Memories of Ice

'I cannot in truth tell you why they trust you, Wizard, only that they do. Such matters are not for me to question. In your fevered state, you revealed the way your mind works — you wove a net, a web, yet even I could not discern all the links, the connecting threads. Your grasp of causality surpasses my intellect, Ben Adaephon Delat. Perhaps my gods caught a glimmer of your design. Perhaps no more than a hint, triggering an instinctive suspicion that in you, mortal, the Crippled God will meet his match.'

Quick Ben climbed to his feet and strode to where his leather armour and Bridgeburner colours waited in a heap near the tent flap. 'That's the plan, anyway. All right, Talamandas, we've a deal. I admit, I was at a loss as to how to proceed without my warrens.' He paused, turned to the sticksnare once more. 'Maybe you can answer me a few questions. Someone else is in this game. Seems to be shaping its own opposition to the Fallen One. Do you know who or what that might be?'

Talamandas shrugged. 'Elder Gods, Wizard. My Barghast gods conclude their actions have been reactionary by and large-'

'Reactionary?'

'Aye, a kind of fighting withdrawal. They seem incapable of changing the future, only preparing for it.'

'That's damned fatalistic of them.'

'Their perennial flaw, Wizard.'

Quick Ben shrugged himself into his armour. 'Mind you,' he muttered, 'it's not really their battle. Except for maybe K'rul. '

Talamandas leapt to the floor and scrambled to stand directly in front of the wizard. 'What did you say? K'rul? What do you know of him?'

Quick Ben raised an eyebrow. 'Well, he made the warrens, after all. We swim his immortal blood — we mages, and everyone else who employs the pathways of sorcery, including the gods. Yours, too, I imagine.'

The sticksnare hopped about, twig fingers clutching at the yellowed grass bound to its acorn head. 'No-one knows all that! No-one! You — you — how can you — aagh! The web! The web of your infernal brain!'

'K'rul is in worse shape even than Burn, given the nature of the Crippled God's assault,' Quick Ben said. 'So, if I felt helpless, imagine how he must feel. Makes that fatalism a little more understandable, don't you think? And if that's not enough, all the last surviving Elder Gods have lived under a host of nasty curses for a long, long time. Haven't they? Given those circumstances, who wouldn't be feeling a little fatalistic?'

'Bastard mortal! Warp and weft! Deadly snare! Out with it, damn you!'

Quick Ben shrugged. 'Your Barghast gods aren't ready to go it alone. Not by throwing all their weight behind me, in any case. Not a chance, Talamandas — they're still babes in the woods. Now, the Elder Gods have been on the defensive — tried to go it alone, I imagine. Legendary hubris, with that lot. But that wasn't working, so they've gone looking for allies.

'Thus … who was at work refashioning you into something capable of shielding me in the warrens? Hood, for one, I'd imagine. Layers of death protecting your soul. And your own Barghast gods, of course. Cutting those binding spells that constrained your own power. And Fener's thrown you a bone, or Treach, or whoever's on that particular roost right now — you can hit back if something comes at you. And I'd guess the Queen of Dreams has stepped in, a bridge between you and the Sleeping Goddess, to turn you into a lone and likely formidable crusader against the poison in her flesh, and in K'rul's veins. So, you're all ready to go, but where? How? And that's where I come in. How am I doing so far, Talamandas?'

'We are relying upon you, Ben Adaephon Delat,' the sticksnare growled.

'To do what?'

'Whatever it is you're planning to do!' Talamandas shrieked. 'And it had better work!'

After a long moment, Quick Ben grinned down at the creature.

But said nothing.

The sticksnare scrambled after Quick Ben when he left the tent. The mage paused to look around. What he had thought to be rain had been, in fact, water dripping from the leaves of a broad, verdant oak, its branches hanging over the tent. It was late afternoon, the sky clear overhead.

A Barghast encampment was sprawled out on all sides. Wicker and hide dwellings rose from the forest floor along the base of a lightly treed slope directly behind the wizard, whilst before him — to the south — were the dun-coloured humps of rounded tipis. The different styles reflected at least two distinct tribes. The mud-churned pathways crisscrossing the encampment were crowded with warriors, many wounded or bearing fallen kin.

'Where,' Quick Ben asked Talamandas, 'are my fellow Bridgeburners?'

'First into Capustan, Wizard, and still there. At the Thrall, likely.'

'Did they get into any fighting?'

'Only at the north gate — breaking through the siege line. Swiftly done. There are none wounded, Ben Adaephon Delat. Making your tribe unique, yes?'

'So I see,' Quick Ben murmured, watching the warriors filing into the camp. 'Not much duelling of late, I take it.'