The Crippled God

ancient words. When all you are is made wrong. This is how it feels .
    Brys Beddict’s army was many days behind the other two, for the prince had made certain he was the last to leave the Bonehunters. They had marched with them to the desert’s very edge. Eight days through an increasingly parched and forbidding land. She wondered if he’d been hoping to change the Adjunct’s mind, to convince her of the madness of her determination to cross the Glass Desert. Or perhaps he had been considering accompanying that doomed force. For the first time since they had become lovers, Brys had closed himself to her. And not just me. To everyone .
    And on the day we parted from them, he stood near Tavore, but he said nothing. Nor as we all watched the Bonehunters form up and set out, crossing that ghastly midden of crystals and bones, into the harsh glare beyond; we all watched, and not one of us – not one in the entire mass of soldiers – had a thing to say .
    When the last burdened wagon rocked over the berm, and the lastof the dust swirled away in the Malazans’ wake; when the column wavered and smeared in the fierce glare and rising heat, Brys had turned to face her.
    The look in his face shocked her, cut through her every defence. Whatever he had thought to do to dissuade the Adjunct, the moment had passed. No, a thousand moments. Eight days’ worth, and not one grasped, not one taken in hand like a weapon. The brittle wall of silence had defeated him, defeated them all. That look …
    Helpless. Filled with … Abyss below, filled with despair .
    She was a singular woman, was Tavore Paran. They could all see that. They had all witnessed the terrible majesty of her will.
    And her soldiers followed – that had been for Aranict the hardest thing to witness. The squads fell in, the companies formed up, and as they marched past Prince Brys they offered him a sharp, perfect salute. As if on a parade ground. Eyes hidden in the shadow of their helms, that closed fist on the chest, expressions chiselled from stone – gods, I will never forget that, any of it. Those faces. Horrifying in their emptiness. Those soldiers: veterans of something far beyond battles, far beyond shields locked and swords bared, beyond even the screams of dying comrades and the desolation of loss .
    Veterans of a lifetime of impossible decisions, of all that is unbearable and all that is without reconciliation .
    Brys Beddict rode to the head of the column then, to lead his soldiers south, along the very edge of the Glass Desert. It was clear that as soon as they reached its southernmost end, he would swing the army eastward, and the pace would become savage. They were a week or more behind the Perish and the Evertine Legion.
    Aranict lit another stick of rustleaf. Her neck ached, as she found it impossible to face forward, to look ahead. The Glass Desert held her.
    They’re out there. Do they reel beneath its onslaught? Has its madness infected them? Are they even now killing each other, frenzied with fever? It has been three days. They might already be dead, every one of them. More bones to crush, to push towards the shoreline – the only retreat left to them . She looked again at the bleached splinters. Did you all try to cross the desert?
    The very notion chilled her. Shivering beneath her cloak, she forced her gaze away from the horror on her left, only to see its mangled verge stretching ahead, southward alongside the column, until the two seemed to merge in the hazy distance.
    Brys, my love, from all of us what will you now forge? We Letherii have known too many defeats of late. And we tasted our own blood yet again, against the Nah’ruk. Not so bitter that time, for we saved the Bonehunters. Still, we pale beside our allies. In their shadow we are diminished .
    And yet … they saluted us .
    She could not get that moment out of her mind. The faces haunted her and she feared they would do so for the rest of her life.
    Whose army are they? These Bonehunters. What is their cause? And the strength within them, where does it come from? Is it held in the soul of the Adjunct? No – at least, I don’t think so. Oh, she is the focus for them all, but they have no love for her. They see her, if at all, as no different from a mountain, a column of storm clouds, a bitter grey sea – they see her as part of the natural world, a thing to be borne, to be weathered .
    I saw in their faces the erosion of her will, and they bore it. They bore it as