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‘What do you want?’
‘We need a burial place consecrated.’
He thought to laugh at that, glancing briefly at the valley floor below, with its hundreds of corpses, its dead and dying horses.
‘Not there, priest. But it’s not far. We’re building a cairn for just one man.’
Endest held up his hands. ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘what do you see?’
‘Old blood.’
‘Anything else?’
‘What else would there be to see?’
He nodded. ‘Just so. Her eyes are gone. Not even a scar remains. She’s left me.’
A few moments passed. ‘Ah, you were that one, then. From the market. The one who spoke with a dragon. More to the point, you were one of the priests who stood against Hunn Raal. Now I wonder, why is no one attending you?’
‘I sent th
em away.’
She stepped forward and hooked a hand under his left arm, lifting him to his feet. ‘You did damned well, priest. Gave us a chance. We just didn’t take it.’
He couldn’t make much sense of this woman, or what she truly wanted from him, but he let her guide him up the track. They passed through the exhausted soldiers of the Hust, but the sight of so many broken men and women was too much, and Endest dropped his gaze, studied the snow and sleet-crusted mud and stone at his feet.
After ascending a short slope they left the track, and the woman drew him over to where a huge old man was busy piling the last of the stones to a cairn. This man’s breaths were harsh, and when he glanced over at them, Endest saw why. He had lost most of his nose. But the injury was old. He wore the same livery as the woman.
All around them, on this faint summit, horse hoofs had stamped deep into the mud, and nearby waited three horses, one bearing a filigreed saddle.
The woman spoke to the other man. ‘They gave up, then?’
‘They didn’t like it, Pelk. Didn’t like it at all. But it seemed they didn’t want to cross me.’
‘No one wants to cross you, Rancept.’
She finally halted Endest close to the cairn. ‘In there,’ she said.
‘Who?’
‘Lord Venes Turayd.’
‘The lord is dead?’
The woman glanced at her companion, who wiped at his weeping nose and then shrugged. She then turned back to Endest Silann and said, ‘I should think so, by now.’
* * *
Faror Hend found Prazek and Dathenar sitting on the muddy road. Both men still wore their chain hauberks, but their helms and gauntlets were on the ground beside them, and from the scabbarded swords sounded a low, incessant mutter.
Her own blade was silent. Drawing off her helm, she felt the blessed cold wind on her brow, and the low moan of the iron that had filled her head was suddenly gone. ‘I made them take her away,’ she said. ‘Under guard. Galar Baras died from a broken neck, when his wounded horse threw him. She wanted to fight, you know. She wanted to throw herself into the fray, so that someone could kill her. I would have welcomed that, and indeed, I would have joined her. Instead, she was too drunk to stand.’
Dathenar nodded. ‘We are vulnerable, one and all, Faror Hend, to the madness of our desires. So much of the longing in our lives is revealed as a longing for death. These guises are myriad, but none are available to us now, nor for our lives to come.’
‘Absent the sweet and lustful lies,’ added Prazek, ‘the future appears bleak.’
‘Too eager with the wagging finger, the iteration of old warnings renewed one more time. All our secrets lead us to grief.’ Dathenar grunted and then slowly climbed to his feet. ‘I am soaked through.’ His eyes shifted and he half turned to the west. ‘They must be drawing near the city by now.’
