A tug on the whip decapitated the fourth guard.
The Awl released his hold on the cadaran’s handle and, gripping the rygtha at both ends, stepped close to slam the haft into the last guard’s throat, crushing the windpipe.
Collecting the whip, he moved on.
A street, the sound of lancers off to the right. The gate, fifty paces to the left, now knotted with guards – heads turning his way.
He raced straight for them.
Atri-Preda Bivatt took personal command of a troop of lancers. Twenty riders at her back, she led her horse at a canter, following the trail of a bloodbath.
The two Patriotist agents midway down the alley. Five city guardsmen at the far end.
Riding out onto the street, she angled her mount to the left, drawing her longsword as she neared the gate.
Bodies everywhere, twenty or more, and only two seemed to be still alive. Bivatt stared from beneath the rim of her helm, cold sweat prickling awake beneath her armour. Blood everywhere. On the cobbles, splashed high on the walls and the gate itself. Dismembered limbs. The stench of vacated bowels, spilled intestines. One of the survivors was screaming, head whipping back and forth. Both his hands had been sliced off.
Just beyond the gate, Bivatt saw as she reined in, four horses were down, their riders sprawled out on the road. Drifting dust indicated that the others from the first troop to arrive were riding in pursuit.
The other survivor stumbled up to her. He had taken a blow to the head, the helm dented on one side and blood flowing down that side of his face and neck. In his eyes as he stared up at her, a look of horror. He opened his mouth, but no words came forth.
Bivatt scanned the area once more, then turned to her Finadd. ‘Take the troop through, go after them. Get your weapons out, damn you!’ She glared back down at the guardsman. ‘How many were there?’
He gaped.
More guardsmen were arriving. A cutter hurried to the screaming man who had lost his hands.
‘Did you hear my question?’ Bivatt hissed.
He nodded, then said. ‘One. One man, Atri-Preda.’
One? Ridiculous. ‘Describe him!’
‘Scales – his face was scales. Red as blood!’
A rider from her troop returned from the road. ‘The first troop of lancers are all dead, Atri-Preda,’ he said, his tone high and pinched. ‘Further down the road. All the horses but one – sir, should we follow?’
‘Should you follow? You damned fool – of course you should follow! Stay on his trail!’
A voice spoke behind her. ‘That description, Atri-Preda…’
She twisted round in her saddle.
Orbyn Truthfinder, sheathed in sweat, stood amidst the carnage, his small eyes fixed on her.
Bivatt bared her teeth in a half-snarl. ‘Yes,’ she snapped. Redmask. None other.
The commander of the Patriotists in Drene pursed his lips, glanced down to scan the corpses on all sides. ‘It seems,’ he said, ‘his exile from the tribes is at an end.’
Yes.
Errant save us.
Brohl Handar stepped down from the carriage and surveyed the scene of battle. He could not imagine what sort of weapons the attackers had used, to achieve the sort of damage he saw before him. The Atri-Preda had taken charge, as more soldiery appeared, while Orbyn Truthfinder stood in the shade of the gate blockhouse entrance, silent and watching.
The Overseer approached Bivatt. ‘Atri-Preda,’ he said, ‘I see none but your own dead here.’
She glared at him, yet it was a look containing more than simple anger. He saw fear in her eyes. ‘The city was infiltrated,’ she said, ‘by an Awl warrior.’
‘This is the work of one man?’
‘It is the least of his talents.’
‘Ah, then you know who this man is.’
‘Overseer, I am rather busy—’
‘Tell me of him.’
Grimacing, she gestured him to one side of the gate. They both had to step carefully over corpses sprawled on the slick cobblestones. ‘I think I have sent a troop of lancers out to their deaths, Overseer. My mood is not conducive to lengthy conversation.’
‘Oblige me. If a war-party of Awl’dan warriors is at the very edge of this city, there must be an organized response – one,’ he added, seeing her offended look, ‘involving the Tiste Edur as well as your units.’
After a moment, she nodded. ‘Redmask. The only name by which we know him. Even the Awl’dan have but legends of his origins—’
‘And they are?’
‘Letur Anict—’
Brohl Handar hissed in anger and glared across at Orbyn, who had moved within hearing range. ‘Why is it that every disaster begins with that man’s name?’
Bivatt resumed. ‘There was skirmishing, years ago now, between a rich Awl tribe and the Factor. Simply, Letur Anict coveted the tribe’s vast herds. He despatched agents who, one night, entered an Awl camp and succeeded in kidnapping a young woman – one of the clan leader’s daughters. The Awl, you see, were in the habit of stealing Letherii children. In any case, that daughter had a brother.’
‘Redmask.’
She nodded. ‘A younger brother. Anyway, the Factor adopted the girl into his household, and before too long she was Indebted to him—’
‘No doubt without even being aware of that. Yes, I understand. And so, in order to purchase that debt, and her own freedom, Letur demanded her father’s herds.’
‘Yes, more or less. And the clan leader agreed. Alas, even as the Factor’s forces approached the Awl camp with their precious cargo, the girl plunged a knife into her own heart. Thereafter, things got rather confused. Letur Anict’s soldiers attacked the Awl camp, killing everyone—’
‘The Factor decided he would take the herds anyway.’
‘Yes. It turned out, however, that there was one survivor. A few years later, as the skirmishes grew fiercer, the Factor’s troops found themselves losing engagement after engagement. Ambushes were turned. And the name of Redmask was first heard – a new war chief. Now, what follows is even less precise than what I have described thus far. It seems there was a gathering of the clans, and Redmask spoke – argued, that is, with the Elders. He sought to unify the clans against the Letherii threat, but the Elders could not be convinced. In his rage, Redmask spoke unwise words. The Elders demanded he retract them. He refused, and so was exiled. It is said he travelled east, into the wildlands between here and Kolanse.’
‘What is the significance of the mask?’
Bivatt shook her head. ‘I don’t know. There is a legend that he killed a dragon, in the time immediately following the slaughter of his family. No more than a child – which makes the tale unlikely.’ She shrugged.
‘And so he has returned,’ Brohl Handar said, ‘or some other Awl warrior has adopted the mask and so seeks to drive fear into your hearts.’
‘No, it was him. He uses a bladed whip and a two-headed axe. The weapons themselves are virtually mythical.’
The Overseer frowned at her. ‘Mythical?’
‘Awl legends hold that their people once fought a war, far to the east, when the Awl dwelt in the wildlands. The cadaran and rygtha were weapons designed to deal with that enemy. I have no more details than what I have just given you, except that it appears that whatever that enemy was, it wasn’t human.’
‘Every tribe has tales of past wars, an age of heroes—’
‘Overseer, the Awl’dan legends are not like that.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. First of all, the Awl lost that war. That is why they fled west.’
‘Have there been no Letherii expeditions into the wildlands?’
‘Not in decades, Overseer. After all, we are clashing with the various territories and kingdoms along that border. The last expedition was virtually wiped out, a single survivor driven mad by what she had seen. She spoke of something called the Hissing Night. The voice of death, apparently. In any case, her madness could not be healed and so she was p
ut to death.’
Brohl Handar considered that for a time. An officer had arrived and was waiting to speak with the Atri-Preda. ‘Thank you,’ he said to Bivatt, then turned away.
‘Overseer.’
He faced her again. ‘Yes?’
‘If Redmask succeeds this time…with the tribes, I mean, well, we shall indeed have need of the Tiste Edur.’
His brows rose. ‘Of course, Atri-Preda.’ And maybe this way, I can reach the ear of the Emperor and Hannan Mosag. Damn this Letur Anict. What has he brought down upon us now?
He rode the Letherii horse hard, leaving the north road and cutting east, across freshly tilled fields that had once been Awl’dan grazing land. His passage drew the attention of farmers, and from the last hamlet he skirted three stationed soldiers had saddled horses and set off in pursuit.
In a dip of the valley Redmask had just left, they met their deaths in a chorus of animal and human screams, piercing but short-lived.
A bluster of rhinazan spun in a raucous cloud over the Awl warrior’s head, driven away from their favoured hosts by the violence, their wings beating like tiny drums and their long serrated tails hissing in the air as they tracked Redmask. He had long since grown used to their ubiquitous presence. Residents of the wildlands, the weasel-sized flying reptiles were far from home, unless their hosts – in the valley behind him and probably preparing another ambush – could be called home.
He slowed his horse, shifting in discomfort at the awkward Letherii saddle. No-one would reach him now, he knew, and there was no point in running this beast into the ground. The enemy had been confident in their city garrison, brazen with their trophies, and Redmask had learned much in the night and the day he had spent watching them. Bluerose lancers, properly stirruped and nimble on their mounts. Far more formidable than the foot soldiers of years before.
And thus far, since his return, he had seen of his own people only abandoned camps, drover tracks from smallish herds and disused tipi rings. It was as if his home had been decimated, and all the survivors had fled. And at the only scene of battle he had come upon, there had been naught but the corpses of foreigners.
The sun was low on the horizon behind him, dusk closing in, when he came upon the first burned Awl’dan encampment. A year old, maybe more. White bones jutting from the grasses, blackened stumps from the hut frames, a dusty smell of desolation. No-one had come to retrieve the fallen, to lift the butchered bodies onto lashed platforms, freeing the souls to dance with the carrion birds. The scene raised grim memories.
He rode on. As the darkness gathered, the rhinazan slowly drifted away, and Redmask could hear the double-thump, one set to either side, as his two companions, their bloody work done, moved up into flanking positions, barely visible in the gloom.
The rhinazan settled onto the horizontal, scaled backs, to lick splashed gore and pluck ticks, to lift their heads in snapping motions, inhaling sharply to draw in the biting insects that buzzed too close.
Redmask allowed his eyes to half close – he had been awake for most of two days. With Sag’Churok, the hulking male, gliding over the ground to his right; and Gunth Mach, the young drone that was even now growing into a female, on his left, he could not be more secure.
Like the rhinazan, the two K’Chain Che’Malle seemed content, even in this strange land and so far away from their kin.
Content to follow Redmask, to protect him, to kill Letherii.
And he had no idea why.
Silchas Ruin’s eyes were reptilian in the lantern light, no more appropriate a sight possible given the chamber they now found themselves in, as far as Seren Pedac was concerned. The stone walls, curving upward to a dome, were carved in overlapping scales. The unbroken pattern left her feeling disoriented, slightly nauseous. She settled onto the floor, blinked the grit from her eyes.
It must be near morning, she judged. They had been walking tunnels, ascending inclines and spiralling ramps for most of an entire night. The air was stale, despite the steady downward flow of currents, as if it was gathering ghosts with every chamber and down every corridor it traversed.
She glanced away from her regard of Silchas Ruin, irritated at her own fascination with the savage, unearthly warrior, the way he could hold himself so perfectly still, even the rise and fall of his chest barely discernible. Buried for millennia, yet he did indeed live. Blood flowed in his veins, thoughts rose grimed with the dust of disuse. When he spoke, she could hear the weight of barrowstones. It was unimaginable to her how a person could so suffer without going mad.
Then again, perhaps he was mad, something hidden deep within him, either constrained by exigencies, or simply awaiting release. As a killer – for that surely was what he was – he was both thorough and dispassionate. As if mortal lives could be reduced in meaning, reduced to surgical judgement: obstacle or ally. Nothing else mattered.
She understood the comfort of seeing the world in that manner. The ease of its simplicity was inviting. But for her, impossible. One could not will oneself blind to the complexities of the world. Yet, for Silchas Ruin, such seeming complexities were without relevance. He had found a kind of certainty, and it was unassailable.
Alas, Fear Sengar was not prepared to accept the hopelessness of his constant assaults upon Silchas Ruin. The Tiste Edur stood near the triangular portal they would soon pass through, as if impatient with this rest stop. ‘You think,’ he now said to Silchas Ruin, ‘that I know virtually nothing of that ancient war, the invasion of this realm.’
The albino Tiste Andii’s eyes shifted, fixed on Fear Sengar, but Silchas Ruin made no reply.
‘The women remembered,’ Fear said. ‘They passed the tales to their daughters. Generation after generation. Yes, I know that Scabandari drove a knife into your back, there on that hill overlooking the field of battle. Yet, was this the first betrayal?’
If he was expecting a reaction, he was disappointed.
Udinaas loosed a low laugh from where he sat with his back to the scaled wall. ‘You two are so pointless,’ he said. ‘Who betrayed whom. What does it matter? It’s not as if we’re relying on trust to keep us together. Tell me, Fear Sengar – once-master of mine – does your brother have any idea of who Ruin is? Where he came from? I would suggest not. Else he would have come after us personally, with ten thousand warriors at his back. Instead, they toy with us. Aren’t you even curious why?’
No-one spoke for a half-dozen heartbeats, then Kettle giggled, drawing all eyes to her. Her blink was owlish. ‘They want us to find what we’re looking for first, of course.’
‘Then why block our attempts to travel inland?’ Seren demanded.
‘Because they know it’s the wrong direction.’
‘How could they know that?’
Kettle’s small, dust-stained hands fluttered like bats in the gloom. ‘The Crippled God told them, that’s how. The Crippled God said it’s not yet time to travel east. He’s not ready for open war, yet. He doesn’t want us to go into the wildlands, where all the secrets are waiting.’
Seren Pedac stared at the child. ‘Who in Errant’s name is the Crippled God?’
‘The one who gave Rhulad his sword, Acquitor. The true power behind the Tiste Edur.’ Kettle threw up her hands. ‘Scabandari’s dead. The bargain was Hannan Mosag’s, and the coin was Rhulad Sengar.’
Fear stood with bared teeth, staring at Kettle with something like terror in his eyes. ‘How do you know this?’ he demanded.
‘The dead told me. They told me lots of things. So did the ones under the trees, the trapped ones. And they said something else too. They said the vast wheel is about to turn, one last time, before it closes. It closes, because it has to, because that’s how he made it. To tell him all he needs to know. To tell him the truth.’
‘Tell who?’ Seren asked, scowling in confusion.
‘Him, the one who’s coming. You’ll see.’ She ran over to where Fear stood, took him by one hand and started tugging. ‘We need to hurry, or they’ll get us. And if
they get us, Silchas Ruin will have to kill everyone.’
I could strangle that child. But she pushed herself to her feet once more.
Udinaas was laughing.
She was inclined to strangle him as well.
‘Silchas,’ she said as she moved close, ‘do you have any idea what Kettle was talking about?’
‘No, Acquitor. But,’ he added, ‘I intend to keep listening.’
Chapter Three
We came upon the fiend on the eastern slope of the Radagar Spine. It was lying in a shallow gorge formed by flash flooding, and the stench pervading the hot air told us of rotting flesh, and indeed upon examination, conducted with utmost caution on this, the very day following the ambush on our camp by unknown attackers, we discovered that the fiend was, while still alive, mortally wounded. How to describe such a demonic entity? When upright, it would have balanced on two hugely muscled hind legs, reminiscent of that of a shaba, the flightless bird found on the isles of the Draconean Archipelago, yet in comparison much larger here. The hip level of the fiend, when standing, would have been at a man’s eye level. Long-tailed, the weight of the fiend’s torso evenly balanced by its hips, thrusting the long neck and head far forward, the spine made horizontal. Two long forelimbs, thickly bound in muscle and hardened scales providing natural armour, ended, not in grasping talons or hands, but enormous swords, iron-bladed, that seemed fused, metal to bone, with the wrists. The head was snouted, like that of a crocodile, such as those found in the mud of the southern shoreline of the Bluerose Sea, yet, again, here much larger. Desiccation had peeled the lips back to reveal jagged rows of fangs, each one dagger-long. The eyes, clouded with approaching death, were nonetheless uncanny and alien to our senses.
The Atri-Preda, bold as ever, strode forward to deliver the fiend from its suffering, with a sword thrust into the soft tissue of its throat. With this fatal wound, the fiend loosed a death cry that struck us with pain, for the sound it voiced was beyond our range of hearing, yet it burst in our skulls with such ferocity that blood was driven from our nostrils, eyes and ears.
The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen Page 582