Dust of Dreams

Chapter Seventeen

The bones of the rythen rested on a bed of glittering scales, as if in dying it had shed its carpet of reptilian skin, unfolding it upon the hard crystals of the Glass Desert’s lifeless floor: a place to lie down, the last nest of its last night. The lizard-wolf had died alone, and the stars that looked down upon the scene of this solitary surrender did not blink. Not once.

No wind had come to scatter the scales, and the relentless sun had eaten away the toxic meat from around the bones, and had then bleached and polished those bones to a fine golden lustre. There was something dangerous about them, and Badalle stood staring down at the hapless remains for some time, her only movement coming when she blew the flies away from the sores clustering her mouth. Bones like gold, a treasure assuredly cursed. ‘Greed invites death,’ she whispered, but the voice broke up and the sounds that came out were likely unintelligible, even to Saddic who stood close by her side.

Her wings were shrivelled, burnt down to stumps. Flying was but a memory finely dusted with ash, and she found nothing inside to justify brushing it clean. Past glories dwindled in the distance. Behind her, behind them, behind them all. But her descent was not over. Soon, she knew, she would crawl. And finally slither like a drying worm, writhing ineffectually, making grand gestures that won her nothing. Then would come the stillness of exhaustion.

She must have seen such a worm once. She must have knelt down beside it as children did, to better observe its pathetic struggles. Dragged up from its dark comforting world, by some cruel beak perhaps, and then lost on the fly, striking a hard and unyielding surface-a flagstone, yes-one making up the winding path in the garden. Injured, blind in the blazing sunlight, it could only pray to whatever gods it wanted to exist. The blessing of water, a stream to swim back into the soft soil, a sudden handful of sweet earth descending upon it, or the hand of some merciful godling reaching down, the pluck of salvation.

She had watched it struggle, she was certain she had. But she could not recall if she had done anything other than watch. Children understood at a very young age that doing nothing was an expression of power. Doing nothing was a choice swollen with omnipotence. It was, in fact, godly.

And this, she now realized, was the reason why the gods did nothing. Proof of their omniscience. After all, to act was to announce awful limitations, for it revealed that chance acted first, the accidents were just that-events beyond the will of the gods-and all they could do in answer was to attempt to remedy the consequences, to alter natural ends. To act, then, was an admission of fallibility.

Such ideas were complicated, but they were clean, too. Sharp as the crystals jutting from the ground at her feet. They were decisive in catching the rays of the sun and cutting them into perfect slices, proving that rainbows were not bridges in the sky. And that no salvation was forthcoming. The Snake had become a worm, and the worm was writhing on the hot stone.

Children withheld. Pretending to be gods. Fathers did the same, unblinking when the children begged for food, for water. They knew moments of nostalgia and so did nothing, and there was no food and no water and the sweet cool earth was a memory finely dusted with ash.

Brayderal had said that morning that she had seen tall strangers standing beneath the rising sun, standing, she said, on the ribby snake’s tail. But to look in that direction was to go blind. People could either believe Brayderal or not believe her. Badalle chose not to believe her. None of the Quitters had chased after them, even the Fathers were long gone, as were the ribbers and all the eaters of dead and dying meat except for the Shards-who could fly in from leagues away. No, the ribby snake was alone on the Glass Desert, and the gods watched down and did nothing, to show just how powerful they really were.

But she could answer with her own power. That was the delicious truth. She could see them writhing in the sky, shrivelling in the sun. And she chose not to pray to them. She chose to say nothing at all. When she had winged through the heavens, she had sailed close to those gods, fresh and free as a hatchling. She had seen the deep lines bracketing their worried eyes. She had seen the weathered tracks of their growing fear and dismay. But none of these sentiments was a gift to their worshippers. The faces and their expressions were the faces of the self-obsessed. Such knowledge was fire. Feathers ignited. She had spiralled in a half-wild descent, unravelling smoke in her wake. Flashes of pain, truths searing her flesh. She had plunged through clouds of Shards, deafened by the hissing roar of wings. She had seen the ribby snake stretched out across a glittering sea, had seen-with a shock-how short and thin it had grown.

She thought again of the gods now high above her. Those faces were no different from her own face. The gods were as broken as she was broken, inside and out. Like her, they wandered a wasteland with nowhere to go.

The Fathers drove us out. They were done with children. Now she believed the fathers and mothers of the gods had driven them out as well, pushed them out into the empty sky. And all the while and far below the people crawled in their circles and from high up no one could make sense of the patterns. The gods that sought to make sense of them were driven mad.

‘Badalle.’

She blinked in an effort to clear her eyes of the cloudy skins that floated in them, but they just swam back. Even the gods, she now knew, were half-blinded by the clouds. ‘Rutt.’

His face was an old man’s face, cracked lines through caked dust. Held was wrapped tight within the mottled blanket. Rutt’s eyes, which had been dull for so long that Badalle thought they had always been so, were suddenly glistening. As if someone had licked them. ‘Many died today,’ she said. ‘We can eat.’

‘Badalle.’

She blew at flies. ‘I have a poem.’

But he shook his head. ‘I–I can’t go on.’

‘Quitters never quit,

And that is the lie we live with

Now they walk us

To the end.

Eating our tail.

But we are shadows on glass

And the sun drags us onward.

The Quitters have questions

But we are the eaters

Of answers.’

He stared at her. ‘She was right, then.’

‘Brayderal was right. She has threads in her blood. Rutt, she will kill us all if we let her.’

He looked away, and she could see he was about to cry. ‘No, Rutt. Don’t.’

His face crumpled.

She took him as he sagged, took him and somehow found the strength to hold him up as he shuddered with sobs.

Now he too was broken. But they couldn’t let that happen. She couldn’t, because if he broke then the Quitters would get them all. ‘Rutt. Without you, Held is nothing. Listen. I have flown high-I had wings, like the gods. I went so high I could see how the world curves, like the old women used to tell us, and I saw-Rutt, listen-I saw the end of the Glass Desert.’

But he shook his head.

‘And I saw something else. A city, Rutt. A city of glass-we will find it tomorrow. The Quitters won’t go there-they are afraid of it. The city, it’s a city they know from their legends-but they’d stopped believing those legends. And now it’s invisible to them-we can escape them, Rutt.’

‘Badalle-’ his voice was muffled against the skin and bone of her neck. ‘Don’t give up on me. If you give up, I won’t-I can’t-’

She had given up long ago, but she wouldn’t tell him that. ‘I’m here, Rutt.’

‘No. No, I mean’-he pulled back, stared fixedly into her eyes-‘don’t go mad. Please.’

‘Rutt, I can’t fly any more. My wings burned off. It’s all right.’

‘Please. Promise me, Badalle. Promise!’

‘I promise, but only if you promise not to give up.’

His nod was shaky. His control, she could see, was thin and cracked as burnt skin. I won’t go mad, Rutt. Don’t you see? I have the power to do nothing. I have all the powers of a god.

This ribby snake will not die. We don’t have to do anything at all, just keep going. I have flown to where the sun sets, and I tell you, Rutt, we are marching into fire. Beautiful, perfect fire. ‘You’ll see,’ she said to him.

Beside them stood Saddic, watching, remembering. His enemy was dust.

What is, was. Illusions of change gathered windblown into hollows in hillsides, among stones and the exposed roots of long-dead trees. History swept along as it had always done, and all that is new finds shapes of old. Where stood towering masses of ice now waited scars in the earth. Valleys carried the currents of ghost rivers and the wind wandered paths of heat and cold to deliver the turn of every season.

Such knowledge was agony, like a molten blade thrust to the heart. Birth was but a repetition of what had gone before. Sudden light was a revisitation of the moment of death. The madness of struggle was without beginning and without end.

Awakening to such things loosed a rasping sob from the wretched, rotted figure that clambered out from the roots of a toppled cottonwood tree sprawled across an old oxbow. Lifting itself upright, it looked round, the grey hollows beneath the brow-ridges gathering the grainy details into shapes of meaning. A broad, shallow valley, distant ridges of sage and firebrush. Grey-winged birds darting down the slopes.

The air smelled of smoke and tasted of slaughter. Perhaps a herd had been driven over a bluff. Perhaps heaps of carcasses spawned maggots and flies and this was the source of the dreadful, incessant buzzing sound. Or was this something sweeter? Had the world won the argument? Was she now a ghost returned to mock the rightful failure of her kind? Would she find somewhere nearby the last putrid remnants of her people? She dearly hoped so.

She was named Bitterspring in the language of the Brold clan, Lera Epar, a name she had well earned for the terrible crimes she had committed. She had been the one flower among all the field’s flowers whose scent had been deadly. Men had cast away their own women to clutch her as their own. Each time, she had permitted herself to be plucked-seeing in his eyes what she had wanted to see, that he valued her above all others-even and especially the mate he had abandoned-and so their love would be unassailable. Before it went wrong, before it proved the weakest binding of all. And then another man would appear, with that same hungry fire in his eyes, and she would think, This time, it is different. This time, I am certain, our love is a thing of great power.

Everyone had agreed that she was the cleverest person in all the clans of the Brold Gathering. She was not a thing of the shallows, no, her mind plunged unlit depths. She was the delver into life’s perils, who spoke of the curse that was the alighting of reason’s spark. She found divination not in the fire-cracked shoulder-blades of caribou, but in the watery reflections of faces in pools, springs and gourd bowls-faces she knew well as kin. As kin, yes, and more. Such details as made one distinct from all others, she knew these to be illusions, serving for quick recognition but little else. Beneath those details, she understood, they were all the same. Their needs. Their wants, their fears.

She had been regarded as a formidable seer, a possessor of spirit-gifted power. But the truth was, and this she knew with absolute certainty, there was no magic in her percipience. Reason’s spark did not arise spontaneously amidst the dark waters of base emotion. No, and nor was each spark isolated from the others. Bitterspring understood all too well that the sparks were born of hidden fires-the soul’s own array of hearth-fires, each one devoted to simple, immutable truths. One for every need. One for every want. One for every fear.

Once this revelation found her, reading the futures of her kin was an easy task. Reason delivered the illusion of complexity, but behind it all, we are as simple as bhederin, simple as ay, as ranag. We rut and bare our teeth and expose our throats. Behind our eyes our thoughts can burn bright with love or blacken with jealous rot. We seek company to find our place in it, and unless that place is at the top, all we find dissatisfies us, poisons our hearts.

In company, we are capable of anything. Murder, betrayal. In company, we invent rituals to quench every spark, to ride the murky tide of emotion, to be once again as unseeing and uncaring as the beasts.

I was hated. I was worshipped. And, in the end, I am sure, I was murdered.

Lera Epar, why are you awake once more? Why have you returned?

I was the dust in the hollows, I was the memories lost.

I did terrible things, once. Now I stand here, ready to do them all again.

She was Bitterspring, of the Brold Imass, and her world of ice and white-furred creatures was gone. She set out, a chert and jawbone mace dangling from one hand, the yellowed skin of the white-furred bear trailing down from her shoulders.

She had been too beautiful, once. But history was never kind.

He rose from the mud ringing the waterhole, shedding black roots, fish scales and misshapen cakes of clay and coarse sand. Mouth open, jaws stretched wide, he howled without sound. He had been running straight for them. Three K’ell Hunters, whose heads turned to regard him. They had been standing over the corpses of his wife, his two children. The bodies would join the gutted carcasses of other beasts brought down on their hunt. An antelope, a mule deer. The mates of the felled beasts had not challenged the slayers. No, they had fled. But this one, this male Imass roaring out his battle-cry and rushing them with spear readied, he was clearly mad. He would give his life for nothing.

The K’ell Hunters did not understand.

They had met his charge with the flat of their blades. They had broken the spear and had then beaten him unconscious. They didn’t want his meat, tainted as it was with madness.

Thus ended his first life. In rebirth, he was a man emptied of love. And he had been among the first to step into the embrace of the Ritual of Tellann. To expunge the memories of past lives. Such was the gift, so precious, so perfect.

He had lifted himself from the mud, summoned once more-but this time was different. This time, he remembered everything.

Kalt Urmanal of the Orshayn T’lan Imass stood shin-deep in mud, head tilted back, howling without sound.

Rystalle Ev crouched on a mound of damp clay twenty paces from Kalt. Understanding him, understanding all that assailed him. She too had awakened, possessor of all that she had thought long lost, and so she looked upon Kalt, whom she loved and had always loved, even in the times when he walked as would a dead man, the ashes of his loss grey and thick upon his face; and in the times before, when she harboured jealous hatred for his wife, when she prayed to all the spirits for the woman’s death.

It was possible that his scream would never cease. It was possible that, as they all rose and gathered in their disbelief at their resurrection-as they sought out the one who so cruelly summoned the Orshayn-she would have to leave him here.

Though his howl was without voice, it deafened her mind. If he did not cease, his madness would infect all the others.

The last time the Orshayn had walked the earth had been in a place far away from this one. With but three broken clans remaining-a mere six hundred and twelve warriors left-and three damaged bonecasters, they had fled the Spires and fallen to dust. That dust had been lifted high on the winds, carried half a world away-there had been no thought of a return to bone and withered flesh-to finally settle in a scattered swath across scores of leagues.

This land, Rystalle Ev knew, was no stranger to the Imass. Nor-and Kalt’s torment made this plain-was it unknown to the K’Chain Che’Malle. What were they doing here?

Kalt Urmanal fell to his knees, his cry dying away, leaving a ringing echo in her skull. She straightened, leaning heavily on the solid comfort of her spear’s shaft of petrified wood. This return was unconscionable-a judgement she knew she would not have made without her memories-to that time of raw, wondrous mortality replete with its terrible crimes of love and desire. She could feel her own rage, rising like the molten blood of the earth.

Beyond the waterhole she spied three figures approaching. T’lan Imass of the Orshayn. Bonecasters. Perhaps now they would glean some answers.

Brolos Haran had always been a broad man, and even the bones of his frame, so visible beneath the taut, desiccated skin, looked abnormally robust. The clear, almost crystalline blue eyes that gave him his name were, of course, long gone; and in their place were the knotted remnants, gnarled and blackened and lifeless. His red hair drifted like bloodstained cobwebs out over the dun-hued emlava fur riding his shoulders. His lips had peeled back to reveal flat, thick teeth the colour of raw copper.

To his left was Ilm Absinos, her narrow, tall frame sheathed in the grey scales of the enkar’al, her long black hair knotted with snake-skins. The serpent staff in her bony hands seemed to writhe. She walked with a hitched gait, remnant of an injury to her hip.

Ulag Togtil was as wide as Brolos Haran yet taller than Ilm Absinos. He had ever been an outsider among the Orshayn clans. Born as a half-breed among the first tribes of the Trell, he had wandered into the camp of Kebralle Korish, the object of intense curiosity, especially among the women. It was the way of the Imass that strangers could come among them, and, if life was embraced and no violence was stirred awake, such strangers could make for themselves a home among the people, and so cease to be strangers. So it had been with Ulag.

In the wars with the Order of the Red Sash, he had proved the most formidable among all the Orshayn bonecasters. Seeing him now, Rystalle Ev felt comforted, reassured-as if he alone could make things as they once were.

He could not. He was as trapped within the Ritual as was everyone else.

Ulag was the first to speak. ‘Rystalle Ev, Kalt Urmanal. I am privileged to find two of my own clan at last.’ A huge hand gestured slightly. ‘Since dawn I have laboured mightily beneath the assault of these two cloud-dancers-their incessant joy has proved a terrible burden.’

Could she have smiled, Rystalle would have. The image of cloud-dancers was such an absurd fit to these two dour creatures, she might well have laughed. But she had forgotten how. ‘Ulag, do you know the truth of this?’

‘A most elusive hare. How it leaps and darts, skips free of every slingstone. How it sails over the snares and twitches an ear to every footfall. I have run in enough circles, failing to take the creature into my hands, to feel its pattering heart, its terrified trembling.’

Ilm Absinos spoke. ‘Inistral Ovan awaits us. We shall gather more on our return journey. It has not been so long since we last walked. Few, if any, will have lost themselves.’

Brolos Haran seemed to be staring into the south. Now he said, ‘The Ritual is broken. Yet we are not released. In this, I smell the foul breath of Olar Ethil.’

‘So you have said before,’ snapped Ilm Absinos. ‘And still, for all your chewing the same words, there remains no proof.’

‘We do not know,’ sighed Ulag, ‘who has summoned us. It is curious, but we are closed to her, or him. As if a wall of power stands between us, one that can only be breached from the other side. The summoner must choose. Until such time, we must simply wait.’

Kalt Urmanal spoke for the first time. ‘None of you understand anything. The waters are… crowded.’

To this, silence was the only reply.

Kalt snarled, as if impatient with them all. He was still kneeling and it seemed he had little interest in moving. Instead, he pointed. ‘There. Another approaches.’

Rystalle and the others turned.

The sudden disquiet was almost palpable.

She wore the yellow and white fur of the brold, the bear of the snows and ice. Her hair was black as pitch, her face wide and flat, the skin stained deep amber. The pits of her eyes were angled, tilted at the outer corners. The talons of some small creature had been threaded through her cheeks.

T’lan Imass, yes. But… not of our clans.

Three barbed harpoons were strapped to her back. The mace she carried in one hand was fashioned of some animal’s thighbone, inset with jagged blades of green rhyolite and white chert.

She halted fifteen paces away.

Ilm Absinos gestured with her staff. ‘You are a bonecaster, but I do not know you. How can this be? Our minds were joined at the Ritual. Our blood wove a thousand-upon-a-thousand threads. The Ritual claims you as kin, as T’lan Imass. What is your clan?’

‘I am Nom Kala-’

Brolos Haran cut in, ‘We do not know those words.’

That very admission was a shock to the Orshayn. It was, in fact, impossible. Our language is as dead as we are.

Nom Kala cocked her head, and then said, ‘You speak the Old Tongue, the secret language of the bonecasters. I am of the Brold T’lan Imass-’

‘There is no clan chief who claimed the name of the brold!’

She seemed to study Brolos for a moment, and then said, ‘There was no clan chief bearing the name of the brold. There was, indeed, no clan chief at all. Our people were ruled by the bonecasters. The Brold clans surrendered the Dark War. We Gathered. There was a Ritual-’

‘What!’ Ilm Absinos lurched forward, almost stumbling until her staff brought her up short. ‘Another Ritual of Tellann?’

‘We failed. We were camped beneath a wall of ice, a wall that reached to the very heavens. We were assailed-’

‘By the Jaghut?’ Brolos asked.

‘No-’

‘The K’Chain Che’Malle?’

Once more she cocked her head and was silent.

The wind moaned.

A grey fox wandered into their midst, stepping cautiously, nose testing the air. After a moment, it trotted down to the water’s edge. Pink tongue unfurled and the sounds of lapping water tickled the air.

Watching the fox, Kalt Urmanal put his hands to his face, covering his eyes. Seeing this, Rystalle turned away.

Nom Kala said, ‘No. The dominion of both was long past.’ She hesitated, and then added, ‘It was held among many of us that the enemy assailing our people were humans-our inheritors, our rivals in the ways of living. We bonecasters-the three of us who remained-knew that to be no more than a half-truth. No, we were assailed by ourselves. By the lies we told each other, by the false comforts of our legends, our stories, our very beliefs.’

‘Why, then,’ asked Ulag, ‘did you attempt the Ritual of Tellann?’

‘With but three bonecasters left, how could you have hoped to succeed?’ Ilm Absinos demanded, her voice brittle with outrage.

Nom Kala fixed her attention upon Ulag. ‘Trell-blood, you are welcome to my eyes. To answer your question: it is said that no memory survives the Ritual. We deemed this just. It is said, as well, that the Ritual delivers the curse of immortality. We saw this, too, as just.’

‘Then against whom did you wage war?’

‘No one. We were done with fighting, Trell-blood.’

‘Then why not simply choose death?’

‘We severed all allegiance to the spirits-we had been lying to them for too long.’

The fox lifted its head, eyes suddenly wide, ears pricked. It then trotted in its light-footed way along the rim of the pool. Slipped beneath some firebrush, and vanished inside a den.

How much time passed before another word was spoken? Rystalle could not be certain, but the fox reappeared, a marmot in its jaws, and bounded away, passing so close to Rystalle that she could have brushed its back with her hand. A flock of tiny birds descended to prance along the muddy verge. Somewhere in the shallows ruddered a carp.

Ilm Absinos said, in a whisper, ‘The spirits died when we died.’

‘A thing that dies to us is not necessarily dead,’ Nom Kala replied. ‘We do not have that power.’

‘What does your name mean?’ Ulag asked.

‘Knife Drip.’

‘How did the ritual fail?’

‘The wall of ice fell on us. We were all killed instantly. The Ritual was therefore uncompleted.’ She paused, and then added, ‘Given the oblivion that followed, failure seemed a safe assumption-were we capable of making assumptions. But now, it appears, we were in error.’

‘How long ago?’ Ulag asked her. ‘Do you know?’

She shrugged. ‘The Jaghut were gone a hundred generations. The K’Chain Che’Malle had journeyed to the eastern lands two hundred generations previously. We traded with the Jheck, and then with the Krynan Awl and the colonists of the Empire of Dessimbelackis. We followed the ice in its last retreat.’

‘How many of you will return, Knife Drip?’

‘The other two bonecasters have awakened and even now approach us. Lid Ger-Sourstone. And Lera Epar-Bitterspring. Of our people, we cannot yet say. Maybe all. Perhaps none.’

‘Who summoned us?’

One more time she cocked her head. ‘Trell-blood, this is our land. We have heard clear his cry. You cannot? We are summoned, T’lan Imass, by the First Sword. A legend among the Brold that, it seems, was not a lie.’

Ulag was rocked back as if struck a blow. ‘Onos T’oolan? But… why?’

‘He summons us beneath the banner of vengeance,’ she replied, ‘and in the name of death. My new friends, the T’lan Imass are going to war.’

The birds launched into the air like a tent torn loose of its tethers, leaving upon the soft clays nothing but a scattering of tiny tracks.

Bitterspring walked towards the other T’lan Imass. The emptiness of the land was a suffocating pressure. When everything goes, it is fitting that we are cursed to return, lifeless as the world we have made. Still… am I beyond betrayal? Have I ceased to be a slave to hope? Will I once again tread the old, worn trails?

Life is done, but the lessons remain. Life is done, but the trap still holds me tight. This is the meaning of legacy. This is the meaning of justice.

What was, is.

The wind was insistent, tugging at worn strips of cloth, the shredded ends of leather straps, loose strands of hair. It moaned as if in search of a voice. But the lifeless thing that was Toc the Younger held its silence, its immutability in the midst of the life surrounding it.

Setoc settled down on aching legs and waited. The two girls and the strange boy had huddled together nearby and were fast asleep.

Their saviour had carried them leagues from the territory of the Senan Barghast, north and east across the undulating prairie. The horse under them had made none of the normal sounds a horse should make. None of the grunting breaths, the snorts. It had not once sawed at the bit or dipped its head seeking a mouthful of grass. Its tattered hide remained dry, not once twitching to the frustrated deerflies, even as its ropy muscles worked steadily and its hoofs drummed the hard ground. Now it stood motionless beneath its motionless rider.

She rubbed at her face. They needed water. They needed food. She didn’t know where they were. Close to the Wastelands? Perhaps. She thought she could make out a range of hills or mountains far to the east, a dusty grimace of rock shimmering through the waves of heat. Lolling in the saddle behind Toc, she had been slipping into and out of strange dreams, fragmented visions of a squalid farmstead, the rank sweat of herds and small boys shouting. One boy with a face she thought she knew, but it was twisted with fear, and then hard with sudden resolve. A face that had transformed in an instant to one that awaited death. In one so young, nothing was more horrifying. Dreaming of children, but not these children here, not even Barghast children. At times, she found herself wheeling high above this lone warrior who rode with a girl in front, a girl behind, a girl and a boy in the crooks of his arms. She could smell scorched feathers, and all at once the land far below was a sea of diamonds, cut in two by a thin, wavering line.

She was fevered, or so she concluded now as she sat, mouth dry, eyes stinging with grit. Was this meant to be a rest? Something in her was resisting sleep. They needed water. They needed to eat.

A mound a short distance away caught her eye. Groaning, she stood, dragged herself closer.

A cairn, almost lost in the knee-high grasses. A wedge-shaped stone set atop a thinner slab, and beneath that a mound of angled rocks. The wedge was carved on its sides. Etching the eyes of a wolf. Mouth open with the slab forming the lower jaw, the scratchings of fangs and teeth. Worn down by centuries of wind and rain. She reached out a trembling hand, set her palm against the rough, warm stone.

‘We are being hunted.’

The rasping pronouncement drew her round. She saw Toc stringing his bow, heard the wind hum against the taut gut. A new voice in the air. She joined him, gazed westward. A dozen or more riders. ‘Akrynnai,’ she said. ‘They will see our Barghast clothing. They will seek to kill us. Then again,’ she added, ‘if you ride to them, they may change their minds.’

‘And why would that be?’ he asked, even as he kicked his horse forward.

She saw the Akrynnai horse-warriors fan out, saw lances being readied.

Toc rode straight for them, an arrow nocked to the bowstring.

As they drew closer, Setoc saw the Akrynnai falter, even as their lances lifted defensively. Moments later the warriors scattered, horses bucking beneath them. Within a few more heartbeats, all were in flight. Toc slowly wheeled his mount and rode back to where she stood.

‘It seems you were right.’

‘Their horses knew before they did.’

He halted his mount, returned the arrow to its quiver and deftly unstrung the bow.

‘Actually, you’ll need those,’ Setoc said. ‘We need food. We need water, too.’

It seemed he’d stopped listening, and his head was turned to the east.

‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘More hunters?’

‘She wasn’t satisfied,’ he muttered. ‘Of course not. What can one do better than an army can? Not much. But he won’t like it. He never did. In fact, he may turn them all away. Well now, Bonecaster, what would you do about that? If he releases them?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. She? Him? What army?’

His head turned to look past her. She swung round. The boy was on his feet, walking over to the wolf cairn. He sang, ‘Blalalalalalala…’

‘I wish he’d stop doing that,’ she said.

‘You are not alone in that, Setoc of the Wolves.’

She started, turned back to eye the undead warrior. ‘I see you now, Toc Anaster, and it seems you have but one eye-dead as it is. But that first night, I saw-’

‘What? What did you see?’

The eye of a wolf. She waved towards the cairn. ‘You brought us here.’

‘No. I took you away. Tell me, Setoc, are the beasts innocent?’

‘Innocent? Of what?’

‘Did they deserve their fate?’

‘No.’

‘Did it matter? Whether they deserved it or not?’

‘No.’

‘Setoc, what do the Wolves want?’

She knew by his intonation that he meant the god and the goddess-she knew they existed, even if she didn’t know their names, or if they even had ones. ‘They want us all to go away. To leave them alone. Them and their children.’

‘Will we?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

She struggled for an answer.

‘Because, Setoc, to live is to wage war. And it just happens that no other thing is as good at waging war as we are.’

‘I don’t believe you! Wolves don’t wage war against anything!’

‘A pack marks out its territory and that pack will drive off any other pack that seeks to encroach upon it. The pack defends its claim-to the land, and to the animals it preys upon in that land.’

‘But that’s not war!’

He shrugged. ‘Mostly, it’s just the threat of war, until threat alone proves insufficient. Every creature strives for dominance, among its own kind and within its territory. Even a pack of dogs will find its king, its queen, and they will rule by virtue of their strength and the threat their strength implies, until they are usurped by the next in line. What can we make of this? That politics belong to all social creatures? So it would seem. Setoc, could the Wolves kill us humans, every one of us, would they?’

‘If they understood it was them or us, yes! Why shouldn’t they?’

‘I was but asking questions,’ Toc replied. ‘I once knew a woman who could flatten a city with the arch of a single perfect eyebrow.’

‘Did she?’ Setoc asked, pleased to be the one asking questions.

‘Occasionally. But, not every city, not every time.’

‘Why not?’

The undead warrior smiled, the expression chilling her. ‘She liked a decent bath every now and then.’

After Toc had set off in search of food, Setoc set about building a hearth with whatever stones she could find. The boy was sitting in front of the cairn, still singing his song. The twins had awakened but neither seemed to have anything to say. Their eyes were glazed and Setoc knew it for shock.

‘Toc’ll be back soon,’ she told them. ‘Listen, can you make him stop that babbling? Please? It’s making my skin crawl. I mean, has he lost his mind, the little one? Or are they all like that? Barghast children aren’t, at least not that I remember. They stay quiet, just like you two are doing right now.’

Neither girl replied. They simply watched her.

The boy suddenly shouted.

At the cry the ground erupted twenty paces beyond the cairn. Stones spat through a cloud of dust.

And something clambered forth.

The twins shrieked. But the boy was laughing. Setoc stared. A huge wolf, long-limbed, with a long, flat head and heavy jaws bristling with fangs, stepped out from the dust, and then paused to shake its matted, tangled coat. The gesture cut away the last threads of fear in Setoc.

From the boy, a new song. ‘Ay ay ay ayayayayayayay!’

At its hunched shoulders, the creature was taller than Setoc. And it had died long, long ago.

Her eyes snapped to the boy. He summoned it. With that nonsense song, he summoned it.

Can-can I do the same? What is the boy to me? What is being made here?

One of the twins spoke: ‘He needs Toc. At his side. At our brother’s side. He needs Tool’s only friend. They have to be together.’

And the other girl, her gaze levelled on Setoc, said, ‘And they need you. But we have nothing. Nothing.’

‘I don’t understand you,’ Setoc said, irritated by the stab of irrational guilt she’d felt at the girl’s words.

‘What will happen,’ the girl asked, ‘when you raise one of your perfect eyebrows?’

‘What?’

‘ “Wherever you walk, someone’s stepped before you.” Our father used to say that.’

The enormous wolf stood close to the boy. Dust still streamed down its flanks. She had a sudden vision of this beast tearing out the throat of a horse. I saw these ones, but as ghosts. Ghosts of living things, not all rotted skin and bones. They kept their distance. They were never sure of me. Yet… I wept for them.

I can’t level cities.

Can I?

The apparitions rose suddenly, forming a circle around Toc. He slowly straightened from gutting the antelope he’d killed with an arrow to the heart. ‘If only Hood’s realm was smaller,’ he said, ‘I might know you all. But it isn’t and I don’t. What do you want?’

One of the undead Jaghut answered: ‘Nothing.’

The thirteen others laughed.

‘Nothing from you,’ the speaker amended. She had been female, once-when such distinctions meant something.

‘Then why have you surrounded me?’ Toc asked. ‘It can’t be that you’re hungry-’

More laughter, and weapons rattled back into sheaths and belt-loops. The woman approached. ‘A fine shot with that arrow, Herald. All the more remarkable for the lone eye you have left.’

Toc glared at the others. ‘Will you stop laughing, for Hood’s sake!’

The guffaws redoubled.

‘The wrong invocation, Herald,’ said the woman. ‘I am named Varandas. We do not serve Hood. We did Iskar Jarak a favour, and now we are free to do as we please.’

‘And what pleases you?’

Laughter from all sides.

Toc crouched back down, resumed gutting the antelope. Flies spun and buzzed. In the corner of his vision he could see one of the animal’s eyes, still liquid, still full, staring out at nothing. Iskar Jarak, when will you summon me? Soon, I think. It all draws in-but none of that belongs to the Wolves. Their interests lie elsewhere. What will happen? Will I simply tear in half? He paused, looked up to see the Jaghut still encircling him. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Wandering,’ Varandas replied.

Another added in a deep voice, ‘Looking for something to kill.’

Toc glanced again at the antelope’s sightless eye. ‘You picked the wrong continent. The T’lan Imass have awakened.’

All at once, the amusement surrounding him seemed to vanish, and a sudden chill gripped the air.

Toc set down his knife and dragged loose the antelope’s guts.

‘We never faced them,’ said Varandas. ‘We were dead long before their ritual of eternal un-life.’

A different Jaghut spoke. ‘K’Chain Nah’ruk, and now T’lan Imass. Doesn’t anyone ever go away?’

After a moment, all began laughing again.

Through the merriment Varandas stepped close to Toc and said, ‘Why have you killed this thing? You cannot eat it. And since that is true, I conclude that you must therefore hunt for others. Where are they?’

‘Not far,’ he replied, ‘and none are any threat to you.’

‘Too bad.’

‘Nah’ruk-were they Iskar Jarak’s favour?’

‘They were.’

‘What were they after?’

‘Not “what”. Who. But ask nothing more of that-we have discussed the matter and can make no sense of it. The world has lost its simplicity.’

‘The world was never simple, Jaghut, and if you believe it was, you’re deluding yourself.’

‘What would you know of the ancient times?’

He shrugged. ‘I only know recent times, but why should the ancient ones be any different? Our memories lie. We call it nostalgia and smile. But every lie has a purpose. And that includes falsifying our sense of the past-’

‘And what purpose would that serve, Herald?’

He wiped clean his knife in the grasses. ‘You shouldn’t need to ask.’

‘But I do ask.’

‘We lie about our past to make peace with the present. If we accepted the truth of our history, we would find no peace-our consciences would not permit it. Nor would our rage.’

Varandas was clearly amused. ‘Are you consumed with anger, Herald? Do you see too clearly with that lonely eye? Strong emotions are ever a barrier to perception, and this must be true of you.’

‘Meaning?’

‘You failed to detect my mocking tone when I spoke of the world’s loss of simplicity.’

‘I must have lost its distinction in the midst of the irony suffusing everything else you said. How stupid of me. Now, I am done with this beast.’ He sheathed his knife and lifted the carcass to settle it across his shoulders. ‘I could wish you all luck in finding something to kill,’ he said, ‘but you don’t need it.’

‘Do you think the T’lan Imass will be eager to challenge us, Herald?’

He levered the antelope on to the rump of his horse. The eyes, he saw, now swarmed with flies. Toc set a boot in the stirrup and, lifting wide with his leg to clear the carcass, lowered himself into the saddle. He gathered the reins. ‘I knew a T’lan Imass once,’ he said. ‘I taught him how to make jokes.’

‘He needed teaching?’

‘More like reminding, I think. Being un-alive for as long as he was will do that to the best of us, I suspect. In any case, I’m sure the T’lan Imass will find you very comforting, in all that dark armour and whatnot, even as they chop you to pieces. Unfortunately, and at the risk of deflating your bloated egos, they’re not here for you.’

‘Neither were the Nah’ruk. But,’ and Varandas cocked her helmed head, ‘what do you mean they will find us “comforting”?’

Toc studied her, and then scanned the others. Lifeless faces, so eager to laugh. Damned Jaghut. He shrugged, and then said, ‘Nostalgia.’

After the Herald and the lifeless antelope had ridden away on the lifeless horse, Varandas turned to her companions. ‘What think you, Haut?’

The thick-limbed warrior with the heavy voice shifted, armour clanking and shedding red dust, and then said, ‘I think, Captain, we need to make ourselves scarce.’

Suvalas snorted. ‘The Imass were pitiful-I doubt even un-living ones could cause us much trouble. Captain, let us find some of them and destroy them. I’d forgotten how much fun killing is.’

Varandas turned to one of her lieutenants. ‘Burrugast?’

‘A thought has occurred to me, Captain.’

She smiled. ‘Go on.’

‘If the T’lan Imass who waged war against the Jaghut were as pitiful as Suvalas suggests, why are there no Jaghut left?’

No one arrived at an answer. Moments passed.

‘We need to make ourselves scarce,’ Haut repeated. And then he laughed.

The others joined in. Even Suvalas.

Captain Varandas nodded. So many things were a delight, weren’t they? All these awkward emotions, such as humility, confusion and unease. To feel them again, to laugh at their inherent absurdity, mocking every survival instinct-as if she and her companions still lived. As if they still had something to lose. As if the past was worth recreating here in the present. ‘As if,’ she added mostly to herself, ‘old grudges were worth holding on to.’ She grunted, and then said, ‘We shall march east.’

‘Why east?’ Gedoran demanded.

‘Because I feel like it, lieutenant. Into the birth of the sun, the shadows on our trail, a new day ever ahead.’ She tilted back her head. ‘Hah hah hah hah hah!’

Toc the Younger saw the gaunt ay from some distance away. Standing with the boy clinging to one foreleg. If Toc had possessed a living heart, it would have beaten faster. If he could draw breath, it would have quickened. If his eye were swimming in a pool of tears, as living eyes did, he would weep.

Of course, it was not Baaljagg. The giant wolf was not-he realized as he rode closer-even alive. It had been summoned. Not from Hood’s Realm, for the souls of such beasts did not reside there. The Beast Hold, gift of the Wolves. An ay, to walk the mortal world once again, to guard the boy. And their chosen daughter.

Setoc, was this by your hand?

One-eyed he might be, but he was not blind to the patterns taking shape. Nor, in the dry dust of his mind, was he insensitive to the twisted nuances within those patterns, as if the distant forces of fate took ghastly pleasure in mocking all that he treasured-the memories he held on to as would a drowning man hold on to the last breath in his lungs.

I see you in his face, Tool. As if I could travel back to the times before the Ritual of Tellann, as if I could whisper in like a ghost to that small camp where you were born, and see you at but a few years of age, bundled against the cold, your breath pluming and your cheeks bright red-I had not thought such a journey possible.

But it is. I need only look upon your son, and I see you.

We are broken, you and me. I had to turn you away. I had to deny you what you wanted most. But, what I could not do for you, I will do for your son.

He knew he was a fool to make such vows. He was the Herald of Death. And soon Hood would summon him. He would be torn from the boy’s side. Unless the Wolves want me to stay. But no one can know what they want. They do not think anything like us. I have no control… over anything.

He reached the camp. Setoc had built a small fire. The twins had not moved from where they’d been earlier, but their eyes were fixed on Toc now, as if he could hold all their hopes in his arms. But I cannot. My life is gone, and what remains does not belong to me.

I dream I can hold to my vows. I dream I can be Toc the Younger, who knew how to smile, and love. Who knew what it was to desire a woman forever beyond his reach-gods, such delicious anguish! When the self would curl up, when longing overwhelmed with the sweetest flood.

Remember! You once wrote poems! You once crawled into your every thought, your every feeling, to see and touch and dismantle and, in the midst of putting it all back together, feel wonder. Awed, humbled by complexity, assailed by compassion. Uncomprehending in the face of cruelty, of indifference.

Remember how you thought: How can people think this way? How can they be so thoughtless, so vicious, so worshipful of death, so dismissive of suffering and misery?

He stared at the wolf. Baaljagg, not Baaljagg. A mocking reflection, a crafted simulacrum. A Hairlock. He met Setoc’s slightly wide eyes and saw that she had had nothing to do with this summoning. The boy. Of course. Tool made me arrows. His son finds me a companion as dead as I am. ‘It is named Baaljagg-’

‘Balalalalalalalalala!’

Sceptre Irkullas sat, shoulders hunched, barricaded from the world by his grief. His officers beseeched him, battering at the high walls. The enemy was within reach, the enemy was on the move-an entire people, suddenly on the march. Their outriders had discovered the Akrynnai forces. The giant many-headed beasts were jockeying for position, hackles raised, and soon would snap the jaws, soon the fangs would sink deep, and fate would fill the mouth bitter as iron.

A conviction had burrowed deep into his soul. He was about to tear out the throat of the wrong enemy. But there were no thorns to prick his conscience, nothing to stir to life the trembling dance of reason. Before too long, loved ones would weep. Children would voice cries unanswered. And ripples would spread outward, agitated, in a tumult, and nothing would be the same as it once was.

There were times when history curled into a fist, breaking all it held. He waited for the crushing embrace with all the hunger of a lover. His officers did not understand. When he rose, gesturing for his armour, he saw the relief in their eyes, as if a belligerent stream had once more found its destined path. But he knew they thought nothing of the crimson sea they now rushed towards. Their relief was found in the comfort of the familiar, these studied patterns preceding dread mayhem. They would face the time of blood when it arrived.

Used to be he envied the young. At this moment, as the sun’s bright morning light scythed the dust swirling above the restless horses, he looked upon those he could see-weapons flashing like winks from a thousand skulls-and he felt nothing but pity.

Great warleaders were, one and all, insane. They might stand as he was standing, here in the midst of the awakening machine, and see nothing but blades to cut a true path to his or her desire, as if desire alone was a virtue, a thing so pure and so righteous it could not be questioned, could not be challenged. This great warleader could throw a thousand warriors to their deaths and the oily surface of his or her conscience would reveal not the faintest swirl.

He had been a great warleader, once, his mouth full of iron shards, flames licking his fingertips. His chest swollen with unquestioned virtues.

‘If we pursue, Sceptre, we can meet them by dusk. Do you think they will want to close then? Or will they wait for next dawn? If we are swift…’

‘I will clench my jaws one more time,’ Irkullas said. ‘I will keep them fast and think nothing of the bite, the warm flow. You’d be surprised at what a man can swallow.’

They looked on, uncomprehending.

The Akrynnai army shook loose the camp of the night just past. It lifted itself up, broke into eager streams flowing into the wake of the wounded foe, and spread in a flood quickened to purpose.

The morning lost its gleam. Strange clouds gathered, and across the sky, flights of birds fled into the north. Sceptre Irkullas rode straight-backed on his horse, riding the sweaty palm, as the fist began to close.

‘Gatherer of skulls, where is the fool taking us?’

Strahl, Bakal observed, was in the habit of repeating himself, as if his questions were a siege weapon, flinging stones at what he hoped was a weak point in the solid wall of his ignorance. Sooner or later, through the dust and patter of crumbling mortar, he would catch his first glimpse of the answers he sought.

Bakal had no time for such things. If he had questions, he burned them to the ground where they stood, smiling through the drifting ashes. The wall awaiting them all would come toppling down before too long. To our regret.

‘We’ve left a bloody trail,’ Strahl then added, and Bakal knew the warrior’s eyes were fixed upon Hetan’s back, as she limped, tottered and stumbled a short distance ahead of them in the column. Early in the day, when the warriors were still fresh, their breaths acrid with the anticipation of battle-perhaps only a day away-one would drag her from the line and take her on the side of the path, with others shouting their encouragement. A dozen times since dawn, this had occurred. Now, everyone walked as slowly as she, and no one had the energy to use her. Of food there was plenty; their lack was water. This wretched land was an old hag, her tits dry and withered. Bakal could almost see her toothless grin through the waves of heat rising above the yellow grasses on all sides, the nubbed horizon with its rotten stumps of bedrock protruding here and there.

The bloody trail Strahl spoke of marked the brutal consolidation of power by Warchief Maral Eb and his two brothers, Sagal and Kashat. And the widow, Sekara the Vile. What a cosy family they made! He turned his head and spat, since he found the mere thought of them fouled the taste on his tongue.

There had been two more attempts on his life. If not for Strahl and the half-dozen other Senan who’d elected themselves his guardians, he would now be as dead as his wife and her would-be lover. A widow walked a few steps behind him. Estaral would have died by her husband’s hand if not for Bakal. Yet the truth was, his saving her life had been an accidental by-product of his bloodlust, even though he had told her otherwise. That night of storms had been like a fever coursing through the Barghast people. Such a night had been denied them all when Onos Toolan assumed command after Humbrall Taur’s drowning-he had drawn his stone sword before all the gathered clan chiefs and said, ‘The first murder this night will be answered by me. Take hold of your wants, your imagined needs, and crush the life from them.’ His will was not tested. As it turned out, too much was held back, and this time everyone had lunged into madness.

‘They won’t rest until you’re dead, you know.’

‘Then they’d best be quick,’ Bakal replied. ‘For tomorrow we do battle with the Akrynnai.’

Strahl grunted. ‘It’s said they have D’ras with them. And legions of Saphii Spears.’

‘Maral Eb will choose the place. That alone can decide the battle. Unlike our enemy, we are denied retreat. Either we win, or we fall.’

‘They think to take slaves.’

‘The Barghast kneel to no one. The grandmothers will slide knives across the throats of our children, and then sever the taproot of their own hearts.’

‘Our gods shall sing and so summon us all through the veil.’

Bakal bared his teeth. ‘Our gods would be wise to wear all the armour they own.’

Three paces behind the two warriors, Estaral stared at Bakal, the man who had killed her husband, the man who had saved her life. At times she felt as if she was walking the narrowest bridge over a depthless crevasse, a bridge reeled out behind Bakal. At other moments the world suddenly opened before her, vast as a flooding ocean, and she flailed in panic, even as, in a rush of breathless astonishment, she comprehended the truth of her freedom. Finding herself alone made raw the twin births of fear and excitement, and both sizzled to the touch. Estaral alternated between cursing and blessing the warrior striding before her. He was her shield, yes, behind which she could hide. He also haunted her with the memory of that terrible night when she’d looked into her husband’s eyes and saw only contempt-and then the dark desire to murder her.

Had she really been that useless to him? That disgusting? He could not have always seen her so, else he would never have married her-she remembered seeing smiles on his face, years ago now, it was true, but she could have sworn there had been no guile in his eyes. She measured out the seasons since those bright, rushing days, seeking signs of her failure, struggling to find the fatal threshold she had so unwittingly crossed. But the memories swirled round like a vortex, drawing her in, and everything blurred, spun past, and the only thing she could focus on was her recollection of his two faces: the smiling one, the one ugly with malice, flitting back and forth.

She was too old to be desired ever again, and even if she had not been so, it was clear now that she could not keep a man’s love alive. Weak, foolish, blind, and now widow to a husband who’d sought to kill her.

Bakal had not hesitated. He’d killed her man as she might wring the neck of a yurt rat. And then he had turned to his wife-she had stood defiant until his first step towards her, and then she had collapsed to her knees, begging for her life. But that night had been the night of Hetan’s hobbling. The beast of mercy had been gutted and its bloody skin staked to the ground. She’d begged even as he opened her throat.

Blood flows down. I saw it doing just that. Down their bodies, down and down. I thought he would turn to me then and do the same-I witnessed his shame, his rage. And he knew, if I had been a better wife, my husband would never have fixed his eyes upon his wife. And so, the failure and the crime was mine as well.

I would not have begged.

Instead, he had cleaned his knife and sheathed it. And when he looked upon her, she saw his fury fall away, and his eyes glistened. ‘I wish you had not seen this, Estaral.’

‘You wish he’d already killed me?’

‘No-I came here to stop them doing that.’

That had confused her. ‘But I am nothing to you, Bakal.’

‘But you are,’ he said. ‘Without you, I would have no choice but to see this night-to see what I have done here-as black vengeance. As the rage of a jealous man-but you see, I really didn’t care. She was welcome to whoever she wanted. But she had no right-nor your husband there-they had no right to kill you.’

‘You are the slayer of Onos Toolan.’ She still did not know why she had said that then. Had she meant that the night of blood was his and his alone?

He had flinched, and his face had drained. She’d thought then that he regretted sparing her life; indeed, that he might even change his mind. Instead, he turned away and an instant later he was gone.

Did she know that her words would wound him? Why should they? Was he not proud of his glorious deed?

Of course, Bakal had since failed to become the leader of the Barghast. Perhaps he had already seen the power slipping from his grasp, that night. So she followed him now. Had tethered herself to him, all with the intention of taking back her words, and yet not one step she took in pursuit found her any closer. Days now, nights of hovering like a ghost beyond the edge of his hearth-fire. She had witnessed the attempt on him by the first assassin, a Barahn warrior desperate for status-Strahl had cut him down five strides from Bakal. The next time it had been an arrow sent through the darkness, missing Bakal’s head by less than a hand’s-width. Strahl and three other warriors had rushed off after the archer but they had lost the would-be killer.

Upon returning, Strahl had muttered about Estaral’s spectral presence-calling her the Reaper’s eyes, wondering if she stayed close in order to witness Bakal’s death. It seemed Strahl believed she hated Bakal for killing her husband. But the notion of hate had never even occurred to her, not for him, anyway.

She wanted to speak with Bakal. She wanted to explain and if she could understand her own motivations from that night, why, she would do just that. Salve the wound, perhaps heal it completely. They shared something, the two of them, didn’t they? He must have understood, even if Strahl didn’t.

But now they spoke of a battle with the Akrynnai, a final clash to decide who would rule this land. Maral Eb would lead the Barghast, warriors in their tens of thousands. It had been one thing for the Akrynnai to strike clan camps-now at last all of the White Face Barghast were assembled and no tribe in the world could defeat such an army. Even so, Bakal might die in the battle-he would be commanding the Senan after all, and it was inconceivable to imagine Maral Eb being so arrogant as not to position the most powerful clan in the line’s centre. No, the Senan would form the jagged wedge and it would cut savage and deep.

She should approach him soon, perhaps this very night. If only to take back my words. He struck them down to save my life, after all. He said so. Even though I was the cause of so much-

She had missed something, and now Bakal had sent Strahl away and was dropping back to her side. Suddenly her mouth was dry.

‘Estaral, I must ask of you a favour.’

Something in his tone whispered darkness. No more death. Please. If she had other lovers-

‘Hetan,’ he said under his breath. ‘You are among the women who guard her at night.’

She blinked. ‘Not for much longer, Bakal,’ she said. ‘She is past the time of fleeing. There is nothing in her eyes. She is hobbled. Last night there were but two of us.’

‘And tonight there will be one.’

‘Perhaps not even that. Warriors will use her, likely through the night.’

‘Gods’ shit, I didn’t think of that!’

‘If you want her-’

‘I do not. Listen, with the sun’s fall, as warriors gather for their meals, can you be the one to feed her?’

‘The food just falls from her mouth,’ Estaral said. ‘We let the children do that-it entertains them, forcing it down as if she was a babe.’

‘Not tonight. Take it on yourself.’

‘Why?’ I want to speak with you. Take things back. I want to lie with you, Bakal, and take back so much more.

He fixed his eyes upon her own, searching for something-she quickly glanced away, in case he discovered her thoughts. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘Why are you women so eager to hobble another woman?’

‘I had no hand in that.’

‘That is not what I asked.’

She had never before considered such a thing. It was what was done. It had always been so. ‘Women have claws.’

‘I know-I’ve seen it often enough. I’ve seen it in battle. But hobbling-that’s different. Isn’t it?’

She refused to meet his eyes. ‘You don’t understand. I didn’t mean the claws of a warrior. I meant the claws we keep hidden, the ones we use only against other women.’

‘But why?’

‘You speak now in the way Onos Toolan did-all his questions about the things we’ve always done. Was it not this that saw him killed, Bakal? He kept questioning things that he had no right to question.’

She saw as he lifted his right hand. He seemed to be studying it.

His knife hand.

‘His blood,’ he whispered, ‘has poisoned me.’

‘When we turn on our own,’ she said, struggling to put her thoughts into words, ‘it is as water in a skin finds a hole. There is so much… weight-’

‘Pressure.’

‘Yes, that is the word. We turn on our own, to ease the pressure. All eyes are on her, not us. All desire-’ she stopped then, stifling a gasp.

But he’d caught it-he’d caught it all. ‘Are men the reason then? Is that what you’re saying?’

She felt a flush of anger, like knuckles rapping up her spine. ‘Answer me this, Bakal’-and she met his wide eyes unflinchingly-‘how many times was your touch truly tender? Upon your wife? Tell me, how often did you laugh with your friends when you saw a woman emerge from her home with blood crusting her lip, a welt beneath an eye? “Oh, the wild wolf rutted last night!” And then you grin and you laugh-do you think we do not hear? Do you think we do not see? Hobble her! Take her, all of you! And, for as long as she lifts to you, you leave us alone!’

Heads had turned at her venomous tone-even if they could not quite make out her words, as she had delivered them low, like the hiss of a dog-snake as it wraps tight the crushed body in its embrace. She saw a few mocking smiles, saw the muted swirls of unheard jests. ‘Bound tight in murder, those two, and already they spit at each other!’ ‘No wonder their mates leapt into each other’s arms!’

Bakal managed to hold her glare a moment longer, as if he could hold back her furious, bitter words, and then he looked ahead once more. A rough sigh escaped him. ‘I remember his nonsense-or so I thought it at the time. His tales of the Imass-he said the greatest proof of strength a male warrior could display was found in not once touching his mate with anything but tenderness.’

‘And you sneered.’

‘I saw women sneer at that, too.’

‘And if we hadn’t, Bakal? If you’d seen us with something else in our eyes?’

He grimaced and then nodded. ‘A night or two of the wild wolf-’

‘To beat out such treasonous ideas, yes. You did not understand-none of you did. If you hadn’t killed him, he would have changed us all.’

‘And women such as Sekara the Vile?’

She curled her lip. ‘What of them?’

He grunted. ‘Of course. Greed and power are her only lovers-in that, she is no different from us men.’

‘What do you want with Hetan?’

‘Nothing. Never mind.’

‘You no longer trust me. Perhaps you never did. It was only the pool of blood we’re both standing in.’

‘You follow me. You stand just beyond the firelight every night.’

I am alone. Can’t you see that? ‘Why did you murder him? I will tell you. It’s because you saw him as a threat, and he was surely that, wasn’t he?’

‘I–I did not-’ He halted, shook his head. ‘I want to steal her away. I want it to end.’

‘It’s too late. Hetan is dead inside. Long dead. You took away her husband. You took away her children. And then you-we-took away her body. A flower cut from its root quickly dies.’

‘Estaral.’

He was holding on to a secret, she realized.

Bakal glanced at her. ‘Cafal.’

She felt her throat tighten-was it panic? Or the promise of vengeance? Retribution? Even if it meant her own death? Oh, I see now. We’re still falling.

‘He is close,’ Bakal went on under his breath. ‘He wants her back. He wants me to steal her away. Estaral, I need your help-’

She searched his face. ‘You would do this for him? Do you hate him that much, Bakal?’

She might as well have struck him in the face.

‘He-he is a shaman, a healer-’

‘No Barghast shaman has ever healed one of the hobbled.’

‘None has tried!’

‘Perhaps it is as you say, Bakal. I see that you do not want to wound Cafal. You would do this to give to him what he seeks.’

He nodded once, as if unable to speak.

‘I will take her from the children,’ Estaral said. ‘I will lead her to the west end of the camp. But, Bakal, there will be pickets-we are at the eve of battle-’

‘I know. Leave the warriors to me.’

She didn’t know why she was doing this. Nor did she understand the man walking at her side. But what difference did knowing make? Just as easy to live in ignorance, scraped clean of expectation, emptied of beliefs and faith, even hopes. Hetan is hobbled. No different in the end from every other woman suffering the same fate. She’s been cut down inside, and the stem lies bruised and lifeless. She was once a great warrior. She was once proud, her wit sharp as a thorn, ever quick to laugh but never with cruelty. She was indeed a host of virtues, but they had availed her nothing. No strength of will survives hobbling. Not a single virtue. This is the secret of humiliation: the deadliest weapon the Barghast have.

She could see Hetan up ahead, her matted hair, her stumbles brought up by the crooked staff the hobbled were permitted when on the march. The daughter of Humbrall Taur was barely recognizable. Did her father’s spirit stand witness, there in the Reaper’s shadow? Or had he turned away?

No, he rides his last son’s soul. That must be what has so maddened Cafal.

Well, to honour Hetan’s father, she would do this. When the Barghast came to rest at this day’s end. She was tired. She was thirsty. She hoped it would be soon.

Kashat pointed. ‘See there, brother. The ridge forms half a circle.’

‘Not much of a slope,’ Sagal muttered.

‘Look around,’ Kashat said, snorting. ‘It’s about the best we can manage. This land is pocked, but those pocks are old and worn down. Anyway, that ridge marks the biggest of those pocks-you can see that for yourself. And the slope is rocky-they would lose horses charging up that.’

‘So they flank us instead.’

‘We make strongpoints at both ends, with crescents of archers positioned behind them to take any riders attempting an encirclement.’

‘With the rear barricaded by the wagons.’

‘Held by mixed archers and pike-wielders, yes, exactly. Listen, Sagal, by this time tomorrow we’ll be picking loot from heaps of corpses. The Akrynnai army will be shattered, their villages undefended-we can march into the heart of their territory and claim it for ourselves.’

‘An end to the Warleader, the rise of the first Barghast King.’

Kashat nodded. ‘And we shall be princes, and the King shall grant us provinces to rule. Our very own herds. Horses, bhederin, rodara. We shall have Akrynnai slaves, as many of their young women as we want, and we shall live in keeps-do you remember, Sagal? When we were young, our first war, marching down to Capustan-we saw the great stone keeps all in ruin along the river. We shall build ourselves those, one each.’

Sagal grinned at his brother. ‘Let us return to the host, and see if our great King is in any better mood than when we left him.’

They turned back, slinging their spears over their shoulders and jogging to rejoin the vanguard of the column. The sun glared through the dust above the glittering forest of barbed iron, transforming the cloud into a penumbra of gold. Vultures rode the deepening sky to either side. Barely two turns of the beaker before dusk arrived-the night ahead promised to be busy.

The half-dozen Akryn scouts rode between the narrow, twisting gullies and out on to the flats where the dust still drifted above the rubbish left behind by the Barghast. They cut across that churned-up trail and cantered southward. The sun had just left the sky, dropping behind a bank of clouds dark as a shadowed cliff-face on the western horizon, and dusk bled into the air.

When the drum of horse hoofs finally faded, Cafal edged out from the deeper of the two gullies. The bastards had held him back too long-the great cauldrons would be steaming in the Barghast camp, the foul reek of six parts animal blood to two parts water and sour wine, and all the uncured meat still rank with the taste of slaughter. Squads would be shaking out, amidst curses that they would have to eat salted strips of smoked bhederin, sharing a skin of warm water on their patrols between the pickets. The Barghast encampment would be seething with activity.

One of Bakal’s warriors had found him a short time earlier, delivering the details of the plan. It would probably fail, but Cafal did not care. If he died attempting to steal her back, then this torment would end. For one of them, at least. It was a selfish desire, but selfish desires were all he had left.

I am the last of Father’s children, the last not dead or broken. Father, you so struggled to become the great leader of the White Faces. And now I wonder, if you had turned away from the attempt, if you had quenched your ambition, where would you and your children be right now? Spirits reborn, would we even be here, on this cursed continent?

I know for a fact that Onos Toolan wanted a peaceful life, his head down beneath the winds that had once ravaged his soul. He was flesh, he was life-after so long-and what have we done? Did we embrace him? Did the White Face Barghast welcome him as a guest? Were we the honourable hosts we proclaim to be? Ah, such lies we tell ourselves. Our every comfort proves false in the end.

He moved cautiously along the battered trail. Already the glow from the cookfires stained the way ahead. He could not see the picket stations or the patrols-coming in from the west had disadvantaged him, but soon the darkness would paint them as silhouettes against the camp’s hearths. In any case, he did not have to draw too close. Bakal would deliver her, or so he claimed.

The face of Setoc rose in his mind, and behind it flashed the horrible scene of her body spinning away from his blow, the looseness of her neck-had he heard a snap? He didn’t know. But the way she fell. Her flopping limbs-yes, there was a crack, a sickening sound of bones breaking, a sound driving like a spike into his skull. He had heard it and he’d refused to hear it, but such refusal failed and so its dread echo reverberated through him. He had killed her. How could he face that?

He could not.

Hetan. Think of Hetan. You can save this one. The same hand that killed Setoc can save Hetan. Can you make that be enough, Cafal? Can you?

His contempt for himself was matched only by his contempt for the Barghast gods-he knew they were the cause behind all of this-another gift by my own hand. They had despised Onos Toolan. Unable to reach into his foreign blood, his foreign ideas, they had poisoned the hearts of every Barghast warrior against the Warleader. And now they held their mortal children in their hands, and every strange face was an enemy’s face, every unfamiliar notion was a deadly threat to the Barghast and their way of life.

But the only people safe from change are the ones lying inside sealed tombs. You drowned your fear in ambition and see where you’ve brought us? This is the eve of our annihilation.

I have seen the Akrynnai army, and I will voice no warning. I will not rush into the camp and exhort Maral Eb to seek peace. I will do nothing to save any of them, not even Bakal. He knows what comes, if not the details, and he does not flinch.

Remember him, Cafal. He will die true to the pure virtues so quickly abused by those who possess none of them. He will be used as his kind have been used for thousands of years, among thousands of civilizations. He is one among the bloody fodder for empty tyrants and their pathetic wants. Without him, the great scything blade of history sings through nothing but air.

Would that such virtue could face down the tyrants. That the weapon turn in their sweaty hands. Would that the only blood spilled belonged to them and them alone.

Go on, Maral Eb. Walk out on to the plain and cross swords with Irkullas. Kill each other and then the rest of us can just walk away. Swords? Why such formality? Why not just bare hands and teeth? Tear each other to pieces! Like two wolves fighting to rule the pack-whichever one limps away triumphant will be eyed by the next one in line. And on it goes, and really, do any of the rest of us give a fuck? At least wolves don’t make other wolves fight their battles for them. No, our tyrants are smarter than wolves, aren’t they?

He halted and crouched down. He was in the place he was supposed to be.

The jade talons raked up from the southern horizon, and from the plain to the west a fox loosed an eerie, piercing cry. Night had arrived.

Estaral grasped the girl by her braid and flung her back. They had been trying to force goat shit into Hetan’s mouth-her face was smeared from the cheeks down.

Spitting in rage, the girl scrambled to her feet, her cohorts closing round her. Eyes blazed. ‘My father will see you hobbled for that!’

‘I doubt it,’ Estaral replied. ‘What man wants to take a woman stinking of shit? You’ll be lucky to keep your hide, Faranda. Now, all of you, get away from here-I know you all, and I’ve not yet decided whether to tell your fathers about this.’

They bolted.

Estaral knelt before Hetan, pulling up handfuls of grass to wipe her mouth and chin. ‘Even the bad rules are breaking,’ she said. ‘We keep falling and falling, Hetan. Be glad you cannot see what has become of your people.’

But those words rang false. Be glad? Be glad they chopped off the fronts of your feet? Be glad they raped you so many times you couldn’t feel a damned bhederin pounding into you by now? No. And if the Akrynnai chop off our feet and rape us come tomorrow, who will weep for the White Faces?

Not Cafal. ‘Not you, either, Hetan.’ She flung the soiled grasses away and helped Hetan to stand. ‘Here, your staff, lean on it.’ She grasped a handful of filthy shirt and began guiding the woman through the camp.

‘Don’t keep her too long!’ She glanced back to see a warrior behind them-he had been coming to take her and now stood with a grin that hovered on the edge of something dark and cruel.

‘They fed her shit-I’m taking her to get properly cleaned up.’

A flicker of disgust. ‘The children? Who were they? A solid beating-’

‘They ran before I got close enough. Ask around.’

Estaral tugged Hetan into motion once again.

The warrior did not pursue, but she heard him cursing as he wandered off. She didn’t think she’d run into many more like him-everyone was crowding around their clan cookfires, hungry and parched and short-tempered as they jostled and fought for position. There’d be a few flick-blade duels this night, she expected. There always were, night before battle. Stupid, of course. Pointless. But, as Onos Toolan might say, the real meaning of ‘tradition’ was… what had he called it? ‘Stupidity on purpose’, that’s what he said. I think. I never much listened.

I should have. We all should have.

They neared the western edge of the camp, where the wagons were already being positioned to form a defensive barricade. Just beyond, drovers were busy slaughtering stock, and the bleating cries of hundreds of animals filled the night. The first bonfires for offal had been lit using rotted cloth, bound rushes, dung and liberal splashes of lamp oil. The flames lit up terrified eyes from within crowded pens. Chaos and horror had come to the beasts and the air was thick with death.

She almost halted. She’d never before seen things in such a way; she’d never before felt the echo of misery and suffering assailing her from all directions-every scene painted into life by the fires was like a vision of madness. We do this. We do this all the time. To all these creatures who look to us for protection. We do this and think nothing of it.

We say we are great thinkers, but I think now, that most of what we do each and every day-and night-is in fact thoughtless. We will ourselves empty to numb us to our cruelty. We stiffen our faces and say we have needs. But to be empty is to have no purchase, nothing to grasp on to, and so in the emptiness we slide and we slide.

We fall.

Oh, when will it end?

She pulled Hetan to a position behind a wagon, the plains stretching westward before them. Thirty paces ahead, limned by the deepening remnants of the sunset, three warriors were busy digging a picket. ‘Sit down-no, don’t lift. Just sit.’

‘Listen, Strahl-you have done enough. Leave this night to me.’

‘Bakal-’

‘Please, old friend. This is all by my hand-I stood alone before Onos Toolan. There must be the hope… the hope for balance. In my soul. Leave me this, I beg you.’

Strahl looked away and it was clear to Bakal that his words had been too honest, too raw. The warrior shifted nervously, his discomfort plain to see.

‘Go, Strahl. Go lie in your wife’s arms this night. Look past everything else-none of it matters. Find the faces of the ones you love. Your children, your wife.’

The man managed a nod, not meeting Bakal’s eyes, and then set off.

Bakal watched him leave, and then checked his weapons one last time, before setting off through the camp.

Belligerence was building, sizzling beneath the harsh voices. It lit fires inside the strutting warriors as they bellowed out their oaths among the hearth circles. It bared teeth in the midst of every harsh laugh. War was the face to be stared into, or fled from, but the camp on a night such as this one was a cage, a prison to them all. The darkness hid the ones with skittish eyes and twitching hands; the bold postures and wild glares masked icy terror. Fear and excitement had closed jaws upon each other’s throat and neither dared let go.

This was the ancient dance, this ritualized spitting into the eyes of fate, stoking the dark addiction. He had seen elders, warriors too old, too decrepit to do anything but sit or stand crooked over staffs, and he had seen their blazing eyes, had heard their cracking exhortations-but most of all, he had seen in their eyes the pain of their loss, as if they’d been forced to surrender their most precious love. It was no quaint conceit that warriors prayed to the spirits for the privilege of dying in battle. Thoughts of useless years stretching beyond the warrior’s life could freeze the heart of the bravest of the brave.

The Barghast were not soldiers, not like the Malazans or the Crimson Guard. A profession could be left behind, a new future found. But for the warrior, war was everything, the very reason to live. It was the maker of heroes and cowards, the one force that tested a soul in ways that could not be bargained round, that could not be corrupted by a handful of silver. War forged bonds closer knit than those of bloodkin. It painted the crypt’s wall behind every set of eyes-those of foe and friend both. It was, indeed, the purest, truest cult of all. What need for wonder, then, that so many youths so longed for such a life?

Bakal understood all this, for he was indeed a warrior. He understood, and yet his heart was bitter with disgust. No longer did he dream of inviting his sons and daughters into such a world. Embracing this addiction devoured too much, inside and out.

He-and so many others-had looked into the face of Onos Toolan and had seen his compassion, had seen it so clearly that the only response was to recoil. The Imass had been an eternal warrior. He had fought with the warrior’s blessing of immortality, given the gift of battles unending, and then he had willingly surrendered it. How could such a man, even one reborn, find so much of his humanity still alive within him?

I could not have. Even after but three decades of war… if I was this moment reborn, I could not find in myself… what? A battered tin cup half-filled with compassion, not enough to splash a dozen people closest to me.

Yet… yet he was a flood, an unending flood-how can that be?

Who did I kill? Shy from that question if you must, Bakal. But one truth you cannot deny: his compassion took hold of your arm, your knife, and showed you the strength of its will.

His steps slowed. He looked round, blearily. I am lost. Where am I? I don’t understand. Where am I? And what are all these broken things in my hands? Still crashing down-the roar is deafening! ‘Save her,’ he muttered. ‘Yes. Save her-the only one worth saving. May she live a thousand years, proof to all who see her, proof of who and what the Barghast were. The White Faces.’ We hobble ourselves and call it glory. We lift to meet drooling old men eager to fill us to bursting with their bitter poisons. Old men? No, warleaders and warchiefs. And our precious tradition of senseless self-destruction. Watch it fuck us dry.

He was railing, but it was in silence. Who would want to hear such things? See what happened to the last one who held out a compassionate hand? He imagined himself walking between heaving rows of his fellow warriors. He walked, trailing the gutted ropes of his messy arguments, and from both sides spit and curses rained down.

Truths bore the frightened mind. Are we bored? Yes! Where is the blood? Where are the flashing knives? Give us the unthinking dance! Charge our jaded hearts, you weeping slave! Piss on your difficult thoughts, your grim recognitions. Lift up your backside, fool, while I seek to pound feeling back into me.

Stand still while I hobble you-let’s see you walk now!

Bakal staggered out from the camp’s edge. Halting ten paces beyond the wagons, he tugged loose the straps binding the lance to his back. Rolled the shaft into his right hand. His shoulder ached-the tears of tendon and muscle were not yet mended. The pain would wake him up.

Ahead was the banked berm of the picket’s trench. Three helmed heads were visible as lumps projecting above the reddish heap of earth.

Bakal broke into a trot, silent on the grasses as he closed the distance.

He launched the lance from twelve paces behind the three warriors. Saw the iron point drive between the shoulders of the one on his left, punching the man’s body against the trench wall. As the other two jerked, heads snapping in that direction, he reached the trench-blades in hands-and leapt down between them. His cutlass bit through bronze skull-cap, split half the woman’s skull, and jammed there. The knife in his left hand slashed the back of the last warrior’s neck-but the man had twisted, enough to save his spinal cord, and spinning, he slammed a dagger deep into Bakal’s chest, just under his left arm.

Intimately close with his enemy in the cramped trench, he saw the warrior open his mouth to cry out the alarm. Bakal’s back-slash with his knife ripped out the man’s throat, even as the dagger sank a second time, the blade snapping as it snagged between two ribs.

Blood rushed up to fill Bakal’s throat and he fell against the dying warrior, coughing into the wool of the man’s cloak.

He was feeling so very tired now, but there were things still to be done. Find her. Save her. He crawled from the trench. He was having trouble breathing. A memory that had been lost for decades returned to him suddenly: the last time he’d been near death-the Drowning Fever had struck him down, his lungs filling up with phlegm. The thick poultices encasing his chest, the eye-stinging smell of ground mustard seeds-his mother’s face, a blurred thing, hovering, dread hardening to resignation behind her eyes. Crypt walls. We all have them, there inside-you don’t go there often, do you? It’s where you keep your dead. Dead relatives, dead dreams, dead promises. Dead selves, so many of those, so many. When you loot, you only take the best things. The things you can use, the things you can sell. And when you seal it all up again, the darkness remains.

It remains. Ah, Mother, it remains.

My crypt. My crypt walls.

He thought to regain his feet. Instead, he was lying on the ground, the trench pit almost within reach. Mother? Are you there? Father? Desorban, my son, oh precious son-I put that sword into your hand. I pretended to be proud, even as fear curled black talons round my heart. Later, when I looked down at your so-still face, when all the others were singing the glory of your brave moments-only moments, yes, all you had-I pretended that the music eased the hurt in my soul. I pretended, because to pretend was to comfort them in turn, for the time when they stood in my place, looking down on the face of their own beloved.

Son? Are you there?

Crypt walls. Scenes and faces.

In the dark, you can’t even see the paint.

Estaral struggled in the gloom to see that distant picket. Had something happened there? She wasn’t sure. From the camp behind the row of wagons at her back, she could hear a child shouting, something vicious and eager in the voice. A tremor of unease ran through her and she shot Hetan a glance. Sitting, staring at nothing.

This was taking too long. Warriors would be looking for their hobbled prize. Words would break loose-Estaral had been seen, dragging Hetan through the camp. Westward, yes. Out past the light of the fires.

She reached down and pulled Hetan to her feet. Took up the staff and pushed it into the woman’s hands. ‘Come!’

Estaral dragged her towards the picket. No movement from there. Something lying on this side, something that hadn’t been there earlier. Mouth dry, heart in her throat, she led Hetan closer.

The stench of faeces and urine and blood reached her. That shape-a body, lying still in death.

‘Bakal?’ she whispered.

Nothing. From the trench itself, a heavy silence. She crouched at the body, pulled it on to its back. She stared down at Bakal’s face: the frothy streaks of blood smearing his chin, the expression as of one lost, and finally, his staring, sightless eyes.

Another shout from the camp, closer this time. That’s Faranda-and that one, that’s Sekara. Spirits shit on them both!

Terror rushed through her. She crouched, like a hare with no cover in sight.

Hetan made to sink to her knees. ‘No!’ she hissed. ‘Stay up, damn you!’ She grasped the woman’s shirt again, tugged her stumbling round one end of the trench, out on to the plain.

Jade licked the grasses-a hundred paces ahead the ground rose, showing pieces of a ridge. The column had skirted round that, she recalled. ‘Hetan! Listen to me! Walk to that ridge-do you see it? Walk there. Just walk, do you understand? A man waits for you there-he’s impatient. He’s angry. Hurry to him or you’ll regret it. Hurry!’ She shoved her forward.

Hetan staggered, righted herself. For one terrible moment she simply stood where she was, and then the hobbled lurched into motion.

Estaral watched her for a dozen heartbeats-to be certain-and then she spun and ran back towards the camp. She could slip in unseen. Yes, she’d cleaned up Hetan’s face, and then had simply left her, close to the wagons-the bitch was dead behind the eyes, anyone could see that. She fled out on to the plain? Ridiculous, but if you want to go look, out where the Akrynnai are waiting, go right ahead.

She found shadows between two wagons, squeezed in. Figures were moving in and out of firelight. The shouts had stopped. If she avoided the hearths, she could thread her way back to where Strahl and the others were camped. She would have to tell him of Bakal’s death. Who would lead the Senan tomorrow? It would have to be Strahl. He would need to know, so he could ready his mind to command, to the weight of his clan’s destiny.

She edged forward.

Thirty paces on, they found her. Six women led by Sekara, with Faranda hovering in the background. Estaral saw them rushing to close and she drew her knife. She knew what they would do to her; she knew they weren’t interested in asking questions, weren’t interested in explanations. No, they will do to me what they did to Hetan. Bakal was gone, her protector was gone. There were, she realized, so many ways to be alone.

They saw her weapon. Avid desire lit their eyes-yes, they wanted blood. ‘I killed her!’ Estaral shrieked. ‘Bakal was using her-I killed them both!’

She lunged into their midst.

Blades flickered. Estaral staggered, spun even as she sank to her knees. Gleeful faces on all sides. Such bright hunger-oh, how alive they feel! She was bleeding out, four, maybe five wounds, heat leaking out from her body.

So stupid. All of it… so stupid. And with that thought she laughed out her last breath.

The massive bank of clouds on the western horizon now filled half the night sky, impenetrable and solid as a wall, building block by block to shut out the stars and the slashes of jade. Wind rustled the grasses, pulled from the east as if the storm was drawing breath. Yet no flashes lit the clouds, and not once had Cafal heard thunder. Despite this, his trepidation grew with every glance at the towering blackness.

Where was Bakal? Where was Hetan?

The bound grip of the hook-blade was slick in his hand. He had begun to shiver as the temperature plummeted.

He could save her. He was certain of it. He would demand the power from the Barghast gods. If they refused him, he vowed he would destroy them. No games, no bargains. I know it was your lust for blood that led to this. And I will make you pay.

Cafal dreaded the moment he first saw his sister, this mocking, twisted semblance of the woman he had known all his life. Would she even recognize him? Of course she would. She would lunge into his arms-an end to the torment, the rebirth of hope. Dread, yes, and then he would make it good again, all of it. They would flee west-all the way to Lether-

A faint sound behind him. Cafal whirled round.

The mace clipped him on his left temple. He reeled to the right, attempted to pivot and slash his weapon into the path of his attacker. A punch in the chest lifted him from his feet. He was twisted in the air, hook-blade flying from his hand, and it seemed the fist on his chest followed him down, driving deeper when he landed on his back. Bones grated, splintered.

He saw, uncomprehending, the shaft of the spear, upright as a standard, its head buried in his chest.

Shadowy shapes above him. The gauntleted hands gripping the spear now twisted and pushed down hard.

The point thrust through into the earth beneath him.

He struggled to make sense of things, but everything slipped through his nerveless fingers. Three, now four shapes looming over him, but not a word was spoken.

They watch me die. I’ve done the same. Why do we do that? Why are we so fascinated by this failure?

Because, I think, we see how easy it is.

The Akrynnai warrior holding the man down with his spear now relaxed. ‘He’s done,’ he said, tugging his weapon loose.

‘If he was scouting our camp,’ the mace-wielder said, ‘why was he facing the wrong way?’

‘Barghast,’ muttered a third man, and the others nodded. There was no sense to these damned savages.

‘Tomorrow,’ said the warrior now cleaning his spear, ‘we kill the rest of them.’

She stumbled onward, eyes on the black wall facing her, which seemed to lurch close only to recoil again, as if the world pulsed. The wind pushed her along now, solid as a hand at her back, and the thud of the staff’s heel thumped on and on.

When four Akrynnai warriors cut across her field of vision, she slowed and then halted, waiting for them to take her. But they didn’t. Instead, they made warding gestures and quickly vanished into the gloom. After a time, she set out once more, tottering, her breath coming in thick gasps now. The blisters on her hands broke and made the staff slick.

She walked until the world lost its strength, and then she sat down on the damp grasses beside a lichen-skinned boulder. The wind whipped at her shredded shirt. She stared unseeing, the staff sliding out from her hands. After a time she sank down on to her side, drawing her legs up.

And waited for the blackness to swallow the world.

It was as if night in all its natural order had been stolen away. Strahl watched as the White Faces fed their fires with anything that would burn, crying out to their gods. See us! Find us! We are your children! Goats were dragged to makeshift altars and their throats slashed open. Blood splashed and hoofed legs kicked and then fell to feeble trembling. Dogs fled the sudden, inexplicable slash of cutlass blades. Terror and madness whipped like the smoke and sparks and ashes from the bonfires. By dawn, he knew, not a single animal would be left alive.

If dawn ever comes.

He had heard about Estaral’s death. He had heard about what she had claimed to have done. None of that made sense. Bakal would not have used Hetan-clearly, Estaral had believed she would be with Bakal, that she would be his wife, and when she saw him with Hetan her insanity had painted the scene with the drenched colours of lust. She had murdered them both in a jealous rage.

Strahl cursed himself. He should have driven the widow away days ago. He should have made it plain that Bakal had no interest in her. Spirits below, if he’d seen even a hint of the mad light in her eyes, he would have killed her outright.

Now command of the Senan in the battle this dawn fell to him. He had been handed his most hidden ambition-when he had in fact already willingly surrendered it to stand in Bakal’s shadow. But desire, once it reached the mouth, never tasted as sweet as it did in anticipation. In fact, he was already choking on it.

Bakal had discussed the engagement with him. Had told him what he intended. Strahl had that much at least. And when the Senan gathered at dawn, he would summon the chiefs of the clan, and he would give him Bakal’s words as if they were his own. Would they listen?

He would know soon enough.

The sun opened its eye in the east and seemed to flinch in the face of the massive wall of dark clouds devouring half the sky. On the vast plain at the very edge of what had once been the lands of the Awl, two armies stirred. Bestial standards of the Barghast clans lifted like uneasy masts above the wind-flattened grasses, as ash from the enormous bonfires spun and swirled in the air thick as snow. Approaching from the southwest was a vast crescent, warriors mounted and on foot. Pennons snapped above legions of Saphii soldiers marching in phalanx, shields tilted to cut the wind, long spears blazing with the dawn’s fires. Companies of D’ras skirmishers and archers filled the gaps and ranged ahead of the main force in loose formations. Mounted archers advanced on the tips of the bhederin’s horns, backed by the heavier lancers. The horses were skittish beneath the Akrynnai warriors, and every now and then one reared or bolted and fellow riders would close to help calm the animal.

Along the summit of the ridge, Warleader Maral Eb had positioned the Senan in the centre, framed by the lesser clans. His own Barahn he had divided between his brothers, anchoring the outer flanks.

As the day awakened, the crescent approached the Barghast position, swinging south as scouts rode back to report on the field of battle.

All at once the wind fell off, and in its place frigid cold gripped the air. It was the heart of summer, yet breaths plumed and steam rose from the backs of thousands of horses. Warriors shivered, half with chill and half with sudden dread.

Was this a battle between gods? Were the Akrynnai spirits about to manifest like fangs in snapping jaws? Were the undead ancestor gods of the White Faces only moments from clambering up from the hard, frozen earth, chanting an ancient dirge of blood? Were mortal men and women destined to cower beneath the terrible clash of ascendants? Above them all, the sky was split in two, the brittle light of morning to the east, the unyielding darkness of night in the west. None-not Barghast, not Akrynnai, not Saphii nor D’ras-had ever before seen such a sky. It filled them with terror.

Frost sheathed the grasses and glistened on iron and bronze as icy cold air flowed out from beneath the storm front. Among the two armies, no fierce songs or chants rang out in challenge. An unnatural silence gripped the forces, even at the moment when the two masses of humanity came within sight of each other.

Not a single bird rode the febrile sky.

Yet the Akrynnai army marched closer to its hated enemy; and the enemy stood motionless awaiting them.

A thousand paces west of the Barghast position lay the body of a woman, curled in the frozen grasses with her back against a lichen-skinned boulder. A place to lie down, the last nest of her last night. Frost glittered like diamond scales upon her pale skin.

She had died alone, forty paces from the corpse of her brother. But this death belonged to the flesh. The woman that had been Hetan, wife to Onos Toolan, mother of Absi, Stavi and Storii, had died some time earlier. The body will totter past the dead husk of its soul, sometimes for days, sometimes for years.

She lay on frozen ground, complete in her scene of solitary surrender. Did the sky above blink in witness? Not even once? When a sky blinks, how long does it take between the sweep of darkness and the rebirth of light?

The ghosts, their wings burnt down to black stumps, waited to tell her the answers to those questions.

Saddic, are you still alive? I have dreamed a thing. This thing was a vision, the death of a lizard-wolf lying curled on its side, the danger of bones beneath the sun. Listen to my dream, Saddic, and remember.

Greed is the knife in the sheath of ambition. You see the wicked gleam when you’ve drawn too close. Too close to get away, and as I told you: greed invites death, and now death takes her twice. This thing was a vision. She died not forty paces from her brother, and above her two armies war in the heavens, and beasts that are brothers are about to lock jaws upon each other’s throat. Strange names, strange faces. Painted white like the Quitters. A man with sad eyes whose name is Sceptre Irkullas.

Such a sky, such a sky!

Greed and ambition, Saddic. Greed and treachery. Greed and justice. These are the reasons of fate, and every reason is a lie.

She was dead before dawn. I held her broken soul in my hands. I hold it still. As Rutt holds Held.

I knew a boy.

Absi, where are you?

Saddic listened, and then he said, ‘Badalle, I am cold. Tell me again about the fires. The wonderful fires.’

But these fires were burned down to cinders and ash. The cold was the cold of another world.

Saddic, listen. I have seen a door. Opening.