Warleader Gall could hear his wife’s labour pains. The sound filled him with horror. Could there be anything crueller than this? To deliver a child into this world. By the Fall of Coltaine, have we not shed enough tears? Do we not bear their scars as proof?
He sought to roll over in his furs, wanting none of this, but he could not move. As if his body had died this day. And he but crouched inside it. Born to a dying mother. Who gathers round her now? Shelemasa. The last of the surviving shoulder-women. But there are no daughters. No sons with their wives. And there is not me, and with this child, this last child, for the first time I will not witness my wife giving birth .
A knife pressed against his cheek. Jastara’s voice hissed in his ear. ‘If you do not go to her now, Gall, I will kill you myself.’
I cannot .
‘For the coward you are, I will kill you. Do you hear me, Gall? I will make your screams drown out the world – even your wife’s cries – or do you forget? I am Semk . This whole night – I will make it your eternal torment. You will beg for release, and I shall deny it!’
‘Then do it, woman.’
‘Does not the father kneel before the mother? In the time of birth? Does he not bow to the strength he himself does not possess? Does he not look into the eyes of the woman he loves, only to see a power strange and terrible – how it does not even see him, how it looks past – or no, how it looks within ? Does not a man need to be humbled? Tell me, Gall, that you refuse to see that again – one final time in your life! Witness it!’
He blinked up at her. The knife point had dug deep, now grazing the bone of his cheek. He felt the blood running down to drip from the line of his jaw, the rim of his ear. ‘The child is not mine,’ he whispered.
‘But it is. You fool, can’t you see that? It will be the last Khundryl child! The last of the Burned Tears! You are Warleader Gall. It shall be born, and it shall look up into your face! How dare you deny it that? ’
His breath was coming in gasps. Do I have this left in me? Can I find the strength she demands of me? I … I have lost so much. So much .
‘This is our final night, Gall. Be our Warleader one last time. Be a husband. Be a father.’
A feeble, trembling hand fumbled with the furs covering him – he caught its movement, wondered at it. My own? Yes . Groaning, he struggled to sit up. The knife slipped away from his bloody cheek. He stared across at Jastara.
‘My son … did well by you.’
Her eyes went wide. The colour left her face. She shrank back.
Gall pushed the furs away, reached for his weapon belt.
Summoned by a mother’s cries, Badalle walked with her children. Saddic stumbled at her side. They were all closing in, like an indrawn breath.
The army was on the move. She had not believed these soldiers capable of rising yet again, to face the wastes ahead. She did not understand the source of strength they had found, the hard will in their eyes. Nor did she understand the way they looked at her and Saddic, and at the other children of the Snake. As if we have been made holy. As if we have blessed them. When the truth is, it is they who have blessed us, because now we children will not have to die alone. We can die in the arms of men and women, men and women who for that moment become our fathers, our mothers .
But, here in the Khundryl camp, a new child was about to come into the world.
When she arrived, the clawed warriors surrounded the birth-tent. She saw the corpse of a horse nearby and walked over to stand upon it.
Her children saw and they faced her, for they knew what was coming. Looking down, she met Saddic’s shining eyes, and nodded.