You will forgive me, though, if I do not dwell on those years. It is enough to record here that the trolls are gone from Athas, forgotten, and Hamanu bears the blame.
The end of my war—the end of the trolls—came in the thirty-first year of the 177th Ring's Age, the appropriately named Year of Silt's Vengeance. We'd driven the last of the trolls—some five hundred men, women, and what few of their children as remained—far to the northeast, beyond the vague boundaries of the heartland, and into a land that was as strange to us as it was to them.
The trolls hoped, perhaps, that I would abandon pursuit if they retreated far enough, long enough. But even if they'd trudged to the end of the world, I would have plagued their heels as they plunged over the edge. And, indeed, that was very nearly what happened.
Whether through miscalculation or some half-conscious desire to meet doom at his chosen time, not mine, Windreaver backed his people onto a rocky peninsula jutting into the brack-water and wrack-water we now call the Sea of Silt. There, under an ominous and gritty sky, the trolls stretched their tanned human hides over drum heads for the last time.
"Will we fight?" my adjutant asked when he found me on the mainland heights overlooking Windreaver's camp.
By my count, I had three veterans to pit against each and every troll, which any fool will tell you isn't enough when the cover is sparse and there's a narrows to be won and held at the battle's start. Simpler, wiser by far to sit in my mainland camp until disease and starvation winnowed their ranks. Simplest and wisest of all to wait until those invisible allies won the battle outright. But those drums took a steady toll on my army's morale, and neither disease nor starvation would respect the line between our opposing camps for long. I couldn't guess how long my slight advantage in numbers would hold, or when I might find myself in a disadvantageous retreat.
"We'll fight," I decided. "Spread the word: All or nothing, at dawn."
The land offered little choice in tactics. Wave after wave of my veterans sallied up the peninsula's neck while I stood on the heights, protecting them from the troll shamans and their rock-hurling magic. When the neck was secure, I left the heights and entered the battle myself. Not long before, I'd seen the animal that was to become my emblem forever after: the tawny lion with his thick black mane, ivory fangs, and lethal claws. I cloaked myself in a glamour that was half human, half lion. My sword was precious steel, as long as my leg and honed to a deadly edge. I gave it a golden sheen to match my lion's hide. My own men fell to their knees when they saw me; the troll drums lost their rhythm.
I sought Windreaver myself—his axe against my sword. It was no contest. By the time I found him, he was bleeding from a score of wounds. His white hair was red and matted with blood from a skull wound that would have killed a human twice over. One eye had swollen shut. One arm hung useless at his side; the other trembled when he raised his axe to salute me. I thrust my glowing sword into the dirt.
"Finish it," he demanded. "There'll be no surrender. Not to you. Not to any puny human."
I balked on brink of total victory. I'd come to the end of my destiny: Windreaver and his few battered companions were the last. When they were gone, there'd be no more. My champion's hunger gnawed in my empty gut; all day, I'd turned away from every troll death. The thought of Windreaver's spirit writhing through my grasp as it sought eternity left me burning with anticipated bliss.
And for that reason, I couldn't do it.
"Live out your lives," I offered. "Men and women apart from each other, until your race comes to a natural end."
Had I stood where the old troll stood, I'd have spit in my own eye, and that was exactly what he did. Still, I wouldn't kill him; I wouldn't kill the last troll, nor would any of my veterans. I made them kill themselves, marching off the seaward cliff. Windreaver stood silently beside me. He was no sorcerer, but he was the first person I'd met who could hide his thoughts beneath an empty, surface calm.
Singly and in pairs, clinging to one another for support-but never moaning, never wailing—the trolls hurled themselves over the edge. Trolls couldn't, by nature, swim, even if they'd tried. Those who didn't die on the rocks drowned quickly in the wracken surf. With my eyes closed, I counted their deaths, forty-seven in all. Forty-eight, when Windreaver left me.
He meant to be the last and knew—I suppose—that I would not let him go as easily as the others. I would not let him go at all. I was ready when, on the verge of leaping, he thrust his knife into the big veins of his neck. I caught his escaping spirit, imprisoned it in a smooth gray pebble, and I say this now, thirteen ages after: I was not wrong to bring death to an entire race. The wrong was Rajaat's and Rajaat's madness. But I was not right, and the onus of genocide, rightfully, falls on me, on Hamanu.
Chapter Eleven
... Omniscience...
There was the smell of himali flour, of fresh-bated bread, moist and hot from the oven, filled with sunshine and contentment. Childhood. Family—Mother and Father, brothers and sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews. Community—Deche and Dorean. Love and the future bound as one, together, forever.
... Omniscience...
Coarse-grain bread, cut with sand, kneaded by war-hardened hands and baked flat on hearthstones. Hollow stomachs and hollower victories under a heavy sky. A sky that had neither stars nor moons to break the darkness. Firelit faces in the darkness, waiting for the future.
... Omniscience...
Bread with a golden-tan crust floating in twilight. A mind floating in a windowless room, a room cluttered with chests and bundles. A room crowded with faces. Faces with open eyes, open mouths, and closed minds. Strangers' faces: some men, some not; some human, some not. All of them waiting; none of them familiar.
"Hamanu."
A jolt of darkness as eyes blinked. His eyes. Him. Hamanu.
One voice that cut through the swirling memories. One face above the crowd. A face unlike the others, drawn in silver on the room's shadows. A face that was, at last, familiar.
"Windreaver."
The sound of his own voice was the final key that released Hamanu's self from a stagnant mire of memory. A surge of self-knowledge began to restore order to his consciousness. He blinked his eyes away from the waiting faces, to gather his wits in a semblance of privacy, glanced down and saw an arm—his arm—little more than bone cased in dull, dark flesh.
The thought came to him: When did that happen? Before the answer had unrolled itself in his consciousness, another question had taken its place: After ages upon ages, have I finally succumbed to Rajaat's madness?
The mere fact that he had to ask the question made any answer suspect.
Hamanu shuddered and closed his eyes.
"Step back from the brink, Hamanu," Windreaver's echoing whisper advised.
What brink? Wasn't he sitting in a crowded room?
Then the windswept peninsula where the last trolls had died sprang up behind Hamanu's eyes, more real than this room and anyone in it, anyone except Windreaver.
"Eat, Omniscience. You haven't eaten—haven't moved— for three days and nights together."
Hamanu recognized a round, hairless, and very worried face. With chilly dread, he marveled that he hadn't recognized the dwarf's voice when he first heard it, or picked Enver's face immediately from the crowd. The dread turned icy when he considered that, indeed, he hadn't moved for three days and nights. His joints were rigid, as hard as the black bones that formed them.