The Crippled God

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    These humans have much to teach the K’Chain Che’Malle .
    I, Gu’Rull, Shi’gal Assassin of Gunth’an Wandering, am humbled by all that I have witnessed. And this feeling, so strange, so new, now comes to me in the sweetest flavours imaginable .
    I did not know .
    Settling the last stone down on the elongated pile, Icarium brushed dust from his hands and slowly straightened.
    Ublala – with Ralata sitting nearby – watched the warrior walk to the edge of the hill, watched as Icarium dislodged a small rock and sent it rolling down the slope. And then he looked back at the barrow, and then at Ublala. The morning was bright but there were clouds building to the east and the wind carried the promise of rain.
    ‘It is as you said, friend?’
    Ublala nodded.
    Icarium wiped at the tears still streaming down his face from when he’d wept over the grave. But the look on his face wasn’t filled with grief any more. Just empty now. Lost. ‘Ublala, is this all there is of me?’ He gestured vaguely. ‘Is this all there is to any of us?’
    The Toblakai shrugged. ‘I am Ublala Pung and that is all I ever am, or was. I don’t know if there’s more. I never do.’
    Icarium studied the grave again. ‘He died defending me.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘But I don’t know who he was!’
    Ublala shrugged again. There was no shame in weeping for the death of a stranger. Ublala had done it many times. He reached down, picked up a potsherd, examined the sky-blue glaze. ‘Pretty,’ he said under his breath, tucking it behind his belt.
    Icarium collected up his weapons, and then faced north. ‘I feel close this time, Ublala.’
    Ublala thought to ask close to what, but already he was confused, and so he put the question away. He didn’t think he’d ever go back to find it. It was where all the other troubling things went, never to be gone back to, ever.
    ‘I am glad you found a woman to love, friend,’ Icarium said.
    The giant warrior smiled over at Ralata and received a stony stare in return, reminding him how she’d said she liked it better when it was just the two of them. But she was a woman and once he sexed her again, everything would be all right. That’s how it worked.
    When Icarium set out, Ublala collected up the useful sack he’d found, shouldered it, and went to join the warrior.
    Ralata caught up a short time later, just before Icarium happened to glance at the pottery fragment Ublala had taken out to admire again, and then halted to face one last time the low hill they’d left behind. Icarium frowned and was silent.
    Ublala was ready to turn away when Icarium said, ‘Friend, I have remembered something.’

EPILOGUE I
     
Perched upon the stones of a bridge
The soldiers had the eyes of ravens
Their weapons hung black as talons
Their eyes gloried in the smoke of murder
     
To the shock of iron-heeled sticks
I drew closer in the cripple’s bitter patience
And before them I finally tottered
Grasping to capture my elusive breath
     
With the cockerel and swift of their knowing
They watched and waited for me
‘I have come,’ said I, ‘from this road’s birth,
I have come,’ said I, ‘seeking the best in us.’
     
The sergeant among them had red in his beard
Glistening wet as he showed his teeth
‘There are few roads on this earth,’ said he,
‘that will lead you to the best in us, old one.’
     
‘But you have seen all the tracks of men,’ said I
‘And where the mothers and children have fled
Before your advance. Is there naught among them
That you might set an old man upon?’
     
The surgeon among this rook had bones
Under her vellum skin like a maker of limbs
‘Old one,’ said she, ‘I have dwelt
In the heat of chests, among heart and lungs,
     
And slid like a serpent between muscles,
Swum the currents of slowing blood,
And all these roads lead into the darkness
Where the broken will at last rest.
     
‘Dare say I,’ she went on,‘there is no
Place waiting inside where you might find
In slithering exploration of mysteries
All that you so boldly call the best in us.’
     
And then the man with shovel and pick,
Who could raise fort and berm in a day
Timbered of thought and measured in all things
Set the gauge of his eyes upon the sun
     
And said, ‘Look not in temples proud,
Or in the palaces of the rich highborn,
We have razed each in turn in our time
To melt gold from icon and shrine
     
And of all the treasures weeping in fire
There was naught but the smile of greed
And the thick