He raised his gaze to the ragged host of risen slaves. Instead of surging forward to avenge their fallen king, they had retreated several paces, each face displaying a gratifying level of shock and dismay. Vaelin turned and beckoned Astorek to his side.
“Translate every word as I say it,” he told him before addressing the crowd, “I hereby claim this province in the name of Queen Lyrna Al Nieren of the Unified Realm. Until such time as she makes provision for fair and just governance, you will conduct yourselves as free citizens of the Realm, refraining from murder and thievery. If you do not, the queen will be swift in making judgement, and”—he paused to nudge the large man’s head with the toe of his boot—“she is not so forgiving as I.”
He flicked the blood from his sword and returned it to the scabbard, walking back to Scar. “Now get out of the way.”
? ? ?
The land grew more populous farther south, but no less troubled. They would often catch sight of people on the road ahead, weighed down with goods, either their own or the product of looting. Most would flee at the sight of a large group of mounted warriors, scattering to the surrounding fields where, incredibly, some slaves continued to labour. Not all would flee however, some, mainly the old or those burdened with children, would shuffle to the side of the road and stare in dumb fascination as they rode by, the young ones shushed to silence as they pointed at the strange men. Nor were all so cowed, they endured many insults from the dispossessed, those who had lost everything to marauding slaves seemingly had little left to fear. One old man in a torn black robe assailed them with missiles drawn from a pile of horse dung, his face a mask of unreasoning fury as he spat unintelligible insults. Alturk rode forward to stare down at him, war club resting on his shoulder until the old man finally collapsed, sinking onto his odorous munitions as he wept.
“These people are very strange,” Alturk said, trotting back to the column. “Seeking out a good death then falling to tears when it’s offered.”
They covered two hundred miles over the next week, at no point encountering a single Volarian soldier, though they did find evidence of battle. They lay strewn across the road, perhaps over a hundred bodies, mostly men but women too, Astorek judging them as a mingling of slaves and free folk from their garb. Many had died in mid-struggle, hands still clutching throats or knives, one young woman lying with her teeth clamped onto the forearm of the black-clad who had killed her.
“If this continues for much longer,” Astorek said, “your queen will have nothing left to conquer.”
“Except land,” said the Ally, the entire company starting at the sound of his voice. He cast a dispassionate eye over the carnage before adding, “Land is the only true wealth in a world like this. Your queen will do rather well out of it all, I expect. Pity I can’t let her keep it.”
“You might speak differently,” Vaelin told him, “if you had met her.”
? ? ?
He couldn’t dream. Every night he lay down and slept, falling into slumber with barely a pause, and each time his sleep remained free of dreams. He had dreamt every night in the Emperor’s dungeon, of Dentos, Sherin, even Barkus. At the time he had thought it a torment, well-earned torture fulfilling a desire the Emperor resisted. Now he knew it as a blessing. Dahrena was gone, truly and completely, and he was denied even the delusion of a dream, the brief, precious lie that she still lived, even though the waking would be hard, when the knowledge descended like an axe blade as he reached for the cold, empty place beside him. Still, he yearned for it.
“She spoke of you.”
Vaelin rose from his bedroll, avoiding the Ally’s gaze. The hour was early and the sky not yet bright enough to see well, rendering the Ally a slumped, shadowed form on the other side of the still-smoking ashes of last night’s fire. “Don’t you want to know what she said?” he asked.
“Why choose now to speak again?” Vaelin countered. “Is it because we draw nearer to Volar?”
“No, just honest boredom. Also, you primitives are proving more diverting by the day. I may have bequeathed you an age of ignorance but you do make it interesting. Tell me, why didn’t you keep that man’s head? Presumably there was some ritual significance in taking it.”
“Can you really be so ignorant of us? You have orchestrated havoc in this world for centuries. How can you know so little?”
“I see only through the eyes of those snared in the Beyond, and even then the visions are often dim. Death does things to a soul, stripping away much that gives it substance. There was a philosopher in my time who argued that the sum of a soul is merely memory, the soul itself no more than metaphor.”
“Evidently he was wrong.”
“Was he? Haven’t you ever wondered why it is only the Gifted who reside in the Beyond? Can it be only they are worthy of soulhood and all these other unblessed condemned to slip into nothing when death claims them?”