Oh, these messengers would earn so much… displeasure. And vilification. And these dead, oh how they'd laugh, understanding so well the defensive tactic of all-out attack. The dead mock us, mock us all, and need say nothing…
All those enemies of reason – yet not reason as a force, or a god, not reason in the cold, critical sense. Reason only in its purest armour, when it strides forward into the midst of those haters of tolerance, oh gods below, I am lost, lost in all of this. You cannot fight unreason, and as these dead multitudes will tell you – are telling you even now – certitude is the enemy.
'These,' Ganath whispered, 'these dead have no blood to give you, Ganoes Paran. They will not worship. They will not follow. They will not dream of glory in your eyes. They are done with that, with all of that. What do you see, Ganoes Paran, in these staring holes that once were eyes? What do you see?'
'Answers,' he replied.
'Answers?' Her voice was harsh with rage. 'To what?'
Not replying, Paran forced himself forward, one step, then another.
The first ranks stood upon the shore's verge, foam swirling round their skeletal feet, behind them thousands upon thousands of kin.
Clutching weapons of wood, bone, horn, flint, copper, bronze and iron.
Arrayed in fragments of armour, fur, hide. Silent, now, motionless.
The sky overhead was dark, lowering and yet still, as if a storm had drawn its first breath… only to hold it.
Paran looked upon that ghastly rank facing him. He was not sure how to do this – he had not even known if his summoning would succeed. And now… there are so many. He cleared his throat, then began calling out names.
'Shank! Aimless! Runter! Detoran! Bucklund, Hedge, Mulch, Toes, Trotts!' And still more names, as he scoured his memory, his recollection, for every Bridgeburner he knew had died. At Coral, beneath Pale, in Blackdog Forest and Mott Wood, north of Genabaris and northeast of Nathilog – names he had once fixed in his mind as he researched – for Adjunct Lorn – the turgid, grim history of the Bridgeburners. He drew upon names of the deserters, although he knew not if they lived still or, if indeed dead, whether or not they had returned to the fold. The ones that had vanished in Blackdog's great marshes, that had disappeared after the taking of Mott City.
And when he was done, when he could remember no more names, he began his list again.
Then saw one figure in the front row dissolving, melting into sludge that pooled in the shallow water, slowly seeping away. And in its place arose a man he recognized, the fire-scorched, blasted face grinning – Paran belatedly realized that the brutal smile held no amusement, only the memory of a death-grimace. That and the terrible damage left behind by a weapon.
'Runter,' Paran whispered. 'Black Coral-'
'Captain,' cut in the dead sapper, 'what are you doing here?'