Fall of Light

EIGHT

The two horsemen rode out through the thinning forest. The day was cold, the sky clear but dull, as if hidden behind a veil of soot. They were slumped in their saddles, the horses walking, and, as ever, the two men were engaged in conversation.

‘A most high court, a most select education, and see what it brings us, Dathenar.’

Dathenar rolled his broad shoulders beneath the heavy cloak. ‘Every bridge is but an interlude, Prazek,’ he said. ‘The arc and the span held more worth than we imagined on that dread night of our faltering. We should have stood fast at our station, scowling in each direction. Back to back, and so facing all manner of dire threat.’

‘Dire threat indeed,’ Prazek said, nodding. ‘The treacherous wind, gusting so foul and portentous.’

‘The unleavened night, bitter as black bread.’

‘Fend us, too, Dathenar, from wretched imagination all our own, and the venal thoughts of irate commanders, prone to dancing on our bones. And if we still be clothed around our precious sticks, muscle and gristle bound to honourable purpose, well, that is faint distinction.’

‘You speak ill of Silchas Ruin?’

Prazek worked with his tongue at something stuck between his teeth, somewhere near the back, and then said, ‘I’ve seen white crows with softer regard, and indeed am known to fashion a pleasant disposition from their glittering beads.’

Dathenar reached up and rubbed at his bearded jaw. ‘You liken us to carrion, and our lord’s brother to the winged arbiter of every battlefield. But bleached of hue, you say? In war, I wager, every field is aflutter with black and white. Foe and friend, all those hostile comments and unpleasant looks, and laughter the kind to make you shiver. In all, a misanthropic place, ill suited to civil debate.’

‘I’ve heard tell,’ Prazek said, ‘of a time when we were gentle. Fresh upon the land, behind us some sordid path spewing us out from some forbidden tale of misadventure. But see these majestic trees, we said! Such clear streams! A river like bold sinew to bind the world. Why, here were pits studded with ore, bitumen for the fires, soft hills to welcome sheep and goats.’

‘Even then, I suggest,’ said Dathenar, ‘there were crows of white and crows of black, to keep things simple.’

Prazek shrugged, still trying to dislodge whatever was jammed between two molars. ‘Simple enough for the flames and the forge, the night sky filled with sparks and embers. Simple, too, for the columns of smoke and the sludge to foul every pool, every lake and every stream. Why, we were avatars of Dark even then, though we knew it not. But still, let’s look back on those gentle times, and take note of their myriad instances of gentlest murder.’

‘Destruction is known to thrive in indifference,’ Dathenar said. ‘We are in sleep, calmly, and indeed comely, committed to our placid repose. As you say, these are instances of gentle mayhem, ruckled and ruined, and blissfully innocent the hands gripping the axe.’

‘Weapons needed forging, of course,’ Prazek said, nodding and then spitting. ‘Civilization’s demands are simple ones, after all. Unambiguous, you might say. It is only in the boredom of Kurald Galain’s advanced age, such as we find here, that we tangle the threads, nestle in agitation, and upend our civil simplicity, our simple civility, and like so many turtles on our backs, we flinch at crazed scenes on all sides.’

‘And so you long for simpler times.’

‘Just so. White crows upon one flank, black crows upon the other, and every field a battlefield, and every enemy a foe and every comrade a friend. Decide upon the handshake and dispense with mangling complexity. I long for the rural.’

‘And thus the rural finds you, brother.’

Leaving behind the last of the tree stumps and spindly saplings, they rode out upon the track leading into the hills. Ahead, denuded rock outcroppings and sweeps of winter-dead grass made a rough jumble.

‘It finds me with cruel vigour,’ Prazek said in a growl. ‘Chased by chills and stiffened leather, chafed of thigh and carbuncled of joint.’ He then pulled off his worn glove and reached into his mouth. A moment’s effort and he pulled free a shred of old meat. ‘This, too.’

‘Simple maladies,’ Dathenar easily replied. ‘The complaints of peasants.’

Prazek pulled the glove back on. ‘Well, peasantry defines itself in that miserable self-regard, and now I find myself a purveyor of mud and unheralding skies, no different from said peasant in my squinty eye and cheeky tic, and were my feet upon the ground, why, I’d shuffle one or both, to nudge along my slow thoughts.’

‘Simpler times,’ Dathenar agreed. ‘Musings on the weather can fill a skull with clouds, enough to reduce every horizon. It’s well you shuffle a foot or two, if only to lay claim to the ground upon which you stand.’

‘The threadbare fool knows well that stony soil beneath him,’ Prazek retorted. ‘And so too observes the passing of armies in column, the tidings of smoke above the trees and flotsam in the stream. He raises a damp finger to gauge every new wayward sigh of the wind, too. Then bends once again to shoulder the wrapped bundle of firewood, and sniffs at the smell of plain cooking adrift on the breeze. His wife has paced her cage all day, wearing ruts in the cabin’s floor.’

‘No certainty that pacing,’ Dathenar said. ‘Why, she might be sharpening stakes or, deadlier still, whittling. She might be tending a babe in a crib and humming country hymns to pastoral idyll.’

‘Ha! In tending that babe, Dathenar, she notes the wooden bars of the tiny cage, and then perchance glances up to see the same writ large about her. Yes, she might indeed be sharpening stakes.’

‘But her husband’s an honest man. See his battered hands and blunted finger nubs, the old scars of youthful zeal and the limp from when he miscalculatedly addressed one knee with a hatchet. Oh, those were wild times back then, hi ho! And in such demeanour, why, his idle thoughts hum a somnolent buzz, kept in beat by his plodding boots on the muddy track.’

‘You paint a generous picture, Dathenar. But come the summer a company rides up to gather in the wretched fool. They shove a spear into his hands and wave flags, be they dark or light, crowned or crown-hungry. They take the wife, too, if no crib proffers necessity.’

‘Out marching in column, Prazek.’

‘Reduced to simple thoughts pertaining to weather, aches, and the season’s gentle turn. At least until arrives the moment of terror-strewn mayhem, spears all a-clatter.’

Dathenar grunted, frowning. ‘But wait! Where are the glittering heroes waving their swords in the air? What of the stirring speeches such as to awaken the zeal of mind-wandering farmers and herders? See them stand in that ragged row-’

‘Feet shuffling.’

‘One or two, as befits the moment. Forget not the squint and tic.’

‘And the limp, too,’ Prazek added. ‘They tilt heads as the windbag rides back and forth on a confused horse-’

‘This way? Yes! No! That way! What madness afflicts my gouty master so eager to straddle me?’

‘Dathenar! Enough of the horse thoughts, all right?’

‘They were brought to mind by our chargers, with their ears flickering to catch every word we utter. My humblest pardon, brother, I beg you. The horse, back and forth. You were saying?’

‘The king’s speech!’

‘What king? Whereof comes this king of yours?’

Prazek cleared his throat. ‘Well, let me amend that, by saying this. A king in his own mind, or indeed a queen in her own mind. It’s a crowded skull, to be sure, lofty with minarets and teetering with towers, sparkling with spires, all so grandiose as to beggar any … beggar. And see the selfsame monarch, marching this way and that up and down the echoing halls with their rustling tapestries. Why, a scion of self-importance! He wears the headdress of a high priest this moment, and a jewelled crown the next. The robes of the judge, the clasped hands of the humble penitent. The bared head of the husband and the godly penumbra of the father. Is it any wonder that he casts coy glances at his reflection in every mirror, so inviting to worship and adoration this man-’

‘Or woman,’ Dathenar interjected.

‘No, he is not a woman. She would be a woman, but not him.’

‘Pray get him and us out of his skull, Prazek, and attend to his stirring speech to the peasant soldiers.’

‘Easier said than done,’ Prazek replied. ‘Very well. Since we two are so busy, so thoroughly distracted by all the noble thoughts implicit in our noble bearing and whatnot, taking little note of peasants by the wayside-’

‘We’ve seen none.’

‘No matter. They exist in principle, I’m sure.’

‘Let’s hear this call to war!’

‘Yes, why not, Dathenar? A moment, while I compose myself.’

‘I see a week at least.’

‘My dearest soldiers! My beloved citizens! My wretched minions!’

Dathenar tilted his head back and yelled, ‘We’re here, sire! Summoned-’

‘Press-ganged.’

‘Your pardon, press-ganged into your service, as if tithes weren’t enough-’

‘You, peasant, what was that you mumbled?’

‘Nothing, sire, I but await your speech!’

‘Dearest instruments of my will, howsoever I will it – and I will-’

‘Now there’s a chilling promise.’

‘We are gathered here upon the eve of battle-’

‘Best make it dawn, Prazek, we’re nearing the hills.’

‘Upon the dawn of a day promising glorious battle! Permit me to elaborate. The battle is yours and the glory is mine. There will be no confusion regarding this matter, I trust. Excellent! You are here, and you will fight in my name, for one perfectly reasonable reason – to wit, because you are not over there, upon the valley’s other side, fighting in the name of him, or her. In other words, you are here and not there. Is that clear, then?’

‘Sire! Sire!’

‘What is it?’

‘I have a brother who fights for him or her, over there!’

‘That man is no brother of yours, fool.’

‘But our mother-’

‘Your mother was a whore and a liar! Now, where was I?’

Dathenar sighed. ‘We were being stirred unto inspiration.’

Prazek waved a hand. ‘I hold high this sword, my kin, my comrades, and with it do point that way, towards the enemy. And where my sword points, you follow. You will march, yes, and when close enough, why, you will charge, and if you prevail, I will be pleased, and further pleased to send those of you left alive back to your shacks and barns, if you please. But if you fail, I’ll not be pleased. No, not at all. In fact, your failure will mean that I’m likely to get my skull cracked open-’

‘Spilling into the ditch minarets and towers and spires all tumbling every which way. Crowns askew, robes besmudged, bared head laid bare through and through, and, alas, godliness snuffed out like a guttered candle.’

‘Just so. Was that succinct enough, then? Now, we march to war!’

With this strident challenge ringing in the air, the two men fell silent, both slumping a bit further into their saddles. Until Dathenar sighed and said, ‘Never mind the peasants, Prazek, and let’s speak instead of prisoners.’

‘A touchy subject,’ Prazek replied. ‘Of crime or duty?’

‘Your distinction reeks of the disingenuous.’

‘In this mud, no distinction is possible.’

‘And we not yet upon battle’s field.’

Prazek stood on his stirrups and looked about, eyes narrowed.

‘What now, brother?’

‘Somewhere, lying in the grasses about us, is a pillager of prose, a looter of language.’

Dathenar snorted. ‘Nonsense, we but ape the noble cause, my friend. With hairy discourse.’

Settling back down in the saddle, Prazek scowled. ‘Let us defy the ghost, then, and ride on in silence. I must prepare, in my mind, my stirring speech to my prisoners.’

‘You’ll win their hearts, I am sure.’

‘I need only their swords to cheer.’

‘Yes,’ Dathenar grunted, ‘there is that.’

A short time later, a score of crows winged out from the hills, and made their way overhead, seeking the distant trees. The two officers exchanged a look, but, for a change, neither spoke.

* * *

Flakes of snow drifted down from laden branches, carpeting the stone-lined track ahead, like the petals of fallen blossoms. Spring, however, seemed far away. The sound of his horse’s hoofs was sharp and solid, and yet Captain Kellaras heard little echo, as the snow-shrouded forest made for a muted world. This was one of the few remaining stretches of true wilderness left in the realm, spared the axe only by an ancient royal mandate, granted to an ancestor of House Tulla.

The night before, he had heard wolves, and their voices, rising so mournfully into the night, had stirred something primal within the captain, something he had not known existed. He pondered that experience now, as he let his horse choose its own pace on the slippery cobbles, and it seemed that his thoughts well matched his surroundings. Cloaked in strange isolation, where the only sounds he heard belonged to himself, his mount, and their journey.

Wilderness offered a curious solitude. The comforts of society were gone, and in their place, indifferent nature – but that indifference set forth a challenge to the spirit. It would be easy to choose to see it as cruel, and to then fear it, flee it, or destroy it. Even easier, perhaps, to surrender to animal instincts, to live or die by its own rules.

Long before villages, or towns, or cities, the wild forests were home to modest huddles of makeshift huts, to clans of family. Each camp no doubt commanded a vast range, since such forests were miserly in what they yielded. But by the hearth-fires alone, the wild was kept at bay, and in those flames, a war had begun.

It was not difficult to see the path of devastation made by that still ongoing war, and from the perspective of where he now rode, in this silent forest, it was a challenge to find virtue in the many monuments to victory with which his kind now surrounded itself. Keeps of stone and timber laid claim to the simplest needs, of shelter and warmth and security. Villages, towns and indeed cities gave purpose and protection to the gathered denizens, and the pursuit of convenience was a powerful motivator in all things. All of these creations were fashioned from the bones of nature, the slain corpses in this eternal war. In this manner, the victors did enclose themselves in what they had killed, be it tree or wild stone.

Surrounded by death, it was little wonder that they would sense virtually nothing of what lay beyond it. And yet, from nature’s bones the artists among the people would find and make things of great beauty, things that pleased the eye, with poetry of form and the peace of those forms rearranged in seeming balance. More to the point, Kellaras realized, so much of what was deemed pleasing, or satisfying, or indeed edifying, was but a simulacrum, a reinventing of what nature already possessed, far beyond the lifeless walls and tamed fields.

Was art, then, nothing more than a stumbling, half-blind journey back into the wilderness, with each path selected in groping isolation, endlessly rediscovering what should have been already known, reinventing what already existed, recreating the beauty of what had already been slain?

It would be a shock indeed, should an artist reach this revelation: comprehending the relationship of their art with murder, with generations of destruction, and with this long, long journey away from those first hearth-fires, in that first forest, when the enemy at hand was first glimpsed, like a spark in the mind, and from it was born the first fear. The first unknown.

If imagination’s birth had come from something as ignoble as fear, then, at last, Kellaras understood this eternal war. By a wilful twist of the mind, he could of course choose to be selective in what he saw, and what he felt, and, from those two forces in combination, in what he believed. A brightly gaze, then, to paint the world with the bliss of optimism, and every wonder crafted by the hand, whether mundane tool or glorious edifice, as symbols of the triumphant spirit. But each such pronouncement, no matter how bold the assertion, or how adamant the claim to virtue, was but a cry in the face of a deeper silence, a silence in which lurked a vague unease, a yearning for something else, something more.

Lift high gods and goddesses, if you will. Dream of exaltation, in what the altar bleeds, in what the fires burn, in what art we raise, in what industry we occupy our lives. Each is lifted into view from an ineffable need, a yearning, a hunger to fill some empty space inside.

Our spirits are not whole. Some crucial piece has been carved from them. If we go back, and back, to a forest such as this one, and make for ourselves an entire world of the same, we come to the silence, and the isolation, and the seed-ground of our every thought, beaten down, unlit and awaiting the season’s turn. We come to our beginning, before the walls, before the keeps and towers, with nothing but living wood encircling our precious glade.

In such a place, the gods and goddesses must step down from the high heavens, and kneel, with us, in humility.

But Kellaras was not so naïve as to imagine such a return. The rush and the conflagration of progress were demonic in their intensity. And we stake our lives in this fight for our place in things we ourselves invented. And in our new world, nature is indeed very far away.

Rounding a slow wend in the road, he caught his first glimpse of the outer wall of the Tulla estate. The past summer’s vines made a stark, chaotic latticework upon those walls, like withered veins and arteries drained of all life. The track straightened before a gateway, and beyond, centred amidst expansive grounds, rose the estate itself, built upon massive Azathanai foundation stones. Various outbuildings clustered to either side of the structure, including stables and a mill. Riding through the gateway, Kellaras saw the frozen sweep of a fishpond on his left, and three rows of leafless fruit-bearing trees on his right.

Even here, almost three days away from Kharkanas, the power of Mother Dark was visible, with shadows that belonged to an eclipse, and a pervasive glower to the day’s fractured light. Kellaras glanced again at the orchard, wondering at the fate of those trees. Perhaps in darkness, new trees will come, bearing fruit of another kind.

Or perhaps those trees, and the forest beyond, will simply die.

Still, it was curious that no such die-back had yet occurred, even within Kharkanas itself. As if plants sensed nothing of light’s loss; as if they held to an older, brighter world. Was that yet another front of the selfsame war? Or was Mother Dark’s sorcery a gift given solely to the Tiste? He wondered if the Azathanai perceived the dying light. He would have to ask Grizzin Farl. And if not? Will it mean that we are all subject to an illusion, our very minds under manipulation by Mother Dark?

More and more, this faith tastes sour. Mother, is this your darkness upon my mind, stealing away what others can rightly see? And, in surrendering thus to your will, what else must we yield? It is said believers are selective in what they see of the world – do you announce this with blatant metaphor made real? And if so, what is your point?

Two figures appeared from near the stables. Kellaras angled his mount and rode towards them.

Gripp Galas wore but the thinnest hide, and steam rose from his shoulders, his thinning hair stringy with sweat. Beside him, Lady Hish Tulla stood with furs wrapped about her form.

Kellaras reined in before them. ‘Have the servants all fled, then, milady?’

‘The house staff remain,’ she replied, eyeing him levelly. ‘In winter’s season, there is little to do here, captain. In any case,’ she added, ‘we prefer the solitude.’

Kellaras remained in the saddle, still awaiting their invitation. He had expected some difficulty here, and well understood Hish Tulla’s reluctance. ‘This forest surely invites it, milady. Wilderness has indeed become a refuge.’

‘And yet,’ she replied harshly, ‘you come to bring word of the war beyond. If I could make the trees iron, captain, and each branch a blade, I would raise every wilderness into an impregnable fortress. Ringed in the blood of unwelcome visitors, it would surely grow vast.’

In her bold words, he heard the echoes of his own earlier thoughts, and was in no way inclined to challenge her sentiment. And still, he found himself shaking his head. ‘Milady, it is by unnatural privilege that you find yourself in this refuge, and herein, you face no daily struggle to survive. You would arm your imagined defenders of that privilege, as if the war they are to fight is for you alone, rather than, indeed, their own survival.’

A grunt from Gripp Galas. ‘He has you there, my love. The arrow flew true and sharp, pinning the leaf to the trunk.’ The old man waved. ‘Do dismount, captain, and be welcome in this house.’

Hish Tulla’s shoulders seemed to slump beneath the furs, and she stepped towards Kellaras. ‘The reins, then, captain. My husband has been cleaning the stables, with something like manic zeal. Winter has him pacing. He will hear your tales, as will I, if I must.’

As Kellaras dismounted and Hish led his horse into the stables, Gripp stepped closer and said, ‘Come into the house, captain. The guest rooms are presently closed up, but we’ve plenty of wood, and some heat will take the damp from the chamber. I will send you a servant and see that a bath is drawn. We will dine at the seventh bell.’ He turned to lead the way to the house.

‘Thank you, Gripp,’ said Kellaras, following. ‘The promise of warmth already loosens my bones.’

The old man, once Lord Anomander’s most revered servant, cast a glance back at Kellaras. ‘Simple promises,’ he said, ‘of no consequence. Pray we spend this evening in such easy company.’

To that, Kellaras said nothing, and yet the silence found its own timbre, and the captain was not so benumbed with cold to fail in sensing the sudden tension from Gripp Galas, as the man preceded him towards the estate’s front door.

As they stepped into the antechamber, Kellaras could hold to his silence no longer. ‘Forgive me, Gripp. I am not here of my own accord.’

Gripp nodded but made no other reply. They swung left from the main hall and strode down a chilly corridor, dark for most of its length, until they reached a T-intersection where a small lantern glowed on a niche set in the wall. To the right and six paces in, the aisle ended at a door. Gripp pulled on the handle and the portal swung open with a loud squeal. ‘Guests,’ he muttered, ‘have been few and far between.’

Kellaras followed him into the chamber. Although unlit, he could see it well enough. Sumptuous and welcoming, with two additional rooms just beyond the main one. Gripp set about lighting lanterns.

‘It is a measure, perhaps,’ ventured Kellaras, ‘of our wayward notions, that the celebration of a marriage must have a specified duration. A ceremony, a wedding night, a few days allowed beyond that. And then, why, the return to an uncelebrated life.’

Gripp snorted as he scraped cinders from the hearth. ‘Our commander once made a similar observation, I recall.’

‘That he did,’ Kellaras said. ‘Anomander so dislikes the notion of an uncelebrated life. In marriage or otherwise.’

‘No wonder, then,’ Gripp said, glancing over, ‘that he left us an entire season.’

Kellaras shook his head. ‘He did not send me, Gripp.’

‘No? And yet, did you not say, you have been ordered here?’

‘I have. Forgive me. Perhaps following supper, and in the company of your wife.’

Gripp’s gaze flattened. ‘That’s not a temper you should test, captain.’

‘I know. But to speak to you here, alone, would be a dishonour.’

Gripp straightened, dusting his hands. ‘I’ll have the servant bring wood and get this started. Oh, and the bath. I’ll send Pelk – she could scrub the stripes off a hyldra, and make you beg for more.’

Kellaras’s brows lifted. ‘Gripp, I have no-’

‘Abyss take us, captain, the woman’s bored half out of her mind. Be a mindful guest, will you? I’d be most obliged.’ Gripp strode to the door.

‘This Pelk – is she-’

‘Indulge me, Kellaras, I beg you. You’d thought this house quiet, here in winter’s hoary hold. But I tell you, as a man surrounded by women, I’ll appreciate even a night’s inattention, barring that from my wife.’

‘Ah. Very well, Gripp. We will see what comes of that.’

From the door, Gripp eyed him uncertainly. ‘The bath or my wife’s attention?’

Kellaras smiled. ‘The bath. In the other matter, I shall bear your shield.’

Gripp Galas nodded, in the manner of a man whose deepest fear has just been confirmed. A moment later the door closed behind him.

Freeing himself of his heavy woollen cloak, Kellaras walked to the lead-paned windows. The chamber overlooked the courtyard behind the house, where the snow was smeared with dirt on the cobbles, and woodchips made a path from a storehouse up to the servants’ entrance of the main building. He watched small dun-coloured birds hopping about on a heap of kitchen leavings.

A moment later he saw Gripp Galas appear, still in his thin, sodden shirt. Wood-splitting axe over one shoulder, he crossed the courtyard, heading for the timber shed.

A short while later there was a scratching at the door, and Kellaras turned away from the window in time to see a woman enter the chamber. She was in her middle years, short-haired, solid of build, and stood upright, straight-backed, as she studied the room.

Kellaras cleared his throat. ‘You must be Pelk.’

Flat eyes shifted to him and she nodded. ‘Apologies, sir. There’s some dust. The fire will do for the damp, but the bed needs airing, and drying heat. Gripp’s bringing some wood.’

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘If you listen carefully, you can hear the axe.’

Pelk snorted. ‘He’d fell a hundred trees and rebuild this house from scratch, just to keep himself occupied. I’d wager he wears a smile right now, as the splinters fly.’

Kellaras cocked his head. ‘You are a veteran of the wars, Pelk.’

She had set about wiping down surfaces with a grey rag. ‘Those times are done,’ she said, shaking her head.

‘Were you a Houseblade in Lady Hish Tulla’s company?’

‘For a time. Mostly, though, I trained her. Sword, spear, knife, and horse.’

‘I am sure I am not alone,’ ventured Kellaras, ‘in admiring your lady’s … comportment. The pride in her stance, I mean to say.’

She was now studying him in turn, revealing nothing.

He cleared his throat. ‘Forgive me, Pelk. My point is, I can now see from whom she took her guidance.’

After a moment, Pelk grunted and resumed cleaning.

‘There was mention of a bath.’

‘Water’s on the coals, sir.’

‘I take it that you will lead me to the chamber.’

‘We have to go outside and then back in, I’m afraid. A wing’s been closed off, you see. Locked up and sealed.’

Kellaras collected up his cloak again. ‘Tell me, Pelk, are there any other guests here at the moment?’

She paused near the hearth, but did not turn to face him. ‘No. Just you.’

Kellaras hesitated, and then returned to the window. ‘It is just the season,’ he said.

‘Sir?’

‘Gripp Galas. He has led a busy life. He’s not used to having little to do. But the season wears on all of us.’

‘I’m sure,’ she muttered, leaving Kellaras to wonder what she had meant by that, given that her tone was utterly devoid of sympathy. Then she swung to face him. ‘It’s time. Will you require my attentions in the bath?’

‘Not necessary, but I would welcome them.’

At last, something enlivened her gaze, and she was deliberate as she assayed the man before her. ‘Aye,’ she said, ‘it’s the season. Follow me, then.’

They set out, and Pelk led him straight down the corridor rather than returning the way Gripp and Kellaras had first come. Reaching a narrow passage of stairs, lit only by a lantern with a wick burned down to a bare nub, they descended to a servants’ run that extended parallel to the back wall. Here the dust was thick underfoot, undisturbed except for their own steps. Every ten or so paces, there was a small door on the left side. Only one, two-thirds of the way down, revealed thin slivers of light from the room beyond.

They continued on until reaching the end, where a heavy door upon the right opened out into the back courtyard of the house. Pelk led him alongside the outer wall to the corner, and then round to halfway up the side of the house, where another door awaited them. Here, she produced a key and fought for a time with the lock, before managing to push the door open. A cloud of steam billowed out past her.

‘Quickly now,’ she said, beckoning him inside, and then closing the door behind him.

A half-dozen lanterns had been lit. An iron tub dominated the centre of the room, while off to one side was a huge hearth over which sat a grille. A cauldron steamed above the glowing embers, sweat trickling down its flared sides to hiss in the flames below.

‘Strip down, then,’ Pelk said, collecting up a bucket to dip into the cauldron.

Kellaras found pegs to take his clothes, close enough to the hearth to warm them while he bathed. Behind him, he heard water splashing into the tub. He sat on a chair to pull off his mud-crusted boots. There were sensations in the world, in the life’s span, that could only be treasured, and surely one was the anticipation of blessed warmth, after days of chill and damp. It occurred to him, alas, how quickly the memory of such times drifted away, amidst the crush of immediate necessities that seemed so eager to impose themselves. The mind had a way of leaping from comfort into unease, with far greater alacrity than the other way round.

Musing on these disquieting notions, he pulled off the last boot, and then the filthy gauze strappings that padded and insulated his foot, and stood once more, naked. Turning, he saw Pelk standing beside the tub, similarly disrobed.

She had a soldier’s build, barely softened by age or inactivity. There was a faint roll of fat encircling her belly, just above the hips, and protruding slightly at the front. Her breasts were full but not disproportionately so. Beneath the left one there was an old scar, a finger’s length, stitching a line between her ribs. Kellaras stared at it. ‘Abyss take me, Pelk, that looks right above the heart. How you survived-’

‘I ask myself that often enough,’ she interrupted, a harshness coming to her tone. ‘A cutter told me my heart’s in the wrong place. If it’d been in the right place, I’d have died before I hit the ground. Now, as you can see, the tub’s too big for me to be standing outside it and scrubbing your back – not without putting a vile ache in my spine. So, we get in together.’

‘Ah, yes, of course.’

‘There’re advantages,’ she said.

‘Excuse me?’

‘My heart being in the wrong place. Makes it hard to find, and I prefer it that way. If you understand me.’

He was not sure that he did, but he nodded anyway.

Man or woman, few could claim a life lived without regrets. As a child Kellaras had listened, eager as any boy wearing a wooden sword, to tales of great heroes, all of whom – he saw now – strode through a miasma of violence, stern-faced and righteous. The virtues set forth, step by step, were of the basest sort, and vengeance was the answer to everything. It slashed, it carved, it marched monstrously through a welter of blood. The hero killed for love lost, for love denied, for love misunderstood. The delivery of pain to others, in answer to a pain within – a soul wounded and lashing out – ran like a dark current through every tale.

Still, through it all, the hero remained resolute, or so Kellaras saw it, when looking through his child eyes. As if some aspect of intransigence had made of itself the purest virtue. For such a figure, the notion of feeling – feeling anything but cold satisfaction – in the midst of terrible deeds, and seemingly endless murder, was anathema.

Few heroes wept, unless the tale was a rarity: one tangled in tragedy, and those stories fought a losing battle against the pathological mayhem of the grand heroes, for whom the world of legend was home, and every victim, deserving or not, served as nothing more than a grand staircase of bones leading to the hero’s own exaltation.

A child with a wooden sword could find in such tales an outlet for every injustice and outrage perpetrated upon him, or her. This was not so surprising, given the secret concord between immaturity and cold malice. It was only decades later that Kellaras began to comprehend every hero’s childlike thoughts, that bridling rage, that hunger for revenge, and see for himself what they appeased in so many of his companions. Pure vengeance was nostalgic. It winged back like the voice of a god into childhood, home to the first betrayals and injustices, the first instances of blind fury and impotence, and it spoke of restitution in chilling tones.

Witnessing a tale of heroes, told, written or sung, was like a whispered promise. The betrayers must die, cut down by an implacable iron blade swung by an implacable iron hand. And though betrayal could be found in many guises, including mere indifference, or disregard, or impatience, or a treat denied the grasping hand and its unreasoning demand, yet the incipient storm of violence must be vast. There are times in a child’s life when he or she would happily kill every adult in sight, and this then was the hero’s secret, and the true meaning of his tale of triumph: what I hold inside is the master of all that I survey. Against all that the world flings at me, I shall prevail. In my mind, I never stumble, stagger, or fall. In my mind, I am supreme, and by this sword, I deliver the truth of that, blow upon blow.

Inside me is the thing that would kill you all.

Such a world was not one where feelings counted for much. Indeed, they could be deemed enemies to purpose and desire, to need and the pure pleasure of satisfying that need. The heroes, oh, my heroes of childhood, in their shining, blood-spattered worlds of legend – they were, one and all, insane.

Kellaras had stood in a line, had faced an enemy. He had seen the ruinous disorder of battle. He had witnessed breathtaking deeds of heroic self-sacrifice, tragedies played out before his eyes, and nowhere in such recollections could he find a hero of legend. Because true wars are fought amidst feelings. Be they fear or dread, pity or mercy. And each act, driven by answering hatred and spite, explodes in the mind with horrified wonder. At the self, brought so low. At the other, whose eyes match one’s own.

In the field of battle, our bodies fight with frenzy, but in every face can be seen that appalling tearing loose, disconnecting soul from body, self from flesh. In war, the terrible wonder cries out from a thousand voices. That we are brought to this. That we should lose all that we hold dearest – our compassion, our love, our respect.

If he thought, now, of those heroic tales, he looked upon the heroes and could find, nowhere within himself, a single shred of respect. Misguided children, every one of you. Slayers of innocents, in the slaying of whom you feel nothing but the cold fire of satisfaction. You play out the vengeance game and with every victory you lose everything.

And you poets, with the timbre of the awe-filled in your voices, look well to the crimes you commit, with every stirring tale you sing. Look well to the overgrown child you lift high and name hero, and consider, if you dare, the tyranny of their triumph.

Then, set your eyes upon your audience, to see for yourself the shining rapture in their faces, the glittering delight in their eyes. These are the awakened remnants of the child’s cruel mind, enlivened by your heedless words.

So tell me, dear poet, at evening’s end, the story told, the ashes drifting from the cold hearth, does the blood still drip from your hands? More to the point, does it ever stop?

Her hands, upon his flesh, were hard with calluses. The harsh soap scraped him with grit, and he could feel the weight of her, and her heat, and when she moved round to settle over him, guiding him inside, he pushed from his mind the memory of heroes, and reached instead for the reality of this moment shared, between two veterans of too many battles.

Here, then, were feelings. Beyond the tactile, beyond the sensual. Here, then, was the language that spoke against tyranny in all its guises. But the world he found, in her arms, was a world for adults, not children.

Though she had spoken of her hidden heart, he found his own easily enough, and gave it to her that night. Unexpectedly, wrapped in his own sense of wonder. He knew not what she would do with it, or even that she understood what he had done. There was the risk, so very real, that she would cast it aside, mocking him with harsh laughter, as a child lacking understanding discards the important things which, when offered, so often prove troubling.

He whispered no words, as the gift he gave seemed, for that moment, beyond language. And yet, in his mind, he reached out to close his hand about the throat of the nearest poet. Dragged the fool close, and hissed, ‘This, you bastard, is where you grow up. Now, sing to me of love, like one who knows it, and at last I will hear from you a true tale of heroes.’

Love lost, love denied, love misunderstood. Woman or man, few could claim a life lived without regrets. But such regrets dwelt in the realm of the adult, not the child. They were, in truth, the essential difference between the two.

Sing to us of true heroes, so that we may weep, for something no child will ever understand.

* * *

‘My uncle, Venes,’ said Hish Tulla, ‘commands my Houseblades. They wait in Kharkanas.’ Her eyes, so startling in their beauty, were now cold as coins. ‘But no word comes from the Citadel.’

Kellaras nodded, reaching for his wine. He paused when Pelk, leaning in to collect up his plate, brushed close. He could smell the soap on her still, sweet and soft as a kiss. Momentarily discomfited, he sipped the wine, and then said, ‘Silchas readies the Hust Legion, milady.’

‘He is with them, then?’

‘No. Following Commander Toras Redone’s incapacitation, Galar Baras now conducts the assembling and training of the new recruits.’ He glanced briefly at Gripp Galas, who was still picking at his meal. ‘I have made acquaintance with Galar Baras. We travelled together on a journey out to Henarald’s forge. Should Toras remain … sheltered, he will serve in her place, with honour and distinction.’

Hish Tulla leaned back slightly, her gaze remaining fixed and predatory as she studied Kellaras. ‘A messenger from Venes brought the tale. Prisoners from the mines? What manner of army does Silchas imagine from such a dubious harvest? Loyalty to Mother Dark? Filial duty towards those who happily and righteously imprisoned them? What of the victims of their crimes, those who mourn the ones lost?’ She collected a jug from the table and poured herself another goblet’s worth of the strong, tart wine. ‘Captain, Hust weapons in the hands of such men and women invites a third front to this wretched war.’

‘Prazek and Dathenar have been sent to assist Galar Baras,’ Kellaras said.

Gripp Galas pushed his plate aside, the food upon it barely touched. ‘He had no right, captain. Anomander’s Houseblades! What was so wrong with the officers of his own Houseblades?’

Hish Tulla set the goblet down and rubbed at her eyes, then looked up, blinking, and said, ‘I was there, upon the Estellian Field.’

Kellaras slowly nodded. ‘Would that I had seen it, milady-’

‘Oh, Gallan made decent shape of it, and to hear him tell the tale you would swear he was there, in the midst of that battle. And saw what I saw, what Kagamandra saw, and Scara Bandaris, too. Those two chattering fools, Prazek and Dathenar-’ She shook her head. ‘If ever legend’s heroes walked among us, then we can name them here and now.’

‘Silchas had no right,’ Gripp said again, and Kellaras saw the fists the man had made of his hands, heavy as stones on the table.

‘One hopes,’ Hish added, ‘Galar Baras sees to their proper use. Sees past their prattle, that is. When I think on them, captain, an image comes to my mind. The Dorssan Ryl in winter, so heavily sheathed in ice, and upon the ice the blandest snow from nights of gentle falling. Where, in this scene I describe, will we find Prazek and Dathenar? Why, they are the black current beneath, strong as iron, that courses on, hidden away from all our eyes. But listen well and you will hear …’ she suddenly smiled, ‘that prattle.’

‘By my order,’ Kellaras said, ‘did I send them from Kharkanas.’

‘You?’ Gripp demanded.

‘My order, but Silchas Ruin’s command. Lord Anomander is gone, Gripp, and if his shadow alone remains, it is white, not black.’

‘What of Draconus?’ Hish demanded. ‘If any should assume overall command in Anomander’s absence, it is the Consort.’

Kellaras eyed her, bemused. ‘Milady, he attends Mother Dark, and makes no appearance.’

‘Still? What madness indulgence has become! Upon your return, captain, pray pound upon that door. Awaken the warrior and, if need be, physically drag him from Mother Dark’s arms! He is needed!’

Now Gripp too was looking at Hish, as if in wonder.

Kellaras cleared his throat. ‘Milady, it seems your confidence in Lord Draconus arises from deeds of which I am not aware. Certainly, he fought well in the wars, and even turned a battle’s tide-’

‘Lisken Draw, that was,’ Gripp cut in. ‘The Jhelarkan’s second season. With my own eyes, I saw him meet the charge of a wolf that was as big as a pony. Bare-handed, he took hold of its neck, lifted it high – I was close enough to hear the bones of the beast’s throat crunch, like a sparrow’s wing. It was dead long before he drove it into the ground.’ He glanced up at Kellaras. ‘A clan’s war-master, that wolf. Broke the enemy’s will there and then. The rest of the season was one long pursuit into the north.’

None spoke for a time. Kellaras replayed in his mind the scene Gripp Galas had just described. He barely fought off a shiver. And then, once again, he looked across to Hish Tulla. ‘Few would welcome Lord Draconus as commander, milady. Indeed, I cannot think of a single highborn who would acknowledge his authority.’

‘I would,’ she snapped. ‘And not hesitate.’

‘Then you see beyond his advantage, milady, which the others cannot.’

‘Base envy – such fools! The choice was Mother Dark’s! Think any of them the better suitor? Then by all means present the case to her, and dare her mockery. But no, this desire of theirs paces behind the curtain – we but witness the shuffling feet and bulges in the fabric.’

‘What they cannot hope to possess, milady, makes all the more savage their jealousy. Resentment is an acid upon every blade, but as you say, they dare not confront the woman for the choice she made. So who remains for their ire? Why, Draconus, of course. And now, with the battle against the Borderswords-’

‘Oh indeed,’ Hish snarled, ‘such a paltry deceit!’

‘Some remain unconvinced.’

‘So they choose to, feeding an already fatted pig.’ She then waved a hand, as if to push away the subject, and collected her goblet again. ‘We were host to Captain Sharenas, a week or so ago. The word she brought to us from Neret Sorr, and Vatha Urusander, made no sense. He asserts his innocence in all things – the pogrom, the slaughter of House Enes, even the annihilation of the Wardens – none by his doing!’

Kellaras sighed. ‘This baffles me, milady. It is difficult to imagine Hunn Raal given so free a rein. Vatha Urusander-’

‘Is a broken and bowed man, captain. There is no other explanation. Even Sharenas was at a loss to explain … well, much of anything. Still, she sought assurances, none of which I would give.’

Kellaras glanced away. ‘This holding of yours, milady, proves not as isolated as I had imagined.’

‘You are not alone in that,’ she answered bitterly. ‘Still, I have issued an order to my western estate. That fortress is to hold, if only to protect young Sukul Ankhadu. I have faith in Rancept and will keep him where he is. Still, tell me, how fares young Orfantal?’

‘He remains a child finding his place, milady. It is unfortunate that Silchas is now his lone guardian among the Purake. Still, I have from Orfantal this message: he misses you terribly.’

There was a soft grunt from Gripp. ‘He saw too much of me upon that escape from the hills. It was a foul thing that he witnessed the blood on my hands. I expect him to hold me at a distance from now on, and perhaps that is just as well.’

‘His words and sentiment, Gripp, were for you and Lady Hish Tulla both.’

‘A fair effort, captain, but beware that your generosity here may risk impugning him.’

Kellaras fell silent. He well recalled the flash of fear in Orfantal’s face upon mention of Gripp Galas.

‘Abyss take us, Pelk,’ said Gripp in a low growl, ‘do find a cup and join us, will you?’

‘Only because I am done,’ the veteran replied, coming forward to drag out the chair beside Kellaras’s own. Sitting down, she accepted from Hish a goblet.

‘Tell us your thoughts, Pelk,’ Hish said.

‘Not much worth the telling, milady. Vatha fights clouds of confusion, and half of them have been stirred up by those surrounding him. On the field, you’ll recall, he ever demanded the high ground, to give him a clear sight of things. Mayhap,’ she added, ‘he imagined that his keep over Neret Sorr would give him the same. Of course, it couldn’t, not when the battlefield is all of Kurald Galain.’ She drank, and then shrugged. ‘Anyway, it’s Silchas who’s the problem, and that’s why Kellaras is here, I’d wager.’ And she turned to him. ‘Time, I’d say, to spit it out, captain.’

‘I suppose it is,’ he replied. ‘Very well. Lest the tone here harden in casting Silchas Ruin in the poorest light, he well recognizes his … extremity. More, he alone remains of the brothers, and so must weather the fear, the currents of accusation, and the general sense of malaise that now fills not just the Citadel, but all of Kharkanas. Much of the anger rightly belongs not upon Silchas, but upon Anomander.’

Gripp hissed and thumped the table, rattling what remained of cutlery. ‘Would he be anywhere but in the Citadel, if not for Andarist?’

‘You judge too harshly a grieving man, husband,’ said Hish.

‘There are many flavours to grief,’ he replied.

Pelk said, ‘Do go on, Captain Kellaras.’

Though he had known her but one day, he already comprehended her relentless streak. ‘Silchas pleads for Anomander’s return. He seeks only to step to one side. Accordingly, he asks that his brother be found, and returned to Kharkanas. He understands, of course, that such a task will be difficult, for Anomander is not a man easily swayed. He may well need convincing.’

Gripp said, ‘I shall set out tomorrow.’

‘No!’ Hish Tulla shouted. ‘He promised! Husband! You are free of him! Deny Kellaras – oh, forgive me, captain, I know it is not you – Gripp, listen! Deny Silchas. He has no right! Have you not already said so?’

‘I do this, wife, not for Silchas, but for Anomander.’

‘Don’t you understand?’ she demanded, leaning towards him. ‘He freed you. By solemn vow! Gripp, if you hunt him down, if you do what Silchas asks of you, he will be furious. He is no longer your master, and you no more his servant. The word given was Anomander’s – and that is the only one that will matter to him. Husband, please, I beg you. He is a man of honour-’

‘Who else can hope to find him and, more to the point, bring him back?’ Gripp asked her.

‘Husband, he freed you – he freed us – because that was what he wanted. It was his gift, to me and to you. Will you set it aside? Will you return it to his hands?’

‘Hish, you don’t understand-’

‘What is it that I do not understand, husband? I know these men-’

‘In many ways, yes, and better than any of us. I do not deny any of that, beloved. But it is also now clear to me that you don’t understand them in the ways that I do.’

She leaned back, expression tight, arms crossing. ‘Explain, then.’

‘Anomander will understand, Hish. Why I came, why I found him. He’ll understand, too, the words that I bring, and the necessity behind them.’

‘Why? He has no reason to!’

‘He has. Beloved, listen to me. Anomander …’ Gripp hesitated, his gaze faltering. A moment later, he seemed to tremble, and then, with a deep breath, he continued. ‘Beloved, Anomander does not trust Silchas.’

There was silence at the table. Kellaras slowly closed his eyes. Yes. Of course. And yet…

‘Then why,’ Hish asked, her voice rasping, ‘did he ever leave?’

‘For Andarist,’ Gripp replied without hesitation. ‘They are three, yes, with Anomander upon one point, Silchas the other. But the one who binds them, who maintains the balance – that one is Andarist. Anomander is facing more than one schism.’

‘Then,’ said Hish Tulla, suddenly rising, ‘you will bring him here first.’

‘I will,’ Gripp said.

‘Your pardons,’ Kellaras said, looking to them both, and ignoring Pelk’s sudden hand upon his left arm, ‘but no. He must return to the Citadel-’

‘Captain,’ said Hish in something like a snarl, ‘we have another guest.’

‘Andarist,’ said Gripp, slumping back in his chair.

‘Then … then, Abyss below, summon him! Here!’

‘No point,’ said Gripp. ‘He would refuse you. He has claimed a wing here in the house, barricaded, the doors locked. His flight into the wilderness, away from the scene of slaughter, brought him, eventually, to us. Well,’ he amended, ‘to Hish Tulla. Who, in his moment of greatest need, had taken him into her arms, when none other dared.’ After a moment, the old man shrugged. ‘We sent him our servants. None returned to us. Presumably, they feed him, keep the chambers clean …’

Kellaras slowly sat back, dumbfounded, appalled.

‘That is why,’ said Gripp, ‘when I find Anomander, it will be here that we come. Before Kharkanas.’

Kellaras nodded. ‘Yes, Gripp Galas. Yes. Of course.’

Pelk pulled at his arm, angled him on to his feet. Confused, he swung to her.

‘He leaves tomorrow, does Gripp,’ she said, trying to hold him with her eyes.

Kellaras glanced across at Hish Tulla, and saw in her face such desolation as to blur his vision. See me now, Oh Prazek and Dathenar? You are not alone in grieving over the discord I bring. This task of mine … I did not choose it. It finds me. Alas, it finds me.

* * *

Flanked by Rebble and Listar, Wareth made his way towards the small crowd that had gathered at an intersection between the rows of tents. Peatsmoke hung in wreaths over the enormous encampment, motionless in the still, bitter cold air. Just to the south, the makeshift army’s refuse heap and cesspits were marked by a thicker, darker column of smoke, towering high and tilted like a spear driven into the ground. Ravens wheeled around that column, as if eager to roost. Their distant cries held the timbre of frustration.

‘Step aside, all of you,’ Rebble said in a growl as they reached the score or so recruits, and Wareth saw faces turn towards them, and belligerent scowls quickly vanish behind masks of studied caution when they saw who had challenged them. Men and women backed away to clear a path.

The body sprawled face-down on the frozen ground was naked from the waist up. A dozen or more knife wounds spotted the pallid back. A few had bled freely, crusting the incision made by the blade, but many others were virtually bloodless.

‘Give us room,’ Rebble ordered, and then, frowning down at the corpse, he sighed, his breath pluming. ‘Who’s this one, then?’

Crouching and wincing as his misshapen spine creaked, Wareth pulled the body on to its back. The night’s cold made the corpse stiff, with the arms extended up beyond the man’s head. Fingerprints, painted in smudged blood, encircled both wrists, from when the killer had dragged his or her victim into the intersection. While Wareth studied the unfamiliar face before him, Listar moved away, seeking heel-tracks on the thin, smeared layer of snow still covering the narrow passages between tents.

It didn’t seem likely that he would find any. This murderer was in the habit of dropping the bodies far away from the tent in which each killing had taken place, though how that was managed without anyone’s taking note remained a mystery. In any case, it was now part of the pattern, as were the successive knife wounds driven into a body from which life had fled.

‘Anyone know him?’ Wareth asked, straightening to scan the circle of faces.

There was no immediate reply. Wareth studied the expressions surrounding him, seeing, not for the first time, the ill-disguised contempt and disdain in which he was generally held. Officers had to earn respect, but the labours required lay somewhere in the future, if at all. And in this miserable company of reluctant recruits, rank alone was a flimsy framework, weakened still further by an almost institutional hatred for authority. When it came to Wareth, his reputation made the entire conceit totter, moments from violent collapse. He had warned Galar Baras often enough, to no avail.

But these were his own thoughts, his own internal pacing to and fro, upon which attended every fear, real and imagined. The voices of those fears ran the gamut of whisper to frenzied roar, and in all cacophony, they made a chorus of terror. Most urgent music, the kind to fill the skull of a running man, a fleeing man. But all these frantic steps take me nowhere.

‘From which pit?’ Rebble demanded. ‘Anyone?’

A woman spoke. ‘He was named Ginial, I think. From White Crag Pit, same as me.’

‘Hated or liked?’

The woman snorted. ‘I was a cat. Never paid much attention to what the dogs were up to.’

Wareth eyed her. ‘But you knew his name.’

She refused to meet his gaze. Instead, she answered Rebble as if he had been the one to ask the question. ‘A killer of women, was Ginial.’ She shrugged. ‘We knew about those ones.’

At that, Rebble shot Wareth a look.

Listar returned. ‘Nothing, sir. Like the others.’

Sir. How that word struck him, like a muddy stone to the chest. Wareth glanced away, past the blank faces with their eager animal eyes. He squinted at the towering column of smoke.

Rebble said, ‘Well, looks like we got us some volunteers. Right here, just waiting for us. Four of you, pick him up and take him to the fires – now now, soldiers, no need to fight for the privilege.’

As the woman moved to collect up one outstretched arm, Wareth said, ‘No, not you.’

Scowling, she stepped back a step.

Rebble edged close to her. ‘When the lieutenant talks to you, recruit, give ‘im your cat’s stare, and when he asks you something, hiss your words loud and clear. It don’t matter that he’s all bent and ugly. Understand?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘There,’ and Rebble smiled out through his snarl of beard, revealing startlingly white teeth, ‘now that didn’t pinch too much, did it? Just keep playing at soldier and who knows, you might climb up to become one. Maybe.’

Wareth’s new corporal, and personal strong-arm to the new lieutenant, was certainly enjoying his newly won privileges. With each day that passed, Rebble was sounding more and more like a veteran of many battlefields. Every army has a temper. Abyss save us if it’s Rebble’s.

With the body gone, the remaining onlookers wandered off. The woman alone remained, shifting weight from one foot to the other, not looking at anyone in particular.

‘Your name, recruit?’ Wareth asked her.

‘Rance … sir.’ She lifted her head then and fixed defiant eyes upon him. ‘Drowned my own baby. Or so I’m told and why would anybody lie? I don’t remember any of it, but I did it. Wet hands, wet sleeves, wet face.’

Wareth held her gaze until she broke it. That regard of his was something he had learned to perfect long ago, discovering how easily it could be mistaken for resolve and inner strength. Games of disguise. Wareth knows them all. Yet here he stands, his deepest secret known to us. So should he not feel free? Unencumbered? At last able to dispense with what so hungrily devoured all his energy, year after year, step after step in this useless life? The hiding, the deceptions, the endless pretence?

But no, a man such as Wareth, well, he but finds new hauntings, new instruments of torture.

Still, a rampant murderer stalking the camp will serve as a worthy distraction.

If only it did.

Still grinning, Rebble said to Rance, ‘Yes, it’s a dangerous thing, that speaking up.’

She grimaced. ‘You’re short on opinions, sir? Camp with the cats.’

‘Is that an invitation?’

‘Even you might not survive the night … sir.’

Wareth said, ‘Rance. We need squad leaders.’

‘No.’

Rebble laughed, clapping her hard on the shoulder, enough to make her stumble. ‘You passed the first test, woman. We don’t want them as are hungry for the rank. You got to say no at least five times, and then you’re in.’

‘Once will do, then.’

‘No good. You already said it twenty times in that pretty round skull of yours. You’d be amazed at what old Rebble can hear.’

‘They won’t follow me.’

‘They won’t follow anyone,’ Wareth said, still eyeing her. ‘That’s what makes it an adventure.’

Her sharp glare found him again. ‘Is it true, sir? Did you run?’

Rebble growled under his breath, but Wareth gestured the man to silence, and then said, ‘I did. Ran like an arse-poked hare, with the sword in my hand screaming its outrage.’

Something settled in her face, and whatever it was, Wareth had not expected it. No disgust. No contempt. Then what is it I’m seeing? Rance shrugged. ‘A sword that screams. Next time, I’ll be right there beside you, sir.’

The weapons and armour of the Hust were yet to be distributed. They remained in heavily guarded wagons, the iron moaning day and night. Every now and then one wailed through its burlap mummery, like a child trapped in the jaws of a wolf.

In her eyes he saw recognition.

Killed your baby, did you? Not knowing what to do with the damned thing, as it screamed and screamed. Not knowing how you could cope – not just that day, but for the rest of your life. So you took the easy way out. End the screams, in a tub of soapy water.

But the screams don’t end, do they? Unless, of course, your mind snaps, and it all vanishes inside. As if you weren’t even there. But for all that not-knowing, there remains a bone-deep terror – the terror of one day remembering.

‘Your killer’s killing men who hurt women,’ Rance said. ‘It’s what they all share, these victims. Isn’t it?’ She hesitated and then said, ‘Could be a woman.’

Yes. We think so, too.

‘I think you just joined the investigation,’ Rebble said.

‘What makes you think I want her caught?’ Rance snapped in reply.

‘That’s fine, too,’ Rebble answered, nodding. ‘We’re not much interested either. But the commander wants it all settled.’

‘When the last woman-killer is dead,’ she replied. ‘Then it will settle.’

‘Could be a few hundred men, maybe more,’ said Wareth, studying her, noting the redness of her hands, as if she had recently scalded them, and the guardedness that clenched her face. ‘Too many to lose.’

Rance shook her head. ‘Then tell him how it is, sir.’ Her eyes found his again, and indeed he thought of a cat. ‘Tell him how it’s the men who are cowards who hurt and kill women. Tell him about their small minds, full of dark knots and darting fears. Tell him how they can’t think past that first rush of blind rage, and how satisfying it is to just give up thinking altogether.’ Colour had risen to her face with her words. ‘Tell the commander, sir, that these dead bastards are worthless in any army. They’ll run. They’ll make trouble with us cats, looking for more women to bully and threaten. Better to see them all dead. Sir.’

Wareth glanced across at Rebble, and saw the man grinning, but it was a cold grin that could go in any direction.

Listar stood silent, a few paces away. Wife slayer.

Did she know? Of course she knows. Crimes are the meat of our conversations, and we’ll chew the gristle over and over again, in the belief that, with enough jawing, the flavour will change and the bitterness will go away. The sour misery of it all … listen! Just fade into nothing, will you? Oh, we’re a stubborn lot, especially with those faiths promising escape.

‘They ain’t all cowards,’ Rebble said, still grinning, but something was lit in his eyes.

She was sharp enough to notice and stepped back. ‘If you say so, sir.’

‘I do. More to the point, some killings, well, they just happen. In a red haze.’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

‘That’s how forgetting and remembering becomes the worst part of it.’

Now, at last, Wareth saw the woman pale. ‘You have the truth of that,’ she said in a low, frail voice.

Then Rebble’s grin spread into a smile. ‘But me, I don’t have that problem. I remember every poor bastard I went and killed. The ones I meant to, the ones I didn’t. If I gave you all their names, would you know which was which? No. Nobody would. Because it really makes no difference to anybody, not even me. That’s my problem, you see. What I can’t remember, no matter how hard I try, are my reasons for killing anybody. The arguments, I mean, the ones that broke out and turned bad.’ He shook his head, showing an exaggerated expression of bafflement. ‘Not a single reason, not one.’

Sighing, Wareth looked away. Rebble’s new habit was making speeches, but none of them left a listener feeling at ease. Is there anything beneath all that, Rebble? Something you’re trying to tell us? Something you need to confess? What’s stopping you?

Rance simply nodded in answer to Rebble’s words.

The tall, wiry man then turned and walked over to Listar. ‘Let’s go find the dead man’s tent, Listar, and see what’s to be seen.’ He glanced over at Wareth. ‘It’s almost tenth bell, sir.’

‘I know,’ Wareth replied. ‘Go on then, the two of you.’

He watched the two men head off towards the White Crag block.

‘Can I go now, sir?’

‘No. Come with me.’

She surprised him by offering no objection, and fell in at his side when he set out for the command centre. ‘Better you than him, sir.’

‘Just smile and nod, no matter what he says.’

‘I’d forgotten about Listar,’ she said.

‘Rebble figured you were looking to wound, I think. He didn’t like it.’ Wareth hesitated, and then said, ‘Listar isn’t a coward. He wants to die. He won’t take a guard at his tent at night, despite these murders. Every time we find ourselves standing over another body, he’s disappointed that it’s not him lying there at our feet.’

Rance grunted, but said nothing.

‘Not much longer now, I think.’

‘What?’

‘We’ve got a problem with desertions, Rance. And not enough old Legion soldiers to ring the camp. Besides which, the deal was freedom, only to win it we’d have to serve, but given the chance we’ll take the freedom and Abyss take the serving part. I think it will all fall apart.’

‘So why make me do anything? Just let me go back to my tent-’

‘You weren’t anywhere near your tent when looking at that body,’ Wareth observed as they drew closer to the larger cluster of tents at the camp’s centre. ‘Not if you’re in the White Crag block.’

‘I was just wandering, sir. They won’t accept me, you know.’

‘Who’s the worst of your lot, Rance, for making trouble with you?’

‘There’s one. Velkatal. She dropped six babies, then left them to run wild. Four were dead before coming of age, and the other two ended up in the mines and died in them. But to hear her tell it, she was the world’s best mother.’

‘Fine. Make her your Rebble.’

Rance snorted. ‘She’d be the first to mutiny under my command.’

‘Not after I inform her that whatever your fate, she will share it.’

‘So that is how you make squad leaders. And that’s why Rebble keeps you alive.’

‘It’s how we’re making squad leaders,’ Wareth agreed. ‘But as for Rebble, he started keeping me alive back in the pit. So, I don’t know his reasons, but there was no deal made that’s changed anything. At least, not that he’s told me.’

‘You never killed a woman, did you?’

‘No. Rance, there’re all kinds of cowards out there.’

She grunted again, her only response.

* * *

Fleeing the future seemed the most sordid of acts, and yet Faror Hend felt that she was making a habit of it. Two men haunted her wake, and the one pursuing her was, to her mind, the wrong man. At night, lying sleepless on her cot, with the tent walls slumping with the weight of the ice left by her breath, she could, upon closing her eyes, see a figure, tall and spectral, emerging from a vast, lifeless plain. He was walking towards her, hunting her down, and for all the monstrosity of the image, she knew that there was no evil in him. He was simply her fate, bound in promise, inescapable.

Yet in her dreams, when at last sleep found her, she saw Spinnock Durav, a cousin too close for propriety. She saw his youth, nearly a match to her own. She saw his smile, and basked in the wit of his sly words. He offered her an image, a possibility, that burned with mockery – the cruel, sneering kind. Though he stood close, she could not reach for him. Though she longed to take him, he was like a man armoured against her every charm. She would then wake, her soul heavy and cringing with the hopelessness of her desire. He had, after all, pushed her away, confessing instead his love for Finarra Stone, and the bitter irony of that revelation still tasted like ashes in Faror’s mouth.

With dawn streaking the east horizon, she would leave her tent, and set out in the direction of that growing light, drawn to its red slash, the fires of a new day’s birth. With each and every night a realm of ashes and despair, she fled into the light. An army encamped was a creature of routine, mechanical and obstinate in its witless, dull-brained way. It offered nothing new, no change in its surly, trudging mood.

Out past the pickets, facing on to a snow-smeared plain, she would stand, wrapped in her heavy cloak, and look for a figure, walking on foot, coming out of dawn’s blazing fire. New day, new life. Those who play at soldiers stir behind me, and before me, somewhere out there, a man striding out from a soldier’s end.

Mechanical things will break. Dirt and rust to bind the gears, millstones worn down, ratchets and brackets weakened by strain unto snapping. But some, no matter how carefully fitted the assembled parts, are destined to not work at all. And even then, look into the east, out on to this empty plain. There he walks, a broken cog, seeking a new routine. Husband. Wife.

I flee, but in truth, there is nowhere to run to. The future chases me, hunts me.

On this day, Commander Galar Baras had summoned her to join him in his staff meeting. She saw no reason for that. She was a Warden, not an officer of the Hust. More to the point, she needed to leave, to ride for her own company – back to Commander Calat Hustain, and Spinnock Durav.

Would Kagamandra be there as well? Hunched over some table, his vein-roped hand curled round a tankard, enwreathed in the smoke from the hearth, a grey figure with hooded eyes? Or was he in fact somewhere between here and the fort of the Wardens? And if so, which path would she take upon her return? Do I meet him? Or do I leave the tracks, journey at night and hide well during the day?

Such shame in these childish thoughts!

After some time, she turned about and made her way back into the Hust encampment. It was not the army she had expected to find. The machine might well rattle on, like the vast bellows of Henarald’s forge, all iron arms, wheels and cogs, but it was a sickly assemblage now.

The horror of Hunn Raal’s poisoning dwelt in Faror Hend’s mind like some vast fortress, isolated, rising from an island surrounded by forbidding seas. Every current pushed her away, and she was reluctant to fight that tide. Ambition was one thing. The desire for restitution held at its core a righteous cause. Sufficient for a civil war? She could not see that. But then, had not Hunn Raal sought to prevent such a war? With no legions to stand against Urusander’s, that civil war was as good as done.

Instead, the Hust Legion sought a rebirth. Walking into the camp, where men and women sat in clumps around morning cookfires, she could feel nothing of the surety that belonged to a military gathering. Instead, the atmosphere swirled with resentment, defiance, fear and dread.

These new soldiers were killing each other. Those that didn’t desert. They spoke of freedom as if it meant unfettered anarchy. It was a wonder to Faror that this camp had not already burst apart. She did not understand what held it together. Or, perhaps, I choose not to understand. How that, beyond all the resentment and fear, there can be heard a soft whisper, a voice filled with promises, yet strident with need.

The weapons of the Hust never shut up. Bound and wrapped tight, still they sing. Faint as a breath upon this chill wind.

If the prisoners fear, they also desire. And few, I wager, understand that this desire came not from them, but from the guarded wagons, from the stacks of blades and bundles of chain armour. From the greaves and vambraces, from the helms and their rustling camails. Voices whispering without end.

She fought against that terrible music. She did not belong here.

The command tent was directly ahead. Two Hust soldiers flanked the entrance. Muttering and something like soft laughter rained from them although they stood mute, faces impassive, and as Faror passed between them she fought off a shiver.

Within, the quartermaster, Seltin Ryggandas, was crouched before a free-standing woodstove in the centre of the chamber, feeding it dung-chips. Captain Castegan – the last of the surviving officers of that rank, apart from Galar Baras himself – was standing near a portable table. He had been near retirement, a man whose weak bladder had saved his life the night of Hunn Raal’s visit, as he would not drink alcohol. It was clear, from his bent form and sunken expression, that he cursed his caution, although Faror suspected that Castegan’s deepest hatred belonged to all those in Kharkanas who had refused to let the Hust Legion follow its soldiers into extinction.

Galar Baras was sitting on a travel chest, half turned away from everyone else, and nothing in his demeanour invited conversation. To Faror’s eyes the man had aged beyond his years in the past few weeks.

Moments later, the officers drawn from the prisoners began arriving. The first man, Curl, had been a pit blacksmith, pocked by half a lifetime’s worth of burns from embers and spatters of molten metal. He was hairless, his skin black as Galar’s, with soft, blunt features that looked vaguely melted. Bland, empty eyes, pale as tin, slid across the others in the tent, hesitating only an instant upon Faror Hend.

Despite the brevity of that pause, Faror felt herself grow cold. Curl had killed his partner in the smithy in the small village where he lived and worked. He had then broken the man’s bones, battering the body through most of a night, until what he had left would fit easily into the forge’s brick-lined belly. For all the calculation in removing the evidence of his crime, he had not considered the black columns of smoke that poured from the chimney to settle heavy and rank upon the village, delivering the stench of burned clothing, hair, bones and flesh.

None knew what had motivated Curl to murder his partner, and he was not forthcoming on the matter.

Behind him came the one woman promoted thus far, from Slate Pit to the northwest. Aral was gaunt, her black hair streaked with grey, with a pinched, pale face and eyes that seemed capable of holding a world’s fill of malice and spite. She had, one fine evening, fed a dozen select guests her husband for supper. That her guests were one and all related to her husband made the deed all the sweeter, as far as she was concerned, and she would have happily included any or all of them as dessert. When Faror had heard the tale, from Rebble one night over a cask of ale, his telling had dragged her past horror into humour. But upon meeting Aral, all amusement vanished into the depthless darkness of her gaze.

‘It’s the husband you need to think about, Warden,’ Rebble had added later. ‘I mean, one look into those eyes … no, not a thing to marry, not in there. Not a thing to love, or cherish, or – gods forbid – worship. That woman – I near piss myself every time we chance to meet gazes. So you can’t help but wonder at the man who took her hand. But one thing’s for certain. She’ll be a fine commander, since no man or woman, if they got eyes to see, would ever go against her.’

‘That’s a dubious justification,’ Wareth had replied. ‘It’s not just giving orders, Rebble. Being an officer’s a lot more than that. It’s down to who you’ll follow.’

‘Well, lieutenant, if you know anything about that, it’d be from the backside.’

‘True enough, Rebble, but that don’t make my vision any less clear.’

Of these new officers, selected from the prisoners, only Rebble and Wareth had caught Faror Hend’s interest. Rebble was a victim of his own temper, and that was far from a rare thing. Nothing in Rebble baffled her. As for Wareth … well, monstrous he might appear to be after years of wielding a pick, but there was something gentle in the man. Gentle and, she had to admit, weak. It may well have been his cowardice that made him as clever as he was. She would not trust Wareth in any setting that threatened violence, but she did not anticipate ever finding herself in such a situation when she might have to: accordingly, she accepted him as he was, and perhaps the real reason for that was, just as with Rebble, she understood him.

Her aversion to joining the military had guided her into the company of the Wardens. She saw nothing inviting or glorious in battle, and had no desire to seek it out.

Accompanying Aral were Denar and Kalakan, a pair of thieves who had broken into an estate in Kharkanas, only to stumble into what they swore was a father raping all four of his children, with the wife lying dead on the floor in the room’s centre. By their tale, which they still maintained as the truth, the man in question was highborn enough to sell his innocence to the magistrate, and, indeed, to twist the scene around, accusing the thieves of the murder and the rapes. As the four children were, one and all, driven too deep into shock to be capable of responding to anyone or anything, it was the noble’s word against two common thieves.

Denar and Kalakan had been sent to separate pits, only to reunite here in the Hust Legion. Their promotions were earned by the sharpness of their minds, and the cutting precision of their wit. Their sheer popularity made the charges against them seem profoundly unlikely, and, as it turned out, the two men had been partners in love as well as thievery.

A few moments later, Wareth arrived, and with him was a young woman who seemed far from pleased to be in his company, or anyone’s company for that matter. She immediately moved off to stand with her back against canvas, arms crossed and eyes upon the muddy floor.

You have my sympathy. This is a bag full of knives, and here you all are, with your hands plunged into it.

She saw Galar Baras studying the newcomer with a frown, and then he looked away, scanning the others for a moment before nodding and rising. ‘Today,’ he said, ‘we begin issuing weapons and armour.’

Castegan seemed to choke, but it was the quartermaster who said, ‘Commander, you cannot do that!’

‘It’s time, Seltin.’

‘The blades are eager for blood,’ Castegan said. ‘They are stung, each and every one of them. You can hear it, Galar Baras. The betrayal burns them.’

Sighing, Galar said, ‘Enough of that nonsense, Castegan. Yes, the iron has a voice, but you would make those weapons out to be more than what they are. Henarald himself explained how the Hust iron reacts to changes in temperature, and how each blade talks to those nearest it, as would a tuning fork. What we hear is pressure, and tension. These weapons, Castegan, are not alive.’

Castegan scowled. ‘It may be that they weren’t, Galar, but they are now. And I tell you this’ – he rapped the scabbard at his belt – ‘my blade slides into my dreams every night now. Begging for blood. Beseeching me to be the hand of its vengeance.’ He jabbed a finger at his commander. ‘Tell me, does your sword sleep at night?’

Galar met Castegan’s gaze for a long moment, and then he turned away. ‘Wareth, do you have anything to report?’

‘No, sir. Just another murder. Another woman-killer now stumbles through the everlasting Abyss. The mystery of how the bodies are moved continues to perplex us. We’ve gone nowhere in our investigation.’

‘And who is this woman you have brought to us?’

‘Rance, sir. From White Crag Pit. She has the makings of an officer, sir.’

Galar Baras grunted, and then faced her. ‘Rance. What think you? Shall I distribute the weapons and armour of the Hust to you and your fellow recruits?’

Her eyes narrowed on the commander. ‘It’s a conversation we cannot but overhear, sir,’ she said. ‘Those … things. What you suggest … I don’t know if any of us want to be part of that conversation.’

‘Not a conversation,’ Castegan said. ‘An argument. They’ll pluck at the worst in you. Think on that, Galar Baras! Think on these wretched murderers you would now arm! There will be chaos. Bloody chaos.’

Denar cleared his throat, glancing briefly at Kalakan, and then said, ‘Sir, it’s chaos already, and that’s building. We all spent years working, stumbling exhausted back to our bunks. Now we just march this way and that – at least, those willing to listen to us. Most of them, sir, just lie around bickering.’

Kalakan added, ‘We need more than just weapons, maybe. We need to be doing something. Anyway.’

Galar Baras nodded. ‘Well, consider this, then. It seems that Urusander is not interested in doing things the traditional way. He will not wait for spring. He will probably begin his march on Kharkanas before the month’s out.’

Faror Hend wondered at that, and then she said, ‘Forgive me, commander. But that would be foolish of him. The Wardens-’

Castegan cut her off with a harsh bark of laughter. ‘Then you’ve not heard. Ilgast Rend was given command by Calat Hustain and took your Wardens to Neret Sorr. There was a battle with Urusander’s Legion. Rend’s dead, the Wardens shattered.’

She stared at the man, unable to comprehend his news. Galar Baras stepped close and set a hand upon her shoulder. ‘Damn Castegan for his insensitivity, Faror. I would have spoken of it to you, once this meeting was done. I am sorry. The tale but just arrived, from a courier out of Kharkanas.’

‘This is the season of sordid ends,’ Castegan said, now pacing. ‘No time for sentimentality. I make my words hard and cruel, not out of malice, but to impress upon everyone here that niceties are an indulgence we can no longer afford. Galar – send that rider back to Kharkanas, with a message for Silchas Ruin. The effort here has failed. There is no Hust Legion. It’s dead. Gone. Exhort him to sue for peace.’

Faror backed away from Galar’s grip, until she felt the cold, wet tent wall at her back. Ilgast Rend … no! My friends- ‘Commander, what is the fate of Calat Hustain? He rode out to the Vitr with a company-’ Spinnock! You still live. Oh, feel my relief – woman, are you truly this shallow? ‘Captain Finarra Stone was sent to the Shake. Does she – has she learned of this?’ What, what am I to do now?

A camp-stool nudged her left leg, and she looked down, uncomprehendingly, until Wareth’s voice said, ‘Sit, Faror.’

Numb, she sank down.

Galar Baras was speaking. ‘… mission is now imperative. He wants us ready to march in two weeks. The matter is made simple. We have no choice, now.’

‘Untrue!’ Castegan said in a snarl. ‘We cannot hope to command these savages! The only choice left us is to surrender!’

‘Wareth.’

‘Commander?’

‘Gather the sergeants and corporals drawn from the prisoners. Add more to make the complement complete. I will want that list before noon today. Bring them to the training ground. We will do this in two phases. They are the first to be armed and armoured.’

‘Long overdue,’ said Curl, making fists with his battered hands. ‘I would feel that iron. Taste it. Listen to its song.’

‘Wareth, take your fellows out to the wagons. Oh, by the way, your old blade awaits you.’

At those words, Wareth flinched. ‘Sir, I beg you, not that one.’

‘You are bound to it,’ Galar Baras replied. ‘Until death takes you. Really, Wareth, you already knew that.’

‘Then, sir, I humbly request that I remain unarmed.’

‘Denied. Seltin, join Wareth and see to the proper issuing to my lieutenants here. Thereafter, remain at your post, and double the guard over the wagons. We will see what happens when the sergeants and corporals return to their squads – this afternoon and tonight. Then, if all goes well, we will equip the regulars tomorrow.’

As the quartermaster led the prisoners out of the tent, Galar turned to Castegan. ‘Get out. I will speak in private with Faror Hend now.’

‘Consider well,’ said Castegan in a growl, ‘the honour of the Hust Legion.’

‘See to your own, Castegan!’ Galar snapped, eyes holding on Faror where she sat.

The man straightened. ‘When it is all I have left to defend, Galar Baras, I require no admonition from you.’

Galar turned on him. ‘Is it honour you now fight for? I would think guilt a more apt word for what gnaws at your soul. Swallow it down whole, Castegan, and muse long on its weight. At the very least, it will keep your feet on the ground.’

‘Commander Toras Redone defied my seniority here-’

‘Defied? No. She questioned it. You may have me in years, but not years in service to the Hust. I will, if you ask it, release you to return to your original legion. I am sure you will have plenty of intelligence to sell to Urusander.’

Castegan was trembling as he faced his commander. ‘You make a dangerous offer, Galar Baras.’

‘Why? This is not a gale you need face. Leave it to push you round, and, like a hand at your back, send you running home.’

Saying nothing more, Castegan strode from the tent.

After a long moment, Galar Baras faced Faror Hend once again. ‘What Lord Ilgast Rend did was unforgivable.’

She snorted. ‘He need not beg for forgiveness any longer, sir, now that he lies dead.’

‘Faror, Lord Silchas Ruin has given me command of all forces but the Houseblades of the highborn Houses. For all that, I expect it to be temporary. When Lord Anomander returns, it will be Silchas taking my place.’

She blinked up at him. ‘Toras Redone will return to command the Hust, sir.’

‘I think not.’

‘Her husband will see to it.’

Galar Baras studied her briefly, and then shrugged. ‘Perhaps. But we cannot rely upon that. The Wardens are no more. I am attaching you to my staff, elevating your rank to captain. You will command a company, Faror Hend.’

‘Sir, I cannot. Calat Hustain is my commander still.’

‘He has lost his command. Faror, I have word – there are survivors from the battle. Not many, but some. Seen on the south tracks. They are fleeing here, captain.’

Oh, gods below. ‘Sir, send a rider to Yedan Monastery. Captain Finarra Stone is there. She will be the ranking officer, not me.’

‘Until then, it will have to be you, Faror Hend.’

‘Sir, I do not want a Hust sword.’

Galar strode to the woodstove. He kicked the latch so that the grilled door opened, and then crouched to fling in handfuls of dung-chips. ‘There was a time,’ he said, ‘when the Hust Legion was a name spoken of with pride. For all the tales of cursed weapons and such, we stood against the Forulkan. We saved not just Kharkanas, but all of Kurald Galain.’

‘I am not a soldier, Galar Baras.’

His shoulders shook in silent laughter, ‘Oh, have I not heard that said enough yet?’

‘How can you hope to resurrect the Hust Legion?’ she asked. ‘To what it once was? Where, sir, will you find glory in these men and women?’

He straightened, but kept his face averted. ‘I can but try.’

* * *

‘Nothing downtrodden in yonder peasants,’ Prazek observed.

‘Nothing peasantry in them either, brother,’ Dathenar replied.

Ahead upon the track stood a score or more figures. They had been hurrying from the west, bundled under gear wrapped in blankets and furs. Upon spying the two approaching riders, they had drawn up in a clump, barring the way.

Clearing his throat, Dathenar said, ‘Lacking a king, they merely await your first and, one hopes, most stirring speech, Prazek.’

‘I have speech to stir indeed.’

‘Emotions to churn, thoughts to swirl, but save your last handful of spice, Prazek, for the final turn.’

‘You invite a burning hand, Dathenar, to give bridling sting to my slap.’

‘Shall a slap suffice? I see not the yoke of drudgery before me, but loot collected in the dark, and in haste. And see how they are armed, with cudgels, spears and brush-hooks.’

‘Forest bandits, perchance? But then, why, their zeal with said brush-hooks is unequalled in the annals of wayfarers, for not a tree stands to hide their hidey-hole.’

‘Zealotry has its downside,’ Dathenar added, nodding.

Three over-muscled men had stepped out from the crowd. Two wielded spears made of knives bound to shafts, while the one in the centre carried a pair of brush-hooks, one of which appeared to be splashed with frozen blood. This man was smiling.

‘Well met, sirs!’ he cried.

The two riders reined in, but a dozen or so paces distant from the three men.

‘Met well indeed,’ Prazek called back, ‘since by cogent meditation I conclude you to be recruits of the Hust Legion, but it seems you travel without an officer, and perhaps have found yourselves lost so far from the camp. Fortunate for you, then, that we find you here.’

‘For this day,’ Dathenar added, ‘you will see our lenient side, and rather than tangle your mob’s many legs with something as mentally challenging as a proper march in cadence, you can scurry back to the camp like a gaggle of sheep.’

‘Sheep, Dathenar?’ Prazek asked. ‘Surely, by the belligerence arrayed before us, we must consider the simile as inaccurate. Better we deem them goats.’

‘Listen to these shits!’ one of the men said, and the others laughed. ‘You sweat perfume too, do you?’

‘Goatly humour,’ Prazek explained to Dathenar. ‘Forever barking up ill-chosen trees. Sweat, good sir, belongs to the unwashed multitudes, such as are lacking the civil hygiene of panic well hidden. If perfume you seek, why, set nose to your own arse and breathe deep.’

‘Prazek!’ exclaimed Dathenar. ‘You bend low to crass regard.’

‘No more than but to match said gentleman’s anticipated posture.’

‘Shut your mouths,’ snapped the man with the two brush-hooks, no longer smiling. ‘We’ll take your horses. Oh, and your weapons and armour. And if we’re feeling … what was that word? Lenient? … we might let you keep your silk sac-bags, so whatever shrivelled stuff’s inside ’em don’t disappear entirely.’

‘That stretched a breath, Dathenar, did it not?’

‘I myself hearkened more to the stretching of his thoughts, not to mention grammar, Prazek – nigh unto breaking, I’d swear.’

‘Let us dispense with leniency, Dathenar. Surely the Hust Legion can indulge our spat of discipline as might be needed here.’

Someone in the crowd now said, ‘Leave ’em be, Biskin. They’s feckin’ armoured and feck.’

‘Now there are wise words,’ said Dathenar, brightening.

‘Indeed?’ Prazek asked. ‘How could you tell?’

No answer was possible, as the first three men charged them, with a dozen or so others following.

Weapons leapt from scabbards. The mounts surged forward, eager to close.

Hoofs lashed out, blades slashed, stabbed and twisted. Figures flew away to the sides of the track, while others vanished beneath the stamping horses. Blades flickered. Voices shrieked.

Moments later, both Houseblades rode clear and then reined in to wheel round. In their wake, a dozen deserters were still standing. Half that number writhed on the ground, while the remaining bodies did not move at all. There was blood on the track, blood bright upon the thin drifts of snow to either side.

Dathenar whipped his sword blade downward, shedding gore from its length. ‘Wise words, Prazek, are rarely understood.’

Their horses stamped and snorted, eager for another charge into the press, but both men were quick to quiet them.

Prazek eyed the deserters. ‘Few enough now, I think, to see them march in proper cadence.’

‘The cadence of the limp, yes.’

‘The limp, the shuffle, the stagger and the reel.’

‘You describe the gait of the defeated and the cowed, the battered and the bruised.’

‘I but describe what I see before me, Dathenar. Which of us, then, shall round up and make them proper?’

‘’Twas your stirring speech, was it not?’

‘Was it? Why, I thought it yours!’

‘Shall we ask Biskin?’

Prazek sighed. ‘Alas, Biskin tried to swallow my horse’s left forehoof. What remains of his brain bears the imprint of a horseshoe, decidedly unlucky.’

‘Ah, and do we see the other two from the front? One I know flung his head out of the path of my sword.’

‘Careless of you.’

‘No, just his head. His body went the other way.’

‘Ah, well. This is poor showing on our part, as the other man lost his hat.’

‘He wore no hat.’

‘Well, the cap bearing most of his hair, then.’

Dathenar sighed. ‘When leaders wrongly lead, why, best that others step in to take their place. You and I, perhaps? See, they recover – those that can – and look to us with the broken regard of the broken.’

‘Ah, so I see. Not goats then after all.’

‘No. Sheep.’

‘Shall we dog them, brother?’

‘Why not? They’ve seen our bite.’

‘Enough to heed our bark?’

‘I should think so.’

‘I should, too.’

Side by side, the two officers rode back to the deserters. Overhead, crows had already gathered, wheeling and crying out their impatience.