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Tathe Lorat smiled. ‘I have often wondered at that.’
‘At what?’
‘You and your kind, so quick to judge.’
‘What “kind” would that be?’
‘Fish-cold, frightened of love and quick to point a finger, when what you truly feel is envy, at my freedom, my willingness and all the pleasures I embrace.’
‘As you pushed your daughter into a man’s arms.’
‘Oh, is that what is bothering you? Do not be deceived by Sheltatha and her airs of sophistication. She begged me the first time, and after that, there was no stopping her.’
‘I do not believe you.’
Well enough, but Infayen, did you really think I would tell you the truth of what lies between me and my daughter? As you point out, we’re not friends. ‘Think what you like, then.’
They reached the valley, the cohorts spilling out from the old road and forming up along the crest, and for the first time Tathe Lorat saw the enemy arrayed upon the opposite side. The highborn were there, with all their Houseblades. She didn’t think she had quite believed that would happen. And there, holding the centre, the Hust Legion. Her gaze narrowed on those solid ranks. Are they drugged? Prisoners, criminals, they should be agitated, nervous, terrified. They should be rioting even now. Instead, the ranks were motionless, the only movement coming from the three standards raised above the companies, where the faint wind rippled the dark cloth.
Infayen said, ‘The wind moans its promise of—’
‘You fool!’ Tathe Lorat snapped. ‘That’s not the wind moaning. It’s the Hust swords – look, they’re drawn!’
* * *
The soft keening filled the air, as if iron could know pain, and pain could rise and twist like threads, weaving a tapestry to trap this moment, binding every soul of the Hust Legion. Wareth stood motionless, feeling himself circling an emptiness inside, wondering if the absence within him announced an end to things, a fate, his future wiped clean. A future without me, without Wareth of the Pits, the coward, the fool. J
ust a name now, uttered by the survivors, at least in passing, and soon to be forgotten.
Like so many others.
It was no wonder the Hust iron mourned, for surely that was what this sound was, all these voices making the noise that precedes a sob, and he waited for that wrung-out cry with trembling limbs, his hands feeling drained of blood, his legs watery beneath him.
He wore his helmet now, as did his fellow soldiers of the Hust. The hinged cheek-guards were locked in place, shutting out most of the world to left and right, barring a curved gap at eye-level that Wareth found far too narrow for his liking. The keening of the iron filled his ears, but there was a coldness to this intimacy, as if it whispered like a lover who promised nothing but grief.
His fear circled the emptiness, terrified of slipping and plunging into that unknown. Yet the panic he felt was somehow constrained, trapped in its mad circling. There was nowhere to run to, no ‘away’ in the midst of this press of bodies. He had believed that he would escape this fate, remaining among the commanders in their place at some high vantage point, well away from the actual fighting. Instead, Toras Redone had seen through him, her sodden gaze too knowing, her recollection of him uncanny in its detail. What source her omniscience? How so easily her striking home, and that smile! She knew too well my mind, this drunken goddess. Who now cups my soul in one hand, rolls me to the fore, no less and no more than just another piece in this dread game.
He imagined himself now, a skein of tangled threads at the mercy of the artist, woven in fate, just one more life made immortal in this panoply of stupidity. He saw his likeness upon a greasy wall, almost lost in some wick-addled corridor, a thing to pass in life’s bright-spark scurry, while his own colours dulled to candlesmoke and dust, and the knotted threads of his eyes faded to the senseless march of decades, and then centuries.
What manner the ritual of those Bonecaster witches? What truth now caps my soul, set down by their infernal dance? I see it blank. I circle it in terror, fearing my fall, my steps round and round in furious haste, tottering, slipping, catching, wheeling and reeling – oh, gods!
As the iron wept, the prisoners stood unmoving and made no sound, not a mutter, not a sigh. While, upon the other side of the valley, Urusander’s Legion shook out to form solid ranks. Bleached faces in the distance, iron polished almost white, now the hue of bone in the faltering light.
Wareth of the Pit, oh yes, he fell that day. ’Tis said the artist caught him, there in that front line of the Hust Legion. Toras Redone promised the coward a quick death. There was mercy in that, don’t you think?
Prazek and Dathenar? Why, they held the flanking companies. But in that moment – so I’m told – even they said nothing. The poet soldiers were struck silent, muted by the iron’s grief. And that sound! From the helm, piercing the skull to run riot in the brain – that was no battle cry! That was no promise of glorious victory. The Dog-Runner witches cursed them one and all, those poor fools of the Hust!
‘But you don’t know,’ he whispered. ‘You weren’t there. The witches promised us truth, and we were on the edge of it. Here, in this moment. We all felt it. We all trembled before it. And the iron? This dread keening? Why, it is the sound of knowing.’
The Hust iron grieves, and it grieves for us.
He looked across at the enemy ranks, and felt pity.
* * *
Renarr rode with Lord Urusander to where Hunn Raal and the other captains now gathered, positioned centrally as the Legion assembled in ordered ranks along the ridgeline to either side. She reined in a few moments before Urusander and watched him continue on, pushing his horse forward until he reached the very edge, where he stared across at the enemy.
‘They mean to make a fight of this,’ Hunn Raal said, his voice carrying. ‘Or so they would have us believe. I for one am unconvinced.’
