Fall of Light

TWENTY-ONE

‘The ways of Tiste confuse,’ said Hataras Raze, slipping free of the heavy bhederin furs as the sun’s light clawed through the high clouds, leaving her naked from the hips upward.

Fighting his incessant chill, Listar looked away. He was leading all three horses, as the two Bonecasters refused to ride the animals, although they examined them often, running their red-painted hands across the sleek hides. It was, Listar had come to realize, a habit of theirs, this endless touching, caressing, palms resting firm upon flesh. Most nights, the two Dog-Runner women were busy doing that with each other. Even more disconcerting, they seemed indifferent to the cold.

In response to Hataras’s observation, Listar shrugged. ‘Crimes must be punished, Bonecaster.’

‘All that work,’ said the younger of the two women, Vastala Trembler. ‘Build fire in winter. Against the stone. Then cold water. Stone cracks, tools can be made.’

‘But you see these weapons I wear, Vastala? They are iron. The rock must be broken and then melted. I do not know the intricacies. I just hauled the rubble up from the pits.’

‘As punishment,’ said Hataras.

‘Yes.’

‘For iron, which all Tiste use.’

‘Yes.’

‘And find pleasure in.’

He sighed. ‘It’s just our way, Bonecaster. As yours are different from ours.’

Vastala Trembler had bundled up all her skins and furs, and was carrying them on one shoulder. She wore hide moccasins and nothing else, barring an obsidian knife bound to a leather thong around her neck. ‘The Ay get restless.’

Listar frowned, looked about for the huge wolves, but the rolling plain with its windswept drifts of old snow seemed empty of life. As if to give credence to their name, the Dog-Runners had company wherever they travelled. Twice since departing the encampment, Listar had seen a half-dozen of the enormous beasts paralleling them in the distance. But the last time had been three or four days past. He’d thought them gone. ‘What has made them restless?’ And more to the point, how do you even know?

‘They wonder,’ Vastala replied, ‘when it’s time to eat horse. As do we.’

‘We’re not starving, are we?’

‘Fresh meat better.’ She lifted one red hand and made a strange, elaborate gesture.

A step behind her, Hataras laughed. ‘Then take him, fool.’

‘Punished Man,’ said Vastala, moving up alongside him. ‘Would you like to lie with me tonight? It is privilege. Bonecasters can have anyone.’

‘I will take him night after,’ Hataras said. ‘Too much waiting. He thinks us ugly, but in dark he will feel our beauty.’

‘I’ve not told you my crime,’ Listar said, edging away from Vastala. ‘You’ll want nothing to do with me. I had a mate. I killed her.’

‘No you didn’t,’ Vastala retorted, drawing close again.

‘You know nothing of it!’

‘You have never taken a life.’

A snort from behind them, and then, ‘Insects. Lice. Gnats.’

Vastala glared back at Hataras. ‘A Tiste life, then. You know this. Nothing stains him.’

‘Mice, spiders, fish.’

In a flash, Vastala spun and launched herself at Hataras. Both went down scratching and snarling, biting and kicking.

Listar halted, the horses nervously gathering up around him. He squinted northward, waiting for the scrap to work through to its exhausted, sex-filled conclusion. It was not the first fight between these women. He could not recall what had set them at each other the first time, but he had stared at them, alarmed, and then bemused, as the vicious grappling soon found nipples and the tangled thatch between their legs, and before too long the struggling grew rhythmic, with moans and gasps instead of snarls, and he had looked away then, his face burning.

These were the women he was escorting to the Hust Legion, the women who were meant to give shape to a ritual of some kind of absolution. Beyond the unlikelihood of success, Listar was troubled by such notions of forgiveness. Some things did not deserve what captains Prazek and Dathenar sought.

He knew Rance had been the killer in the camp. He had awaited her knife, and would have welcomed it. Instead, she had danced around him, until the anticipation left holes burning in his gut. And then he had been sent away, out into the wild plains of the south, as if there’d been no thought of his fleeing, running away from all that he was.

The women were now coupling, in the way that women did when together, each with her face in the other’s crotch. At least, he assumed that was a typical position, although he could not be certain. A few other times, fingers had been involved.

They would be at this for some time. Sighing, he looked away, drew off his satchel and crouched down, unclasping the flap. Hands upon horseflesh. A judgement of meat. No wonder they run with dogs, not horses. He drew out the makings of a meal and set to preparing it. ‘We are not far from the camp,’ he said.

As he expected, neither woman replied.

‘We’re not eating the horses. You two were supposed to ride with me, to deliver us quickly to the Hust camp. We are short of time.’

Hataras lifted her head, licked her lips and then said, ‘A ritual of cleansing, yes. Stains taken away. You ride, we run.’

Vastala rolled over and sat up. ‘The Ay now hunt. Mother will provide.’

Studying the two of them as they recovered, their flushed faces and glowing cheeks, the wetness of sex on their sloping, almost non-existent chins, he said, ‘This Mother you speak of, the one you cry out to when … when doing what you just did. She is your goddess?’

Both women laughed. Hataras climbed to her feet. ‘Womb of fire, the promise that devours.’

‘Child Spitter. Swollen Spring.’

‘Guardian of the Dreamer. False Mother.’

‘Deadly when spurned,’ Vastala said. ‘We appease to keep her claws sheathed. She is masked, is Mother, but the face of blood-kin is a lie. Azathanai.’

‘Azathanai,’ echoed Hataras, nodding. ‘She keeps the Dreamer asleep. The longer the sleep, the weaker we become. Soon, Dog-Runners will be no more. One dream ends. Another begins.’

‘Mother whispers of immortality,’ said Vastala, making a face. ‘A path out from the dream. Let her sleep, she says.’

‘We do not fear Mother,’ added Hataras, walking over to run a hand along a horse’s flank. ‘We fear only the Jaghut.’

Listar frowned. ‘The Jaghut? Why?’

‘They play with us. Like Azathanai, only more clumsy. They think us innocent-’

‘Children,’ Vastala cut in.

‘But look into our eyes, Punished Man. See our knowing.’

‘The Dreamer birthed us and we are content. Our lives are short.’

‘But fullest.’

‘We struggle to eat and stay warm.’

‘But love is never a stranger.’ Hataras stepped away from the horse and approached Listar. ‘Punished Man, will you wait with others? Or we give you ritual now? We end torment in soul.’

‘How, Bonecaster? How will you do such a thing, to any of us?’

Vastala settled down beside him. ‘Many dreams are forgotten upon awakening, yes?’

He glanced away from her appallingly open expression. ‘But not memories,’ he said. ‘They just rise up, like the sun. Each morning, after a moment’s bliss, they return. Like ghosts. Demons. They return, Vastala, with all the fangs and claws of the truth. We awaken to what’s real, what was and can’t be taken back.’

She reached out with a tanned, blunted hand and touched his cheek. ‘There is no real, Punished Man. Only dreams.’

‘It feels otherwise.’

‘There is fear in awakening,’ she replied, ‘even when the dream displeases. In the voice in your head, even as it cries out, begs to wake up, another voice warns you. You awaken to a world unknown. This is cause for fear.’

‘We need our guilt, Vastala Trembler. Without it, all conscience dies. Is that what you would do to me? To us? Take away our conscience? Our guilt?’

‘No,’ answered Hataras, who now crouched opposite him, her eyes bright and wet. ‘There is another path.’

‘What is it?’

‘Only what must be felt, in the heart of the ritual. Shall we ease you now?’

He shook his head and swiftly began packing up the leavings of his meal. ‘No. I am a Hust soldier now. I will stand with my comrades.’

‘Your fear speaks.’

He paused. ‘Fear? More like terror.’

‘If you are made to surrender the lie of your crime of murder,’ said Vastala, ‘you will face the crime of your innocence.’

‘For which,’ Hataras said, ‘you feel greater guilt than could any bloodied blade in your hand.’

‘She killed herself,’ Listar whispered, ‘out of spite. She arranged it to make it seem her death was by my hand.’ Shivers rippled through him, and he sank back down, bringing his hands to his face. ‘I don’t know what I did to earn that … but it must have been something. Something.’ Abyss below, something …

Their hands were upon him now, surprisingly soft and warm. They left heat wherever they touched.

‘Punished Man,’ said Hataras, ‘there was nothing.’

‘You can’t know that!’

‘Her ghost is chained. You drag it behind you. You have always done.’

‘This was what she wanted,’ said Vastala. ‘At first.’

‘It was madness, Punished Man. Her madness. A spirit broken, a dream lost in the mists.’

‘We will wait,’ said Vastala. ‘But for her, we cannot.’

‘Her dream is a nightmare, Punished Man. She begs like a child. She wants to go home.’

‘But no home waits for her. The hut where you lived – with all its rooms – still screams with her crime. To send her there is to send her to a prison, a pit, the very fate of your punishment – but an eternal one.’

‘No,’ he begged. ‘Don’t do that to her. I tell you – she had a reason! There must have been – something I did, or didn’t do!’

‘Be at ease, Punished Man,’ said Hataras. ‘We will make her a new home. A place of rest. Peace.’

‘And love.’

‘You will feel her from there. Feel her anew. Her ghost will touch you again, but with tender hands. As the dead owe to the living, no matter their state. The dead owe it, Punished Man, to salve your grief, and to take from you the grief you feel for yourself.’

He wept, while their hands slipped from him, and their voices fell into a cadence, making sounds that seemed less than words, yet truer somehow, as if they spoke the language of the souls.

After a time he thought he heard her then. His wife. The sounds of weeping to answer his own. He felt their shared grief washing back and forth, cool and impossibly bittersweet. The madness of long ago, the endless torment of uncertainty each time he stepped into a room where she waited, the dread of what might come the instant he looked into her wild, panicked eyes.

If there was magic in the world worthy of its power, this was surely it.

I must tell everyone. There is another kind of sorcery. Awake in the world, awake in our souls.

And her words on that last day, before he set out to place an order with Galast the cooper, for the casks they would need at the estate. ‘I have a surprise for you, beloved husband, for your return. Proof of my feelings for you. You will taste my love, Listar, when you come home. You will taste it, in ways unimagined. See how my love blesses you.’

And so he had, returning home filled with a new hope, and yet something trembled beneath the surface of his thoughts, a visceral fear. Hope, he now knew, was a vicious beast. Every thought a delusion, every imagined scene perfect in its resolution and yet utterly false; and when he found her, with the braided cord about her neck that she must have slipped over the bedroom door’s latch – in a house emptied of servants, who each later swore that they had been sent away by Listar’s express command – and when he comprehended the power of the will that kept tightening the cord while she sat against the door, only then did he understand the blessing of her love for him.

Illness, a mind bent, a soul broken, wherein every cruel impulse had slipped its leash. He knew now the horror behind her eyes, the fleeing child within who had nowhere to run.

He lowered his hands, wiped at his eyes, and looked to the two Bonecasters kneeling opposite him. So many undeserved gifts.

But the Dream will fade. The Dog-Runners will die out.

Abyss take us, that loss is beyond all recompense.

Something left him then. He did not know what it was, could not know, but its departure was like a sob, a relinquishing of unbearable pain. And in its absence, there was … nothing.

Faintly, as he sank to the ground, he heard one of the Bonecasters speak. ‘She makes the home ready. For her husband, for the day he joins her.’

‘It is well,’ the other replied. ‘But still, they make ugly huts.’

‘Let him sleep now – no, stop that, Vastala, leave his lovely black cock alone.’

‘This is my payment. I will have his seed.’

‘He does not give it freely.’

‘No, but I take it freely.’

‘You are such a slut, Vastala.’

‘We can keep him asleep. You can have him after me, when this cock recovers.’

‘He may be asleep, but it surely is awake. Don’t empty him, Vastala. I want my share. Don’t be greedy.’

‘I’m always greedy.’

‘Too greedy, then.’

He heard his wife laughing as a heavy, brawny pair of legs straddled him, as he was pushed inside, and a body began moving rhythmically against him.

‘It is dark enough,’ said someone, ‘when you keep your eyes closed.’

This was, Listar decided, the strangest dream, but one for which he had no complaint.

* * *

Commander Toras Redone had been riding beside him in silence since they’d broken camp that morning. By the day’s end they would reach the Hust encampment. Galar Baras studied the track ahead as it slipped between denuded, pockmarked hills, bending round slopes of tailings, the scoured flats where furnaces had once stood, along with sheds and ditches, all lining the old road to either side.

The day was cool, but he could feel the weather turning, as if a new season was rushing upon them. Word had come on the day they had left Henarald’s estate: Urusander’s Legion had departed Neret Sorr. They had begun their march on Kharkanas.

He listened to the horses’ hoofs strike the frozen ground, at times sharp as the strike of a ballpeen against raw rock. The sword at his hip murmured incessantly.

‘If you think I hate them, you would be wrong.’

Startled, he glanced across at her. She wore a heavy cloak of sable, the hood drawn up to hide her profile, and sat slumped heavily in the saddle. ‘Sir?’

She smiled. ‘Ah, back to the honorifics, then? No more thought of the sweat between us, as we grapple every night beneath the furs? Our breaths shared, out from me and into you, out from you and into me, our taste as one – could two people hold each other tighter? Oh, for a sorcery to merge our flesh. If I could, I would swallow you, Galar Baras, my body a mouth, my arms a forked tongue to wrap about you, to pull you in.’

‘I beg you, sir, no more of that.’ Your words torment me.

‘This day too bright? All things in stark detail, a focus so sharp as to cut the mind? No matter, come the night I will fold you in, yet again, like a lost child. I was speaking of Urusander’s Legion. And Hunn Raal, whom I should despise, but do not.’

He thought about that, and then shrugged. ‘He is truly of the Issgin line, sir, a betrayer, a poisoner – if not hate, then what?’

‘Yes, the Issgin line. Possessing a well-matched claim to the throne, only to lose the bloody struggle. By virtue of failure, they are now condemned, tarred, vilified as the quintessential villains. Do not let our perpetual reinvention of the past deceive you, captain.’

He shrugged. ‘Then is this pity that you feel?’

‘Consider well my warning. We can make no claim to righteous vengeance. These prisoners now wearing the Hust, they have no anger to mine, no ruinous rubble to crush down with fury. You may well seek to bleed down upon them all, and so stain them alike, but such a desire will fail, captain.’

He said nothing to that, as she had touched upon his own fear. There was no cause for this new Hust Legion. In manner, they are mercenaries who have already been paid, with all the suspect loyalty such an error in judgement entails.

‘Hunn Raal and his ilk seek stature and wealth,’ said Toras Redone. ‘A redistribution of power. The highborn of the Greater and Lesser Houses deem the table crowded enough. So, we now have a war.’

‘There is also the matter of Urusander, and the High Priestess Syntara-’

‘Temple squabbles, and worse yet, captain, some hoary remnant of misplaced notions on monarchy, when our queen has long since left us to become a goddess, making the whole debate a charade. But let them elevate Urusander into godhood, a Father Light for Mother Dark. Do you see the assumption yet?’

‘I’m afraid I do not, sir.’

‘It is this atavistic absurdity, this clinging to kings and queens who must be bound in matrimony, as the putative parents of Kurald Galain. Captain, listen to this drunken whore here, when she tells you that there can be a Father Light and a Mother Dark without the former having to jam his cock into the latter’s cunt. More to the point, a god and a goddess need not be married to rule us. Let her keep her lover. Let him fuck his scrolls. What of it?’

He stared at her, speechless.

She tilted her hood back, showed him her sallow, puffy face. The ebon hue was fading, like a failing of convictions. Her smile was broken. ‘But they’ll not listen to me, captain. It’s gone too far. The highborn will see Draconus taken down. The priestesses will see their victims wed. Hunn Raal will see the power of the nobles broken, and his own lackeys in their place.’

‘Sir, Lord Anomander-’

‘Is a man. Of honour and integrity. Mother Dark commands him to keep sheathed his sword. He thinks this a denial. A refusal of all that he is. He sees no other path, comprehends nothing of her meaning.’

‘Then, by the Abyss, Toras, someone should tell him! No! She should! Mother Dark!’

‘She has, from the arms of her lover.’

‘Too subtle!’

She laughed. ‘Too subtle by far, Galar Baras. Should have left this all to us women with lovers, yes? We are the ones who trampled the barriers, the sacred agreements, snapped the chains constraining our sordid appetites. We see outside the strictures – look at you, Galar Baras. We could ride to the very edge of the Hust camp, only to have me drag you from your saddle and fuck you blind, witnessed by all, and you could not stop me. Could you?’

‘There is virtue in being brazen, Toras? What of your husband?’

‘Yes, the humiliation of being so publicly cuckolded, and there we lay bare the heart of everything.’

‘How?’

She drew her hood up again, reaching down for her flask, from which she drank, long and deeply, before saying, ‘Men. It’s all about saving face. Every argument, every duel, every battle, every war. You would level a world to keep from being made to look a fool. And so you shall.’

‘I will speak to Lord Anomander. Your solution is simple yet elegant. Indeed, as you say, it is wholly natural. Urusander seeks no wife. Mother Dark seeks no husband, yet she has not once spoken against the notion of a god at her side. Lord Anomander will realize this.’

‘They’ll not let him.’

‘Sir?’

‘He is trapped. Utterly, irrevocably trapped. Mind you, so is Urusander. Chained and caged. The holders of the keys, darling, are the priestesses, and Hunn Raal. And, of course, the highborn. No,’ she said, after another mouthful from the flask, ‘there will be a battle. Many people must die – do you not feel it, captain? This clawing thirst?’

‘I feel, commander, fates converging, a maelstrom of deaths, all unnecessary, all a terrible waste.’

She grunted. ‘Better a whore on the throne. Or behind it.’

Her comment left him bemused, and he said nothing as he pondered its meaning.

They rode out from the knot of hills, and saw before them the Hust encampment. As they lifted their mounts into a canter, and drew closer to the picket line, Galar Baras glanced across at Toras Redone, to see her face turned towards him.

She laughed.

* * *

Wareth sat in his tent, staring at the armour lying on a carpet opposite him, the blood hue of the iron links, the overlapped coin-shaped scales protecting the leather straps, the studded rivets sheathing the gauntlets. He looked upon the helm, flared at the neck, with a camail of chain depending from just inside the rim, and the broad cheek-guards flanking the nasal spine. For all the artistry inherent in the design, there were no elaborations, no creative touches, not a single swirl or inset pattern. Like the swords, the armour was plain, purely functional. It promised the utilitarian application of prowess in the midst of violence. There was something both beautiful and terrible in this.

And yet, none of it was for him. The trappings rode him uneasily, no matter how tightly he fit the straps, or cinched the buckles. There needed to be solid flesh beneath the chain, not this shying unease that now seemed to plague him, as if every muscle upon his bent frame had become uncertain. Shivering despite the brazier, he sat with his hands together, fingers knotted.

Cursed weapons and the like belonged in fairy tales, along with magical rings and staves that sprouted fire. In each, a wish was fulfilled only for a price to be paid, the wagers of life reduced to a simplistic morality tale delivered to children. But here, in this world, even sorcery defied the conventions of wishes made real, unearned power suddenly within reach, and none of these gifts settled easily into the reality he had made for himself.

Too many of the prisoners had seen it differently. They now strutted. They laughed with the blades, hummed in time with the keening links of chain. They took to the marching in serried ranks, the wheels in formation, the chorus of weapons drawn in unison. Their crimes dwindled behind them, their punishments – whether felt deserved or otherwise – had been magically transformed.

And yet.

And yet. It all remains a game to them. They sneer behind the backs of every officer. At night, gathered round their squad fires, they spit sizzling contempt into the flames, telling each other stories of looting, pillage and all the helpless victims to their every desire.

We are an army of monsters. Thugs. Mother help us should we ever win a battle.

Both Prazek and Dathenar had lost something in the days since their arrival, as if their equanimity was under siege by all that they witnessed, and all that they feared was still to come.

Wareth pitied the return of Galar Baras, and the thought of Commander Toras Redone seeing for herself the vicious travesty of her legion filled him with shame.

I warned them. This was a mistake. Corruption was inevitable. The Hust Legion should have been left dead, every sword and every hauberk of chain buried with the rotting flesh in the barrows.

Should they prevail against Urusander, should they crush this uprising, the Hust Legion would stand alone, unmatched on the field. It would turn on the highborn and their rich estates. It would turn on Kharkanas itself.

We will break this world. I warned them, and now it’s too late. The beast is made, its thousand limbs shaken loose, its multitude of eyes blinking open, each ablaze with avarice and lust.

Not even Prazek and Dathenar can hope to hold these reins. Nor Galar nor Toras Redone. Nor Faror Hend, nor any of us who once lived in the pits. We’re rolling to our feet, bristling and bold, and this sneer – still hiding in the shadows – will soon turn to a snarl.

An unexpected call to muster had sounded. He stared at his armour, and then, with trembling hands, he reached for it.

* * *

Faror Hend had been standing on the edge of the camp, facing east, when the harsh tone of the bell reached her. She had been waiting for something to appear on the horizon. A mounted figure, gaunt atop a weary horse, a man of grey and black, or perhaps revealing the bleached skin of one blessed by another god. She had thought to remain where she was as that rider approached, as if pinned to the frozen earth, spikes driven through her boots. She wondered at the words they might exchange, when at last he drew up before her.

Less than a legend, yet more than a careless promise of a future to be shared between them. She imagined him drawing closer, revealing ever more detail, a fleshless face, the hard angles of bone beneath stretched skin, his long iron-grey hair hanging limp from a peeling pate. And in the sockets where eyes belonged, only darkness.

‘I’ve come for what was promised.’

She nodded but said nothing as he continued.

‘Youth was lost to me. I will now have it back.’ Raising a skeletal hand. ‘Here, to hold.’

‘Yes, Lord Tulas, I understand. It was all I was ever meant to be, all I was made for. You name my purpose, sir.’

‘I have no power to steal your youth, nor would I. Rather, I would see you age. This, and this alone, is what I seek.’

‘Sir, will I never awaken your desire?’

‘You have already. In my keep there is a throne, elevated to embrace my lifeless presence. There I will sit, to witness the years take you. Such are the appetites of old men. My desire is appeased, my lust, coiled as a serpent, dreams of heat and is content in its torpor.’

‘Kagamandra Tulas, I will be your wife.’

‘You will be my regret.’

She frowned. ‘And this is all? There can be … nothing else?’

‘You speak of children,’ he replied.

‘Yes.’

‘Have as many as you like. I see you having no shortage of lovers.’

‘I see.’

‘You see before you the future’s face, Faror Hend.’

She shrugged. ‘That visage belongs to all of us, milord. Your death’s mask. The decay. The husk. You do not frighten me.’

‘I’ll never find you,’ he said, as he began to fade before her eyes.

‘No, we ride soon to a battle. I do not expect to survive it.’

‘Then … farewell, my darling. Think of me, and all that we could have had …’

Blinking, she squinted at the horizon, growing darker with each passing moment. Unbroken the line. No distant rider. Not yet.

Kagamandra Tulas, I impugn you with disservice. I raise you as a spectre of my own creation. This youthful visage that you see hides a welter of evil. Spinnock saw as much, and so he rejected me. If you ride now, Lord Tulas, better you arrive too late.

There was no fighting these despondent notions, these conjurings of an imagination driven to despair. The army at her back terrified her, and she found herself desiring only its annihilation. Even the charms of the captains could not hold this fraying leash for much longer. The swords whispered promises of murder, and their wielders did but lick their lips.

They were condemned, you see. Rejected by us all and cast down into the pits. Sentenced to labour in tunnels of unlit rock, where even thoughts could not escape to the light. Wareth comprehends. Even in Rebble’s eyes there is a glint of fear. And thrice since Rance has tried to take her own life. So now she sits in her tent, a guard standing over her, and will not speak.

Castegan has taken to the pipe, lost in his opiate dreams. The entire command structure totters, only moments from utter collapse.

The camp was stirring behind her, in answer to the call to muster. She heard the laughter of swords half-drawn, the rising atonal song of the chain hauberks and the keening cacophony of helms being readied.

Yes, war will deafen us all. This seems fitting enough, I suppose.

Sighing, she turned about and made her way into the camp, and to her tent, where awaited both weapon and armour.

I was a Warden. I did not ask for this.

They said others were coming. Refugees from the winter fort. But none have arrived. I remain alone. They were wise to avoid this place, this fate. Would that I could flee and join them now, wherever they may be.

Instead, she walked to her tent.

* * *

Seltin Ryggandas, the quartermaster, had rushed into the command tent with the news. Galar Baras was returning with Commander Toras Redone. After dismissing the man, Prazek collected up his gauntlets and then paused, looking down at Dathenar. His companion was sprawled in the padded chair that seemed more suited to an estate, flanking a fire, with a dog lying asleep at its foot. Where it had come from, none knew.

‘Despondent in this surrender of our brief elevation, now we must scan left and right, seeking another bridge to patrol.’

‘We yield in the manner of the genuflected,’ Dathenar replied. ‘Upon hands and knees, posterior raised to take the boot.’

‘Boot, or riding crop. ’Tis rumoured she has rough appetites.’

‘Then I’ll wince in ecstasy.’

‘Rise then, my friend, fore and aft, and let us make a stand of our surrender, as befits the discarded.’

Sighing, Dathenar climbed to his feet. ‘We hand over a belligerent beast, our knuckles scraped and raw, and must compose our features with earnest innocence.’ He collected up his cloak and fastened the clasp high on his left breast. ‘Evince no hint of relief, as three thousand pairs of eyes will be fixed upon us, give or take.’

‘A one-eyed man among the ranks.’

‘A women whose left wanders.’

‘While the right impugns.’

‘Jaded eye.’

‘Jaundiced eye, lowered eye, squinting eye, ego’s eye, an I in the eye other than thine own, that we should meet, to gauge the distance between us, these gulfs too treacherous to cross, the self an island among islets, the chain relegated to maps.’ Prazek paused, and then sighed. ‘An eye to draw the straightest line, or rounded in wondrous regard, unto itself.’

‘They shall stare at us,’ Dathenar said, nodding.

‘The weight of such knowing offends me,’ Prazek replied. He paused at the tent’s doorway. ‘Presumably, Galar Baras has prepared her. Still, these new soldiers know her by name alone, an utterance swaddled in reluctance. A broken woman, no less. How fragile her approach, how timorous her comportment.’

‘As you say,’ Dathenar agreed. ‘Then gird yourself once more, friend, as we place ourselves between the archer and the arrow butt. Paint the placid façade, targeted upon your face-’

‘Attain the aplomb, the swaggering ease of confidence.’

‘Unruffled the surface of our equanimity.’

‘Pellucid the shallows.’

‘Impenetrable the depths.’

‘We must be moon-drawn, the steady advance of an ocean’s familiar broach.’

Dathenar nodded and approached the tent flap. ‘Time, then, to lap her boots.’

They exited the tent, looked out upon the companies already forming up in a rising moan of armour and the chittering of scabbarded swords. The sun was nearing zenith, lending a hint of warmth, and where snow lingered on the plain, amidst tangled stretches of yellow grass, it made deflated dunes.

As the ranks assembled to either side of the camp’s central parade ground, two riders appeared at the far end.

Side by side, Prazek and Dathenar set out to meet them.

The time for conversation had passed, barring the swords and their almost nervous muttering, and so neither captain spoke as they crossed the ground.

Near the far end, Galar Baras and Toras Redone reined in, and then slowly dismounted in time to greet Prazek and Dathenar, who arrived and saluted the commander.

She was not quite sober as she regarded the two captains, her glassy eyes amused, her expression ironic. ‘Anomander’s lieutenants. Or, rather, captains now, of the Hust Legion. Silchas Ruin empties his brother’s martial treasury.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘Report, then, on the readiness of these soldiers.’

Dathenar cleared his throat. ‘Commander, most welcome. We invite you to inspect the new recruits.’

‘Recruits.’ She seemed to chew on the word for a moment, and then glanced at Galar Baras. ‘Captain, I understand that none of these … recruits are in fact volunteers.’

‘You could say that,’ Galar replied. ‘The pits were closed-’

‘But their punishment has not ended, with forgiveness bargained and a deal struck. Rather, it’s been extended, and in place of hammers and picks, they now wield swords.’

Galar Baras nodded.

She faced Dathenar again. ‘Which are you?’

‘The other is Prazek, sir. We are less interchangeable than it might at first seem.’

‘Spoken true,’ Prazek added. ‘I am less inclined to the disingenuous.’

‘Yet more to pontification,’ Dathenar added.

Prazek resumed. ‘Are these soldiers ready, you ask, sir?’ He scratched at his beard and pondered for a moment, and then said, ‘Readiness is a curious notion. Ready for what, precisely? An argument? Assuredly. Betrayal? Possibly. Courage? Of a sort. A battle? Oh, I should think so.’

She studied him for a moment. ‘Less disingenuous, you said.’

‘I was being-’

‘I gathered that,’ she snapped. ‘Your opinion, Dathenar?’

‘Dilemmas regard us upon all sides, commander. Officers culled from the least objectionable among them still reveal a host of flaws. Surviving soldiers of the old legion vacillate between horror and shame. Swords defy their wielders in refusing to duel, leaving them fisticuffs and mundane knives. Armour howls in the night at the scamper of a mouse. These recruits step in time, however, and wheel in a fashion, and close shields, and when we speak of the coming clash, why, something dances in their eyes.’

‘Discipline?’

‘Poor.’

‘Loyalty to the soldier to either side?’

‘Unlikely.’

‘That said,’ Prazek opined, ‘they are likely to strike fear in the heart of their enemies.’

‘Hust iron will do that.’

‘Indeed, sir. But more so the evident inability of their officers to control their soldiers.’

‘Then you two have failed.’

‘So it seems, sir. Will you now cast us out? Demote us? Send us into the ranks, cowed as curs under boot?’

‘Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

Prazek smiled.

Toras Redone paused and then said, ‘Join me, all of you, and let us walk this gauntlet. We will speak more in the command tent, where I can have a drink, and you two can tell me, in your scattered manner, how you plan to fix this.’

‘Sir?’ Dathenar asked. ‘Command of the Hust Legion is now yours, surely. Level your orders upon us, and we will do all that you ask.’

‘Level of head, smoothly planed, as it were,’ Prazek added.

Toras Redone snorted. ‘I command soldiers, not savages. Galar Baras, I should have heeded your warnings. They would have us march in aid of Kharkanas and Mother Dark? Abyss below, I see a weasel in a rabbit’s den.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Dathenar, ‘in a supporting role …’

She looked at him, but his expression remained unchanged, stolid and serious.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Try as you might, you’ll not make me laugh.’

‘Yes sir.’

Prazek gestured. ‘Commander, would you be so kind as to begin the inspection?’

* * *

Wareth stood in front of his company. He had watched, from the corner of his eye, the extended conversation between the three captains and their commander. If meant to test the fortitude of this newfound discipline, it would have little effect either way – this was not an instance of soldiery quavering beneath the stentorian, icy regard of superior officers. Rather, it was the gimlet regard of criminals, murderers one and all, fixed brazen and defiant upon those who presumed to command them.

At last, however, Toras Redone set out to walk the arrayed ranks, and where she passed, the Hust iron lifted a high keening, rippling with her passage. Some among the front lines flinched at the sound. Others grinned, and then studied the commander with renewed attention.

She suffered their insolence, each step measured in the manner of someone who knew how to control their inebriation.

Her pace did not change until she came opposite Wareth, where she halted and faced him. ‘Ah, my mercy.’

He met her eyes. ‘Sir.’

‘Something you would say?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Out with it, then.’

‘Welcome back, sir.’

Oddly, his words seemed to rattle her. After a moment, she said, ‘Should I offer the same to you, Wareth?’

‘I am unchanged, sir.’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘it seems we have something in common.’

Then she had moved on, and Wareth was left, alone once more in front of his troops. The sword at his hip was shivering inside the scabbard, as if to mock his cowardice, and behind him someone muttered something that elicited low laughter, until a snarl from Rebble silenced everyone.

Now you see for yourself, Toras Redone. But then, perhaps you are right for this. I could smell the alcohol fresh on your breath, see the settled wastage in your face bespeaking your determination. Abyss knows, your marriage to Calat Hustain must be a disaster, to have led you to this state.

But sometimes not moving is the greatest act of cowardice one can find. Safe in the hole, the cramped walls, the sodden womb of staying right where you are.

Galar, she will do, when it comes to leading us all into ruination. Did you know this?

* * *

When the inspection was done and the soldiers had been dismissed, Faror Hend joined the other officers in assembling within the command tent. Present were Wareth, Rance, and the other criminals who had been promoted, along with the quartermaster, Castegan and now Galar Baras. Flanked by Prazek and Dathenar, Commander Toras Redone had been invited to sit in the worn but plush chair, into which she sank, cradling a jug of wine.

‘Is this everyone? Good. I haven’t got much to say. None of us asked for this.’ She paused to drink down two quick mouthfuls. ‘I trust you hold no delusions about me. The legion I once commanded is gone. In its place, a nightmare waiting to happen. Criminals?’ She gestured lazily at Wareth and the others. ‘I speak plain, but none of you are officers, barring the titles you’ve been given.’ Her gaze levelled on Wareth. ‘Abyss take us, we have a coward in our midst – oh, he holds the proper pose, but it seems that is all any of us has. A pose. Will that be enough to disabuse Hunn Raal’s ambitions? Enough to make Urusander’s Legion recoil? I doubt it. Mother help Lord Anomander. Mother help Kharkanas.’

There was silence, and then, reluctantly, Faror Hend cleared her throat and said, ‘Commander.’

Toras Redone settled her bleary eyes upon her. ‘Oh yes, the lost Warden. You have something to say?’

‘Yes sir. What the fuck is this?’

Toras Redone blinked.

‘If we’re only here to pity ourselves, we could have gone back to our tents and done it there, as we’ve pretty much been doing ever since we got here. Shall we all get drunk with you now, sir? Not yet acquired our quota of wallowing?’

‘This one,’ said Toras Redone, ‘has spine. No wonder she seems so out of place.’

‘Fine,’ she replied. ‘I’m happy to leave at your convenience.’

‘Commander,’ said Dathenar, ‘the officers assembled here have done exceptionally well under the circumstances.’

Toras Redone affected an exaggerated frown. ‘You chastise me, Dathenar?’

‘I am dismayed by your quick dismissal. The state of this legion was, until your arrival, the responsibility of myself and Prazek. Castigate us as it please you, but as to the matter of those officers under us, ignorance is an unworthy display.’

Toras Redone snorted. ‘And on the field of battle, who among you here can rally his or her soldiers? A buckling company? A handful of squads holding the centre of a line? Who here can make a fist of every command? Dathenar, you and Prazek cannot be everywhere. Nor can Galar Baras.’ She pointed a finger at Rance. ‘You, sergeant. Tell me, who among your soldiers will follow you?’

‘None, sir,’ Rance replied. ‘They follow no one.’

Castegan spoke up. ‘Commander, I did warn Galar Baras against this madness. True, it was all by command of Silchas Ruin, but Galar could have refused it, and done so with his honour intact. Silchas is not Anomander, after all.’

Toras Redone slid her gaze across to him. ‘Ah, dear old Castegan. I imagine your optimism overwhelmed all and sundry. Galar Baras maintained his honour by following orders. Whatever misgivings he held he kept to himself. But I have been warned – a new sorcery afflicts the Hust iron.’ She drank again, three long swallows, and then settled back further in the chair. ‘They judge us,’ she said in a low tone. ‘Each sword. And that dreadful armour. Judgement. Condemnation. Iron has no respect for flesh. It never did. But these blades, they now thirst.’ Abruptly, she shook herself. ‘Prazek, prepare this legion to march. We leave tomorrow. Pray Lord Anomander finds his way home. Failing that, Silchas Ruin can take command of what he has wrought.’

Faror Hend said, ‘Then I will take my leave-’

‘No you won’t,’ cut in Toras Redone. ‘You, I want at my side, if only to prop me up.’

‘Find someone else.’

‘None but you, lieutenant. Now, all but Galar Baras and Prazek and Dathenar, out. You have work to do. Warden, see that my wagon is well stocked.’

Faror Hend stared down at the commander for a moment longer, then saluted and departed the tent.

Outside, she found a few of the others milling. Wareth met her eyes and smiled. ‘Well played, Faror.’

‘We waited for this? Abyss take us.’

‘As it will,’ Wareth replied, glancing across at Rance, and then at the two guards standing nearby, waiting to escort the woman back to her tent. After a moment, he offered Faror Hend a smile. ‘We assemble. Face the enemy. Give the orders, and then see what happens.’

‘She was unduly harsh on you,’ Faror said.

Wareth shrugged. ‘Not unexpected. Her mercy was never meant to absolve me, nor mitigate her contempt. We were fighting a war, after all.’

Rance spoke to Wareth. ‘You must tell her. About me.’

‘I leave that to Prazek and Dathenar.’

‘The commander will decide the right thing to do,’ Rance said. ‘I welcome the end to this.’

Frowning, Wareth said, ‘Has it not occurred to you, Rance, that there may not be time … to deal with you? She wants us on the march tomorrow-’

‘What?’ Rance’s face filled with dismay.

Faror Hend grunted and then shook her head. ‘Expect two more days, at least, before we are ready.’

‘Still,’ said Wareth, ‘too little time.’

Faror Hend stepped close to Rance. ‘An end to things … well, yes, Rance, I can see how you might long for that. But what if dying doesn’t end anything?’

At that, Rance recoiled. After a moment, in which terror twisted her face, she spun round and rushed away. Her two guards were startled by her haste, and hurried to catch up.

‘You seeded a cruel thought, Faror Hend.’

‘My patience is fraying. In any case, in this mood I should speak with no one else for the rest of this day. After all,’ she added bitterly, ‘I have to see a wagon stocked with wine.’

‘She never liked Castegan,’ Wareth said. ‘Sobriety makes for a cautious soul. She was never one for being cautious.’

Faror Hend studied Wareth for a moment, and then, shrugging, she set off.

* * *

Galar Baras watched his commander – his lover – getting drunk. Prazek had taken a seat at the map table, where he seemed to be studying the supply report Seltin Ryggandas had left there before departing. Dathenar paced near the tent flap, as if silently debating something, a frown marring his brow.

‘I should have left this to you, Galar,’ Toras Redone said, her words thick and low. ‘But that cell made me bored. You’d think I’d welcome such solitude, just me and my … wine. And now, well, look at us. If the corpses had been raised up, by swords refusing death itself, I would have led them. Vengeance was a fire I could have stoked, fury a storm I would have ridden. We would have caught Hunn Raal unawares, and descended upon Neret Sorr. An army of undead, silent but for their screaming weapons, to deliver righteous slaughter.’ She lifted the jug, sloshed it to gauge how much was left, and then drained it. When done, she let the jug fall to the floor beside the chair, loosed a heavy sigh, and continued, ‘But the dead don’t care. Neither lust nor vengeance stirs their motionless limbs. No indignant rage flashes in their lifeless eyes. I walked among them, and with each body I stepped over, I felt something more taken away from me. Some … essence. Dathenar, bring me another jug – there, against the back wall. Excellent, a man who knows to follow orders. We’ll need that.’

Prazek looked over from where he sat by the table. ‘And so each death surrenders its name, choosing but one, whispered again and again, from countless pale lips. And that name is Loss, and to utter it is to feel it. Diminished, death by death, this essence of what we once were.’

Dathenar stood near her, watching as she tugged free the jug’s stopper. Then he said, ‘Fallen friends cease to ask how you fare, cease to answer in kind. They may retreat from your thoughts, but never quite far enough. If in our minds we walk as one among many, in the midst of families knotted by blood and by choice, and witness, as years pass, the crowd grow ever smaller, then we come to comprehend – as we must – a day when we walk alone, abandoned by all.’

‘Or contemplate another kind of abandonment,’ Prazek said, nodding, ‘when it is we who must leave the others. A last step comes to us all. Regret and sorrow will ride the final breaths of each of us, moments of pity perhaps for those who must remain, those who must take another step, and then another, trailed by none but ghosts.’

‘They were my friends,’ said Toras Redone in a ragged whisper. ‘One and all. My family.’

‘You are not entirely alone,’ Galar Baras pointed out.

She smiled, but her eyes remained fixed on the dry earthen floor. ‘I walk no reasonable path. The fewer that remain, the more easily we find ourselves lost.’ She drank again. ‘But this womb is red and sweet. It bears the colour of blood, but is quick to lose its warmth. It enlivens the mind, in the instant before it dulls every thought. It licks the cunt, only to take all feeling away. For all that, I am eager for the insensibility, so easily mistaken for lust.’

‘Yet you berated Wareth for his cowardice,’ said Dathenar.

She scowled. ‘No wonder Silchas sent you packing.’

Prazek spoke. ‘We have stood guard upon many a bridge, Dathenar and me. Lofty our presumption of stout diligence, our capacity to fend either approach.’

‘But the river runs past,’ Dathenar said, ‘with mocking indifference. Such is the fate of those who guard the civil, this span of bold traverse upon which peasants and kings will walk, each in their time. Stand in vigil, even as the stone and mortar rots beneath our boots. You would share pity before death’s distant bell? Be on with it then, commander. The river’s surface ripples with black and silver, a commingling of despair and hope.’

‘And what lies beneath that surface, alas, is anything but clear.’

Galar Baras stared at the two men, one to the other, and then back again as each spoke. Their voices possessed a cadence. Their words carried him frail as a leaf upon a stream. Glancing down, he saw desolation in his lover’s eyes.

‘Pity,’ she finally said, as if tasting the word yet again. ‘It suffices. But I keep my tears in a jug. You’ll see me astride my mount on the day of battle. I will not shy from that fate.’

‘We have spoken nothing of fate,’ Prazek said.

‘By its utterance the word invites,’ Dathenar observed.

‘Surrender,’ said Prazek, ‘by another name.’

‘Yet it awaits, a promise to the future, in which all power is yielded. To swim or drown beneath a reckless sky.’

‘I’ll order the advance when such is required of me,’ said Toras Redone. But her red eyes were glazed, her lips wet. ‘You three will command a thousand each. You will array your eight cohorts into a flattened wedge and march to close. I expect we’ll hold a flank-’

‘I will advise Lord Anomander that we take the centre,’ said Prazek.

She lifted her gaze with an effort, studied him. ‘Why?’

‘Should our side prevail, sir, it may be necessary for our flanking allies to turn on us.’

Toras Redone let her head tilt forward again, until she was peering at the jug on her lap, or her hands that held it as if it was a baby. ‘Now there is a fate unanticipated – forgive me my addled mind. Of course we take the centre, as we will be the wild beast with blood in its mouth. Cut-throats and thugs, sadists and murderers, our iron shrieking its own thirst. None of you can rein that in, can you?’

‘It’s not likely,’ said Dathenar, resuming his pacing.

‘Would that Hunn Raal returned to us,’ she then said, ‘with yet more wagons loaded with fatal casks. We could make husks of the armour, again, and take every hand from every sword. And,’ she lifted the jug and kissed its broad mouth, ‘begin anew.’

Galar Baras wanted to weep. Instead, he said, ‘Some other discarded or neglected segment of the population … but none comes to mind, alas.’

Prazek rose as if bidden by some unseen signal from his friend, who moved to draw back the tent flap, and as he stepped into the dull light beyond he said, ‘Well, there’re always children, though the armour might need refitting.’

The two men departed.

Toras Redone coughed, and then asked, ‘Did I dismiss them?’

In every way imaginable, sir. ‘I would depart too, sir, to oversee the preparations of my cohorts.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘as I am too far gone to even fuck right now.’

Without your will or your leave, Toras, there is nothing I could find to make love to. It may seem a fragile agreement, with you sodden most of the time, but I will hold to it nonetheless.

He waited a moment longer, if she would speak again, but then saw that her eyes had closed, her breaths now slow and deep.

The commander cannot see you now, as she communes with her jug of tears, with not a drop spilled to the world.

* * *

‘The ways of the Tiste,’ muttered Hataras Raze, her level blue gaze fixed upon the encampment ahead. ‘They scurry like ants upon a kicked nest. Each one a child to the world.’

‘Soldiers the worst,’ said Vastala Trembler, who now walked holding Listar’s left hand, while he gripped the lead for the horses with his right. The feel of her warm palm against his own was strangely miraculous, a gift undeserved, and he still did not know what to make of it. Earlier in the day, it had been Hataras walking close at his side, her fingers brushing his forearm on occasion, or resting on his hip. There seemed to be few barriers in the sensibilities of the Dog-Runners.

His eyes were not as sharp as theirs and it was a few moments before he made out the bustle of activity in the camp ahead. ‘They’re preparing to march,’ he said. ‘We’re just in time.’ He glanced at Vastala. ‘What did you mean, soldiers were the worst?’

‘Our children play the hunt. To learn the ways. But once the first blood is on their hands, they stop play. They meet the eyes of the hunt as adults, not children.’

‘Cruel necessity,’ said Hataras, nodding. ‘To give thanks to the spirit of the slain beast seeks to silence the terrible guilt within the hunter.’

Listar nodded. ‘I have heard of such practices. Among the Deniers.’

Vastala grunted. ‘Such gratitude is real,’ she said, ‘but if the hunter remains a child inside, the guilt is false. Only a hunter who is grown to an adult inside can understand the burden of such guilt. And knows that no animal spirit is appeased by its slayer’s gratitude.’

Hataras stepped ahead to twist round and study Listar as they walked. ‘A wolf drags you down, Punished Man, and begins to feed on you before your last breath. Its tail wags in gratitude. Tell me, are you appeased? Do you forgive with your last breath? Do you now see,’ she continued, ‘the delusion of the hunter?’

‘But soldiers-’

Vastala’s hand tightened its grip. ‘Soldiers! They blunt their guilt for every life taken. Their souls bear desperate shields, deflecting every threat away from themselves and towards their leader, king, queen, god or goddess. The one who demands of them the spilling of blood. In defence. Or conquest. Or punishment.’

‘Or disbelief,’ added Hataras. ‘Death to the faithless for the misguided Deniers.’

‘Children inside,’ Vastala said dismissively. ‘Guilt a lie. Wrongness made righteous. Lies to the self, lies to all others, lies to the god worshipped, lies to the children to come. Soldiers play, in the name of goddess or god, king or queen. In the name of generations to come. In the name of all but the true name.’

Hataras gestured ahead. ‘The child self. Cruel without necessity. Cruelty that tastes of pleasure. Such exists among hunters whom we have failed. Such exists among soldiers.’

They were drawing closer. Listar prised his hand loose from Vastala’s grip, felt the cold bite of its absence. ‘And criminals,’ he muttered under his breath.

‘So,’ said Hataras, ‘to the ritual. Dog-Runners do not abide adults who stay children inside. We force truths upon them. To draw aside the veil, this is what we will do.’

‘I told you of the woman, Rance.’

‘Yes, Punished Man. We will examine her.’

‘Be warned,’ interjected Vastala, ‘some things we cannot heal. Some things need to be cut away. Sometimes the one lives, sometimes it dies.’

‘Our captains wish you to begin with her,’ said Listar. ‘And they wish your ritual to be witnessed by all in the camp.’

Vastala smiled. ‘We are to perform. Good. Dog-Runners not shy.’

‘Indeed,’ Listar replied, recalling the night just past.

Vastala drew close to him again and peered into his face, and then she nodded. ‘Hataras, you spoke true. Our children will bear the tilt of his eyes. Our children will carry within them the promise of a life beyond the fate of the Dog-Runners. So. It is an even exchange.’

The notion that he had planted the seeds of children in these two women made Listar flinch. He forced his thoughts away, telling himself that such things could not yet be known, and that their words of payment – for the ritual to come – could not be weighed in flesh and blood.

Ahead, soldiers stationed at the pickets had seen them, and while one set off to deliver the news, others began gathering from the camp, drawn out to the defensive line by curiosity, or, perhaps, boredom.

‘I think,’ said Listar, ‘the secret’s out.’

‘No Azathanai hide in yonder camp,’ said Hataras. ‘Good. They are obsessed with secrets.’

Listar frowned at her. ‘You can sense their presence?’

Both women nodded. ‘We have learned this talent,’ said Vastala.

‘By tasting the fires of the hearth, the breath of smoke.’

‘By lapping the valley between Mother’s legs.’

‘Tellanas,’ Hataras said, nodding again. ‘Sorcery is the snake eating its own tail. It looks upon itself and in looking it devours, and in devouring, it grows. So the magic attends an endless feast. Our goddess Mother is trapped in a circle of herself. But we Bonecasters, we dance.’

For all their bluntness, these two women often confounded Listar. He had no understanding of this magic of which they spoke. To him, the Azathanai were half-legendary figures, not quite obscure enough for him to disbelieve in their existence, yet vague enough in details to lend him scepticism regarding their exploits. They straddled a line of veracity, and until tales of the one named T’riss, and her curses uttered in the Citadel of Kharkanas, reached Listar, he had given little thought to the Azathanai. Builders. Gift givers.

And, it now seems, meddlers.

‘If they would be gods,’ he now said, as the guards ahead waved them forward, ‘why not reveal such? Why hide their power?’

‘Worship is vulnerability,’ replied Hataras. ‘See how we dance around Mother? We are her weakness, even as she is ours.’

‘Worse yet,’ added Vastala, ‘they too are children inside. Players of games.’

Listar squinted, seeing Wareth and Rebble now, the two men pushing their way through the small crowd awaiting them. It is strange, to call these two my friends. And yet, they are. The coward and the bully. But I wonder, how much courage does it take to live with your fear? And how vast is Rebble’s heart, to cast so kind an eye upon those of us who are weak? We too readily judge and then dismiss.

But I think it is not Rance who should fear most what is to come. It is Wareth.

* * *

‘Listar looks different,’ said Rebble, tugging at his fingers to make the knuckles pop. ‘Younger.’

Wareth nodded. Or, perhaps, no longer so old. ‘Then they may have worked on him already,’ he said.

Rebble grunted. ‘By how they hover around him, I’d say there was truth in your words, Wareth. Worked on him, hah.’

‘I meant the ritual.’

‘I meant sex.’

‘Yes, well. I suppose word’s already reached Prazek and Dathenar, but why don’t you make sure, and see that Rance is escorted into the centre of the parade ground. That’s how they want this to proceed.’

‘Assuming those witches will do as asked.’ Rebble paused. ‘Whatever that is, and damned if I have a clue.’

‘Nor I, to be honest. As for these Bonecasters agreeing to it, well, they’re here, aren’t they?’

Grunting, Rebble stepped forward. ‘Listar! Welcome back! Bring ’em in to the middle of the parade ground.’ Then he turned about, grinned enigmatically at Wareth, and set off back into the camp.

Wareth studied the two Dog-Runners. For all their blunt, stolid forms, there was a sensuality about them, and in their manner of moving, and their gestures, he wondered if they were sisters. Still, they seem young to be powerful witches.

Listar handed the reins of the trailing horses to a nearby soldier and then walked up to Wareth. For a moment, it seemed that the man contemplated closing with an embrace, but at the last instant he halted, and nodded awkwardly. ‘Lieutenant.’ He glanced to one of the Bonecasters who now moved past him to stare up into Wareth’s eyes. ‘Ah, this is Hataras Raze. And here, Vastala Trembler. Bonecasters of the Logros clan of the Dog-Runners.’

Hataras reached out and rested one thick, calloused forefinger against Wareth’s chest. ‘This one, the coward?’

‘So he calls himself,’ Listar replied.

She pushed Wareth back a step with that stiff finger, and then, moving past, said, ‘Bah. We are all cowards, until we are not. Now, where is the tormented woman?’

‘Take your pick,’ a feminine voice offered from the crowd.

Hataras grinned. ‘Good!’

Another woman spoke, ‘You here to kill all the men?’

Vastala replied, ‘In a way, yes!’

Listar scowled, and then turned to Vastala. ‘Please, no more of Dog-Runner humour. Come along, we’re to head to the centre of the camp.’

‘Have the soldiers encircle us there,’ Hataras said, continuing on.

‘I think that is the plan,’ Listar replied, his gaze now searching Wareth with some confusion.

But Wareth was unable to respond. We are all cowards, until we are not. The words thundered through him, as did the easy dismissal with which she had uttered them. He wanted to turn, to set off after Hataras Raze, to demand more from her. Do you offer me hope? A rebirth? If cowardice only before now, then when and how its end? What side of me still hides? Where, in myself, have I not already crawled, or cowered, or searched?

Do not offer me such words! Do not leave me with them, damn you!

The crowd had parted, and closed in again to form an informal escort as the Bonecasters made their way into the camp, Listar lingering between them and Wareth.

‘Sir?’

‘C-can they do this, Listar?’

After a long moment, Listar nodded, and said, ‘Mother help us all.’

* * *

Galar Baras scowled at Prazek, and then Dathenar. ‘You are both addled,’ he said. The three of them stood just outside the command tent. A moment later he waved away the soldier who’d delivered the news of Listar’s return. Stepping close to Prazek, he said, ‘This is madness. We are Tiste Andii. Children of Mother Dark. To bring in foreign witches-’

‘Children we may be,’ Prazek cut in, ‘but of the Hust, not Mother Dark.’

‘Be not deceived by the cast of the skin,’ Dathenar added. ‘That was a summary blessing. The Hust iron now claims these men and women, and it bridles with newborn power. Sorcery and witchery, a dance of the unknown, yet we would face it. We would grasp it. We would make it our own.’

Galar Baras shook his head. ‘The commander will not sanction this.’

‘Our commander lies insensate to the world,’ Prazek retorted.

‘A singular proclamation,’ said Dathenar, ‘to embrace all manner of leader and politician. Waters made opaque by unsecured belief and misapprehension, to which dear Toras Redone has splashed a sampling of sour wine. We meet her inebriation with indifference, deeming it irrelevant to the failures implicit among all who would rule us.’

‘Mother Dark,’ said Prazek, scratching at his beard, ‘made no distinction in her blessing, and now leaves the skin to will its hue, as befits each man’s and each woman’s mercurial moods. This is a wavering faith, a host of questions devoid of stipulation.’

‘The Hust Legion,’ said Dathenar, ‘requires more than that. Manic blades and moaning armour will not suffice. The shared residue of pits and picks, shackles and groaning carts, of crimes snared and punishments binding, all prove insufficient to our need.’

Galar could now see a knot of figures entering the parade square, while from all sides, soldiers had abandoned their preparations for the march and were drawing closer in a rough, jostling ring. Swords bickered in scabbards. Chain and scales muttered incessantly. Dark faces remained expressionless.

Overhead, the sky was pale and dull, a formless white stretched across the heavens. A hint of warmth rode the soft winds from the south. The day seemed to slump, heavy feet rooted to the still frozen ground. Sounds were dying away, one by one, like unfinished thoughts.

He watched as the two Dog-Runner witches emerged from an unbidden divide among the soldiers, heading towards Rebble who now stood with Sergeant Rance at his side. The bearded man was gripping Rance’s left arm. Frowning, Galar Baras swung to Prazek. ‘Is that woman to be their sacrifice? I cannot permit-’

‘No blood will be spilled,’ Prazek said.

‘How do you know?’

‘Not the Dog-Runner way,’ Dathenar said. ‘Join us, Galar Baras. Stand in your commander’s stead. You need neither condone nor bless. We shall witness, and in witnessing, partake. Alas, what finds us on this day may well fail in penetrating our commander’s present state of unconsciousness.’

‘Unfortunate,’ muttered Prazek, ‘that the one who, perhaps, needs healing the most, has inadvertently excused herself. But then, who could have predicted the timing of this?’

‘Sergeant Rance,’ said Dathenar to Galar Baras, ‘has been killing men in the camp. And yet the woman you see yonder is in fact innocent, though the blood stains her hands.’

‘What riddle is this?’

‘Another hides within her, Galar Baras. One adept with sorcery, and yet consumed by the madness of murder.’

‘What will these witches do to her?’

‘We don’t know.’

Galar Baras stared at Dathenar, and then at Prazek. ‘And our soldiers are to witness all this as well? Have they not suffered enough scenes of punishment and retribution? And to now be reminded once again on the very day before we march? Gentlemen, you will see this legion torn apart!’

‘Possibly,’ Prazek conceded. ‘The manner in which we gamble defines the stakes. Win or lose, it shall be absolute.’

The two witches reached Rance, who at the last moment pulled back and would have fled if not for Rebble’s sudden, somewhat harsh intercession, as he wrapped both arms about her. Rance struggled in his grip, and then sagged as if in a faint, slipping down to the ground.

‘No,’ said Galar Baras, moving forward. ‘This is wrong.’

One of the witches knelt beside Rance, who now hung by one arm in Rebble’s grasp, her hair covering her face, as motionless as if death had taken her.

As Galar Baras drew closer, Rebble looked over and met the captain’s eyes. ‘She’s fled,’ he said. ‘Not away. Inside.’

‘Rebble, let her go.’

He released his grip and her arm flopped down.

The witch who knelt beside Rance now held up a staying hand. ‘No closer, Lover of Death.’

The title halted Galar Baras in his tracks. He was unable to speak. From the ring of soldiers surrounding the parade ground, there was now utter silence. Not a sword cackled. The chain and scale had ceased their desultory murmur. Something had come into the air, potent and febrile.

The other witch began dancing with slow steps, her naked form swaying above her broad hips. ‘Watch me!’ she cried. ‘All of you! I am Vastala Trembler, Bonecaster of the Logros! Watch me, and I will open your eyes!’

* * *

Faror Hend pushed through the ring of silent soldiers, her eyes fixed on the prone form of Rance. Fear shortened her breath. There was nothing fair in this. Even Rebble, who had now taken two steps back from where the Bonecaster knelt over Rance, was making a mute appeal to Galar Baras who also stood nearby.

But the witch who had been dancing in a circle around Rance now began stretching her steps into an outward spiral, and some unseen power emanated from her, visibly pushing away both Rebble and Galar Baras. As Faror Hend drew nearer, she felt a pressure building against her, resisting each step. After a moment she halted, panting. The dancing woman seemed to be trembling, shivering, her form blurring as if seen through thick glass.

Rance suddenly cried out, her shriek answered by three thousand Hust swords with a fierce metallic shout. Staggering back, Faror Hend saw soldiers collapsing in the line, one after another, while others struggled, fighting against something – and now she could feel it, a slithering sensation beneath her armour, as if snakes had been loosed here. Yet, wherever she frantically reached, she felt nothing.

They are beneath my skin! She fell to her knees, desperately pulling at the straps and buckles.

* * *

An inexplicable rage filled Wareth as he pushed against the overwhelming pressure that rolled in waves from the centre of the parade ground. Whatever sorcery this was, it seeped through the armour as if it was little more than cheesecloth. It raced across his skin, and then burrowed beneath it, rushing into muscles and then bones. He was roaring his fury but could hear nothing but the deafening rush of that terrible power.

He could feel his blood thinning to water in his veins, while something else flooded through him, thick and viscous. It seemed to burn through his rage and his terror, whispering secrets he could feel but not hear.

But Rance was thrashing on the ground, her agony and torment plain to see, and he would not stop as he clawed his way towards her. The Bonecaster kneeling at her side had reached into Rance’s abdomen, as if plunging her hands through flesh, and there was blood on her forearms, clear fluids stretching like webs down from her elbows.

No woman could survive such wounds. He found he was reaching for his sword, but the blade would not pull free of the scabbard. It was howling, as if matching Rance’s pain, and yet helpless, its pealing voice shrill with frustration.

He fought his way closer, was now less than ten paces from the dancing witch, whom he could barely see as she slipped past his field of vision, her arms seeming to spin.

No one should die like that-

An eruption took his mind, swept away every thought. Amidst the chaos, he felt a revelation, opening like a poisonous flower. He stared into its core and, inexorably, felt his sanity torn apart by what he saw.

* * *

Whatever gifts the Bonecasters had bestowed upon Listar sustained him through the ordeal of the ritual. On his knees at the edge of the clearing, he witnessed the collapse of everyone. The weapons and armour fell silent, as if struck mute by their uselessness in the face of this foreign sorcery. He saw officers fall. He saw the Bonecaster Hataras lift something small and bloody from Rance, quickly wrapping its still form in a hide. He saw Vastala cease her dance, shedding her trembling like a skin, whereupon she fell to her knees and vomited on to the frozen ground.

Listar staggered to his feet. He made his way towards them, his eyes on the body of Rance. There had been blood, but now there was none. She was unmarked, her eyes shut, and as he came closer he saw the steady rise and fall of her chest.

‘Punished Man,’ said Hataras, her voice raw and her eyes red. ‘She had a twin, dead in her mother’s womb. A short life starved and wanting, struggling and failing.’ She waved a hand. ‘But it had power that not even death could still.’

Not quite understanding, Listar reached Rance. He studied the woman. ‘She will live?’

‘The other wanted a child. She found one. Gave it death to be with her. A night of drowning, to begin many other nights. Death and blood on the hands. Blood on the sorcery itself.’

Vastala stumbled closer, wiping at her face. ‘A tormented sea,’ she said, ‘yet I drank deep. I drank it dry, leaving bones and rocks and shells. Leaving all that drowns in light and air. What remains in them is a gift of dust.’

Listar knelt beside Rance.

Hataras moved closer, settled a hand upon his shoulder and leaned close. ‘Punished Man. You need to understand.’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t.’

‘No soul is truly alone. It only seems so, when it is the last left standing in a field of war. And that war is waged within each of us. Her twin – that shrunken, blackened corpse in the womb – it fed on every thought murdered upon awakening, or snuffed out in its sleep, where hopes unfold into dreams and dreams become nightmares. It devoured the rendered remains of stillborn ideas, sudden wants, of avarice and betrayal. Imagination, Punished Man, can be a most wicked realm.’

Vastala spoke. ‘I took from them everything. I have left them nowhere to hide.’ She paused, looked around. ‘I have made this army into a terrible thing. These soldiers. They will not hesitate. They will march into Mother’s fire if it is asked of them. They will fight all who face them. And they will die, one by one, no different from any other soldier. No different, and yet, utterly different.’ She pulled Hataras to her feet. ‘My love, we must flee. They will rise soon, in silence. They will blink. They will not meet the eyes of friend or rival. The cursed iron flinches from their touch. These soldiers, beloved, are an abomination.’

‘This is what you gave us?’ Listar demanded. ‘This is not what was asked of you! We sought a blessing!’

Vastala bared her teeth. ‘Oh, they are blessed, Punished Man. But think on this, what comes to a mortal soul, when it finds that truth is unwelcome?’ She faced Hataras again. ‘What fate the witch within the orphaned twin?’

Hataras shrugged. ‘Her possessor lies dead, its flesh gone, but the husk of its soul remains. This one,’ and she nodded at Rance, ‘must learn to reach into it, to find the sorcery residing there.’

‘Ugly magic,’ said Vastala.

‘Yes,’ Hataras agreed. ‘Ugly magic.’

Listar remained beside Rance. Looking around, he saw the army fallen, as if slain where they stood. It must have been like this when Hunn Raal poisoned them all.

The Bonecasters had already departed the clearing. He felt the absence of their touch as a sharp ache somewhere deep inside. So easy their abandonment of me. No, I do not understand Dog-Runner ways.

Then his gaze caught movement, and he turned to see a woman stepping out from the command tent. She stood, swaying slightly, looking out upon the thousands of motionless soldiers, lying in poses no different from death, and the weapons remained silent. The only sound Listar could hear was the soft wind, carrying with it the last of the afternoon’s warmth.

Abyss take me, that must be Toras Redone.

Listar climbed to his feet. He made his way towards her. When she saw him she flinched and took a step back. ‘No more ghosts,’ she said.

‘They are alive,’ Listar replied, slowing his steps. ‘All of them. It is not what it seems.’

Her lips curled in a wretched smile. ‘Nor am I.’

‘There were Bonecasters among us,’ Listar said. ‘A ritual.’

She studied him with red-rimmed eyes, from a face bleak and desolate. ‘And what did this ritual achieve, beyond the collapse of my soldiers?’

He hesitated, and then said, ‘Sir, forgive me. I do not know.’