‘God,’ whispered Temple. ‘Oh, God.’
‘Still, all of you!’ called Kahdia, one arm out.
‘You are their leader?’ asked the foremost of the Eaters, raising one brow. His dark face was young, and smooth, and beautiful, but his eyes were old.
‘I am Kahdia, Haddish of this temple.’
‘A priest, then. A man of the book. Dagoska has been the birthplace of many holy men. Of revered philosophers, admired theologists. Men who heard the voice of God. Are you one such, Haddish Kahdia?’
Temple did not know how, but Kahdia showed no fear. He spoke as he might to one of his congregation. Even this devil born of hell, this eater of the flesh of men, he treated as if he was no lesser or greater than himself. ‘I am but a man. I struggle to be righteous.’
‘Believe it or not, so do we all.’ The Eater frowned down at his hand, and made a fist of it, and let the fingers slowly open again as if allowing sand to drain from his palm. ‘And here is where the road to righteousness has led me. Do you know who I am?’ There was no mocking triumph in his perfect face. Only a sadness.
‘You are Mamun,’ said Haddish Kahdia. ‘The fruit of the desert. Thrice Blessed and Thrice Cursed.’
‘Yes. Though with every year the curses weigh heavier, and the blessings seem more dust.’
‘You have only yourself to blame,’ said Kahdia, calmly. ‘You broke God’s law and ate the flesh of men.’
‘And of women, and of children, and of everything that breathes.’ Mamun frowned over towards the acolyte’s ruined corpse. One of the Eaters had squatted beside the body, and she put one finger in the pooling blood and began to smear it on her blandly smiling face. ‘If only I had known then what I know now things might have been different.’ He gave a sad smile. ‘But it is easy to speak of the past, impossible to go there. I am powerful in ways you can only dream, yet I am still a prisoner of what I have done. I can never escape the cell I have made for myself. Things are what they are.’
‘We always have a choice,’ said Kahdia.
Mamun smiled at him. A strange smile, it was. Almost … hopeful. ‘Do you think so?’
‘God tells us so.’
‘Then I offer you yours. We can take them.’ He glanced towards the crowd, and as his glassy eyes passed over Temple he felt the hairs rise on his neck. ‘We can take all of them, but you will be spared.’
The Eater with the golden hair winked at Temple again, and he felt the girl beside him trembling, and he felt himself trembling, too.
‘Or we can take you,’ said Mamun, ‘and they will be spared.’
‘All of them?’ asked Kahdia.
‘All of them.’
That was the time to step forward, Temple knew. To act as he would want to act. As he would want others to act. That was the moment for courage, for selflessness, for solidarity with the man who had saved his life, who had shown him mercy, who had given him a chance he did not deserve. To step forward, and offer himself in Kahdia’s place. Now was the time.
Temple did not move.
No one did.
The Haddish gave a smile, though. ‘You drive a poor bargain, Eater. I would happily have given my life for any one of them.’
The blonde woman raised her long arms, let her head fall back and began to sing. High and dazzlingly pure, her voice soared in the great spaces above, more beautiful than any music Temple had ever heard.
Mamun fell to his knees before Kahdia and pressed one hand to his heart. ‘All heaven rejoices in the finding of one righteous man. Wash him. Give him food and water. Convey him with honour to the Prophet’s table.’
‘God be with you,’ murmured Kahdia over his shoulder, the smile still on his face. ‘God be with you all.’ And he walked from the temple, an Eater on either side, their heads respectfully bowed as his was held high.
‘Shame,’ said the Eater with the blood-daubed face, her lips pushed out in a pout. She took the acolyte’s corpse by one ankle and dragged it after her, swaggering to the doors and leaving a bloody trail across the floor.
Mamun paused for a moment in the broken doorway. ‘The rest of you are free. Free from us, at least. From yourselves, there is no escape.’
How long did they stand in that sweating press, after the Eaters were gone? How long did they stand silent, staring towards the ruined gate? Frozen with terror. Rooted with guilt. Minutes? Hours? While outside, faintly, they heard the burning, the clash of steel, the screams, the sound of the sack of Dagoska. The sound of the end of the world.
Finally the girl beside Temple leaned close and asked in a broken whisper, ‘What do we do?’
Temple swallowed. ‘We care for the wounded. We give comfort to the weak. We bury the dead. We pray.’
God, it sounded hollow. But what else was there?
Somewhere in the North,
Summer 576
‘This is hell,’ muttered Shev, peering over the brink of the canyon. ‘Hell.’ Rock shiny-dark with wet disappeared into the mist below, water rushing somewhere, a long way down. ‘God, I hate the North.’
‘Somehow,’ answered Javre, pushing back hair turned lank brown by the eternal damp, ‘I do not think God is listening.’
‘Oh, I’m abundantly aware of that. No one’s bloody listening.’
‘I am.’ Javre turned away from the edge and headed on down the rutted goat-track beside it with her usual mighty strides, head back, heedless of the rain, soaked cloak flapping at her muddy calves. ‘And, what is more, I am intensely bored by what I am hearing.’
‘Don’t toy with me, Javre.’ Shev hurried to catch her up, trying to find the least boggy patches to hop between. ‘I’ve had about as much of this as I can take!’
‘So you keep saying. And yet the next day you take some more.’
‘I’m bloody furious!’
‘I believe you.’
‘I mean it!’
‘If you have to tell someone you are furious, and then, furthermore, that you mean it, your fury has failed to achieve its desired effect.’
‘I hate the bloody North!’ Shev stamped at the ground, as though she could hurt anything but herself, succeeding only in showering wet dirt up her leg. Not that she could have made herself much wetter or dirtier. ‘The whole place is made of shit!’
Javre shrugged. ‘Everything is, in the end.’
‘How can anyone stand this cold?’
‘It is bracing. Do not sulk. Would you like to ride on my shoulders?’
Shev would have, in fact, very much, but her bruised pride insisted that she continue to squelch along on foot. ‘What am I, a bloody child?’
Javre raised her red brows. ‘Were you never told only to ask questions you truly want the answer to? Do you want the answer?’
‘Not if you’re going to try to be funny.’
‘Oh, come now, Shevedieh!’ Javre bent down to snake one huge arm about her shoulders and gave her a bone-crushing squeeze. ‘Where is that happy-go-lucky rascal I fell in love with back in Westport, always facing her indignities with a laugh, a caper and a twinkle in her eye?’ And her wriggling fingers crept towards Shev’s stomach.
Shev held up a knife. ‘Tickle me and I will fucking stab you.’
Javre puffed out her cheeks, took her arm away and squelched on down the track. ‘Do not be so overdramatic. It is exhausting. We just need to get you dry and find some pretty little farmgirl for you to curl up with and it will all feel better by morning.’
‘There are no pretty farmgirls out here! There are no girls! There are no farms!’ She held out her arms to the endless murk, mud and blasted rock. ‘There isn’t even any bloody morning!’
‘There is a bridge,’ said Javre, pointing into the gloom. ‘See? Things are looking up!’
‘I never felt so encouraged,’ muttered Shev.
It was a tangle of fraying
rope strung from ancient posts carved with runes and streaked with bird-droppings, rotten-looking slats tied to make a precarious walkway. It sagged deep as Shev’s spirits as it vanished into the vertiginous unknown above the canyon and shifted alarmingly in the wind, planks rattling.
‘Bloody North,’ said Shev as she picked her way towards it and had a tentative drag at the ropes. ‘Even their bridges are shit.’
‘Their men are good,’ said Javre, clattering out with no fear whatsoever. ‘Far from subtle, but enthusiastic.’
‘Great,’ said Shev as she edged after, exchanging a mutually suspicious glance with a crow perched atop one of the posts. ‘Men. The one thing that interests me not at all.’
‘You should try them.’
‘I did. Once. Bloody useless. Like trying to have a conversation with someone who doesn’t even speak your language, let alone understand the topic.’
‘Some are certainly more horizontally fluent than others.’
‘No. Just no. The hairiness, and the lumpiness, and the great big fumbling fingers and … balls. I mean, balls. What’s that about? That is one singularly unattractive piece of anatomy. That is just … that is bad design, is what that is.’
Javre sighed. ‘It is the great shame of creation that we cannot all be so perfectly formed as you, Shevedieh, springy little string of sinew that you are.’
‘There’d be more bloody meat on me if we weren’t living on high hopes and the odd rabbit. I may not be perfect but I don’t have a sock of bloody gravel swinging around my knees, you’d have to give me … Hold on.’ They had reached the sagging middle of the bridge now, and Shev could see neither rock face. Only the ropes fading up into the grey in both directions.
‘What?’ muttered Javre, clattering to a stop.
The bridge kept on bouncing. A heavy tread, and coming towards them.
‘There’s someone heading the other way,’ muttered Shev, twisting her wrist and letting the dagger drop from her sleeve into her waiting palm. A fight was the last thing she ever wanted, but she’d reluctantly come to find there was no downside to having a good knife ready. It made a fine conversation point, if nothing else.
A figure started to form. At first just a shadow, shifting as the wind drove the fog in front of them. First a short man, then a tall one. Then a man with a rake over his shoulder. Then a half-naked man with a huge sword over his shoulder.
Shev squinted around Javre’s elbow, waiting for it to resolve itself into something that made better sense. It did not.
‘That is … unusual,’ said Javre.
‘Bloody North,’ muttered Shev. ‘Nothing up here would surprise me.’
The man stopped perhaps two strides off, smiling. But a smile more of madness than good humour. He wore trousers, thankfully, made of some ill-cured pelt, and boots with absurd fur tops. Otherwise he was bare, and his pale torso was knotted with muscle, criss-crossed with scars and beaded with dew. That sword looked even bigger close up, as if forged by an optimist for the use of giants. It was nearly as tall as its owner, and he was not short by any means, for he looked Javre more or less in the eye.
‘Someone’s compensating for something,’ muttered Shev, under her breath.
‘Greetings, ladies,’ said the man, in a thick accent. ‘Lovely day.’
‘It’s fucking not,’ grumbled Shev.
‘Well, it’s all in how you look at it, isn’t it, though?’ He raised his brows expectantly, but when neither of them answered, continued, ‘I am Whirrun of Bligh. Some folk call me Cracknut Whirrun.’
‘Congratulations,’ said Shev.
He looked pleased. ‘You’ve heard of me, then?’
‘No. Where the hell’s Bligh?’
He winced. ‘Honestly, I couldn’t say.’
‘I am Javre,’ said Javre, puffing up her considerable chest, ‘Lioness of Hoskopp.’ Shev rolled her eyes. God – warriors, and their bloody titles, and their bloody introductions, and their bloody chest-puffing. ‘We are crossing this bridge.’
‘Ah! Me too!’
Shev ground her teeth. ‘What is this, a stating-the-obvious competition? We’ve met in the middle of it, haven’t we?’
‘Yes.’ Whirrun heaved in a great breath through his nose and let it sigh happily away. ‘Yes, we have.’
‘That is quite a sword,’ said Javre.
‘It is the Father of Swords, and men have a hundred names for it. Dawn Razor. Grave-Maker. Blood Harvest. Highest and Lowest. Scac-ang-Gaioc in the valley tongue which means the Splitting of the World, the Battle that was fought at the start of time and will be fought again at its end. Some say it is God’s sword, fallen from the heavens.’
‘Huh.’ Javre held up the roughly sword-shaped bundle of rags she carried with her. ‘My sword was forged from a fallen star.’
‘It looks like a sword-shaped bundle of rags.’
Javre narrowed her eyes. ‘I have to keep it wrapped up.’
‘Why?’
‘Lest its brilliance blind you.’
‘Ooooooooh,’ said Whirrun. ‘The funny thing about that is, now I really want to see it. Would I get a good look before I was blinded, or—’
‘Are you two done with the pissing contest?’ asked Shev.
‘I would not get into a pissing contest with a man.’ Javre pushed her hips forward, stuck her hand in her groin and indicated the probable arc with a pointed finger. ‘I have tried it before and you can say what you like about cocks but they just get far more distance. Far more. What?’ she asked, frowning over her shoulder. ‘It simply cannot be done, no matter how much you drink. Now, if you want a pissing contest—’
‘I don’t!’ snapped Shev. ‘Right now all I want is somewhere dry to kill myself!’
‘You are so overdramatic,’ said Javre, shaking her head. ‘She is so overdramatic. It is exhausting.’
Whirrun shrugged. ‘It’s a fine line between too much drama and too little, isn’t it, though?’
‘True,’ mused Javre. ‘True.’
There was a pause, while the bridge creaked faintly.
‘Well,’ said Shev, ‘this has been lovely, but we are being pursued by agents of the Great Temple in Thond and some fellows hired by Horald the Finger, so, if you don’t mind—’
‘In fact I do. I, too, am pursued, by agents of the King of the Northmen, Bethod. You’d think he’d have better things to do, what with this mad war against the Union, but Bethod, well, like him or no, you have to admit he’s persistent.’
‘Persistently a shit,’ said Shev.
‘I won’t disagree,’ lamented Whirrun. ‘The greater a man’s power swells, the smaller his good qualities shrivel.’
‘True,’ mused Javre. ‘True.’
Another long silence, and the wind blew up and made the bridge sway alarmingly. Javre and Whirrun frowned at one another.
‘Step aside,’ said Javre, ‘and we shall be on our way.’
‘I do not care to step aside. Especially on a bridge as narrow as this one.’ Whirrun’s eyes narrowed slightly. ‘And your tone somewhat offends me.’
‘Then your delicate feelings will be even worse wounded by my boot up your arse. Step aside.’
Whirrun swung the Father of Swords from his shoulder and set it point-down on the bridge. ‘I fear you will have to show me that blade after all, woman.’
‘My pleasure—’
‘Wait!’ snapped Shev, ducking around Javre to hold up a calming palm. ‘Just wait a moment! You can murder each other with my blessing but if you set to swinging your hugely impressive swords on this bridge, the chances are good you’ll cut one of the ropes, and then you’ll kill not just each other but me, too, and that you very much do not have my blessing for.’
Whirrun raised his brows. ‘She has a point.’
‘Shevedieh can be a deep thinker,’ said Javre, no
dding. She gestured back the way they had come. ‘Let us return to our end to fight.’
Shev gave a gasp. ‘So you wouldn’t step aside to let him past but you’ll happily plod all the way back to fight?’
Javre looked baffled. ‘Of course. That is only good manners.’
‘Exactly!’ said Whirrun. ‘Manners are everything to a good-mannered person. That is why we must go to my end of the bridge to fight.’
It was Javre’s turn to narrow her eyes. She was almost as dangerous an eye-narrower as she was a fighter, which was saying something. ‘It must be my end.’
‘My end,’ growled Whirrun. ‘I insist.’
Shev rubbed at her temples. The past few years, it was a wonder she hadn’t worn them right through. ‘Are you two idiots really going to fight over where you fight? We were going this way! He’s offering to let us go this way! Let’s just go this way!’
Javre narrowed her eyes still further. Blue slits, they were. ‘All right. But don’t think you’re talking us out of fighting, Shevedieh.’
Shev gave her very weariest sigh. ‘Far be it from me to prevent bloodshed.’
Whirrun wedged his great sword point-down into a crack in the rocks and left it gently wobbling. ‘Let’s put our blades aside. The Father of Swords cannot be drawn without being blooded.’
Javre snorted. ‘Afraid?’
‘No. The witch Shoglig told me the time and place of my death, and it is not here, and it is not now.’
‘Huh.’ Javre set her own sword down and began, one by one, to explosively crack her knuckles. ‘Did she tell you the time of me kicking you so hard you shit yourself?’
Whirrun’s face took on a contemplative look. ‘She did predict my shitting myself, but that was because of a rancid stew and, anyway, that happened already. Last year, near Uffrith. That is why I have these new trousers.’ He bent over to smile proudly upon them, then frowned towards Shev. ‘I trust your servant will stay out of this?’