Dust of Dreams

chopped off the fronts of your feet? Be glad they raped you so many times you couldn’t feel a damned bhederin pounding into you by now? No. And if the Akrynnai chop off our feet and rape us come tomorrow, who will weep for the White Faces?
    Not Cafal.
‘Not you, either, Hetan.’ She flung the soiled grasses away and helped Hetan to stand. ‘Here, your staff, lean on it.’ She grasped a handful of filthy shirt and began guiding the woman through the camp.
    ‘Don’t keep her too long!’ She glanced back to see a warrior behind them—he had been coming to take her and now stood with a grin that hovered on the edge of something dark and cruel.
    ‘They fed her shit—I’m taking her to get properly cleaned up.’
    A flicker of disgust. ‘The children? Who were they? A solid beating—’
    ‘They ran before I got close enough. Ask around.’
    Estaral tugged Hetan into motion once again.
    The warrior did not pursue, but she heard him cursing as he wandered off. She didn’t think she’d run into many more like him—everyone was crowding around their clan cookfires, hungry and parched and short-tempered as they jostled and fought for position. There’d be a few flick-blade duels this night, she expected. There always were, night before battle. Stupid, of course. Pointless. But, as OnosToolan might say, the real meaning of ‘tradition’ was . . . what had he called it?
‘Stupidity on purpose’, that’s what he said. I think. I never much listened.
    I should have. We all should have.
    They neared the western edge of the camp, where the wagons were already being positioned to form a defensive barricade. Just beyond, drovers were busy slaughtering stock, and the bleating cries of hundreds of animals filled the night. The first bonfires for offal had been lit using rotted cloth, bound rushes, dung and liberal splashes of lamp oil. The flames lit up terrified eyes from within crowded pens. Chaos and horror had come to the beasts and the air was thick with death.
    She almost halted. She’d never before seen things in such a way; she’d never before felt the echo of misery and suffering assailing her from all directions—every scene painted into life by the fires was like a vision of madness.
We do this. We do this all the time. To all these creatures who look to us for protection. We do this and think nothing of it.
    We say we are great thinkers, but I think now, that most of what we do each and every day—and night—is in fact thoughtless. We will ourselves empty to numb us to our cruelty. We stiffen our faces and say we have needs. But to be empty is to have no purchase, nothing to grasp on to, and so in the emptiness we slide and we slide.
    We fall.
    Oh, when will it end?
    She pulled Hetan to a position behind a wagon, the plains stretching westward before them. Thirty paces ahead, limned by the deepening remnants of the sunset, three warriors were busy digging a picket. ‘Sit down—no, don’t lift. Just sit.’
     
    ‘Listen, Strahl—you have done enough. Leave this night to me.’
    ‘Bakal—’
    ‘Please, old friend. This is all by my hand—I stood alone before Onos Toolan. There must be the hope . . . the hope for balance. In my soul. Leave me this, I beg you.’
    Strahl looked away and it was clear to Bakal that his words had been too honest, too raw. The warrior shifted nervously, his discomfort plain to see.
    ‘Go, Strahl. Go lie in your wife’s arms this night. Look past everything else—none of it matters. Find the faces of the ones you love. Your children, your wife.’
    The man managed a nod, not meeting Bakal’s eyes, and then set off.
    Bakal watched him leave, and then checked his weapons one last time, before setting off through the camp.
    Belligerence was building, sizzling beneath the harsh voices. It lit fires inside the strutting warriors as they bellowed out their oaths among the hearth circles. It bared teeth in the midst of every harsh laugh. War was the face to be stared into, or fled from, but the camp on a night such as this one was a cage, a prison to them all. The darkness hid the ones with skittish eyes and twitching hands; thebold postures and wild glares masked icy terror. Fear and excitement had closed jaws upon each other’s throat and neither dared let go.
    This was the ancient dance, this ritualized spitting into the eyes of fate, stoking the dark addiction. He had seen elders, warriors too old, too decrepit to do anything but sit or stand crooked