Memories of Ice

'Hood's breath! Stop doing that! Where you been skulking, anyway?'

'Nowhere,' she replied.

'Liar,' Picker said. 'Caught you sliding up outa the corner of my eye, Blend. You're mortal, after all.'

She shrugged. 'Heard an interesting conversation between Paran and Trotts. Turns out that Barghast bastard once had some kind of high rank in his own tribe. Something about all those tattoos. Anyway, turns out we're here to find the biggest local tribe — the White Faces — with the aim of enlisting their help. An alliance against the Pannion Domin.'

Picker snorted. 'Flown then dropped off at the foot of the Barghast Range, what else did you think we were up to?'

'Only there's a problem,' she continued laconically, examining her nails. 'Trotts will get us face to face without all of us getting skewered, but he might end up fighting a challenge or two. Personal combat. If he wins, we all live. If he gets himself killed …'

Antsy's mouth hung open, his moustache twitching as if independently alive.

Picker groaned.

The sergeant spun. 'Corporal — find Trotts! Sit 'im down with that fancy whetstone of yours and get 'im to sharpen his weapons real good-'

'Oh, really, Antsy!'

'We gotta do something!'

'About what?' a new voice asked.

Antsy whirled again. 'Spindle, thank the Queen! Trotts is going to get us all killed!'

The mage shrugged beneath his hairshirt. 'That explains all those agitated spirits in this hill, then. They can smell him, I guess-'

'Smell? Agitated? Hood's bones, we're all done for!'

Standing with the rest of the Bridgeburners, Paran's eyes narrowed on the squad at the foot of the barrow. 'What's got Antsy all lit up?' he wondered aloud.

Trotts bared his teeth. 'Blend was here,' he rumbled. 'Heard everything.'

'Oh, that's terrific news — why didn't you say anything?'

The Barghast shrugged his broad shoulders, was silent.

Grimacing, the captain strode over to the Black Moranth commander.

'Is that quorl of yours rested enough, Twist? I want you high over us. I want to know when we've been spotted-'

The chitinous black helm swung to face him. 'They are already aware, noble-born.'

'Captain will do, Twist. I don't need reminding of my precious blood. Aware, are they? How, and just as important, how do you know they know?'

'We stand on their land, Captain. The soul beneath us is the blood of their ancestors. Blood whispers. The Moranth hear.'

'Surprised you can hear anything inside that helm of yours,' Paran muttered, tired and irritated. 'Never mind. I want you over us anyway.'

The commander slowly nodded.

The captain turned and surveyed his company. Veteran soldiers — virtually every one of them. Silent, frighteningly professional. He wondered what it would be like to see out through the eyes of any one of them, through the layers of the soul's exhaustion that Paran had barely begun to find within himself. Soldiers now and soldiers to the end of their days — none would dare leave to find peace. Solicitude and calm would unlock that safe prison of cold control — the only thing keeping them sane.

Whiskeyjack had said to Paran that, once this war was done, the Bridgeburners would be retired. Forcibly if necessary.

Armies possessed traditions, and these had less to do with discipline than with the fraught truths of the human spirit. Rituals at the beginning, shared among each and every recruit. And rituals at the end, a formal closure that was recognition — recognition in every way imaginable. They were necessary. Their gift was a kind of sanity, a means of coping. A soldier cannot be sent away without guidance, cannot be abandoned and left lost in something unrecognizable and indifferent to their lives. Remembrance and honouring the ineffable. Yet, when it's done, what is the once-soldier? What does he or she become? An entire future spent walking backward, eyes on the past — its horrors, its losses, its grief, its sheer heart-bursting living? The ritual is a turning round, a facing forward, a gentle and respectful hand like a guide on the shoulder.

Sorrow was a steady, faint susurration within Paran, a tide that neither ebbed nor flowed, yet threatened to drown him none the less.