Toll the Hounds (The Malazan Book of the Fallen #8)

Toll the Hounds (The Malazan Book of the Fallen #8) Page 261

The things that died in him on that day would be deemed virtues by most. Duty had revealed its lie, shattering the sanctity of loyalty and honour. They’d fought for nothing. They could have retreated, holed up at the decrepit temple entrance, and simply waited for the arrival of the humans, first the assassins and then the one named Traveller and his followers. Traveller, who murdered everyone foolish enough to step into his path. Whose arrival made Andarist’s death-and the deaths of his friends-meaningless.

How Skintick hated that man. Competence was no gift when it arrived too late.

He no longer believed in honesty either. To be told the truth was to feel the shackles snap shut on one’s ankle. Truth was delivered with the expectation that it would force a single course of action-after all, how could one honourably turn away? Truth was used as a weapon, and all one could do in defence against such an assault was to throw up a wall of lies. Lies of acceptance, capitulation. Lies to oneself, too. That things mattered. That ideas had currency and symbols deserved the servitude of courageous fools. And that it all had meaning.

Nor was he a believer in courage. People relied on the bravery of others to reap whatever profits they imagined they had earned or deserved, but the blood spilled was never theirs, was it? No, it was clear now to Skintick. Virtues were lauded to ensure compliance, to wrap round raw, reprehensible servitude. To proclaim the sacrifice of others-each of whom stood in for those reaping the rewards and so were paid in suffering and pain.

So much for the majesty of patriotism.

He was having none of it, not any more, never again. And this was what made him dead now. And like anyone for whom nothing matters, he now found much of what he saw around him profoundly amusing. Snide commentary, derisive re-gard and an eye for the horror of true irony, these were the things he would now pursue.

Did Anomander Rake grieve for his dead brother? For Andarist, who had stood in his place? Did he spare a thought for his wretched spawn, so many of whom were now dead? Or was he now lolling fat and dissolute on whatever mockery he called his throne, reaping all the rewards of his brother’s final sacrifice? And that of my cousins! My closest friends, who each died to defend a possession so valu-able to you that it rots in an empty templet Remind me to ask you that question when we finally meet.

Though he loved Nimander-indeed, loved them all in this pathetic band (save

Clip, of course)-Skintick could not help but observe with silent hilarity the des-pcrate expectations of this journey’s fated end. They all sought safety and, no doubt, a pat on the head for services rendered. They all wanted to he told thill their sacrifices had meaning, value, were worthy of pride. And Skintick knew that the alone would be able to see the disdain veiled in the eyes of the Son of Darkness, even as he spouted all the necessary platitudes, before sending them off to their small rooms in some forgotten wing of whatever palace Rake now occupied.

And then what, my dearest kin? Shunted out on to the streets to wander in the dusk, as the presence of others slowly prises our band apart, until all we once were become memories thick with dust, barely worthy of the occasional remi-niscence, some annual gathering in some tavern with a leaking roof, where we will see how we each have sagged with the years, and we’ll get drunk swapping tales we all know by heart, even as the edges grow blunt and all the colours bleed out.

Desra lying on her back, her legs spread wide, but the numbness inside can’t be pierced that way and she probably knows but habits never die, they just wear dis-guises. Nenanda will polish his weapons and armour every morning-we’ll see him clanking round guarding everything and nothing, his eyes mottled with verdi-gris and rust. Aranatha sits in an overgrown garden, mesmerized for ten years and vaunting by a lone blossom beneath a tree; do we not envy the bliss in her empty cyes? Kedeviss? Well, she will chronicle our despair, our sordid demise. Rounding us up for the night in the tavern will be her one task with any meaning-at least to her-and she will silently rail at our turgid, insipid uninterest.

Nimander, ah, Nimander, what waits for you? One night, your vision will clear. One deadly, devastating night. You will see the blood on your hands, dear vicious Phaed’s blood. And that of so many others, since you were the one we victimized by proclaiming you as our leader. And on that night, my friend, you will see that it was all for naught, and you will take your own life. A tower, a window ledge and a plummet down through the dark to achieve the incumbent poetic futility.

Skintiek could not find himself in that future. He did not expect to complete this journey. He was not sure he even wanted to. The same chronicler who painted past scenes would paint the future ones, too. The same damned theme, reworked with all the obsessiveness of a visionary throttling the blind.