Isak lifted his hands up so his long sleeves fell back and revealed the bent and scarred fingers. ‘The memory’s always there, whether you bring it up or not. As for what happens after, I don’t care — it’s the way I die that interests me.’
‘Sounds like you’ve got a plan,’ Carel said suspiciously.
‘More peaceful than last time, that’s all I’m asking. General Daken’s taken his cavalry on ahead. He’s forced a few skirmishes with their rearguard, but that’s all; their pace is fast enough that we can’t catch them, and the bastards aren’t interested in fighting.’
‘Your point?’
‘That this is building to one last battle. Daken’s snarling like a frustrated dog, so I hear.’ He flexed the black fingers of his right hand. ‘When they get to where they’re going, they’ll give us the battle we want and not before. We’re not far off matched, so how far I’m prepared to go might swing it for us.’
‘You’re going to sacrifice yourself?’ Carel said in horror. ‘You can’t!’
Isak pursed his uneven lips. ‘I’m not saying that, just that it might get desperate. I don’t know what I’d do — I don’t know what I’m able to do, but there’s more power in this sword than in any Crystal Skull. If I use it to win a battle, I doubt there’ll even be anything left to cremate.’ He sniffed. ‘I never much liked prayers or temple anyway, so maybe it’s fitting I dodge one last boring service.’
Out of the corner of his eye he saw the glint of a tear in the veteran’s eyes.
‘What is it?’
Carel shook his head, but Isak persisted. If it hadn’t been for the solemnity of the occasion, he realised Carel might have even shouted at him, but as it was he saw a shocking and profound sadness in the man’s face.
‘You don’t get it, do you?’ Carel croaked at last, tears spilling down his cheek. ‘You have the power to change the Land around, the strength to command the Gods, and yet you never really understood people half the time, did you?’ He was quiet for a dozen heartbeats as he studied Isak’s brutalised face. Eventually he sighed, looking deflated in his borrowed tabard.
‘Funerals aren’t for the one who’ve died,’ he started, ‘they’re for the rest of us, to remember. Gods, boy, I stood in the Temple of Nartis at your funeral, then just a few weeks later I was standing there again, mourning Tila — but it wasn’t just her memory in my mind that day. I loved that girl, but you were the son I never had. I stood there all alone; I couldn’t leave, not even after the High Cardinal had finished the rituals. It felt like my damn heart was ripping open, the pain worse than when I lost my bloody arm.’ He looked at Legion Chaplain Cerrat, standing at the head of the body, his white robes billowing in the cold evening wind, then at the man kneeling next to him.
‘Look at Vesna,’ he hissed, jabbing a finger towards the man, clad in his famous black and gold armour. ‘Lahk was a friend of his, a man he served with for more’n a decade. Look at him.’
Isak did so, and realised that the hero of the Farlan was weeping, his hands shaking as his tears flowed over them. His head was bowed, as if he couldn’t lift it for the weight of grief. His normally pristine black hair fell in disarray about his face and though he was not making a sound, every Ghost was aware of his grief. Swordmaster Pettir put his hand on Vesna’s shoulder as Chaplain Cerrat continued, but the gesture seemed to increase the burden Vesna felt, and he bowed lower under its weight.
‘He’s grieving Tila as well,’ Isak said when he found the strength to speak again.
‘Pain like that doesn’t just go away,’ Carel said in a small voice, ‘not when it cuts to the heart of you. It’s grief for you too,’ he added after a moment.
‘Me?’
‘The Gods only know why, but you do have friends, Isak. Your death hit more’n me hard, and we had long enough thinking of you as dead to let the pain go in deep. That you were — all that you had to-’ He gestured helplessly at the scars on Isak’s hands and neck.
‘Your worst fears were confirmed?’
‘Gods, boy, you’re really no good at this, are you?’ Carel said, wiping his sleeve over his face. The tears still flowed, but he ignored them. ‘It’s hard enough to lose a friend; near breaks a man to lose one he loved. The guilt and shame we feel at letting you do what you did, end up where you did — that opens up another tear in an already broken heart.’
‘And if we leave the best of us in our wake,’ Tiniq added in a choked voice, ‘what then for the Land we march on into?’
At the shrine, Vesna stood to face the crowds. It took him a while to find the words, but once he started they tumbled out with ease: the battles Lahk had won, the defeats he had salvaged, the unswerving devotion to their tribe’s cause — and the legion surrounding him now.
Before he had even finished recounting the most notable of General Lahk’s deeds, a low murmur arose from the ranks all around him: the battle hymn of the Ghosts, three lines, repeated again and again, while Vesna spoke his last and set the fires burn ing. The song rose with each heaving breath of the Farlan’s finest as they honoured the best of them, and it continued as the flames rose higher and the officers retreated away from the burning body, until it was echoing around like a storm, rumbling through the hills where they stood and crashing out across the Land for allies and enemies alike to hear.
And still the tears flowed, but pride shone in every face.
King Emin turned in his saddle and surveyed the mud-stained ranks trudging along in weary, sour silence. The rain had been falling for a week, a near-constant drizzle that never quite cleared up but never grew strong enough to rain itself out. The rivers they forded grew steadily deeper and swifter, leaving the troops soaked from head to foot.
The undulating, fertile foothills around Thotel had gradually levelled off as they marched beyond the Chetse’s capital city and further into the break in the mountains that led to the unknown reaches of the Waste. Now they were on vast open plains with barely a handful of trees visible. Away from the rivers, the ground was brown, covered in scrub, few crops able to survive in the open, exposed earth.
This countryside was the province of sheep and goat-herders. There were a few communities, clustered around the rivers, while the bulk of the population were closer to the mountains, north and south of the army’s path, affording them a clear route. The few Chetse warbands that shadowed them kept their distance — the Menin troops were sandwiched by a legion of light cavalry, more than enough to stop any hotheads who might have disa greed with the honour settlement.
‘They’re quiet again, Doranei,’ King Emin commented.
‘It’s a strange march we’re on,’ Doranei replied, his eyes on the road. ‘They’ve all got things on their mind, and no outlet.’
The coldness between Emin and his King’s Man was visible to the whole army, but neither let it interfere with the task at hand and the army’s officers and men of the Brotherhood steered well clear of mentioning it. Forrow kept a suspicious eye on his Brother — his job was to mistrust all of them — but they all knew neither was to blame.
‘I’d expected Ruhen to leave a force in his wake by now, to sacrifice some troops in order to slow us down, but aside from a few raids, there’s been nothing; they’re all marching with him. Why?’
‘Azaer doesn’t have much interest in battle, so might not have thought so hard about tactics.’
‘But Ilumene?’
Doranei shrugged. ‘The man’s no general, whatever he thinks. He might have more of an instinct for battle than Azaer, but Ilumene’s never led an army. I can’t say for certain if I’d want to lose a third of my forces — and my numerical advantage — in an attempt to gain a few days’ breathing space. Those Devoted generals will have realised they’re not in command now, so they won’t be keen to volunteer their experience, not when it’s likely to get them sacrificed.’
‘Or perhaps they have a vested interest in keeping us close? How many Skulls do they have? Five, at least one of which could still be hidden in some soldier’s pack in our own ranks.’
‘Want to order another surprise search?’
Emin shook his head. ‘No, it’ll be well hidden, I’m sure. Magic had to have been used to gain entry to the general’s tent, and we don’t have enough mages to search so many thousands. And anyway, I don’t trust all the mages.’
Doranei looked over at the collection of juddering carriages and brightly caparisoned horses at the heart of the army. Magic was their one major advantage over the Devoted, so King Emin had gathered as many battle- mages as he could bully into service. They might not be able to match Tomal Endine for power or skill, or even Fei
