The Crippled God

bulled forward. And Blistig moved to meet him.
    Two men too weak to do any real damage to the other. The fight was pathetic. Punches that couldn’t break skin, blows that could barelybruise. Three or four exchanges and both men were kneeling three paces apart, gasping, heads held down.
    When Kindly looked up, Blistig threw sand into his eyes, lurched forward, grasped Kindly’s head and drove it down on to one knee.
    Sort moved to intervene but Ruthan Gudd reached out and held her back.
    The impact should have shattered Kindly’s nose, but it didn’t. He punched Blistig’s crotch.
    The man let out a strangled grunt, sagged down on to his side.
    Kindly tried to get up, fell back down, and then rolled on to his back, eyes squeezed shut, his chest heaving for breath.
    ‘That’s it,’ Ruthan Gudd said. ‘They’re done.’
    ‘Stupid!’ Faradan Sort snapped, pulling her arm out of Gudd’s grip. She went to stand over the two men. ‘What was the point? If the soldiers up there had seen this – you useless fools! Blistig, if we weren’t all of us about to die, I would kill you. But you don’t deserve that mercy – no, you’re going to suffer through this night just like everyone else.’ She turned. ‘Captain Raband, help your Fist.’
    Blistig managed to work himself back on to his knees, and he slowly sat up. ‘She’s killed us all. For nothing.’ He moved his glare from one face to the next. ‘Aye, I see it in your eyes, every one of you, you ain’t got a thing to say to make it different. She’s killed us. You know it the same as me. So, you want to kill me? You want to do her work for her?’ He climbed, with difficulty, to his feet. ‘Give me the dignity of dying on my own.’
    ‘You should have understood the value of that,’ said Ruthan, ‘before you stuck a knife in Pores, Fist Blistig.’
    ‘Maybe I should have. But he lied to me, and I don’t like being lied to.’ He pointed a finger at Kindly. ‘We’re not done, you and me. I’ll be waiting for you at Hood’s Gate, old man.’
    ‘Pathetic,’ hissed Faradan Sort.
    They left Blistig where he was, and the way he held himself, it would be a while before he’d be ready to start walking again. Skanarow moved alongside Ruthan Gudd.
    ‘I was hoping we’d just kill him,’ she said, low under her breath. ‘The man’s a murderer, after all. Pores wasn’t even wearing a weapon belt, and his knife was jammed hilt deep in a bale on the wagon.’
    ‘If anyone will be looking for Blistig at Hood’s Gate, it will be Lieutenant Pores, don’t you think?’
    But Skanarow shook her head. ‘I never believed in retribution beyond Death’s Gates. Nobody is squatting on the other side weighing and balancing a life’s scales.’ She stumbled slightly and Ruthan moved to catch her. Felt her momentarily sag against him. ‘Shit, I may not last the night.’
    ‘You will, Skanarow. I’m not letting you die, do you understand me?’
    ‘There’s no way out, and you know it, my love. You know it – you can’t hide what I see in your eyes.’
    He said nothing, because there was nothing to say.
    ‘You’ll forget me, won’t you? Eventually. Like … all the rest.’
    ‘Don’t say that, Skanarow – it’s the wrong thing to think. For people … like me … it’s not forgetting that is our curse. It’s remembering.’
    Her smile was faint, and she disengaged herself from his half-embrace. ‘Then I beg you, love, do all that you can to forget me. Leave no memory behind to haunt you – let it all fade. It shouldn’t be hard – what we had didn’t last long, did it?’
    He’d heard such words before. And this is why remembering is a curse .
    Blistig faced back the way they’d come. Off in the distance he could make out the glow of lanterns, the lights swinging low to the ground. Frowning, he watched as they came closer.
    She killed us. Come the dawn, when we’re all finished, unable to take another step, I’m going to go to her. I’m going to stick a knife in her. Not a fatal wound, not right away, no. In the stomach, where the acids will all leak out and start eating her up from the inside out. And I’ll kneel over her, staring down into her pain, and that will be the sweetest sight I will ever see. A sight to carry me right into death .
    But even that won’t be enough, not for what she’s done to us. Kindly, at Hood’s Gate, you’re going to have to wait, because I won’t be finished with Tavore Paran of House Paran