After a moment, Lord Anomander said, ‘You mean to say, sir, that the creatures behave as if it was still day.’
‘As it indeed is, milord. Late afternoon.’
‘Perhaps,’ ventured Ivis, ‘Mother Dark has blessed all life within her realm with this dubious gift.’
At a nod, Gazzan set out, leading them into the forest.
Eyes upon us, named history or otherwise, can still make a man’s skin crawl. ‘Milord.’
‘Out with it, captain. I well see your dismay.’
‘These Azathanai now among us … they make me uneasy.’
‘It is my suspicion, Ivis,’ said Anomander in a low voice, ‘that they have always been among us. Unseen for the most part. But in their machinations we are tossed and turned like blindfolded fools.’
The notion rattled Ivis. He combed through his beard, felt ice crystals beneath his fingernails, and then spat to one side. ‘I would we turned on them, milord, if what you say is true.’
‘You would either way,’ Anomander retorted, with some amusement in his tone.
‘My lord’s keep is in ruin,’ Ivis said in a growl. ‘An ancient edifice and ancestral home, brought down in a single night. Was there no other means of dealing with the daughters? Fire and smoke, the tumbling of walls, and such a maelstrom of sorcery as to make me sick with fear for the future.’
Anomander sighed. ‘Just so, Ivis. Yet, did I not bait him? The fault is mine, captain, and I will make that plain to your lord.’
‘You dismiss the threat posed by Envy and Spite.’
‘As any sober reflection would lead us to do, Ivis. No matter their power, their minds remained those of children. The sorcery indeed lent claws to their impulses, a lesson we are all obliged to heed, given the child within each of us. But in truth, old friend, I anticipated an emasculation, a reducing of the threat in a manner more civilized than what we were witness to.’ He shook his head. ‘It was a brutal night, and the shock of it reverberates still.’
‘Sorcery, milord, lacks all subtlety.’
‘As will any force wielded without restraint. And here, Ivis, you set your knife-point into the heart of my dread. I despise the use of the fist, when a caress would better serve.’
‘These Azathanai see it differently, milord.’
‘So it seems. And yet T’riss affected a simple touch, and see now its consequences. I have thought,’ Anomander added with a bitter laugh, ‘my loyalty’s abiding would have seen off this silver hue upon my mane, but she would see me set apart, and that I must now live with.’
‘There was a spirit, milord, within the fire—’
‘Brood spoke of her, yes. Olar Ethil, a matron of the Dog-Runners.’
‘An Azathanai.’
‘If the title means anything, then yes, an Azathanai.’
‘She offered the ecstasy of destruction, milord.’
‘As would any creature of flames.’
‘And desire,’ Ivis added. ‘You speak of caresses, but I tell you, I now live with the curse of such a caress.’
Ahead the trees thinned, revealing part of a glade. The grackle and murmur of ravens descended from the bared branches on all sides, whilst black shapes danced on the churned-up, frozen snow between dark huddled forms. The cold air held the stink of bile and faeces.
Drawing closer, silent now, they reached the glade’s edge and looked out upon scores of corpses, many stripped down near naked, their flesh frozen black, the wounds and gaping holes pecked open, purple-hued and glistening with frost.
‘Their skin misleads,’ said Ivis. ‘These dead are Liosan.’
‘Fleeing Liosan, sir,’ Gazzan added. ‘Struck from behind as they ran. Axe and spear, and arrows. Broken, sir, in a rout.’
‘The Deniers,’ someone muttered from the squad, ‘have found their teeth.’
‘Or the monks have finally ventured out to their flock,’ Ivis said. ‘And yet … arrows. Nothing noble in that.’
Anomander’s breath hissed out in a plume that swept ghost-like into the glade. ‘The nobility adhered to by the Legion slaughtering peasants in the woods, captain?’
‘A crime demanding—’
‘A crime, sir? Is this how we are to divide the blood on our hands? One side just, the other an outrage? Best take a blade to ensure the distinction, and cleave to the cause with a sure eye! But I tell you this: history’s unbidden gaze shall not be given leave to turn away, not by absolving words or the cynical dip into semantics. Remember what you see here, captain, and leave every excuse upon the ground. A life defending itself has right to any means, be they teeth and nails, or arrows.’
‘Then will atrocity be met with atrocity, milord? How swift our descent to the savage!’
Anomander waved a dismissive hand. ‘Best be clear-eyed on that truth, sir, and see the descent for what it is.’ He faced Ivis with fierceness burning in his eyes. ‘We knew war directly, the two of us. In the slaying and the slaughter, savagery was our lover, locked step in step with our relentless advance. Do you deny it?’
‘The cause was just—’
‘Did that stay your hand, even once?’
‘Why would it, milord?’
‘Indeed, why would it?’ He then turned back to the clearing and its corpses. ‘Why would it, when justice serves the savage? Why would it, when the cause justifies the crime? Justifies? Absolves, more like. I wonder if the rise of priests among us was for the sole purpose of blessing the killing we would do. Priests, kings, warlords, highborn. And, of course, officers and the iron-clad fist that backs them.’ He swung round. ‘So bless this field. In the absence of priests, we can leave the gods out of it. Bless it for what it is, Ivis, in a world where killing is no crime.’
Shaken, Ivis backed up a step. ‘Milord, you give cause for despair.’
‘I give it? Abyss below, Ivis. I’ve but carved words to name what we’d rather not name. If the messenger delivers despairing news, is he the cause of it?’
He moved past Ivis then, on his way back to their camp upon the road. Ivis waved his squad to follow, watched them file silently past, and finally, with a lingering glance back at the glade and its hooded sentinels murmuring among the trees, he took up the rear.
We are past distinctions. He said as much. The field behind me announces the same. And if, in these shattered woods, a goddess slowly sinks down upon a bed of spikes, to that crime even history is blind.
* * *
It was a delusion to imagine that a wild forest was filled with such bounty as to keep the belly full. Even in the absence of wolves and hunting cats to keep their numbers down, deer and elk could starve in the winter. Sharenas Ankhadu understood, now, the purpose behind the seasonal hunts of the Deniers. Victuals needed collecting, pits needed digging, meats smoked or salted to be buried in caches. In such a realm, bound to the seasons, a single family struggled, and what congress existed between each one was both fraught and tense.
The moans and pangs of an empty stomach found no relief in the sentiments of nobility and dignity. Nothing proud was conferred by the laying bare of raw need. And yet, she now recalled bitterly, she had, in shared company with her kin, often spoken with a kind of voyeuristic nostalgia, longing for simpler days, when purity meant fingers pressed deep into the earth, or the brutal pursuit of some scampering prey, as if her own blood held a memory of past lives, each one a paragon of virtue.
But time played its tricks with such things. The noble face with its mouth stained red, the battered hands with dirt beneath cracked and chipped nails, the worn furs and threadbare tunics, and the blank, solemn gaze so often mistaken for dignity, did not belong to her past, but existed in step with her – among these forest dwellers, and the castouts in their caves in the hills.
Delivering slaughter upon them had been a crime almost beyond measure.
Beloved Kagamandra, I now comprehend the meaning of unconscionable. No bleaching of the skin can cleanse what we have done here.
And now, see what we have made them,
our suffering kindred of the forest. If nobility hid in their mourning shrouds, the time for grief has passed.
She moved among corpses. She saw faces she recognized, although death stole away most of what she remembered of them. Most of the arrows had been cut out from the wounds they had made, although here and there a shattered shaft had been left behind, tossed aside once the arrowhead had been retrieved. Beyond the rough, jumbled line of fallen soldiers, there were others who had been caught in flight. Their frantic paths of retreat were plain enough to see.
Hallyd Bahann’s company, drawn here by Sharenas herself.
Here is a lesson, my love, but one I’ll not venture to broach. In any case, best look away now, as I become another raven amidst this feast. A flicker of this iron beak, some flesh to dull the pangs. While on the branches, jaded black eyes ponder their new rival.
Hearing a noise she turned.
Their approach had been quiet, and now they stood less than twenty paces away. Sharenas adjusted the knife in her hand, eyeing the strangers. Then her eyes narrowed.
Bah, he is anything but a stranger. ‘Gripp Galas,’ she said, her voice cracking with disuse. ‘Marriage palled, did it? The woman beside you is comely enough, but her instead of Hish Tulla? Age has taken your sight along with your wits.’
‘Sharenas Ankhadu?’
‘Why doubt who stands before you? Did I not visit your winter nest? Did I not huddle shivering beneath furs in that unheated cell you call a guest room?’
The woman suddenly scowled. ‘Once the fire was lit, it warmed up quickly enough.’
Sharenas squinted at her. ‘Ah, yes. You, then.’ She waved with her knife to the bodies surrounding them. ‘Seeking old friends, perhaps?’
‘If so,’ Gripp Galas said, ‘then for a different purpose than you, it would seem.’
‘The forest is unfriendly.’
‘And, I believe, has been so for some time, Sharenas Ankhadu.’
‘I am a deserter. A murderer of fellow officers and more than a few of these soldiers and scouts. They were hunting me.’
‘This was a battle, not an ambush,’ said the woman.
‘Widowers with nothing to lose, but the taste of blood on the tongue invites a recurring thirst.’
‘For them, or you?’
Sharenas smiled across at the woman. ‘Pelk. Once on Urusander’s staff. You never had much to say.’
‘Sending soldiers out to fight and die demands little, as you well know, captain.’
‘You were a trainer. A weapon master.’
‘I did what must be done to make an army, captain,’ said Pelk, drawing closer, eyes now scanning the frozen, contorted bodies in the snow. ‘Made orphans of you all, and then showed you the teats of the only bitch left, and her name was War.’
The words chilled Sharenas – her first real sense of cold in what seemed weeks. ‘I am undecided about you two, so halt your advance, Pelk. Be warned, I am now a sorceress.’
‘A piss-poor one,’ Pelk snapped. ‘You look starved. You’re filthy, and you stink.’
‘These ones,’ said Gripp Galas. ‘They were hunting you? Whose company?’
‘Hallyd Bahann. If he isn’t dead, he should be.’ Sharenas paused, and then said, ‘I would have butchered them all in their damned tents, but as it was, I got to Esthala and her useless husband. And Serap Issgin. Before running out of time.’
‘And who set this task upon you, captain?’
Sharenas studied Pelk’s flat face, bemused by her question. ‘Urusander.’
‘By his command?’
‘By his utter uselessness.’
‘And these ones?’
‘Deniers, Pelk. That much should be obvious.’ She grinned at Gripp Galas. ‘Precious Legion soldiers, so finely trained and honed by Weapon Master Pelk there, hunted down like animals.’
Gripp Galas said, ‘We have food, captain.’
‘As do I.’
‘Then the choice is yours,’ he replied. ‘Feast here, or return to civilization.’
Her laugh broke into a cackle and she spread her arms, taking in the battlefield. ‘Yes! This civilization! Strip me down, bathe me, dress me, and see to the buckles of my belt and armour, and why, I can march in step with you. Orphan no longer, hey, Pelk?’
‘Better that than this, captain. Or have you truly acquired a taste for Tiste flesh?’
‘Haven’t we all? Oh, I know, my crime here is my lack of subtlety. No, take your bulging bellies and leave me be, both of you. I care not what mission drags you into this forest, and the Deniers won’t bother asking, either. Await the greeting arrows, but save your shocked looks for them, not me.’
She crouched, cut free a large piece of frozen meat from a woman’s thigh.
From the trees, ravens screamed their outrage.
Gesturing, Gripp Galas led Pelk off to their left, westward. The road was not far in that direction. Perhaps they thought it safer.
Well, my love, I’ll allow them this: if not safer, then certainly more civil in its habit of passage. To and fro, on matters of grave import. Enough self-importance to deflect an arrow’s flight? We’ll see, I suppose. Darling of mine, I have reached such a noble state, that even dignity tastes like raw meat.
Satisfied with the cut she now held in her left hand, she set off in the opposite direction.
* * *
Gripp’s sigh was rough, jagged. ‘Have we seen the future, Pelk?’
‘Now there’s a lesson,’ she replied as they wound among the blackened boles of the trees.
‘Which is?’
‘Future’s face, sir, is no different from the past’s face. Savagery is fangs upon its own tail, and no escape is possible. We are encircled, with no way out.’
‘Surely,’ Gripp replied, ‘civilization can offer us something more.’
She shook her head. ‘Peace is a drawn breath; war the roar of its release.’
‘I have had a thought,’ said Gripp Galas after a time of crunching footsteps through brittle snow. ‘It may be that even Andarist will not tarry in his isolation.’
She seemed to chew on this, before saying, ‘We seek his brother, sir, and will urge him to join us in returning to the estate. Now you suspect that Andarist will not be there?’
‘Just so … a feeling.’
Pelk was silent again for a dozen or so strides, and then she said, ‘Where, then, are we to guide Lord Anomander?’
‘Into the current, perhaps.’
‘And where will this flood take us?’
Gripp Galas sighed. ‘Kharkanas. And a field of battle.’
It was well past dusk when they neared the road, only to see firelight ahead. Raising a hand, Gripp Galas studied the distant camp.
Pelk grunted softly. ‘Carriage and wagons. Many soldiers.’
‘Houseblades, I think,’ Gripp replied.
They approached. Another dozen strides, and from nearby cover two figures rose before them, levelling spears. Gripp spoke. ‘Just the two of us. Your livery is Dracons – is Captain Ivis with you?’
The Houseblades were both women. They moved further apart. One spoke. ‘You’ve not the look of Deniers. Advance and identify yourselves.’
‘Gripp Galas, and with me is the gate sergeant of House Tulla, Pelk. I am known to your captain—’
‘You are known to me,’ the other woman said, lowering her spear and stepping closer. ‘I fought at Fant Reach.’
Gripp nodded. With Pelk at his side, he moved forward.
Escorted by the Houseblade who had fought at Fant Reach, they continued on into the camp straddling the road. It was clear to Gripp that the entire company of Dracons Houseblades was here, meaning the keep was abandoned, and the supplies in the wagons, along with the carriage, indicated that the household accompanied the troops. The implications left him uneasy.
‘Sir,’ said Pelk, pointing to figures standing near one fire. ‘Our search is at an end.’
Now Gripp Galas saw his old master, in the company of Captai
n Ivis and a huge, broad figure cloaked in furs. The firelight played upon all three in a game of glinting metal and burnished leather. From somewhere near the carriage, a baby was crying.
Lord Anomander’s gaze fixed upon Gripp as he approached.
‘Gripp? Why have you come among us?’
‘Milord, I have come in search of you.’
Frowning, Anomander glanced across at either Ivis or the other man – Gripp could not be sure which – and then the First Son of Darkness stepped out of the firelight. ‘Walk with me, old friend.’ They moved away from the fire, and Pelk stepped forward to greet Captain Ivis.
Anomander continued, ‘I feel the heat upon me already fade. South, then, upon the road. Beyond this civil shell, perhaps we’ll find the familiar stars above us. Sufficient to recall nights long past.’
‘Milord, forgive me—’
‘Yes,’ Anomander cut in, an edge to his tone, ‘forgiveness jostles to the fore, demanding dispensation, as it ever does. You are not with your wife. You are not withdrawn to that sanctuary of love, so high-walled as to be secure from all travails.’
‘We were well retired, milord, wintered and sedate. But our isolation proved far from complete. Emissaries from Lord Urusander. Your own Captain Kellaras. And, milord, one other.’
‘And which of these sent you to me, so unmindful of past gifts?’
‘Kellaras, milord, in his desperation, came with news from Kharkanas. Captain Sharenas Ankhadu, with warnings of the Legion’s impending march. And the other …’ Gripp hesitated, and then said, ‘Milord, Andarist came to us, seeking the privacy of our remote estate.’
Anomander was silent. They walked the frozen slush of the road. Already the lights from the camp’s fires were well behind them, and what heat might have lingered from those flames was long gone from both men.
After a time, Gripp spoke again. ‘Your brother Silchas sent Prazek and Dathenar to the Hust Legion, in aid of Galar Baras, although I am certain that Commander Toras Redone will finally relent, and will resume command in time for the Legion’s march to Kharkanas. In any case, we can presume they have already begun that march. Your own Houseblades await you in the Citadel.’
Anomander raised a hand then, forestalling Gripp. ‘I am well enough informed,’ he said, ‘of matters pertaining to Kharkanas.’