suspect our agent.’
Ruhen pursed his lips. ‘Let us not make too many assumptions; they have surprised us in the past.’
‘Aye, well, they’re running out of cards to play. Once our agent performs his task, they’ll be left reeling and unable to stop us.’
‘And then the game will be ours,’ Ruhen finished, savouring the words on his tongue with the ghost of a smile. ‘But until then, it remains at risk.’
It was morning and the Devoted army was ready to march again. Seeded through their ranks were ragged figures in greys and whites, the wild-eyed, exhausted and half-starved preachers and followers who called themselves Ruhen’s Children. Some knelt and muttered prayers, watched by Chetse farmhands and villagers. They all faced Ruhen as they droned devotionals of Venn’s and Luerce’s devising, or keened wordlessly, arms linked with their fellow devout, or gripping the shoulders of the person in front.
‘It is a lesson for us both,’ Ruhen said after a while, gesturing to the masses around them.
‘In what?’
‘In the unexpected. Look at these soldiers, professional, obedient, but unremarkable in many ways. They have no proud pedigree, no great nation to inspire their pride, nothing more than a basic level of devotion and the regimen of training.’
Ilumene followed Ruhen’s gaze. ‘Unexpected, aye,’ he commented as he watched the white clad worshippers slowly clump together.
They had no tents or supplies with them — they were beggars, the mad and the lost, who either had nothing, or had not understood what they might need on their journey. All the way through the central states they had been in lands sworn to Ruhen and the Knights of the Temples, and the local preachers at every village and town had provided basic provisions. The followers who had accompanied them from the Circle City hadn’t fallen away as some had expected; instead, they had swelled in number, and for every one who found the going too hard, or who fell to sickness, a dozen more joined the cause, driven by a consuming zeal.
Advance scouts had negotiated supplies for the army once they’d entered Chetse lands, but the haphazard organisation of Ruhen’s Children fell away. Ilumene had predicted a vicious but necessary culling as only the strongest among them survived, but something entirely different had happened, and now the man and boy watched in silent wonder as men, women and children crawled from the tents of the Devoted, ready to resume their march.
Without orders, the men of the army had taken them in, sheltering and feeding them without complaint. There was enough to go around, they estimated, but it was the care and effort expended that surprised all who saw it.
‘I underestimated them,’ Ruhen said. ‘I had not thought soldiers would embrace my message too.’
Ilumene laughed softly. ‘They didn’t, not really,’ he said when Ruhen turned enquiringly towards him. ‘It’s not that you underestimated them, you just don’t know ’em.’
‘I have watched humans for long enough, I think,’ Ruhen replied coldly.
‘Watched, yes, but you ain’t one.’ Ilumene prodded the boy on his thin shoulder, ignoring the dark look he received.
‘This bag o’ bones you’re wearing,’ Ilumene said, grinning, ‘this doesn’t tell you what it’s like to be human. Those scar-hearted troops of the Devoted haven’t embraced your message, not so much as you think. They’re simple men; all soldiers are when they’re on the march. The Devoted’s weakness has always been its disparate roots: competing cultures and peoples, all wearing the Runesword. It’s always much harder to get strangers to fight side-by-side for a cause that matters to neither. This army doesn’t understand its purpose here, so it’s made one up.’
‘They embrace the spirit of the message without paying attention to the words?’ Ruhen said hesitantly.
Ilumene nodded. ‘This ain’t devotion or fanaticism, it’s human ity, grubby and uneasy maybe, but it’s naked humanity for all the Land to see. They see the weak and broken and they care for ’em. They see others driven by devotion and they honour them. They hear talk about protecting the innocent — and sure, it seeps into some, but it’s really two more basic instincts converging. Soldiers are always looking for a cause. It takes a heartless man to watch some poor fool to die at the side of the road.’
‘They have made frailty their banner,’ Ruhen mused. ‘That it matches my message of innocence is mere confirmation in their hearts, a justification for what they all feel is right.’
‘And now we’ve got an army,’ Ilumene added. ‘Your followers are the common thread for all these troops, some of whom faced each other on the battlefield last year. They’re bound together now, and they’ll fight together because they’re all fighting for the same thing. The Knight-Cardinal knows he’s just a figurehead; his soul’s bound to you and that’s shackled him as surely as a pet dog. Soon the rest’ll realise just how empty their authority is too, and on that day, any of ’em with a backbone left will most likely be cut down by his own men.’ He shrugged. ‘If not, I’ll do it myself.’
CHAPTER 37
Under an evening moon the men of the Ghosts assembled around a small rise, on top of which stood a broken standing stone which had been struck by a lightning bolt and split open to reveal a white fissure down its centre, following the path of the strike. Vesna had deemed this small shrine to Nartis an appropriate place for the general’s funeral.
The Ghosts formed up around the hillock in division blocks, five hundred men apiece, standing silently, even as the sun went down and a cold wind picked up. The officers prayed around the stone as the body was prepared. Isak stood back, leaving the preparation to those who wore the black and white.
Tiniq stood alongside him, his hood low over his face, and he said nothing as they watched the ceremonies. Legion Chaplain Cerrat, the young man appointed in Lord Bahl’s last degree, led the observances with Suzerains Torl and Saroc at his side, while Vesna, Swordmaster Pettir and Sir Cerse, Colonel of the Palace Guard, knelt opposite them. Stretched out on the flat strip of grass before the shrine-stone was the linen-wrapped body of General Lahk. Only the face was visible. His eyes were closed and his skin drained of colour. His hands had been set around the longsword he’d carried for years, its plain pommel and notched blade catching the last of the daylight. Once they had cremated his body, the fire-scorched sword would be thrown into the first lake they could find. Farlan legend said that a warrior’s weapon would follow its master into the afterlife, to be in his hand on the slopes of Ghain.
Carel appeared at Isak’s side, wearing a Palace Guard tabard. His expression was grim.
The sight sent a cold shiver down Isak’s spine for a reason he couldn’t quite place. ‘I forgot you’d said were in the Ghosts,’ he said softly. ‘Uniform suits you, old man.’
Carel turned and looked Isak up and down. The white-eye had no such thing to wear; even the dragon- emblazoned uniform of personal guards was lost to him.
Carel shifted uncomfortably. ‘Can’t say I ever thought I’d wear it again, not until the day I was the one wrapped up in linen.’
‘You kept it for your own funeral?’
Carel frowned at him. ‘Gods, makes my head hurt to think you’ve forgotten that! Can’t remember the times you asked me to show it to you — the uniform you’d one day serve in, and most likely die in, being a white-eye. I looked damn good — the ladies of Tirah appreciated it, I can tell you.’
‘But I never did,’ Isak said, a little uncertainly.
‘No,’ Carel confirmed, ‘the Gods had a different plan for you. You got your own uniform.’
Isak nodded and returned his attention to the shrine ahead. ‘We’ll gather his ashes and take them home?’
‘It’s what he’d have wanted,’ Tiniq broke in from Isak’s other side. ‘Eternity with his comrades was always his wish. Me, I’d want to be set free on the winds, but we always were different.’
Carel grunted in response. ‘Not sure I give a damn,’ he said eventually. ‘As long as a cup’s raised in my memory, I’ll be happy. Don’t reckon I’ll be there to care, after all, but I’d like to be remembered well. Isak?’
The white-eye flinched. ‘Just as long as it’s not like last time,’ he said in a small voice.
‘Aye,’ Carel said, putting a hand on Isak’s arm. ‘Sorry, lad, didn’t think there.’
