The ragged man

CHAPTER 27

Kastan Styrax waited, the dying sun on his face. A faint breath of wind danced across his cheek like a ghost's lament, as unnoticed as the discordant song of cicadas all around. He watched the orange smears of cloud as though searching for meaning in their patterns, but they answered no questions. The beauty of the sunset was similarly lost on him. Styrax had always been a man of the dawn, as the mysteries of the darkness were slowly unveiled. Any fool could enjoy dusk, thinking it heralded the reward of another day survived. Great men preferred dawn.

'You found me at dawn, Fate,' he said to the sunset. 'You sought me out when I was barely a man and told me I had a future like no other.' He raised a wineskin and drank, but when he lowered the skin, he realised his thirst had not been assuaged, and tossed it carelessly behind him, prompting a snort from the wyvern crouched nearby. The beast sat low on its hind legs, dusty-blue wings half-outstretched as though ready to catch the dusk wind. A voice in the back of his mind told Styrax he too should shake out his muscles, loosen the knots in his body with a few repeated forms with his sword. He did nothing. He felt like the weariness of his soul was a well of ice deep inside him.

The hillside was almost bare; low, gorse-like bushes with pale green leaves providing the only cover for the birds that nested there. Their nervous calls punctuated the summer evening, frantic chirps coming from all directions as though they were attempting to confuse the massive predator that had landed in their midst.

'You told me it was a future you could not affect, that the choices were mine alone. All this has come about because I willed it.' Styrax gestured to the Land around him, the open fields and olive groves, the glinting stream and serried ranks of sheltered vines. 'So who could be blamed for Kohrad's death but I? The Farlan boy? He sought to wound me; to distract me from the fight ahead, or excise the motive for conquest. As much as he deserves the lonely tortures of Ghenna, he was only reacting to my own actions. Thus the blame is ours to share.'

He walked forward a few paces until he reached a big boulder and sat. The weight of years had never before pressed so hard upon his shoulders; it had increased tenfold since Major Amber had roused him from his murderous grief. Now Styrax slumped forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he stared down at the dirt. It was dry and dusty on the hillside, what little water in the soil used up by the bushes. He paused as six pairs of dark eyes peered up at him: some sort of game-bird, with grey mottled plumage. Her five brown chicks were looking anxiously up from underneath their mother's wing.

'Hello, supper,' Styrax whispered. The bird bobbed its head in response, a nervous, wary reaction to the sound, no doubt, but one that filled him with a sudden sense of kinship. 'Oh, see now I can't eat you,' he continued reproachfully, 'not when you've welcomed me so respectfully.'

From somewhere behind the bird was an urgent chirrup, and the call was taken up in all directions, producing a sudden riot of sound. The cacophony was interrupted by the voice of someone calling, 'My Lord?' from further down the hillside.

The wyvern gave a hungry hiss, followed a ragged flapping sound as it hurriedly folded its wings in readiness to leap. The white-eye whispered a few soft words and a drift of magic slithered off his tongue. The wyvern quietened immediately, needing little encouragement to settle back down. It had flown for several hours that day and it was tired – no matter how tasty a morsel General Gaur might be.

'Come, my friend,' Styrax replied, not bothering to get up from the boulder, 'how fares my war?'

'About as hard as we anticipated,' the beastman said, trudging up the slope towards Styrax. He had a plain breastplate strapped on and his axe was slung on his back, ready for battle. 'And you?'

Styrax's gaze hardened, but the look had no effect on his long-time friend. He opened his mouth to speak, then the sight of Kohrad's body appeared in his mind and momentarily paralysed him. He looked away, unable to meet Gaur's bronze-flecked eyes any longer. 'Bored by the Circle City,' he said at last.

'They like to talk, sure enough,' Gaur agreed, the contempt obvious in his thick, deep voice. 'I don't have much good news for you, though.'

'How far from Aroth?'

'At the gates. King Emin pulls back at every thrust like a girl with pious guilt.'

'That is not good news?'

Gaur shrugged with a chink of steel. 'Good enough, but no victories to speak of. I have strike forces ranging ahead of the main armies, chasing down the score or more warbands raiding our lines. The Cheme Third got close to wiped out, major sorcery of some sort finishing what, to hear the survivors tell, Colonel Uresh's rashness started. Was timed with the only real assault they've ventured, one that decimated the Third Army's supplies and stalled our centre entirely.'

'Something tells me Major Amber won't thank me for keeping him away from that.'

'You're not sending him forward?'

Styrax shook his head. 'Byora's his mission now, Byora and Azaer.'

'I understand – it's a shame though. Spirits are low in the camps. It would be good for them to see their newest hero.'

'Low?' Styrax exclaimed. 'The enemy fears to face us in open battle and it's our morale that's affected?'

Gaur shook his dark mane. 'The raids are sapping strength and will. They've lost friends, without being able to strike back properly. King Emin's tactic is working, to a degree.'

'His tactic is flawed,' Styrax corrected, one finger raised. 'King Emin knows it, and so do I, for it is Aryn Bwr's own battle-plan.'

'He casts you in the role of the Gods?' Gaur gave an abrupt laugh. 'How prophetic of him.'

Styrax did not share his friend's humour. 'How reckless of him. His nation is nothing like as large as the last king's. How long can he run before he meets the ocean – long enough to wear us down? He hopes to force us to turn, to slow our pace and buy himself time for the Farlan to recover and honour their agreements.'

'Has there been word from our envoy?'

'No, but the more I think on it, the more I believe he'll be successful. Every report I get from the Farlan confirms my assessment. They've no stomach for a protracted foreign war, and they remain too divided for any ruler to sustain it.'

Gaur was silent for a while, his attention focused completely on Styrax. The beastman had smothered his grief for his lord, taking up the slack when the white-eye had raged alone. When Styrax lifted his head he saw the pain in Gaur's eyes that was eating away inside him. Kohrad, the youth Gaur had loved as a son, was dead before his eyes, while he had been brushed aside, left uninjured by the Farlan white-eye.

I could send you back, Styrax thought, forcing himself to look at Gaur despite the horrific, gut-clenching images of Kohrad's corpse that burst in his mind. I could send you away to Thotel and let you oversee the garrison there. The Chetse are mine, body and soul, so there you could grieve… and yet I will not. A general's compassion is smoke on the wind; you know this though it may leave you dead inside.

'What will you do in response?' Gaur said, looking down as if he had heard his lord's thoughts.

Styrax gave him a grim, mirthless smile. 'I will obliterate all he holds dear. I will be as the Gods of past Ages and lay waste to all before me. I will make my enemy realise he has no choice but to face me in battle.'

He stared off to the east, where the sun had dropped below the horizon, and far beyond to their homeland, where a mother too grieved the loss of her son. Selar, Kohrad's mother, was capable of cruelty and viciousness surpassing most other white-eyes, but she had loved her son. Her heart would be breaking at the news of his death – it might even eclipse the simmering hatred she felt for Styrax for a while.

You sought to stop me, Lord Isak. You sought to take away my reason for conquest. It would have been better for you if the Lady had not died. She would have been able to dispel your illusions. His hand tightened into a fist. He was burning to unsheathe his weapons and scour the Land around him.

She saw… All those years ago, when I was about to leave home and join the army… She came to me at dawn, to tell me of the choices ahead, and she saw my heart and knew my choice even as I made it. Only a fool builds empires for his family. The Lady saw my will, as deadly as any blade, sharp enough to carve a path through history itself. The loss of my son will not stop me; Fate knew that: Nothing will stop me.

Styrax spat in the dirt as the last sliver of sun sank beneath the distant horizon. He bent down to the bird on its nest. Moving as quickly as a snake he grabbed the creature by the neck and had wrung the life from her before she had even sounded the alarm. Her chicks scattered, but Styrax ignored them and turned away, leaving them for whatever hungry animals hunted the hillside at night. He slipped a knife from his belt and started to gut the bird as he walked back towards the wyvern.

My compassion is at an end. It died alongside you, Lord Isak. Now your allies will see my wrath, and it will be a righteous fury worthy of the Gods.

King Emin glanced round at the sound of footsteps, then resumed his position on the wall of Camatayl Castle. A cigar burned unnoticed in his fingers as he stared down at the fields beyond, where, in the distance, fallow deer were grazing.

– The reports have started to come, Legana wrote as she joined him at the wide embrasure, leaning back against the crenellated wall so she could observe the king. She rested her silver-headed cane against the stone and wrote – A success?

Her words provoked a sudden exhalation from King Emin: the laughter he couldn't bring himself to voice?

'A success,' he murmured, 'so it is reported. Most eliminated with great efficiency, as far as reports go. I've only heard from the cities, where I can communication directly with my agents through the slates, but if we extrapolate…' He didn't bother to finish the statement.

Legana looked at him for a while. His shoulders were hunched, as though weighed down by the burden of his decisions. The king, she realised, was starting to thin on top. Age was at last catching up with the man most still thought of as having the brilliance of youth.

What if that's behind him? What if the candle is now burned, the fuel spent? What then for this war? she wondered.

The Harlequins had a special place in the Land. Their mandate and skills had come direct from the Gods; to kill one was a crime beyond murder, it was treason, heresy – to slaughter them all, systematically, as Emin and Legana were doing was unthinkable, horrifying. The Harlequins had always represented the rebirth of civilisation, and something more intangible still: the heartbeat of the Land. The human side of Legana railed at the deed, but the divine fragment cared little. All mortals could be tools when necessary.

– I have noticed something, Legana wrote, about my new self.

'Oh?'

– My poor balance, my trembling hands – they come most often when I rest. My body hates inaction.

If he smiled, she didn't see it; it was hard for her to make out much detail in the twilight. 'I'm sure I could swing you a position in the kitchens to keep you busy.'

– Still good with a knife.

'As is your friend Ardela, according to my agent in Tirah. Two Harlequins in one night – impressive by any standards.' Emin sighed. 'And yet it might still be for naught. There were two pieces of news from Aroth. The Menin Army has been sighted from the walls.'

– Siege?

He stubbed out the remains of his cigar and tossed the butt off the battlements before turning to face Legana. 'I doubt for long. He has yet to lose a direct confrontation in his invasion of the West, and Aroth's defences are not so formidable I can afford to hope they'll slow him for long.'

– And then?

'Hah, and then he and I both know there's nothing of consequence between Aroth and here. The ground is open and level for the main, providing few suitable spots to set raids. We could demolish every bridge across the Goeder but that would barely slow them. This fortress is the only defence between Aroth and – ah Gods, Moorview, I suppose. It's too much to hope that he'd go west around the Blue Hills; that'd invite attacks from Canar Thritt.'

– Moorview?

'A castle overlooking Tairen Moor. It's built on a small hill that gives it command over the whole area. If I could make a stand against Lord Styrax it would be there.'

– But you do not yet dare?

'Until I can think of a way to defeat him in battle, some ruse that bypasses the entirely unsporting attributes he is blessed with, no. Aryn Bwr forced a confrontation in his war; he tried to meet the power of the Gods head-on and he failed.'

– How far will you retreat? Legana watched in shades of grey as Emin's face fell.

'As far as I must,' he said in a soft, almost apologetic voice. 'He tries to lure out my army, to force battle. It isn't cowardice that stays my hand. We must wait, we must delay for as long as we can – the longer we can hold out, the more problems he will have with his new "allies" and his conquered cities. Supplies will become scarce, even in our farming heartland, and who knows? Perhaps your fellow Farlan will honour our treaty? If the Farlan Army marched to my aid, the Menin would be massively outnumbered, and they would be forced to evade for a change.'

– While Azaer grows stronger.

Emin scowled. 'I know that, only too well. My one consolation is that the shadow's goal appears to be promoting chaos in the nations of the West.' He managed a bitter laugh now. 'It's in Azaer's interests for me to last as long as possible too. A quick war does not serve the shadow's purpose.'

– Forget Styrax for a moment. How can you defeat Azaer? The question made him turn back to the evening sky. 'A question I have asked for years now,' he said eventually, 'and one I have posed to some of the finest minds in my kingdom. And still I am unsure.'

– What do you know?

'Of Azaer? Little enough.' He grimaced. 'All these years, and still I do not know my enemy. Azaer is a shadow, neither God nor daemon. It's an entity with a similar origin, most likely, but it draws no strength from worship as a God does, nor from fear and suffering, as might a daemon. It simply exists, neither expending power, nor requiring its harvesting. If anything, it glories in its weakness, it finds power in its flaws.'

– And flaws in power.

Legana's observation made Emin frown, but he could not deny it. He hunched down further, as though assailed, and continued, 'Perhaps the shadow was once a God, in the time before the Age of Myths, when the laws of magic and the Land were still malleable. Perhaps there was no death then, as we know it. Maybe the God was defeated to the point of death, reduced to the existence of a shadow.'

– Never to gather followers again?

'Never to risk it, you mean? To be reduced once and in glimpsing oblivion, seeing the choices of death, or service as an Aspect to some other God, so it forged its own path? The case for that is strong, certainly. Even now, the Lady isn't dead, not in the mortal sense, however reduced she is, lacking in everything that made her the Goddess you knew.'

– But you do not believe.

'It is the best theory I've come across, but no,' Emin admitted. 'It contains the beginnings of understanding, but I suspect there is more to it than that. There is no God Azaer particularly hates that I can tell, which would be strange if one had killed it, no? While all the accounts I have are secondhand at best it – ' He hesitated a moment, as if trying to pluck the correct word from the aether.

He shook himself, and went on, 'In the years of fighting Azaer's disciples, I have seen many things – I have dreamed of the shadow half a dozen times, and I do not believe they were merely dreams. For certain it has a scheme in everything it does, its actions are carefully calculated, and yet I have never detected hatred in its actions, nor a need for revenge. Azaer delights in cruelty, but its evil is motiveless.

'When it sent Rojak to the village of Thistledell to wreak its horror, it was for a purpose – it was refining the magics it ultimately used in Scree. I have read the few survivors' accounts; it took pleasure in what it did to those innocent souls, but it was for pleasure's sake. It cannot compel; it must persuade – although it is very persuasive. It prefers to offer its victims exactly what they desire, and then twist that desire to wring out any value it might have had.

'To choose to believe all this comes from Azaer's fear of death or its cowardice… I feel that would be a fatal mistake.'

– What does it want?

'To tear down the Pantheon,' Emin said with sudden conviction. 'The shadow loves power over others – over its disciples, over those it tyrannises. Plans formed over millennia, a hand in the Last King's rebellion; an end-game with the foundations of empty temples and war tearing through the entire Land – where Crystal Skulls are being collected by a peerless warrior and the weapons of Life and Death may soon come into play.'

King Emin took a weary breath and looked Legana straight in the eye. The cold glitter of his pale blue eyes seemed to shine in the burgeoning twilight, just as she knew her own, divine-touched eyes did.

'Azaer is playing for keeps,' he said almost in a whisper. 'There will be no limit to the stakes when the shadow plays its final hand.'

– So we must work out how to kill a shadow, Legana wrote, a smile creeping onto her ethereally beautiful face, preferably by giving it everything it wants.

Awkwardly she reached out and put her hand on his shoulder. She could feel the king tense under the contact, but after a moment Emin relaxed and covered her hand with his. They stood together until the last light of day had gone, silently sharing the burdens of their callings.