The Dusk Watchman

CHAPTER 33

Doranei felt something nudge his elbow. When he bothered to look up, High Mage Endine was offering him a bottle. The King’s Man grunted and took it, not even bothering to sniff the contents before taking a long swig.

‘Easy,’ Endine said, patting him on the shoulder, ‘that’s the good stuff.’ He walked around Doranei and sat opposite him, staring at him over the fitful flames of a cooking fire. It was late and most had turned in for the night, ready to be up at dawn, but Doranei had wanted some time alone and that was in scant supply on the march.

‘Apricot brandy?’

Endine beamed. ‘Indeed!’

Doranei took another gulp. ‘Goes down well enough — smooth as a virgin’s tit.’ He paused and inspected the bottle. ‘Where’d you get this from? There’s a bitter almonds flavour at the back of it.’

‘I tested it for poison first.’ Endine laughed. ‘You think I’m such a fool I’d just accept the finest spirits in the kingdom turning up free without a little suspicion?’

‘Why in the name of the Dark Place did it turn up at all?’

‘A small part of the resupply consignment — some merchant from Canar Fell, one of those old pirates the king befriended during the wars of conquest and made rich after. The man rode into camp a few hours back, at the head of a wagon-train, food, weapons — even bloody horses.’

‘Free?’ Doranei asked between gulps.

‘Well, not quite free. I asked Dashain about it. It appears our friend Count Antern has been busy these last few months back in Narkang, making deals, selling concessions or assets — Antern’s mortgaged half the nation, as far as I can tell, and the credit extended to the Crown has been — well, I doubt even the Brotherhood could have bullied such terms out of the nobility and merchant houses.’

Doranei gave a snort and shifted to a more comfortable position. ‘Antern’s mortgaged the nation? Aye, the king’s a man of forward thinking, no doubt about that.’

‘What do you mean?’

The King’s Man gave him a sour smile. As much as he’d drunk since they’d eaten, his brain was still working all too well. ‘The prosperity of Narkang — you think that was a selfless act?’

‘It’s a fine legacy for any king.’

‘Aye, well, sure it is. You’re a member of the Di Senego Club, right? Where the king collects intellectuals and the like? There’re a lot of merchants on the membership rolls too: all men who owe the king more than a few favours. They got help over the years, and now they’re all figures of note in their particular trades. But haven’t you ever noticed the common thread in those trades?’

Endine frowned. ‘Perhaps — but what king wouldn’t involve himself in such things? He’s long admired Farlan horse-breeding, and the population’s increased in the last few decades, so food production has to be able to keep up.’

‘Iron ore and leatherworkers, too,’ Doranei said. ‘Our responsible king, putting these merchants in the same room as inventors and mages of all types; no other reason for it, I’m sure.’

‘What are you saying?’

The King’s Man pushed himself to his feet. ‘This nation he built, these men he surrounded himself with: now these merchants are falling over themselves to support his war effort, all ready at a few weeks’ notice to lead supply-trains into a lawless warzone.’ He spat into the fire. ‘It’s almost like he knew one day he’d want to wage a war of some sort and built a nation to service it.’

‘What? That was his motivation?’

‘Pah, who don’t like power too? It’s not been a hard life for a man like him, being king — when you’re that clever it’s always good to make sure the whole Land knows it. And the richer Narkang became, the better he could fight his secret war. Before his sister died, screaming about shadows with claws, he was just some nobleman drinking and whoring his way through life, forever looking for a use for that big brain o’ his.’

‘And that’s all the nation is to him?’

Doranei shrugged and belched. ‘Maybe, maybe not. Who’s to say? You ever thought you knew his mind, truly?’

‘Narkang and the Three Cities is just a machine for this war, one built over two decades?’ Endine gasped. ‘No, there must be more to it than that — one loss doesn’t define a man like that. He’s not Vorizh — he’s not so cold that he’d see us just as tools-’

‘Sure, if you say so. He’s not one for being ruthless, our king, that’s for sure. All gentle smiles and gracious waving at the commoners; no surrounding himself with murderers and madmen who drag fucking great dragons out o’ Ghenna itself.’ Doranei made a show of looking down at himself, prodding the brigandine he wore and pretending surprise at the sword hanging from his hip. His point made, the King’s Man swung around and stared out at the dark camp beyond.

‘Question is, does that make you proud or angry?’ he asked over his shoulder. ‘Me, I got a touch of both.’ He slapped his belly and wandered off into the dark. ‘And a whole lot o’ piss besides,’ he muttered as he went, a shadowy figure already. ‘Where the fuck’d we put the latrine?’

Isak opened his eyes to a dead Land, scoured grey by the hot wind so that even the grasses underfoot were lifeless and withered. He saw buildings in the distance, a tiered city wall and great square towers. Even from afar he could see they were in ruins, their people long since killed: the bones of a city, broken, jutting from its corpse.

‘Where am I?’ he said aloud. The wind snatched his words away like a jealous child.

‘An ending,’ came a deep voice behind him.

Isak turned and regarded the figure that had appeared from nowhere: gaunt and insubstantial, and far taller than any man. The face was hidden beneath a black cowl, one bone-white hand bearing a double-headed spear. It was said the Harlequins and Jesters both wore white masks to echo Death’s own emotionless, featureless face, but even weakened, the God showed Isak nothing of His self.

‘Not my ending,’ Isak declared, fighting the bone-deep compulsion to kneel. ‘So why here?’

Death did not speak for a long while. Instead, He surveyed the wasteland they stood in, the destruction done there. Isak realised that beneath the dust and grey grass there were stones laid in some semblance of order. Few were visible, but there were enough to imagine the shape of the building that once stood there. There was no sun, just the dull grey sky of a permanent twilight.

‘Why here?’ Death said at last. ‘To show you the consequences of power.’

‘This is the City of Ghosts?’

The Chief of the Gods didn’t reply, but He didn’t have to. The dust clouds swirling all around contained shapes, Isak realised, figures and movement — snapshots of life, burned forever into the place they were erased. Long sinuous bodies, tall figures on horseback, a woman who stood over them all, sword raised high. Isak caught glimpses only before the wind shifted and then they were gone, only for other broken souls to momentarily appear elsewhere.

Pale lights, mournful faces and the lonely cry of the wind; that was all they were. This was no judgment of the Gods; this was damage so profound even Gods could not affect it.

‘This was a place of beauty once,’ Death said, ‘and in our rage we tore it apart — tore it from the Land.’ He raised His spear and pointed to a rounded plateau. ‘There we cursed Aryn Bwr and his allies, unmindful of what it would cost us.’

‘What you stole from yourselves,’ Isak finished. ‘You lessened what you were in the name of revenge — you who call yourselves Gods.’

‘And now you lessen us further. By your actions, we are forever diminished and the shadow will take domain over the Pantheon.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘All you have done — you opened the way for Azaer, a being of no power, only words.’

Isak took a step towards the God and looked up into the depthless black of its cowl. ‘You think the shadow’s words weren’t power? That it wouldn’t have slowly crept into position after years, decades of whispers in the dark eroding the whole Pantheon? I’ve cleared the path some, not opened the way. I’ve made my enemy hurry and adapt carefully laid plans rather than allow it to choose its own time and place for the battle to come.’

‘Azaer was just a voice on the wind, a spirit, like countless others. Azaer was nothing — until you made it so.’

The white-eye turned away and watched the shifting shapes on the wind. Behind them an unearthly light danced around the far ruins of a broken spire, half buried by the dust and sand that was all that remained of the ground here.

‘You made Azaer, not I. You brought reason into the minds of mortals. You blessed them with fear and envy, the power to create and dream — all in your need for worship.’

‘Azaer is no daemon, feeding off the fear of mortals. The shadow lacks even that.’

Isak nodded. ‘A shadow’s between the light of worship and the dark of dread. Those private thoughts and cruelties, the unspoken, unformed prayers that are mortal thoughts — that’s what shaped Azaer. The petty desires and spite; greed in forms as numerous as the creatures you gave mortals dominion over.’

‘You try to absolve yourself?’ Death asked, stalking stiffly forward. ‘You hide now from what you have done? Azaer will soon challenge us because of what you’ve done — Azaer is a challenge because of your actions.’

‘No,’ Isak said simply. ‘I know what I’ve done, the price I might yet have to pay. But you sowed the seeds of your own destruction, and I might yet be able to redress the balance of the Land. For good or for ill, I intend to try.’

‘Even if the entire Land burns in your wake?’

Isak’s smile was sad. ‘I am what you made me. Now you live with the consequences.’

They broke from nowhere, rushing up like a flock of flushed game but with murder in their hearts. Daken barely turned in time as the lead attacker hurtled towards him with mad abandon. The notched edge of the rusted sword he held above his head was already coming down towards the white-eye’s face. Daken spun to one side, his great axe following him round and catching the man so hard in the ribs he was thrown from his feet.

General Amber stepped in to protect Daken’s flank, his scimitars slicing the air towards the next attacker. Behind them Amber’s Menin bodyguards surged forward, hunched low behind their shields, taking the impacts in their stride, moving steadily forward, chopping and stabbing at the frantic, unprotected attackers.

Daken drove ahead again, battering a bloody path through the fanatics with great sweeps of his axe, and Amber followed him, embracing the rush of battle: no time to think, no use in it. A man drove on, carried by the tide of his comrades and fought until he could not move. That was the Menin way; that was what had been drilled into him, year after year. The strokes he performed without thought; his arm knew the movements as his heart knew to beat, and he let it subsume him into those blessed, empty moments when the loss in his mind was distant and forgotten.

And then the Land snapped back into focus. The enemy were gone, taken down in a blinding slaughter, none fleeing, all lying there dead or dying. Only a few-score men and woman in rags for armour, but they had fought to the end against veterans. Amber blinked down at the squirming figure at his feet.

It was a young man of no more than fifteen summers, barely an adult, thin-limbed and pale. Old scabs had formed around his mouth, and the white scars of ringworm were clear on his neck. His collarbone had been cleaved through and Amber’s scimitar had chopped into the ribcage below as well. Blood poured from the wound, bubbling up like oil from the ground. The youth stared in shock at the sky above, his mouth working feebly as he tried to scream his last pain. Before Amber could end it, he saw the light fade in the young man’s eyes; his body sagged and the flow of blood tapered off.

‘Guess that answers one question,’ Daken commented as he kicked a corpse out of his way.

Amber looked up with a frown.

‘What the reception would be like for us,’ Daken explained, pointing towards the city walls a few hundred yards off. ‘No Devoted, but plenty more o’ these fuckers.’

‘None of them ran,’ Amber muttered, wiping his scimitars and sheathing them again. As he reached up his pauldron snagged again and he was forced to tug it back into place. The straps holding it had been sheared through in the last skirmish. ‘Not even when they realised they would be slaughtered.’

He looked around at his troops. They all bore the scars of the running war they were fighting: half-healed cuts and deep bruises, mismatched armour where some piece had been irreparable. Every skirmish now ended in a flurry of scavenging, belts and boots as valuable as weapons and food. With every day they looked less like a Menin army; more barbarian warriors than hardened, drilled infantry.

Every day Amber felt their eyes on him, the unspoken thoughts that he was the one doing this to them — he was the one asking for this relentless battle, and he could promise only leagues more of it to come.

‘Aye, I heard folk were dumb in these parts,’ Daken said.

‘That’s what surprises me — not that they’re dumb, that they were so fanatical. Tor Salan was as secular a city as I’ve ever seen, founded on magic and science, not devotion to the Gods. Not the most fertile grounds for tales of a saviour.’

Daken made a face and went back to surveying the haphazard shapes before them, the mounds of steel, brass and stone resting where they’d fallen. The Giants’ Hands — Tor Salan’s famed defences — were now lying useless.

‘Oh I don’t know. Your lot cut the heart out o’ this city, remember? You killed every mage here, so those defences don’t work and their way o’ life collapsed around them. Might have made them a little desperate, a little more open to persuasion.’

Amber nodded. For all his bloodthirsty bluster, Daken had travelled far across the Land and seen enough to know how life worked for most folk. His counsel, or the kernel of it, at least, tended to be useful more often than not.

‘At least the Devoted couldn’t use the Giants’ Hands on us,’ Nai said, joining them. The necromancer used his mace as a walking stick, the odd-sized boots he was wearing making him lurch even more than normal.

‘Your king said they would retreat, that they don’t want to fight here,’ Amber pointed out. ‘They never intended to defend Tor Salan, only recruit here.’

‘Well they did that,’ Nai said. ‘The scryer says forty thousand have dug in around the road to Thotel. Too many for us to break through, I’d guess, what with another army marching down from the north.’

‘North? Where did you hear that? The scryers didn’t tell me that,’ Amber said.

Nai shifted uncomfortably. ‘Ah, a different source, that one.’

‘Fucking daemons?’ Daken exclaimed. ‘Tsatach’s fiery balls, you just don’t learn, do you? Bloody necromancers.’

‘I didn’t invoke anything,’ Nai protested, ‘but some covenants still hold true.’

‘So what now? Do we dig in and wait to be attacked?’

‘The army needs a rest,’ Amber said. ‘The king said supplies would follow us once the way was clear. I don’t think we’re welcome in Tor Salan now, and we’ve killed enough civilians for the time being. We advance as far as we can without getting caught in a battle and dig in, but we won’t be attacked. Daken, your Green Scarves can raid the Devoted as much as you like, but the way home is blocked to us, so until King Emin’s army reaches us, we wait.’

He looked east towards the Devoted army, many miles away now. His skin felt cold. Even the realisation that they would have to fight through Ruhen’s armies to find the way home did nothing for him. The first milestone on that journey had been crossing the border, such as it was. The second had been reaching Tor Salan and ridding it of Devoted troops.

Perhaps by the third, I’ll start to feel something again. He scowled and looked up at the sky. Crows wheeled high above.

Isak blinked and uneasily opened his eyes. Slowly his surroundings came into focus: curved wicker struts arched over his body. His feet pressed against wooden boards. Underneath him was a sticky bedroll; above him, a ripped canvas was lashed over the struts, admitting a little light through the various tears. He could just make out a pale grey sky through them, and dark patches on the canvas showed where spots of rain had fallen.

The bed rumbled and jolted beneath him; igniting a dull ache in his skull that made him groan and put his hands to his head — or one hand, at least. Isak blinked at his white palm in confusion until he realised his right arm had been loosely bound to the nearest strut. The dusty black palm was empty, as it usually was when he woke, but clearly someone had decided not to take the chance.

He fumbled with the leather ties, eventually getting free. He inspected himself, and discovered someone had changed his clothes, put him in breeches and left a shirt and boots to one side. The blanket had slipped off, and he stared down at his body. The indentation in his belly was most obvious: a wide mess of scarring the size of his flattened hand, followed by the raised circle of the rune burned into his chest. That seemed so long ago, his first night in Tirah Palace, but unlike his other injuries he remembered that searing pain with fondness.

‘Still not so pretty,’ Isak croaked and patted the cloth strip that bound the Skull of Ruling to his waist.

He’d not been without the Crystal Skull since taking Termin Mystt. Without it his mind, assailed by the raging power of Death’s black sword, would be torn apart completely.

The faint smell of mud drifted through the hanging canvas flaps at the rear of the wagon, evoking fragmented memories of his life with the wagon-train before the day he was Chosen by Nartis. He flexed the fingers of his right hand. ‘If that’s my father driving,’ he muttered, ‘I’m gonna punch the bastard.’

‘If I were your da,’ laughed Carel from the driver’s seat just behind Isak’s head, ‘I’d have whipped you out of that bed at dawn and told you to set the traces!’

Isak struggled around until he was kneeling on the grimy mattress. Bowing his head to avoid the struts above, he shoved the canvas open to see Carel’s grinning face looking back while another man held the reins. Carel held out a filled pipe to him while the hooded driver turned to acknowledge Isak: Tiniq, General Lahk’s brother. He was one of the few bodyguards who hadn’t been returned to the ranks of the Ghosts — as he disliked riding almost as much as horses hated to be ridden by him, he’d doubtless volunteered to drive the wagon.

‘Thought you’d lost that habit,’ Carel commented mildly. ‘Passing out like some girl on the battlefield? I dunno, smacks o’ cowardice to me.’ He laughed.

The white-eye tried to find the words to respond to Carel’s banter, but his mind was blank.

Carel thumped him on the shoulder and smiled fondly. ‘Don’t worry; I know what you’re like when you’re just woken up. Here, make yourself useful, lazy bugger.’

Isak frowned, but he took the pipe and pressed his thumb into the bowl, lighting it with a spark of magic before handing it back. ‘I thought for a moment I was back on the wagon-train,’ he said as Carel puffed away at the pipe.

‘Relieved, then?’

Isak sighed and scratched the patchy stubble on his cheek. ‘I don’t know, to be honest.’

‘Fate’s eyes!’ Carel exclaimed, ‘I never thought you’d miss that lot! Don’t tell me you’re looking back fondly on life there?’

‘Nah — they’re still a bunch of bastards; the ones I can remember, at least,’ Isak said. ‘I think I’ve lost a few in my head; I can’t remember enough names and faces for all the caravans.’ He shrugged. ‘But life was simpler then. I might not have liked it much, but at least I wasn’t coming apart at the seams.’

‘Ah, well, life ain’t fair. At least people care about your opinion now, eh? All those wagon-folk would pretend you’d never even spoken; now a whole army’s marching on your word alone.’

‘Not my word, the king’s.’

‘Hah! Sure, he gave the order, but he’s following your lead — yours and Legana’s.’ Carel paused. ‘They’re an odd couple those two, but thick as thieves nowadays. You reckon they, ah-?’

‘Reckon what? That they’re-?’ Isak laughed. ‘Bloody soldiers, only one thing on your minds.’

‘Well, he’s a king, ain’t they expected to shag everything in sight? Anyone who gets married for political reasons won’t stay faithful.’

‘Any man tries that with Legana, he’ll find out the hard way how quick she can draw a knife. They’re friends, nothing more. They both — they can see each other as a person, not just a Goddess or king. Brings them close, means they can trust each other, and so can I.’

‘Plus Ardela looks the jealous type,’ Carel added.

Isak looked past the veteran at the column of men, horses and wagons and recognised the broad road they were slowly trundling down: the trader route to Tor Salan. ‘So how long was I asleep?’ he asked.

‘Passed out like a big girl, you mean?’ Tiniq quipped, attempting to join the banter.

‘Fuck off and drive the wagon,’ Isak snapped.

After a moment of uncomfortable silence Carel waved the pipe in Isak’s face and the white-eye took it, happy to have the distraction.

‘You were out three days,’ Carel said. ‘The king went after the Devoted troops when they retreated, but they were in better shape to march and they’re well ahead. He left you with a rearguard, but after a day I decided there was no telling when you were going to wake up, so we loaded you into this and went to catch ’em up. We reached the army mid-morning today — they keep having to stop and probe ahead because the Devoted have left divisions of troops staggered behind them — they’re not waiting for a fight, just looking to strafe any ragged edges, but it all needs a proper response.’

‘We’ll make good time on the road,’ Isak said after a moment. ‘Is anyone cutting cross-country?’

‘Aye, Vesna and Lahk have taken five divisions to harry their flanks, but given the ground this road’ll be the fastest route for as many infantry as we got.’

‘So now we chase them,’ Isak said wearily, ‘all the way to the Waste. Let’s hope the Chetse take exception to them, slow them up enough for us to force battle.’

‘Reckon they will? Where’s Ruhen going, anyway?’

‘Keriabral, Aryn Bwr’s fortress — where this all started, near enough.’

‘Why? What’s out there?’

Isak took a long draw on the pipe before replying, as though reluctant to voice the answer. ‘Why? Because I weakened the Gods, and now’s the time to challenge them, when they can’t defend themselves.’

‘And he can really do it?’

‘That and more,’ Isak said with a grim expression. ‘He’s got thousands of devoted worshippers, near-limitless power and half the opposition he expected.’

Carel fell silent.

‘And you can stop him?’ Tiniq asked in a quiet voice.

‘If I can catch him, I can kill him — not just his mortal body, Azaer too. And we still hold the majority of Crystal Skulls; without them he can’t make the Gods of the Upper Circle kneel, so he can’t avoid us forever.’ He sighed. ‘Unless he’s mad enough to kill them all. There’s always that.’