The Crippled God

‘If we were just waiting for the dawn, soldier, you’d have to ask, what in Hood’s name for? You think we’d see you put through all of this for nothing? And then there’s Hedge. He’s here to die beside you and that’s it? We sent him to you so you could just kiss and make up? Gods below, Fiddler, you’re not that important in this wretched scheme.’

‘Well,’ said Mallet, ‘he might be, Sergeant. Made Captain now, didn’t he? Got himself his own company of marines and heavies. Bloody insufferable now, is old Fid.’

‘Sky’s paling,’ Whiskeyjack said.

Because you’re on damned horses. I can’t see it.

‘False dawn,’ growled Trotts. ‘And Fid’s fading, Sergeant. We can’t hold on here much longer. Once he stops thinking past his feet …’

I was a mason’s apprentice. Had dreams of being a musician, getting fat and drunk in some royal court.

‘Not this again,’ someone said among the crowd. ‘Someone find him a fiddle, and me a hanky.’

Glad you’re all here with me. Well, most of you, anyway. The Bridgeburners deserved a better way to die-

The rider made a derisive sound. ‘Don’t be such an idiot, sapper. In your heads you’ve all built us up into something we never were. How quickly you’ve forgotten — we were mutinous at the best of times. The rest of the time — and that would be almost all the time — we were at each other’s throats. Officers getting posted to us would desert first. It was that bad, Fiddler.’

Look, I ain’t done nothing to make this fucking legend, Sergeant. I ain’t said a damned thing.

‘You don’t have to, and that’s just my point. People can talk up anything, can make a snivelling dollop of shit the god’s own mountain, given enough time and enough lies and enough silences.’

I’m a Bonehunter now. Got nothing to do with any of you any more — which is what I was trying to tell Hedge.

‘Fine. Now go hunt down some bones.’

Sure, why not? Whose bones do you want us to hunt for?

Whiskeyjack rode slightly ahead and swung his mount round, blocking Fiddler’s path. But his old sergeant wasn’t looking good — he was a damned half-mummified corpse, and his mount wasn’t much better off. ‘Whose do you think, Fid?’ And yet that voice was his — no question. Whiskeyjack.

‘Where’d you come by that name, Fid?’ And that was Mallet, but he was badly chopped up, the wounds crusted with dried blood.

The name? Bonehunters? It was finger bones, I think.

‘Whose hand?’

What? Nobody’s — lots of people. Nameless ones, long dead ones — just nameless bones!

They were all fading from his vision now. But he wanted them to stay. They were supposed to be here with him, to take up his soul when he died.

Whiskeyjack was backing his horse even as he grew translucent. ‘Bones of the fallen, Fiddler. Now, who fell the furthest?’

Before him now nothing but that distant, flat line. Nothing but the horizon. Fiddler rubbed at his face. Fucking hallucinations. Least they could’ve done was give me a drink of water.

He resumed walking. No reason to. No reason not to.

‘Who fell the furthest. Funny man, Whiskeyjack.’ But maybe it was so. Maybe she made us and named us to hunt down the bones of a damned god. Maybe she was telling us what she wanted all along, and we were too thick to know it.

But look at that line. That perfect flat line. Just waiting for our bones to make us a shore, and once we’ve made it, why, we go no farther.

Almost time.

Hedge, I’ll find you if I can. A few words. A clasp of hands, or a clout upside the head, whichever best suits the moment.

Bonehunters. Oh. Nice one.

Lostara Yil wanted her god back. She wanted to feel that flow of strength, that appalling will. To take her out of here. To feel a sudden, immortal power filling her body, and she would reach out to draw Henar Vygulf under her shadowy wing. Others too, if she could. This whole army of sufferers — they didn’t deserve this.

Henar walked close by her side, ready to steady her when she stumbled. He had seemed indomitable, but now he was bent like an old man. Thirst was crushing them all, like a vast hand pressing down. The Adjunct was ten paces ahead, Banaschar off to her right, and far ahead walked Fiddler, alone, and she imagined she could hear music from him, a siren call pulling them ever forward. But his fiddle was broken. There was no music, no matter what she thought she heard, just the sluggish dirge of her own blood, the rasps of their breaths and the crunch of their worn boots on the hard ground.

The Jade Strangers hung now over the northern sky, casting confused shadows — those terrible slashes would circle round over the course of the day, now visible even through the sun’s bright glare, making the light eerie, unearthly.

The Adjunct’s march was unsteady, drifting to the right for a time, and then back to the left. It seemed only Fiddler was capable of managing a straight line. She remembered back to the reading. Its wild violence — had it all been for nothing? A rush of possibilities, not one realized, not one borne out in the days to follow. It seemed the Adjunct — who alone warranted no card — had taken them all from their destinies, taken them into a place with no end but death, and a death bereft of glory or honour. If that was so, then Fiddler’s reading had been the cruellest of jokes.

Was he walking out there, ahead of the rest of them, out of some desperate desire? To drag them all into the truth of his visions? But the desert still stretched empty — not even the bones of the children of the Snake could be seen — they had lost them, but no one knew precisely when, and the path that might have led them to the mythical city of Icarias was now nowhere to be seen.

Her gaze found the Adjunct again, this woman she had chosen to follow. And she didn’t know what to think.

Beyond Tavore, the horizon, pale as the water of a tropical sea, now showed a rim of fire. Announcing the end of the night, the end of this march. Shadows spun round.

Fiddler halted. He turned round to face them all.

The Adjunct continued until she was ten paces from him and then slowed, and with her last step, she tottered and almost fell. Banaschar moved close but stopped when Tavore straightened once more.

Henar took hold of Lostara’s left arm, and they were still, and she looked down at the ground, as if to make it familiar to her eyes, knowing that from this place she would not move, ever again. Not her, not Henar. This, this is my grave.

The Fists and their officers were arriving. Faradan Sort with Skanarow and, beside her, Ruthan Gudd. Kindly, his face puffy and red, as if he’d stumbled and driven it into something. Raband standing close, one hand on his sword as he eyed Fist Blistig. That man, Lostara saw, had taken a punch — the evidence was plain in his swollen, misaligned nose, his split lips and the smears of dried blood. Bruises had spread out under his reddened eyes, and it seemed as if those eyes were nailed to the Adjunct. Fevered, burning with malice.

Behind them all, the army slowly ground down into something motionless, and she could see the faces of the nearest soldiers — this legion of old men and old women — all staring. Equipment bags slumped to the ground. A few, here and there, followed their kit to the ground.

It’s done, then.

All eyes were on the Adjunct.

Tavore Paran suddenly looked small. A person none would notice on a street, or in a crowd. The world was filled with such people. They bore no proof of gifts, no lines of beauty or grace, no bearing of confidence or challenge. The world is filled with them. Filled. For ever unnoticed. For ever … unwitnessed.

Her plain face was ravaged by the sun, blistered and cracked. The weight she had lost made her gaunt,