The privilege of being so close to home was proving too painful, even as Torrent-the last warrior of the Awl-sought to exult in the anguish. Punishment for surviving, for persisting, like one last drop of blood refusing to soak into the red mud; he did not know what held him upright, breathing, heart pounding on and on, thoughts clawing through endless curtains of dust. Somewhere, deep inside, he prayed he would find his single, pure truth, squeezed down into a knucklebone, polished by all the senseless winds, the pointless rains, the spiralling collapse of season upon season. A little knot of something like bone, to stumble over, to roll across, to send him sprawling.
He might find it, but he suspected not. He did not possess the wit. He was not sharp in the way of Toc Anaster, the Mezla who haunted his dreams. Thundering hoofs, a storm-wracked night sky, winds howling like wolves, and the dead warrior’s single eye fixed like an opal in its shadowed socket. A face horrifying in its red, glistening ruin-the skin cut away, smeared teeth exposed in a feral grin-oh, perhaps indeed the Mezla rode into Torrent’s dreams, a harbinger of nightmares, a mocker of his precious, fragile truth. One thing seemed clear-the dead archer was hunting Torrent, fired by hatred for the last Awl warrior, and the pursuit was relentless, Torrent’s steps dragging even as he ran for his life, gasping, shrieking-until with a start he would awaken, sheathed in sweat and shivering.
It seemed that Toc Anaster was in no hurry to bring the hunt to its grisly conclusion. The ghost’s pleasure was in the chase. Night after night after night.
The Awl warrior no longer wore a copper mask. The irritating rash that had mottled his face was now gone. He had elected to deliver himself and the children into the care of the Gadra clan, camped as they were at the very edge of the Awl’dan. He had not wished to witness the devastating grief of the strange warrior named Tool, over Toc Anaster’s death.
Shortly after joining the clan, and with the fading of his rash, Gadra women had taken an interest in him, and they were not coy, displaying a boldness that almost frightened Torrent-he had fled a woman’s advance more than once-but of late the dozen or so intent on stalking and trapping him had begun cooperating with one another.
And so he took to his horse, riding hard out from the camp, spending the entire span of the sun’s arc well away from their predations. Red-eyed with exhaustion, miserable in his solitude, and at war with himself. He had never lain with a woman, after all. He had no idea what it involved, beyond those shocking childhood memories of seeing, through the open doorways of huts, adults clamped round one another grunting and moaning and sighing. But they had been Awl-not these savage, terrifying Barghast who coupled with shouts and barks of laughter, the men bellowing like bears and the women clawing and scratching and biting.