The Crippled God

hid in the hearts of everyone. Desires for justice, for redress, for a settling of the scales. And of course, that sour undercurrent of knowledge, that none of it was possible, that so much would rise in opposition, in self-preservation even, to crush that dream, its frail bones, its pattering heart – even that could not take away the sweet delight, the precious hope.
    Wells for the coin, league-stones for the wreaths, barrows for the widdershins dance – the world was filled with magical places awaiting wishes. And empires raised lotteries, opened games, sought to lift high heroes among the common folk – and everyone rushes up with their dreams. But stop. Look back. Gods, look around! If all we seek is an escape, what does that say about the world we live in? That village, that city, that life?
    We are desperate with our dreams. What – oh, what – does that say?
    So those two children had forgotten about toys. She wasn’t surprised. She remembered the day she sat with the last dolls she owned, but across from her sat no one. Where was her sister? They’d taken her. But how can I play?
    ‘ Child, she was taken long ago. You cannot remember what you never had. Go out now and play with Skella .’
    ‘ Skella is highborn – she just orders me around .’
    ‘ That’s the way it is, child. Best you get used to it .’
    In her dream, she saved murdering Skella for last.
    Cuttle’s brothers had been on the wall when it came down. He remembered his shock. Their city was falling. His brothers had just died defending it. Hengese soldiers were in the gap, clambering over the wreckage, coming out of the dust howling like demons.
    Lessons, then. No wall was impenetrable. And the resolute in spirit could die as easily as could the coward. He would have liked to believe it wasn’t like that, none of it – this whole mess. And that children could be left to play and not worry about the life ahead. To play the way he and his brothers had played, unmindful of the irony as they charged each other with wooden swords and fought to defend a midden behind the fishworks, dying one by one like heroes in some imagined last stand, giving their lives to save the swarming flies, the screeching gulls and the heaps of shells. Where knelt a helpless maiden, or some such thing.
    Maiden, stolen crown, the jewelled eye of a goddess. They wove fine stories around their deeds, didn’t they? In those long winters when it seemed that all the grey, sickly sky wanted to do was collapse down on the whole city, crush it for ever, they lived and died their shining epics.
    A backside kick sent him out from childhood. He’d not forgotten those games, however. They lived with him and would until this – his last damned day. But not for the obvious reasons. Nostalgia was like a disease, one that crept in and stole the colour from the world and the time you lived in. Made for bitter people. Dangerous people, when they wanted back what never was. And it wasn’t even our innocence back then – we never felt innocent . They spent day after day living older than their years, after all. And no, not even the ties of family blood, those so-familiar faces he grew up alongside, and all the safety and protection and comfort they offered. No, those games stayed with him because of something else, something he now understood to have been with him, undying, since those days.
    Maiden, stolen crown, the jewelled eye of a god. Die for a reason . That’s all. Cuttle, you’re the last brother left who can do this. The others didn’t make it, not to this epic’s end. So you carry them now, here on your back, those boys with their flushed faces, you carry them. You’re carrying them right past their useless deaths on that wall in a war that meant nothing. Take them now to where they need to go .
    We’re going to die for a reason. That’s not too much to ask, is it?
    You should’ve seen our last stands. They were something .
    Corabb was thinking about Leoman of the Flails. Not that he wanted to, but that evil, lying, murdering bastard was like a friend you didn’t want any more who just kept showing up with a stupid grin on his ugly face. He was covered in dust, too, and he had no idea why and no, he didn’t care either.
    That’s what came of believing in people. All sorts of people, with their foreheads all hot and burning and not a drink of water in sight. The man burned a city to the ground. Tried killing fifty million people, too, or however many