Bowed beneath the tyranny of the brooding sky, he prayed for the dullness his mind had lost. The pace was merciless; his back, an arch of pain. The rope threatened to prune his feet off at the ankles and his head off at the neck. He was a running crucifixion.
His misery seemed to have already stretched for days when they came suddenly to a halt. Carnelian felt his heart give a flutter and almost go out. The mud and his feet were melting together. He crumpled to his knees thirsting for death. The hunger for it had set like concrete in his stomach. He could feel the sartlar settling to the ground. He was seeing the world through a window of water. A flicker of green caught at the centre of his vision. The colour was a salve for his eyes. He blinked his vision clear. A shoot was pulling its curled leaves out from the rusty earth. Fresh, reborn, it sought the sky. Its freedom mocked him. He dribbled as he cursed it for giving him just enough hope not to let him die.
They came to the edge of a lake of curdled blood. Carnelian caught glimpses of it as they were herded along its shore and up onto a road. He ran with the sartlar upon its stone.
When they began slowing, he stumbled, but was immediately pulled back onto his feet. The groan his lungs expelled brought a blow crashing into his head.
'Shut up!'
Through surging pain, he became aware of a commotion up ahead. His leash went slack and a long, dirty flint was shoved before his eyes.
'If you make as much as a whisper,' a voice hissed in his ear, 'I'll gut you with this.'
Eyeing the flint, Carnelian began building the strength to cry out. He longed for the relief of having that knife in his body.
A clamour of young voices, followed by the sound of the Ichorian answering them, made Carnelian listen.
'You're a half-black, a Bloodguard of the Masters.' A young voice speaking in thick-tongued Vulgate.
'Nothing…' Carnelian heard the Ichorian say.
'Not even a bronze blade?' This time the accented voice was a man's.
The paving brightened around Carnelian's feet as the sartlar shuffled away. He was gathering the courage to lift his head against the rope, when a huge, taloned foot settled onto the stone. He watched it spread as it took the weight of its leg. Another came down in front of it as the aquar came walking towards him.
'What've we here?'
The Vulgate fell from the sky. Carnelian tried to see the aquar's rider. He felt as much as heard the impact of the man's weight as he vaulted down. Carnelian could smell his sweat. Two, dark, thick-toed feet came into sight.
'But…' The man gasped and began rubbing at Carnelian's ear. 'You're white under the black. A marumaga? A M-Master?'
Before Carnelian could find his voice, the man slashed with a blade. Carnelian felt it as a stabbing in his back.
He heard the screams and the cries of battle as if he were coming up out of water. It confused him that the blade he could feel was filleting him up his back and yet the man was in front of him. He waited for oblivion, his heart pounding eagerly as if death were a lover. He wondered at the screams and anger. He saw without seeing the two ends of his ropes dangling under his chin. His eyes focused on them. They had been cut. The realization took hold. He erupted a roar, unfolding upwards to reach and breathe free air. Too late. Fire leapt from his white-hot spine to consume him. Aflame, he fell into blackness; a torch dropped down a well.
THE RAIDERS
A smooth bead is earned for each complete season of service. More may be threaded onto an auxiliary's service cord for any action deemed by a superior to go beyond those stipulated in the Legionary Code; such awards subject to ratification by a quaestor who shall index the action against the Categories of Valour. Rough beads are threaded onto a service cord according to statute infringements as listed in the Categories of Offence. The Protocol of Remission states that smooth beads may be given up to redeem rough beads subject to the Laws of Remission. The Laws of Remission are: first, that a rough bead may be redeemed by the loss of a smooth bead; second, rough beads may be redeemed by mandatory or voluntary chastisement as determined by the Laws of Punishment; third, three rough beads can only be redeemed by the concurrent loss of three smooth beads.
The Laws of Punishment are: first, that a rough bead may be redeemed by a standard flogging; second, that three rough beads may be redeemed by progressive mutilation as described in the Schedule of Removals and according to the corresponding protocols; third, that at any time a service cord should have on it five rough beads, the auxiliary to whom it belongs shall, without recourse to appeal, be put to death by crucifixion. The Schedule of Removals is applied as follows: on the first occasion, the middle fingers of both hands with associated knuckles; on the second, the ears; on the third, the nose; on the fourth, the right eye; on the fifth, the left eye.
It was the sudden stillness that pulled Carnelian up from his nightmare. He could no longer feel the sway of the black water. Confused, he wondered if the boat had brought him at last to the opposite shore? Opening his eyes, he found he was wedged in, buttocks pressing against a crossbeam, his knees almost in his face.
Somewhere, a man was speaking. Though his voice was harsh and nasal, its pouring of almost-words had a familiar sound that made Carnelian smile even as he strove to pluck out meaning.
'… the lads are scared enough already,' another voice was saying with a strange accent.
Dream still clouding his mind, Carnelian became convinced it was one of his marumaga brothers speaking. Grane perhaps, though Carnelian had a notion it was his Uncle Crail he had been expecting, who Aurum had had killed. Carnelian wanted to see Grane's face, but was unable to clear his head enough to call out.
'Do you imagine I'm any less afraid than they are, Father Cloud?' asked the nasal voice, speaking as if to the deaf. Through no choice of mine, I'm now as much involved in this sacrilege as the rest of you. If that weren't bad enough, what possessed you two to bring the Standing Dead with us?'
Carnelian did not recognize the voice, nor the strange term.
'Leave them be, Ranegale,' growled a weary voice Carnelian had not heard before. 'Can't you see their uncle and their brother lying there dead?'
Carnelian grew uneasy. All this talk of death and the strange names; worse, there was something peculiar about their speech that was making it hard to follow.
'Leave them be?' said Ranegale, the man with the nasal voice. 'You may be an Elder, Stormrane, but I don't believe even that gives you or your sons the right to let the dead ride.'
Realization came to Carnelian as a shock. The voices were speaking neither Vulgate nor the tongue of the Masters, Quya, yet he understood them. Incredibly, they were speaking the same barbarian language his nurse Ebeny had used with him and his brothers when they were children.
'… my doing, not theirs,' Stormrane was saying.
To hear the cadence of Ebeny's speech in a man's voice was startling.
'And was it you, my father, who ordered some of the lads to double up so as to free saddle-chairs in which to put the Standing Dead? I see by your silence it wasn't. Will you deny it was Ravan who first saw the Bloodguard and Fern who then found the Standing Dead? No? Then it seems we all agree it was your sons who drew us into that bloodbath, so don't ask me to leave things be. If they'd let things be, your brother and your eldest son would still be alive; you yourself and the rest of us unwounded and, even now, we'd all be safely on the road to Makar. Instead of which we're out here tainted by this sacrilege, the Mother forgive us and, if that weren't enough of a curse, we now have these white scorpions to deal with.'
White scorpions? Was Ranegale talking about him? More than one Master. Carnelian's mind cleared. As Ranegale continued droning accusations, Carnelian became desperate to see his beloved. His knees were blocking
