I doubt she was sixteen. If she was sixteen she’d have been off with the hunters. Fifteen.
The need to breathe was a distant shout in her mind now, and she found it easy to ignore. Until black smoke rolled in, obscuring everything, and then it was time to go away.
* * *
‘We think she fell down the stairs,’ said the soldier.
Captain Silann studied the corpse of the woman lying at the foot of the tower steps. ‘This is Krissen,’ he said. ‘A scholar of highest repute.’
The soldier shrugged, sheathing his sword. ‘Life’s full of accidents,’ he said, moving off.
Silann felt sick inside. ‘Highest repute,’ he repeated in a whisper. ‘What was she doing here?’ After a long moment he settled to his knees beside the body. Her head was tilted at an impossible angle; her eyes were half open, her mouth parted with the tip of the tongue protruding. Her hands were filthy with coal dust or the powder that sometimes came from old ink.
The soldier he had been speaking to earlier now returned. ‘None left alive in here, sir. Place was damned near abandoned as it was. It’s time to fire the keep.’
‘Of course.’ But still Silann studied the woman’s face.
‘Do you want we should take the body, sir? For proper burial, I mean.’
‘No, the pyre of this keep will suffice. Was there anything at the top of the tower?’
‘No sir, nothing. We need to go – got another village to hit.’
‘I know,’ Silann snapped. He straightened and then followed the soldier back outside.
On the keep road, just outside the gate, his wife had arrived with her vanguard. Her thighs were red with splashed blood, and Silann well knew the look on her face. Tonight there would be fierce lovemaking, the kind that skirted the edge of pain. It was, she had once explained, the taste of savagery that lingered from a day of killing.
‘Lieutenant Risp is dead,’ Esthala announced.
‘How unfortunate,’ Silann replied. ‘Do we have wounded?’
‘Few. Lost seven in all. There was at least one Bordersword in the village, a woman, we think, but we’ve not found her.’
‘Well, that’s good, then,’ he said. As her expression darkened he added, ‘A witness, I mean. That’s what we wanted, isn’t it?’
‘Depends on what she figured out, husband,’ Esthala replied, in that weary tone that he was all too familiar with: as if she were speaking to a dim-witted child. ‘Better some terrified midwife or pot-thrower.’ She turned in her saddle to survey the village below. Houses were burning in a half-dozen places. ‘We need to burn it all down. Every building. We’ll leave out a few of our losses, but with their faces disfigured. Nobody they might recognize.’ She looked across to Silann. ‘I leave all that to you and your company. Join us at Hillfoot.’
Silann assumed that was the name for the next village, and so he nodded. ‘We will do what’s needed.’
‘Of course you will,’ Esthala replied, taking up the reins.
She had refused to see her husband executed and Silann knew that among the soldiers that had been seen as weakness. But he alone was aware of how close she had been to changing her mind, and that still left him rattled. Lieutenant Risp’s death delighted him, since she had been the source of all this talk about executions and crimes; and it had been her troop that had brought back the carved-up head of one of Hunn Raal’s messengers. Silann still cursed the name of Gripp Galas, although it was a curse riding a wave of fear.
He watched his wife gesture and then she was riding down the road with her troop.
Glancing back, he saw smoke coming from the keep’s slit windows, and drifting out from the open front doorway. It was not as easy to burn such edifices as one might think, he knew, since they were mostly stone. He turned to the soldier at his side. ‘I trust you are confident that it will burn down.’
The man nodded, and then shrugged. ‘Nobody will want to live in it, sir.’
‘Let’s head down to the village, then, and be on with it.’
‘Yes sir.’
‘I want to look upon the lieutenant’s body.’
‘Sir?’
‘To pay my respects.’
* * *
Captain Hallyd Bahann, Tutor Sagander decided, was an unpleasant man. Handsome, with grey in his short-cropped hair, he had about him an arrogance that, for some odd reason, women liked. No doubt he could charm, but even then his commentary was sly and verged on cutting. It baffled Sagander that Captain Tathe Lorat shared the man’s tent. She possessed a beauty that left the tutor breathless, and looking upon her – the laughter in her eyes and the ever ready smile on her full, painted lips – it seemed impossible that she would delight in killing and, even more appalling, that she would keep in her company a daughter sired by her first, now dead, husband, and that then she would do … this.
They sat in the command tent, the two captains and Sagander, and Hallyd Bahann’s dark eyes glittered with something like barely contained mirth. At his side, Tathe Lorat was refilling her goblet with yet more wine, and the flush of her cheeks held its own glow in the faint lanternlight.
‘I see,’ she said in a slurred drawl, ‘that you are struck speechless, tutor, which must, I am sure, be a rare occurrence. Do you wonder at my generosity? Good sir, even now, behind you on the tent wall, we can make out the flames from the monastery. True, the monks fought with uncommon vigour and we took disturbing losses despite your betrayal, but this nest of Deniers is now destroyed, and for that we are pleased to reward you.’
‘It may be,’ Hallyd said, half smiling, ‘that the tutor prefers boys.’
Tathe’s perfect brows lifted. ‘Is this so, tutor? Then I am sure we can find—’
‘No, captain, it is not,’ Sagander replied, looking down. He sat on a camp stool, and with but one leg to anchor himself he felt poorly perched upon the leather saddle of the seat. The imbalance he felt in his body was like an infection, spreading out to skew the entire world. ‘Did none of them surrender?’
Hallyd snorted. ‘Why should the fate of the Deniers concern you now? You showed us the old tunnel to the second well. By your invitation, we visited slaughter upon the occupants of that monastery. However, I will assure you none the less. Not one knelt except to more closely observe the ground awaiting their final fall.’
‘And the Mother?’
‘Dead. Eventually.’ And his smile broadened.
‘Is it,’ Tathe asked, ‘that you do not find my daughter attractive?’
‘C-captain,’ Sagander stammered, ‘she rivals even you.’
Tathe slowly blinked. ‘I am well aware of that.’
There was something ominous in her tone and Sagander felt his gaze drop yet again.
‘We tire of your indecision,’ said Hallyd Bahann. ‘Do not think she will be unfamiliar with her purpose. She is no virgin and is indeed now well into her womanhood. We do not approve of consort with children and among our soldiers we count it a heinous crime punishable by castration or, in the case of women, the branding of their breasts. Now then, will you accept our offer or not?’
‘A most generous reward,’ Sagander said in a mumble. ‘I – I am pleased to accept.’
‘Go then,’ said Tathe Lorat. ‘She awaits you in her tent.’
As always, it was a struggle to climb upright, using his crutch like a ladder, and then tottering as he found his balance. Breathing hard with the effort, he made his way out of the command tent.
The stench of smoke filled the air, drifting down into the streets and alleys of Abara Delack. Here and there walked squads of Legion soldiers, still loud and boisterous in the aftermath of the battle, although more than a few could be seen who were silent, for whom the end of the killing saw a second battle, this time with grief. Sagander looked upon them all as savages, filled with brutal appetites and the stupidity that marked bullies. Every civilization bred such creatures and he longed for a time when they could, one and all, be done away with. A civilization for ever wi
thin easy reach of a blade had little to boast about.
No, the only hope for humility was in the disarming of everyone, and with it the end of the threat of physical violence. He knew he could well hold his own in a society where words alone sufficed, where victories could be measured in conviction and reasoned debate. Yet here, on these streets in this cowed village, it was the thugs who swaggered drunk on ale and death, their faces alive with animal cunning and little else. With them, he could win nothing by argument, since in the failing of their wits they ever had recourse to the weapons at their sides. Was it not Gallan who had once said ‘At the point of a sword you will find the punctuation of idiots’?
He hobbled towards the tent where awaited Tathe Lorat’s daughter. Shame had driven him to this, step by stuttering step. A hundred or more lives had been taken away this night, all by his own hand. In some ways, it would have been worse had he been whole, rather than the maimed, pain-filled wretch that he was now. Because then he would have no excuses, no justifications for the betrayals his wounded heart had unleashed. Still, he was committed to this path, and at its very end there would come what he desired most: vengeance against Lord Draconus and his pathetic whelp of a bastard son.
The Legion knew its enemies, after all.
Reaching the tent, he fumbled one-handed at the flap. A sound from within made him pause, and a moment later a long-fingered hand appeared to pull to one side the heavy canvas.
Ducking, Sagander hobbled inside. He found he could not look at her. ‘Forgive me,’ he whispered.
‘What for?’ the young woman asked. She stood close and yet still in shadow. The lone lantern cast little light from its shortened wick. He could smell rosewater on her breath.
‘I am old. Since I lost my leg, ah, I beg you, do not mock me, but I am able to do … nothing.’
‘Then why accept me as your reward?’
‘Please, I would sit at least.’
She gestured to the cot. He kept his gaze averted from her as he made his way over to it. ‘I am no fool,’ he said. ‘Your mother knows you as her rival and would see you used, damaged even. Broken and dissolute. You must find a way to win free of her.’
Her breathing was soft, and he thought he could feel the heat from her body – but that was unlikely. ‘I am not at risk of dissolution, tutor Sagander, and against me my mother can only fail. Because she is old and I am young.’
‘Yet she delights in casting you into the arms of men, some of whom might be cruel, even violent.’
‘None dare, and this will not change. I am not my mother, tutor, and nothing that I give of myself I value overmuch. I can out-wait her.’
Trembling, he looked up and met her eyes. They were clear, but not languid. They held sympathy, but not empathy. This, he realized, was a woman who had learned how to protect herself. ‘If you ever need my help, Sheltatha Lore,’ he said, ‘I am yours.’
She smiled. ‘Be careful with such promises, tutor. Now, if you are incapable of making love, will passing a night in the arms of a woman please you?’
* * *
‘This one to finish her! She’s a beauty, Waft, and she’s all yours!’ The soldier’s voice laughed the words in Narad’s head. He measured his paces by them as the company moved through the smoke-filled forest. He sat hunched beneath them when the Legion camped for the night, his back to the cookfires, his hands reaching up again and again to probe the bulges and indents of his face. They echoed in the darkness when all had bedded down on damp ground and insects whined close to draw blood from whatever was exposed. In his dreams he felt her again, in his arms, her skin impossibly soft and still warm – he knew the truth of that no matter what they told him – and how she had yielded to his awkwardness and so made of herself a welcome embrace.
She had been past all hurting by then. He told himself this again and again, as if by incantation he could silence that soldier’s laughing voice, as if he could impose a balance between cruelty and mercy. But even this haunted him, since he could not be sure which was which. Was there pity and mercy in that soldier’s gleeful invitation, and cruelty in Narad’s answering it? Had he not sought to be tender, to show a gentle touch when taking her? Had he not thrown his body over hers to shield her from their laughter and their raw jests, their eager eyes?
What had they fed on that day, in that hall, when looking upon what they had done to that poor bride? Not once had he felt a part of it; not once did he imagine himself truly belonging to this company of killers. He asked himself how he had come to be among them, sword in hand, padding out from the night into a horror-filled dawn.
There had been a boy once, not ugly, not filled with venom or fear. A boy who had walked into town with his small paw nestled inside someone else’s hand, and that boy had known warmth and impossible freedom – with all the sands ahead smooth and clean. Perhaps, suckling on the tales of war, he had filled his head with dreams of battle and heroism; but even then, his place in every scene had been unquestioned in its righteousness. Evil belonged to the imagined enemies, for whom viciousness was sweet nectar sipped with wrongful pleasure, and all vengeance awaited those enemies by the toy sword he held.
In the world of that not-ugly boy, he was the saviour of maidens.
Anguish filled Narad at the thought of the boy he had once been, and at the thought of the crooked path he now saw crossing blood-splashed sands behind him.
There was slaughter in the forest. There was the smoke of fire and burnt-out glades and blackened patches, and endless ash drifting in the air. He had lost all sense of direction and now followed his comrades blindly, and for all their bluster it still felt like flight. Sergeant Radas, who led his squad with her ever flat eyes and bitter expression, had told them that they were trekking north, and that their destination was a stretch of land on the other side of the river from House Dracons, where they would at last rendezvous with Captain Scara Bandaris.
Captain Infayen had led her company eastward the day after the attack, apparently seeking to link up with Urusander himself, who it was said intended to march on Kharkanas.
In truth, Narad could not care less. He was a soldier in an unwanted war, faceless to his commanders but necessary for their ambitions; and all the tumult filling his skull – these careening thoughts so riddled with horror – were as nothing to them. In this company, each man and each woman surrendered too much of themselves, melding into a faceless mass where life and death was measured in numbers.
It was one thing to learn to see the enemy as less than Tiste, as abominations in fact; but the truth was, Narad realized, every commander could not but view every soldier in that way, no matter the colour or cut of their uniforms. Without that severing of empathy, no sane person could send anyone into battle, could wager the lives of others. When he thought of what was surrendered in the coming of war, he thought of that not-ugly boy and the warm hand he held suddenly torn away. He thought of soft and yielding flesh beneath his weight slowly growing cold and lifeless.
Who could return from such things? Who could walk back across the sands, smoothing his own wake, and every other sign of atrocity, to then reach out and take the hand of a child, a son, a daughter?
He walked with his ugliness for all to see, and perhaps this relieved the others since they imagined that they could hide the ugliness they had inside. Instead, he was their banner, their standard, and if they haunted him, then surely he must haunt them as well – behind their laughter, behind their mockery. It was difficult to imagine otherwise.
They loped through another burnt-out cluster of huts, stepping round blackened corpses. None of these dead Deniers had ever held hands, or dreamed of heroic deeds. None had slept in a mother’s arms, or felt the caress of a lover and shivered in the realization that fortune favoured them by each precious touch. None had whispered promises, to others or to themselves. None had ever broken them. None had ever wept over a child’s future, or caught the morning song of a bird hidden in the trees, or felt cool water sliding smooth down
their throat. None had prayed for a better world.
Narad spat the bitterness from his mouth.
Just ahead, Corporal Bursa glanced back. ‘That dead kiss again, Waft?’
The others in the squad laughed.
Every crime committed was a betrayal of some sort. The first barrier breached was one of propriety, and this could not occur without the dismissal of respect and all those things that courtesy comprised. It took a hardening of the soul and a chilling of the eyes to do away with respect. The second barrier, he realized, was all the easier to overcome after the fall of the first. It was marked by the sanctity of the flesh, and when flesh meant nothing then harming it was no difficult task.
People could measure crimes by the levels of betrayal achieved. And from that, they could create laws and devise punishments. All of this, he understood, belonged to everyone. It was society’s way of working, and it had a way of melding faces into one, for the good of all. It had nothing to do with what he needed the most – what every criminal needed – and that was the opportunity for redemption.
Where would he not go to find redemption? What would he not sacrifice? And in the end, for all that he did to repair what could not be repaired, what greater torment could he feel?
I am not like the others here. I am filled with regret when they are not. For them, no redemption should be offered. Take their lives in return for what they did.
But I yearn to make it all right again. I dream of doing something, something to unravel what happened, and what I did. I whispered to her. I begged her, and she answered with her last breath. Was there a word in it? I don’t know. I will never know.
There was a man who loved her, who sought to marry her. But I was the last man in her arms. Ugly Narad, shuddering like an animal. I know you hunt me, sir, whoever you are. I know that you dream of finding me and taking my life.
But you’ll not find me. I’ll do that much for you, sir, because I tell you, taking my life will offer you no release, no peace.
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