Authors: Steven Erikson
‘Yet you berated Wareth for his cowardice,’ said Dathenar.
She scowled. ‘No wonder Silchas sent you packing.’
Prazek spoke. ‘We have stood guard upon many a bridge, Dathenar and me. Lofty our presumption of stout diligence, our capacity to fend either approach.’
‘But the river runs past,’ Dathenar said, ‘with mocking indifference. Such is the fate of those who guard the civil, this span of bold traverse upon which peasants and kings will walk, each in their time. Stand in vigil, even as the stone and mortar rots beneath our boots. You would share pity before death’s distant bell? Be on with it then, commander. The river’s surface ripples with black and silver, a commingling of despair and hope.’
‘And what lies beneath that surface, alas, is anything but clear.’
Galar Baras stared at the two men, one to the other, and then back again as each spoke. Their voices possessed a cadence. Their words carried him frail as a leaf upon a stream. Glancing down, he saw desolation in his lover’s eyes.
‘Pity,’ she finally said, as if tasting the word yet again. ‘It suffices. But I keep my tears in a jug. You’ll see me astride my mount on the day of battle. I will not shy from that fate.’
‘We have spoken nothing of fate,’ Prazek said.
‘By its utterance the word invites,’ Dathenar observed.
‘Surrender,’ said Prazek, ‘by another name.’
‘Yet it awaits, a promise to the future, in which all power is yielded. To swim or drown beneath a reckless sky.’
‘I’ll order the advance when such is required of me,’ said Toras Redone. But her red eyes were glazed, her lips wet. ‘You three will command a thousand each. You will array your eight cohorts into a flattened wedge and march to close. I expect we’ll hold a flank—’
‘I will advise Lord Anomander that we take the centre,’ said Prazek.
She lifted her gaze with an effort, studied him. ‘Why?’
‘Should our side prevail, sir, it may be necessary for our flanking allies to turn on us.’
Toras Redone let her head tilt forward again, until she was peering at the jug on her lap, or her hands that held it as if it was a baby. ‘Now there is a fate unanticipated – forgive me my addled mind. Of course we take the centre, as we will be the wild beast with blood in its mouth. Cut-throats and thugs, sadists and murderers, our iron shrieking its own thirst. None of you can rein that in, can you?’
‘It’s not likely,’ said Dathenar, resuming his pacing.
‘Would that Hunn Raal returned to us,’ she then said, ‘with yet more wagons loaded with fatal casks. We could make husks of the armour, again, and take every hand from every sword. And,’ she lifted the jug and kissed its broad mouth, ‘begin anew.’
Galar Baras wanted to weep. Instead, he said, ‘Some other discarded or neglected segment of the population … but none comes to mind, alas.’
Prazek rose as if bidden by some unseen signal from his friend, who moved to draw back the tent flap, and as he stepped into the dull light beyond he said, ‘Well, there’re always children, though the armour might need refitting.’
The two men departed.
Toras Redone coughed, and then asked, ‘Did I dismiss them?’
In every way imaginable, sir.
‘I would depart too, sir, to oversee the preparations of my cohorts.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘as I am too far gone to even fuck right now.’
Without your will or your leave, Toras, there is nothing I could find to make love to. It may seem a fragile agreement, with you sodden most of the time, but I will hold to it nonetheless.
He waited a moment longer, if she would speak again, but then saw that her eyes had closed, her breaths now slow and deep.
The commander cannot see you now, as she communes with her jug of tears, with not a drop spilled to the world.
* * *
‘The ways of the Tiste,’ muttered Hataras Raze, her level blue gaze fixed upon the encampment ahead. ‘They scurry like ants upon a kicked nest. Each one a child to the world.’
‘Soldiers the worst,’ said Vastala Trembler, who now walked holding Listar’s left hand, while he gripped the lead for the horses with his right. The feel of her warm palm against his own was strangely miraculous, a gift undeserved, and he still did not know what to make of it. Earlier in the day, it had been Hataras walking close at his side, her fingers brushing his forearm on occasion, or resting on his hip. There seemed to be few barriers in the sensibilities of the Dog-Runners.
His eyes were not as sharp as theirs and it was a few moments before he made out the bustle of activity in the camp ahead. ‘They’re preparing to march,’ he said. ‘We’re just in time.’ He glanced at Vastala. ‘What did you mean, soldiers were the worst?’
‘Our children play the hunt. To learn the ways. But once the first blood is on their hands, they stop play. They meet the eyes of the hunt as adults, not children.’
‘Cruel necessity,’ said Hataras, nodding. ‘To give thanks to the spirit of the slain beast seeks to silence the terrible guilt within the hunter.’
Listar nodded. ‘I have heard of such practices. Among the Deniers.’
Vastala grunted. ‘Such gratitude is real,’ she said, ‘but if the hunter remains a child inside, the guilt is false. Only a hunter who is grown to an adult inside can understand the burden of such guilt. And knows that no animal spirit is appeased by its slayer’s gratitude.’
Hataras stepped ahead to twist round and study Listar as they walked. ‘A wolf drags you down, Punished Man, and begins to feed on you before your last breath. Its tail wags in gratitude. Tell me, are you appeased? Do you forgive with your last breath? Do you now see,’ she continued, ‘the delusion of the hunter?’
‘But soldiers—’
Vastala’s hand tightened its grip. ‘Soldiers! They blunt their guilt for every life taken. Their souls bear desperate shields, deflecting every threat away from themselves and towards their leader, king, queen, god or goddess. The one who demands of them the spilling of blood. In defence. Or conquest. Or punishment.’
‘Or disbelief,’ added Hataras. ‘Death to the faithless for the misguided Deniers.’
‘Children inside,’ Vastala said dismissively. ‘Guilt a lie. Wrongness made righteous. Lies to the self, lies to all others, lies to the god worshipped, lies to the children to come. Soldiers play, in the name of goddess or god, king or queen. In the name of generations to come. In the name of all but the true name.’
Hataras gestured ahead. ‘The child self. Cruel without necessity. Cruelty that tastes of pleasure. Such exists among hunters whom we have failed. Such exists among soldiers.’
They were drawing closer. Listar prised his hand loose from Vastala’s grip, felt the cold bite of its absence. ‘And criminals,’ he muttered under his breath.
‘So,’ said Hataras, ‘to the ritual. Dog-Runners do not abide adults who stay children inside. We force truths upon them. To draw aside the veil, this is what we will do.’
‘I told you of the woman, Rance.’
‘Yes, Punished Man. We will examine her.’
‘Be warned,’ interjected Vastala, ‘some things we cannot heal. Some things need to be cut away. Sometimes the one lives, sometimes it dies.’
‘Our captains wish you to begin with her,’ said Listar. ‘And they wish your ritual to be witnessed by all in the camp.’
Vastala smiled. ‘We are to perform. Good. Dog-Runners not shy.’
‘Indeed,’ Listar replied, recalling the night just past.
Vastala drew close to him again and peered into his face, and then she nodded. ‘Hataras, you spoke true. Our children will bear the tilt of his eyes. Our children will carry within them the promise of a life beyond the fate of the Dog-Runners. So. It is an even exchange.’
The notion that he had planted the seeds of children in these two women made Listar flinch. He forced his thoughts away, telling himself that such things could not yet be known, and that their words of payment – for the ritual to come – could not be weighed in flesh and blood.
Ahead, soldiers stationed at the pickets had seen them, and while one set off to deliver the news, others began gathering from the camp, drawn out to the defensive line by curiosity, or, perhaps, boredom.
‘I think,’ said Listar, ‘the secret’s out.’
‘No Azathanai hide in yonder camp,’ said Hataras. ‘Good. They are obsessed with secrets.’
Listar frowned at her. ‘You can sense their presence?’
Both women nodded. ‘We have learned this talent,’ said Vastala.
‘By tasting the fires of the hearth, the breath of smoke.’
‘By lapping the valley between Mother’s legs.’
‘Tellanas,’ Hataras said, nodding again. ‘Sorcery is the snake eating its own tail. It looks upon itself and in looking it devours, and in devouring, it grows. So the magic attends an endless feast. Our goddess Mother is trapped in a circle of herself. But we Bonecasters, we dance.’
For all their bluntness, these two women often confounded Listar. He had no understanding of this magic of which they spoke. To him, the Azathanai were half-legendary figures, not quite obscure enough for him to disbelieve in their existence, yet vague enough in details to lend him scepticism regarding their exploits. They straddled a line of veracity, and until tales of the one named T’riss, and her curses uttered in the Citadel of Kharkanas, reached Listar, he had given little thought to the Azathanai.
Builders. Gift givers.
And, it now seems, meddlers.
‘If they would be gods,’ he now said, as the guards ahead waved them forward, ‘why not reveal such? Why hide their power?’
‘Worship is vulnerability,’ replied Hataras. ‘See how we dance around Mother? We are her weakness, even as she is ours.’
‘Worse yet,’ added Vastala, ‘they too are children inside. Players of games.’
Listar squinted, seeing Wareth and Rebble now, the two men pushing their way through the small crowd awaiting them.
It is strange, to call these two my friends. And yet, they are. The coward and the bully. But I wonder, how much courage does it take to live with your fear? And how vast is Rebble’s heart, to cast so kind an eye upon those of us who are weak? We too readily judge and then dismiss.
But I think it is not Rance who should fear most what is to come. It is Wareth.
* * *
‘Listar looks different,’ said Rebble, tugging at his fingers to make the knuckles pop. ‘Younger.’
Wareth nodded.
Or, perhaps, no longer so old.
‘Then they may have worked on him already,’ he said.
Rebble grunted. ‘By how they hover around him, I’d say there was truth in your words, Wareth. Worked on him, hah.’
‘I meant the ritual.’
‘I meant sex.’
‘Yes, well. I suppose word’s already reached Prazek and Dathenar, but why don’t you make sure, and see that Rance is escorted into the centre of the parade ground. That’s how they want this to proceed.’
‘Assuming those witches will do as asked.’ Rebble paused. ‘Whatever that is, and damned if I have a clue.’
‘Nor I, to be honest. As for these Bonecasters agreeing to it, well, they’re here, aren’t they?’
Grunting, Rebble stepped forward. ‘Listar! Welcome back! Bring ’em in to the middle of the parade ground.’ Then he turned about, grinned enigmatically at Wareth, and set off back into the camp.
Wareth studied the two Dog-Runners. For all their blunt, stolid forms, there was a sensuality about them, and in their manner of moving, and their gestures, he wondered if they were sisters.
Still, they seem young to be powerful witches.
Listar handed the reins of the trailing horses to a nearby soldier and then walked up to Wareth. For a moment, it seemed that the man contemplated closing with an embrace, but at the last instant he halted, and nodded awkwardly. ‘Lieutenant.’ He glanced to one of the Bonecasters who now moved past him to stare up into Wareth’s eyes. ‘Ah, this is Hataras Raze. And here, Vastala Trembler. Bonecasters of the Logros clan of the Dog-Runners.’
Hataras reached out and rested one thick, calloused forefinger against Wareth’s chest. ‘This one, the coward?’
‘So he calls himself,’ Listar replied.
She pushed Wareth back a step with that stiff finger, and then, moving past, said, ‘Bah. We are all cowards, until we are not. Now, where is the tormented woman?’
‘Take your pick,’ a feminine voice offered from the crowd.
Hataras grinned. ‘Good!’
Another woman spoke, ‘You here to kill all the men?’
Vastala replied, ‘In a way, yes!’
Listar scowled, and then turned to Vastala. ‘Please, no more of Dog-Runner humour. Come along, we’re to head to the centre of the camp.’
‘Have the soldiers encircle us there,’ Hataras said, continuing on.
‘I think that is the plan,’ Listar replied, his gaze now searching Wareth with some confusion.
But Wareth was unable to respond.
We are all cowards, until we are not.
The words thundered through him, as did the easy dismissal with which she had uttered them. He wanted to turn, to set off after Hataras Raze, to demand more from her.
Do you offer me hope? A rebirth? If cowardice only before now, then when and how its end? What side of me still hides? Where, in myself, have I not already crawled, or cowered, or searched?
Do not offer me such words! Do not leave me with them, damn you!
The crowd had parted, and closed in again to form an informal escort as the Bonecasters made their way into the camp, Listar lingering between them and Wareth.
‘Sir?’
‘C-can they do this, Listar?’
After a long moment, Listar nodded, and said, ‘Mother help us all.’
* * *
Galar Baras scowled at Prazek, and then Dathenar. ‘You are both addled,’ he said. The three of them stood just outside the command tent. A moment later he waved away the soldier who’d delivered the news of Listar’s return. Stepping close to Prazek, he said, ‘This is madness. We are Tiste Andii. Children of Mother Dark. To bring in foreign witches—’
‘Children we may be,’ Prazek cut in, ‘but of the Hust, not Mother Dark.’
‘Be not deceived by the cast of the skin,’ Dathenar added. ‘That was a summary blessing. The Hust iron now claims these men and women, and it bridles with newborn power. Sorcery and witchery, a dance of the unknown, yet we would face it. We would grasp it. We would make it our own.’