The assassin closed the door behind him and leaned against it. Better to walk into a trap that you can see than one you can't. Yet the thought gave him scant comfort. He wasn't even sure if there was a trap. Mebra's web was vast—Kalam had always known that, and had himself plucked those strands more than once. Nor, it seemed, had the Ehrlitan spy betrayed him when it came to delivering the Book of Dryjhna—Kalam had placed it into Sha'ik's hands, after all.
Salk Elan was likely a mage, and he also had the look of a man capable of handling himself in a fight. He had not so much as flinched when the treasurer's bodyguard had closed on him.
None of which puts me at ease.
The assassin sighed. And the man knows bad ale when he tastes it…
When the High Fist's breeding stallions were led through the gate into the Imperial yard, chaos ensued. Stamping, nervous horses jostled with stablers, deckhands, soldiers and various officials. The Master of the Horse shrieked and ran about in an effort to impose some order, fomenting even more confusion in the seething press.
The woman holding the reins of one magnificent stallion was notable only for her watchful calm, and when the Master finally managed to arrange the loading, she was among the first to lead her charge up the broad gangplank onto the Imperial transport. And though the Master knew every one of his workers and every one of the breeders in his care, his attention was so tugged and strained in multiple directions that he did not register that both woman and horse were unknown to him.
Minala had watched Ragstopper cast off two hours earlier, following the boarding of two squads of marines and their gear. The trader was towed clear of the inside harbour before being allowed to stretch sails, flanked by Imperial galleys that would provide escort crossing Aren Bay. Four similar warships awaited the Imperial transport a quarter-league out.
The complement of Marines aboard the Imperial transport was substantial, at least seven squads. Clearly, the Dojal Hading Sea was not secure.
Kalam's stallion tossed his head as he stepped down onto the main deck. The massive hatch that led down into the hold was in fact an elevator, raised and lowered by winches. The first four horses had been led onto the platform.
An old, grizzled stabler standing near Minala eyed her and the stallion. 'The latest in the High Fist's purchases?' he asked.
She nodded.
'Magnificent animal,' the man said. 'He's a good eye, has the High Fist.'
And not much else worth mentioning. The bastard's making a show of his imminent flight, and when he finally leaves, he'll have an entire fleet of warships for escort, no doubt. Ah, Keneb, is this what we've delivered you to?
Get out of Aren, Kalam had said. She'd urged the same to Selv before saying goodbye, but Keneb was among the army's ranks now. Attached to Blistig's City Garrison. They were going nowhere.
Minala suspected she would never see any of them again.
Ah. to chase a man I don't understand. A man I'm not even sure I like. Oh, woman, you're old enough to know better…
The southern horizon ran in a thin, grey-green vein that wavered in the streams of heat rising from the road. The land that stretched before it was barren, studded with stones except along the path of the potsherd-strewn trader track that branched out from the Imperial Road.
The vanguard sat their horses at the crossroads. To the east and southeast lay the coast, with its clustering of villages and towns and the Holy City of Ubaryd. The skyline in that direction was bruised with smoke.
Slumped in his saddle, Duiker listened with the others as Captain Sulmar spoke.
'—and the consensus on this is absolute, Fist. We've no choice but to hear Nethpara and Pullyk out. It is, after all, the refugees who will suffer the most.'
Captain Lull grunted his contempt.
Sulmar's face paled beneath the dust, but he went on, 'Their rations are at starvation level as it is—oh, there'll be water at Vathar, but what of the wasteland beyond?'
Bult raked fingers through his beard. 'Our warlocks say they sense nothing, but we are still distant—a forest and a wide river between us and the drylands. It may be that the spirits of the land down there are simply buried deep—Sormo has said as much.'
Duiker glanced at the warlock, who offered nothing and who sat wrapped in an Elder's cloak atop his horse, his face hidden beneath the hood's shadow. The historian could see the now constant tremble in Sormo's long-fingered hands where they rested on the saddlehorn. Nil and Nether were still recovering from their ordeal at Gelor Ridge, not once emerging from the covered wagon that carried them, and Duiker had begun to wonder whether they still lived at all. Our last three mages, and two of them are either dead or too weak to walk, while the third has aged ten years for every week of this Hood-cursed journey.
'The tactical advantages must be clear to you, Fist,' Sulmar said after a moment. 'No matter how sundered Ubaryd's walls may be, they'll provide a better defence than a land devoid even of hills—'
'Captain!' Bult barked.
Sulmar subsided, lips pressing into a thin, bloodless line.
Duiker shivered in response to a chill that had nothing to do with the dying day's slow cooling. Such a vast concession, Sulmar, according to a Wickan war chief the rules of courtesy expected from one of lower rank. What skin is this that's wearing so thin on you, Captain? No doubt quickly cast off when you sup wine with Nethpara and Pullyk Alar…
Coltaine did not take Sulmar to task. He never did. He met every jibe and dig of nobleborn presumption and arrogance in the same manner that he dealt with everything else: cold indifference. It may well have worked for the Wickan, but Duiker could see how bold it was making Sulmar and others like him.
And the captain was not finished. 'This is not just a military concern, Fist. The civil element of the situation—'
'Promote me, Commander Bult,' Lull said, 'so that I may whip this dog until his hide's just a memory.' He bared his teeth at his fellow captain. 'Otherwise, a word with you somewhere private, Sulmar…'
The man replied with a silent sneer.
Coltaine spoke. 'There is no civil element. Ubaryd will prove a fatal trap should we retake it. Assailed from the land and the sea, we would never hold. Explain that to Nethpara, Captain, as your last task.'
'My last task, sir?' The Fist said nothing.
'Last,' Bult rumbled. 'Means just that. You've been stripped of rank, drummed out.'
'Begging the Fist's pardon, but you cannot do that.'
Coltaine's head turned and Duiker wondered if the captain had finally got to the Fist.
Sulmar shrugged. 'My Imperial commission was granted by a High Fist, sir. Based on that, it is within my right to ask for adjudication. Fist Coltaine, it has always been the strength of the Malazan Army that a tenet of our discipline insists that we speak our mind. Regardless of your commands—which I will obey fully—I have the right to have my position duly recorded, as stated. If you wish, I can recite the relevant Articles to remind you of these rights, sir.'
There was silence, then Bult swung in his saddle to Duiker. 'Historian, did you understand any of that?'
'As well as you, Uncle.'
'Will his position be duly recorded?'
'Aye.'
'And presumably adjudication requires the presence of advocates, not to mention a High Fist.'
Duiker nodded.
'Where is the nearest High Fist?'
'Aren.'
Bult nodded thoughtfully. 'Then, to resolve this matter of the captain's commission, we must make all haste to Aren.' He faced Sulmar. 'Unless, of course, the views of the Council of Nobles are to take precedence over the issue of the fate of your career, Captain.'
'Retaking Ubaryd will allow relief from Admiral Nok's fleet,' Sulmar said. 'Through this avenue, a swift and safe journey to Aren can be effected.'
'Admiral Nok's fleet is in Aren,' Bult pointed out. 'Yes, sir. However, once news reaches them that we are in Ubaryd, the obvious course will be clear.'
'You mean they w
ill hasten to relieve us?' Bult's frown was exaggerated. 'Now I am confused, Captain. The High Fist holds his army in Aren. More, he holds the entire Seven Cities fleet as well. Neither has moved in months. He has had countless opportunities to despatch either force to our aid. Tell me, Captain, in your family's hunting estates, have you ever seen a deer caught in lantern light? How it stands, frozen, unable to do anything. The High Fist Pormqual is that deer. Coltaine could deliver this train to a place three miles up the coast from Aren and Pormqual would not set forth to deliver us. Do you truly believe that an even greater plight, such as you envisage for us in Ubaryd, will shame the High Fist into action?'
'I was speaking more of Admiral Nok—'
'Who is dead, sick or in a dungeon, Captain. Else he would have sailed long ere now. One man rules Aren, and one man alone. Will you place your life in his hands, Captain?'
Sulmar's expression had soured. 'It seems I have in either case, Commander.' He drew on his riding gloves. 'And it also seems that I am no longer permitted to venture my views—'
'You are,' Coltaine said. 'But you are also a soldier of the Seventh.'
The captain's head bobbed. 'I apologize, Fist, for my presumption. These are strained times indeed.'
'I wasn't aware of that,' Bult said, grinning.
Sulmar swung to Duiker suddenly. 'Historian, what are your views on all this?'
Asan objective observer… 'My views on what, Captain?'
The man's mouth twitched into a smile. 'Ubaryd, or the River Vathar and the forest and wastes southward? As a civilian who knows well the plight of the refugees, do you truly believe they will survive such a fraught journey?'
The historian said nothing for a long minute, then he cleared his throat and shrugged. 'As ever, the greater of the threats has been the renegade army. The victory at Gelor Ridge has purchased for us time to lick our wounds—'
'Hardly,' Sulmar interjected. 'If anything, we have been pushed even harder since then.'
'Aye, we have, and for good reason. It is Korbolo Dom who now pursues us. The man was a Fist in his own right, and is a very able commander and tactician. Kamist Reloe is a mage, not a leader of soldiers—he wasted his army, thinking to rely upon numbers and numbers alone. Korbolo will not be so foolish. If our enemy arrives at the River Vathar before we do, we are finished—'
'Precisely why we should surprise him and recapture Ubaryd instead!'
'A short-lived triumph,' Duiker replied. 'We'd be left with two days at the most to prepare the city's defences before Korbolo's arrival. As you said, I am a civilian, not a tactician. Yet even I can see that retaking Ubaryd would prove suicidal, Captain.'
Bull shifted in his saddle, making a show of looking around. 'Let us find a cattle-dog, so that we may have yet another opinion. Sormo, where's that ugly beast that's adopted you? The one the marines call Bent?'
The warlock's head lifted slightly. 'Do you really wish to know?' His voice was a rasp.
Bult frowned. 'Aye, why not?'
'Hiding in the grass seven paces from you, Commander.'
It was inevitable that everyone began looking, including Coltaine. Finally, Lull pointed and, after peering for a moment longer, Duiker could make out a tawny body amidst the high prairie spikegrass. Hood's breath!'
'I am afraid,' Sormo said, 'that he will offer little in the way of opinion, Uncle. Where you lead, Bent follows.'
'A true soldier, then,' Bult said, nodding.
Duiker guided his horse around on the crossroads, then looked back over the vast column stretching its length north ward. The Imperial Road was designed for the swift travel of armies. It was wide and level, the cobbles displaying geometric precision. It could manage a troop of fifteen horsewarrior riding abreast. Coltaine's Chain of Dogs was over an Imperial league long, even with the three Wickan clans riding the grass lands to either side of the road.
'Discussion is ended,' Coltaine announced.
Bult said, 'Report to your companies, captains.' It was not necessary to add, We march for the River Vathar. The command meeting had revealed positions, in particular Sulmar's conflicting loyalties, and beyond the mundane discussion of troop placement, supply issues and so on, nothing else was open to debate.
Duiker felt a wave of pity for Sulmar, realizing the level of pressure the man must be under from Nethpara and Pullyl Alar. The captain was nobleborn, after all, and the threa of displeasure visited upon his kin made Sulmar's positioin untenable.
'The Malazan Army shall know but one set of rules,' Emperor Kellanved had proclaimed, during the first 'cleansing' and restructuring' of the military early in his reign. 'One set of rules and one ruler…' His and Dassem Ultor's imposition of merit as the sole means of advancement had triggered a struggle for control within the hierarchies of the Army and Navy commands. Blood was spilled on the palace steps, and Laseen's Claw was the instrument of that surgery. She should have learned from that episode. We had our second cull, but it came far too late.
Captain Lull interrupted Duiker's thoughts. 'Ride back with me, old man. There's something you should see.'
'Now what?'
Lull's grin was ghastly in his raw, ravaged face. 'Patience, please.'
'Ah, well, I've acquired that with plenty to spare, Captain.' Waiting to die, and such a long wait it's been.
Lull clearly understood Duiker's comment. He squinted his lone eye out across the plain, northwest, to where Korbolo Dom's army was, less than three days away and closing fast. 'It's an official request, Historian.'
'Very well. Ride on, then.'
Coltaine, Bult and Sormo had ridden down to the trader track. Voices shouted from the Seventh's advance elements as preparations began to leave the Imperial Road. Duiker saw the cattle-dog Bent loping ahead of the three Wickans. And so we follow. We are indeed well named.
'How fares the corporal?' Lull asked as they rode down the corridor towards Lull's company.
Duiker frowned. List had taken a vicious wound at Gelor Ridge. 'Mending. We face difficulties with the healers—they're wearing down, Captain.'
'Aye.'
'They've drawn so much on their warrens that it's begun to damage their own bodies—I saw one healer's arm snap like a twig when he lifted a pot from a hearth. That frightened me more than anything else I've yet to witness, Captain.'
The man tugged at the patch covering his ruined eye. 'You're not alone in that, old man.'
Duiker fell silent. Lull had nearly succumbed to a septic infection. He had become gaunt beneath his armour, and the scars on his face had set his features into a tortured expression that made strangers flinch. Hood's breath, not just strangers. If the Chain of Dogs has a face, it is Lull's.
They rode between columns of soldiers, smiled at the shouts and grim jests thrown their way, though for Duiker the smile was strained. It was well that spirits were high, the strange melancholy that came with victory drifting away, but the spectre of what lay ahead nevertheless loomed with monstrous certainty. The historian had felt his own spirits deepening to sorrow, for he'd long since lost the ability to will himself into blind faith.
The captain spoke again. 'This forest beyond the river, what do you know of it?'
'Cedar,' Duiker replied. 'Source of Ubaryd's fame in ship building. It once covered both sides of the River Vathar, but now only the south side remains, and even that has dwindled close to the bay.'
'The fools never bothered replanting?'
'A few efforts, when the threat was finally recognized, but herders had already claimed the land. Goats, Captain. Goats can turn a paradise into a desert in no time at all. They eat shoots, they strip bark entirely around the boles of trees, killing them as surely as a wildfire. However, there's plenty of forest left upriver—we'll be a week or more travelling through it.'
'So I'd heard. Well, I'll welcome the shade…'
A week or more, indeed. More like eternity—how does Coltaine defend his vastwinding train amidst a forest, where ambushes will come from every direction, where
troops cannot wheel and respond with anything like swiftness and order? Sulmar's concerns about the dry lands beyond the forest are moot, as far as I'm concerned. And I wonder if I'm alone in thinking that?
They rode between wagons loaded with wounded soldiers. The air was foul here with flesh rotting where forced healing had failed to stem the advance of infection. Soldiers in fever raved and rambled, delirium prying open the doors of their minds to countless other realms—from this nightmare world into countless others. Only Hood's gift offers surcease…
Off to their left on the flat grassland, the train's dwindling herds of cattle and goats moved amidst turgid clouds of dust
Wickan cattle-dogs patrolled the edges, accompanied by Weasel Clan riders. The entire herd would be slaughtered at the River Vathar, for the lands beyond the forest would not sustain them. For there are no spirits of the land there.
The historian found himself musing as he eyed the herd. The animals had matched them step for step on this soul-destroying journey. Month after month of suffering. That is one curse we all share—the will to live. Their fates had been decided, though thankfully they knew nothing of that. Yet even that will change in the last moments. The dumbest of beasts seems capable of sensing its own impending death. Hood grants every living thing awareness at the very end. What mercy is that?
'The horse's blood had burned black in its veins,' Lull said suddenly.
Duiker nodded, not needing to ask which horse the captain meant. She carried them all, such a raging claim on her life force, it seared her from within. Such thoughts took him past words, into a place of raw pain.
'It's said,' Lull went on, 'that their hands are stained black now. They are marked for ever more.'
Asam I. He thought of Nil and Nether, two children curled foetally beneath the hood of the wagon, there in the midst of their silent kin. The Wickans know that the gift of power is never free. They know enough not to envy the chosen among them, for power is never a game, nor are glittering standards raised to glory and wealth. They disguise nothing in trappings, and so we all see what we'd rather not, that power is cruel, hard as iron and bone, and it thrives on destruction.
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