Rautos went to his pack and rummaged within it until he found some rags and a flask. He then went over to crouch, grunting, beside Nappet. ‘Let’s see what we can do here, Nappet.’
Betrayal could lie dead, a cold heap of ashes, only to blaze alight in an instant. What drove me to such slaughter? They were kin. Companions. Loved ones. How could I have done that to them? My wife, she wanted to hurt me-why? What had I done? Gorim’s sister? That was nothing. Meaningless. Not worth all the screaming, she had to have seen that.
Hurting me like she did, but I won’t ever forget the look in her eyes-her face-when I took her life. And I’ll never understand why she looked like the one betrayed. Not me. Gorim’s sister, that wasn’t anything to do with her. I wasn’t out to hurt her. It just happened. But what she did, that was like a knife stabbed into my heart.
She had to know I wasn’t the kind of man to let that pass. I got my pride. And that’s why they all had to die, all of them who knew and laughed behind my back. I needed to deliver a lesson, but then, after it was all done, why, there was no one left to heed it. Just me, which didn’t work, because it made it into a different lesson. Didn’t it?
The dragon waits on the plain. It doesn’t even blink. It did, once, and everything disappeared. Everything and everyone. It won’t ever do that again.
You blink, you lose that time for ever. You can’t even be sure how long that blink lasted. A moment, a thousand years. You can’t even know for sure that what you see now is the same as what you saw before. You can’t. You think it is. You tell yourself that, convince yourself of that. Just a continuation of everything you knew before. What you see is still there. That’s what you tell yourself. That’s the game of reassurance your mind plays. To keep things sane.
But think on that one blink-you’ve all known it-when all that you thought was real suddenly changes. From one side of the blink to the other side. It comes with bad news. It comes with soul-plummeting horror and grief. How long was that blink?
Gods below, it was fucking eternity.
Chapter Fourteen
Turn this dark maddening charge
All you I once knew snagged like moths
In the still web of younger days
Rise up from the fresh white foam
In the face of my seaward plunge
Howl against my wild run and these wild
Blazing eyes-but I hear the call
Of how life once had been and such heat
In the crushed chirr of locusts rubbing
The high grasses of a child’s road
And the summer was unending
The days refused to close and I played
Savage and warrior, the heroic nail
Upon which worlds pitched and wobbled
Blue as newborn iron and these salt-winds
Were yet to blow and sink corrosive teeth
Into my stolid spine and my stiffened ribs
That could take the golden weight
Of a thousand destinies
Where are you now, my unlined faces
On those rich sighing summers
When we gods ruled feral the wilding
World? Hollow husks turning on
Threads of tired silk so lost in my wake,
And you that run with me in the blind
Stampede-this charge we cannot turn
And the sea awaiting us waits with its
Promise of dissolution, the fraying of
Youthful days, the broken nails, the sagging
Ribs-the summers drifting away and away
And forever away.
Broken Nail’ s l ament, Fisher
S omeone was screaming in agony, but that was a sound warleader Gall had grown used to. Eyes stinging in the drifting smoke, he swung his horse round on the dirt track and unleashed a stream of curses. At least three raids were swarming out from the village in the valley, lances held high, grisly trophies bobbing and weaving. ‘Coltaine take those fools and crush them under his heel! Jarabb-ride down to that commander. He’s to form up his troop and resume scouting to the south-no more attacks-tell the fool, I’ll have his loot, his wives and his daughters, all of it, if he disobeys me again.’
Jarabb was squinting. ‘That is Shelemasa, Warleader.’
‘Fine. Her husband and her sons-I’ll take them as slaves and then sell them to a D’ras. Bult’s broken nose, she needs better control of her warriors!’
‘They’re just following her lead,’ Jarabb said. ‘She’s worse than a rabid she-wolf.’
‘Stop chewing my ear,’ Gall said, wanting to pull a foot out of the stirrup and drive it into the man’s chest-too familiar of late, too smug, too many Hood-damned words and too many knowing looks. After Shelemasa was dealt with, he’d send the pup yelping and turn a blind eye to all the wounded looks sure to follow.
