Midnight Tides & The Bonehunters - By Steven Erikson Page 0,109

could have killed us all where we slept. All because Rhulad will not grasp what it is to be a warrior. There was nothing more to be said, and all knew it.

Except for Rhulad. 'I wasn't sleeping! I swear it! Fear, you have to believe me! I simply sat down for a moment to rest my legs. I saw no'one!'

'Behind closed lids,' Theradas growled, 'that's not surprising.'

'You think I'm lying, but I'm not! I'm telling the truth, I swear it!'

'Never mind,' Fear said. 'It is done. From now on, we will double the watch.'

Rhulad walked towards Midik. 'You believe me, don't you?'

Midik Buhn turned away. 'It was a battle just waking you for your watch, Rhulad,' he said, his tone both sad and weary.

Rhulad stood as if in shock, the pain of what he saw as betrayal clear and deep-struck on his face. His lips thinned, jaw muscles bunching, and he slowly turned away.

The bastards were in our camp. Hannan Mosag's faith in us...

'Let us strike the tents,' Fear said, 'and be on our way.'

Trull found himself scanning the horizon in an endless sweep, his sense of vulnerability at times near overwhelming. They were being watched, tracked. The emptiness of the landscape was a lie, somehow. Possibly there was sorcery at work, although this did not – could not – excuse Rhulad's failing.

Trust was gone, and Trull well knew that Rhulad's future would now be dominated by the effort to regain it. A lapse, and the young man's future path awaited him, deep-rutted and inevitable. A private journey beset by battle, each step resisted by a host of doubts, real and imagined – the distinction made no difference any more. Rhulad would see in his brothers and friends an unbroken succession of recriminations. Every gesture, every word, every glance. And, the tragedy was, he would not be far from the truth.

This would not be kept from the village. Sengar shame or not, the tale would come out, sung with quiet glee among rivals and the spiteful – and, given the opportunity, there were plenty of those to be found. A stain that claimed them all, the entire Sengar line.

They moved on. Northward, through the empty day.

Late in the afternoon, Theradas caught sight of something ahead, and moments later the others saw it as well. A glimmer of reflected sunlight, tall and narrow and angular, rising from the flat waste. Difficult to judge its size, but Trull sensed that the projection was substantial, and unnatural.

'That is the place,' Fear said. 'Hannan Mosag's dreams were true. We shall find the gift there.'

'Then let us be about it,' Theradas said, setting off.

The spar grew steadily before them. Cracks appeared in the snow and ice underfoot, the surface sloping upward the closer they approached. The shard had risen up from the deep, cataclysmically, a sudden upthrust that had sent wagon-sized chunks of ice into the air, to crash and tumble down the sides. Angular boulders of mud, now frozen and rimed, had rolled across the snow and ringed the area in a rough circle.

Prismatic planes caught and split the sunlight within the spar. The ice in that towering shard was pure and clear.

At the base of the fissured up-welling – still thirty or more paces from the spar – the group halted. Trull slipped out from the sled harness, Binadas following suit.

Theradas, Midik, stay here and guard the sleds,' Fear said. 'Trull, draw your spear from its sling. Binadas, Rhulad, to our flanks. Let's go.'

They climbed the slope, winding their way between masses of ice and mud.

A foul smell filled the air, of old rot and brine.

Binadas hissed warningly, then said, 'The spirit Hannan Mosag called up from the ocean deep has been here, beneath the ice. This is its handiwork, and the sorcery lingers.'

'Emurlahn?' Trull asked.

'No.'

They came to the base of the spar. Its girth surpassed that of thousand-year-old Blackwood trees. Countless planes rose in twisted confusion, a mass of sharp, sheered surfaces in which the setting sun's red light flowed thick as blood.

Fear pointed. 'There. The gift.'

And now Trull saw it. Faint and murky, the smudged form of a two-handed sword, bell-hilted, its blade strangely fractured and mottled – although perhaps that effect was created by the intervening thickness of ice.

'Binadas, weave Emurlahn into Trull's spear. As much as you can – this will take many, many shadows.'

Their brother frowned. 'Take? In what way?'

'Shattering the ice will destroy them. Annihilation is demanded, to free the gift. And remember, do not close your