Aela Ren sent Samuel Orlan to meet the combined force of Mireea, Yeflam and the Saan.
The cartographer had mounted his grey without a word after the Innocent gave him the order. With a surprising sense of sadness, Bueralan watched the wide road swallow the old man in the late morning’s sun. The Orlan he had known a year ago, who had ridden into Leera with him and Dark, the Orlan who had betrayed him in Dirtwater, remained only in bits and pieces. The confident, famous man who gambled with the lives of his friends in Ranan could still be seen, but only through the damage that threatened now to consume him. In a fashion, he was like a weathered statue, where the sculptor’s original work could still be seen but was now defined by blemishes and age.
Bueralan could identify similar damage within himself, as well. After Ille, after Elar was murdered, he had taken Aned Heast’s job in Mireea because he thought it would be simple. An army to stop, a city to defend. In such a job, Bueralan could take a moment to breathe, could make simple choices, ones based on morals close to his own. Instead, Kae, Ruk, Liaya and Aerala had all died. Zean had died as well, but Bueralan had reached out for the stone that held his soul and taken it to Ooila when he should have broken it and left.
‘Do you know what he is doing?’ Joqan appeared on the other side of the thick, twisted tree trunk Bueralan leant against. He had a heavy axe over his back. ‘Aela, that is.’
The Innocent stood alone in the centre of the wide road ahead of them, his hands behind his back.
‘He is waiting,’ Bueralan said.
‘But do you know why?’
‘He wants to be easily seen.’
‘He has offered to duel their champion.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I heard him tell Orlan that.’
‘Aela first started offering the duels in Sooia.’ Joqan said. ‘It did not happen in our first battle. It came after. After we had seen what our war would look like. After our first battles. We knew we would become inured to the death that we caused, that what had so horrified us would one day stop doing so. When that happened, our doubts would leave us. Aela said that our horror would become an abstract one. The thought distressed us. After all, we had been the voices of our gods. We had been feared, yes, and we had raised our weapons when we had been asked, but we had been loved, also. People made pilgrimages to us in times of need. They sought us out so that they could ask a god for vengeance, for forgiveness, and for more. We had never been seen as murderers, not even those of us who had served the God of Death.’
‘So you decided to test those you fought against?’ Bueralan asked. ‘To decide what, exactly?’
‘The gods have buried our deaths somewhere in time,’ he said. ‘They are like jewels to be found in the sand. What if this was the sand? What if the gods had seen us here, and had seen what we would become? What if they had buried our deaths here, in the world without them?’
‘You didn’t think that you shouldn’t go to war?’ A hint of disgust entered his voice. ‘When it was so objectionable, after all?’
‘You have not stood in the world with the gods and heard their voices. You have not seen all that is around you defined by them. You have not felt that absence.’
‘I have worked for men and women who had as much power as you can have over another,’ Bueralan said. ‘They had been paid to listen to their ideologies and they paid me to enact it.’ He pushed away from the tree and, in doing so, pushed away from the other man’s conversation. ‘You make a choice,’ he said, at the edge of it. ‘After they’ve spoken, you make it, and you live it. No one else carries the burden for you.’
Ahead, riders were emerging from the sunken glare of the morning’s sun, shadows drawing up to the shadow of the Innocent. Without a word, Bueralan joined him.
The god-touched soldiers who stood on the sides of the roads, in the trees, or throughout the marshes were different to the man he stood beside. It had not been obvious to Bueralan: he had been guided by Samuel Orlan’s impression of them. For him, they were sad figures, tragic in a certain way, men and women who were victims of their gods’ actions. It echoed Orlan’s view of how the gods acted, but Bueralan saw something different now. He saw how the gods had freed each one of them of responsibility for their actions. In their service, they had become akin to actors who performed a part they had been taught. Their lines had been said, their thoughts organized and their motivations transcribed, and in doing that, they had no longer needed to make their own decisions. When the gods had died, they had handed the responsibility of themselves to Aela Ren, and he, in response, had crafted a horrific path for them to walk.
The approaching force stopped and four riders broke from the front and continued forwards. The morning’s sun left them as no more than shadows at first, but as they drew closer, each of the riders began to define him and herself. Orlan sat in the middle, while beside him, on the left, rode the Soldier, Xrie. He was the youngest of the Keepers of the Divine, a man born in the Saan who wore sashes of red through his armour. Bueralan wondered if he knew that he was one of only two surviving Keepers.
Next to Xrie rode a thickset warrior from the Saan. He was past middle age, but the armour he wore was well made, and well worn. When he halted his horse, Bueralan saw the faintest hint of resemblance to the Saan prince who had been brought to Ooila. Miat Dvir, the saboteur thought. The Lord of the Saan had left his home, ridden down the tunnels and crossed the ocean.
It was the last rider, the one who rode next to Orlan, who surprised Bueralan. White, grey-haired and wearing simple but solid armour, Lieutenant Mills rode in the position that Aned Heast would have held, had he been part of the force that crossed the Mountains of Ger. She was clearly the captain of the Mireean forces, but Bueralan had expected to find Heast here, had planned on the old mercenary being an active cog in the unfolding war. It had not occurred to him that he would not be. After Muriel Wagan had given him that position, Heast had rebuilt himself not as a soldier, but as a captain on the Spine of Ger, and Bueralan could not imagine him walking away from it. Yet, he was not dead. He knew that. Bueralan would have heard if Heast had died. The information would have found its way to him, whether he had been in Ooila, or in on a ship in the middle of an ocean.
‘Aela Ren,’ Xrie said, dipping his head in a slight greeting. Beside him, Orlan left the three and rode back to the god-touched soldiers. ‘You do not send a friend as a messenger.’
‘I send a man who will not lie for me,’ the Innocent said evenly. ‘I send a man who makes it very clear that to fight me is to die.’
‘He said that if you were defeated all your soldiers would leave this war.’ The Soldier did not bother with the challenge in Ren’s words. ‘Is this true?’
‘Yes.’
‘My soldiers will not do that if I am defeated.’
‘I have not asked them to do so.’
‘Then I accept.’