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‘We will do what we can,’ Endest replied.
‘We shall prevail,’ Cedorpul said, his face flushed. ‘I feel it in my heart.’
‘We need only hold.’
‘Sorcery will see an end to armies and battles,’ Cedorpul said. ‘Perhaps even an end to war itself. Together, the two of us, we can lead our realm into a new era of peace. Mark my words.’
The sound of the hoofs beneath them was a cacophony, rattling Endest Silann’s thoughts, and he could think of no reply to Cedorpul’s assertions. They rode on at a quick canter, the road before them strangely empty this close to the city, though the air itself seemed turgid. If there were refugees fleeing Kharkanas, they were on the south road, although in truth Endest did not believe the city’s inhabitants were fleeing. Mother Dark, your children have nowhere to go.
Even if Urusander’s Legion proved victorious, the notion of his soldiers looting Kharkanas was too heinous to consider. No, this will be decided in the Valley of Tarns. Nothing else is required. The Wise City will survive this.
‘We will drive this Liosan from our world!’ Cedorpul said. ‘What say you?’
Endest Silann nodded, but could manage nothing more. His hands wept with the anguish of a goddess, and yet the tears of blood burned, making him think of rage.
* * *
All the soldiers were gone. Wreneck hurried through a city emptied of almost everyone except ghosts, and they too had begun a march, eastward, in a silent progression of damaged and diseased figures. He saw children with bloated faces, bruised by the pillows that had stilled their last breath. Others, much younger than Wreneck himself, bore broken limbs, from beatings, he imagined, as he recalled the cane coming down upon his own body, and all this made him rush through the city of Kharkanas, barely seeing the magnificent buildings on either side of the street. He drew his spear around so that he could find strength in its solid shaft of dark wood, gripping it with both hands. As if, with this weapon, he could fend off his own memories.
There were so many ghosts who had been hurt somehow. He wondered at that, fighting a chill that burgeoned from somewhere deep inside him. He wondered at all the broken people, and all their secret histories, and at how none seemed able to hide their hurts now that they were dead. Yet none wept. They walked, instead, with eyes like dusty stones plucked from a dry riverbed. They were too pathetic to frighten him, too hopeless to make him think he could in any way help them.
The world was a big place, bigger than he’d ever imagined. And it was old, too, impossibly old. The dead never went away, he knew now, and they crowded him, moving in a noiseless mass, spilling out through the gate in the outer wall, and on to the road. He didn’t want to be seeing any of this, and he wondered at the curse that now afflicted him. I must have done something wrong. All those times I failed. All the times I proved too weak, and because of my weakness people got hurt. This is where it comes from. It must be. I was never good enough.
His breaths harsh, he ran through the ghosts, striving to win free of them all, to find a clear space on the track. A few turned to follow him with their dull eyes. One or two reached out as if to take hold of him, but he evaded their grasp even though he knew their efforts were useless – their flailing hands simply slipped through him, no different from the last of the bodies he pushed through as he finally outraced them and found himself alone on the cobbled road.
Some distance ahead, he saw another lone figure, tall, dressed in heavy robes, hobbling like a man with broken feet. It did not take long before Wreneck caught up and came alongside the man.
A narrow, deeply lined face, an iron-grey beard snarled and seemingly stained with rust. Seeing Wreneck, the old man smiled. ‘Late to the battle, soldier! As am I, as am I. Shall we hasten? I have no H
ouseblades. They must have left without me – no, wait, that’s not right. My Houseblades bear the swords I forged, my armour, too. I made them into a legion. I left them somewhere. I’ll remember where, I’m sure, sooner or later. Ah!’ He took a few quick steps forward, leaned down to collect a rock, and showed it to Wreneck. ‘Slag,’ he said, his face twitching. ‘You find it everywhere. Our legacy – my son’s wife, you know her? When they were but betrothed, I happened upon her in a room and saw that she had a small blade in one hand, and she was using it to cut the insides of her thighs. She was hurting herself, you see. I could make no sense of it. Can you?’
Wreneck wanted to hurry on, leave the strange old man behind. Instead, he shrugged. ‘She was trying to feel something. Anything.’
‘But she was loved. We all loved her. Surely she understood that.’
Wreneck glanced back to the mass of ghosts on the road behind them. ‘She didn’t believe you. You loved her because you didn’t really know her. That’s what she believed, I mean. You didn’t know her so whoever you loved wasn’t her, it was someone else, someone who just looked like her. But she knew better.’ Jinia, wait for me. Don’t do anything to hurt yourself. And please, please, don’t let me see you among these ghosts.
The old man still held out the ragged piece of slag, and now he closed his fingers about it, tight enough to break skin and draw blood. It ran down the edge of his palm, down to stain his cuff. He offered Wreneck a ghastly smile. ‘Every pit we carved into the earth. Every hill we tore down. Every tree we burned, the wastelands of poison we left behind. It’s the same, young soldier, exactly the same. Wounding ourselves. And, as you say, wounding ourselves because we’re not who we think we are. We’re far less than that.’ He grunted. ‘I used to play in the murdered places, with my toys, my painted heroes of lead and pewter.’ He reached round and drew out a heavy leather satchel he had been carrying hidden beneath his cloak. ‘I brought them along, you see, because we’re going to have a battle.’
‘It’ll be a real battle, sir, and I need to get there in time, so we have to hurry—’
‘You take one side and I’ll take the other. I have ones painted in green livery, others in blue. Upon either side of the ditch here, we line them up, you see?’ He reached out and grasped Wreneck’s arm, pulling him to the side of the road. ‘I’m green and you’re blue,’ he said, his eyes bright as he spilled out what was in the satchel.
Wreneck looked down on the battered toy soldiers, a hundred or more. He watched as the old man deftly separated the two colours, pushing the blue-painted ones up against Wreneck’s worn boots.
‘But we need rules for this,’ the old man continued as he collected up the green soldiers and made his way across the snow-filled ditch and seated himself on the far bank. ‘Fronting strength, flanking weakness. Adds and subtracts. The attrition of unrelieved pressure – I have dice for this, knucklebones in fact. Not Tiste, of course. Forulkan. I’ll explain the adds and subtracts once our troops engage. Quickly now, line yours up, there along the valley’s crest!’
‘Sir, the real battle—’
‘You will obey your lord!’
Wreneck flinched at the shouted command, and then he set the spear down to one side and knelt on the edge of the road. ‘Yes, milord.’
The first of the ghosts reached them, passing along on the road, paying no attention whatsoever to the two figures off to one side.
The old man licked his purple lips and began speaking in a quick, almost breathless tone. ‘I have my Hust Legion. See? I told you I would find them, and here they are!’ He gestured down at his green-painted toys. ‘Superb soldiers one and all. Can you hear their swords? Bitter prisons, making the iron howl. They have bonuses against pressure. But you, Urusander, you have bonuses for ferocity, for all that your soldiers learned fighting the Jheleck. You see how it balances out? We are well suited in opposition, yes? My legion can hold its ground. Yours can attack like no other. Our strengths lock horns, as it should be.’
Wreneck paused in lining his soldiers up along the edge of the ditch. He thought back to all the mock battles he’d played with young Orfantal, and tried to recall what Orfantal had said about strategies and tactics and other things Wreneck didn’t really understand. But just like Orfantal, this old lord had a fever for war. Wreneck frowned. ‘But, milord, if our strengths lock horns, then more soldiers die. I should trick you into attacking me, and then withdraw once you’re down in the valley, and then come in on your flanks. I should make you turn to defend and then get you to attack, over and over again. That way, I can still use my strength even as I turn yours into a weakness.’
