Corporal Bursa told him that he and his troop had cleaned out most of the Deniers in this section of forest — a day’s walk in any direction. He said it had been easy as there didn’t seem to be too many warriors among them, just the old and mothers and the young. Bursa reminded Narad of Haral, and already he had felt his instinctive response to a man bad at hiding hurts, but this time he kept quiet. He had learned his lesson and he wanted to stay with these men and women, these soldiers of the Legion. He wanted to be one of them.
He had drawn his sword in the Deniers’ camp, but none of the enemy had come within reach, and almost before he knew it the whole thing was over, and the others were firing the huts.
Where the girl had hidden was something of a mystery, but the smoke and flames had driven her out, eventually. Narad had been close by — well, the closest of any of them — and when she’d crawled out Bursa had ordered him to put the creature out of its misery.
He still remembered edging closer, fighting the gusts of heat. She was making no sound. Not once had she even screamed, although her agony must have been terrible. It was right to kill her, to end her torment. He told himself that again and again, as he worked ever closer — until he hunched over her, staring down at her scorched back. Pushing the sword into it had not been as hard as he thought it would be. The thing below him could as easily have been a sow’s carcass, roasted on a spit. Except for all the black hair.
There was no reason, then, that his killing her should be haunting him. But he was having trouble laughing and joking with the others. He was, in fact, having trouble meeting their eyes. Bursa had tried telling him that these forest folk weren’t even Tiste, but that was untrue. They were — the lame man they’d cut down could have been from Narad’s own family, or a cousin in a nearby village. He felt confused and the confusion wouldn’t go away. If he could get drunk it’d go away, for a time, but that wasn’t allowed in this troop. They drank beer because it was safer than the local water, but it was weak and there wasn’t that much of it and besides, these soldiers weren’t like that. Captain Scara Bandaris wouldn’t allow it; by all accounts, he was hard and ferociously disciplined, and he expected the same of his soldiers.
Yet these men and women worshipped the captain.
Narad was jealous of them all. He’d not even met the captain yet, and he wondered what he would see in this Scara Bandaris to make sense of this killing of Deniers, and this whole damned war. Narad had grown up on a farm lying just outside a small hamlet. He knew the reasons everyone gave when hunting vermin — the rats brought disease, the hares ate the crops and riddled the ground, and so all that slaughter was necessary. He knew that he should think of these Deniers in the same way, as an infestation and a threat to their way of life. Even rats minded their own business, but that didn’t save them; that didn’t stop them from being a problem; that didn’t keep the beaters and their dogs away.
He sat on a log outside the tent he had been given. Every now and then he would look down at his hands, and then quickly away again.
It wasn’t murder. It was mercy.
But he was an ugly man now and the world was just as ugly, and this face wasn’t his and if this face wasn’t his then neither were these hands, and yesterday was someone else’s crime. He wondered if that girl had been beautiful. He believed that she had. But beauty had no place in this new world. This world that Haral had delivered him into. This was Haral’s fault and one day he would kill that bastard.
He looked up, his eyes catching movement from the trail. A man had appeared, astride a mule.
Others took note, and Narad saw Bursa approach. The corporal caught Narad’s eye and a hand waved him an invitation. Narad straightened, feeling the weight of his sword at his hip, a weight he had always liked but never quite felt comfortable with, but it was there now and it wasn’t going away. He made his way over to Bursa’s side.
The stranger had not even paused upon finding the camp, and by his dress Narad could see that he was highborn, although his mount and the stained boxes strapped to it suggested otherwise.
Bursa, with Narad now on his left, positioned himself directly in the stranger’s path, forcing him to rein in.
It came to Narad suddenly that the trail this man had come from led straight back to the Deniers’ camp. His eyes narrowed on the stranger’s bland, utterly fearless expression.
‘You wander obscure paths, sir,’ said Bursa, hands on his hips.
‘You have no idea,’ the stranger replied. ‘Cleaned your blades yet? I see that you have and so must acknowledge your discipline. You wear the livery of Urusander’s Legion, but I suspect he knows not what you do in his name.’
The challenge of this left Bursa momentarily speechless, and then he laughed. ‘Sir, you are mistaken-’
‘Corporal, I have just ridden from Vatha Keep. I have been Lord Urusander’s guest for much of this past month. The only “mistake” here is your assumption of my ignorance. So I ask you, since when does Urusander’s Legion make war upon innocent men, women and children?’
‘You have, I fear, been somewhat out of touch,’ Bursa growled in reply, and Narad could see the anger bubbling up, a fizzling froth that this stranger seemed blind to, or indifferent.
Narad put his hand on the grip of his sword.
The stranger’s eyes flicked to him then away again, back to Bursa. ‘Out of touch? What you are touching I want nothing to do with, corporal. I am returning to my father’s estate. It is regrettable that you are in my way, but as I have no wish to share your company I will continue on.’
‘In a moment,’ Bursa said. ‘I am under orders to make note of travellers in this area-’
‘Whose orders? Not Lord Urusander’s. So I ask again, who gives orders to Urusander’s Legion in his name?’
Bursa’s face was reddening. In a tight voice he said, ‘My orders came by messenger from Captain Hunn Raal not three days past.’
‘Hunn Raal? You’re not of his company.’
‘No, we are soldiers under the command of Captain Scara Bandaris.’
‘And where is he?’
‘In Kharkanas. Sir, you ride in ignorance. An uprising is under way.’
‘I see that,’ the stranger replied.
Bursa’s lips thinned into a straight, bloodless line. Then he said, ‘Your name, please, if you wish to pass.’
‘I am Kadaspala, son of Lord Jaen of House Enes. I have been painting your commander’s portrait. Shall I tell you how much I see in a man’s face when studying it day after day after day? I see everything. No dissembling evades my eye. No malice, no matter how well hidden, can hide from me. I don’t doubt you are following Hunn Raal’s orders. The next time you see that smirking drunk, give him this message from me. It will not do to imagine that Lord Urusander is now little more than a mere figurehead, to be pushed this way and that. Manipulate Vatha Urusander and he will make you regret it. Now, we have the measure of each other. Let me pass. It’s getting late, and I ride in the company of ghosts. You’ll not wish us to linger.’
After a long moment, Bursa stepped to one side. Narad did the same, feeling his heart pounding in his chest.
As the artist edged past them, he turned to Narad and said, ‘I can see the man you once were.’
Narad stiffened, biting back his shame.
Kadaspala continued, ‘But all I can see is this. What was inside is now outside. I feel sorry for you, soldier. No one deserves to be that vulnerable.’
He then rode on, through the camp and the crowd of other soldiers — all of them silent and hooded, as if cowed by this unarmed boy of an artist. A few moments later, he disappeared into the far end of the clearing, where the trail picked up once more.
‘Shit,’ Bursa said.
Narad wanted to ask a question, but seeing the expression on Bursa’s face silenced him. The corporal had paled, looking to where the artist had gone, and in his eyes there was confusion and something like sick dread. ‘Captain told us to sit tight,’ he muttered. ‘But Hunn Raal’s whore said-’ He stopped then and glared across at Narad. ‘That’ll do, soldier. Back to your tent.’
‘Yes sir,’ Narad replied.
Moving quickly, eyes on the log lying in front of his tent, Narad reached up to brush the lines of his broken face, and for the first time, he felt fear at what his fingers found.
