Billat reached the top of the stairs, then suddenly withdrew, back down a step. A hand gesture froze both Esk and Rathadas. He edged down another step and leaned close to whisper in Esk’s ear.
‘Two guards, at hall’s end. Either side of a large door.’
Some careless indulgence, she concluded, had left Skelenal alone in the main chamber, an old man asleep in a chair by the hearth. But here, before what had to be Sheccanto’s private chamber, diligence remained. Frowning, Esk brought her sword down, tugging her wolfskin cloak over to hide the weapon, and then, indicating with a nod that her soldiers remain where they were, she climbed past them both and stepped out into the corridor.
At the far door, both warrior monks rose from the wooden chairs upon which they had been sitting.
Smiling, Esk approached. ‘I was told that the Higher Grace would receive me, no matter how late my arrival. Friends, I have important word from Lord Urusander.’
The monk to the right of the door took two steps forward. There was a short-handled throwing axe tucked into his belt, but in his left hand he held a heavy knife with an angled blade. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Come ahead. She will be pleased to see you.’
With her gaze fixed on the monk who was speaking, Esk barely registered the blur of motion from the other man. With ten paces between her and the nearer monk, Esk felt a heavy blow to her left shoulder, of such force as to half spin her round. Looking down, she saw an axe, its blade buried deep in her shoulder.
Shocked, suddenly confused, she felt her back thud against a wall.
The nearer monk was rushing towards her now.
Ah, shit. Fooled no one.
Motion from the stairs revealed both Rathadas and Billat charging forward, their swords drawn.
The monk reached her first. She had raised her sword, thrusting its point towards the man, waiting for his heavy knife to move as he sought to sweep aside her blade – but he would miss, as she disengaged his attempted beat. Or so it should have been.
Instead, the monk threw the knife underhand with barely three paces between them.
Another heavy blow punched under her right arm, and she saw her sword leap from her grip, clattering against the wall before falling to the floor. The thrown knife had slipped between ribs, the massive, crooked blade sliding into her right lung. Sagging, slumping down the wall, Esk gagged as her mouth filled with blood.
Bodyguards. Of course they’re good. It started out too easily, down at the gatehouse.
As the monk swept past her to engage with Rathadas and Billat, he ran the thin blade of a parrying knife across her throat.
A sting, sudden warmth, and then nothing.
Seeing the monk casually slice open the lieutenant’s throat, Rathadas cursed and charged to close with the bastard.
His sword had the advantage of reach, as the monk facing him was readying a short-handled, single-bladed axe in his right hand, and a thin parrying knife in his left. His expression, as he watched Rathadas approach, was calm.
‘She came to parley!’ Billat shouted from behind Rathadas.
‘She came to die,’ the monk replied.
Rathadas bellowed as he attacked, slashing crossways to either cut or force away the monk’s two out-thrust hands. Instead, he cut through nothing but air. Recovering, he brought the blade back up, point angled to take the monk from low should the man seek to close – but something obstructed it, swept it out to the side. The parrying knife tapped his temple, making a sound like a nail driven through the side of a clay pot.
As the sound echoed, Rathadas stepped back, shaking his head. He was having trouble seeing. He then realized that he did not know where he was, or what the strange man now stepping past him had done to him. He stood, uncomprehending, as a second stranger reached him. Frowning, Rathadas watched the man swing a heavy knife casually towards him. Vaguely alarmed, he tried raising an arm to block the knife – which looked sharp and might hurt him – but his arm would not answer, or perhaps it was simply too slow. The knife edge sawed through his neck, cutting muscle, gristle and bone.
The world tilted crazily as Rathadas watched the floor rising to meet him.
Billat screamed when he saw Rathadas’s head roll forward, toppling from the man’s still upright body. A moment later, the lead monk reached the soldier. Cursing that they’d not been permitted to carry their shields, Billat backed away, his sword thrust out, its point dancing to keep his distance from the advancing monk. A shield would have made all the difference. He’d not have needed to worry about that second weapon, and behind a shield he could have charged the man, blocking the axe even if it was thrown at him, and then his sword would have done its work quickly.
He nodded to himself, only then realizing that he was sitting down, almost opposite the staircase. Sweat stung his eyes, making it difficult to understand what his hands were doing, there in his lap, repeatedly moving in a way something like shovelling, as they sought to push his intestines back into his body. It wasn’t working.
A shield. And a sword. Things would have turned out differently if he’d had those. He wouldn’t be sitting here on the floor.
Blinking back on a world that now stung, he saw his hands give up, and the guts roll out. He recalled trying to dig a latrine once, in sandy clay, and how the side walls kept caving in, until that damned pit was fifteen fucking paces across, and his comrades – all laughing – had had to throw him a rope so he could climb up the sloping sides. They’d known about the sand, of course. It was a rite of passage, being made into a fool, but how it had burned, how it had stung.
Humiliation. What a last thing to remember.
* * *
The heat from the fire engulfing the barracks forced Sergeant Telra and her soldiers back towards the entrance to the main building, where she decided they would await the reappearance of the lieutenant, once the ugly work inside was done with.
The shrieks from inside the barracks were gone now. No one had made it outside, meaning that she and her comrades had yet to bless their swords this night. Often, war forgot about being all about fighting, and instead became a sordid exercise in destruction, in flames and burned bodies stepped over, as if the aftermath had a way of creeping unseen over the present. In some ways, of course, that was a relief, but one could be left with the sense of having missed out on everything.
The heat and the flames, the billowing black smoke rising only to tumble over beneath the ceiling of white clouds, all reminded her of the last time she’d set fire to a building. That one had been an estate, empty but for a horrid old woman. Something of a debacle, to be honest. She’d exceeded her orders. Well, truth was, she’d been drunk.
Motion from the gatehouse drew her attention and she turned to see the first of Bahann’s advance squads arriving. Lieutenant Uskan was in the lead, sword in one hand and shield drawn round and set. Telra bit back a sneer. The man’s excessive caution hinted at cowardice, as far as she was concerned. Stepping forward, she said, ‘Sir. Lieutenant Esk is still in the main building. We got the company unawares – not a single man made it out of the barracks.’
‘How long?’ he demanded.
She frowned at his flushed face beneath the helm’s rim. ‘Sir?’
‘How long has she been in there, sergeant?’
‘Well, now that you mention it, some time’s passed.’
‘Stay here,’ he ordered, gesturing his squads to follow him. He brushed past Telra and entered the main building, his soldiers trooping after him.
Stepping back to join her three comrades, Telra watched for a moment, and then shrugged. ‘Well, leave ’em to it, I say. We did our bit.’
None of her soldiers replied.
She looked across at them. ‘Got a problem with any of this?’
The three men shook their heads.
It was then that the first screams erupted from the main house.
* * *
Dawn was paling the sky when Captain Hallyd Bahann at last stepped into the compound of Y
annis monastery. He halted upon seeing Sergeant Telra directing her soldiers on the laying out of bodies. Legion bodies.
Scowling, he marched up to Telra. ‘Sergeant, where’s Lieutenant Esk?’
‘Dead, sir. Uskan’s inside. He’s badly wounded. He went in there with eighteen soldiers, sir, came out with three still standing. It was Sheccanto’s bodyguards, sir.’
‘Abyss take me, how many did she have?’
‘Two, sir.’
Hallyd Bahann found himself unable to muster a reply to that. He swung round to scan the corpses that had been lined up in three rows on the ground. The men and women looked chopped to pieces. Most bore multiple wounds. Smoke drifted over them like ethereal veils. The heat from the burned-down barracks had melted all the snow in the compound, leaving the bodies in puddles of sooty water now stained red.
He turned to Telra. ‘And you didn’t go in to help them?’
‘Sir? Lieutenant Esk ordered us to guard the gatehouse. That was the last order she gave us.’
‘Very well,’ Bahann said after a moment.
‘Oh, and sir?’
‘Yes?’
‘We got them both, sir. Sheccanto and Skelenal.’
‘Skelenal? Well, then some good’s come of this mess after all.’ He turned and strode into the main building.
Lieutenant Uskan was seated in a plush chair near the hearth in the main hall. The chair opposite him held a corpse, which Uskan seemed to be studying intently, as if they’d been sharing a conversation just now interrupted. From the waist down the lieutenant was soaked in blood.
Hallyd Bahann cursed under his breath. ‘Uskan,’ he said.
The veteran glanced over with glassy eyes. ‘Sir. Building secured.’
‘How much of that blood on you is yours?’
‘All of it, sir. I won’t see the sun’s rise.’
‘Tell me those bodyguards are dead.’
Uskan bared his teeth in a smile. ‘They are, but as you can see, it wasn’t easy. It’s a damned good thing, sir, that the rest of those monks went up in flames.’
‘Who killed Sheccanto? Was it you, Uskan?’
‘No. Truth is, sir, no one killed her. She was dead when my soldiers finally broke down the door to her room. Cutter Hisk says the body’s long past stiff, too.’
‘Meaning?’
Uskan laughed. ‘Meaning, sir, she probably died yesterday afternoon.’
‘You find that amusing, do you, lieutenant?’
Uskan leaned his head to one side and spat blood. ‘Those poor monks were defending a corpse. They killed eighteen soldiers. And all of it was for nothing. Amusing, sir? No. Fucking hilarious.’ He paused, a frown settling on his pale brow. ‘Did I say eighteen? Wrong. Make that … nineteen …’
Hallyd Bahann glared at him, until he realized that Uskan couldn’t see anything, because the man was dead.
The commander stepped back, eyed the two corpses facing each other in their plush chairs.
Telra appeared at his side. ‘Sir, we should collect his body—’
‘No,’ Bahann replied. ‘Leave him where he is. For all we know, he and that old man are swapping stories right now. Move our other dead back into the hall. We’re going to burn it all down.’
‘We have prisoners, sir—’
‘Prisoners?’
‘Servants. Children, mostly.’
‘Find them a wagon. Send them down to Yedan monastery.’
‘We’re not going to attack it, sir?’
‘No. They’ve lost both their leaders and that monastery is now full of widows. Let them grieve.’
‘And us, sir?’
With some effort, Hallyd Bahann dragged his gaze away from the two corpses in their chairs. He eyed Telra. ‘We’re heading into the forest. We’ve dealt with the Shake. Now we’ll deal with the Deniers.’
‘Yes sir.’
‘I’m field promoting you to lieutenant.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
After a moment, he shook his head. ‘Uskan never really seemed to be the kind of soldier to die in battle. Not like this.’
Telra shrugged. ‘Perhaps, sir, he got careless.’
Bahann squinted at her, wondering, but her face was expressionless, and stayed that way.
EIGHTEEN
THERE HAD BEEN AN AGE, PERHAPS A CENTURY BACK, WHEN artists had turned their talents to working in stone and bronze. As if stung by the prodigious masterpieces raised up by the Azathanai, and in particular the High Mason Caladan Brood, these Tiste artists had pursued techniques to match, if not surpass, the efforts of their neighbours. In the pursuit of realism, and then the conjuration of natural forms elevated into a kind of aesthetic perfection, the use of plaster casting – upon living, breathing models – had been perfected. The art form had burgeoned in a spectacular, albeit brief, flurry of statuary that saw works proliferating throughout the public spaces of Kharkanas, and in the gardens, grand halls and courtyards of the nobility.
But any civilization that saw art as a kind of cultural competition was, to Rise Herat’s mind, well down the road to disillusion, and the collapse of statuary as a form of artistic expression came on the day that a Tiste merchant returned from the lands of the Azathanai, transporting in her train a new work by some unknown Azathanai sculptor.
If the Azathanai had been paying attention to the Tiste sculptors, they had been unmoved. The idealization of the Tiste form, the body transformed into marble or bronze and thereby stripped of its mortality, was a kind of conceit, possibly defiant, probably diffident. The work that had been brought into Kharkanas was massive, wrought in rough bronze. It bore sharp, jagged edges. It writhed with panic and fury. Upon a broad, flat pedestal, a dozen hounds surrounded a single hound, and that beast, in the centre of the storm, was dying. Its companions tore into its flanks, sank fangs into its hide, pulling, stretching, tearing.
Gallan told the tale of a score or so of Kharkanas’s finest sculptors, all gathering in the private courtyard where stood the Azathanai bronze. Some had railed, filling the air with spiteful condemnation, or voicing their sniffing contempt for the raw hand that had sculpted this monstrosity. A few others had fallen silent, their gazes fixed upon the work. Only one, a master artist considered by most to be the finest sculptor in Kurald Galain, had wept.
Among the Tiste, art had given shape to an ideal. But stone never betrayed. Bronze could not deceive. The ideal, made to kneel to political assertions of superiority, had, almost overnight, descended into mockery.
‘By this,’ Gallan had said, ‘perfection is made mortal once again. By this, our conceit dulls.’
The Azathanai bronze, deemed offensive, had been removed from public display. Eventually, it had found its way into a crypt beneath the Citadel, a broad, low-ceilinged room, now home to scores of other works, that Gallan had named the Tarnished Chamber.
The historian had set three lanterns down, casting sharp light upon three sides of the Azathanai bronze, which someone had rather uninspiringly called ‘The Savaging of the Hound’. He had then circled the work, studying it from varying heights and angles. He had made a window with his hands to block out all but the details. He had drawn close to smell the metal and its patina of greasy dust, and had set fingertips against the verdigris where it coated the beasts like mange.
Despite the steady, unwavering light, the animals seemed to blur with motion, spinning round their snarling victim. He had read from some treatise that, if seen from above, it was clear that the circling hounds actually formed an inward spiral of flesh and rending canines; and the scholar had gone on to suggest – to a subsequent chorus of disbelief – that the animal in the centre, by virtue of its own writhing, twisted form, was itself spiralling inward. The man’s final outrage was to wonder if the sculpture depicted, not many beasts, but one: an animal destroying itself, turning round and round and ever inward into a vortex of self-annihilation.
For the historian, the only appalling thing about the scholar’s interpretation was its plausib
ility. After all, had the artist not sought to convey a hidden meaning with this scene, the beast in the centre of this violent storm would have been a stag, perhaps, or a bull.
Though he heard the door to the chamber squeal with motion, Rise Herat did not turn round until the newcomer spoke.
‘Here, historian? In the name of Dark, why?’
Rise Herat shrugged. ‘It is private enough.’
Cedorpul grunted. ‘The only spies in the Citadel are our own.’
‘Yes, curious, that. After all, isn’t the purpose of spying the protection of our own people? Have we descended into insouciance so far, priest, as to claim, with a straight face, that we are protecting our people from themselves?’
The round-faced man pursed his lips, and then waved dismissively.
Rise Herat smiled. ‘“Oh deadly language, how so you offend me!”’
Scowling, Cedorpul said, ‘Remind me not of that wretched man, our court coward, our sneering seneschal of high mages! His elevation was shortlived. I will stand in his stead.’
The historian turned back to ‘The Savaging of the Hound’. ‘Do you recall this, priest?’
‘Before my time. It is ghastly. No wonder it hides here. Only in darkness could you now bless this. Douse the lights – we’ve no need of them.’
‘It is Azathanai.’
‘Is it now? Well, then yes, I can see why you’d be curious.’
‘All the others in here, however, are Tiste.’
Cedorpul waved dismissively. ‘Every fad fades in time, historian. If you would be the purveyor of hoary frenzies from before the age of modern enlightenment, then make a study of this chamber. Line the statues into a library of stone and mouldy bronze. Drag up a desk, light a candle, and pen your treatise.’
‘And what treatise would that be, priest?’
Cedorpul shrugged, glancing around. ‘The past is a litany of naїve expectations.’
‘But at last, we are now much wiser.’
‘Just so.’
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