Steven Erikson - Forge of Darkness

I won’t fall. It’s all right then.

I won’t fall ever again.

The sounds of battle diminished slightly, and there was boiling motion coming through the dust. Sandalath saw scores of white shields appear on one side, and then black shields on the other flank, all drawing closer, and moments later those shields numbered in the hundreds. ‘Oh!’ cried Sandalath. ‘Is it over?’

‘Can’t say, hostage,’ Venth admitted. ‘Seemed awfully quick.’ He wiped again at his eyes.

‘Venth, I am sorry for the horses out there, on both sides.’

‘As am I, hostage. Abyss knows, they deserve better.’

Now the flags were being changed, as the Houseblades withdrew at a slow canter. She saw some reeling in their saddles, and a few riderless horses accompanied them. The troops began re-forming, wheeling round to present an even line, while a few rode on, back towards the keep — the wounded men and women who could fight no more on this day.

The wind was lifting the dust up and past the field of battle, and she saw now the hundreds of fallen strewn all the way back to the distant stone wall. Those shapes formed humps, some seething with wounded soldiers and wounded beasts, but even between the humps no ground was clear. Sudden nausea took Sandalath and she reached out to a merlon to steady herself.

‘Abyss take us,’ Venth muttered. ‘That was brutal. See, they chased off even the skirmishers. If not for that wall, none of them would have escaped.’

Perhaps three hundred or so riders had retreated past the wall and now milled on the nearest field of stubble. Sandalath shook her head. ‘Where are the rest of them?’ she asked.

‘Dead and dying, hostage.’

‘But… almost no time has passed!’

‘Longer than you might think,’ he said. ‘But less than you’d think reasonable, I’ll admit.’

‘Is it over?’

‘I think it might be. They’ve not enough to mount a second attack. I see but a score or so fallen Houseblades on that field.’ He pointed to the new flags. ‘The captain is recalling them all, and that higher flag is announcing a yielding of the field itself, meaning both sides can head out to recover the wounded.’

‘Won’t they fight each other all over again?’

‘Hostage, everyone who leaves a battlefield enters a land of bogs, a swamp that sinks them to their knees. They’ve not the will to fight on, nor the strength neither. In exhaustion and silence, they will scour the bodies of their fallen comrades, looking for friends and kin. I will wager the captain offers his healers and cutters as soon as our own are taken care of… perhaps tomorrow.’

‘And will the Borderswords accept them?’

He shrugged. ‘I cannot say, since we know not their grievance with us.’

She studied the field, and the few figures now staggering among the dead. ‘It seems such a waste, horse master.’

‘War is a shout against futility, hostage, but its echo never lasts long.’

She considered his words, and shivered against their chilling touch.

‘There will be wounded animals,’ said Venth.

‘Of course. Let us head down then.’

The horse master led the way down the ladder. Sandalath followed. As she joined him on the landing below she drew close to the locked door. A moment later she gasped. ‘Venth!’

‘Hostage?’

‘Someone paces behind this!’

He came close. Then he shook his head. ‘I hear nothing.’

‘No,’ she replied. ‘Not now. But when I first came close — I heard footsteps. Heavy, shuffling.’

Venth hesitated, and then he reached for the latch. He tried lifting it and failed. Stepping back he shrugged. ‘I am sorry, hostage. Perhaps it was your imagination. Heavy, you say? Then not the girls.’

She thought back. ‘No,’ she said. ‘They were heavy.’

‘Only Lord Draconus possesses the key to this chamber, hostage. There was dust on the latch, and this marks the only entrance — you can see as much. The room’s walls here are a single layer of stone, and the chamber beneath this one has no trap in the ceiling. And no windows, of course.’

‘I know, horse master. Yes, perhaps I imagined it. Mother always said I was prone to such fancies. Come, let us continue on. I have no liking for this place.’

Drifting back from some timeless abyss, she opened her eyes.

A Houseblade was above her, his seamed face hovering close. She saw him lift a hand and then set its palm against her forehead. It was warm but rough with calluses. She should have despised that touch, but she couldn’t. Above the man, thin clouds were stretched across the sky.

‘Can you hear me?’ he asked. ‘I am Captain Ivis. Your companions have… departed. They left to us their wounded. I did not imagine they would find defeat as bitter as they did, to so abandon you.’ He glanced away briefly, eyes squinting, and then looked down at her again. ‘You were knocked unconscious, but seem otherwise uninjured. We have gathered up a few Bordersword horses. When you feel able, we will send you back to your people. But I need to know — why did you attack us?’

The question seemed absurd, too absurd to even answer.

The captain scowled. ‘What is your name?’

She contemplated refusing to answer, but there seemed to be no point in that. ‘Lahanis.’

‘Well, you’re young. Too young for this to be your war.’

‘It was mine!’ she hissed, reaching up and pushing his hand from her brow. ‘You attacked our villages, slaughtered everyone! We tracked you back — we hunted you down!’

‘Lahanis, we did no such thing.’ He studied her for a moment, and then cursed under his breath and turned to someone she couldn’t see. ‘Those Legion companies. I should have chased them off. I should have demanded to know why they camped a stone’s throw from the keep.’

‘We were made to take the blame for that slaughter, sir?’

‘Corporal, I know you sharpened up on the night of the murders, so where does your brain go when you’re in my company?’

‘I wish I knew, sir.’

Ivis met Lahanis’s eyes. ‘Listen to me. You were deceived. If I had ridden out to parley with your commanders-’

‘You would have been cut down before you got out a single word,’ she said. ‘We weren’t interested in talking.’

‘So your standard told me,’ Ivis said. ‘Stupid!’

She flinched at that.

‘Not you,’ he said. ‘Lahanis, listen. Ride to your kin, to the survivors. You say you tracked us back here. Is that true, or did you backtrack?’

‘We backtracked, sir. We were even hoping we’d reach the keep before you returned from the last village you burned.’

‘Abyss below, who was commanding you?’

She shook her head. ‘No one, really. Traj, I suppose. He shouted the loudest. Maybe Rint.’

‘Rint?’ Ivis suddenly straightened, looking round. ‘Venth!’ he shouted. ‘Over here on the double!’

Lahanis struggled to sit up. She was lying on a cot in the keep’s compound. There were other wounded, but with blankets swaddling them there was no way to tell if they were Borderswords or Houseblades — she recognized none of the faces she could see. The back of her skull was tender; her neck was stiff and throbbing with pain.

A third man arrived. ‘Captain? I have injured horses-’

‘What were the names of the Borderswords who rode with Lord Draconus?’

The man blinked. ‘Sir? Well, I can’t remember, to be honest.’

Hands to the sides of her head, Lahanis spoke. ‘Rint, Feren, Ville and Galak. They all came back to us. They said your lord sent them home.’

‘Why? When?’

Lahanis shrugged. ‘Not long. I don’t know why.’

Ivis stood, rubbing at the back of his neck, his gaze on the gates.