He had seen the enemy’s face, its twin masks of abject self-sacrifice and cold-eyed command. He had seen leaders feed on the flesh of the bravely fallen. And this is not the Teblor way. It shall not be my way.

The sounds of looting from the rooms around him were gone now. Silence on all sides. Karsa reached down and used a hook to lift the kettle from the coals and set it down on the small table amidst the foodstuffs, the silver plates and the polished goblets. Then he kicked the brazier over, scattering coals on to the beautifully woven carpets, into the silks and woollen blankets, the furs. He waited to see flames ig-nite.

When the first ones began, Karsa Orlong rose and, hunched over to clear the panel door, he made his way out.

Darkness in the world beyond the camp’s cookfires. A mad profusion of stars overhead. Arrayed in a vast semicircle facing the enormous carriage was the kingdom of the Captain. Karsa Orlong stood in front of the throne on the balcony.

‘The slaves are free,’ he said in a loud voice that carried to everyone. ‘The offi-cers will divide the loot, the horses and all the rest-an equal share for all, slaves and free, soldier and crafter. Cheat anyone and I will kill you.’

Behind him on the carriage, flames licked out from the countless windows and vents. Black smoke rose in a thickening column. He could feel the heat gusting against his back.

‘Come the dawn,’ he said, ‘everyone will leave. Go home. Those without a home-go find one. And know that the time I give you now is all that you will ever have. For when next you see me, when you are hiding there in your cities, I will come as a destroyer. Five years or twenty-it is what you have, what I give you. Use it well. All of you, live well.’

And that such a farewell should be received, not as a benediction, but as a threat, marked well how these people understood Karsa Orlong-who came from the north, immune to all weapons. Who slew the Captain without even touching him. Who freed the slaves and scattered the knights of the realm with not a single clash of swords.

The god of the Broken Face came among them, as each would tell others for the years left to them. And, so telling, with eyes wide and licking dry lips, they would reach in haste for the tankard and its nectar of forgetfulness.

Some, you cannot kill. Some are deliverers of death and judgement. Some, in wishing you a full life, promise you death. There is no lie in that promise, for does not death come to us all? And yet, how rare the one to say so. No sweet euphemism, no quaint colloquialism. No metaphor, no analogy. There is but one true poet in the world, and he speaks the truth.

Flee, my friends, but there is nowhere to hide. Nowhere at all.

See your fate, there in his Broken Face.

See it well.

Horses drawn to a halt on a low hilltop, grasses whispering unseen on all sides.

‘I once led armies,’ Traveller said. ‘I was once the will of the Emperor of Malaz.’

Samar Dev tasted bitterness and leaned to one side and spat. The man beside her grunted, as if acknowledging the gesture as commentary. ‘We served death, of course, in all that we did. For all our claims otherwise. Imposing peace, ending stupid feuds and tribal rivalries. Opening roads to mer-chants without fear of banditry. Coin flowed like blood in veins, such was the gilt of those roads and the peace we enforced. And yet, behind it all, he waited.’

‘All hail civilization,’ Samar Dev said. ‘Like a beacon in the dark wilderness,’

‘With a cold smile,’ Traveller continued, as if not hearing her, ‘he waits. Where all the roads converge, where every path ends. He waits.’ A dozen heartbeats passed, with nothing more said.

To the north something burned, lancing bright orange flames into the sky, lighting the bellies of churning clouds of black smoke. Like a beacon… ‘What burns?’ Traveller wondered.

Samar Dev spat again. She just couldn’t get that foul taste out of her mouth. ‘Karsa Orlong,’ she replied. ‘Karsa Orlong burns, Traveller. Because that is what he does.’

‘I do not understand you.’

‘It’s a pyre,’ she said. ‘And he does not grieve. The Skathandi are no more.’

‘When you speak of Karsa Orlong,’ Traveller said, ‘I am frightened.’ She nodded at that admission-a response he probably could not even see. The man beside her was an honest one. In many ways as honest as Karsa Orlong. And on the morrow these two would meet. Samar Dev well understood Traveller’s fear. The bulls ever walk alone to the solitude Of their selves

Swaggering in their coats of sweaty felt Every vein swollen

Defiant and proud in their beastly need Thunderous in step

Make way make way the spurting swords Slay damsel hearts

Cloven the cut gaping wide-so tender an attitude! And we must swoon

Before red-rimmed eyes you’ll find no guilt In the self so proven And the fiery charge of most fertile seed Sings like gods’ rain

Make way make way another bold word

The dancer’s sure to misstep

In the rushing drums of the multitude

Dandies of the Promenade Seglora

Expectation is the hoary curse of humanity. One can listen to words, and see them as the unfolding of a petal or, indeed, the very opposite: each word bent and pushed tighter, smaller, until the very packet of meaning vanishes with a flip of deft fingers. Poets and tellers of tales can be tugged by either current, into the riotous conflagration of beauteous language or the pithy reduction of the tersely colourless.

As with art, so too with life. See a man without fingers standing at the back of his house. He is grainy with sleep that yields no rest, no relief from a burdensome world (and all that), and his eyes are strangely blank and might be shuttered too as he stares out on the huddled form of his wife as she works some oddity in her vegetable patch.

This one is terse. Existence is a most narrow aperture indeed. His failing is not in being inarticulate through some lack of intellect. No, this mind is most finely honed. But he views his paucity of words-in both thought and dialogue-as a virtue, sigil of rigid manhood. He has made brevity an obsession, an addiction, and in his endless paring down he strips away all hope of emotion and with it em-pathy. When language is lifeless what does it serve? When meaning is rendered down what veracity holds to the illusion of depth?

Bah! to such conceits! Such anal self-serving affectation! Wax extravagant and let the world swirl thick and pungent about you! Tell the tale of your life as you would live it!

A delighted waggle of fingers now might signal mocking cruelty when you are observing this fingerless man who stands silent and expressionless as he studies his woman. Decide as you will. His woman. Yes, the notion belongs to him, art-fully whittled from his world view (one of expectation and fury at its perpetual failure). Possession has its rules and she must behave within the limits those rules prescribe. This was, to Gaz, self-evident, a detail that did not survive his own manic editing.

But what was Thordy doing with all those flat stones? With that peculiar pat-tern she was building there in the dark loamy soil? One could plant nothing be-neath stone, could one? No, she was sacrificing fertile ground, and for what? Hi didn’t know. And he knew that he might never know. As an activity, however, Thordy’s diligent pursuit was a clear transgression of the rules, and he might have to do something about that. Soon.

Tonight he would beat a man to death. Exultation, yes, but a cold kind. Flies buzzing in his head, the sound rising like a wave, filling his skull with a hundred thousand icy legs. He would do that, yes, and this meant he didn’t have to beat his wife-not yet, anyway; a few more days, maybe a week or so-he would have to see how things went.

Keep things simple, give the flies not much to land on, that was the secret. The secret to staying sane.