Forge of Darkness (The Kharkanas Trilogy 1)

For a moment it seemed that the man was about to cry. ‘I have now,’ he said, turning away. He walked off, his shoulders hunched, his steps uncertain.

The young corporal squatted down beside her. ‘Hungry?’ he asked. ‘Thirsty?’

‘Just get that horse,’ she said.

But he did not move. ‘Captain’s a little… measured, when it comes to scribing. There is time, Bordersword. So?’

She shrugged. ‘Water, then.’ As he headed off she closed her eyes. It was me they all listened to. I saw the standards. We could all read the trail. But it was me. You didn’t kill us, captain. I did.

They had disarmed her — even her eating knife was missing from its thin leather sheath. If she had such a weapon within reach, she would take her own life.

But no. I will deliver the captain’s message. Then, before my kin, I will open my throat. I will give them my name to curse. She saw the corporal returning with a waterskin. Hungry? Thirsty? Scratch behind the ear? As soon as he arrived, she reached out and took the skin from him. ‘Now get me that horse.’

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For a moment it seemed that the man was about to cry. ‘I have now,’ he said, turning away. He walked off, his shoulders hunched, his steps uncertain.

The young corporal squatted down beside her. ‘Hungry?’ he asked. ‘Thirsty?’

‘Just get that horse,’ she said.

But he did not move. ‘Captain’s a little… measured, when it comes to scribing. There is time, Bordersword. So?’

She shrugged. ‘Water, then.’ As he headed off she closed her eyes. It was me they all listened to. I saw the standards. We could all read the trail. But it was me. You didn’t kill us, captain. I did.

They had disarmed her — even her eating knife was missing from its thin leather sheath. If she had such a weapon within reach, she would take her own life.

But no. I will deliver the captain’s message. Then, before my kin, I will open my throat. I will give them my name to curse. She saw the corporal returning with a waterskin. Hungry? Thirsty? Scratch behind the ear? As soon as he arrived, she reached out and took the skin from him. ‘Now get me that horse.’

Seven heavily burdened wagons, each one drawn by a brace of oxen, had begun their journey at the Hust Forge, travelling southward to the borderlands where awaited the Hust Legion encampment. Their pace was slow, stalled at times when an axle split or a wheel stripped its rim on the rough cobbles of the road.

Bearing his lord’s command calling the Hust to war, Galar Baras caught up with the train half a day out from the camp. He had ridden hard and his mount was weary, and after the haunting solitude of his journey thus far he welcomed the company of drovers, wagon masters, carpenters, smiths, cooks and guards, many of whom he knew from the Forge settlement where he had been born and then raised. For all that, it was a muted welcome. News of the slaughter at the wedding hung like a pall over everyone. For many, he knew, it was not so much the sudden deaths of Lord Jaen and his daughter that sobered the crew and made conversations infrequent and hushed; rather, it was what the killings portended.

War had returned to Kurald Galain. This time, however, the enemy came not from beyond the realm’s borders. Galar could not imagine the mind of a Tiste in the moments that led up to the slaying of a fellow Tiste. For himself, it was difficult to think of any other Tiste as being anything but kin. Yet now it seemed that every face, with its familiar array of traits, was but a mask, and behind some of those masks lurked an enemy, a stranger with strange thoughts.

There was nothing obvious to make simple this designation of friend or foe; not the chalky white skin and angular body of the Forulkan, nor the savage bestiality of the Jheleck. Of course, there had always been bandits and other criminals, who made a profession from preying upon their own kind, but then Galar did not understand them either. Such fools dispensed with trust, and so suffered lives of loneliness and fear. Even among their own kind, such fraternity as existed was rife with betrayal and treachery. The existence of a lifelong criminal was a pitiful one, for all the wealth they might gather, and for all the power they might come to possess.

In a world emptied of virtues, all things became vices, including wealth and even family, and each day arrived with bleaker aspect than the last.

This war will unleash the criminal in all of us, I fear.

As he rode in the company of this train of wagons, he could feel the future settling on everyone, thick and suffocating, under heavy skies that might never break.

This last day of the journey seemed to mock all of that, with its cerulean sky and the warm wind that came up from the south. The low hills flanking the road showed the pocks of old mines, from which rough tracks wended down; and here and there could be seen old basins excavated out centuries past, where foul water had settled and, upon drying up, left discoloured, toxic sands. Galar could see the remains of wooden structures: buildings and trestles, scaffolding and ramps, but the forests that had once cloaked these hills and the broad shallow valleys around them were long gone.

There were legacies to be found in every scene of ruination, and as much as Galar sought to grasp only those that led to triumph, even to hold these too tightly could cut him to the bone.

He rode at the head of the column, avoiding the dust. Henarald’s delivery of the sword to Lord Anomander, and the blessing that had — or had not — occurred in the Chamber of Night still left Galar rattled, and he need only catch a glimpse of his hand gripping the reins, seeing the ebon hue of his skin, to be reminded of that time. In revisiting that fated day in the Citadel, he found himself shaking his head again and again: at times in wonder, but more often in disbelief. Every uttered word had seemed to blaze with fire — even those words that Galar had himself spoken had felt like incantations, or fragments plucked from some disordered, ethereal poem that all who were present somehow shared.