Steven Erikson - Forge of Darkness

Ville spoke. ‘A cairn it shall be, then. You two are not the only ones longing for home.’

She saw her brother nod, but he said nothing, and she felt the silence that followed Ville’s words harden about them all. Submission without a word of thanks made plain the surrender, and that could only sting. Rifts were forming and widening and soon, she knew, they would not be able to cross them. She shook herself, straightening in the saddle. ‘Thank you both,’ she said. ‘We are in a broken place, my brother and me. Even Rint’s vengeance stretches too far behind us, while poor Raskan draws so close we might as well be carrying him on our backs.’

Ville’s eyes were wide when she glanced at him.

Galak cleared his throat and spat to one side. ‘That’s a taste I am well rid of. My thanks, Feren.’

Abruptly, Rint shuddered, sobbed, and began weeping.

They all reined in. ‘That’s it for today,’ Feren said, her voice harsh. She slipped down from the saddle and went over to help her brother dismount. He had curled in around his torment and it was a struggle to get him down from his horse. Both Ville and Galak arrived to help.

Rint sank to the ground. He kept shaking his head, even as sobs racked him. Feren gestured Ville and Galak away and then held her brother tight. ‘We’re a useless pair,’ she muttered softly to Rint. ‘Let’s blame our parents and be done with it.’

A final sob broke, ended in a ragged laugh.

They stayed clenched together, and he stilled in her arms.

‘I hate him,’ he said with sudden vehemence.

Feren glanced over at Ville and Galak. They stood over their packs, staring, frozen by Rint’s words.

‘Who?’ she asked. ‘Who do you hate, Rint?’

‘Draconus. For what he’s done to us. For this cursed journey!’

‘He is behind us now,’ she said. ‘We are going home, Rint.’

But he shook his head, pulling himself loose from her arms and rising to his feet. ‘It’s not enough, Feren. He will return. He will take his place at Mother Dark’s side. This user of children, this abuser of love. Evil is at its boldest when it walks an unerring path.’

‘He has enemies enough at court-’

‘To the Abyss with the court! I now count myself his enemy, and I will speak against our neutrality to all the Borderswords. The Consort must be driven out, his power shattered. I would see him slain, cut down. I would see his name become a curse among all the Tiste!’

Her brother stood, trembling, his eyes wide but hard as iron as he glared at Feren, and then at Ville and Galak. ‘That witch was his lover,’ he continued, wiping at the tears streaking his cheeks. ‘What does that tell you about Draconus? About the cast of his soul?’ He marched over to where Raskan’s body was bound across the back of the sergeant’s horse. ‘Let’s ask Raskan, shall we? This poor man under the so-called protection of his lord.’ He tore at the leather strings, but the knots resisted him, until he simply tugged the moccasins from the dead man’s feet, and then dragged the corpse free. His foot caught and he fell back with the wrapped form in his arms. They landed heavily. Swearing, Rint pushed the body away and stood, ashen-faced. ‘Ask Raskan what he thinks. About his lord, his master and all the women he has taken into his arms. Ask Raskan about Olar Ethil, the Azathanai witch who murdered him.’

Feren released her breath. Her heart was thumping fast. ‘Rint, our neutrality-’

‘Will be abused! Is already being abused! It is our standing to one side that yields ground to the ambitious. Neutrality? See how easily it acquires the colours of cowardice! I will argue an alliance with Urusander, for all the Borderswords. Sister, tell me that you are with me! You bear visible proof of what that man has done!’

‘Don’t.’

‘Take his coin and surrender your body — that is how Draconus sees it! He respects nothing, Feren. Not your feelings, not the losses in your past, not the wounds you will carry for the rest of your life — none of that matters to him. He sought a grandchild-’

‘No!’ Her cry echoed, and each time her voice came back to her from the empty plain it sounded yet more plaintive, more pathetic. ‘Rint, listen to me. I was the one who wanted the child.’

‘Then why did he drive you away from his son once he determined that you were pregnant?’

‘To save Arathan.’

‘From what?’

‘From me, you fool.’

Her reply silenced him and she saw his shock, and then his struggle to understand her. Weakness took her once again and she turned away. ‘I was the one walking an unerring path, unmindful of the people I hurt, Rint.’

‘Draconus invited you into his world, Feren. He did not care that you were vulnerable.’

‘When he cut me from Arathan, he saved both of us. I know you can’t see it that way. Or you won’t. You want to hurt Draconus, just as you hurt Olar Ethil. It’s just the same, and it’s all down to your need to strike out, to make someone else feel the pain you’re feeling. My wars are over with, Rint.’

‘Mine are not!’

She nodded. ‘I see that.’

‘I expected you to stand with me, Feren.’

She turned on him. ‘Why? Are you so certain that you’re doing all this for me? I’m not. I don’t want it! I just want my brother back!’

Rint seemed to crumple before her eyes, and once more he sank down to the ground, covering his face with his hands.

‘Abyss take us,’ Ville said. ‘Stop this. Both of you. Rint, we will hear your arguments and we will vote on them. Feren, you are with child. No one would expect you to unsheathe your sword. Not now.’

She shook her head. Poor Ville didn’t understand, but she could not blame him for that.

‘We have far to go,’ Galak added in a soft tone. ‘And on the morrow, we shall reach the hills, and find a place for Raskan’s body. A place of gentle regard to embrace his bones. When we return to our homelands I will ride on to House Dracons and inform Captain Ivis of the location. For now, my friends, let us make camp.’

Feren looked out on the plain to the south. There was a path there, distant now and fading, that trekked westward into strange lands. There were patches of ground with soft grasses that had known the pressure of a man and a woman drawn together by unquenchable needs. The same sky that was above her now looked down on those remnants, those faint and vanishing impressions, and the wind that slid across her face, plucking at the tears on her cheeks, whipped and swirled but flowed ever southward, and sometime in the night would brush those grasses.

Life could reach far, into the past where it grasped hold of things and dragged them howling into the present. And distance could breed resentment, when all the promises of the future remained for ever beyond reach. And the child shifting in her womb, as the day died, felt like a thing lost in the wilderness, and as its faint cries reached her from no known place she knelt, eyes closed, hands over her ears.

Rint dared not look again at his sister; not to see her as she was, on her knees and broken by the words they had flung between them. He left Ville and Galak to make ready the camp, and sat staring into the northeast, trapped in his own desolation.

It was a struggle to envisage the face of his wife. When he imagined her sitting wrapped in furs with a newborn child against her breast, he saw a stranger. Two strangers. His hands would not cease trembling. They felt hot, as if they still held the fires they had unleashed in that moment of fury, so fierce with brutal vengeance. He did not regret the pain he had delivered upon Olar Ethil; but when he thought of it, he saw himself first, a figure silhouetted by towering flames, and the screams filling the smoke and ashes rising into the air became the voice of the trees, the agony of blackening leaves and snapping branches. He stood then, like a god, face lit in the reflection of his undeniable triumph. A witness to the destruction, even when that destruction was his own. Such a man knew no love, not for a wife, not for a child. Such a man knew nothing but violence and so made of himself a stranger to everyone.