Peter Hamilton - The Evolutionary Void

The Gilmorn held his hands up, the chain clanking as he did so. “Is this what you’re reduced to, Waterwalker, gloating over your victims?”

“And you? Goading someone whose village you destroyed?”

“Touche.”

“You set me on the path that led to this day. I enjoy that.”

“As Ranalee and others enjoy Salrana. I’ve heard she’s very popular. Fetches quite a high price in the right circles, so I understand.”

Dinlay’s hand fell on Edeard’s shoulder. “Let me deal with him.”

“You?” The Gilmorn sneered. “A eunuch does the Waterwalker’s dirty work? How amusing.”

Dinlay’s face reddened behind his glasses. “I am not-”

“Enough of this,” Larose said. “Waterwalker, do you have any serious questions for this bastard? Some of my men can get answers out of him. It might take a while, but they’ll persist.”

“No,” Edeard said. “He has nothing vital for me. I just wondered why he kept on fighting, but now I know.”

“Really?” the Gilmorn said. “And that is?”

“Because I have taken everything else away from you. There is nothing else for you to do. Without your masters you are nothing. You are so pitiful, you cannot even think of anything else to devote yourself to. When the time comes for your life to end, you will have achieved nothing, you will leave no legacy, your soul will never find the Heart. Soon this universe will forget you ever even existed.”

“So that is what you have come here for, to kill me. The Waterwalker’s revenge. You’re no better than me. Owain never went into exile. I know you murdered him and the others. Don’t set yourself up as some aloof judge of morals. You’re wrong to say I leave nothing behind. I leave you. I created you. Without me, you would be a countryside peasant with a fat wife and a dozen screaming children, scrabbling in the mud for food. But not now. Not anymore. I forged a true ruler, one who is every bit as ruthless as Owain. You say I can do nothing else? Take a look at yourself. Do you tolerate anyone who doesn’t comply? Is that not me, the very ethos you claim to despise?”

“I enforce the law equally and impartially for all. I abide by the results of elections.”

“Words words words. A true Makkathran politician. May the Lady help your enemies when you become Mayor.”

“That’s a long time in the future, if I ever do stand.”

“You will. Because I would.”

Edeard’s cloak flowed aside with the smoothness of jamolar oil. He reached into a pocket and took out the warrant. “This is the proclamation signed by the Mayor of Makkathran and notarized by the provincial governors of the militia alliance. Given the scale of the atrocities you have perpetrated for years, you will not be returned to civilization for trial.”

“Ha, a death warrant. You are nothing more than the tribal savages we enlisted.”

“You will be taken to the port of Solbeach, where a ship will sail eastward. When the captain has voyaged as far as the seas will allow him, he will search for an island with fresh water and vegetation. There you will be abandoned with seed stock and tools sufficient for your survival. You will live out your life there alone to contemplate the enormity of your crimes. You will not attempt to return to civilization. If you are found within the boundary of civilization, you will immediately be put to death. May the Lady bless your soul.” Edeard rolled up the scroll. “Constables Felax and Marcol will accompany you on the journey to ensure the sentence is carried out. I’d advise you not to annoy them.”

“Fuck you. I won, and you know it. This alliance is the start of One Nation.”

Edeard turned and started to leave the tent.

“Owain won,” the Gilmorn shouted after him. “You’re nothing more than his puppet. That’s all. Do you hear me, Waterwalker? Puppet to the dead, puppet to the man you murdered. You are my soul twin. I salute you. I salute my final victory. Family blood will govern this world. They say you can see souls. Can you see the soul of Mistress Florrel laughing? Can you?”

Edeard hardened the shield his third hand created, blotting out the vicious shouting as he walked away.

Edeard wanted to travel on alone, but Dinlay wouldn’t hear of it. He wouldn’t argue; he just said nothing while Edeard shouted hotly at him, maintaining his quiet stubborn self. In the end Edeard gave in, as they both knew he would, and ordered the regiment’s cavalry master to saddle two horses. The pair of them rode off together toward Ashwell.

The landscape hadn’t altered, only the use it had once been put to. Half a day’s ride from his destination, Edeard began to recognize the features that had dominated his childhood. Shapes on the horizon started to register. They were cloaked in different colors now as the vegetation had changed, crops giving way to a surge of wilder plants. The road was completely overgrown, hard to distinguish, though the buried stony surface was still perceptible to farsight. The fields around the village, once rich and fertile, had long reverted to grassland and bushes, with their old neatly layed hedges sprouting up into small trees. Drainage ditches were clotted with leaves and silt, swelling out into curiously long pools.

It was a warm day, with few clouds in the bright azure sky. Sitting in his saddle, Edeard could see for miles in every direction. The cliff was the first thing he identified. That hadn’t changed at all. It set off a peculiar feeling of trepidation in his heart. He had truly never expected to come back here. On the day after the attack, he’d left with the posse from Thorpe-by-Water and had glanced back only once, seeing blackened ruins chuffing a thin smoke into the open sky, and even that image was blurred by tears and anguish. It had been too painful to attempt another look; he and Salrana had ridden away together, holding hands and bravely staring ahead.

Now nature had completed what Owain and the Gilmorn had started. Years of rain and wind and insects and tenacious creepers had accelerated the decay begun by the fires. All the village council’s halfhearted repairs along the rampart walls had finally started to give way, leaving the broad defenses sagging and uneven. The outer gates had gone, their charcoal remnants rotting to a thin mulch where tough weeds infiltrated their roots. Their absence exposed the short tunnel under the ramparts, a dank uninviting passage of gloomy fungus-coated brick. Above them, the stone watchtowers sagged; their thick walls held fast, though the slate and timber roofs under which so many sentries had sheltered across the decades were gone.

Edeard dismounted and tethered his skittish horse to the iron rings just outside the arching portal. The sturdy metal at least remained untouched.

“You okay?” Dinlay queried cautiously.

“Yes,” Edeard assured him, and walked through the dripping tunnel, sweeping aside the curtain of trailing vines. As soon as he emerged into the village, birds took flight, great swirls of them shrieking as they flapped their way into the sky. Small creatures scampered away over the rough mounds of debris.

Edeard was prepared for ruins, but the size of the village caught him by surprise. Ashwell was so small. He’d never considered it in such terms before. But really, the whole area between the cliff and the rampart walls could fit easily into Myco or Neph, the smallest city districts.

The basic layout of the village remained. Most of the stone walls survived in some form or another, though collapsing roofs had demolished a lot of them. Streets were easy to make out, and his memory filled in the lines wherever slides of rubble obscured the obvious routes. The big guild halls had withstood the fires well enough to retain their shapes, though they were nothing more than empty shells without roofs or internal walls. Edeard sent his farsight sweeping out to examine them, then immediately halted. Lying just below the thin coating of dirt and ash and weeds that had engulfed the village were the bones of the inhabitants. They were everywhere. “Lady!”