Raband shrugged.
‘Lead on, Captain,’ Kindly said, so quiet the words barely carried.
Balm watched them go.
Deadsmell followed a pace behind his guide. Ahead, the other T’lan Imass had raised a tarp. Lanterns were lit, shutters slipped back, wicks turned up and blazing. It had been a long way back along the trail, forty or more paces. Nearby squatted a wagon. In the harsh light beneath the tarp, he saw Pores’s body.
Blood everywhere. He won’t survive this
. He edged past the T’lan Imass and made his way under the tarp, falling to his knees beside Pores. Studied the wound.
This is a bleeder. Above the heart. He should be already dead
. But he could see the faint pulse, pushing out thinning trickles of blood. The man’s breathing was shallow, rasping.
Not a lung, too. Please, not a lung
. ‘I’ve got no magic here,’ he said, looking up and seeing nothing but withered, lifeless faces staring back down at him.
Shit, no help there
.
He stared back down at Pores. ‘Seen the insides of plenty of people,’ he muttered. ‘Living and dead. Well. Had a teacher, once, a priest. Dresser of the dead. He had some radical notions. Gods, why not? He’s going to die either way.’
Deadsmell drew out his sewing kit. ‘Said it should be possible to go right inside a body, clamp the bleeder, and then sew it back together, right there inside. Not that it’ll help much if he’s got a punctured lung too. But no blood froth at the mouth. Not yet. So … I guess I’ll give it a try.’ He looked up. ‘Two of you, I need your hands – I need the wound held open, wide as you can make it – gods, those are foul-looking fingers you Imass got.’
‘There is nothing living on our hands,’ said one of them.
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ Deadsmell asked.
‘We will carry no infection into his flesh, healer.’
‘No, but the knife blade that did this probably has.’
‘His bleeding has cleaned the wound, healer. The greatest risk of infection will be from your hands, and your tools.’
Threading a needle with gut, Deadsmell scowled. ‘That old priest shared your opinion. But there’s nothing I can do about that, is there?’
‘No.’
Deadsmell’s vision spun momentarily, and then steadied once more.
Unbelievable. I’m dying, even as I’m trying to save another man from doing the same. And really, is there any point to this?
Two Imass had knelt, reaching to prise open the wound.
‘Dig your fingers in – I need to see as much as I can. No, wait, now all I can see are your fingers.’
One spoke. ‘Healer. One of us shall hold open the wound. The other shall reach inside and find the two severed ends of the vessel.’
‘Yes! That’s it! And once you’ve got them, pinch hard – stop the blood flow – and then bring them together so I can see them.’
‘We are ready, healer.’
‘He’s lost a lot of blood. He’s in shock. This probably won’t work. Surprised he’s not already dead. I might just kill him. Or he’ll die later. Blood loss. Infection.’ He trailed off, looked across at blank, staring, lifeless faces. ‘Right, needed to get all that out of the way. Here goes.’
They were waiting well off to one side of the trail. The column’s ragged end had already passed. Blistig stood facing the others, arms crossed.
Kindly and Raband made their way over.
Overhead, the Jade Strangers blazed with a green light bright enough to cast sharp shadows, and it seemed the desert air itself was confused, not nearly as chill as it should have been. There was no wind, and stillness surrounded the group.
Blistig met Kindly’s eyes unflinchingly. ‘I executed a traitor tonight, Kindly. That and nothing more. I was holding on to reserves of water – knowing a time of great need would come.’
‘Indeed,’ Kindly replied. ‘How many casks was it again? Four? Five?’
‘For the officer corps, Kindly. With some, if we so judged, to the marines and heavies. It wouldn’t have been much, granted, but something … maybe enough. Didn’t the Adjunct make it plain? The marines and the heavies before everyone else. In fact, the rest of them don’t matter.’
‘Lieutenant Pores was not under your command, Blistig.’
‘Acts of treason fall under the purview of any commanding officer who happens to be present, Kindly. I acted within military law in this matter.’
‘That water,’ said Ruthan Gudd, ‘was doled out to the children of the Snake. By the Adjunct’s direct command.’
‘The Adjunct knew nothing about it, Captain Gudd, so what you’re saying makes no sense.’
Faradan Sort snorted. ‘We all knew about your stash, Blistig. We’ve just been waiting for you to make your move. But you can’t reclaim what was never yours in the first place, never mind that it’s now all gone. If there was any treason here, Blistig, it was yours.’
He sneered. ‘That’s where you’ve lost the track – all of you! All this “we’re in this together” rubbish – so that a lowly latrine digger gets the same portion as a Fist, or a captain, or the damned Adjunct herself – that’s not how the world is, and with good reason! It’s us highborn who’ve earned the greater portion. On account of our greater responsibilities, our greater skills and talents.
That’s
the order of the world, friends.’
‘Never knew you were highborn, Blistig,’ commented Faradan Sort.
The man scowled. ‘There’s other paths to privilege, Sort. Look at you, after all, a deserter of the Wall, now here you are, a damned Fist. And Kindly here, straight up from the regular ranks, and that climb wasn’t exactly meteoric, was it? Decades of mediocrity, right, Kindly? You ended up just outlasting everyone else.’
‘Everything you’re saying, Blistig,’ said Ruthan Gudd, ‘is undermining your original argument. Seems there’s not one highborn among us here. In fact, only the Adjunct can make that claim.’
‘A woman who betrayed her own class,’ Blistig said, with a cold grin. ‘Treason starts at the top when it comes to the Bonehunters.’
‘You plan on killing everyone, then, Blistig?’
‘Kindly, turns out I don’t have to, do I? We’re finished. All those warnings have proved true. This desert can’t be crossed. We’ve failed. In every way, we’ve failed.’ He shook his head. ‘I did Pores a damned favour. I made it quick.’
‘Expecting one of us to make it as quick for you?’ Ruthan Gudd asked him.
Blistig shrugged. ‘Why not? I don’t care any more. I really don’t. She’s already killed us all. Will it be your blade, Captain Gudd? Do me a favour – make it the icy one.’
‘No one will be killing you this night,’ Kindly said. He unclipped his sword belt and threw it to one side. ‘We bear these titles. Fists. Let’s find their original meaning, you and me, Blistig.’
‘You’re joking, old man.’
Faradan Sort turned to Kindly in alarm. ‘What are you doing? Let’s just drag him up before the Adjunct. Kindly!’
But the man bulled forward. And Blistig moved to meet him.
Two men too weak to do any real damage to the other. The fight was pathetic. Punches that couldn’t break skin, blows that could barely
bruise. Three or four exchanges and both men were kneeling three paces apart, gasping, heads held down.
When Kindly looked up, Blistig threw sand into his eyes, lurched forward, grasped Kindly’s head and drove it down on to one knee.
Sort moved to intervene but Ruthan Gudd reached out and held her back.
The impact should have shattered Kindly’s nose, but it didn’t. He punched Blistig’s crotch.
The man let out a strangled grunt, sagged down on to his side.
Kindly tried to get up, fell back down, and then rolled on to his back, eyes squeezed shut, his chest heaving for breath.
‘That’s it,’ Ruthan Gudd said. ‘They’re done.’
‘Stupid!’ Faradan Sort snapped, pulling her arm out of Gudd’s grip. She went to stand over the two men. ‘What was the point? If the soldiers up there had seen this – you useless fools! Blistig, if we weren’t all of us about to die, I
would
kill you. But you don’t deserve that mercy – no, you’re going to suffer through this night just like everyone else.’ She turned. ‘Captain Raband, help your Fist.’
Blistig managed to work himself back on to his knees, and he slowly sat up. ‘She’s killed us all. For nothing.’ He moved his glare from one face to the next. ‘Aye, I see it in your eyes, every one of you, you ain’t got a thing to say to make it different. She’s killed us. You know it the same as me. So, you want to kill me? You want to do her work for her?’ He climbed, with difficulty, to his feet. ‘Give me the dignity of dying on my own.’
‘You should have understood the value of that,’ said Ruthan, ‘before you stuck a knife in Pores, Fist Blistig.’
‘Maybe I should have. But he lied to me, and I don’t like being lied to.’ He pointed a finger at Kindly. ‘We’re not done, you and me. I’ll be waiting for you at Hood’s Gate, old man.’
‘Pathetic,’ hissed Faradan Sort.
They left Blistig where he was, and the way he held himself, it would be a while before he’d be ready to start walking again. Skanarow moved alongside Ruthan Gudd.
‘I was hoping we’d just kill him,’ she said, low under her breath. ‘The man’s a murderer, after all. Pores wasn’t even wearing a weapon belt, and his knife was jammed hilt deep in a bale on the wagon.’
‘If anyone will be looking for Blistig at Hood’s Gate, it will be Lieutenant Pores, don’t you think?’
But Skanarow shook her head. ‘I never believed in retribution beyond Death’s Gates. Nobody is squatting on the other side weighing and balancing a life’s scales.’ She stumbled slightly and Ruthan moved to catch her. Felt her momentarily sag against him. ‘Shit, I may not last the night.’
‘You will, Skanarow. I’m not letting you die, do you understand me?’
‘There’s no way out, and you know it, my love. You know it – you can’t hide what I see in your eyes.’
He said nothing, because there was nothing to say.
‘You’ll forget me, won’t you? Eventually. Like … all the rest.’
‘Don’t say that, Skanarow – it’s the wrong thing to think. For people … like me … it’s not forgetting that is our curse. It’s remembering.’
Her smile was faint, and she disengaged herself from his half-embrace. ‘Then I beg you, love, do all that you can to forget me. Leave no memory behind to haunt you – let it all fade. It shouldn’t be hard – what we had didn’t last long, did it?’
He’d heard such words before.
And this is why remembering is a curse
.
Blistig faced back the way they’d come. Off in the distance he could make out the glow of lanterns, the lights swinging low to the ground. Frowning, he watched as they came closer.
She killed us. Come the dawn, when we’re all finished, unable to take another step, I’m going to go to her. I’m going to stick a knife in her. Not a fatal wound, not right away, no. In the stomach, where the acids will all leak out and start eating her up from the inside out. And I’ll kneel over her, staring down into her pain, and that will be the sweetest sight I will ever see. A sight to carry me right into death
.
But even that won’t be enough, not for what she’s done to us. Kindly, at Hood’s Gate, you’re going to have to wait, because I won’t be finished with Tavore Paran of House Paran
.
T’lan Imass, carrying a makeshift stretcher on which lay a swaddled body. Beside this, a marine with blood covering his hands and forearms.
Blistig squinted as they drew closer.
The T’lan Imass walked past him and the Fist looked down at the pale face of the man on the stretcher. He grunted.
The marine halted before him, saluted. ‘Fist,’ he said.
‘Pores ain’t dead yet? What was the point of that, healer?’
Blistig’s answer was a fist smashing into his face, hard enough to crush his nose, send him reeling back. Stumbling, falling to the ground. Blood gushing down, he lay stunned.
The healer moved to stand over him. ‘Thing is, Fist,’ he said, massaging his hand, ‘what with all the shit Pores has gone through because of you, we decided to make him an honorary marine. Now, you go sticking a knife in a fellow marine and, well, we’re out for you now. Understand me, sir? The marines are out for you.’
Blistig listened to the man walk off in the wake of the T’lan Imass.
He made it on to his side to spit out slime and blood, and then grunted a laugh.
Aye, and a man is measured by his enemies
.
Do your worst, marines. So long as I get to her first
.
It was some time before he managed to regain his feet, but when he set off after the column, his strides were stiff, jerking, filled with a strength past anything he had known before. In his head three words made a mantra.
To see her. To see her. To see her
.
The Khundryl camp was being packed up, but the people doing the task moved with aching slowness. The claws upon their skin seemed to be dragging them down, and Badalle watched in the midst of twenty or so of Rutt’s children, as everything that was coming along for this final night was put in its proper place – everything but for the mother’s tent, and she was yet to emerge.
The midwives and other women had come out earlier, expressions guarded, and, though she could not be certain, in Badalle’s mind she saw but three figures remaining inside. The father, the mother, and the baby. Would this be their final home, then?