R. Bakker - The Judging eye

Achamian had almost forgotten what it was like, watching men about their fires. The arms folded against the chill. The mouths smiling, laughing, tongue and teeth peeking in and out of the firelight. The gazes hopping from face to face within the cage of camaraderie, only to return to the furnace coals during the inevitable lulls. At first it struck him as something fearful, an exposing of what humans do when they turn their backs to the world, their interiority laid bare to the vaults of dark infinity, cracked open like oysters, with no walls save a warlike nature. But as the moments passed, he found the sight more and more affecting, to the point of feeling old and maudlin. That in a place so vast and so dark creatures this frail would dare gather about sparks called light. They seemed at once precious and imperilled, like jewels mislaid across open ground, something sure to be scooped up by jealous enormities.

His scrutiny did not go unnoticed. The first time he noticed the man watching him, Achamian simply looked away. But when he glanced back moments afterwards, the man was still staring-intently. Achamian recognized him as the Ketyai who had arrived at the company's initial muster in Marrow fussing over the hems of his white Nilnameshi gowns. What might have been a hard moment passed between them, then the man was standing, talking, and nodding in his direction. As one, most of the others in his eclectic group followed his eyes, some craning their necks, some leaning to see past their fellows-a series of hooded, cursory looks. Achamian had seen them all innumerable times on the trail, wondered about their stories, but he had shared no words with any of them. He imagined it wouldn't much matter even if he had. Like mead-hall tables, campfires seemed to make foreigners of everyone.

The Nilnameshi strode from the others to come crouch by Achamian's humble little flame. He smiled and shrugged, introduced himself as Somandutta. He was relatively young, clean-shaven, as was the custom for Nilnameshi caste-nobles, with amiable eyes and a full-lipped mouth-the kind of man who inspired husbands to be more gracious to their wives. He seemed to blink continually, but it was a habit that only seemed ludicrous the first time you noticed it, then became quite natural after.

"You're not one of them," he said, nodding with raised brows toward the Captain's fire. "And you certainly aren't one of the Herd." He tipped his head to his right, in the direction of three neighbouring firepits, each of them crammed with younger flame-yellowed faces, most sporting long Galeoth moustaches. "That means you must be one of the Bitten."

"The Bitten?"

"Yes," he said, smiling broadly. "One of us."

"One of you."

The generous face regarded him for a moment, as though trying to decide how to interpret his tone. Then he shrugged, smiled like somebody remembering a sensible deathbed promise. "Come," he simply said. "Your beard has the punch of smoke."

Even though he had no clue what the Nilnameshi meant, Achamian found himself following the man. The "punch of smoke," as it turned out, referred to hashish. A pipe was handed to him the instant he stepped up to the fire, and the next thing Achamian knew he was sitting cross-legged at the puffing centre of their attention. Out of nervousness perhaps, he drew deep.

The smoke burned like molten lead. They roared with laughter as he hacked himself purple.

"See!" He heard Somandutta cry. "It wasn't just me!"

"Wizard!" someone growled and cheered. Others took it up-"Wiz-Wiza-Wizard!" — and Achamian found himself smiling and choking and nodding in bleary-eyed acknowledgment. He even waved.

"You get used to it. You get used to it," someone assured him while rubbing the small of his back. "Only the good mud for the slog, my old friend. It has to take us far!"

"See!" Somandutta repeated as though the world's last sane man. "It's not me!"

The hashish was already soaking through Achamian's senses by the time Somandutta, or Soma as the others called him, went around the circle with introductions. Achamian had met such groups before, strangers hammered into families by the privations of the road. Once they lowered their hackles, he knew, they would find in him cause to celebrate their fraternity. Every family was eager to prove itself exceptional in some way.

There was Galian, perhaps the eldest member of Bitten. In his youth he had been a soldier in the old Nansur Army; he had even fought in the famed Battle of Kiyuth, where Ikurei Conphas, the last of the Nansur Emperors, had overcome the nomadic Scylvendi. The giant that Soma had earlier called Ox was Oxwora, a renegade son of the famed Yalgrota, one of the heroes of the First Holy War. There was Xonghis, a Jekki hillman who had been a former Imperial Tracker. He, Soma explained, was the Captain's "peach," by which he meant his most prized possession. "If he gets a chill," the Nilnameshi caste-noble said, "you must surrender your cloak and rub his feet!" The other giant of the group was Pokwas, or Pox as he was called. According to Somandutta, he was a disgraced Zeьmi Sword-Dancer, come to eke out a living among the unwashed barbarians of the Three Seas. "It's always Zeьm this or Zeьm that with him," the Nilnameshi explained with mock disgust. "Zeьm invented children. Zeьm invented wind…" There was Sutadra, or Soot, whom Achamian had already identified as Kianene because of his goatee and long moustaches. Apparently Soot refused to speak of his past, which meant, Soma said with exaggerated menace, he was a fugitive of some description. "Likely a Fanim heretic." And lastly, there was Moraubon, a rangy Galeoth who had once been a Shrial Priest, "until he discovered that peaches don't grow on prayers." Apparently the question of whether he was "half skinny" was a matter of ongoing debate.

"He hunts," Pox explained, his grin as broad as his black face, "with both bows strung."

Collectively, the seven of them were the only remaining members of the original company first assembled by Lord Kosoter some ten years previous. They called themselves the Bitten because they had been "gnawed" for so many long slogs. As it so happened, each and every one of them had been literally bitten by Sranc as well-and sported the scars to prove it. Pox even stood and dropped his leggings to reveal a puckered crescent across his left cheek, among other things.

"Sweet Sejenus," Galian exclaimed. "That solves the mystery of Soma's missing beard!"

Raucous laughter.

"Was that where it was hiding?" Achamian asked as innocently as a crafty old man could manage.

The Bitten fell dead silent. For a moment all he could hear was the talk and laughter from the other campfires echoing through the sieve of the surrounding forest. He had taken that step, so fateful in the company of close-knit strangers, between watching and participating.

"Where what was hiding?" Xonghis asked.

"The skinny that bit him."

Somandutta was the first to howl. Then all the Bitten joined in, rocking on their mats, trading looks like sips of priceless wine, or simply rolling their eyes heavenward, shining beneath the eternal arches of the night.

And Drusas Achamian found himself friends with the men he had in all likelihood killed.

Ever since striking out from his tower, Achamian had been afraid that his old body would fail him, that he would develop any one of the innumerable ailments that deny the long road to the aged. For some reason, he had assumed that his far thinner frame would also be far weaker. But he was pleasantly surprised to find his legs growing more and more roped with muscle, and his wind becoming deep-to the point where he had no difficulty managing even the most punishing pace.

Walking in file, leading their small mule trains, they followed a broad trail that generally ran parallel to the river. For long tracts it was treacherous going, as the trail had been scuffed deep enough to expose knobbed roots and buried rocks. The Osthwai Mountains loomed vast and magnificent above them, their peaks lost in a dark shoal of clouds as wide as the horizon. They seemed to eat the eastern sky in imperceptible increments.