Dust of Dreams

another.

And so he took to his horse, riding hard out from the camp, spending the entire span of the sun’s arc well away from their predations. Red-eyed with exhaustion, miserable in his solitude, and at war with himself. He had never lain with a woman, after all. He had no idea what it involved, beyond those shocking childhood memories of seeing, through the open doorways of huts, adults clamped round one another grunting and moaning and sighing. But they had been Awl-not these savage, terrifying Barghast who coupled with shouts and barks of laughter, the men bellowing like bears and the women clawing and scratching and biting.

No, none of it made any sense. For, even as he endeavoured to escape these mad women with their painted faces and bright eyes, he wanted what they offered. He fled his own desire, and each time he did so the torture he inflicted upon himself stung all the worse.

Such misery as no man deserves!

He should have rejoiced in his freedom, here on the vast plains so close to the Awl’dan. To see the herds of bhederin-which his own people had never thought to tame-and the scattering of rodara, too, that the surviving children of the Awl now cared for-and to know that the cursed Letherii were not hunting them, not slaughtering them… he should be exulting in the moment.

Was he not alive? Safe? And was he not the Clan Leader of the Awl? Undisputed ruler of a vast tribe of a few score children, some of whom had already forgotten their own language, and now spoke the barbaric foreign tongue of the Barghast, and had taken to painting their bodies with red and yellow ochre and braiding their hair?

He rode his horse at a slow canter, already two or more leagues from the Gadra encampment. The herds had swung round to the southeast the night before, so he had seen no one on his journey out. When he first caught sight of the Barghast dogs, he thought they might be wolves, but upon seeing Torrent they altered their route straight towards him-something no pack of wolves would do-and as they drew closer he could see their short-haired, mottled hides, their shortened muzzles and small ears. Larger than any Awl or Letherii breed, the beasts were singularly savage. Until this moment, they had ignored Torrent, beyond the occasional baring of fangs as they trotted past in the camp.

He slipped his lance from its sling and anchored it in the stirrup step just inside his right foot. Six dogs, loping closer-they were, he realized, exhausted.

Torrent reined in to await them, curious.

The beasts slowed, and then encircled the warrior and his horse. He watched as they sank down on to their bellies, jaws hanging, tongues lolling and slick with thick threads of saliva.

Confused, Torrent settled back in the saddle. Could he just ride through this strange circle, continue on his way?

If these were Awl dogs, what would their behaviour signify? He shook his head-maybe if they were drays, then he would imagine that an enemy had drawn near. Frowning, Torrent stood in his stirrups and squinted to the north, whence the dogs had come. Nothing… and then he shaded his eyes. Yes, nothing on the horizon, but above that horizon-circling birds? Possibly.

What to do? Return to the camp, find a warrior and tell him or her of what he had seen? Your dogs found me. They laid themselves down. Far to the north… some birds. Torrent snorted. He gathered the reins and nudged his mount between two of the prone dogs, and then swung his horse northward. Birds were not worth reporting-he needed to see what had drawn them.

Of the six dogs he left behind him, two fell into his wake, trotting. The remaining four rose and set out for the camp to the south.

In the time of Redmask, Torrent had known something close to contentment. The Awl had found someone to follow. A true leader, a saviour. And when the great victories had come-the death of hundreds of Letherii invaders in fierce, triumphant battles-they were proof of Redmask’s destiny. He could not be certain when things began to go wrong, but he recalled the look in Toc Anaster’s eye, the cynical set of his foreign face, and with every comment the man uttered, the solid foundations of Torrent’s faith seemed to reverberate, as if struck deadly blows… until the first cracks arrived, until Torrent’s very zeal was turned upon itself, jaded and mocking, and what had been a strength became a weakness.

Such was the power of scepticism. A handful of words to dismantle certainty, like seeds flung at a stone wall-tender greens and tiny roots, yes, but in time they would take down that wall.

Contentment alone should have made Torrent suspicious, but it had reared up before him like a god of purity and willingly he had knelt, head bowed, to take comfort in its shadow. In any other age, Redmask could not have succeeded in commanding the Awl. Without the desperation, without the succession of defeats and mounting losses, without extinction itself looming before them like a cliff’s edge, the tribes would have driven him away-as they had done once before. Yes, they had been wiser, then.

Some forces could not be defeated, and so it was with the Letherii. Their hunger for land, their need to possess and rule over all that they possessed-these were terrible desires that spread like the plague, poisoning the souls of the enemy. Once the fever of seeing the world as they did erupted like fire in one’s brain, the war was over, the defeat absolute and irreversible.

Even these Barghast-his barbaric saviours-were doomed. Akrynnai traders set up camps up against the picket lines. D’rhasilhani horse sellers drove herd after herd in a mostly futile parade past the encampment, and every now and then a Barghast warrior would select one of the larger animals, examine it for a time, and then, with a dismissive bark of laughter, send it back to the herd. Before too long, Torrent believed, a breed of sufficient height and girth would arrive, and that would be that.

Invaders did not stay invaders for ever. Eventually, they became no different from every other tribe or people in a land. Languages muddied, blended, surrendered. Habits were exchanged like currency, and before too long everyone saw the world the same way as everyone else. And if that way was wrong, then misery was assured, for virtually everyone, for virtually ever.

The Awl should have bowed to the Letherii. They would be alive now, instead of lying in jumbled heaps of mouldering bones in the mud of a dead sea.

Redmask had sought to stop time itself. Of course he failed.

Sometimes, belief was suicide.

Torrent had cast away his faiths, his certainties, his precious beliefs. He did nothing to resist the young ones losing their language. He saw the ochre paint on their faces, the spiked hair, and was indifferent to it. Yes, he was the leader of the Awl, the last there would ever be, and it was his task to oversee the peaceful obliteration of his culture. Ways will pass. He vowed he would not miss them.

No, Torrent wore no copper mask. Not any more. And his face was clear as his eyes.

He slowed his horse’s canter as soon as he made out the corpses, the bodies scattered about. Crows and gold-beaked vultures moved here and there in the carrion dance, whilst rhinazan flapped about, disturbing capemoths into flight-sudden blossoms of white petals that settled almost as quickly as they appeared. A scene of the plains that Torrent knew well.

A troop of Barghast had been ambushed. Slaughtered.

He rode closer.

No obvious tracks, neither foot nor hoof, led away from the killing ground. He saw how the Barghast had been in close formation-and that was odd, contrary to what Torrent had seen of their patrols. Perhaps, he thought, they had contracted defensively, which suggested an enemy in overwhelming numbers. But then… there was no sign of that. And whoever had murdered these warriors must have taken their own dead with them-he walked his horse in a circuit round the bodies-saw no trailing smears of blood, no swaths through the grasses to mark dragged heels.

The bodies, he realized then, had not been looted. Their beautiful weapons were scattered about, the blades devoid of blood.

Torrent felt his nerves awaken, as if brushed by something unholy. He looked once more at the corpses-not a contraction, but a converging… upon a single foe. And the wounds-despite the efforts of the scavengers-displayed nothing of what one would expect. As if they closed upon a beast, and see how the blows struck downward upon them. A plains bear? No, there are none left. The last surviving skin of one of those beasts-among my people-was said to be seven generations old. He remembered the thing, vast, yes, but tattered. And the claws had been removed and since lost. Still…

Torrent glanced at the two dogs as they trotted up. The beasts looked preternaturally cowed, stubby tails ducked, the glances they sent him beseeching and frightened. If they had been Awl drays, they would now be moving on to the enemy’s trail, eager, hackles raised. He scowled down at the quivering beasts.

He swung his horse back round and set off for the Gadra camp. The dogs hurried after him.

A beast, yet one that left no trail whatsoever. A ghost creature.

Perhaps his solitary rides had come to an end. He would have to surrender to those eager women. They could take away his unease, he hoped.

Leave the hunt to the Barghast. Give their shamans something worthwhile to do, instead of getting drunk on D’ras beer every night. Report to the chief, and then be done with it.

He already regretted riding out to find the bodies. For all he knew the ghost creature was close, had in fact been watching him. Or something of its foul sorcery lingered upon the scene, and now he was marked, and it would find him no matter where he went. He could almost smell that sorcery, clinging to his clothes. Acrid, bitter as a snake’s belly.

Setoc, who had once been named Stayandi, and who in her dreams was witness to strange scenes of familiar faces speaking in strange tongues, of laughter and love and tenderness-an age in the time before her beasthood-stood facing the empty north.

She had seen the four dogs come into the camp, in itself an event unworthy of much attention, and if the patrol was late in returning, well, perhaps they had surprised a mule deer and made a kill, thus explaining the absence of two dogs from the pack, as the beasts would have been strapped to a travois to carry back the meat. Explanations such as these served for the moment, despite the obvious flaws in logic (these four would have remained with the patrol in such a case, feeding on the butchered carcass and its offal and whatnot); although the truth of it was Setoc spared few thoughts for what interpretations the nearby Barghast might kick up in small swirls of agitated dust, as they tracked with their eyes the sweat-lathered beasts, or for their growing alarm when the dogs then sank down on to their bellies.

So, she watched as a dozen or so warriors gathered weapons and slowly converged on the exhausted beasts, and then returned her attention to the north.

Yes, the animals stank of death.

And the wild wolves in the emptiness beyond, who had given her life, had howled with the dawn their tale of terror.

Yes, her first family ever remained close by, accorded a kind of holy protection in the legend that was the girl’s finding-no Barghast would hunt the animals, and now even the Akrynnai had been told the story of her birth among the pack, of the lone warrior’s discovery of her. Spirit-blessed, they now all said when looking upon her. The holder of a thousand hearts.

At first, that last title had confused Setoc, but her memories slowly awakened, with each day that she grew older, taller, sharper-eyed. Yes, she held within herself