Steven Erikson - Fall of Light

‘She deemed the mines a mercy?’ Rebble asked, in astonishment.

‘No. Perhaps. I could not guess her mind.’

He knew the soldiers were listening to this conversation, but none offered a comment.

They reached the ramp and began the ascent. The captain had left the small company of Hust soldiers positioned there, and the overseer stood to one side, like a man forgotten. Wareth met his eyes and the overseer shook his head.

Am I to be executed then? We three are collected up, but for two purposes. Theirs, I think I understand. Mine? Well, nine years is a long reprieve, by any sane standards.

He could feel his terror returning, familiar as a treacherous friend. It muttered its belated warnings, fuelling his imagination. It mocked his stupidity.

I should have ignored the unarmed women. I should have let this damned Hust captain see what we all really were. But Ganz used to spit down from the top of the shaft, aiming for me beside the water station. I don’t forget such things.

They passed through the gate. On one side of the gatehouse, beyond the razor-studded bars, was a door that had been left open. The sergeant halted the group just outside the doorway. ‘The captain wishes to speak to each of you, but one at a time.’ The man pointed at Listar. ‘You first.’

‘Any reason for that?’ Rebble asked in a growl.

‘No,’ the sergeant replied, before escorting Listar into the corridor beyond the door.

The remaining pair of soldiers moved off to one side, and began a muted conversation that was marked, on occasion, by a glance back at Wareth. Now he took note that one of them – the woman – had a hunter’s bow strapped to her back. Merrec’s last kiss.

‘You’ve too many friends,’ Rebble muttered, pulling at the joints of his fingers, making each one pop. He did this in a particular order, the part of the habit that defied Wareth’s attempts at making sense of it, and once again he bit back on his curiosity. For all he knew, it was the secret code of his friend’s forbearance, and a fragile one at that.

‘Before you,’ he now replied, ‘I had but one.’

Rebble glanced at him with his dark, half-mad eyes. ‘That sword?’

‘You have the truth of it.’

‘Yet you never saw me as metal for your confessions.’

‘I would say, perhaps, I learned my lesson.’

Rebble grunted, nodding. ‘I have many friends. Of course I do. Better my friend than my enemy, hey?’

‘The regret of the broken bodies strewn in the wake of your temper, Rebble. But when that rage is chained, you are an honourable man.’

‘You think? I doubt the worth of that honour, Wareth. Maybe this is why we’re friends.’

‘I will take that wound,’ Wareth said after a moment. ‘It was your temper, after all, that warded me when I was bound to the cot.’

‘If you’d been bound face-down, even that would not have sufficed.’

‘Rapists don’t live long in the pit.’

‘Nor do the raped.’

‘So,’ Wareth said, and he ground the word out. ‘We have a code.’

‘Of honour? Maybe so, when you put it that way. Tell me, does it take cleverness to be a coward?’

‘I think so.’

‘I think so, too.’

The sergeant reappeared with Listar. The miner looked confused and would not meet the eyes of his companions, and there was something in the set of his body that whispered defeat.

The sergeant gestured to one of the waiting soldiers and said, ‘Take him to the wagons.’ Then he pointed at Rebble. ‘Now you.’

‘If any of you asks me to cut my hair,’ Rebble said, straightening from the wall against which he had been leaning, ‘I’ll kill you.’

‘Come with me.’

Wareth was left alone. He glanced over to see the last remaining soldier studying him. After a moment the woman turned away. That’s right. You saved my life. How does it feel?

No matter. Merrec got what he deserved. A bully. Full of talk. All the women he had, all the husbands he cuckolded, until the one who got in his face and made trouble. But a knife in the back took care of that one. And you dared to call me a coward, Merrec?

But you would have done for me today, knowing I’d run. He studied the Hust soldier, the slantwise curve of her back as she settled most of her weight on one leg, hip cocked. Her attention was fixed southward, out across the broken landscape pockmarked by pulled tree trunks. Her armour seemed to ripple of its own accord. On occasion, the scabbarded sword at her side jolted as if knocked by her knee – but she had made no move.

The Hust. Few were left. The story had come in hushed tones – even for the savage killers in the pit, there was something foul in the poisoning of almost three thousand men and women. But it seemed that civil war precluded all notions of criminality, and who among the victors – standing beside Hunn Raal – would even contemplate a redressing of justice? Blows were struck, the cause sure and true, a rushing sluice to wash away what lingered on the hands, what stained the boots. The first words of the triumphant were always about looking to the future, restoring whatever nostalgic illusion of order they’d fought for. The future, for such creatures, was a backhanded game of revising the past. It was a place, Wareth well knew, where lies could thrive.

He was chilled now, having left his shirt in the shaft far below the earth’s surface. He used the wall behind him to keep his back straight, although the effort made his spine ache, but the cold of the stone quickly sank into his muscles, offering some relief.

A coward saw regret as if regarding a lost lover, as a thing used hard and fast only to quickly pall, pulling apart in mutual disgust. Those regrets then died of starvation. But their carcasses littered his world, all within easy reach. Occasionally, when driven by need, he would pick one up and seek to force life into it once again. But any carcass could be prodded this way and that, given gestures that resembled those of the living. A child would understand this easily enough, and deem it play. The games adults played, however, existed in a realm of ever-shifting rules. Regrets were the pieces, escape the coward’s prize, and each time, the prize turned out to be failure.

He lived in a world of confusion, and neither the world nor the confusion ever went away . I am slave to living, and nothing is to be done for that. He will see that. The captain is not a fool. Wise enough to survive the Poisoning. One of the very few, if the rumours are true.

Had he stayed, hidden among them, he would now be dead.

But the coward ever finds ways to live. It is our one gift.

The sound of footsteps, and then Rebble reappeared. He looked over at Wareth. ‘Half the game, us,’ he said. ‘I pity the other half.’

‘The women?’

Rebble nodded.

The sergeant detailed the last soldier to escort Rebble to the wagons beyond the camp. Before they drew out of earshot, Rebble turned and shouted, ‘The captain has lost his mind, Wareth! Just so you know!’

Scowling, the sergeant waved Wareth into the corridor.

‘You do not argue his opinion,’ Wareth said as they approached the office.

Saying nothing, the man opened the door and gestured.

‘Alone?’ Wareth asked.

‘The captain elects privacy in this,’ the sergeant said, ‘as is his privilege. Go in now, Wareth.’

But the miner hesitated, eyes narrowing on the man. ‘Did we once know each other?’

‘No, but your name is known to us all. The Hust Legion’s lone blot of shame.’

From within the office, the captain spoke. ‘That’s enough, sergeant. Wait outside.’

‘Sir,’ the man replied.

And if shame was the only blot, we could do away with swords. And war. And punishment, for that matter. We would guard ourselves against the crime of failing oneself, and feel only pity – like Rebble – for those who fell.