Farlander (3 page)

His master observed him with interest.

‘Your head,’ he said. ‘Any pains?’

‘Some. I think another attack might be coming on.’

‘I told you it would be this way, did I not?’

‘I’m not dead yet.’

Osh
frowned. He rubbed his hands together, blew into them.

‘Ash, you must see how it is time, at last.’

The flames of the oil stove sputtered against Ash’s sigh. He looked about him, at the noisy flaps of the canvas, at the air rolling visible from the broth. His sword, perched upright against his leather pack, like the marker of a grave. ‘This work . . . it is all I have,’ he said. ‘Would you take it from me?’

‘Your condition does the taking, not I. Ash, even if you survive tonight, how much longer do you think you have?’

‘I will not lie down and wait for the end, no purpose left to me.’

‘I do not ask you to. But you should be here, with the order, and your companions. You deserve some rest, and what peace you may find while you still can.’

‘No,’ Ash responded hotly. He glanced away, staring far into the flames. ‘My father went that way, when his condition worsened. He gave in to grief after the blindness struck him, and lay weeping in his bed waiting for the end. It made a ghost of him. No, I will not squander what little time I have that way. I will die on my feet, still striving forwards.’

Osh
swept that comment aside with a gesture of his hand. ‘But you are in no shape for this. Your attacks are worsening. For days you can barely see due to them, let alone move. How can you expect to carry on in this way, to see a vendetta through to the end? No, I cannot allow it.’

‘You must!’ roared Ash.

Across the sloping confines of the tent, Osh
, head of the R
shun order, blinked but said nothing.

Ash hung his head, then breathed deeply, composing himself.

Softly came the words, offered like a sacrifice on an altar: ‘Osh
, we have known each other for more than half a lifetime. We two are more than friends. We are closer even than father and son, or brothers. Listen to me now. I need this.’

Their gazes locked: he and Osh
, surrounded by canvas and winds and a thousand laqs of frozen waste; here in this imaginary cell of heat, so small in scale that they shared each other’s breath.

‘Very well,’ murmured Osh
at last, causing Ash to rock back in surprise.

He opened his mouth to thank him, but Osh
held up a palm.

‘On one condition, and it is not open for debate.’

‘Go on.’

‘You will take an apprentice at last.’

A gust pressed the canvas of the tent against his back. Ash stiffened. ‘You would ask that of me?’

‘Yes,’ snapped Osh
. ‘I would ask that of you – as you have asked of me. Ash, you are the best that we have, better than even I was. Yet for all these years, you have refused to train an apprentice, to pass on your skills, your insights.’

‘You know I have always had my own reasons for that.’

‘Of course I know! I know you better than any soul alive. I was there, you recall? But you were not the only one to lose a son in battle that day – or a brother, or a father.’

Ash hung his head. ‘No,’ he admitted.

‘Then you will do so, if you make it safely out of this?’

Still he could not look directly at Osh
; instead his eyes were filled with the scattering brilliance of the oil stove’s flames. The old man did know him well. He was like a mirror to Ash, a living breathing surface that reflected all that Ash might try to hide from himself.

‘Do you wish to die out here alone, in this forsaken wilderness?’

Ash’s silence was answer enough.

‘Then agree to my offer. I promise you that, if you do, you will make it out of this, you will see your home again – and there I will allow you to continue in your work, at least while you train another.’

‘Is that a bargain?’

‘Yes,’ Osh
told him with certainty.