Instead, and this I vow, I will find something right to fight for, and set my life into the path of every murderer, every rapist, until I am finally cut down.
The echoes of laughter reached through his silent promises and he cringed. His was the face of war. His was the body that raped the innocent. And every desperate whisper to the fallen was a lie, and the way ahead was filled with smoke and fire, and he moved through it like a standard, a banner awaiting the rallying cry of killers.
There had been a boy once, not ugly…
Rint watched as the last stone was placed atop the cairn. Ville stepped back, slapping the grit from his hands. The short grasses on the hill glistened with morning dew, like diamonds scattered on the ground. Here and there flowering lichen lifted short stalks holding up tiny, bright red crowns, each one cupping a pearl of water.
He thought again of that headless body and found it difficult to recall Raskan’s face. The moccasins were folded and bound and lying nearby. They would accompany the messenger to House Dracons. Rint’s gaze drifted over them, and then he spoke. ‘Headless and bared of feet, we yield what remains of Raskan. We leave him alone now, upon this hill. But he has no eyes with which to see, no voice to utter his losses, and not even the voice of the wind will mourn for him.’
‘Please, Rint,’ said Galak. ‘Surely there must be softer words for this moment.’
‘He lies under stone,’ Rint replied, ‘and so knows the weight of that. What soft words would you like to hear, Galak? What comforts do you yearn for? Speak them, if you must.’
‘He was a child of Mother Dark-’
‘His soul abandoned to foreign fate,’ Rint cut in.
‘He served his lord-’
‘To be made a plaything for his lord’s old lover.’
‘Abyss take us, Rint!’
Rint nodded. ‘It surely will, Galak. Very well then, heed these soft words. Raskan, I give voice to your name one more time. Perhaps she left some of you in the embers of the morning fire. Perhaps you looked upon us through flames, or when the wind’s breath fanned the coals, and you saw us bearing your body away. I doubt you think of honour. I doubt you are warmed by what respect we muster for the body you left behind. No, I see you now as made remote to all our needs, to all our mortal concerns. If you look upon us now, you feel only a distant sorrow. But know this, Raskan, we who still live will carry your regrets. We will wear the burden of your untimely death. We will harvest the unanswerable questions and grow lean on what little they offer us. And still you will not speak. Still you will grant us no comfort, and no cause for hope. Raskan, you are dead, and to the living, it seems, you have nothing to say. So be it.’
Ville was muttering under his breath through all of this, but Rint ignored him. Finished with his words he turned away from the cairn and walked over to his horse. Feren followed a step behind him and before he set foot in the stirrup her hand settled on his shoulder. Surprised, Rint glanced at her. ‘What is it, sister?’
‘Regret, brother, is gristle you can chew for ever. Spit it out.’
He glanced down at her belly and nodded. ‘Spat out and awaiting a new mouthful, sister. But in you I have reason to pray. I look forward to seeing you a mother again.’
She withdrew her hand and stepped back. He saw her lips part as if she was about to speak; instead she turned away, striding to her horse and mounting up.
‘None of us are unfamiliar with death,’ Galak said in a bitter hiss as he swung on to his horse. ‘We each face the silence as we must, Rint.’
‘Will you face it with every word in winged flight, Galak?’
‘Better that than harsh and cruel! It seems all you do is cut these days.’
Rint settled into the saddle and took up the reins. ‘No, all I do is bleed.’
They set out, pushing deeper into the ancient hills. The old lines of rise and descent had been carved through in places by thousands of years of hoofs from migrating herds, and down these tracks floods had rushed in the wet seasons, exposing bedrock and an endless wash of bleached bones and the crumbling cores of broken horns.
Rint could see the old blinds, constructed from piled stones, arcing in fragmented lines along slopes overlooking the old migration tracks. He could see signs of runs where beasts had been cut away from the main herd and driven off cliffs. Here and there, massive boulders rested atop hills, each one bearing painted scenes of beasts charging and dying, and stick figures wielding spears; and yet upon not one of these wrinkled tableaux was there a line denoting solid ground. Instead, these remembered hunts, these eternal images of slaughter, all floated in a dream world, uprooted and timeless.
Only a fool would not see death in such art. No matter how enlivened the beasts depicted, they were all long gone, slain, carved up and devoured, or left to rot. To look upon them, as he did when he and his companions rode past, was to see a dead hand’s longing for life, but a life belonging to the past. Every scene was a broken promise, and upon these hills now had settled a pall of silence.
If the dead spoke to the living, they did so in an array of frozen images, and this doomed them to themes of loss and regret. He well understood Feren’s warning. This was a gristle one could chew without end.
Lifting his gaze, his eyes narrowed. The eastern sky was grey, smudging the line of the horizon. He thought back to the Jhelarkan’s words and felt something grow taut within him.
‘Is that smoke?’ Ville asked.
Rint nudged his mount to a faster pace, and the others joined him. There was nothing worth saying. The chattering of speculation would simply give voice to fear and so fill the gut with bile. Smoke hung above Riven Keep. It could be as simple as a grass fire, spreading out across the plain.
His home was in the village below the fortification. There he would find his wife and his child, and discover anew their place in his life. Nothing needed to be the same as it had once been. Their nights of indifference and hard silence would be behind them now. Rint finally understood the gift she was to him, and now that they had made a child he would look with clear eyes upon all that was precious and sacred.
No longer would he flee her company, escaping into the wilds. He would make the future different from the past. For every person, change was within reach. He had made his journey and it would be the last one he would make. His future was at his wife’s side.
I have sworn vengeance against Draconus. But I will join my sister and put away my sword. I, too, am done with this.
By midday, they had ridden out from the hills on to flat land. The way ahead was wreathed in smoke. The smell did not belong to a grass fire. It was rank, oily.
The four Borderswords broke into a fast canter.
In his head, Rint uttered a list of vows to his wife and to his newborn child. The list began and ended with a vision of him standing with her, in a home emptied of his anger, the temper he could never quite control. And he saw the guardedness leaving her eyes, her hand leaving the grip of her knife which she had drawn countless times to defend herself against his rages. He saw a world of peace, floating as if painted on stone. The hand that could paint the past could paint the future. Rint meant to prove it.
‘Riders on our left!’
At Ville’s shout Rint turned, rose on his stirrups. Directly north was the long line of a dust cloud.
‘Must be the hunting party,’ Galak said. ‘Abyss below! There was no one at Riven!’
My wife. My child.
The distant riders were converging on them, and Rint now saw that they were Borderswords. No. No. He pushed his mount into a gallop, fixed his eyes eastward, to that dark smudge that was Riven Keep. But the tower was mostly gone, only one wall rising to two-thirds its original height, black as charcoal against the grey sky.
It was just one more damned argument. I rushed out, thinking only of escape lest I tear the knife from her grasp. And there was the call, a summons from Lord Draconus, who wanted an escort into the west. I found Feren. I badgered her into joining me. We needed to get away.
My wife’s face is burned in my mind. It was fear that made it a stranger’s face. It had always been fear that took away the face I knew.
I was running. Again.
Life was easier out there. Simpler. Feren was rotting, drinking too much. I had my sister to think of -
All at once, there were more riders crowding them, the thunder of horse hoofs almost deafening. As if from a vast distance, Rint heard Ville shouting.
