Dust of Dreams

we deserve. For we have earned the freedom to choose.

She glanced down at her makeshift sword. It seemed unaccountably bright, as if gathering all the light it could drink. Golden flames seemed to glitter in its heart. It was beautiful, yes, but there was something else there. Something of power… a terrible power.

She remembered, from somewhere, tales about weapons, and those weapons were given names. Thus. She would name hers Fire.

Fuck! Fiddler spun away from the three worried faces, the sets of frightened eyes, the twitches of incipient panic. He scanned the ground. ‘Stay where you are,’ he told the heavies. ‘No, wait. Shortnose, go and get Bottle. Flashwit, you and Mayfly enforce a cordon round here, especially their tent. No one gets in, understood?’

Solemn nods from the soldiers, and then Shortnose set off at a lumbering run.

On all sides, the camp was breaking, tents dropping down, stakes rocked loose from the hard stony soil. Soldiers shouted, complained and bickered. The smell of spicy food from the kitchen tents wafted in the cool morning air. Closer by, two other squads were looking over, uneasy, bereft of answers. They’d slept sound, they said. Heard nothing.

Fiddler’s gaze drew back to the tent. Slashed to ribbons. Inside-what was left of inside-the cots bore rumpled bedding. But no blood. Fuck. Fuck and fire. His breath slowly hissed as he resumed studying the ground, seeking tracks, signs of a scuffle, anything. Nothing caught his eyes. Too scared to concentrate. Where in Hood’s name is Bottle?

Flashwit had come to him half a bell earlier. He’d barely crawled out from his tent to find her standing in front of him, a look of dread on her broad face.

‘They’re gone, Sergeant.’

‘What? Who’s gone?’

‘Their tent’s all cut up, but no bodies-’

‘Flashwit, what are you talking about? Whose tent? Who’s gone?’

‘Our sergeant and corporal. Gone.’

‘Gesler? Stormy?’

‘Their tent’s all cut up.’

Not cut up, he discovered, after following Flashwit back to the Fifth Squad’s camp. Slashed. The thick canvas was rent from all sides, with what must have been frenzied zeal. And of Gesler and Stormy there was no sign. Their weapons and armour were gone as well. And the heavies were in tents to either side-barely room to walk between them, and in the dark with all the guy ropes and stakes… no, this doesn’t make sense.

He turned to see Shortnose and Bottle jogging up to where stood Mayfly-who held out thick arms as if to bar their passage.

‘Let ’em through, Mayfly-but no one else. Not yet, anyway. Bottle, get over here.’

‘What’s this I hear about Gesler and Stormy deserting?’

Fiddler almost cuffed the man. Instead, he hissed, ‘Ain’t nobody’s deserted-but now that rumour’s on its way, isn’t it? Idiot.’

‘Sorry, Sergeant-it’s too damned early in the morning for me to be thinking straight.’

‘Better wake up fast,’ Fiddler snapped. He pointed at the tent. ‘Look for signs, all round it. Someone had to walk in to get that close. And if you find a single drop of blood let me know-but quietly, understood?’

Licking his lips as he eyed the ravaged tent, Bottle nodded, and then edged past his sergeant.

Fiddler unstrapped and drew off his helm. He wiped sweat from his brow. Glared across at the nearby squads. ‘Wake up your sergeants and all of you make sure we got a full cordon!’ The soldiers jumped. Fiddler knew that news of his sickness had gone through the ranks-he’d been down for days, stinking with fever. Standing close to Anomander Rake had been miserable enough, he recalled, but nothing compared to this. He didn’t need the Deck of Dragons to know what he knew. Besides, nowhere in the Deck would he find a card called the Consort of Darkness. At least, not that he knew of, though sometimes powers were of such magnitude, such insistence, that they could bleed the paint off a minor card and usurp it. Maybe that had happened with his Deck-but he wasn’t about to shuffle through for a look. In any case, his being down had scared people-damned unfair, but there it was, nothing Fiddler could do about it. And now that he was back on his feet, well, he could see far too much undisguised relief in too many eyes.

The older he got, he realized, the more sensitive his talent-if it could be called talent. He preferred curse.

Now Rake went and got himself killed. Unbelievable. Insane. Dragnipur is in pieces. Oh sure, Rake and Hood made sure most of the monsters chained within it were wiped out-nice deal, that. Chained souls and Hood’s own menagerie of scary malcontents, all fed into Chaos. ‘The dead will sleep, and sleep for evermore.’ Amen.

He clawed at his beard. Barely three days on foot again-he still felt wobbly-and now this. They’ve been snatched. Right out from the middle of a whole damned army. Gesler. Stormy. Why them? Oh don’t be obtuse, Fid. They were annealed in the Forge of Thyrllan. Ascendants both.

So think about that. Gesler-he can throw a punch heavy enough to stagger a god. Stormy can swing a sword through three bodies if he’s mad enough. But… not a drop of blood-

‘Found a drop of blood, Sergeant.’

Bottle was suddenly at his side, head lowered, voice barely a whisper.

‘Just one?’

‘Well, maybe two drops together. A dollop? It’s thick and it stinks.’

Fiddler scowled at the man. ‘Stinks?’

‘Not human blood.’

‘Oh, great. Demonic?’

‘More like… rhizan.’

Rhizan? ‘This ain’t the time for jokes, Bottle-’

‘I’m not. Listen. There’s not a trace, not a single footprint beyond the kind soldiers make-and we both know it wasn’t no soldiers jumped the tent and the two men inside it. Unless they had talons long as swords, and it was talons that did in that tent. But the hands they belonged to were huge. It gets stranger, Sergeant-’

‘Hold on. Let me think a moment.’ Rhizan? Flit around at night, eating insects, small bats… winged. They got fucking wings! ‘It came down out of the sky. Of course, it’s bloody obvious now. That’s why there’s no tracks. It just dropped straight down on to the tent-’

‘Then someone should’ve heard it-at the very least, Ges and Stormy would’ve been screaming.’

‘Aye, that part still doesn’t scry.’

‘Let me examine the tent, Sergeant-pick it apart, I mean.’

‘Go ahead.’ Fiddler walked over to Shortnose. ‘Another trip for you. Find Captain Faradan Sort, and maybe Fist Keneb. And Quick Ben-aye, get Quick Ben first and send him here. And listen, Shortnose, don’t say nothing about desertions-we already got enough of those. Gesler and Stormy didn’t desert-they were kidnapped.’

Shortnose shook his head. ‘We ain’t seen or heard nothing, Sergeant-and I’m a light sleeper. Stupid light, in fact.’

‘I’m guessing some kind of sorcery silenced the whole thing. And the demon was winged. It just picked them both up and flew off into the night. Now, go on, Shortnose.’

‘All right. Quick Ben, Sort and then Keneb.’

‘Right.’ Turning back, he saw Bottle on his hands and knees, lifting up shreds of canvas. The soldier looked up, nodded him over.

Fiddler joined him, crouching at his side. ‘What is it?’

‘Everything stinks, Sergeant. Feel this cloth-it’s oily.’

‘That’s what keeps ’em waterproof-’

‘Not this stuff. This stuff smells like a lizard’s armpit.’

Fiddler stared at Bottle, wondering when the fool last jammed his nose into a lizard’s armpit, then decided that some questions just should never be asked. ‘Enkar’al? Could be, but it would have had to have been a big one, old, probably female. And somehow it got its hands round both their mouths, or round their necks.’

‘Then Ges and Stormy are dead,’ whispered Bottle.

‘Quiet, I’m still working through this. I can’t recall ever seeing an enkar’al big enough to fly carrying two full-grown men. So, Locqui Wyval? Draconic lapdogs? Not a chance. A bull enkar’al masses more than a wyval. But then, wyval fly in packs-in clouds, I think it’s called-so if a dozen came down, striking fast… maybe. But all those wing-beats… no, somebody’d hear the ruckus for certain. So, not wyval and probably not an enkar’al. What’s that leave us with?’

Bottle stared at him. ‘Dragon.’

‘Do dragons smell like rhizan armpits?’

‘How the Hood would I know?’ Bottle demanded.

‘Calm down, sorry I asked.’

‘But it doesn’t work anyway,’ said Bottle after a moment. ‘The slashed tent-the rents aren’t big enough for a dragon’s talons, or teeth. And if a dragon did swoop down, wouldn’t it just pick up the whole thing? Tent, people, cots, the whole works?’

‘Good point. So, we’re back to a giant rhizan?’

‘I was just saying what it smelled like, Sergeant. I didn’t mean a real rhizan, or even one of those slightly bigger ones we got round here.’

‘If it wasn’t for the wings,’ muttered Fiddler, ‘I might think K’Chain Che’Malle.’

‘They died out a hundred thousand years ago, Sergeant. Maybe even longer. Even the ones Hedge went up against at Black Coral-they were undead, so probably stinking of crypts, not oil.’

Quick Ben arrived, pushing through the crowd that had gathered. ‘Shortnose said something about-shit, they have a cat fight or something?’

‘Snatched,’ said Fiddler. ‘Something with wings. Big enough to shut them both up-not a sound, Quick. Smells like magic-’

‘Like lizards, you mean,’ cut in Bottle. ‘Look at this, High Mage.’

Quick Ben held out a hand and Bottle gave him the strip of canvas. ‘Lizards, Bottle?’