‘Dear wife, you should not ask that question.’
‘Why not?’
He met her eyes again, not with anger this time, but bleak despair. ‘You may find that mistakes are all you have.’
She grew very still, chilled despite the burgeoning heat of the morning. ‘Oh, and for you, does that include me?’
‘No, I speak to help you understand an Imass who was once a T’lan.’ He hesitated, and then said, ‘With you, with our children, I had grown to believe that such things were at last behind me—those dread errors and the burden of all they yielded. And then, in an instant . . . I am reminded of my own stupidity. It does no good to ignore one’s own flaws, Hetan. The delusion comforts, but it can prove fatal.’
‘You’re not dead.’
‘Am I not?’
She snorted and turned away. ‘You’re just as bad as your sister!’ Then wheeled back to him. ‘Wake up! Your twenty-seven clans are down to nineteen—how many more will you lose because you can’t be bothered to make a decision?’
His eyes narrowed on her. ‘What would you have me decide?’ he asked quietly.
‘We are White Face Barghast! Find us an enemy!’
The privilege of being so close to home was proving too painful, even as Torrent—the last warrior of the Awl—sought to exult in the anguish. Punishment for surviving, for persisting, like one last drop of blood refusing to soak into the red mud; he did not know what held him upright, breathing, heart pounding on and on, thoughts clawing through endless curtains of dust. Somewhere, deep inside, he prayed he would find his single, pure truth, squeezed down into a knucklebone, polished by all the senseless winds, the pointless rains, the spiralling collapse of season upon season. A little knot of something like bone, to stumble over, to roll across, to send him sprawling.
He might find it, but he suspected not. He did not possess the wit. He was not sharp in the way of Toc Anaster, the Mezla who haunted his dreams. Thundering hoofs, a storm-wracked night sky, winds howling like wolves, and the dead warrior’s single eye fixed like an opal in its shadowed socket. A face horrifying in its red, glistening ruin—the skin cut away, smeared teeth exposed in a feral grin—oh, perhaps indeed the Mezla rode into Torrent’s dreams, a harbinger of nightmares, a mocker of his precious, fragile truth. One thing seemed clear—the dead archer was hunting Torrent, fired by hatred for the last Awl warrior, and the pursuit was relentless, Torrent’s steps dragging even as he ran for his life, gasping, shrieking—until with a start he would awaken, sheathed in sweat and shivering.
It seemed that Toc Anaster was in no hurry to bring the hunt to its grisly conclusion. The ghost’s pleasure was in the chase. Night after night after night.
The Awl warrior no longer wore a copper mask. The irritating rash that had mottled his face was now gone. He had elected to deliver himself and the children into the care of the Gadra clan, camped as they were at the very edge of the Awl’dan. He had not wished to witness the devastating grief of the strange warrior named Tool, over Toc Anaster’s death.
Shortly after joining the clan, and with the fading of his rash, Gadra women had taken an interest in him, and they were not coy, displaying a boldness that almost frightened Torrent—he had fled a woman’s advance more than once—but of late the dozen or so intent on stalking and trapping him had begun cooperating with one another.
And so he took to his horse, riding hard out from the camp, spending the entire span of the sun’s arc well away from their predations. Red-eyed with exhaustion, miserable in his solitude, and at war with himself. He had never lain with a woman, after all. He had no idea what it involved, beyond those shocking childhood memories of seeing, through the open doorways of huts, adults clamped round one another grunting and moaning and sighing. But they had been Awl—not these savage, terrifying Barghast who coupled with shouts and barks of laughter, the men bellowing like bears and the women clawing and scratching and biting.
No, none of it made any sense. For, even as he endeavoured to escape these mad women with their painted faces and bright eyes, he wanted what they offered. He fled his own desire, and each time he did so the torture he inflicted upon himself stung all the worse.
Such misery as no man deserves!
He should have rejoiced in his freedom, here on the vast plains so close to the Awl’dan. To see the herds of bhederin—which his own people had never thought to tame—and the scattering of rodara, too, that the surviving children of the Awl now cared for—and to know that the cursed Letherii were not hunting them, not slaughtering them . . . he should be exulting in the moment.
Was he not alive? Safe? And was he not the Clan Leader of the Awl? Undisputed ruler of a vast tribe of a few score children, some of whom had already forgotten their own language, and now spoke the barbaric foreign tongue of the Barghast, and had taken to painting their bodies with red and yellow ochre and braiding their hair?
He rode his horse at a slow canter, already two or more leagues from the Gadra encampment. The herds had swung round to the southeast the night before, so he had seen no one on his journey out. When he first caught sight of the Barghast dogs, he thought they might be wolves, but upon seeing Torrent they altered their route straight towards him—something no pack of wolves would do—and as they drew closer he could see their short-haired, mottled hides, their shortened muzzles and small ears. Larger than any Awl or Letherii breed, the beasts were singularly savage. Until this moment, they had ignored Torrent, beyond the occasional baring of fangs as they trotted past in the camp.
He slipped his lance from its sling and anchored it in the stirrup step just inside his right foot. Six dogs, loping closer—they were, he realized, exhausted.
Torrent reined in to await them, curious.
The beasts slowed, and then encircled the warrior and his horse. He watched as they sank down on to their bellies, jaws hanging, tongues lolling and slick with thick threads of saliva.
Confused, Torrent settled back in the saddle. Could he just ride through this strange circle, continue on his way?
If these were Awl dogs, what would their behaviour signify? He shook his head—maybe if they were drays, then he would imagine that an enemy had drawn near. Frowning, Torrent stood in his stirrups and squinted to the north, whence the dogs had come. Nothing . . . and then he shaded his eyes. Yes, nothing on the horizon, but above that horizon—circling birds? Possibly.
What to do? Return to the camp, find a warrior and tell him or her of what he had seen? Your dogs found me. They laid themselves down. Far to the north . . . some birds. Torrent snorted. He gathered the reins and nudged his mount between two of the prone dogs, and then swung his horse northward. Birds were not worth reporting—he needed to see what had drawn them.
Of the six dogs he left behind him, two fell into his wake, trotting. The remaining four rose and set out for the camp to the south.
In the time of Redmask, Torrent had known something close to contentment. The Awl had found someone to follow. A true leader, a saviour. And when the great victories had come—the death of hundreds of Letherii invaders in fierce, triumphant battles—they were proof of Redmask’s destiny. He could not be certain when things began to go wrong, but he recalled the look in Toc Anaster’s eye, the cynical set of his foreign face, and with every comment the man uttered, the solid foundations of Torrent’s faith seemed to reverberate, as if struck deadly blows . . . until the first cracks arrived, until Torrent’s very zeal was turned upon itself, jaded and mocking, and what had been a strength became a weakness.
Such was the power of scepticism. A handful of words to dismantle certainty, like seeds flung at a stone wall—tender greens and tiny roots, yes, but in time they would take down that wall.
Contentment alone should have made Torrent suspicious, but it had reared up before him like a god of purity and willingly he had knelt, head bowed, to take comfort in its shadow. In any other age, Redmask could not have succeeded in commanding the Awl. Without the desperation, without the success
ion of defeats and mounting losses, without extinction itself looming before them like a cliff’s edge, the tribes would have driven him away—as they had done once before. Yes, they had been wiser, then.
Some forces could not be defeated, and so it was with the Letherii. Their hunger for land, their need to possess and rule over all that they possessed—these were terrible desires that spread like the plague, poisoning the souls of the enemy. Once the fever of seeing the world as they did erupted like fire in one’s brain, the war was over, the defeat absolute and irreversible.
Even these Barghast—his barbaric saviours—were doomed. Akrynnai traders set up camps up against the picket lines. D’rhasilhani horse sellers drove herd after herd in a mostly futile parade past the encampment, and every now and then a Barghast warrior would select one of the larger animals, examine it for a time, and then, with a dismissive bark of laughter, send it back to the herd. Before too long, Torrent believed, a breed of sufficient height and girth would arrive, and that would be that.
Invaders did not stay invaders for ever. Eventually, they became no different from every other tribe or people in a land. Languages muddied, blended, surrendered. Habits were exchanged like currency, and before too long everyone saw the world the same way as everyone else. And if that way was wrong, then misery was assured, for virtually everyone, for virtually ever.
The Awl should have bowed to the Letherii. They would be alive now, instead of lying in jumbled heaps of mouldering bones in the mud of a dead sea.
Redmask had sought to stop time itself. Of course he failed.
Sometimes, belief was suicide.
Torrent had cast away his faiths, his certainties, his precious beliefs. He did nothing to resist the young ones losing their language. He saw the ochre paint on their faces, the spiked hair, and was indifferent to it. Yes, he was the leader of the Awl, the last there would ever be, and it was his task to oversee the peaceful obliteration of his culture. Ways will pass. He vowed he would not miss them.
No, Torrent wore no copper mask. Not any more. And his face was clear as his eyes.
He slowed his horse’s canter as soon as he made out the corpses, the bodies scattered about. Crows and gold-beaked vultures moved here and there in the carrion dance, whilst rhinazan flapped about, disturbing capemoths into flight—sudden blossoms of white petals that settled almost as quickly as they appeared. A scene of the plains that Torrent knew well.
A troop of Barghast had been ambushed. Slaughtered.
He rode closer.
No obvious tracks, neither foot nor hoof, led away from the killing ground. He saw how the Barghast had been in close formation—and that was odd, contrary to what Torrent had seen of their patrols. Perhaps, he thought, they had contracted defensively, which suggested an enemy in overwhelming numbers. But then . . . there was no sign of that. And whoever had murdered these warriors must have taken their own dead with them—he walked his horse in a circuit round the bodies—saw no trailing smears of blood, no swaths through the grasses to mark dragged heels.
The bodies, he realized then, had not been looted. Their beautiful weapons were scattered about, the blades devoid of blood.
Torrent felt his nerves awaken, as if brushed by something unholy. He looked once more at the corpses—not a contraction, but a converging . . . upon a single foe. And the wounds—despite the efforts of the scavengers—displayed nothing of what one would expect. As if they closed upon a beast, and see how the blows struck downward upon them. A plains bear? No, there are none left. The last surviving skin of one of those beasts—among my people—was said to be seven generations old. He remembered the thing, vast, yes, but tattered. And the claws had been removed and since lost. Still . . .
Torrent glanced at the two dogs as they trotted up. The beasts looked preternaturally cowed, stubby tails ducked, the glances they sent him beseeching and frightened. If they had been Awl drays, they would now be moving on to the enemy’s trail, eager, hackles raised. He scowled down at the quivering beasts.
He swung his horse back round and set off for the Gadra camp. The dogs hurried after him.
A beast, yet one that left no trail whatsoever. A ghost creature.
Perhaps his solitary rides had come to an end. He would have to surrender to those eager women. They could take away his unease, he hoped.
Leave the hunt to the Barghast. Give their shamans something worthwhile to do, instead of getting drunk on D’ras beer every night. Report to the chief, and then be done with it.
He already regretted riding out to find the bodies. For all he knew the ghost creature was close, had in fact been watching him. Or something of its foul sorcery lingered upon the scene, and now he was marked, and it would find him no matter where he went. He could almost smell that sorcery, clinging to his clothes. Acrid, bitter as a snake’s belly.
Setoc, who had once been named Stayandi, and who in her dreams was witness to strange scenes of familiar faces speaking in strange tongues, of laughter and love and tenderness—an age in the time before her beasthood—stood facing the empty north.
She had seen the four dogs come into the camp, in itself an event unworthy of much attention, and if the patrol was late in returning, well, perhaps they had surprised a mule deer and made a kill, thus explaining the absence of two dogs from the pack, as the beasts would have been strapped to a travois to carry back the meat. Explanations such as these served for the moment, despite the obvious flaws in logic (these four would have remained with the patrol in such a case, feeding on the butchered carcass and its offal and whatnot); although the truth of it was Setoc spared few thoughts for what interpretations the nearby Barghast might kick up in small swirls of agitated dust, as they tracked with their eyes the sweat-lathered beasts, or for their growing alarm when the dogs then sank down on to their bellies.
So, she watched as a dozen or so warriors gathered weapons and slowly converged on the exhausted beasts, and then returned her attention to the north.
Yes, the animals stank of death.
And the wild wolves in the emptiness beyond, who had given her life, had howled with the dawn their tale of terror.
Yes, her first family ever remained close by, accorded a kind of holy protection in the legend that was the girl’s finding—no Barghast would hunt the animals, and now even the Akrynnai had been told the story of her birth among the pack, of the lone warrior’s discovery of her. Spirit-blessed, they now all said when looking upon her. The holder of a thousand hearts.
At first, that last title had confused Setoc, but her memories slowly awakened, with each day that she grew older, taller, sharper-eyed. Yes, she held within herself a thousand hearts, even more. Wolf gifts. Milk she had suckled, milk of blood, milk of a thousand slain brothers and sisters. And did she not recall a night of terror and slaughter? A night fleeing in the darkness?
They spoke of her legend, and even the shoulder-seers made her offerings and would come up and touch her to ease their troubled expressions.
And now the Great Warlock, the Finder of the Barghast Gods, the one named Cafal, had come to the Gadra, to speak with her, to search her soul if she so permitted it.
The wild wolves cried out to her, their minds a confused tumult of fear and worry. Anxious for their child, yes, and for a future time when storms gathered from every horizon. They understood that she would be at the very heart of that celestial conflagration. They begged to sacrifice their own lives so that she might live. And that, she would not permit.
If she was spirit-blessed, then the wolves were the spirits that had so blessed her. If she was a thing to be worshipped here among the Barghast, then she was but a symbol of the wild and it was this wild that must be worshipped—if only they could see that.
She glanced back at the cowering dogs, and felt a rush of sorrowful regret at what such beasts could have been, if their wildness was not so chained, so bound and muzzled.
God, my children, does not await us in the wilderness. God, my children, is the wilderness.<
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Witness its laws and be humbled.
In humility, find peace.
But know this: peace is not always life. Sometimes, peace is death. In the face of this, how can one not be humble?
The wild laws are the only laws.
She would give these words to Cafal. She would see in his face their effect.
And then she would tell him that the Gadra clan was going to die, and that many other Barghast clans would follow. She would warn him to look to the skies, for from the skies death was coming. She would warn him against further journeys—he must return to his own clan. He must make peace with the spirit of his own kin. The peace of life, before the arrival of the peace of death.
Warriors had gathered round the dogs, readying weapons and such. Tension flowed out from them in ripples, spreading through the camp. In moments a warleader would be selected from among the score or so milling about. Setoc pitied them all, but especially that doomed leader.
A wind was blowing in from the east, scratching loose her long sun-bleached hair until it whispered across her face like withered grass. And still the stench of death filled her senses.
Cafal’s heavy features had broadened, grown more robust since his youth, and there were deeply etched lines of stress between his brows and framing his mouth. Years ago, in a pit beneath a temple floor, he had spoken with the One Who Blesses, with the Malazan captain, Ganoes Paran. And, seeking to impress the man—seeking to prove that, somehow, his wisdom belied his few years—he had uttered words he had heard his father use, claiming them as his own.
‘A man possessing power must act decisively . . . else it trickle away through his fingers.’
The observation, while undoubtedly true, now echoed sourly. The voice that made that pronouncement, back then, was all wrong. It had no right to the words. Cafal could not believe his own pretensions uttered by that younger self, that bold, clear-eyed fool.
A pointless, stupid accident had stolen away his father, Humbrall Taur. For all that the huge, wise warrior had wielded his power, neither wisdom nor that power availed him against blind chance. The lesson was plain, the message bleak and humbling. Power was proof against nothing, and that was the only wisdom worth recognizing.
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