Dust of Dreams

‘I do not. Listen, with the sun’s fall, as warriors gather for their meals, can you be the one to feed her?’

‘The food just falls from her mouth,’ Estaral said. ‘We let the children do that-it entertains them, forcing it down as if she was a babe.’

‘Not tonight. Take it on yourself.’

‘Why?’ I want to speak with you. Take things back. I want to lie with you, Bakal, and take back so much more.

He fixed his eyes upon her own, searching for something-she quickly glanced away, in case he discovered her thoughts. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘Why are you women so eager to hobble another woman?’

‘I had no hand in that.’

‘That is not what I asked.’

She had never before considered such a thing. It was what was done. It had always been so. ‘Women have claws.’

‘I know-I’ve seen it often enough. I’ve seen it in battle. But hobbling-that’s different. Isn’t it?’

She refused to meet his eyes. ‘You don’t understand. I didn’t mean the claws of a warrior. I meant the claws we keep hidden, the ones we use only against other women.’

‘But why?’

‘You speak now in the way Onos Toolan did-all his questions about the things we’ve always done. Was it not this that saw him killed, Bakal? He kept questioning things that he had no right to question.’

She saw as he lifted his right hand. He seemed to be studying it.

His knife hand.

‘His blood,’ he whispered, ‘has poisoned me.’

‘When we turn on our own,’ she said, struggling to put her thoughts into words, ‘it is as water in a skin finds a hole. There is so much… weight-’

‘Pressure.’

‘Yes, that is the word. We turn on our own, to ease the pressure. All eyes are on her, not us. All desire-’ she stopped then, stifling a gasp.

But he’d caught it-he’d caught it all. ‘Are men the reason then? Is that what you’re saying?’

She felt a flush of anger, like knuckles rapping up her spine. ‘Answer me this, Bakal’-and she met his wide eyes unflinchingly-‘how many times was your touch truly tender? Upon your wife? Tell me, how often did you laugh with your friends when you saw a woman emerge from her home with blood crusting her lip, a welt beneath an eye? “Oh, the wild wolf rutted last night!” And then you grin and you laugh-do you think we do not hear? Do you think we do not see? Hobble her! Take her, all of you! And, for as long as she lifts to you, you leave us alone!’

Heads had turned at her venomous tone-even if they could not quite make out her words, as she had delivered them low, like the hiss of a dog-snake as it wraps tight the crushed body in its embrace. She saw a few mocking smiles, saw the muted swirls of unheard jests. ‘Bound tight in murder, those two, and already they spit at each other!’ ‘No wonder their mates leapt into each other’s arms!’

Bakal managed to hold her glare a moment longer, as if he could hold back her furious, bitter words, and then he looked ahead once more. A rough sigh escaped him. ‘I remember his nonsense-or so I thought it at the time. His tales of the Imass-he said the greatest proof of strength a male warrior could display was found in not once touching his mate with anything but tenderness.’

‘And you sneered.’

‘I saw women sneer at that, too.’

‘And if we hadn’t, Bakal? If you’d seen us with something else in our eyes?’

He grimaced and then nodded. ‘A night or two of the wild wolf-’

‘To beat out such treasonous ideas, yes. You did not understand-none of you did. If you hadn’t killed him, he would have changed us all.’

‘And women such as Sekara the Vile?’

She curled her lip. ‘What of them?’

He grunted. ‘Of course. Greed and power are her only lovers-in that, she is no different from us men.’

‘What do you want with Hetan?’

‘Nothing. Never mind.’

‘You no longer trust me. Perhaps you never did. It was only the pool of blood we’re both standing in.’

‘You follow me. You stand just beyond the firelight every night.’

I am alone. Can’t you see that? ‘Why did you murder him? I will tell you. It’s because you saw him as a threat, and he was surely that, wasn’t he?’

‘I-I did not-’ He halted, shook his head. ‘I want to steal her away. I want it to end.’

‘It’s too late. Hetan is dead inside. Long dead. You took away her husband. You took away her children. And then you-we-took away her body. A flower cut from its root quickly dies.’

‘Estaral.’

He was holding on to a secret, she realized.

Bakal glanced at her. ‘Cafal.’

She felt her throat tighten-was it panic? Or the promise of vengeance? Retribution? Even if it meant her own death? Oh, I see now. We’re still falling.

‘He is close,’ Bakal went on under his breath. ‘He wants her back. He wants me to steal her away. Estaral, I need your help-’

She searched his face. ‘You would do this for him? Do you hate him that much, Bakal?’

She might as well have struck him in the face.

‘He-he is a shaman, a healer-’

‘No Barghast shaman has ever healed one of the hobbled.’

‘None has tried!’

‘Perhaps it is as you say, Bakal. I see that you do not want to wound Cafal. You would do this to give to him what he seeks.’

He nodded once, as if unable to speak.

‘I will take her from the children,’ Estaral said. ‘I will lead her to the west end of the camp. But, Bakal, there will be pickets-we are at the eve of battle-’

‘I know. Leave the warriors to me.’

She didn’t know why she was doing this. Nor did she understand the man walking at her side. But what difference did knowing make? Just as easy to live in ignorance, scraped clean of expectation, emptied of beliefs and faith, even hopes. Hetan is hobbled. No different in the end from every other woman suffering the same fate. She’s been cut down inside, and the stem lies bruised and lifeless. She was once a great warrior. She was once proud, her wit sharp as a thorn, ever quick to laugh but never with cruelty. She was indeed a host of virtues, but they had availed her nothing. No strength of will survives hobbling. Not a single virtue. This is the secret of humiliation: the deadliest weapon the Barghast have.

She could see Hetan up ahead, her matted hair, her stumbles brought up by the crooked staff the hobbled were permitted when on the march. The daughter of Humbrall Taur was barely recognizable. Did her father’s spirit stand witness, there in the Reaper’s shadow? Or had he turned away?

No, he rides his last son’s soul. That must be what has so maddened Cafal.

Well, to honour Hetan’s father, she would do this. When the Barghast came to rest at this day’s end. She was tired. She was thirsty. She hoped it would be soon.

***

Kashat pointed. ‘See there, brother. The ridge forms half a circle.’

‘Not much of a slope,’ Sagal muttered.

‘Look around,’ Kashat said, snorting. ‘It’s about the best we can manage. This land is pocked, but those pocks are old and worn down. Anyway, that ridge marks the biggest of those pocks-you can see that for yourself. And the slope is rocky-they would lose horses charging up that.’

‘So they flank us instead.’

‘We make strongpoints at both ends, with crescents of archers positioned behind them to take any riders attempting an encirclement.’

‘With the rear barricaded by the wagons.’

‘Held by mixed archers and pike-wielders, yes, exactly. Listen, Sagal, by this time tomorrow we’ll be picking loot from heaps of corpses. The Akrynnai army will be shattered, their villages undefended-we can march into the heart of their territory and claim it for ourselves.’

‘An end to the Warleader, the rise of the first Barghast King.’

Kashat nodded. ‘And we shall be princes, and the King shall grant us provinces to rule. Our very own herds. Horses, bhederin, rodara. We shall have Akrynnai slaves, as many of their young women as we want, and we shall live in keeps-do you remember, Sagal? When we were young, our first war, marching down to Capustan-we saw the great stone keeps all in ruin along the river. We shall build ourselves those, one each.’

Sagal grinned at his brother. ‘Let us return to the host, and see if our great King is in any better mood than when we left him.’

They turned back, slinging their spears over their shoulders and jogging to rejoin the vanguard of the column. The sun glared through the dust above the glittering forest of barbed iron, transforming the cloud into a penumbra of gold. Vultures rode the deepening sky to either side. Barely two turns of the beaker before dusk arrived-the night ahead promised to be busy.

The half-dozen Akryn scouts rode between the narrow, twisting gullies and out on to the flats where the dust still drifted above the rubbish left behind by the Barghast. They cut across that churned-up trail and cantered southward. The sun had just left the sky, dropping behind a bank of clouds dark as a shadowed cliff-face on the western horizon, and dusk bled into the air.

When the drum of horse hoofs finally faded, Cafal edged out from the deeper of the two gullies. The bastards had held him back too long-the great cauldrons