‘Hood!’ barked Burrugast as the three arrived. ‘Your self-proclaimed officers are here! Iron of spine and steeled with resolve, our hands twitch in anticipation of sharp salutes and whatnot. What say you to that?’
‘Ah now, Burrugast,’ Varandas pointed out, ‘an unseemly challenge rides your greeting. Beloved Hood, Lord of Grief, pray do not let him sting you to life. The drama alone might kill us all.’
‘They but followed me here,’ said Haut, sitting down opposite Hood. ‘Worse than dogs, these two. Why, just yesterday I found them both upon the western shore, rolling in rotten fish. To hide the scent, no doubt.’
‘Ha,’ said Varandas, ‘and what scent would that be?’
‘A complex odour, to be sure,’ Haut allowed, adjusting himself atop the blockish stone. ‘Hints of derision, mockery. Smudges of contempt. The flavour of rooks on a leafless branch, looking down upon a raving fool. The glitter of sordid patience. Flavours of sorrow, but already turned bitter, as if grief deserves not a face, nor a purpose. And, at the last, wisps of envy-’
‘Envy!’ snorted Burrugast. ‘This fool would elevate his personal pain, and make it a plague to take us all!’
‘This fool would stand for us, in our stead, against a most implacable enemy. That we now join him marks the honesty we have each faced, the thing in our souls that cries out against the void. Envy, I say, in seeing courage not found in ourselves. This is a wake I will walk, and so too will you, Burrugast. And you, Varandas. The same for Gathras, and Sanad. Suvalas and Bolirium, too. We defiant, miserable Jaghut, alone in the futures awaiting us – and yet, here we are.’
Making a vaguely helpless gesture with one hand, Varandas lowered himself into a crouch, close to the fire. ‘Bah, there’s no heat from these flames. Hood, you would have done better with a mundane lantern. Or one of those Fire-Keepers who tend their charge. These flames are cold.’
‘Illusion,’ said Haut. ‘Light has its rival, and so too heat. We fend off darkness as a matter of course, and since when did an icy breath bother us?’
‘They seek a commander for this enterprise,’ said Varandas. ‘Hood offers nothing.’
Haut nodded. ‘Just my point. This hearth and the light it yields – not real. Nor is the station of command – neither real, nor relevant. Hood pronounced his vow. Was it meant to be answered? Do we all gather as if summoned? Not by our Lord of Grief, surely. Rather, by the nature of the enterprise itself. One Jaghut gave voice, but the sentiment was heard by all – well, all of us here.’
Burrugast growled under his breath. ‘How then to command this army? By what means are we to be organized?’
In answer, Haut shrugged. ‘Do you need a banner? An order of march? What discipline, Burrugast, do you imagine necessary, given the nature of our enemy? Shall we send out scouts, seeking the dread border – when in truth it is only found in our minds, between self and oblivion?’
‘Then are we to sit here, rotting, befouling the land around us, until age itself creeps over us, stealing souls one by one? You call this a war?’
‘Call it all a war,’ Haut said.
‘Captain,’ Varandas said, ‘you have led armies, seen fields of battle. In your past, you knew the privations, the brutal games of necessity. You won a throne, only to flee it. Stood triumphant on a mound of the slain, only to kneel in surrender the following dawn. In victory you lost everything, and in defeat you won your freedom. Of all who would join Hood, I did not expect you.’
‘Ah, you old woman, Varandas. It is in that very curse – my most martial past – where hides the answer. To a warrior, war is the drunkard’s drink. We yearn unending, seeking the numbness of past horrors, but each time, the way ahead whispers of paradise. But no soldier is so blind as to believe that. It is the unfeeling that we seek, the immunity to all depravity, all cruelty. The only purity in the paradise into which we would march is the timelessness it promises.’ He shook his head. ‘Beware the lustful ambitions of old warriors – it is our thirst that makes politics, and we will drink of mayhem again and again.’
Burrugast thumped his thigh in frustration and faced Hood. ‘Yield us a single word, I beg you. How long must we wait? I will see this enemy of yours!’
Hood lifted his gaze, studied Burrugast for a long moment, and then Varandas who still crouched, and finally Haut who sat opposite him. ‘If you have come here,’ he said. ‘If you would follow.’
‘I cannot decide,’ said Burrugast. ‘Perhaps none of us can. A war is already being waged, in our minds. Should reason win, you will find yourself alone.’
Hood smiled then, without much humour. ‘If so, Burrugast, then I will still tend to this fire here.’
‘The illusion of fire – the illusion of life itself!’
‘Just so.’
‘Then’ – Burrugast looked to the others – ‘what is it you mean to say? That you are already dead?’
Hood spread his hands out, held them motionless in the flickering flames.
‘Then what is it you await?’
Haut grunted. ‘An end to the battles within us, Burrugast, is what Hood waits for – if indeed he waits for anything. Look inward, my friends, and take up weapons. Begin this night your war on reason. In ashes we will find our triumph. In desolation we will find the place where the march can begin.’
Varandas sat down on the cold ground, leaning back on his hands with legs outstretched, boots at the very edge of the hearthstones. He sighed. ‘I foresee little challenge in the war you describe, Haut. A thousand times a night, I slay reason – but yes, I see it now. We Jaghut must take the lead in this, veterans as we all are. Girded obstinate, armed stubborn, arrayed in bloody-mindedness, we are unmatched.’
In the brief silence that followed, they all heard the sounds of heavy boots, drawing closer. Haut twisted round to see a score or more Thel Akai approaching. ‘Now then, Hood, see what the night brings. It’s the wretched Seregahl.’
Warriors, forsworn of all family ties, defiant of peace, blades unleashed in countless foreign wars, these Thel Akai were, to Haut’s mind, a curse to their people’s name. But the fiercest contempt held for the Seregahl belonged to other Thel Akai. ‘They have slain their own humour, the fools – and see what misery remains!’
The lead Seregahl – none knew their names, and for all Haut knew, those too had been surrendered to whatever secret purpose they held – now halted at the stone wall encircling Hood’s camp. Huge, heavy in battered armour, and taking a pose that involved leaning on the long handle of a massive double-bladed axe, the Seregahl commander scowled through a tangled nest of hair and beard. ‘Hood! The Seregahl will command the van – it is not for us to chew the dust of lesser folk. We shall raise a worthy banner to this noble cause. To slay death! In victory, we shall return all to the realm of the living, and be done with dying for ever more!’
Varandas, squinting up at the Thel Akai, frowned and said, ‘An impressive if well-rehearsed speech, sir. Even so, you describe a crowded world.’
The warrior blinked at Varandas. ‘A welcome future, then, Jaghut! Think of the wars that will be fought, as all battle to claim land, wealth, security!’
‘Fruitless battles, I should think, since no enemy will ever die.’
‘Pointless wealth, too,’ Haut added, ‘as by the accumulation of weight alone, it will surely lose all lustre.’
‘Security naught but an illusion,’ Burrugast added, ‘held but briefly, until the next wave of raging foes.’
‘As for the land,’ Varandas noted, ‘I see an ocean of crimson mud, banners tottering, tilting, sinking. None to die, no room for the living – why, this future life you describe, Seregahl, makes of death a heaven. Who, in that time, will rise up to pronounce a war upon life?’