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She was everything. And she is dead.

A cool wind sighed, plucking away that tension-a tension he now knew he but imagined. A moment of weakness. Something skittering on a nearby roof.Advertisement

These things did not come to those who were incomplete. He should have known better.

Three soft chimes sounded in the night, announcing yet another shift of personnel out in the advance pickets. Mostly silent, soldiers rose, dark shapes edging out from their positions, quickly replaced by those who had come to guard in their stead. Weapons rustled, clasps and buckles clicked, leather armour making small animal sounds. Figures moved back and forth on the plain. Somewhere in the darkness beyond, on the other side of that rise, out in the sweeps of high grasses and in the distant ravines, the enemy hid.

The soldiers knew that Bivatt had believed the battle was imminent. Redmask and his Awl were fast approaching. Blood would be spilled in the late afternoon on the day now gone. Oh, as the Letherii soldiers along the advance pickets well knew, the savages had indeed arrived. And the Atri-Preda had arrayed her mages to greet them. Foul sorceries had crackled and spat, blackening whole swaths of grassland until ash thickened the air.

Yet the enemy would not close, the damned Awl would not even show their faces. Even as they moved, just beyond line of sight, to encircle the Letherii army. This sounded deadlier than it was-no Awl line of barbarians would be able to hold against a concerted break-out, and the hundreds of low-ranking tactical geniuses common to all armies had predicted again and again that Bivatt would do just that: drive a solid wedge into contact with the Awl, scattering them to the winds.

Those predictions began falling away as the afternoon waned, as dusk gathered, as night closed in round them with its impenetrable cloak.

Well, they then said, of course she ain’t bitten. It’s an obvious trap, so clumsy it almost beggars belief. Redmask wants us out of our positions, moving this way and that. Wants the confusion, d’you see? Bivatt’s too smart for that.

So now they sat the night, tired, nervous, and heard in every sound the stealthy approach of killers in the dark. Yes, friends, there was movement out there, no doubt of that. So what were the bastards doing?

They’re waiting. To draw swords with the dawn, like they did the last time. We’re sitting out here, wide awake, for nothing. And come the morrow we’ll be sand’eyed and stiff as corpses, at least until the fighting starts for real, then we’ll tear their hides off. Blade and magic, friends. To announce the day to come.

The Atri-Preda paced. Brohl Handar could see her well enough, although even if he couldn’t he would be able to track her by the mutter of her armour. And, despite the diminishment of details, the Tiste Edur knew she was overwrought; knew she held none of the necessary calm expected of a commander; and so it was well, he concluded, that the two of them were twenty or more paces away from the nearest bivouac of troops.

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More than a little exposed, in fact. If the enemy had infiltrated the pickets, they might be hiding not ten paces distant, adjusting grips on their knives moments before the sudden rush straight for them. Slaying” the two leaders of this invading army. Of course, to have managed that, the savages would have had to deceive the magical wards woven by the mages, and that seemed unlikely. Bivatt was not unique when it came to fraught nerves, and he needed to be mindful of such flaws.

Redmask excelled in surprises. He had already proved that, and it had been foolish to expect a sudden change, a dramatic failure in his deviousness. Yet was this simply a matter of seeking battle with the sun’s rise? That seemed too easy.

The Atri-Preda walked over. ‘Overseer,’ she said in a low voice, ‘I would you send your Edur out. I need to know what he’s doing.’

Startled, Brohl said nothing for a moment.

She interpreted that, rightly, as disapproval. ‘Your kind are better able to see in the dark. Is that not correct? Certainly better than us Letherii; but more important, better than the Awl.’

And their dogs, Atri-Preda? They will smell us, hear us-they will raise their heads and awaken the night. Like your soldiers,’ he continued, ‘mine are in position, facing the high grasses and expecting to sight the enemy at any moment.’

She sighed. ‘Yes, of course.’

‘He plays with us,’ Brohl Handar said. ‘He wants us second-guessing him. He wants our minds numbed with exhaustion come the dawn, and so slowed in our capacity to react, to respond with alacrity. Redmask wants us confused, and he has succeeded.’

‘Do you imagine that I don’t know all that?’ she demanded in a hiss.

‘Atri-Preda, you do not even trust your mages just now-the wards they have set to guard us this night. Our soldiers should be sleeping.’ pqdm.com