‘Matters were far more complicated than you realize.’
She shook her head. ‘You face a crisis, Shield Anvil. Your soldiers have lost confidence in you. It is crucial that you understand – if not for me, this army would return to Krughava.’
‘Unleash the Wolves upon the K’Chain Che’Malle – buy us the time we need.’
‘It will not be.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because they refuse, Shield Anvil.’
‘But … why?’
Setoc shrugged. ‘The K’Chain Che’Malle were never the enemy of the beasts. They were never so insecure as to feel the need to slaughter everything in sight. They were never so frightened, so ignorant, so … pathetic. I believe the Wolves do not see them as deserving of slaughter.’
‘And will they change their minds when those lizards attack us?’
She fixed on him a sharp, searching stare. ‘What will the Wolves witness? K’Chain Che’Malle cutting down … humans .’
‘But we Perish are to be their swords of vengeance!’
‘Then we can only hope that we do not face the K’Chain Che’Malle on a field of battle.’
‘Do you finally comprehend the necessity, the burden upon us, Destriant? We must stand in the shadow of the Forkrul Assail. We must be free to choose where and when to fight, and indeed whom we shall face. Let the Assail believe they have us well shackled and compliant, eager even.’
‘You balance everything on the thinnest knife edge, Shield Anvil.’
‘We are the Grey Helms, Destriant, and we shall serve the Wolves.’
‘Indeed.’
‘And that is why we must continue marching at this pace – leave the lizards no time to think about what to do about us. And if they chase our tails right into the Assail army, well, the moment those two ancient foes set sight upon each other …’
‘We need only step aside.’
He nodded.
Dismissing him for the moment, Setoc turned away. Perhaps. Is this the treachery I sense in Tanakalian? And if I cannot agree with his methods, must I then reject his intentions? But the game he would play … poised between two such deadly enemies … is it possible?
No, ask yourself this instead, Setoc: what alternative do we have? When she turned he was standing as he had been, facing her, and in his face, blind need. ‘Are you clever enough for this, Shield Anvil?’
‘I see no other way, Destriant.’ He hesitated, and then he said, ‘Each night, I pray to the Wolves of Winter—’
She turned away again, and this time with finality. ‘You waste your breath, Shield Anvil.’
‘ What? ’
‘They don’t understand worshippers,’ she said, closing her eyes. ‘ They never did .’
Once more, staggering lost – the darkness and the unbearable pressure, the raging currents that sought to rend the flesh from his bones, and on all sides the half-buried wreckage of the lost. He stumbled over rotted planks from broken hulls, kicked up bleached bones that flashed and spun in milky clouds. Silt-painted amphorae, ingots of tin and lead, a scattering of hundreds of round shields, hammered bronze over crumbling wood. Banded chests collapsed and spilling out their gems and coins – and everywhere the remains of sea creatures, their insensate bodies dragged down into the depths, and the rain from above was unending.
Brys Beddict knew this world. Was this yet another dream? A haunting from his memories? Or had his soul at last returned, to this place he would learn to call home ?
Above all, the greatest pressure he felt, the one force which neither the strength of his legs nor the stolid stubbornness of his will could withstand, was that of immense, devastating loneliness. Into death we step alone. Our last journey is made in solitude. Our eyes straining, our hands groping – where are we? We do not know. We cannot see .
It was all he needed. It was all anyone needed. A hand to take ours. A hand reaching out from the gloom. To welcome us, to assure us that our loneliness – that which we knew all our lives and so fought against with each breath we took – that loneliness has at last come to an end .
Making death the most precious gift of all .
A thousand sages and philosophers had closed desperate fingers about the throat of this … this one thing. Even as they recoiled in horror, or, with a defiant cry, leapt forward. Tell us, please – show us your proofs. Tell us oblivion has a face, and upon it the curve of a smile, the blessing of recognition. Is that too much to ask?
But this, he knew, was the secret terror behind all faiths. The choice to believe, when to not believe invited the horror of the meaningless, all these lives empty of purpose, all these hopes relinquished, dropped from the hand, left to sink in the thick mud – with silts raining down until everything is buried .