The Steel Remains полностью

When the tale was done, with Marnak safely back across the river and into barracks before dawn, when their laughter had soaked away once again, the clanmaster nodded and told another Yhelteth story from his own stock. How a noted imperial knight had once come home to find the young Egar in bed with his wives, all four of them at once. And you know, more than anything, that seemed to be what he was so pissed off about. Standing there, yelling at me with that fucking stupid court sword in his fist. Apparently, the Revelation says yes, you can have up to six wives, but it absolutely forbids you doing it with more than one of them at a time. Egar let drop the reins, spread his hands wide. Hell, how was I supposed to know that?

More laughter.

Another tale.

And so, eventually, they came to Erkan’s grave. They quieted and looked at each other. For a while they’d been able to forget where they were going, but that was over now. Egar dismounted.

“Thanks for the company.”

“Yeah.” Marnak cast glances around. A slight rise, a single stooped and gnarled tree with the ball of the declining sun tangled in its leafless branches. It was a bleak place, not made for the living.

“I’ll be fine,” Egar said quietly. “He was a good man in life, he isn’t going to hurt me now.”

Marnak grimaced. It wasn’t the received wisdom among the Majak that good men made good ghosts. A spirit must be placated, regardless of its origins; rituals must be honored. So said the shaman. No one ever explained exactly why, but the implication was that if you didn’t get that stuff right, there’d be a heavy price, for you and your people.

“Go on, get moving. You ride hard, you’ll make it back not much after full dark.” Egar watched the other man wheel his horse about. “Oh yeah, and if Sula asks, you left me half a league out, doing the last stretch on foot. Right?”

Marnak grinned back over his shoulder. “Right.” He clucked and heeled his horse into a gathering trot, canter, finally a full gallop back the way they’d come.

Egar watched him go, until horse and rider were a single dot that faded slowly into the gloom. Then he sighed and turned to his father’s grave.

It wasn’t much to look at. Steppe soils made for hard digging at this time of year, and the grave was shallow, piled over with rocks it took them the whole day to gather. They’d built the traditional cairn end pile at the buried man’s feet, warded it about with daubed symbols in the Skaranak colors and iron talismans hung off the stones on buffalo-hide thongs. They shredded tundra rose and crocus petals over the stones and set a dwarf oak sapling in the ground at Erkan’s head, so in a couple of years’ time he’d have shade when summer swung around.

Now the clan colors were bleached with age, and the branches of the grown tree were naked and skeletal overhead. Only the shaped iron ornaments remained, though—Egar squinted suspiciously—it looked as if even one or two of those might have been stolen from the grave over the past year.

“Motherfucking Voronak tinks,” he muttered.

Yeah, this far south and west it’s just as likely Skaranak renegades, or even some bunch of fuckwit explorers from the south. He’d seen Skaranak grave wards in more than one imperial museum over the years, had never quite been able to drive home to anyone the rage it aroused in him. In Yhelteth, in the city itself at least, they tolerated a variety of beliefs well enough, but behind that there was always the base assumption of a civilized superiority in the Revelation that never failed to piss him off. In the end, the imperials didn’t much care whose sensibilities they trampled on.

Let’s stick to the task at hand, shall we.

He left his horse to crop the grass a short distance off, unstoppered the rice wine flask he’d brought with him, held it lowered in clasped hands, and stood a moment looking down at the grave.

“Hey, Dad,” he said loudly. “Brought you something special this time.”

The quiet wind keened. There was no other reply for him.

“It’s good stuff. Used to drink it in the south all the time. This tavern down by the harbor had it, not far from Imrana’s place. I think you would have liked it in there, Dad. Noisy, full of all these tough guys off the docks. You could see the sea from the front door.” He paused, stared down at the cairn. “I would have liked to show you the sea, Dad.”

He blinked hard a couple of times. Cleared his throat.