Steven Erikson - Forge of Darkness

For the sake of her own bloodline, she would have to find a way to love Kagamandra Tulas.

Yet, as she rode through the night, she could not find his face — it remained blurred, formless. And in those dark smudges where his eyes belonged, she saw glittering firelight.

Obsessions were harmless, so long as they remained trapped inside, imprisoned and left pacing the cage of firm conscience; and if temptation was a key, well, she had buried it deep.

The lance’s weight had drawn her arm down, and she decided to seat the weapon in the socket riveted to the saddle. The wolf cries had not sounded for some time, and there was nothing on the bleak, silvered landscape before her to mark their presence. But she knew how far those cries could carry.

Faror willed her mind blank, opening her senses to the verge. She rode on for a time, until some instinct made her slow her mount. Hoofs thumped a succession of double beats as the beast dropped out of its canter, jostling her as she settled her weight into the trot. She now listened for the sound she dreaded: the muted snarls of wolves bickering over their kill.

Instead, a fierce shriek sliced through the night, startling her. Unseating the lance, she half rose in her stirrups. Drawing tight the reins she forced her frightened horse into a walk. The cry had been close. Still, before her she could see nothing untoward.

There.

A humped form, a trail of blood and gore, black in the grey dust. Beyond it, another.

Faror brought her mount up alongside the first dead wolf. A sword thrust had impaled the soft tissues of the belly, ripping open its gut. Fleeing, the savage creature had dragged its entrails behind it, until stumbling in them. Now the wolf huddled in a tangle, like a thing pulled inside out. Blood sheathed its scaly hide and the lambent eyes were ebbing.

The second beast lying a dozen paces further on had been hacked almost in half, a downward chop through the spine and down between ribs. The ground around it was scuffed, criss-crossed with ragged furrows. Wary, she guided her horse closer.

No boot prints in the dirt, but the gouges of claws and kicking limbs could well have obscured such signs.

Blood still poured down from the deep wound, and, leaning over, she could see the beast’s labouring heart. Alarmed, Faror pulled back. The wolf’s baleful eyes tracked her and the head tried to lift.

She set the point of the lance into the soft sack of the creature’s throat, and then punched the blade deep into the neck. The wolf tried biting at the long blade for a moment, and then fell back, jaws gaping, eyes fading. Straightening, tugging her weapon free, Faror looked around.

The edge of the grasses was a broken wall off to her left, perhaps sixteen paces away. Most of that barrier had been battered down, chewed by the passage of many beasts. Random sprays of blood made dark sweeps in the grey dust. Her searching gaze fixed on one path, where it seemed the passage had been at its most violent. The root bundles flanking the gap were thick with gore. She saw stalks sliced clean, blade-cut.

Halting her mount, she listened, but the dark night was again silent. Faror eyed the mouth of the trail. If she set out upon it, she suspected, she would come upon a grisly scene — the wolves feeding on a corpse. She would have to drive them off, if she could, if only to recover Finarra Stone’s body. It was clear to her that the fighting was over.

She hesitated, and not without some fear. It was not a given that she’d succeed in defeating the naked wolves; more packs would have been drawn to the kill site by the scent, and the eerie howls she had heard earlier. Somewhere in the high grasses there was a clearing, trampled down and bloody, and around it circled rival packs. There could be as many as fifty of the animals by now, and they would be hungry.

Thoughts of marriage, life in Kharkanas, and illicit desires, all fell away, as she realized that Spinnock might well find himself alone, facing the peril of returning to the fort with unguarded flanks: alone and abandoned; and Kagamandra Tulas would be left to mourn, or at least give the appearance of mourning — but that too would sink into those hollow eyes, one more cruel memory joining countless others, and he would know the guilt of not feeling enough, carving out still more emptiness in the husk of his soul.

She adjusted her grip on the lance, leaned forward to whisper in her horse’s ear, and prepared to urge it into the trail.

A faint sound behind her — she twisted round.

Finarra Stone was edging out from between the boulders forming the ridge above the shoreline. Her sword was sheathed and she gestured.

Heart pounding, Faror backed her horse from the trail mouth and then swung the beast round. She rode at a walk towards Finarra.

A second gesture told her to dismount. Moments later she was facing her captain.

Finarra was splashed in drying blood. Her left arm appeared to be broken, the shoulder possibly dislocated. Wolf fangs had torn into the muscle of her left thigh, but the wound was roughly bound.

‘I thought-’

Finarra pulled her close. ‘Softly,’ she whispered. ‘Something has walked out of the sea.’

What? Confused, Faror pointed back at the trail mouth. ‘A blade passed through the grasses. A weapon-wielder. I thought it you, captain.’

‘And you were about to set off after me — Warden, I would have been dead. You would have given up your life for no reason. Have I taught you nothing?’

Chastened, Faror was silent, only now realizing that she had begun to welcome that end, even though the grief others might feel at it still pained her. Her future felt hopeless — was it not simpler to surrender her life now? She had been about to do so, and a calm had come over her, an ecstasy of peace.

‘A small pack found me,’ Finarra resumed after a moment in which she searched Faror’s face intently. ‘Swiftly dealt with. But the danger was too great, so I returned to the broken path between the rocks. It was there that I found a trail — emerging from the Vitr.’

‘But that is impossible.’

Finarra grimaced. ‘I would have agreed with you… yesterday. But now…’ She shook her head. ‘Small footprints, puddles of Vitr pooled in them. I was following their trail when I came upon you.’

Faror faced the high grasses once more. ‘It went in through there,’ she said, pointing. ‘I heard a wolf cry.’

‘As did I,’ the captain said, nodding. ‘But tell me, Faror Hend, if you believe a creature from the Vitr need fear wolves?’

‘What do we do, sir?’

Finarra sighed. ‘I wonder if I have not caught your madness. We need to discover more about this stranger. We need to gauge threat — is that not our purpose here in the Outer Reach?’

‘Then we follow?’

‘Not tonight. We will return to Spinnock — I need to rest, and my wounds need purging, lest infection take hold. For the moment, however, lead your horse by the reins. Once we are well clear of this place, we will ride double.’

‘Did the wolves kill your mount, captain?’

Finarra grimaced. ‘No.’ She straightened. ‘Keep your lance at the ready, and ’ware the grasses.’

They set off.

Her wounded leg slowed them down, and Finarra longed to climb into the saddle behind Faror. The numbness of her arm had faded and in its place was a throbbing agony that lit the world red, and she could feel bone grinding on bone in her shoulder. Yet none of these concerns could scour away the look she had seen in Faror Hend’s eyes.

There was a lust for death, flowering black and fierce. She had seen it before, had come to believe it was a flaw among the Tiste, emerging in each and every generation, like poisonous weeds in a field of grain. The mind backed into a corner, only to then turn its back upon the outer world. Seeing nothing but walls — no way through, no hope of escape — it then longed for turmoil’s end, the sudden absence of self found in some heroic but doomed deed, some gesture intended to distract others, offering false motivations. Burying the secret desire was the goal, and death precluded all argument.