“They are angry,” Farait whispered. Everyone looked at him, unnerved, but his eyes were fixed on the spectral people out in the still-falling snow. The camp wasn’t well-lit, and it took Havec a moment to notice that his eyes were green. Then the man shook his head sharply and turned back to him. “They’re too foreign, not enough like humans. Mahudar can only get vague impressions.”
“Of?” the major asked.
“Sorrow. Weariness. Anger, above all else.”
Havec set off walking, making to push between the sentries. He heard several people muttering unhappily, and Farait actually grabbed him by the arm. “What are you doing?”
“Going to talk to them.”
“You said they kill people who get close enough to touch.”
“So I won’t.”
“Havec…”
He took the man’s arm by the wrist and pulled it off of him. “They’re the slaves of the being that destroyed their people. Who do you think they’re angry at?”
That said, he walked away, and no one called him back. After only a heartbeat, he heard hurried footsteps, then Hot Priest fell in beside him. “If you maintain a safe distance, what harm is there in standing at your side?”
He came to a stop well back from the forward edge of the crowd, giving them a nod that hopefully conveyed his friendliness. There was a stir, and he saw them exchanging looks as if communicating, but never once did he hear a whisper of sound. Then one droghos emerged from the throng and stepped proud of the rest.
She was female and ancient, he could tell by her bared withered breasts, nipples dark as cherries. She wore a mass of strands of shells around her neck, nearly hiding the stark framework of cadaverous ribs descending from her clavicles. She stopped one step out from her people, where she began to gesticulate. It wasn’t a simple pattern repeating like a pantomime, but a lengthy, complex series of motions. As if she were telling an epic story with her hands. Havec didn’t have the first idea what it meant.
Farait rested a hand on his shoulder. “Suffering, growing resignation.” His eyes were green again. “Loss. Surprise. Pain. Anger, sorrow, frustration. Anger, sorrow, frustration. Anger, sorrow, frustration.” The ancient revenant gestured curtly with her hands, trying to express the horrible indignity her people had suffered for so many years.
“Change. Hope. You.”
Havec meant to ask what any of this had to do with him, but then he understood. What made him special was Kebbal, and it wasn’t hard to guess why they were drawn to it. He had brought among them a creature the droghos hadn’t known existed, which spoke to something in them. Just like the restless ghosts of Dareh, but these people must thirst after vengeance in a way no other people possibly could. Unlike the ghosts, the target of all that ancient rage was still available.
Dareh had bothered him, and he had only been persuaded to walk away because he didn’t have a better plan. He had no clear idea what he might do to free the droghos but absolutely wasn’t willing not to try. “I’m going to do something reckless that will probably make you mad,” he said. Hot Priest tried to respond, but Havec spoke over him. “I don’t have any trouble telling you apart: the last man bought me at an auction, then tried to trick me into believing I consented. If you don’t get why I feel like that’s the only difference that matters, you need to go poking through my memories again: you watched but didn’t understand. I want you to think I’m incredible and spend all your time thinking about me. But if you need to prove to yourself that you’re better than him, don’t boss me around like I belong to you.”
That said, he knelt on the ground in the snow and closed his eyes. Kebbal? I’m going to ask you to do something that’s going to scare everyone, maybe including you. You trust me, right? When nothing happened, he persisted, Can I get a shake or a nod? Another tense moment passed, then his head bobbed. I know now just how free you are of this ‘cage,’ you gave yourself away. These things deserve vengeance more than anyone else in the world ever has. I want to help them but I don’t know how. Show them the way. Please.
Nothing happened, and at first, he feared that Kebbal would refuse. Then a tingling sensation started in his fingertips and toes, creeping up his limbs toward his heart. He felt dizzy and giddy. Afraid. Not a cringing fearfulness, but rather an icy awareness of his own power. How huge and dangerous it was. Such fear as a man might feel the first time he held his tiny newborn child. He had thought he might be pushed into the background and watch the proceedings as if peering through a crack, but he found he was still very much present in his body, able to think, firmly linked to the sensations of his flesh.
Just no longer the person in command.
As his body pushed itself to its feet, it fleeted across Havec’s mind that he and his father had cut the same deal. It might even be where he got this idea. His father, though, had sold himself to a cruel and selfish creature in an effort to achieve a selfish end, while Havec had given himself to a friend in the hope that if they worked together, they could accomplish something beautiful. He could only hope those distinctions were meaningful.
When he started to move his hands as they did, communicating, that came as a surprise. He was talking to the droghos but had no idea what he was saying. He wondered how Kebbal knew their language, then wondered if that was a sensible question. The moment his hands went still, the droghos abandoned their vigil around the encampment, streaming north.
Kebbal turned to the Tabbaqerans hurrying out into the snow. “I will require a conveyance for this body.”
The major had been about to pose a question and drew back in surprise. “Of course, Avat, but where will you be wanting to go?”
“North.” His hand gestured toward the spooky creatures moving half-hidden through the snow. “These are the soldiers of your enemy. I am going to cram them down his throat. The sorcerers have a plan, and we must do our part in it.”
“With all respect, Avat, I thought you said it was too dangerous to move through the storm?”
“Our new allies will clear the worst of it from our path. It is one of the powers he gave to them when he enslaved them, in order that they keep him fed. For this, they want revenge.”
From his comfortable repose within his own skin, Havec saw the moment when the truth registered; the major’s face went very still, and he was watching Havec the way a rabbit watched a wolf. He could see, too, when the man came to the conclusion that humoring the Archetype of War was the only safe bet; turning away with a silent bow, he began hollering commands. Kebbal moved back into camp on his heels, walking with the exaggerated caution of someone operating stilts. Every other step, he grabbed Hot Priest by the arm as if he might topple.
By the time they made it back amidst the army, the camp was already being broken down. It was happening with remarkably little confusion or noise. At the place where the north-bound road entered camp, the chaos coalesced into readiness. When someone led a horse to him, Kebbal recoiled. Havec could feel its dread.
The major was there, and Kebbal raised his voice: “I will not sit upon that thing.”
Everyone looked at him strangely.
“I am afraid,” Kebbal told them, and to Havec’s ears, his voice sounded off, curiously uninflected. “I do not want to fall.”
Major Cimmuman was losing hold of his signature certainty with every passing moment and scratched at his head. “We could hitch up one of the carts for you to ride in?”
“That would be acceptable.”
While they waited for this to happen, Kebbal gazed absently into the middle distance where the snow had ceased to fall. Farait had followed and now took a brave step closer to him. “You didn’t want him anywhere near this Lofflied character earlier. You went to drastic lengths to keep him away.”
Kebbal glanced at him. “Now, the whole of its army will be between it and him. He was right to warn it that I did not like being threatened by some puling adolescent wight.”
“Won’t this weaken you? To be physically present in the material plane…”
Havec’s head cocked, and he had no idea whom Kebbal learned the mannerism from. “I am no more or less ‘here’ than I ever am. I cannot be used up, any more than I can be killed. I do not feed upon this plane like your gods. As the wight itself told you, I am older than reality: it derives from me.”
“You seem very… unstable,” the Tabbaqeran persisted.
“I do not wish to hurt him. I have lived within human flesh long enough to learn how the body works, but I have no practice at manipulating it.” A cart trundled forward and Havec suspected everyone was waiting for him to climb up beside the driver. Kebbal, however, made for the bed, stopping at the foot of the wagon and holding his arms out to Hot Priest in a demanding manner. “Assist me.”
Farait took his arms and helped him to climb into the bed of the wagon, where bewildered soldiers, who seemed to have decided it was better not to ask, passed over armloads of blankets for him to sit upon and wrap about his shoulders. He hadn’t thought to put his coat on as he ran into the night and shivered gratefully as the wool enveloped him. From within the dizzy cloud in his own head, he watched Kebbal take note of this, anxiety increasing. He felt terrible that he was asking this of it, but he had no control of his mouth and couldn’t tell it so.
