Fall of Light (The Kharkanas Trilogy 2)

‘In any case,’ Rebble continued, ‘I looked for Listar but could not find him. But I’ll make another round, look in on his tent and whatnot. He should turn up.’

Wareth watched Rebble walk away. Soldiers were mustering for the breakfast bell. There was little conversation, and not everyone had emerged from tents wearing their armour, although a belted sword adorned every soldier in sight. Had it been as simple as that? Weapons to make these men and women into soldiers?

Setting out, Wareth rolled his shoulders against the permanent ache in his lower back. The heavy chain surcoat wasn’t helping matters, and the round-cornered plates of his shoulder-guards sat like tiles upon a slanted roof, pulling at the muscles of his neck.

He was used to the eyes tracking him as he walked through the camp. Contempt needed no words. The scabbard holding his sword was the same one Castegan had given him, and he found a perverse satisfaction in wearing that brand. He could see little of worth in Rance’s words the night before. The cats needed someone better. His actions upon that day of liberation had, in all likelihood, been a last spasm of decency, undermined in the next breath by unpalatable truths.

The memory of the shovel crushing Ganz’s skull was an echo that never quite left him, and in that manner, it persisted in the way of all things venal. He never saw it coming. No, Ganz was filling up with lust, charging the violence of his strength against women who could not match it. He’d shown the same against me. A thousand small slights to make my confession a weighty tome of reasons, justifications.

But the truth was, I saw my chance and took it.

He never saw it coming. That’s why I struck when I did. Old Wareth the coward, well, he’s no fool. An easy mistake to make, one supposes. But fear only paralyses in the possibilities, and on that day it lagged a step. The man was dead before my terror could even wake. Did I know that at the time? Did I, as Rance and the other cats might believe, act before the coward in me had a chance to stop me?

It was questionable, at least in his own mind, whether the distinction was in any way significant.

He approached the command tent. One of the guards, a regular, offered him a sneer, but said nothing when he passed by and entered the tent.

‘Lieutenant Wareth! Join our morning repast, will you?’

The speaker was Captain Prazek. Wareth had halted a stride into the chamber upon seeing the two captains at a table, breaking their fast with Rance. The woman sat stiffly, the food upon the plate before her untouched. A pewter cup filled with mulled wine was in her red hands, held close against her stomach, the steam rising to her face like a veil of smoke. The look she cast him was blank.

Dathenar had leaned to one side to drag another chair to the table opposite Rance, with the two captains positioned at either end.

Wareth remained standing. ‘My apologies, sirs. But your guest is one of my officers. I feel that I should be present if some issue of discipline is involved.’

‘Honourable sentiment, lieutenant,’ Dathenar said, while around a mouthful of food Prazek grunted agreement. ‘Now, do join us. We shall hope, by virtue of imitation and the pressure to conform, that the witnessing of taking food to mouth will incite in our guest the same inclination, thus putting us all at ease.’

‘She is perhaps wiser than we think,’ Prazek observed after making a scene of swallowing. ‘This sausage mocks th

e pretence. But,’ he added, spearing another piece, ‘I am assured that it lodges in the pit of the belly, and remains silent, if not unobtrusive, until the moment of its rebirth into the world.’

‘Hardly an image to encourage our appetites, Prazek,’ said Dathenar. ‘Unless you know more of the cook’s supply than do we.’

The chair awaiting Wareth was too elaborate for common camp gear, possessing curved armrests. ‘Perhaps,’ he said as he pushed himself down into the seat, which proved uncomfortably narrow, ‘we could discuss the reason for summoning Sergeant Rance.’

Prazek wagged the speared piece of sausage in the air. ‘But I assure you, lieutenant, that issue, despite its inherent complexities, is one in which a sated belly is advised. After all, we must find a means to twist crime into crusade—’

‘Vengeance into virtue—’

‘Obsession into ritual.’ Prazek frowned at the meat, and then slipped it into his mouth. He chewed.

Wareth looked from one man to the other. ‘I do not understand,’ he said.

Rance cleared her throat and then spoke. ‘It’s to do with the murders, sir. The investigation in which it seemed you had lost interest. It is why I visited you last night, to give you the chance to act before the captains did.’ She frowned across at him. ‘I was certain that you had found the killer, but for some reason you chose not to end things.’

Wareth studied her. ‘I gave up because it made no sense.’

She glanced away.

Abyss take me, I’ve been a fool. ‘How did you move the bodies, Rance? And what of your fear of the sight of blood?’

‘I can’t tell you, sir, about any of it, because I do not remember the murders. I simply awaken in my tent, with blood on my hands. I find my knife unsheathed, but thoroughly cleansed.’ She hesitated. ‘I scrubbed off what I could. I thought that it was that habit that finally betrayed me.’

But Wareth shook his head. ‘It seems we misread that obsession,’ he said, ‘and set upon it a much earlier crime.’

‘It began there, yes, but even then, sir, there was simple necessity. I don’t like the sight of blood. I hate the feel of it even more.’ Straightening in her seat, she set the tankard down. ‘It would be better, sir, if you were the one to arrest me.’

Wareth sighed. ‘You leave me little choice, but what should also be apparent to the captains here is the extent of my incompetence.’