Fall of Light (The Kharkanas Trilogy 2)

Faror Hend said, ‘Then I will take my leave—’

‘No you won’t,’ cut in Toras Redone. ‘You, I want at my side, if only to prop me up.’

‘Find someone else.’

‘None but you, lieutenant. Now, all but Galar Baras and Prazek and Dathenar, out. You have work to do. Warden, see that my wagon is well stocked.’

Faror Hend stared down at the commander for a moment longer, then saluted and departed the tent.

Outside, she found a few of the others milling. Wareth met her eyes and smiled. ‘Well played, Faror.’

‘We waited for this? Abyss take us.’

‘As it will,’ Wareth replied, glancing across at Rance, and then at the two guards standing nearby, waiting to escort the woman back to her tent. After a moment, he offered Faror Hend a smile. ‘We assemble. Face the enemy. Give the orders, and then see what happens.’

‘She was unduly harsh on you,’ Faror said.

Wareth shrugged. ‘Not unexpected. Her mercy was never meant to absolve me, nor mitigate her contempt. We were fighting a war, after all.’

Rance spoke to Wareth. ‘You must tell her. About me.’

‘I leave that to Prazek and Dathenar.’

‘The commander will decide the right thing to do,’ Rance said. ‘I welcome the end to this.’

Frowning, Wareth said, ‘Has it not occurred to you, Rance, that there may not be time … to deal with you? She wants us on the march tomorrow—’

‘What?’ Rance’s face filled with dismay.

Faror Hend grunted and then shook her head. ‘Expect two more days, at least, before we are ready.’

‘Still,’ said Wareth, ‘too little time.’

Faror Hend stepped close to Rance. ‘An end to things … well, yes, Rance, I can see how you might long for that. But what if dying doesn’t end anything?’

At that, Rance recoiled. After a moment, in which terror twisted her face, she spun round and rushed away. Her two guards were startled by her haste, and hurried to catch up.

‘You seeded a cruel thought, Faror Hend.’

‘My patience is fraying. In any case, in this mood I should speak with no one else for the rest of this day. After all,’ she added bitterly, ‘I have to see a wagon stocked with wine.’

‘She never liked Castegan,’ Wareth said. ‘Sobriety makes for a cautious soul. She was never one for being cautious.’

Faror Hend studied Wareth for a moment, and then, shrugging, she set off.

* * *

Galar Baras watched his commander – his lover – getting drunk. Prazek had taken a seat at the map table, where he seemed to be studying the supply report Seltin Ryggandas had left there before departing. Dathenar paced near the tent flap, as if silently debating something, a frown marring his brow.

‘I should have left this to you, Galar,’ Toras Redone said, her words thick and low. ‘But that cell made me bored. You’d think I’d welcome such solitude, just me and my … wine. And now, well, look at us. If the corpses had been raised up, by swords refusing death itself, I would have led them. Vengeance was a fire I could have stoked, fury a storm I would have ridden. We would have caught Hunn Raal unawares, and descended upon Neret Sorr. An army of undead, silent but for their screaming weapons, to deliver righteous slaughter.’ She lifted the jug, sloshed it to gauge how much was left, and then drained it. When done, she let the jug fall to the floor beside the chair, loosed a heavy sigh, and continued, ‘But the dead don’t care. Neither lust nor vengeance stirs their motionless limbs. No indignant rage flashes in their lifeless eyes. I walked among them, and with each body I stepped over, I felt something more taken away from me. Some … essence. Dathenar, bring me another jug – there, against the back wall. Excellent, a man who knows to follow orders. We’ll need that.’

Prazek looked over from where he sat by the table. ‘And so each death surrenders its name, choosing but one, whispered again and again, from countless pale lips. And that name is Loss, and to utter it is to feel it. Diminished, death by death, this essence of what we once were.’

Dathenar stood near her, watching as she tugged free the jug’s stopper. Then he said, ‘Fallen friends cease to ask how you fare, cease to answer in kind. They may retreat from your thoughts, but never quite far enough. If in our minds we walk as one among many, in the midst of families knotted by blood and by choice, and witness, as years pass, the crowd grow ever smaller, then we come to comprehend – as we must – a day when we walk alone, abandoned by all.’

‘Or contemplate another kind of abandonment,’ Prazek said, nodding, ‘when it is we who must leave the others. A last step comes to us all. Regret and sorrow will ride the final breaths of each of us, moments of pity perhaps for those who must remain, those who must take another step, and then another, trailed by none but ghosts.’

‘They were my friends,’ said Toras Redone in a ragged whisper. ‘One and all. My family.’