The Crippled God

soon even if we seek the safety of shore, it will be too late.’

‘A fine speech, Spax. The Gilk Warchief advises caution. So noted.’ Abruptly she rose. ‘My Fourteenth Daughter is not one you could tumble behind the equipment tent. That said, I do not think she invited that undead Jaghut into our alliance — rather, I suspect she had little say in the matter.’

‘And the current grows bold.’

She eyed him. ‘Journey to the Letherii camp. Inform Prince Brys of this turn of events.’

‘Now?’

‘Now.’

‘What of the Perish?’

The queen frowned, and then shook her head. ‘I will not see one of our few fit horses run to death just to bring word to the Grey Helms. I don’t know what they’re trying to prove with that torrid pace-’

‘I do.’

‘Indeed? Very well, Spax, let’s hear it.’

‘They seek to make us irrelevant, Firehair. You, Brys, and especially the K’Chain Che’Malle.’

‘They want the glory for themselves?’

‘Shield Anvil Tanakalian,’ he said, adding a disgusted grunt. ‘He’s young, with too much to prove. But that is not what is bothering me, Highness. I no longer trust his motives — I cannot say if the goal he seeks is at all related to the Adjunct’s. These Grey Helms, they are the avatars of war, but it is not the war between peoples that they serve, it is the war of nature against humans.’

‘Then he is a greater fool than we can even imagine,’ Abrastal said. ‘He cannot win that war. Nature cannot win — it never could.’

Spax was silent for a moment, and then in a low voice he said, ‘I believe that it is the other way round, Highness. This is a war we cannot win. All of our victories are temporary — no, illusory. In the end we lose, because, even in winning, we still lose.’

Abrastal walked from the chamber. Brows lifting, Spax followed her.

Outside, under the green-lit night sky, past the two guards.

She continued down the centre aisle between the officers’ tents, out past the kitchen camps, the offal pits, the latrine rows. Like peeling back the orderly facade, down now among the foul rubbish of our leavings. Ah, Firehair, I am not so blind as to miss the meaning of this journey.

When at last she halted, they were beyond the northeast pickets. For Spax to make his way to the distant Letherii encampment, he need only strike out northward, angling slightly to the west. He could see the fitful glow from the prince’s position. Like us, they’re running out of things to burn.

Abrastal faced east, to where just beyond a ribbon of white bones the Glass Desert was a sea of sharp, glittering stars lying as if scattered in death, bathed in emerald light. ‘The Wastelands,’ she murmured.

‘Highness?’

‘Who won here, Spax?’

‘As we can see. No one won.’

‘And in the Glass Desert?’

He squinted. ‘It hurts the eye, Firehair. Blood was spilled there, I think. Immortal blood.’

‘Would you throw the crime at the feet of humans?’

He grunted. ‘Now you split reeds, Highness. It is the wilful mind that is Nature’s enemy, for out of that wilfulness comes arrogance-’

‘And contempt. Warchief, it seems we will all face a terrible choice, then. Are we worth saving? You? Me? My children? My people?’

‘Do you now waver in your resolve?’

She faced him. ‘Do you?’

Spax scratched his beard with both hands. ‘All that Krughava said when she was ousted. I have considered it, again and again.’ He grimaced. ‘Now it seems that even Spax of the Gilk can revise his views. A time of miracles to be sure. I will, I think, choose to see it this way: if nature must win in the end, then let the death of our kind be sweet and slow. So sweet, so slow, that we do not even notice. Let us fade and dwindle in our tyranny, from world to continent, from continent to country, from country to city, city to neighbourhood, to home, to the ground under our feet, and finally down to the pointless triumphs inside each of our skulls.’

‘These are not the words of a warrior.’

He heard the harsh emotion in her tone and nodded in the darkness. ‘If it is true and the Grey Helms seek to be the swords of nature’s vengeance, then the Shield Anvil has missed the point. Since when is nature interested in revenge? Look around.’ He waved a hand. ‘The grass grows back where it can. The birds nest where they can. The soil breathes when it can. It just goes on, Highness, the only way it knows how to — with what’s left.’

‘The same as us,’ she said.

‘Maybe this is what Krughava could see so clearly, and Tanakalian can’t. When we war against nature, we war against ourselves. There is no distinction, no dividing line, no enemy. We devour everything in a lust for self-destruction. As if that is intelligence’s only gift.’

‘Only curse, you mean.’

He shrugged. ‘I suppose there is a gift is in being able to see what we’re doing, even as we do it. And in seeing, we come to understand.’

‘Knowledge we choose not to use, Spax.’

‘I have no answer to that, Firehair. Before our inaction, I am as helpless as the next man. But it may be that we all feel that way. Smart as we are individually, together we become stupid, appallingly stupid.’ He shrugged again. ‘Even the gods cannot find a way through this. And even if they had, we’d not listen, would we?’

‘I see her face, Spax.’

Her face. Yes. ‘It’s not much of a face, is it? So plain, so … lifeless.’

Abrastal flinched. ‘Find another word, please.’

‘Bleak, then. But she makes no effort, does she? Nothing regal in her clothes. Not a single item of jewellery. No paint on her face, or her lips, and her hair — so short, so … ah, Highness, why does any of that even bother me? But it does, and I don’t know why.’

‘Nothing … regal,’ Abrastal mused. ‘If what you say is true — and yes, so it seems to me as well — then why, when I look upon her, do I see … well, something …’

That I did not see before. Or that I did not understand. She ever grows in my mind, this Adjunct Tavore. ‘Noble,’ he said.

She gasped. ‘Yes!’

‘She doesn’t fight against nature, does she?’

‘Is it just that? Is that all it is?’

Spax shook his head. ‘Highness, you say you keep seeing her face. It is the same for me. I am haunted and I do not know why. It floats behind my eyes and I fix upon it again and again, as if I’m waiting. Waiting to see the expression it will assume, that one expression of truth. It’s coming. I know it is, and so I look upon her and I cannot stop looking upon her.’

‘She has made us all lost,’ Abrastal said. ‘I did not anticipate I would feel so troubled, Spax. It’s not in my nature. Like some prophet of old, she has indeed led us out into the wilderness.’

‘Until she leads us home.’

Abrastal turned and stepped closer, her eyes glittering. ‘And will she?’

‘In that nobility, Firehair,’ he replied in a whisper, ‘I find faith.’ Against the despair. As did Krughava. And in the Adjunct’s small hand, like a wispy seed, there is compassion.

He watched her eyes widen, and then her hand was behind his head, pulling him close. One hard kiss, and then she pushed him away. ‘It’s getting cold,’ she said, setting off for camp. Over a shoulder she added, ‘You should be able to reach the Letherii before dawn.’

Spax stared after her. Very well, it seems we will do this, after all. Hood, the Lord of Death, stood before me and spoke of fear. The fear of the dead. But if the dead know fear, what hope do we have?

Tavore, does a god stand in your shadow? Ready to offer us a gift, for the sacrifices we will