sported the scars to prove it. Pox even stood and dropped his leggings to reveal a puckered crescent across his left cheek, among other things.
'Sweet Sejenus,' Galian exclaimed. 'That solves the mystery of Soma's missing beard!'
Raucous laughter.
'Was that where it was hiding?' Achamian asked as innocently as a crafty old man could manage.
The Bitten fell dead silent. For a moment all he could hear was the talk and laughter from the other campfires echoing through the sieve of the surrounding forest. He had taken that step, so fateful in the company of close-knit strangers, between watching and participating.
'Where what was hiding?' Xonghis asked.
'The skinny that bit him.'
Somandutta was the first to howl. Then all the Bitten joined in, rocking on their mats, trading looks like sips of priceless wine, or simply rolling their eyes heavenward, shining beneath the eternal arches of the night.
And Drusas Achamian found himself friends with the men he had in all likelihood killed.
Ever since striking out from his tower, Achamian had been afraid that his old body would fail him, that he would develop any one of the innumerable ailments that deny the long road to the aged. For some reason, he had assumed that his far thinner frame would also be far weaker. But he was pleasantly surprised to find his legs growing more and more roped with muscle, and his wind becoming deep-to the point where he had no difficulty managing even the most punishing pace.
Walking in file, leading their small mule trains, they followed a broad trail that generally ran parallel to the river. For long tracts it was treacherous going, as the trail had been scuffed deep enough to expose knobbed roots and buried rocks. The Osthwai Mountains loomed vast and magnificent above them, their peaks lost in a dark shoal of clouds as wide as the horizon. They seemed to eat the eastern sky in imperceptible increments.
They passed several inbound companies, lines of lean, lean men, hunched beneath their remaining provisions and cord-threaded scalps, not a beast of burden to be seen. They would have looked macabre, like skeletons marching in stolen skins, were they not so jubilant at the prospect of gaining Marrow.
'They were forced to winter in the Wilds,' Soma explained to Achamian. 'We were almost caught ourselves. The Ochain Passes have been especially treacherous these past couple of years.' He bent his head to his feet, as though inspecting his boots for scuffs. 'It's like the world is getting colder,' he added after several steps.
Tidings and jibes were shared back and forth as the companies passed. The newest whores. The worsening conditions in the Osthwai. The brokers who kept 'forgetting their thumbs' when counting. Rumours of the Stone- Hags, a pirate company cum bandit army that apparently hunted scalpers the way scalpers hunted Sranc. Which tavern-keeps were watering their wine. And as always, the unaccountable cunning of the skinnies.
'The trees!' one particularly hoary Norsirai said. 'They came at us out of the trees! Like monkeys with fucking knives…'
Achamian listened without comment, both fascinated and dismayed. Like all Mandate Schoolman, he looked at the world with the arrogance of someone who had survived-even if only in proxy-the greatest depravities circumstance could offer. But what happened in the Wilds, whatever it was that edged their voices when the Skin Eaters spoke of it, was different somehow. They too carried the look and posture of survivors, but of something more mean, more poisonous, than the death of nations. There was the wickedness that cut throats, and there was the wickedness that put whole peoples to the sword. Scalpers, Achamian realized, dwelt somewhere in the lunatic in-between.
And for the first time he understood: He had no real comprehension of what was to come.
The point was brought home by the half-starved man he saw slumped, his face between his knees, beneath the hanging veils of a willow. Before he knew what he was doing, Achamian was kneeling at the man's side, pressing him upright. The fellow was as light as kindling pine. His face was sunken in the way Achamian had seen in Caraskand during the First Holy War, so that the edges and the irregularities of the skull beneath pressed clear through the skin, chipping short the cheeks and pitting the sockets. His eyes were as flat and waxen as any guttered candle.
The man said nothing, seemed to stare into the same.
Pokwas dropped a large hand on Achamian's shoulder, startling him. 'Where you fall is where you lie,' the Sword-Dancer said. 'It's a Rule. No pity on the slog, friend.'
'What kind of soldiers leave their comrades to die?'
'Soldiers who aren't soldiers,' Pokwas replied with a noncommital shrug. 'Scalpers.'
Even though the Sword-Dancer's tone said it all-the Wilds were simply a place too hard for ritual observance or futile compassion-Achamian wanted to ask him what he meant. The old indignant need to challenge, to contest, welled sharp within his breast. Instead, he simply shrugged and obediently followed the towering man back into the long-walking file.
Achamian the talker, the asker of questions, had died a long time ago.
But the episode continued to occupy the old Wizard's thoughts, not the cruelty so much as the pathos. He had been away for so long a part of him had forgotten that men could die so ignominiously, like dogs skulking into the weeds to pant their last. The image of the unfortunate refused to fade: the eyes clouding, the lips mouthing the air, the body like sticks in the sack of his skin. How could he not feel like a fool? Between his Dreams of the First Apocalypse and his memories of the First Holy War, he could scarce imagine anyone who had seen more death and degradation than he. And yet there it was, the fact of a dying stranger, like an added weight, a tightness that robbed him of his wind.
Was it some kind of premonition? Or was he simply growing soft? He had seen it many times, the way compassion made rotted fruit of old men's hearts. The vitality of his old bones had surprised him. Perhaps his spirit was what would fail…
Something always failed him.
The trail wound on and on through the forest deeps, a track that had seen countless scalpers strut or shamble. Though Somandutta paced him on several occasions, trying to draw him into some inane topic of conversation, Achamian remained silent, walking and brooding.
That night he made a point of sitting next to Pokwas at the fire. The mood was celebratory. Xonghis had felled a doe, which the company then portioned according to rank-the unborn fetus included. Achamian said nothing, knowing that the sacrilege of consuming pregnant game would mean nothing to these men.
'I'm curious,' Achamian asked after eating his fill, 'about these Rules of the Slog…'
The black man said nothing at first. He looked particularly fierce, limned in firelight, his lips drawn back as he tore meat from bone. He chewed in contemplation a moment, then said, 'Yah.'
'If it were, say, Galian lying at the side of th-'
'It would be the same,' the Zeьmi interrupted through a mouthful of venison. He looked to Galian as he said this, shrugged in mock apology.
'But he's your… your brother, is he not?'
'Course he is.'
Galian made kissing noises from across the fire.
'So,' Achamian pressed, 'what about the rules of brotherhood?'
This time it was Galian who answered. 'The only rules on the slog, Wizard, are the rules of the slog.'
Achamian scowled, pausing to sort between a number of different questions, but Galian interrupted him before he could speak. 'Brotherhood is well and fine,' the former Columnary said, 'so long as it doesn't cost. As soon as it becomes a luxury…' He shrugged, resumed gnawing on the bone he still held in his right hand. 'The skinnies,' he said with an air of distracted finality.
The Sranc, he was saying. The Sranc were the only rule.
Achamian studied their faces across the firelight. 'No liabilities, is that it? Nothing that could afford your opponent any advantage.' He raised a finger to scratch the side of his nose. 'That sounds like something our glorious Aspect-Emperor would say.'
Aside from the vague intuition that discussing the Aspect-Emperor was generally unwise, the old Wizard really didn't know what to expect.
'I would help,' Soma blurted. 'If Galian was dying, that is. I really would…'
