‘Now finally you have a point worth making, Warleader. Who would? The answer lies before me, a stupid old man. It’s been five days. You are Warleader. Shake yourself awake, damn you—’
‘No. Tomorrow I will give my people into the Adjunct’s care. The Khundryl Burned Tears are no more. It is done. I am done.’
The blade of a knife hovered before his eyes. ‘Is this what you want?’
‘Yes,’ he whispered.
‘What should I cut first?’
‘You decide.’
The knife vanished. ‘I am Gilk, as you say. What do I know of mercy? Find your own way to Hood, Gall. The Wickans would have died, just as your warriors died. No different. Battles are lost. It is the world’s way. But you still breathe. Gather up your people – they look to you.’
‘No longer. Never again will I lead warriors into battle.’
She snarled something incomprehensible, and moved off, leaving him alone.
He stared at the tent wall, listened to his own pointless breaths.
I know what this is. It is fear. For all my life it has waited for me, out in the cold night. I have done terrible things, and my punishment draws near. Please, hurry
.
For this night, it is very cold, and it draws ever nearer
.
Once we knew nothing.
Now we know everything.
Stay away from our eyes.
Our eyes are empty.
Look into our faces
and see us if you dare.
We are the skin of war.
We are the skin of war.
Once we knew nothing.
Now we know everything.
Skin
Sejaras
SWEAT ENOUGH A MAN COULD DROWN IN
. HE SHIVERED BENEATH HIS
furs, something he did every night since the battle. Jolting awake, drenched, heart pounding. After-images behind his eyes. Keneb, in the instant before he was torn apart, twisting round in his saddle, fixing Blistig with a cold, knowing stare. Not ten paces away, their eyes locking. But that was impossible.
I know it’s impossible. I was never even close. He didn’t turn, didn’t look back. Didn’t see me. Couldn’t
.
Don’t you howl at me from the dark, Keneb. Don’t you stare. It was nothing to do with me. Leave me alone
.
But this damned army didn’t know how to break, understood nothing about routing before a superior enemy. Every soldier alone, that was what routing was all about. Instead, they
maintained order
. ‘
We’re with you, Fist Blistig. See our boots pound. It’s north we’re going, is it? They ain’t pursuing, sir, and that’s a good thing – can’t feel it no more, sir, you know: Hood’s own breath, there on the back of my neck. Can’t feel it. We’re in good order, sir. Good order …
’
‘Good order,’ he whispered to the gloom in his tent. ‘We should be
scattered to the winds. Finding our own ways back. To civilization. To sanity.’
The sweat was drying, or the scraped underside of the fur skin was soaking it all up. He was still chilled, sick to his stomach with fear.
What’s happened to me? They stare. Out there in the darkness. They stare. Coltaine. Duiker. The thousands beyond Aren’s wall. They stare, looking down on me from their crosses. And now Keneb, there on his horse. Ruthan Gudd. Quick Ben. The dead await me. They wonder why I am not with them. I should be with them
.
They know I don’t belong here
.
Once, he’d been a fine soldier. A decent commander. Clever enough to preserve the lives of his garrison, the hero who saved Aren from the Whirlwind. But then the Adjunct arrived, and it all started to go wrong. She conscripted him, tore him away from Aren – they would have made him High Fist, the City’s Protector. They would have given him a palace.
She stole my future. My life
.
Malaz City was even worse. There, he’d been shown the empire’s rotted core. Mallick Rel, the betrayer of Aren’s legion, the murderer of Coltaine and Duiker and all the rest – no, there was no doubt about any of that. Yet there the Jhistal was, whispering in the Empress’s ear, and his vengeance against the Wickans was not yet done.
And against us. You took us into that nest, Tavore, and more of us died. For all that you have done, I will never forgive you
.
Standing before her filled him with bile. Every time, he almost trembled in his desire to take her by the throat, to crush that throat, to tell her what she’d done to him even as the light left those dead, flat eyes.
I was a good officer once. An honourable soldier
.
Now I live in terror. What will she do to us next? Y’Ghatan wasn’t enough. Malaz City wasn’t enough. Nor Lether either, never enough. Nah’ruk? Not enough. Damn you, Tavore. I will die for a proper cause. But this?
He’d never before known such hate. Its poison filled him, and still the dead looked on, from their places in the wastes of Hood’s realm.
Shall I kill her? Is that what you all want? Tell me!
The tent walls were lightening. This day, the parley. The Adjunct, Fists arrayed around her, the new ones, the lone surviving old one.
But who looks to me? Who walks a step behind me? Not Sort. Not Kindly. Not even Raband or Skanarow. No, the new Fists and their senior officers look right through me. I am already a ghost, already one of the forgotten. What have I done to deserve that?
Keneb was gone. Since Letheras, Keneb had to all intents and purposes been commanding the Bonehunters. Managing the march, keeping it supplied, maintaining discipline and organization. In short, doing
everything. Some people possessed such skills.
Running a garrison was easy enough. We had a fat quartermaster who had a hand in every pocket, a smiling oaf with a sharp eye, and our suppliers surrounded us and whatever needed doing, why, it was just a written request away. Sometimes not even that, more a wink, a nod
.
The patrols went out. They came back. Watches turned, gatekeepers maintained vigilance. We kept the peace and peace kept us happy
.
But an army on the march was another matter. The logistics besieged him, staggered his brain. Too much to think about, too much to worry over.
Fine, we’re now leaner – hah, what a sweet way of putting it. We’re an army of regulars with a handful of heavies and marines. So, we’re oversupplied, if such a thing even exists
.
But it won’t last. She wants us to cross the Wastelands – and what waits beyond them? Desert. Emptiness. No, hunger waits for us, no matter how heaped our wagons. Hunger and thirst
.
I won’t take that on. I won’t. Don’t ask
.
But they wouldn’t, would they? Because he wasn’t Keneb.
I really have no reason to show up. I’m worse than Banaschar in that company. At least he’s got the nerve to turn up drunk, to smile in the face of the Adjunct’s displeasure. That’s its own kind of courage
.
Activity in the camp now, as dawn approached. Muted, few conversations, a torpid thing awakening to brutal truths, eyes blinking open, souls flinching.
We’re the walking dead. What more do you want of us, Tavore?
Plenty. He knew it like teeth sinking into his chest.
Growling under his breath, he pulled aside the furs and sat up. A Fist’s tent. All that room for nothing, for the damp air to wait around for his heroic rise, his gods-given brilliance. He dragged on his clothes, collected his chill leather boots and shook them to check for nesting scorpions and spiders and then forced his feet into them. He needed to take a piss.
I was a good officer once
.
Fist Blistig slipped the tethers of the tent flap, and stepped outside.
Kindly looked round. ‘Captain Raband.’
‘Fist?’
‘Find me Pores.’
‘Master Sergeant Pores, sir?’
‘Or whatever rank he’s decided on this morning, yes. You’ll know him by his black eyes.’ Kindly paused, ruminating, and then said, ‘Wish I knew who broke his nose. Deserves a medal.’
‘Yes sir. On my way, sir.’
He glanced over at the sound of boots drawing nearer. Fist Faradan Sort and, trailing a step behind her, Captain Skanarow. Neither woman
looked happy. Kindly scowled. ‘Are those the faces you want to show your soldiers?’
Skanarow looked away guiltily, but Sort’s eyes hardened to flint. ‘Your own soldiers are close to mutiny, Kindly – I can’t believe you ordered—’
‘A kit inspection? Why not? Forced them all to scrape the shit out of their breeches, a bit of tidying that was long overdue.’
Faradan Sort was studying him. ‘It’s not an act, is it?’
‘Some advice,’ Kindly said. ‘The keep is on fire, the black stomach plague is killing the kitchen staff, the rats won’t eat your supper and hearing the circus is in the yard your wife has oiled the hinges on the bedroom door. So I walk in and blister your ear about your scuffy boots. When I leave, what are you thinking about?’
Skanarow answered. ‘I’m thinking up inventive ways to kill you, sir.’
Kindly adjusted his weapon belt. ‘The sun has cracked the sky, my dears. Time for my constitutional morning walk.’
‘Want a few bodyguards, sir?’
‘Generous offer, Captain, but I will be fine. Oh, if Raband shows up with Pores any time soon, promote the good captain. Omnipotent Overseer of the Universe should suit. Ladies.’
Watching him walk off, Faradan Sort sighed and rubbed at her face. ‘All right,’ she muttered, ‘the bastard has a point.’
‘That’s why he’s a bastard, sir.’
Sort glanced over. ‘Are you impugning a Fist’s reputation, Captain?’
Skanarow straightened. ‘Absolutely not, Fist. I was stating a fact. Fist Kindly is a bastard, sir. He was one when he was captain, lieutenant, corporal, and seven-year-old bully. Sir.’
Faradan Sort studied Skanarow for a moment. She’d taken the death of Ruthan Gudd hard, hard enough to suggest to Sort that their relationship wasn’t simply one of comrades, fellow officers. And now she was saying ‘sir’ to someone who only days before had been a fellow captain.
Should I talk about it? Should I tell her it’s as uncomfortable to me as it must be to her? Is there any point?
She was holding up, wasn’t she? Behaving like a damned soldier.
And then there’s Kindly. Fist Kindly, Hood help us all
.
‘Constitutional,’ she said. ‘Gods below. Now, I suppose it’s time to meet my new soldiers.’
‘Regular infantry are simple folk, sir. They ain’t got that wayward streak like the marines got. Should be no trouble at all.’
‘They broke in battle, Captain.’
‘They were ordered to, sir. And that’s why they’re still alive, mostly.’
‘I’m beginning to see another reason for Kindly’s kit inspection. How many dropped their weapons, abandoned their shields?’
‘Parties have been out recovering items on the backtrail, sir.’
‘That’s not the point,’ said Sort. ‘They dropped weapons. Doing that is habit-forming. You’re saying they’ll be no trouble, Captain? Maybe not the kind you’re thinking. It’s the other kind of trouble that worries me.’
‘Understood, sir. Then we’d better shake them up.’
‘I think I’m about to become very unpleasant.’
‘A bastard?’
‘Wrong gender.’
‘Maybe so, sir, but it’s still the right word.’
If he was still. If he struggled past the fumes and dregs of the past night’s wine, and pushed away the ache in his head and sour taste on his tongue. If he held his breath, lying as one dead, in that perfect expression of surrender. Then, he could feel her. A stirring far beneath the earth’s cracked, calloused skin.
The worm stirs, and you do indeed feel her, O priest. She is your gnawing guilt. She is your fevered shame, so flushing your face
.
His goddess was drawing closer. A drawn out endeavour, to be sure. She had the meat of an entire world to chew through. Bones to crunch in her jaws, secrets to devour. But mountains groaned, tilting and shifting to her deep passage. Seas churned. Forests shook. The Worm of Autumn was coming. ‘
Bless the falling leaves, bless the grey skies, bless this bitter wind and the beasts that sleep
.’
Yes, Holy Mother, I remember the prayers, the Restiturge of Pall
. ‘
And the weary blood shall feed the soil, their fleshly bodies cast down into your belly. And the Dark Winds of Autumn shall rush in hunger, snatching up their loosed souls. Caverns shall moan with their voices. The dead have turned their backs on the solid earth, the stone and the touch of the sky. Bless their onward journey, from which none return. The souls are nothing of value. Only the flesh feeds the living. Only the flesh. Bless our eyes, D’rek, for they are open. Bless our eyes, D’rek, for they see
.’
He rolled on to his side. Poison comes to the flesh long before the soul ever leaves it. She was the cruel measurer of time. She was the face of inevitable decay. Was he not blessing her with every day of this life he’d made?
Banaschar coughed, slowly sat up. Invisible knuckles kneaded the inside of his skull. He knew they were in there, someone’s fist trapped inside, someone wanting out.
Out of my head, aye. Who can blame them?