Dust of Dreams

by Erikson, Steven

  ‘And women such as Sekara the Vile?’

  She curled her lip. ‘What of them?’

  He grunted. ‘Of course. Greed and power are her only lovers—in that, she is no different from us men.’

  ‘What do you want with Hetan?’

  ‘Nothing. Never mind.’

  ‘You no longer trust me. Perhaps you never did. It was only the pool of blood we’re both standing in.’

  ‘You follow me. You stand just beyond the firelight every night.’

  I am alone. Can’t you see that? ‘Why did you murder him? I will tell you. It’s because you saw him as a threat, and he was surely that, wasn’t he?’

  ‘I—I did not—’ He halted, shook his head. ‘I want to steal her away. I want it to end.’

  ‘It’s too late. Hetan is dead inside. Long dead. You took away her husband. You took away her children. And then you—we—took away her body. A flower cut from its root quickly dies.’

  ‘Estaral.’

  He was holding on to a secret, she realized.

  Bakal glanced at her. ‘Cafal.’

  She felt her throat tighten—was it panic? Or the promise of vengeance? Retribution? Even if it meant her own death? Oh, I see now. We’re still falling.

  ‘He is close,’ Bakal went on under his breath. ‘He wants her back. He wants me to steal her away. Estaral, I need your help—’

  She searched his face. ‘You would do this for him? Do you hate him that much, Bakal?’

  She might as well have struck him in the face.

  ‘He—he is a shaman, a healer—’

  ‘No Barghast shaman has ever healed one of the hobbled.’

  ‘None has tried!’

  ‘Perhaps it is as you say, Bakal. I see that you do not want to wound Cafal. You would do this to give to him what he seeks.’

  He nodded once, as if unable to speak.

  ‘I will take her from the children,’ Estaral said. ‘I will lead her to the west end of the camp. But, Bakal, there will be pickets—we are at the eve of battle—’

  ‘I know. Leave the warriors to me.’

  She didn’t know why she was doing this. Nor did she understand the man walking at her side. But what difference did knowing make? Just as easy to live in ignorance, scraped clean of expectation, emptied of beliefs and faith, even hopes. Hetan is hobbled. No different in the end from every other woman suffering the same fate. She’s been cut down inside, and the stem lies bruised and lifeless. She was once a great warrior. She was once proud, her wit sharp as a thorn, ever quick to laugh but never with cruelty. She was indeed a host of virtues, but they had availed her nothing. No strength of will survives hobbling. Not a single virtue. This is the secret of humiliation: the deadliest weapon the Barghast have.

  She could see Hetan up ahead, her matted hair, her stumbles brought up by the crooked staff the hobbled were permitted when on the march. The daughter of Humbrall Taur was barely recognizable. Did her father’s spirit stand witness, there in the Reaper’s shadow? Or had he turned away?

  No, he rides his last son’s soul. That must be what has so maddened Cafal.

  Well, to honour Hetan’s father, she would do this. When the Barghast came to rest at this day’s end. She was tired. She was thirsty. She hoped it would be soon.

  ______

  Kashat pointed. ‘See there, brother. The ridge forms half a circle.’

  ‘Not much of a slope,’ Sagal muttered.

  ‘Look around,’ Kashat said, snorting. ‘It’s about the best we can manage. This land is pocked, but those pocks are old and worn down. Anyway, that ridge marks the biggest of those pocks—you can see that for yourself. And the slope is rocky—they would lose horses charging up that.’

  ‘So they flank us instead.’

  ‘We make strongpoints at both ends, with crescents of archers positioned behind them to take any riders attempting an encirclement.’

  ‘With the rear barricaded by the wagons.’

  ‘Held by mixed archers and pike-wielders, yes, exactly. Listen, Sagal, by this time tomorrow we’ll be picking loot from heaps of corpses. The Akrynnai army will be shattered, their villages undefended—we can march into the heart of their territory and claim it for ourselves.’

  ‘An end to the Warleader, the rise of the first Barghast King.’

  Kashat nodded. ‘And we shall be princes, and the King shall grant us provinces to rule. Our very own herds. Horses, bhederin, rodara. We shall have Akrynnai slaves, as many of their young women as we want, and we shall live in keeps—do you remember, Sagal? When we were young, our first war, marching down to Capustan—we saw the great stone keeps all in ruin along the river. We shall build ourselves those, one each.’

  Sagal grinned at his brother. ‘Let us return to the host, and see if our great King is in any better mood than when we left him.’

  They turned back, slinging their spears over their shoulders and jogging to rejoin the vanguard of the column. The sun glared through the dust above the glittering forest of barbed iron, transforming the cloud into a penumbra of gold. Vultures rode the deepening sky to either side. Barely two turns of the beaker before dusk arrived—the night ahead promised to be busy.

  The half-dozen Akryn scouts rode between the narrow, twisting gullies and out on to the flats where the dust still drifted above the rubbish left behind by the Barghast. They cut across that churned-up trail and cantered southward. The sun had just left the sky, dropping behind a bank of clouds dark as a shadowed cliff-face on the western horizon, and dusk bled into the air.

  When the drum of horse hoofs finally faded, Cafal edged out from the deeper of the two gullies. The bastards had held him back too long—the great cauldrons would be steaming in the Barghast camp, the foul reek of six parts animal blood to two parts water and sour wine, and all the uncured meat still rank with the taste of slaughter. Squads would be shaking out, amidst curses that they would have to eat salted strips of smoked bhederin, sharing a skin of warm water on their patrols between the pickets. The Barghast encampment would be seething with activity.

  One of Bakal’s warriors had found him a short time earlier, delivering the details of the plan. It would probably fail, but Cafal did not care. If he died attempting to steal her back, then this torment would end. For one of them, at least. It was a selfish desire, but selfish desires were all he had left.

  I am the last of Father’s children, the last not dead or broken. Father, you so struggled to become the great leader of the White Faces. And now I wonder, if you had turned away from the attempt, if you had quenched your ambition, where would you and your children be right now? Spirits reborn, would we even be here, on this cursed continent?

  I know for a fact that Onos Toolan wanted a peaceful life, his head down beneath the winds that had once ravaged his soul. He was flesh, he was life—after so long—and what have we done? Did we embrace him? Did the White Face Barghast welcome him as a guest? Were we the honourable hosts we proclaim to be? Ah, such lies we tell ourselves. Our every comfort proves false in the end.

  He moved cautiously along the battered trail. Already the glow from the cookfires stained the way ahead. He could not see the picket stations or the patrols—coming in from the west had disadvantaged him, but soon the darkness would paint them as silhouettes against the camp’s hearths. In any case, he did not have to draw too close. Bakal would deliver her, or so he claimed.

  The face of Setoc rose in his mind, and behind it flashed the horrible scene of her body spinning away from his blow, the looseness of her neck—had he heard a snap? He didn’t know. But the way she fell. Her flopping limbs—yes, there was a crack, a sickening sound of bones breaking, a sound driving like a spike into his skull. He had heard it and he’d refused to hear it, but such refusal failed and so its dread echo reverberated through him. He had killed her. How could he face that?

  He could not.

  Hetan. Think of Hetan. You can save this one. The same hand that killed Setoc can save Hetan. Can you make t
hat be enough, Cafal? Can you?

  His contempt for himself was matched only by his contempt for the Barghast gods—he knew they were the cause behind all of this—another gift by my own hand. They had despised Onos Toolan. Unable to reach into his foreign blood, his foreign ideas, they had poisoned the hearts of every Barghast warrior against the Warleader. And now they held their mortal children in their hands, and every strange face was an enemy’s face, every unfamiliar notion was a deadly threat to the Barghast and their way of life.

  But the only people safe from change are the ones lying inside sealed tombs. You drowned your fear in ambition and see where you’ve brought us? This is the eve of our annihilation.

  I have seen the Akrynnai army, and I will voice no warning. I will not rush into the camp and exhort Maral Eb to seek peace. I will do nothing to save any of them, not even Bakal. He knows what comes, if not the details, and he does not flinch.

  Remember him, Cafal. He will die true to the pure virtues so quickly abused by those who possess none of them. He will be used as his kind have been used for thousands of years, among thousands of civilizations. He is one among the bloody fodder for empty tyrants and their pathetic wants. Without him, the great scything blade of history sings through nothing but air.

  Would that such virtue could face down the tyrants. That the weapon turn in their sweaty hands. Would that the only blood spilled belonged to them and them alone.

  Go on, Maral Eb. Walk out on to the plain and cross swords with Irkullas. Kill each other and then the rest of us can just walk away. Swords? Why such formality? Why not just bare hands and teeth? Tear each other to pieces! Like two wolves fighting to rule the pack—whichever one limps away triumphant will be eyed by the next one in line. And on it goes, and really, do any of the rest of us give a fuck? At least wolves don’t make other wolves fight their battles for them. No, our tyrants are smarter than wolves, aren’t they?

  He halted and crouched down. He was in the place he was supposed to be.

  The jade talons raked up from the southern horizon, and from the plain to the west a fox loosed an eerie, piercing cry. Night had arrived.

  Estaral grasped the girl by her braid and flung her back. They had been trying to force goat shit into Hetan’s mouth—her face was smeared from the cheeks down.

  Spitting in rage, the girl scrambled to her feet, her cohorts closing round her. Eyes blazed. ‘My father will see you hobbled for that!’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Estaral replied. ‘What man wants to take a woman stinking of shit? You’ll be lucky to keep your hide, Faranda. Now, all of you, get away from here—I know you all, and I’ve not yet decided whether to tell your fathers about this.’

  They bolted.

  Estaral knelt before Hetan, pulling up handfuls of grass to wipe her mouth and chin. ‘Even the bad rules are breaking,’ she said. ‘We keep falling and falling, Hetan. Be glad you cannot see what has become of your people.’

  But those words rang false. Be glad? Be glad they chopped off the fronts of your feet? Be glad they raped you so many times you couldn’t feel a damned bhederin pounding into you by now? No. And if the Akrynnai chop off our feet and rape us come tomorrow, who will weep for the White Faces?

  Not Cafal. ‘Not you, either, Hetan.’ She flung the soiled grasses away and helped Hetan to stand. ‘Here, your staff, lean on it.’ She grasped a handful of filthy shirt and began guiding the woman through the camp.

  ‘Don’t keep her too long!’ She glanced back to see a warrior behind them—he had been coming to take her and now stood with a grin that hovered on the edge of something dark and cruel.

  ‘They fed her shit—I’m taking her to get properly cleaned up.’

  A flicker of disgust. ‘The children? Who were they? A solid beating—’

  ‘They ran before I got close enough. Ask around.’

  Estaral tugged Hetan into motion once again.

  The warrior did not pursue, but she heard him cursing as he wandered off. She didn’t think she’d run into many more like him—everyone was crowding around their clan cookfires, hungry and parched and short-tempered as they jostled and fought for position. There’d be a few flick-blade duels this night, she expected. There always were, night before battle. Stupid, of course. Pointless. But, as Onos Toolan might say, the real meaning of ‘tradition’ was … what had he called it? ‘Stupidity on purpose’, that’s what he said. I think. I never much listened.

  I should have. We all should have.

  They neared the western edge of the camp, where the wagons were already being positioned to form a defensive barricade. Just beyond, drovers were busy slaughtering stock, and the bleating cries of hundreds of animals filled the night. The first bonfires for offal had been lit using rotted cloth, bound rushes, dung and liberal splashes of lamp oil. The flames lit up terrified eyes from within crowded pens. Chaos and horror had come to the beasts and the air was thick with death.

  She almost halted. She’d never before seen things in such a way; she’d never before felt the echo of misery and suffering assailing her from all directions—every scene painted into life by the fires was like a vision of madness. We do this. We do this all the time. To all these creatures who look to us for protection. We do this and think nothing of it.

  We say we are great thinkers, but I think now, that most of what we do each and every day—and night—is in fact thoughtless. We will ourselves empty to numb us to our cruelty. We stiffen our faces and say we have needs. But to be empty is to have no purchase, nothing to grasp on to, and so in the emptiness we slide and we slide.

  We fall.

  Oh, when will it end?

  She pulled Hetan to a position behind a wagon, the plains stretching westward before them. Thirty paces ahead, limned by the deepening remnants of the sunset, three warriors were busy digging a picket. ‘Sit down—no, don’t lift. Just sit.’

  ‘Listen, Strahl—you have done enough. Leave this night to me.’

  ‘Bakal—’

  ‘Please, old friend. This is all by my hand—I stood alone before Onos Toolan. There must be the hope … the hope for balance. In my soul. Leave me this, I beg you.’

  Strahl looked away and it was clear to Bakal that his words had been too honest, too raw. The warrior shifted nervously, his discomfort plain to see.

  ‘Go, Strahl. Go lie in your wife’s arms this night. Look past everything else—none of it matters. Find the faces of the ones you love. Your children, your wife.’

  The man managed a nod, not meeting Bakal’s eyes, and then set off.

  Bakal watched him leave, and then checked his weapons one last time, before setting off through the camp.

  Belligerence was building, sizzling beneath the harsh voices. It lit fires inside the strutting warriors as they bellowed out their oaths among the hearth circles. It bared teeth in the midst of every harsh laugh. War was the face to be stared into, or fled from, but the camp on a night such as this one was a cage, a prison to them all. The darkness hid the ones with skittish eyes and twitching hands; the bold postures and wild glares masked icy terror. Fear and excitement had closed jaws upon each other’s throat and neither dared let go.

  This was the ancient dance, this ritualized spitting into the eyes of fate, stoking the dark addiction. He had seen elders, warriors too old, too decrepit to do anything but sit or stand crooked over staffs, and he had seen their blazing eyes, had heard their cracking exhortations—but most of all, he had seen in their eyes the pain of their loss, as if they’d been forced to surrender their most precious love. It was no quaint conceit that warriors prayed to the spirits for the privilege of dying in battle. Thoughts of useless years stretching beyond the warrior’s life could freeze the heart of the bravest of the brave.

  The Barghast were not soldiers, not like the Malazans or the Crimson Guard. A profession could be left behind, a new future found. But for the warrior, war was everything, the very reason to live. It was the maker of heroes and cowards, the one force that tested a soul
in ways that could not be bargained round, that could not be corrupted by a handful of silver. War forged bonds closer knit than those of bloodkin. It painted the crypt’s wall behind every set of eyes—those of foe and friend both. It was, indeed, the purest, truest cult of all. What need for wonder, then, that so many youths so longed for such a life?

  Bakal understood all this, for he was indeed a warrior. He understood, and yet his heart was bitter with disgust. No longer did he dream of inviting his sons and daughters into such a world. Embracing this addiction devoured too much, inside and out.

  He—and so many others—had looked into the face of Onos Toolan and had seen his compassion, had seen it so clearly that the only response was to recoil. The Imass had been an eternal warrior. He had fought with the warrior’s blessing of immortality, given the gift of battles unending, and then he had willingly surrendered it. How could such a man, even one reborn, find so much of his humanity still alive within him?

  I could not have. Even after but three decades of war … if I was this moment reborn, I could not find in myself … what? A battered tin cup half-filled with compassion, not enough to splash a dozen people closest to me.

  Yet … yet he was a flood, an unending flood—how can that be?

  Who did I kill? Shy from that question if you must, Bakal. But one truth you cannot deny: his compassion took hold of your arm, your knife, and showed you the strength of its will.

  His steps slowed. He looked round, blearily. I am lost. Where am I? I don’t understand. Where am I? And what are all these broken things in my hands? Still crashing down—the roar is deafening! ‘Save her,’ he muttered. ‘Yes. Save her—the only one worth saving. May she live a thousand years, proof to all who see her, proof of who and what the Barghast were. The White Faces.’ We hobble ourselves and call it glory. We lift to meet drooling old men eager to fill us to bursting with their bitter poisons. Old men? No, warleaders and warchiefs. And our precious tradition of senseless self-destruction. Watch it fuck us dry.

  He was railing, but it was in silence. Who would want to hear such things? See what happened to the last one who held out a compassionate hand? He imagined himself walking between heaving rows of his fellow warriors. He walked, trailing the gutted ropes of his messy arguments, and from both sides spit and curses rained down.