Death—he had forgotten its bitter kiss. So long . . . so long.
But I knew a gift. I tasted the air in my lungs . . . after so long . . . after ages of dust. The sweet air of love . . . but now . . .
Night-stained faces crowded above him, paint white as bone.
Skulls? Ah, my brothers . . . we are dust—
Dust, and nothing but—
He could hear shouting, alarms rising from the Senan encampment. Cursing, Maral Eb straightened, saw the sentinels clearly now—all running back into the camp.
‘Damn the gods! We must charge—’
‘Listen!’ cried the scout. ‘Warchief—listen to the words!’
‘What?’
And then he did. His eyes slowly widened. Could it be true? Have the Senan taken matters into their own hands?
Of course they have! They are Barghast! White Faces! He raised his sword high in the air. ‘Barahn!’ he roared. ‘Hear the words of your warchief! Sheathe your weapons! The betrayer is slain! Onos Toolan is slain! Let us go down to meet our brothers!’
Voices howled in answer.
They will have someone to set forward—they will not relinquish dominance so easily—I might well draw blood this night after all. But none will stand long before me. I am Maral Eb, slayer of hundreds.
The way lies open.
It lies open.
The Barahn warchief led his warriors down into the hollow.
To claim his prize.
Hetan woke in the night. She stared upward, eyes wide but unseeing, until they filled with tears. The air in the yurt was stale, darkness heavy and suffocating as a shroud. My husband, I dreamed the flight of your soul . . . I dreamed its brush upon my lips. A moment, only a moment, and then it was as if a vast wind swept you away.
I heard your cry, husband.
Oh, such a cruel dream, beloved.
And now . . . I smell dust in the air. Rotted furs. The dry taste of ancient death.
Her heart pounded like a mourner’s drum in her chest, loud, heavy, the beat stretching with each deep breath she took. That taste, that smell. She reached up to touch her own lips. And felt something like grit upon them.
O beloved, what has happened?
What has happened—
To my husband—to the father of my children—what has happened?
She let out a ragged sigh, forcing out the unseemly fear. Such a cruel dream.
From the outer room, the dog whined softly, and a moment later their son suddenly sobbed, and then bawled.
And she knew the truth. Such a cruel truth.
Ralata crouched in the high grasses and studied the figures gathered round the distant fire. None had stirred in the time she had been watching. But the horses were tugging at their stakes and even from here she could smell their terror—and she did not understand, for she could see nothing—no threat in any direction.
Even so, it was strange that none of her sisters had awakened. In fact, they did not move at all.
Her confusion was replaced by unease. Something was wrong.
She glanced back at the hollow where waited her horse. The animal seemed calm enough. Collecting her weapons, Ralata rose and padded forward.
Hessanrala might be a headstrong young fool, but she knew her trade as well as any Ahkrata warrior—she should be on her feet by now, drawing the others in with silent hand gestures—was it just a snake slithering among the horses’ hoofs? A scent on the wind?
No, something was very wrong.
As she drew within ten paces, she could smell bile, spilled wastes, and blood. Mouth dry, Ralata crept closer. They were dead. She knew that now. She had failed to protect them—but how? What manner of slayer could creep up on five Barghast warriors? As soon as night had fallen, she had drawn near enough to watch them preparing camp. She had watched them rub down the horses; had watched them eat and drink beer from Hessanrala’s skin. They had set no watch among themselves, clearly relying upon the horses should danger draw near. But Ralata had remained wakeful, had even seen when the horses first wakened to alarm.
Beneath the stench of death there was something else, an oily bitterness reminding her of serpents. She studied the movements of the Akryn mounts—no, they were not shying from any snake in the grasses. Heads tossed, ears cocking in one direction after another, eyes rolling.
Ralata edged towards the firelight. Once lit, dried dung burned hot but not bright, quick to sink into bricks of pulsating ashes; in the low, lurid reflection, she could see fresh blood, glistening meat from split corpses.
No quick knife thrusts here. No, these were the wounds delivered by the talons of a huge beast. Bear? Barbed cat? If so, why not drag at least one body away . . . to feed upon? Why ignore the horses? And how was it that Ralata had seen nothing; that not one of her kin had managed to utter a death-cry?
Gutted, throat-slit, chests ripped open—she saw the stubs of ribs cut clean through. Talons sharp as swords—or swords in truth? All at once she recalled, years ago, on the distant continent they had once called home, visions of giant undead, two-legged lizards. K’Chain Che’Malle, arrayed in silent ranks in front of the city called Coral. Swords at the end of their wrists instead of hands—but no, the wounds she looked upon here were different. What then had triggered that memory?
Ralata slowly inhaled once more, deeply, steadily, running the acrid flavours through her. Yes, the smell. Although, long ago, it was more . . . stale, rank with death.
But the kiss upon the tongue—it is the same.
The horses ducked and fanned out, heads snapping back as they reached the ends of their tethers. A faint downdraught of wind—the whish of wings—
Ralata threw herself flat, rolled, making for the legs of the horses—anything to put between her and whatever hovered above.
Thuds in the air, leathery hissing—she stared up into the night, caught a vast winged silhouette that devoured a sweep of stars. A flash, and then it was gone.
Hoofs kicked at her, and then settled.
She heard laughter in her head—not her own, something cold, contemptuous, fading now into some inner distance, until even the echoes were gone.
Ralata rose to her feet. The thing had flown northeastward. Of course, there could be no tracking such a creature, but at least she had a direction.
She had failed to protect her kin. Perhaps, however, she could avenge them.
The Wastelands were well named, but Torrent had always known that. He had last found water two days past, and the skins strapped to his saddle would suffice him no more than another day. Travelling at night was the only option, now that the full heat of summer had arrived, but his horse was growing gaunt, and all that he could see before them beneath dull moonlight was a vast, flat stretch of sunbaked clay and shards of broken stone.
The first night following the gate and his parting ways with Cafal and Setoc, he had come upon a ruined tower, ragged as a rotten fang, the walls of which seemed to have melted under enormous heat. The destruction was so thorough not a single window or dressed facing survived, and much of the structure’s skeleton was visible as sagging latticework snarled with twisted ropes of rusting metal wire. He had never before seen anything remotely like it, and superstitious fear kept him from riding closer.
Since then, Torrent had seen nothing of interest, nothing to break the monotony of the blasted landscape. No mounds, no hills, not even ancient remnants of myrid, rodara and goat pens, as one often found on the Awl’dan.
It was nearing dawn when he made out a humped shape ahead, directly in his path, barely rising above the cracked rock. The ripple of furs—a torn, frayed hide riding hunched, narrow shoulders. Thin, grey hair seeming to float up from the head in the faint, sighing wind. A girdled skirt of rotted strips of snakeskin flared out from the seated form. He drew closer. The figure’s back was to Torrent, and beyond the wind-tugged hair and accoutrements, it remained motionless as he walked his horse up and halted five paces behind it.
A corpse? From the
weathered pate beneath the sparse hair, it was likely. But who would have simply left one of their own out on this lifeless pan?
When the figure spoke, Torrent’s horse started back, nostrils flaring. ‘The fool. I needed him.’
The voice was rough as sand, hollow as a wind-sculpted cave. He could not tell if it belonged to a man or a woman.
It uttered something between a sigh and a hissing snarl, and then asked, ‘What am I to do now?’
The Awl warrior hesitated, and then said, ‘You speak the language of my people. Are you Awl? No, you cannot be. I am the last—and what you wear—’
‘You have no answer, then. I am used to disappointment. Indeed, surprise is an emotion I have not known for so long, I believe I have forgotten its taste. Be on your way then—this world and its needs are too vast for one such as you. He would have fared better, of course, but now he’s dead. I am so . . . irritated.’
Torrent dismounted, collecting one of his waterskins. ‘You must be thirsty, old one.’
‘Yes, my throat is parched, but there is nothing you can do for that.’
‘I have some water—’
‘Which you need more than I do. Still, it is a kind gesture. Foolish, but most kind gestures are.’
When he walked round to face the elder, he frowned. Much of the face was hidden in the shadow of protruding brows, but it seemed it was adorned in rough strings of beads or threads. He caught the dull gleam of teeth and a shiver whispered through him. Involuntarily he made a warding gesture with his free hand.
Rasping laughter. ‘Your spirits of wind and earth, warrior, are my children. And you imagine such fends work on me? But wait, there is this, isn’t there? The long thread of shared blood between us. I might be foolish, to think such things, but if anyone has earned the right to be a fool, it must surely be me. Thus yielding this . . . gesture.’
The figure rose in a clatter of bones grating in dry sockets. Torrent saw the long tubes of bare, withered breasts, the skin patched and rotted; a sagging belly cut and slashed, the edges of the wounds dry and hanging, and in the gashes themselves there was impenetrable darkness—as if this woman was as dried up inside as she was on the outside.
Torrent licked parched lips, struggled to swallow, and then spoke in a hushed tone, ‘Woman, are you dead?’
‘Life and death is such an old game. I’m too old to play. Did you know, these lips once touched those of the Son of Darkness? In our days of youth, in a world far from this one—far, yes, but little different in the end. But what value such grim lessons? We see and we do, but we know nothing.’ A desiccated hand made a fluttering gesture. ‘The fool presses a knife to his chest. He thinks it is done. He too knows nothing, because, you see, I will not let go.’
The words, confusing as they were, chilled Torrent nonetheless. The waterskin dangled in his hand, and its pathetic weight now mocked him.
The head lifted, and beneath those jutting brow ridges Torrent saw a face of dead skin stretched across prominent bones. Black pits regarded him above a permanent grin. The beaded threads he had thought he’d seen turned out to be strips of flesh—as if some clawed beast had raked talons down the old woman’s face. ‘You need water. Your horse needs fodder. Come, I will lead you and so save your useless lives. Then, if you are lucky, I will eventually find a reason to keep you alive.’
Something told Torrent that refusing her was impossible. ‘I am named Torrent,’ he said.
‘I know your name. The one-eyed Herald begged me on your behalf.’ She snorted. ‘As if I am known for mercy.’
‘The one-eyed Herald?’
‘The Dead Rider, out from Hood’s Hollow. He knows little respite of late. An omen harsh as a crow’s laugh, thus comes Toc the Younger—but do I not cherish the privacy of my dreams? He is rude.’
‘He haunts my dreams as well, Old One—’
‘Stop calling me that. It is . . . inaccurate. Call me by my name, and that name is Olar Ethil.’
‘Olar Ethil,’ said Torrent, ‘will he come again?’
She cocked her head, was silent a moment. ‘As they shall, to their regret, soon discover, the answer is yes.’
Sunlight spilled over a grotesque scene. Cradling his injured arm, Bakal stood with a half-dozen other Senan. Behind them, the new self-acclaimed Warleader of the White Faces, Maral Eb, was cajoling his warriors to wakefulness. The night had been long. The air smelled of spilled beer and puke. The Barahn were rising rough and loud, unwilling to relinquish their abandon.
Before Bakal and the others was the flat where their encampment had been—not a tent remained, not a single cookfire still smouldered. The Senan, silent, grim-faced, were ready to begin the march back home. A reluctant escort to the new Warleader. They sat on the ground to one side, watching the Barahn.
Flies were awakening. Crows circled overhead and would soon land to feed.
Onos Toolan’s body had been torn apart, the flesh deboned and pieces of him scattered everywhere. His bones had been systematically shattered, the fragments strewn about. His skull had been crushed. Eight Barahn warriors had tried to break the flint sword and had failed. In the end, it was pushed into a fire built from dung and Tool’s furs and clothing, and then, when everything had burned down, scores of Barahn warriors pissed on the blackened stone, seeking to shatter it. They had failed, but the desecration was complete.
Deep inside Bakal, rage seethed black and biting as acid upon his soul. Yet for all its virulence, it could not destroy the knot of guilt at the very centre of his being. He could still feel the handle of his dagger in his hand, could swear that the wire impressions remained on his palm, seared like a brand. He felt sick.
‘He has agents in our camp,’ said the warrior beside him, his voice barely a murmur. ‘Barahn women married into the Senan. And others. Stolmen’s wife, her mother. We know what Hetan’s fate will be—and Maral Eb will not permit us to travel ahead of him—he does not trust us.’
‘Nor should he, Strahl,’ replied Bakal.
‘If there were more of us and less of them.’
‘I know.’
‘Bakal, do we tell the Warleader? Of the enemy Onos Toolan described?’
‘No.’
‘Then he will lead us all to our deaths.’
Bakal glared across at the warrior. ‘Not the Senan.’ He studied the array of faces before him, gauging the effect of his words, and then nodded. ‘We must cut ourselves loose.’
‘Into the Lether Empire,’ said Strahl, ‘as Tool said. Negotiate settlement treaties, make peace with the Akrynnai.’
‘Yes.’
They fell silent again, and, inevitably, eyes turned once more to the scene before them. Their rendered Warleader, the endless signs of vicious blasphemy. This dull, discredited morning. This foul, accursed land. The crows had landed and were now hopping about, beaks darting down.
‘They will hobble her and kill the spawn,’ said Strahl, who then spat to clear the foulness of the words. ‘Yesterday, Bakal, we would have joined in. We would have each taken her. One of our own knives might well have tasted the soft throats of the children. And now, look at us. Ashes in our mouths, dust in our hearts. What has happened? What has he done to us?’
‘He showed us the burden of an honourable man, Strahl. And yes, it stings.’
‘He used you cruelly, Bakal.’
The warrior stared down at his swollen hand, and then shook his head. ‘I failed him. I did not understand.’
‘If you failed him,’ growled Strahl, ‘then we all have.’
In Bakal’s mind, there was no disputing that. ‘To think,’ he muttered, ‘we called him coward.’
Before them and behind them, the crows danced.
Some roads were easier to leave than others. Many walked to seek the future, but found only the past. Others sought the past, to make it new once more, and discovered that the past was nothing like the one they’d imagined. One could walk in search of friends, and find naught but strangers. One could yearn for compa
ny but find little but cruel solitude.
A few roads offered the gift of pilgrimage, a place to find somewhere ahead and somewhere in the heart, both to be found at the road’s end.
It was true, as well, that some roads never ended at all, and that pilgrimage could prove a flight from salvation, and all the burdens one carried one must now carry back to the place whence they came.
Drop by drop, the blood built worn stone and dirt. Drop by drop, the way of the Road to Gallan was opened. Weak, ever on the edge of fever, Yan Tovis, Queen of the Shake, commander of thousands of the dispirited and the lost, led the wretched fools ever onward. To the sides, shadows thickened to darkness, and still she walked.
Hunger assailed her people. Thirst haunted them. Livestock lowed in abject confusion, stumbled and then died. She had forgotten that this ancient path was one she had chosen to ease the journey, to slip unseen through the breadth of the Letherii Kingdom. She had forgotten that they must leave it—and now it was too late.
The road was more than a road. It was a river and its current was tightening, holding fast all that it carried, and the pace quickened, ever quickened. She could fight—they all could fight—and achieve nothing but drowning.
Drop by drop, she fed the river, and the road rushed them forward.
We are going home. Did I want this? Did I want to know all that we had abandoned? Did I want the truth, an end to the mysteries of our beginnings?
Was this a pilgrimage? A migration? Will we find salvation?
She had never even believed in such things. Sudden benediction, blessed release—these were momentary intoxications, as addictive as any drug, until one so hungered for the escape that the living, mindful world paled in comparison, bleached of all life, all wonder.
She was not a prophet. But they wanted a prophet. She was not holy. But they begged her blessing. Her path did not promise a road to glory. Yet they followed unquestioningly.
Her blood was not a river, but how it flowed!
No sense left for time. No passage of light to mark dawn, noon and dusk. Darkness all around them, before and behind, darkness breeding in swirls of stale air, the taste of ashes, the stench of charred wood and fire-cracked stone. How long? She had no idea.