Glyph managed a half-shrug. ‘We have made vengeance a god.’
‘A simple answer, but I doubt it.’
‘Then who, Yedan Narad?’
‘Something in need of a refuge, I think. Against what is to come. And it would spend our lives, Glyph, to defend its secret.’
For the first time, Glyph seemed uncertain. He glanced away, and then back again. ‘You promised us to Lord Anomander.’
‘No. He too is an unwitting player.’
Glyph’s breath streamed in the cold air. In … out … in again. ‘I would rather have my god of vengeance.’
Narad nodded. ‘Easily fed, never appeased. I see worshippers beyond counting, a faith too stubborn to die, too foolish for wisdom. But if I am to be its high priest, be warned. My thirst for vengeance seeks no other face but my own.’
‘Once the others are dead.’
‘Once they are dead, yes.’
‘Yedan Narad, I will find you on that day.’
‘And will you do what needs doing?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good,’ Narad replied. ‘I am relieved to hear that.’
‘Will you join us in breaking fast, Yedan Narad?’
Gaze shifting to the campfire now lit just behind Glyph, Narad saw Lahanis, wrapped in her furs, moving close to take some of the warmth. ‘I will,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’
* * *
Sergeant Threadbare was halfway to Yannis monastery when her mount slipped on ice hidden beneath a thin smear of snow. The horse struck in a heavy splintering of leg bones and a shriek of pain. In her efforts to throw herself clear of the beast, Threadbare landed awkwardly against a slope studded with boulders, shattering her shoulder and snapping one clavicle.
The damage seemed to have opened a passage deep into her body for the cold, and she sat against the slope with agony riding every harsh breath, watching the horse thrash and kick on the slick trail that was now stained with mud, shit and a few spatters of blood. The animal’s nostrils were flared, its ears flattened and its eyes bulging. She would have to take a blade to its throat, and be quick to ease her remorse with notions of mercy. But it was proving very difficult to move.
Halfway. Whose cruel game is this? There was no chance of reaching the Shake in time, no chance of warning them against the incipient attack. Indeed, she was not even sure that she would have the strength to make it back to Manaleth.
The trail had led her alongside a low range of hills, a serrated line upon her right as she rode east. Now, that same rough spine was at her back, and the level plain stretching out before her was whiter than the sky above it. Another storm was on its way.
The horse’s gusting breaths stirred her awake – she had been dozing, falling into something formless but strangely warm. Blinking, she studied the beast. It was no longer fighting, simply lying on its side, chest heaving with each breath – but now the exhalations came in a spray of frothy blood.
Ribs. Punctured lung.
She pulled free her sword, worked her way down on to the level track. Using the weapon for support, its tip driven into the thick ice, she forced herself upright. With most of the snow melted or swept away, she could now see the full reach of the ice – and it made no sense. The track was actually slightly humped where the horse had slipped and fallen, and yet upon either side the snow was thin upon gravel-studded mud.
It wasn’t easy to bring a four-legged animal down. The sweep of ice stretched longer and reached wider than a horse’s stance, even at a slow trot.
‘Do you delight in its suffering?’
Threadbare swung round, lifting her blade, but both efforts left her gasping in pain.
A woman stood before her, fair-skinned, golden-haired. She was thin, almost gaunt, as if trapped in a body eternally lost in adolescence. Dressed in linen and wearing boots that seemed woven from grass, she stood as if indifferent to the cold.
As the stranger was unarmed, Threadbare turned back to her mount. She readied her sword as she looked for the throbbing jugular in the animal’s neck. But a hand settled on her uninjured shoulder, and the woman’s voice rode a warm breath that caressed her jaw. ‘It was a question in truth. But now I see, you would end its ordeal.’
‘I’m hurt,’ Threadbare said. ‘I won’t be able to make a deep cut. It needs to be right.’