His wisdom. His will.
The joy of life that could burn in his eyes. The fire of vengeance that could blaze in its stead – that blazed even now – when at last he had judged the time aright, the time to answer for all that had been done.
To the Grey Swords.
An answer delivered unto the betrayers.
An answer delivered unto the slayers.
If not for that brave warrior and his brave horse, then Tool would have killed these Awl immediately. The youth with the mottled face. The muddy children huddled around him. He probably still planned to.
Hetan knew all of this, in her heart; she knew her husband. And, had he drawn his flint sword, she would not have tried to stop him.
The White Faces had been hiding for too long. Their scouting expeditions to the east had long since told them all they needed to know, of the path that awaited them, the journey they must soon undertake. It had been vengeance keeping them in place. That, and the vast, uncanny patience of Tool.
Within the Tellann Warrens, the Barghast had watched this latest war, the protracted engagement that had begun with the massing of the two armies far to the west.
They had not come in time to save the Grey Swords, but Hetan well recalled her and her husband coming upon the killing ground where the company had fallen. Indeed, they had witnessed the plains wolves engaged in their ghastly excision of human hearts – an act of honour? There was no way of knowing – each animal had fled with its prize as soon as it was able. The slaughter of those betrayed soldiers had been particularly brutal – faces had been cut away. It had been impossible to identify anyone among the fallen – and this had delivered upon Tool the deepest wound of all.
He had lost a friend there.
The betrayal.
The slaying.
There would be, in Tool, no room for mercy. Not for the Awl. Not for the Letherii army so far from home.
And now they stood, well able to see the last of the Awl warriors fall, to see their wardogs dying in the mud, to hear the triumphant roars of the Letherii, even as the nearby skirmishers, having seen the Barghast forces, were hastily retreating back to their lines.
Hetan studied that vast, churned killing field, and said, ‘I cannot tell them apart.’
Torrent stared, not knowing what to think. Both women, flanking the lone man, were to his eyes terrifying. The one who had just spoken – in some infernal foreign tongue – was like an apparition from an adolescent boy’s nightmare. Danger and sensuality, a bloodthirstiness that simply took Torrent’s breath away – and with the loss of that breath, so too the loss of courage. Of manhood itself.
The other woman, dark, short yet lithe, wrapped in the furs of a panther. And the blue-black glint of that beast’s skin seemed to be reflected in the heart of her eyes beneath that robust brow. A shaman, a witch, oh yes. A most dreadful witch.
The man was her kin – the resemblances were unmistakable in their features, as well as their modest heights and the bowing of their legs. And for all that the women terrified Torrent, the stolidity of the warrior’s expression chilled the Awl’s soul.
The taller woman, with her face streaked in white paint, now settled her gaze upon Torrent and said, in halting trader’s tongue, ‘You still live. Because of the horse warrior’s sacrifice. But,’ she nodded towards the savage with the flint sword, ‘he remains undecided. Do you understand?’
Torrent nodded.
The man then said something, and the white-faced woman glanced away, eyes thinning. Then her gaze settled on the satchel Torrent still held, dangling from a strap, in his left hand. She pointed down at it. ‘What do you carry?’
The Awl blinked, then looked down at the leather bag. Shrugging, he tossed it aside. ‘Scribblings,’ he said. ‘He painted many words, like a woman. But he was not the coward I thought. He was not.’
‘Scribblings?’
Torrent found that there were tears on his cheeks. He wiped them away. ‘The horse-warrior,’ he said. ‘The Mezla.’
Hetan saw her husband’s head slowly turn at that word, saw his eyes fix on the Awl warrior, then watched as a cascade of realizations took hold of Tool’s expression, ending with a terrible scream as he brought his hands to his face, then fell to his knees.
And she was suddenly at his side, cradling his head against her belly as he loosed another piercing cry, clawing at his own face.
The Awl stared as if in shock.
Barghast warriors were rushing out from the line behind them, the young ones with their ancient single-edged hook-swords drawn, Tool’s most beloved whom he saw as his own children. Faces filled with consternation, with fear, they converged towards Tool.
Hetan held out a hand, halted them all in their tracks.
Beside the two of them now, drawing her panther skin about her shoulders, Kilava Onass. Her husband’s sister, whose heart held more sorrow and loss than Hetan could comprehend, who would weep every night as if it was ritually demanded of her with the sun’s setting. Who would walk out beyond the camp and sing wordless songs to the night sky – songs that would send the ay howling with voices of mourning and grief.
She stood, now, on her brother’s right. But did not reach down a hand, did not even cast upon Tool a glance of sympathy. Instead, her dark eyes were scanning the Letherii army. ‘They prepare for us,’ she said. ‘The Tiste Edur join the ranks. The cavalry wait along the old shoreline. Onos Toolan, we are wasting time. You know I must leave soon. Very soon.’
Tool drew himself from Hetan’s embrace. Saying nothing, he straightened, then began walking.
To where his friend had fallen.
The Awl warrior took a half-step towards him. ‘No!’ he shouted, turning pleading eyes upon Hetan. ‘He must not! The Mezla – he was a friend, yes? Please, he must not!’
Tool walked on.
‘Please! They cut off his face! ‘
Hetan flinched. ‘He knows,’ she said.
And then Tool did halt, looking back, meeting Hetan’s eyes. ‘My love,’ he said in a ragged voice. ‘I do not understand.’
She could but shake her head.
‘They betrayed him,’ Tool continued. ‘Yet, see. This day. He rode to the enemy.’
‘To save the lives of these children,’ Hetan said. ‘Yes.’
‘I do not understand.’
‘You have told me many tales, husband, of your friend. Of Toc the Younger. Of the honour within him. I ask you this: how could he not?’
Her heart came near to bursting as she gazed upon her beloved. These Imass – they were unable to hide anything they felt. They possessed none of the masks, the disguises, that were the bitter gifts of others, including her own Barghast. And they were without control, without mastery, which left grieving to wound the soul deeper than anything Hetan could imagine. As with grieving, so too love. So too friendship. So too, alas, loyalty.
‘They live,’ Tool then said.
She nodded.
Her husband turned and resumed his dreadful journey.
A snort of impatience from Kilava.
Hetan walked over to the leather satchel the Awl warrior had discarded. She picked it up, slung it over one shoulder. ‘Kilava,’ she said. ‘Bonecaster. Lead our Barghast into this battle. I go down to my husband.’
‘They will not—’
‘Don’t be absurd. Terror alone will ensure their obedience. Besides, the sooner they are done slaughtering, the sooner you will part our company.’
Her sudden smile revealed a panther’s canines.
Sending a chill through Hetan. Thank the spirits you smile so rarely, Kilava.
Atri-Preda Bivatt had commanded her forces to withdraw from the seabed. Back onto more solid ground. Their triumph this day had grown sour with the taste of fear. Another damned army, and it was clear that they intended to do battle against her exhausted, bruised and battered forces. She had allowed herself but a few moments’ silent raging at the injustice, before forcing upon herself the responsibilities of
her command.
They would fight with courage and honour, although as the barbaric enemy continued massing she could see that it would be hopeless. Seventy thousand, perhaps more. The ones who landed on the north coast, but also, perhaps, the rumoured allies of the Bolkando. Returned here to the north – but why? To join with the Awl? But for that, their main army had come too late. Bivatt had done what she had set out to do; had done what had been commanded of her. She had exterminated the Awl.
Seventy thousand or two hundred thousand. The destruction of Bivatt and her army. Neither mattered in the greater scheme of things. The Letherii Empire would throw back these new invaders. Failing that, they would bribe them away from the Bolkando; indeed, turn them round to fashion an alliance that would sweep into the border kingdoms in waves of brutal slaughter.
Perhaps, she suddenly realized, there was a way through this . . . She glanced about until she saw one of her Finadds. Walked over. ‘Prepare a delegation, Finadd. We will seek parley with this new enemy.’
‘Yes sir.’ The man rushed off.
‘Atri-Preda!’
Bivatt turned to see Brohl Handar approach. The Overseer did not, at this moment, look like an imperial governor. He was covered in gore, gripping his sword in one hand thick with dried blood.
‘It seems we are not too late after all,’ he said.
‘These are not Awl, Overseer.’
‘I see that clearly enough. I see also, Atri-Preda, that you and I will die here today.’ He paused, then grunted a laugh. ‘Do you recall, Bivatt, warning me that Letur Anict sought to kill me? Yet here I have marched with you and your army, all this way—’
‘Overseer,’ she cut in. ‘The Factor infiltrated my forces with ten assassins. All of whom are dead.’
His eyes slowly widened.
Bivatt continued, ‘Have you seen the tall soldier often at your side? I set him the task of keeping you alive, and he has done all that I commanded. Unfortunately, Overseer, I believe that he shall soon fail at it.’ Unless I can negotiate our way out of this.
She faced the advancing enemy once more. They were now raising standards. Only a few, and identical to each other. Bivatt squinted in the afternoon light.
And recognized those standards.
She went cold inside. ‘Too bad,’ she said.
‘Atri-Preda?’
‘I recognize those standards, Overseer. There will be no parley. Nor any chance of surrender.’
‘Those warriors,’ Brohl Handar said after a moment, ‘are the ones who have been raising the cairns.’
‘Yes.’
‘They have been with us, then, for some time.’
‘Their scouts at the least, Overseer. Longer than you think.’
‘Atri-Preda.’
She faced him, studied his grave expression. ‘Overseer?’
‘Die well, Bivatt.’
‘I intend to. And you. Die well, Brohl Handar.’
Brohl walked away from her then, threading through a line of soldiers, his eyes fixed on one in particular. Tall, with a gentle face streaked now in mud.
The Tiste Edur caught the man’s gaze, and answered the easy smile with one of his own.
‘Overseer, I see you have had an exciting day.’
‘I see the same on you,’ Brohl replied, ‘and it seems there is more to come.’
‘Yes, but I tell you this, I am pleased enough. For once, there is solid ground beneath me.’
The Overseer thought to simply thank the soldier, for keeping him alive this long. Instead, he said nothing for a long moment.
The soldier rubbed at his face, then said, ‘Sir, your Arapay await you, no doubt. See, the enemy readies itself.’
And yes, this is what Brohl Handar wanted. ‘My Arapay will fight well enough without me, Letherii. I would ask one final boon of you.’
‘Then ask, sir.’
‘I would ask for the privilege of fighting at your side. Until we fall.’
The man’s soft eyes widened slightly, then all at once the smile returned. ‘Choose, then, Overseer. Upon my right or upon my left.’
Brohl Handar chose the man’s left. As for guarding his own unprotected flank, he was indifferent.
Somehow, the truth of that pleased him.
In the city of Drene at this time, riots raged over the entire north half of the city, and with the coming night the mayhem would spread into the more opulent south districts.
Venitt Sathad, granted immediate audience with Factor Letur Anict – who awaited him standing before his desk, his round, pale face glistening with sweat, and in whose eyes the steward saw, as he walked towards the man, a kind of bemusement at war with deeper stresses – walked forward, in neither haste nor swagger. Rather, a walk of singular purpose.
He saw Letur Anict blink suddenly, a rapid reassessment, even as he continued right up to the man.
And drove a knife into the Factor’s left eye, deep into the brain.
The weight of Letur Anict, as he collapsed, pulled the weapon free.
Venitt Sathad bent to clean the blade off on the Factor’s silk robe; then he straightened, turned for the door, and departed.
Letur Anict had a wife. He had children. He’d had guards, but Orbyn Truthfinder had taken care of them.
Venitt Sathad set out to eliminate all heirs.
He no longer acted as an agent of the Liberty Consign. Now, at this moment, he was an Indebted.
Who had had enough.
Hetan left her husband kneeling beside the body of Toc the Younger. She could do no more for him, and this was not a failing on her part. The raw grief of an Imass was like a bottomless well, one that could snatch the unsuspecting and send them plummeting down into unending darkness.
Once, long ago now, Tool had stood before his friend, and his friend had not known him, and for the Imass – mortal once more, after thousands upon thousands of years – this had been the source of wry amusement, in the manner of a trickster’s game where the final pleasure but awaited revelation of the truth.
Tool, in his unhuman patience, had waited a long time to unveil that revelation. Too long, now. His friend had died, unknowing. The trickster’s game had delivered a wound from which, she suspected, her husband might never recover.
And so, she now knew in her heart, there might be other losses on this tragic day. A wife losing her husband. Two daughters losing their adopted father, and one son his true father.
She walked to where Kilava Onass had stationed herself to watch the battle, and it was no small mercy that she had elected not to veer into her Soletaken form, that, indeed, she had left the clans of the White Face Barghast the freedom to do what they did best: kill in a frenzy of explosive savagery.
Hetan saw that Kilava stood near where a lone rider had fallen – killed by the weapons of the K’Chain Che’Malle, she noted. A typically vicious slaying, stirring in her memories of the time when she herself had stood before such terrible creatures, a memory punctuated with the sharp pang of grief for a brother who had fallen that day.
Kilava was ignoring the legless, one-armed body lying ten paces to her left. Hetan’s gaze settled upon it in sudden curiosity.
‘Sister,’ she said to Kilava – deliberate in her usage of the one title that Kilava most disliked – ‘see how this one wears a mask. Was not the war leader of the Awl so masked?’
‘I imagine so,’ Kilava said, ‘since he was named Redmask.’
‘Well,’ Hetan said, walking to the corpse, ‘this one is wearing the garb of an Awl.’
‘But he was slain by the K’Chain Che’Malle.’
‘Yes, I see that. Even so . . .’ She crouched down, studied that peculiar mask, the strange, minute scales beneath the spatters of mud. ‘This mask, Kilava, it is the hide of a K’Chain, I would swear it, although the scales are rather tiny—’
‘Matron’s throat,’ Kilava replied.
Hetan glanced over. ‘Truly?’ Then she reached down and tugged the mask away from the man’s face. A long look
down into those pale features.
Hetan rose, tossing the mask to one side. ‘You were right, it’s not Redmask.’
Kilava asked, ‘How do you know that?’
‘Well, Awl garb or not, this man was Letherii.’
Hood, High King of Death, Collector of the Fallen, the undemanding master of more souls than he could count – even had he been so inclined, which he was not – stood over the body, waiting.
Such particular attention was, thankfully, a rare occurrence. But some deaths arrived, every now and then, bearing certain . . . eccentricities. And the one lying below was one such arrival.
Not least because the Wolves wanted his soul, yet would not get it, but also because this mortal had evaded Hood’s grasp again and again, even though any would see and understand well the sweet gift the Lord of Death had been offering.
Singular lives, yes, could be most . . . singular.
Witness that of the one who had arrived a short time earlier. There were no gifts in possessing a simple mind. There was no haze of calming incomprehension to salve the terrible wounds of a life that had been ordained to remain, until the very end, profoundly innocent.
Hood had not begrudged the blood on Beak’s hands. He had, however, most succinctly begrudged the heartless actions of Beak’s mother and father.
Few mortal priests understood the necessity for redress, although they often spouted the notion in their sermons of guilt, with their implicit extortions that did little more than swell the temple coffers.
Redress, then, was a demand that even a god could not deny. And so it had been with the one named Beak.
And so it was, now, with the one named Toc the Younger.
‘Awaken,’ Hood said. ‘Arise.’
And Toc the Younger, with a long sigh, did as Hood commanded.
Standing, tottering, squinting now at the gate awaiting them both. ‘Damn,’ Toc muttered, ‘but that’s a poor excuse for a gate.’
‘The dead see as they see, Toc the Younger. Not long ago, it shone white with purity.’
‘My heart goes out to that poor, misguided soul.’
‘Of course it does. Come. Walk with me.’
They set out towards that gate.
‘You do this for every soul?’