Fall of Light (130 page)

The gods of the forest are back. But they don’t speak in my head. They but show me what no one else here can see.

The Tiste are attending. From every age. Since the very beginning. Come to witness.

Why?

‘Very well,’ Anomander said. ‘Now, shall we ride to the Citadel?’

Wreneck’s gaze was drawn away from the ghostly multitude, so crowding the living that many stood half inside mortal bodies. A flicker of colour had caught his eye: a flag rising above the highest tower of the Citadel. He pointed and said, ‘Milords! What is that?’

Both men lifted their heads.

‘That, young Wreneck,’ said Anomander, ‘announces the approach of the Hust Legion.’

‘We must send a rider to them,’ said Silchas Ruin, his tone suddenly bridling with pleasure. ‘They can march directly to the south flats on the edge of the Valley of Tarns.’

‘The place of battle. Yes, we will do that.’

‘Brother, would you ride with me to the place of battle? There are details to discuss regarding our disposition. Urusander is barely half a day away, after all, and indeed, should he seek haste, we could well greet the dusk with the clamour of iron.’

Anomander seemed momentarily disconcerted. His gaze shifted back to the Citadel. ‘It was my thought that I meet with Mother Dark and her Consort. If only to explain my defiance of her will in this matter. Lord Draconus will understand, perhaps, before she does. I would seek his alliance.’

‘Draconus knows enough to stay away from the battle,’ said Silchas.

That drew Anomander’s attention. ‘You have spoken to him? There have been tragedies I must share with him, for which I am responsible—’

‘Brother,’ said Silchas levelly, ‘Draconus prepares to flee.’

Hurt and confusion marred Lord Anomander’s face. And, whispered a dull voice in Wreneck’s head,
disappointment.

‘Ivis and his company,’ said Silchas, ‘are at your disposal. Perhaps, brother, Ivis should ride with us to Tarns?’

Anomander passed a hand over his eyes, and then nodded. ‘That would delight him.’

‘Allow me to deliver the invitation,’ Silchas said, gathering up his reins, then kicking his mount forward, passing Anomander and then Wreneck, who now moved up to just slightly ahead of the Son of Darkness.

‘Milord, I must go to the Citadel.’

‘Indeed?’

‘To speak to someone.’

Anomander said, ‘Proceed in my name, and at the palace gate deliver the news that I ride with my brother to Tarns, and, depending on Urusander’s patience, I may or may not return to the Citadel before the battle.’ He studied Wreneck for a moment, and then removed a thin silver torc from his left arm. ‘This bears my sigil, but even this may prove a dubious escort – the city is crowded and its mood is pensive. Hide my gift, Wreneck, whilst you traverse the streets.’

Wreneck moved up to take the torc.

‘You wouldn’t rather wait for hostage Sandalath and the others?’

‘No, sir. I want to go now.’

‘I envy your vision, so clear of eye, so sharp in its desire.’

Wreneck glanced over at the ghosts massed along the berm, and then back to where Ivis had settled the camp, and there he saw many other ghosts, as many as the trees in the forest, or perhaps more. ‘Milord,’ he said, ‘I don’t always see what I desire. Sometimes, what I see, I don’t understand at all.’

‘You have left childhood behind, then. Should you mourn its passing in the years to come, remember this day.’

I will, whether I want to or not.
‘Thank you, milord, for saving my life. When I’m done at the Citadel, I’ll go to Tarns, too, with my spear in hand, and I’ll fight beside you.’

His vow was meant to please the lord, and yet Anomander’s face seemed to fold in on itself, as if retreating from the promise of grief instead of glory. Wreneck straightened. ‘You have your vengeance, milord, and I have mine.’

‘Then,’ the man said, ‘how is it possible for me to deny you? Until then, Wreneck.’

Nodding, Wreneck bowed, and then he leaned the spear over one shoulder and stepped on to the cobbled road leading into Kharkanas.

The ghosts watched him, but like all the gathered spirits and gods, they too remained silent.

Maybe that’s what death is. The place you find yourself when there’s nothing left to say.

  *   *   *

‘Envy has many teeth,’ said Prazek as he rode alongside Dathenar, near the head of the train. ‘For men such as you and myself, for whom love can deliver the promise of downy cheeks, soft lips and the sweetest nest of delight; or, through the opposite door, a bristled chin and manly tenderness … such as it is.’ He paused to mull, and then resumed, ‘Is it any wonder others look on and feel the gnaw and nip of outrage? Envy, say I, Dathenar.’

‘I am minded, friend Prazek, of the many artful expostulations of love, by decidedly lesser poets and bards of our age, and ages past. Shall I plumb this wretched trench? Ah, know you this one? “Love is a dog rolling on a dead fish.” ’

‘Strapala of the South Fork. Guess this one: “I wallow in my love, and you the heart of a sow …”’

‘Vask, dead now a hundred years!’

‘And still mired in mediocrity, no blow to his fame, no mar to his name, no challenge to all that is lame—’

‘Barring what you peddle, Prazek.’

‘I yield the floor, step lightly over the chalk defining my place, and call an end to toeing the line.’

‘Consider this one, then. So heartbroken this poet he spent four years and a hundred bottles of ink defending his suicide, only to break his neck upon a bar of soap—’

‘Lye to die, dead by suds, quick to the slick and slip away no time for a quip.’

‘“Forsaken this love, my tongue doth probe, to touch – but touch! – the excretion of the snail’s slime, and now all atingle at exquisite poison, my heart dances like a rat on a griddle, but still she stands with but a faint smile ’pon her sweet lips, tending the fire and tending, tending, and tending the fire!” ’

‘There is a delicacy to that anguish, urging me to admiration.’

‘His talent was all accidental. And yet, not.’

‘Stumbling panged into genius – this does seem a rare talent. By nature of suffering, indulged with passion, to make something sticky of excess, and yet the lure of honey in the flower’s budding mouth, drawing one in, and, as he might say, in.’

‘And in,’ Dathenar added, nodding. ‘Have I confounded you?’

‘No, a moment longer. I am on fertile ground and must only sharpen the plough. Was it Liftera?’

‘Of the Isle? No. Her railing was ever too sour to do aught but crush the petals in desperate grip.’

‘Teroth?’

‘That alley cur? You insult the name of the accidental suicide. One more effort and then I must proclaim my triumph.’

‘Still it echoes oh so familiar …’

‘Well it might.’

Before them, the city’s south wall – dismantled here and there, slumping elsewhere – drew closer, the buildings beyond it dark as smoke-stained stone. The gates were open and unattended. Not even a guard was visible.

‘Four years of wallowing?’

‘’Til the soap upon the tiles.’

‘Such an ironic death should have made him famous.’

‘His body of work put paid to that.’

‘Quoth me another line or three!’

‘ “Too dark this dawn! Too bright this sunset! Too gloomy this day, too starlit this wretched night!”’

‘Too miserable this fool who sees nothing good in anything.’

‘He was suicidal, as I said. Four years the span of his career, as he unleashed all that was within him, broken of heart, blind to the insipid self and all its false confessions – broken of heart, said I? Empty of heart, too obsessed with the trappings of rejection to focus upon the object itself. She said no and before her breath left the word he was off, epic visions filling his head, the ordeal stretched out like a welcoming lover. Hark well the willing martyr and make jaded your eye upon his thrashing agony – this is a game played out to its gory end, with an audience evermost in mind.’

‘In the offing a bronze, I should think. Or a painting, broader than high, a swept vista—’

‘Done, and done, too, the bronze.’

‘What? Varanaxa? Gallan’s mocked hero? But that man was an invention! A fiction! Gallan’s public snipe at his fawners!’

‘I posited no distinctions.’

Prazek sniffed. ‘The broken heart of a poet gets pumped dry fortnightly.’

‘From a healthy one, nothing worthwhile bleeds. So some would claim. But it is these appetites of which we should steer well wide, yet not canted too cynical. Instead, invite a curiosity as to the self-made victim and his self-wounded self. What urge spurs the cut? What hunger invites the bite upon one’s own flesh? This is death turned inward, the maw and the wound made one, like lovers.’

‘Varanaxa,’ sighed Prazek. ‘For that epic farce, Gallan was vilified.’

‘He cares not.’

‘More to the fury of his enemies, that!’

‘And herein hangs a lesson, should we dare pluck it.’

Prazek squinted ahead, to the train’s foremost riders: Commander Toras Redone and at her side Captain Faror Hend. ‘Suicidal indifference?’

Dathenar shrugged, and then said, ‘I am wary.’

Galar Baras had ridden back along the column, driven to distraction no doubt by three thousand soldiers marching in silence. There were no stragglers, few conversations, the weapons and armour mute. The sound of the Hust Legion was a dull drum roll that brooked no pause, a slow thunder drawing ever closer to Kharkanas.

The thaw that had been whispered on the south wind the past few days was now dying away, and the snow crunched beneath boot and hoof, a growing bite to the air as the morning lengthened.

‘That confounded ritual,’ said Dathenar in a frustrated growl. ‘I awakened on thin ice. But which way to crawl? No shoreline beckons with high tufts of yellow grass and the stalks of reeds. To shift a hair’s breadth is to hear the ice creaking beneath me. My eyes strain to read this placid, windswept mirror – is it clouds that promise more solid blooms? The grey sky warning of treacherous patches? Do I lie upon my back, or face-down? Still, through it all, something writhes in my gut, my friend, in anticipation of blood.’

Prazek shook himself. ‘What has changed? Nothing. Everything. The ritual tattooed a mystery upon our souls. Blessing or curse? We remain blind to the pattern. And yet, as you say, there is anticipation.’

Dathenar gestured at the unoccupied walls ahead. ‘See the fanfare awaiting us? Bitter indifference castigates us, Prazek.’

‘No matter, friend. Was I not speaking of love?’

‘You were, the heart under siege. Though I cannot fathom your reason for this sudden crisis.’

‘Criminals,’ Prazek said. ‘No punishment allows for the tender caress, the meeting of hands in soft clasp, the hesitations that linger, the confessions that release.’ He paused. ‘A stillborn twin, now the repository of sorcery, and she who would mine it left broken and filled with self-loathing. So Wareth would take her into his arms. Yet he too allows himself no worth, indeed, no right. Can I not wonder, friend, at those who hold that love is a privilege?’

Dathenar grunted. ‘Every god of the past claimed it a benison. A reward. By its fullness are our mortal deeds measured. Doled out like heavenly coins, as among the Forulkan.’

‘Indeed, and consider that. How can this currency so define itself? Value rises in scarcity of love, plummets in surfeit? The gods played at arbiters, yet demanded love’s purest gold in coin. Who then to measure
their
worth? I challenge the right of this, Dathenar.’

‘And so you may, but to what end?’

‘Dispense with contingency in the giving of love. Shall I push Rance into Wareth’s arms? Shall I insist upon their right to love?’

‘You distract yourself,’ Dathenar replied. ‘The Dog-Runner witches did something to us – all of us barring our commander, that is – and now she leads a legion that knows not itself, yet shows disinclination to introspection. While she in turn … ah, no matter.’

Prazek glanced across at his friend. ‘I distract and you despair. Pray that Toras Redone decides.’

‘Upon what?’

‘Life, and love. For surely the former is an expression of the latter that gives reason for the former.’

‘Easy for you to say.’

‘Dathenar, did the Bonecasters cleanse our souls?’

Up ahead, the commander and Faror Hend reached the gate and rode without pause into the city.

‘No,’ Dathenar replied. ‘They but reordered its myriad possessions.’

‘For what purpose?’

Dathenar shrugged.

Prazek let loose a low growl. ‘And so … anticipation dogs us all.’

Shifting in his saddle, Dathenar glanced back at the column. The soldiers wore their armour. Their hands rested upon the pommels of the swords. Their kit bags were slung over one shoulder, their shields upon their backs. They wore their helms, leaving every face in shadow.

When Faror Hend returned from the gateway and signalled a halt, the Hust Legion’s incessant thunder ceased its heavy rumble for the first time that day. The silence that fell into its wake sent shivers through Dathenar.

Faror Hend reined in before them. ‘We’re to wheel right and skirt the city,’ she said. ‘We march to the Valley of Tarns. Urusander’s Legion draws nigh.’

‘This very day?’ Prazek asked.

‘Have the soldiers drop their kits and leave the baggage train here,’ she said, her face blank.

Both men swung their mounts around. They could see Galar Baras cantering towards them. Prazek waved a signaller forward. ‘Envy has many teeth,’ he muttered as the signaller rode closer. ‘Enough to spawn a civil war.’

Dathenar nodded.

From the Hust weapons and armour, down the entire length of the column, the iron began to moan.

  *   *   *

Wareth moved to the ditch at the road’s side, leaned over, and spewed out the morning’s breakfast. Behind him, not a single soldier called out in derision or amusement. Not a single man or woman voiced disgust. Wiping at his mouth, and then spitting out the last of the bile, he straightened and turned round.

He was being ignored. The faces beneath the helms were fixed upon the new flag being raised by the signaller. Upon receipt, the squad sergeants called out the commands to ready to wheel and then drop kits. Shields were shifted higher on the shoulder, swords brought round to the point of the hip. Chain links hissed like waves on sand, and then the Hust iron began its song. Pensive, a dirge, perhaps, or something trapped by unseen forces, unspoken wills – the eerie song swept through Wareth like a chill. Shivering, he looked on, as Rebble brought the company around, with the lead elements already descending from the road.