Toc the Younger
Hood's Herald (TtH)
Toc the Younger, scout, 2nd Army, a Claw agent badly scarred at the Siege of Pale (Dramatis Personae, GotM)
'I was born on a ship, you know, and it was more than a few
days before Toc the Elder stepped forward to acknowledge his fatherhood – my mother was Captain Cartheron Crust’s sister, you see, and Crust had a temper . . .’ (MoI, UK Trade, p.297)
Hood's Herald – that one-eyed soldier – drove heels to his tattered mount, following. (TtH)
"Toc bears a wolf's eye."
"Because he is the Herald of War." (DoD)
Attributed Works
The Bridgeburners
What see you in the horizon's bruised smear
That cannot be blotted out
By your raised hand?
The Bridgeburners
(DG, UK MMPB, p.21)
He stepped down then
among women and men,
the sigil stripped
in her foul cleansing
there on the blood-soaked sand
spilled the lives
of Emperor and First Sword –
so tragic this treachery . . .
He was of the Old Guard,
commanding the honed edge
of Empire’s fury,
and so in stepping down
but not away
he remained the remembrance
before her eyes, the curse
of conscience she would not stand.
A price was placed before him
that he glanced over in first passing
unknowing and so unprepared
in stepping down among women
and men, he found what
he’d surrendered and damned
its reawakening . . .
The Bridgeburners
Toc the Younger
(GotM, UK Trade, p.188)
They were of a kind, then
the histories writ large
in tattooed tracery
the tales a tracking
of old wounds
but something glowed hard
in their eyes – those
flame-gnawed arches,
that vanishing span,
they are their own past
each in turn destined
to fall in line
on the quiet wayside
beside the river
they refuse to name . . .
The Bridgeburners (IV.i)
Toc the Younger (b.1141)
(GotM, UK Trade, p.93)
Lay of Onos T'oolan
Have you seen the one
who stands apart
cursed in a ritual
sealing his kind
beyond death the host
amassed and whirling
like a plague of pollen –
he stands apart
the First among all
ever veiled in time
yet outcast and alone
a T’lan Imass wandering
like a seed unfallen
Lay of Onos T’oolan
Toc the Younger
(GotM, UK Trade, p.197)
The Collected Works of
