‘I hope,’ said Ville, ‘the hunt went well.’
* * *
Lieutenant Risp studied the blockish silhouette that was Riven Keep. The solitary tower, which rose from a clutter of lower buildings huddled around it, showed a single, faint light, coming from a room on the top floor, just beneath the peaked roof. There was a low wall, she had been told, surrounding this ancient fort, marked by banked revetments. To assault Riven Keep an army would find itself descending steep ditches forming a treacherous maze beyond the walls, all under arrow fire from the revetments, and crowding into chokepoints where the ground underfoot would be uneven and even retreat would prove impossible. It was well, she concluded, that they were not facing an enemy aware of the threat drawing close.
The village below Riven Keep formed a half-circle round the hill, and these houses sprawled to the very edges of community pastureland. Risp could smell the smoke in the cool night air. Twisting in her saddle, she squinted at the waiting soldiers of her own troop. Weapons were drawn but held at rest across saddles and thighs. No one spoke and the only sound came from the occasional shift or snort from a horse. Beyond her unit waited others, all equally silent, gathered in mounted squares in the basins to either side of the road.
Upon the road itself, Captain Esthala led the centre unit, with her husband further along to the woman’s right. The thought of that still left a bitter taste in Risp’s mouth, but she told herself that Silann was not her problem, and if Esthala continued to refuse to do what was needed, well, she would answer to Hunn Raal. For once, Risp was relieved to find herself outranked. Better still, Esthala’s ambitions were now doomed: she would never be promoted, or welcomed among the higher ranks in the Legion.
Stupid woman. All for the sake of love. All for a fool better suited to hoeing vegetables than swinging a sword. Not only didn’t you execute him; you didn’t even demote him, or throw him out. Instead, we must all suffer his incompetence and pray to the Abyss that it doesn’t kill us. When she took over command here …
The sergeant cleared his throat and edged his mount up to her side. ‘Sir, this doesn’t sit well with some of us.’
And I know which, too. Your days are numbered, sergeant. You and your old cronies. ‘We must divide our enemies,’ she said, shrugging. ‘Deceit is an essential component of military tactics. Furthermore, what creditable commander does not take advantage of surprise, or the miscalculations of the enemy?’
‘The enemy, sir? I am sure that they are unaware that they are anyone’s enemy. Is this the miscalculation to which you are referring?’
She heard the awkward formality in his words and was amused. ‘One of them.’
‘Most of the combatants are not here,’ the sergeant said, nodding towards the village. ‘Occupation will suffice to eliminate the Borderswords as a threat to the Legion, by virtue of holding their families under guard.’
‘That is true, but at the expense of committing a defendable force to oversee those hostages, for an unknown period of time.’
‘Few would resist overmuch,’ the sergeant countered. ‘They are neutral as it stands. Instead, we give them reason to reject that neutrality.’
‘Indeed,’ she agreed.
‘Then I do not understand.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘And you don’t need to, sergeant. Take your orders and leave it at that.’
‘If we know what we’re about, sir, then there’s less chance of doing the wrong thing.’
‘Sergeant, with what is about to come down to that village, there’s nothing you could do that would earn our wrath.’ She looked across at him. ‘Barring disobeying orders.’
‘We won’t do that, sir,’ the old man said in a growl.
‘Of course you won’t.’ But even as Risp said that, she felt the hollowness to the assertion. It was hard to know where their orders were coming from. Was this still Hunn Raal’s gambit, or had Urusander finally taken to the field? Where was Osserc? For all they knew here, the entire plan might be in ruins somewhere behind them, lying lifeless behind Hunn Raal’s unseeing eyes in some muddy field, or upon the old spikes of the Citadel’s riverwall, making what they were about to do a crime and an inexcusable atrocity. She knew her own unease with what was to come.
There would always be miscalculations in any campaign. The Tiste had faced near disaster against the Forulkan on more than one occasion, when miscommunication or the outright absence of communication had sent elements to the wrong place at the wrong time. There was nothing more difficult than linking up armies and manoeuvring such large forces into position. Ensuring that they acted effectively and in concert was a commander’s greatest challenge. It was no accident that commanders were at their most comfortable when they could amass all the forces at their disposal. Of course, once battle commenced, everything changed. Upon the field, the company captains and their corps of officers were crucial.
She looked again at the distant keep, and that lone light upon the top floor. Had someone fallen asleep in a soft chair, with the candle burning down? Or was there a guard stationed in the tower, acting as a lookout? The latter did not seem likely, as light in the chamber would make it impossible to see anything outside. Perhaps some cleric or scholar was working through the night, muttering under his or her breath and cursing failing eyesight and aching bones. Risp could feel the chill in the wind coming down from the mountains to the north.
The Borderswords were welcome to this remote, cold place.
‘Sir,’ said the old sergeant.
‘What now?’
‘Once we are done here, will we be returning to besiege House Dracons?’
She recalled the day and the night during which they had camped at the very edge of the estate. The Lord’s Houseblades had ridden out in strength, as if to challenge this unwelcome army camped on its doorstep, but Esthala had been indifferent to the gesture, instead sending a rider to the Houseblade Commander, assuring him that her Legion units intended no violence upon the holdings of the Consort.
The Houseblade captain had been unappeased by these pronouncements, and had maintained his forces in readiness for all the time that the Legion remained on Dracons land, even going so far as to ride parallel to their column for a time, once it resumed its northward journey. Lord Draconus had assembled a formidable company, heavily armoured and impressively disciplined. Risp was in truth relieved that the Consort’s Houseblades were not among Esthala’s targets.
‘Sir?’
‘No, sergeant, we will not be returning to House Dracons. We have done what was needed. We have left a column trail back to his estate.’
There was a sound from the road and Risp glanced over to the vanguard and saw the standards of House Dracons being raised aloft.
The sergeant swore under his breath, and then said, ‘With us out of uniform, I was assuming we’d be laying the blame on the Deniers. Now I see how this will be played.’
‘We need deception,’ Risp said. ‘More to the point, we need our enemies divided and at each other’s throat.’
‘Then there are to be survivors.’
‘It would be foolish to think no one will escape the slaughter, sergeant. And yes, we are relying upon that.’ She met his eyes. ‘We must do what is necessary.’
‘Yes sir.’
‘As every soldier understands.’
He nodded, reaching up to adjust the strap on his helm.
The command rippled out from unit to unit to begin the advance. Behind them, the sun was just beginning its rise, copper red from the smoke above the forest to the east. She readied her lance. My first battle. My first engagement. Today I will spill blood for the first time. Her mouth was dry and she could feel her heart thumping in her chest. She set her heels to her mount’s flanks and they began to move.
* * *
Krissen let the scroll fall fluttering to the floor, joining a dozen others, and reached up to rub her eyes. She felt exhausted in her mind and weak in her flesh, but currents of excitement remained. There w
as no doubt in her mind now. Forty years ago she had travelled alone among the Jhelarkan, into the fastnesses high in the mountains and to the tundra beyond. Moving from clan to clan, she had made her way westward until arriving among the giant Thel Akai, the Keepers of Songs, and from there southward, into Jaghut lands. She had collected stories, legends and songs from the Jhelarkan and the Thel Akai, and had read through the dispirited but enlightened writings of the Jaghut before the originals had been destroyed following the Lord of Hate’s murdering of Jaghut civilization.
In every tale, truths could be found, dull as river stones in a gem-laden mosaic. They needed only prising loose, out of the gaudy clutter and poetic trappings. Among the ancient songs, locked by the extraordinary memory of the Thel Akai, secrets waited.
Krissen understood the First Age now; not in its details, but in its broadest strokes. Everything began with the Azathanai, who walked worlds in the guise of mortals, but were in truth gods. They created. They destroyed. They set things into motion, driven by a curiosity which often waned, leaving to the fates all that followed. They displayed perverse impulses; they viewed one another with indifference or suspicion, yet upon meeting often displayed extraordinary empathy. They held to unwritten laws on sanctity, territorial interests and liberty, and they played with power as would a child a toy.
She could not be certain, but she suspected that one of them had created the Jaghut. That another had answered in kind with the Tiste. Forulkan, Thel Akai, perhaps even the Dog-Runners, were all fashioned by the will of an Azathanai. Created like game pieces in an eternal contest, mysterious in its conditions of victory, in which few strategies were observable. Their interest in this contest rarely accounted outcomes.
But even as they stood outside time, so too did time prove immune to their manipulations, and now, at last, they had begun suffering its depredations. Deeds accumulated, and each one carried weight. She was certain that the Jaghut had created the Jhelarkan, elaborating on the Azathanai gift of Soletaken, and among the Dog-Runners there were now Bonecasters, shamans powerful enough to challenge the Azathanai. Gods were rising from the created peoples – their own gods. Whatever control the Azathanai had once held over their creations was fast tearing free.
She had heard about the mysterious Azathanai who had come to Kharkanas, and even now, among sages and priests, an awareness was emerging that unknown powers were within the reach of mortals. The world was changing. The game had broken away from the players.
Krissen saw before them now the beginning of a new age, one in which all the created peoples could define their own rules.
Hearing something like low thunder from the window, she rose, arching to work the kinks out of her back, and then walked to the lone window where the dawn’s light now paled the sky beyond. She looked down to see hundreds of riders converging on the village below.
For a long moment she simply stared, unable to comprehend what she was seeing. The riders broke up to pour into the streets, and down alleys and tracks. She saw figures appearing from their homes, saw some running from the path of the riders, and then came the flash of iron, or the thrust of lances, and bodies fell to the dirt.
Like pieces on a board. Moves made and then countered. Pieces falling. Faintly now, she could hear screams, and the first column of smoke lifted into the morning sky.
She had nothing of Gallan’s artistry with words, and the more she saw, the more words failed her, each one arriving in her mind listless and pallid. She was a scholar, one whom ideas inspired more than execution, and to put her thoughts into words, upon parchment, had always been a struggle.
Even in her head, her sense of the Azathanai was almost formless, a thing of impressions and strange upwelling emotions. Her failure had always been in the marriage of imagination with the pragmatic. And now, as she watched the slaughter below, and saw the first riders climbing the cobbled track leading up to Riven Keep – an edifice undefended and virtually unoccupied – she felt incapable of binding these details to any personal impetus.
A new age was upon them. How can you not see that? How can you not understand? I have made discoveries. It was all there, in the stories and the songs. Such discoveries!
The keep gate isn’t even closed.
* * *
Instincts had reared, beast-like, and now Risp felt herself knocked about on her saddle, her lance dragging and stuttering heavily on the cobbles, yanking her arm back. Impaled on the weapon was a boy of about five years of age. He had darted out from behind a rag cart, almost into her path, and she had struck without thought, and now his limp body was skewered, his limbs flopping as his weight pulled at her.
A sob broke from her throat, a sound broken with horror. She bit back on it. The lance head stabbed into the ground again and this time she relaxed her grip, releasing the weapon. Directly ahead was a heavily pregnant woman, pulling two children with her as she ran down the alley.
Something cold and empty drove all thoughts from Risp, and she felt her hand draw free her longsword, saw the blade flash in front of her.
As she closed on the three, she saw the woman throw both children ahead of her, screaming ‘Run!’ And then she spun round, leaping into the path of Risp’s horse.
The impact sent the woman flying back, to land stunned on the cobbles.
Risp’s horse staggered, coughing, forelegs folding under it. As it collapsed, Risp kicked her boots free of the stirrups and rolled from the saddle. She struck the ground on her right shoulder, felt the sword clatter away from a senseless hand, and came up against the wall of a building. Looking up, she saw her sergeant ride past, slashing down at the nearest of the two children, who fell without a sound. The other child, a girl of about four, wheeled to rush to her fallen sister, and came within reach of the sergeant’s sword. He cut down across the back of her neck and she crumpled like a doll.
Picking herself up, Risp collected her sword, left-handed, and awkwardly readied the weapon. Only now did she see the handle of a knife, its blade embedded in the chest of her dying horse. Fury took hold and she advanced on the pregnant woman. ‘You killed my horse!’ she shouted.
The pregnant woman lifted her head and met Risp’s eyes. Her face twisted and she spat at Risp.
She hacked the woman down with repeated blows.
Beyond them, at the alley mouth, the sergeant had reined in and spun his horse round. He seemed about to shout something, and then a figure leapt down from the roof to the sergeant’s left, colliding with the veteran and dragging him from the saddle. Blood sprayed the moment before they struck the cobbles, and the figure rose into a crouch, glaring across at Risp.
A young woman of sixteen or so. She dragged free a long-bladed knife from under the sergeant’s ribcage, and then advanced on Risp.
Sensation was returning to the lieutenant’s right hand and she quickly changed grips, but her shoulder was throbbing and weak. She backed away.
The girl bared her teeth. ‘You armoured and all! Don’t run, you filthy murderer!’
Another rider came up behind Risp, but had to slow his mount since Risp’s dead horse blocked the alley. ‘Back up, sir!’ he snapped. ‘Leave the pup to me!’
She saw that he was one of the sergeant’s comrades, Bishim. His face looked almost black beneath his helm, contorted with rage. He slipped down from his horse and drew his shield to the ready as he advanced on the girl, pointing with his sword. ‘For Darav, I’m going to make this hurt.’
The girl laughed. ‘Come at me, then.’
Bishim charged behind his shield, slashing with his sword.
The girl somehow slipped past and then was clambering on to the man’s kite shield. Her weight pulled it down and she stabbed her knife into the side of his neck. The point burst out the other side in a welter of blood. As Bishim fell to his knees, the girl sliced through the biceps of his weapon arm and laughed as the sword clanged on the stones. Then she stepped over the dying man and advanced on Risp.
The lieutenant threw her sword at t
he girl and then ran, grasping the reins of Bishim’s horse as she went. With the beast between her and the girl in the narrow alley, she knew that she had a few moments in which to—
The girl used one wall to rebound from as she leapt to land astride the horse. Her knife slashed down and Risp felt her arm snap upward. Staggering, confused, she looked to see that its hand was gone, sliced clean off at the wrist, and blood was gushing out. Moaning, she fell back against the nearest wall. ‘Don’t,’ she said.
The girl swung round the horse’s neck to land in front of the beast, and then advanced on Risp. ‘Don’t? Don’t what? I’m a Bordersword. You attacked us. What is it you don’t want me to do?’
‘I was following orders,’ Risp pleaded, pushing with her boots as if she could somehow back through the wall behind her.
‘Draconus just kicked the wrong nest,’ said the girl.
Risp shook her head. ‘It’s not – we’re not what you think! Spare me and I will go with you to your commander. I’ll explain everything.’
‘Commander? You understand nothing about us. Today, right now, right here in this alley, I’m in command.’
‘Please!’
The girl stepped forward. She was pathetically scrawny, more boy than girl, and in her eyes there was nothing Risp recognized.
‘I’ll explain—’
The knife went into the side of her neck like a sliver of fire. Choking, she felt the blade turn, and then the girl sliced through her windpipe, and all at once Risp felt the back of her helmet slam into the stone wall as tendons were cut. Hot blood filled her lungs and she began to drown.
The girl stared down at her for a moment, and then moved off.
Risp tried turning her head, to follow her killer’s flight, but instead felt her head sink back down. She looked down to see the stump at the end of her right wrist. The blood had stopped spilling out. Soldiers survived worse. She could learn to fight with her left hand. Wasn’t easy, but she was young – and when you’re young, these things are possible. So many things are possible.
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