Seventy thousand or two hundred thousand. The destruction of Bivatt and her army. Neither mattered in the greater scheme of things. The Letherii Empire would throw back these new invaders. Failing that, they would bribe them away from the Bolkando; indeed, turn them round to fashion an alliance that would sweep into the border kingdoms in waves of brutal slaughter.
Perhaps, she suddenly realized, there was a way through this… She glanced about until she saw one, of her Finadds. Walked over. ‘Prepare a delegation, Finadd. We will seek parley with this new enemy.’
‘Yes sir.’ The man rushed off.
‘Atri-Preda!’
Bivatt turned to see Brohl Handar approach. The Overseer did not, at this moment, look like an imperial governor. He was covered in gore, gripping his sword in one hand thick with dried blood.
‘It seems we are not too late after all,’ he said.
‘These are not Awl, Overseer.’
‘I see that clearly enough. I see also, Atri-Preda, that you and I will die here today.’ He paused, then grunted a laugh. ‘Do you recall, Bivatt, warning me that Letur Anict sought to kill me? Yet here I have marched with you and your army, all this way-’
‘Overseer,’ she cut in. ‘The Factor infiltrated my forces with ten assassins. All of whom are dead.’
His eyes slowly widened.
Bivatt continued, ‘Have you seen the tall soldier often at your side? I set him the task of keeping you alive, and he has done all that I commanded. Unfortunately, Overseer, I believe that he shall soon fail at it.’ Unless I can negotiate our way out of this.
She faced the advancing enemy once more. They were now raising standards. Only a few, and identical to each other. Bivatt squinted in the afternoon light.
And recognized those standards.
She went cold inside. ‘Too bad,’ she said.
Atri-Preda?’
‘I recognize those standards, Overseer. There will be no parley. Nor any chance of surrender.’
‘Those warriors,’ Brohl Handar said after a moment, ‘are the ones who have been raising the cairns.’
‘Yes.’
‘They have been with us, then, for some time.’
‘Their scouts at the least, Overseer. Longer than you think.’
Atri-Preda.’
She faced him, studied his grave expression. ‘Overseer?’
‘Die well, Bivatt.’
‘I intend to. And you. Die well, Brohl Handar.’
Brohl walked away from her then, threading through a line of soldiers, his eyes fixed on one in particular. Tall, with a gentle face streaked now in mud.
The Tiste Edur caught the man’s gaze, and answered the easy smile with one of his own.
‘Overseer, I see you have had an exciting day.’
‘I see the same on you,’ Brohl replied, ‘and it seems there is more to come.’
‘Yes, but I tell you this, I am pleased enough. For once, there is solid ground beneath me.’
The Overseer thought to simply thank the soldier, for keeping him alive this long. Instead, he said nothing for a long moment.
The soldier rubbed at his face, then said, ‘Sir, your Arapay await you, no doubt. See, the enemy readies itself.’
And yes, this is what Brohl Handar wanted. ‘My Arapay will fight well enough without me, Letherii. I would ask one final boon of you.’
‘Then ask, sir.’
‘I would ask for the privilege of fighting at your side. Until we fall.’
The man’s soft eyes widened slightly, then all at once the smile returned. ‘Choose, then, Overseer. Upon my right or upon my left.’
Brohl Handar chose the man’s left. As for guarding his own unprotected flank, he was indifferent.
Somehow, the truth of that pleased him.
In the city of Drene at this time, riots raged over the entire north half of the city, and with the coming night the mayhem would spread into the more opulent south districts.
Venitt Sathad, granted immediate audience with Factor Letur Anict-who awaited him standing before his desk, his round, pale face glistening with sweat, and in whose eyes the steward saw, as he walked towards the man, a kind of bemusement at war with deeper stresses-walked forward, in neither haste nor swagger. Rather, a walk of singular purpose.
He saw Letur Anict blink suddenly, a rapid reassessment, even as he continued right up to the man.
And drove a knife into the Factor’s left eye, deep into the brain.
The weight of Letur Anict, as he collapsed, pulled the weapon free.
Venitt Sathad bent to clean the blade off on the Factor’s silk robe; then he straightened, turned for the door, and departed.
Letur Anict had a wife. He had children. He’d had guards, but Orbyn Truthfinder had taken care of them.
Venitt Sathad set out to eliminate all heirs.
He no longer acted as an agent of the Liberty Consign. Now, at this moment, he was an Indebted.
Who had had enough.
Hetan left her husband kneeling beside the body of Toc the Younger. She could do no more for him, and this was not a failing on her part. The raw grief of an Imass was like a bottomless well, one that could snatch the unsuspecting and send them plummeting down into unending darkness.
Once, long ago now, Tool had stood before his friend, and his friend had not known him, and for the Imass-mortal once more, after thousands upon thousands of years-this had been the source of wry amusement, in the inanner of a trickster’s game where the final pleasure but awaited revelation of the truth.
Tool, in his unhuman patience, had waited a long time to unveil that revelation. Too long, now. His friend had died, unknowing. The trickster’s game had delivered a wound from which, she suspected, her husband might never recover.
And so, she now knew in her heart, there might be other losses on this tragic day. A wife losing her husband. Two daughters losing their adopted father, and one son his true father.
She walked to where Kilava Onass had stationed herself to watch the battle, and it was no small mercy that she had elected not to veer into her Soletaken form, that, indeed, she had left the clans of the White Face Barghast the freedom to do what they did best: kill in a frenzy of explosive savagery.
Hetan saw that Kilava stood near where a lone rider had fallen-killed by the weapons of the K’Chain Che’Malle, she noted. A typically vicious slaying, stirring in her memories of the time when she herself had stood before such terrible creatures, a memory punctuated with the sharp pang of grief for a brother who had fallen that day.
Kilava was ignoring the legless, one-armed body lying ten paces to her left. Hetan’s gaze settled upon it in sudden curiosity.
‘Sister,’ she said to Kilava-deliberate in her usage of the one title that Kilava most disliked-‘see how this one wears a mask. Was not the war leader of the Awl so masked?’
‘I imagine so,’ Kilava said, ‘since he was named Redmask.’
‘Well,’ Hetan said, walking to the corpse, ‘this one is wearing the garb of an Awl.’
‘But he was slain by the K’Chain Che’Malle.’
‘Yes, I see that. Even so…’ She crouched down, studied that peculiar mask, the strange, minute scales beneath the spatters of mud. ‘This mask, Kilava, it is the hide of a K’Chain, I would swear it, although the scales are rather tiny-’
‘Matron’s throat,’ Kilava replied.
Hetan glanced over. ‘Truly?’ Then she reached down and tugged the mask away from the man’s face. A long look down into those pale features.
Hetan rose, tossing the mask to one side. ‘You were right, it’s not Redmask.’
Kilava asked, ‘How do you know that?’
‘Well, Awl garb or not, this man was Letherii.’
Hood, High King of Death, Collector of the Fallen, the undemanding master of more souls than he could count-even had he been so inclined, which he was not-stood over the body, waiting.