The Crippled God

And where is my love? Where does she hide? He glared around, at the bare rock, the flight of sparks, the frail shelter in this crook of stone. Not here, that’s for sure .



Well, if any man needed a woman more than he did, it was his father. In a way, he is as alone among the Imass as I am here. He was a slave. A sailor. A Letherii. His home was civilized. Crowded with so many conveniences one could go mad trying to choose among them. And now he lives in a hut of hide and tenag bones. With winter closing in – oh, the Imass knew a harsh world . No, none of that was fair on Udinaas, who saw himself as so unexceptional he was beneath notice. Unexceptional? Will it take a woman to convince you otherwise? You can’t find one there – you need to go home, Father .



He could try a sending. A conjuration of will and power – was it possible to reach that far? ‘Worth a try,’ he muttered. ‘Tomorrow morning.’ For now, Rud Elalle would try to sleep. If that failed, well, there was the blood of the Eleint, and its deadly, sultry call.



He lifted his head, looked south. At the far side of the range, he knew, there was a vast green valley, slopes ribboned with terraces verdant with growth. There were towns and villages and forts and high towers guarding the bridges spanning the rivers. There were tens of thousands working those narrow fields.



They had flown so high above all of this, to a human eye they would have been virtually invisible. When they drew nearer to the rearing range north of the valley, close to its westernmost end, they had seen an encamped army, laying siege to a fastness carved into the first of the mountains. Rud had wondered at that. Civil war? But Silchas Ruin had shown no curiosity. ‘ Humans can do whatever they please, and they will. Count on it, Ryadd .’



Still, he imagined it was warm inside that keep right now.



Assuming it still held against the enemy. For some reason, he was sure that it did. Aye, humans will do whatever they please, Silchas Ruin, and they’ll be damned stubborn about it, too .



He settled down against the cold night.



His thoughts were earth, and the blood moved slowly through it, seeping like a summer’s rain. He saw how the others looked at him, when they’d thought his attention elsewhere. So much larger than any of them was he, bedecked in the armour of Dalk’s hide, his Ethilian mace showing a face to each of the cardinal directions, as befitted the Witch’s gift from the sky.



Listening to them readying their weapons, adjusting the straps of their armour, locking the grilled cheek-guards in place on their blackened helms, he knew that, in the past weeks, he had become the mountain they huddled against, the stone at their backs, on their flanks, at the point of the spear – wherever he was needed most, there he would be.



How many of the foe had he killed? He had no idea. Scores. Hundreds. They were the Fangs of Death, their numbers were endless and that, he well knew, was no exaggeration.



His fellow invaders, who once numbered in their tens of thousands, had dwindled now. It might be that other fragments still pushed on, somewhere to the south or north, but then they did not have a Thel Akai warrior in their company. They did not have a dragon-killer. They do not have me .



Earth was slow in dying. The soil was a black realm of countless mouths, ceaseless hungers. In a single handful raged a million wars. Death was ever the enemy, yet death was also the source of sustenance. It took a ferocious will to murder earth.



One by one, his companions – barely a score left now – announced themselves ready, in rising to their feet, in testing their gauntleted grips on their notched, battered weapons. And such weapons! Each one worth a dozen epic songs of glory and pain, triumph and loss. If he looked up from the ground at this moment, he would see faces swallowed in the barred shadows of their cheek-guards; he would see these proud warriors standing, eyes fixed eastward, and, slowly, those grimly set mouths and the thin, tattered lips would twist with wry amusement.



A war they could not win.



An epic march from which not one great hero would ever return.



The earth within him surged with sudden fire, and he rose, the mace lifting in his huge hands. We shall have lived as none other has lived. We shall die as no other has died. Can you taste this moment? By the Witch but I can!



He faced his companions, and gave them his own grin.



Tusked mouths opened like split flesh, and cold laughter filled the air.



Groaning, Ublala Pung opened his eyes. More dreams! More terrible visions! He rolled on to his side and blinked across the makeshift camp at the huddled form of the Barghast woman. His love. His adored one. It wasn’t fair that she hated him. He reached out and drew close the strange mace with its four blue-iron heads. It looked as if it should be heavy, and perhaps to some people it was. And it had a name, its very own name. But he’d forgotten it. A dozen and four epic songs. Songs of glore and painty, turnips and lust .