‘What’s wrong with her?’
Amby said, ‘Fainted … Faint.’
‘Oh, sod off, you lump of lard.’
Ten thousand furred backs, black, silver and grey, the bodies lean and long. Like iron swords, ten thousand iron swords. They seethed before Setoc’s eyes, they blurred like the honed edges of waves on an angry sea. She was carried along, driven to rearing cliffs, to up-thrust fangs of rotted rock.
The wind roared in her ears, roared in and through her, trembling like thunder through every bone of her being. She felt the beasts crashing ashore, felt their fury assailing insensate stone and all the brutal laws that held it in place. They bared teeth at the sky, they bit and chewed shafts of sunlight as if speared through. They howled against the coming of night and in the hunt they stalked their own senseless savagery.
We are what we are, and facing this enemy what we are is helpless
.
Who will fight for us? Who will peel lips back to reveal swords of sharp iron?
The cliffs ahead reverberated to the onslaught – she drew ever closer.
Wolves of Winter, do you see me? Blessed Lord, Proud Lady, is this your summons? Does there await a cave in that ravaged wall? And inside, a Hold of Thrones?
There is a smell to the wild, a smell that makes the hairs stand on end, that rushes like ice through human veins. There are trails crossing the path, secret passages beneath the canopy. Mice dance on the beaten floor in the instant before we arrive, and we are blind to it all
.
And all the spaces carved out by our fires and our weapons and our axes and our ploughs, we must then fill with that sweating, bitter flood that is pride. In the wastelands of our making we will ourselves to stand as would one exalted and triumphant
.
Thrones of the Wild, thrones of bones and hides and lifeless eyes. Tall as mountains, these Beast Thrones
.
Who assails us? Who hunts us? Who slays us?
Everyone
.
She raced for the jagged rocks. Annihilation, if it came, would arrive as a blessing. The heat of the beasts carrying her was sweet as a loving kiss, a safe embrace, a promise of salvation.
I am the Destriant of the Wolves. I hold in my chest the souls of the all the slain beasts, of this and every other world
.
But I cannot hold them for ever
.
I need a sword. I need absolution
.
Absolution, yes, and a sword. Ten thousand iron swords. In the name of the Wolves of Winter, in the name of the Wild
.
Sister Equity walked across lifeless sand, far to the south of the Spire, far away from the eyes of everyone. She had once dreamed of peace. She had lived in a world where questions were rare, and there had been comfort in that. If there was a cause worthy enough to which she could devote her life, it was to journey from birth to death without confrontation. Nothing to stir her unease, nothing to deliver pain or to receive it. Although the Forkrul Assail had long ago lost their god, had long ago suffered the terrible grief of that god’s violent end – the murder for which no penance was possible – she had come to harbour in her own soul a childish hope that a new god could be made. Assembled like the setting of bones, the moulded clay of muscles, the smooth caress of a face given form, given life by her own loving hands. And this god she would call Harmony.
In the world of this god life would not demand a death. There would be no need to kill in order to eat. There would be no cruel fate or random tragedy to take one before her time, and the forests and plains
would seethe with animals, the skies with birds, the seas, lakes and rivers with fish.
The wishes of a child were fragile things, and she now knew that none ever survived the hard, jostling indifference that came with the bitter imperatives of adulthood: the stone-eyed rush to find elusive proofs of worth, or to reach at last the swollen satiation that was satisfaction. Virtues changed; the clays found new forms and hardened to stone, and adults took weapons in hand and killed each other over them. And in that new world she had found herself growing into there was no place – no place at all – for peace.
She recalled walking from the ship into the city, into the midst of these clamouring humans with the frightened eyes. On all sides, she could see how they dwelt in war, each one an exhausted soldier battling demons real and imagined. They fought for status, they fought for dignity, and they fought to wrest both away from their neighbours, their mates, their kin. In fact, the very necessity that held families together, and neighbourhoods, provinces and kingdoms, was fraught with desperation and fear, barricaded against the unknown, the strange and the threatening.
The Forkrul Assail had been right in shattering it all. There would be peace, but in the making of peace there must be judgement, and retribution. The people of Kolanse and the kingdoms to the south must all be returned to their childlike state, and then built anew. They could not, would not, do it for themselves – too many things got in the way, after all. They always did.
It was unfortunate that to achieve a sustainable balance many thousands had to die, but when the alternative was the death of
everyone
, who could argue against the choice made? Populations had been dismantled, selectively culled. Entire regions laid waste, not a single human left, to free the land to heal. Those who were permitted to live were forced into a new way of living, under the implacable guidance of the Forkrul Assail.
If this had been the extent of the redress, Equity would have been content. Things could be made viable, a balance could be achieved, and perhaps even a new god would arise, born of sober faith in reality and its very real limitations, born of honest humility and the desire for peace. A faith to spread across the world, adjudicated by the Pures and then the Watered.
If not for the Heart, if not for that fist of torment dredged up from the depths of the bay. All that power, so raw, so alien, so perfect in its denial. Our god was slain, but we had already found a path to vengeance – the Nah’ruk, who had broken their chains and now thirsted for the blood of their masters. So much was already within our reach
.
But for the Heart, so firing Reverence, Serenity and the other elders, so poisoning their souls. No balance could be perfect – we all knew that – but now a new solution burned bright, so bright it blinded them to all else. The Gate, wrested away from the K’Chain Che’Malle, cleansed of that foul, ancient curse. Akhrast Korvalain, returned once more to the Forkrul Assail, and from that gate – from the power of the Heart – we could resurrect our god
.
We could be made children once again
.
Sacrifices? Oh yes, but everything of worth demanded that. Balance? Why, we shall do away with the one force eternally intent on destroying that balance – humanity
.
Our answer is annihilation. Our cull shall be absolute. Our cull shall be the excision of an entire species
.
‘
Raise up the Heart! Hold it high so that its dread beat is heard by all! Against the depredations of humanity, think you not that we shall find allies?
’
Allies. Yes, Reverence, we have found allies
.
And I tell myself that I see peace in the future – the peace of my childhood, the peace of harmony, the peace of a silent world. All we need to reach it, is a little blood. A little blood
.
But, Sister Reverence, then I look into your ancient eyes, and I see how the hunger of our allies has infected you. The Tiste Liosan, the Eleint, the Lord and Lady of the Beast Hold – but all they desire is chaos, anarchy, destruction, the end of the Age of Gods and the Age of Humans. Like you, they thirst for blood, but not a little blood. No. Oceans, oceans of blood
.
Sister Reverence, we shall defy you when the time comes. Calm has found a weapon, a weapon to end your insane ambitions
.
Her footfalls were a whisper in the sand, but in her mind the ground trembled beneath her tread. The sun’s heat was fierce on her white face, but the fire of her thoughts was hotter still. And the voices from the beach, not far ahead now, should fall in futility before her hard intransigence, yet in them she found … hope.
‘Balance,’ she said under her breath. ‘Sister Reverence, you force this upon us. In your extremity, we must counter you. Calm has found the weapon we need. Reach for your fiercest madness, we shall match it – and more.’
In truth, she cared nothing for the fate of humanity. If they all perished, so be it. No, what was important, here and now and in the future to come, was
principle
.
Balance has an eternal enemy, and its name is ambition. You have forgotten this, Sister Reverence, and it falls to us to remind you. And so we shall
.
She climbed the high bank above the beach. Below, fifteen paces away, a dozen humans had gathered, and it seemed an argument was
under way. In the bay beyond sat a ship, its arcane lines sending a sudden chill through Equity.
Jaghut. The fools!
She marched down on to the beach.
The first two sailors who saw her both shrieked. Weapons flashed, and all at once the humans were rushing towards her.
‘I would speak—’
A cutlass lashed out for her face. She edged aside, caught the wrist and clenched until bones split. The man howled, and she closed, driving her fingers into his throat. Blood sprayed from his gaping mouth, his eyes bulging as he fell back. A knife-thrust sought her stomach. Her mid-section bent to one side, evading the attack. She sent one hand snapping out to grasp the woman’s forehead and crushed it like the shell of an egg.
A cutlass struck her left shoulder, rebounded as if from dense wood. Hissing, Equity twisted round. Two swift blows broke the man’s neck. Scowling now, she waded forward. Bodies spun to her lashing hands. The screams were deafening—
And then the survivors were fleeing along the beach, their weapons flung away, and down by the water, thirty paces distant, stood four figures: a man, three women. Equity marched towards them.
Sorcery erupted from the shortest of the women. A wave of blistering cold crashed into the Forkrul Assail, driving her back a step.
One of the other women had drawn two short-hafted throwing axes and was fast closing.
Sweet kiss of the Abyss, are they all suicidal?
‘Cease your attack!’
One axe flew straight for her. She slipped from its path, only to grunt as the second axe struck her in the chest, its iron blade lodged in her breast bone. Agony ripped through her. The second wave of Omtose Phellack lifted her from the sand, flung her five paces back. She landed hard on her back, rolled, and then regained her feet. The bones of her chest plate convulsed, rejecting the axe blade, and she straightened in time to meet the attack of the axe-throwing woman.
Long-bladed knives, a blur of hissing blades.
Equity blocked the attacks, one after another, but was driven back, one step, two.
She awakened her voice. ‘
STOP!
’
The woman staggered, and then, with a growl, she pushed forward.
‘
STOP THIS!
’
Blood spattered from her attacker’s nose. Blood blossomed in her eyes. She stumbled, then lifted her weapons once more.
Snarling, Equity stepped close and slapped the woman, hard enough to snap her head round. She collapsed in a heap. The Forkrul Assail stood over her, contemplating driving a heel into the human’s throat.
An arrow glanced across her left temple, scoring a red slash. ‘
CEASE ALL ATTACKS!
’
The woman at her feet moaned, tried to rise. Exasperated, Equity reached down, picked her up and threw her into the sea ten paces to her right. She stabbed a long finger at the sorceress. ‘I will speak to you!’
The other woman with her shouted, ‘Then stop killing my crew!’
Equity ran a finger along the gash in her temple – the wound was already mending. She sighed. Her chest ached, but the bones had begun healing and the pain was fading to an itch. ‘They attacked me,’ she said. ‘I simply defended myself. Indeed,’ she added, cautiously approaching, ‘if I desired to kill them all, I would have done so.’
‘I see five bodies over there—’
‘As I said, I would have killed them all.’
The woman thrashing in the shallows was climbing unsteadily to her feet. Equity regarded her for a moment. ‘If she comes at me again, I will kill her.’ She faced the sorceress. ‘Make that plain to her – she belongs to you, does she not?’
The short, plump mage made a strange wiggle with the fingers of one hand. ‘I am hard pressed to keep her from carving your head from your rather bony shoulders. You certainly have a way with words, Inquisitor, but that will not work a second time.’
Equity narrowed her attention on the other woman in the group. She snorted. ‘It is said the Realm of Death is sundered. Do your kind now plague the world?’
‘I carry no plague,’ the woman replied.
The Forkrul Assail frowned. Was she a simpleton? Often, she well knew, the brain decayed irreparably in such creatures.
The man standing beside the undead woman was now staring at her with his one working eye. ‘Did she say y’got the plague, Cap’n?’