‘Thank you, sir.’
And now, everything had proceeded to match the Factor’s predictions. Brohl Handar would accompany the expedition, refuting her every argument against the idea. Reading his expression, she saw a renewed confidence and will-the Overseer felt as if he had found, at last, firm footing. No error in his recognition of his true enemy. The unmitigated disaster lay in the Edur’s belief that he had made the first move.
She said now to the Overseer, ‘Sir, if you will excuse me. I must have words with my officers.’
‘Of course,’ Brohl Handar replied. ‘When do you anticipate contacting the enemy?’
Oh, you fool, you already have. ‘That depends, sir, on whether they’re fleeing, or coming straight for us.’
The Overseer’s brows lifted. ‘Do you fear this Redmask?’
‘Fear that yields respect is not a bad thing, sir. In that fashion, yes, I fear Redmask. As he will me, before too long.’
She rode away then, down to her troops, seeking out, not an officer, but one man in particular, a horseman among the Bluerose, taller and duskier than most.
After a time she found him, gestured him to ride out to her side, and they walked their horses along one edge of the road. She spoke of two things, one loud enough to be heard by others and concerning the health of the mounts and other such mundane details; the other in much quieter tones, which no-one but the man could hear.
‘What can you see of the horizon’s bruised smear, that cannot be blotted out by a raised hand?’
Redmask glanced over at the foreigner.
Anaster Toc smiled. ‘Lying in a ditch amidst the wastes of humanity is something I would recommend to any nascent poet. The rhythms of ebb and flow, the legacy of what we discard. Wealth like liquid gold.’
Not entirely sane any more, Redmask judged, unsurprised. Skin and bones, scabbed and stained with fiery, peeling rashes. At least he could now stand without the aid of a stick, and his appetite had returned. Before long, Redmask believed, the foreigner would recover, at least physically. The poor man’s mind was another matter.
‘Your people,’ Anaster Toc continued after a moment, ‘do not believe in poetry, in the power of simple words. Oh, you sing with the coming of dawn and the fleeing sun. You sing to storm clouds and wolf tracks and shed antlers you find in the grass. You sing to decide the order of beads on a thread. But no words to any of them. Just tonal variations, as senseless as birdsong-’
‘Birds sing,’ cut in Natarkas who stood on the foreigner’s other side, squinting westward to the dying sun, ‘to tell others they exist. They sing to warn of hunters. They sing to woo mates. They sing in the days before they die.’
‘Very well, the wrong example. You sing like whales-’
‘Like what?’ asked Natarkas and two other copper-faces behind them.
‘Oh, never mind, then. My point was, you sing without words-’
‘Music is its own language.’
‘Natarkas,’ said Anaster Toc, ‘answer me this, if you will. The song the children use when they slip beads onto a thread, what does it mean?’
‘There is more than one, depending on the pattern desired. The song sets the order of the type of bead, and its colour.’
‘Why do such things have to be set?’
‘Because the beads tell a story.’
‘What story?’
‘Different stories, depending on the pattern, which is assured by the song. The story is not lost, not corrupted, because the song never changes.’
‘For Hood’s sake,’ the foreigner muttered. ‘What’s wrong with words?’
‘With words,’ said Redmask, turning away, ‘meanings change.’
‘Well,’ Anaster Toe said, following as Redmask made his way back to his army’s camp, ‘that is precisely the point. That’s their value-their ability to adapt-’
‘Grow corrupt, you mean. The Letherii are masters at corrupting words, their meanings. They call war peace, they call tyranny liberty. On which side of the shadow you stand decides a word’s meaning. Words are the weapons used by those who see others with contempt. A contempt which only deepens when they see how those others are deceived and made into fools because they chose to believe. Because in their naivety they thought the meaning of a word was fixed, immune to abuse.’
‘Togg’s teats, Redmask, that’s a long speech coming from you.’
‘I hold words in contempt, Anaster Toc. What do you mean when you say “Togg’s teats”?’