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‘No different from you! What company? Tell me!’
‘Why, none other than Captain Infayen Menand’s.’
Hallyd’s eyes narrowed. ‘Ah, and do I see a bride’s blood on your hands?’
‘Yes,’ said Narad, ‘I think you do.’
‘Then—’
‘Then yes, sir. I followed orders. That was my crime, remains my crime, remains forever my crime.’
‘I’ll give you Infayen Menand,’ Hallyd hissed. ‘Free me. I swear I’ll lead her here, into ambush.’
‘Why is it, captain, that every army kills its deserters? Could it be, perhaps, that such objection by common soldiers in fact threatens the entire façade? That delicate tower of twigs and sticks, of stretched spider-silk and beads of sap, this tottering construct of institutional insanity that makes a cage of every virtue, only to then whisper of necessity?’
‘Deserters are cowards,’ growled Hallyd Bahann.
‘Some are, I’m sure,’ agreed Narad. ‘But others, well, I suspect they simply object. And refuse, and deny. They do what anyone who has been betrayed might do, yes? And if so, must we not look at the betrayers?’
‘Justify what you’ve done all you like.’
‘I did try just that, sir, without much success. In fact, I could not even get past the reasons, sickly and contemptuous as they proved to be, much less justifications. And that was my discovery, captain. The journey from reasons to justifications should be long and difficult, and indeed, few of us truly deserve the journey’s completion. But we know that, don’t we? So, we simply … cheat.’
As he had been speaking, Narad noted Glyph’s arrival, with a blood-drenched Lahanis a step behind him. Have we lost a single warrior?
Hallyd struggled anew against his bindings.
‘Yedan Narad?’
He looked up at the shaman. ‘He is not to die slowly,’ he said. ‘Neither he nor any other made captive. Slit his throat, as you would any other quarry brought down and at last within your reach. Whatever we possess that we believe sets us apart from the beasts, let us not make it cruel.’
After a long moment, the two witches and the shaman bowed to him, and one of the witches knelt down beside Hallyd Bahann. She grasped his sweaty hair in one fist and pulled his head back. Iron flashed and then blood poured out upon the ground. The captain’s wet sigh came from his throat, the only sound he made as he died.
The shaman said, ‘We would take his body to the clearing, and the sharpened stakes. For the forest, Watch. For the weeping trees. For the burned ground beneath the snow, and the sleeping roots.’
Narad nodded. ‘As you will.’
As the shaman helped the two witches drag away Hallyd Bahann’s corpse, Glyph strode up to Narad. ‘Some escaped,’ he said. ‘Made it to the horses.’
‘How many?’
Glyph glanced back at Lahanis, who shrugged and said, ‘A score, perhaps. Half of them wounded before they could ride away, as we were among them. We have captured most of the horses.’ Her smile was stained pink. ‘We’ll not starve, priest. We’ll not,’ she added after a moment, ‘have to eat our slain.’
Narad turned away at that. Two hunters had found the leavings of a meal in a camp not far off. Someone had made a repast of a dead soldier’s thigh. He prayed that someone was not now here in this swollen camp.
In any case, Lahanis was correct. Food was scarce and starvation had gripped their ragged army. It was a poor fate for well-trained horses, but needs must.
‘Yedan Narad.’
‘Glyph?’
‘Your plan worked, but no future commander will be so foolish as to repeat Bahann’s stupidity on this day.’
‘That is true.’
‘Urusander will come for us.’
‘Perhaps.’
