The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen

by Steven Erikson

  A short while later they came to the first of the mud-packed, wooden walkways the Rathyd of this valley had built long ago and still maintained, if only indifferently. Lush grasses filling the joins attested to this particular one’s disuse, but its direction suited the Uryd warriors, and so they dismounted and led their horses up onto the raised track.

  It creaked and swayed beneath the combined weight of horses, Teblor and dogs.

  ‘We’d best spread out and stay on foot,’ Bairoth said.

  Karsa crouched and studied the roughly dressed logs. ‘The wood is still sound,’ he observed.

  ‘But the stilts are seated in mud, Warleader.’

  ‘Not mud, Bairoth Gild. Peat.’

  ‘Karsa Orlong is right,’ Delum said, swinging himself back onto his destrier. ‘The way may pitch but the cross-struts underneath will keep it from twisting. We ride down the centre, in single file.’

  ‘There is little point,’ Karsa said to Bairoth, ‘in taking this path if we then creep along it like snails.’

  ‘The risk, Warleader, is that we become far more visible.’

  ‘Best we move along it quickly, then.’

  Bairoth grimaced. ‘As you say, Karsa Orlong.’

  Delum in the lead, they rode at a slow canter down the centre of the walkway. The pack followed. To either side, the only trees that reached to the eye level of the mounted warriors were dead birch, their leafless, black branches wrapped in the web of caterpillar nests. The living trees—aspen and alder and elm—reached no higher than chest height with their fluttering canopy of dusty-green leaves. Taller black spruce was visible in the distance. Most of these looked to be dead or dying.

  ‘The old river is returning,’ Delum commented. ‘This forest slowly drowns.’

  Karsa grunted, then said, ‘This valley runs into others that all lead northward, all the way to the Buryd Fissure. Pahlk was among the Teblor elders who gathered there sixty years ago. The river of ice filling the Fissure had died, suddenly, and had begun to melt.’

  Behind Karsa, Bairoth spoke. ‘We never learned what the elders of all the tribes discovered up there, nor if they had found whatever it was they were seeking.’

  ‘I did not know they were seeking anything in particular,’ Delum muttered. ‘The death of the ice river was heard in a hundred valleys, including our own. Did they not travel to the Fissure simply to discover what had happened?’

  Karsa shrugged. ‘Pahlk told me of countless beasts that had been frozen within the ice for numberless centuries, becoming visible amidst the shattered blocks. Fur and flesh thawing, the ground and sky alive with crows and mountain vultures. There was ivory, but most of it was too badly crushed to be of any worth. The river had a black heart, or so its death revealed, but whatever lay within that heart was either gone or destroyed. Even so, there were signs of an ancient battle in that place. The bones of children. Weapons of stone, all broken.’

  ‘This is more than I have ever—’ Bairoth began, then stopped.

  The walkway, which had been reverberating to their passage, had suddenly acquired a deeper, syncopating thunder. The walkway ahead made a bend, forty paces distant, to the left, disappearing behind trees.

  The pack of dogs began snapping their jaws in voiceless warning. Karsa twisted round, and saw, two hundred paces behind them on the walkway, a dozen Rathyd warriors on foot. Weapons were lifted in silent promise.

  Yet the sound of hoofs—Karsa swung forward again, to see six riders pitch around the bend. Warcries rang in the air.

  ‘Clear a space!’ Bairoth bellowed, driving his horse past Karsa, and then Delum. The bear skull sprang into the air, snapping as it reached the length of the straps, and Bairoth began whirling the massive, bound skull over his and his horse’s head, using both hands, his knees high on his destrier’s shoulders. The whirling skull made a deep, droning sound. His horse loped forward.

  The Rathyd riders were at full charge. They rode two abreast, the edge of the walkway less than half an arm’s length away on either side.

  They had closed to within twenty paces of Bairoth when he released the bear skull.

  When two or three wolf skulls were used in this fashion, it was to bind or break legs. But Bairoth’s target was higher. The skull struck the destrier on the left with a force that shattered the horse’s chest. Blood sprayed from the animal’s nose and mouth. Crashing down, it fouled the beast beside it—no more than the crack of a single hoof against its shoulder, but sufficient to make it veer wildly, and plunge down off the walkway. Legs snapped. The Rathyd warrior flew over his horse’s head.

  The rider of the first horse landed with bone-breaking impact on the walkway, at the very hoofs of Bairoth’s destrier. Those hoofs punched down on the man’s head in quick succession, leaving a shattered mess.

  The charge floundered. Another horse went down, stumbling with a scream over the wildly kicking beast that now blocked the walkway.

  Loosing the Uryd warcry, Bairoth drove his mount forward. A surging leap carried them over the first downed destrier. The Rathyd warrior from the other fallen horse was just clambering clear and had time to look up to see Bairoth’s sword-blade reach the bridge of his nose.

  Delum was suddenly behind his comrade. Two knives darted through the air, passing Bairoth on his right. There was a sharp report as a Rathyd’s heavy sword-blade slashed across to block one of the knives, then a wet gasp as the second knife found the man’s throat.

  Two of the enemy remained, one each for Delum and Bairoth, and so the duels could begin.

  Karsa, after watching the effect of Bairoth’s initial attack, had wheeled his mount round. Sword in his hands, blade flashing into Havok’s vision, and they were charging back down the walkway towards the pursuing band.

  The dog pack split to either side to avoid the thundering hoofs, then raced after rider and horse.

  Ahead, eight adults and four youths.

  A barked order sent the youths to either side of the walkway, then down. The adults wanted room, and, seeing their obvious confidence as they formed an inverted V spanning the walkway, weapons ready, Karsa laughed.

  They wanted him to ride down into the centre of that inverted V—a tactic that, while it maintained Havok’s fierce speed, also exposed horse and rider to flanking attacks. Speed counted for much in the engagement to come. The Rathyd’s expectations fit neatly into the attacker’s intent—had that attacker been someone other than Karsa Orlong. ‘Urugal!’ he bellowed, lifting himself high on Havok’s shoulders. ‘Witness!’ He held his sword, point forward, over his destrier’s head, and fixed his gaze on the Rathyd warrior on the V’s extreme left.

  Havok sensed the shift in attention and angled his charge just moments before contact, hoofs pounding along the very edge of the walkway.

  The Rathyd directly before them managed a single backward step, swinging a two-handed overhead chop at Havok’s snout as he went.

  Karsa took that blade on his own, even as he twisted and threw his right leg forward, his left back. Havok turned beneath him, surged in towards the centre of the walkway.

  The V had collapsed, and every Rathyd warrior was on Karsa’s left.

  Havok carried him diagonally across the walkway. Keening his delight, Karsa slashed and chopped repeatedly, his blade finding flesh and bone as often as weapon. Havok pitched around before reaching the opposite edge, and lashed out his hind legs. At least one connected, flinging a shattered body from the bridge.

  The pack then arrived. Snarling bodies hurling onto the Rathyd warriors—most of whom had turned when engaging Karsa, and so presented exposed backs to the frenzied dogs. Shrieks filled the air.

  Karsa spun Havok round. They plunged back into the savage press. Two Rathyd had managed to fight clear of the dogs, blood spraying from their blades as they backed up the walkway.

  Bellowing a challenge, Karsa drove towards them.

  And was shocked to see them both leap from the walkway.

  ‘Bloodless cowards! I witnes
s! Your youths witness! These damned dogs witness!’

  He saw them reappear, weapons gone, scrambling and stumbling across the bog.

  Delum and Bairoth arrived, dismounting to add their swords to the maniacal frenzy of the surviving dogs as they tore unceasing at fallen Rathyd.

  Karsa drew Havok to one side, eyes still on the fleeing warriors, who had been joined now by the four youths. ‘I witness! Urugal witnesses!’

  Gnaw, black and grey hide barely visible beneath splashes of gore, panted up to stand beside Havok, his muscles twitching but no wounds showing. Karsa glanced back and saw that four more dogs remained, whilst a fifth had lost a foreleg and limped a red circle off to one side.

  ‘Delum, bind that one’s leg—we will sear it anon.’

  ‘What use a three-legged hunting dog, Warleader?’ Bairoth asked, breathing heavy.

  ‘Even a three-legged dog has ears and a nose, Bairoth Gild. One day, she will lie grey-nosed and fat before my hearth, this I swear. Now, is either of you wounded?’

  ‘Scratches.’ Bairoth shrugged, turning away.

  ‘I have lost a finger,’ Delum said as he drew out a leather strap and approached the wounded dog, ‘but not an important one.’

  Karsa looked once more at the retreating Rathyd. They had almost reached a stand of black spruce. The warleader sent them a final sneer, then laid a hand on Havok’s brow. ‘My father spoke true, Havok. I have never ridden such a horse as you.’

  An ear had cocked at his words. Karsa leaned forward and set his lips to the beast’s brow. ‘We become, you and I,’ he whispered, ‘legend. Legend, Havok.’ Straightening, he studied the sprawl of corpses on the walkway, and smiled. ‘It is time for trophies, my brothers. Bairoth, did your bear skull survive?’

  ‘I believe so, Warleader.’

  ‘Your deed was our victory, Bairoth Gild.’

  The heavy man turned, studied Karsa through slitted eyes. ‘You ever surprise me, Karsa Orlong.’

  ‘As your strength does me, Bairoth Gild.’

  The man hesitated, then nodded. ‘I am content to follow you, Warleader.’

  You ever were, Bairoth Gild, and that is the difference between us.

  Chapter Two

  There are hints, if one scans the ground with a clear and sharp eye, that this ancient Jaghut war, which for the Kron T’lan Imass was either their seventeenth or eighteenth, went terribly awry. The Adept who accompanied our expedition evinced no doubt whatsoever that a Jaghut remained alive within the Laederon glacier. Terribly wounded, yet possessing formidable sorcery still. Well beyond the ice river’s reach (a reach which has been diminishing over time), there are shattered remains of T’lan Imass, the bones strangely malformed, and on them the flavour of fierce and deadly Omtose Phellack lingering to this day.

  Of the ensorcelled stone weapons of the Kron, only those that were broken in the conflict remained, leading one to assume that either looters have been this way, or the T’lan Imass survivors (assuming there were any) took them with them…

  THE NATHII EXPEDITION OF 1012

  KENEMASS TRYBANOS, CHRONICLER

  ‘I believe,’ Delum said as they led their horses down from the walkway, ‘that the last group of the hunt has turned back.’

  ‘The plague of cowardice ever spreads,’ Karsa growled.

  ‘They surmised at the very first,’ Bairoth rumbled, ‘that we were crossing their lands. That our first attack was not simply a raid. So, they will await our return, and will likely call upon the warriors of other villages.’

  ‘That does not concern me, Bairoth Gild.’

  ‘I know that, Karsa Orlong, for what part of this journey have you not already anticipated? Even so, two more Rathyd valleys lie before us. I would know. There will be villages—do we ride around them or do we collect still more trophies?’

  ‘We shall be burdened with too many trophies when we reach the lands of the lowlanders at Silver Lake,’ Delum commented.

  Karsa laughed, then considered. ‘Bairoth Gild, we shall slip through these valleys like snakes in the night, until the very last village. I would still draw hunters after us, into the lands of the Sunyd.’

  Delum had found a trail leading up the valley side.

  Karsa checked on the dog limping in their wake. Gnaw walked alongside it, and it occurred to Karsa that the three-legged beast might well be its mate. He was pleased with his decision to not slay the wounded creature.

  There was a chill in the air that confirmed their gradual climb to higher elevations. The Sunyd territory was higher still, leading to the eastern edge of the escarpment. Pahlk had told Karsa that but a single pass cut through the escarpment, marked by a torrential waterfall that fed into Silver Lake. The climb down was treacherous. Pahlk had named it Bone Pass.

  The trail began to wind sinuously among winter-cracked boulders and treefalls. They could now see the summit, six hundred steep paces upward.

  The warriors dismounted. Karsa strode back and lifted the three-legged dog into his arms. He set it down across Havok’s broad back and strapped it in place. The animal voiced no protest. Gnaw moved up to flank the destrier.

  They resumed their journey.

  The sun was bathing the slope in brilliant gold light by the time they had closed to within a hundred paces of the summit, reaching a broad ledge that seemed—through a sparse forest of straggly, wind-twisted oaks—to run the length of the valley side. Scanning the terrace’s sweep to his right, Delum voiced a grunt, then said, ‘I see a cave. There,’ he pointed, ‘behind those fallen trees, where the shelf bulges.’

  Bairoth nodded and said, ‘It looks big enough to hold our horses. Karsa Orlong, if we are to begin riding at night…’

  ‘Agreed,’ Karsa said.

  Delum led the way along the terrace. Gnaw scrambled past him, slowing upon nearing the cave mouth, then crouching down and edging forward.

  The Uryd warriors paused, waiting to see if the dog’s hackles rose, thus signalling the presence of a grey bear or some other denizen. After a long moment, with Gnaw motionless and lying almost flat before the cave entrance, the beast finally rose and glanced back at the party, then trotted into the cave.

  The fallen trees had provided a natural screen, hiding the cave from the valley below. There had been an overhang, but it had collapsed, perhaps beneath the weight of the trees, leaving a rough pile of rubble partially blocking the entrance.

  Bairoth began clearing a path to lead the horses through. Delum and Karsa took Gnaw’s route into the cave.

  Beyond the mound of tumbled stones and sand, the floor levelled out beneath a scatter of dried leaves. The setting sun’s light painted the back wall in patches of yellow, revealing an almost solid mass of carved glyphs. A small cairn of piled stones sat in the domed chamber’s centre.

  Gnaw was nowhere to be seen, but the dog’s tracks crossed the floor and vanished into an area of gloom near the back.

  Delum stepped forward, his eyes on a single, oversized glyph directly opposite the entrance. ‘That Bloodsign is neither Rathyd nor Sunyd,’ he said.

  ‘But the words beneath it are Teblor,’ Karsa asserted.

  ‘The style is very…’ Delum frowned, ‘ornate.’

  Karsa began reading aloud, ‘“I led the families that survived. Down from the high lands. Through the broken veins that bled beneath the sun…” Broken veins?’

  ‘Ice,’ Delum said.

  ‘Bleeding beneath the sun, aye. “We were so few. Our blood was cloudy and would grow cloudier still. I saw the need to shatter what remained. For the T’lan Imass were still close and much agitated and inclined to continue their indiscriminate slaughter.”’ Karsa scowled. ‘T’lan Imass? I do not know those two words.’

  ‘Nor I,’ Delum replied. ‘A rival tribe, perhaps. Read on, Karsa Orlong. Your eye is quicker than mine.’

  ‘“And so I sundered husband from wife. Child from parent. Brother from sister. I fashioned new families and then sent them away. Each to a different place. I proclaim
ed the Laws of Isolation, as given us by Icarium whom we had once sheltered and whose heart grew vast with grief upon seeing what had become of us. The Laws of Isolation would be our salvation, clearing the blood and strengthening our children. To all who follow and to all who shall read these words, this is my justification—”’

  ‘These words trouble me, Karsa Orlong.’

  Karsa glanced back at Delum. ‘Why? They signify nothing of us. They are an elder’s ravings. Too many words—to have carved all these letters would have taken years, and only a madman would do such a thing. A madman, who was buried here, alone, driven out by his people—’

  Delum’s gaze sharpened on Karsa. ‘Driven out? Yes, I believe you are correct, Warleader. Read more—let us hear his justification, and so judge for ourselves.’

  Shrugging, Karsa returned his attention to the stone wall. ‘“To survive, we must forget. So Icarium told us. Those things that we had come to, those things that softened us. We must abandon them. We must dismantle our…” I know not that word, “and shatter each and every stone, leaving no evidence of what we had been. We must burn our…” another word I do not know, “and leave naught but ash. We must forget our history and seek only our most ancient of legends. Legends that told of a time when we lived simply. In the forests. Hunting, culling fish from the rivers, raising horses. When our laws were those of the raider, the slayer, when all was measured by the sweep of a sword. Legends that spoke of feuds, of murders and rapes. We must return to those terrible times. To isolate our streams of blood, to weave new, smaller nets of kinship. New threads must be born of rape, for only with violence would they remain rare occurrences, and random. To cleanse our blood, we must forget all that we were, yet find what we had once been—”’

  ‘Down here,’ Delum said, squatting. ‘Lower down. I recognize words. Read here, Karsa Orlong.’

  ‘It’s dark, Delum Thord, but I shall try. Ah, yes. These are…names. “I have given these new tribes names, the names given by my father for his sons.” And then a list. ‘Baryd, Sanyd, Phalyd, Urad, Gelad, Manyd, Rathyd and Lanyd. These, then, shall be the new tribes…’ It grows too dark to read on, Delum Thord, nor,’ he added, fighting a sudden chill, ‘do I desire to. These thoughts are spider-bitten. Fever-twisted into lies.’