Somewhere between his departure from Neret Sorr and here, the tide of determination and will had died away. A better man would have pushed on in defiance of his own sordid failings. At the very least, he would have completed his journey to the winter fort of the Wardens, or perhaps onward from there, to the Shake denizens of Yannis Monastery or Yedan. And from such places Kharkanas was not far, not far at all. Each step offered its own momentum, something even a mule understood.
Heroic journeys, as sung by poets, never stumbled against a lack of fortitude in the hero. The inner landscape of such men and women was something strange and foreign to the audience, and so it was ever intended, as a poet’s purpose was neither simple nor innocent.
No mortal could set himself against such a hero. Perhaps that was the secret lesson in such tales. But Kagamandra had long since abandoned the romance of heroism, as if life could be lived only from a distance, with oneself that figure, forever remote on the horizon, crossing an arid landscape with every step a battle won, where every war was a war worth fighting. In this scene, there was no promise to draw closer. Details surrendered to the necessity of purpose.
He had once believed that such tales would be spun of his own life, of his exploits on the field of battle. He had once yearned for the attention of poets – in the days when songs showed no bitter underside, before the world grew jaded with itself.
Sharenas – cousin to Hunn Raal and the woman who had quite possibly stolen his heart – had urged him to ride to his betrothed. Was that not a heroic quest? Did that not invite a song or a poem? Would not such a journey win for him Faror Hend’s undying love? But as he rode out from Neret Sorr, leaving behind that wretched, reborn army, did he truly believe any of that? Should he find her, should he come at last face to face with Faror Hend, what would she see? A desperate, pathetic old man, who would grasp hold of her in the way of all old men: as if she embodied his long-lost youth. How could she not flinch from his approach? How could she not distrust anything he had to say?
Vows of freedom were like a dog clamping jaws on its own tail. With the promise between its teeth, it could run for ever.
The sky to the east was heavy with clouds, polished iron and promising snow. He was running low on food and these hills were mostly barren, barring a few rabbits that still eluded the snares he’d set. The forage he’d brought with him for his horse was almost all gone and the animal was weakening by the day. The exigencies of survival should have already forced him to resume his journey, but even this impetus had yet to drive him from his lair.
His father had known him for a self-indulgent child, and, should the man’s spirit still linger, it would yield no surprise when looking now upon its only surviving son. The privilege of dying while still filled with promise had belonged to Kagamandra’s brothers. Somewhere leagues to the south, three cairns made islands on the plain, and around each of them the grasses grew verdant, and come the spring flowers would blossom in colourful profusion about the stones.
He had spent years telling himself to not begrudge the liberation his brothers had found: that blessed release from expectation and the sordid disappointments that followed.
I do not love her. That much is clear. Nor do I wish her love. I am a ghost. I linger on through lack of will.
In the distance, riders had emerged from the wall of black grasses. Some led horses bearing what looked like bodies. He had been watching the troop for some time as they walked their mounts alongside the sharp edge of Glimmer Fate. They were now directly opposite him and would soon pass as they continued south.
There was an ancient saying his father had been wont to use, wielding the words like weapons to batter down his children. A hero’s name will live for ever. Die forgotten, and you have not lived at all. When Kagamandra had returned home from the wars, the lone survivor among his father’s children, he had been a hero of renown, a warrior raised high on the shield of nobility – gifted with title and honour. His father had stared at him with lifeless eyes and said nothing.
In the following year, the old man elected to waste away to nothing, behaving as if all his sons had died. He never again spoke Kagamandra’s name. You’d forgotten it, perhaps. And so I, who lived, never lived at all. Your favourite saying, Father, proved a lie, when at last it settled at your feet. Or was it you who failed it?
No matter. Not a single reward did not taste bitter once I returned home. I did not return to find my bride awaiting me. I did not return to my father, for the news had preceded my arrival, and when at last I came, he was already standing in the shadow of death.
He did not love Faror Hend. He’d not even wanted her. When he huddled under the furs at night, hearing the distant cries of the lizard wolves of Glimmer Fate, he thought not of that young woman. He thought, instead, of Sharenas.
How many fatal choices could a man make? Many, because even death need not be sudden. It can be measured out like sips of poison. Each day can be greeted as if it too had died, and but awaited your arrival. How many deaths could a man endure? I still walk a field of corpses, and not one of them has anything good to say, but I have learned to look them in the eye and not flinch. I thank my father for that.
He stepped away from the ledge, worked his way down the narrow, crooked path to his camp.
He fed the last of the forage to his horse and then gathered and bound his bed furs, strapped on his sword and checked over the rest of his gear before saddling his scrawny mount.
A short time later, astride his horse, he emerged from the defile, swung the animal over the crest and rode down a red slope of silts to the hard, frozen plain. Snowflakes spun down from the sky. He set out at a slow canter, to work some heat into the beast’s legs.
* * *
Bursa re-joined them. ‘It is Kagamandra Tulas, commander.’
Calat Hustain rode on for a moment longer, and then reined in. The rest of the troop drew up around their leader.
The veteran sergeant settled in the saddle, gloved hands resting on the horn. Since the day on the Vitr shore, Bursa had not slept well. Each night pulled him into a fevered world where dragons wheeled overhead whilst he ran across a vast, featureless plain. His arms were burdened with strange objects: a silver chalice, a crown, a sceptre, a small chest from which gold coins spilled.
In this nightmare, he was the lone protector of these treasures, but the dragons were not hunting him. They but circled overhead like carrion birds. They waited for him to fall, and onward he ran, flinching from their vast shadows that played over the ground ahead. The coins kept falling, bouncing and scattering in his wake – there seemed to be no end to them. And when the sceptre slipped through his grasp and fell, he found another one, identical to the last, still in his arms.
The crown, he saw, was broken. Mangled. The chalice was dented.
The Eleint were patient overhead. He could not run for ever, and there was no place in which to hide. Even the ground under his feet was too hard for him to make a hole, to bury his precious hoard.
Awakening in the dawn, he was red-eyed with exhaustion, and he found himself repeatedly searching the sky during the course of each day’s travel.
They had seen no further sign of the terrible creatures. The Eleint had plunged into this world through a gaping rent in the air above the Vitr, only to then vanish. Somehow, this was worse – and during the day Bursa almost longed to see one, a minute talon-slash of black off in the distance. But this desire never lasted the journey into sleep.
At Calat Hustain’s command he had ridden back to discern the identity of the lone rider following them. It seemed now that they would await the man. Bursa glanced across at Spinnock Durav, and felt a stab of something close to resentment. The young could weather anything, and among them there were those who stood out even among their peers, and Spinnock Durav was such a man. Was it his perfect features that made certain the founding stones of his confidence, or did some residue of untrammelled self-worth seep out to settle into his face, creating the illusion of ba
lance and open equanimity?
Bursa was tasked with protecting the young Warden by none other than Captain Finarra Stone. But it had been Spinnock’s warning cry that had saved everyone, down at the shoreline. Or perhaps Bursa misremembered – it had been a fraught time. But when he revisited that shout in his memory, it came in Spinnock’s voice.
I begin to obsess. Again. All my life, this same game. I but move from one to another. No peace, no hope of rest. I run like the fool of my dreams, carrying the last treasures of Wise Kharkanas.
Eleint.
Spinnock Durav. She should never have charged me with this task. Should never have invited me to fix my attention upon him. Did she guess nothing of the envy hiding within me, and how it would find Durav? Obsession runs down the same path, again and again. Each time, the same stony trail. Envy is a sharp emotion. It has purpose and it has power. It needs someone to hate, and it seems I have found him.
Spinnock Durav caught his eye and smiled. ‘Another two days of this, sergeant, and then we’re home.’
Bursa nodded, tugging at the strap on his helm, where it had begun rubbing his throat raw. The air was cold and it was dry, and his skin never did well in this miserable season. He leaned back and scanned the dull sky. The snow spinning in the air seemed to fail in reaching the ground.
‘Cold up there, I’d think,’ said Spinnock, edging his mount up alongside Bursa. ‘Even for a dragon.’
Bursa scowled. Of course the man had noted his habit, and now teased him for it. ‘My bones ache,’ he said to Durav. ‘Tells me a storm is coming. I but seek its measure.’
Spinnock offered another quick smile and nodded. ‘I thought we might outrun it, sergeant.’ He twisted to watch the approach of Kagamandra Tulas. ‘But it seems not.’
Only then, in following the young man’s gaze, did Bursa see the swollen bank of the storm front, spread across the north horizon. Grunting, he shook his head. His thoughts stumbled with weariness, building reckless bridges in his mind.
Calat Hustain tapped heels against his horse’s flanks and worked his way free of his troop, reining in just beyond the last horses with their bound corpses as Kagamandra Tulas finally arrived.
‘Captain,’ said Calat in greeting. ‘You are far from the track between Neret Sorr and our winter camp – have you been looking for me? What dire Legion pronouncement must I face now?’
The grey-bearded warrior was unkempt, his heavy cloak filthy. The horse he rode was gaunt. He held up a gauntleted hand as if to forestall Calat’s questions. ‘No word from Urusander accompanies me, commander. I travel upon my own purpose, not that of the Legion.’
‘Then you have no news?’
Bursa saw Kagamandra hesitate, and then shrug. ‘Winter is a yoke upon all ambitions. But I would say beware the spring, Calat Hustain.’
‘Must every soldier of the Legion threaten me?’
‘I am a captain no longer, sir. My old allegiances are done.’
Calat Hustain was silent for a moment, and then he said, ‘Cut off the limb. Still it bleeds.’
Kagamandra squinted across at Calat, and then growled something under his breath. He shook his head, and his anger was evident. ‘If my warning of a coming war stings you like a thorn, then, commander, I wonder what wilderness grows riot in your skull. For the sake of your Wardens, I advise you hack your way free. The threat of war greets all of us, or would you claim special privilege in the face of its tragic promise?’
‘Yet you would seek the Wardens,’ said Calat. ‘Kagamandra, Faror Hend will not be found at our winter camp.’
‘Then tell me where I will find her.’
‘I cannot, beyond what I have already said. She does not await you at this trail’s end.’
Bursa knew that his commander could have been more forthcoming. He could not decide if Calat’s pettiness shamed him or left him satisfied. There had been nothing inviting in Calat’s initial greeting, and now it seemed as if, in understanding the reason for Kagamandra’s journey, Bursa’s commander stood before a caged dog, jabbing between the bars with a sharp stick.
We are all tired. Battered by circumstance. Pity grows sparse in this season.
With a nod, Kagamandra collected his reins. He set out towards the hills to the west.
‘Wise enough to find shelter,’ Spinnock murmured. ‘I wonder if we should do the same.’
‘And follow Tulas?’ Bursa asked in a hoarse whisper. ‘I invite you to offer our commander that suggestion.’
Although Spinnock answered that with a smile, at last Bursa saw a hint of frailty in it, and as the young Warden remained silent when Calat gestured and the troop resumed its southward trek, skirting the edge of Glimmer Fate, the sergeant found himself chewing a certain pleasure in this modest victory.
That was worthy guarding, was it not? Do not make a fool of yourself to your commander, Spinnock Durav. Best speak to me first, believing as you do an ease between us, and in me a secure home for your foolish words. And if I should hoard them, well, that is my business.
He was thinking, again, of the vast empty plain, on which shadows raced as dragons sailed the sky overhead, his arms burdened, and the breath ragged in his throat, when the winter storm reached them in a gust of bitter cold wind, and a flurry of icy sleet.
* * *
Narad crouched close to the fire, watching the others who had come in answer to Glyph’s summons, though he knew not the nature of that invitation. It seemed as if there were voices in this ruined forest that he could not hear. Blunted and dulled by his sordid self, all sensitivity was lost to him. With his eyes, he was reduced to indifferent observation; the few sounds he heard were nothing more than mundane camp sounds of hunters gathering; the taste in his mouth was bitter with stale scraps of food and brackish water. With this prison that was his body, he could feel frozen ground underfoot, and the brittle fragility of the twigs and branches that he fed into the flames. This, then, was all that he was. No different from the half-dozen scrawny dogs that had joined their makeshift tribe.
The Deniers surrounding him were strangers, in ways Narad could barely fathom. They moved in near silence, spoke rarely, and seemed obsessed with their weapons – the hunting bows, and the bewildering array of arrows, each one somehow distinct in its purpose, each made unique in the twist of the fletching, or the barb, the length of shaft or the wood used, or the material from which the point was fashioned. With matching meticulousness, these men and women, and even the youths among them, worked also on their long-bladed knives, with oil, with spit, with various sands and gritty clay. They unwrapped and wrapped again the antler or bone handles, using leather, or stringy grasses, or gut. A number carried throwing spears, and made use of weighted atlatls made of soapstone, or greenstone – these artfully carved in sinewy, serpentine patterns that made Narad think of water in streams, or rivers.
The obsessions invoked patterns, ways of moving that were repeated without variation. The rote dispensed with the need for words, and no paths were crossed, no task interrupted, nothing to change one day from the next. From this, Narad had begun sensing the way of living among these people of the forest. Circular in its seeming mindlessness, no different from the seasons, no different from life’s own cycle.
And yet, in purpose, Glyph’s tribe was bending itself to the task of murder. All this was preparation, offering up a deceiving rhythm that could lull a man unaccustomed to patience.
A man such as me. Too clumsy to dance. He had looked over the Legion sword he now carried. It seemed serviceable. Someone had taken care of the honed edge, smoothing out burrs and softening nicks. The scabbard required no repairs. The belt’s leather was burnished and worn, but nowhere overstretched. The rivets were firmly in place, the buckle and rings sound. His examination had taken but a score of breaths.
And now he waited, watchful but emptied of feeling, and found for his self a greater affinity with the wandering dogs than with these hunters, these avowed killers.
Patterns were something he
understood. All that he was, and had been, or would be, ever circled around some thing, some force – he imagined it as an iron stake driven deep into the ground, and affixed to it was a solid, thick ring. Whatever he did, whatever he planned to do, was bound to that ring, in knots no mortal could break. Sometimes the rope felt long, looping, eager to unfurl and let him run and run far, but never as far as he had imagined, or dreamed that he could. And so he would be pulled round, to the right or the left, and though he kept running, he but tracked a circle. The stake stood in a glade, with all the earth around it beaten down, the grasses worn away, the trails circling and circling.
He had killed and would kill again. He had found himself plucked loose from the company of others, singled out, scorned and belittled and mocked. Every promise of brotherhood proved an illusion. There had been no women strong enough to cut the rope, or work loose the stake itself. Instead, he but dragged them into his coils, pinned them down, took what he needed but never found – never, never that way. Our bodies close in seeming intimacy, but the truth is a savage thing. What I long for … what I longed for, was something tender.
But that language was never given me. Give shape to my frustration, then, in brutal rape, in the empty triumph of power. I could take a thousand women this way, into my embrace, where the grasses are worn down and dust stings the eye, and never find what I seek.
Patterns. Round and round I go, nailed in place, trapped, doing again what I did before, and again, and again.
He but waited for the falling out, the first cruel comment, the birth of barbed words flung his way. Wasn’t it enough that he was not of this forest? That the hunters only tolerated him because Glyph had told them to? How soon would the resentment of that eat through this thin civility?