Steven Erikson - Dust of Dreams

‘No better place to piss on Hood’s face than in an army. When piss is all you got, and let’s face it, it’s all any of us has got.’

‘I’m waiting-patiently-to see how all this comes back to Sinn and Grub and the Azath.’

‘Last night, I went to the kennels and got out Bent and Roach-the lapdog’s the one of them with the real vicious streak, you know. Old Bent, he’s just a damned cattle-dog. Pretty simple, straightforward. I mean, you know what he really wants to do is rip out your throat. But no games, right? Not Roach, the simpering fanged demon. Well, I thumped Bent on the head which told him who’s boss. Roach gave me a tail wag and then went for my ankle-I had to near strangle it to work its jaws loose from my boot.’

‘You collected the dogs.’

‘Then I unleashed them both. They shot like siege bolts-up streets, down alleys, round buildings and right through screaming crowds-right up to that door over there. The Azath.’

‘How’d you keep up with them?’

‘I didn’t. I set a geas on them both and just followed that. By the time I got here, Roach had been throwing itself at the door so often it was lying stunned on the path. And Bent was trying to dig through the flagstones.’

‘So why didn’t any of us think of doing something like that?’

‘Because you’re all stupid, that’s why.’

‘What did you do then?’ Bottle asked.

‘I opened the door. In they went. I heard them racing up the stairs-and then… nothing. Silence. The dogs went after Sinn and Grub, through a portal of some sort.’

‘You know,’ said Bottle, ‘if you’d come to me, I could have ridden the souls of one of them, and got maybe an idea of where that portal opened out. But then, since you’re a genius, Deadsmell, I’m sure you’ve got a good reason for not doing that.’

‘Hood’s breath. All right, so I messed up. Even geniuses can get stupid on occasion.’

‘It was Crump who delivered your message-I could barely make any sense of it. You wanted to meet me here, and here I am. But this tale of yours you could have told me over a tankard at Gosling’s Tavern.’

‘I chose Crump because I knew that as soon as he delivered the message he’d forget all about it. He’d even forget I talked to him, and that he then talked to you. He is, in fact, the thickest man I have ever known.’

‘So we meet in secret. How mysterious. What do you want with me, Deadsmell?’

‘I want to know about your nightly visitor, to start with. I figured it’d be something best done in private.’

Bottle stared at him.

Deadsmell frowned. ‘What?’

‘I’m waiting to see the leer.’

‘I don’t want those kind of details, idiot! Do you ever see her eyes? Do you ever look into them, Bottle?’

‘Aye, and every time I wish I didn’t.’

‘Why?’

‘There’s so much… need in them.’

‘Is that it? Nothing else?’

‘Plenty else, Deadsmell. Pleasure, maybe even love-I don’t know. Everything I see in her eyes… it’s in the “now.” I don’t know how else to explain it. There’s no past, no future, only the present.’

‘Empty and full.’

Bottle’s gaze narrowed. ‘Like the ram, aye, the animal side of her. It freezes me in my tracks, I admit, as if I was looking into a mirror and seeing my own eyes, but in a way no one else can see them. My eyes with…’ he shivered, ‘nobody behind them. Nobody I know.’

‘Nobody anyone knows,’ Deadsmell said, nodding. ‘Bottle, I once looked into Hood’s own eyes, and I saw the same thing-I even felt what you just described. Me, but not me. Me, but really, nobody. And I think I know what I saw-what you keep seeing in her, as well. I think I finally understand it-those eyes, the empty and full, the solid absence in them.’ He faced Bottle. ‘It’s our eyes in death. Our eyes when our souls have fled them.’

Bottle was suddenly pale. ‘Gods below, Deadsmell! You just poured cold worms down my spine. That-that’s just horrible. Is that what comes of looking into the eyes of too many dead people? Now I know to keep my own eyes averted when I walk a killing field-gods!’

‘The ram was full of seed,’ said Deadsmell, studying the Azath once more, ‘and needed to get it out. Was it the beast’s last season? Did it know it? Does it believe it every spring? No past and no future. Full and empty. Just that. Always that. For ever that.’ He rubbed at his face. ‘I’m out of moves, Bottle. I can feel it. I’m out of moves.’

‘Listen,’ she said, ‘me puttin’ my finiger-my finger-in there does nothing for me. Don’t you get that? Bah!’ And she rolled away from him, thinking to swing her feet down and then maybe stand up, but someone had cut the cot down the middle and she thumped on to the filthy floor. ‘Ow. I think.’

Skulldeath popped up for a look, his huge liquid woman’s eyes gleaming beneath his ragged fringe of inky black hair.

Hellian had a sudden bizarre memory, bizarre in that it reached her at all since few ever did. She’d been a child, only a little drunk (hah hah), stumbling down a grassy bank to a trickling creek, and in the shallows she’d found this slip of a minnow, dead but fresh dead. Taking the limp thing into her hand, she peered down at it. A trout of some kind, a flash of the most stunning red she’d ever seen, and along its tiny back ran a band of dark iridescent green, the colour of wet pine boughs.

Why Skulldeath reminded her of that dead minnow she had no idea. Wasn’t the colours, because he wasn’t red or even green. Wasn’t the deadness because he didn’t look very dead, blinking like that. The slippiness? Could be. That liquid glisten, aye, that minnow in the bowl of her hand, in its paltry pool of water wrapping it like a coffin or a cocoon. She remembered now, suddenly, the deep sorrow she’d felt. Young ones struggled so. Lots of them died, sometimes for no good reason. What was the name of that stream? Where the Hood was it?

‘Where did I grow up?’ she whispered, still lying on the floor. ‘Who was I? In a city? Outside a city? Farm? Quarry?’

Skulldeath slithered to the cot’s edge and watched her in confused hunger.

Hellian scowled. ‘Who am I? Damned if I know. And does it even matter? Gods, I’m sober. Who did that to me?’ She glared at Skulldeath. ‘You? Bastard!’

‘Not bastard,’ he said. ‘Prince! King in waiting! Me. You… you Queen. My Queen. King and Queen, we. Two tribes now together, make one great tribe. I rule. You rule. People kneel and bring gifts.’

She bared her teeth at him. ‘Listen, idiot, if I never knelt to nobody in my life, there’s no way I’ll make anybody kneel to me , unless,’ she added, ‘we both got something else in mind. Piss on kings and queens, piss on ’em! All that pomp is pure shit, all that…’ she scowled, searching for the word, ‘… all that def’rence! Listen! I’ll salute an orficer, cos that crap’s needed in an army, right? But that’s because somebody needs to be in charge. Don’t mean they’re better. Not purer of blood, not even smarter, you unnerstand me? It’s just-between that orficer and me-it’s just something we agree between us. We agree to it, right? To make it work! Highborn, they’re different. They got expectations. Piss on that! Who says they’re better? Don’t care how fuckin’ rich they are-they can shit gold bricks, it’s still shit, right?’ She jabbed a finger up at Skulldeath. ‘You’re a hood-damned soldier and that’s all you are. Prince! Hah!’ And then she rolled over and threw up.

Cuttle and Fiddler stood watching the row of heavily padded wagons slowly wend through the supply camp to the tree-lined commons where they would be stored, well away from everything else. Dust filled the air above the massive sprawl of tents, carts, pens, and parked wagons, and now as the day was ending, thin grey smoke lifted lazily skyward from countless cookfires.