House of Chains

Gamet wondered what had gone through the man’s mind at that moment. Knowing that Coltaine and the remnants of the Seventh were still out there, fighting their desperate rearguard action. Knowing that they had achieved the impossible.

Duiker had delivered the refugees.

Only to end up staked to a tree. It was beyond him, Gamet realized, to comprehend the depth of that betrayal.

A body never recovered. No bones laid to rest.

‘There is so much,’ Tene Baralta rumbled at Gamet’s side.

‘So much?’

‘To give answer to, Gamet. Indeed, it takes words from the throat, yet the silence it leaves behind-that silence screams.’

Discomforted by Tene’s admission, Gamet said nothing.

‘Pray remind me,’ the Red Blade went on, ‘that Tavore is equal to this task.’

Is that even possible? ‘She is.’ She must be. Else we are lost.

‘One day, Gamet, you shall have to tell me what she has done, to earn such loyalty as you display.’

Gods, what answer to make to that? Damn you, Tene, can you not see the truth before you? She has done… nothing. I beg you. Leave an old man to his faith.

‘Wish whatever you like,’ Gesler growled, ‘but faith is for fools.’

Strings cleared the dust from his throat and spat onto the side of the track. Their pace was torturously slow, the three squads trailing the wagon loaded down with their supplies. ‘What’s your point?’ he asked the sergeant beside him. ‘A soldier knows but one truth, and that truth is, without faith, you are already as good as dead. Faith in the soldier at your side. But even more important-and no matter how delusional it is in truth-there is the faith that you cannot be killed. Those two and those two alone-they are the legs holding up every army.’

The amber-skinned man grunted, then waved at the nearest of the trees lining Aren Way. ‘Look there and tell me what you see-no, not those Hood-damned fetishes-but what’s still visible under all that mess. The spike holes, the dark stains of bile and blood. Ask the ghost of the soldier who was on that tree-ask that soldier about faith.’

‘A faith betrayed does not destroy the notion of faith itself,’ Strings retorted. ‘In fact, it does the very opposite-’

‘Maybe for you, but there are some things you can’t step around with words and lofty ideals, Fid. And that comes down to who is in that vanguard somewhere up ahead. The Adjunct. Who just lost an argument with that pack of hoary Wickans. You’ve been lucky-you had Whiskeyjack, and Dujek. Do you know who my last commander was-before I was sentenced to the coastal guard? Korbolo Dom. I’d swear that man had a shrine to Whiskeyjack in his tent-but not the Whiskeyjack you know. Korbolo saw him differently. Unfulfilled potential, that’s what he saw.’

Strings glanced over at Gesler. Stormy and Tarr were walking in step behind the two sergeants, close enough to hear, though neither had ventured a comment or opinion. ‘Unfulfilled potential? What in Beru’s name are you talking about?’

‘Not me. Korbolo Dom. “If only the bastard had been hard enough,” he used to say, “he could’ve taken the damned throne. Should’ve.” As far as Dom is concerned, Whiskeyjack betrayed him, betrayed us all-and that’s something that renegade Napan won’t forgive.’

‘Too bad for him,’ Strings growled, ‘since there’s a good chance the Empress will send the whole Genabackan army over in time for the final battle. Dom can take his complaints to Whiskeyjack himself.’

‘A pleasant thought,’ Gesler laughed. ‘But my point was, you’ve had commanders worthy of the faith you put in them. Most of the rest of us didn’t have that luxury. So we got a different feeling about it all. That’s it, that’s all I was trying to say.’

The Aren Way marched past on both sides. Transformed into a vast, open-air temple, each tree cluttered with fetishes, cloths braided into chains, figures painted on the rough bark to approximate the soldiers who had once writhed there on spikes driven in by Korbolo Dom’s warriors. Most of the soldiers ahead and behind Strings walked in silence. Despite the vast, empty expanse of blue sky overhead, the road was oppressive.

There had been talk of cutting the trees down, but one of the Adjunct’s first commands upon arriving in Aren had been to forbid it. Strings wondered if she now regretted her decision.

His gaze travelled up to one of the Fourteenth’s new standards, barely visible through clouds of roiling dust up ahead. She had understood the whole thing with the finger bones well enough, understood the turning of the omen. The new standard well attested to that. A grimy, thin-limbed figure holding a bone aloft, the details in shades of dun colours that were barely visible on the yellow ochre field, the border a woven braid of the imperial magenta and dark grey. A defiant figure standing before a sandstorm. That the standard could as easily apply to Sha’ik’s army of the Apocalypse was a curious coincidence. As if Tavore and Sha’ik-the two armies, the forces in opposition-are in some way mirrored reflections of the other.

There were many strange… occurrences in all this, nibbling and squirming beneath Strings’ skin like bot-fly larvae, and it seemed indeed that he was feeling strangely fevered throughout the day. Strains of a barely heard song rose up from the depths of his mind on occasion, a haunting song that made his flesh prickle. And stranger still, the song was entirely unfamiliar.

Mirrored reflections. Perhaps not just Tavore and Sha’ik. What of Tavore and Coltaine? Here we are, reversing the path on that blood-soaked road. And it was that road that proved Coltaine to most of those he led. Will we see the same with our journey? How will we see Tavore the day we stand before the Whirlwind? And what of my own return? To Raraku, the desert that saw me destroyed only to rise once more, mysteriously renewed-a renewal that persists, since for an old man I neither look nor feel old. And so it remains for all of us Bridgeburners, as if Raraku stole something of our mortality, and replaced it with… with something else.

He glanced back to check on his squad. None were lagging, which was a good sign. He doubted any of them were in the shape required for the journey they were now on. The early days would prove the most difficult, before marching in full armour and weapons became second nature-not that it would ever prove a comfortable second nature-this land was murderously hot and dry, and the handful of minor healers in each of the companies would recall this march as a seemingly endless nightmare of fending off heat prostration and dehydration.

There was no way yet to measure the worth of his squad. Koryk certainly had the look, the nature, of the mailed fist that every squad needed. And the stubborn set to Tarr’s blockish features hinted at a will not easily turned aside. There was something about the lass, Smiles, that reminded Strings all too much of Sorry-the remorseless chill of her eyes belonged to those of a murderer, and he wondered at her past. Bottle had all the diffident bluster of a young mage, probably one versed in a handful of spells from some minor warren. The last soldier in his squad, of course, the sergeant had no worries about. He’d known men like Cuttle all his life. A burlier, more miserable version of Hedge. Having Cuttle there was like… coming home.

The testing would come, and it would probably be brutal, but it would temper those who survived.

They were emerging from the Aren Way, and Gesler gestured to the last tree on their left. ‘That’s where we found him,’ he said in a low tone.

‘Who?’

‘Duiker. We didn’t let on, since the lad-Truth-was so hopeful. Next time we came out, though, the historian’s body was gone. Stolen. You’ve seen the markets in Aren-the withered pieces of flesh the hawkers claim belonged to Coltaine, or Bult, or Duiker. The broken long-knives, the scraps of feathered cape…’

Strings was thoughtful for a moment, then he sighed. ‘I saw Duiker but once, and that at a distance. Just a soldier the Emperor decided was worth schooling.’

‘A soldier indeed. He stood on the front line with all the others. A crusty old bastard with his short-sword and shield.’

‘Clearly, something about him caught Coltaine’s eye-after all, Duiker was the one Coltaine chose to lead the refugees.’

‘I’d guess it wasn’t Duiker’s soldiering that decided Coltaine, Strings. It was that he was the Imperial Historian. He wanted the tale to be told, and told right.’