The Crippled God

The Khundryl children had been bringing him toys all day.

The times she’d watched that procession, she’d wanted to cry. She’d wanted Saddic to cry. But she didn’t understand why she wanted that — they were being kind, after all. And she didn’t know why she saw those Khundryl children as if they were but servants to something greater, something almost too big for words. Not at the instigation of adults, not even mothers and fathers. Not at the behest of pity, either. Didn’t they want their toys? She had seen such precious things settle into Saddic’s hand, had seen bright shining eyes lift shyly to Saddic in the moment of giving, and then fall away again — children running off, too light-footed, flinging themselves into their friends’ arms, and this went on and on and Badalle didn’t understand, but how her heart ached. How she wanted Saddic to weep, how she wanted to feel her own tears.

She spoke a poem under her breath.

‘Snakes do not know how to cry.

They know too much

and yearn for darkness.

They know too much

and fear the light.

No one gives gifts to snakes,

and no one makes of them a gift.

They are neither given

nor received.

Yet in all the world,

snakes do not know how to cry.’

Saddic studied her and she knew that he had heard. Of course it was for him, this poem, though she suspected that he did not know that. But the man who will find him will. Maybe he’ll cry, when we cannot. Maybe he will tell this tale in such a way as to make his listeners cry, because we cannot.

A Khundryl elder came up then and helped Saddic load his bag of toys on to a wagon. When the boy glanced over at Badalle, she nodded. He climbed up to settle himself beside his treasure. And there, he believed, he would die.

But it is not to be. How will he survive? I wish I knew the answer to that, because a secret hides inside it.

The birth-tent’s flap was swept aside then, and the father emerged. His eyes were raw with weeping, yet there was a fire in them. He is proud. He is defiant in his pride, and would challenge us all. I like this look. It is how a father should look. Then behind him, out she came, unsteady on her feet, sagging with exhaustion, and in her arms a small bundled form.

Badalle gasped upon seeing Rutt walking towards them — where had he come from? Where had he been hiding?

With his crooked arms, with a terrible need in his ancient face, he walked to stand before the mother.

Anguish gripped Badalle’s heart and she staggered in sudden weakness. Where is Held? Held is gone. Held was gone long ago. And what Rutt carried in his arms was us, all that way. He carried us.

The mother looked across at this boy, and Badalle saw now that she was old — and so too was the father, old enough to be grandparents — she looked at Rutt, his empty arms, the ravaged face.

She does not understand. How can she? He cannot hurt anyone, not Rutt. He carried our hope, but our hope died. But it wasn’t his fault, it wasn’t his fault. Mother, if you had been there — if you had seen-

And she stepped forward then, that old woman, that mother with her last ever child, this stranger, and gently laid her baby into Rutt’s waiting arms.

A gift beyond measure, and when she settled an arm about his shoulders, drawing him forward, so that he could walk with them — her and her husband — and they set out, slowly as it was all she could manage, in the wake of the nearest wagon, and all the Khundryl began to move … Badalle stood unmoving.

Saddic, I will tell you to remember this. These are the Khundryl, the givers of gifts. Remember them, won’t you?

And Rutt walked like a king.

From where he sat, Saddic watched as they made space on a Khundryl wagon for the mother, and for Rutt and her child that he held, and then set out to catch up with the rest of the army. The man who was the father took the lead yoke at the wagon’s head, and strained as if he alone could shoulder this burden.

Because it was no burden.

As Saddic well knew, gifts never are.

Ahead, the desert stretched on. Fiddler could see no end to it, and now believed he never would. He remembered that ancient shoreline of bones, the one they had left behind what seemed a century ago. No clearer warning could have been granted them, yet she had not hesitated.

He had to hand it to her. The world was her enemy, and she would face it unblinking. She had led them on to this road of suffering in the name of the Crippled God, and, to that god, what other path could there have been? She was making of them her greatest sacrifice — was it as brutal and as simple as that? He did not think her capable of such a thing. He wanted to refuse the very thought.

But here he walked, fifty or more paces ahead of them all. Even the Khundryl children were gone, leaving him alone. And behind him, a broken mass of humanity, somehow dragging itself forward, like a beast with a crushed spine. It had surrendered all formation, each soldier moving as his or her strength dictated. They carried their weapons because they had forgotten a time when they didn’t. And bodies fell, one by one.

Beneath the ghoulish light of the Jade Strangers, Fiddler set his eyes upon the distant flat line of the horizon, his legs scissoring under him, the muscles too dead to feel pain. He listened to his own breaths, wheezing as the air struggled up and down a swollen, parched windpipe. In so vast a landscape he felt his world contracting, step by step, and soon, he knew, all he would hear would be his own heart, the beats climbing down, losing all rhythm, and finally falling still.

That moment waited somewhere ahead. He was on his way to find it.

Whispering motion around him now, drifting out from a fevered mind. He saw a horseman at his side, close enough to reach out, if he so wanted, and set a hand upon the beast’s patched, salt-streaked shoulder. The man riding the beast he knew all too well.

Broke his leg. A toppling pillar, of all things. Mallet — I see you — you wanted to work on that leg. Got damned insubordinate about it, in fact. But he didn’t listen. That’s his problem, he only listens when he feels like it.

Trotts, you’re still the damned ugliest Barghast I ever saw. They bred ’em that way in your tribe, didn’t they? To better scare the enemy. Did they breed your women to be half blind, too? Keep the stones balanced, that’s the only way to make it through.

So where’s Quick Ben? Kalam? I want to see you all here, friends.

Hedge, well, he’s stepped out of this path. Can’t look him in the eye these days. It’s the one bad twist in this whole thing, isn’t it. Maybe you can talk to him, Sergeant. Talk him back to how it should be.

‘Hedge is where we want him, Fid.’

What?

‘We sent him to you … to this, I mean. He’s walked a lonely path back, sapper.’

Mallet then spoke. ‘Bet he thought he’d made it all the way, too, when he stood before you, Fiddler. Only to have you back away.’

I … oh, gods. Hedge. I better find him, chew it all out, come the dawn — we’ll make it that far, won’t we, Sergeant?

‘Until it rises, aye, sapper. Until it rises.’

And then?

‘You’re so eager to join us?’

Whiskeyjack — please — where else would I go?