Ash realized that the tin mug he had been drinking from was still clutched in his left hand, the contents gone from it. He lunged forwards without warning, breaking free of the men’s grasps as he swung the mug with all his might, a black rage upon him.
When they dragged Ash to his feet, his step-uncle was lying on the floor with his face caved in like a bowl. Blood was bubbling from a hole at the very bottom of it. The man’s left foot kicked a beat against the planks of the floor, and then he gasped and died as they all stood there watching.
He’s murdered the headsman, someone muttered.
Ash fled into the darkness of the night.
He looked up, found himself staring at a harsh square of moonlight.
It was the bedroom window, with the thin curtains hanging over it.
A figure sat silhouetted in the chair, picking at the wood of one of its arms.
‘Ché?’
The figure leaned forward in the chair. Ash heard the wood creak.
‘It must have been hard, hearing that news about your son.’
Nico.
A strange thrill filled Ash’s stomach, like the fear of falling. He found that he couldn’t speak.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Nico. ‘I don’t mean to pry.’
Ash rested his back against the headrest, feeling how the pillow was wet where his face had been lying.
The memory faded slowly in his mind, though he could still smell the popping maize in his nostrils.
‘Not as hard as losing him,’ he rasped, and blood pumped in his throat.
‘You miss him.’
‘I think of Lin every day. As I think of you.’
‘What do you think about?’
‘You, or my son?’
‘Your son.’
‘Ach,’ Ash said in frustration.
He felt the urge for a drink, recalled he had already finished the wine he’d found in the kitchen.
‘I think of his eyes, like his mother’s. I think of how he gave his spare tackbread to his friends in the leanest days on the trail. I think of him chasing the girls before he even knew what he was chasing them for. I think—’ and he stopped himself there, on the brink of something reckless.
‘I think of his death,’ he said in a whisper.
Ash saw it then, as though he was there in the Sea of Wind and Grasses. He saw the dust of the tindergrass engulfing the clash of battle. The Heavy Wing of General Shin emerging from behind the lines of the Shining Way, betraying them all for a fortune in diamonds. A rider bearing down on his son, felling the boy with a single stroke. Hooves trampling over his body as though he was nothing but a discarded sack of clothing.
‘What is it?’ said Nico in the silence.
Ash clutched the sheet he lay upon in his fists, needing something to cling to.
‘You wish to hide things from me, even now?’
No, Ash thought. I wish to hide them only from myself.
He looked at the shadowy form of his apprentice across the room.
‘I did not love him,’ came his cracking voice. ‘For a time, at least, I thought I did not love him as my son.’
‘You thought he was not yours.’
Ash gripped harder. It came to him then that it hardly mattered whether he suppressed the memories of how he’d behaved towards the boy. He’d still be here, still living with the shame of it.
‘After I heard what my wife’s uncle had to say, I treated Lin unkindly.’
Unkindly, he reflected, as he listened to himself in disgust.
No, he’d been a bastard to the boy, plain and simple. For the few years they had spent together in the cause before he had died, Ash had treated his son with a cold and satisfying indifference.
‘I’m sorry, Nico,’ he said.
‘For what?’
‘If I was ever unkind to you also. If it seemed I did not care for you. I am not good with . . . these thing at times.’
The figure watched him in silence.
‘Please, now, I’m tired,’ he told it.
And he lay down again, and slowly pulled the blanket over his head, and waited until he knew that Nico was gone.
The ferries approached the mouth of the Chilos in single file, borne by the quickening current of the lake and the banks of oars that splashed through the dark waters. Drums sounded from within them, beating slow and steady beats for the benefit of the oarsmen labouring to increase their speed.
Halahan stood in the fortified wheelhouse at the stern of the boat next to General Creed, who peered through the gap at the top of the wooden screen