Fall of Light

FIFTEEN

‘I have lived,’ saidLord Hust Henarald, ‘in a world of smoke.’ He sat on a stone bench in the chill garden, amidst leafless thickets and snow-capped boulders. Overhead the sky was thick with a grey blending of snowflakes and ash. Someone, perhaps a servant, had settled a thick robe on the lord, rough wool dyed burgundy, and it was draped unclasped across his shoulders like a mantle of old blood.

Galar Baras sat opposite. To his left was the low curving wall of the fountain. The mechanical pump had long ceased to function and the thick ice on the water was streaked and smeared with dead algae. Old layers of soot darkened the snow upon the ground.

‘It blinds the fools who dwell in its midst,’ Henarald continued, his vein-roped hands red with cold as he picked through a small heap of slag that rested in a pile upon the encircling stone wall. Occasionally, he brought one piece closer to his face for careful examination, eyes narrowing, before returning it to the heap. In the time that Galar had been in audience with the lord, a number of pieces of the ragged waste material had been examined more than once. ‘It stings, awakens tears, but leaves nothing seen to give comfort.’

‘Milord,’ Galar Baras ventured, not for the first time, ‘the armour you have sent us. The blades as well. Something now afflicts them-’

‘In smoke we dwell, shrouding us in the weariest of days. Do you see this ash? The last of the charcoal. Soon will come to us the stench of poor coal, and the iron will be brittle, red and short. It’s the sulphur, you see.’ He selected another piece of slag and peered at it. ‘We beat order into the world and make a song of smoke, but such music is too harsh, or not harsh enough, for the soul is never as strong as it believes itself, nor ever as weak as it fears. We are, in all, middling creatures, eager to bedeck our lives in trappings of grandeur. Self-importance. But still the smoke remains, blinding us, and what tears find our cheeks are but wet signifiers of irritation, damp whispers of discomfort. The air soon takes them away, to make each face a blank page.’ He set the rough piece of slag back down. ‘And now, this is all I see, here through the smoke. Faces like blank pages. I know none of them, yet imagine that I should. The confusion frightens me. I am stalked by what I once knew and haunted by the man I once was. You cannot know how that feels.’

‘Milord, what has happened to the Hust iron?’

Something flickered in Henarald’s blue eyes, like pale sunlight upon a blade. ‘Born of smoke – I never imagined how it would feel, this imprisonment. Is it any wonder we cry? Wrapped in flesh, drawn down, muscle to match the fuller’s peen, bent and swaged, the patina writ like poetry, yearning for a voice that might be music, only to yield nothing but cries of anguish. Iron is a prison, my friend, and escape is impossible when you are the bars.’

‘I never believed them alive, milord. In all my years, wielding this sword at my side, I told myself that I heard nothing living in its voice. Others swore otherwise. Many winced upon releasing the blade from its scabbard. They marched into battle with visages of dread. For one man, a fine soldier, that voice became his own cry of terror-’

Henarald waved dismissively. ‘Terror lives a brief span. When there is no possible escape, madness proves a quick and sure refuge.’ An odd smile twisted the old man’s gaunt features. ‘Iron and flesh alike.’

‘Milord-’

‘The forges are dying. The age of the Hust ends. We burned our way into a world of ash. Could you even imagine, my friend, how it felt? The day I walked a forest of stumps and holes, of ravaged ground, roots clawing the sky, and saw upon all sides the ledger of my enterprise, my sordid fever? Did I think the new vistas promised escape? Did I set my gaze upon distant hills, verdant with nature, and but lick my lips?’ He shuddered suddenly, and the wool slipped down to reveal the bones of his shoulders prominent beneath thin skin. The man was naked beneath the robe. ‘I might have. I might have. Mother bless me, but I might have.’

The madness of iron was a difficult, terrible thing to witness. Galar Baras looked away, chilled by the stone bench, the frigid, flake-filled air, this mocking knot of garden. After a moment he rose, stepped close to his lord, and returned the robe to its place upon Henarald’s shoulders. He saw the tears running down upon the man’s spalled cheeks, freezing white and glistening in the deep wrinkles.

‘Industry, milord. The demands of progress. These are forces the tide of which we cannot withstand. There is no single man or woman to blame. The crime, if such a thing could be said to exist, is our nature, and our nature we cannot deny, nor defeat.’

Henarald looked up with watery eyes. ‘You believe this thing, Galar Baras?’ he asked in a hoarse whisper.

‘I do, milord. If not the Hust bloodline upon the anvil, then another, or yet another. The Jaghut alone displayed the proper courage, to refuse their own natures, to turn their backs upon progress, but even then, milord, their final congress was one of destruction and abandonment.’

‘The Jaghut? The Jaghut, yes. They unravelled the iron, released the screams. So she told me, when she sat here with me, beside the fountain, and touched my brow.’

‘Milord? Who?’

He frowned. ‘The Azathanai, named by the Tiste Andii. What was that name? Yes, now I remember. T’riss, born of the Vitr. She sat with me, as I wept in the wake of my gift to Lord Anomander. Upon a night when I could hear the breaking of my soul.’

‘She came here?’

His expression drained into something lifeless, spun so far inward that he seemed a corpse. His next words fell flat, devoid of inflection. ‘The realms are bound. Beaten and twisted. They tremble to the pressure and yearn to burst apart. Wrapped and folded, wrapped and folded, quenched in the fires of chaos. Within the Hust iron, my friend, Mother bless me, I imprisoned a thousand realms. A thousand and more.’ He paused, eyes slightly widening as they remained fixed upon the slag heap. ‘She showed me, with her horse of grass, her woven cloak, her russet sword. Magic resists imprisonment – and yet, I worked unknowing, blissfully uncomprehending of my crimes. The forges are dying, as they must, and the world will end, as it must.’ He reached up, set a trembling finger upon his brow. ‘Here, with a single caress, she gave me leave. And now here I dwell, in this place. This quick and sure refuge.’ Suddenly smiling, Henarald reached down to select another piece of slag. He studied it intently. ‘We deem this waste. Why? It has all the shout of stone, freed of the weight of iron, smelling only of usage. Waste? No more than a corpse, and it takes a cold soul to deem that detritus.’

‘Milord, I beg you – tell me more of the Hust iron, and these realms of which you speak.’

Henarald blinked. ‘Realms?’ His face twisted. ‘You fool! Here I speak of the beauty that is waste, the beauty that is usefulness exhausted. I speak of the freedom in each piece of slag, in each bone upon the field. See how this one curls? Is that not the most perfect smile? It revels in its escape. Beyond our grasp now, don’t you understand? Like the ashes rising from the last chimneys, or the wretched sulphur in the coal. Like the barren hillsides, or the mined-out pits. Our industry promises immortality, and yet behold, the only immortal creation it achieves is the wasteland!’ He leaned over, plunging his hands into the heap of slag. ‘Listen! Bury me in a mound of this treasure, Galar Baras. A barrow constructed of my legacy, piece by piece. Imbue the gesture with ritual, and each one of you select a single fragment. Build the mound by procession, suitably solemn. I would my bones join the pointless concert of freedom. Pronounce me useless and so bless my remains with everlasting peace.’

Shaken, Galar Baras stepped back. He bowed to Henarald – the gesture unseen by the lord, who now sought to embrace the pile of slag with both arms, slipping down to his knees upon the frozen ground beside the fountain’s wall – and then departed the garden.

When such a man loses his way, we are all left feeling lost. We flee, and yet carry with us something of the infection, jarred into imbalance, reeling in our own minds like a drunkard.

He found himself in a broad corridor, a grand causeway with niches upon each wall, in which stood mundane objects fashioned from metal. They marked a progression, from copper and tin to bronze and iron, from cast to wrought, poured to drawn and folded, an evolution of metallurgy, as if inviting the notion of advancement with the ease of taking a step, and then another, and another. The intention, he well understood, was one of triumph, of wild energies tamed, subjugated. And yet, he now realized, not one object on display revealed the discarded leavings of its making: more than just slag and tailings, but also the bitter taste of the smoke from its forging, the stench of burned hair and flesh, the dusty surrender of wood and sap, streams and rivers fouled, the countless lives altered, for good or ill, by industry’s manic zeal.

Despondent, he walked slowly down the corridor until he came to the last niche, which was empty. This vacant space announced the birth of Hust iron. The tale of that absence was one he’d always thought both unlikely and perverse. No object made of that metal, it was said, welcomed the stripping away of function, of value and labour, the reduction to a curiosity, an offering solely for display. The tale was well known of the moment when a Hust sword, bared, was set in the niche. Its howl was heard throughout the estate, and it had been unceasing, deafening. Until recently, Galar Baras had thought the story apocryphal.

Now, he halted opposite the empty niche and stared into the poignant absence.

It had been midday, snow wet upon the ground, when at last the officers of the Hust Legion were fully assembled at the wagons. Amid the sharp unease there was a current of anticipation among the prisoners. If freedom had a cost, and if that charge was the cruel gift of Hust weapons and armour, then this was the moment of consummation, and bound to the notion of freedom there was power. Men and women who had lived in cages, they were the starved before the feast.

Among the officers, only two held back, visibly reluctant to join the others. The woman Rance, who had drowned her own babe, stood beside Wareth. Her wringing hands were so red Galar thought them scalded, and her face was ashen with dread. As for Wareth, well, Galar Baras understood the man’s sickly visage, his slumped shoulders and the animal panic flitting about in his gaze as the tarps were drawn back from the nearest wagon.

Captain Castegan had taken a malicious pleasure in finding Wareth’s old sword among the wrapped weapons on the bed. Its hide sheath had been marked to distinguish it from the others, with a series of runes branded into the leather. They were the marks of a weaponsmith when, upon completing and then testing a blade’s will, it was found to be flawed. In this instance, of course, it was not the iron at fault, but its wielder.

With a half-smile, Castegan clearly intended to make a ceremony of delivering the sword to Wareth. Furious, Galar Baras set out, marshalling hard words for the old man. But to Castegan’s surprise Wareth stepped forward and, before the captain could embellish the moment further, plucked the wrapped sword from the veteran’s hands. He then stripped away the hide to reveal the naked blade.

Galar Baras saw the weapon jolt in Wareth’s grip, as if seeking to twist round to cut its owner, but Wareth steadied the sword, the muscles of his wrist bunching with the effort. And from the man came a wry smile that he held with bitter disdain as he met Castegan’s eyes. ‘Thank you, captain,’ he said.

‘It wants your blood.’

‘Enough, Castegan,’ warned Galar Baras as he drew nearer.

The moment had been seen by the others. There had been gasps upon witnessing the will of the sword, and some of the anticipation among the prisoners drained away.

Even then, Galar could not be certain that the sword’s sudden twist had not belonged to some wayward, suicidal impulse from Wareth himself. But, after a moment’s contemplation, that seemed unlikely. After all, in addition to wilful stupidity, suicide also took courage.

‘Best sheathe it soon, lieutenant,’ Castegan said. ‘You wouldn’t want an accident.’

The sword had begun moaning, and that in turn woke the other weapons still on the wagon, raising a mournful dirge.

Quickly returning to the wagon, Castegan gestured to Seltin Ryggandas. Expression bleak, the quartermaster directed one of his aides to begin distributing the arms.

The first prisoner to step forward to accept a sword was the blacksmith, Curl.

Another wagon had been brought up, this one stacked with standard scabbards of wood, bronze and leather, and after taking a Hust sword into his hands Curl was directed towards that one. The man unwrapped the blade as he made his way to the second wagon. When the cover fell away, he halted as if struck. His sword had begun laughing. Quickly the laughter rose into a manic cackle.

In shock, Curl flung the weapon to the ground.

The sword shrieked its glee, shivering on the half-frozen mud.

‘Pick it up!’

Galar Baras was not sure who had shouted that command, but Curl reached down and collected up the weapon. He seemed to struggle to hold on to it as he hurried over to the second wagon. Accepting a scabbard he quickly slammed the weapon home. Its terrible laughter was muted, but only by the scabbard itself.

Something is wrong. I have never heard-

Wareth moved up beside Galar Baras and said, ‘They have been driven mad, sir.’

‘That is ridiculous, Wareth. They are not sentient. There is nothing living within that iron.’

‘You still hold to that, sir?’

Galar Baras made no reply, stung by the disbelief in Wareth’s tone.

‘The others have lost their lust for power,’ Wareth then observed of the prisoners, who had all drawn back from the wagons. ‘And these are the officers, since you insist on calling them that. How will it be when we equip everyone else in this camp? Granted, more than a few will join in the laughter, being utterly mad already. But most, sir, well, they just made mistakes in their lives. And were busy paying for them.’

‘Wareth, make Rebble the next one.’

‘Commander, I doubt I can make Rebble do anything he’s not of a mind to do.’

‘Just convey my order.’

Nodding, Wareth walked over to the tall, bearded man. They began arguing in low tones.

Galar glanced over at Rance. ‘You after Rebble,’ he said.

‘I tried telling Wareth,’ she said in a brittle voice. ‘I don’t like blood. My … my first night of womanhood wasn’t … not a good memory, that is. Sir. I don’t want to be here. I can’t be a soldier, sir.’

‘It’s that, or the corps of cutters.’

‘But that would be-’

‘I’m sure it would,’ Galar snapped.

At last, Rebble moved, but instead of making his way to the weapons, he strode to the wagon bearing the scabbards. Collecting one, he faced the other wagon. Then, with an oath, he approached. Reaching the aide he snatched the wrapped sword from the woman’s hands. Tearing the hide away he raised the suddenly shrieking blade before his own face, and snarled, ‘Save it for the fucking enemy!’

The sword’s scream intensified, and from the wagon the moaning sharpened, rising in pitch, and then broke into gleeful laughter.

The prisoners were all backing away. Galar could see, beyond his officers, a crowd gathering from the main camp. The air was taut now, on the very edge of panic.

Rebble sheathed the sword with shaking hands.

Galar could feel the situation slipping away. Even the weapons hanging at the sides of the few remaining regulars were crying out within their scabbards. His own sword’s voice reached him, frenetic and fractured.

Wareth returned to his side. ‘Commander, we’re making a mistake here.’

Galar turned to Rance. ‘Get in that line.’

‘Yes sir.’

They watched her walk unsteadily towards the wagon bearing the scabbards.

The regulars beyond the thin cordon of guards were crowding closer, strangely mute.

Wareth tried again. ‘Sir-’

‘I am not aware of any viable option,’ Galar said in a low voice.

‘I have always believed that they were alive. But … somehow, they seemed to be … I don’t know. Controlled. Chained. Now, sir, they are indeed insane. What will bearing these weapons, and then the armour, do to us?’

Galar Baras hesitated, and then said, ‘The day after the Poisoning, Wareth, the iron howled – I was there for that. Its cry haunts me still. Those of us present … I think it drove us all slightly mad, and some of us … well, not just slightly.’

‘It’s said,’ Wareth muttered, edging closer, ‘that the world is rotten with sorcery now. Is it possible that the magic has somehow infected the iron?’

‘I don’t know.’

Rebble seemed to have regained his composure, although his expression was fierce as he cajoled the other officers forward to the wagons.

‘Rebble was a good choice, sir. For this, you needed a man with no imagination.’

‘And you, Wareth?’

The man shook his head, glanced down at the bared blade still in his hand. ‘Too much, sir. Far too much.’

‘Still, your old weapon has little to say.’

‘For now, sir, so it seems.’

Yet, for all Rebble’s threats and bluster, the officers resisted. The quartermaster collected another of his aides and directed him to begin scabbarding the swords. The blades were then brought over, one by one, into the tight knot of officers. Galar watched Rance accept a weapon, gripping it awkwardly, her hands so red he wondered if she had washed them in blood.

Cursing, Rebble walked over. ‘Commander, this won’t work.’

‘It will have to,’ Galar replied.

‘We’ve not even got to the armour yet – you can’t put that shit into a scabbard, can you? And almost nobody from the old Hust’s worn it yet, either. Wasn’t it delivered the day after the Poisoning?’

‘Get back to the others, Rebble,’ Galar said. ‘Show some spine.’

‘Spine?’ Rebble’s sudden smile was bright and dangerous. ‘Oh, I’ve plenty of that, sir. Too much, maybe. But it ain’t the bending kind. You break it and I’m useless. But until then it’ll take a lot of weight, sir, and it knows how to push back.’

‘Your point, Rebble?’

‘Just that, sir. You want me back there, fine. But I’m no merchant. If you want me to sell something I’ll make a pitch, only I pitch with my fists, sir.’

‘Just pull Curl to your side, and Rance, and each new one to take a weapon. Line them up, Rebble.’

Still smiling, Rebble saluted and returned to the clutch of officers.

‘You should have spoken up, Wareth. You have a way with Rebble.’

Wareth grunted. ‘Hardly. I just make certain that every order I give him is for something he’d do anyway. That man chose to save my life in the mining camp, but I can’t tell you his reason for doing so. He still binds me straight every night.’ He shook his head. ‘This is how it is among us. Our crimes we hold like shields. Some are solid and strong, but others are flimsy and weak. Some are little more than illusions, or whispers.’ He nodded at the officers. ‘As with Listar, there. His mystery protects him, though who can say for how much longer. In any case, sir, those shields are more than just things to protect us. They’re also what we hide behind.’

Rebble had managed to order the others into a rough line. They had belted their weapons, but even scabbarded the swords at their hips and the others remaining on the wagon’s bed still cried out, a cacophony as shrill as gulls upon a battlefield. A mass of regular prisoners had begun pushing closer. Galar saw more than one guard being shoved backwards. Their hands were on the grips of their blades. They won’t hold.

‘They want to see for themselves,’ Wareth said. ‘They want to know what’s coming.’

At that moment, two riders walked their horses into the gap behind the thin line of guards. Recognizing them, Galar Baras felt a tremor of shock.

The two men were having a conversation, loud enough to cut through the clamour of the weapons.

‘Hark, old friend, do you hear something amiss?’

‘Crows will chatter,’ the other replied. ‘Why, I once held a blade that did nothing but complain. Eager to cut, but chafing in the misery of peace.’

‘What fate that weapon, Prazek?’

‘Seduced by rust, in the manner of retired soldiers, sagging prostitutes and decrepit bards with wavering voices. All things end in their time, Dathenar.’

‘But swords that chortle in the midst of mayhem, Prazek, surely that is untoward?’

‘Promises to the enemy,’ Prazek replied, halting his mount and leaning on his saddle horn as he surveyed the prisoners. ‘I’ve a mind to take such a blade and, indeed, to wear both the armour and its dreadful avowal. Someone must speak for the madness of civil war, after all, and if such a war is to have a voice, then these weapons will suit.’

Dathenar reined in and slipped down from his horse. He adjusted his heavy gauntlets. ‘Uncanny amusement is to make a song of our sad state of affairs? Well suited indeed. You there! Ready for me a fine weapon!’ He strode easily towards the wagon. ‘Let it be one that shrieks on my behalf! Let it crow in the manner of … of …’

‘Crows,’ suggested Prazek.

‘Of crows! Bleak and black above battles just done, outraged by bounty, furious with excess. Trapped between glee and grief, between the empty belly and salvation. Such weapons surely know how to survive, enough to crown the sky with midnight hues. Promises, you say, Prazek? Imagine the quavering knees among the enemy, there in their trembling line – why, the justice of their cause, as they might see it, shrinks like a sac of nuts in ice water. While we stand before them, hands upon engorged grips, swords climbing from slick scabbards-’

‘Dathenar! You filade the charming gender of half these soldiers here! What of the round-faced and sweet-eyed, the buxom and the ample, the curved icons of aesthetic perfection?’

Dathenar accepted a sword and scabbard. He drew the weapon with a flourish. It screamed. ‘What is this? Am I so ugly as to elicit terror?’

‘Not your visage, friend. Perhaps your breath.’

‘Impossible! I speak with rose petals upon my tongue. It’s a habit of discourse. But, if I understand you, Prazek, you spoke of women.’

‘My weakness, yes.’

‘It is surely their strength that makes you weak.’

‘That, and the unmanning fear of mystery.’

‘Then, for a woman here to take hold of such a sword, pommel glistening and iron stiff with anticipation, why, would she not prove far more fearless than any man at her side? Will not the blade shiver in deafening horror at her willingness to see it tested?’

‘Tested and tried, blunted and nicked, made limp if such a thing were possible. I now see your point, Dathenar.’

‘There are points and then there are points. I am now eager for loud armour, if only to invite a clash of opinions.’

‘Elegance was ever your suit, Dathenar. By fine tailoring and cloth’s perfect cut, by colours in subtle complement and boots of profound polish, you are ever the envy of others.’

‘Grace is an acquisition, Prazek, though it demands a mindful application. Only by practice am I born to it, as natural as the coiled and perfumed curls upon my head.’

‘And when your helm howls, Dathenar? How will you answer?’

‘With a smile, friend, as befits my supreme confidence. You, quartermaster! Is it not time for an unveiling of armour? Your officers need timely garb, with your clerks no doubt eager to allot names to kit, in even rows to prove salient organization, and scrolls coded by the colour of their wax, or some such thing. Look at me, sir! Do I not stand as if naked here?’

Standing close beside Galar Baras, Wareth muttered a disbelieving curse. ‘Commander? Who are these fools?’

Smiling, Galar Baras shook his head. ‘An unexpected blessing, Wareth. But even so, I did not expect Lord Anomander to be so … generous.’

‘Sir?’

‘The two finest officers from his Houseblades, Wareth. Lieutenants Prazek and Dathenar.’

Two of Seltin’s assistants had appeared, carrying between them a hide-wrapped bundle. They reached Dathenar and set it down at his feet.

‘Well, unwrap it now, will you, good sirs?’

The prisoners crowded still closer, although this time something had changed. No longer threatening. Urged forward instead by curiosity, and something of the pleasure that might attend the performance of mummers or jesters.

Prazek remained on his horse, and suddenly Galar understood the value of that, as the man abruptly straightened. ‘Soldiers of the Hust Legion! Your wise commander has given me leave to address this momentous moment! Did I truly say “momentous moment”? Why, indeed I did, since we are about to witness a moment so important it demands twice saying.’

‘I missed that,’ Dathenar called as he watched the unfolding of the hide. ‘Pray say it again.’

‘’Tis overfamiliarity, Dathenar,’ Prazek said in a growl, ‘that makes you careless in my company.’

‘No doubt. Now then, Prazek, in keeping with your moment of momentous import, do call to me our own precious squad, which we found upon the road on our way here. The commander would see what we have made of such misanthropic gallywags.’

‘Why, we have made nothing of them yet.’

Dathenar frowned. ‘No time like the present, which, if you think on it, could not be truer, with the past done with and the future forever undiscovered. Call them to me, Prazek. They may not be officers, either in material or comportment, but in answering the former we mayhap invite the latter. Failing that, we simply kill them all.’

Prazek swung his mount round and gestured. ‘Be not shy, my pretties. Do recall, it was slothfulness on the road that proved your doing in the midst of your quicker comrades’ undoing. Dulled of wit and spark, you but stood unnerved while the blood, guts, limbs and heads of your fellow deserters flung about as if of their own accord. Come now, reveal the mercy of your officers in that we permitted your return, and let it be a sundry lesson of fate to everyone else, should one or two be eyeing the empty plains beyond the camp.’

The ragtag deserters shuffled into view.

Seltin caught Galar’s eye and the commander answered with a swift nod.

Dathenar now raised up a hauberk of heavy chain. ‘Abyss below! We shall be adorned in the impervious! Thus weighted, no such line will ever take a back step! Why, link by link, we best our enemy – and see here, the vambraces! What so amuses them, I wonder? No matter – see if they laugh when I inadvertently sit on them. And the greaves, bracing enough to fend off whatever might seek to bark my shin, be it pup or grovelling servant. And what are these? Scales to drape my shoulders, a coif for head and neck, and at last, the helm! Oh, hollow-voiced one, I would fill your space with bold thoughts – yours if not mine! Now, who will dress me?’ He swung round, squinted at the oversized squad of deserters, and then pointed at a woman. ‘You are comely enough. Shall we make a game of it?’

Sudden laughter from the crowd of prisoners. And upon that rustle of sound, the manic mirth of the weapons fell away, leaving behind a silence that drew gasps from many.

Dathenar frowned. ‘As I suspected, Prazek! For all this performance, Hust iron is without humour. Or any natural delight in the softness of a caressing touch, the chance meeting of shy gazes, a brush of hips – ah, still my sword that I hold – some things aver public witness, for now, at least.’

Prazek stood in his stirrups to face the crowd. ‘Leer if you will at this graven and solemn scene of disrobement followed by … er, robement. Your attention is most welcome, and hopefully enlightening for the virgins among you.’

Wheeling from renewed laughter, and a few lewd shouts, Prazek kicked his horse forward into a loping, lazy trot, reining in before Galar Baras. The lieutenant dismounted and saluted. ‘Commander, by command of Lord Silchas Ruin, we are now at your disposal.’

‘Silchas? Not your lord’s?’

‘Just so, sir, as Lord Anomander has not yet returned to Kharkanas. Captain Kellaras sends his regards.’

‘You found some deserters upon the trail, lieutenant?’

Prazek frowned. ‘A wayward patrol, I’m sure, sir. Returned to the fold as you see, barring a few malcontents.’

‘You are welcome to their care, lieutenant.’

‘We shall adopt them indeed, sir. But between us, I would wager none fit as officers. Still, glory is possible in any corner. We will retain a measure of misplaced optimism suitable to the fate awaiting us all.’ Prazek then stepped closer. ‘Sir, all is amiss in Kharkanas. Lord Urusander will not wait until the season’s turn, or so it is believed. He will bring blood’s fire to winter, but few will find comfort in its bask.’

Galar Baras nodded, and then turned to Wareth. ‘Inform the quartermaster that there is no further need to wait. Distribute weapons and armour to the regulars.’

He saw a flash of uncertainty in Wareth’s expression, but then the man nodded and walked off.

Bedecked in the unusually robust armour of Hust iron, Dathenar approached. ‘See me, sir, in jangling array. Six with linked arms could make a wall, twenty in a circle a bailey. We will attend to the field like legged keeps. I feel assembled into a fortress, with myriad taunts from the battlements of my shoulders and nape, and upon the helm’s brim, why, such mocking derision as to infuriate the enemy.’

‘Heavy kitting,’ Galar Baras agreed. ‘It was in Lord Henarald’s mind to see a new kind of soldier, stolid and steadfast. The Hust Legion has a history of holding a line, and often it was will alone that blunted the foe’s desire. But now, with armour such as this, we will add iron to our spines.’

‘Well said, sir. I trust Prazek has informed you of our elevation.’

Galar Baras smiled with little humour. ‘I wondered at what insubordination led you here.’

‘A bridge left unguarded was the first of our crimes,’ Dathenar replied. ‘But worse than that, we malingered too long in the Citadel, lured into cups until we sloshed with careless aplomb. Fools that we were, to so offend the white crow with our indolence. We judge this just, and will endeavour, sir, to avoid all future disapprobation.’

‘By this,’ Prazek added, ‘he means we will serve with all the distinction nature has accorded us, and more besides.’

‘Pushed past nature, aye,’ Dathenar said, nodding. ‘Into arcane constructs of obscure logic, yielding to us the perfect symbol with swords that crow and armour eager with contempt. See how well it fits, sir. One day the Hust Legion will be asked to stand against the impossible. I foresee this legion breaking hearts, sir.’

Galar Baras felt his gaze slide away from Dathenar’s bright, challenging regard. He looked upon the mob now gathering to receive weapons and armour. ‘Lieutenants, I leave the two of you in command. I must ride to Hust Forge. If it is at all possible, I will reawaken Toras Redone to our need for her. At the very least, I wonder if she has even heard of the fall of the Wardens. If not, best I be the one to bring her the news.’

‘You delight in heavy burdens, sir.’

Dathenar’s observation had come in a casual tone, but the truth of it cut Galar Baras, so that he stood for a moment, bereft of words, with something roaring in his skull. Shaking himself free of the paralysis, he turned away from the two lieutenants, and then paused and glanced back. ‘Welcome to the Hust Legion. Look to Wareth to inform you of any details with respect to the prisoners. Oh, and there is a killer in our midst, revisiting, perhaps, old hurts. Wareth will give you the details.’

‘Intrigue and mystery, sir, keep us young.’

Galar Baras eyed Dathenar, with his now placid expression, and then Prazek, who stood smiling like a man about to dance. ‘Again, you are both most welcome.’

An empty niche in a corridor, from which echoes still seemed to drift out, rebounding from some other place, but with weariness and overtones of loss. As the recollection of that day slowly faded from his mind, Galar Baras turned away from the niche and resumed his walk. Earlier in the day, before his eventual audience with Lord Henarald, he had walked the work yard, shocked by the fading energy of cooling blast furnaces, tall chimneys all but one yielding no column of smoke, an air of exhaustion heavy in the bitter winter air.

Behind the dozen bricked furnaces with their flanking bellows, there had been a row of wagons, sagging with coal left unattended. He had seen in all this the truth of what Henarald would soon tell him: the forges were dying. The charcoal was gone, the new seams of coal rotten. The age of weapons was itself coming to an end, in the manner that would surprise only a fool. War, this artless collapse that sees every forged blade worked to its sole purpose. How is it, then, that in the perfection of the form, and in its equally perfect application, we bring upon ourselves nothing but chaos and destruction? Am I alone in seeing the irony of this? Industry, you unfold in the machinations of our minds, so sweetly reasoned that we believe you both inevitable and righteous. But see what you build. No, step around the monuments, around every glorious edifice. Walk here, to this place of tailings and slag.

Henarald was right. The only freedom left the world belongs to what we discard, the pointless wastage we so quickly sweep away. See the birds dance on the heaps, thinking every glistening twinkle the betrayal of an insect’s wings. But to feed there is to die, and the hunt’s lure rewards with nothing but starvation.

He had walked the yards, and now, as he drew closer to the inner wing of the keep, where Toras Redone had either retreated or been locked away from the sight of others, he listened for the distant roar of the forges, but heard nothing.

Industry, your artistry was an illusion. Your offer of permanence was a lie. You are nothing more than the maw we built, and then fed until both we and the world sank down in exhaustion, and in the failing of your fires, your never-satisfied hunger, we turn not upon you, but upon each other.

The Jaghut alone dared face you and name you the demon in their midst. Us? Why, we will die at your feet as if you were an altar, and hold with our last breath to the belief in your sanctity, even as the rust seizes your soul, and the last drop of blood falls from ours.

As with so many other things, Galar Baras realized, the seeds of civilization’s death were sown in its birth. But the Jaghut had proved that progress was not inevitable, that the fates could be defied, broken, utterly discarded.

He reached the door, studied its black bronze, its rivets and stained wood. Beyond it, alas, was his love. No matter her condition, he knew that he would fall to his knees upon seeing her, if not in body then in his soul. We do well to curse love. That makes us so abject, so eager to surrender. She need only meet my eye to know that I am hers, to do with as she pleases. Where then is my courage?

He hesitated.

Toras Redone, I bring sad news. The Wardens have been destroyed in battle. But Calat Hustain survives, and is blameless in the fate of his people. Or can that be said? Did he not give his command to Ilgast Rend? Was he not precipitous in setting out to the Vitr in such a time as this? The news is sad indeed, and you will choose which – the end of the Wardens, or that your husband still lives.

He could imagine himself, standing before her, unbowed by her sordid presence. Speaking his mind, flensing all decorum from the raw hungers and needs that plagued both him and her. But no, I can hardly be certain of her, can I? She was drunk the night she made me her plaything. It left embers between us, fanned by flattery and chance gazes locked a moment too long. For all her games, her memory of that night might be blurred, stripped of all detail.

In her appetites she was ever blind, taking all within her reach.

I may walk in to find her recalling neither me nor herself. Grief and horror and recrimination, and jugs of wine. There may be nothing left of Toras Redone. Denied her chance to die with her soldiers, denied again upon the morning that followed, by my own hand-

Oh, she should recall that, I would think. In a flare of hate, she will recall my staying hand.

Courage retreated before love. A brave man would have let her drink deep the poison.

Sad tidings, my love. He lives. You live. And so do I.

The Hust Legion? Well, the iron lives, too. You’ll know its voice by the laughter, the black chatter of crows feasting upon the dead. Listen, then, to war’s cold welcome.

He reached out, closed his hand upon the door’s heavy iron ring. It was time to look upon what was left of his love.

* * *

‘In times of war, privileges of rank are won in blood. Or so,’ Prazek added, ‘we make it known.’ He reached out to add another chip of dung to the fire. A small hearth, set well away from the others of the camp. Faror Hend had seen it from a distance while walking the perimeter, ensuring that the pickets were in place, and that two of every three soldiers on guard were, in fact, facing inward, upon the camp. For all that, there had been no desertions since the distribution of the Hust weapons and armour. None, indeed, since lieutenants – now captains – Prazek and Dathenar assumed temporary command of the Hust Legion.

Curious, Faror Hend had made her way to the flickering flames out upon the plain, fifty paces beyond the pickets, to find the two officers from Lord Anomander’s Houseblades attending a private fire ringed by stones that had been collected from a nearby cairn. Upon seeing her hesitant approach, and even as she had begun turning away, Dathenar had spoken an invitation to join them. And now she sat opposite the two men, feeling out of place.

Gallan had once called them his soldier poets, and after half a week in their company, official and otherwise, she well understood the honorific. But theirs was a wit too sharp for her, and even to witness it was to feel one’s own mind as something too blunt, likely to stumble should it seek to keep pace with the two men. Still, it proved a modest wound, given how entertaining they often were.

But this was a night for sober reflection, at least thus far, and what eloquence was loosed sounded wry, almost bitter at times. More to the point, it was heavy with exhaustion, and Faror had come to comprehend the sheer effort of aplomb. In the watery light of the fire, the faces before her were drawn, haggard, revealing all that they were wont to hide from others. This particular window’s view humbled her.

‘Private fires,’ said Dathenar, nodding in answer to Prazek’s earlier assertion. ‘We tend them as would any common soldier or peasant, and by any starry measure above we are just as unnoticed in the eyes of the firmament. Rank, my friend, is an impostor.’

‘It is the dung in my hand that belies my artless grace, Dathenar. Clumsy and feckless of gesture, I long for an able servant to make these flames dance as is proper. Perhaps it is the cold, or the too brief interim of desiccation afforded this chip, but I feel no heat from this fire. A cold serpent entwines my bones this night, and not even the fair face of Faror Hend can defeat this hearth’s woeful dearth.’

Dathenar grunted. ‘With a fire tended between us and her, my friend, we dare not reach through the heat, though we might – in most private and complimentary fashion – yearn for her softer warmth as a place beyond what burns.’

‘Sirs,’ said Faror Hend after a moment, ‘it seems my presence is an imposition-’

‘Not at all! Prazek?’

‘Anything but! Faror Hend, by the flame’s soft glow, your lovely visage blesses the night. If we falter, it is from beauty’s reflection, so poorly do we hide our longing. I see you surrounded in darkness, like the mien of a moon that looks upon a sun we cannot see. As Dathenar noted, you are well beyond our reach, humbling our regard.’

‘Forgive us,’ Dathenar murmured.

‘If I am reduced to a view, sirs, then best I keep quiet, to better serve your elevation of my worth.’

‘Ah, Prazek, see how she stings? In our appreciation we are unmanned.’

Faror Hend sighed. ‘Commanding this legion is surely a burden. But you are not entirely alone, sirs. And more help may be on the way, when Galar Baras returns with Toras Redone.’

‘Will she ride Galar Baras home, I wonder?’

Faror Hend blinked at Prazek, startled by his question. ‘It is said her spirit is broken, and no surprise at that. Hunn Raal was clever in his infamy. But then, he did offer her the poisoned wine. Was that a gesture of mercy, do you think?’

Prazek eyed her for a moment, and then shrugged. ‘Rank is the issue here, alas. There are times when it is the spine of an army that carries its commander, but these are rare moments. Propriety insists that it is the commander who must bear the army’s burden, roughly measured by its will, its heart and its resolve.’

Dathenar added, ‘But a legion of prisoners, well … we must find our spine, I think. No armour intended for mortals can sustain flesh weakened by a damaged spirit. No weapon can lend its wielder the ferocity of its purpose. We are fitted in the trappings, but they are not enough.’

Faror Hend shook her head. ‘You two have done well. You must know that. Better, in some ways, than Galar Baras. You weave seduction with your words and manner. You invite in us a confidence we cannot muster on our own.’

Prazek grunted. ‘Fourteen dead men, each and all slayers of women and children. Someone is confident enough, it seems.’

‘I fear Wareth is not working too hard on finding the murderer,’ Faror Hend said. ‘Although, that said, he worries on Listar’s behalf. Oddly, that man still lives, even though he refuses added protection.’

‘There is a clue there, I should think,’ Dathenar observed.

‘Some feel the accusations are suspect,’ she replied. ‘Those against Listar, I mean. Sergeant Rance looks upon him and shakes her head, saying he is no killer. I am inclined to believe her.’

‘Women see nothing in him, then.’

‘Nothing to suggest he has blood on his hands, no.’

‘Then the murderer,’ concluded Dathenar, ‘agrees with you. A woman wields the knife.’

Faror Hend nodded. ‘That is generally accepted, sir.’

‘Wareth drags his feet.’

‘Perhaps he hopes the situation will simply go away,’ Faror suggested. ‘That at some point, the killer will be satisfied that enough justice has been served.’

‘You sound doubtful.’

‘I cannot say, Dathenar. Justice, I would think, acquires strength upon its deliverance, enough to sustain the zeal.’

‘She speaks of momentum,’ Prazek murmured, poking at the fire with a flimsy stick. ‘The unseen current. Will without mind. An army can find it as easily as can a mob. We must hope for Toras Redone’s resurrection. We must hope that the Hust Legion will find sure guidance to whatever fate awaits it.’

‘And much of that responsibility,’ Faror said, sighing, ‘falls to us officers as well. Before you two arrived, well, Galar Baras did not have many from which to choose. Wareth, Rance, Rebble, Curl – you’ve met them now, and the others. Even Castegan-’

‘Castegan,’ Prazek interrupted, making the name a growl. ‘We know his cut, Faror Hend. Leave that man to us.’

‘Though as yet unknown, sir, I already regret his fate. I surely would not want both or either of you to set upon me your sanction.’

‘Opprobrium will do for that man,’ Dathenar said, waving the stick in a dismissive gesture. ‘He is lonely and grieves, yet twists both into spite for the survivors, of whom he is the first and foremost. We will turn him about.’

‘Or slap him silly,’ Prazek said.

‘Rance,’ said Dathenar after a moment, looking up at Faror. ‘She is the quiet one with the wounded hands, yes?’

‘She heats a brimming cauldron every morning,’ said Faror. ‘Nigh unto boiling. Then, behind her tent, stripped down to the waist, she plunges her hands into the scalding water. She scrubs them raw with pumice and lye.’ After some hesitation, during which neither man spoke, she continued. ‘She has no memory of drowning her newborn babe. But her hands remind her. The pain reminds her too, I suppose. She answers what she never felt, and cannot recall, with rituals of hurt. Sirs, I beg you, this is not to be challenged. It may be that she cannot command a company, but that she holds herself together at all is, to me, remarkable.’

‘I knew few details,’ Dathenar said in a low voice, ‘but I sensed well something unbreakable within her. Faror Hend, we would burden her further.’

‘Sirs-’

‘This legion wears and wields madness,’ Prazek said. ‘It will need its own spine. Neither Hust’s history, nor its fame, nor even its infamy, will suffice this rebirth. The weapons and armour laugh, but the timbre of that voice betrays helplessness. So, we cannot look even to the fever of magic iron.’

‘We have prisoners,’ Dathenar said, his gaze hard upon her. ‘This is our lot. Up from pits and holes carved down through rock and earth. Up from where we put them. No outside authority will reach them, for their habits long ago rejected that authority. There is a vast difference between kneeling and being forced to kneel. Galar Baras was right in plunging into their midst. Now it falls to us to take their stock, to see what we can use.’

‘But Rance’s inner torment?’

‘We will be cruel, yes.’

‘She does not scrub her hands raw out of some manic need to cleanse unseen stains, Dathenar. If either of you think the symbol so crass as that-’

‘No, Faror, we heard you well enough.’

Prazek nodded. ‘A ritual intended to awaken pain, because the pain keeps her here, keeps her conscious. Keeps her alive.’

‘Nothing of that can belong to the Legion, sirs.’

In answer, Prazek drew his new sword. The reflected flames licked down its length with a lurid red tongue. A dull muttering sound rose from the blade, breaking then into a low, dreadful laugh. ‘This attends us all, Faror Hend. Every edge, however, promises pain, yes? Prisoners – by the title alone we see their plight. All was taken from them. For each, some past incident has been made into a shrine of hurts, betrayals, losses and sour violence. Like penitents they can but circle this unholy moment, whipping their backs to keep it alive. They will speak of forgetting what they have done. Some will even claim to have done so. Others will protect their shrine, believing it a place of righteous justice, thus absolving themselves of all responsibility. But all this – all these pronouncements, these evasions, these pathetic defiances – they are helpless and hopeless. Each man, each woman, up from the pit, is burdened with what they must live with.’

Dathenar added, ‘Loss of freedom delivers its own pain. This is an army that ritually scalds itself every dawn. The soldiers fill their days with talk of freedom – some even seek to run away – but now, at last, they begin to see. There will be no freedom, neither here nor there – out beyond the campfires, beyond the pickets. No freedom at all, Faror Hend.’

‘We must make of the Hust Legion,’ said Prazek, sheathing the weapon once more, ‘a promise. To each prisoner, each soldier. Wake with pain? March with pain? Eat with it? Sleep with it? Breathe it with every breath drawn in, every breath loosed? Oh yes, my friends. And here is the Hust Legion, an answer to you all.’

‘The Hust Legion builds the fire in the crisp light of the sun’s rise,’ said Dathenar. ‘Sets the cauldron upon the coals, and calls the soldiers into line. Hands into the scalding water, thus beginning the pain of a new day.’

‘We will make this legion their home,’ Prazek said. ‘A familiar temple to house their familiar, personal, shrines of pain. The iron now laughs, in proof of its imprisonment, its helplessness. When we are done with our soldiers, we shall make the iron weep.’

Faror Hend stared at the two men, their harsh visages lit in flames. Abyss below, I face two monsters … and find myself blessing their every word.

* * *

Tent walls made for flimsy barriers, and through the entirety of Wareth’s short career as a soldier of the Hust Legion he had felt neither safe nor protected by them. The waxed canvas even failed in disguising an occupant’s presence come the night, with oil lamps or lanterns painting silhouettes upon the walls. When, as he prepared for sleep, the scratching came upon the front flap, followed a moment later by the tap of a knife pommel on the ridge pole, he considered for a long moment the prospect of not responding. Yet there had been no hiding his presence, and to pretend otherwise seemed both puerile and petty.

Grunting an invitation, he sat upon the cot to await yet another messenger with still more bad news, as it seemed the litany was unending, and when enough people were gathered anywhere the train of news never paused. It was no wonder that most officers stumbled between exhaustion and incompetence, as each fed the other. That history recounted the tales of battles gone awry, filled with appalling errors in judgement, a cascade of fatal decisions and the pointless slaughter of hundreds, if not thousands of misled soldiers, no longer surprised Wareth.

Logistics could gnaw like termites through the base of a tree-

Sergeant Rance stepped through the tent entrance.

‘What now?’ Wareth asked.

She flinched at his tone, and half turned as if to leave again – and in that instant Wareth comprehended that nothing official had brought her into his company. Silently cursing, he raised a staying hand and said, ‘No, wait. Do come in, Rance. Take that bench there – someone delivered it for reasons unknown to me. Perhaps the seating of guests? That seems reasonable.’

‘It’s nothing, sir,’ she said. ‘I saw the light, and motion, and wondered at your being awake this late.’

‘Well,’ he said, watching her tentatively settle on to the bench, ‘there is some good timing in all this, Rance. I found myself drawn short by a thought. Tell me, what do you know about the habits of termites? I recall seeing mounds – nay, towers – in the drylands to the south, constructed of mud. But here in Kurald Galain we mostly know of them as delivering ruination to wood. I have in my mind an image of a large tree riven through by the insects – did I see some such thing as a child? I must have.’

She studied him with an odd expression, and then said, ‘I recall a house that collapsed, in the village where I lived. The beams were found to have been eaten through from the inside. Their cores were dust. Or so I heard, sir. I do remember seeing the wreckage. It had more or less fallen in from each side. The weight of the roof timbers, I suppose.’

‘Logistics,’ Wareth said. ‘The line of messengers, busy messengers, with busy words. Even as this army sleeps, problems spread like some plague – or an infestation.’

‘It’s been three nights since the last murder.’

‘We’re all armed now, Rance. I’d imagine that those men fearing retribution for past crimes have taken to sleeping in their armour. More to the point, a sword left out of its scabbard will betray the arrival of a stranger.’

‘It will?’

Wareth nodded. ‘I suppose I should have explained that, but I imagine that the soldiers will make their own discoveries. Indeed, for all I know, the armour will do the same. A Hust camp needs no watchdogs, no geese. A Hust soldier standing on guard cannot be sneaked up on if he or she keeps a blade bared. But now, why, the armour could well suffice.’ He paused, and then cocked his head. ‘Hardly a sound defence against intrigue or treachery, however. Nothing in Henarald’s iron can sniff out poisoned wine, after all.’

‘They said it was a curse,’ Rance said.

‘What was?’

‘The termite infestation, sir. A curse upon the family, and the father in particular. Careless with his cock.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘The rooster in his yard, sir. It used to escape, terrorizing the younger children.’

‘Ah. Well then, was there something specific you wished to discuss?’

She glanced away, and then shrugged. ‘I am to report to Captain Prazek and Captain Dathenar on the morrow, immediately following the seventh bell.’

‘You are?’

She nodded, and then frowned. ‘You knew nothing of it? Oh. Then I wonder what they might want of me.’ A moment later she straightened her back, and then slowly slumped – though whether in defeat or relief, Wareth could not tell. ‘I am to be dismissed. That’s it. Well, I’m surprised it took this long.’

‘Rance, I’m not aware of anything like that. They would have spoken to me first, I assure you. No, they have some other purpose for wishing to speak to you. And, to be honest, I’m glad you’ve told me. I will accompany you tomorrow.’

‘Sir, there’s no reason-’

‘I selected you, remember? In fact, you are my responsibility.’ Still something uncertain flickered in her gaze. Wareth considered for a moment, and then he said, ‘A coward upon the field of battle is driven by an overwhelming need to survive, to escape from all threat, all risk. But upon the day to day matters away from that field of battle, a coward can well display virtues, such as loyalty. And on occasion, both fortitude and integrity might rear their pale heads into day’s light. Said virtues might even assemble all at once, in a single moment.’ He offered her a wry smile. ‘I am too easily painted in a single hue, Rance.’

‘I know that,’ she replied. ‘In that single colour you can hide other things about you. Few will see. Few will bother. Even the title itself – coward – can be used to hide behind, if you’re clever enough.’

He shrugged. ‘I’m not, alas.’

She snorted. ‘And here I thought you lied well, as cowards should be able to do.’

‘Titles have that way, Rance. Coward. Murderer.’ Seeing her blanch, he shook his head and added, ‘You misunderstand. I can claim both, you see. On the day we were freed, I killed a man with a shovel-’

‘I know.’

He blinked. ‘You know of that?’

‘Every woman does, sir. The men were about to attack them – the cats of your pit so roughly awoken, pushed out into the morning light. You broke open the first bastard’s skull, dropped him dead, and that stopped the others long enough for you to send Rebble to the sheds. Gave the cats time to arm themselves. You saved lives that day, sir. Stopped rapes.’

Wareth looked away. ‘It wasn’t quite like that,’ he said. ‘I just didn’t think it all through, that’s all. Never liked the one I killed either.’

She shrugged. ‘Real cowards always think it through, all the way through, sir.’

‘Not if they see their chance at getting rid of a tormentor, which I did. I simply forgot about his friends.’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘now at last I see the fear in you, sir. You’re frightened by the thought that you did the right thing, a brave thing. It doesn’t fit with who you think you are.’

‘If not for Rebble and Listar, I would have run,’ Wareth said. ‘Don’t let that tale live on in the camp, not among the cats, Rance. It wasn’t the way you’ve just told it.’

‘You first, and then Rebble and then Listar, sir. Us cats set you apart, sir. The three of you. You didn’t know it – not until now, I suppose – but you had the cats of your pit with you from that moment. Now, every pit’s cats know it, and they’re with you, too.’

‘You’re heading for disappointment, Rance. Warn them. Warn them all.’

‘We know you’re clever, sir.’

‘How? How do you know that?’

She studied him for a long moment, and then offered him a most peculiar and baffling smile, before rising to her feet. ‘I just thought I should let you know, sir, about them wanting to see me tomorrow. You see, I know they’re clever, far too clever, I suppose. Like you, only not like you. They see no value in wasting time. In any case, sir, you now have some time to think on finding a new sergeant to replace me. That’s what I was here to say, sir.’

He watched her leave the tent. What was all that? They’re not dismissing her. They wouldn’t do it that way. They have something else in mind. I’ll find out when she does, in the morning.

In the meantime, why didn’t I swing that conversation back to the careless cock?

This was what came of being exhausted. A dulled wit was blind to nuance, even the hint of possible innuendo, when it offered that narrow trail between empty charm and crass invitation. But then, how many years had it been since he’d last played such games? And what of Rance? Dreams of intimacy might feel deadly to a woman who took love into her hands, then drowned it. Abyss take me, these are venal thoughts. That I dare imagine her and me together – that I dare upend the world’s rightful order, to believe that either of us deserves such a thing.

Murderer and coward upon the one hand, child-slayer upon the other. Not for them tender moments, nor soft laughter, nor sweet pleasures. Not for them anything like love, or the wanting of happiness, and how deep the outrage, should they seek contentment.

No, these are the privileges of the innocent.

For surely they must be innocent, to desire for themselves such privileges, and then claim them as their right.

But for us who are guilty, the desire itself is a crime. That we should dare such things for ourselves, for whatever wrecked remnant is left in our lives.

Forget Rance. Forget anything playful. Eschew every soft thought, Wareth. Not for you and not for her. Not, indeed, for the new Hust Legion.

The weapons and armour can laugh for us, since they exist without guilt, and know nothing of blame.

His gaze strayed across to where his scabbarded sword hung from a peg in the centre pole. Barring you, of course. You know me too well. You delight in our reunion, if only to anticipate and then witness my final fall. How you will delight in orchestrating your vengeance. I know it is coming, old friend. And for all that I betrayed in you, why, I welcome it.

It was time to douse the lamps, and make of these walls something opaque and impenetrable. If there was one trait he did not share with other cowards, it was his utter absence of fear when in darkness. He knew it well as a state in which he could hide, silent, unseen.

Yet Mother Dark would strip that from us. Give us eyes to pierce any gloom. Many may consider that a blessing, an end to the fear of what cannot be seen, what cannot be known. Is it only fear that makes us pray for answers? What do we lose by not knowing? Not understanding?

Lamps doused, he sat on the cot, wishing that he were blind inside and out. Bless me with darkness if you must, but make it the blessing of not seeing. Do that, Mother Dark, and I will serve you. There are times, as you must well know, when ignorance is no enemy.

* * *

Galar Baras found Toras Redone standing near a shuttered window, shrouded in gloom. The window was one of the tall, narrow ones that looked out upon the forges. Its copper shutters were old and pitted, the edges of each slat rippled and uneven, and the faint glow coming through was the blue of a moonless night. He could see, by those liquid ribbons painted upon her, that she was naked.

Inactivity had softened her form. There was nothing visible of the hardness that came with a life of soldiering. Rolls of flesh sagged over the points of her hips, burying them deep. The drink had bulged her belly, which in turn emphasized the arch of her back beneath rounded shoulders. She stood in profile, curled, her breasts pushed out and resting upon the fat below them. The faint blue rows of light tracked her form like an arcane script, its style both melodic and drunken.

She had cut her hair short, which paradoxically made her head and face seem more feminine. After a long moment, she turned her gaze to him. ‘Galar Baras. Like the rising sun you were. Swift to touch on my intent, swifter still in striking the darkness from my hand. I recall falling to my knees. I recall eating bitter soil. You’d think it sweet, wouldn’t you? Wine and earth, or, rather, wine and dust. Whatever the poison, it must have been tasteless. Anyway, I cannot for the life of me determine what it was I found so bitter, so cruelly tart upon my tongue.’

‘Commander,’ said Galar Baras, ‘could we return to that morning, and had I truly comprehended what had happened, well, I might have hesitated … long enough.’

In swinging round to face him, the rows of blue script flowed as if painted on a silk curtain stirred awake by a draught. ‘I doubt that,’ she said.

‘Will you now return to us, commander? We have need of you.’

‘How will he see me now, do you think?’ She slowly raised heavy arms. ‘Not the woman he married, to be sure. The thing is, and I see it well in your eyes, you look upon all of this and imagine it soft as pillows. What you’ve yet to experience, lover, is the weight of it. Too solid to be a pillow, I assure you.’ She then reached out as if to accept his hand. ‘Come, let me show you.’

‘Toras-’

‘Ah! Is this the truth of it then? You imagine disgust in my husband’s face, and it twists you away from desire. Even the kiss of temptation proves suddenly sour. And what of wickedness? Did we not both delight in that? No longer, I see. Now you would stand before me, an officer with a duty to decorum, shouting your propriety with every crisp salute.’ Her hand beckoned him again. ‘Come along, lover, let’s dispel your fantasies and then we’ll be done with it, and you can beg again for my return to the Legion. Do this, Galar Baras, and I will reconsider my future.’

She was sober, or at least as sober as he might ever expect her to be. Grief, he supposed, had muted her habit of grand gestures. Or perhaps it was simply that there was more of her, the weight adding sloth to her practised indolence.

None of this should have attracted him. None of this should have awakened his hunger for her.

Seeing something in his gaze, or hearing the change in his breathing, Toras Redone smiled slyly. ‘At last, lover. Come to me. It is dissolution you long to caress. Others might deem that, well, sordid, but you and I, we understand each other.’

He stepped forward, and then his hands were upon her cool skin. ‘Toras,’ he said, ‘I came here to speak to you of Lord Henarald.’

‘Cast him from your mind, Galar. He’s found his own dissolution.’ She brushed her lips against his, pressing more of her body against him. ‘If he hasn’t already, he will talk to you about smoke, and things left to waste.’

‘Yes.’

‘Him and us, Galar, we but worship different aspects of the same grisly god. The end of things will lure us, until in our lust we make an end of our world. It’s nothing but variations in scale. This … dissolution.’

He wanted to pull away from her. Instead, he drew her tighter into his arms.

She laughed. ‘Oh, Galar, how I’ve missed you.’

She had ever been, he reminded himself, good with lies. That all that she had said before her last statement had been true, he did not doubt. But Toras Redone’s world was a private one, with room only for herself. She would take visitors, provided they understood well enough to expect only what she offered.

So he mulled on the lie, even as his body fell into the motions of long held desires. She had indeed been honest, he discovered, in how she had described her new shape, and what in his mind had been soft as pillows now proved impediments to reaching her at all, in any place where pleasure might be found. Curiously, even this challenge proved alluring.

Later, Galar Baras found himself wondering which man he was: the one he both saw in himself and showed to virtually everyone else, or the man she made him into, with such knowing in her eyes, such recognition in her low laughter, that he felt himself reduced to … to a faint script, scrawled across her skin, riding every undulation and curve, every fold.

The night writes me upon her, in a language only she can understand. I stagger away, all meaning undone, all sense stripped away. Where, in this wretched love, is my reason?

He would return her to the Legion. The officers and soldiers would see him as a man of formidable powers, if not an unassailable will. And only in the occasional glance she would send his way would he be reminded of their hidden language, there upon its sweet vellum of stretched skin, unseen by anyone else.

Which man is the truth of me?

To that question, he had no answer.

* * *

As if even metal lips could somehow be soft, the Hust armour muttered like mouths pressed against flesh. But this was a cruel seduction. From the vambraces, from the chain and scale and greaves, came a sound like rain threading through trees, cold streams upon a forest floor, a chorus of whispering. With the helm fixed upon his head, Wareth listened to the faint imprecations and felt an uncanny chill ripple through him. There was something almost suffocating in the weight, with its cloying murmurs, as if he was in the embrace of a woman he did not desire.

Stepping out from his tent, he found himself facing Rebble. He too was armoured, and from the tangle of his wild beard there was the white flash of a rueful grin.

‘Like wearing your fears, isn’t it, Wareth?’ He then rapped knuckles against the scabbarded sword at his hip. ‘And this thing. Abyss take me but she’s eager for my temper.’

‘She?’

He shrugged. ‘As close as I’ll get, I suppose, to having a wife. Beautiful in hand until she cuts.’

Shaking his head, Wareth said, ‘I must attend a meeting with the captains.’

Rebble’s small eyes narrowed. ‘You’ll shadow Rance, then? Well, it was only a matter of time.’

‘What was?’

He glanced away, shrugged again. ‘For me, it’s out to the pickets. I need the walk, need to get used to all this weight. It’s the helm I hate the most – I got enough voices in my fucking skull.’

‘Find Listar for your patrol, Rebble.’

Rebble cocked his head. ‘For a coward, you’ve uncommon loyalty, Wareth. Makes you hard to figure. I’m not complaining, sir. Maybe the opposite, in fact. It’s something that gets noticed.’

‘Enough of that, Rebble. You’d be better off listening to your armour, and sword. There’s a battle coming, but it won’t be me in the front ranks. Remember that. Galar knows enough to keep me as far from the fighting as he can. But you, and Listar – and all the other officers and squad leaders – you’re heading into something else. My loyalty won’t put me at your side when that time comes.’

There was a momentary glint of something ugly in Rebble’s eyes, and then he smiled. ‘No one’s planning on your statue, sir. Not even a painted portrait, or a fucking bust or something. You’re Wareth, and we all remember that.’

Wareth nodded. ‘It’s well that you do.’

‘In any case,’ Rebble continued, ‘I looked for Listar but could not find him. But I’ll make another round, look in on his tent and whatnot. He should turn up.’

Wareth watched Rebble walk away. Soldiers were mustering for the breakfast bell. There was little conversation, and not everyone had emerged from tents wearing their armour, although a belted sword adorned every soldier in sight. Had it been as simple as that? Weapons to make these men and women into soldiers?

Setting out, Wareth rolled his shoulders against the permanent ache in his lower back. The heavy chain surcoat wasn’t helping matters, and the round-cornered plates of his shoulder-guards sat like tiles upon a slanted roof, pulling at the muscles of his neck.

He was used to the eyes tracking him as he walked through the camp. Contempt needed no words. The scabbard holding his sword was the same one Castegan had given him, and he found a perverse satisfaction in wearing that brand. He could see little of worth in Rance’s words the night before. The cats needed someone better. His actions upon that day of liberation had, in all likelihood, been a last spasm of decency, undermined in the next breath by unpalatable truths.

The memory of the shovel crushing Ganz’s skull was an echo that never quite left him, and in that manner, it persisted in the way of all things venal. He never saw it coming. No, Ganz was filling up with lust, charging the violence of his strength against women who could not match it. He’d shown the same against me. A thousand small slights to make my confession a weighty tome of reasons, justifications.

But the truth was, I saw my chance and took it.

He never saw it coming. That’s why I struck when I did. Old Wareth the coward, well, he’s no fool. An easy mistake to make, one supposes. But fear only paralyses in the possibilities, and on that day it lagged a step. The man was dead before my terror could even wake. Did I know that at the time? Did I, as Rance and the other cats might believe, act before the coward in me had a chance to stop me?

It was questionable, at least in his own mind, whether the distinction was in any way significant.

He approached the command tent. One of the guards, a regular, offered him a sneer, but said nothing when he passed by and entered the tent.

‘Lieutenant Wareth! Join our morning repast, will you?’

The speaker was Captain Prazek. Wareth had halted a stride into the chamber upon seeing the two captains at a table, breaking their fast with Rance. The woman sat stiffly, the food upon the plate before her untouched. A pewter cup filled with mulled wine was in her red hands, held close against her stomach, the steam rising to her face like a veil of smoke. The look she cast him was blank.

Dathenar had leaned to one side to drag another chair to the table opposite Rance, with the two captains positioned at either end.

Wareth remained standing. ‘My apologies, sirs. But your guest is one of my officers. I feel that I should be present if some issue of discipline is involved.’

‘Honourable sentiment, lieutenant,’ Dathenar said, while around a mouthful of food Prazek grunted agreement. ‘Now, do join us. We shall hope, by virtue of imitation and the pressure to conform, that the witnessing of taking food to mouth will incite in our guest the same inclination, thus putting us all at ease.’

‘She is perhaps wiser than we think,’ Prazek observed after making a scene of swallowing. ‘This sausage mocks the pretence. But,’ he added, spearing another piece, ‘I am assured that it lodges in the pit of the belly, and remains silent, if not unobtrusive, until the moment of its rebirth into the world.’

‘Hardly an image to encourage our appetites, Prazek,’ said Dathenar. ‘Unless you know more of the cook’s supply than do we.’

The chair awaiting Wareth was too elaborate for common camp gear, possessing curved armrests. ‘Perhaps,’ he said as he pushed himself down into the seat, which proved uncomfortably narrow, ‘we could discuss the reason for summoning Sergeant Rance.’

Prazek wagged the speared piece of sausage in the air. ‘But I assure you, lieutenant, that issue, despite its inherent complexities, is one in which a sated belly is advised. After all, we must find a means to twist crime into crusade-’

‘Vengeance into virtue-’

‘Obsession into ritual.’ Prazek frowned at the meat, and then slipped it into his mouth. He chewed.

Wareth looked from one man to the other. ‘I do not understand,’ he said.

Rance cleared her throat and then spoke. ‘It’s to do with the murders, sir. The investigation in which it seemed you had lost interest. It is why I visited you last night, to give you the chance to act before the captains did.’ She frowned across at him. ‘I was certain that you had found the killer, but for some reason you chose not to end things.’

Wareth studied her. ‘I gave up because it made no sense.’

She glanced away.

Abyss take me, I’ve been a fool. ‘How did you move the bodies, Rance? And what of your fear of the sight of blood?’

‘I can’t tell you, sir, about any of it, because I do not remember the murders. I simply awaken in my tent, with blood on my hands. I find my knife unsheathed, but thoroughly cleansed.’ She hesitated. ‘I scrubbed off what I could. I thought that it was that habit that finally betrayed me.’

But Wareth shook his head. ‘It seems we misread that obsession,’ he said, ‘and set upon it a much earlier crime.’

‘It began there, yes, but even then, sir, there was simple necessity. I don’t like the sight of blood. I hate the feel of it even more.’ Straightening in her seat, she set the tankard down. ‘It would be better, sir, if you were the one to arrest me.’

Wareth sighed. ‘You leave me little choice, but what should also be apparent to the captains here is the extent of my incompetence.’

‘I am not alone,’ Rance said. ‘In this body you see, I am not the sole occupant. There is someone else – we’ve never met. She walks when I sleep, and in her freedom she murders … people. Child of my own womb, men who have killed women – these are only lists. Categories. Satisfied with one, she will move to another. A new list. You need to kill me, sir.’

Sick with dread, heavy with something like disappointment – if such a bland word could be used – Wareth shook his head, as if he could deny this entire morning. He faced Prazek. ‘I understand now, sir, why you stepped around me for this.’

Prazek’s brows lifted. ‘Do you?’

‘I – I like Rance.’

‘The woman you know, you mean,’ corrected Dathenar.

‘Well, yes. Of the other, I know only the corpses she leaves in her wake – and even then, the details do not make sense.’

‘The other,’ said Dathenar, ‘is a mage.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘A wielder of sorcery,’ Prazek said. ‘A natural adept. That said, she is somewhat feral. She uses what she needs to clean up her mess. But the knife work, why, that is most mundane, wouldn’t you say?’

‘She exists,’ said Rance, ‘in a world without remorse. That, sirs, should be reason enough to see her executed. But I fear she will defend herself, and if she is as the captain says – a mage – then you must act now, while she sleeps.’

Dathenar grunted. ‘Two within you, sergeant, and between them, the one demanding punishment is the innocent one.’

‘Yet this body is the only one we possess, sir. Kill me, and the other one dies as well.’

‘The death of two for the crimes of one? ’Tis skewed scales no matter how they tilt.’

Rance made a sound of exasperation, but there was something brittle in her eyes now. ‘Then what will you do to me?’

‘The mage,’ said Dathenar, ‘we deem useful.’

‘What?’

‘If awakened to its companion, who, it seems, possesses conscience-’

‘No.’ She sat forward. ‘No. It is bad enough to know what you’ve done, but to remember it as well – no.’

In that instant, Wareth understood her. How sweeter would it be to recall nothing of Ganz’s crumpled skull? The weight of the shovel in his hands, the snap of reverberation along the wooden handle, the sound of the man’s breaking neck? Take up the shovel. Blink. Stand looking down upon his body. As if I but stepped over the moment, blessed to see only the aftermath.

Rance, the woman hiding in you took hold of your baby and drowned it. You remember nothing. The mage is not without conscience, not without mercy, all too desperate to protect her twin. I can almost hear her: ‘Not for you, my love. I will protect you, as only I can. Sleep, dear sister, and dream of nothing.’ ‘Sirs,’ said Wareth. ‘She is right. If you have some plan of somehow merging the two within Rance … please, don’t.’

‘Lieutenant,’ said Dathenar, though he held his gaze fixed upon Rance, ‘you see but one side of this – the Rance now sitting before us. She, in turn, knows only this world as well. And yet what of the one hiding behind her eyes? The one cursed to darkness, and horror?’

With his knife, Prazek tapped the side of the pewter plate before him. ‘While they continue to avoid one another, each circling the truth of the other, a single question remains, and upon that question balances the future of Rance.’ He waved the knife. ‘Perhaps yes, there is a kind of mercy, at least insofar as sits the woman before us at this moment. And perhaps indeed, we are driven – out of that most honourable mercy – to spare her.’

‘If not for that one question,’ Dathenar said. ‘They must be made to meet. Only in that moment, and all that follows, is forgiveness possible. One for the other, and back again.’

‘More to the point,’ Prazek added, ‘there is no one else capable of telling the mage to stop the killing.’

Rance was trembling, shaking her head in refusal, yet she seemed unable to speak.

Dathenar sighed. ‘We cannot execute an innocent woman.’

‘Justice must not be seen to stumble,’ said Prazek. ‘Not here, not now. The test before us will measure our own worth.’

‘The ritual must be attended by all-’

‘Ritual?’ Wareth stared at Dathenar. ‘What ritual?’

‘We sent a rider last night,’ Prazek said. ‘Southwest, to the Dog-Runners.’

‘Why?’

‘We seek a Bonecaster,’ Dathenar said. ‘It will be understood,’ he added, ‘that a demon possesses Rance, one that needs to be exorcized. But this ritual – and comprehend well what I mean here, both of you – will speak in answer not just to Rance, but to the prisoners – every prisoner – and, indeed, to the Hust Legion itself.’

‘The demons need exposing,’ said Prazek. ‘Dragged into the day, as it were.’

‘And then extirpated.’

Wareth stared at the two men. ‘Dog-Runners? Sirs, we are soldiers in the service of Mother Dark. You would invite a witch of the Dog-Runners? We are the Hust Legion!’

‘Indeed,’ said Dathenar. ‘And as it stands, lieutenant, we are also, to not put too fine a point on it, royally fucked.’

‘We believe,’ added Prazek, ‘that Galar Baras will return with Commander Toras Redone. What of her demons, lieutenant?’

‘But our goddess-’

Prazek leaned forward, his eyes suddenly hard. ‘A ritual, sir, to make the iron howl. Until we turn about this imbalance of power, until we stand as masters over our own blades, over the links sheathing us, we are nothing. The crimes crowding us are vast, countless, of such myriad details as to paralyse us all. This legion, and all within it, needs purging.’ He nodded, not without sympathy, towards Rance. ‘And she will lead us. Face to face with what she was, and is. A child-slayer.’

Faror Hend remained at a distance, but within sight of the tent entrance, and watched as Rance emerged. The woman seemed almost too weak to remain upright, and when Wareth appeared, moving quickly to take her weight, she pushed him away and stumbled into an alley, where she fell to her knees and was sick.

Prazek and Dathenar had sent Listar away in the depth of the night just past. Upon one horse, with two more trailing, the man had set out on to the plain.

There were many rituals in the world, private and public, honest and false. At some point, in each and every one, some kind of transformation was invited in the participant, to be embraced with belief. And, at that same instant, those who were there to observe were in turn invited into participation, and with it, that selfsame belief.

She understood all of that. A mirror was held up, one purporting a truth that could be hitherto believed hidden, unseen, or simply unrecognized. And a single step was invited, from one reflection into the other. In this step, she knew, an entire world could change. Irrevocably.

Listar, haunted man, wearing his accusation as if it truly fitted him, rode to find a witch, or a shaman – a Bonecaster of the Dog-Runners, a people unlike the Tiste, a people brushing shoulders with something wild and primitive.

Rituals. Spirits of earth and sky, of water and blood. Headdresses of antler and horn, furs of the hunter and hide of the hunted. This shall be the Legion’s own mirror.

Mother Dark, where are you in all of this?

The morning was bright and cold. Upon the camp, along every pathway and track, smoke hung in wreaths low over the frozen ground, as the Legion wakened to the new day.