Forge of Darkness

SEVENTEEN

‘Did he ever speak of family?’

Feren said nothing to Ville’s question, and after a moment it was Rint who said, ‘Not that I recall. He talked only of House Dracons. It was the home he had made and if there was something before then, they were ashes he would not stir among us.’

‘Why should he?’ Galak demanded. ‘Sergeant or not, he was our commanding officer. I don’t see how our ignorance excuses anything. We may well be discharged from the Lord’s compass, but this does not absolve us from decency.’

‘He is not a Bordersword,’ Rint said in a growl. ‘I have no desire to ride back to House Dracons just to deliver a headless corpse. I have a newborn child and would see it.’

Feren held her gaze fixed on the way ahead, the rolling grasses and the dark wavy line that marked hills to the northeast. They had already left the trail they had made when venturing west. If Ville and Galak won this argument, they would have to cut across, straight east, to reach Abara Delack.

Their horses were tired, and the wrapped body of Gate Sergeant Raskan made pungent every wayward gust of wind.

‘We can build a cairn in the hills ahead,’ said Rint. ‘We can surrender his empty flesh to the realm of Mother Dark, and make all the necessary propitiations. There is nothing dishonourable in that. And if need be, we can send a message back to House Dracons, specifying the location of that cairn, should someone wish to come and collect the body.’

‘How could such a message not be deemed an insult?’ Ville said. ‘I don’t understand you, Rint. If we cannot hold to courtesy, what is left to us?’

‘I am past courtesy,’ Rint snapped. ‘If you and Galak feel it is so important, then deliver him. But I am returning home.’

‘Feren?’ Galak asked.

‘She took him,’ Feren replied. ‘The witch stole his soul. It matters not where you leave what’s left, or even that you make propitiation. Mother Dark will never receive his soul. Raskan is gone from us.’

‘The rituals serve the conscience of the living,’ Ville insisted. ‘Mine. Yours. His kin.’

She shrugged. ‘I see no salve in empty gestures, Ville.’

Galak grunted in frustration, and then said, ‘Would that we had never parted. You and me, Ville, we tell ourselves and each other that we ride in the company of two old friends. They well look the part.’

Everyone fell silent then, and the thumping of horse hoofs filled the cool afternoon air. Feren half closed her eyes, settling back into the rhythmic roll of her mount’s slow canter. In a short while they would slow their pace back down to a walk, and the distant hills would seem no closer and the homeland beyond would remain lost in longing and fearful uncertainty — as if distance alone could call its very existence into question.

There were ways of resenting the world that she had never known before, never sensed, and she would never have believed anyone’s claim to their veracity. She cursed the stretch of grassland. She cursed the pointless immensity of the sky overhead, its painless blue of daytime and its cruel indifference at night. The wind’s ceaseless moaning filled her head like the distant wailing of a thousand children, and every harsh breath bit at her eyes.

With the coming of dusk she would sit huddled with the others, and the fire they made would mock with every tongue of flame. And she would hear the witch’s laughter, and then her terrible screams which now came to Feren and sank in, stealing her satisfaction, her pleasure at what her brother had done. Instead, that sound of pain haunted her, leaving her feeling belittled and shamed.

The easy camaraderie among the Borderswords was gone. Her brother would sit with bruised eyes that caught the reflection of the fire, and she remembered the cry of anguish that had been torn from him when she had held on to his rigid body. She could not imagine what he had taken from her in that moment, to give him the strength to strike back at the witch. For the scar she now bore. For the murder of an innocent man. She had no courage to match his, and if he would now ride for home, she would ride with him and voice no objection.

She told herself that Rint was as he had once been: the brother who would always be there, protecting her from the world and its cruel turns. But the truth was that she doubted her own convictions, and for all of her gestures, her willingness to follow Rint, she felt herself falling behind him. She was a child again, and that was no place to be, with what she carried in her womb. Somewhere, in this vast landscape, the woman that she had been — strong, resolute — now wandered lost. Without that woman, Feren felt bereft and weak beyond measure, even as her brother seemed to be rushing towards an unknown but terrible fate.

She’d had no final parting words for Arathan, and this too shamed her. Few would not scorn the notion of an innocent father. After all, the guilt was in the conception, the act of wilful surrender. But she saw him as innocent. The knowledge and the wilfulness had belonged solely to her, and she suspected that she would have seduced him even without his father’s command.

The sky was deepening its hue, remote in its unchanging laws, its crawling progression that looked down with blind eyes and gave no thought to wounded souls and their hopeless longing for peace. If self-pity was a depthless pool then she skirted its muddy, slippery bank on hands and knees, round and round. Awareness made no difference. Knowledge was useless. She held innocence in her womb and felt like a thief.

Ville spoke. ‘A cairn it shall be, then. You two are not the only ones longing for home.’

She saw her brother nod, but he said nothing, and she felt the silence that followed Ville’s words harden about them all. Submission without a word of thanks made plain the surrender, and that could only sting. Rifts were forming and widening and soon, she knew, they would not be able to cross them. She shook herself, straightening in the saddle. ‘Thank you both,’ she said. ‘We are in a broken place, my brother and me. Even Rint’s vengeance stretches too far behind us, while poor Raskan draws so close we might as well be carrying him on our backs.’

Ville’s eyes were wide when she glanced at him.

Galak cleared his throat and spat to one side. ‘That’s a taste I am well rid of. My thanks, Feren.’

Abruptly, Rint shuddered, sobbed, and began weeping.

They all reined in. ‘That’s it for today,’ Feren said, her voice harsh. She slipped down from the saddle and went over to help her brother dismount. He had curled in around his torment and it was a struggle to get him down from his horse. Both Ville and Galak arrived to help.

Rint sank to the ground. He kept shaking his head, even as sobs racked him. Feren gestured Ville and Galak away and then held her brother tight. ‘We’re a useless pair,’ she muttered softly to Rint. ‘Let’s blame our parents and be done with it.’

A final sob broke, ended in a ragged laugh.

They stayed clenched together, and he stilled in her arms.

‘I hate him,’ he said with sudden vehemence.

Feren glanced over at Ville and Galak. They stood over their packs, staring, frozen by Rint’s words.

‘Who?’ she asked. ‘Who do you hate, Rint?’

‘Draconus. For what he’s done to us. For this cursed journey!’

‘He is behind us now,’ she said. ‘We are going home, Rint.’

But he shook his head, pulling himself loose from her arms and rising to his feet. ‘It’s not enough, Feren. He will return. He will take his place at Mother Dark’s side. This user of children, this abuser of love. Evil is at its boldest when it walks an unerring path.’

‘He has enemies enough at court-’

‘To the Abyss with the court! I now count myself his enemy, and I will speak against our neutrality to all the Borderswords. The Consort must be driven out, his power shattered. I would see him slain, cut down. I would see his name become a curse among all the Tiste!’

Her brother stood, trembling, his eyes wide but hard as iron as he glared at Feren, and then at Ville and Galak. ‘That witch was his lover,’ he continued, wiping at the tears streaking his cheeks. ‘What does that tell you about Draconus? About the cast of his soul?’ He marched over to where Raskan’s body was bound across the back of the sergeant’s horse. ‘Let’s ask Raskan, shall we? This poor man under the so-called protection of his lord.’ He tore at the leather strings, but the knots resisted him, until he simply tugged the moccasins from the dead man’s feet, and then dragged the corpse free. His foot caught and he fell back with the wrapped form in his arms. They landed heavily. Swearing, Rint pushed the body away and stood, ashen-faced. ‘Ask Raskan what he thinks. About his lord, his master and all the women he has taken into his arms. Ask Raskan about Olar Ethil, the Azathanai witch who murdered him.’

Feren released her breath. Her heart was thumping fast. ‘Rint, our neutrality-’

‘Will be abused! Is already being abused! It is our standing to one side that yields ground to the ambitious. Neutrality? See how easily it acquires the colours of cowardice! I will argue an alliance with Urusander, for all the Borderswords. Sister, tell me that you are with me! You bear visible proof of what that man has done!’

‘Don’t.’

‘Take his coin and surrender your body — that is how Draconus sees it! He respects nothing, Feren. Not your feelings, not the losses in your past, not the wounds you will carry for the rest of your life — none of that matters to him. He sought a grandchild-’

‘No!’ Her cry echoed, and each time her voice came back to her from the empty plain it sounded yet more plaintive, more pathetic. ‘Rint, listen to me. I was the one who wanted the child.’

‘Then why did he drive you away from his son once he determined that you were pregnant?’

‘To save Arathan.’

‘From what?’

‘From me, you fool.’

Her reply silenced him and she saw his shock, and then his struggle to understand her. Weakness took her once again and she turned away. ‘I was the one walking an unerring path, unmindful of the people I hurt, Rint.’

‘Draconus invited you into his world, Feren. He did not care that you were vulnerable.’

‘When he cut me from Arathan, he saved both of us. I know you can’t see it that way. Or you won’t. You want to hurt Draconus, just as you hurt Olar Ethil. It’s just the same, and it’s all down to your need to strike out, to make someone else feel the pain you’re feeling. My wars are over with, Rint.’

‘Mine are not!’

She nodded. ‘I see that.’

‘I expected you to stand with me, Feren.’

She turned on him. ‘Why? Are you so certain that you’re doing all this for me? I’m not. I don’t want it! I just want my brother back!’

Rint seemed to crumple before her eyes, and once more he sank down to the ground, covering his face with his hands.

‘Abyss take us,’ Ville said. ‘Stop this. Both of you. Rint, we will hear your arguments and we will vote on them. Feren, you are with child. No one would expect you to unsheathe your sword. Not now.’

She shook her head. Poor Ville didn’t understand, but she could not blame him for that.

‘We have far to go,’ Galak added in a soft tone. ‘And on the morrow, we shall reach the hills, and find a place for Raskan’s body. A place of gentle regard to embrace his bones. When we return to our homelands I will ride on to House Dracons and inform Captain Ivis of the location. For now, my friends, let us make camp.’

Feren looked out on the plain to the south. There was a path there, distant now and fading, that trekked westward into strange lands. There were patches of ground with soft grasses that had known the pressure of a man and a woman drawn together by unquenchable needs. The same sky that was above her now looked down on those remnants, those faint and vanishing impressions, and the wind that slid across her face, plucking at the tears on her cheeks, whipped and swirled but flowed ever southward, and sometime in the night would brush those grasses.

Life could reach far, into the past where it grasped hold of things and dragged them howling into the present. And distance could breed resentment, when all the promises of the future remained for ever beyond reach. And the child shifting in her womb, as the day died, felt like a thing lost in the wilderness, and as its faint cries reached her from no known place she knelt, eyes closed, hands over her ears.

Rint dared not look again at his sister; not to see her as she was, on her knees and broken by the words they had flung between them. He left Ville and Galak to make ready the camp, and sat staring into the northeast, trapped in his own desolation.

It was a struggle to envisage the face of his wife. When he imagined her sitting wrapped in furs with a newborn child against her breast, he saw a stranger. Two strangers. His hands would not cease trembling. They felt hot, as if they still held the fires they had unleashed in that moment of fury, so fierce with brutal vengeance. He did not regret the pain he had delivered upon Olar Ethil; but when he thought of it, he saw himself first, a figure silhouetted by towering flames, and the screams filling the smoke and ashes rising into the air became the voice of the trees, the agony of blackening leaves and snapping branches. He stood then, like a god, face lit in the reflection of his undeniable triumph. A witness to the destruction, even when that destruction was his own. Such a man knew no love, not for a wife, not for a child. Such a man knew nothing but violence and so made of himself a stranger to everyone.

Insects spun through the dusk. Behind him he heard Ville muttering something to Galak, and the smoke from the cookfire drifted past him, like serpents escaping another realm, fleeing off into the gathering darkness. He looked across to where he had left Raskan’s cloth-wrapped body. The hands were stretched out, bruised and swollen, and where the leather strings were tied round the wrists they now bit deep. Beyond them were the moccasins, lying on the grass. Draconus was free with his gifts indeed.

Urusander would find a way. He would crush the madness and force peace upon Kurald Galain. But blood would flow and the struggle would be arduous. If only the guilty died, then such deaths could be deemed just, and so make of each unfortunate murder an act of execution. Justice was at the heart of retribution, after all.

For too long had the highborn lounged, smug and complacent with the privileges that came with the wielding of power. But nothing of worth was given for free. Privilege was a bright weed growing on the spilled blood of the enslaved, and Rint saw nothing precious in such bitter flowers. When he looked ahead, he could think of nothing but smoke and flames, the only answers he had left.

It was Draconus’s noble blood that had yoked them all, dragging them through misery and unfeeling abuse. Without his title, he was no different from any of them. And yet they had bowed before him. They had knelt in deference, and by each and every such act they but served to confirm the Lord’s own sense of superiority. These were the rituals of inequity, and everyone knew their role.

He thought back to Tutor Sagander’s nonsense — the appalling lessons the old man had thrust upon Arathan on the first days out. The self-righteous could argue unto their last breath, so certain were they of their stance, and yet with outrage would they view any accusation of being self-serving. But smugness filled the silence after every pronouncement they made, as if condescension were virtue’s reward.

The Borderswords were men and women who had rejected the stilted rigidity of Kharkanas and sought out a rawer truth in the wild lands upon the very edge of civilization. They claimed to live under older laws, the kind that bound all forms of life, but Rint wondered now if the very sentiment had been forged on an anvil of lies. Innocence withered before knowing eyes just as it had once withered behind them. The first foot set upon virgin ground despoiled; the first touch stained; the first embrace broke the bones of the wild.

Outside House Dracons, it had been Ville — or was it Galak — who had bemoaned the slaughter of the beasts, and yet dreamed of taking the last creature by spear or arrow, if only to bring an end to its loneliness. That was a sentiment breathless in its stupidity and tragedy. It arrived as punctuation, and only idiotic silence could follow. And yet Rint knew the truth of it, and felt its heavy reverberation, like a curse to haunt his kind down the ages.

He would fight for justice. And, if need be, he would expose to the Borderswords the sordid delusion of their so-called neutrality. Life was a war against a thousand enemies, from the sustenance carved from nature to the insanity of a people’s will to do wrong in the name of right. His hands trembled, he now knew, from the blood they had spilled, and their eagerness to spill yet more.

There was a truth that came with standing as would a god, with eyes fixed upon the destruction his malign will had wrought. To be a god was to know utter loneliness, and yet find comfort in isolation. When one stood alone with nothing but power in one’s hands, violence was a seductive lure.

And now, dear Ville, I long for a spear to the back, an arrow to the throat.

Give me war, then. I have walked from complex truth to simple lie, and I cannot go back.

It is no crime to end a life that sees what it has lost.

The sun was a red smear to the west. Behind him, Galak announced that supper was ready, and Rint climbed to his feet. He looked across to his sister, but she had not turned at the invitation. He thought of the child growing within her, and felt only sadness. Another stranger. Blinking and then wailing to a new world. Only innocent before the first breath drawn. Only innocent until the birth of need and its desperate voice. A sound we all hear and will hear for the rest of our lives.

What god would not flee that?

‘We have company,’ said Ville, and, straightening, he drew out his sword.

Five beasts were approaching from the west. Tall as horses, but heavier in the way of predators. Black-furred with heads slung low, bearing collars of iron blades. Insects swarmed in clouds around them.

‘Sheathe your weapon,’ Rint told Ville. ‘Jheleck.’

‘I know what they are,’ snapped Ville.

‘And we are at peace.’

‘What we are, Rint, is four Borderswords alone on the plain.’

One of the huge wolves held the carcass of an antelope in its massive jaws. The antelope seemed small, like a hare in the mouth of a hunting dog. Rint shook his head. ‘Put the weapon away, Ville. If they wanted to kill us, they would have rushed in. The war is over. They were vanquished, and like any beaten dog they will yield to our command.’ But his mouth was dry, and the horses shifted uneasily as the Soletaken drew closer.

He felt something come to his eyes, stinging, and saw the five forms blur, as if melting into the dusk, only to reappear as fur-clad savages. They paused to remove their collars, the one bearing the carcass now throwing it over a shoulder. The cloud of flies lifted briefly, and then swept down once again.

During the wars, there had been few opportunities to look upon the Jheleck in their upright, sembled form. Even when a village was attacked, the fleeing non-combatants had quickly veered to aid their escape, and Rint recalled riding down many of them, pinning them to the earth with his lance and hearing their cries of pain amidst the snapping of their jaws. There had been much to admire and respect in the wolves they fought and killed. Individually, they were far more formidable than a Forulkan. Massed as armies, however, they had been next to useless. Jheleck were at their deadliest in small packs, such as the one that now drew to within a dozen paces of their camp.

Looking upon them now, however, Rint saw five savages, rank with filth and mostly naked under loose fur skins. The one bearing the antelope stepped closer and set the carcass down. Showing filthy teeth in a smile, he spoke in guttural Tiste. ‘Meat for your fire, Bordersword.’ Dark eyes shifted over to Ville. ‘We saw the flash of your blade and it amused us. But where is your memory? Our war is done, is it not?’ He waved a hand. ‘You cross Jheleck land and we permit it. We come to you as hosts, with food. But if you would rather fight, why, we will happily accept the challenge. Indeed, we even agree to stand against you on two legs, as you see us, to more even the odds.’

Rint said, ‘You offered us meat for our fire. Will you join us in the repast, Jhelarkan?’

The man laughed. ‘Just so. Peace and hostages, like jaws around the throat. We’ll not twitch, until it is time for the slave to turn on the master, and that time is not now.’ He looked back to his companions and they came forward. Eyes fixing on Rint once more, the savage said, ‘I am Rusk, blood kin to Sagral of the Derrog Clan.’

‘I am Rint, and with me are Feren, Ville and Galak.’

Rusk nodded at his sister. ‘We can use her tonight?’

‘No.’

‘Oh well,’ Rusk said, shrugging. ‘In truth, we did not expect you to share. Not the Tiste way. But if not her for the meat, then what gift will you offer us?’

‘Something in return, Rusk, at some other time. If that is not acceptable, then take back your gift and with it the word itself, for gift it is not.’

Rusk laughed. ‘Tell the Borderswords, then, of my generosity.’

‘I will. Galak, take care of the carcass. Rusk, Galak is skilled with the skinning knife. You will have a decent hide at least.’

‘And useful antlers and useful bones, yes. And full bellies. Good. Now, we sit.’

The other Jhelarkan lumbered up and sat in a rough half-circle facing the Borderswords. Except for Rusk, they were young, and seemed ignorant of the Tiste language. Their leader squatted, the grin never leaving his dirt-smeared face. With Feren forbidden him, he now ignored her, and Rint was glad.

‘We do not agree with giving hostages, Borderswords,’ Rusk now said, ‘but we have done so. Fine pups one and all. If you harm them, we shall slaughter the Tiste and burn Kharkanas to the ground. We shall split your bones and bury your skulls. We shall piss on your temples and rut in your palaces.’

‘No harm will come to the hostages,’ Rint said, ‘so long as you remain true to your words.’

‘So you Tiste keep saying. Even the Jaghut nod and say it is so. But now we hear that Tiste kill Tiste. You are a pack with a weak leader, and too many among you eager to take his place. There is blood in the mouth and fur on the ground in Kurald Galain.’

Rint held his gaze on the Jheleck and said, ‘We have been away for some time. Do you voice rumours or have you witnessed the things you describe?’

Rusk shrugged. ‘War rides the winds and lifts the hackles. We see you wound yourselves, and we wait to strike.’

Ville grunted. ‘So much for keeping your word!’

‘We fear for the safety of our pups, Bordersword. Just as you would your own.’

‘With you upon our borders,’ Ville retorted, ‘we had cause for fear.’

‘But that is done now,’ Rusk said, still grinning. ‘We live with the new peace, Bordersword. The peace of empty villages and empty lands. Often, we look upon your hunting packs, as they travel with impunity across our homeland, seeking the last of the wild beasts. And when those beasts are gone, what shall the Jheleck eat? Grass?’ He nodded. ‘Peace, yes, plenty of that, written in bleached bones in old camps.’

Galak hacked at a hind joint.

‘You have pups with you,’ Rint said, nodding at the others.

‘I teach them how to hunt, and so we all learn to go hungry, and come to understand all that we have lost. One day, they will be savage killers, and this night they take your scent and will keep it for all time.’

Feren said, ‘If you are going hungry, why offer any to us?’

Rusk scowled. ‘A host can do no less. But you Tiste do not comprehend honour. Only four days ago, the Borderswords gathered and rode out on to our land. They have word of a bhederin herd coming down from the north, and would make slaughter. They ride past our villages and laugh as they race our warriors to kill-sites. And when they have killed hundreds of the beasts, will they offer any to us? No. They will claim those carcasses as their own and take the meat, hides and bones away. We watch. We smile. And we vow to remember all that we see.’

‘The Bordersword villages need meat for the winter,’ Ville said.

‘And long before the war, you took all you could from our lands, and so we made war-’

‘And lost it!’

Rusk smiled again and nodded. ‘We lost, and you may believe that you won. But when all the beasts are gone, will your victory fill your bellies? Will it taste any less bitter than our defeat? What you own you must nurture. But you Tiste do not understand that. All that you own you use, until it is used up, and then you cast your vision past your borders, and scheme to take again, this time from others.’

‘I have hunted on your lands,’ Ville said. ‘I saw no nurture passing through your kill-sites.’

‘Then you did not look carefully enough. We take the weak and leave the strong.’

‘You took every beast,’ Ville said.

Rusk laughed. ‘We were defeated. We learned your ways of killing, but we found the winters long when we had naught but ghosts to hunt. You killed thousands of us. You made us few, and the irony of that is that it returned us to our old ways. And now we breed but rarely, and keep only the strongest pups. And when at last all the Tiste are dead, then we shall nurture the herds, until their numbers are vast once more, and we will make each new day the same as the day past, for all time, and know contentment.’ He held up his hands. ‘So we dream. But then your hunters pour over the border and the wise ones among us see the truth awaiting us. Yours is the language of death, and it will speak to us.’

Meat sizzled on skewers over the fire. The night had drawn close. Rint pushed away Rusk’s words and stared into the flames. He thought he could see the witch’s face, twisting with pain, the mouth opened to an endless shriek he could not hear but felt in his bones. He had wanted to spend this night alone, saying little and quick to take to his bedding. Instead, he found himself face to face with a filthy half-beast who smiled a smile devoid of humour, and whose dark eyes belonged to a wolf.

‘Rusk,’ said Galak, ‘when did you see the Bordersword hunters?’

‘Hunters, butchers, skinners, bone-splitters. Dogs, horses, mules and oxen pulling wagons. On another day their numbers would make them an army. They rode armed and wary, with scouts tracking our own hunters.’ He waved a greasy hand. ‘Days past now.’

‘How many days? Five? Ten?’

Rusk sat forward, forearms on the knees of his crossed legs, and offered Galak that same, hard smile. ‘We have kin, scouting your lands. They move at night and remain hidden. We have seen armies on this side of the river. One rode into Abara Delack. Another gathers in the hills of House Dracons-’

‘That one is the Lord’s own,’ said Galak. ‘You evade answering, Rusk.’

‘I am indifferent to your need, Bordersword. I tell you what I choose to tell you. Your civil war has begun. We rejoice and sniff the wind for smoke, and look to the skies for the carrion birds. You killed us before, but now you kill each other and this pleases us.’

It was not long before the carcass was stripped down to the bones. Galak rolled up the antelope’s hide and offered it to Rusk, along with the antlers and the long bones. Grunting, the Jhelarkan leader gestured to his hunters and as one they rose.

‘Your company is bitter,’ he announced. ‘We return to the night. Remember our generosity, Borderswords, and tell the tale of this meeting to your hunters, so that they may at last understand courtesy.’

‘It is a thought,’ Rint allowed, ‘that we might work best together. To hunt the great herds and to share in the bounty.’

‘Rint, there are no great herds.’

The figures withdrew from the fire’s light, and in moments were gone.

Ville spat into the flames. ‘I think he lied,’ he said in a growl. ‘About those armies. He would stir us to alarm and fear.’

Galak said, ‘We well know that there is an army at House Dracons, Ville, just as he described. He may have thrown more than a few truths into his words to us.’

‘And Abara Delack? Why would any army, rebel or otherwise, occupy Abara Delack?’

‘We don’t know,’ Rint said, wanting to end this debate. ‘We’ve been away for too long. There is no point in speculating. Listen, our bellies are full for the first time in months. Let us sleep now, with the aim of riding hard on the morrow.’

‘I hope,’ said Ville, ‘the hunt went well.’

Lieutenant Risp studied the blockish silhouette that was Riven Keep. The solitary tower, which rose from a clutter of lower buildings huddled around it, showed a single, faint light, coming from a room on the top floor, just beneath the peaked roof. There was a low wall, she had been told, surrounding this ancient fort, marked by banked revetments. To assault Riven Keep an army would find itself descending steep ditches forming a treacherous maze beyond the walls, all under arrow fire from the revetments, and crowding into chokepoints where the ground underfoot would be uneven and even retreat would prove impossible. It was well, she concluded, that they were not facing an enemy aware of the threat drawing close.

The village below Riven Keep formed a half-circle round the hill, and these houses sprawled to the very edges of community pastureland. Risp could smell the smoke in the cool night air. Twisting in her saddle, she squinted at the waiting soldiers of her own troop. Weapons were drawn but held at rest across saddles and thighs. No one spoke and the only sound came from the occasional shift or snort from a horse. Beyond her unit waited others, all equally silent, gathered in mounted squares in the basins to either side of the road.

Upon the road itself, Captain Esthala led the centre unit, with her husband further along to the woman’s right. The thought of that still left a bitter taste in Risp’s mouth, but she told herself that Silann was not her problem, and if Esthala continued to refuse to do what was needed, well, she would answer to Hunn Raal. For once, Risp was relieved to find herself outranked. Better still, Esthala’s ambitions were now doomed: she would never be promoted, or welcomed among the higher ranks in the Legion.

Stupid woman. All for the sake of love. All for a fool better suited to hoeing vegetables than swinging a sword. Not only didn’t you execute him; you didn’t even demote him, or throw him out. Instead, we must all suffer his incompetence and pray to the Abyss that it doesn’t kill us. When she took over command here…

The sergeant cleared his throat and edged his mount up to her side. ‘Sir, this doesn’t sit well with some of us.’

And I know which, too. Your days are numbered, sergeant. You and your old cronies. ‘We must divide our enemies,’ she said, shrugging. ‘Deceit is an essential component of military tactics. Furthermore, what creditable commander does not take advantage of surprise, or the miscalculations of the enemy?’

‘The enemy, sir? I am sure that they are unaware that they are anyone’s enemy. Is this the miscalculation to which you are referring?’

She heard the awkward formality in his words and was amused. ‘One of them.’

‘Most of the combatants are not here,’ the sergeant said, nodding towards the village. ‘Occupation will suffice to eliminate the Borderswords as a threat to the Legion, by virtue of holding their families under guard.’

‘That is true, but at the expense of committing a defendable force to oversee those hostages, for an unknown period of time.’

‘Few would resist overmuch,’ the sergeant countered. ‘They are neutral as it stands. Instead, we give them reason to reject that neutrality.’

‘Indeed,’ she agreed.

‘Then I do not understand.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘And you don’t need to, sergeant. Take your orders and leave it at that.’

‘If we know what we’re about, sir, then there’s less chance of doing the wrong thing.’

‘Sergeant, with what is about to come down to that village, there’s nothing you could do that would earn our wrath.’ She looked across at him. ‘Barring disobeying orders.’

‘We won’t do that, sir,’ the old man said in a growl.

‘Of course you won’t.’ But even as Risp said that, she felt the hollowness to the assertion. It was hard to know where their orders were coming from. Was this still Hunn Raal’s gambit, or had Urusander finally taken to the field? Where was Osserc? For all they knew here, the entire plan might be in ruins somewhere behind them, lying lifeless behind Hunn Raal’s unseeing eyes in some muddy field, or upon the old spikes of the Citadel’s riverwall, making what they were about to do a crime and an inexcusable atrocity. She knew her own unease with what was to come.

There would always be miscalculations in any campaign. The Tiste had faced near disaster against the Forulkan on more than one occasion, when miscommunication or the outright absence of communication had sent elements to the wrong place at the wrong time. There was nothing more difficult than linking up armies and manoeuvring such large forces into position. Ensuring that they acted effectively and in concert was a commander’s greatest challenge. It was no accident that commanders were at their most comfortable when they could amass all the forces at their disposal. Of course, once battle commenced, everything changed. Upon the field, the company captains and their corps of officers were crucial.

She looked again at the distant keep, and that lone light upon the top floor. Had someone fallen asleep in a soft chair, with the candle burning down? Or was there a guard stationed in the tower, acting as a lookout? The latter did not seem likely, as light in the chamber would make it impossible to see anything outside. Perhaps some cleric or scholar was working through the night, muttering under his or her breath and cursing failing eyesight and aching bones. Risp could feel the chill in the wind coming down from the mountains to the north.

The Borderswords were welcome to this remote, cold place.

‘Sir,’ said the old sergeant.

‘What now?’

‘Once we are done here, will we be returning to besiege House Dracons?’

She recalled the day and the night during which they had camped at the very edge of the estate. The Lord’s Houseblades had ridden out in strength, as if to challenge this unwelcome army camped on its doorstep, but Esthala had been indifferent to the gesture, instead sending a rider to the Houseblade Commander, assuring him that her Legion units intended no violence upon the holdings of the Consort.

The Houseblade captain had been unappeased by these pronouncements, and had maintained his forces in readiness for all the time that the Legion remained on Dracons land, even going so far as to ride parallel to their column for a time, once it resumed its northward journey. Lord Draconus had assembled a formidable company, heavily armoured and impressively disciplined. Risp was in truth relieved that the Consort’s Houseblades were not among Esthala’s targets.

‘Sir?’

‘No, sergeant, we will not be returning to House Dracons. We have done what was needed. We have left a column trail back to his estate.’

There was a sound from the road and Risp glanced over to the vanguard and saw the standards of House Dracons being raised aloft.

The sergeant swore under his breath, and then said, ‘With us out of uniform, I was assuming we’d be laying the blame on the Deniers. Now I see how this will be played.’

‘We need deception,’ Risp said. ‘More to the point, we need our enemies divided and at each other’s throat.’

‘Then there are to be survivors.’

‘It would be foolish to think no one will escape the slaughter, sergeant. And yes, we are relying upon that.’ She met his eyes. ‘We must do what is necessary.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘As every soldier understands.’

He nodded, reaching up to adjust the strap on his helm.

The command rippled out from unit to unit to begin the advance. Behind them, the sun was just beginning its rise, copper red from the smoke above the forest to the east. She readied her lance. My first battle. My first engagement. Today I will spill blood for the first time. Her mouth was dry and she could feel her heart thumping in her chest. She set her heels to her mount’s flanks and they began to move.

Krissen let the scroll fall fluttering to the floor, joining a dozen others, and reached up to rub her eyes. She felt exhausted in her mind and weak in her flesh, but currents of excitement remained. There was no doubt in her mind now. Forty years ago she had travelled alone among the Jhelarkan, into the fastnesses high in the mountains and to the tundra beyond. Moving from clan to clan, she had made her way westward until arriving among the giant Thel Akai, the Keepers of Songs, and from there southward, into Jaghut lands. She had collected stories, legends and songs from the Jhelarkan and the Thel Akai, and had read through the dispirited but enlightened writings of the Jaghut before the originals had been destroyed following the Lord of Hate’s murdering of Jaghut civilization.

In every tale, truths could be found, dull as river stones in a gem-laden mosaic. They needed only prising loose, out of the gaudy clutter and poetic trappings. Among the ancient songs, locked by the extraordinary memory of the Thel Akai, secrets waited.

Krissen understood the First Age now; not in its details, but in its broadest strokes. Everything began with the Azathanai, who walked worlds in the guise of mortals, but were in truth gods. They created. They destroyed. They set things into motion, driven by a curiosity which often waned, leaving to the fates all that followed. They displayed perverse impulses; they viewed one another with indifference or suspicion, yet upon meeting often displayed extraordinary empathy. They held to unwritten laws on sanctity, territorial interests and liberty, and they played with power as would a child a toy.

She could not be certain, but she suspected that one of them had created the Jaghut. That another had answered in kind with the Tiste. Forulkan, Thel Akai, perhaps even the Dog-Runners, were all fashioned by the will of an Azathanai. Created like game pieces in an eternal contest, mysterious in its conditions of victory, in which few strategies were observable. Their interest in this contest rarely accounted outcomes.

But even as they stood outside time, so too did time prove immune to their manipulations, and now, at last, they had begun suffering its depredations. Deeds accumulated, and each one carried weight. She was certain that the Jaghut had created the Jhelarkan, elaborating on the Azathanai gift of Soletaken, and among the Dog-Runners there were now Bonecasters, shamans powerful enough to challenge the Azathanai. Gods were rising from the created peoples — their own gods. Whatever control the Azathanai had once held over their creations was fast tearing free.

She had heard about the mysterious Azathanai who had come to Kharkanas, and even now, among sages and priests, an awareness was emerging that unknown powers were within the reach of mortals. The world was changing. The game had broken away from the players.

Krissen saw before them now the beginning of a new age, one in which all the created peoples could define their own rules.

Hearing something like low thunder from the window, she rose, arching to work the kinks out of her back, and then walked to the lone window where the dawn’s light now paled the sky beyond. She looked down to see hundreds of riders converging on the village below.

For a long moment she simply stared, unable to comprehend what she was seeing. The riders broke up to pour into the streets, and down alleys and tracks. She saw figures appearing from their homes, saw some running from the path of the riders, and then came the flash of iron, or the thrust of lances, and bodies fell to the dirt.

Like pieces on a board. Moves made and then countered. Pieces falling. Faintly now, she could hear screams, and the first column of smoke lifted into the morning sky.

She had nothing of Gallan’s artistry with words, and the more she saw, the more words failed her, each one arriving in her mind listless and pallid. She was a scholar, one whom ideas inspired more than execution, and to put her thoughts into words, upon parchment, had always been a struggle.

Even in her head, her sense of the Azathanai was almost formless, a thing of impressions and strange upwelling emotions. Her failure had always been in the marriage of imagination with the pragmatic. And now, as she watched the slaughter below, and saw the first riders climbing the cobbled track leading up to Riven Keep — an edifice undefended and virtually unoccupied — she felt incapable of binding these details to any personal impetus.

A new age was upon them. How can you not see that? How can you not understand? I have made discoveries. It was all there, in the stories and the songs. Such discoveries!

The keep gate isn’t even closed.

Instincts had reared, beast-like, and now Risp felt herself knocked about on her saddle, her lance dragging and stuttering heavily on the cobbles, yanking her arm back. Impaled on the weapon was a boy of about five years of age. He had darted out from behind a rag cart, almost into her path, and she had struck without thought, and now his limp body was skewered, his limbs flopping as his weight pulled at her.

A sob broke from her throat, a sound broken with horror. She bit back on it. The lance head stabbed into the ground again and this time she relaxed her grip, releasing the weapon. Directly ahead was a heavily pregnant woman, pulling two children with her as she ran down the alley.

Something cold and empty drove all thoughts from Risp, and she felt her hand draw free her longsword, saw the blade flash in front of her.

As she closed on the three, she saw the woman throw both children ahead of her, screaming ‘ Run! ’ And then she spun round, leaping into the path of Risp’s horse.

The impact sent the woman flying back, to land stunned on the cobbles.

Risp’s horse staggered, coughing, forelegs folding under it. As it collapsed, Risp kicked her boots free of the stirrups and rolled from the saddle. She struck the ground on her right shoulder, felt the sword clatter away from a senseless hand, and came up against the wall of a building. Looking up, she saw her sergeant ride past, slashing down at the nearest of the two children, who fell without a sound. The other child, a girl of about four, wheeled to rush to her fallen sister, and came within reach of the sergeant’s sword. He cut down across the back of her neck and she crumpled like a doll.

Picking herself up, Risp collected her sword, left-handed, and awkwardly readied the weapon. Only now did she see the handle of a knife, its blade embedded in the chest of her dying horse. Fury took hold and she advanced on the pregnant woman. ‘You killed my horse!’ she shouted.

The pregnant woman lifted her head and met Risp’s eyes. Her face twisted and she spat at Risp.

She hacked the woman down with repeated blows.

Beyond them, at the alley mouth, the sergeant had reined in and spun his horse round. He seemed about to shout something, and then a figure leapt down from the roof to the sergeant’s left, colliding with the veteran and dragging him from the saddle. Blood sprayed the moment before they struck the cobbles, and the figure rose into a crouch, glaring across at Risp.

A young woman of sixteen or so. She dragged free a long-bladed knife from under the sergeant’s ribcage, and then advanced on Risp.

Sensation was returning to the lieutenant’s right hand and she quickly changed grips, but her shoulder was throbbing and weak. She backed away.

The girl bared her teeth. ‘You armoured and all! Don’t run, you filthy murderer!’

Another rider came up behind Risp, but had to slow his mount since Risp’s dead horse blocked the alley. ‘Back up, sir!’ he snapped. ‘Leave the pup to me!’

She saw that he was one of the sergeant’s comrades, Bishim. His face looked almost black beneath his helm, contorted with rage. He slipped down from his horse and drew his shield to the ready as he advanced on the girl, pointing with his sword. ‘For Darav, I’m going to make this hurt.’

The girl laughed. ‘Come at me, then.’

Bishim charged behind his shield, slashing with his sword.

The girl somehow slipped past and then was clambering on to the man’s kite shield. Her weight pulled it down and she stabbed her knife into the side of his neck. The point burst out the other side in a welter of blood. As Bishim fell to his knees, the girl sliced through the biceps of his weapon arm and laughed as the sword clanged on the stones. Then she stepped over the dying man and advanced on Risp.

The lieutenant threw her sword at the girl and then ran, grasping the reins of Bishim’s horse as she went. With the beast between her and the girl in the narrow alley, she knew that she had a few moments in which to The girl used one wall to rebound from as she leapt to land astride the horse. Her knife slashed down and Risp felt her arm snap upward. Staggering, confused, she looked to see that its hand was gone, sliced clean off at the wrist, and blood was gushing out. Moaning, she fell back against the nearest wall. ‘Don’t,’ she said.

The girl swung round the horse’s neck to land in front of the beast, and then advanced on Risp. ‘Don’t? Don’t what? I’m a Bordersword. You attacked us. What is it you don’t want me to do?’

‘I was following orders,’ Risp pleaded, pushing with her boots as if she could somehow back through the wall behind her.

‘Draconus just kicked the wrong nest,’ said the girl.

Risp shook her head. ‘It’s not — we’re not what you think! Spare me and I will go with you to your commander. I’ll explain everything.’

‘Commander? You understand nothing about us. Today, right now, right here in this alley, I’m in command.’

‘Please!’

The girl stepped forward. She was pathetically scrawny, more boy than girl, and in her eyes there was nothing Risp recognized.

‘I’ll explain-’

The knife went into the side of her neck like a sliver of fire. Choking, she felt the blade turn, and then the girl sliced through her windpipe, and all at once Risp felt the back of her helmet slam into the stone wall as tendons were cut. Hot blood filled her lungs and she began to drown.

The girl stared down at her for a moment, and then moved off.

Risp tried turning her head, to follow her killer’s flight, but instead felt her head sink back down. She looked down to see the stump at the end of her right wrist. The blood had stopped spilling out. Soldiers survived worse. She could learn to fight with her left hand. Wasn’t easy, but she was young — and when you’re young, these things are possible. So many things are possible.

I doubt she was sixteen. If she was sixteen she’d have been off with the hunters. Fifteen.

The need to breathe was a distant shout in her mind now, and she found it easy to ignore. Until black smoke rolled in, obscuring everything, and then it was time to go away.

‘We think she fell down the stairs,’ said the soldier.

Captain Silann studied the corpse of the woman lying at the foot of the tower steps. ‘This is Krissen,’ he said. ‘A scholar of highest repute.’

The soldier shrugged, sheathing his sword. ‘Life’s full of accidents,’ he said, moving off.

Silann felt sick inside. ‘Highest repute,’ he repeated in a whisper. ‘What was she doing here?’ After a long moment he settled to his knees beside the body. Her head was tilted at an impossible angle; her eyes were half open, her mouth parted with the tip of the tongue protruding. Her hands were filthy with coal dust or the powder that sometimes came from old ink.

The soldier he had been speaking to earlier now returned. ‘None left alive in here, sir. Place was damned near abandoned as it was. It’s time to fire the keep.’

‘Of course.’ But still Silann studied the woman’s face.

‘Do you want we should take the body, sir? For proper burial, I mean.’

‘No, the pyre of this keep will suffice. Was there anything at the top of the tower?’

‘No sir, nothing. We need to go — got another village to hit.’

‘I know,’ Silann snapped. He straightened and then followed the soldier back outside.

On the keep road, just outside the gate, his wife had arrived with her vanguard. Her thighs were red with splashed blood, and Silann well knew the look on her face. Tonight there would be fierce lovemaking, the kind that skirted the edge of pain. It was, she had once explained, the taste of savagery that lingered from a day of killing.

‘Lieutenant Risp is dead,’ Esthala announced.

‘How unfortunate,’ Silann replied. ‘Do we have wounded?’

‘Few. Lost seven in all. There was at least one Bordersword in the village, a woman, we think, but we’ve not found her.’

‘Well, that’s good, then,’ he said. As her expression darkened he added, ‘A witness, I mean. That’s what we wanted, isn’t it?’

‘Depends on what she figured out, husband,’ Esthala replied, in that weary tone that he was all too familiar with: as if she were speaking to a dim-witted child. ‘Better some terrified midwife or pot-thrower.’ She turned in her saddle to survey the village below. Houses were burning in a half-dozen places. ‘We need to burn it all down. Every building. We’ll leave out a few of our losses, but with their faces disfigured. Nobody they might recognize.’ She looked across to Silann. ‘I leave all that to you and your company. Join us at Hillfoot.’

Silann assumed that was the name for the next village, and so he nodded. ‘We will do what’s needed.’

‘Of course you will,’ Esthala replied, taking up the reins.

She had refused to see her husband executed and Silann knew that among the soldiers that had been seen as weakness. But he alone was aware of how close she had been to changing her mind, and that still left him rattled. Lieutenant Risp’s death delighted him, since she had been the source of all this talk about executions and crimes; and it had been her troop that had brought back the carved-up head of one of Hunn Raal’s messengers. Silann still cursed the name of Gripp Galas, although it was a curse riding a wave of fear.

He watched his wife gesture and then she was riding down the road with her troop.

Glancing back, he saw smoke coming from the keep’s slit windows, and drifting out from the open front doorway. It was not as easy to burn such edifices as one might think, he knew, since they were mostly stone. He turned to the soldier at his side. ‘I trust you are confident that it will burn down.’

The man nodded, and then shrugged. ‘Nobody will want to live in it, sir.’

‘Let’s head down to the village, then, and be on with it.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘I want to look upon the lieutenant’s body.’

‘Sir?’

‘To pay my respects.’

Captain Hallyd Bahann, Tutor Sagander decided, was an unpleasant man. Handsome, with grey in his short-cropped hair, he had about him an arrogance that, for some odd reason, women liked. No doubt he could charm, but even then his commentary was sly and verged on cutting. It baffled Sagander that Captain Tathe Lorat shared the man’s tent. She possessed a beauty that left the tutor breathless, and looking upon her — the laughter in her eyes and the ever ready smile on her full, painted lips — it seemed impossible that she would delight in killing and, even more appalling, that she would keep in her company a daughter sired by her first, now dead, husband, and that then she would do… this.

They sat in the command tent, the two captains and Sagander, and Hallyd Bahann’s dark eyes glittered with something like barely contained mirth. At his side, Tathe Lorat was refilling her goblet with yet more wine, and the flush of her cheeks held its own glow in the faint lanternlight.

‘I see,’ she said in a slurred drawl, ‘that you are struck speechless, tutor, which must, I am sure, be a rare occurrence. Do you wonder at my generosity? Good sir, even now, behind you on the tent wall, we can make out the flames from the monastery. True, the monks fought with uncommon vigour and we took disturbing losses despite your betrayal, but this nest of Deniers is now destroyed, and for that we are pleased to reward you.’

‘It may be,’ Hallyd said, half smiling, ‘that the tutor prefers boys.’

Tathe’s perfect brows lifted. ‘Is this so, tutor? Then I am sure we can find-’

‘No, captain, it is not,’ Sagander replied, looking down. He sat on a camp stool, and with but one leg to anchor himself he felt poorly perched upon the leather saddle of the seat. The imbalance he felt in his body was like an infection, spreading out to skew the entire world. ‘Did none of them surrender?’

Hallyd snorted. ‘Why should the fate of the Deniers concern you now? You showed us the old tunnel to the second well. By your invitation, we visited slaughter upon the occupants of that monastery. However, I will assure you none the less. Not one knelt except to more closely observe the ground awaiting their final fall.’

‘And the Mother?’

‘Dead. Eventually.’ And his smile broadened.

‘Is it,’ Tathe asked, ‘that you do not find my daughter attractive?’

‘C-captain,’ Sagander stammered, ‘she rivals even you.’

Tathe slowly blinked. ‘I am well aware of that.’

There was something ominous in her tone and Sagander felt his gaze drop yet again.

‘We tire of your indecision,’ said Hallyd Bahann. ‘Do not think she will be unfamiliar with her purpose. She is no virgin and is indeed now well into her womanhood. We do not approve of consort with children and among our soldiers we count it a heinous crime punishable by castration or, in the case of women, the branding of their breasts. Now then, will you accept our offer or not?’

‘A most generous reward,’ Sagander said in a mumble. ‘I–I am pleased to accept.’

‘Go then,’ said Tathe Lorat. ‘She awaits you in her tent.’

As always, it was a struggle to climb upright, using his crutch like a ladder, and then tottering as he found his balance. Breathing hard with the effort, he made his way out of the command tent.

The stench of smoke filled the air, drifting down into the streets and alleys of Abara Delack. Here and there walked squads of Legion soldiers, still loud and boisterous in the aftermath of the battle, although more than a few could be seen who were silent, for whom the end of the killing saw a second battle, this time with grief. Sagander looked upon them all as savages, filled with brutal appetites and the stupidity that marked bullies. Every civilization bred such creatures and he longed for a time when they could, one and all, be done away with. A civilization for ever within easy reach of a blade had little to boast about.

No, the only hope for humility was in the disarming of everyone, and with it the end of the threat of physical violence. He knew he could well hold his own in a society where words alone sufficed, where victories could be measured in conviction and reasoned debate. Yet here, on these streets in this cowed village, it was the thugs who swaggered drunk on ale and death, their faces alive with animal cunning and little else. With them, he could win nothing by argument, since in the failing of their wits they ever had recourse to the weapons at their sides. Was it not Gallan who had once said ‘ At the point of a sword you will find the punctuation of idiots ’?

He hobbled towards the tent where awaited Tathe Lorat’s daughter. Shame had driven him to this, step by stuttering step. A hundred or more lives had been taken away this night, all by his own hand. In some ways, it would have been worse had he been whole, rather than the maimed, pain-filled wretch that he was now. Because then he would have no excuses, no justifications for the betrayals his wounded heart had unleashed. Still, he was committed to this path, and at its very end there would come what he desired most: vengeance against Lord Draconus and his pathetic whelp of a bastard son.

The Legion knew its enemies, after all.

Reaching the tent, he fumbled one-handed at the flap. A sound from within made him pause, and a moment later a long-fingered hand appeared to pull to one side the heavy canvas.

Ducking, Sagander hobbled inside. He found he could not look at her. ‘Forgive me,’ he whispered.

‘What for?’ the young woman asked. She stood close and yet still in shadow. The lone lantern cast little light from its shortened wick. He could smell rosewater on her breath.

‘I am old. Since I lost my leg, ah, I beg you, do not mock me, but I am able to do… nothing.’

‘Then why accept me as your reward?’

‘Please, I would sit at least.’

She gestured to the cot. He kept his gaze averted from her as he made his way over to it. ‘I am no fool,’ he said. ‘Your mother knows you as her rival and would see you used, damaged even. Broken and dissolute. You must find a way to win free of her.’

Her breathing was soft, and he thought he could feel the heat from her body — but that was unlikely. ‘I am not at risk of dissolution, tutor Sagander, and against me my mother can only fail. Because she is old and I am young.’

‘Yet she delights in casting you into the arms of men, some of whom might be cruel, even violent.’

‘None dare, and this will not change. I am not my mother, tutor, and nothing that I give of myself I value overmuch. I can out-wait her.’

Trembling, he looked up and met her eyes. They were clear, but not languid. They held sympathy, but not empathy. This, he realized, was a woman who had learned how to protect herself. ‘If you ever need my help, Sheltatha Lore,’ he said, ‘I am yours.’

She smiled. ‘Be careful with such promises, tutor. Now, if you are incapable of making love, will passing a night in the arms of a woman please you?’

‘ This one to finish her! She’s a beauty, Waft, and she’s all yours! ’ The soldier’s voice laughed the words in Narad’s head. He measured his paces by them as the company moved through the smoke-filled forest. He sat hunched beneath them when the Legion camped for the night, his back to the cookfires, his hands reaching up again and again to probe the bulges and indents of his face. They echoed in the darkness when all had bedded down on damp ground and insects whined close to draw blood from whatever was exposed. In his dreams he felt her again, in his arms, her skin impossibly soft and still warm — he knew the truth of that no matter what they told him — and how she had yielded to his awkwardness and so made of herself a welcome embrace.

She had been past all hurting by then. He told himself this again and again, as if by incantation he could silence that soldier’s laughing voice, as if he could impose a balance between cruelty and mercy. But even this haunted him, since he could not be sure which was which. Was there pity and mercy in that soldier’s gleeful invitation, and cruelty in Narad’s answering it? Had he not sought to be tender, to show a gentle touch when taking her? Had he not thrown his body over hers to shield her from their laughter and their raw jests, their eager eyes?

What had they fed on that day, in that hall, when looking upon what they had done to that poor bride? Not once had he felt a part of it; not once did he imagine himself truly belonging to this company of killers. He asked himself how he had come to be among them, sword in hand, padding out from the night into a horror-filled dawn.

There had been a boy once, not ugly, not filled with venom or fear. A boy who had walked into town with his small paw nestled inside someone else’s hand, and that boy had known warmth and impossible freedom — with all the sands ahead smooth and clean. Perhaps, suckling on the tales of war, he had filled his head with dreams of battle and heroism; but even then, his place in every scene had been unquestioned in its righteousness. Evil belonged to the imagined enemies, for whom viciousness was sweet nectar sipped with wrongful pleasure, and all vengeance awaited those enemies by the toy sword he held.

In the world of that not-ugly boy, he was the saviour of maidens.

Anguish filled Narad at the thought of the boy he had once been, and at the thought of the crooked path he now saw crossing blood-splashed sands behind him.

There was slaughter in the forest. There was the smoke of fire and burnt-out glades and blackened patches, and endless ash drifting in the air. He had lost all sense of direction and now followed his comrades blindly, and for all their bluster it still felt like flight. Sergeant Radas, who led his squad with her ever flat eyes and bitter expression, had told them that they were trekking north, and that their destination was a stretch of land on the other side of the river from House Dracons, where they would at last rendezvous with Captain Scara Bandaris.

Captain Infayen had led her company eastward the day after the attack, apparently seeking to link up with Urusander himself, who it was said intended to march on Kharkanas.

In truth, Narad could not care less. He was a soldier in an unwanted war, faceless to his commanders but necessary for their ambitions; and all the tumult filling his skull — these careening thoughts so riddled with horror — were as nothing to them. In this company, each man and each woman surrendered too much of themselves, melding into a faceless mass where life and death was measured in numbers.

It was one thing to learn to see the enemy as less than Tiste, as abominations in fact; but the truth was, Narad realized, every commander could not but view every soldier in that way, no matter the colour or cut of their uniforms. Without that severing of empathy, no sane person could send anyone into battle, could wager the lives of others. When he thought of what was surrendered in the coming of war, he thought of that not-ugly boy and the warm hand he held suddenly torn away. He thought of soft and yielding flesh beneath his weight slowly growing cold and lifeless.

Who could return from such things? Who could walk back across the sands, smoothing his own wake, and every other sign of atrocity, to then reach out and take the hand of a child, a son, a daughter?

He walked with his ugliness for all to see, and perhaps this relieved the others since they imagined that they could hide the ugliness they had inside. Instead, he was their banner, their standard, and if they haunted him, then surely he must haunt them as well — behind their laughter, behind their mockery. It was difficult to imagine otherwise.

They loped through another burnt-out cluster of huts, stepping round blackened corpses. None of these dead Deniers had ever held hands, or dreamed of heroic deeds. None had slept in a mother’s arms, or felt the caress of a lover and shivered in the realization that fortune favoured them by each precious touch. None had whispered promises, to others or to themselves. None had ever broken them. None had ever wept over a child’s future, or caught the morning song of a bird hidden in the trees, or felt cool water sliding smooth down their throat. None had prayed for a better world.

Narad spat the bitterness from his mouth.

Just ahead, Corporal Bursa glanced back. ‘That dead kiss again, Waft?’

The others in the squad laughed.

Every crime committed was a betrayal of some sort. The first barrier breached was one of propriety, and this could not occur without the dismissal of respect and all those things that courtesy comprised. It took a hardening of the soul and a chilling of the eyes to do away with respect. The second barrier, he realized, was all the easier to overcome after the fall of the first. It was marked by the sanctity of the flesh, and when flesh meant nothing then harming it was no difficult task.

People could measure crimes by the levels of betrayal achieved. And from that, they could create laws and devise punishments. All of this, he understood, belonged to everyone. It was society’s way of working, and it had a way of melding faces into one, for the good of all. It had nothing to do with what he needed the most — what every criminal needed — and that was the opportunity for redemption.

Where would he not go to find redemption? What would he not sacrifice? And in the end, for all that he did to repair what could not be repaired, what greater torment could he feel?

I am not like the others here. I am filled with regret when they are not. For them, no redemption should be offered. Take their lives in return for what they did.

But I yearn to make it all right again. I dream of doing something, something to unravel what happened, and what I did. I whispered to her. I begged her, and she answered with her last breath. Was there a word in it? I don’t know. I will never know.

There was a man who loved her, who sought to marry her. But I was the last man in her arms. Ugly Narad, shuddering like an animal. I know you hunt me, sir, whoever you are. I know that you dream of finding me and taking my life.

But you’ll not find me. I’ll do that much for you, sir, because I tell you, taking my life will offer you no release, no peace.

Instead, and this I vow, I will find something right to fight for, and set my life into the path of every murderer, every rapist, until I am finally cut down.

The echoes of laughter reached through his silent promises and he cringed. His was the face of war. His was the body that raped the innocent. And every desperate whisper to the fallen was a lie, and the way ahead was filled with smoke and fire, and he moved through it like a standard, a banner awaiting the rallying cry of killers.

There had been a boy once, not ugly…

Rint watched as the last stone was placed atop the cairn. Ville stepped back, slapping the grit from his hands. The short grasses on the hill glistened with morning dew, like diamonds scattered on the ground. Here and there flowering lichen lifted short stalks holding up tiny, bright red crowns, each one cupping a pearl of water.

He thought again of that headless body and found it difficult to recall Raskan’s face. The moccasins were folded and bound and lying nearby. They would accompany the messenger to House Dracons. Rint’s gaze drifted over them, and then he spoke. ‘Headless and bared of feet, we yield what remains of Raskan. We leave him alone now, upon this hill. But he has no eyes with which to see, no voice to utter his losses, and not even the voice of the wind will mourn for him.’

‘Please, Rint,’ said Galak. ‘Surely there must be softer words for this moment.’

‘He lies under stone,’ Rint replied, ‘and so knows the weight of that. What soft words would you like to hear, Galak? What comforts do you yearn for? Speak them, if you must.’

‘He was a child of Mother Dark-’

‘His soul abandoned to foreign fate,’ Rint cut in.

‘He served his lord-’

‘To be made a plaything for his lord’s old lover.’

‘Abyss take us, Rint!’

Rint nodded. ‘It surely will, Galak. Very well then, heed these soft words. Raskan, I give voice to your name one more time. Perhaps she left some of you in the embers of the morning fire. Perhaps you looked upon us through flames, or when the wind’s breath fanned the coals, and you saw us bearing your body away. I doubt you think of honour. I doubt you are warmed by what respect we muster for the body you left behind. No, I see you now as made remote to all our needs, to all our mortal concerns. If you look upon us now, you feel only a distant sorrow. But know this, Raskan, we who still live will carry your regrets. We will wear the burden of your untimely death. We will harvest the unanswerable questions and grow lean on what little they offer us. And still you will not speak. Still you will grant us no comfort, and no cause for hope. Raskan, you are dead, and to the living, it seems, you have nothing to say. So be it.’

Ville was muttering under his breath through all of this, but Rint ignored him. Finished with his words he turned away from the cairn and walked over to his horse. Feren followed a step behind him and before he set foot in the stirrup her hand settled on his shoulder. Surprised, Rint glanced at her. ‘What is it, sister?’

‘Regret, brother, is gristle you can chew for ever. Spit it out.’

He glanced down at her belly and nodded. ‘Spat out and awaiting a new mouthful, sister. But in you I have reason to pray. I look forward to seeing you a mother again.’

She withdrew her hand and stepped back. He saw her lips part as if she was about to speak; instead she turned away, striding to her horse and mounting up.

‘None of us are unfamiliar with death,’ Galak said in a bitter hiss as he swung on to his horse. ‘We each face the silence as we must, Rint.’

‘Will you face it with every word in winged flight, Galak?’

‘Better that than harsh and cruel! It seems all you do is cut these days.’

Rint settled into the saddle and took up the reins. ‘No, all I do is bleed.’

They set out, pushing deeper into the ancient hills. The old lines of rise and descent had been carved through in places by thousands of years of hoofs from migrating herds, and down these tracks floods had rushed in the wet seasons, exposing bedrock and an endless wash of bleached bones and the crumbling cores of broken horns.

Rint could see the old blinds, constructed from piled stones, arcing in fragmented lines along slopes overlooking the old migration tracks. He could see signs of runs where beasts had been cut away from the main herd and driven off cliffs. Here and there, massive boulders rested atop hills, each one bearing painted scenes of beasts charging and dying, and stick figures wielding spears; and yet upon not one of these wrinkled tableaux was there a line denoting solid ground. Instead, these remembered hunts, these eternal images of slaughter, all floated in a dream world, uprooted and timeless.

Only a fool would not see death in such art. No matter how enlivened the beasts depicted, they were all long gone, slain, carved up and devoured, or left to rot. To look upon them, as he did when he and his companions rode past, was to see a dead hand’s longing for life, but a life belonging to the past. Every scene was a broken promise, and upon these hills now had settled a pall of silence.

If the dead spoke to the living, they did so in an array of frozen images, and this doomed them to themes of loss and regret. He well understood Feren’s warning. This was a gristle one could chew without end.

Lifting his gaze, his eyes narrowed. The eastern sky was grey, smudging the line of the horizon. He thought back to the Jhelarkan’s words and felt something grow taut within him.

‘Is that smoke?’ Ville asked.

Rint nudged his mount to a faster pace, and the others joined him. There was nothing worth saying. The chattering of speculation would simply give voice to fear and so fill the gut with bile. Smoke hung above Riven Keep. It could be as simple as a grass fire, spreading out across the plain.

His home was in the village below the fortification. There he would find his wife and his child, and discover anew their place in his life. Nothing needed to be the same as it had once been. Their nights of indifference and hard silence would be behind them now. Rint finally understood the gift she was to him, and now that they had made a child he would look with clear eyes upon all that was precious and sacred.

No longer would he flee her company, escaping into the wilds. He would make the future different from the past. For every person, change was within reach. He had made his journey and it would be the last one he would make. His future was at his wife’s side.

I have sworn vengeance against Draconus. But I will join my sister and put away my sword. I, too, am done with this.

By midday, they had ridden out from the hills on to flat land. The way ahead was wreathed in smoke. The smell did not belong to a grass fire. It was rank, oily.

The four Borderswords broke into a fast canter.

In his head, Rint uttered a list of vows to his wife and to his newborn child. The list began and ended with a vision of him standing with her, in a home emptied of his anger, the temper he could never quite control. And he saw the guardedness leaving her eyes, her hand leaving the grip of her knife which she had drawn countless times to defend herself against his rages. He saw a world of peace, floating as if painted on stone. The hand that could paint the past could paint the future. Rint meant to prove it.

‘Riders on our left!’

At Ville’s shout Rint turned, rose on his stirrups. Directly north was the long line of a dust cloud.

‘Must be the hunting party,’ Galak said. ‘Abyss below! There was no one at Riven!’

My wife. My child.

The distant riders were converging on them, and Rint now saw that they were Borderswords. No. No. He pushed his mount into a gallop, fixed his eyes eastward, to that dark smudge that was Riven Keep. But the tower was mostly gone, only one wall rising to two-thirds its original height, black as charcoal against the grey sky.

It was just one more damned argument. I rushed out, thinking only of escape lest I tear the knife from her grasp. And there was the call, a summons from Lord Draconus, who wanted an escort into the west. I found Feren. I badgered her into joining me. We needed to get away.

My wife’s face is burned in my mind. It was fear that made it a stranger’s face. It had always been fear that took away the face I knew.

I was running. Again.

Life was easier out there. Simpler. Feren was rotting, drinking too much. I had my sister to think of -

All at once, there were more riders crowding them, the thunder of horse hoofs almost deafening. As if from a vast distance, Rint heard Ville shouting.

‘Traj! What has happened?’

‘Lahanis found us — she escaped the slaughter — the villagers, Ville — they’re all dead!’

Someone howled, but even that sound was muffled, quickly swept away. The hammering of horse hoofs upon hard ground was a roar in Rint’s skull. Lahanis. He knew that name. A young woman, fast with her long-bladed Hust knife, but too young still to ride with the adults. A Bordersword in waiting who lived up the street.

‘Who attacked us, Traj? The Legion?’

‘She saw standards, Ville! House Dracons! We ride to it now. We ride to war!’

Blackened, scorched and in ruins, the village surrounding Riven Hill was beneath a shroud of smoke. He looked for his house, but the scene was jarring up and down, wheeling as vertigo took hold of him. He pitched to one side but was quickly brought up by a firm hand. Wild-eyed he looked across to see his sister — her face was wet with tears and the tears were black with dirt.

She’s had her fill of those. But it’s over now. At least she saw her baby, and held it in her arms. A living thing, nestled in her arms. That’s why I led her away — no, the wrong face, the wrong woman. Where is my wife? Why can’t I remember her face?

Then they were riding through the remains of the village, riding past bloated bodies. Feren’s fist, still holding him upright in the saddle — her knee stabbing into his thigh as she forced her horse to remain close — now tightened around a handful of cloak. If not for that grip, he would have fallen. He would have plunged down into the ashes, down among the dead.

Where she waits for me. And the child. And my child. My family, of which I will never again speak.

We ride to war -