Picker snorted. ‘Flown then dropped off at the foot of the Barghast Range, what else did you think we were up to?’
‘Only there’s a problem,’ she continued laconically, examining her nails. ‘Trotts will get us face to face without all of us getting skewered, but he might end up fighting a challenge or two. Personal combat If he wins, we all live. If he gets himself killed…’
Antsy’s mouth hung open, his moustache twitching as if independently alive.
Picker groaned.
The sergeant spun. ‘Corporal – find Trotts! Sit ‘im down with that fancy whetstone of yours and get ‘im to sharpen his weapons real good—’
‘Oh, really, Antsy!’
‘We gotta do something!’
‘About what?’ a new voice asked.
Antsy whirled again. ‘Spindle, thank the Queen! Trotts is going to get us all killed!’
The mage shrugged beneath his hairshirt. ‘That explains all those agitated spirits in this hill, then. They can smell him, I guess—’
‘Smell? Agitated? Hood’s bones, we’re all done for!’
* * *
Standing with the rest of the Bridgeburners, Paran’s eyes narrowed on the squad at the foot of the barrow. ‘What’s got Antsy all lit up?’ he wondered aloud.
Trotts bared his teeth. ‘Blend was here,’ he rumbled. ‘Heard everything.’
‘Oh, that’s terrific news – why didn’t you say anything?’
The Barghast shrugged his broad shoulders, was silent.
Grimacing, the captain strode over to the Black Moranth commander.
‘Is that quorl of yours rested enough, Twist? I want you high over us. I want to know when we’ve been spotted—’
The chitinous black helm swung to face him. ‘They are already aware, Nobleborn.’
‘Captain will do, Twist. I don’t need reminding of my precious blood. Aware, are they? How, and just as important, how do you know they know?’
‘We stand on their land, Captain. The soul beneath us is the blood of their ancestors. Blood whispers. The Moranth hear.’
‘Surprised you can hear anything inside that helm of yours,’ Paran muttered, tired and irritated. ‘Never mind. I want you over us anyway.’
The commander slowly nodded.
The captain turned and surveyed his company. Veteran soldiers – virtually every one of them. Silent, frighteningly professional. He wondered what it would be like to see out through the eyes of any one of them, through the layers of the soul’s exhaustion that Paran had barely begun to find within himself. Soldiers now and soldiers to the end of their days – none would dare leave to find peace. Solicitude and calm would unlock that safe prison of cold control – the only thing keeping them sane.
Whiskeyjack had said to Paran that, once this war was done, the Bridgeburners would be retired. Forcibly if necessary.
Armies possessed traditions, and these had less to do with discipline than with the fraught truths of the human spirit. Rituals at the beginning, shared among each and every recruit. And rituals at the end, a formal closure that was recognition – recognition in every way imaginable. They were necessary. Their gift was a kind of sanity, a means of coping. A soldier cannot be sent away without guidance, cannot be abandoned and left lost in something unrecognizable and indifferent to their lives. Remembrance and honouring the ineffable. Yet, when it’s done, what is the once-soldier? What does he or she become? An entire future spent walking backward, eyes on the past – its horrors, its losses, its grief, its sheer heart-bursting living? The ritual is a turning round, a facing forward, a gentle and respectful hand like a guide on the shoulder.
Sorrow was a steady, faint susurration within Paran, a tide that neither ebbed nor flowed, yet threatened to drown him none the less.
And when the White Faces find us … each and every man and woman here could end up with slit throats, and Queen help me, I begin to wonder if it would be a mercy. Queen help me …
A swift flutter of wings and the quorl was airborne, the Black Moranth commander perched on the moulded saddle.
Paran watched them rise for a moment longer, his stomach churning, then turned to his company. ‘On your feet, Bridgeburners. Time to march.’
* * *
The dark, close air was filled with sickly mist. Quick Ben felt himself moving through it, his will struggling like a swimmer against a savage current. After a few more moments he withdrew his questing, slipped sideways into yet another warren.
It fared little better. Some kind of infection had seeped in from the physical world beyond, was corrupting every sorcerous path he attempted. Fighting nausea, he pushed himself forward.
This has the stench of the Crippled God … yet the enemy whose lands we approach is the Pannion Seer. Granted, an obvious means of self-defence, sufficient to explain the coincidence. Then again, since when do I believe in coincidences? No, this comingling of scents hinted at a deeper truth. That bastard ascendant may well be chained, his body broken, but I can feel his hand – even here – twitching at invisible threads.
The faintest of smiles touched the wizard’s lips. A worthy challenge.
He shifted warrens once again, and found himself on the trail of … something. A presence was ahead, leaving a cooled, strangely lifeless wake. Well, perhaps no surprise – I’m striding the edge of Hood’s own realm now, after all. None the less … Unease pattered within him like sleet. He pushed his nervousness down. Hood’s warren was resisting the poison better than many others Quick Ben had attempted.
The ground beneath him was clay, damp and clammy, the cold reaching through the wizard’s moccasins. Faint, colourless light bled down from a formless sky that seemed no higher than a ceiling. The haze filling the air felt oily, thick enough on either side to make the path seem like a tunnel.
Quick Ben’s steps slowed. The clay ground was no longer smooth. Deep incisions crossed it, glyphs in columns and panels. Primitive writing, the wizard suspected, yet … He crouched and reached down. ‘Freshly cut … or timeless.’ At a faint tingle from the contact he withdrew his hand. ‘Wards, maybe. Bindings.’
Stepping carefully to avoid the glyphs, Quick Ben padded forward.
He skirted a broad sinkhole filled with painted pebbles – offerings to Hood from some holy temple, no doubt – benedictions and prayers in a thousand languages from countless supplicants. And there they lie. Unnoticed, ignored or forgotten. Even clerks die, Hood – why not put them to good use cleaning all this up? Of all our traits to survive the passage of death, surely obsessiveness must be counted high among them.
The incisions grew thicker, more crowded, forcing the wizard to slow his pace yet further. It was becoming difficult to find a clear space on the clay for his feet. Binding sorceries – the whispered skeins of power made manifest, here on the floor of Hood’s realm.
A dozen paces ahead was a small, bedraggled object, surrounded in glyphs. Quick Ben’s frown deepened as he edged closer. Like the makings of fire … sticks and twisted grasses on a round, pale hearthstone.
Then he saw it tremble.
Ah, these binding spells belong to you, little one. Your soul, trapped As I once did to that mage, Hairlock, someone’s done to you. Curious indeed He moved as close as he could, then slowly crouched.
‘You’re looking a little worse for wear, friend,’ the wizard said.
The minuscule acorn head swivelled slightly, then flinched back. ‘Mortal!’ the creature hissed in the language of the Barghast. ‘The clans must be told! I can go no further – look, the wards pursued, the wards closed the web – I am trapped!’
‘So I see. You were of the White Faces, shaman?’
‘And so I remain!’
‘Yet you escaped your barrow – you eluded the binding spells of your kin, for a while at least, in any case. Do you truly believe they will welcome your return, Old One?’
‘I was dragged from my barrow, fool! You are journeying to the clans – I see the truth of that in your eyes. I shall tel
l you my tale, mortal, and so they know the truth of all that you tell them, I shall give you my true name—’
‘A bold offer, Old One. What’s to prevent me from twisting you to my will?’
The creature twitched, a snarl in its tone as it replied, ‘You could be no worse than my last masters. I am Talamandas, born of the First Hearth in the Knotted Clan. The first child birthed on this land – do you know the significance of that, mortal?’
‘I am afraid not, Talamandas.’
‘My previous masters – those damned necromancers – had worked through, mortal, were mere moments from discovering my true name – worked through, I tell you, with brutal claws indifferent to pain. With my name they would have learned secrets that even my own people have long forgotten. Do you know the significance of the trees on our barrows? No, you do not. Indeed they hold the soul, keep it from wandering, but why?
‘We came to this land from the seas, plying the vast waters in dugouts – the world was young, then, our blood thick with the secret truths of our past. Look upon the faces of the Barghast, mortal – no, look upon a Barghast skull stripped of skin and muscle…’
‘I’ve seen … Barghast skulls,’ Quick Ben said slowly.
‘Ah, and have you seen their like … animate?’
The wizard scowled. ‘No, but something similar, squatter – the features slightly more pronounced—’
‘Slightly, aye, slightly. Squatter? No surprise, we never went hungry, for the sea provided. Yet more, Tartheno Toblakai were among us…’
‘You were T’lan Imass! Hood’s breath! Then … you and your kin must have defied the Ritual—’
‘Defied? No. We simply failed to arrive in time – our pursuit of the Jaghut had forced us to venture onto the seas, to dwell among ice-flows and on treeless islands. And in our isolation from kin, among the elder peoples – the Tartheno – we changed … when our distant kin did not. Mortal, wherever land proved generous enough to grant us a birth, we buried our dugouts – for ever. From this was born the custom of the trees on our barrows – though none among my kind remembers. It has been so long…’
‘Tell me your tale, Talamandas. But first, answer me this. What would you do … if I freed you of these bindings?’
‘You cannot.’
‘Not an answer.’
‘Very well, though it be pointless. I would seek to set free the First Families – aye, we are spirits, and now worshipped by the living clans. But the ancient bindings have kept us as children in so many ways. Well meant, yet a curse none the less. We must be freed. To grow into true power—’
‘To ascend into true gods,’ Quick Ben whispered, his eyes wide as he stared down at the ragged figure of grasses and twigs.
‘The Barghast refuse to change, the living think now as the living always did. Generation after generation. Our kind are dying out, mortal. We rot from within. For the ancestors are prevented from giving true guidance, prevented from maturing into their power – our power. To answer your question, mortal, I would save the living Barghast, if I could.’
‘Tell me, Talamandas,’ Quick Ben asked with veiled eyes, ‘is survival a right, or a privilege?’
‘The latter, mortal. The latter. And it must be earned. I wish for the chance. For all my people, I wish for the chance.’
The wizard slowly nodded. ‘A worthy wish, Old One.’ He held out his hand, palm up, stared down at it. ‘There’s salt in this clay, is there not? I smell it. Clay is usually airless, lifeless. Defiant of the tireless servants of the soil. But the salt, well…’ A writhing clump took shape on Quick Ben’s palm. ‘Sometimes,’ he went on, ‘the simplest of creatures can defeat the mightiest sorceries, in the simplest way imaginable.’ The worms – red like blood, thin, long and ridged with leg-like cilia along their lengths – twisted and heaved, fell in clumps to the glyph-strewn ground. ‘These are native to a distant continent. They feed on salt, or so it seems – the mines on the dry sea beds of Setta are thick with these things, especially in the dry season. They can turn the hardest pan of clay into sand. To put it another way, they bring air to the airless.’ He dropped the clump onto the ground, watched as the worms spread out, began burrowing. ‘And they breed faster than maggots. Ah, see those glyphs – there, on the edges? Their binding’s crumbling – can you feel the loosening?’
‘Mortal, who are you?’
‘In the eyes of the gods, Talamandas? Just a lowly saltworm. I’ll hear your tale now, Old One…’
Chapter Nine
On the subcontinent of Stratem, beyond Korelri’s south range, can be found a vast peninsula where even the gods do not tread. Reaching to each coast, encompassing an area of thousands of square leagues, stretches a vast plaza. Aye, dear readers, there is no other word for it. Fashion this in your mind: near-seamless flagstones, unmarred by age and of grey, almost black, stone. Rippled lines of dark dust, minuscule dunes heaped by the moaning winds, these are all that break the breathless monotony. Who laid such stones?
Should we give credence to Gothos’s hoary tome, his glorious ‘Folly’? Should we attach a dread name to the makers of this plaza? If we must, then that name is K’Chain Che’Malle. Who, then, were the K’Chain Che’Malle? An Elder Race, or so Gothos tells. Extinct even before the rise of the Jaghut, the T’lan Imass, the Forkrul Assail.
Truth? Ah, if so, then these stones were laid down half a million – perhaps more – years ago. In the opinion of this chronicler, what utter nonsense.
MY ENDLESS TRAVELS
ESSLEE MONOT (THE DUBIOUS)
‘How do you measure a life, Toc the Younger? Please, darling, I would hear your thoughts. Deeds are the crudest measure of all, wouldn’t you say?’
He cast her a glower as they walked. ‘You suggesting that good intentions are enough, Lady?’
Envy shrugged. ‘Can no value be found in good intentions?’
‘What, precisely, are you trying to justify? And to me, or yourself?’
She glared, then quickened her pace. ‘You’re no fun at all,’ she sniffed as she pulled ahead, ‘and presumptuous as well. I’m going to talk with Tool – his moods don’t swing!’
No, they just hang there, twisting in the wind.
Not entirely true, he realized after a moment. The T’lan Imass had showed the fullest measure of his emotions a week past. With his sister’s departure. None of us are immune to tortured hearts, I guess. He rested a hand on Baaljagg’s shoulder, squinted towards the distant ridgeline to the northeast, and the washed-out mountains beyond.
The ridge marked the borders of the Pannion Domin. There was a city at the foot of those mountains, or so the Lady had assured him. Bastion. An ominous name. And strangers aren’t welcome … So why in Hood’s name are we heading there?
Onearm’s Host had effectively declared war on the theocratic empire. Tool’s knowledge of the details had Toc wondering, but not doubting. Every description of the Pannion Domin simply added fuel to the likelihood of Dujek taking … umbrage. The old High Fist despised tyranny. Which is ironic, since the Emperor was a tyrant … I think. Then again, maybe not. Despotic, sure, and monomaniacal, even slightly insane … He scowled, glanced back to the three Seguleh trailing him. Glittering eyes within hard masks. Toc resumed his study of the ridge ahead, shivering.
Something’s awry, somewhere. Maybe right here. Since her return from Callows, with Mok in tow and his mask sporting a crimson, thickly planted kiss – Hood’s breath, does the man even know? If I was Senu or Thurule, would I dare tell him? Since her return, yes, there’s been a change. A skittery look in her eyes – just the occasional flash, but I’m not mistaken. The stakes have been raised, and I’m in a game I don’t even know. I don’t know the players ranged against me, either.
He blinked suddenly, finding Lady Envy walking alongside him once again. ‘Tool say the wrong thing?’ he asked.
Her nose wrinkled in distaste. ‘Haven’t you ever wondered what the undead think about, Toc the Younger?’
‘No. That is,
I don’t ever recall musing on the subject, Lady.’
‘They had gods, once, you know.’
He shot her a glance. ‘Oh?’
‘Well. Spirits, then. Earth and rock and tree and beast and sun and stars and antler and bone and blood—’
‘Yes, yes, Lady, I grasp the theme.’
‘Your interruptions are most rude, young man – are you typical of your generation? If so, then the world is indeed on a downward spiral into the Abyss. Spirits, I was saying. All extinct now. All nothing more than dust. The Imass have outlasted their own deities. Difficult to imagine, but they are godless in every sense, Toc the Younger. Faith … now ashes. Answer me this, my dear, do you envisage your afterlife?’
He grunted. ‘Hood’s gate? In truth, I avoid thinking about it, Lady. What’s the point? We die and our soul passes through. I suppose it’s up to Hood or one of his minions to decide what to do with it, if anything.’
Her eyes flashed. ‘If anything. Yes.’
A chill prickled Toc’s skin.
‘What would you do,’ Lady Envy asked, ‘with the knowledge that Hood does nothing with your soul? That it’s left to wander, eternally lost, purposeless? That it exists without hope, without dreams?’
‘Do you speak the truth, Lady? Is this knowledge you possess? Or are you simply baiting me?’
‘I am baiting you, of course, my young love. How would I know anything of Hood’s hoary realm? Then again, think of the physical manifestations of that warren – the cemeteries in your cities, the forlorn and forgotten barrows – not places conducive to festive occasions, yes? Think of all of Hood’s host of holidays and celebrations. Swarming flies, blood-covered acolytes, cackling crows and faces stained with the ash from cremations – I don’t know about you, but I don’t see much fun going on, do you?’
‘Can’t we be having some other kind of conversation, Lady Envy? This one’s hardly cheering me up.’
‘I was simply musing on the T’lan Imass.’
You were? Oh … right. He sighed. ‘They war with the Jaghut, Lady. That is their purpose, and it certainly seems sufficient to sustain them. I’d imagine they’ve little need for spirits or gods or faith, even. They exist to wage their war, and so long as a single Jaghut’s still breathing on this world…’
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