Drink deep, Black Coral.
And dance, yes, dance until you die.
Monkrat struggled his way up the muddy, root-tangled slope with the last two children in his arms. He glanced up to see Spindle crouched at the crest, smeared in clay, looking like a damned gargoyle. But there was no glee in the staring eyes, only exhaustion and dread.
The unnatural rain had reached out to this broken, half-shattered forest. The old trenches and berms were black with slime, the wreckage of retaining walls re shy;minding him of rotting bones and teeth, as if the hillside’s flesh had been torn away to reveal a giant, ravaged face, which now grinned vacuously at the grey and brown sky.
The two ex-Bridgeburners had managed to find an even twenty children, four of them so close to death they’d weighed virtually nothing, hanging limp in their arms. The two men had worked through the entire night ferrying them up to the entrenchments, down into the tunnels where they could be out of the worst of the rain. They had scrounged blankets, some food, clean water in clay jugs.
As Monkrat drew closer Spindle reached down to help him scrabble over the edge. The scrawny girls dangled like straw dolls, heads lolling, as Monkrat passed each one up to Spindle, who stumbled away with them, sloshing through the muddy rivulet of the trench.
Monkrat sagged, stared down at the ground to keep the rain from his eyes and mouth as he drew in deep breaths.
A lifetime of soldiering, aye, the kind that made miserable slogs like this one old news, as familiar as a pair of leaking leather boots. So what made this one feel so different?
He could hear someone crying in the tunnel, and then Spindle’s voice, soothing, reassuring.
And gods, how Monkrat wanted to weep.
Different, aye, so very different.
‘Soldiers,’ he muttered, ‘come in all sorts.’
He’d been one kind for a long time, and had grown so sick of it he’d just walked away. And now Spindle showed up, to take him and drag him inside out and make him into a different kind of soldier. And this one, why, it felt right. It felt proper. He’d no idea. .
He looked over as Spindle stumbled into view. ‘Let’s leave it at this, Spin,’ he begged. ‘Please.’
‘I want to stick a knife in Gradithan’s face,’ Spindle growled. ‘I want to cut out his black tongue. I want to drag the bastard up here so every one of them tykes can see what I do to him-’
‘You do that and I’ll kill you myself,’ Monkrat vowed, baring his teeth. ‘They seen too much as it is, Spin.’
‘They get to see vengeance-’
‘It won’t feel like vengeance to them,’ Monkrat said, ‘it’ll just be more of the same fucking horror, the same cruel madness. You want vengeance, do it in private, Spindle. Do it down there. But don’t expect my help — I won’t have none of it.’
Spindle stared at him. ‘That’s a different row of knots you’re showing me here, Monkrat. Last night, you was talking it up ’bout how we’d run him down and do him good-’
‘I changed my mind, Spin. These poor runts did that.’ He hesitated. ‘You did that, making me do what we just done.’ He then laughed harshly. ‘Fancy this, I’m feeling. . redeemed. Now ain’t that ironic, Spin.’
Spindle slowly settled back against the trench wall, and then sank down until he was sitting in the mud. ‘Shit. How about that. And I walked all this way, looking for just what you done and found here. I was needing something, I thought they was answers. . but I didn’t even know the right questions.’ He grimaced and spat. ‘I still don’t.’
Monkrat shrugged. ‘Me neither.’
‘But you been redeemed.’ And that statement was almost bitter sounding.
Monkrat struggled with his thoughts. ‘When that hits you — me, when it hit me, well, what it’s feeling like right now, Spin, it’s like redemption finds a new meaning. It’s when you don’t need answers no more, because you know that any shy;body promising answers is fulla crap. Priest, priestess, god, goddess. Fulla crap, you understanding me?’
‘That don’t sound right,’ Spindle objected, ‘To be redeemed, someone’s got to do the redeeming,’
‘But maybe it don’t have to be someone else. Maybe it’s just doing something, being something, someone, and feeling that change inside — it’s like you went and redeemed yourself. And nobody else’s opinion matters. And you know that you still got all them questions, right ones, wrong ones, and maybe you’ll be able to find an answer or two, maybe not. But it don’t matter. The only thing that matters is you now know ain’t nobody else has got a damned thing to do with it, with any of it. That’s the redemption I’m talking about here.’
Spindle leaned his head back and closed his eyes. ‘Lucky you, Monkrat. No, I mean that. I do.’
‘You idiot. I was rotting here, seeing everything and doing nothing. If I now ended up someplace else, it’s all because of you. Shit, you just done what a real priest should do — no fucking advice, no bullshit wisdom, no sympathy, none of that crap. Just a damned kick in the balls and get on with doing what you know is right. Anyway, I won’t forget what you done, Spin. I won’t ever forget.’
Spindle opened his eyes, and Monkrat saw an odd frown on the man’s face as he stared skyward.
And then he too looked up.
A lone figure walked towards the Temple of Darkness, moccasins whispering on the slick cobbles. One hand was held up, from which thin delicate chains whirled round and round, the rings at their ends flashing. Thick rain droplets burst apart in that spinning arc, spraying against the face and the half-smile curving the lips.
Someone within that building was resisting. Was it Rake himself? Clip dearly hoped so, and if it was true, then the so-called Son of Darkness was weak, pathetic, and but moments from annihilation. Clip might have harboured demands and accusations once, all lined up and arrayed like arrows for the plucking. Bow-string thrumming, barbed truths winging unerringly through the air to strike home again and again. Yes, he had imagined such a scene. Had longed for it.
What value hard judgement when there was no one to hurt with it? Where was satisfaction? Pleasure in seeing the wounds? No, hard judgement was like rage. It thrived on victims. And the delicious flush of superiority in the delivery.
Perhaps the Dying God would reward him, for he so wanted victims. He had, after all, so much rage to give them. Listen to me, Lord Rake. They slaughtered everyone in the Andara. Everyone! And where were you, when your worshippers were dying? Where were you? They called upon you. They begged you.
Yes, Clip would break him. He owed his people that much.
He studied the temple as he approached, and he could sense familiarity in its lines, echoes of the Andara, and Bluerose. But this building seemed rawer, cruder, as if the stone inadvertently mimicked rough-hewn wood. Memories honoured? Or elegance forgotten? No matter.
An instant’s thought shattered the temple doors, and he felt the one within recoil in pain.
He ascended the steps, walked through the smoke and dust.
Rings spinning, kelyk streaming.
The domed roof was latticed with cracks, and the rain poured down in thick black threads. He saw a woman standing at the back, her face a mask of horror. And he saw an old man down on his knees in the centre of the mosaic floor, his head bowed.
Clip halted, frowned. This was his opponent? This useless, broken, feeble thing?
Where was Anomander Rake?
He. . he is not here. He is not even here! I am his Mortal Sword! And he is not even here!
He screamed in fury. And power lashed out, rushing in a wall that tore tesserae from the broad floor as it ripped its way out from him, that shattered the pillars ringing the chamber so that they toppled back like felled trees. That engulfed the puny old man-