‘Goodbye, Wreneck.’
Then, remembering his regrets after he saw Orfantal off, he lunged to her and hugged her tight, and all the pain he felt when he did that, from the sword-wound, from everything else, seemed right.
She seemed to shrink in his arms, and then she was pushing him away, taking hold of his shoulders to turn him round and then giving him a little push.
He walked through the gateway.
Wreneck would cross the fields, as he had promised. But he wasn’t going home. He was going off to make things right, because even in this world some things just had to be made right. His ma would still be there when he finally went home, after he’d done everything he needed to do. He could fix things with her then.
But now, he would wait for dusk, hidden from sight, and then go and collect the spear he had buried under the snow near the old stone trough.
He was eleven, and it felt as if the year before it had been the longest one in his life. As if he’d been ten for ever. But that was the thing about growing older. He’d never be ten again.
The soldiers went east, into the burned forest.
He would find them there. And do what was right.
* * *
‘What are you doing?’ Glyph quietly asked.
Startled, the dishevelled man looked up. He was crouched beside a heap of stones that had been pulled from the frozen ground along the edge of the marsh. His hands were filthy and spotted with blood from scrapes and broken fingernails. He was wearing a scorched wolf hide, but it didn’t belong to him. Nearby, left on the snow-smeared ground, was a Legion sword and scabbard and belt.
The stranger said nothing, eyes on the bow in Glyph’s hand, the arrow notched in the string, and the tension of the grip.
‘You are in my family’s camp,’ Glyph said. ‘You have buried them under stones.’
‘Yes,’ the man whispered. ‘I found them here. The bodies. I – I could not bear to see them. I am sorry if I have done wrong.’ He slowly straightened. ‘You can kill me if you like. I won’t regret leaving this world. I won’t.’
‘It is not our way,’ Glyph said, nodding down at the stones.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’
‘When the soul leaves, the flesh is nothing. We carry our dead kin into the marsh. Or the forest where it is deep and thick and unlit.’ He waved slightly with the bow. ‘But here, there was no point. You take the bodies away to keep your home clean, but no one lives here any more.’
‘It seems,’ said the man, ‘that you do.’
‘They had rotted down by the time I returned. No more than bones. They were,’ Glyph added, ‘easy to live with.’
‘I would not have had the courage for that,’ the stranger said.
‘Are you a Legion soldier?’
The man glanced across at his sword. ‘I killed one. I cut him down. He was in Scara Bandaris’s troop – the ones who deserted and rode away with the captain. I went with them for a time. But then I killed a man, and for the murder I committed Scara Bandaris banished me from his company.’
‘Why did he not take your life?’
‘When he discovered the truth of me,’ the man said, ‘he deemed life the greater punishment. He was right.’
‘The man you killed – what did he do to you? Your face is twisted. Scarred and bent. He did that?’
‘No. This face you see has been mine now for some time. Well, it’s always been mine. No.’ He hesitated, and then shrugged. ‘He spoke cruel words. He cut me with them, again and again. Even the others took pity on me. Anyway, he was not well liked, and none regretted his death. None but me, that is. Those words, while cruel, were all true.’
‘In your eyes, I can see,’ Glyph said, ‘you yearn for my arrow.’
‘Yes,’ the man whispered.
Slipping the arrow’s notch from the string, Glyph lowered his bow. ‘I have been hunting Legion soldiers,’ he said, stepping forward.
‘You have reason,’ the man said.
‘Yes. We have reasons. You have yours, and I have mine. They wield your sword. They guide my arrows. They make souls leave bodies and leave bodies to lie rotting on the ground.’ He brushed the cloth hiding the lower half of his face. ‘They are the masks we hide behind.’
The man started, as if he had been struck, and then he turned away. ‘I wear no mask,’ he said.
‘Will you kill more soldiers?’ Glyph asked.
‘A few, yes,’ said the man, collecting up his sword-belt and strapping it on. ‘I have a list.’
‘A list, and good reasons.’
He glanced across at Glyph. ‘Yes.’
‘I name myself Glyph.’
‘Narad.’
‘I have some food, from the soldiers. I will share it with you, for the kindness you meant when burying my beloved family. And then I will tell you a story.’
‘A story?’
‘And when I am done with my story, you can decide.’
‘Decide what, Glyph?’
‘If you will hunt with me.’
Narad hesitated. ‘I am not good with friends.’
Shrugging, Glyph went over to the hearth. He saw that Narad had taken away the stones that had ringed the ashes and cinders, adding them to the cairn. He set about finding some smaller stones, to build up around the hearth and so block the wind while he set to lighting a fire.
‘The people who fished the lake,’ he said as he drew out his fire-making kit and a small bag of dried tinder.
‘This is your story?’
‘Not theirs. But of the Last Fish. The story is his, but it begins with the people who fished the lake.’
Narad removed his sword again and let it drop. ‘There’s little wood left to burn,’ he said.
‘I have what I need. Please, sit.’
‘Last Fish, is it? I think this will be a sad story.’
‘No, it is an angry story.’ Glyph looked up, met the man’s misaligned eyes. ‘I am that Last Fish. I have come from the shore. This story I will tell, it has far to go. I cannot yet see its end. But I am that Last Fish.’
‘Then you are far from home.’
Glyph looked around, at the camp of his family, and the scraped ground where there had been bones. He looked to the fringe of brush and the thin ring of trees that still survived. Then he looked up at the empty, silvered sky. The blue was going away, as the Witch on the Throne devoured the roots of light. Finally, he returned his gaze to the man now seated opposite him. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I am far from home.’
Narad grunted. ‘I have never before heard a fish speak.’
‘If you did,’ Glyph asked, looking across at him, ‘what would he say?’
The murderer was silent for a moment, his gaze falling from Glyph’s, and then moving slowly over the ground to settle on the sword lying in the dirty snow. ‘I think … he might say … There will be justice.’
‘My friend,’ Glyph said, ‘on this night, and in this place, you and me. We meet each other’s eyes.’
The struggle that came in answer to Glyph’s words revealed itself on Narad’s twisted face. But then, finally, he looked up, and between these two men the bond of friendship was forged. And Glyph understood something new. Each of us comes to the shore. In our own time and in our own place.
When we are done with one life, and must begin another.
Each of us will come to the shore.
FOUR
‘Lead unto me each and every child.’
A statement so benign, and yet in the mind of the Shake assassin Caplo Dreem it dripped still, steady as the blood from a small but deep wound, a heavy tap upon his thoughts, not quite rhythmic, like the leakage of unsavoury notions best left hidden, or denied outright. There were places into which an imagination could wander, and if he could but bar these places, and stand guard with weapons unsheathed, he would frighten off any who might venture near. And should one persist and draw still closer, he would kill without compunction.
But the old man’s thin lips, wetted by the words, haunted the lieutenant. He would as soon welcome a dying man’s kiss as see, once again, Higher Grace Skelenal grind out that invitation, in that wretched chamber of shadows, with winter creeping in under the doors and through the window joins, making dirty frost on floor and sill. Breath riding the chill air like smoke, the old man’s hands trembling where they feebly gripped the arms of the chair, and the avid thing in the deep pits of his eyes belonging in no temple, in no place proclaimed holy, in no realm of propriety or decency.