Authors: Steven Erikson
Hunn Raal grunted. ‘I admit to some curiosity about that. We’ll see soon enough what he has in mind.’
The Legion cavalry had turned inward, rising to the charge. The Wardens answered. Moments later, the leading edges collided.
* * *
On the crest of her hilltop, Renarr flinched at the distant impact. She saw bodies silently rising as if invisible hands had reached down from the empty sky, snatching them from their saddles. Their limbs flailed, and blooms of red snapped sudden as flags in the midst of the crush. Horses went down, thrashing and kicking. An instant later, the thunder of that collision reached her.
The whores were shouting, while the children now crowded between the men and women along the ridge, silent and watching with wide eyes, some with thumbs in their mouths, others pulling on pipes.
Renarr could see how, in the initial impact, many more Legion horses staggered and fell than did those of the Wardens. She suspected that this was unanticipated. An advantage of the wooden armour of the enemy’s mounts, she supposed, which while providing surprising defence did little to slow the swiftness and agility of the beasts. Even so, the Legion’s superior numbers checked that counterattack, absorbing the blow, and now, as riders fought in the crowded, churning maelstrom, the Wardens began giving ground.
She looked to the centre, and saw the foremost Wardens reach the base of the slope. Flags rippled, changing colour in a wave leading out from the stations upon the opposite hillside, and all at once the Wardens charged up the slope.
The pikes awaiting them glinted in the sun like the thread of a mountain stream.
Sensing someone at her side, Renarr glanced down and saw the girl with the bloodied face. Tears had cleaned her cheeks in narrow, crooked trails, but her pale eyes, fixed upon the battle below, were dry.
* * *
His lover’s face was everywhere now, upon all sides. Beneath the rims of helms, among his kin and among the enemy surging around him. He sobbed as he fought, howled as he cut down that dear man again and again, and screamed each time one of his comrades fell. He had left his lance buried halfway through a horse, the point driving into its chest and reaching all the way to its gut. Disbelief had flashed through Havaral then: he’d felt little resistance along the weapon’s shaft. The point had slipped past every possible obstacle. The horse’s rider had attempted to swing his heavy longsword at the captain, but the beast collapsing under him had tugged him away, and moments later a Warden’s lance cut clean through his neck, sending the head spinning.
His troop was falling back, collapsing inward. Lord Rend had done nothing to prevent it, and Havaral understood the role his flank now inherited, as a sacrificial bulwark protecting the centre. They would fight on, without hope of victory or even escape, and in this forlorn fate their only task was to take a long time in dying.
He knew nothing of the rest of the battle. The few flags he caught sight of, barely glimpsed and distant on the far slope, were all black.
He swung his sword, hacking at Legion soldiers. The multitude of his lover’s face showed twisted, enraged expressions, filled with hate and fury, with terror. Others showed him that face in grey, clouded confusion, as they sank back, or slid from their saddles. The surprise of death was one no actor on a stage could capture, because its truth cast an inhuman shade upon the eyes, and that shade spread out to claim the skin of the face, rushing down to bleach the throat. It was silent and it was, horribly, irrefutable.
Beloved, why are you doing this to me? Why are you here? What have I done to you, to so earn this?
He had lost sight of Kullis, and yet longed for the man, desperate to see a visage other than those that now surrounded him. He imagined holding the man tightly in his arms, burying his face in the crook of neck and shoulder, and weeping as only an old man could.
Was not love its own shock? A match to that of death? Did it not take the eyes first? Such reverberations as to weaken the bravest man or woman – its trembling echoes never left a mortal soul. He had fooled himself. There was no music in this, no song, no chorus of longing and regret. There was only chaos, and a lover’s face that never, ever went away.
He killed his beloved without pause. Again and again, and again.
* * *
With a gap of only a few horse-lengths separating the two centres, Sevegg saw the lances of the enemy riders angle to one side, and only at that instant did she note that one entire half of the Wardens in the front line had anchored their weapons on their left sides – and that line was to her right.
As the forces collided, the foremost line of riders peeled out to the sides in staggered timing, and a roar of clashing announced the rippling collision of their lance shafts with those of the pikes facing them as they swept those weapons outward, as if folding to one side blades of grass.
Immediately behind them, and matching the staggered cadence of those before them, the second line hammered into the exposed front line of the centre, the impact rippling out to the sides.
Sevegg shouted her astonishment. The precision of the manoeuvre was appalling, the effect devastating.
The Legion centre buckled, as dying bodies were plucked from the ground and driven into the ranks behind them. Pikes caught on fellow soldiers, dragging weapons or snapping the shafts. Moments later swords flashed down, hacking at heads, necks and shoulders.
Against the slope, the soldiers struggled to back up, many driven to the ground instead, and still the fist of the enemy drove deeper, churning up the slope.
‘Shit of the Abyss!’ Hunn Raal hissed, suddenly galvanized. ‘Commit our foot flanks!’ he shouted, rising on his stirrups. ‘Hurry, damn you all!’ He sawed his mount around. ‘Second rank centre, down the slope at the double! Form a second line and hold to save your lives!’
And ours.
Sevegg’s mouth was suddenly dry, and she felt her insides contract, as if every organ fought to retreat, to flee, only to be trapped by the cage of her bones. She closed a hand about the grip of her sword. The leather wrapping the handle was too smooth – not yet worn or roughened by sweat – and the weapon seemed to resist her grasp.
‘Keep it sheathed, you fool!’ her cousin snapped. ‘If you panic my soldiers I’ll see you skinned alive.’
Below, the Wardens chopped, slashed and hacked their way ever closer. Of the six-deep line of pikes, only two remained, and the lead one was fast fragmenting.
Then soldiers seethed over the crest to both sides of Sevegg and Hunn Raal, closing up once past and levelling their pikes.
‘We’ll grind them down now,’ Hunn Raal said. ‘But damn, that was well played.’
‘He did not imagine he was facing three entire cohorts,’ Sevegg said, her voice sounding thin to her own ears, even as relief flooded through her.
‘I could have done with two more.’
Thus emptying Urusander’s camp. But that would have made Raal’s intent too clear.
‘Ah, see the left flank! Our cavalry is through!’
She looked, and relief gave way to elation. ‘I beg you, cousin, let me join them!’
‘Go on, then. No, wait. Hold together your troop, Sevegg. Wet your swords by all means, but only on the edges – I want you riding for Ilgast Rend. He does not escape. Chase him down if necessary. He will face me in chains today, do you understand me?’
‘Alive then?’
‘Alive. Now, go, have your fun.’
Too quick to call me the fool, cousin. I won’t forget these public humiliations, and when I next have you in my arms, I’ll remind you of pleasure’s other side.
Waving to her troop, she set off along the crest.
* * *
Kicking, Havaral tried pushing his way out from under his dead horse. The beast’s weight was immense, trapping one leg, and yet still he struggled. When the pinned knee succumbed to the relentless pull, and the bone popped from its joint, he shouted in pain.
Blackness washed through him, and, gasping, he fought to remain conscious.
Well, that is that. I go nowhere.
Somewhere behind him, beyond sight, the Legion cavalry was savaging the centre. The captain had failed to hold them back, and now, he knew, the battle was lost.
Bodies and carcasses lay in heaps around him. Blood and spilled entrails made a glistening carpet on the ground, and he was covered in the same. The mosquitoes swarmed so thick around his face they filled his mouth like soft cornmeal, choking him as he swallowed them down again and again. The insects seemed both frenzied and baffled by this unflinching bounty, and though they clustered in such numbers as to blacken nearby corpses in their hunger, it appeared to be futile, as though they could not draw blood without the pressure of their prey’s pumping heart.
Havaral assembled these observations, holding on to his musings as if the rest of the world, with all its drama, and all its wretched desperation, was now beneath notice. Even his lover was gone from the field, and those faces that he could see, whether Warden or Legion, were one and all made strangers by death. He knew none of them.
He heard voices nearby, and then a guttural shout, and moments later a rider appeared, reining in and suddenly looming above him. The sun was high, casting the figure in silhouette, but he knew the voice when she spoke. ‘Old man, such fortune in finding you.’
Havaral said nothing. Mosquitoes kept drowning in the corners of his eyes, making them water all the more. He thought he had wept himself dry long ago. The high sun disturbed him. Surely they had fought longer than that?
‘Your Wardens are broken,’ Sevegg said. ‘We slaughter them. They thought we would permit a retreat, as if honour still lived in this day and age. Had any of you possessed a soldier’s mind, you wouldn’t have been so naїve.’
Blinking, he studied the dark shadow where her face should be.
‘Will you say nothing now?’ she asked. ‘Not even a curse or two?’
‘How fits shame, lieutenant?’
To that query she made no reply, but quickly dismounted, and then moved to crouch beside him. At last he could see her face.
She was studying him curiously. ‘We captured Lord Rend. My troop now delivers him to Hunn Raal. I will grant Ilgast this – he did not flee us, and looks to accept his fate as just punishment for failing on this day.’
‘Today,’ agreed Havaral, ‘marks a day of failures.’
‘Well, let me give you this. You’ll not scorn my pity, I hope. I see you at last. Old and useless, with every pleasure long behind you now. This hardly seems a fitting end, does it? Alone, with only me to caress your eyes. So, at the very least, I choose to offer you a gift. But first, I see you covered in blood and guts – where is your wound? Do you feel much pain, or has that faded?’
‘I feel nothing, lieutenant.’
‘That’s good then.’ She laughed. ‘Here I was going on and on, too unmindful by far.’
‘I’ll take the sharp point of your gift now, Sevegg, and deem it the sweetest kiss.’
Sevegg frowned briefly, as if struggling to understand the meaning of his invitation. Then she shook her head. ‘No, I cannot do that. I’ll let you bleed out instead.’
‘This is your first field of battle, isn’t it?’ he asked.
Her frown deepened. ‘Everyone has a first.’
‘Yes, I suppose that’s true. I will concede your innocence here, then.’
The furrows of her brow beneath the helm’s rim faded, and, smiling, she said, ‘That’s generous of you. I think now we could have been friends. I could well have looked on you as a father.’
‘A father to you, Sevegg Issgin? Now you curse me in earnest.’
She bore that well and nodded, looking off to one side for a moment before returning her attention to him. ‘So there’s still some fire in you. Not a daughter, then. We’ll imagine the lover instead. More blessed then my gift.’ She reached down and grasped the wrist of his left hand, tugging off the gauntlet. ‘Here, old man, one last time, a soft pleasure.’ And she moved his hand up under her leather breastplate. ‘You can squeeze if you’ve the strength.’
He met her eyes, feeling the swell of her tit cupped by his calloused palm. And then he laughed.
Confusion clouded her face, and at that moment, as he brought up his other hand and drove the knife it held up under her rib cage, using all his strength to pierce the leather, and felt it slide home to take her heart – at that moment, he looked hard at her face, seeing no one but a stranger. And this pleased him even more than the surprise he saw in that visage.
‘I bear no wounds,’ he said to her. ‘A veteran would have checked, woman.’
The weapon sobbed as she slipped back from him and fell awkwardly on to her heels.
Someone shouted in dismay. There was hurried motion. A sword flashed in Havaral’s eyes, like a lick of blinding sunlight, and at the same instant something slammed into his forehead, delivering a new, unexpected surprise.
Peace.
* * *
Soldiers had brought camp-stools to the summit overlooking the valley of the slain, with one to take Hunn Raal, as he contended with the grief of his cousin’s treacherous murder. The captain sat with a jug of wine balanced on one thigh, the other leg flung out, the foot resting on its outer ankle. He was indifferent to the activity around him, and the wine in his gut felt heavy and sour, yet comforting all the same.
He had ill news to deliver to Serap, who had become the last survivor among his kin. There was greater need now in keeping her close by Urusander’s side, as a valued officer in the commander’s staff. On the day that Urusander took the throne beside Mother Dark’s, she would be well placed in the new court. But he was running out of pawns.
Some hurts were not worth looking at, and if his display here before his soldiers – that of a captain reduced to a man, and a man reduced to a grieving child in a family twice broken – if all that yielded pity he could use, well, he would.
Drunks were well known as master tacticians. Seductively familiar with strategies of all sorts. The hurting thirst of his habit had honed him well, and he would not refuse his own tempered nature. Drunks were dangerous, in every way imaginable. Especially in matters of faith, trust and loyalty.