House of Chains

by Steven Erikson

  If Bairoth heard his approach, he gave no sign. There were tears running down the huge warrior’s broad, blunt face, whilst Delum, lying perfectly still, stared up at him with wide, unblinking eyes.

  ‘He does not comprehend,’ Karsa growled, ‘but I do. Bairoth Gild, you dishonour every Uryd warrior who has worn the battle-mask.’

  ‘Do I, Karsa Orlong? Those warriors grown old, setting out for a final fight—there is nothing of glory in their deed, nothing of glory in their battle-mask. You are blind if you think otherwise. The paint hides nothing—the desperation remains undisguised in their eyes. They come to the ends of their lives, and have found that those lives were without meaning. It is that knowledge that drives them from the village, drives them out to seek a quick death.’ Bairoth finished with the black paint and now moved on to the white, spreading it with three fingers across Delum’s wide brow. ‘Look into our friend’s eyes, Karsa Orlong. Look closely.’

  ‘I see nothing,’ Karsa muttered, shaken by Bairoth’s words.

  ‘Delum sees the same, Warleader. He stares at . . . nothing. Unlike you, however, he does not turn away from it. Instead, he sees with complete comprehension. Sees, and is terrified.’

  ‘You speak nonsense, Bairoth Gild.’

  ‘I do not. You and I, we are Teblor. We are warriors. We can offer Delum no comfort, and so he holds on to that dog, the beast with misery in its eyes. For comfort is what he seeks, now. It is, indeed, all he seeks. Why do I gift him the battle-mask? He will die this day, Karsa Orlong, and perhaps that will be comfort enough for Delum Thord. I pray to Urugal that it be so.’

  Karsa glanced skyward. ‘The wheel is nearly done. We must ready ourselves.’

  ‘I am almost finished, Warleader.’

  The horses stirred as Karsa rubbed blood-oil into his sword’s wooden blade. The dogs were on their feet now, pacing restlessly. Bairoth completed his painting of Delum’s face and headed off to attend to his own weapons. The three-legged dog struggled in Delum’s arms, but he simply held the beast all the tighter, until a soft growl from Gnaw made the whimpering warrior release it.

  Karsa strapped the boiled leather armour onto Havok’s chest, neck and legs. When he was done, he turned to see Bairoth already astride his own horse. Delum’s destrier had also been armoured, but it stood without a rein. The animals were trembling.

  ‘Warleader, your grandfather’s descriptions have been unerring thus far. Tell me of the farmstead’s layout.’

  ‘A log house the size of two Uryd houses, with an upper floor beneath a steep roof. Heavy shutters with arrow-slits, a thick, quickly barred door at the front and at the back. There are three outbuildings; the one nearest the house and sharing one wall holds the livestock. Another is a forge, whilst the last one is of sod and likely was the first home before the log house was built. There is a landing on the lakeshore as well, and mooring poles. There will be a corral for the small lowlander horses.’

  Bairoth was frowning. ‘Warleader, how many lowlander generations have passed since Pahlk’s raid?’

  Karsa swung himself onto Havok’s back. He shrugged in answer to Bairoth’s question. ‘Enough. Are you ready, Bairoth Gild?’

  ‘Lead me, Warleader.’

  Karsa guided Havok onto the trail beside the river. The mouth was on his left. To the right rose a high, raw mass of rock, treed on top, leaning out towards the lakeshore. A wide strand of round-stoned beach wound between the pinnacle and the lake.

  The wind had not changed. The air smelled of smoke and manure. The farm’s dogs were silent.

  Karsa drew his sword, angled the glistening blade near Havok’s nostrils. The destrier’s head lifted. Trot to canter, onto the pebbled beach, lake on the left, rock wall sliding past to the right. Behind him, he heard Bairoth’s horse, hoofs crashing down into the stones, and, further back, the dogs, Delum and his horse, the latter lagging to stay alongside its once-master.

  Once clear of the pinnacle, they would shift hard right, and in moments be upon the unsuspecting children of the farm.

  Canter to gallop.

  Rock wall vanishing, flat, planted fields.

  Gallop into charge.

  The farm—smoke-blackened ruins barely visible through tall corn plants—and, just beyond it, sprawled all along the lake’s shore and back, all the way to the foot of a mountain, a town.

  Tall, stone buildings, stone piers and wood-planked docks and boats crowding the lake’s edge. A wall of stones enclosing most of the structures inland, perhaps the height of a full-grown lowlander. A main road, a gate flanked by squat, flat-topped towers. Woodsmoke drifting in a layer above the slate rooftops. Figures on those towers.

  More lowlanders—more than could be counted—all scurrying about now, as a bell started clanging. Running towards the gate from the cornfields, farming implements tossed aside.

  Bairoth was bellowing something behind Karsa. Not a warcry. A voice pitched with alarm. Karsa ignored it, already closing in on the first of the farmers. He would take a few in passing, but not slacken his pace. Leave these children to the pack. He wanted the ones in the town, cowering behind the now-closing gate, behind the puny walls.

  Sword flashed, taking off the back of a farmer’s head. Havok ran down another, trampling the shrieking woman under his hoofs. The gate boomed as it shut.

  Karsa angled Havok to the left of it, eyes on the wall as he leaned forward. A crossbow quarrel flitted past, striking the furrowed ground ten paces to his right. Another whistled over his head.

  No lowlander horse could clear this wall, but Havok stood at twenty-six hands—almost twice the height and mass of the lowlander breeds—and, muscles bunching, legs gathering, the huge destrier leapt, sailing over the wall effortlessly.

  To crash, front hoofs first, onto the sloped roof of a shack. Slate tiles exploded, wood beams snapped. The small structure collapsed beneath them, chickens scattering, as Havok stumbled, legs clawing for purchase, then surged forward onto the muddy cart ruts of the street beyond.

  Another building, this one stone-walled, reared up before them. Havok slewed to the right. A figure suddenly appeared at the building’s entrance, a round face, eyes wide. Karsa’s crossover chop split the lowlander’s skull where he stood just beyond the threshold, spinning him in place before his legs folded beneath him.

  Hoofs pounding, Havok swept Karsa down the street towards’ the gate. He could hear slaughter in the fields and the road beyond—most of the workers had been trapped outside the town, it seemed. A dozen guards had succeeded in dropping a bar and had begun fanning out to take defensive positions when the warleader burst upon them.

  Iron helm crunched, was torn from the dying child’s head as if biting at the blade as it was dragged free. A back-handed slash separated another child’s arm and shoulder from his body. Trampling a third guard, Havok pivoted, flinging his hindquarters around to strike a fourth child, sending him flying to crash up against the gate, sword spinning away.

  A longsword—its blade as puny as a long knife’s to Karsa’s eyes—struck his leather-armoured thigh, cutting through two, perhaps three of the hardened layers, before bouncing away. Karsa drove his sword’s pommel into the lowlander’s face, felt bone crack. A kick sent the child reeling. Figures were scattering in panic from his path. Laughing, Karsa drove Havok forward.

  He cut down another guard, whilst the others raced down the street.

  Something punched the Teblor’s back, then a brief, stinging blossom of pain. Reaching over, Karsa dragged the quarrel free and flung it away. He dropped down from the horse, eyes on the barred gate. Metal latches had been locked over the bar, holding the thick plank in place.

  Taking three strides back, Karsa lowered one shoulder, then charged it.

  The iron pins holding the hinges between blocks of mortared stone burst free with the impact, sending the entire gate toppling outward. The tower on Karsa’s right groaned and sagged suddenly. Voices cried out inside it. The stone wall began to fold.

 
Cursing, the Teblor scrambled back towards the street as the entire tower collapsed in an explosion of dust.

  Through the swirling white cloud, Bairoth rode, threads of blood and gore whipping from his bloodsword, his mount leaping to clear the rubble. The dogs followed, and with them Delum and his horse. Blood smeared Delum Thord’s mouth, and Karsa realized, with a faint ripple of shock, that the warrior had torn out a farmer’s throat with his own teeth, as would a dog.

  Hoofs spraying mud, Bairoth reined in.

  Karsa swung himself back onto Havok, twisted the destrier round to face down the street.

  A square of pikemen approached at a trot, their long-poled weapons wavering, iron blades glinting in the morning light. They were still thirty paces distant.

  A quarrel glanced off the rump of Bairoth’s horse, coming from a nearby upper floor window.

  From somewhere outside the wall came the sound of galloping horses.

  Bairoth grunted. ‘Our withdrawal shall be contested, Warleader.’

  ‘Withdrawal?’ Karsa laughed. He jutted his chin towards the advancing pikemen. ‘There can be no more than thirty, and children with long spears are still children, Bairoth Gild. Come, let us scatter them!’

  With a curse, Bairoth unlimbered his bear skull bolas. ‘Precede me, then, Karsa Orlong, to hide my preparation.’

  Baring his teeth in fierce pleasure, Karsa urged Havok forward. The dogs fanned out to either side, Delum positioning himself on the war-leader’s far right.

  Ahead, the pikes slowly lowered, hovering at chest height as the square halted to plant their weapons.

  Upper floor windows on the street opened then, and faces appeared, looking down to witness what would come.

  ‘Urugal!’ Karsa bellowed as he drove Havok into a charge. ‘Witness!’ Behind him he heard Bairoth riding just as hard, and within that clash of sounds rose the whirring flow of the grey bear skull, round and round, and round again.

  Ten paces from the readied pikes, and Bairoth roared. Karsa ducked low, pitching Havok to the left even as he slowed the beast’s savage charge.

  Something massive and hissing whipped past him, and Karsa twisted to see the huge bolas strike the square of soldiers.

  Deadly chaos. Three of the five rows on the ground. Piercing screams.

  Then the dogs were among them, followed by Delum’s horse.

  Wheeling his destrier once again, Karsa closed on the shattered square, arriving in time to be alongside Bairoth as the two Teblor rode into the press. Batting aside the occasional, floundering pike, they slaughtered the children the dogs had not already taken down, in the passage of twenty heartbeats.

  ‘Warleader!’

  Dragging his bloodsword from the last victim, Karsa turned at Bairoth’s bellow.

  Another square of soldiers, this time flanked by crossbowmen. Fifty, perhaps sixty in all, at the street’s far end.

  Scowling, Karsa glanced back towards the gate. Twenty mounted children, heavily armoured in plate and chain, were slowly emerging through the dust; more on foot, some armed with short bows, others with double-bladed axes, swords or javelins.

  ‘Lead me, Warleader!’

  Karsa glared at Bairoth. ‘And so I shall, Bairoth Gild!’ He swung Havok about. ‘This side passage, down to the shoreline—we shall ride around our pursuers. Tell me, Bairoth Gild, have we slain enough children for you?’

  ‘Aye, Karsa Orlong.’

  ‘Then follow!’

  The side passage was a street almost as wide as the main one, and it led straight down to the lake. Dwellings, trader stores and warehouses lined it. Shadowy figures were visible in windows, in doorways and at alley mouths as the Teblor raiders thundered past. The street ended twenty paces before the shoreline. The intervening space, through which a wide, wood-planked loadway ran down to the docks and piers, was filled with heaps of detritus, dominant among them a huge pile of bleached bones, from which poles rose, skulls affixed to their tops.

  Teblor skulls.

  Amidst this stretch of rubbish, squalid huts and tents filled every clear patch, and scores of children had emerged from them, bristling with weapons, their rough clothing bedecked with Teblor charms and scalps, their hard eyes watching the warriors approach as they began readying long-handled axes, two-handed swords, thick-shafted halberds, whilst yet others strung robust, recurved bows and nocked over-long, barbed arrows—which they began to draw, taking swift aim.

  Bairoth’s roar was half horror, half rage as he sent his destrier charging towards these silent, deadly children.

  Arrows flashed.

  Bairoth’s horse screamed, stumbled, then crashed to the ground. Bairoth tumbled, his sword spinning away through the air as he struck, then broke through, a sapling-walled hut.

  More arrows flew.

  Karsa shifted Havok sharply, watched an arrow hiss past his thigh, then he was among the first of the lowlanders. Bloodsword clashed against an axe’s bronze-sheathed shaft, the impact tearing the weapon from the man’s hands. Karsa’s left hand shot out to intercept another axe as it swung towards Havok’s head. He plucked it from the man, sent it flying, then lunged forward the same hand to take the lowlander by the neck, lifting him clear as they continued on. A single, bone-crunching squeeze left the head lolling, the body twitching and spilling piss. Karsa flung the corpse away.

  Havok’s onward plunge was brought to a sudden halt. The destrier shrieked, slewed to one side, blood gushing from its mouth and nostrils, dragging with it a heavy pike, its iron head buried deep in the horse’s chest.

  The beast stumbled, then, with a drunken weave, it began toppling.

  Karsa, screaming his fury, launched himself from the dying destrier’s back. A sword point rose to meet him, but Karsa batted it aside. He landed atop at least three tumbling bodies, hearing bones snap beneath him as he rolled his way clear.

  Then he was on his feet, bloodsword slashing across the face of a lowlander, ripping black-bearded jaw from skull. An edged weapon scored deep across his back. Spinning, Karsa swung his blade under the attacker’s outstretched arms, chopped deep between ribs, jamming at the breastbone.

  He tugged fiercely, tearing his sword free, the dying lowlander’s body cartwheeling past him.

  Heavy weapons, many of them bearing knotted Teblor fetishes, surrounded him, each striving to drink Uryd blood. They fouled each other as often as not, yet Karsa was hard-pressed blocking the others as he fought his way clear. He killed two of his attackers in the process.

  Now he heard another fight, nearby, from where Bairoth had crashed into the hut, and, here and there, the snap and snarl of the dogs.

  His attackers had been silent until a moment ago. Now, all were screaming in their gibbering tongue, their faces filled with alarm, as Karsa wheeled once more and, seeing more than a dozen before him, attacked. They scattered, revealing a half-crescent line of lowlanders with bows and crossbows.

  Strings thrummed.

  Searing pain along Karsa’s neck, twin punches to his chest, another against his right thigh. Ignoring them all, the warleader charged the half-crescent.

  More shouts, sudden pursuit from the ones who had scattered, but it was too late for that. Karsa’s sword was a blur as he cut into the archers. Figures turning to run. Dying, spinning away in floods of blood. Skulls shattering. Karsa carved his way down the line, and left a trail of eight figures, some writhing and others still, behind him, by the time the first set of attackers reached him. He pivoted to meet them, laughing at the alarm in their tiny, wizened, dirt-smeared faces, then he lunged into their midst once more.

  They broke. Flinging weapons away, stumbling and scrambling in their panic. Karsa killed one after another, until there were no more within reach of his bloodsword. He straightened, then.

  Where Bairoth had been fighting, seven lowlander bodies lay in a rough circle, but of the Teblor warrior there was no sign. The screams of a dog continued from further up the street, and Karsa ran towards the sound.

  He p
assed the quarrel-studded corpses of the rest of the pack, though he did not see Gnaw among them. They had killed a number of lowlanders before they had finally fallen. Looking up, he saw, thirty paces down the street, Delum Thord, near him his fallen horse, and, another fifteen paces beyond, a knot of villagers.

  Delum was shrieking. He had taken a dozen or more quarrels and arrows, and a javelin had been thrust right through his torso, just above the left hip. He had left a winding trail of blood behind him, yet still he crawled forward—to where the villagers surrounded the three-legged dog, beating it to death with walking sticks, hoes and shovels.

  Wailing, Delum dragged himself on, the javelin scraping alongside him, blood streaming down the shaft.

  Even as Karsa began to run forward, a figure raced out from an alley mouth, coming up slightly behind Delum, a long-handled shovel in its hands. Lifting high.

  Karsa screamed a warning.

  Delum did not so much as turn, his eyes fixed on the now-dead three-legged dog, as the shovel struck the back of his head.

  There was a loud crunch. The shovel pulled away, revealing a flat patch of shattered bone and twisted hair.

  Delum toppled forward, and did not move.

  His slayer spun at Karsa’s charge. An old man, his toothless mouth opening wide in sudden terror.

  Karsa’s downward chop cut the man in half down to the hips.

  Tearing his bloodsword free, the warleader plunged on, towards the dozen or so villagers still gathered around the pulped corpse of the three-legged dog. They saw him and scattered.

  Ten paces beyond lay Gnaw, leaving his own blood-trail as, back legs dragging, he continued towards the body of his mate. He raised his head upon seeing Karsa. Pleading eyes fixed on the warleader’s.

  Bellowing, Karsa ran down two of the villagers and left their twitching corpses sprawled in the muddy street. He saw another, armed with a rust-pitted mattock, dart between two houses. The Teblor hesitated, then with a curse he swung about and moments later was crouched beside Gnaw.