The lord stared across at him, and then giggled. ‘Yes! Of course! Of course! But you see, nobody’s supposed to win. We both get bloodied and then we both withdraw. Better yet, we turn on our commanders and, why, we cut their heads off! We throw down our weapons! Throw away our armour! We tell the bastards to go fuck themselves and then we go home! Hah!’ He half slid down on to the ditch’s slope. ‘Now, it’s time to advance! To war! The standards are raised! This is the secret joke, you see. When we all agree on insanity … it’s still insane!’
Wreneck watched the old man laugh, watched the face redden, the watery eyes bulging. He wondered at the joke, not quite sure of it, and then he wondered if that joke might end up killing the lord, as the tears ran down the old man’s lined cheeks, as the laughter grew more helpless, and finally as, hysterical, the breaths growing harder and harder to draw, the man choked and gagged, clutching his chest.
The ghosts marched past, pebble-eyes fixed on nothing.
Upon each side of the ditch, a few of the tiny soldiers toppled in the wind as the wet mud gave way beneath them.
Gasping, the lord righted himself and wiped at his eyes. ‘Now,’ he said in a rasp, ‘it begins with magic, or so I’m told. Powerful spells, but the first and most powerful one no one even sees. It’s the sorcery of war itself, the ritual words flung back and forth, everyone moving into place – there, set those up again, it’s not yet time for them to fall. But they’ve all agreed. There’s no choice. You have to agree on that first, you have to weave it, a web that snares everyone. No choice, no choice, must be done, draw the sword. There’s no choice, we agree on that. We have to agree on that, to begin with. No choice, oh dear, no choice, oh, how sad, how regrettable. No choice. Keep saying it and it comes true, do you understand? No choice!’ He sighed, leaned back to study his troops. ‘Split into three. The centre will advance first. The wings will stretch and form the horns – this is simple tactics, you understand. Nothing subtle or clever on this day. But wait! Before all that, the mages must duel!’
Wreneck looked back to the road, watching the dead filing past. There were many soldiers among them.
‘What do the mages do?’ he asked the lord.
The old man frowned. ‘I don’t know. Let me think. Magic. There must be a structure to it, lest it serve nefarious purposes. It cannot simply be a force no one understands. Not a metaphor, then, nothing like a poet’s meat. People make use of it, after all, don’t they?’
‘Milord, I don’t understand.’
‘Sorcery! If this then not that, if that then not this! Chart the cause and effect, mutter and write notes and pretend that such things impose limits and rules, abeyances and prohibitions, all these contingencies to milk the brain with an inventor’s delight – pah! The poet’s meat is a better way of seeing it. Metaphor. Meat to be wrung until the blood drips. Meat to invite thoughts of rendering, something hacked away from some unseen body, a giant’s corpse lying unseen in the forest, or among the hills, or amidst storm-clouds in the sky. The flesh in one hand, dripping with heat, the butcher’s take on the world, where all invites the cleaver and knife, where all must perforce be lifeless to take the cut, the cold, empty chop! Yet look! The flesh cut away bleeds still, and there is heat, and something pulses – the twitch of wounded nerves.’ He paused to regain his breath, and then pointed across at Wreneck. ‘The poet knows it’s alive. The butcher believes it dead. Thus, the gift upon one side and upon the other the taker of that gift, the sorceror, the butcher, the blind, clumsy bastard.’
The lord shifted to study his rows of soldiers, and then reached down and lifted one free. ‘Here he is. The poet recoils. All those tales of childhood, the magicks and the witches and wizards, the cursed gems and sacred swords – magic, my young friend, belongs to twin goddesses’ – and he smiled – ‘I see them still. Name this first one Wonder, and she leads you by the hand into unlikely realms. Your delight is her reward! Now, the other, why, let’s call her Warning. The other side to every magical gift, to every strange world. The poet knows all this, or the poet should, at any rate. Wonder and Warning, what other detail does one need in the comprehension of magic?’
Wreneck shrugged, and then, when that did not seem enough, he shook his head.
‘We use what we don’t understand,’ the lord explained, scowling. ‘It’s a simple message, a simple metaphor. We use what we don’t understand. To invent rules and make charts and lists is to forget the meaning of the metaphor. Such a mind is locked into its rational cage, a most limited realm, a realm of self-delusion and presumption, a narcissistic stance, and the rules and logic only serve to reflect the brilliance of the one using them, as if, indeed, that is the singular purpose of the entire pointless exercise!’ He wagged a finger at Wreneck. ‘The poet cocks a leg and pisses on them all! It’s meat and the meat bleeds, and the blood is warm and the blood fills the cup of the hand and to use it is to kill it and to kill it is a crime.’ He set down the soldier he’d collected, positioned further down the bank of the ditch. ‘My idiot champion of ignorance. Now you – wait, what is your name?’
‘Wreneck.’
‘Now, good Wreneck, select your champion.’
Wreneck picked up one of his soldiers and moved to place it opposite the lord’s lone figure. ‘Like this, milord?’
The old man frowned. ‘I must add another.’
‘Two against one?’
‘No matter. One of mine is going to die.’
‘How do we fight with magic, milord?’
‘Why, I’ll roll the bones, of course.’
‘Then how do you know one of yours is going to die?’
‘Because magic demands meat, Wreneck. Blood in the hand, fading heat, something broken, something dying, a crime unforgivable.’
Wren
eck looked down at all the soldiers. ‘Milord, are we gods?’
The old man snorted. ‘Less than that, less than who we are, in fact. Toy soldiers and dolls, puppets and deeds writ small, we’re the venal manipulators of the unpleasant. With secret purpose, we lay waste to lives we ourselves have invented. With hopeless despair, we hammer home lessons no one pays any attention to.’ He laughed again, a bitter, caustic sound. ‘All a waste, my young friend, all a waste.’
The old man began weeping then, and after a time, Wreneck reached down to the lord’s second mage, and tipped the figure over until it was flat upon the ground.
* * *
‘Soon,’ said Lord Vatha Urusander as they rode towards the valley, ‘the thaw will come. There is a will to water, never as wayward as it might seem. It finds certain paths in its hunt for the lowest land, for the places where it can rest. When the flood takes the streams, the streams flow into the river, and the flood rises yet higher. It spills out and finds refuge in hollows and sinkholes, in pits and trenches. When I was a child, the thaw was the season I loved the best. Those pools of cold, cold water – water beetles would appear in them, from where I knew not, and yet their glory would be brief, as the pools slowly dried up.’
Renarr rode at Urusander’s side. They were not part of the Legion’s vanguard. Well ahead, Hunn Raal and his captains commanded the army’s bristling point, and behind them trundled the heavy carriage bearing High Priestess Syntara, Sagander the one-legged scholar, and young Sheltatha Lore. Riding alongside the carriage was Infayen Menand. Renarr and the commander had only each other for company, with the first company of soldiers marching a dozen paces behind.