Now warriors, but this is no elevation of stature or rank, no prize freshly won. This is a descent felt deep in the soul, as if a newfound skill was only now comprehended as a curse. This is competence maligned, pride besmirched. We now walk a levelled world.
‘A ransom will be paid. This I promise!’
Narad frowned at the captain who had been thrown down at his feet. He struggled to make sense of the man’s fraught words. ‘Ransom? What need have we for coin?’
‘I have value! I am an officer of the Legion, damn you.’
Yes. I recall taking orders from ones such as you, sir. I recall, as well, where that led. ‘Every soldier,’ he said, ‘holds to a faith. That the ones commanding them are honourable, that necessity is bound to righteousness. This keeps the stains from becoming permanent. Imagine the betrayal, then, when the soldier discovers neither honour nor righteousness in those commanders.’
‘Lord Urusander’s cause is righteous enough, you fool. Abyss take me,’ Hallyd snarled, ‘that I should argue morality with a forest-grubbing murderer.’
Narad tilted his head as he studied the man at his feet. ‘Was it by Lord Urusander’s command that a family at a wedding should be slaughtered? Name for me, sir, the moral justification for that. What of the bride – the poor bride – raped to death upon the hearthstone? Where, I beg you, is the honour to be found in such atrocity?’
‘The excesses of that … event, belong to the captain commanding that company. She exceeded her orders—’
‘Infayen Menand, yes. But I am curious – where did the instances of excess begin? The bride’s ill usage, or the first sword to leave the scabbard? Some paths acquire a momentum of their own, as I am sure you comprehend. One thing leads inevitably to the next. So, from noble beginnings, to unmitigated horror.’
Hallyd bared his teeth. ‘Take it up with Infayen.’
‘Perhaps we will.’
Hallyd Bahann’s face suddenly twisted. ‘They will hunt you down! They will flay the skin from every damned one of you!’
Narad glanced up as three figures approached. A shaman and two witches. They had come down from the northwest, from the lands of House Dracons. With their bags filled with bones and talons, with teeth and acorns, feathers and beads. With magic like smoke around them. Say nothing more to me of ancient spirits and forgotten gods, and I’ll not speak of my memories of your kind screaming inside a burning longhouse.
The one bearing the antlered headdress now spoke. ‘Yedan Narad, we will take him if you like.’
‘Take him?’ He eyed the three. Their flat visages revealed nothing.
‘A clearing,’ the shaman continued. ‘Filled with sharpened stakes. It is fitting.’
‘What are they talking about?’ demanded Hallyd Bahann, struggling to shift position, twisting round in an effort to glare up at the shaman.
‘They seek to prolong your death, I think,’ Narad replied, sighing.
‘Torture? Abyss below, have mercy on me. It’s not done to soldiers – don’t you people understand that? When did the Tiste sink to the level of savages?’
‘Oh, we are savages indeed,’ Narad said, nodding. ‘Not soldiers at all, sir. You should have considered that before you sent your soldiers into the forests to slay the innocent. Before your soldiers raped the helpless. In your world, sir, you called your victims Deniers. What gift of your civil comportment did they so egregiously deny? Never mind. We have now fully embraced your ways, sir.’
‘You’re a damned deserter! That sword at your belt!’
Narad shrugged. ‘But I wonder, sir. What worth this civilization, when savagery thrives within it? When criminals abound in safety behind its walls? And no, I speak not of the Deniers, but of you and your soldiers.’
‘No different from you! What company? Tell me!’
‘Why, none other than Captain Infayen Menand’s.’
Hallyd’s eyes narrowed. ‘Ah, and do I see a bride’s blood on your hands?’
‘Yes,’ said Narad, ‘I think you do.’
‘Then—’
‘Then yes, sir. I followed orders. That was my crime, remains my crime, remains forever my crime.’
‘I’ll give you Infayen Menand,’ Hallyd hissed. ‘Free me. I swear I’ll lead her here, into ambush.’
‘Why is it, captain, that every army kills its deserters? Could it be, perhaps, that such objection by common soldiers in fact threatens the entire façade? That delicate tower of twigs and sticks, of stretched spider-silk and beads of sap, this tottering construct of institutional insanity that makes a cage of every virtue, only to then whisper of necessity?’
‘Deserters are cowards,’ growled Hallyd Bahann.
‘Some are, I’m sure,’ agreed Narad. ‘But others, well, I suspect they simply object. And refuse, and deny. They do what anyone who has been betrayed might do, yes? And if so, must we not look at the betrayers?’
‘Justify what you’ve done all you like.’
‘I did try just that, sir, without much success. In fact, I could not even get past the reasons, sickly and contemptuous as they proved to be, much less justifications. And that was my discovery, captain. The journey from reasons to justifications should be long and difficult, and indeed, few of us truly deserve the journey’s completion. But we know that, don’t we? So, we simply … cheat.’
As he had been speaking, Narad noted Glyph’s arrival, with a blood-drenched Lahanis a step behind him. Have we lost a single warrior?
Hallyd struggled anew against his bindings.
‘Yedan Narad?’
He looked up at the shaman. ‘He is not to die slowly,’ he said. ‘Neither he nor any other made captive. Slit his throat, as you would any other quarry brought down and at last within your reach. Whatever we possess that we believe sets us apart from the beasts, let us not make it cruel.’
After a long moment, the two witches and the shaman bowed to him, and one of the witches knelt down beside Hallyd Bahann. She grasped his sweaty hair in one fist and pulled his head back. Iron flashed and then blood poured out upon the ground. The captain’s wet sigh came from his throat, the only sound he made as he died.
The shaman said, ‘We would take his body to the clearing, and the sharpened stakes. For the forest, Watch. For the weeping trees. For the burned ground beneath the snow, and the sleeping roots.’
Narad nodded. ‘As you will.’
As the shaman helped the two witches drag away Hallyd Bahann’s corpse, Glyph strode up to Narad. ‘Some escaped,’ he said. ‘Made it to the horses.’
‘How many?’
Glyph glanced back at Lahanis, who shrugged and said, ‘A score, perhaps. Half of them wounded before they could ride away, as we were among them. We have captured most of the horses.’ Her smile was stained pink. ‘We’ll not starve, priest. We’ll not,’ she added after a moment, ‘have to eat our slain.’
Narad turned away at that. Two hunters had found the leavings of a meal in a camp not far off. Someone had made a repast of a dead soldier’s thigh. He prayed that someone was not now here in this swollen camp.
In any case, Lahanis was correct. Food was scarce and starvation had gripped their ragged army. It was a poor fate for well-trained horses, but needs must.
‘Yedan Narad.’
‘Glyph?’
‘Your plan worked, but no future commander will be so foolish as to repeat Bahann’s stupidity on this day.’
‘That is true.’
‘Urusander will come for us.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Will you have an answer for them?’
‘Glyph, the same answer. Always the same answer.’
‘Yedan, you have become a war-master in your own right.’
But Narad shook his head. ‘No, I have not. But the one who speaks through me, Glyph … ah, that one. Cold, a soul unloved. There are some for whom doubt does not weaken, for whom uncertainty only strengthens resolve. I said “cold”, did I not? The wrong word. Indeed, there is no word for that man
. In my dreams, I become him. In my dreams, he dwells within me.’
‘We lost no one,’ Glyph said.
Narad closed his eyes. ‘Not true.’
‘Yedan?’
‘Before this battle, we lost everyone.’
After a long moment, Glyph suddenly sobbed. Quickly turning away, he stumbled off.
Left in his wake, Lahanis glared at Narad. ‘This is how you celebrate our victory?’
‘When there is nothing to celebrate, Lahanis, then my answer must be yes, this is how we are to celebrate our victories.’
She snarled and then swung about, marching off to re-join her Butchers.
Narad stared after her. The loss of children was a terrible thing.
TWENTY
THE WINDS BATTERED AT THE STONE WALLS OF TULLA KEEP, sweeping round the turreted cones of the tower roofs that had been raised to fend off the winter, scouring free of snow the walkways, the crenellations and the black pocks of the murder holes in the outer walls and gatehouse. The granite, grey as ice, was cold enough to burn skin.
The keep surmounted a crag of stone, but the jagged outcrops of the surrounding ridge rose higher still, like the stubs of rotted teeth, and there the snow huddled in pockets, ice forming rivers in the cracks and fissures. Sukul Ankhadu so disliked this season, with the cold laying siege to the keep and the wagonloads of firewood dwindling as the months dragged on. More than half the rooms and an entire wing of the main building had been abandoned to the chill, and this did nothing to insulate the remaining rooms where braziers burned continuously, or hearths blazed night and day.
Under the disapproving regard of Castellan Rancept, she had taken to drinking more wine than usual, ill befitting a girl not yet into womanhood, and wandering about wrapped in a fur robe the trailing edge of which had once been white.
Restlessness was a dark force in the soul, riding currents of longing for what could not be found, much less recognized. Rooms shrank, corridors narrowed, and the light from lanterns and oil lamps seemed to withdraw, abandoning the world to shadows and gloom.
She stood now, alone, in an unused fitting room crowded with chests and winter gear stored here on behalf of the keep’s guests, of which there were many, with more arriving each day. The floor’s thin planks of wood beneath her moccasins were covered by a worn rug, and both warmth and voices from the chamber below drifted up to her.
Lady Hish Tulla’s return had been less than delightful. A woman torn from her new husband made for fierce moods and a displeased outlook, and already Sukul longed for the days when she and Rancept had been virtually alone amidst servants, grooms and maids, while the Houseblades kept to their barracks gambling with bones or playing Kef Tanar.
But even Sukul could agree that a meeting of the highborn bloods was long overdue. Her own interest in the matter was increasingly losing its intriguing and delightful irrelevance – that sense of its being a game, a curious realm of machination and ambition – and luring her into the world of adults, where she could dwell beneath notice, unremarked upon and thereby made invisible.
The voices rising from beneath her belonged to a trio of guests. Sukul had met Lord Vanut Degalla and his odious wife Syl Lebanas once before, at some event in the Citadel, although her memory of the details was vague – she had been very young then, too wide-eyed to comprehend much beyond a few names and the faces to which they belonged. Her sister Sharenas had expressed disdain for the pair, although Sukul could not quite recall why. The third guest sharing the small chamber below was Lady Aegis, of House Haran, an outlying estate inclined to isolation. Tall, attractive in a regal fashion, somewhat diminished by the obvious efforts she made to maintain that regal air, Aegis had already set herself in opposition to Hish Tulla, for reasons Sukul did not yet understand.
Moving quietly, she seated herself on a chest, drawing her fur robe closer about her shoulders, and listened.
Syl Lebanas was speaking. ‘The fault lies with Anomander,’ she said yet again. ‘I think we can all agree on that. It falls to the comportment of Mother Dark’s champion to affect the proper unity among the highborn. After all, the face of our enemy is hardly obscure—’
‘Oh, enough of that, Syl,’ cut in Aegis, her clipped manner of speaking hinting, as always, at impatience and contempt. ‘Insist upon simplicity as it seems you must, if only to find false comfort in your mastery of the situation. The truth of this matter … far more complicated. Allegiances uncertain. Loyalties suspect. What looms before us is nothing short of a fundamental reordering of power in the realm. As such … promises to be vicious.’
‘Against which,’ Vanut Degalla murmured, ‘even you must acknowledge, Aegis, Lord Anomander has failed and continues to fail in placating. Blood will be spilled in the Citadel itself before this is done.’
‘Let the two priestesses set talons to each other,’ Aegis retorted. ‘All this talk of Father Light and Mother Dark. Since when did matters of religion demand … unveiling of daggers, much less swords? Before this pogrom – before the atrocity … unmitigated slaughter of innocents – we Tiste dwelt well enough in a plurality of faiths.’
Degalla snorted. ‘My dear Aegis, and how many Deniers crowded your distant holdings? Scant few, I should think. No, the worm of disaffection was set among us the day Draconus elevated our queen into a goddess. While even you, wife, would see Anomander the instigator of our present disorder. He is not.’
‘Even so,’ Syl insisted, ‘he has indeed failed in meeting the challenge.’
‘The failure is not his,’ Degalla said.
‘I am content enough,’ said Aegis, ‘seeing him reduced.’
‘I am sure.’
‘What do you mean by that, Vanut?’
‘Sheathe your knives, Aegis. Your refutation on the matter of Andarist’s choice of woman to wed lacked subtlety. What future do you imagine? Why, if a schism now exists between Anomander and Andarist, you will surely offer commiseration to ease a certain grief and the pain of bereavement. But no matter. We would see the Legion weakened, but not necessarily destroyed.’
‘The challenge,’ added Syl Lebanas, ‘lies in achieving that.’
‘Then you two would side with Hish Tulla,’ said Aegis.
Degalla replied, ‘The diminishing of power and influence upon both sides would be ideal, Aegis. Anomander feels free to indulge himself in personal matters – not well suited to the commander of Mother Dark’s armies. We are all agreed on that, yes?’
‘And should he be stripped of such responsibility?’
‘Then a more modest sibling might serve in his place.’
‘But not,’ said Syl, ‘that bloodless brother of theirs. If, among the three, there is one to truly fear, it is Silchas Ruin.’
‘Why?’ demanded Aegis.
Vanut Degalla answered. ‘Silchas Ruin does not understand loyalty.’
Aegis snorted. ‘Meaning, he cannot be bought. But you think Andarist can?’
‘I leave his suborning to your sympathetic hands.’
‘Then we are agreed?’
‘We will attend the battle, and see how it plays out,’ Vanut said.
‘Hish will believe us with her, then?’
‘She can believe what she likes. In this, we are hardly alone in our unwillingness to commit. My sister agrees entirely with this position, and so too House Manaleth.’
Aegis spoke again, her tone suddenly harsher. ‘You know something, Degalla.’
‘Let us say, we are confident in matters, to the extent that anything can be predicted. It is, indeed, more a matter of expectation.’
‘Enlighten me further.’
‘Have faith, Aegis.’
‘Faith?’
‘Just so,’ and Sukul could hear the sly smile in Syl Lebanas’s voice. ‘Faith.’
‘We should return to the dining hall,’ Vanut Degalla said. ‘My sister will not attend, preferring to leave this night to me. I believe I heard the bell announcing the arrival of yet another highborn.’
&nbs
p; Aegis grunted. ‘That should be enough to begin things, then.’
‘Hish Tulla will decide.’
Syl laughed softly. ‘Yes, we can be generous on occasion.’
‘When it costs nothing.’
‘It pleases me that we do understand one another, Lady Aegis.’
Sukul listened to them leave, waited a few moments, and then rose from the chest. The game of betrayal was indeed a subtle one, when it came to adults and their ways. And yet, a child’s glee remained, swirling beneath the surface. Recognizing this came to Sukul as something of a shock. Boys and girls in the end after all. Here I believed politics to be something lofty, clever and sharp with wit. But it is nothing like that.
Desire is venal. Needs give way to hunger, fostering the illusion of starvation – as Gallan has said – and the world becomes a pit of wolves. ‘In the cruel game of politics, we are brought low by the child within each of us, until every howl is deafening in its abject stupidity, and none can hear the wails of the suffering.’
She felt sick to her stomach. In need of another goblet brimming with wine.
Restlessness, let me dull thy sting.
* * *
Rancept’s breathing wheezed noisily in the steamy confines of the kitchen. The cook had driven his cast of helpers into the scullery and from within that side chamber with its vast iron sinks came the clash of pots, plates and cutlery, leaving the castellan and his two informal guests alone at the carving table. Sekarrow wore the livery of a Houseblade of House Drethdenan, although her long fingers and delicate hands were clearly better suited to the four-stringed iltre she idly plucked than to the plain sword at her belt. There was a delicacy about her that most men would find endearing, and her eyes were large and luminous, set within a childlike face. Her brother, Horult Chiv, made for a stark contrast, with his face of sharp angles and his frame robust and stolid, and the hands he rested upon the tabletop were broad, battered and blunt. Horult was captain of the same Houseblades, and also Drethdenan’s long-time lover. Such a union could of course produce no heirs, but in all other manner the two men were indeed married and seen as such.
In his long years of life, Rancept had had occasion to reflect on the wondrous variability of love, as might anyone left standing on its periphery, too bent and battered to draw another’s eye. He was no sceptic in his observation of tenderness, but the longing in his soul did not incline him to bitterness. Some were destined to walk alone through life, others not. Drethdenan’s adoration of Horult Chiv delivered a kind of balm to all who witnessed it.
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