She glanced back at the cowering dogs, and felt a rush of sorrowful regret at what such beasts could have been, if their wildness was not so chained, so bound and muzzled.
God, my children, does not await us in the wilderness. God, my children, is the wilderness.
Witness its laws and be humbled.
In humility, find peace.
But know this: peace is not always life. Sometimes, peace is death. In the face of this, how can one not be humble?
The wild laws are the only laws.
She would give these words to Cafal. She would see in his face their effect.
And then she would tell him that the Gadra clan was going to die, and that many other Barghast clans would follow. She would warn him to look to the skies, for from the skies death was coming. She would warn him against further journeys-he must return to his own clan. He must make peace with the spirit of his own kin. The peace of life, before the arrival of the peace of death.
Warriors had gathered round the dogs, readying weapons and such. Tension flowed out from them in ripples, spreading through the camp. In moments a warleader would be selected from among the score or so milling about. Setoc pitied them all, but especially that doomed leader.
A wind was blowing in from the east, scratching loose her long sun-bleached hair until it whispered across her face like withered grass. And still the stench of death filled her senses.
Cafal’s heavy features had broadened, grown more robust since his youth, and there were deeply etched lines of stress between his brows and framing his mouth. Years ago, in a pit beneath a temple floor, he had spoken with the One Who Blesses, with the Malazan captain, Ganoes Paran. And, seeking to impress the man-seeking to prove that, somehow, his wisdom belied his few years-he had uttered words he had heard his father use, claiming them as his own.
‘A man possessing power must act decisively… else it trickle away through his fingers.’
The observation, while undoubtedly true, now echoed sourly. The voice that made that pronouncement, back then, was all wrong. It had no right to the words. Cafal could not believe his own pretensions uttered by that younger self, that bold, clear-eyed fool.
A pointless, stupid accident had stolen away his father, Humbrall Taur. For all that the huge, wise warrior had wielded his power, neither wisdom nor that power availed him against blind chance. The lesson was plain, the message bleak and humbling. Power was proof against nothing, and that was the only wisdom worth recognizing.
He wondered what had happened to that miserable Malazan captain, chosen and cursed (and was there any real difference between the two?), and he wondered, too, why he now longed to speak with Ganoes Paran, to exchange a new set of words, these ones more honest, more measured, more knowing. Yes, the young were quick with judgement, quick to chastise their torpid elders. The young understood nothing about the value of sober contemplation.
Ganoes Paran had been indecisive, in Cafal’s eyes back then. Pitifully, frustratingly so. But to the Cafal of this day, here on this foreign plain under foreign skies, that Malazan of years ago had been rightly cautious, measured by a wisdom to which young Cafal had been woefully blind. And this is how we gauge a life, this is how we build the bridge from what we were to what we are. Ganoes Paran, do you ever look down? Do you ever stand frozen in place by that depthless chasm below?
Do you ever dream of jumping?
Onos Toolan had been given all the power Cafal’s own father had once commanded, and there was nothing undeserved in that. And now, slowly, inexorably, it was trickling away through the fingers of that ancient warrior. Cafal could do nothing to stop it-he was as helpless as Tool himself. Once again, blind chance had conspired against the Barghast.
When word reached him that wardogs had returned to the camp-beasts bereft of escort and therefore mutely announcing that something ill had befallen a scouting troop-and that a war-party was forming to set out on the back-trail, Cafal drew on his bhederin-hide cloak, grunting beneath its weight, and kicked at the ragged, tufted doll crumpled on the tent floor near the foot of his cot. ‘Wake up.’
The sticksnare spat and snarled as it scrambled upright. ‘Very funny. Respect your elders, O Great Warlock.’
The irony oozing like pine sap from the title made Cafal wince, and then he cursed himself when Talamandas snorted in amusement upon seeing the effect of his mockery. He paused at the entrance. ‘We should have burned you on a pyre long ago, sticksnare.’
‘Too many value me to let you do that. I travel the warrens. I deliver messages and treat with foreign gods. We speak of matters of vast importance. War, betrayals, alliances, betrayals-’
‘You’re repeating yourself.’