‘Contemplating.’
‘Contemplating,’ Quick Ben mimed, head wagging from side to side in time with each syllable.
‘I could cut your throat with this. One swipe.’
‘We never did get along, did we? Gods, I can’t believe how we hugged and slapped each other on the back, down at that river-’
‘Stream.’
‘Watering hole.’
‘Spring.’
‘Will you please cut my throat now, Hedge?’
The sapper tossed the flint away and dusted his hands with brisk slaps. ‘What makes you so sure the baddies are coming up from the south?’
‘Who says I’m sure of anything?’
‘So we could be sitting in the wrong place. Facing the wrong direction. Maybe everybody’s getting butchered right now even as I speak.’
‘Well, Hedge, if you hadn’t of interrupted my meditating, maybe I’d have figured out where we should be right now!’
‘Oh, nice one, wizard.’
‘They’re coming from the south because it’s the best approach.’
‘As what, rabbits?’
‘No, as dragons, Hedge.’
The sapper squinted at the wizard. ‘There always was a smell of Soletaken about you, Quick. We finally gonna see what scrawny beastie you got hiding in there?’
‘That’s a rather appalling way of putting it, Hedge. And the answer is: no.’
‘You still feeling shaky?’
The wizard glanced over, his eyes bright and half mad-his normal look, in other words. ‘No. In fact, the very opposite.’
‘How so?’
‘I stretched myself, way more than I’d ever done before. It’s made me… nastier.’
‘Really.’
‘Don’t sound so impressed, Hedge.’
‘All I know is,’ the sapper said, grunting to his feet, ‘when they roll over you, there’s just me and an endless supply of cussers. And that suits me just fine.’
‘Don’t blast my body to pieces, Hedge.’
‘Even if you’re already dead?’
‘Especially then, because I won’t be, will I? You’ll just think it, because thinking it is convenient, because then you can go wild with your damned cussers until you’re standing in a Hood-damned crater a Hood-damned league acrossl’
This last bit had been more or less a shriek.
Hedge continued his squinting. ‘No reason to get all testy,’ he said in a hurt tone, then turned and walked back to his crossbow, his beloved lobber. And said under his breath, ‘Oh, this is going to be so much fun, I can’t wait!’
‘Hedge!’
‘What?’
‘Someone’s coming.’
‘From where?’ the sapper demanded, readying a cusser in the cradle of the crossbow.
‘Ha ha. From the south, you bloated bladder of piss.’
‘I knew it,’ Hedge said, coming to the wizard’s side.
She had chosen to remain as she was, rather than veer into her Soletaken form. That would come later. And so she walked across the plain, through the high grasses of the basin. On a ridge directlyahead stood two figures. One was a ghost, but maybe something more than just a ghost. The other was a mage, and without question more than just a mage.
A sliver of disquiet stirred Menandore’s thoughts. Quickly swept away. If Rud Elalle had selected these two as allies, then she would accept that. Just as he had recruited the Tiste Edur and the one known as Onrack the Broken. All… complications, but she would not be alone in dealing with them, would she?
The two men watched as she ascended the gentle slope. One was cradling a bizarre crossbow of some kind. The other was playing with a handful of small polished stones, as if trying to choose one as his favourite.
They’re fools. Idiots.
And soon, they will both be dust.
She fixed on them her hardest glare as she drew up to the edge of the crest. ‘You two are pathetic. Why stand here-do you know who approaches? Do you know they will come from the south? Meaning that you two will be the first they see. And so, the first they kill.’
The taller, darker-skinned one turned slightly, then said, ‘Here comes your son, Menandore. With Ulshun Pral.’ He then frowned. ‘That’s a familiar walk… Wonder why I never noticed that before.’
Walk? Familiar walk? He is truly mad.
‘I have summoned them,’ she said, crossing her arms. ‘We must prepare for the battle.’
The shorter one grunted, then said, ‘We don’t want any company. So pick somewhere else to do your fighting.’
‘I am tempted to crush your skull between my hands,’ Menandore said.
‘Doesn’t work,’ the wizard muttered. ‘Everything just pops back out.’
The one with the crossbow gave her a wide smile.
Menandore said, ‘I assure you, I have no intention of being anywhere near you, although it is my hope I will be within range to see your grisly deaths.’
‘What makes you so sure they’ll be grisly?’ the wizard asked, now studying one pebble in particular, holding it up to the light as if it was a gem of some sort, but Menandore could see that it was not a gem. Simply a stone, and an opaque one at that.
‘What are you doing?’ she demanded.
He glanced across at her, then closed his hand round the stone and brought it down behind his back. ‘Nothing. Why? Anyway, I asked you a question.’
‘And I am obliged to answer it?’ She snorted.
Rud Elalle and Ulshun Pral arrived, halting a few paces behind the wizard and his companion.
Menandore saw the hard expression in her son’s face. Could I have seen anything else? No. Not for this. ‘Beloved son-’
‘I care nothing for the Finnest,’ Rud Elalle said. ‘I will not join you in your fight, Mother.’
She stared, eyes widening even as they filled with burning rage. ‘You must! I cannot face them both!’
‘You have new allies,’ Rud Elalle said. ‘These two, who even now guard the approach-’
‘These brainless dolts? My son, you send me to my death!’
Rud Elalle straightened. ‘I am taking my Imass away from here, Mother. They are all that matters to me-’
‘More than the life of your mother?’
‘More than the fight she chooses for herself!’ he snapped.
‘This clash-this feud-it is not mine. It is yours. It was ever yours! I want nothing to do with it!’
Menandore flinched back at her son’s fury. Sought to hold his eyes, then failed and looked away. ‘So be it,’ she whispered. ‘Go then, my son, and take your chosen kin. Go!’
As Rud Elalle nodded and turned away, however, she spoke again, in a tone harder than anything that had come before. ‘But not him.’
Her son swung round, saw his mother pointing towards the Imass at his side.
Ulshun Pral.
Rud Elalle frowned. ‘What? I do not-’
‘No, my son, you do not. Ulshun Pral must remain. Here.’
