Fall of Light (10 page)

Leaving his chamber and making his way towards the outer ward and the gate, beyond which waited the bridge, Kellaras was forced to cross the Terondai’s glittering pattern cut into the flagstones. He could feel the power beneath him, emanating in slow exudations, like the breath of a sleeping god. The sensation crawled across his skin.

He emerged into the chill night, where frost glistened on the stone walls and the lone Houseblade positioned at the gate stood huddled beneath a heavy cloak, dozing as she leaned against the barrier. Hearing his approach, she straightened.

‘Sir.’

‘You have closed the gate.’

She nodded. ‘I saw, sir, that the bridge was unguarded.’

‘Unguarded? Where, then, are Dathenar and Prazek?’

‘I do not know, sir.’

Kellaras gestured and she hurried to unbar the gate. The hinges squealed as she pushed on the portal. The captain passed through, on to the bridge. The bitter chill in this almost perpetual night was made all the more fierce by the black waters of the Dorssan Ryl. His boots cracked on ice as he hurried across the span.

He could well guess the refuge Dathenar and Prazek had found. Dereliction by officers was a grievous offence, and worse, the example it set could deliver a mortal wound to morale. Yet, in his heart, Kellaras could not blame his two friends. Their lord had abandoned them, and the one brother who remained to command the Citadel’s Houseblades often mistook birthright for wisdom: with this last command, written in the spinning of a heel, half the officers remaining to the Houseblades were divested of their colours.

Without question, Galar Baras and the Hust would welcome this gift, although Kellaras suspected that even his friend would be startled at the largesse, and perhaps wonder at Silchas Ruin’s unleavened generosity with respect to Anomander’s soldiers.

Attachment to any other force might be cause for envy, under the circumstances, but Kellaras was under no illusions, and he well knew the effect delivering this command would have upon Dathenar and Prazek
. As good as banishment. And so it will seem, given their abandoning their post, and to be honest, I am loath to deny the connection. Officers, by the Abyss! No, it’s serendipitous punishment, enough to sober them to the quick.

The Gillswan was a tavern that made a virtue of its obscure location, down a curling slope to a loading dock and sunk into the foundations of a lesser bridge. The cobbles were uneven due to frost-heaving, all the more treacherous with the addition of frozen puddles filling the gaps left by missing stones. Despite this, the gloom failed in disguising the pitfalls, and Kellaras made his way to the low door without mishap. He pushed it open and felt smoky heat gust into his face.

Prazek’s voice crossed the cramped, crowded room. ‘Kellaras! Here, join us hogs in the swill! We are drunk in defeat, my friend, but see us welcome the woe and wallow of our fate!’

Kellaras saw his friends, leaning against one another on a bench backed by a wall. Ignoring the crowd of off-duty Houseblades, even those that called out in greeting, he made his way over to Dathenar and Prazek, pulled out a chair and sat down opposite them. Faces flushed, they smiled. Then Dathenar pushed a flagon towards the commander, and said, ‘It’s the beastly tongue that wags us this night, my friend.’

‘There is pomp to this circumstance nonetheless,’ Prazek said, lurching forward to rest his thick forearms on the table. ‘No highborn can truly sink into the hole of ignorance’s cloying mud. We poke our faces free again and again, gasping for air.’

‘If this fug be air,’ Dathenar said in a growl. ‘Besides, I am too drunk to swim, too bloated to drown, and too confused to tell the difference. We left the bridge – this much I know – and that is a crime in the eyes of our lord.’

‘Fortunate, then,’ said Prazek, ‘that our lord’s eyes are elsewhere.’

‘Unfortunate,’ corrected Kellaras, ‘since I must see in his stead.’

‘That will make any man’s eyes sting,’ Dathenar said.

‘I’ll not deny that,’ Kellaras replied, pointedly.

But neither man was in any condition for subtlety. With a broad, sloppy smile, Prazek waved one hand. ‘Must we take our posts again? Will you berate us with cold promises? At the very least, friend, build us a fine argument, an intricaspy – intricacy – of purpose. Hook fingers into the nostrils and drag out the noble horse, so we may see its fine trappings. Honour’s bridle—’

‘Pride’s stirrups!’ shouted Dathenar, raising his flagon.

‘Duty’s bit between the teeth!’

‘Loyalty’s over-worn saddle, so sweet under the cheeks!’

‘To take belch’s foul cousin—’

‘Friends,’ said Kellaras in a warning hiss, ‘that is enough of that. Your words are unfit for officers of Lord Anomander’s Houseblades. You try my indulgence. Now, be on your feet, and pray the cold night air yields you sobriety.’

Prazek’s brows lifted and he looked to Dathenar. ‘He dares it, brother! To the bridge, then! Torches approach from some dire quarter. ’Tis revelation’s light, to make every sinner cower!’

‘Not the bridge,’ Kellaras said, sighing. ‘You have been reassigned. Both of you. By command of Silchas Ruin. You are to join the Hust Legion.’

This silenced them. Looking upon their shocked expressions offered Kellaras no satisfaction.

‘F-for abandoning our posts?’ Prazek asked in disbelief.

‘No. That crime stays between us. The matter is more prosaic. Galar Baras has terrible need for officers. This is Ruin’s answer.’

‘Oh,’ muttered Dathenar, ‘it is indeed. Ruin, ruinous answer, ruin of all privilege, ruin of life. A command voiced with distinction – alas, we hear it all too well.’

‘Our privilege to do so,’ nodded Prazek, ‘in language less than obscure.’

‘More than plain, brother.’

‘Just so, Dathenar. See me long for sudden complexity. Wish me swathed in obfuscation and euphoric euphemism. I would flee to the nearest lofty tower, worthy of my hauteur. I would sniff and decry the state’s sordid … state, and then frown and announce: the wine is too tart. Too … too, far too … tart.’

‘I’ll whip the servant, brother, if that pleases you.’

‘Pleasing is dead, Dathenar, and dead … pleasing.’

Dathenar groaned and rubbed at his face. ‘Prazek, we should never have left unguarded the bridge. See what fate we let cross, when a mere switch would have sent the hog running. So be it. I yield to simple fate and name her just.’

Prazek pushed himself upright. ‘Commander Kellaras, we are, as ever, at your call.’

Grunting, Dathenar stood as well. ‘Perchance the sword has a bawdy tale, to amuse us in our perfidy. And the armour – well, it is said to be loquacious to a fault, but I’ll not begrudge the warning voice, even should we fail in heeding it.’

Standing, Kellaras gestured to the door. ‘Step carefully once outside, friends. The way back is uncertain.’

Both men nodded at that.

THREE

‘T
HERE WILL BE JUSTICE!’

When that call came, echoing down the long, foul tunnels, Wareth thought it a sour joke. Belatedly, he comprehended the earnestness in that cry. And when he dropped the heavy pick in his hands, the sudden absence of that familiar weight almost made him stagger back a step.

He was alone, at the far end of a deep vein. The words whispered their echoes as if the iron ore itself was speaking to him in the darkness. He remained motionless, drawing in the chill air, as the ache in his hands slowly faded. The past was a cruel and remorseless pursuer, and in this place – for Wareth and for all the others down these shafts – it muttered of justice more often than not.

Again the call sounded. Close around him, the rock wept its unceasing tears, making glittering runnels around patches of luminescence, pooling at his feet. If those words iterated a promise, it was far too late. If a summons, then far past time. He had yet to turn round. The way ahead, just visible in the gloom, was a blunted, battered wall. He had been beating at it for weeks now. It had served him well, as a place where he could, with his back to the world, live out his wakeful existence. He had grown to admire the vein’s stubborn defiance, had come to grieve its shattering surrender, piece by piece.

The pick Wareth had wielded was a fine tool. Iron tamed and given shape. Iron domesticated, subjugated, forged into a slayer of its wild kin. This was the only battle he fought, and he and the pick fought it well, and so the wild ore retreated, shard by shard. Of course, the truth was, the vein did not retreat. It simply died, in buckets of rubble. This was the only war he knew how to win.

The cry sounded a third time, but fainter now, as the other miners worked their way to the surface, rising sunward. He thought to retrieve his pick, to resume his assault. The wild stood no chance. It never did. Instead, he swung round, to make his way back to the surface.

More often than not, justice was a word written in blood. The curiosity that tugged him onward, and upward, made him no different from anyone else. That righteous claim needed a victim. It depended on there being one, and this fed a kind of lust.

Hunched over, he made his way up the shaft, his boots splashing through the pools made by the weeping rock. The trek took some time.

Eventually, he stood at the mine’s ragged entrance, blinking in the harsh sunlight. Sharp pains stabbed at his lower back as he straightened to his full height for the first time since rising from his cot that morning. Sweat streamed from him despite the air’s wintry bite, mixing with dust and grime as it ran down his bared torso. He could feel his muscles slowly contracting to the cold and it seemed as if simple light and clean, bitter air could cleanse him, scouring skin, flesh, bone and down into his very soul, and so yield the miracle of restitution, of redemption. In the wake of that notion came mocking derision.

Other miners were shouting, some singing, running like children across the snow-dusted ground. He heard the word
freedom
and listened to laughter that would make a sane man cringe. But Wareth looked to the prison guards for the truth of this day. They still ringed the vast pit that housed the mining camp’s compound. Many of them now ebon-skinned, they leaned on their spears and made grim silhouettes against the skyline on all sides. At the south edge, at the end of the ramp that climbed to a barricaded gatehouse and barracks, the iron gates remained shut.

He was not alone in remaining silent, and watchful. He was not alone in his growing scepticism.

No one freed prisoners, unless indeed the civil war had seen an overthrow of all authority; or, with a new ruler upon the Throne of Darkness, an amnesty had been announced. But the cries of freedom lacked specific details.
‘We are to be freed! On this day! Prisoners no longer!’

‘There will be justice at last!’

That last proclamation was absurd. Every miner in this camp belonged here. They had committed crimes, terrible crimes. They had, in the words of the magistrate, abrogated their compact with civil society. In more common diction, they were one and all murderers, or worse.

The guards remained. Society, it seemed, was not yet ready to welcome them. The hysteria of the moment was fast fading, as others at last took notice of the guards in their usual positions, and the barred gate with its barbed fangs. Elation collapsed. Voices growled, and then cursed.

Wareth looked over to the women’s camp. The night-shifters were stumbling from their cells, dishevelled and drawing together in knots. No guards stood between them and the men. He could sense their burgeoning fear.

All the animals loose in the corral. Even this cold air cannot stifle a beast’s passions. Trouble is moments away.

Regretting leaving his pick behind, he looked round, and saw a shovel on the ground beside an ore cart, a breach of rules more shocking than anything else this day. He walked over and collected it, and then, as if unable to stop what he had begun, he slowly made his way towards the women.

Wareth was tall, and his nine years in the shafts as lead rock-biter had broadened his shoulders and thickened his neck. His body now bore unnatural proportions, his arms and torso too large for his hips and legs. The curl and pull of overworked muscles had spread wide his shoulder blades while drawing him inward at his upper chest, giving him a hunched-over appearance. The bones of his legs had bowed, but not as much as he could see in many other miners. At shift’s end, after his meal, he took to his cot, where he had bound belts to the iron frame, and these he fastened about himself, forcing his legs straight. And the one man he trusted, Rebble, would come to him then and tighten the straps across his chest and shoulders, forcing them flat. The agony of these efforts lived with him every night, yet exhaustion proved its master, and he slept despite the pain.

With something cold gripping his insides, he wended his way through the crowd, pushing aside those who had not seen him approaching. Others simply stepped back to clear his path. Faces frowned at him, uncomprehending, eyes narrowing as they saw the shovel in his hands.

He was through most of the press when a man ahead suddenly laughed and shouted, ‘The kittens are awake, my friends! See the way unopposed – I think this is the freedom we’ve won!’