Cafal whirled round.
The mace clipped him on his left temple. He reeled to the right, attempted to pivot and slash his weapon into the path of his attacker. A punch in the chest lifted him from his feet. He was twisted in the air, hook-blade flying from his hand, and it seemed the fist on his chest followed him down, driving deeper when he landed on his back. Bones grated, splintered.
He saw, uncomprehending, the shaft of the spear, upright as a standard, its head buried in his chest.
Shadowy shapes above him. The gauntleted hands gripping the spear now twisted and pushed down hard.
The point thrust through into the earth beneath him.
He struggled to make sense of things, but everything slipped through his nerveless fingers. Three, now four shapes looming over him, but not a word was spoken.
They watch me die. I’ve done the same. Why do we do that? Why are we so fascinated by this failure?
Because, I think, we see how easy it is.
The Akrynnai warrior holding the man down with his spear now relaxed. ‘He’s done,’ he said, tugging his weapon loose.
‘If he was scouting our camp,’ the mace-wielder said, ‘why was he facing the wrong way?’
‘Barghast,’ muttered a third man, and the others nodded. There was no sense to these damned savages.
‘Tomorrow,’ said the warrior now cleaning his spear, ‘we kill the rest of them.’
She stumbled onward, eyes on the black wall facing her, which seemed to lurch close only to recoil again, as if the world pulsed. The wind pushed her along now, solid as a hand at her back, and the thud of the staff’s heel thumped on and on.
When four Akrynnai warriors cut across her field of vision, she slowed and then halted, waiting for them to take her. But they didn’t. Instead, they made warding gestures and quickly vanished into the gloom. After a time, she set out once more, tottering, her breath coming in thick gasps now. The blisters on her hands broke and made the staff slick.
She walked until the world lost its strength, and then she sat down on the damp grasses beside a lichen-skinned boulder. The wind whipped at her shredded shirt. She stared unseeing, the staff sliding out from her hands. After a time she sank down on to her side, drawing her legs up.
And waited for the blackness to swallow the world.
It was as if night in all its natural order had been stolen away. Strahl watched as the White Faces fed their fires with anything that would burn, crying out to their gods. See us! Find us! We are your children! Goats were dragged to makeshift altars and their throats slashed open. Blood splashed and hoofed legs kicked and then fell to feeble trembling. Dogs fled the sudden, inexplicable slash of cutlass blades. Terror and madness whipped like the smoke and sparks and ashes from the bonfires. By dawn, he knew, not a single animal would be left alive.
If dawn ever comes.
He had heard about Estaral’s death. He had heard about what she had claimed to have done. None of that made sense. Bakal would not have used Hetan-clearly, Estaral had believed she would be with Bakal, that she would be his wife, and when she saw him with Hetan her insanity had painted the scene with the drenched colours of lust. She had murdered them both in a jealous rage.
Strahl cursed himself. He should have driven the widow away days ago. He should have made it plain that Bakal had no interest in her. Spirits below, if he’d seen even a hint of the mad light in her eyes, he would have killed her outright.
Now command of the Senan in the battle this dawn fell to him. He had been handed his most hidden ambition-when he had in fact already willingly surrendered it to stand in Bakal’s shadow. But desire, once it reached the mouth, never tasted as sweet as it did in anticipation. In fact, he was already choking on it.
Bakal had discussed the engagement with him. Had told him what he intended. Strahl had that much at least. And when the Senan gathered at dawn, he would summon the chiefs of the clan, and he would give him Bakal’s words as if they were his own. Would they listen?
He would know soon enough.
The sun opened its eye in the east and seemed to flinch in the face of the massive wall of dark clouds devouring half the sky. On the vast plain at the very edge of what had once been the lands of the Awl, two armies stirred. Bestial standards of the Barghast clans lifted like uneasy masts above the wind-flattened grasses, as ash from the enormous bonfires spun and swirled in the air thick as snow. Approaching from the southwest was a vast crescent, warriors mounted and on foot. Pennons snapped above legions of Saphii soldiers marching in phalanx, shields tilted to cut the wind, long spears blazing with the dawn’s fires. Companies of D’ras skirmishers and archers filled the gaps and ranged ahead of the main force in loose formations. Mounted archers advanced on the tips of the bhederin’s horns, backed by the heavier lancers. The horses were skittish beneath the Akrynnai warriors, and every now and then one reared or bolted and fellow riders would close to help calm the animal.
Along the summit of the ridge, Warleader Maral Eb had positioned the Senan in the centre, framed by the lesser clans. His own Barahn he had divided between his brothers, anchoring the outer flanks.
As the day awakened, the crescent approached the Barghast position, swinging south as scouts rode back to report on the field of battle.
All at once the wind fell off, and in its place frigid cold gripped the air. It was the heart of summer, yet breaths plumed and steam rose from the backs of thousands of horses. Warriors shivered, half with chill and half with sudden dread.
Was this a battle between gods? Were the Akrynnai spirits about to manifest like fangs in snapping jaws? Were the undead ancestor gods of the White Faces only moments from clambering up from the hard, frozen earth, chanting an ancient dirge of blood? Were mortal men and women destined to cower beneath the terrible clash of ascendants? Above them all, the sky was split in two, the brittle light of morning to the east, the unyielding darkness of night in the west. None-not Barghast, not Akrynnai, not Saphii nor D’ras-had ever before seen such a sky. It filled them with terror.
Frost sheathed the grasses and glistened on iron and bronze as icy cold air flowed out from beneath the storm front. Among the two armies, no fierce songs or chants rang out in challenge. An unnatural silence gripped the forces, even at the moment when the two masses of humanity came within sight of each other.
Not a single bird rode the febrile sky.
Yet the Akrynnai army marched closer to its hated enemy; and the enemy stood motionless awaiting them.
A thousand paces west of the Barghast position lay the body of a woman, curled in the frozen grasses with her back against a lichen-skinned boulder. A place to lie down, the last nest of her last night. Frost glittered like diamond scales upon her pale skin.
She had died alone, forty paces from the corpse of her brother. But this death belonged to the flesh. The woman that had been Hetan, wife to Onos Toolan, mother of Absi, Stavi and Storii, had died some time earlier. The body will totter past the dead husk of its soul, sometimes for days, sometimes for years.
She lay on frozen ground, complete in her scene of solitary surrender. Did the sky above blink in witness? Not even once? When a sky blinks, how long does it take between the sweep of darkness and the rebirth of light?
The ghosts, their wings burnt down to black stumps, waited to tell her the answers to those questions.
Saddic, are you still alive? I have dreamed a thing. This thing was a vision, the death of a lizard-wolf lying curled on its side, the danger of bones beneath the sun. Listen to my dream, Saddic, and remember.
Greed is the knife in the sheath of ambition. You see the wicked gleam when you’ve drawn too close. Too close to get away, and as I told you: greed invites death, and now death takes her twice. This thing was a vision. She died not forty paces from her brother, and above her two armies war in the heavens, and beasts that are brothers are about to lock jaws upon each other’s throat. Strange names, strange faces. Painted white like the Quitters. A man with sad eyes whose name is Sceptre Irkullas.
Such a sky, such a sky!
Greed and ambition, Saddic. Greed and treachery. Greed and justice. These are the reasons of fate, and every reason is a lie.
She was dead before dawn. I held her broken soul in my hands. I hold it still. As Rutt holds Held.
I knew a boy.
Absi, where are you?
Saddic listened, and then he said, ‘Badalle, I am cold. Tell me again about the fires. The wonderful fires.’
But these fires were burned down to cinders and ash. The cold was the cold of another world.
Saddic, listen. I have seen a door. Opening.
QUALITIES OF LIFE
SAEGEN
Weak and exhausted, Yan Tovis had followed her brother through the gates and into the dead city of Kharkanas. The secret legends possessed by her bloodline had virtually carved into her soul the details before her. When she’d walked the bridge, the echo of the stones underfoot embraced her, as familiar and steeped in sorrow as a dead grandmother’s cloak. Passing beneath the storeyed arch, she felt as if she had returned home-but this home was a forgotten place, as if she had inherited someone else’s nostalgia. Her discomfort turned to distress as she emerged from the cool darkness and saw before her a silent, lifeless vista of tall, smoke-stained buildings, smeared towers and disfigured statues. Tiered gardens had grown past weeds and were now thick with twisted trees, the roots of which had burst the retaining walls, snaking down walls and buckling pavestones. Birds nested on ledges above walls painted white in guano. Heaps of wind-blown leaves mouldered in corners, and plants had pushed up between flagstones.
She could feel the ancient magic, like something fluttering at the edge of her vision. The city had survived the eons far better than it rightly should have. And the sorcery still resisted the relentless siege of time. She looked upon a scene that might have been abandoned little more than a generation ago, when in truth it was ancient beyond imagining.
Mothers will hold children close
Until the world itself crumbles
So wrote some poet from this very city, and Yan Tovis understood it well enough. The child and the home shall never change, if that child’s mother has any say over the matter. But explanations make truths mundane. The poet seeks to awaken in the listener all that is known yet unspoken. Words to conjure an absence of words. But children will grow up, and time will drive spears through the thickest walls. And sometimes the walls are breached from within.
It had always been her habit-and she knew it well enough-to sow uncertainty. In her mind, indecision was a way of life. Her brother, of course, was the very opposite. They stood facing one another in extremity, across a gulf that could not be bridged. When Yedan Derryg stepped beyond challenge, his will was a brutal thing, a terrible force that destroyed lives. When she did not have him facing her-his hands dripping blood and his eyes hard as stone-she came to believe that indecisiveness was the natural order of the world, a state of mind that waited until acted upon, doomed to react and never initiate, a mind that simply held itself in place, passive, resigned to whatever the fates delivered.
They were meant to stand together, meant to fix pressure each upon the other like the counterweights at either end of the bridge, and in that tense balance they might find the wisdom to rule, they might make solid and sure the stones beneath the feet of their people.
He had murdered her witches and warlocks, and it had not been a matter of stepping round her to get to them, for she had proved no obstacle to him. No, she had been frozen in place. Awaiting the knife of fate. Yedan’s knife.
I forgot. And so I failed. I need him back. I need my Witchslayer.
Behind her trooped the vanguard of her people. Pully and Skwish, plump and rosy as maidens, their faces growing slack as the residual magic bled through their meagre defences. The two officers commanding the Watch’s company, Brevity and Pithy, had already begun sending squads on to the side streets, to scout out places to accommodate the refugees. Their calm, drawling instructions were like a farrier’s file over the uneven edge of fear and panic.
She could not see Yedan, nor his horse, but ahead, close to the centre of the city, rose a massive edifice, part temple, part palace and keep, from which five towers rose to spear the heavy gloom of the sky. The Citadel. It occupied an island encircled by a gorge that could be crossed by but one bridge, and that bridge was reached by this main avenue.
Yan Tovis glanced back, found Pithy. ‘Settle the people as best you can-but don’t spread them out too much. Oh, and tell the witches they won’t be able to think straight until they’ve worked a protective circle around themselves.’
At the woman’s nod, Yan faced the heart of the city again, and then set out.
He rode to the Citadel. Of course he did. He was Yedan Derryg. And he wants to see for himself where all the blood was spilled.
Some enormous concussion had cracked the marble pillars flanking the Great Hall. Fissures gaped, many of the columns bowed or tilted precariously, and a fine scattering of white dust coated the mosaic floor. In places that dust had congealed into muddy stains.
Indifferent to the rubbish, Yedan crossed the vast chamber. He could feel a warmth coursing through him, as if he was about to wade into a battle. Currents of power still drifted in this place, thick with discordant emotions. Horror, grief, black rage and terrible agony. Madness had descended upon this citadel, and blood had drenched the world.
He found a side corridor just beyond the Great Hall, its entranceway ornate with arcane carvings: women marching in solemn procession. Tall, midnight-skinned women. Once within the passage, the images on the walls to either side transformed into carnal scenes, growing ever more elaborate as he proceeded to the far end. After a series of cloisters, the function of which was in no way ambiguous, Yedan entered a domed chamber. The Terondai-was that the word? Who could say how time had twisted it? The sacred eye in the darkness, the witness to all things.
There was a time, the secret legends told, when light did not visit this world, and the darkness was absolute. But only the true children of the Mother could survive in such a realm, and no blood remains for ever pure. More, there were other beings dwelling in Night. Some saw truly, others did not.
Light was what seeped in with the wounding of the Mother-a wounding she chose to permit, a wounding and then the birthing that came of it. ‘All children,’ she said, ‘must be able to see. We gift the living with light and darkness and shadow. The truth of our natures cannot be found in the absence of that which we are not. Walk from darkness, walk into shadow, walk beyond into light. These are the truths of being. “Without ground, there can be no sky.” So spoke the Azathanai in the dust of their quarries.’
Secret legends, likely little more than nonsense. Words to give meaning to what already existed, to what existed with or without the guiding hand of sentient beings. To this rock, to that river, to the molten fires from below and the frozen rain from above. He wasn’t much impressed with things like that.
The Terondai was smeared in ashes and cluttered with dried leaves. Shapeless ridges of white dust were all that remained of bodies left lying where they fell. There was no sign of weapons or jewellery, leading Yedan to surmise that looters had been through the chamber-and everywhere else in the Citadel, he suspected. Odd that his bloodline’s secret legends made no mention of those flitting thieves. Yet, weren’t we here at the grisly end? Not wielding weapons. Not making heroic stands. Just… what? Watching? Prompting the question: who in the name of the Shore were we? Their damned servants? Their slaves?
Secret legends, tell us your secret truths.
And what of this ancient claim to some kind of royal bloodline? Rulers of what? The woodshed? The garden island in the river? Yes, he would trot out the righteous assertions that he and his sister were fit to command, if that was what was needed to bend others to his will. They had titles, didn’t they? Twilight. The Watch. And Yan Tovis had done much the same, taking upon herself the role of Queen of the Shake. The burden of privilege-see how we bow beneath its weight.
Jaws bunched, he scanned the chamber once more, now with greater care.
‘You damned fool.’
He twisted round, eyed his sister.
‘You’re in the temple, idiot-get off the damned horse.’
‘There are raised gardens,’ he said. ‘Find some farmers among your lot and get them to start clearing. I’ll send others down to the river-we’ve got plenty of nets.’
‘You want us to occupy the city?’
‘Why not?’
She seemed at a loss for words.
Yedan drew his horse round until he faced her. ‘Twilight, you took us on to the Road of Gallan. The Blind Man’s Road. Now we are in the Realm of Darkness. But the realm is dead. It is preserved in death by sorcery. If this was once our home, we can make it so again. Was that not our destiny?’
‘Destiny? Errant’s balls, why does speaking that word sound like the unsheathing of a sword? Yedan, perhaps we knew this city once. Perhaps our family line reaches back and every story we learned was true. The glory of Kharkanas. But not one of those stories tells us we ruled here. In this city. We were not this realm’s master.’
He studied her for a time. ‘We move on, then.’
‘Yes.’
‘To where?’
‘The forest beyond the river. Through it and out to the other side. Yedan, we have come this far. Let us make the journey to the place where it started. Our true home. The First Shore.’
‘We don’t even know what that means.’
‘So we find out.’
‘The river is still worth a look,’ he said. ‘We’re short of food.’
‘Of course. Now, in honour of those who fell here, brother, get off that damned horse!’
Moments after the two had left the chamber, the stillness that had existed for millennia was broken. A stirring of dead leaves, spinning as if lifted by small whirlwinds. Dust hazed the air, and the strange muted gloom-where light itself seemed an unwelcome stranger-suddenly wavered.
And something like a long, drawn breath slowly filled the chamber. It echoed wretched as a sob.
Brevity followed Pithy to the mouth of the alley. They carried lanterns, shadows rocking on walls as they made their way down half the narrow thoroughfare’s length.
She halted beside her friend and together they stared down at the bodies.
‘Dead?’ Brevity asked.
‘No, sweetie. In the realm of dreams, the both of them.’
‘When did this happen?’
‘Couldn’t a been too long ago,’ Pithy replied. ‘I seen the two wander in here to do that ritual or whatever. Little later I chanced to peek in and saw their torches had gone out. So I come for a look.’
Brevity settled into a crouch and set the lantern to one side. She grasped the witch nearest her and pulled the woman over, peering down at the face. ‘Pully, I think. They look like twins as it is.’
‘Gettin’ more so, too,’ Pithy noted, ‘or so I noticed.’
‘Eyelids fluttering like mad.’
‘Realm of dreams, didn’t I say so?’
Brevity pushed back an eyelid. ‘Rolled right up. Maybe the ritual turned on ’em.’
‘Could be. What should we do?’
‘I’m tempted to bury them.’
‘But they ain’t dead.’
‘I know. But opportunities like this don’t come every day.’
‘What’s broken cannot be mended. You broke us, but that is not all-see what you have done.’
Gallan had been horrified. He could not abide this new world. He wanted a return to darkness and, when he’d done gouging out his own eyes, he found it. Sandalath, her son’s tiny hand held tight within her solid grip, stood looking down on the madman, seeing but not registering all the blood on his face and smeared across the floor-the impossibility of it here at the very threshold to the Terondai. He wept, choking on something again and again-yet whatever was in his mouth he would not spit out-and his lips were glistening crimson, his teeth red as cedar chips.
‘Mother,’ said her son, ‘what’s happened?’
The world changes. Gallan, you fool. What you’ve done does not change it back. ‘An accident,’ she replied. ‘We must find someone to help-’
‘But why is he eating his eyes?’
‘Go now, find a priestess-quickly, Orfantal!’
Gallan choked, trying to swallow his eyeballs only to hack them back into his mouth. The holes in his head wept bloody tears.
Ever the poetic statement, Gallan. The grandiose symbol, artfully positioned at the temple door. You will lie here until someone important comes, and then you’ll swallow those damned things down. Even the masterpiece is servant to timing.
Will Mother Dark be struck in the heart by this, Gallan? Or simply disgusted? ‘It’s done, old man,’ she said. ‘No going back.’
He clearly misunderstood her, as he began laughing.
She saw one of the eyes in his mouth roll into view, and for one insane moment it seemed to look up at her.
‘What’s broken cannot be mended. You broke us, but that is not all-see what you have done.’
Sandalath hissed as that echo intruded a second time into her memories. It didn’t belong in the scene she had resurrected. It belonged somewhere else, with someone else. With someone else, not to. Of course that was the horrid thing about it. She heard those words spoken and they indeed came from her, arriving in her own voice, and that voice was from a woman who truly understood what it was to be broken.
And that is the bitter truth. I have not mended. After all this time…
‘You asleep?’ Withal asked from where he lay behind her.
She contemplated the merits of a response, decided against them and remained silent.
‘Talking in your sleep again,’ he muttered, shifting beneath the furs. ‘But what I want to know is, what broke?’
She sat up as if stung by a scorpion. ‘What?’
‘Awake after all-’
‘What did you just say?’
‘Whatever it was, it’s put my heart in my throat and you poised to tear it out. I suppose you could beat me senseless-’
Snarling, she flung the furs back and rose to her feet. The three Venath demons were, inexplicably, digging a huge hole a short distance down from the road. Mape was in the bottom, heaving enormous boulders into Rind’s arms where the demon crouched at the edge. Rind then swung round to transfer the rock to Pule, who pitched it away. What in Hood’s name are they doing? Never mind. She rubbed at her face.
Talking in my sleep? Not those words. Please, not those words.
She walked some way up the Road, eager to be off. But Withal needed some sleep. Humans were absurdly frail. Their every achievement proved similarly fragile. If there weren’t so damned many of them, and if they didn’t display the occasional ant-nest frenzy of creativity, why, they’d have died out long ago. More to the point, if the rest of us hadn’t sneered in our idle witnessing of their pathetic efforts-if we’d wised up, in fact, one or all of us would have wiped them out long ago. Tiste Andii, Jaghut, K’Chain Che’Malle, Forkrul Assail. Gods, Tiste Edur, even. Scabandari, you slaughtered the wrong enemy. Even you, Anomander-you play with them as if they’re pets. But these pets will turn on you. Sooner or later.
She knew she was avoiding the scaly beast gnawing at the roots of her mind. Urging her thoughts to wander away, away from the place where kindred blood still glistened. But it was no use. Words had been spoken. Violence had given answer, and the rise and fall of chests faded into eternal stillness. And that beast, well, it had the sharpest teeth.
Sandalath sighed. Kharkanas. The city awaited her. Not so far away now, her ancient home, her own private crypt, its confines crammed solid with the worthless keepsakes of a young woman’s life.
Watch me chase my dreams
In the transit of dust
Snorting, she swung round, retracing her path to where her husband slept. The demons-Venath, who’d once been allies of the Jaghut. Who gave of their blood to the Trell-and what a fell mix that turned out to be-the demons had all vanished into the hole they’d dug. Why had the damned things attached themselves to Withal? He said he’d found them on the island where he’d been imprisoned by the Crippled God. Which suggested that the Crippled God had summoned and bound the demons. But later, the Nachts had abetted Withal’s escape and seemed instead to be in league with Mael. And now… they’re digging a hole.
‘Never mind,’ said Withal, rolling over and sitting up. ‘You’re worse than a mosquito in a room. If you’re in such a hurry, let’s just go until we get there. I can rest then.’
‘You’re exhausted.’
He eyed her. ‘It ain’t the walking that’s exhausting me, beloved.’
‘You’d better explain that.’
‘I will. But not right now.’
She saw the defiance in his eyes. I could make him talk. But that look in his eyes… it’s cute. ‘Gather up your gear then, husband. And while you do, I will explain something to you. We are following the road that leads to the city where I was born. Now, that’s stressful enough. But it’s something I can handle. Not happily, mind you, but even so. No, there is something else.’
He’d tied up his bedroll and had it tucked under an arm. ‘Go on.’
‘Imagine a pool of black water. Depthless, hidden within a cave where no air stirs and nothing drips. The pool’s surface has not known a single ripple in tens of thousands of years. You’ve come to kneel beside it-all your life-but what you see never changes.’
‘All right.’
‘I still see nothing to change that, Withal. But… somewhere far below the surface, in depths unimaginable… something moves.’
‘Sounds like we should be running the other way.’
‘You’re probably right, but I can’t.’
‘This old life of yours, Sand-you’ve said you were not a fighter-you knew nothing of weapons or warfare. So, what were you in this city home of yours?’
‘There were factions-a power struggle.’ She looked away, up the Road. ‘It went on for generations-yes, that may be hard to believe. Generations among the Tiste Andii. You’d think that after the centuries they’d be entrenched, and maybe they were, for a time. Even a long time. But then everything changed-in my life, I knew nothing but turmoil. Alliances, betrayals, war pacts, treacheries. You cannot imagine how such things twisted our civilization, our culture.’
‘Sand.’
‘I was a hostage, Withal. Valued but expendable.’
‘But that’s a not a life! That’s an interruption in a life!’
‘Everything was breaking down.’ We were supposed to be sacrosanct. Precious. ‘It doesn’t matter now,’ she added. ‘It’s not a career I can pick up again, is it?’
He was staring at her. ‘Would you? If you could?’
‘A ridiculous question.’ ‘What’s broken cannot be mended. You broke us, but that is not all-see what you have done.’
‘Sand.’
‘Of course not. Now, saddle up.’
‘But why is he eating his eyes?’
‘Once, long ago, my son, there was nothing but darkness. And that nothing, Orfantal, was everything.’
‘But why-’
‘He is old. He’s seen too much.’
‘He could have just closed them.’
‘Yes, he could have at that.’
‘Mother?’
‘Yes, Orfantal?’
‘Don’t eat your eyes.’
‘Don’t worry. I am like most people. I can keep my eyes and still see nothing.’
Now, woman, you said no such thing. And be thankful for that. The other rule applies. Mouth working, nothing said. And that is the ease we find for ourselves. After all, if we said everything we could say to each other, we’d have all killed each other long ago.
Gallan, you were a poet. You should have swallowed your tongue.
He had hurt someone, once. And he had known he had done so, and knowing led him into feeling bad. But no one enjoys feeling bad. Better to replace the guilt and shame with something turned outward. Something that burned all within reach, something that would harness all his energies and direct them away from himself. Something called anger. By the time he was done-by the time his rage had run its course-he found himself surrounded in ashes, and the life he had known was for ever gone.
Introspection was an act of supreme courage, one that few could manage. But when all one had left to stir was a heap of crumbled bones, there was nothing else one could do. Fleeing the scene only prolonged the ordeal. Memories clung to the horrors in his wake, and the only true escape was a plunge into madness-and madness was not a thing he could simply choose for himself. More’s the pity. No, the sharper the inner landscape, the fiercer the sanity.
He believed that his family name was Veed. He had been a Gral, a warrior and a husband. He had done terrible things. There was blood on his hands, and the salty, bitter taste of lies on his tongue. The stench of scorched cloth still filled his head.
I have slain. In this admission, he had a place to begin.
Then, all these truths assembled themselves into the frame of his future. Leading to his next thought.
I will slay again.
Not one among those he now hunted could hope to stand before him. Their petty kingdom was no more formidable than a termite mound, but to the insects themselves it was majesty and it was permanence and it was these things that made them giants in their own realm. Veed was the boot, the bronze-sheathed toe that sent walls crashing down, delivering utter ruin. It is what I am made to do.
His path was unerring. Into the sunken pit and through the entrance, finding himself in a chamber crowded with reptilian corpses that swarmed with orthen and maggots. He crossed the room and halted before the inner portal.
They were somewhere far above-they had seen him, he was sure of it. Watched him from the eyes or mouth of the dragon. They did not know who he was, and so they had no reason to fear him. Even so, he knew that they would be cautious. If he simply lunged into their midst, blades flashing, some might escape. Some might fight back. A lucky swing… no, he would need his charm, his ability to put them all at ease. It is possible that this cannot be rushed. I see that now. But I have shown patience before, haven’t I? I have shown a true talent for deceit.
Empty huts are not my only legacy, after all.
He sheathed his weapons.
Spat into the palms of his hands, and slicked back his hair. Then set off on the long ascent.
He could howl into their faces, and they would hear nothing. He could close invisible hands about their throats and they would not even shrug. A slayer has come! The one below-I have sailed the storm of his desires-he seeks to murder you all! His wretched family remained oblivious. Yes, they had seen the stranger. They had seen his deliberate path to the great stone edifice they had claimed as their own. And they had then resumed their mundane activities, as if suffering beneath a geas of careless indifference.
Taxilian, Rautos and Breath followed Sulkit as the K’Chain drone laboured over countless mechanisms. The creature seemed immune to exhaustion, as if the purpose driving it surpassed the needs of the flesh. Not even Taxilian could determine if the drone’s efforts yielded any measurable effect. Nothing sprang to sudden life. No hidden gears churned into rumbling action. Darkness still commanded every corridor; feral creatures still scurried in chambers and made nests in the rubbish.
Last and Asane were busy constructing a nest of their own, when they weren’t hunting orthen or collecting water from the dripping pipes. Sheb maintained vigil over the empty wastes from a perch that he called the Crown, while Nappet wandered without purpose, muttering under his breath and cursing his ill luck at finding himself in such pathetic company.
Blind fools, every one of them!
The ghost, who once gloried in his omniscience, fled the singular mind of the Gral named Veed and set out to find the ones accompanying Sulkit. The witch Breath was an adept, sensitive to sorcery. If any of them could be reached, awakened to the extremity of his need, it would be her.
He found them in the circular chamber behind Eyes, but the vast domicile of the now-dead Matron was a realm transformed. The ceiling and walls dripped with bitter slime. Viscid pools sheathed the floor beneath the raised dais and the air roiled with pungent vapours. The vast, sprawling bed that had once commanded the dais now looked diseased, twisted as the roots of a toppled tree. Tendrils hung loose, ends dripping, and the atmosphere shrouding the malformed nightmare on the dais was so thick that all within it was blurred, uncertain, as if in that place reality itself was smudged.
Sulkit stood immobile as a statue in front of the dais, its scales streaming fluids-as if it was melting before their eyes-and strange guttural sounds issuing from its throat.
‘-awakening behind every wall,’ Taxilian was saying. ‘I’m sure of it.’
‘But nothing like this!’ Rautos said, gesturing at Sulkit. ‘Gods below, this air-I can barely breathe!’
‘You’re both fools,’ Breath snapped. ‘This is a ritual. This is the oldest sorcery of all-the magic of sweat and scent and tears-against this, we’re helpless as children! Kill it, I say! Drive a knife into its back-slash open its throat! Before it’s too late-’
‘No!’ retorted Taxilian. ‘We must let this happen-I feel it-in what the drone does we will find our salvation.’
‘Delusions!’
Rautos had positioned himself between the two, but his expression was taut with fear and confusion. ‘There is a pattern,’ he said, addressing neither of them. ‘Everything the drone has done-everywhere else-it has led to this moment. The pattern-I can almost see it. I want-I want…’
But he didn’t know what he wanted. The ghost spun wild in the currents of the man’s ineffable needs.
‘There will be answers,’ said Taxilian.
Yes! the ghost cried. And it comes with knives in its hands! It comes to kill you all!
Beneath the level of the Womb, Nappet stood beside a strange pipe running the length of the corridor. He had been following alongside it for some time before becoming aware that the waist-high sheath of bronze had begun emanating heat. Dripping sweat, he hesitated. Retrace his route? He might melt before he reached the stairs he had come down. In the gloom ahead, he could make out nothing to indicate side passages. The hot, brittle air burned in his lungs. He was near panic.
Something swirled within the pipe, rushing down its length. A whimper escaped him-he could die here! ‘Move, you fool. But which way? Hurry. Think!’ Finally, he forced himself forward in a stagger-somewhere ahead, there would be salvation. There had to be. He was sure of it.
The air crackled, sparks arcing from the surface of the pipe. He shrieked, broke into a run. Flashes blinded him as lightning ignited in the corridor. Argent roots snapped out, lanced through him. Agony lit his nerves-his screams punched from his chest, tearing his throat-and he flailed with his hands. Arcs leapt between his fingers. Something was roaring-just ahead-bristling with fire.
The wrong way! I went-
Sudden darkness. Silence.
Nappet halted, gasping. He drew a breath and held it.
Desultory trickling sounds from within the pipe, draining away even as he listened.
He sighed unsteadily.
The air reeked of something strange and bitter, stinging his eyes. What had just happened? He had been convinced that he was going to die, cooked like a lightning-struck dog. He had felt those energies coursing through him, as if acid filled his veins. Sweat cooling on his skin, he shivered.
He heard footsteps and turned. Someone was coming up behind him. No lantern illuminated the corridor. He heard the scrape of iron. ‘Sheb? That you? Last? You damned oaf, light a lantern!’
The figure made no reply.
Nappet licked his lips. ‘Who is that? Say something!’
The ghost watched in horror as Veed strode up to Nappet. A single-bladed axe swung in a savage arc that bit into Nappet’s neck. Spittle flew from the man’s mouth as he rocked with the blow. Bone grated and crunched as Veed tugged his weapon free. Blood gouted from the wound and Nappet reached up to press his palm against his neck, his eyes still wide, still filled with disbelief.
The second blow came from the opposite side. His head fell impossibly on its side, rested a moment on his left shoulder, and then rolled off the man’s back. The headless body toppled.
‘No point in wasting time,’ muttered Veed, crouching to clean the blade. Then he rose and faced the ghost. ‘Stop screaming. Who do you think summoned me in the first place?’
The ghost recoiled. I-I did not-
‘Now lead me to the others, Lifestealer.’
The ghost howled, fled from the abomination. He had to warn the others!
Grinning, Veed followed.
Stepping down, he crushed the last cinders of the paltry hearth, feeling the nuggets roll under his heel, and then turned to face the lifeless hag. He glared at her scaled back, as if silent accusation could cut her down where she stood. But what Torrent willed, he knew, was weaker than rain. ‘Those are the spires of my people’s legends-the fangs of the Wastelands. You stole the stars, witch. You deceived me-’
Olar Ethil snorted, but did not turn round. She was staring south-at least, he thought of it as south, but such certainties, which he had once believed to be unassailable, had now proved as vulnerable to the deathless woman’s magic as the very stones she lit aflame every night. As vulnerable as the bundles of dead grass from which she conjured slabs of dripping meat, and the bedrock that bled water with the rap of one bony knuckle.
Torrent scratched at his sparse beard. He’d used up the last of the oils young Awl warriors applied to burn off the bristle until such time that a true beard was possible-he must look a fool, but nothing could be done for it. Not that anyone cared anyway. There were no giggling maidens with veiled eyes, no coy dances from his path as he strutted the length of the village. All those old ways were gone now. So were the futures they had promised him.
He pictured a Letherii soldier standing atop a heap of bones-a mountain of white that was all that remained of Torrent’s people. Beneath the rim of his helm, the soldier’s face was nothing but bone, leaving a smile that never wavered.
Torrent realized that he had found a lover, and her name was hate. The Letherii details were almost irrelevant-it could be any soldier, any stranger. Any symbol of greed and oppression. The grasping hand, the gleam of avid hunger in the eyes, the spirit that took all it could by virtue of the strength and might it possessed.
Torrent dreamed of destruction. Vast, sweeping, leaving behind nothing but bones.
He glanced again at Olar Ethil. Why do you want me, witch? What will you give me? This is an age of promises, isn’t it? It must be, else I exist without reason.
‘When you find your voice,’ she said without turning, ‘speak to me, warrior.’
‘Why? What will you answer?’
Her laugh was a hollowed-out cackle. ‘When I do, mountains shall crumble. The seas shall boil. The air shall thicken with poison. My answer, warrior, shall deafen the heavens.’ She spun amidst flapping rags. ‘Do you feel it? The gate-it cracks open and the road will welcome what comes through. And such a road!’ She laughed again.
‘My hate is silent,’ Torrent said. ‘It has nothing to say.’
‘But I have been feeding it nonetheless.’
His eyes widened. ‘This fever comes from you, witch?’
‘No, it ever lurked in your soul, like a viper in the night. I but awakened it to righteousness.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it amuses me. Saddle your horse, warrior. We ride to the spires of your legends.’
‘Legends that have outlived the people telling them.’
She cocked her head in his direction. ‘Not yet. Not yet.’ And she laughed again.
‘Where is he?’ Stavi screamed, her small fists lifted, as if moments from striking her.
Setoc held her ground. ‘I don’t know,’ she replied levelly. ‘He always returned before.’
‘But it’s been days and days! Where is he? Where is Toc?’
‘He serves more than one master, Stavi. It was a miracle he was able to stay with us as long as he did.’
Stavi’s sister looked close to tears, but she’d yet to speak. The boy sat with his back against the lifeless flank of Baaljagg where the huge beast lay as if asleep, nose down between its front paws. Playing with a handful of stones, the boy seemed oblivious to his sisters’ distress. She wondered if perhaps he was simple in the head. Sighing, Setoc said, ‘He turned us into the east-and so that is the direction we shall take-’
‘But there’s nothing out there!’
‘I know, Stavi. I don’t know why he wants us to go there. He wouldn’t explain. But, would you go against his wishes?’ It was an unfair tactic, she knew, the kind meant to extort compliance from children.
It worked, but as every adult knew, not for long.
Setoc gestured. The ay lifted to its feet and trotted ahead, while Setoc picked up the boy and cajoled the twins into her wake. They set out, leaving behind their measly camp.
She wondered if Toc would ever return. She wondered if he’d any purpose behind his taking care of them, or had it been some residue of guilt or sense of responsibility for the children of his friend? He had left life behind and could not be held to its ways, or the demands it made upon a mortal soul-no, there could be no human motivation to what such a creature did.
And the eye he’d fixed upon her had belonged to a wolf. But even among such beasts, the closeness of the pack was a tense game of submission and dominance. The bliss of brother-and sisterhood hid political machinations and ruthless judgements. Cruelty needed only opportunity. So, he had led this paltry pack of theirs, and his lordship had been uncontested-after all, he could hardly be threatened with death, could he?
She understood, finally, that she could not trust him. And that her relief at his taking command had been the response of a child, a creature eager to cower in the shadow of an adult, praying for protection, willing itself blind to the possibility that the true threat was found in the man-or woman-standing over it. Of course, the twins had lost everything. Their desperate loyalty to a dead man, who had once been their father’s friend, was reasonable under the circumstances. Stavi and Storii wanted him back. Of course they did, and they had begun to look upon Setoc with something like resentment, as if she was to blame for his absence.
Nonsense, but the twins saw no salvation in Setoc. They saw no protector in her. They’d rather she had been the one to vanish.
The boy had his giant wolf. Would it protect them as well? Not a notion to rely upon.
And I have power, though I can’t yet make out its shape, or even its purpose. Who in their dreams is not omnipotent? If in sleep I grow wings and fly high above the land, it does not mean I will awaken cloaked in feathers. We are gods in our dreams. Disaster strikes when we come to believe the same is true in our real lives.
I wish Torrent was here. I wish he’d never left me. I see him in my mind even now. I see him standing atop a mountain of bones, his eyes dark beneath the rim of his helm.
Torrent, where are you?
‘They looked near death,’ Yedan Derryg said.
Riding beside her brother, Yan Tovis grimaced. ‘They must have awakened something-I told them to protect themselves, now I’m thinking I may have killed them both.’
‘They may look and act like two giggling girls, Twilight, but they aren’t. You killed no one.’
She twisted in her saddle and looked back down the road. The light of torches and lanterns formed a refulgent island in the midst of buildings at the far end of the city. The light looked like a wound. She faced forward again. Darkness, and yet a darkness through which she could see-every detail precise, every hint of colour and tone looking strangely opaque, solid before her eyes. As if the vision she had possessed all her life-in that now distant, remote world-was in truth a feeble, truncated thing. And yet, this did not feel like a gift-a pressure was building behind her eyes.
‘Besides,’ Yedan added, ‘they’re not yet dead.’
They rode on at a canter as the road climbed out of the valley, leaving behind the weed-snarled fields and brush-crowded farm buildings. Ahead was the wall of trees that marked the beginning of the forest called Ashayn. If the tales were true, Ashayn had fallen-every last tree-to the manic industry of the city, and in the leagues beyond that wasteland great fires had destroyed the rest. But the forest had returned, and the boles of blackwood could not be spanned by a dozen men with hands linked. There was no sign of a road or bridle path, but the floor beneath the high canopy was clear of undergrowth.
The gloom thickened once they rode beneath the towering trees. Among the blackwood she could now see other species, equally as massive, smooth-barked down to the serpentine roots. High above, some kind of parasitic plant created islands of moss, serrated leaves and black blossoms, like huge nests, depending from thick tangles of vines. The air was chill, musty, smelling of wet charcoal and sap.
A third of a league, then half, the horses’ hoofs thumping, hauberks rustling and clasps clicking, but from the forest itself only silence.
The pressure had sharpened to pain, as if a spike had been driven into her forehead. The motion of the horse was making her nauseated. Gasping, leaning forward, she reined in. A hand to her face revealed bright blood from her nostrils. ‘Yedan-’
‘I know,’ he said in a growl. ‘Never mind. Memories return. There’s something ahead.’
‘I don’t think-’
‘You said you wanted to see the First Shore.’
‘Not if it makes my head explode!’
‘Retreat is not possible,’ he said, spitting to one side. ‘What assails us, Yan, does not come from what awaits us.’
What? She managed to lift her head, looked across at him.
Her brother was weeping blood. He spat again, a bright red gout, and then said, ‘Kharkanas… the empty darkness’-he met her eyes-‘is empty no longer.’
She thought back to the two unconscious witches in the city behind them. They will not survive this. They cannot. I brought them all this way, only to kill them. ‘I must go back-’
‘You cannot. Not yet. Ride that way, Twilight, and you will die.’ And he kicked his horse forward.
After a moment she followed.
Goddess of Darkness, have you returned? Are you awakened in rage? Will you slay all you touch?
The black pillars marched past, a cathedral abandoned in some timeless realm, and now they could hear a sound, coming from just beyond the broken black wall ahead. Something like the crashing of waves.
The First Shore.
Where we began-
A glimmer between the boles, flashes of white-
Brother and sister rode clear of the forest. The horses beneath them slowed, halted as the reins grew slack, lifeless.
With red-smeared vision, silence like a wound, they stared, uncomprehending.
The First Shore.
The clouds in the west had blackened and fused into an impenetrable wall. The ground was silver with frost and the grasses crunched and broke underfoot. Hunched beneath furs, Strahl watched the enemy forces forming up on the gentle slope of the valley opposite them. Two hundred paces to his right Maral Eb stood in a vanguard of chosen Barahn warriors, behind him the mixed units of four lesser clans-he had taken command of those warriors who had tasted the humiliation of defeat. A courageous decision, enough to grind away some of the burrs in Strahl’s eyes. Some, but not all.
Breaths plumed in white streams. Warriors stamped to jolt feeling back into their feet. Blew on hands gripping weapons. Across the way, horses bucked and reared amidst the ranks of mounted archers and lancers. Pennons hung grey and dull, standards stiff as planed boards.
The iron taste of panic was in the bitter air, and eyes lifted again and again to stare at the terrifying sky-to the west, the black, seething wall; to the east the cerulean blue sparkling with crystals and the sun burnished white as snow and flanked by baleful sun-dogs. Directly above, a ragged seam bound the two. The blackness was winning the battle, Strahl could see, as tendrils snaked out like roots, bleeding into the morning.
Now on the valley floor phalanxes of kite-shielded Saphii held to the centre, their long spears anchored in the hinged sockets at the hip. D’ras skirmishers spilled out around the bristling squares, among them archers with arrows nocked, edging ever closer. The Akrynnai cavalry held to the wings, struggling to keep formation as they advanced at the walk.
Sceptre Irkullas was wasting no time. No personal challenges on the field, no rousing exhortations before his troops. The Akrynnai wanted this battle joined, the slaughter unleashed, as if the chorus of clashing weapons and the screams of the dying and wounded could wrench the world back to its normal state, could right the sky overhead, could send the cold and darkness reeling away.
Blood to pay, blood to appease. Is that what you believe, Akrynnai?
Strahl stirred into motion, stepping forward until he was five paces in front of the Senan line. He swung round, studied the nearest faces.
Belligerence like bruises beneath the sheen of fear. Hard eyes fixing on his, then shifting away, then back again. White-painted faces cracking in the cold. In turn, his officers stung him with their acuity, as if they sought the first sign of uncertainty, the first waver of doubt in his face. He gave them nothing.
Strange crackling from the silvered sky, as of a frozen lake breaking in the first thaw, and warriors ducked as if fearing the descent of shards of ice. But nothing came of the eerie sounds. The fists of the gods are pounding against the glass of the sky. Cracks craze the scene. It’s all moments from shattering. Well may you duck, my friends. As if that will do any good.
‘Bakal,’ Strahl said, loudly enough to startle the figures he faced, and he saw how the lone word rippled back through the ranks, stirring them to life. ‘And before Bakal, Onos Toolan. Before him, Humbrall Taur. We came in search of an enemy. We came seeking a war.’
He waited, and saw in the nearest faces a host of private wars unleashed. He beheld in those expressions the fiercest battles of will. He saw the spreading stain of shame. And nodded.
‘Here we stand, Senan.’ Behind him he could hear and feel the sudden thunder of soldiers on the advance, of waves of riders sweeping out from the flanks. ‘And I am before you, alone. And I shall speak the words of those before me.’ He held high in his right hand his tulwar, and in his left the weapon’s scabbard.
‘Not this enemy! Not this war!’
Strahl sheathed the sword, slamming the weapon hard to lock it and then holding it high with both hands.
Weapons flashed. Iron vanished. Barked commands from the rear and the Senan forces wheeled round.
And now, we leave.
You wanted this, Maral Eb? Then take it.
Someone was shouting, but Maral Eb’s eyes remained fixed on the enemy as it advanced. The first arrows hissed through the glittering air-almost unseen in the gathering gloom. The phalanxes were readying for a charge, long spears levelled in the first three ranks. On the outer wings horse-archers were fast closing, moments from loosing arrows and then wheeling to rake the front Barghast lines with subsequent salvos.
Bastards fought like babies. Once those Saphii closed, everything would change-
The shouting was suddenly louder and then a hand gripped his shoulder and yanked him round. He glared into the face of one of his bodyguards-but the man was pointing, spittle flying as he shrieked. What was he saying? The damned idiot-what-
Then he saw the growing gap that was his line’s centre.
What? Did they charge-no-I see nothing-but-
‘They’ve withdrawn! Warleader! The Senan!’
‘Don’t be a fool!’ He pushed his way through his milling guards until his view was unobstructed. The Senan were gone. The most powerful of the Barghast White Faces-routed! ‘Get them back!’ he shrieked. ‘Get them back!’
Sceptre Irkullas reined in, a deep frown knitting his features beneath the helm’s flaring rim. What was the centre doing? Do you invite us to march into that maw? Do you really think that will work? Damned barbarians, have you never before faced a phalanx? ‘Rider! Inform the Saphii commander to be certain to hold their squares-if the Barghast want to bite down on that mouthful of spikes, they’re welcome to.’ He twisted round until he spotted a second messenger. ‘Have the lancers draw in closer to our centre and await my orders to charge. Go!’
Another messenger who had been among the skirmishers rode up, saluting. ‘Sceptre! The centre clan is withdrawing from battle!’
‘It’s a feint-’
‘My pardon, Sceptre, but their leader was seen facing his warriors-he sheathed his weapon and held it high, sir. And they did the same back, and then turned round and left the line!’
Errant’s pull! ‘Sound the Saphii advance to close! Before the bastards can plug the hole-ride, soldier! Signallers! To me!’
Sekara the Vile pushed her way through the press for a better look at the treachery. She was in command of the rearguard, the elders, unblooded youths and their mothers, along with eight hundred warriors still recovering from wounds. Their task was to hold the line of wagons should the Akrynnai encircle or pull round to strike for the belly. But with the front centre gone, they would have nothing but enemy at their backs.
She spat out a string of curses at the retreating warriors. ‘Cowards! I will wait for you at the Gate, for every one of you!’ She ran out a half-dozen strides-the last ranks of the Senan were almost within reach. Not of her claws-that would be too risky-but she could spit as well as any Barghast woman, and now-
Someone moved up beside her. She twisted round, teeth bared.
A gauntleted hand hammered her face. Light exploded behind her eyes. Legs giving out, she collapsed in a heap. Her mouth was full of shards of teeth.
Strahl’s voice spoke from directly over her. ‘Sekara, wait at the Gate all you want. But remember, your husband’s already there. Waiting just for you. The dead will say what they dared not say in life. Oh, don’t forget to take your hoard with you.’
She heard his moccasins crunching on the grasses as he set off in the wake of his clan.
My husband? Whenever did he not cower before me? She spat out a mouthful of slimy blood.
We’ll stand side by side, Strahl, to welcome you. To tear you to pieces! A curse upon the Senan! Choose what you will, you shall not see the fangs until it is too late!
The ground shook. A shock wave thundered through the Barghast. Screams battered the frozen air. The battle was joined.
Sekara regained her feet, her face already swollen and hot. ‘Other side of the wagons!’ she shouted. ‘Everyone-through! And then form up!’
She saw them lurch into motion.
Yes, hold for a time. Time enough for me to run. Darkness, such a blessing! She staggered towards the wagons.
Another sleet of arrows and Sagal ducked behind his hide shield. Two thuds bit into the thickly matted reeds and he flinched as his forearm was pricked. Warm blood trickled beneath his vambrace. He cursed. His brother had done the best he could in selecting this site, but to deal with these Akrynnai horse-archers most effectively they would have done better to find broken ground. A proper range of hills, plenty of rock, gullies and draws.
Instead, the bastards didn’t even have to close-at least for as long as they had arrows-and Barghast were dying without even the honour of clashing blades with the enemy. The rattling pass of the horses continued its deadly sweep.
The next time, Sagal would straighten and lead a charge-right into the path of the riders-see how you will fare with three thousand White Faces in your midst!
The descent of arrows fell off and Sagal waited a moment longer-he could still hear those horse hoofs-but sound was doing strange things this morning. Yet, they seemed… heavier than before. He lowered his shield and straightened. Blinking, struggling to make out details in the infernal gloom.
Crazed motion rising up from the valley, the entire hillside trembling-
Three chevrons of lancers had come in behind the screen of archers. There was no time to close ranks, to lift and settle pikes. He stared, furious, and then unsheathed his tulwar. ‘They come! They come!’
The Barghast seemed to grunt like some massive beast stirring awake. As thousands of levelled lances churned up the slope, the White Faces answered with a roar, and at the last instant, the mass of Barahn warriors heaved into the iron fangs. The front lines vanished, ducking beneath the lanceheads, heavy blades chopping into horses’ forelegs. Beasts shrieked, went down, and all at once the charge ground to a halt against a seething wall of carnage, the points of the chevrons flattening out in wild, vicious maelstrom.
Deluged in the fluids of a gutted horse, Sagal surged back to his feet, howling like a demon. Time to deliver slaughter! The fools closed-the fools charged! They could have held back all day until the Barahn on this flank were nothing but a heap of arrow-studded meat-but their impatience betrayed them! Laughing, he hacked at everything in sight. Cut deep into thighs, slashed through wrists, chopped at the stamping legs of the horses.
He could feel the cavalry attempting to withdraw, a giant snagged weapon, its edges nicked and blunted. Bellowing, he pushed deeper into the press, knowing his fellow warriors were all doing the same. They would not let go easily, no, they would not do that.
Half the Free Cities of Genabackis have flung their cavalry at us-and we destroyed them all!
Sceptre Irkullas stared as the heavy lancers fought to extricate themselves from the outer flanks of the Barghast position. Scores of fine warriors and superbly trained mounts were going down with every breath he drew into his aching lungs, but there was no help for it. He needed that retreat as ugly as it could be, slow enough to draw more and more of the enemy down the slope. He needed to see that entire flank committed to the slaughter, before he could command the horse-archers in behind the Barghast, followed quickly by his skirmishers and then a phalanx of Saphii to ensure the entire flank was thoroughly cut off and exposed on the hillside. Then he would send the bulk of his lancers and mounted axe-wielders, the hammer to the Saphii anvil.
The other flank was not going as well, he saw, as the commander there had managed to lock shields and lift pikes to ward off the cavalry charge, and now the horse-archers were resuming their sweeps across the face of the line-this was a game of attrition that served the Akrynnai well enough, but it took longer. How many arrows could the Barghast suffer?
His final regard he fixed on the centre, and a surge of pleasure washed up against the chill of the day. The Saphii phalanxes had driven deep into the gap, effectively bisecting the enemy line. On the far side, the isolated enemy was locked in a bloody, fighting withdrawal back towards the outside flank-those Barghast knew how to fight on foot-better than any other soldiers he’d ever seen, but they were losing cohesion, pitching wayward as Saphii spears drove them back, and back; as the Saphii kaesanderai-the jalak-wielding in-fighters-shot forward into every gap, their curved shortswords slashing and hacking.
Elements of the lead phalanx had pushed into the rearguard, and flames were rising from the wagons-likely fired by the Barghast after they’d broken and fled through the barrier. That phalanx was falling out into a curling line to close any hope of retreat by the far flank.
The savages had found their last day, and they were welcome to it.
Irkullas lifted his gaze and studied the sky. The sight horrified him. Day was dying before his eyes. Ragged black arteries, like slow lightning, had arced through the morning sky until it seemed nothing but fragments of blue remained. It shatters. The day-it shatters!
He could see something now, a darkness descending, falling and falling closer still.
What is happening? The air-so cold, so empty-Errant defend us-what-
Kashat reached over his shoulder and tore the arrow loose. Someone cried out behind him, but he had no time for that. ‘We hold!’ he screamed, then stumbled as fresh blood rushed down his back. His right arm was suddenly useless, hanging at his side, and now the leg it thumped against was growing numb. Spirits below, it was but a prick-a damned puny arrow-I don’t understand. ‘We hold!’ The shout filled his mind, but this time it came out weak as a whisper.
The army was split in two. No doubt the Sceptre believed that that would prove the death of the Barghast. The fool was in for a surprise. The White Faces had fought as clans for generations. Even a damned family could stand on its own. The real bloodbath had yet to begin.
He struggled to straighten. ‘Stupid arrow. Stupid fuck-’
A second arrow punched through his left cheek, just under the bone and deep into his nasal passage. The impact knocked his head back. Blood filled his vision. Blood poured down his throat. He reached up with his one working hand and tore the bolt from his face. ‘-ing arrows!’ But his voice was a thick, spattering gargle.
He struggled to find cover behind his shield as more arrows hissed down. The ground beneath him was wet with blood-his own-and he stared down at that black pool. The stuff filling his mouth he swallowed down as fast as he could, but he was beginning to choke and his belly felt heavy as a grain sack.
Try another charge, you cowards. We will lock jaws on your throat. We will tear the life from you. We shall stand on a mountain of your bodies.
An arrow caught a warrior’s helmet-almost close enough to be within reach-and Kashat saw the bolt shatter as if it was the thinnest sliver of ice. Then he saw the helmet slide in two pieces from the man’s head. Reeling, the warrior stared a moment at Kashat-with eyes burst and crazed with frost-before he collapsed.
Arrows were exploding everywhere. The screams of warriors cut short with a suddenness that curled horror round Kashat’s soul. Another impact on his shield and the rattan beneath the hide broke like glass.
What is happening? The agony of his wounds had ceased. He felt strangely warm, a sensation that left him elated.
Horses were falling just beyond the line. Bowstrings shivered into sparkling dust, the laminated ribs snapping as glues gave out. He saw Akrynnai soldiers-their faces twisted and blue-tumbling from saddles. The enemy was a mass of confusion.
Charge! We must charge! Kashat forced himself upright. Flinging away the remnants of his shield, he tugged his sword into his left hand. Pushing forward, as if clawing through a deadly current, he raised his weapon.
Behind him, hundreds followed, moving slow as if in a dream.
Maral Eb, a mass of mixed clans behind him, led yet another charge into the bristling wall of Saphii. He could see the terror in their eyes, their disbelief at the sheer ferocity of the White Faces. The shattered stumps of spears marred the entire side, but thus far they had held, pounded and at times close to buckling, as the savagery of the Warleader’s assaults drove like a mailed fist into the square.
The air felt inexplicably thick, unyielding, and night was falling-had they been fighting that long? It was possible, yes-see the ranks of dead on all sides! Saphii and Barghast, and there, on the slope, mounds of dead riders and horses-had the Senan returned? They must have!
Such slaughter!
The fierce charge slammed into the wall of flesh, leather, wood and iron. The sound was a meaty crunch beneath snapping spear shafts. Lunging close, tulwar lashing down, Maral Eb saw a dark-skinned face before him, saw the frozen mask of the fool’s failed courage, and he laughed as he swung his weapon-
The iron blade struck dead centre on the peaked helm.
Sword, helm and head exploded. Maral Eb staggered as his sword-arm jumped out to the side, impossibly light. His eyes fixed on the stump of his wrist, from which frozen pellets of his blood sprayed like seeds. Something struck his shoulder, careened off, and then two commingled bodies fell on to the ground-the impact had driven them together and Maral Eb stared, uncomprehending, at their fused flesh, the exposed roots of blood and muscle beneath split skin.
He could hear dread groaning on all sides, pierced by brief shrieks.
On his knees, the Warleader sought to rise, but the armoured caps of his greaves were frozen to the ground. Leather buckles broke like twigs. He lifted his head-a reddish mist had swallowed the world. What was this? Sorcery? Some poisonous vapour to steal all their strength?
Spirits, no-the mist is blood-blood from burst bodies, ruptured eyeballs-
He understood. The stump of his wrist, the complete absence of pain-even the breaths he dragged into his lungs-the cold, the darkness-
He had been thrown to the ground. A horse, one foreleg stamping down, the bones shearing just above the fetlock, twin spikes of jagged bone plunging through his hauberk, his chest, and pinning him to the earth. Screaming, the huge beast fell on to its side, flinging the lifeless hulk of its rider from the saddle, the man’s body breaking like crockery.
The scything foreleg tossed Sagal a few paces away, and he landed again, feeling his hip crumple as if it were no more than a reed basket. Blinking, he watched the cold burn the hide from the thrashing, blinded beast. He found its confusion amusing at first, but then sadness overwhelmed him-not for the hapless animal-he’d never much liked horses-but for everyone on this hillside. Cheated of this battle, of the glory of a rightful victory, the honour of a noble defeat.
The gods were cruel. But then, he’d always known that.
He settled his head back, stared up at the red-stained darkness. A pressure was descending. He could feel it on his chest, in his skull. The Reaper stood above him, one heel pressing down. Sagal grunted as his ribs snapped, the collapse jerking his limbs.
The slingstone caught the hare and spun it round in the air. My heart was in my throat as I ran, light as a whisper, to the grasses where it had fallen. And I stood, looking down on the creature, its panting chest, the tiny droplets of blood spotting its nose. Its spine had broken and the long back legs were perfectly still. But the front paws, they twitched.
My first kill.
I stood, a giant, a god, watching as the life left the hare. Watching, as the depths in the eyes cleared, revealing themselves to be shallow things.
My mother, walking up, her face showing none of the joy she should have shown, none of the pride. I told her about the shallowness that I had seen.
She said, ‘It is easy to believe the well of life is bottomless, and that none but the spirits can see through to the far end of the eyes. To the end that is the soul. Yet we spend all our lives trying to peer through. But we soon discover that when the soul flees the flesh, it takes the depth with it. In that creature, Sagal, you have simply seen the truth. And you will see it again and again. In every beast you slay. In the eyes of every enemy you cut down.’
She’d been poor with words, her voice ever flat and cruel. Poor with most things, in fact, as if everything worth anything in the world wasn’t worth talking about. He’d even forgotten she’d spoken that day, or that she’d been his teacher in the ways of the hunt.
He realized that he still didn’t understand her.
No matter. The shallowness was coming up to meet him.
Sceptre Irkullas crawled, dragging one leg, from the carcass of his horse. He could bear its shrieks no longer, and so he had opened its throat with his knife. Of course, he should have done that after dismounting, instead of simply leaning over his saddle, but his mind had become fogged, sluggish and stupid.
And now he crawled, with the splintered stub of a thigh bone jutting from the leather of his trouser leg. Painless, at least. ‘Brush lips with your blessings’, as the saying went. I used to hate sayings. No, I still do, especially when you find how well they fit the occasion.
But that just reminds us that it’s an old track we’re walking. And all the newness is just our own personal banner of ignorance. Watch us wave it high as if it glitters with profound revelation. Ha.
The field of battle was almost motionless now. Thousands of warriors frozen in the clinches of murder, as if a mad artist had sought to paint rage, in all its frayed shrouds of senseless destruction. He thought back on that towering host of conceits he had constructed, every one of which had led to this battle. Cracked, grinding, descending in chaotic collapse-he so wanted to laugh, but the breaths weren’t coming easy, the air was like a striking serpent in his throat.
He bumped up against another dead horse, and sought to pull himself atop the blistered, brittle beast. One last look, one final sweep of this wretched panorama. The valley locked in its preternatural darkness, the falling sky with its dread weight crushing everything in sight.
Grimacing, he forced himself into a sitting position, one leg held out stiff and dead.
And beheld the scene.
Tens of thousands of bodies, a rotting forest of shapeless stumps, all sheathed in deathly frost. Nothing moved, nothing at all. Flakes of ash were raining down from the starless, impenetrable heavens.
‘End it, then,’ he croaked. ‘They’re all gone… but me. End it, please, I beg you…’
He slid down, no longer able to hold himself up. Closed his eyes.
Was someone coming? The cold collector of souls? Did he hear the crunch of boots, lone steps, drawing closer-a figure, emerging from the darkness in his mind? My eyes are closed. That must mean something.
Was something coming? He dared not look.
He had once been a farmer. He was certain of that much, but trouble had befallen him. Debt? Perhaps, but the word was stingless, as far as Last was concerned, suggesting that it was not a haunting presence in his mind, and when memories were as few and as sketchy as were his, that must count for something.
Instead, he had this: the stench of bonfires, that ashy smear of cleared land, everything raw and torn and nothing in its proper place. High branches stacked in chaotic heaps, moss knotted on every twig. Roots dripping in inverted postures. Enormous boles lying flat and stripped down, great swaths of bark prised loose. Red-stained wood and black gritty rocks pulled from the flecked soil.
The earth could heave and make such a mess, but it had not. It had but trembled, and not from any deep stirring or restlessness, but from the toppling of trees, the bellowing of oxen straining at stumps, the footfalls of mindful men.
Shatter all you see. It’s what makes you feel. Feel… anything.
He remembered his hands deep in the rich warm earth. He remembered closing his eyes-for just a moment-and feeling that pulse of life, of promise and purpose. They would plant crops, nurture a bounty for their future lives. This was just. This was righteous. The hand that shapes is the hand that reaps. This, he told himself, was pure. Sighing, a sure smile curving his lips, he opened his eyes once more. Smoke, mists here and there amidst the ruination. Still smiling, he then withdrew his hands from the warm earth.
To find them covered in blood.
He never counted himself a clever man. He knew enough to know that and not much else. But the world had its layers. To the simple it offered simplicity. To the wise it offered profundity. And the only measure of courage worth acknowledging was found in accepting where one stood in that scheme-in hard, unwavering honesty, no matter how humbling.
He stared down at his hands and knew it for a memory not his own. It was, in fact, an invention, the blunt, almost clumsy imposition of something profound. Devoid of subtlety and deliberately so, which then made it more complicated than it at first seemed.
Even these thoughts were alien. Last was not a thoughtful man.
The heart knows need, and the mind finds reason to justify. It says: destruction leads to creation, so the world has shown us. But the world shows us more than that. Sometimes, destruction leads to oblivion. Extinction. But then, what’s so bad about that? If stupidity does not deserve extinction, what does? The mind is never so clever as to deceive anyone and anything but itself and its own kind.
Last decided that he was not afraid of justice, and so he stood unmoving, unflinching, as the slayer appeared at the far end of the corridor. Asane’s shrieks had run down to silence. He knew she was dead. All her fears come home at last, and in oblivion there was, for her, relief. Peace.
Murder could wear such pleasant masks.
The slayer met his eyes and at that final moment they shared their understanding. The necessity of things. And Last fell to the sword without a sound.
There had been blood on his hands. Reason enough. Justice delivered.
Forgive me?
Sheb couldn’t remember who he had been. Indebted, a prisoner, a man contemptuous of the law, these things, yes, but where were the details? Everything had flitted away in his growing panic. He’d heard Asane’s death echoing down the corridor. He knew that a murderer now stalked him. There was no reason for it. He’d done nothing to deserve this.
Unless, of course, one counted a lifetime of treachery. But he’d always had good cause for doing the things he did. He was sure of it. Evading imprisonment-well, who sought the loss of freedom? No one but an idiot, and Sheb was no idiot. Escaping responsibility? Of course. Bullies earn little sympathy, while the victims are coddled and cooed over at every turn. Better to be the victim than the bully, provided the mess is over with, all threat of danger past and it’s time for explanations, tales of self-defence and excuses and the truth of it was, none of it mattered and if you could convince yourself with your excuses, all the better. Easy sleeping at night, easier still standing tall atop heaps of righteous indignation. No one is more pious than the guilty. And I should know.
And no one is a better liar than the culpable. So he’d done nothing to deserve any of this. He’d only ever done what he needed to do to get by, to slip round and slide through. To go on living, feeding all his habits, all his wants and needs. The killer had no reason!
Gasping, he ran down corridor after corridor, through strange rooms, on to spiralling ascents and descents. He told himself that he was so lost no one would ever find him.
Lost in my maze of excuses-stop! I didn’t think that. I never said that. Has he found me? Has the bastard found me?
He’d somehow misplaced his weapons, every one of them-how did that happen? Whimpering, Sheb rushed onward-ahead was a bridge of some sort, crossing a cavernous expanse that seemed to be filling with clouds.
All my life, I tried to keep my head down. I never wanted to be noticed. Just grab what I can and get out, get free, until the next thing I need comes up. It was simple. It made sense. No one should kill me for that.
He had no idea how thinking could be so exhausting. Staggering on to the bridge, iron grating under his boots-what was wrong with damned wood? Coughing in the foul vapours of the clouds, eyes stinging, nose burning, he stumbled to a halt.
He’d gone far enough. Everything he did, he’d done for a reason. As simple as that.
But so many were hurt, Sheb.
‘Not my fault they couldn’t get out of the way. If they’d any brains they’d have seen me coming.’
The way you lived forced others into lives of misery, Sheb.
‘I can’t help it if they couldn’t do no better!’
They couldn’t. They weren’t even people.
‘What?’ He looked up, into the killer’s eyes. ‘No, it’s not fair.’
‘That’s right, Sheb. It isn’t, and it never was.’
The blade lashed out.
The ghost shrieked. Suddenly trapped in the Matron’s chamber. Mists roiled. Rautos was on his knees, weeping uncontrollably. Breath was casting her tiles, which were no longer tiles, but coins, glittering and bright-yet every pattern she scanned elicited a snarl from her, and she swept them up yet again-the manic snap and bounce of coins filled the air.
‘No answers,’ she hissed. ‘No answers! No answers!’
Taxilian stood before the enormous throne, muttering under his breath. ‘Sulkit transformed it-and now it waits-everything waits. I don’t understand.’
Sulkit stood nearby. Its entire body had changed shape, elongating, shoulders hunched, its snout foreshortened and broader, fangs gleaming wet with oils. Grey reptilian eyes held fixed, unblinking-the drone was a drone no longer. Now a J’an Sentinel, he stood facing the ghost.
The unhuman regard was unbearable.
Veed strode into the chamber and halted. Sword blade dripping gore, the front of his studded vest spattered and streaked. His face was lifeless. His eyes were the eyes of a blind man. ‘Hello, old friend,’ he said. ‘Where should I start?’
The ghost recoiled.
Rautos stood facing his wife. Another evening spent in silence, but now there was something raw in the air. She was searching his face and her expression was strange and bleak. ‘Have you no pity, husband?’
‘Pity,’ he’d replied, ‘is all I have.’
She’d looked away. ‘I see.’
‘You surrendered long ago,’ he said. ‘I never understood that.’
‘Not everyone surrenders willingly, Rautos.’
He studied her. ‘But where did you find your joy, Eskil? Day after day, night after night, where was your pleasure in living?’
‘You stopped looking for that long ago.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You found your hobbies. The only time your eyes came alive. My joy, husband, was in you. Until you went away.’
Yes, he remembered this now. One night, one single night. ‘That was wrong,’ he’d said, his voice hoarse. ‘To put all that… in someone else.’
Her shrug horrified him. ‘Overwhelmed, were you? But Rautos, that’s just not so, is it? After all, you can’t be overwhelmed by something you don’t even bother to notice.’
‘I noticed.’
‘And so you turned away from me. Until, as you say, here you stand with nothing in your heart but pity. You once said you loved me.’
‘I once did.’
‘Rautos Hivanar, what are these things you are digging up from the river bank?’
‘Mechanisms. I think.’
‘What so fascinates you about them?’
‘I don’t know. I cannot glean their purpose, their function-why are we talking about this?’
‘Rautos, listen. They’re just pieces. The machine, whatever it was, whatever it did, it’s broken.’
‘Eskil, go to bed.’
And so she did, ending the last real conversation between them. He remembered sitting down, his hands to his face, outwardly silent and motionless yet inside he was wracked with sobs. Yes, it was broken. He knew that. And not a single piece left made any sense. And all his pity, well, turned out it was all he had for himself, too.
Rautos felt the bite of the blade and in the moment before the pain rushed in, he managed a smile.
Veed stood over the corpse, and then swung his gaze to Taxilian. Held there for a moment, before his attention drifted to Breath. She was on her knees, scraping coins into her hands.
‘No solutions. No answers. They should be here, in these! These fix everything-everyone knows that! Where is the magic?’
‘Illusions, you mean,’ Veed said, grinning.
‘The best kind! And now the water’s rising-I can’t breathe!’
‘He should never have accepted you, Feather Witch. You understand that, don’t you? Yes, they were all mistakes, all fragments of lives he took inside like so much smoke and dust, but you were the worst of them. The Errant drowned you-and then walked away from your soul. He should not have done that, for you were too potent, too dangerous. You ate his damned eye.’
Her head snapped up, a crazed grin smeared across her face. ‘Elder blood! I hold his debt!’
Veed glanced at the ghost. ‘He sought to do what K’rul did so long ago,’ he said, ‘but Icarium is not an Elder God.’ He regarded Feather Witch again. ‘He wanted warrens of his own, enough to trap him in one place, as if it was a web. Trap him in place. Trap him in time.’
‘The debt is mine!’ Feather Witch shrieked.
‘Not any more,’ said Veed. ‘It is now Icarium Lifestealer’s.’
‘He’s broken!’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s not his fault!’
‘No, it isn’t, and no, it’s not fair either. But there is blood on his hands, and terror in his heart. It seems we must all feed him something, doesn’t it? Or perhaps it was the other way round. But the ghost is here now, with us. Icarium is here. Time to die, Feather Witch. Taxilian.’
‘And you?’ Taxilian asked.
Veed smiled. ‘Me, too.’
‘Why?’ Taxilian demanded. ‘Why now?’
‘Because Lifestealer is where he must be. At this moment, he is in place. And we must all step aside.’ And Veed turned to face the ghost. ‘The J’an sees only you, Icarium. The Nest is ready, the flavours altered to your… tastes.’ He gestured and the ghost saw that both Feather Witch and Taxilian had vanished. ‘Don’t think you are quite rid of us-we’re just back inside you, old friend. We’re the stains on your soul.’
The ghost looked down and saw grey-green skin, long-fingered, scarred hands. He lifted them to touch his face, fingers brushing the tusks jutting from his lower jaw. ‘What must I do?’
But Veed was gone. He was alone in the chamber.
The J’an Sentinel, Sulkit, stood watching him. Waiting.
Icarium faced the throne. A machine. A thing of veins and arteries and bitter oils. A binder of time, the maker of certainty.
The flavours swirled round him. The entire towering city of stone and iron trembled.
I am awake-no. I am… reborn.
Icarium Lifestealer walked forward to take his throne.
The shore formed a ragged line, the bleak sweep of darkness manifested in all the natural ways-the sward leading to the bank that then dropped to the beach itself, the sky directly overhead onyx as a starless night yet smeared with pewter clouds-the realm behind them, then, a vast promise of purity at their backs. But the strand glowed, and as Yan Tovis dismounted and walked down her boots sank into the incandescent sand. Reaching down-not yet ready to fix her gaze on what was beyond the shoreline-she scooped up a handful. Cool, surprisingly light-she squinted.
Not crumbled coral. Not stone.
‘It’s bone,’ said Yedan Derryg, standing a few paces to her left. ‘See that driftwood? Long bones, mostly. Those cobbles, they’re-’
‘Yes,’ she snapped. ‘I know.’ She flung away the handful of bone fragments.
‘It was easier,’ he continued, ‘from back there. We’re too close-’
‘Be quiet, will you?’
Suddenly defiant, she willed herself to look-and reeled back a step, breath hissing from between her teeth.
A sea indeed, yet one that rose like a wall, its waves rolling down to foam at the waterline. She grunted. But this was not water at all. It was… light.
Behind her, Yedan Derryg said, ‘Memories return. When they walked out from the Light, their purity blinded us. We thought that a blessing, when in truth it was an attack. When we shielded our eyes, we freed them to indulge their treacherous ways.’
‘Yedan, the story is known to me-’
‘Differently.’
She came near to gasping in relief as she turned from the vast falling wall to face her brother. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The Watch serves the Shore in its own way.’
‘Then, in turn, I must possess knowledge that you don’t-is that what you’re saying, brother?’
‘The Queen is Twilight, because she can be no other. She holds the falling of night. She is the first defender against the legions of light that would destroy darkness itself. But we did not ask for this. Mother Dark yielded, and so, to mark that yielding, Twilight relives it.’
‘Again and again. For ever.’
Yedan’s bearded jaws bunched, his face still stained with blood. Then he shook his head. ‘Nothing’s for ever, sister.’
‘Did we really lack sophistication, Yedan? Back then? Were we really that superstitious, that ignorant?’
His brows lifted.
She gestured at the seething realm behind her. ‘This is the true border of Thyrllan. It’s that and nothing more. The First Shore is the shore between Darkness and Light. We thought we were born on this shore-right here-but that cannot be true! This shore destroys-can you not feel it? Where do you think all these bones came from?’
‘This was a gift to no one,’ Yedan replied. ‘Look into the water, sister. Look deep into it.’
But she would not. She had already seen what he had seen. ‘They cannot be drowning-no matter what it looks like-’
‘You are wrong. Tell me, why are there so few Liosan? Why is the power that is Light so weak in all the other worlds?’
‘If it wasn’t we would all die-there’d be no life anywhere at all!’
He shrugged. ‘I have no answer to that, sister. But I think that Mother Dark and Father Light, in binding themselves to each other, in turn bound their fates. And when she turned away, so did he. He had no choice-they had become forces intertwined, perfect reflections. Father Light abandoned his children and they became a people lost-and lost they remain.’
She was trembling. Yedan’s vision was monstrous. ‘It cannot be. The Tiste Andii weren’t trapped. They got away.’
‘They found a way out, yes.’
‘How?’
He cocked his head. ‘Us, of course.’
‘What are you saying?’
“In Twilight was born Shadow.”
‘I was told none of this! I don’t believe you! What you’re saying makes no sense, Yedan. Shadow was the bastard get of Dark and Light-commanded by neither-’
‘Twilight, Shadow is everything we have ever known. Indeed, it is everywhere.’
‘But it was destroyed!’
‘Shattered, yes. Look at the beach. Those bones-they belong to the Shake. We were assailed from both sides-we didn’t stand a chance-that any of us survived at all is a miracle. Shadow was first shattered by the legions of Andii and the legions of Liosan. Purity cannot abide imperfection. In the eyes of purity, it becomes an abomination.’
She was shaking her head. ‘Shadow was the realm of the Edur-it has nothing to do with us, with the Shake.’
Yedan smiled-she could not even recall the last time he had done that and the sight of it jolted her. He nodded. ‘Our very own bastard get.’
She sank down to her knees in the bed of crumbled bone. She could hear the sea now, could hear the waves rolling down-and beneath all of that she could hear the deluged voices of the doomed behind the surface. He turned away when she did. But his children had no way out. We held against them, here. We stood and we died defending our realm. ‘Our blood was royal,’ she whispered.
Her brother was beside her now, and one hand rested on her shoulder. ‘Scar Bandaris, the last prince of the Edur. King, I suppose, by then. He saw in us the sins not of the father, but of the mother. He left us and took all the Edur with him. He told us to hold, to ensure his escape. He said it was all we deserved, for we were our mother’s children, and was she not the seducer and the father the seduced?’ He was silent for a moment, and then he grunted and said, ‘I wonder if the last of us left set out on his trail with vengeance in mind, or was it because we had nowhere else to go? By then, after all, Shadow had become the battlefield of every Elder force, not just the Tiste-it was being torn apart, with blood-soaked forces dividing every spoil, every territory-what were they called again? Yes, warrens. Every world was made an island, isolated in an ocean of chaos.’
Her eyes felt raw, but not a single tear sprang loose. ‘We could not have survived that,’ she said. ‘That assault you described. You called it a miracle that we survived, but I know how-though I never understood its meaning-not until your words today.’
Yedan said, ‘The Watch commanded the legions, and we held until we were told to withdraw. It’s said there were but a handful of us left by then, elite officers one and all. They were the Watch. The Road was open then-we but marched.’
‘It was open because of Blind Gallan.’
‘Yes.’
‘Because,’ she looked up at him, ‘he was told to save us.’
‘Gallan was a poet-’
‘And Seneschal of the Court of Mages in Kharkanas.’
He chewed on this for a while, glanced away, studying the swirling wall of light and the ceaseless sweep of figures in the depths, faces stretched in muted screams-an entire civilization trapped in eternal torment-but she saw not a flicker of emotion touch his face. ‘A great power, then.’
‘Yes.’
‘There was civil war. Who could have commanded him to do anything?’
‘One possessing the Blood of T’iam, and a prince of Kharkanas.’
She watched his eyes slowly widen, but still he stared at the wall. ‘Now why,’ he asked, ‘would an Andii prince have done that?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s said he strode down to the First Shore, terribly wounded, sheathed in blood. It’s said he looked upon the Shake, at how few of us were left, and at the ruin surrounding us-the death of the forests, the charred wreckage of our homes. He held a broken sword in one hand, a Hust sword, and it was seen to fall from his grip. He left it here.’
‘That’s all? Then how do you know he commanded Gallan to do anything?’
‘When Gallan arrived he told the Twilight-he had torn out his eyes by then and was accompanied by an Andii woman who led him by an arm down from the shattered forest-he came down like a man dying of fever but when he spoke, his voice was clear and pure as music. He said to her these words:
“There is no grief in Darkness.
It has taken to the skies.
It leaves a world of ashes and failure.
It sets out to find new worlds, as grief must.
Winged grief commands me:
Make a road for the survivors on the Shore
To walk the paths of sorrow
And charge them the remembrance
Of this broken day
As it shall one day be seen:
As the birth of worlds unending
Where grief waits for us all
In the soul’s darkness.” ’
She slipped out from the weight of his hand and straightened, brushing bone dust from her knees. ‘He was asked, then, who was this Winged Grief? And Gallan said, “There is but one left who would dare command me. One who would not weep and yet had taken into his soul a people’s sorrow, a realm’s sorrow. His name was Silchas Ruin.” ’
Yedan scanned the beach. ‘What happened to the broken sword?’
She started, recovered. Why, after all this time, could her brother still surprise her? ‘The woman with Gallan picked it up and threw it into the sea.’
His head snapped round. ‘Why would she do that?’
Yan Tovis held up her hands. ‘She never explained.’
Yedan faced the refulgent wall again, as if seeking to pierce its depths, as if looking for the damned sword.
‘It was just a broken sword-’
‘A Hust sword-you said so.’
‘I don’t even know what that means, except it’s the name for Ruin’s weapon.’
He grimaced. ‘It should have healed by now,’ he muttered, walking out on to the strand, eyes scanning the pallid beach. ‘Light would reject it, cast it up.’
She stared after him. Healed? ‘Yedan!’
He glanced back. ‘What?’
‘We cannot live here.’
‘No, of course not.’
‘But something is happening in Kharkanas-I don’t know if I can even go back there.’
‘Once she’s fully returned,’ Yedan said, swinging back, ‘the power should ease.’
‘She? Who?’
‘Don’t be obtuse, sister. Mother Dark. Who else arrives like a fist in our skulls?’ He resumed his search along the First Shore.
‘Errastas,’ she whispered, ‘whatever will you do now?’
Torrent scowled at the hag. ‘Aren’t you even listening?’
Olar Ethil straightened, gathering up her rotted cape of furs and scaled hide. ‘Such a lovely carpet, such a riot of richness, all those supine colours!’
The withered nut of this witch’s brain has finally cracked. ‘I said these carriage tracks are fresh, probably not even a day old.’
Olar Ethil had one hand raised, as if about to wave at someone on the horizon. Instead, one taloned finger began inscribing patterns in the air. ‘Go round, my friends, slow your steps. Wait for the one to pass, through and out and onward. No point in clashing wills, when none of it has purpose. Such a busy plain! No matter, if anyone has cause to quake it’s not me, hah!’
‘An enormous carriage,’ Torrent resumed, ‘burdened. But while that’s interesting, it’s the fact that the tracks simply begin-as if from nowhere-and look at the way the ground cracked at the start, as if the damned thing had landed from the sky, horses and all. Doesn’t any of that make you curious?’
‘Eh? Oh, soon enough, soon enough.’ She dropped her arm and then pointed the same finger at him. ‘The first temple’s a mess. Besieged a decade ago, just a burnt-out husk, now. No one was spared. The Matron took weeks to die-it’s no easy thing, killing them, you know. We have to move on, find another.’
Snarling, Torrent mounted his horse and collected the reins. ‘Any good at running, witch? Too bad.’ He kicked his horse into motion, setting out on the carriage’s weaving trail. Let the thing’s bones clatter into dust in his wake-the best solution to all his ills. Or she could just stand there and stare at every horizon one by one and babble and rant all she wanted-as if the sky ever answered.
A carriage. People. Living people. That’s what he needed now. The return of sanity-hold on, it dropped out of the sky, don’t forget. What’s so normal about that?
‘Never mind,’ he muttered, ‘at least they’re alive.’
Sandalath made it to the bridge before collapsing. Cursing, Withal knelt at her side and lifted her head until it rested on his lap. Blood was streaming from her nose, ears and the corners of her eyes. Her lips glistened as if painted.
The three Nachts-or whatever they were called in this realm-had vanished, fled, he assumed, from whatever was assailing his wife. As for himself, he felt nothing. This world was desolate, lifeless, probably leagues from any decent body of water-but oh how he wished he could take her and just sail out of this madness.
Instead, it looked as though his wife was dying.
Crimson froth bubbled from her mouth as she began mumbling something-he leaned closer-words, yes, a conversation. Withal leaned back, snorting. When she’d thought him asleep, she’d said the same lines over and over again. As if they were a prayer, or the beginning of one.
‘What’s broken cannot be mended. You broke us, but that is not all-see what you have done.’
There was the touch of a lament in her tone, but one so emptied of sentiment it cut like a dagger. A lament, yes, but infused with chill hatred, a knuckled core of ice. Complicated, aye, layered-unless he was just imagining things. The truth could be as silly as a childhood song sung to a broken doll, its head lolling impossibly with those stupid eyes underneath the nose and the mouth looking like a wound to the forehead-
Withal shook himself. The oldest memories might be smells, tastes, or isolated images-but rarely all three at once-at least in so far as he knew from his own experience. Crammed into his skull, a crowded mess with everything at the back so tightly pressed all the furniture was crushed, and to reach in was to come up with a few pieces that made no sense at all-
Gods, he was tired. And here she was, dragging him all this way, only to die in his lap and abandon him at the gates of a dead city.
‘… see what you have done.’
Her breathing had deepened. The blood had stopped trickling down-he wiped her mouth with a grimy cuff. She suddenly sighed. He leaned closer. ‘Sand? Can you hear me?’
‘Nice pillow… but for the smell.’
‘You’re not going to die?’
‘It’s over now,’ she said, opening her eyes-but only for a moment as she gasped and shut them again. ‘Ow, that hurts.’
‘I can get some water-from the river here-’
‘Yes, do that.’
He shifted her from his lap and settled her down on the road. ‘Glad it’s over, Sand. Oh, by the way, what’s over?’
She sighed. ‘Mother Dark, she has returned to Kharkanas.’
‘Oh, that’s nice.’
As he made his way down the wreckage-cluttered bank, waterskins flopping over one shoulder, Withal allowed himself a savage grimace. ‘Oh, hello, Mother Dark, glad you showed up. You and all the rest of you gods and goddesses. Come back to fuck with a thousand million lives all over again, huh? Now, I got an idea for you all, aye, I do.
‘Get lost. It’s better, you see, when we ain’t got you to blame for our mess. Understand me, Mother Dark?’ He crouched at the edge of black water and pushed the first skin beneath the surface, listening to the gurgle. ‘And as for my wife, hasn’t she suffered enough?’
A voice filled his head. ‘Yes.’
The river swept past, the bubbles streamed from the submerged skin until no bubbles were left. Still, Withal held it down, as if drowning a maimed dog. He wasn’t sure he’d ever move again.
The descent of darkness broke frozen bone and flesh across the width of the valley, spilling out beyond the north ridge, devouring the last flickering flames from the burning heaps that had once been Barghast wagons.
The vast battlefield glistened and sparkled as corpses and carcasses shrivelled, losing their last remnants of moisture, and earth buckled, lurching upward in long wedges of stone-hard clay that jostled bodies. Iron steamed and glowed amongst the dead.
The sky above was devoid of all light, but the ashes drifting down were visible, as if each flake was lit from within. The pressure continued pushing everything closer to the ground, until horses and armoured men and women became flattened, rumpled forms. Weapons suddenly exploded, white-hot shards hissing.
The hillsides groaned, visibly contracted as something swirled in the very centre of the valley, a darkness so profound as to be a solid thing.
A hill cracked in half with a thunderous detonation. The air seemed to tear open.
From the swirling miasma a figure emerged, first one boot then the other crunching down on desiccated flesh, hide and bone, striding out from the rent, footfalls heavy as stone.
The darkness seethed, pulsed. The figure paused, held out a gauntleted left hand.
Lightning spanned the blackness, a thousand crashing drums. The air itself howled, and the darkness streamed down. Withered husks that had once been living things spun upright as if reborn, only to pull free of the ground and whirl skyward like rotted autumn leaves.
Shrieking wind, torn banners of darkness spiralling inward, wrapping, twisting, binding. Cold air rushed in like floodwaters through a crumbling dam, and all it swept through burst into dust that roiled wild in its wake.
Hammering concussions shook the hills, sheared away slopes leaving raw cliffs, boulders tumbling and pitching through the remnants of carnage. And still the darkness streamed down, converging, coalescing into an elongated sliver forming at the end of the figure’s outstretched hand.
A final report, loud as the snapping of a dragon’s spine, and then sudden silence.
A sword, bleeding darkness, dripping cold.
Overhead, late afternoon sunlight burned the sky.
He slowly scanned the ground, even as desiccated fragments of hide and flesh began raining from the heavens, and then he stepped forward, bending down to retrieve a battered scabbard. He slid the sword home.
A sultry wind swept down the length of the valley, gathering streamers of steam.
He stood for a time, studying the scene on all sides.
‘Ah, my love. Forgive me.’
He set out, boots crunching on the dead.
Returned to the world.
Draconus.