‘Yes sir, hurry up. Crump can do that!’
After a moment, the sapper began singing.
‘Shillydan the red-water man Croaks and kisses the lass’s brow Hillyman the blue-cocked man Strokes and blessings t’thank ‘er now!’
Nimander Golit, wrapped in a heavy dark blue woollen cloak, stood at one end of the winding street. Decrepit harbour buildings leaned and sagged, a brick grimace curling down to the waterfront that glittered a hundred paces distant. Shreds of cloud scudded beneath a night sky of bleary stars, rushing southward like advance runners of snow and ice.
Tiste Andii, sentinel to the dark; he would have liked such grand notions wrapped about him as tightly as this cloak. A mythic stance, heavy with… with something. And the sword at his side, a weapon of heroic will, which he could draw forth when dread fate arrived with its banshee wail, and use with a skill that could astound-like the great ones of old, a consummate icon of power unveiled in Mother Dark’s name.
But it was all a dream. His skill with the sword was middling, a symbol of mediocrity as muddied as his own bloodline. He was no soldier of darkness, just a young man standing lost in a strange street, a man with nowhere to go-yet driven, driven on at this very moment-to go somewhere.
No, even that was untrue. He stood in the night because of a need to escape. Phaed’s malice had become rabid, and Nimander was the one in whom she had chosen to confide. Would she murder Sandalath Drukorlat here in this port city, as she had vowed? More to the point, was he, Nimander, going to permit it? Did he even have the courage to betray Phaed-knowing how swiftly she would turn, and how deadly her venom?
Anomander Rake would not hesitate. No, he would kick down the door to Phaed’s room and drag the squealing little stoat out by her neck. And he’d then shake the life from her. He’d have no choice, would he? One look into Phaed’s eyes and the secret would be revealed. The secret of the vast empty space within her, where her conscience should be. He would see it plain, and then into her eyes would come the horror of exposure-moments before her neck snapped.
Mother Dark would wait for Phaed’s soul, then, for its shrieking delivery, the malign birth of just execution, of choices that were not choices at all. Why? Because nothing else can be done. Not for one such as her.
And Rake would accept the blood on his hands. He would accept that terrible burden as but one more amidst countless others he carried across a hundred thousand years. Childslayer. A child of one’s own blood.
The courage of one with power. And that was Nimander’s very own yawning emptiness in the heart of his soul. We may be his children, his grandchildren, we may be of his blood, but we are each incomplete. Phaed and her wicked moral void. Nenanda and his unreasoning rage. Aranatha with her foolish hopes. Kedeviss who screams herself awake every morning. Skintick for whom all of existence is a joke. Desra who would spread her legs for any man if it could boost her up one more rung on the ladder towards whatever great glory she imagines she deserves. And Nimander, who imagines himself the leader of this fell family of would-be heroes, who will seek out the ends of the earth in his hunt for… for courage,, for con-viction, for a reason to do, to feel anything.
Oh, for Nimander, then, an empty street in the dead of night. With the denizens lost in their fitful, pathetic sleep-as if oblivion offered any escape, any escape at all. For Nimander, these interminable moments in which he could contemplate actually making a decision, actually stepping between an innocent elder Tiste Andii and Nimander’s own murderous little sister. To say No, Phaed. You will not have this. No more. You shall be a secret no longer. You shall be known.
If he could do that. If he could but do that.
He heard a sound. Spinning, the whisper of fine chain cutting a path through the air-close, so close that Nimander spun round-but there was no-one. He was alone. Spinning, twirling, a hiss-then a sudden snap, two distinct, soft clicks as of two tiny objects held out at each end of that fine chain-yes, this sound, the prophecy- Mother fend, is this the prophecy?
Silence now, yet the air felt febrile on all sides, and his breath was coming in harsh gasps. ‘He carries the gates, Nimander, so it is said. Is this not a worthy cause? For us? To search the realms, to find, not our grandsire, but the one who carries the gates?
‘Our way home. To Mother Dark, to her deepest embrace-oh, Nimander, my love, let us-’
‘Stop it,’ he croaked. ‘Please. Stop.’
She was dead. On the Floating Isle. Cut down by a Tiste Edur who’d thought nothing of it. Nothing. She was dead.
And she had been his courage. And now there was nothing left.
The prophecy? Not for one such as Nimander.
Dream naught of glory. She too is dead.
She was everything. And she is dead.
A cool wind sighed, plucking away that tension-a tension he now knew he but imagined. A moment of weakness. Something skittering on a nearby roof.
These things did not come to those who were incomplete. He should have known better.
Three soft chimes sounded in the night, announcing yet another shift of personnel out in the advance pickets. Mostly silent, soldiers rose, dark shapes edging out from their positions, quickly replaced by those who had come to guard in their stead. Weapons rustled, clasps and buckles clicked, leather armour making small animal sounds. Figures moved back and forth on the plain. Somewhere in the darkness beyond, on the other side of that rise, out in the sweeps of high grasses and in the distant ravines, the enemy hid.
The soldiers knew that Bivatt had believed the battle was imminent. Redmask and his Awl were fast approaching. Blood would be spilled in the late afternoon on the day now gone. Oh, as the Letherii soldiers along the advance pickets well knew, the savages had indeed arrived. And the Atri-Preda had arrayed her mages to greet them. Foul sorceries had crackled and spat, blackening whole swaths of grassland until ash thickened the air.
Yet the enemy would not close, the damned Awl would not even show their faces. Even as they moved, just beyond line of sight, to encircle the Letherii army. This sounded deadlier than it was-no Awl line of barbarians would be able to hold against a concerted break-out, and the hundreds of low-ranking tactical geniuses common to all armies had predicted again and again that Bivatt would do just that: drive a solid wedge into contact with the Awl, scattering them to the winds.
Those predictions began falling away as the afternoon waned, as dusk gathered, as night closed in round them with its impenetrable cloak.
Well, they then said, of course she ain’t bitten. It’s an obvious trap, so clumsy it almost beggars belief. Redmask wants us out of our positions, moving this way and that. Wants the confusion, d’you see? Bivatt’s too smart for that.
So now they sat the night, tired, nervous, and heard in every sound the stealthy approach of killers in the dark. Yes, friends, there was movement out there, no doubt of that. So what were the bastards doing?
They’re waiting. To draw swords with the dawn, like they did the last time. We’re sitting out here, wide awake, for nothing. And come the morrow we’ll be sand’eyed and stiff as corpses, at least until the fighting starts for real, then we’ll tear their hides off. Blade and magic, friends. To announce the day to come.
The Atri-Preda paced. Brohl Handar could see her well enough, although even if he couldn’t he would be able to track her by the mutter of her armour. And, despite the diminishment of details, the Tiste Edur knew she was overwrought; knew she held none of the necessary calm expected of a commander; and so it was well, he concluded, that the two of them were twenty or more paces away from the nearest bivouac of troops.
More than a little exposed, in fact. If the enemy had infiltrated the pickets, they might be hiding not ten paces distant, adjusting grips on their knives moments before the sudden rush straight for them. Slaying” the two leaders of this invading army. Of course, to have managed that, the savages would have had to deceive the magical wards woven by the mages, and that seemed unlikely. Bivatt was not unique when it came to fraught nerves, and he needed to be mindful of such flaws.
Redmask excelled in surprises. He had already proved that, and it had been foolish to expect a sudden change, a dramatic failure in his deviousness. Yet was this simply a matter of seeking battle with the sun’s rise? That seemed too easy.
The Atri-Preda walked over. ‘Overseer,’ she said in a low voice, ‘I would you send your Edur out. I need to know what he’s doing.’
Startled, Brohl said nothing for a moment.
She interpreted that, rightly, as disapproval. ‘Your kind are better able to see in the dark. Is that not correct?
