'Captain will do, Twist. I don't need reminding of my precious blood. Aware, are they? How, and just as important, how do you know they know?'
'We stand on their land, Captain. The soul beneath us is the blood of their ancestors. Blood whispers. The Moranth hear.'
'Surprised you can hear anything inside that helm of yours,' Paran muttered, tired and irritated. 'Never mind. I want you over us anyway.'
The commander slowly nodded.
The captain turned and surveyed his company. Veteran soldiers — virtually every one of them. Silent, frighteningly professional. He wondered what it would be like to see out through the eyes of any one of them, through the layers of the soul's exhaustion that Paran had barely begun to find within himself. Soldiers now and soldiers to the end of their days — none would dare leave to find peace. Solicitude and calm would unlock that safe prison of cold control — the only thing keeping them sane.
Whiskeyjack had said to Paran that, once this war was done, the Bridgeburners would be retired. Forcibly if necessary.
Armies possessed traditions, and these had less to do with discipline than with the fraught truths of the human spirit. Rituals at the beginning, shared among each and every recruit. And rituals at the end, a formal closure that was recognition — recognition in every way imaginable. They were necessary. Their gift was a kind of sanity, a means of coping. A soldier cannot be sent away without guidance, cannot be abandoned and left lost in something unrecognizable and indifferent to their lives. Remembrance and honouring the ineffable. Yet, when it's done, what is the once-soldier? What does he or she become? An entire future spent walking backward, eyes on the past — its horrors, its losses, its grief, its sheer heart-bursting living? The ritual is a turning round, a facing forward, a gentle and respectful hand like a guide on the shoulder.
Sorrow was a steady, faint susurration within Paran, a tide that neither ebbed nor flowed, yet threatened to drown him none the less.
And when the White Faces find us. each and every man and woman here could end up with slit throats, and Queen help me, I begin to wonder if it would be a mercy. Queen help me.
A swift flutter of wings and the quorl was airborne, the Black Moranth commander perched on the moulded saddle.
Paran watched them rise for a moment longer, his stomach churning, then turned to his company. 'On your feet, Bridgeburners. Time to march.'
The dark, close air was filled with sickly mist. Quick Ben felt himself moving through it, his will struggling like a swimmer against a savage current. After a few more moments he withdrew his questing, slipped sideways into yet another warren.
It fared little better. Some kind of infection had seeped in from the physical world beyond, was corrupting every sorcerous path he attempted. Fighting nausea, he pushed himself forward.
This has the stench of the Crippled God … yet the enemy whose lands we approach is the Pannion Seer. Granted, an obvious means of self-defence, sufficient to explain the coincidence. Then again, since when do I believe in coincidences? No, this comingling of scents hinted at a deeper truth. That bastard ascendant may well be chained, his body broken, but I can feel his hand — even here — twitching at invisible threads.
The faintest of smiles touched the wizard's lips. A worthy challenge.
He shifted warrens once again, and found himself on the trail of … something. A presence was ahead, leaving a cooled, strangely lifeless wake. Well, perhaps no surprise — I'm striding the edge of Hood's own realm now, after all. None the less … Unease pattered within him like sleet. He pushed his nervousness down. Hood's warren was resisting the poison better than many others Quick Ben had attempted.
The ground beneath him was clay, damp and clammy, the cold reaching through the wizard's moccasins. Faint, colourless light bled down from a formless sky that seemed no higher than a ceiling. The haze filling the air felt oily, thick enough on either side to make the path seem like a tunnel.
Quick Ben's steps slowed. The clay ground was no longer smooth. Deep incisions crossed it, glyphs in columns and panels. Primitive writing, the wizard suspected, yet… He crouched and reached down. 'Freshly cut … or timeless.' At a faint tingle from the contact he withdrew his hand. 'Wards, maybe. Bindings.'
Stepping carefully to avoid the glyphs, Quick Ben padded forward.
He skirted a broad sinkhole filled with painted pebbles — offerings to Hood from some holy temple, no doubt — benedictions and prayers in a thousand languages from countless supplicants. And there they lie. Unnoticed, ignored or forgotten. Even clerks die, Hood — why not put them to good use cleaning all this up? Of all our traits to survive the passage of death, surely obsessiveness must be counted high among them.