The tears that started from their eyes burned him for the betrayer and impostor he felt and he moved on quickly, clearing his throat and wiping his own eyes. Damn them for tormenting me! Don’t they see I’m not what they think? That they are casting upon me the weight of their own hopes? Their own dreams? No one should be asked to carry such a burden. It’s impossible!
He found a circle of guards turning everyone away from Martal’s tent. They’d lifted her from her horse and now she lay within. The same bonecutter was removing her armour once more and cursing her and her aides as he did so. The woman’s face was white with agony and blood loss, wet with sweat — or perhaps shock. She was barely conscious, her eyes staring sightlessly upwards.
The clenched, pale lips parted. ‘Carr has command,’ she hissed through clamped teeth.
‘You still command,’ Ivanr said. ‘You will always command.’
‘Ivanr…’ she said, peering around, straining.
He knelt at her side. ‘Yes?’
‘I must be seen tomorrow! I must… no matter what!’ Ivanr looked to the bonecutter, who shook his head. ‘Do you understand?’
‘Yes, Martal,’ he answered, simply to quiet her. ‘I understand.’
She eased back, letting go a taut breath. ‘Tell him I tried. I tried my best. I would so like to have seen him again.’
‘Who?’
‘My old commander. Tell him that, won’t you?’
Ivanr could not answer. Her old commander! The Malazan… Greymane! ‘Yes,’ he managed, clearing his throat, hardly able to speak.
‘That’s enough,’ the bonecutter said. ‘Everyone out.’
Straightening outside the tent, it took all the strength Ivanr possessed to fix upon his face an expression of resolve, even one of firm optimism. He entered the gathered crowd, which parted before him. He squeezed shoulders, set hands on bowed heads, and answered their questions and worries: yes, she was wounded but she was recovering. She would lead them tomorrow. Never fear. Tomorrow they would finish the Imperials. The Black Queen would see them through again.
Yet he hardly heard his words or saw their faces. Instead Martal’s parting words haunted him. Her old commander… Greymane. The
Betrayer… Stonewielder. Tell him she had tried… Tried what? I thought she’d been fighting for us! Yet what if all this time she’d been serving his command? And he was now back! But no — that was too incredible, too far-fetched. More likely she saw herself as remaining loyal to his… what? His… intent. Perhaps that was it. She’d been honouring his intent. And that — according to the Lady’s priesthood — nothing less than the annihilation of their faith itself.
But Beneth chose her! He chose her. A neat dovetailing of purpose? Nothing more? Perhaps so.
Still, he was shaken.
That night sleep would not come. He lay restless until, giving up and rising, he threw a long loose jerkin over his shirt and trousers and went to a gap in his tent flap to stare out at the night. Overcast, as usual, the winter clouds scudding so low as to be almost within reach, yet stubbornly yielding none of their snow. Occasionally stars winked through openings only to disappear. Torches of pickets upon the walls flickered orange and red. The smell of an army in the field wafted over him: wet leather, unwashed bodies, the stink of privies too close for comfort.
‘She’s dead,’ a man’s voice whispered behind him.
He started, tensing. The fellow was an old man in dirty torn shirt, vest and dark trousers, bearded, with wild grey-shot hair. His eyes seemed to glow in the gloom of the tent. ‘Dead?’ Ivanr asked, his throat dry, even though he knew.
The man gestured him back in with a crook of a finger. ‘First Beneth, now Martal. Leaving… you.’
Ivanr considered rolling backwards, a feint to the right…
Deep crimson flame alighted on the man’s hand and he bared yellowed teeth in a knowing smile. Ivanr let the flap close. ‘You are a mage. The Lady doesn’t usually permit such things…’
‘Special dispensation for those who cleave to the path of the righteous.’
‘Which would be…?’
The smile twisted into a sneer. ‘Save your sophistry for the sheep outside.’ He gestured and a vice clamped itself round Ivanr’s body. Invisible bonds tightened like rope in a crushing agony. He could not breathe, could not shout. His vision darkened.
Then relief as the bonds dissipated, seeming to shred. Ivanr drew a shuddering breath. Blinking, he saw the mage frowning, uncertain.
‘There is some sort of passive protection upon you,’ he muttered. ‘How…’ His eyes widened and he glanced about in sudden alarm. ‘No…’
The tent flap was thrust aside and an old woman entered — if anything she appeared even older than Sister Gosh. She was lean and wiry, dark as aged leather, her wiry hair up in a tight bun. The man bowed, his tongue wetting his lips. ‘Sister Esa.’
The old woman, Sister Esa apparently, was pulling the gloves from her hands. ‘I was hoping you would come, Totsin.’
Totsin edged around the tent as if searching for a way out. ‘Now… Sister Esa… let’s not jump to conclusions.’
The old woman’s gloves came off, revealing hands twisted like claws, long nails broken and thick like talons and black with dirt. She gave a strange gurgling hiss and her lips drew back over teeth now black as well, and needle sharp. Ivanr flinched away, horrified. Soletaken? She launched herself upon Totsin.
The two wrestled in silence, the woman straining to set her claws or teeth into the man, he holding her wrists, head twisting aside. They fought, gasping and panting. The woman’s hands and teeth edged ever closer to the man’s flesh until she shuddered suddenly, her back arching in anguish. She fell to the floor, spasms twisting her limbs. The old man straightened his clothes and spat upon her.
‘The Lady is with me, Esa. And now she has you…’
Ivanr leapt to his pallet and spun, his shortsword in hand, to slash Totsin. Incredibly, the man flicked his head aside, the blade merely gashing across his face. He clamped a hand to his head. Blood welled between the fingers. Ivanr closed, but searing pain bit into one ankle and he felclass="underline" the old woman had him.
‘I leave you to the Lady,’ Totsin gasped, rage and agony in his voice. He disappeared in a moil of greyness that enveloped him then vanished, leaving Ivanr alone with Sister Esa. He almost called for help, but caught himself — gods, if this got out it would terrify everyone!
The hand clenched, its talons cutting into his flesh and grating the bone. The head rose, eyes rolled back all white. The hair on Ivanr’s neck stirred as a voice gurgled from the throat: ‘Embrace me, Ivanr, and I will forgive you…’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and brought the blade down through the neck.
Some time later steps in the tent roused him and he leapt up, short-sword readied. It was Sister Gosh, pipe in mouth, staring down at the wrapped corpse of Sister Esa. A sudden fury took him that only now did she appear. ‘Where were you?’ he demanded. ‘Together you might’ve taken him!’
She shook her head. ‘I told her not to step in. We can’t fight the Lady.’
Ivanr fell back on to his pallet, exhausted. ‘Well, he got away.’
She let out a lungful of smoke. ‘I think we’ll meet yet.’
‘And then what?’
She drew hard on the pipe and its embers blazed. She peered at him from deep within the crow’s feet wrinkles at her eyes. ‘Then we’ll see.’
Ivanr grunted at the predictable, maddening opaqueness. He hung his arms over his knees. ‘So… is she really gone?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did he…’
‘No. The wound.’
He grunted again, accepting that. In other lands, he knew, such wounds could be treated by healers with access to Warrens. But here, the Lady denied all. That alone was more than enough reason for her destruction. How many needless deaths all these ages…? ‘Well,’ he said, gazing at the dirt floor, ‘I don’t know if we’ll last tomorrow.’