There had been a boy once, not ugly, not filled with venom or fear. A boy who had walked into town with his small paw nestled inside someone else’s hand, and that boy had known warmth and impossible freedom — with all the sands ahead smooth and clean. Perhaps, suckling on the tales of war, he had filled his head with dreams of battle and heroism; but even then, his place in every scene had been unquestioned in its righteousness. Evil belonged to the imagined enemies, for whom viciousness was sweet nectar sipped with wrongful pleasure, and all vengeance awaited those enemies by the toy sword he held.
In the world of that not-ugly boy, he was the saviour of maidens.
Anguish filled Narad at the thought of the boy he had once been, and at the thought of the crooked path he now saw crossing blood-splashed sands behind him.
There was slaughter in the forest. There was the smoke of fire and burnt-out glades and blackened patches, and endless ash drifting in the air. He had lost all sense of direction and now followed his comrades blindly, and for all their bluster it still felt like flight. Sergeant Radas, who led his squad with her ever flat eyes and bitter expression, had told them that they were trekking north, and that their destination was a stretch of land on the other side of the river from House Dracons, where they would at last rendezvous with Captain Scara Bandaris.
Captain Infayen had led her company eastward the day after the attack, apparently seeking to link up with Urusander himself, who it was said intended to march on Kharkanas.
In truth, Narad could not care less. He was a soldier in an unwanted war, faceless to his commanders but necessary for their ambitions; and all the tumult filling his skull — these careening thoughts so riddled with horror — were as nothing to them. In this company, each man and each woman surrendered too much of themselves, melding into a faceless mass where life and death was measured in numbers.
It was one thing to learn to see the enemy as less than Tiste, as abominations in fact; but the truth was, Narad realized, every commander could not but view every soldier in that way, no matter the colour or cut of their uniforms. Without that severing of empathy, no sane person could send anyone into battle, could wager the lives of others. When he thought of what was surrendered in the coming of war, he thought of that not-ugly boy and the warm hand he held suddenly torn away. He thought of soft and yielding flesh beneath his weight slowly growing cold and lifeless.
Who could return from such things? Who could walk back across the sands, smoothing his own wake, and every other sign of atrocity, to then reach out and take the hand of a child, a son, a daughter?
He walked with his ugliness for all to see, and perhaps this relieved the others since they imagined that they could hide the ugliness they had inside. Instead, he was their banner, their standard, and if they haunted him, then surely he must haunt them as well — behind their laughter, behind their mockery. It was difficult to imagine otherwise.
They loped through another burnt-out cluster of huts, stepping round blackened corpses. None of these dead Deniers had ever held hands, or dreamed of heroic deeds. None had slept in a mother’s arms, or felt the caress of a lover and shivered in the realization that fortune favoured them by each precious touch. None had whispered promises, to others or to themselves. None had ever broken them. None had ever wept over a child’s future, or caught the morning song of a bird hidden in the trees, or felt cool water sliding smooth down their throat. None had prayed for a better world.
Narad spat the bitterness from his mouth.
Just ahead, Corporal Bursa glanced back. ‘That dead kiss again, Waft?’
The others in the squad laughed.
Every crime committed was a betrayal of some sort. The first barrier breached was one of propriety, and this could not occur without the dismissal of respect and all those things that courtesy comprised. It took a hardening of the soul and a chilling of the eyes to do away with respect. The second barrier, he realized, was all the easier to overcome after the fall of the first. It was marked by the sanctity of the flesh, and when flesh meant nothing then harming it was no difficult task.
People could measure crimes by the levels of betrayal achieved. And from that, they could create laws and devise punishments. All of this, he understood, belonged to everyone. It was society’s way of working, and it had a way of melding faces into one, for the good of all. It had nothing to do with what he needed the most — what every criminal needed — and that was the opportunity for redemption.
Where would he not go to find redemption? What would he not sacrifice? And in the end, for all that he did to repair what could not be repaired, what greater torment could he feel?
