The reparations that followed were conducted in sated silence. She combed through her hair to remove the bark, pebbles and saliva. I rubbed my face with sand and would have cut off my own left arm for a bowl of water. We hunted down our wayward clothing, before each in turn staggering off to find our bedding.
Thus ended the twenty-third night upon Crack’d Pot Trail.
A Recounting of the Twenty-fourth Day
LIKE RUBBING A glossy coat the wrong way, secret amorous escapades can leave the elect parties stirred awry in the wake, although of course there are always exceptions to the condition, and it would appear that, upon the dawn of the twenty-fourth day, both your venerable chronicler and Relish Chanter could blissfully count themselves thus blessed. Indeed, I never slept better, and from Relish’s languid feline stretch upon sitting up from her furs, her mind was as unclouded as ever, sweet as unstirred cream upon the milk.
Far more soured the dispositions of the haggard mottle of artists as the sun elbowed its way up between the distant crags to the east. Wretched their miens, woeful their swollen eyes. Harried their hair, dishevelled their comportment as sullen they gathered about the embers whilst Steck Marynd revived the flames with sundry fettles of tinder and whatnot. Strips of meat roasted the night before were chewed during the wait for the single small pot of tea to boil awake.
With bared iron fangs, the day promised torrid heat. Already the sun blazed wilful and not a single cloud dared intrude upon the cerulean sands of heaven’s arena. We stood or sat with the roar of blood in our ears, the silty tea gritty upon our leathery tongues, our hands twitching as if reaching for the journey’s end.
From somewhere close came the keening cry of a harashal, the cruel lizard vulture native to the Great Dry. The creature could smell the burnt bone, the ravelled flaps of human skin and scalp, the entrails shallowly buried in a pit just upwind of the camp. And with its voice it mocked our golden vigour until we felt nothing but leaden guilt. The world and indeed life itself lives entirely within the mind. We cast the colours ourselves, and every scene of salvation to one man shows its curly-haired backside to another. And so standing together we each stood alone, and that which we shared was unpleasant to all.
With, perhaps, a few exceptions. Rubbing a lump on his temple, Tiny Chanter walked off to fill a hole, humming as he went. Flea and Midge grinned at each other, which they did with unnerving frequency. Both had sore skulls and only moments earlier had been close to drawing knives, the belligerence halted by a warning grunt from Tiny.
Mister Ambertroshin filled a second cup of tea and walked over to the carriage, where a chamber pot awaited him set on the door’s step. A single knock and the wooden shutter on the window opened a crack, just wide enough for him to send the cup through, whereupon it snapped shut, locks setting. He collected the chamber pot and set out to dispose of its contents.
Tulgord Vise watched him walk off and then he grunted. ‘Looked to be a heavy pot for some old lady. See that, Steck? Arpo?’
The forester squinted with slitty eyes, but perhaps that was just the woodsmoke drifting up to enwreathe his weathered face.
Arpo, on the other hand, was frowning. ‘Well, she took two helpings last night, so it’s no wonder.’
‘Did she now?’ and Tulgord Vise glanced over at the carriage. He scratched at his stubbled jaw.
‘Must get horrid hot in there,’ Apto Canavalian mused, ‘despite the shade. Not a single vent is left open.’
Arpo set off to see to his horse, and after a moment Tulgord did something similar. Steck had already saddled his own half-wild mount and it stood nearby, chewing on whatever grasses it could find. Mister Ambertroshin returned with the scoured pot and stored it in the back box, which he then locked. He then attended to the two mules. So too did the others address to sundry chores or, as privilege or arrogance warranted, did nothing but watch the proceedings. Oggle Gush and Pampera set about combing Nifty’s golden locks, while Sellup bundled bedding and then laced onto Nifty’s feet the artist’s knee-high moccasins.
Thus did the camp break and all preparations were made for the trek ahead.
Calap Roud and Brash Phluster came up to me in the course of such readying. ‘Listen, Flicker,’ said Calap in a low voice, ‘nobody’s even told the Chanters about your deal last night, and I’m still of a mind to argue against it.’
‘Oh, did the Lady’s word not convince you then?’
‘Why should it?’ he demanded.
‘Me neither,’ said Brash. ‘Why you anyway? She won’t even look at me and I’m way better looking.’
‘This relates to the tale, surely,’ said I. ‘A woman such as Purse Snippet would hardly be of such beggarly need as to consider me in any other respect. Brash Phluster, I began a tale and she wishes to hear its end.’
‘But it’s not a believable one, is it?’
To that I could but shrug. ‘A tale is what it is. Must you have every detail relayed to you, every motivation recounted so that it is clearly understood? Must you believe that all proceeds at a certain pace only to flower full and fulsome at the expected time? Am I slave to your expectations, sir? Does not a teller of tales serve oneself first and last?’
Calap snorted. ‘I have always argued thus. Who needs an audience, after all. But this situation, it is different, is it not?’
‘Is it?’ I regarded them both. ‘The audience can listen, or they can walk away. They can be pleased. They can be infuriated. They can feel privileged to witness or cursed by the same. If I kneel to one I must kneel to all. And to kneel is to surrender and this no teller of tales must ever do. Calap Roud, count for me the times you have been excoriated for your arrogance. To be an artist is to know privilege from both sides, the privilege of creating your art and the privilege in those who partake of it. But even saying such a thing is arrogance’s deafening howl, is it not? Yet the audience possesses a singular currency in this exchange. To partake thereof or to not partake thereof. It extends no further for them, no matter how they might wish otherwise. Now, Calap, you say this situation is different, indeed, unique, yes?’
‘When our lives are on the line, yes!’
‘I have before me my audience of one, and upon her and her alone my life now rests. But I shall not kneel. Do you understand? She certainly understands – I can see that and am pleased by it. How will she judge? By what standards?’
‘By that of redemption,’ said Calap. ‘It’s what you have offered, after all.’
‘Redemption comes in a thousand guises, and they are sweetest those that come unexpectedly. For now, she will trust me, but, as you say, Calap, at any time she can choose to abandon that trust. So be it.’
‘So you happily trust your life to her judgement?’
‘Happily? No, I would not use that word, Calap Roud. The point is, I will hold to my story, for it is mine and none other’s.’
Scowling and no doubt confused, Calap turned about and walked away.
Brash Phluster, however, remained. ‘I would tell you something, Avas Flicker. In confidence.’
‘You have it, sir.’
‘It’s this, you see.’ He licked his lips. ‘I keep beginning my songs, but I never get to finish them! Everyone just votes me dispensation! Why? And they laugh and nobody’s supposed to be laughing at all. No, say nothing just yet. Listen!’ His eyes were bright with something like horror. ‘I decided to hide my talent, you see? Hide it deep, save it for the Festival. But then, this happened, and suddenly I realized that I needed to use it, use it to its fullest! But what happened? I’ll tell you what happened, Flicker. Now I know why I was damned good at hiding my talent.’ He clawed at his straggly beard. ‘It’s because I don’t have any in the first place! And now I’m sunk! Once they stop laughing, I’m a dead man!’
Such are the nightmares of artists. The gibbering ghosts of dead geniuses (yes, they are all dead). The bald nakedness of some future legacy, chewed down illegible. The torture and flagellation of a soul in crisis. The secret truth
is that every artist kneels, every artist sets head down upon the block of fickle opinion and the judgement of the incapable. To be a living artist is to be driven again and again to explain oneself, to justify every creative decision, yet to bite down hard on the bit is the only honourable recourse, to my mind at least. Explain nothing, justify even less. Grin at the gallows, dear friends! The artist that lives and the audience that lives while they live are without relevance! Only those still unborn shall post the script of legacy, whether it be forgotten or canonized! The artist and the audience are trapped together in the now, the instant of mood and taste and gnawing unease and all the blither of fugue that is opinion’s facile realm! Make brazen your defiance and make well nested your home in the alley and doorstep or, if the winds fare you well, in yon estate with Entourage in tow and the drool of adoration to soothe your path through the years!
‘Dear Brash,’ said I after this torrid outburst, ‘worry not. Sing your songs with all the earnestness you possess. What is talent but the tongue that never ceases its wag? Look upon us poets and see how we are as dogs in the sun, licking our own behinds with such tender love. Naught else afflicts us but the vapours of our own worries. Neither sun nor stone heeds human ambition. Kings hire poets to sell them lies of posterity. Be at fullest ease, is it not enough to try? Is desire not sufficient proof? Is conviction not the stoutest shield and helm before wretched judgement? If it is true that you possess the talent of the talentless, celebrate the singularity of your gift! And should you survive this trek, why, I predict your audience will indeed be vast.’
‘But I won’t!’
‘You shall. I am sure of it.’
Brash Phluster’s eyes darted. ‘But then … that means … Calap Roud? Nifty Gum?’
Solemn my nod.
‘But that won’t be enough!’
‘It shall suffice. We shall make good time today, better than our host adjudges.’
‘Do you truly believe so?’
‘I do, sir. Now, the others have begun and the carriage is moments from lurching forward. Unless you wish to breathe the dust of its passing, we had best be on, young poet.’
‘What if Purse hates your story?’
I could but shrug.
Now, it falls upon artists of all ilk to defend the indefensible, and in so doing reveal the utterly defenceless nature of all positions of argument, both yours and mine. Just as every ear bent to this tale is dubious, so too the voice spinning its way down the track of time. Where hides the truth? Why, nowhere and everywhere, of course. Where slinks the purposeful lie? Why, ’tis the lumps beneath truth’s charming coat. So, friends, assume the devious and you’ll not be wrong and almost half-right, as we shall see.
Not twenty paces along, Tiny Chanter pointed a simian forefinger at Calap Roud and said, ‘You, finish your story, and if it’s no good you’re dead.’
‘Dead,’ agreed Flea.
‘Dead,’ agreed Midge.
Calap gulped. ‘So soon?’ he asked in a squeak. ‘Wait! I must compose myself! The Imass woman, dying in the cold, a spin backward in time to the moment when the Fenn warrior, sorely wounded, arrives, sledge in tow. Yes, there I left it. There. So.’ He rubbed at his face, worked his jaw as might a singer or pugilist (wherein for both beatings abound, ah, the fates we thrust upon ourselves!), and then cleared his throat.
‘He stood silent before her,’ Calap began, ‘and she made a gesture of welcome. “Great Fenn,” said she—’
‘What’s her name?’ Sellup asked.
‘She has no name. She is Everywoman.’
‘She’s not me,’ Sellup retorted.
‘Just so,’ Calap replied, and then resumed. ‘“Great Fenn” said she, “you come to the camp of the Ifayle Imass, the clan of the White Ferret. We invite you to be our guest for the time of your stay, however long you wish it to be. You shall be our brother.” She did not, as you may note, speak of the dire state of her kin. She voiced no excuse or said one word to diminish his expectation. Suffering must wait in the mist, and vanish with the sun’s light, and the sun’s light is found in every stranger’s eyes—’
‘That was stupid,’ said Oggle Gush, her opinion rewarded with a nod from Sellup. ‘If she’d said “we’re all starving,” why, then he’d go away.’
‘If that happened,’ said Apto Canavalian, ‘there can be no story, can there?’
‘Sure there can! Tell us what she’s wearing! I want to know every detail and how she braids her hair and the paints she uses on her face and nipples. And I want to hear how she’s in charge of everything and secretly smarter than everyone else, because that’s what heroes are, smarter than everyone else. They see clearest of all! They wear Truth and Honour – isn’t that what you always say, Nifty?’
The man coughed and looked uncomfortable. ‘Well, not precisely. That is, I mean – what I meant is, well, complicated. That’s what I meant. Now, let Calap continue, I pray you, darling.’
‘What do they look like?’ Apto asked Oggle.
‘What does what look like?’
‘Truth and Honour. Is Truth, oh, fur-trimmed? Line stitched? Brocaded? And what about Honour? Do you wear Honour on your feet? Well tanned? Softened with worn teeth and the gums of old women?’
‘You do maybe,’ Oggle retorted, ‘wear them, I mean,’ and then she rolled her eyes and said, ‘Idiot.’
Calap continued, ‘To her words the Fenn warrior did bow, and together they walked to the circle of round-tents, where the chill winds rushed through the furs of the stretched hides. Three hunters were present, two men and another woman, and they came out to greet the stranger. They knew he would have words to speak, and they knew, as well, that he would only speak them before the fire of the chief’s hut. In good times, the arrival of a stranger leads to delight and excitement, and all, be they children or elders, yearn to hear tales of doings beyond their selves, and such tales are of course the currency a stranger pays for the hospitality of the camp.’
‘Just as a modern bard travels from place to place,’ commented Apto. ‘Poets, each of you can lay claim to an ancient tradition—’
‘And for reward you kill and eat us!’ snapped Brash Phluster. ‘Those horses—’
‘Will not be sacrificed,’ uttered Tulgord Vise, in a low growl of lifted hackles. ‘That was settled and so it remains.’
Tiny Chanter laughed with a show of his tiny teeth and said to Tulgord, ‘When we done ate all the artists, peacock, it’s you or your horses. Take your pick.’ His brothers laughed too and their laughs were the same as Tiny’s, and at this moment the knights exchanged glances and then both looked to Steck Marynd who rode a few paces ahead, but the forester’s back stayed hunched and if his hairs prickled on his neck he made no sign.
Tiny’s threat remained, hanging like a raped woman’s blouse that none would look at, though Brash seemed pleased by it, evidently not yet thinking through Tiny’s words.
‘The Chief in the camp was past his hunting years, and wisdom made bleak his eyes, for when word came to him that a Fenn had made entrance, and that he brought with him a sledge on which lay a body, the Chief feared the worst. There was scant food, and the only medicines the shoulder-women still possessed – after such trying months – were those that eased hunger pangs. Yet he made welcome his round floor and soon all those still able to walk had gathered to meet the Fenn and to hear his words.’
Clearing his throat, Calap resumed. ‘The woman who had first greeted him, fair as the spring earth, could not but feel responsible for his presence – though she was bound to honour and so had had no choice – and so she walked close by him and stood upon his left as they waited for the Chief’s invitation to sit. Soft the strange whisperings within her, however, and these drew her yet closer, as if his need was hers, as if his straits simply awaited the strength of her own shoulders. She could not explain such feeling, and knew then that the spirits of her people had gathered close to this moment, beneath grey and lifeless skies, and the strokes upon her heart bel
onged to them.
‘It is fell and frightening when the spirits crowd the realm of mortals, for purposes remain ever hidden and all will is as walls of sand before the tide’s creep. So, fast beat her heart, quickening her breath, and when at last a child emerged from his grandfather’s hut and gestured, she reached out and took hold of the stranger’s hand – her own like a babe’s within it, and feeling too the hard calluses and seams of strength – and he in turn looked with hooded surprise down upon her, seeing for the very first time her youth, her wan beauty, and something like pain flinched in his heavy eyes—’
‘Why?’ Sellup asked. ‘What does he know?’
‘Unwelcome your chorus,’ muttered Apto Canavalian.
Calap rubbed his face, as if in sudden loss. Had he forgotten the next details? Did the Reaver now stand before him, Death at home in his camp?
‘Before the fire …’ said I in soft murmur.
Starting, Calap nodded. ‘Before the fire, and with the sledge left outside where the last of the dogs drew close to sniff and dip tails, the Fenn warrior made sit before the Chief. His weapons were left at the threshold, and in the heat he at last drew free of his wintry clothing, revealing a face in cast not much elder to the woman kneeling beside him. Blood and suffering are all-too-common masks among all people throughout every age. In dreams we see the hale and fortunate and imagine them some other place, yet one within reach, if only in aspiration. Closer to our lives, waking each day, we must face the scarred reality, and all too often we don our own matching masks, when bereft of privilege as most of us are.’ It seemed he faltered then, as if the substance of this last aside now struck him for the first time.
Statements find meaning only in the extremity of the witness, else all falls flat and devoid of emotion, and no amount of authorial exhortation can awaken sincerity among those crouch’d in strongholds of insensitivity. No poorer luck seeking to stir dead soil to life, no seed will take, no flower will grow. True indeed the dead poet’s young vision of masks of suffering and blood, but true as well – as he might have seen in his last days and nights – a growing plethora of masks of the insensate, the dead-inside, the fallow of soul, who are forever beyond reach.
The Second Collected Tales of Bauchelain & Korbal Broach: Three Short Novels of the Malazan Empire Page 20