He had to hand it to her. The world was her enemy, and she would face it unblinking. She had led them on to this road of suffering in the name of the Crippled God, and, to that god, what other path could there have been? She was making of them her greatest sacrifice – was it as brutal and as simple as that? He did not think her capable of such a thing. He wanted to refuse the very thought.
But here he walked, fifty or more paces ahead of them all. Even the Khundryl children were gone, leaving him alone. And behind him, a broken mass of humanity, somehow dragging itself forward, like a beast with a crushed spine. It had surrendered all formation, each soldier moving as his or her strength dictated. They carried their weapons because they had forgotten a time when they didn’t. And bodies fell, one by one.
Beneath the ghoulish light of the Jade Strangers, Fiddler set his eyes upon the distant flat line of the horizon, his legs scissoring under him, the muscles too dead to feel pain. He listened to his own breaths, wheezing as the air struggled up and down a swollen, parched windpipe. In so vast a landscape he felt his world contracting, step by step, and soon, he knew, all he would hear would be his own heart, the beats climbing down, losing all rhythm, and finally falling still.
That moment waited somewhere ahead. He was on his way to find it.
Whispering motion around him now, drifting out from a fevered mind. He saw a horseman at his side, close enough to reach out, if he so wanted, and set a hand upon the beast’s patched, salt-streaked shoulder. The man riding the beast he knew all too well.
Broke his leg. A toppling pillar, of all things. Mallet – I see you – you wanted to work on that leg. Got damned insubordinate about it, in fact. But he didn’t listen. That’s his problem, he only listens when he feels like it .
Trotts, you’re still the damned ugliest Barghast I ever saw. They bred ’em that way in your tribe, didn’t they? To better scare the enemy. Did they breed your women to be half blind, too? Keep the stones balanced, that’s the only way to make it through .
So where’s Quick Ben? Kalam? I want to see you all here, friends .
Hedge, well, he’s stepped out of this path. Can’t look him in the eye these days. It’s the one bad twist in this whole thing, isn’t it. Maybe you can talk to him, Sergeant. Talk him back to how it should be .
‘Hedge is where we want him, Fid.’
What?
‘We sent him to you … to this, I mean. He’s walked a lonely path back, sapper.’
Mallet then spoke. ‘Bet he thought he’d made it all the way, too, when he stood before you, Fiddler. Only to have you back away.’
I … oh, gods. Hedge. I better find him, chew it all out, come the dawn – we’ll make it that far, won’t we, Sergeant?
‘Until it rises, aye, sapper. Until it rises.’
And then?
‘You’re so eager to join us?’
Whiskeyjack – please – where else would I go?
‘If we were just waiting for the dawn, soldier, you’d have to ask, what in Hood’s name for? You think we’d see you put through all of this for nothing? And then there’s Hedge. He’s here to die beside you and that’s it? We sent him to you so you could just kiss and make up? Gods below, Fiddler, you’re not that important in this wretched scheme.’
‘Well,’ said Mallet, ‘he might be, Sergeant. Made Captain now, didn’t he? Got himself his own company of marines and heavies. Bloody insufferable now, is old Fid.’
‘Sky’s paling,’ Whiskeyjack said.
Because you’re on damned horses. I can’t see it .
‘False dawn,’ growled Trotts. ‘And Fid’s fading, Sergeant. We can’t hold on here much longer. Once he stops thinking past his feet …’
I was a mason’s apprentice. Had dreams of being a musician, getting fat and drunk in some royal court .
‘Not this again,’ someone said among the crowd. ‘Someone find him a fiddle, and me a hanky.’
Glad you’re all here with me. Well, most of you, anyway. The Bridgeburners deserved a better way to die —
The rider made a derisive sound. ‘Don’t be such an idiot, sapper. In your heads you’ve all built us up into something we never were. How quickly you’ve forgotten – we were mutinous at the best of times. The rest of the time – and that would be almost all the time – we were at each other’s throats. Officers getting posted to us would desert first. It was that bad, Fiddler.’
Look, I ain’t done nothing to make this fucking legend, Sergeant. I ain’t said a damned thing .