Reaper's Gale
She watched Keneb and his squads move down from the island, splashing their way further inland, due west. ‘How long before they’re out of this heading in that direction – heading west, I mean?’
‘Maybe twelve hundred paces, if they stay out of the river.’
She grunted. ‘Two hundred extra steps won’t kill them. All right, Beak, north it is. Lead on.’
‘Aye, Captain. We can use the old walkway.’
She laughed then. Beak had no idea why.
There was a sound in war that came during sieges, moments before an assault on the walls. The massed onagers, ballistae and catapults were let loose in a single salvo. The huge missiles striking the stone walls, the fortifications and the buildings raised a chaotic chorus of exploding stone and brick, shattered tiles and collapsing rooftops. The air itself seemed to shiver, as if recoiling from the violence.
Sergeant Cord stood on the promontory, leaning into the fierce, icy wind, and thought of that sound as he stared across at the churning bergs of ice warring across the strait. Like a city tumbling down, enormous sections looming over where Fent Reach used to be were splitting away, in momentary silence, until the waves of concussion rolled over the choppy waves of the sea, arriving in thunder. Roiling silver clouds, gouts of foamy water—
‘A mountain range in its death-throes,’ muttered Ebron at his side.
‘War machines pounding a city wall,’ Cord countered.
‘A frozen storm,’ said Limp behind them.
‘You all have it wrong,’ interjected Crump through chattering teeth. ‘It’s like big pieces of ice . . . falling down.’
‘That’s . . . simply stunning, Crump,’ said Corporal Shard. ‘You’re a Hood-damned poet. I cannot believe the Mott Irregulars ever let you get away. No, truly, Crump. I cannot believe it.’
‘Well, it’s not like they had any choice,’ the tall, knock-kneed sapper said, rubbing vigorously at both sides of his jaw before adding, ‘I mean, I left when no-one was looking. I used a fish spine to pick the manacles – you can’t arrest a High Marshal anyhow. I kept telling them. You can’t. It’s not allowed.’
Cord turned to his corporal. ‘Any better luck at talking to your sister? Is she getting tired holding all this back? We can’t tell. Widdershins doesn’t even know how she’s doing it in the first place, so he can’t help.’
‘Got no answers for you, Sergeant. She doesn’t talk to me either. I don’t know – she doesn’t look tired, but she hardly sleeps any more anyway. There’s not much I recognize in Sinn these days. Not since Y’Ghatan.’
Cord thought about this for a time, then he nodded. ‘I’m sending Widdershins back. The Adjunct should be landing in the Fort by now.’
‘She has,’ said Ebron, pulling at his nose as if to confirm it hadn’t frozen off. Like Widdershins, the squad mage had no idea how Sinn was managing to fend off mountains of ice. A bad jolt to his confidence, and it showed. ‘The harbour’s blocked, the thug in charge is contained. Everything is going as planned.’
A grunt from Limp. ‘Glad you’re not the superstitious type, Ebron. As for me, I’m getting down off this spine before I slip and blow a knee.’
Shard laughed. ‘You’re just about due, Limp.’
‘Thanks, Corporal. I really do appreciate your concern.’
‘Concern is right. I got five imperials on you living up to your name before the month’s out.’
‘Bastard.’
‘Shard,’ Cord said after they’d watched – with some amusement – Limp gingerly retreat from the promontory, ‘where is Sinn now?’
‘In that old lighthouse,’ the corporal replied.
‘All right. Let’s get under some cover ourselves – there’s more freezing rain on the way.’
‘That’s just it,’ Ebron said in sudden anger. ‘She’s not just holding the ice back, Sergeant. She’s killing it. And the water’s rising and rising fast.’
‘Thought it was all dying anyway.’
‘Aye, Sergeant. But she’s quickened that up – she just took apart that Omtose Phellack like reeds from a broken basket – but she didn’t throw ‘em away, no, she’s weaving something else.’
Cord glared at his mage. ‘Sinn ain’t the only one not talking. What do you mean by “something else”?’
‘I don’t know! Hood’s balls, I don’t!’
‘There’s no baskets over there,’ Crump said. ‘Not that I can see. Marsh pigs, you got good eyes, Ebron. Even when I squint with one eye, I don’t see—’
‘That’s enough, Sapper,’ Cord cut in. He studied Ebron for a moment longer, then turned away. ‘Come on, I got a block of ice between my legs and that’s the warmest part of me.’
They headed down towards the fisher’s shack they used as their base.
‘You should get rid of it, Sergeant,’ Crump said.
‘What?’
‘That block of ice. Or use your hands, at least.’
‘Thanks, Crump, but I ain’t that desperate yet.’
It had been a comfortable life, all things considered. True, Malaz City was hardly a jewel of the empire, but at least it wasn’t likely to fall apart and sink in a storm. And he’d had no real complaints about the company he kept. Coop’s had its assortment of fools, enough to make Withal feel as if he belonged.
Braven Tooth. Temper. Banaschar – and at least Banaschar was here, the one familiar face beyond a trio of Nachts and, of course, his wife. Of course. Her. And though an Elder God had told him to wait, the Meckros blacksmith would have been content to see that waiting last for ever. Damn the gods, anyway, with their constant meddling, they way they just use us. As they like.
Even after what had to be a year spent on the same ship as the Adjunct, Withal could not claim to know her. True, there had been that prolonged period of grief – Tavore’s lover had been killed in Malaz City, he’d been told – and the Adjunct had seemed, for a time, like a woman more dead than alive.
If she was now back to herself, then, well, her self wasn’t much.
The gods didn’t care. They’d decided to use her as much as they had used him. He could see it, that bleak awareness in her unremarkable eyes. And if she had decided to stand against them, then she stood alone.
I would never have the courage for that. Not even close. But maybe, to do what she’s doing, she has to make herself less than human. More than human? Choosing to be less to be more, perhaps. So many here might see her as surrounded by allies. Allies such as Withal himself, Banaschar, Sandalath, Sinn and Keneb. But he knew better. We all watch. Waiting. Wondering.
Undecided.
Is this what you wanted, Mael? To deliver me to her? Yes, she was who I was waiting for.
Leading, inevitably, to that most perplexing question: But why me?
True, he could tell her of the sword. His sword. The tool he had hammered and pounded into life for the Crippled God. But there was no answering that weapon.
Yet the Adjunct was undeterred. Choosing a war not even her soldiers wanted. With the aim of bringing down an empire. And the Emperor who held that sword in his hands. An Emperor driven mad by his own power. Another tool of the gods.
It was hard to feel easy about all this. Hard to find any confidence in the Adjunct’s bold decision. The marines had been flung onto the Letherii shore, not a single landing en masse, in strength, but one scattered, clandestine, at night. Then, as if to defy the tactic, the transports had been set aflame.
An announcement to be sure.
We are here. Find us, if you dare. But be assured, in time we will find you.
While most of another legion remained in ships well off the Letherii coast. And the Adjunct alone knew where the Khundryl had gone. And most of the Perish.
‘You have taken to brooding, husband.’
Withal slowly lifted his head and regarded the onyx-skinned woman sitting opposite him in the cabin. ‘I am a man of deep thoughts,’ he said.
‘You’re a lazy toad trapped in a pit of self-obsession.’
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‘That, too.’
‘We will soon be ashore. I would have thought you’d be eager at the gunnel, given all your groaning and moaning. Mother Dark knows, I would never have known you for a Meckros with your abiding hatred of the sea.’
‘Abiding hatred, is it? No, more like . . . frustration.’ He lifted his huge hands. ‘Repairing ships is a speciality. But it’s not mine. I need to be back doing what I do best, wife.’
‘Horseshoes?’
‘Precisely.’
‘Shield-rims? Dagger-hilts? Swords?’
‘If need be.’
‘Armies always drag smiths with them.’
‘Not my speciality.’
‘Rubbish. You can fold iron into a blade as well as any weaponsmith.’
‘Seen plenty of ‘em, have you?’
‘With a life as long as mine has been, I’ve seen too much of everything. Now, our young miserable charges are probably down in the hold again. Will you get them or will I?’
‘Is it truly time to leave?’
‘I think the Adjunct is already off.’
‘You go. They still make my skin crawl.’
She rose. ‘You lack sympathy, which is characteristic of self-obsession. These Tiste Andii are young, Withal. Abandoned first by Anomander Rake. Then by Andarist. Brothers and sisters fallen in pointless battle. Too many losses – they are caught in the fragility of the world, in the despair it delivers to their souls.’
‘Privilege of the young, to wallow in world-weary cynicism.’
‘Unlike your deep thoughts.’
‘Completely unlike my deep thoughts, Sand.’
‘You think they have not earned that privilege?’
He could sense her growing ire. She was, after all, no less Tiste Andii than they were. Some things needed steering around. Volcanic island. Floating mountain of ice. Sea of fire. And Sandalath Drukorlat’s list of sensitivities. ‘I suppose they have,’ he replied carefully. ‘But since when was cynicism a virtue? Besides, it gets damned tiring.’
‘No argument there,’ she said in a deadly tone, then turned and marched out.
‘Brooding’s different,’ he muttered to the empty chair across from him. ‘Could be any subject, for one thing. A subject not at all cynical. Like the meddling of the gods – no, all right, not like that one. Smithing, yes. Horseshoes. Nothing cynical about horseshoes . . . I don’t think. Sure. Keeping horses comfortable. So they can gallop into battle and die horribly.’ He fell silent. Scowling.
* * *
Phaed’s flat, heart-shaped face was the colour of smudged slate, a hue unfortunate in its lifelessness. Her eyes were flat, except when filled with venom, which they were now as they rested on Sandalath Drukorlat’s back as the older woman spoke to the others.
Nimander Golit could see the young woman he called his sister from the corner of his eye, and he wondered yet again at the source of Phaed’s unquenchable malice, which had been there, as far as he could recall, from her very earliest days. Empathy did not exist within her, and in its absence something cold now thrived, promising a kind of brutal glee at every victory, real or imagined, obvious or subtle.
There was nothing easy in this young, beautiful woman. It began with the very first impression a stranger had upon seeing her, a kind of natural glamour that could take one’s breath away. The perfection of art, the wordless language of the romantic.
This initial moment was short-lived. It usually died following the first polite query, which Phaed invariably met with cold silence. A silence that transformed that wordless language, dispelling all notions of romance, and filling the vast, prolonged absence of decorum with bald contempt.
Spite was reserved for those who saw her truly, and it was in these instances that Nimander felt a chill of premonition, for he knew that Phaed was capable of murder. Woe to the sharp observer who saw, unflinchingly, through to her soul – to that trembling knot of darkness veined with unimaginable fears – then chose to disguise nothing of that awareness.
Nimander had long since learned to affect a kind of innocence when with Phaed, quick with a relaxed smile which seemed to put her at ease. It was at these moments, alas, when she was wont to confide her cruel sentiments, whispering elaborate schemes of vengeance against a host of slights.
Sandalath Drukorlat was nothing if not perceptive, which was hardly surprising. She had lived centuries upon centuries. She had seen all manner of creatures, from the honourable to the demonic. It had not taken her long to decide towards which end of the spectrum Phaed belonged.
She had answered cold regard with her own; the contempt flung her way was like pebbles thrown at a warrior’s shield, raising not even a scratch. And, most cutting riposte of all, she had displayed amusement at Phaed’s mute histrionics, even unto overt mockery. These, then, were the deep wounds suppurating in Phaed’s soul, delivered by the woman who now stood as a surrogate mother to them all.
And now, Nimander knew, heart-faced Phaed was planning matricide.
He admitted to his own doldrums – long periods of flat indifference – as if none of this was in fact worth thinking about. He had his private host of demons, after all, none of which seemed inclined to simply fade away. Unperturbed by the occasional neglect, they played on in their dark games, and the modest hoard of wealth that made up Nimander’s life went back and forth, until the scales spun without surcease. Clashing discord and chaos to mark the triumphant cries, the hissed curses, the careless scattering of coin. He often felt numbed, deafened.
It may have been that these were the traits of the Tiste Andii. Introverts devoid of introspection. Darkness in the blood. Chimerae, even unto ourselves. He’d wanted to care about the throne they had been defending, the one that Andarist died for, and he had led his charges into that savage battle without hesitation. Perhaps, even, with true eagerness.
Rush to death. The longer one lives, the less valued is that life. Why is that?
But that would be introspection, wouldn’t it? Too trying a task, pursuing such questions. Easier to simply follow the commands of others. Another trait of his kind, this comfort in following? Yet who stood among the Tiste Andii as symbols of respect and awe? Not young warriors like Nimander Golit. Not wicked Phaed and her vile ambitions. Anomander Rake, who walked away. Andarist, his brother, who did not. Silchas Ruin – ah, such a family! Clearly unique among the brood of the Mother. They lived larger, then, in great drama. Lives tense and humming like bowstrings, the ferocity of truth in their every word, the hard, cruel exchanges that drove them apart when nothing else would. Not even Mother Dark’s turning away. Their early lives were poems of epic grandeur. And we? We are nothing. Softened, blunted, confused into obscurity. We have lost our simplicity, lost its purity. We are the Dark without mystery.
Sandalath Drukorlat – who had lived in those ancient times and must grieve in her soul for the fallen Tiste Andii – now turned about and with a gesture beckoned the motley survivors of Drift Avalii to follow. Onto the deck – ‘you have hair, Nimander, the colour of starlight’ – to look upon this squalid harbour town that would be their home for the next little eternity, to use Phaed’s hissing words.
‘It used to be a prison, this island. Full of rapists and murderers.’ A sudden look into his eyes, as if seeking something, then she gave him a fleeting smile that was little more than a showing of teeth and said, ‘A good place for murder.’
Words that, millennia past, could have triggered a civil war or worse, the fury of Mother Dark herself. Words, then, that barely stirred the calm repose of Nimander’s indifference.
‘You have hair, Nimander, the colour of—’ But the past was dead. Drift Avalii. Our very own prison isle, where we learned about dying.
And the terrible price of following.
Where we learned that love does not belong in this world.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I took the stone bowl
in both hands
and poured out my time
onto t
he ground
drowning hapless insects
feeding the weeds
until the sun stood
looking down
and stole the stain.
Seeing in the vessel’s cup
a thousand cracks
I looked back
the way I came
and saw a trail green
with memories lost
whoever made this bowl
was a fool but the greater
he who carried it.
Stone Bowl
Fisher kel Tath
The pitched sweep of ice had gone through successive thaws and freezes until its surface was pocked and sculpted like the colourless bark of some vast toppled tree. The wind, alternating between warm and cold, moaned a chorus of forlorn voices through this muricated surface, and it seemed to Hedge that with each crunching stamp of his boot, a lone cry was silenced for ever. The thought left him feeling morose, and this motley scatter of refuse dotting the plain of ice and granulated snow only made things worse.
Detritus of Jaghut lives, slowly rising like stones in a farmer’s field. Mundane objects to bear witness to an entire people – if only he could make sense of them, could somehow assemble together all these disparate pieces. Ghosts, he now believed, existed in a perpetually confused state, the way before them an endless vista strewn with meaningless dross – the truths of living were secrets, the physicality of facts for ever withheld. A ghost could reach but could not touch, could move this and that, but never be moved by them. Some essence of empathy had vanished – but no, empathy wasn’t the right word. He could feel, after all. The way he used to, when he had been alive. Emotions swam waters both shallow and deep. Tactile empathy perhaps was closer to the sense he sought. The comfort of mutual resistance.
He had willed himself this shape, this body in which he now dwelt, walking heavily alongside the withered, animate carcass that was Emroth. And it seemed he could conjure a kind of physical continuity with everything around him – like the crunching of his feet – but he now wondered if that continuity was a delusion, as if in picking up this curved shell of some ancient broken pot just ahead of him he was not in truth picking up its ghost. But for that revelation his eyes were blind, the senses of touch and sound were deceits, and he was as lost as an echo.