‘B’nagga, send half your force forward. Observe the enemy, but remain unseen.’
The K’risnan who had spoken earlier said, ‘Fear, there will be a mage cadre attached to the army.’
Fear nodded. ‘Withdraw the wraiths barring a dozen or so. I would convey the belief that those few are but residents of the area. The enemy must remain unsuspecting. Hanradi Khalag, our warriors must be made ready to march. You will lead them.’
‘We shall be under way before mid-morning.’
Trull watched the Merude chief walk away, then said, ‘Those Letherii mages will prove troublesome.’
The K’risnan grunted. ‘Trull Sengar, we are their match.’
He looked at the two warlocks. Chiefs’ sons. Of Rhulad’s age.
The K’risnan’s smile was knowing. ‘We are linked to Hannan Mosag, and through him to the emperor himself. Trull Sengar, the power we now call upon is more vast, and deadlier, than any the Edur have known before.’
‘And that does not concern you? What is the aspect of this power? Do you even know? Does Hannan Mosag know? Rhulad?’
‘The power comes to the emperor through the sword,’ the K’risnan said.
‘That is no answer—’
‘Trull!’ Fear snapped. ‘No more. I have asked that you assemble a unit from our village. Have you done so?’
‘Yes, brother. Fifty warriors, half of them unblooded, as you commanded.’
‘And have you created squads and chosen your officers?’
Trull nodded.
‘Lead them to the bridge. Take advance positions on the other side and wait until Hanradi’s forces reach you – it should not be a long wait.’
‘And if the Letherii have sent scouts ahead and they arrive first?’
‘Gauge their strength and act accordingly. But Trull, no last stands. A skirmish will suffice to hold up the enemy’s advance, particularly if they are uncertain as to your strength. Now, gather your warriors and be off.’
‘Very well.’
There was no point in arguing any further, he told himself as he made his way to where his company waited. No-one wanted to listen. Independent thought had been relinquished, with appalling eagerness it seemed to him, and in its place had risen a stolid resolve to question nothing. Worse, Trull found he could not help himself. Even as he saw the anger grow in the faces of those around him – anger that he dare challenge, that he dare think in ways contrary to theirs, and so threaten their certainty – he was unable to stay silent.
Momentum was building all around him, and the stronger it grew the more he resisted it. In a way, he suspected, he was becoming as reactionary as they were, driven into extreme opposition, and though he struggled against this dogmatic obstinacy it was a battle he sensed he was losing.
There was nothing of value in such opposed positions of thought. And no possible conclusion but his own isolation and, eventually, the loss of trust.
His warriors were waiting, gear packed, armour donned. Trull knew them all by name, and had endeavoured to achieve a balanced force, not just in skill but in attitude. Accordingly, he knew many of them resented being under his command, for his dissatisfaction with this war was well known. None the less, he knew they would follow him.
There were no nobles among them.
Trull joined the warrior he had chosen as his captain. Ahlrada Ahn had trained alongside Trull, specializing in the Merude cutlass as his preferred weapon. He was left-handed, rare among the Edur, yet used his other hand to wield a short, wide-bladed knife for close fighting. The bell-hilt of his cutlass sprouted a profusion of quillons designed to trap opposing sword-blades and spear-shafts, and his ceaseless exercises concentrating on that tactic had made his left wrist almost twice the bulk of its opposite. Trull had seen more than one of his practice spears snap at a shoulder-wrenching twist from Ahlrada’s sword-arm.
The warrior also hated him, for reasons Trull had yet to fathom. Although now, he amended, Ahlrada had probably found a new reason.
‘Captain.’
The dark eyes would not meet his. They never did. Ahlrada’s skin was darker than any other Edur Trull had seen. There were colourless streaks in his long, unbound hair. Shadow wraiths swarmed round him – another strange detail unique to the warrior. ‘Leader,’ he replied.
‘Inform the sergeants, we’re heading out. Minimum kits – we need to travel quickly.’
‘Already done. We were waiting for you.’
Trull walked over to his own gear, shouldered the small leather pack, then selected four spears from his cache. Whatever was left behind would be collected by the Letherii slaves and carried with the main body as it made its cautious way south in the wake of Trull’s company and Hanradi’s forces.
When he turned, he saw that the company were on their feet, all eyes fixed on him. ‘We must needs run, warriors. The south end of the bridge. Once through the pass, each squad sends out a point and makes its own way off-trail down to the bridge. Thus, you must be both swift and silent.’
A sergeant spoke. ‘Leader, if we leave the trail we are slowed.’
‘Then we had best get moving.’
‘Leader,’ the sergeant persisted, ‘we will lose speed—’
‘I do not trust the trail beyond the pass, Canarth. Now, move out.’ In his head he cursed himself. A leader need not give reasons. The command was sufficient. Nor, he silently added, was a sergeant expected to voice public challenge. This was not beginning well.
One squad in the lead, followed by Trull, then the remaining squads with Ahlrada taking up the rear, the company set out for the pass at a steady run. They quickly left the camp behind. Then, through an avenue provided them, they swept past Hanradi Khalag’s forces.
Trull found pleasure, and relief, in the pace they set. The mind could vanish in the steady rhythm, and the forest slid past with each stride, the trees growing more stunted and thinner on the ground the closer they approached the summit, while overhead the sun climbed a cloudless sky.
Shortly before mid-morning they halted on the south end of the pass. Trull was pleased to see that none of his warriors was short of breath, instead drawing long, deep lungfuls to slow their hearts. The exertion and the heat left them, one and all, sheathed in sweat. They drank a little water, then ate a small meal of dried salmon and thin bread wrapped round pine nut paste.
Rested and fed, the warriors formed up into their squads, then, without another word, headed into the sparse forest to either side of the trail.
Trull elected to accompany the squad led by Canarth. They headed into the forest on the trail’s west side, then began the slow, silent descent, staying thirty or so paces from the main path. Another squad was further west, fifteen paces distant, whilst the third trailed midway between them and thirty paces back. An identical pattern had been formed on the eastern side.
Sergeant Canarth made his disapproval plain, constantly edging ahead until he was almost on the heels of the warrior at point. Trull thought to gesture him back but Canarth was ignoring him as if he was not there.
Then, halfway down the slope, the point halted and crouched low, one hand reaching back to stop Canarth.
Trull and the others also ceased moving. The forest had thickened during the descent, an army of blackened pine boles blocking line of sight beyond fifteen paces. There was little undergrowth, but the slope was uneven and treacherous with moss-coated boulders and rotting tree-falls. A glance to his right showed the nearest warrior of the flanking squad a half-dozen paces further down, but now also halted, one hand raised, his gaze fixed on Trull.
Ahead, the point was whispering to Canarth. After a moment, the sergeant reversed direction and made his way cautiously back to where Trull and the others waited.
‘There is a scout on the edge of the main trail. Faraed, likely serving with the Letherii army. He has a good line of sight on the trail itself, maybe seventy-five or more paces.’
Trull looked back at the rest of the squad. He singled one warrior
out and beckoned him closer. ‘Badar, go back to the third squad. They are to choose a warrior to head upslope a hundred and twenty paces, then cut in to the main path. He is then to make his way down, as if on point. Once you have delivered the message, return to us.’
Badar nodded and slipped away.
‘What of us?’ Canarth asked.
‘We wait, then join the squad to our west. Make our way down below the scout’s position, and lay our own trap.’
‘What of the squads to the east of the trail?’
A good question. He had split his forces with no way of communicating with half his company. A mistake. ‘We had best hope they too have seen the scout. And will have rightly judged that a Faraed is virtually impossible to sneak up on.’
The sergeant simply nodded. He did not need to point out Trull’s error. Nor, it was evident, his own.
We even out. Fair enough.
A short time later Badar returned and gave them a perfunctory nod. Trull gestured the squad to follow and struck out westward to join the outlying warriors.
Once there, he quickly related his plan and the fifteen warriors set off downslope.
They descended sixty paces before Trull waved them towards the main path. The position they reached was directly below a crook in the trail. He had his warriors draw and ready weapons.
Canarth gestured. ‘Across from us, Leader. Rethal’s squad. They have anticipated you.’
Trull nodded. ‘Into position. We’ll take him when he comes opposite us.’
Heartbeats. The sun’s heat bouncing from the gravel and dust of the trail. Insects buzzing past.
Then, light thumping, the sound swiftly growing. Suddenly upon them.
The Faraed was a blur, plunging round the bend in the trail then flashing past.
Spears darted out shin-high to trip him up.
The scout leapt them.
A curse, then a shaft raced past Trull, the iron head crunching into the Faraed’s back, between the shoulder blades. Snapping through the spine. The scout sprawled, then tumbled, limbs flopping, and came to a rest ten paces down the path.
Settling dust. Silence.
Trull made his way down to where the body lay in a twisted heap. The scout, he saw, was a boy. Fourteen, fifteen years of age. His smeared face held an expression of surprise, filling the eyes. The mouth was a grimace of terror. ‘We killed a child.’
‘An enemy,’ Canarth said beside him. ‘It is the Letherii you must look to, Leader. They throw children into this war.’ He turned to face uptrail. ‘Well thrown, Badar. You are now blooded.’
Badar scrambled down and retrieved his spear.
The third squad appeared at the crook. One of them spoke. ‘I never even saw him.’
‘Our first kill, Leader,’ Ahlrada Ahn said.
Trull felt sick. ‘Drag the body from the trail, Sergeant Canarth. Cover this blood with dust. We must move on.’
****
The bridge was not a bridge at all. Trull had visited it once before, and left with naught but questions. Constructed, it seemed, from a single massive disc, notched in rows across its rim, which was broad enough to permit eight warriors to stride across it without shoulders touching. The disc was on end, filling the gap of the deep gorge below which roared the Katter River. The base of the wheel was lost in the chute’s darkness and the mist rising ceaselessly from the rushing water. To cross to the other side, one had to walk that curved, slick rim. The hub of the enormous wheel was visible, at least three man-lengths down. Thigh-thick rods of polished stone, spear-shaft straight, angled out from a projection on the hub on both sides, appearing to plunge into the rock wall of the gorge’s south side.
The squads gathered on the north edge, scanning the treeline opposite. Two of the Edur had already crossed, one returning to report back. No signs of scouts, no evidence of recent camps. The lone Faraed they had killed seemed to have been sent far in advance of the main forces, or had taken upon himself the task of a deep mission. His courage and his intelligence had cost him his life.
Trull approached the very edge of the wheel, where the angle of the stone first emerged from the surrounding rock. As before, he saw a thin, milky film between that carved perfection and the rough rock of the precipice. As he had done once before, long ago, he wiped that foam away with a finger, to reveal the straight line, too narrow to slip a dagger blade into, that separated the construct from the raw stone. A disc in truth, somehow set into the notch of the gorge.
And, even stranger, the disc moved. Incrementally turning in place. At the moment, it was midway along one of the shallow grooves carved in parallel rows across the rim. He knew he could set his feet on that first notch, and halt. And, had he the patience, he would eventually – days, maybe a week, maybe more – find himself stepping off onto the south side of the gorge.
A mystery without an answer. Trull suspected it was never intended as a bridge. Rather, it had been built for some other purpose. It did not make sense to him that it functioned solely as what had immediately occurred to him the first time he had visited. There were, after all, easier ways to measure the passage of time.
Trull straightened, then waved his warriors across.
Ahlrada took the lead.
They reached the other side and fanned out, seeking cover. The ground resumed its downward slope, amidst boulders, pines and straggly oaks. They would cautiously move down in a few moments, to search for defensible positions that permitted a line of sight down the trail.
Trull crouched near Ahlrada, scanning the area ahead, when he heard the warrior grunt, then step away, swearing under his breath.
‘What’s wrong, Captain?’
‘I felt it… move. Here.’
Trull edged over, and saw that Ahlrada’s original position had been on a slightly curved panel of stone, set lower than the surrounding rock. It was covered in dust and gravel, but looked too smooth to be natural. He reached down and brushed the panel clear.
And saw arcane symbols carved into the stone, row upon row, the language unknown to him. Deeply delineated grooves formed an incomplete box around the writing, the base and side lines visible. Beneath the base a new row of lettering was just beginning to show.
Trull glanced back at the bridge, then back at the recessed panel. ‘It moved?’
‘Yes, I am certain of it,’ Ahlrada said. ‘Not much, but yes.’
‘Was there a sound?’
‘More felt than heard, Leader. As if something huge and buried was… shifting.’
Trull stared down at the panel, running his fingers along the lettering. ‘Do you recognize the language?’
Ahlrada shrugged and looked away. ‘We should head down, Leader.’
‘You have seen such writing before.’
‘Not in… stone. In ice. It doesn’t matter.’
‘Ice?’
‘I once lived and hunted with the Den-Ratha, on the north coast. North and east, deep into the ice seas. Before the unification. There was a wall, covered in such writing, a berg that blocked our way. Twenty man-heights high, half a league wide. But it sank into the sea – it was gone the next season.’
Trull knew that Ahlrada had, like Binadas, journeyed far and wide, had fashioned blood-bound kinships with many Edur from rival tribes. And, like Trull himself, had opposed the wars of subjugation conducted by Hannan Mosag. By all counts, he realized, they should be friends. ‘What did your Den-Ratha comrades say about it?’
‘The Tusked Man wrote them, they said.’ He shrugged again. ‘It is nothing. A myth.’
‘A man with tusks?’
‘He has been… seen. Over generations, sightings every now and then. Skin of green or grey. Tusks white as whalebone. Always to the north, standing on snow or ice. Leader, this is not the time.’
Trull sighed, then said, ‘Send the squads down.’
A short time later Canarth reported that he smelled rotting meat.
But it was only a dead owl, lying beside the trail.
; ****
There were dark times for the Letherii, so long ago now. The First Empire, from which vast fleets had sailed forth to map the world. The coasts of all six continents had been charted, eight hundred and eleven islands scattered in the vast oceans, ruins and riches discovered, ancient sorceries and fierce, ignorant tribes encountered. Other peoples, not human, all of whom bled easily enough. Barghast, Trell, Tartheno, Fenn, Mare, Jhag, Krinn, Jheck… Colonies had been established on foreign coasts. Wars and conquests, always conquests. Until… all was brought down, all was destroyed. The First Empire collapsed in upon itself Beasts rose in the midst of its cities, a nightmare burgeoning like Plague.
The Emperor who was One was now Seven, and the Seven were scattered, lost in madness. The great cities burned. And people died in the millions.
The nightmare had a name, and that name was T’lan Imass.
Two words, inspiring hatred and terror. But beyond those two words, there was nothing. All memory of who or what the T’lan Imass had been was lost in the chaos that followed.
Few Letherii remained who were aware of even that much. True, they knew the name ‘First Empire’. And they knew of the fall of that glorious civilization of so long ago, a civilization that was their legacy. And little else, barring the prophecy of rebirth.
Udinaas could no longer make that claim of blissful ignorance for himself. Within the world of ghosts and shades, the past lived on, breathed like a thing alive and ever restive. And voices haunted him, long dead voices. The Tiste Andii shade, Wither, was indifferent to the Letherii slave’s own desires, his pleading for silence, for an end to the grisly cacophony of regrets which seemed to be all that held ghosts together,
Udinaas knew enough horror, here among the living. And the distilling of old truths was, as far as he was concerned, not worth it.
T’lan Imass.
T’lan Imass…
What did he care about some ancient nemesis?
Because the dust of over four thousand of them was beneath their feet at this moment. A truth riding Wither’s raspy laughter.
‘And that dust has eyes, slave. Should you fear? Probably not. They’re not interested. Much. Not enough to rise up and slaughter you all, which they might not succeed in doing anyway. But, I tell you this, Udinaas, they would give it a good try.’