‘Still nervous?’ Hedge asked him. ‘I’d be, if I was you. Khundryl like their horses. A lot. Between a warrior’s horse and his mother, it’s even odds which one he’d save, if it came down to choosing. Then you just went and killed ’em.’
‘They were dying anyway, sir. In a single day, a horse needs more water than four soldiers, and those Khundryl were running out. Try bleeding a dehydrated animal, sir – it isn’t easy.’
‘Right, so now they got undead horses and still no water, meaning if you’d done that a week ago, why, all that sacrifice wouldn’t have been necessary. They want to kill you, alchemist – it took me half a day to talk ’em out of it.’
Bavedict glared at Hedge. ‘You just said, between horses and their mothers—’
‘They’d save their mothers, of course. What are you, an idiot?’
The alchemist sighed.
‘Anyway,’ Hedge continued after a moment, ‘we’re all Bridgeburners now. Now it’s true, we killed a few officers every now and then, if they was bad enough. Who wouldn’t? Get a fool in charge and they’re likely to get you all killed, so better top ’em first, right? But you ain’t done nothing to earn that. Besides, I need you and so do they. So it’s simple and all – nobody’s gonna cut your throat.’
‘I am most relieved, Commander.’
Hedge moved closer, dropping his voice. ‘But listen. It’s all about to fall apart – can you see that? The Bonehunters – those regulars – they’re losing it.’
‘Sir, we’re not much better off.’
‘So we don’t want to get caught up in the slaughter, right? I already told my captains. We’re gonna pull out hard as soon as it starts up – I want a hundred paces between us before they start looking for somebody new to kill.’
‘Sir, do you think it will get that bad?’
Hedge shrugged. ‘Hard to say. So far, the marines are holding ’em all in check. But there’s gonna come a scrap, any time now, when a marine gets taken down. And the smell of blood will do it, mark my words.’
‘How would the Bridgeburners have handled this, sir? Back in the day?’
‘Simple. Sniff out the yappers and kill ’em. It’s the ones who can’t stop bitching, talking it up, egging on the stupider ones to do something stupid. Hoping it all busts out. Me’ – he nodded to the column walking beside them – ‘I’d jump Blistig and drag him off into the desert – and for a whole damned day nobody’d be sleeping, ’cause of all the screaming.’
‘No wonder you all got outlawed,’ Bavedict muttered.
The sky to the east was lightening, the sun rising to wage war with the Jade Strangers before they plunged beneath the north horizon. The column broke down in sections, clumps of soldiers spilling away on to the sides of the trail. Sinking down, heads lowered, weapons and armour clashing as packs dropped to the ground. The haulers stopped, struggled out of the heavy yokes. Wailing from the Khundryl as yet another horse stumbled and fell on to its side – and out flashed the knives, and this day there would be plenty of blood to drink, but no one rejoiced among the Burned Tears.
Where the wagons halted, the marines settled, red-eyed and slack-faced with exhaustion. On all sides, the soldiers moved like old men and women, fighting to raise tarps and flies, roll out bedding, pausing to rest between tasks. Weapons were slowly drawn, the day’s damage repaired with oiled whetstones, but the act was almost mindless: gestures of instinct observed by dull, sullen eyes.
And then out from the wagons came the children, in ones and twos, into the midst of the soldiers. They came not to beg or plead, but simply to sit, watching over the soldiers as they slept. Or suffered with staring eyes. Or, in the case of some, quietly died.
Sergeant Sinter observed this as she sat leaning against the wheel of the wagon they’d been guarding. The tremulous arrival of a child into every knot of soldiers seemed to have a strange effect upon them. Arguments fell away, glaring eyes faded, resentments sank down. The sleepless rolled on to their sides and surrendered to weariness. Pain was swallowed back and those who sat weeping without tears eventually settled into silence.
What gift was this? She did not understand. And when a soldier awoke in the closing of dusk, and found curled at his or her side a small, still form, cool and pale in the dying light, she’d seen how the squad then gathered to set shards of crystal over the lifeless child, raising a glittering mound. And the soldiers would then cut fetishes free from their belts and harnesses – the bones they’d carried since Aren – and set them upon the pathetic heaps of rock.
‘They’re killing us.’
She looked over at her sister, who sat against the back wheel, her splinted leg stretched out. ‘Who is it this time, Kisswhere?’
‘They come and share the last moments. Ours. Theirs. It’s not fair, what they bring.’
Sinter’s eyes narrowed on Kisswhere. You’ve gone away, sister. Will you ever come back? ‘I don’t know what they bring,’ she said.
‘You wouldn’t.’
A dull awakening of anger, which then drained away. ‘Why do you say that?’
Kisswhere bared her teeth, the back of her head resting between two spokes, her eyes closed. ‘What you always had, Sinter. What I never had. That’s why you can’t see it. Can’t recognize it. It’d be like seeing into your own soul, and that’s something nobody can do. Oh, they say they can. Talk about revelation, or truth. All that shit. But inside us, something stays hidden. For ever.’
‘There’s nothing hiding inside me, Kisswhere.’
‘But those children – sitting, watching, lying close – it hurts you to see them, doesn’t it?’
Sinter looked away.
‘You fool,’ Kisswhere sighed. ‘They bring dignity. Same as you. Same as the Adjunct herself – why do you think so many of us hate her? Hate the sight of her? She shows us everything we don’t want to be reminded of, because there’s nothing harder for most of us to find than dignity. Nothing. So, they show us how you can die with dignity – they show us by dying themselves, and by letting us die while being watched over.
‘The Adjunct said unwitnessed. These children don’t agree.’
But it’s all pointless anyway.
Kisswhere went on, ‘Did you think this would be easy? Did you think our feet wouldn’t start to drag? We’ve walked across half a world to get here. We stopped being an army long ago – and no, I don’t know what we are now. I don’t think there’s a person in this world who’d be able to give us a name.’
‘We’re not going to make it,’ Sinter said.
‘So what?’
Sinter looked across at her sister. Their eyes briefly locked. Just past Kisswhere, Corporal Rim sat hunched over, rubbing oil into the stump of his right arm. He made no sign of listening, but she knew he was. Same for Honey, lying shrouded under stained linen to keep the sun from her eyes. ‘So you don’t care, Kisswhere. You never did.’
‘Surviving this ain’t the point, Sinter. It stopped being the point some time ago.’
‘Right,’ she snapped. ‘So enlighten me.’
‘You already know. You said it yourself – we’re not going to make it. And those children, they come among us, like homunculi. Made up of everything we surrendered in our lives – all that dignity, and integrity, and truth – all of it, and look at them – starved down to bones and not much else. We ain’t been too good with the best in us, sister, have we?’
If tears had been possible, Sinter would have wept them. Instead, she sank down on to the hard ground. ‘You should’ve run,’ she said.
‘I bet the Adjunct says that to herself a thousand times a day.’
The Adjunct? Sinter shook her head. ‘She’s not the running type.’
‘No, and neither are you. And now, it turns out, neither am I.’