She sighed. ‘Yes, of course.’
‘He plays with us,’ Brohl Handar said. ‘He wants us second-guessing him. He wants our minds numbed with exhaustion come the dawn, and so slowed in our capacity to react, to respond with alacrity. Redmask wants us confused, and he has succeeded.’
‘Do you imagine that I don’t know all that?’ she demanded in a hiss.
‘Atri-Preda, you do not even trust your mages just now – the wards they have set to guard us this night. Our soldiers should be sleeping.’
‘If I have reason to lack confidence in my mages,’ Bivatt said dryly, ‘I have good cause. Nor has your K’risnan impressed me thus far, Overseer. Although,’ she added, ‘his healing talents have proved more than adequate.’
‘You sound very nearly resentful of that,’ Brohl said.
She waved a dismissive hand and turned away to resume her pacing.
A troubled commander indeed.
Redmask would be delighted.
Toc leaned along the length of the horse’s neck. He was riding bareback, and he could feel the animal’s heat and its acrid yet gentle smell filled his nostrils as he let the beast take another step forward. From the height of the horse’s shoulder he could see just above the line of the ridge off to his left.
The modest defensive berms were like humped graves along the flat this side of the Letherii camp. There had been a change of guard – the chimes had been readily audible – meaning yet another ideal time for the attack had slipped past.
He was no military genius, but Toc believed that this night could not have been more perfect as far as the Awl were concerned. They had their enemy confused, weary and frayed. Instead, Redmask exhausted his own warriors by sending them one way and then the next, with the seemingly sole purpose of raising dust no-one could even see. No command to initiate contact had been issued. No concerted gathering to launch a sudden strike into the Letherii camp. Not even any harassing flights of arrows to speed down in the dark.
He thought he understood the reason for Redmask’s inconstancy. The Letherii mages. His scouts had witnessed that impatient, deadly sorcery, held ready to greet the Awl attack. They had brought back stories of blistered land, rocks snapping in the incandescent heat, and these tales had spread quickly, driving deep into the army a spike of fear. The problem was simple. Here, in this place, Redmask had no answer to that magic. And Toc now believed that Redmask would soon sound the retreat, no matter how galling – no spilling of blood, and the great advantage of advancing well beyond reach of the Letherii column and so avoiding detection had been surrendered, uselessly thrown away. No battle, yet a defeat nonetheless.
His horse, unguided by the human on its back, took another step, head dipping so that the animal could crop grass. Too much of that and the beast would find its bowels in knots.
Oh, we take you into slaughter without a moment’s thought. And yes, some of you come to enjoy it, to lust for that cacophony, that violence, the reek of blood. And so we share with you, dear horse, our peculiar madness. But who judges us for this crime against you and your kind? No-one.
Unless you horses have a god.
He wondered if there might be a poem somewhere in that. But poems that remind us of our ghastlier traits are never popular, are they? Best the bald lies of heroes and great deeds. The slick comfort of someone else’s courage and conviction. So we can bask in the righteous glow and so feel uplifted in kind.
Aye, I’ll stay with the lies. Why not? Everyone else does.
And those who don’t are told they think too much. Hah, now there’s a fearsome attack enough to quail any venturesome soul. See me tremble.
His horse heard a whinny from off to the right and in whatever language the beasts shared that sound was surely a summons, for it lifted its head, then walked slowly towards it. Toc waited a few moments longer, then, when he judged they were well clear of the ridge line behind them, he straightened and gathered the reins.
And saw before him a solid line of mounted warriors, lances upright.
In front of the row was the young Renfayar, Masarch.
Toc angled his horse on an approach.
‘What is this, Masarch? A cavalry charge in the dark?’
The young warrior shrugged. ‘We’ve readied three times this night, Mezla.’
Toc smiled to himself. He’d thrown that pejorative out in a fit of self-mockery a few days past, and now it had become an honorific. Which, he admitted, appealed to his sense of irony. He edged his horse closer and in a low tone asked: ‘Do you have any idea what Redmask is doing, Masarch?’
A hooded glance, then another shrug.
‘Well,’ Toc persisted, ‘is this the main concentration of forces? No? Then where?’
‘To the northwest, I think.’
‘Is yours to be a feint attack?’
‘Should the horn sound, Mezla, we ride to blood.’
Toc twisted on the horse and looked back at the ridge. The Letherii would feel the drumming of hoofs, and then see the silhouettes as the Awl crested the line. And those soldiers had dug pits – he could already hear the snapping of leg bones and the animal screaming. ‘Masarch,’ he said, ‘you can’t charge those pickets.’
‘We can see them well enough to ride around them—’
‘Until the animal beside you jostles yours into one.’
At first Toc thought he was hearing wolves howling, but the sudden cry levelled out – Redmask’s rodara horn.
Masarch raised his lance. ‘Do you ride with us, Mezla?’
Bareback? ‘No.’
‘Then ride fast to one side!’
Toc kicked his horse into motion, and as he rode down the line he saw the Awl warriors ready their weapons above suddenly restless mounts. Breaths gusted like smoke into the air. From somewhere on the far side of the Letherii encampment there was the sudden reverberation of clashing arms.
He judged that Masarch led six or seven hundred Awl riders. Urging his horse into a gallop, Toc drew clear just as the mass of warriors surged forward. ‘This is madness!’ He spun the mount round, tugging his bow loose from his shoulder even as he looped the reins over his left wrist. Jamming one end of the bow onto his moccasined foot – between the big toe and the rest – he leaned down his weight to string it. Weapon readied and in his right hand, he deftly adjusted his hold on the reins and knotted them to ensure that they did not fall and foul the horse’s front legs.
As the beast cantered into the dusty wake of the cavalry charge, Toc Anaster drew out from the quiver at his hip the first stone-tipped arrow. What in Hood’s name am I doing?
Getting ready to cover the retreat I know is coming? Aye, a one-eyed archer . . .
With the pressure of his thighs and a slight shifting of weight, he guided his horse in the direction of the rise – where the Awl warriors had arrived in a dark mass, only now voicing their war-cries. Somewhere in the distance rose the sound of dogs, joining that ever-growing cacophony of iron on iron and screaming voices.
Redmask had finally struck, and now there was chaos in the night.
The cavalry, reaching the rise, swept down the other side and moments later were lost from sight.
Toc urged his horse forward, nocking the arrow. He had no stirrups to stand in while shooting, making this whole exercise seem ridiculous, yet he quickly approached the crest. Moments before arriving, he heard the clash ahead – the shouts, the piercing shrieks of injured horses, and beneath it all the thunder of hoofs.
Although difficult to discern amidst the darkness and dust, Toc could see that most of the lancers had swept round the outlying pickets, continuing on to crash into the camp itself. He saw soldiers emerging from those entrenchments, many wounded, some simply dazed. Younger Awl warriors rode among them, slashing down with scimitars in a grotesque slaughter.
Coruscating light burgeoned off to the right – the foaming rise of sorcery – and Toc saw the Awl cavalry begin to withdraw, pulling away like fangs from flesh.
‘No!
’ he shouted, riding hard now towards them. ‘Stay among the enemy! Go back! Attack, you damned fools! Attack!’
But, even could they hear him, they had seen the magic, the tumult building into a writhing wave of blistering power. And fear took their hearts. Fear took them and they fled—
Still Toc rode forward, now among the berms. Bodies sprawled, horses lying on their sides, kicking, ears flat and teeth bared; others broken heaps filling pits.
The first of the retreating Awl raced past, unseeing, their faces masks of terror.
A second wave of sorcery had appeared, this one from the left, and he watched it roll into the first of the horsewarriors on that side. Flesh burst, fluids sprayed. The magic climbed, slowed as it seemed to struggle against all the flesh it contacted. Screams, the sound reaching Toc on its own wave, chilling his very bones. Hundreds died before the magic spent itself, and into the dust now swirled white ash – all that was left of human and horse along the entire west flank.
Riders swarming past Toc, along with riderless horses surging ahead in the grip of panic. Dust biting his lone eye, dust seeking to claw down his throat, and all around him shadows writhing in their own war of light and dark as sorceries lifted, rolled then fell in gusting clouds of ash.
And then Toc Anaster was alone, arrow still nocked, in the wasteland just inside the berms. Watching another wave of sorcery sweep past his position, pursuing the fleeing Awl.
Before he could think either way, Toc found himself riding hard, in behind that dread wave, into the scalding, brittle air of the magic’s wake – and there, sixty paces away, within a mass of advancing soldiers, he saw the mage. The latter clenched his hands and power tumbled from him, forming yet another excoriating conjuration of raw destruction that rose up to greet Toc, then heaved for him.
One eye or not, he could see that damned wizard.
An impossible shot, jostled as he was on the horse’s back as the beast weaved between pits and suspect tufts of grass, as its head lifted in sudden recognition of terrible danger.
Silver-veined power surging towards him.
Galloping now, mad as any other fool this night, and he saw, off to his left, a deep, elongated trench – drainage for the camp’s latrines – and he forced his mount towards it, even as the sorcery raced for him on a convergent path from his right.
The horse saw the trench, gauged its width, then stretched out a moment before gathering to make the leap.
He felt the beast lift beneath him, sail through the air – and for that one moment all was still, all was smooth, and in that one moment Toc twisted at the hips, knees hard against the animal’s shoulders, drew the bow back, aimed – damning this flat, one-eyed world that was all he had left – then loosed the stone-tipped arrow.
The horse landed, throwing Toc forward onto its neck. Bow in his right hand, legs stretching out now along the length of the beast’s back, and his left arm wrapping, desperately tight, about the animal’s muscle-sheathed neck – behind them and to the right, the heat of that wave, reaching out, closer, closer—
The horse screamed, bolting forward. He held on.
And felt a gust of cool air behind him. Risked a glance.
The magic had died. Beyond it, at the front line of the advancing – now halted and milling – Letherii troops, a body settling onto its knees. A body without a head; a neck from which rose, not blood, but something like smoke—
A detonation? Had there been a detonation – a thumping crack, bludgeoning the air – yes, maybe he had heard—
He regained control of his horse, took the knotted reins in his left hand and guided the frightened creature round, back towards the crest.
The air reeked of cooked meat. Other flashes lit the night. Dogs snarled. Soldiers and warriors died. And among Masarch’s cavalry, Toc would later learn, half were not there to see the dawn.
High overhead, night and its audience of unblinking stars had seen enough, and the sky paled, as if washed of all blood, as if drained of the last life.
The sun was unkind in lighting the morning sky, revealing the thick, biting ash of incinerated humans, horses and dogs. Revealing, as well, the strewn carnage of the battle just done. Brohl Handar walked, half numbed, along the east edge of the now-dishevelled encampment, and approached the Atri-Preda and her retinue.
She had dismounted, and was now crouched beside a corpse just inside the berms – where, it seemed, the suicidal Awl had elected to charge. He wondered how many had died to Letherii sorcery here. Probably every damned one of them. Hundreds for certain, perhaps thousands – there was no way to tell in this kind of aftermath, was there? A handful of fine ash to mark an entire human. Two for a horse. Half for a dog. Just so. The wind took it all away, less than an orator’s echo, less than a mourner’s gut-deep grunt of despair.
He staggered to a halt opposite Bivatt, the corpse – headless, it turned out – between them.
She looked up, and perhaps it was the harsh sunlight, or the dust in a thin sheath – but her face was paler than he had ever seen before.
Brohl studied the headless body. One of the mages.
‘Do you know, Overseer,’ Bivatt asked in a rough voice, ‘what could have done this?’
He shook his head. ‘Perhaps his sorcery returned to him, uncontrolled—’
‘No,’ she cut in. ‘It was an arrow. From a lone archer with the audacity to outrun . . . to slip between – Overseer, an archer riding bareback, loosing his arrow whilst his horse leapt a trench . . .’
She stared up at him, disbelieving, as if challenging him to do other than shake his head. He was too tired for this. He had lost warriors last night. Dogs rushing from the high grasses. Dogs . . . and two Kechra – two, there were only two, weren’t there? The same two he had seen before. Only one with those strapped-on swords.
Swords that had chopped his K’risnan in half, one swinging in from one side, the other from the opposite side. Not that the blades actually met. The left one had been higher, from the top of the shoulder down to just below the ribcage. The right blade had cut into ribs, down through the gut, tearing free below the hip and taking a lot of that hip out with it. So, to be accurate, not in half. In three.
The other Kechra had just used its talons and jaws, proving no less deadly – in fact, Brohl thought this one more savage than its larger companion, more clearly delighting in its violent mayhem. The other fought with perfunctory grace. The smaller, swordless Kechra revelled in the guts and limbs it flung in every direction.
But those beasts were not immortal. They could bleed. Take wounds. And enough spears and swords had managed to cut through their tough hides to drive both of them off.
Brohl Handar blinked down at the Atri-Preda. ‘A fine shot, then.’
Rage twisted her features. ‘He was bound with another of my mages, both drawing their powers together. They were exhausted . . . all the wards.’ She spat. ‘The other one, Overseer, his head burst apart too. Same as this one here. I’ve lost two mages, to one damned arrow.’ She clambered stiffly to her feet. ‘Who was that archer? Who? ‘ Brohl said nothing.
‘Get your K’risnan to—’
‘I cannot. He is dead.’
That silenced her. For a moment. ‘Overseer, we mauled them. Do you understand? Thousands died, to only a few hundred of our own.’
‘I lost eighty-two Tiste Edur warriors.’
He was pleased at her flinch, at the faltering of her hard gaze. ‘An arrow. A lone rider. Not an Awl – the eyewitnesses swear to that. A mage-killer.’
The only thorn from this wild ride through the night. I see, yes. But I cannot help you. Brohl Handar turned away. Ten, fifteen strides across cracked, crackling, ash-laden ground.
Sorcery had taken the grasses. Sorcery had taken the soil and its very life. The sun, its glory stolen before it could rise this day, looked down, one-eyed. Affronted by this rival.
Yes. Affronted.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
When I go in search
 
; The world cries out
And spins away
To walk is to reach
But the world turns
Shied into sublime fend
Flinching to my sting
So innocent a touch
This is what it is to search
The world’s answer
Is a cornered retort
It does not want seeing
Does not suffer knowing
To want is to fail
And die mute
Ever solitary these steps
Yielding what it is
To be alone
Crying out to the world
Spinning away
As in its search
It finds you out.
Search
Gaullag of the Spring
He might well speak of mystery and show a mask of delighted wonder, but the truth of it was, mystery frightened Beak. He could smell sorcery, yes, and sense its poetic music, so orderly and eloquent, but its heat could so easily burn, right down to a mortal man’s core. He was not much for bravery; oh, he could see it well enough among other soldiers – he could see it in every detail of Captain Faradan Sort, who now sat her horse at his side – but he knew he possessed none of it himself.
Coward and stupid were two words that went together, Beak believed, and both belonged to him. Smelling magic had been a way of avoiding it, of running from it, and as for all those candles within him, well, he was happiest when nothing arrived that might send their flames flickering, brightening, bursting into a conflagration. He supposed it was just another stupid decision, this being a soldier, but there was nothing he could do about it now.
Marching across that desert in that place called Seven Cities (although he’d only seen two cities, he was sure there were five more somewhere), Beak had listened to all the other soldiers complaining. About . . . well, everything. The fighting. Not fighting. The heat of the day, the cold at night, the damned coyotes yipping in the dark sounding so close you thought they were standing right beside you, mouth at your ear. The biting insects, the scorpions and spiders and snakes all wanting to kill you. Yes, they’d found lots to complain about. That terrible city, Y’Ghatan, and the goddess who’d opened one eye that night and so stolen away that evil rebel, Leoman. And then, when all had seemed lost, that girl – Sinn – showing her own candle. Blindingly bright, so pure that Beak had cowered before it. They’d complained about all of that, too. Sinn should have snuffed that firestorm out. The Adjunct should have waited a few days longer, because there was no way those marines would have died so easily.