One spoke. ‘Healer. One of us shall hold open the wound. The other shall reach inside and find the two severed ends of the vessel.’
‘Yes! That’s it! And once you’ve got them, pinch hard – stop the blood flow – and then bring them together so I can see them.’
‘We are ready, healer.’
‘He’s lost a lot of blood. He’s in shock. This probably won’t work. Surprised he’s not already dead. I might just kill him. Or he’ll die later. Blood loss. Infection.’ He trailed off, looked across at blank, staring, lifeless faces. ‘Right, needed to get all that out of the way. Here goes.’
They were waiting well off to one side of the trail. The column’s ragged end had already passed. Blistig stood facing the others, arms crossed.
Kindly and Raband made their way over.
Overhead, the Jade Strangers blazed with a green light bright enough to cast sharp shadows, and it seemed the desert air itself was confused, not nearly as chill as it should have been. There was no wind, and stillness surrounded the group.
Blistig met Kindly’s eyes unflinchingly. ‘I executed a traitor tonight, Kindly. That and nothing more. I was holding on to reserves of water – knowing a time of great need would come.’
‘Indeed,’ Kindly replied. ‘How many casks was it again? Four? Five?’
‘For the officer corps, Kindly. With some, if we so judged, to the marines and heavies. It wouldn’t have been much, granted, but something … maybe enough. Didn’t the Adjunct make it plain? The marines and the heavies before everyone else. In fact, the rest of them don’t matter.’
‘Lieutenant Pores was not under your command, Blistig.’
‘Acts of treason fall under the purview of any commanding officer who happens to be present, Kindly. I acted within military law in this matter.’
‘That water,’ said Ruthan Gudd, ‘was doled out to the children of the Snake. By the Adjunct’s direct command.’
‘The Adjunct knew nothing about it, Captain Gudd, so what you’re saying makes no sense.’
Faradan Sort snorted. ‘We all knew about your stash, Blistig. We’ve just been waiting for you to make your move. But you can’t reclaim what was never yours in the first place, never mind that it’s now all gone. If there was any treason here, Blistig, it was yours.’
He sneered. ‘That’s where you’ve lost the track – all of you! All this “we’re in this together” rubbish – so that a lowly latrine digger gets the same portion as a Fist, or a captain, or the damned Adjunct herself – that’s not how the world is, and with good reason! It’s us highborn who’ve earned the greater portion. On account of our greater responsibilities, our greater skills and talents. That’s the order of the world, friends.’
‘Never knew you were highborn, Blistig,’ commented Faradan Sort.
The man scowled. ‘There’s other paths to privilege, Sort. Look at you, after all, a deserter of the Wall, now here you are, a damned Fist. And Kindly here, straight up from the regular ranks, and that climb wasn’t exactly meteoric, was it? Decades of mediocrity, right, Kindly? You ended up just outlasting everyone else.’
‘Everything you’re saying, Blistig,’ said Ruthan Gudd, ‘is undermining your original argument. Seems there’s not one highborn among us here. In fact, only the Adjunct can make that claim.’
‘A woman who betrayed her own class,’ Blistig said, with a cold grin. ‘Treason starts at the top when it comes to the Bonehunters.’
‘You plan on killing everyone, then, Blistig?’
‘Kindly, turns out I don’t have to, do I? We’re finished. All those warnings have proved true. This desert can’t be crossed. We’ve failed. In every way, we’ve failed.’ He shook his head. ‘I did Pores a damned favour. I made it quick.’
‘Expecting one of us to make it as quick for you?’ Ruthan Gudd asked him.
Blistig shrugged. ‘Why not? I don’t care any more. I really don’t. She’s already killed us all. Will it be your blade, Captain Gudd? Do me a favour – make it the icy one.’
‘No one will be killing you this night,’ Kindly said. He unclipped his sword belt and threw it to one side. ‘We bear these titles. Fists. Let’s find their original meaning, you and me, Blistig.’
‘You’re joking, old man.’
Faradan Sort turned to Kindly in alarm. ‘What are you doing? Let’s just drag him up before the Adjunct. Kindly!’
But the man bulled forward. And Blistig moved to meet him.
Two men too weak to do any real damage to the other. The fight was pathetic. Punches that couldn’t break skin, blows that could barely bruise. Three or four exchanges and both men were kneeling three paces apart, gasping, heads held down.
When Kindly looked up, Blistig threw sand into his eyes, lurched forward, grasped Kindly’s head and drove it down on to one knee.
Sort moved to intervene but Ruthan Gudd reached out and held her back.
The impact should have shattered Kindly’s nose, but it didn’t. He punched Blistig’s crotch.
The man let out a strangled grunt, sagged down on to his side.
Kindly tried to get up, fell back down, and then rolled on to his back, eyes squeezed shut, his chest heaving for breath.
‘That’s it,’ Ruthan Gudd said. ‘They’re done.’
‘Stupid!’ Faradan Sort snapped, pulling her arm out of Gudd’s grip. She went to stand over the two men. ‘What was the point? If the soldiers up there had seen this – you useless fools! Blistig, if we weren’t all of us about to die, I would kill you. But you don’t deserve that mercy – no, you’re going to suffer through this night just like everyone else.’ She turned. ‘Captain Raband, help your Fist.’
Blistig managed to work himself back on to his knees, and he slowly sat up. ‘She’s killed us all. For nothing.’ He moved his glare from one face to the next. ‘Aye, I see it in your eyes, every one of you, you ain’t got a thing to say to make it different. She’s killed us. You know it the same as me. So, you want to kill me? You want to do her work for her?’ He climbed, with difficulty, to his feet. ‘Give me the dignity of dying on my own.’
‘You should have understood the value of that,’ said Ruthan, ‘before you stuck a knife in Pores, Fist Blistig.’
‘Maybe I should have. But he lied to me, and I don’t like being lied to.’ He pointed a finger at Kindly. ‘We’re not done, you and me. I’ll be waiting for you at Hood’s Gate, old man.’
‘Pathetic,’ hissed Faradan Sort.
They left Blistig where he was, and the way he held himself, it would be a while before he’d be ready to start walking again. Skanarow moved alongside Ruthan Gudd.
‘I was hoping we’d just kill him,’ she said, low under her breath. ‘The man’s a murderer, after all. Pores wasn’t even wearing a weapon belt, and his knife was jammed hilt deep in a bale on the wagon.’
‘If anyone will be looking for Blistig at Hood’s Gate, it will be Lieutenant Pores, don’t you think?’
But Skanarow shook her head. ‘I never believed in retribution beyond Death’s Gates. Nobody is squatting on the other side weighing and balancing a life’s scales.’ She stumbled slightly and Ruthan moved to catch her. Felt her momentarily sag against him. ‘Shit, I may not last the night.’
‘You will, Skanarow. I’m not letting you die, do you understand me?’
‘There’s no way out, and you know it, my love. You know it – you can’t hide what I see in your eyes.’
He said nothing, because there was nothing to say.
‘You’ll forget me, won’t you? Eventually. Like … all the rest.’
‘Don’t say that, Skanarow – it’s the wrong thing to think. For people … like me … it’s not forgetting that is our curse. It’s remembering.’
Her smile was faint, and she disengaged herself from his half-embrace. ‘Then I beg you, love, do all that you can to forget me. Leave no memory behind to haunt you – let it all fade. It shouldn’t be hard – what we had didn’t last long, did it?’
He’d heard such words before. And this is why remembering is a curse.