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January 31 - March 3, 2019
K’rul seemed to study the fire. Eventually, he said, ‘In these dark waters, one cannot feel one’s own tears.’ Mael’s reply was bitter. ‘Why do you think I live here?’
‘I told Gruntle of my visions, the Wolves and the throne they guard. Do you know what he asked me?’ Torrent shook his head. ‘He asked me if I’ve seen the Wolves lift a leg against that throne.’
‘Gruntle says worship is nothing more than the surrender to things beyond our control. He says the comfort from that is false, because there is nothing comfortable in the struggle to live.
Cooking is the process of making the familiar unrecognizable, and thus palatable.
If dreams of flying are the last hope of freedom I will pray for wings with my last breath
You can’t die for a living.
All right, get outa my tent so I can get decent.’ ‘You’re not in your tent, Sergeant, you’re in our latrine ditch.’ She looked round. ‘That explains the smell.’ ‘None of us used it yet, Sergeant, seeing as how you were here.’ ‘Oh.’
The things said and the things not said. In the space in between, a thousand worlds.
‘If Sergeant Gesler is now Mortal Sword, Corporal, what does that make you?’ ‘Shield Anvil.’ ‘I see. And the god you serve?’ ‘Damned if I know, Adjunct.’
For we are all bound in stories, and as the years pile up they turn to stone, layer upon layer, building our lives. You can stand on them and stare out at future’s horizon, or you can be crushed beneath their weight. You can take a pick in hand and break them all apart, until you’re left with nothing but rubble. You can crush that down into dust and watch the wind blow it away. Or you can worship those wretched stories, carving idols and fascinating lies to lift your gaze ever higher, and all those falsehoods make hollow and thin the ground you stand on.
Choices fall away, without you even noticing, until there are very few left, and you realize that you are nothing but what you are.’
Tavore, I think I begin to understand you. Must the fallen be made to see what they died for, to see their sacrifice so squandered? Is this what you mean – what you have always meant – by ‘unwitnessed’?
‘In times of crisis, Firehair, even the smallest group of people will turn their heads, finding one among them. When we have no answers, we look to one who might – and that hope is born of qualities observed: of clearest thought, of wisdom or bold courage – all that each of us wishes to reflect.’
‘Corporal Touchless!’ ‘Sergeant?’ ‘What you got in that jug there?’ ‘Piss.’ ‘Who’s selling that stuff anyway? Bloody genius.’
Hood, the Lord of Death, stood before me and spoke of fear. The fear of the dead. But if the dead know fear, what hope do we have?
we will run even when there’s nowhere to run to, and nothing terrible to run from. Why? Because to walk is just as meaningless. It just takes longer.
‘If all honest observation ends up sounding critical, is it the honesty you then reject, or the act of observation?’
If you knew where this path led Would you have walked it? If you knew the pain at love’s solemn end Would you have awakened it?
What I dare you to lose I surrendered long ago But what I beg you to find Must I then lose?
Many are the chains that cut cruel, that enslave with malice. Yet other chains also exist, and these are the ones we each choose to wear – not out of fear, or ignorance. These are the noblest of chains. Honour. Virtue. Loyalty.
‘What are wolves but dogs not yet beaten into submission?’
Nostalgia was like a disease, one that crept in and stole the colour from the world and the time you lived in. Made for bitter people. Dangerous people, when they wanted back what never was.
In a war between fanatics and sceptics, the fanatics win every time.”’
this, he knew, was the secret terror behind all faiths. The choice to believe, when to not believe invited the horror of the meaningless, all these lives empty of purpose, all these hopes relinquished, dropped from the hand, left to sink in the thick mud
We love ourselves and so we deserve two thrones – at least two! We deserve them so we’ll have them, even if we have to kill ten thousand babies to get to them.’ ‘Babies? Killing babies?’ ‘Why not?’ They resumed their swishing rush through the grasses. ‘I can almost see them, Telorast! An army of babies between us and those thrones. They can swing their bone rattles all they like – we’ll chew through them like cheese!’ ‘And kittens and puppies and small mice, too!’ ‘Stop it, Curdle – you’re making me hungry!
‘Commander Erekala, High Fist Paran extends his greetings. He wants you to surrender, so we don’t have to kill all of you.’
some futures hold such promise as to convince you they can be nothing more than dreams, delusions built on wishful thoughts. You walk the steps of your life, and always that dream beckons, that dream waits. You don’t know if it can ever be made real. You don’t know that, even should you somehow stumble upon it, you won’t find it less than it was, less than it could have been – if only you could have kept that distance, kept it just outside arm’s reach. For ever shining. For ever unsullied by the all-too-real flaws of your own making.
Regretting your moment of madness?’ Faint shook her head – or tried to. ‘Only if it fails.’ ‘Well, how often do we regret successes?’
A civilization was the means by which too many people could live together despite their mutual hatred.
I remember so many loves, so many things lost. I remember being broken. Again and again. There need be no end to it – there is no law to say that one cannot break one more time.
The Jaghut went to war against death. So many met that notion with disbelief, or confusion. They could not understand. Who is the enemy? The enemy is surrender. Where is the battlefield? In the heart of despair. How is victory won? It lies within reach. All you need do is choose to recognize it. Failing that, you can always cheat. Which is what I did. How did I defeat death? By taking its throne.
if we do not sacrifice our own ease, our own comfort, to make the future’s world a better one, then we curse our own children. We leave them a misery they do not deserve; we leave them a host of lessons unearned.
‘You can’t steer anyone away from the path they’re going to take. You can show ’em that there’s plenty of other paths – you can do that much – but past that? They’ll go where they go.’
Like you’re headed for the executioner. Us soldiers only got one kind of coin worth anything, and it’s called respect. And we hoard it, we hide it away, and there ain’t nobody who’d call us generous. Easy spenders we’re not. But there’s something feels even worse than having to give up a coin – it’s when somebody steps up and tosses one back at us. We get antsy. We look away. And part of us feels like breaking inside, and we get down on ourselves, and outsiders don’t understand that. They think we should smile and wave or stand proud. But we don’t want to do anything of the sort, even when
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‘Will they fight?’ She stepped close, her eyes cold as ice. ‘You don’t ask that kind of question, Pores. Not another word. Am I understood?’ ‘Aye, Fist. I just don’t want to be the only one unsheathing my sword, that’s all.’ ‘You’re in no condition for that.’ ‘That detail hardly matters, Fist.’
Listen all of you! I can taste it in the air!’ ‘That’d be Widdershins.’ ‘No! It is glory, my friends. Glory!’ Koryk said, ‘If that’s the smell of glory, Corabb, I knew an anaemic cat that was queen of the world.’
I will remember this. I will set out scrolls and burn upon them the names of these Fallen. I will make of this work a holy tome, and no other shall be needed. Hear them! They are humanity unfurled, laid out for all to see – if one would dare look! There shall be a Book and it shall be written by my hand. Wheel and seek the faces of a thousand gods! None can do what I can do! Not one can give voice to this holy creation! But this is not bravado. For this, my Book of the Fallen, the only god worthy of its telling is the crippled one. The broken one. And has it not always been thus? I never hid
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‘The dead forget us, and this is why we fear death.’
