‘That confounded ritual,’ said Dathenar in a frustrated growl. ‘I awakened on thin ice. But which way to crawl? No shoreline beckons with high tufts of yellow grass and the stalks of reeds. To shift a hair’s breadth is to hear the ice creaking beneath me. My eyes strain to read this placid, windswept mirror – is it clouds that promise more solid blooms? The grey sky warning of treacherous patches? Do I lie upon my back, or face-down? Still, through it all, something writhes in my gut, my friend, in anticipation of blood.’
Prazek shook himself. ‘What has changed? Nothing. Everything. The ritual tattooed a mystery upon our souls. Blessing or curse? We remain blind to the pattern. And yet, as you say, there is anticipation.’
Dathenar gestured at the unoccupied walls ahead. ‘See the fanfare awaiting us? Bitter indifference castigates us, Prazek.’
‘No matter, friend. Was I not speaking of love?’
‘You were, the heart under siege. Though I cannot fathom your reason for this sudden crisis.’
‘Criminals,’ Prazek said. ‘No punishment allows for the tender caress, the meeting of hands in soft clasp, the hesitations that linger, the confessions that release.’ He paused. ‘A stillborn twin, now the repository of sorcery, and she who would mine it left broken and filled with self-loathing. So Wareth would take her into his arms. Yet he too allows himself no worth, indeed, no right. Can I not wonder, friend, at those who hold that love is a privilege?’
Dathenar grunted. ‘Every god of the past claimed it a benison. A reward. By its fullness are our mortal deeds measured. Doled out like heavenly coins, as among the Forulkan.’
‘Indeed, and consider that. How can this currency so define itself? Value rises in scarcity of love, plummets in surfeit? The gods played at arbiters, yet demanded love’s purest gold in coin. Who then to measure their worth? I challenge the right of this, Dathenar.’
‘And so you may, but to what end?’
‘Dispense with contingency in the giving of love. Shall I push Rance into Wareth’s arms? Shall I insist upon their right to love?’
‘You distract yourself,’ Dathenar replied. ‘The Dog-Runner witches did something to us – all of us barring our commander, that is – and now she leads a legion that knows not itself, yet shows disinclination to introspection. While she in turn … ah, no matter.’
Prazek glanced across at his friend. ‘I distract and you despair. Pray that Toras Redone decides.’
‘Upon what?’
‘Life, and love. For surely the former is an expression of the latter that gives reason for the former.’
‘Easy for you to say.’
‘Dathenar, did the Bonecasters cleanse our souls?’
Up ahead, the commander and Faror Hend reached the gate and rode without pause into the city.
‘No,’ Dathenar replied. ‘They but reordered its myriad possessions.’
‘For what purpose?’
Dathenar shrugged.
Prazek let loose a low growl. ‘And so … anticipation dogs us all.’
Shifting in his saddle, Dathenar glanced back at the column. The soldiers wore their armour. Their hands rested upon the pommels of the swords. Their kit bags were slung over one shoulder, their shields upon their backs. They wore their helms, leaving every face in shadow.
When Faror Hend returned from the gateway and signalled a halt, the Hust Legion’s incessant thunder ceased its heavy rumble for the first time that day. The silence that fell into its wake sent shivers through Dathenar.
Faror Hend reined in before them. ‘We’re to wheel right and skirt the city,’ she said. ‘We march to the Valley of Tarns. Urusander’s Legion draws nigh.’
‘This very day?’ Prazek asked.
‘Have the soldiers drop their kits and leave the baggage train here,’ she said, her face blank.
Both men swung their mounts around. They could see Galar Baras cantering towards them. Prazek waved a signaller forward. ‘Envy has many teeth,’ he muttered as the signaller rode closer. ‘Enough to spawn a civil war.’
Dathenar nodded.
From the Hust weapons and armour, down the entire length of the column, the iron began to moan.
* * *
Wareth moved to the ditch at the road’s side, leaned over, and spewed out the morning’s breakfast. Behind him, not a single soldier called out in derision or amusement. Not a single man or woman voiced disgust. Wiping at his mouth, and then spitting out the last of the bile, he straightened and turned round.
He was being ignored. The faces beneath the helms were fixed upon the new flag being raised by the signaller. Upon receipt, the squad sergeants called out the commands to ready to wheel and then drop kits. Shields were shifted higher on the shoulder, swords brought round to the point of the hip. Chain links hissed like waves on sand, and then the Hust iron began its song. Pensive, a dirge, perhaps, or something trapped by unseen forces, unspoken wills – the eerie song swept through Wareth like a chill. Shivering, he looked on, as Rebble brought the company around, with the lead elements already descending from the road.
He looked for Rance but could not see her. She had been avoiding him, and he well knew why. Attentions from a coward could not be welcome, especially for a soul as wounded as hers. Her determination to live was weak enough without his dubious presence. He was, after all, a visible affront, for her demons were not ones from which she could flee. But then, neither are mine. If only she could see that.
‘Wareth.’
Blinking, he turned to find Listar at his side. He studied the man’s narrow face. ‘What is wrong, Listar?’
‘What is wrong? Abyss take me, Wareth, everything. Everything’s wrong! Look at them! The ritual—’
‘Which you brought to us, Listar,’ Wareth said. ‘And not even you know what has been done to us.’ He gestured. ‘None of us do.’
‘And yet …’
Nodding, Wareth sighed. ‘And yet.’
There was no joy in the song of the Hust iron. Wareth shook his head. ‘Listen to that,’ he said. ‘What do you make of it?’
Listar rubbed at his face. He mumbled something Wareth could not hear.
‘What?’
‘The iron, Wareth, is filled with dread. The swords do not grieve for those they would slay, but for those wielding them.’ He paused, and then glanced at Wareth. ‘She defied your wish, and Galar Baras’s too. Here you are, ordered to lead us into battle. It seems she is indifferent to your fate, and by extension, to all of us under your command.’
Wareth could not argue against any of that. ‘Do not look to me, Listar.’
‘We won’t. We’ll follow Rebble. Just be certain of one thing, Wareth. Voice no orders. Issue no commands. If you bolt, we’ll not follow you.’
Wareth thought back to a few moments ago, when terror emptied his gut. ‘I am unmade,’ he said. ‘If they look my way at all, they see right through me.’
‘We’ll not burden you with our hope, if that is what you mean.’
The words should have stung. Instead, he felt relieved.
The column was re-forming, and they watched as Toras Redone and her retinue cantered from the city’s gate to take position as the Legion’s vanguard once more.
Horse hoofs thumped in the snow-laden grasses as Galar Baras rode up, reining in beside Wareth. The captain’s face was flushed with the cold. ‘Wareth!’
‘Sir.’
‘Your company is under my command, along with the seventh, the ninth and the third. We are to present the right flank.’
Wareth nodded.
‘Rebble will lead them down into the valley.’
‘We are to fight on this day?’
‘If Urusander seeks it.’
‘Dusk chases him,’ said Listar.
‘It chases us all, Listar,’ Galar replied, gathering up the reins once more.
* * *
Commander Toras Redone rolled unsteadily in her saddle, righted herself with an effort. Her face was slack, her eyes muddy red. A moment later, as
Faror Hend drew up alongside her, the commander smiled. ‘Had I known today would be the day …’
‘You would have done what?’
Toras Redone’s smile broadened. ‘Level your tone, darling. And punctuate your query with a “sir”, if you please. Why, I would have rationed the wine, of course. It begins to sour in my belly, as voluminous as I have made it. Plenty of room left, it seems, for anxious thoughts.’
Faror Hend rose in her stirrups, twisted round and checked back on the column. Then she settled once more. ‘Your anxiety not sufficiently dulled? Sir? Not yet drowned? Thrashing still in that dark nectar?’
‘You are too sober a conscience, Faror Hend.’
‘You need not concern yourself with that much longer, sir, as my words are running down. Soon, my silence will give you its final cry.’
‘You surrender too easily,’ Toras Redone replied. ‘Will you yield your life as cheaply in the battle to come? Are you not betrothed to a war hero? Why are you not at his side? Perchance, he awaits us at the Valley of Tarns, or is that consideration the cause for your despondency?’
Faror Hend bit back a cruel retort, and said, ‘Kagamandra Tulas may well be there, the hero in search of yet another war.’
‘Against you, I wager he has no defence,’ Toras Redone said. And, as if she had somehow caught a hint of Faror’s unspoken retort, she continued, ‘He chooses the lesser trial, then. I well understand him, you know. Calat Hustain was always too bright a light for my dulled eyes, too upright in his virtues, too untested his forgiveness – no matter how egregious my crime. He weakened my knees, and to stand at his side was to tremble in the shadow of his piety. Is it any wonder I reached for a lover?’
‘Galar Baras deserves better.’
Toras Redone did not respond for a moment, and then she said, ‘I meant wine, of course. But she’s a generous whore, I find, quick to yield my flesh to someone else’s pleasures.’
Faror Hend closed her eyes briefly, willing a bit between the teeth of her fury.
Beside her, the commander laughed. ‘This war is such a travesty. So crude in its cruelty, so obvious in its tragedy. Look instead to a life in times of peace, to see the subtler – and yet still brutal – battles of the soul. Day upon day, night after night. The soldier longs for the simplicity of war, making a coward of every sword-wielder. Peace, my dear, is the bloodiest affair of all.’
‘I weigh things differently, sir.’
‘Do you? I think not. Instead of finding your husband to be, you rode to the Hust Legion. Instead of claiming an estate and giving it the shape of your heart, you perch here like a crow on my shoulder, quick to judge but oh so slow to cast inward that unflinching regard.’ She waved a hand. ‘But I welcome your spite nonetheless. You are my barbed shield, Faror Hend. I draw you ever closer to feel the sting of the spikes, here on my chest, pricking the skin above my heart, and I but await the first crush of battle to see me home.’
‘You’ll make no descent into the press, sir,’ Faror Hend said. ‘I’ll not let you.’
‘Indeed, and why such mercy?’
‘Because,’ she snapped, ‘it is the very opposite of mercy.’
Toras Redone seemed to reel in her saddle, pulling herself upright with severe effort. Her face was suddenly set, the smile long gone, her gaze fixing forward now, to what awaited them all.
* * *
Once across the inner bridge, Kellaras dismounted close to the Citadel’s gatehouse and, handing the reins over to a steward, made his way into the keep. Its severe façade rose before him as he traversed the compound. It has not the look of a temple, but a fortress. And is it not odd, all things considered, how so often one demands the other. That faith needed defending suddenly struck him awry, the very notion jarring his thoughts, and it seemed that he tottered on the edge of a revelation. After a moment he righted himself, picking up his pace as he reached the broad flight of steps.
Philosophers can’t have been blind to any of this – my startling realizations stumble in well-trodden troughs of discourse, no doubt. No faith worthy of itself needs defending. Indeed, there can be no such thing as an external threat to faith – barring that of genocide. And even there, killing the flesh impugns not the faith held within it.
No, the sordid truth is this. Faith’s only enemy exists in the mind that calls it home. The only forces that can destroy faith are those the believer wields against him or herself.
He reached the doorway, saw the door left open – swung wide, in fact – and strode into the keep.
A believer whose face twists, who points an accusing finger at a disbeliever, who then draws a blade with blood in his mind – that believer pronounces a lie, for his doubts are his own, and were he truly honest before his god, he would voice them. No number of corpses imaginable for this believer to stride over can quell the threat – the potency – of self-doubt.
A true believer, indeed, need never draw a weapon, need never rise in argument, or howl in fury, or make fists, or roll in a mob to crush some helpless, innocent enemy. A true believer needs none of those things. How much of the world insists on living this lie?
Blinking, he found himself standing at the entrance of a side corridor, the one leading to the chamber where Lord Draconus waited. Vaguely, he recalled hearing words spoken near the Terondai, a conversation perhaps, and a question thrown towards him. Frowning, Kellaras turned, in time to see Cedorpul and Endest Silann approaching him.
‘This war,’ Kellaras said, forestalling them, ‘is unnecessary.’
Both priests halted at his words, and then Cedorpul snorted and shook his head. ‘Dear captain, we all know that.’
‘We fight because we have lost faith.’
‘Yes,’ said Cedorpul, his round face grave.
‘Fighting,’ Kellaras continued remorselessly, ‘is proof of our lost faith. And now people will die in payment for our own private failings. This is not a civil war. Not a religious war.’ He paused, helplessly. ‘I don’t know what it is.’
Endest Silann stepped forward. ‘Captain, take care of your loved ones.’ He lifted his hands with their sodden, crimson bandages. ‘It is our folly to see a hole at the centre of our world, one of empty darkness, a manifestation of absence.’
‘But it is not empty,’ whispered Kellaras. ‘Is it?’
Endest Silann glanced back at Cedorpul for an instant, and then, facing Kellaras once more, he shook his head. ‘No, sir. It is not. She has filled it, to the brim. It is swollen with her gift.’
Behind him, tears were falling freely down Cedorpul’s cheeks.
Kellaras brought his hands to his face, as Pelk’s visage filled his mind. ‘Her gift,’ he said.
‘Draconus was the proof of it,’ Endest said, ‘if only we’d the courage to see. All of this,’ and he gestured with his bloody hands, ‘is filled with love. Yet see what rears up to stand in its way. See our innumerable objections to this simple, most profound gift.’ His smile was broken. ‘This is a war of fools, captain. Like every war before this, and every war to come. And yet, as proof of our failings, as proof of our weakness, and every petty distraction we so willingly embrace, it is, alas, no more than what we deserve.’
Kellaras backed away from the two men. ‘I await Lord Anomander and Silchas Ruin,’ he said.
Cedorpul grunted. ‘Too late for that. They ride to the Valley of Tarns.’
The words stilled the torment in Kellaras’s mind, and then horror rose in its wake. ‘What? Surely Lord Anomander would have—’
Endest Silann interrupted him. ‘Lord Anomander has been away. He relies upon his brother’s judgement.’
Kellaras looked to each man in turn, and back again, still uncomprehending despite the dread he felt, still lost by this turn of events. ‘Lord Draconus waits,’ he said.
This was a day of revelations, a cruel cacophony of simple words plainly stated. He saw the flush leave Cedorpul’s face. He saw Endest Silann flinch, and then come close to staggering before regaining his balance.
Kellaras turned to the corridor behind him. ‘Here,’ he said, and started walking.
Neither man followed.
The war of fools. And the greatest folly of all, it is now clear to me, is to dream of peace. Faith, with all your promise, and all your betrayal … must I see you as the enemy of hope?
He reached the door and hesitated. Beyond it sat a man bereft of love, a man now profoundly vulnerable to betrayal. And once more, it would be delivered with banal declaration. The world had tilted in Kellaras’s mind. He saw voices, a torrent of words that had done their work, now slowly withdrawing, retreating from what was coming. And by the time this was done, the voices would be without words, reduced to piteous cries.
All to begin again. Born only to die. See what we have made of the time between the two.
Behind him, a priest wept, while another bled. Kellaras reached for the latch.
* * *
Wreneck knew he had nothing to fear as he hurried through the crowds in the street. Ghosts closed tight around him, and it seemed that they blinded most people to the young man slipping between them, rushing fast as his legs could carry him. They made for him a path in ways Wreneck had no hope of understanding.
The shaft of the spear rested heavily across his right shoulder. He held the weapon tilted high, to keep the leather-wrapped iron head away from others. The silver tore that Lord Anomander had given him was tucked under his coat. Among the ghosts he saw warriors, long dead, still bearing their fatal wounds. It was all he could do to avoid their faces, their steady gazes fixed so solemnly upon him. For all he knew, his father was among them.
Something was wrong. He understood that much. The dead of the Tiste belonged somewhere else, a world hidden away from mortals. They had no reason for being here. And yet, he now wondered, perhaps they were always present, and it was only his newfound curse that he could see what others could not. It was possible that such crowds always existed, thousands upon thousands, wherever living Tiste dwelt, drawn like moths, hovering and swarming around what they had lost.
They had nothing to say, or perhaps they could not be heard, which made them nothing more than eyes, trapped in the faint memories of bodies. The thought that death was a prison horrified Wreneck, and he felt his own mind now tracking other, even crueller thoughts. I seek vengeance. I want to hurt the people that hurt Jinia and me. I want to send their souls into this empty ghost-realm. I want them to just stand there, mute, seeing but never able to touch. I want them to suffer.
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