Nodding, Stavi reached down and snatched up the boy. He struggled, tilting his head back until it pressed hard against her chest. She blew down, stirring the hair atop his slightly elongated head, and he instantly settled.
‘Excited voices.’
‘Not happy excited.’
‘No,’ Stavi agreed, turning to look in the direction of the camp—just beyond a sweep of tilted rock outcroppings. The glow of fires was rising beneath a layer of woodsmoke.
‘We should get back.’
Hetan cursed under her breath. The girls had kidnapped their half-brother yet again, and no one had seen their escape. When they were out of her sight, the vast pit of her solitude opened its maw beneath her, and she could feel herself tumbling and spinning as she fell . . . and fell. So much darkness, so little hope that the plunge would end in a merciful snap of bones, the sudden bliss of oblivion.
Without her children, she was nothing. Sitting motionless, wandering inside her skull, dull-eyed and weaving like a hoof-kicked dog. Nose sniffing, claws scratching, but there was no way out. Without her children, the future vanished, a moth plunging into the fire. She blinked motes from her eyes, hands drawn together and thumbnails picking at the scabs and oozing slices left behind by the last assault on the ends of her fingers, the tender skin round the nails.
Frozen in place, sunken, in endless retreat.
Another bowl of rustleaf? Durhang? A resin bud of d’bayang? D’ras beer? Too much effort, every one of them. If she sat perfectly still, time would vanish.
Until the girls brought him back. Until she saw the twins pretending to smile but skittish and worried behind their eyes. And he would squirm in a girl’s arms, reaching for Hetan, who would see those strangely large, wide hands with their stubby fingers, clutching, straining, and a howl would rise within her, lifting out of that black maw, blazing like a skystone returning to the sky.
She would take him into a suffocating embrace, desperate sparks igniting within her, forcing her into animation.
Strings on the ends of those pudgy fingers, plucking her to life.
And she howled and she howled.
Heavy footsteps rushed past the entrance to the tent. Voices, a few shouts. A runner had entered the camp. The word was delivered, and the word was dead.
How could imagination hope to achieve the wonders of reality? The broken, deathly landscape stretched out on all sides, but the vista was shrinking as the day’s light faded. Yet more than darkness embraced the transformation. Domes of cracked bedrock appeared, skinned in lichen and moss. Shin-high trees with thick, twisted boles, branches fluttering with the last of the autumn leaves, like blackened layers of peeled skin. Bitter arctic wind rushing down from the northwest to herald winter’s eager arrival.
Cafal and Setoc ran through this new world. The frigid air bit in their lungs, yet it was richer and sweeter than anything they had breathed in their own realm, their own time.
How to describe the noise of a hundred thousand wolves running across the land? It filled Cafal’s skull with the immensity of an ocean. Padded footfalls delivered a pitch and rhythm unlike that of spaded hoofs. The brush of fur as shoulders rubbed was a seething whisper. The heat rising from bodies was thick as mist, the animal smell overwhelming—the smell of a world without cities, forges, charcoal burners, without battlefields, trenches filled with waste, without human sweat and perfumes, the smoke of rustleaf and durhang, the dust of frantic destruction.
Wolves. Before humans waged war upon them, before the millennia-long campaign of slaughter. Before the lands emptied.
He could almost see them. Every sense but sight was alive with the creatures. And he and Setoc were carried along on the ghostly tide.
All that was gone had returned. All this history, seeking a home.
They would not find it among his people. He did not understand why Setoc was leading them to the Barghast. He could hear her singing, but the words she used belonged to some other language. The tone was strangely fraught, as if warring forces were bound together. Curiosity and wariness, congress and terror—he could almost see the glint of bestial eyes as they watched the first band of humans from a distance. Did these two-legged strangers promise friendship? Cooperation? A recognition of brother-and sisterhood? Yes, to all of that. But this was no family at peace; this was a thing writhing with deceit, betrayal, black malice and cruelty.
The wolves were innocents. They stood no chance.
Flee the Barghast. Please, I beg you—
But his pleading rang hollow even to Cafal. He needed them—he needed this swift passage. Night had fallen. A wind was rising to tear at the torches and hearth-fires in the Senan camp. Rain spat with stinging fury and lightning ignited the horizon.
Eyes gleamed, iron licked the darkness—
The gods were showing him was what coming.
And he would not get there in time. Because, as has ever been known, the Barghast gods were bastards.
Heart thudding with anticipation, Sathand Gril slipped out from the light of the wind-whipped fires. He had watched the children and their furtive flight into the shattered hills northeast of the camp when the sun was still a hand’s breadth above the horizon. This had been his singular responsibility for weeks now—spying on the horrid little creatures—all leading to this moment, this reward.
He had killed the boy’s dog and now he would kill the boy. Plunging his knife into his belly with a hand over his mouth to stifle the shrieks. A large rock to crush the skull and destroy the face, because no one welcomed the face of a dead child, especially one frozen in twisted pain. He had no desire to look upon the half-lidded eyes that saw nothing, that had gone flat with the soul’s absence. No, he would destroy the thing utterly, and then fling it into a defile.
The twins were destined for something far more elaborate. He’d break their legs. Then tie their hands. He’d blood them both, but not cruelly, for Sathand was not one of those who hungered to rape, not women, not children. But he would give them his seed to carry to the gods.
This night of murder, it was for the Barghast. The righting of wrongs. The end of the usurper’s line and the eradication of Hetan’s shame. Onos Toolan was not of the clans of the White Face. He was not even Barghast.
No matter. Word had come. Onos Toolan was dead—murdered by Bakal, who had broken his own arm with the force of the knife-thrust he had driven into the Warleader’s heart. A power struggle was coming—Sathand Gril well knew that Sekara had decided on the Barahn warchief, Maral Eb. But to Sathand’s eyes—and to those of many others among the Senan—Bakal could make a surer claim, and that was one Sathand would back. More blood to be spilled before things settled out. Most were agreed on that.
Sekara the Vile. Her idiot husband, Stolmen. Maral Eb and his vicious brothers. The new Warleader would be Senan—no other clan was as powerful, after all, not even the Barahn.
It would have to be quick—all of it. The cursed Akrynnai army was on its way.
Sathand Gril padded through the darkness—the brats should be on their way back by now. Even they weren’t stupid enough to stay out once the sun set, what with both half-starved wolves and Akrynnai marauders on the hunt. So . . . where were they?
From the camp behind him, someone shrieked.
It had begun.
Three women entered the tent, and Hetan knew them all. She watched them advance on her, and suddenly everything became perfectly clear, perfectly understandable. Mysteries flitting away like veils of smoke on the wind. Now I join you, husband. She reached for her knife and found only the sheath at her hip—her eyes snapped to the flat-stone on which sat the remnants of her last meal, and there waited the knife—and Hetan lunged for the weapon.
She did not reach it in time. A knee slammed into her jaw, whipped her head round, blood spinning in threads. Hands snagged her wrists, dragged her round and pushed her to the ground.
Fists pummelled her face. Flares of light exploded behind her eyes. Stunned, suddenly too weak to st
ruggle, she felt herself rolled on to her stomach. Rawhide bound her arms behind her. Fingers snarled a fist’s worth of hair and lifted her head up.
Balamit’s foul breath whispered across her cheek. ‘No easy way for you, whore. No, it’s hobbling for Hetan—and what’s so different about that? You’d rut with a dog if it knew how to kiss! May you live a hundred years!’
She was thrown on to her back, and then lifted up from behind, Jayviss’s nails digging deep into Hetan’s armpits.
Hega, burly, miserable Hega, swung the hatchet down.
Hetan shrieked as the front half of her right foot was chopped off. The leg jumped, spraying blood. She tried to pull the other one away, but a crack of the hatchet’s iron ball against her kneecap numbed the leg. The hatchet swung down again.
The pain rushed in a black flood. Balamit giggled.
Hetan passed out.
Krin, whose niece had married a Gadra warrior and was swollen with child, watched as Sekara’s bitch dogs dragged Hetan out from the tent. The whore was unconscious. Her stumped feet trailed wet streaks that seemed to flare as lightning flashed in the night.
They brought her to the nearest hearth-fire. Little Yedin was tending to the flat blade and it was pale hot when she lifted it from the coals. Meat sizzled and popped as the blade was pushed against Hetan’s left foot. The woman’s body jerked, her eyes starting open in shock. A second shriek shattered the air.
Nine-year-old Yedin stared, and then at an impatient snap from one of the bitches, she flipped the blade and seared Hetan’s other foot.
Krin hurried forward, scowling at the way Hetan’s eyes had rolled up, head lolling. ‘Wake her up, Hega. I’m first.’
His sister grinned, still holding the bloodied hatchet. ‘Your son?’
Krin looked away, disgusted. He was barely half her age. Then he jerked a nod. ‘Tonight’s the night for it,’ he said.
‘Widow’s gift!’ Hega cried in glee.
Jayviss brought over a gourd of water and threw its contents into Hetan’s bruised face.
She sputtered, coughed.
Krin advanced on her, mindful and delighted at how many people had gathered, and at how other men were arguing their place. ‘Keep her hands tied,’ he said. ‘For the first dozen or so. After that, there won’t be any need.’
It was true—no Barghast woman resisted by that point. And in a few days, she’d drop to her hands and knees at a glance, backside upthrust and ready.
‘Might be two dozen,’ someone in the crowd observed. ‘Hetan was a warrior, after all.’
Hega stepped up and kicked Hetan in the ribs. Spittle flew from the widow’s lips as she snarled and said, ‘What’s a warrior without a weapon? Bah, she’ll be licking her lips after five or so, you’ll see!’
Krin said nothing; nor did anyone else. The warriors knew their own, after all. Hega was an idiot, to think Hetan would break so easily. I remember you, Hega. My sister, too fat to fight. And who was the one licking her lips five times a day? Oh, we see where your hate lives—gods, I am giving my son to this thing? Well, just for one night. And I’ll give him my own knife, with leave to use it. No one will miss you, Hega. And no one will call out my boy, either.
The wind was howling—a storm had found them on this fateful night—he could hear rain in the distance. Guy ropes quivered and hummed. Hide walls thumped and rippled—Barghast warriors were pouring into the encampment as if the wild drumming had summoned them, and Krin caught word that Maral Eb had arrived, along with the Senan warriors Tool had taken with him. Bakal among them. Slayer, liberator of all the Barghast. Who would forget this night?
Who would forget, too, that it was Krin, firstborn son of Humbrall Taur’s own uncle, who was the first to fuck Hetan?
The thought hardened him. He stood above her, waiting until her wild eyes slanted across his own, and when that fevered gaze stuttered and then returned to lock with his, Krin smiled. He saw the shock, and then the hurt that was betrayal, and he nodded. ‘Allies, Hetan? You lost them all. When you proclaimed him as your husband. When you championed your father’s madness.’
Hega pushed back in. ‘Where are your children, Hetan? Shall I tell you? Dead and cold in the darkness—’
Krin backhanded her across the face. ‘Your time with her is over, widow! Go! Run and hide in your hut!’
Hega wiped blood from her lips, and then, eyes flashing, she wheeled, shouting, ‘Bavalt son of Krin! Tonight you are mine!’
Krin almost sent a knife her way as she pushed through the crowd. A knife, son, long before she wraps round you, long before you sink into that spider’s hole.
As the significance of Hega’s words worked through, there was laughter, and Krin was stung by the contempt he heard all round him. He looked down at Hetan—she was still staring up at him, eyes unwavering.
Shame flooded through him, stealing his hardness fast as a mother’s kiss.
‘Don’t think you can watch,’ he said in a growl, crouching to pull her on to her stomach. As he tugged down her leathers, excitement returned—awakened by anger as much as anything else. Oh, and triumph, for many men among the Senan had looked upon her with lust and desire, and they were even now arguing their turn with her. But I am the first. I will make you forget Onos Toolan. I will remind you of the manhood of the Barghast. He knelt, pushing with his knees to splay wide her legs. ‘Lift up to me, whore. Show them all how you accept your fate.’
Pain was a distant roar. Something cold and sharp now filled her skull, fixed like spears to her eyes, and every face she had looked upon since awakening once more had pierced her like lightning, arcing in from her eyes, igniting her brain. Faces—those expressions and all that they revealed—they were burned upon her soul now.
She had played with Hega’s younger sister—they had been so close—but that woman was somewhere in the crowd now, flat-eyed, walled-off. Jayviss had spun a fine horse blanket as a wedding gift, and Hetan remembered her bright, proud smile when Hetan singled her out in giving public thanks. Balamit, daughter of a shoulderwoman, had been her keeper on the Night of First Blood, when Hetan was barely twelve years old. She’d sat awake, holding her hand, until sleep finally took the child now a woman.
Yedin often played with the twins—
Husband, I have betrayed you! In my misery, in my pathetic self-pity—I knew, I knew this was coming, how could it not? My children—I have abandoned them.
They killed them, husband. They killed our children!
‘Lift up to meet me, whore.’
Krin, I used to laugh at your hunger for me, sick as it was. Does my father’s ghost wait for you, Krin? Does he witness this, and what you demand of me?
Does he understand my shame?
Krin now punishes me. He is only the first, but no matter how many there are, the punishment will never be enough.
Now . . . now I understand the mind of a hobbled woman. I understand.
And she lifted up to meet him.
The wretches saw him before he saw them, and they saw, too, the heavy knife in his hand.
None would deny that the twins were clever, nasty creatures, in the manner of newborn snakes, and so when they spun round and fled, Sathand Gril was not surprised. But one of them was burdened with a child, and that child was now screaming.
Oh, they might silence him in the only way possible—a suffocating hand over his mouth and nose, thus sparing Sathand the blood on his own hands—and he waited for that as he plunged in pursuit, but the shrieks went on.
He could run them down, and so he would, eventually. He was sure they knew that they were already dead. Well, if they would make it a game, he would play. One last gesture of childhood, before he took childhood away. Would they squeal when he caught them? An interesting question. If not immediately, then later, yes, later they would squeal indeed.
Scrabbling sounds ahead, at the slumped end of a rock-walled defile, and Sathand lumbered forward—yes, there was one of them, with that boy in her arms, trying to climb
up the scree—
The boulder very nearly killed him, dropping down to hammer into his shoulder. He howled in pain, stumbled—caught the flash of the other twin up on the edge of the wall to his left. ‘You rotted piece of dung!’ he snarled. ‘You will pay for that!’
No longer a game. He would give them hurt for hurt, and then more. He would make them regret such stupid attempts.
Ahead, the girl with the boy had given up trying to climb the fan of sand and gravel, and had instead dropped down and to the right, vanishing into a crevasse. A moment later the other girl darted in after her sister.
The whole thing had been an act. A trap. So clever, weren’t they?
Mind blackening with fury, he bolted after them.
Setoc was tugging at his arms. ‘Cafal! Get up!’
It was too late. He was seeing all there was to see. Cursed by his own gods. Could he close hands about their necks, one by one, and choke the life from them, he vowed he would.
His beloved sister—he had screamed as the hatchet chopped down. He had fallen to his knees when Krin stepped up to her, and now he sought to claw out his own eyes—although the visions behind them proved indifferent to the damage done to them. Blood ran with tears—he would dig and dig until never again would he look upon the world—but it seemed that blindness would for ever elude him.
He watched Krin rape his bloodkin. He heard the exhortations from the hundreds of warriors gathered round. He saw Bakal, gaunt and his eyes luminous, stumble into view, saw the man’s horror as all the blood left his face, saw as the great slayer of Onos Toolan twisted round and fled, as if the Warleader’s ghostly hand was reaching for him. But it was just the rape of a hobbled woman—not even considered rape, in fact. Just . . . using.
And Sathand Gril, whom he had hunted beside in years past, was now hunting Stavi and Storii, and Absi who flailed in Stavi’s arms as if in full awareness that this new world he had found was crumbling around him, that death was coming to take him before he could as much as taste it. And the boy was outraged, indignant, defiant. Confused. Terrified.