The Crippled God
She turned to study the camp. Faint, Precious Thimble, Sweetest Sufferance and Amby Bole, all looking for a way home. A place of comfort, all threats diminished, all dangers locked away. Where patrols kept the streets safe, where the fields ran in rows and so did trees. Or so she imagined – strange scenes that couldn’t be memory, because she had no memory beyond the plains and the wild lands. But in those cities the only animals nearby were slaves or food, and those that weren’t lived in cages, or their skins adorned the shoulders of fine ladies and bold nobles, or their bones waited in heaps for the grinders, to be fed into the planted fields.
That was their world, the one they wanted back.
You can have it. There is no place for me in it, is there? Very well . The sorrow within her now seemed infinite. She walked from the camp, out into the darkness. The Bonecaster had taken the children, and Torrent with them. Destinies had taken the Trell and Gruntle. Death had taken the others. But I owe you nothing. In your company, my ghost wolves stay away. They drift like distant desires. I am forgetting what it is to run free .
I am forgetting why I am here .
They would not miss her. They had their own haunts, after all. I do not belong with you. I think – I think … I am what you left behind. Long ago . She wondered if she too was in search of a destiny, the same as Mappo and Gruntle, but it seemed they were so much more than her, and that even the idea of a destiny for Setoc was ridiculous. But the ghost wolves – and all the other fallen beasts – they look to me. For something. I just don’t know what it is. And I need to find out .
Is that what destiny is? Is that all it is?
Let the Wolves cleanse this world. Let the beasts return. Above all, let the senseless killing end: we are tired of running, tired of dying. You must see that. You must feel something for that. Just how cold is your soul?
You empty the land. You break the earth and use it until it dies, and then your children starve. Do not blame me. Do not blame any of us for that .
Her breath caught and she hesitated. A sudden dark thought had flared in her mind. A knife in her hand. Throats opening to the night. Four more of the murderers dead. In a war that she knew might never end. But what difference does that make – we’ve been losing for so long, I doubt we’d know the taste of victory even as it filled our mouths. Even as it drowned us in its glory .
The thoughts were delicious, but she resumed her journey. It was not, she decided, her destiny to kill one here, another there. No, if she could, she would kill them all. This is the war the Wolves have sought. The Hold shall be reborn. Am I to be their leader? Am I to stand alone at the head of some vast army of retribution?
I will show you freedom. So I vow: I will show you what it is to be free .
On all sides, the ghost wolves howled.
‘She’s gone.’
Faint opened her eyes, blinked at the bright morning sun. ‘What? Who?’
‘The girl. Setoc, with the wolf eyes. Gone.’
‘I don’t think she’s coming back.’
‘No, Amby, I don’t either.’
He moved back as she sat up. Her chest ached, her ragged scars itched. She was filthy and the taste in her mouth was thick with the rancid meat they’d eaten the night before. Amby stood like a man lost in the company of anyone but his brother – just a glance nearly broke her heart.
She looked past him. Sweetest Sufferance was still asleep, her rounded form swathed in blankets. Precious Thimble sat near the ashes of the night’s fire, eyes fixed dully on Amby.