Forge of Darkness (Kharkanas Trilogy 1)

by Steven Erikson

  None of it’s right. So maybe things do have to go down. Maybe it all needs tearing apart, every one of those lies. And maybe brutality is what’ll make us all equal.

  Still, he dreamed of killing Haral. And Gripp and that boy.

  Every face is ugly. Even the perfect ones.

  Horses behind him. He twisted round to see that woman and four others. Coming for him. Terror spasmed in Narad’s chest, throbbed into the cracked bones of his skull like fists punching from the inside out. He drove his heels into his mount’s flanks and leaned forward in the saddle as the beast surged forward, knowing that he was now riding for his life.

  She’s another Haral. Abyss spare me – I saw it in her. I saw in her what he had. Those eyes. I can’t take any more beatings. I can’t.

  He felt his bowels loosening, and each jolt in the saddle warmed his crotch.

  None of this was fair. He was just trying to get by, to get through. Instead, he felt as if he were sliding down, and down, and no matter how he grasped or dug in his nails, he kept sliding. The scene before him was jarred and rocked with every clash of hoofs on the old cobbles. As if the world were breaking apart.

  But his horse was fresher. He was outdistancing his pursuers – he could hear it. Once he was out of sight again he would cut into the forest, plunge into it and take any trail he found. He would lose them in the wild. He shot a look over one shoulder.

  In time to see a score from Bursa’s troop surge up the bank and hammer like a fist into the five Houseblades. Animals went down with shrill screams. Bodies fell, bounced and flopped on the road.

  One Houseblade sought to wheel round, to flee back up the road, but it was Bursa himself who hacked down between the man’s shoulder and neck, sword blade cutting through bone. The blow flung the victim forward, so that he pitched from the saddle and tore the weapon from the corporal’s grip.

  Narad had let his mount slow, and now he reined in and pulled the beast round. The five Houseblades were all down, along with two of their horses. Soldiers had dismounted to make certain none still lived. He watched them push their swords into bodies, Tiste and animal, and it seemed there was no difference between the two – the actions were precisely the same, methodical and final.

  He trotted towards them. He had fouled himself and this shamed him, but the relief upon seeing his comrades overwhelmed him and he looked through watery eyes.

  Bursa had dropped down from his horse to recover his sword, and now he walked towards Narad. ‘You left a heady wake, Narad.’

  The others laughed, but to Narad’s astonishment those laughs were not cruel.

  ‘There’s the river, soldier,’ Bursa added, pointing. ‘Get yourself cleaned up.’

  ‘Yes sir. It was the thought of another beating—’

  ‘We know. In your place I’d be the same. We all would. And you can be sure they would have tortured you to get their answers.’

  Narad nodded. He dismounted and almost sat down on the road. His legs wobbled under him, but he forced himself to walk down the slope to the river’s bank. Behind him, soldiers were dragging the corpses from the road, back into the forest. Others were tying ropes to the dead horses. For all their efforts, only a blind fool would not see that something terrible had happened here. Blood and gore littered the span, staining black the white dust on the cobbles.

  The water was deep, the bank dropping off sharply. He pulled off his boots and leggings and, naked from the waist down, held on to a branch and settled into the bitter cold water. The currents would cleanse him – they would have to as he was not about to let go or risk trying to hold on with one hand. He did not know how to swim.

  Bursa edged down the bank. ‘We had someone keeping an eye on you.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ Narad replied in grunts, still gripping the branch and feeling his feet and legs growing numb.

  ‘Standard doctrine,’ Bursa replied. ‘No one is left on their own, even if it looks like they are. You’re a soldier of the Legion now, Narad. Initiated on a stream of shit and piss.’ He laughed again.

  Shaking his head, Narad clambered free of the river. He looked down at his pale, thin legs. They seemed clean enough. He went to the soiled clothing.

  ‘Throw the trousers away,’ Bursa said. ‘I’ve got a spare pair that you can have, with a rope belt which I think you’ll need.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. I’ll pay you back.’

  ‘Don’t insult me, Narad. This kind of debt means nothing in the Legion. Who knows, maybe one day you’ll make the same offer to someone else, and so it goes.’

  ‘Yes sir. Thanks.’

  ‘Come back up with me. We have a wedding to attend.’

  Narad followed Bursa back on to the road. Seeing his nakedness, the men laughed and the women crowed.

  ‘That water was cold,’ Narad explained.

  * * *

  The afternoon light was fading. Hobbling on blistered feet, the swelling on his thigh now reaching to the knee, Kadaspala made his way down the slope of the road’s bank. He was spent, too weary to go on. He could see a battered lean-to among the young trees at the forest’s edge. It would have to do for this night.

  Arriving, he paused to study the old camp. The ancient necessity for shelter was simple in its beginnings, he reflected, before it strived for such elaborations as to achieve absurdity. But there was nothing elaborate or absurd about this humble construction. It would need work to keep the rain from him, but he knew that there would be no rain, not this night. Beyond that, this shelter’s only surviving function was to comfort the mind.

  With a small fire flickering before it, smoke wafting in along with the heat, to keep the insects at bay, he would sleep like a king, albeit a hungry, battered one. When he arrived at Andarist’s house, he would appear like a pauper, a destitute wastrel. Would anyone even recognize him? He imagined a familiar Houseblade grasping him by the scruff of the neck and marching him behind an outbuilding, for a lesson in propriety.

  He saw his father’s disgust, his sister’s shock. Hostage Cryl would laugh and drape an arm across his shoulders. All this on the morrow, then. A return to civilization for the wandering artist, the mad painter of portraits, the fool and his brushes.

  But even this scene, conceived so tenderly in his mind, was but an illusion. Tiste were killing Tiste. Today’s righteous cause is religion. The gods are paying attention, after all. Wanting you to die in their name. Why? To prove your loyalty, of course. And what of their loyalty, you might wonder? Has your god blessed you and your life? Answered your every prayer? Given proof of its omnipotence?

  Where is this god’s loyalty to you? Not loyal enough to spare your life which you give in its name. Not loyal enough to steer you past tragedy and grief, loss and misery. Not loyal enough to save your loved ones. Or the children who had to die as proof of that selfsame loyalty.

  No, today the sack is filled with religion. Tomorrow it will be something else. The joy lies in beating it.

  ‘Poor Enesdia,’ he muttered as he sat down beneath the flimsy shelter. ‘The wrong wedding. At the wrong time.’ Bruised petals on the black currents.

  He had asked, once, to paint a portrait of Lord Anomander. This in itself was almost unprecedented. Kadaspala was asked: he did not ask. But, that one time, he had, because he had seen something in that young highborn. Something different. He knew that he would find no answer to this mystery without day upon day devoted to piercing the mien of Anomander of House Purake, to slicing it away sliver by sliver with each stroke of his brush, down to the bone and then through that bone. No one, not even a highborn, should possess what Anomander possessed – that almost ancient assurance, and eyes that saw across a thousand years in an instant.

  In other flesh, he would see it as madness. As tyranny, or an historian’s jaded, cynical regard, or both, since surely every historian was a tyrant at heart, so fiercely armed were they with the weapons of fact and truth; and if tyranny did not thrive in delusion and self-delusion, then it thrived no
where at all. He would know the first honest historian he saw – the one broken and weeping and well beyond words or even a meeting of gazes. Instead, those he knew were mostly smug with their presumed knowledge, and on board or canvas their visages were as flat as anyone else’s.

  But he saw no cynicism in Lord Anomander. He barely saw privilege, and the notions of strength and weakness blended in confusion, until Kadaspala wondered if he had not, all through his life, somehow inverted the meanings of each. A man who could offer weakness in strength was a man at peace with power.

  Still, Kadaspala was haunted, when thinking of Anomander, by fears and unnamed, faceless dangers. If the lord had not refused him his request, he would now know the truth, from the surface through to the very roots, and all mysteries would be gone, revealed and exposed on board or canvas, and nothing would be quite as dark as it was.

  Do not haunt me, Anomander. Not on this night, the night before your brother takes her hand and steals her from me. Not on this night, I beg you, when I curse the growing darkness and the mother who died in order to birth perfect beauty. Died and broke her husband, died and broke her son. Not on this night, when everything ends and nothing new begins.

  Andarist, to be the hand that creates. Silchas, the hand that but waits to destroy. Anomander, who owns them both yet stands as would one defenceless and yet impenetrable. You three! War comes and it comes now. How will you answer?

  Anomander, where is your weakness, and how can it be in truth your strength? Show this to me, and I in turn promise to not haunt you as you now haunt me. Fail in what comes, however, and I vow to never leave your soul in peace.

  If there was one thing he could not deny, it was that, sullied and ruined as she would be, Enesdia would at least be safe. With Andarist and his gentle ways. Safe, but not preserved. The thought sickened him.

  He drew his cloak around him and settled into the shelter. Too tired for a fire, too weary for false comforts, he closed his eyes and tried to sleep.

  * * *

  There was a hill overlooking Enes House. A watchtower had once commanded it, but some ancient conflict lost in the family’s history had seen it burned, and then fully dismantled until only the foundation stones remained. The ground surrounding the ring of stones and the rubbish-filled pit was mostly denuded, covered in a gravel of fire-cracked rocks and broken crockery. A single track led down the southeastern side of the hill to the road.

  From the summit, Cryl studied the estate. The light was fast fading. The river bent away from the road, circling this hill, and it ran like a black serpent behind the house and its grounds. All looked peaceful.

  Beside him, Corporal Rees was studying the ground. A moment later he dismounted and crouched. ‘Lieutenant, it’s as you said on the road – they rode up here, a dozen or so in all. To do just what we’re doing.’

  Cryl continued studying the estate. He saw the pole bearing no banner. He could see the front courtyard of the house and the carriage stable, its doors open. Smoke rose from the chimneys of the mess hall. A few figures moved about, and the two guards at the gates were out on the sward, watching them.

  ‘Scouting,’ Rees said. ‘The Lord was right to fear for his home.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Cryl replied.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘They came up here, studied the estate. They saw it was under-manned. They saw that the Lord was not present, and the carriage was gone.’

  ‘A perfect time to attack.’

  ‘Yet they didn’t, did they? Why not?’

  ‘Loss of nerve?’

  Cryl shook his head. Dread was a cold fist tightening in his chest. ‘The estate wasn’t their target, corporal. They didn’t attack, because the procession had already left.’

  ‘Sir, they would not do that. It is one thing to launch a purge against the Deniers, but what you suggest – against highborn, against a Greater House – they could never justify that in Mother Dark’s name.’

  ‘Those highborn who harbour Deniers on their lands,’ said Cryl. ‘The Lord spoke of this.’

  ‘But sir, we are speaking of the bride of Lord Andarist.’

  Cryl looked down at the corporal, bemused.

  Rees had pulled off his helm, running a hand through his sparse hair. ‘Sorry, sir. It’s just … I have friends in the Legion. Dear friends. Men and women I fought alongside. What you’re saying – none of them I know would ever agree to that. You’re describing a crime. Raw murder. Lord Urusander would be the first to hunt down the killers and hang them all.’

  ‘Renegades,’ said Cryl. ‘Bandits, even, or perhaps the blame will be laid upon the Deniers. If proper signs are left behind. Abyss knows, they could even implicate Draconus. Deceit is their weapon, and every act of murder and chaos will simply impress upon everyone the need for more order – the need for the Legion’s return.’

  ‘They would not do that,’ Rees whispered.

  ‘They need to strike quickly,’ Cryl went on, ‘before those coming up from Kharkanas reach the wedding camp. Don’t you understand, Rees? Strike the brothers to anger – no, to blind rage – and by whose hand will this civil war be unleashed?’ He gathered up his reins. ‘Mount up. We ride to the estate, and there I will hand you over to the castellan.’

  ‘And you, sir?’

  ‘A fresh horse. No, two. I will ride through the night – Sergeant Agalas should have caught up with us. Something has happened to them. If the attackers wait for dawn, I should reach Lord Jaen in time—’

  ‘Sir, don’t you think they’d have watchers on the road?’

  ‘If I take the other side of the river, there is a ford—’

  ‘I know the one, sir, but the river is high – no one dares it and for good reason.’

  ‘Which is why they’ll post no watchers upon it.’

  ‘Sir, you should not go alone.’

  ‘Corporal, it may be that Lord Jaen is right and indeed that I am completely wrong. You need to ready yourselves. Explain it all to Castellan Delaran.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  They swung their weary horses round and set off down the hill.

  * * *

  The night sky was clear and the swirl of stars bright overhead when Narad dismounted with the others in Bursa’s troop. Awaiting them in a glade was another troop of Legion soldiers, although none wore uniforms. From this unlit camp an officer strode out to meet them.

  She was tall, well shaped, yet she moved in a loose way, dissolute, and Narad wondered if she was drunk. But when she spoke, her words were sharp and precise.

  ‘Corporal Bursa, what news do you bring me?’

  ‘Small troubles only, sir. Taken care of on the road. But we can be certain that no reinforcements from the north will reach them in time. Has Captain Scara Bandaris responded to the rider I sent?’

  ‘I intercepted your messenger, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Too great a risk, corporal. I deemed it more prudent that no Legion soldier ride to Kharkanas. I understand that you wish for confirmation of your orders. That you feel troubled by events, but you may take the word of Infayen Menand that all we do here is necessary. These first acts, each one but a small letting of blood, are intended to prevent more bloodshed later.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘Now, divest yourselves of all Legion attire. There is spare clothing awaiting you.’

  Narad had stood close enough, among his comrades, to hear this exchange. He assumed that the officer was this Infayen Menand, although he could not be sure. When Bursa turned back to them, however, Narad could see, even in the darkness, his troubled mien.

  ‘You heard the lieutenant, then,’ he said to them. ‘Head over to that heap of clothing and be quick about it. Once changed, you can try to get some sleep. We’ll be back on the move, on foot, well before dawn. Supper’s cold tonight. Go on, all of you.’

  Narad joined the others in making his way to the spare clothing. When he began picking through it, he felt sticky blood stains on some ite
ms.

  ‘Denier shit,’ the woman beside him muttered. ‘In case any of us get cut down.’

  ‘We get left behind?’ Narad asked.

  ‘That’s the way of it, Waft.’

  Narad didn’t much like the nickname they’d given him, but he knew enough to not complain, which would only make it worse. Just another lie.

  The woman shot him a look. ‘You say something?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Glad for that,’ she snapped under her breath, shaking out a tunic and holding it up. ‘Spent four years going hungry after getting discharged. Four nobleborn boys once caught me worse for wear on a country road. Said I stank and damned near drowned me giving me a bath in the river. They laughed and pawed me and left me lying naked in the mud. I risked my life to see them safe and that was what they did to me? It wasn’t right, and now they’re going to pay.’

  Narad stared at her. Others had paused to listen, but he suspected that they’d all heard the tale before. They probably had their own. Lists of wrongs could bind tighter than blood. And I got my face ruined by a Legion veteran, so go to the Abyss all of you. He stood studying a shirt he’d pulled out, and then dropped it. ‘Just realized I don’t need anything from here, since I ain’t wearing any uniform.’

  She snorted a laugh. ‘Lucky you. Go get some sleep, Waft. Killing comes with the dawn.’

  * * *

  They were camped in the clearing in front of the new Great House of Andarist, which stood silent, unoccupied but ready. In the darkness, with the Houseblades ranged out to form a protective circle, Enesdia was at last permitted to climb out from the carriage. She was swathed in a thick robe and hooded and the weight of this covering pulled at her.

  It was late and her father stood alone by the fire, his eyes upon the huge edifice of the Great House. She moved up alongside him, feeling strangely hollow, almost frightened by what would come in the days ahead.