Wreneck looked down on the battered toy soldiers, a hundred or more. He watched as the old man deftly separated the two colours, pushing the blue-painted ones up against Wreneck’s worn boots.
‘But we need rules for this,’ the old man continued as he collected up the green soldiers and made his way across the snow-filled ditch and seated himself on the far bank. ‘Fronting strength, flanking weakness. Adds and subtracts. The attrition of unrelieved pressure – I have dice for this, knucklebones in fact. Not Tiste, of course. Forulkan. I’ll explain the adds and subtracts once our troops engage. Quickly now, line yours up, there along the valley’s crest!’
‘Sir, the real battle—’
‘You will obey your lord!’
Wreneck flinched at the shouted command, and then he set the spear down to one side and knelt on the edge of the road. ‘Yes, milord.’
The first of the ghosts reached them, passing along on the road, paying no attention whatsoever to the two figures off to one side.
The old man licked his purple lips and began speaking in a quick, almost breathless tone. ‘I have my Hust Legion. See? I told you I would find them, and here they are!’ He gestured down at his green-painted toys. ‘Superb soldiers one and all. Can you hear their swords? Bitter prisons, making the iron howl. They have bonuses against pressure. But you, Urusander, you have bonuses for ferocity, for all that your soldiers learned fighting the Jheleck. You see how it balances out? We are well suited in opposition, yes? My legion can hold its ground. Yours can attack like no other. Our strengths lock horns, as it should be.’
Wreneck paused in lining his soldiers up along the edge of the ditch. He thought back to all the mock battles he’d played with young Orfantal, and tried to recall what Orfantal had said about strategies and tactics and other things Wreneck didn’t really understand. But just like Orfantal, this old lord had a fever for war. Wreneck frowned. ‘But, milord, if our strengths lock horns, then more soldiers die. I should trick you into attacking me, and then withdraw once you’re down in the valley, and then come in on your flanks. I should make you turn to defend and then get you to attack, over and over again. That way, I can still use my strength even as I turn yours into a weakness.’
The lord stared across at him, and then giggled. ‘Yes! Of course! Of course! But you see, nobody’s supposed to win. We both get bloodied and then we both withdraw. Better yet, we turn on our commanders and, why, we cut their heads off! We throw down our weapons! Throw away our armour! We tell the bastards to go fuck themselves and then we go home! Hah!’ He half slid down on to the ditch’s slope. ‘Now, it’s time to advance! To war! The standards are raised! This is the secret joke, you see. When we all agree on insanity … it’s still insane!’
Wreneck watched the old man laugh, watched the face redden, the watery eyes bulging. He wondered at the joke, not quite sure of it, and then he wondered if that joke might end up killing the lord, as the tears ran down the old man’s lined cheeks, as the laughter grew more helpless, and finally as, hysterical, the breaths growing harder and harder to draw, the man choked and gagged, clutching his chest.
The ghosts marched past, pebble-eyes fixed on nothing.
Upon each side of the ditch, a few of the tiny soldiers toppled in the wind as the wet mud gave way beneath them.
Gasping, the lord righted himself and wiped at his eyes. ‘Now,’ he said in a rasp, ‘it begins with magic, or so I’m told. Powerful spells, but the first and most powerful one no one even sees. It’s the sorcery of war itself, the ritual words flung back and forth, everyone moving into place – there, set those up again, it’s not yet time for them to fall. But they’ve all agreed. There’s no choice. You have to agree on that first, you have to weave it, a web that snares everyone. No choice, no choice, must be done, draw the sword. There’s no choice, we agree on that. We have to agree on that, to begin with. No choice, oh dear, no choice, oh, how sad, how regrettable. No choice. Keep saying it and it comes true, do you understand? No choice!’ He sighed, leaned back to study his troops. ‘Split into three. The centre will advance first. The wings will stretch and form the horns – this is simple tactics, you understand. Nothing subtle or clever on this day. But wait! Before all that, the mages must duel!’
Wreneck looked back to the road, watching the dead filing past. There were many soldiers among them.
‘What do the mages do?’ he asked the lord.
The old man frowned. ‘I don’t know. Let me think. Magic. There must be a structure to it, lest it serve nefarious purposes. It cannot simply be a force no one understands. Not a metaphor, then, nothing like a poet’s meat. People make use of it, after all, don’t they?’
‘Milord, I don’t understand.’
‘Sorcery! If this then not that, if that then not this! Chart the cause and effect, mutter and write notes and pretend that such things impose limits and rules, abeyances and prohibitions, all these contingencies to milk the brain with an inventor’s delight – pah! The poet’s meat is a better way of seeing it. Metaphor. Meat to be wrung until the blood drips. Meat to invite thoughts of rendering, something hacked away from some unseen body, a giant’s corpse lying unseen in the forest, or among the hills, or amidst storm-clouds in the sky. The flesh in one hand, dripping with heat, the butcher’s take on the world, where all invites the cleaver and knife, where all must perforce be lifeless to take the cut, the cold, empty chop! Yet look! The flesh cut away bleeds still, and there is heat, and something pulses – the twitch of wounded nerves.’ He paused to regain his breath, and then pointed across at Wreneck. ‘The poet knows it’s alive. The butcher believes it dead. Thus, the gift upon one side and upon the other the taker of that gift, the sorceror, the butcher, the blind, clumsy bastard.’
The lord shifted to study his rows of soldiers, and then reached down and lifted one free. ‘Here he is. The poet recoils. All those tales of childhood, the magicks and the witches and wizards, the cursed gems and sacred swords – magic, my young friend, belongs to twin goddesses’ – and he smiled – ‘I see them still. Name this first one Wonder, and she leads you by the hand into unlikely realms. Your delight is her reward! Now, the other, why, let’s call her Warning. The other side to every magical gift, to every strange world. The poet knows all this, or the poet should, at any rate. Wonder and Warning, what other detail does one need in the comprehension of magic?’
Wreneck shrugged, and then, when that did not seem enough, he shook his head.
‘We use what we don’t understand,’ the lord explained, scowling. ‘It’s a simple message, a simple metaphor. We use what we don’t understand. To invent rules and make charts and lists is to forget the meaning of the metaphor. Such a mind is locked into its rational cage, a most limited realm, a realm of self-delusion and presumption, a narcissistic stance, and the rules and logic only serve to reflect the brilliance of the one using them, as if, indeed, that is the singular purpose of the entire pointless exercise!’ He wagged a finger at Wreneck. ‘The poet cocks a leg and pisses on them all! It’s meat and the meat bleeds, and the blood is warm and the blood fills the cup of the hand and to use it is to kill it and to kill it is a crime.’ He set down the soldier he’d collected, positioned further down the bank of the ditch. ‘My idiot champion of ignorance. Now you – wait, what is your name?’
‘Wreneck.’
‘Now, good Wreneck, select your champion.’
Wreneck picked up one of his soldiers and moved to place it opposite the lord’s lone figure. ‘Like this, milord?’
The old man frowned. ‘I must add another.’
‘Two against one?’
‘No matter. One of mine is going to die.’
‘How do we fight with magic, milord?’
‘Why, I’ll roll the bones, of course.’
‘Then how do you know one of yours is going to die?’
‘Because magic demands meat, Wreneck. Blood in the hand, fading heat, something broken, something dying, a crime unforgivable.’
Wren
eck looked down at all the soldiers. ‘Milord, are we gods?’
The old man snorted. ‘Less than that, less than who we are, in fact. Toy soldiers and dolls, puppets and deeds writ small, we’re the venal manipulators of the unpleasant. With secret purpose, we lay waste to lives we ourselves have invented. With hopeless despair, we hammer home lessons no one pays any attention to.’ He laughed again, a bitter, caustic sound. ‘All a waste, my young friend, all a waste.’
The old man began weeping then, and after a time, Wreneck reached down to the lord’s second mage, and tipped the figure over until it was flat upon the ground.
* * *
‘Soon,’ said Lord Vatha Urusander as they rode towards the valley, ‘the thaw will come. There is a will to water, never as wayward as it might seem. It finds certain paths in its hunt for the lowest land, for the places where it can rest. When the flood takes the streams, the streams flow into the river, and the flood rises yet higher. It spills out and finds refuge in hollows and sinkholes, in pits and trenches. When I was a child, the thaw was the season I loved the best. Those pools of cold, cold water – water beetles would appear in them, from where I knew not, and yet their glory would be brief, as the pools slowly dried up.’
Renarr rode at Urusander’s side. They were not part of the Legion’s vanguard. Well ahead, Hunn Raal and his captains commanded the army’s bristling point, and behind them trundled the heavy carriage bearing High Priestess Syntara, Sagander the one-legged scholar, and young Sheltatha Lore. Riding alongside the carriage was Infayen Menand. Renarr and the commander had only each other for company, with the first company of soldiers marching a dozen paces behind.
‘I had a clay jar,’ Urusander resumed. ‘I spent my days capturing the beetles, and then releasing them into the streams. Nothing mattered more to me than saving their small lives. Unlike those bugs, you see, I knew what was coming. This incurred in me a responsibility, young as I was, and from that an obligation. I could not stand to one side, yielding to cruel nature.’
‘The water beetles,’ said Renarr, ‘probably bred in the mud left behind by the pools, and there the eggs remained until the next season of flood.’
Urusander was silent for a time then.
Renarr twisted slightly round to observe the soldiers marching behind them. After the midday’s break, they had donned their armour and readied their weapons. Scouts had reported the enemy massing on the south side of the valley. It seemed that no one was much interested in delaying the battle. The following dawn offered no gift of light – not this close to Kharkanas. And yet it seemed precipitous nonetheless, at least to Renarr’s mind. The soldiers would be weary after the day’s march, after all.
‘Did I kill in my misplaced mercy?’ Urusander suddenly asked.
‘You were a child, as you say. At that age, we are easy playing at gods and goddesses. Carve a trough at the pool’s edge, watch it drain away. Stir up the silts and mud, scattering whatever had been hidden there. We become fickle chance to the life that knows nothing of us. The life we victimize, the life buckling to our misguided will.’ She paused, and then shrugged. ‘The thaw offers up a world of pools. Year after year. All that you altered eventually returned to what it had been before. You but passed through, hastening as always into an older body, older interests, older desires.’
‘You speak with the voice of a crone, Renarr, not a woman half my age. In your company, I am belittled. How then was this wisdom of yours earned? In the whores’ tent? I should think not.’
Perhaps, Urusander, beneath the eager weight of your son. Now there was a self-proclaimed god, far past the age when he should have abandoned the conceit. He settled his body on mine, pushed himself inside to my small cry of pain, and looked into my eyes seeking the twin reflections of his own face. Just as every woman he takes finds herself gazing up into his frantically searching eyes. A boy desperate to find the man he should have been. And no amount of thrusting cock can grant him that one benediction.
To your son, Urusander, every woman is a whore.
‘You confuse age with wisdom,’ she said. ‘The whores’ tent was my temple. I paid in years for the blessing of moments. While the men and women who used me bled out worthless coin, and thought themselves absolved of the bargain’s sad and sordid truth. Consider, sir, the abject failure that is sex without love. The act denigrates both flesh and soul, and all the gasps and moans that cut through the night cannot replace what was so willingly surrendered.’
‘And what, Renarr, did you and your men and women surrender?’
‘Why, dignity, I should imagine.’
‘Just that?’
‘No. If intimacy is a virtue.’
‘And is it?’
She turned her head away from his regard, as if hearing a strange sound to one side, and this was sufficient to hide her unbidden and unwelcome smile. ‘A fragile one, of course. Too fragile, perhaps, for this world.’ The smile lingered, a thing of unbearable pain and grief, and then faded. A moment later and she was able to look ahead once more, offering the man at her side an untroubled profile.
‘You confound me, Renarr.’
‘There is an unexpected gift to my years of unrelieved education. But you know it as well. See us here, two dispassionate orphans. Uprooted before a flood of foreign ideas, unexpected discoveries and terrible realizations. Your eternal hunt for justice, sir, but circles a host of simple truths. We are all believers in justice as applied to others, but never to ourselves. And this is how we make virtue a weapon, and delight in seeing it make people bleed.’
‘The imposition of law is civilization’s only recourse, Renarr.’
‘And in its inevitable exceptions lies civilization’s downfall.’ She shook her head. ‘But we have argued this before, and again I say to you, make every law subservient to dignity. By that rule and that rule alone, sir. Dignity to and for each and every citizen, each and every enslaved beast of burden, each and every animal led to slaughter – we cannot deny our needs, but in serving those needs, we need not lose sight of the tragedy of those who in turn serve us with their lives.’
‘The people are never so enlightened, Renarr, as to comprehend such a thing.’
‘A judgement inviting your contempt.’
‘Perhaps. But sometimes, contempt is all many of them deserve.’
Renarr nodded, her gaze on the army’s vanguard. ‘Yes. Too many gods and goddesses in this world, this world and every other.’
‘I am a figurehead,’ said Lord Urusander.
She felt no need to respond to that. Some things were too obvious for words.
‘I fear Hunn Raal,’ he added.
‘So do we all.’
* * *
Sagander fidgeted, his watery gaze darting again and again to the leg that was not there. He licked his lips, sipping constantly from a flask of water he carried in a pocket on the inside of his robe. The carriage rocked its occupants, sliding at times on slick ice covering one or two cobbles, crunching down with a jolt that rattled the shutters and made the dozen bright lanterns swing wildly on their hooks. Each jarring motion made the old man wince.
From beneath veiled lids, High Priestess Syntara watched the self-proclaimed official historian of the Liosan. Here in this sanctified temple on wheels, she could read his innermost thoughts and with idle ease she plundered them. Each one was bright with outrage and venom, swirling madly around a vortex of betrayal, for betrayal was at the core of everything for poor Sagander. He blamed Lord Draconus. He blamed now dead Borderswords. He blamed Draconus’s bastard son Arathan. But she saw for herself the blow he sent to Arathan’s head, the boy reeling in his saddle, stunned into witlessness. She saw Arathan’s horse attack, saw its hoofs stabbing savagely down, heard the snapping of bones.
No one else was to blame for the loss of that leg – no one but Sagander himself, and of course that was something he could not – could never – admit. It was pathetic, the raving accusations of an ego blind to its own lies. And the manner in w
hich a thousand exculpatory words could drown out a simple truth was something that made her thoughtful, as they drew ever nearer to the Valley of Tarns.
They were fast approaching the time when the shout of words would give way to the shout of swords. She would finally discover the extent of Hunn Raal’s sorcerous power, and that was the source of some trepidation. No matter how certain her own faith and no matter the vast reach of her own magic, the Mortal Sword of Liosan posed a threat, and with this recognition she discovered a new irony, in that the only obstacle blocking Hunn Raal’s true ambitions was Lord Vatha Urusander.
Our reluctant Father Light, who already moves like a puppet, confounded by a tangle of strings. Still, a throne waits for him, and once Urusander is seated in it, Hunn Raal can reach no higher.
Her secret missives with Emral Lanear made it clear that both High Priestesses understood the politics of what was coming. This very evening I shall ride into Kharkanas, and in the company of Urusander’s Legion shall cross the bridges and claim the Citadel. And I shall be met by Emral Lanear, and before all we will embrace like old friends.
And in the Chamber of Night, Mother Dark will have to acknowledge us. She will have to face us, and accede to the inevitable.
‘This battle shall be glorious,’ said Sagander suddenly, startling both Syntara and a dozing Sheltatha Lore. Tathe Lorat’s daughter had been injured while on the march, when a slipping horse inadvertently stepped down on her foot, breaking bones. She now sat directly opposite Sagander, her bandaged foot occupying the space where his missing leg would have been, and Syntara knew well that the pose was not accidental.
Venal child. I am of a mind to give her to Emral Lanear, as she’d make a fine temple whore. Her and her new tutor, Renarr. Such women are worthy of contempt and little else. But they have a value nonetheless, as things to be used.