And Drusas Achamian found himself friends with the men he had in all likelihood killed.
Ever since striking out from his tower, Achamian had been afraid that his old body would fail him, that he would develop any one of the innumerable ailments that deny the long road to the aged. For some reason, he had assumed that his far thinner frame would also be far weaker. But he was pleasantly surprised to find his legs growing more and more roped with muscle, and his wind becoming deep-to the point where he had no difficulty managing even the most punishing pace.
Walking in file, leading their small mule trains, they followed a broad trail that generally ran parallel to the river. For long tracts it was treacherous going, as the trail had been scuffed deep enough to expose knobbed roots and buried rocks. The Osthwai Mountains loomed vast and magnificent above them, their peaks lost in a dark shoal of clouds as wide as the horizon. They seemed to eat the eastern sky in imperceptible increments.
They passed several inbound companies, lines of lean, lean men, hunched beneath their remaining provisions and cord-threaded scalps, not a beast of burden to be seen. They would have looked macabre, like skeletons marching in stolen skins, were they not so jubilant at the prospect of gaining Marrow.
"They were forced to winter in the Wilds," Soma explained to Achamian. "We were almost caught ourselves. The Ochain Passes have been especially treacherous these past couple of years." He bent his head to his feet, as though inspecting his boots for scuffs. "It's like the world is getting colder," he added after several steps.
Tidings and jibes were shared back and forth as the companies passed. The newest whores. The worsening conditions in the Osthwai. The brokers who kept "forgetting their thumbs" when counting. Rumours of the Stone-Hags, a pirate company cum bandit army that apparently hunted scalpers the way scalpers hunted Sranc. Which tavern-keeps were watering their wine. And as always, the unaccountable cunning of the skinnies.
"The trees!" one particularly hoary Norsirai said. "They came at us out of the trees! Like monkeys with fucking knives…"
Achamian listened without comment, both fascinated and dismayed. Like all Mandate Schoolman, he looked at the world with the arrogance of someone who had survived-even if only in proxy-the greatest depravities circumstance could offer. But what happened in the Wilds, whatever it was that edged their voices when the Skin Eaters spoke of it, was different somehow. They too carried the look and posture of survivors, but of something more mean, more poisonous, than the death of nations. There was the wickedness that cut throats, and there was the wickedness that put whole peoples to the sword. Scalpers, Achamian realized, dwelt somewhere in the lunatic in-between.
And for the first time he understood: He had no real comprehension of what was to come.
The point was brought home by the half-starved man he saw slumped, his face between his knees, beneath the hanging veils of a willow. Before he knew what he was doing, Achamian was kneeling at the man's side, pressing him upright. The fellow was as light as kindling pine. His face was sunken in the way Achamian had seen in Caraskand during the First Holy War, so that the edges and the irregularities of the skull beneath pressed clear through the skin, chipping short the cheeks and pitting the sockets. His eyes were as flat and waxen as any guttered candle.
The man said nothing, seemed to stare into the same.
Pokwas dropped a large hand on Achamian's shoulder, startling him. "Where you fall is where you lie," the Sword-Dancer said. "It's a Rule. No pity on the slog, friend."
"What kind of soldiers leave their comrades to die?"
"Soldiers who aren't soldiers," Pokwas replied with a noncommital shrug. "Scalpers."
Even though the Sword-Dancer's tone said it all-the Wilds were simply a place too hard for ritual observance or futile compassion-Achamian wanted to ask him what he meant. The old indignant need to challenge, to contest, welled sharp within his breast. Instead, he simply shrugged and obediently followed the towering man back into the long-walking file.
Achamian the talker, the asker of questions, had died a long time ago.
But the episode continued to occupy the old Wizard's thoughts, not the cruelty so much as the pathos. He had been away for so long a part of him had forgotten that men could die so ignominiously, like dogs skulking into the weeds to pant their last. The image of the unfortunate refused to fade: the eyes clouding, the lips mouthing the air, the body like sticks in the sack of his skin. How could he not feel like a fool? Between his Dreams of the First Apocalypse and his memories of the First Holy War, he could scarce imagine anyone who had seen more death and degradation than he. And yet there it was, the fact of a dying stranger, like an added weight, a tightness that robbed him of his wind.
Was it some kind of premonition? Or was he simply growing soft? He had seen it many times, the way compassion made rotted fruit of old men's hearts. The vitality of his old bones had surprised him. Perhaps his spirit was what would fail…
Something always failed him.
The trail wound on and on through the forest deeps, a track that had seen countless scalpers strut or shamble. Though Somandutta paced him on several occasions, trying to draw him into some inane topic of conversation, Achamian remained silent, walking and brooding.
That night he made a point of sitting next to Pokwas at the fire. The mood was celebratory. Xonghis had felled a doe, which the company then portioned according to rank-the unborn fetus included. Achamian said nothing, knowing that the sacrilege of consuming pregnant game would mean nothing to these men.
"I'm curious," Achamian asked after eating his fill, "about these Rules of the Slog…"
The black man said nothing at first. He looked particularly fierce, limned in firelight, his lips drawn back as he tore meat from bone. He chewed in contemplation a moment, then said, "Yah."
"If it were, say, Galian lying at the side of th-"
"It would be the same," the Zeьmi interrupted through a mouthful of venison. He looked to Galian as he said this, shrugged in mock apology.
"But he's your… your brother, is he not?"
"Course he is."
Galian made kissing noises from across the fire.
"So," Achamian pressed, "what about the rules of brotherhood?"
This time it was Galian who answered. "The only rules on the slog, Wizard, are the rules of the slog."
Achamian scowled, pausing to sort between a number of different questions, but Galian interrupted him before he could speak. "Brotherhood is well and fine," the former Columnary said, "so long as it doesn't cost. As soon as it becomes a luxury…" He shrugged, resumed gnawing on the bone he still held in his right hand. "The skinnies," he said with an air of distracted finality.
The Sranc, he was saying. The Sranc were the only rule.
Achamian studied their faces across the firelight. "No liabilities, is that it? Nothing that could afford your opponent any advantage." He raised a finger to scratch the side of his nose. "That sounds like something our glorious Aspect-Emperor would say."
Aside from the vague intuition that discussing the Aspect-Emperor was generally unwise, the old Wizard really didn't know what to expect.
"I would help," Soma blurted. "If Galian was dying, that is. I really would…"
The eating paused. The ring of faces turned to the young Nilnameshi, some screwed in mock outrage, others sporting skeptical grins.
With a guileless smile, Soma said, "His boots fit as fine as my own!"
There was a moment of silence. Soma's jokes, Achamian had learned, generally occasioned a kind of communal trial and conviction, especially when he was trying to be funny. Heads were shaken. Eyes were rolled to heaven. Oxwora, the enormous Thunyeri with shrunken Sranc heads tangled in his shaggy mane, looked up from the glistening rib he had been gnawing, scowling as though his appetite had been ruined. Without a word he tossed the bone at the Nilnameshi. Either by fluke or by dint of grease, the thing slid rather than bounced from his head.
"Ox!" Somandutta cried with
real anger, but in the harmless way of the long heckled. The giant grinned, his beard and moustache spackled with flecks of meat.
Suddenly the others were reaching to their feet, and a haphazard wave of bones peppered the hapless Nilnameshi, who held his arms out, cursing. He made as though to throw several back at this or that figure, but ended up joining the general laughter instead.
"Loot thy brother," the Zeьmi said to Achamian in a there-you-have-it tone. The Sword-Dancer slapped his back. "Welcome to the slog, Wizard!"
Achamian laughed and nodded, glanced out beyond the circle of illumined faces to the night-hooded world. It was no simple or mean thing, the companionship of killers.
Two days following his introduction to the Bitten, Achamian glimpsed Xonghis jogging along the outside of the trudging line from the rear. The others paid him no attention: He continually roamed while the others marched. Out of boredom more than anything, Achamian asked the man what was wrong, expecting something wry and cutting in reply. Instead, the Jekki slowed his pace to stride beside him. His short-sleeved tunic revealed a grappler's veined arms, brown beneath the reddish hint of sunburn. He was a lean, broad-shouldered man, with the aura of coiled reserve that seemed proper to a former Imperial Tracker.
"We're being followed," he said in his odd accent.
"Followed?"
"Yes…" He seemed to weigh his own cryptic options. "By a woman."
Achamian nearly coughed, such was his alarm. "Who else knows?"
The Tracker's almond-shaped eyes narrowed. His Xiuhianni blood was always more pronounced in open daylight. "Moraubon and several of the Herd."
"Moraubon?"
Suddenly Achamian was huffing and gasping, running back along the tangled verge of the trail. The parade of walking scalpers watched him pass with frowning curiosity. Then he was all alone on the trail, running down a boulder-stumped incline, away from the river and into the mute confines of the forest. Several moments passed before he heard the first hoot, a raw laughing call, filled with malice and the open-mouthed eagerness of men bent on rutting. He heard Moraubon shouting a few moments afterwards: instructions to the others racing across the forest floor. He heard a feminine shriek-no, not a shriek, a shrill cry of defiance and frustration.
The sorcerous words were already rumbling from his lips, through the essence of the encircling world, and he was climbing, not air, but the echoes of ground across the sky, up into the interweaving limbs. Branches lashed him as he broke through the canopy, then walked over the forest crown, each step swallowing a dozen cubits, tipping for the vertigo of looking down through the towering trees. He could see the pitch of the surrounding wilderness to the horizon, ridges like wandering fins, tributaries threading dark clefts with silver, mountains looming in white judgment. He saw men running, Skin Eaters, like the shadows of mice beneath meadow thatch. Then he saw her-Mimara-kicking and thrashing in the clutches of three men.
He stepped into their midst.
They had her pulled like living rope across the forest floor. Moraubon was kneeling between her legs, undoing his girdle and breeches. He seemed to be cooing and growling. He whirled to the sound of Achamian's sorcerous muttering…
Only to be blown tumbling, kicking up tailings of leaves. An Odaini Concussion Cant.
The other Skin Eaters cried out, scrambled back while tugging at their weapons. Through his rage, Achamian could feel something exult at this first violent exercise. Let them see! an inner voice cried. Let them know! His voice cracked out, soaked into the surrounding matter and steamed skyward, sourceless, all-encompassing. The Skin Eaters, including Moraubon, retreated in the safety of the great trunks.
The Compass of Noshainrau, an existential glitter, a line of sun-concentrated white, sweeping out like a flail from the axis of his upraised arm, sketching a perfect circle of destruction. Wood charred and exploded. Flame spilled like water across the ancient oaks, elms, and maples. Mountainous groans and creaks-a chorus-then the roar of mighty trees falling, a ring of them crashing into their stone-heavy cousins, chasing the Skin Eaters into the deeper shadows of the forest.
Achamian stood over her, bright in the sudden sunlight, showered by the twirling green of innumerable spring-early leaves. A Wizard draped in wolf skins. The bulk of once great trees lay heaped about them. Forked trunks and limbs gouged the ground beneath shags of greenery.
Mimara spat blood from her lips, tried to pull her torn leggings to her hips. She made a noise that might have been a sob or a laugh or both. She fell to her knees before him, her left thigh as bare and pale as a barked sapling. A laughing grimace. A glimpse of teeth soaked in blood.
"Teach me," she said.
No words were spoken as they hastened back, Achamian fuming in the lead, Mimara shambling in her clutched clothing to keep up. They found the Skin Eaters standing in clots across slopes of earth between wain-sized molars of stone. The river arced and sprayed white beyond them, endlessly pounding the hillside. All eyes turned to them as they approached, lingered for a moment on Mimara's slight figure. Instinctively, Achamian held out his arm and drew her close to his chest. Together they pressed to the fore of the crowd.
They saw Moraubon, obviously winded, climb to Lord Kosoter where he stood, thumbs hooked in his war girdle, on the mottled back of a boulder. A confusion of vertical stone faces rose behind the Captain, crested with bracken and the odd suicidal tree. A great rooster tail of water spouted through the heart of the enclosure, kicked into foam by some powerful twist in the current. The cowled Nonman, Cleric, was nowhere to be seen.
The two men shared inaudible words, with Moraubon glancing at Mimara, as though to say, Look at her… The Captain remained absolutely motionless. Sarl glared at the Skin Eaters from immediately below.
"The one with the Chorae," Mimara whispered, referring to Lord Kosoter. "Who is he?"
Achamian found himself glancing down the line of warlike faces. "Shush," was all he said.
At first it seemed the Captain had simply reached out and seized Moraubon's chin-so casual was his movement. Achamian squinted, trying to understand the wrongness of the image: Lord Kosoter holding the man mere inches from his face, not so much looking into his eyes as watching… Achamian only glimpsed the knife jammed beneath the scalper's mandible when Lord Kosoter withdrew his hand.
Moraubon crumpled as if the Captain had ripped out his bones. Blood sheeted the boulder.
"Can anybody," Sarl cried out over the river's white thunder, "tell me what the rule is for peaches on the slog?"
"The Captain always gets the first bite," Galian called solemnly.
"And what is it that has made us legends of the Wilds? What allows us to eat so much skin?"
"The Rules of the Slog!" a number of them shouted against the roar.
Not in reluctance, Achamian realized, but with dark affirmation. Even the Bitten, even those who had broken bread with the dead man on the boulder.
They're all mad.
Sarl reddened about his mock smile. His eyes became two more wrinkles creasing his face.
Without a glance at his sergeant, the Captain crouched in his ragged Ainoni finery, wiped his blade clean on Moraubon's sleeve. Then he fixed his gaze on Achamian and Mimara. He leapt from the boulder, his balance and bearing shockingly limber. Until that moment, he had seemed carved of living granite.
He strode up to the two of them.
"Who is she?"
"My daughter," Achamian heard himself say.
There was no chance the murderous brown eyes could stare him down-not this time. She felt too much like her mother pressed in the brace of his arm, too much like Esmenet. The Captain glanced to the ground for a meditative moment, seemed to nod, though it could have been a trick of the breeze through his squared beard. After a hooded glance, he turned to make his way back to the head of the trail.
"Either she carries her weight like a man," he shouted as he walked away. "Or she carries our weight like a woman!"
Catcalls and whistles from the
Skin Eaters. Each of them, it seemed, glanced at Achamian and Mimara as they drifted back to resume the march. Their expressions ran the gamut from accusation to jeering lechery. But it was the blank faces that troubled Achamian the most, the eyes that seemed to commit Mimara's torn leggings to memory.
No one bothered with Moraubon's body, which continued to drain against a backdrop of booming water and towering debris. A white corpse on a red-painted stone.
"Who is he?" Mimara whispered. While Achamian had eyed the others, she had continued gazing at the Captain's receding back.
"A Veteran," he murmured. "The same as me."
***
They lagged behind the others, passing from broken sunlight to green shadow, arguing over the rush and hiss of the river.
"You cannot stay! This is impossible!"
"Where would you have me go?"
"Go? Go? Where do you think? Back to your mother! Back to the Andiamine Heights where you belong!"
"Never."
"I know your mother. I know she loves you!"
"Not so much as she hates what she did to me."
"To save your life!"
"Life… Is that what you call it? Should I tell you the story of my life?"
"No."
"All these men. Trust me, I've borne them before. I can bear them again."
"Not these men."
"Then I suppose I'm lucky to have you."
She was nothing like Esmenet, he had come to realize. She tilted her head the same way, as though literally trying to look around your nonsense, and her voice stiffened into the same reedy bundle of disgust, but aside from these echoes…
"Look. You simply cannot stay. This is a journey…" He paused, his breath yanked short by the sheer factuality of what he was about to say. "This is a journey without any return."
She sneered and laughed. "So is every life."
There was something snide and infuriating about her, he decided, something that begged to be struck-or dared… He could not tell which.
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