The spirits fed him life. And he took them into his soul and gave them a new home. They proved, alas, restless, uncivil guests.
The journey and the transformation into a nomadic tyrant of the Lamatath Plains was long, difficult, and miraculous to any who could have seen the wretched, maimed creature the Captain had once been. Countless tales spun like dust-devils about him, many invented, some barely brushing the truth.
His ruined feet made walking an ordeal. His fingers had curled into hooklike things, the bones beneath calcifying into unsightly knobs and protrusions. To see his hands was to be reminded of the feet of vultures clutched in death.
He rode on a throne set on the forward-facing balcony of the carriage’s second tier, protected from the midday sun by a faded red canvas awning. Before him walked somewhere between four hundred and five hundred slaves, yoked to the carriage, each one leaning forward an they strained to pull the enormous wheeled palace over the rough ground, An equal number rested in the wagons of the en-tourage, helping the cooks and the weavers and the carpenters until their turn came in the harnesses.
The Captain did not believe in stopping. No camps were established. Motion was everything. Motion was eternal. His two wings of cavalry, each a hundred knights strong, rode in flanking positions, caparisoned in full banded armour and ebony cloaks, helmed and carrying barbed lances, the heads glinting in the sun-light. Behind the palace was a mobile kraal of three hundred horses, his greatest pride, for the bloodlines were strong and much of his wealth (that which he did not attain through raiding) came from them. Horse-traders from far to the south sought him out on this wasteland, and paid solid gold for the robust destriers.
A third troop of horse warriors, lighter-armoured, ranged far and wide on all sides of his caravan, ensuring that no enemy threatened, and seeking out possible targets-this was the season, after all, and there were-rarely these days, true enough-bands of savages eking out a meagre existence on the grasslands, in cluding those who bred grotesque mockeries of horses, wide-rumped and bristle-maned, that if nothing else proved good eating. These ranging troops included raiding parties of thirty or more, and at any one time the Captain had four or five such groups out scouring the plains.
Merchants had begun hiring mercenary troops, setting out to hunt him down. But those he could not buy off he destroyed. His knights were terrible in battle.
The Captain’s kingdom had been on the move for seven years now, rolling in a vast circle that encompassed most of the Lamatath. This territory he claimed as his own, and to this end he had recently dispatched emissaries to all the bordering cities-Darujhistan, Kurl and Saltoan to the north, New Callows to the southwest, Bastion and Sarn to the northeast-Elingarth to the south was in the midst of civil war, so he would wait that out.
In all, the Captain was pleased with his kingdom. His slaves were breeding, pro-viding what would be the next generation drawing his palace. Hunting parties car-ried in bhederin and antelope to supplement the finer foodstuffs looted from passing caravans. The husbands and wives of his soldiers brought with them all the neces-sary skills to maintain his court and his people, and they too were thriving.
So like a river, meandering over the land, this kingdom of his. The ancient, half-mad spirits were most pleased.
Though he never much thought about it, the nature of his tyranny was, as far as he was concerned, relatively benign. Not with respect to foreigners, of course, but then who gave a damn for them? Not his blood, not his adopted kin, not his responsibility. And if they could not withstand his kingdom’s appetites, then whose fault was that? Not his.
Creation demands destruction. Survival demands that something else fails to survive. No existence was truly benign.
Still, the Captain often dreamed of finding those who had nailed him to the ground all those years ago-his memories of that time were maddeningly vague. He could not make out their faces, or their garb. He could not recall the details of.their camp, and as for who and what he had been before that time, well, he had no memory at all. Reborn in a riverbed. He would, when drunk, laugh and proclaim that he was but eleven years old, eleven from that day of rebirth, that day of beginning anew,
He noted the lone rider coming in from the southwest, the man pushing his horse hard, find the Captain frowned-the fool had better have a good reason for the beast in that manner. He didn’t appreciate his soldiers posturing and to make bold impressions. He decided that, if the reason was insufficient, he would have the man executed in the traditional manner-trampled into bloody ruin beneath the hoofs of his horses.
The rider drew up alongside the palace, a servant on the side platform taking the reins of the horse as the man stepped aboard. An exchange of words with the Master Sergeant, and then the man was climbing the steep steps to the ledge sur-rounding the balcony. Where, his head level with the Captain’s knees, he bowed.
‘Sire, Fourth Troop, adjudged ablest rider to deliver this message.’
‘Go on,’ said the Captain.
‘Another raiding party was found, sire, all slain in the same manner as the first one. Near a Kindaru camp this time.’
‘The Kindaru? They are useless. Against thirty of my soldiers? That cannot be.’
‘Troop Leader Uludan agrees, sire. The proximity of the Kindaru was but coincidental-or it was the raiding party’s plan to ambush them.’
Yes, that was likely. The damned Kindaru and their delicious horses were get-ting hard to find of late. ‘Does Uludan now track the murderers?’
‘Difficult, sire. They seem to possess impressive lore and are able to thor-oughly hide their trail. It may be that they are aided by sorcery.’
‘Your thought or Uludan’s?’
A faint flush of the man’s face. ‘Mine, sire.’
‘I did not invite your opinion, soldier.’
‘No, sire. I apologize.’
Sorcery-the spirits within should have sensed such a thing anywhere on his territory. Which tribes were capable of assembling such skilled and no doubt nu-merous warriors? Well, one obvious answer was the Barghast-but they did not travel the Lamatath. They dwelt far to the north, along the edges of the Rhivi Plain, in fact, and north of Capustan. There should be no Barghast this far south. And if, somehow, there were… the Captain scowled. ’Twenty knights shall ac-company you back to the place of slaughter. You then lead them to Uludan’s troop. Find the trail no matter what.’
‘We shall, sire.’
‘Be sure Uludan understands.’
‘Yes, sire.’
And understand he would. The knights were there not just to provide a heav-ier adjunct to the troop. They were to exact whatever punishment the sergeant deemed necessary should Uludan fail.
The Captain had just lost sixty soldiers. Almost a fifth of his total number of light cavalry.
‘Go now,’ he said to the rider, ‘and find Sergeant Teven and send him to me at once.’
‘Yes, sire.’
As the man climbed back down, the Captain leaned hack in his throne, staring down at the dusty backs of the yoked slaves. Kindaru there, yes. And Sinbarl and the last seven or so Gandaru, slope-browed cousins of the Kindaru soon to be en-tirely extinct. A shame, that-they were strong bastards, hard-working, never com-plaining. He’d set aside the two surviving women and they now rode a wagon, bellies swollen with child, eating fat grubs, the yolk of snake eggs and other bizarre foods the Gandaru were inclined towards. Were the children on the way pure Gandaru? He did not think so-their women rutted anything with a third leg, and far less submissively than he thought prudent. Even so, one or both of those children might well be his.
Not as heirs, of course. His bastard children held no special rights. He did not even acknowledge them. No, he would adopt an heir when the time came-and, if the whispered promises of the spirits were true, that could be centuries away.
His mind had stepped off the path, he realized.
Sixty slain soldiers. Was the kingdom of Skathandi at war? Perhaps so.
Yet the enemy clearly did not dare face him here, with his knights and the en-tire mass of his army ready and able to take the field of battle. Thus, whatever army would fight him was small-
Shouts from ahead.
