Steven Erikson - Forge of Darkness

He sat on a log outside the tent he had been given. Every now and then he would look down at his hands, and then quickly away again.

It wasn’t murder. It was mercy.

But he was an ugly man now and the world was just as ugly, and this face wasn’t his and if this face wasn’t his then neither were these hands, and yesterday was someone else’s crime. He wondered if that girl had been beautiful. He believed that she had. But beauty had no place in this new world. This world that Haral had delivered him into. This was Haral’s fault and one day he would kill that bastard.

He looked up, his eyes catching movement from the trail. A man had appeared, astride a mule.

Others took note, and Narad saw Bursa approach. The corporal caught Narad’s eye and a hand waved him an invitation. Narad straightened, feeling the weight of his sword at his hip, a weight he had always liked but never quite felt comfortable with, but it was there now and it wasn’t going away. He made his way over to Bursa’s side.

The stranger had not even paused upon finding the camp, and by his dress Narad could see that he was highborn, although his mount and the stained boxes strapped to it suggested otherwise.

Bursa, with Narad now on his left, positioned himself directly in the stranger’s path, forcing him to rein in.

It came to Narad suddenly that the trail this man had come from led straight back to the Deniers’ camp. His eyes narrowed on the stranger’s bland, utterly fearless expression.

‘You wander obscure paths, sir,’ said Bursa, hands on his hips.

‘You have no idea,’ the stranger replied. ‘Cleaned your blades yet? I see that you have and so must acknowledge your discipline. You wear the livery of Urusander’s Legion, but I suspect he knows not what you do in his name.’

The challenge of this left Bursa momentarily speechless, and then he laughed. ‘Sir, you are mistaken-’

‘Corporal, I have just ridden from Vatha Keep. I have been Lord Urusander’s guest for much of this past month. The only “mistake” here is your assumption of my ignorance. So I ask you, since when does Urusander’s Legion make war upon innocent men, women and children?’

‘You have, I fear, been somewhat out of touch,’ Bursa growled in reply, and Narad could see the anger bubbling up, a fizzling froth that this stranger seemed blind to, or indifferent.

Narad put his hand on the grip of his sword.

The stranger’s eyes flicked to him then away again, back to Bursa. ‘Out of touch? What you are touching I want nothing to do with, corporal. I am returning to my father’s estate. It is regrettable that you are in my way, but as I have no wish to share your company I will continue on.’

‘In a moment,’ Bursa said. ‘I am under orders to make note of travellers in this area-’

‘Whose orders? Not Lord Urusander’s. So I ask again, who gives orders to Urusander’s Legion in his name?’

Bursa’s face was reddening. In a tight voice he said, ‘My orders came by messenger from Captain Hunn Raal not three days past.’

‘Hunn Raal? You’re not of his company.’

‘No, we are soldiers under the command of Captain Scara Bandaris.’

‘And where is he?’

‘In Kharkanas. Sir, you ride in ignorance. An uprising is under way.’

‘I see that,’ the stranger replied.

Bursa’s lips thinned into a straight, bloodless line. Then he said, ‘Your name, please, if you wish to pass.’

‘I am Kadaspala, son of Lord Jaen of House Enes. I have been painting your commander’s portrait. Shall I tell you how much I see in a man’s face when studying it day after day after day? I see everything. No dissembling evades my eye. No malice, no matter how well hidden, can hide from me. I don’t doubt you are following Hunn Raal’s orders. The next time you see that smirking drunk, give him this message from me. It will not do to imagine that Lord Urusander is now little more than a mere figurehead, to be pushed this way and that. Manipulate Vatha Urusander and he will make you regret it. Now, we have the measure of each other. Let me pass. It’s getting late, and I ride in the company of ghosts. You’ll not wish us to linger.’

After a long moment, Bursa stepped to one side. Narad did the same, feeling his heart pounding in his chest.

As the artist edged past them, he turned to Narad and said, ‘I can see the man you once were.’

Narad stiffened, biting back his shame.

Kadaspala continued, ‘But all I can see is this. What was inside is now outside. I feel sorry for you, soldier. No one deserves to be that vulnerable.’

He then rode on, through the camp and the crowd of other soldiers — all of them silent and hooded, as if cowed by this unarmed boy of an artist. A few moments later, he disappeared into the far end of the clearing, where the trail picked up once more.

‘Shit,’ Bursa said.

Narad wanted to ask a question, but seeing the expression on Bursa’s face silenced him. The corporal had paled, looking to where the artist had gone, and in his eyes there was confusion and something like sick dread. ‘Captain told us to sit tight,’ he muttered. ‘But Hunn Raal’s whore said-’ He stopped then and glared across at Narad. ‘That’ll do, soldier. Back to your tent.’

‘Yes sir,’ Narad replied.

Moving quickly, eyes on the log lying in front of his tent, Narad reached up to brush the lines of his broken face, and for the first time, he felt fear at what his fingers found.

Drought had dried the field and the hoofs of horses had driven like mattocks into the soil, tearing up the grasses until nothing was left alive. Master-at-arms Ivis walked from it covered in gritty dust. His leathers were stained, his jerkin sodden under his arms and against his back. Behind him the brown clouds of dust were slow to settle over the clearing and the troop he’d been training had all retired to the trees, desperate for shade and a rest. There wasn’t much talk left in them: Ivis had driven that out. Some were crouched down, heads hanging. Others were sprawled on the grassy verge, forearms covering their eyes. Armour and half-emptied waterskins were scattered about like the aftermath of a battle, or a drunken night of revelry.

‘Take what’s left of that water and cool down your horses. Those animals need it more than any of you.’

At his words, the men and women stirred into motion. Ivis studied them a moment longer and then turned to where the warhorses stood beneath the trees. The only movement that came from them was the swishing of their tails against the swarming flies, and the occasional ripple of their sleek hides. The beasts looked strong, stripped down of all fat. As the Houseblades moved in among them, Ivis felt a spasm of sadness and looked away.

He didn’t know if animals dreamed. He didn’t know if they knew hope in their hearts, if they longed for things — like freedom. He didn’t know what looked out through their large, soft eyes. Most of all, he didn’t know what teaching them to kill did to them, to their spirits. Habits and deeds could stain a soul — he’d seen enough of that among his own kind. He’d seen broken children become broken men and broken women.

No doubt scholars and philosophers, puttering in their cosy rooms in Kharkanas, had devised elaborate definitions of all those intangible things that hovered like clouds of stirred-up dust above hard and battered ground — things nobody could really grasp or hold on to. Ideas about the soul, the hidden essence that knew itself, but knew itself incompletely, and so was doomed to ever question, to ever yearn. No doubt they had arguments and defences, built up into impressive structures that were more monuments to their own brilliance than stolid fortifications.