Rance shook her head. ‘Then tell him how it is, sir.’ Her eyes found his again, and indeed he thought of a cat. ‘Tell him how it’s the men who are cowards who hurt and kill women. Tell him about their small minds, full of dark knots and darting fears. Tell him how they can’t think past that first rush of blind rage, and how satisfying it is to just give up thinking altogether.’ Colour had risen to her face with her words. ‘Tell the commander, sir, that these dead bastards are worthless in any army. They’ll run. They’ll make trouble with us cats, looking for more women to bully and threaten. Better to see them all dead. Sir.’
Wareth glanced across at Rebble, and saw the man grinning, but it was a cold grin that could go in any direction.
Listar stood silent, a few paces away. Wife slayer.
Did she know? Of course she knows. Crimes are the meat of our conversations, and we’ll chew the gristle over and over again, in the belief that, with enough jawing, the flavour will change and the bitterness will go away. The sour misery of it all … listen! Just fade into nothing, will you? Oh, we’re a stubborn lot, especially with those faiths promising escape.
‘They ain’t all cowards,’ Rebble said, still grinning, but something was lit in his eyes.
She was sharp enough to notice and stepped back. ‘If you say so, sir.’
‘I do. More to the point, some killings, well, they just happen. In a red haze.’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘That’s how forgetting and remembering becomes the worst part of it.’
Now, at last, Wareth saw the woman pale. ‘You have the truth of that,’ she said in a low, frail voice.
Then Rebble’s grin spread into a smile. ‘But me, I don’t have that problem. I remember every poor bastard I went and killed. The ones I meant to, the ones I didn’t. If I gave you all their names, would you know which was which? No. Nobody would. Because it really makes no difference to anybody, not even me. That’s my problem, you see. What I can’t remember, no matter how hard I try, are my reasons for killing anybody. The arguments, I mean, the ones that broke out and turned bad.’ He shook his head, showing an exaggerated expression of bafflement. ‘Not a single reason, not one.’
Sighing, Wareth looked away. Rebble’s new habit was making speeches, but none of them left a listener feeling at ease. Is there anything beneath all that, Rebble? Something you’re trying to tell us? Something you need to confess? What’s stopping you?
Rance simply nodded in answer to Rebble’s words.
The tall, wiry man then turned and walked over to Listar. ‘Let’s go find the dead man’s tent, Listar, and see what’s to be seen.’ He glanced over at Wareth. ‘It’s almost tenth bell, sir.’
‘I know,’ Wareth replied. ‘Go on then, the two of you.’
He watched the two men head off towards the White Crag block.
‘Can I go now, sir?’
‘No. Come with me.’
She surprised him by offering no objection, and fell in at his side when he set out for the command centre. ‘Better you than him, sir.’
‘Just smile and nod, no matter what he says.’
‘I’d forgotten about Listar,’ she said.
‘Rebble figured you were looking to wound, I think. He didn’t like it.’ Wareth hesitated, and then said, ‘Listar isn’t a coward. He wants to die. He won’t take a guard at his tent at night, despite these murders. Every time we find ourselves standing over another body, he’s disappointed that it’s not him lying there at our feet.’
Rance grunted, but said nothing.
‘Not much longer now, I think.’
‘What?’
‘We’ve got a problem with desertions, Rance. And not enough old Legion soldiers to ring the camp. Besides which, the deal was freedom, only to win it we’d have to serve, but given the chance we’ll take the freedom and Abyss take the serving part. I think it will all fall apart.’
‘So why make me do anything? Just let me go back to my tent-’
‘You weren’t anywhere near your tent when looking at that body,’ Wareth observed as they drew closer to the larger cluster of tents at the camp’s centre. ‘Not if you’re in the White Crag block.’
‘I was just wandering, sir. They won’t accept me, you know.’
‘Who’s the worst of your lot, Rance, for making trouble with you?’
‘There’s one. Velkatal. She dropped six babies, then left them to run wild. Four were dead before coming of age, and the other two ended up in the mines and died in them. But to hear her tell it, she was the world’s best mother.’
‘Fine. Make her your Rebble.’
Rance snorted. ‘She’d be the first to mutiny under my command.’
‘Not after I inform her that whatever your fate, she will share it.’
‘So that is how you make squad leaders. And that’s why Rebble keeps you alive.’
‘It’s how we’re making squad leaders,’ Wareth agreed. ‘But as for Rebble, he started keeping me alive back in the pit. So, I don’t know his reasons, but there was no deal made that’s changed anything. At least, not that he’s told me.’
‘You never killed a woman, did you?’
‘No. Rance, there’re all kinds of cowards out there.’
She grunted again, her only response.
* * *
Fleeing the future seemed the most sordid of acts, and yet Faror Hend felt that she was making a habit of it. Two men haunted her wake, and the one pursuing her was, to her mind, the wrong man. At night, lying sleepless on her cot, with the tent walls slumping with the weight of the ice left by her breath, she could, upon closing her eyes, see a figure, tall and spectral, emerging from a vast, lifeless plain. He was walking towards her, hunting her down, and for all the monstrosity of the image, she knew that there was no evil in him. He was simply her fate, bound in promise, inescapable.
Yet in her dreams, when at last sleep found her, she saw Spinnock Durav, a cousin too close for propriety. She saw his youth, nearly a match to her own. She saw his smile, and basked in the wit of his sly words. He offered her an image, a possibility, that burned with mockery – the cruel, sneering kind. Though he stood close, she could not reach for him. Though she longed to take him, he was like a man armoured against her every charm. She would then wake, her soul heavy and cringing with the hopelessness of her desire. He had, after all, pushed her away, confessing instead his love for Finarra Stone, and the bitter irony of that revelation still tasted like ashes in Faror’s mouth.
With dawn streaking the east horizon, she would leave her tent, and set out in the direction of that growing light, drawn to its red slash, the fires of a new day’s birth. With each and every night a realm of ashes and despair, she fled into the light. An army encamped was a creature of routine, mechanical and obstinate in its witless, dull-brained way. It offered nothing new, no change in its surly, trudging mood.
Out past the pickets, facing on to a snow-smeared plain, she would stand, wrapped in her heavy cloak, and look for a figure, walking on foot, coming out of dawn’s blazing fire. New day, new life. Those who play at soldiers stir behind me, and before me, somewhere out there, a man striding out from a soldier’s end.
Mechanical things will break. Dirt and rust to bind the gears, millstones worn down, ratchets and brackets weakened by strain unto snapping. But some, no matter how carefully fitted the assembled parts, are destined to not work at all. And even then, look into the east, out on to this empty plain. There he walks, a broken cog, seeking a new routine. Husband. Wife.
I flee, but in truth, there is nowhere to run to. The future chases me, hunts me.
On this day, Commander Galar Baras had summoned her to join him in his staff meeting. She saw no reason for that. She was a Warden, not an officer of the Hust. More to the point, she needed to leave, to ride for her own company – back to Commander Calat Hustain, and Spinnock Durav.