The half-naked woman settled down beside him, tortured him by leaning against him. ‘Now that was a fight, thief. And for you, maybe not over.’
He was having trouble with his eyes – the blood was drying, seeking to close them up. ‘Not over?’
‘If you don’t give that armour back, I will have to kill you.’
He reached up, dragged his helm free and let it tumble from his hands. ‘It’s yours. I never want to see it again.’
‘Ill words,’ she chided. ‘It saved your life a dozen times this day.’
She was right in that. Still. ‘I don’t care.’
‘Look up, man. It’s the least you can do.’
But that was too hard. ‘No. You did not see them here from the beginning. You did not see them die. How long have they been fighting? Weeks? Months? For ever?’
‘I can see the truth of that.’
‘They weren’t soldiers—’
‘I beg to differ.’
‘
They weren’t soldiers!
’
‘Look up, old man. In the name of the Fallen, look up.’
And so he did.
He and the Shake, the Letherii, the Queen Yan Tovis, Twilight –
these few hundred – were surrounded once more. But this time those facing them were Tiste Andii, in their thousands.
And not one was standing.
Instead, they knelt, heads bowed.
Withal twisted round, made to rise. ‘I’m not the one needs to see this—’
But the woman beside him caught his arm, forcibly pulled him back down. ‘No,’ she said, like him looking across to Yan Tovis – who still knelt over the body of her brother, and who still held shut her eyes, as if she could hold back all the truths before her. ‘Not yet.’
He saw Sergeant Cellows sitting near the queen, the Hust sword balanced across his thighs. He too seemed unable to look up, to see anything beyond his inner grief.
And all the others, blind to all that surrounded them.
Oh, will not one of you look up? Look up and see those who have witnessed all that you have done? See how they honour you … but no, they are past such things now. Past them
.
A group of Tiste Andii approached from up the strand. Something familiar there – Withal’s eyes narrowed, and then he hissed a curse and climbed to his feet. Nimander. Skintick. Desra. Nenanda. But these were not the frail creatures he had once known –
if they ever were what I thought they were. If it was all hidden away back then, it is hidden no more. But … Aranatha? Kedeviss?
‘Withal,’ said Nimander, his voice hoarse, almost broken.
‘You found your people,’ Withal said.
The head cocked. ‘And you yours.’
But that notion hurt him deep inside, and he would not consider it. Shaking his head, he said, ‘The Shake and the Letherii islanders, Nimander – see what they have done.’
‘They held the First Shore.’
And Withal now understood that hoarseness, all the broken edges of Nimander’s voice. Tears were streaming down his cheeks. For all that he had seen – that he must have seen, for surely he numbered among the black dragons – of this strand, this battle.
Nimander turned as another Tiste Andii staggered close. A woman, half her clothes torn away, her flesh flensed and gashed. ‘Korlat. She did what was needed. She … saw reason. Will you go to your mother now?’
‘I will not.’
Withal saw Nimander’s sudden frown. ‘She sits upon the throne of Kharkanas, Korlat. She must be made to know that her daughter has returned to her.’
Korlat’s eyes shifted slowly, fixed upon the kneeling form of Yan Tovis. ‘Her son was the only child that ever mattered to my mother,
Nimander. And I failed to protect him. She set that one charge upon me. To protect her son.’
‘But you are her daughter!’
Korlat raised her voice, ‘Twlight, queen of the Shake! Look upon me.’
Slowly, Yan Tovis lifted her gaze.
Korlat spoke. ‘I have no place in the palace of my mother, the queen of Kharkanas. In ancient times, Highness, there stood at your side a Sister of Night. Will you take me – will you take Korlat, daughter of Sandalath Drukorlat?’
Yan Tovis frowned. Her gaze wandered from the Tiste Andii woman standing before her, wandered out to the kneeling Tiste Andii, and then, at last, to the huddle of her own people, her so few survivors. And then, as if borne by an impossible strength, she climbed to her feet. Brushed feebly at the sand clinging to her bloody clothes. Straightened. ‘Korlat, daughter of Sandalath Drukorlat, the Sister of Night in the House of the Shake is not for one of the pure blood—’
‘Forgive me, Queen, but my blood is not pure.’
Yan Tovis paused, and then continued, ‘The blood of the Eleint—’
‘Queen,
my blood is not pure
.’
Withal suddenly comprehended Korlat’s meaning. Cold dread curled in his chest.
No, Korlat will have no place in the palace of Queen Sandalath Drukorlat
. And how was it, after all that had happened, here on the First Shore, that his heart could still break?
One more time.
Oh … Sand
.
Yan Tovis spoke. ‘Korlat, Daughter of Sandalath Drukorlat, I welcome you into the House of the Shake. Sister of Night, come to me.’
One more time
.
‘What are you doing?’ Sharl asked. She was lying down on the ground again, with no memory of how she’d got there.
‘Pluggin’ the hole in your gut,’ Brevity said.
‘Am I going to die?’
‘Not a chance. You’re my new best friend, remember? Speaking of which, what’s your name?’
Sharl tried to lift herself up, but there was no strength left in her. She had never felt so weak. All she wanted to do was close her eyes. And sleep.
Someone was shaking her. ‘Don’t!
Don’t you leave me alone!
’
Her body felt chained down, and she wanted free of it.
I never knew how to fight
.
‘No! I can’t bear this, don’t you understand? I can’t bear to see you die!’
I’m sorry. I wasn’t brave enough for any of this. My brothers, they died years ago, you see. It was only my stubbornness, my guilt – I couldn’t let them go. I brought them with me. And those two boys I found, they didn’t mind the new names I gave them. Oruth. Casel
.
I couldn’t stop them dying. It was hunger, that’s all. When you have no land, no way through, when they just step over you in the street. I did my best. We were not good enough – they said so, that look in their eyes, stepping over us – we just weren’t good enough. Not clever enough, not brave enough
.
Casel was four when he died. We left him in the alley behind Skadan’s. I found a bit of sacking. I put it over his eyes. Oruth asked why and I said it was what they did at funerals. They did things to the body. But why? he asked. I said I didn’t know. When Oruth died a month later, I found another piece of cloth. I put it over his eyes. Another alley, another funeral
.
They were so little
.
Someone was crying. A sound of terrible, soul-crushing anguish. But she herself was done with that.
Let the chains fall away. And for my eyes, a cloth
.
It’s what they do
.
With the Sister of Cold Nights standing close, Yan Tovis sat once more beside the body of her brother. She looked down on his face, wondering what seemed so different about it now, wondering what details had now arrived, here in death, that made it seem so peaceful.
And then she saw. The muscles of his jaw were no longer taut, bunched by that incessant clench. And suddenly he seemed young, younger than she’d ever seen him before.
Yedan Derryg, you are beautiful
.
From all sides, she now heard, there rose a keening sound. Her Shake and her Letherii were now mourning for their fallen prince. She let the sound close round her like a shroud.
Welcome home then, brother
.
‘We stood watching the bodies tumbling and rolling down the broad steps. Half the city was on fire and out in the farm-holdings terrified slaves were dragging the diseased carcasses into enormous heaps while lamplighters wearing scarves poured oil and set alight the mountains of putrid flesh, until the black columns marched like demons across the land.
‘In the canals the corpses were so thick we saw a filthy boy eschew the bridge for a wild scramble, but he only made it halfway before falling in, and the last we saw of him was a small hand waving desperately at the sky, before it went down.
‘Most of the malformed and wizened babies had already been put to death, as much an act of mercy as any kind of misplaced shame, though there was plenty about which we rightly should be ashamed, and who would dare argue that? The animals were gone, the skies were empty of life, the waters were poisoned, and where paradise had once beckoned now desolation ruled, and it was all by our own righteous will.
‘The last pair of politicians fell with hands around each other’s throat, trailed by frantic toadies and professional apologists looking for a way out, though none existed, and soon they too choked on their own shit.
‘As for us, well, we leaned our bloodied pikes against the plinth of the toppled monument facing those broad steps, sat down in the wreckage, and discussed the weather.’
Sadakar’s Account
The Fall of Inderas
THE SUN HAD SET. THE BOY, AWAKE AT LAST, TOTTERED INTO THE
Khundryl camp. He held his arms as if cradling something. He heard the woman’s cries – it was impossible not to – and all
the Khundryl had gathered outside a tent, even as the rest of the army pushed itself upright like a beast more dead than alive, to begin another night of marching. He stood, listening. There was the smell of blood in the air.
Warleader Gall could hear his wife’s labour pains. The sound filled him with horror. Could there be anything crueller than this?
To deliver a child into this world. By the Fall of Coltaine, have we not shed enough tears? Do we not bear their scars as proof?
He sought to roll over in his furs, wanting none of this, but he could not move. As if his body had died this day. And he but crouched inside it.
Born to a dying mother. Who gathers round her now? Shelemasa. The last of the surviving shoulder-women. But there are no daughters. No sons with their wives. And there is not me, and with this child, this last child, for the first time I will not witness my wife giving birth
.
A knife pressed against his cheek. Jastara’s voice hissed in his ear. ‘If you do not go to her now, Gall, I will kill you myself.’
I cannot
.
‘For the coward you are, I will kill you. Do you hear me, Gall? I will make your screams drown out the world – even your wife’s cries – or do you forget?
I am Semk
. This whole night – I will make it your eternal torment. You will beg for release, and I shall deny it!’
‘Then do it, woman.’
‘Does not the father kneel before the mother? In the time of birth? Does he not bow to the strength he himself does not possess? Does he not look into the eyes of the woman he loves, only to see a power strange and terrible – how it does not even see him, how it looks past – or no, how it looks
within
?
Does not a man need to be humbled?
Tell me, Gall, that you refuse to see that again – one final time in your life! Witness it!’
He blinked up at her. The knife point had dug deep, now grazing the bone of his cheek. He felt the blood running down to drip from the line of his jaw, the rim of his ear. ‘The child is not mine,’ he whispered.
‘But it is. You fool, can’t you see that? It will be the last Khundryl child! The last of the Burned Tears! You are Warleader Gall. It shall be born, and it shall look up into your face!
How dare you deny it that?
’
His breath was coming in gasps.
Do I have this left in me? Can I find the strength she demands of me? I … I have lost so much. So much
.
‘This is our final night, Gall. Be our Warleader one last time. Be a husband. Be a father.’
A feeble, trembling hand fumbled with the furs covering him – he caught its movement, wondered at it.
My own? Yes
. Groaning, he struggled to sit up. The knife slipped away from his bloody cheek. He stared across at Jastara.
‘My son … did well by you.’
Her eyes went wide. The colour left her face. She shrank back.
Gall pushed the furs away, reached for his weapon belt.
Summoned by a mother’s cries, Badalle walked with her children. Saddic stumbled at her side. They were all closing in, like an indrawn breath.
The army was on the move. She had not believed these soldiers capable of rising yet again, to face the wastes ahead. She did not understand the source of strength they had found, the hard will in their eyes. Nor did she understand the way they looked at her and Saddic, and at the other children of the Snake.
As if we have been made holy. As if we have blessed them. When the truth is, it is they who have blessed us, because now we children will not have to die alone. We can die in the arms of men and women, men and women who for that moment become our fathers, our mothers
.