Forge of Darkness (The Kharkanas Trilogy #1)

Forge of Darkness (The Kharkanas Trilogy #1) Page 298

The residents of Neret Sorr would face a hard winter, she realized. Lord Urusander was confiscating the majority of the grain. There was the promise of payment and no doubt the commander would prove generous. But one could not eat coins, and with the stores of fuel wood and dried dung diminishing by the day, neither could coin feed a hearth fire.

Yet the people of the village were too cowed to complain. Over a thousand armed soldiers now lived among them, with more arriving day and night.

She set a gloved hand against her horse’s neck and waited to feel the animal’s warmth seep through. ‘You’ve not fled, friend. Nor have you growled in answer to the commander’s order, and I see no chance of you ever assaulting his position.’

‘And so I am frozen in place,’ Kagamandra confessed. ‘And still we have heard nothing from Kharkanas, yet each evening we look west and see the sun made copper by smoke. I fear for the forest, Sharenas, and all who dwell within it.’

‘I am expecting Sergeant Yeld to return to us soon,’ Sharenas said. ‘But even without the details, we can be certain that Deniers are being hunted down and butchered.’

‘Surely many have fled to the protection of the monasteries,’ Kagamandra said. ‘And this smoke but comes from homes set alight. Winter draws ever closer. Sharenas, will we see Tiste corpses frozen to the ground in the months to come? I am sickened by the thought.’

‘With luck,’ she said, ‘this absurd war will be over by then. Do we not still bow to the will of Mother Dark? Lord Urusander will march soon, and you can be sure that he will see justice set upon the murderers who act in his name. By blade’s edge, he will end the madness.’

‘And Hunn Raal?’

She had no answer to that question. The captain’s whereabouts remained unknown. Even cousin Serap could not say where Hunn Raal had gone. After a long moment, she sighed. ‘He will face Urusander or he will face the ire of the highborn. Will he take responsibility for this wretched pogrom? I rather doubt it. Besides, he is not the only captain loose in the countryside.’

‘It may well be,’ Kagamandra conceded, ‘that events have proceeded beyond his control, and that indeed the Legion has splintered, with renegade elements taking advantage of the chaos.’

‘I have decided on my place in this,’ said Sharenas. ‘And so must you, friend.’

‘No dog is so foolish as to stand in the path of a charging boar. Yet in this, the dumb brute shows more wit than me. I believe I will return to Glimmer Fate, and so bring to a close this pursuit of my betrothed.’ The smile he then offered her was, she suspected, meant to be wry; instead, it was a bitter grimace. ‘I will chase her down, if only to tell her that she need not fear me. That my zeal was ever honourable, and I will make my studied distance a gesture of respect. Though we clasp hands on the day of marriage, no other infliction will come by my touch.’

‘Kagamandra Tulas, you have learned to savour the taste of your own blood.’

His face clouded and then he looked away. His bared hands were white on the horn of the saddle.

Returning her gaze to the wagons on the road below, and feeling the chill wind loose icy serpents beneath her clothes, Sharenas shook herself and said, ‘My friend. Do look her in the eye and say the things you would say. I cannot gauge her answer beyond what I would feel if I were in her place. And what I would feel is anger and humiliation. You free her to love other men and deem this generous. But all women wish to be desired, and loved. I see your sacrifice as selfish.’

‘It is the very opposite of selfish!’

‘You would make a martyrdom of marriage. You would ask from your betrothed not her love but her pity. What will stand firm on such foundations? I see you both upon your knees, your backs to one another, each facing a door you long to pass through, and yet locked together by crimes of will and pride. She’ll not yield to your sordid invitation, since that could only serve to confirm your own sense of worthlessness — such a choice for a woman comes after years of hard weather in an unfeeling husband’s arms. The taking of lovers is a desperate search for things few would dare name. To make of this offer her wedding gift cuts to the core of her heart.’

‘But I am the one who speaks out of pity! She is young. She deserves what I once had, not this broken man old enough to be her father, who would flee his ageing years! I am too frail to carry the weight of every necessary delusion in this union!’

She shook her head. ‘Many a fine union has come from such disparity of age.’

‘It is crass and venal.’