‘So?’
‘Their prayers didn’t save them from me, did it? Why would yours save me from some other bastard?’ And Raith stalked off down the walls, back to Blue Jenner.
‘Problem?’ asked the old raider.
‘Hatful of ’em.’
‘Well, family’s family. Daresay your brother will come around.’
‘He might. I doubt the Breaker of Swords will be so giving.’
‘He doesn’t strike me as a giver.’
‘I’m done with him.’ Raith spat over the walls. ‘I’m done with me too, the way I was.’
‘Did you like what you were?’
‘Plenty at the time. Now it seems I was more than a bit of a bastard.’ That woman’s face wouldn’t leave him alone, and he swallowed and looked down at the old stones under his feet. ‘How does a man know what’s right to do?’
Jenner puffed out his cheeks. ‘I’ve spent half my life doing the wrong thing. Most of the rest trying to work out the least wrong thing. The few times I’ve done the right thing it’s mostly been by accident.’
‘And you’re about the best man I know.’
Blue Jenner’s eyebrows shot up. ‘I thank you for the compliment. And I pity you.’
‘So do I, old man. So do I.’ Raith watched the little figures moving in Bright Yilling’s camp. Men crawling from their beds, gathered about their fires, picking at their breakfasts, maybe somewhere an old man and a young, looking up to where they stood on the walls and talking about nothing. ‘Reckon they’ll come again today?’
‘Aye, and that concerns me somewhat.’
‘They’ll never get over these walls with ladders. Not ever.’
‘No, and Yilling must know it. So why waste his strength trying?’
‘Keep us nervous. Keep us worried. It’s a siege, isn’t it? He wants to get in somehow.’
‘And in such a way as will burnish his fame.’ Jenner nodded out towards the graves. ‘After a battle, do you dig big howes for every man?’
‘Most of ’em we’d burn in a heap, but these One God-worshippers got odd ways with their dead.’
‘Why so close to our walls, though? You hide your hurts from an enemy. You don’t shove your losses under his nose, even if you can afford them.’
Raith reached up and rubbed at that old notch out of his ear. ‘I’m taking it you’ve got some clever explanation?’
‘You’re getting to know and admire me, I see.’ Jenner pushed his chin forward to scratch at his neck. ‘It had occurred to me Yilling might be ordering these mad attacks just so he’s got bodies to bury.’
‘He’s what?’
‘Worships Death, don’t he? And he’s got men to spare.’
‘Why kill men just to bury them?’
‘So we’d think that’s all he’s doing. But I don’t reckon Bright Yilling’s digging graves all night, just out of bowshot from where we’re weakest.’
Raith stared at him a moment, and then out towards those brown humps, and felt a cold shiver up his back. ‘They’re digging under the walls.’
Dust
For a boy who was reluctantly starting to consider himself a man, Koll had seen a few cities. Stern Vulsgard in spring and sprawling Kalyiv in summer, majestic Skekenhouse in its elf-walls and beautiful Yaletoft before they burned it. He’d made the long journey down the winding Divine, over the tall hauls and across the open steppe, finally to gape in wonder at the First of Cities, greatest settlement of men.
Beside the elf-ruins of Strokom they were all pinpricks.
He followed Skifr and the two ministers down black roads as wide as the market square in Thorlby, bored into the ground in echoing tunnels or stacked one upon the other on mighty pillars of stone, tangled up into giant madman’s knots while broken eyes of glass peered sadly down on the ruin. In silence they walked, each of them alone with their own worries. For the world, for those they knew, for themselves. Nothing lived. No plant, no bird, no crawling insect. There was only silence and slow decay. All around them, for mile upon mile, the impossible achievements of the past crumbled into dust.
‘What was this place like when the elves lived?’ whispered Koll.
‘Unimaginable in its scale and its light and its noise,’ said Skifr, leading the way with her head high, ‘in its planned confusion and its frenzied competition. All thousands of years silent.’
She let her fingertips trail along a crooked rail then lifted them, peered at the grey dust that coated them, tasted it, rubbed it against her thumb, frowned off down the cracked and buckled roadway.
‘What do you see?’ asked Koll.
Skifr raised one burned brow at him. ‘Only dust. There are no other omens here, for there is no future to look into but dust.’