Reaper's Gale

The treacherous ice was behind them now, the broken mountains that had filled the sea and clambered onto the Fent Reach, crushing everything on it to dust. No ruins to ponder over in some distant future, not a single sign of human existence left on that scraped rock. Ice was annihilation. It did not do what sand did, did not simply bury every trace. It was as the Jaghut had meant it: negation, a scouring down to bare rock.

Lostara Yil drew her fur-lined cloak tighter about herself as she followed the Adjunct to the forecastle deck of the Froth Wolf. The sheltered harbour was before them, a half-dozen ships anchored in the bay, including the Silanda-its heap of Tiste Andii heads hidden beneath thick tarpaulin. Getting the bone whistle from Gesler hadn’t been easy, she recalled; and among the soldiers of the two squads left to command the haunted craft, the only one willing to use it had been that corporal, Deadsmell. Not even Sinn would touch it.

Before the splitting of the fleet there had been a flurry of shifting about among the squads and companies. The strategy for this war demanded certain adjustments, and, as was expected, few had been thrilled with the changes. Soldiers are such conservative bastards.

But at least we pulled Blistig away from real command-worse than a rheumy old dog, that one.

Lostara, still waiting for her commander to speak, turned for a glance back at the Throne of War blockading the mouth of the harbour. The last Perish ship in these waters, for now. She hoped it would be enough for what was to come.

‘Where is Sergeant Cord’s squad now/’ the Adjunct asked.

‘Northwest tip of the island,’ Lostara replied. ‘Sinn is keeping the ice away-’

‘How?’ Tavore demanded, not for the first time.

And Lostara could but give the same answer she had given countless times before. ‘I don’t know, Adjunct.’ She hesitated, then added, ‘Ebron believes that this ice is dying. A Jaghut ritual, crumbling. He notes the water lines on this island’s cliffs-well past any earlier high water mark.’

To this the Adjunct said nothing. She seemed unaffected by the cold, damp wind, barring an absence of colour on her features, as if her blood had withdrawn from the surface of her flesh. Her hair was cut very short, as if to discard every hint of femininity.

‘Grub says the world is drowning,’ Lostara said.

Tavore turned slightly and looked up at the unlit shrouds high overhead. ‘Grub. Another mystery,’ she said.

‘He seems able to communicate with the Nachts, which is, well, remarkable.’

‘Communicate? It’s become hard to tell them apart.’

The Froth Wolf was sidling past the anchored ships, angling towards the stone pier, on which stood two figures. Probably Sergeant Balm and Deadsmell.

Tavore said, ‘Go below, Captain, and inform the others we are about to disembark.’

‘Aye, sir.’

Remain a soldier, Lostara Yil told herself, a statement that whispered through her mind a hundred times a day. Remain a soldier, and all the rest will go away.

With dawn’s first light paling the eastern sky, the mounted troop of Letherii thundered down the narrow coastal track, the berm of the old beach ridge on their left, the impenetrable, tangled forest on their right. The rain had dissolved into a clammy mist, strengthening the night’s last grip of darkness, and the pounding of hoofs was oddly muted, quick to dwindle once the last rider was out of sight.

Puddles in the track settled once more, clouded with mud. The mists swirled, drifted into the trees.

An owl, perched high on a branch of a dead tree, had watched the troop pass. The echoes fading, it remained where it was, not moving, its large unblinking eyes fixed on a chaotic mass of shrubs and brambles amidst thin-boled poplars. Where something was not quite as it seemed. Unease sufficient to confuse its predatory mind.

The scrub blurred then, as if disintegrating in a fierce gale-although no wind stirred-and upon its vanishing, figures rose as if from nowhere.

The owl decided it would have to wait a little longer. While hungry, it nevertheless experienced a strange contentment, followed by a kind of tug on its mind, as of something… leaving.

Bottle rolled onto his back. ‘Over thirty riders,’ he said. ‘Lancers, lightly armoured. Odd stirrups. Hood, but my skull aches. I hate Mockra-’

‘Enough bitching,’ Fiddler said as he watched his squad-barring a motionless Bottle-drawing in, with Gesler’s doing the same beneath some trees a few paces away. ‘You sure they didn’t smell nothing?’

‘Those first scouts nearly stepped right on us,’ Bottle said. ‘Something there… especially in one of them. As if he was somehow… I don’t know, sensitized, I suppose. Him and this damned ugly coast where we don’t belong-’

‘Just answer the questions,’ Fiddler cut in again.

‘We should’ve ambushed the whole lot,’ Koryk muttered, checking the knots on all the fetishes he was wearing, then dragging over his oversized supply pack to examine the straps.

Fiddler shook his head. ‘No fighting until our feet dry. I hate that.’