dead into those great pits. The earth was stained rusty-red, and the stink of death was rising with the clouds of flies.
‘Can’t get the taste out the back of my mouth,’ Suzerain Derenin muttered. ‘No matter what I try to wash it away with.’
‘Try this.’ Doranei proffered his cigar. ‘Covers up most stinks that can be covered.’
He watched Derenin puff away at it, grimacing at the unfamiliar taste but drawing all the harder on it for that. ‘You fought well,’ Doranei said. ‘There’s not much to feel proud about when you’re treading on the faces of the dead and sticky with their blood, but you were a hero yesterday. Never forget that.’
‘I won’t,’ he murmured. ‘It’s right there with the screams of men I’ve known my whole life — men who were only in that hell-pit because of me.’
‘I’ve got no answers for you,’ Doranei replied wearily. ‘There’s no justice in war, no consolation. My best friend died before the battle of the Byoran Fens — you know why? Because we tossed a coin and he got unlucky. Much as I hate myself for it, that’s all there is, and no amount of blame’ll change that.’
‘And life goes on,’ the nobleman said bitterly, wincing as he shifted slightly. ‘I’ve heard men say that half-a- dozen times already this morning.’
‘It’s the only truth we know. You got the luck o’ the draw, others didn’t. I ain’t claiming to have worked this out myself, but all you can do is mourn and keep on living.’ Doranei paused and looked at the battlefield. When he spoke again it was with a firm nod of the head, as though he was still having to remind himself that what he said was true. ‘If I meet Sebe on the slopes of Ghain and he asks me how I lived the life won on that toss of a coin, I better have a good answer for him. Hard as it might be, we got to try.’
He hauled himself up again and started on down the stepped gardens into the small forest of tents pitched on the moor’s edge. To the right was a second, smaller camp where the worst-injured of the prisoners were; anyone able to walk was out on the moor dragging bodies into the pits. The prisoners were a mixed lot, mainly Menin as most of their allies had fled when they felt the Menin lord’s name ripped from their minds. Some, unable to escape, had surrendered; only the Menin elite had fought to the death, but it did mean there was no chance of pursuit.
He walked forward, drawn without thinking towards the fort where he’d made his stand at the king’s side. He was still not sure how they’d survived that crazed assault. He felt his hands start to shake as he neared it. When he reached the mound where Cetarn had sacrificed himself, his legs gave way and he sank to his knees, feeling the anguish build up inside him, but the tears would not come; no matter how much he craved the release, the outpouring of grief, it wouldn’t come.
At a sound behind him Doranei gave a cry of alarm and tried to turn and draw his sword, but his body betrayed him and he staggered sideways, waving the weapon drunkenly until he used it to steady himself on the uneven ground. The group of soldiers behind him were enlisted men, wearing the Narkang legion’s uniform.
‘My apologies, sir,’ said the nearest, tugging frantically at his greasy curls of hair, ‘din’t mean to disturb you, sir.’
Doranei wavered and his vision blurred for a moment before he was able to pull himself together. ‘I- Ah, no, it doesn’t matter. What do you want?’
The man glanced back at his comrades. The lot of them were caked in mud and blood, and several were very obviously injured. ‘Well, sir, we was hopin’ you’d tell us what happened.’
Doranei tried to grin. ‘We won, didn’t you hear? Can’t you smell the glory?’
The soldier winced and bobbed his head again. ‘Aye, sir, we all felt his name taken, but no one knows what happened — some said the Gods themselves must’ve-’
Doranei stopped him. ‘Cetarn,’ he said, ‘Shile Cetarn, Narkang’s greatest mage: you want someone to thank in your prayers, he’s the one. Him and Coran, they both sacrificed themselves.’
‘The king’s bodyguard?’
‘Aye, him, the one and only, stubborn, stupid, vicious white-eye motherless shit that he was.’ Doranei felt his lips tremble, but suddenly he couldn’t stop talking. ‘A man with no friends and lots of enemies, who liked his whores bloodied and bruised and never had a good word for any living man. The sort o’ fearless bastard you wanted at your side when it got down to the bone, one who never backed down from a fight in his life and enjoyed pain more than any fucker I ever met.’
He took a long, shuddering breath and glanced back at the mound of earth where Cetarn had died. The earth was scorched and ripped open by the terrible magic unleashed there, the fury of an earthquake visited upon that small scrap of moorland.
‘And Cetarn was the best of men; ’cept for his size he had nothing in common with Coran before this. But neither one hesitated, or took a step back when the time came — they marched into Death’s bony arms, glad they were doing their duty and never a backwards glance from either of them.’
Doranei turned his back on the soldiers’ stunned silence and looked at the killing ground between the fort and the mound. There too the grass was scorched black, the earth furrowed and seamed with white as though burnt to ashes. Crows and ravens hopped across the brutalised ground, their calls cruel and callous to Doranei’s ears. The faint smell of smoke carried on the wind and for a moment he felt his soul tug free to drift on the breeze with the voices of the dead and carrion birds.
There were still many hundreds of bodies there on the killing ground, still lying where they had fallen. Not all could be identified, not even from one side or another, but there were enough green and gold Kingsguard uniforms to show Doranei where Coran had likely fallen. He hadn’t seen the body himself, but someone had said it bore terrible injuries — more than would be needed to kill a normal human or most white-eyes.
Stubborn even to death? Doranei thought before muttering a prayer to the dead. I’ve no doubt you were a bastard to kill — you’d have had it no other way.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a group of people heading his way and his heart sank. Isak and Vesna, with Mihn in close attendance. The broken white-eye was entirely hidden by a long patchwork cloak, as though trying to hide his identity, but it was hard to mistake a shuffling seven-foot monster of a man, no matter how stooped he now was. The harsh voice of a crow swooping above them made Isak look up and follow its movement with wary intensity.
By contrast Vesna, the Mortal-Aspect of Karkarn, looked pristine and regal. His title had been taken from him; Vesna was no longer a nobleman of the Farlan but had been dubbed Iron General by the God of War. Unlike Isak he still looked the part: his clothes were spotless, his hair neat and oiled, even the strange armoured arm Vesna now sported was clean and undamaged.
Doranei sheathed his sword and turned to wait for them as the soldiers fled. He couldn’t blame them for being unwilling to loiter when Karkarn’s own approached them across a battlefield. Isak’s identity remained a secret. Even if his death hadn’t been widely reported, the horrific mass of scars on his face and body rendered him unrecognisable to anyone who might have known him.
The King’s Man nodded as the group of Farlan reached him, not caring to do more even if they still expected it after giving up their noble titles. Seeing them here and now, he realised it meant as little to both men as it did to him. ‘Didn’t get a chance to thank you yesterday,’ he said to Vesna.
The handsome Farlan looked startled at the idea. ‘Because we charged the Menin?’
‘Aye, well, some of us appreciated it.’
Vesna’s face darkened. ‘Not too many left to do so, by the time we got there. Not sure even our final stand in Scree compared to what I saw there. How many of you survived? Maybe a hundred all told, around the king?’
‘Easy to look heroic when there’s nowhere to run,’ Doranei said awkwardly.
‘No,’ Isak interrupted, ‘it would have been easy to give up — none of you did that.’
Doranei scowled at the furrowed ground at his feet. ‘Yeah, well, sure I’ll find a knighthood in my morning porridge. What’re you doing out here?’
‘Walking.’
Doranei cocked his head and looked inside the drooping hood Isak wore. The dead man’s face was twisted strangely, but whether he was trying to make a joke Doranei couldn’t tell. Isak’s expressions were forever ambiguous now: the daemons of Ghenna had seen to that.
But there was something different about the young white-eye. Though permanently stooped, thanks to the abuse he’d received in Ghenna, Isak definitely stood a fraction taller today; it made Doranei think a weight had been lifted from those scarred shoulders. He had been born to be the Menin lord’s adversary, in more forms than one, so Isak could truly feel his purpose in life had been fulfilled.
