Forge of Darkness (Kharkanas Trilogy 1) (84 page)

Blinking awake, he stared up through the motionless branches and leaves that seemed to fracture the night sky. He would never be desired – even the small hope he had cherished in the wasted years before the beating was now dead.

Not even the gods offered fairness, not without a bargain to be made first. There were tears in his eyes, blurring the scene overhead.
Bargain? I have nothing to give up
. If gods looked down on him now, their regard was flat, unfeeling. Even pity demanded a soul dropping to its knees, and he would not give that up for so poor a reward.
I get pity enough here among the mortals
.

The beautiful women look away, look past. Their eyes glide over and that has always been the way of it, long before my face was broken. All they want is a mirrored reflection, another perfect face to match the admiration that is the only wealth they understand
.

Behind this broken face waits an honest man, a man capable of love. He wants only what so many others have. Something beautiful to hold on to
.

I ask for it, but the gods do not answer. No light or warmth finds their flat eyes. They blink cold. They look away, find something else, something more interesting, more original
.

There were no ugly gods. Their first expression of power was in the reshaping of their selves, into forms lovely to behold. Had he the power, he would do the same. He would take this clay in his own hands and mould it into perfection.

But no such gifts awaited him.

He heard low voices, and then a figure moved close to him, one hand reaching out to nudge him. ‘Up, Waft, it’s time. Cold breakfast and then weapons and armour on.’

It was the woman who had spoken so bitterly the night before. He turned his head, studied her dark form. Wishing she was both beautiful and blind, even her fingers senseless and dumb. Wishing he could lie to her and convince her and then slide into her and afterwards feel at peace.

‘You awake?’

‘Yes,’ he replied.

‘Good.’ She moved on to the next sleeping form, and he knew that she had been oblivious of his thoughts.

Just as well. He’d had enough of their laughter.

A short time later, over a hundred armed figures were moving through the forest. Narad was among them, a few steps behind Corporal Bursa. He had drawn his sword but the hand that held it was cold. He was shivering under his clothes yet his skin was slick with sweat, and in his mind there was turmoil.

He saw his life unfurled behind him: all the times when he cut people with words, mocking all their pretensions. When he had viewed with disdain every gesture of kindness or supposed sincerity. It seemed to him now that he had been fighting a war all his life. Nothing was real enough to believe in; nothing was good enough to fight for, barring the patch of useless ground he stood upon, and the flimsy borders of his contempt.

And now he found himself in the company of murderers, just one more shadowy form threading between silent boles. Somewhere ahead slept innocent people. Assuming innocence even existed, and of that he had a lifetime of doubt gnawing the edges of his faith. No matter. Their dawn was about to be shattered in a sudden descent into violence and brutality.

He did not want this, and yet something in him hungered for what was to come, the ugliest part of himself – the outside pulled in and made still more venal, still more disgusting. Among all the soldiers in this midst, he alone bore the physical truth of what was hidden inside each and every one of them.

They had their lists, their grievances, just as he had his own.

Moving through the wood, as it drew the darkness down and around them all. There were different kinds of purity, different kinds of pain, but in the gloom every distinction was lost, made the same. He was no uglier than anyone here, they no more beautiful or handsome than he.
We’re all the same
.

Every cause is just when it is your own, when feelings count for something. But sometimes, among some people, feelings count for nothing at all
.

This was the soldier’s gift, he supposed.

He staggered then, down to one knee, and his breakfast came back
up
his throat, sprayed out on to the black earth. The convulsions continued, until there was nothing left inside. Head hanging, threads of mucus and bile dangling from his twisted lips, he sensed people moving past him. Heard a few low laughs.

A gloved hand rapped him on the shoulder and the woman who’d woken him leaned down and said, ‘Rancid meat, Waft. Been fighting to keep it down all the way. Get up, stay with me, we’re almost there.’

He pushed himself upright, wondering at her invitation. Had Bursa put her up to this? Did they think him a coward, someone they needed to keep an eye on? Shamed, he wiped his mouth with a sleeve, spat out the bitter taste, and set off, the woman falling in beside him.

‘We’re going to make this a horror, Waft.’

He nodded, a gesture she could not even see.

‘As bad as can be. You can’t let it get to you. You got to shut it all down, understand? Do but don’t think, that’s the soldier’s creed. If you think of anything at all, think of the peace to come, a year or two from now. Think of a new way of things in Kurald Galain, the nobles knocked down and weak, real people – like you and me – living well and living respected.’

Living respected. Empty Abyss, woman, you think that’ll take the place of self-respect? It won’t. You’re fooling yourself. We all are
.

‘You with me, Waft?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

There was a lightening of the way ahead, the trees thinning, stumps rising from beaten down grasses. A bulky shape – a carriage – and a row of horses tied to a rope stretching between two upright banners. The glimmer of an ebbing fire.

And figures at the clearing’s edge, motionless, seeming to stare directly at Narad.

Sudden shouts, the hiss of iron on scabbard rims—

‘
Let’s go!
’ barked the woman.

And then they were running into the clearing, upon the open grounds of the Great House of Andarist.

* * *

Lord Jaen had stood the night, fully dressed, as if in vigil. He had walked the round, checking on his Houseblades, sharing a few quiet words. Andarist and his retinue were at least a day away, with the guests to follow the day after. The night was measured by his circling strides, a slow spiral that, eventually, brought him once more to his position beside the waning fire.

His heart ached for his daughter, for the blindness of youth. And every thought of hostage Cryl was a twisted pressure deep inside him:
fear
for the young man who might have to defend Enes House from an attack; pain for the wounds his daughter had delivered upon him.

Regret was an empty curse. He had let age take hold of him, as if ennui was an old man’s final gift to himself – the blessed embrace of indifference in the guise of wisdom. Weariness awaited every unmindful soul, no matter its age, no matter its station. He knew that centuries of life awaited him, but that was a truth he could not face without blinking, without shying away. The true curse, the one curse that could fill a soul to bursting, was weariness. Not of the flesh, although that played its part; but of the spirit. He had come to recognize in himself a kind of hapless impatience: the affliction of a man waiting and wanting to die.

Loss and broken hearts could be borne by the young, the strong of will, the robust in spirit. He possessed none of those traits, and so he stood, soon to give away his only daughter, soon to pass into her hands all the promises of youth and none of the unspoken regrets, as befitted a father fading from the light.
I am left behind and I am content with that. As content as any old fool can be content. Perhaps I’ll take to drink. Some sordid poison of forgetfulness to plunge days and nights into oblivion
.

No longer needed … why should such things feel so cruel?

He stared at the spent fire, the cooling coals that held to their old shapes of stick and branch. Every dying hearth was home to fragile ghosts, and all that glowed on was but the memory of living. That and nothing—

A sense of motion drew him round. A Houseblade shouted – he saw his guards draw weapons, saw them contract to form a tight line. And from the forest edge, dark shapes boiling out – a gleam of bared iron—

Appalled, disbelieving, Lord Jaen tugged his sword free. He lunged towards the carriage and drove the pommel of his weapon against the door. ‘Out! Now!
Out!
’

The maid, Ephalla, crawled from under the carriage, groggy with sleep. Jaen grasped her arm and lifted her to her feet. He shook her. ‘Listen to me – take my daughter – flee to the house. Do you understand? To the house!’ He flung her hard against the side of the carriage and then wheeled.

His Houseblades were retreating, closing in around the carriage on the side facing the forest.

Behind him he heard the door swing open; heard his daughter’s frightened cry as Ephalla dragged her from the carriage.

‘We withdraw!’ Jaen shouted to his Houseblades. ‘Back to the house. Fall back!’

His guards formed a curved line, backing quickly. Jaen glanced over a shoulder and saw the two women running for the house.

The attackers were rushing closer. There were too many of them.

‘Slow them down!’ he commanded.

The first line of the enemy reached his Houseblades. Weapons clashed, blades slashed down. Two of his guards fell, overwhelmed. The others fought on, desperately hacking at the swords slashing and thrusting towards them. Another fell, his skull crushed.

The ones who remained continued to retreat. Lord Jaen backed up with them, helplessly trapped between his Houseblades and the two women striving to reach the house. Another moment’s hesitation and then, with a curse, Jaen spun round and ran after his daughter and the maid. He would hold the door if he could, knowing that the gesture meant nothing.

Andarist had not built a fortress. A grand home and nothing more. Jaen doubted the bar would even hold.

The women reached the door. Ephalla tugged it open and pushed Enesdia through.

Before her husband – not side by side – ill omen, a marriage doomed
—

The thought tore through him on a spasm of absurd guilt.

He heard scores of footfalls thudding on the ground behind him, fast closing.
My Houseblades are dead. Another dozen would have made no difference. Oh, Cryl
—

He reached the gaping doorway, saw the terrified faces of his daughter and the maid in the hallway inside. He met Ephalla’s eyes and nodded.

She slammed the door shut, even as Enesdia shrieked.

Jaen wheeled on the threshold, readying his sword.

* * *

He had lost one of the horses to the river, watched it swept downstream with its head raised and neck straining. Grainy-eyed, feeling leaden, Cryl clung to the remaining beast as it finally reached the far bank and stumbled up the slope. Without a pause he kicked the creature’s flanks and it struggled against its own exhaustion, building into a plodding canter up and on to the road. Still he kicked and somehow the horse found the will to stretch out into a gallop.

He would be coming up to the house from the south. Before him the road was empty, with dawn only now edging the sky.

In the distance he heard shouts and then the clash of blades.

Above a line of trees, he saw the freshly tiled roof of Andarist’s house. Cutting down from the road, he drove his horse hard across an open sward, and then through brush and into the shadow of the trees. Before him, as he rode towards the back of the house, he saw figures spilling to the sides at the run. He understood that Jaen had retreated into the house – his only choice, for there were scores of attackers.

Cryl’s eyes fixed on a shuttered window on the main floor, to the left of the back door. He pushed his mount to even greater speed, riding straight for it.

Someone shouted – they had seen him, but that did not matter. He was almost there.

He kicked his boots free of the stirrups. He clambered up until he was perched on the saddle. At the last moment, as the horse veered of its own accord to avoid colliding with the back of the house, Cryl launched himself across the intervening distance, angling his shoulder down and protecting his face with his arms.

He struck the shutters and wood exploded around him.

Splinters lanced into him as he landed on the floor and skidded across slate tiles. Picking himself up, he drew his sword and rushed towards the front of the house. He could hear hammering against the front door and the sound of splitting wood. The rooms blurred past unseen as he ran.

Enesdia screamed as the front door was battered down.

Cryl plunged into the hallway – saw Enesdia. Ephalla had drawn a dagger and was standing before her mistress. A sword lashed out, the flat of the blade striking the maid’s forearm, breaking bones. Another blade punched into her chest, lifting her from the floor—

Cryl rushed past Enesdia. He did not even register the faces of the figures before him. His sword flickered out, opened the throat of the man who had murdered Ephalla, tore free to bury half its length in the gut of a second attacker.