Steven Erikson - Forge of Darkness

‘Will you face it with every word in winged flight, Galak?’

‘Better that than harsh and cruel! It seems all you do is cut these days.’

Rint settled into the saddle and took up the reins. ‘No, all I do is bleed.’

They set out, pushing deeper into the ancient hills. The old lines of rise and descent had been carved through in places by thousands of years of hoofs from migrating herds, and down these tracks floods had rushed in the wet seasons, exposing bedrock and an endless wash of bleached bones and the crumbling cores of broken horns.

Rint could see the old blinds, constructed from piled stones, arcing in fragmented lines along slopes overlooking the old migration tracks. He could see signs of runs where beasts had been cut away from the main herd and driven off cliffs. Here and there, massive boulders rested atop hills, each one bearing painted scenes of beasts charging and dying, and stick figures wielding spears; and yet upon not one of these wrinkled tableaux was there a line denoting solid ground. Instead, these remembered hunts, these eternal images of slaughter, all floated in a dream world, uprooted and timeless.

Only a fool would not see death in such art. No matter how enlivened the beasts depicted, they were all long gone, slain, carved up and devoured, or left to rot. To look upon them, as he did when he and his companions rode past, was to see a dead hand’s longing for life, but a life belonging to the past. Every scene was a broken promise, and upon these hills now had settled a pall of silence.

If the dead spoke to the living, they did so in an array of frozen images, and this doomed them to themes of loss and regret. He well understood Feren’s warning. This was a gristle one could chew without end.

Lifting his gaze, his eyes narrowed. The eastern sky was grey, smudging the line of the horizon. He thought back to the Jhelarkan’s words and felt something grow taut within him.

‘Is that smoke?’ Ville asked.

Rint nudged his mount to a faster pace, and the others joined him. There was nothing worth saying. The chattering of speculation would simply give voice to fear and so fill the gut with bile. Smoke hung above Riven Keep. It could be as simple as a grass fire, spreading out across the plain.

His home was in the village below the fortification. There he would find his wife and his child, and discover anew their place in his life. Nothing needed to be the same as it had once been. Their nights of indifference and hard silence would be behind them now. Rint finally understood the gift she was to him, and now that they had made a child he would look with clear eyes upon all that was precious and sacred.

No longer would he flee her company, escaping into the wilds. He would make the future different from the past. For every person, change was within reach. He had made his journey and it would be the last one he would make. His future was at his wife’s side.

I have sworn vengeance against Draconus. But I will join my sister and put away my sword. I, too, am done with this.

By midday, they had ridden out from the hills on to flat land. The way ahead was wreathed in smoke. The smell did not belong to a grass fire. It was rank, oily.

The four Borderswords broke into a fast canter.

In his head, Rint uttered a list of vows to his wife and to his newborn child. The list began and ended with a vision of him standing with her, in a home emptied of his anger, the temper he could never quite control. And he saw the guardedness leaving her eyes, her hand leaving the grip of her knife which she had drawn countless times to defend herself against his rages. He saw a world of peace, floating as if painted on stone. The hand that could paint the past could paint the future. Rint meant to prove it.

‘Riders on our left!’

At Ville’s shout Rint turned, rose on his stirrups. Directly north was the long line of a dust cloud.

‘Must be the hunting party,’ Galak said. ‘Abyss below! There was no one at Riven!’

My wife. My child.

The distant riders were converging on them, and Rint now saw that they were Borderswords. No. No. He pushed his mount into a gallop, fixed his eyes eastward, to that dark smudge that was Riven Keep. But the tower was mostly gone, only one wall rising to two-thirds its original height, black as charcoal against the grey sky.

It was just one more damned argument. I rushed out, thinking only of escape lest I tear the knife from her grasp. And there was the call, a summons from Lord Draconus, who wanted an escort into the west. I found Feren. I badgered her into joining me. We needed to get away.

My wife’s face is burned in my mind. It was fear that made it a stranger’s face. It had always been fear that took away the face I knew.

I was running. Again.

Life was easier out there. Simpler. Feren was rotting, drinking too much. I had my sister to think of -

All at once, there were more riders crowding them, the thunder of horse hoofs almost deafening. As if from a vast distance, Rint heard Ville shouting.

‘Traj! What has happened?’

‘Lahanis found us — she escaped the slaughter — the villagers, Ville — they’re all dead!’

Someone howled, but even that sound was muffled, quickly swept away. The hammering of horse hoofs upon hard ground was a roar in Rint’s skull. Lahanis. He knew that name. A young woman, fast with her long-bladed Hust knife, but too young still to ride with the adults. A Bordersword in waiting who lived up the street.

‘Who attacked us, Traj? The Legion?’

‘She saw standards, Ville! House Dracons! We ride to it now. We ride to war!’

Blackened, scorched and in ruins, the village surrounding Riven Hill was beneath a shroud of smoke. He looked for his house, but the scene was jarring up and down, wheeling as vertigo took hold of him. He pitched to one side but was quickly brought up by a firm hand. Wild-eyed he looked across to see his sister — her face was wet with tears and the tears were black with dirt.

She’s had her fill of those. But it’s over now. At least she saw her baby, and held it in her arms. A living thing, nestled in her arms. That’s why I led her away — no, the wrong face, the wrong woman. Where is my wife? Why can’t I remember her face?

Then they were riding through the remains of the village, riding past bloated bodies. Feren’s fist, still holding him upright in the saddle — her knee stabbing into his thigh as she forced her horse to remain close — now tightened around a handful of cloak. If not for that grip, he would have fallen. He would have plunged down into the ashes, down among the dead.

Where she waits for me. And the child. And my child. My family, of which I will never again speak.

We ride to war -

Calat Hustain paced through the bars of light that shot through the slats of the window’s shutters, and such was the frown on his angular features that Finarra Stone remained silent, reluctant to speak. From the main hall outside the room and from the compound through the window behind the commander, there was a seemingly endless clamour of shouting and the thump of footsteps, as if chaos had arrived like a fever among the Wardens.

‘You will not be accompanying us,’ Calat said suddenly.

‘Sir?’

‘I will take Spinnock with me, but I want you and Faror Hend to ride to Yannis Monastery.’

Finarra said nothing.

Her commander continued pacing for a few moments longer, and then he halted and turned to face her. ‘Captain, if I were a man who was plagued by night terrors, the worst nightmare I could imagine befalling the Tiste is a descent into a war of clashing religions. Faith is a personal accord between a lone soul and that in which it chooses to believe. In any other guise it is nothing more than a thin coat of sacred paint slapped over politics and the secular lust for power. We each choose with whom to have our dialogue. Who dares frame it in fear, or shackle it in invented proscriptions? Is a faith to be so weak that its only definition of strength lies in raw numbers and avowals of fidelity; in words made into laws and pronouncements, all of which need to be backed by an executioner’s sword?’