Dust of Dreams

swear at—now gone. Dead.
    This was all wrong. He and Ges should have died with them, died fighting at their sides. Brotherhood and sisterhood only found true meaning in the wash of death, in the falling one after another, the darkness and then the shuddering awake before Hood’s Gate.
Aye, we’re family when fighting to the last, but the real family is among the fallen. Why else do we stagger half-blind after every battle? Why else do we look upon dead kin and feel so abandoned? They left without us, that’s why.
    A soldier knows this. A soldier saying different is a Hood-damned liar.
    Dawn was not far off. The last day was close.
But this ain’t the family I knew. It ain’t the one I wanted. All I got is Gesler. We been through it all, true, so at least we can die together. At least that makes sense. Been through it all. Falar—gods we were young! Damned fools, aye. Running off, swearing ourselves into the Fener cult—it was the rumours of the orgies that did us in. What rutting lad wouldn’t jump at the thought?
    Damned orgies, oh yes. But we should’ve worked it out for ourselves. S’damned god of war, right? Orgies, oh indeed, orgies of slaughter, not sex. Thinkingwith the wrong brains, is what we did. But, at that age, isn’t it how it’s supposed to be?
    Only we never got out, never got wise, did we? We found ourselves in a cesspool and then spent the next twenty years telling each other the smell ain’t so bad. Sweet as rain, in fact.
    The K’Chain Che’Malle were going to die. They were going to pour their blood into him, souls crowding for his embrace, whatever that meant. The Matron who wanted all this was dead, but then . . .
ain’t dying the first and most obvious path into ascendancy, into godhood?
    Though eating the front of her skull, that’s just sick. She’ll make ’em pay for that, now that she’s a goddess or whatever.
    Well, he’d keep the door barred until the last moment—he had an army to order around, after all. A mob of heavies who’d wheel on a horse-hair with an instant’s thought.
Imagine what Coltaine could’ve done with these legions. If he’d had ’em, Korbolo Dom wouldn’t be wiggling his finger up Laseen’s backside right now. In fact—
    ‘Hood’s breath, Stormy, you’re leaking the sickest things.’
    ‘So get outa my head!’
    ‘I said “leaking,” you oaf. I ain’t in your head. Listen, stop thinking we’re all vulture shit, all right? I don’t know if these things got anything like morale, but if they do you’ve just beaten it into a pulpy mess.’
    ‘Those were
my
thoughts!’
    ‘So figure out a way of keeping them inside. Just picture your thick skull—it’s got holes, right. Out the eyes, the nose, whatever. So, picture blocking ’em all up. Now you’re safe. Now you can think all the stupid things you like to think about.’
    ‘Is that why I ain’t getting anything from you?’
    ‘No. Right now, I’m too witless to think. Sky’s lightening—look at that cloud to the south. It’s not a cloud. It’s a hole in the sky. It’s a warren ripped wide open. Just looking at it makes my skin crawl like a leech under a rock.’
    ‘Ges, these legions—’
    ‘Furies.’
    ‘They ain’t presented for battle, unless you plan on us just marching right up to ’em. Like the Quon used to do.’
    ‘You’re right. The Quon had badly trained troops, but they had a lot of them. Who needs tactics?’
    ‘We do.’
    ‘Right. So, see if we can get ’em sawtooth—’ He stopped suddenly.
    In the same instant something rushed through Stormy and he grunted, twisting round.
    The massive baggage train had halted. Drones—smaller creatures, not much taller than a human—swarmed the beds, unshipping rectangular slabs of iron. ‘Gesler—are those shields?’
    Gesler had halted and wheeled his mount. ‘Aye, I think so. I was wondering at those hand-and-a-half axes the Ve’Gath carried. So, these really are heavies—’
    ‘I couldn’t pick up one of those shields, let alone hang it from one arm. The Nah’ruk got missile weapons?’
    ‘Unplug your skull,’ said Gesler, ‘and you’ll get your answer. Another innovation from the Matron. She must have been something, I think.’
    ‘She was a big fat lizard.’
    ‘She also broke ten thousand years of changing nothing—and the Che’Malle claim they never had a religion.’
    Grunting—and not quite understanding what Gesler had meant—Stormy cast about to find the