‘If you’ve already got a bad feeling about this,’ the wizard replied, ‘why do you need Fid?’
‘Confirmation, is why. The bastard was talking to a woman, who then veered into a dragon and thought to give us a scare. Anybody keeping scaly company makes me nervous.’
‘Onrack,’ said Trull Sengar as the man drew closer, walking with a casual, almost loose stride, ‘I think we approach the place where Cotillion wanted us to be.’
At that, Hedge scowled. ‘Speaking of scaly – dealing with Shadowthrone’s lackey makes all this stink even worse—’
‘Leaving once more unspoken the explanation for what you’re doing here, Hedge,’ the Tiste Edur replied with a faint smile at the sapper – that damned smile, so bloody disarming that Hedge almost spilled out every secret in his head, just to see that smile grow into something more welcoming. Trull Sengar was like that, inviting friendship and camaraderie like the sweet scent of a flower – probably a poisonous one – but that might be just me. My usual paranoia. Well earned, mind. Still, there doesn’t seem to be anything poisonous about Trull Sengar.
It’s just that I don’t trust nice people. There, it’s said – at least here in my head. And no, I don’t need any Hood-kissed reason either. He stepped too close to one of the emlava cubs and had to dance away to avoid lashing talons. He glared at the hissing creature. ‘Your hide’s mine, you know that? Mine, kitty. Take good care of it in the meantime.’
The eyes burned up at him, and the emlava cub opened wide its jaws to loose yet another whispering hiss.
Damn, those fangs are getting long.
Onrack had moved out ahead, and now the Imass stopped. Moments later they had all drawn up to stand a few paces behind him.
The tall, wild-haired warrior walked closer. Five paces from Onrack he halted, smiled and said something in some guttural language.
Onrack cocked his head. ‘He speaks Imass.’
‘Not Malazan?’ Hedge asked with mock incredulity. ‘What’s wrong with the damned fool?’
The man’s smile broadened, those amber nugget eyes fixing on Hedge, and in Malazan he said, ‘All the children of the Imass tongue are as poetry to this damned fool. As are the languages of the Tiste,’ he added, gaze shifting to Trull Sengar. Then he spread his hands out to the sides, palms exposed. ‘I am Rud Elalle, raised among the Bentract Imass as a child of their own.’
Onrack said, ‘They have yet to show themselves, Rud Elalle. This is not the welcome I expected from kin.’
‘You have been watched, yes, for some time. Many clans. Ulshun Pral sent out word that none were to block your path.’ Rud Elalle looked down at the tethered cubs to either side of Trull Sengar. ‘The ay flee your scent, and now I see why.’ He then lowered his hands and stepped back. ‘I have given you my name.’
‘I am Onrack, of Logros T’lan Imass. The one who restrains the emlava is Trull Sengar, Tiste Edur of the Hiroth tribe. The dark-skinned man is Ben Adaephon Delat, born in a land called Seven Cities; and his companion is Hedge, once a soldier of the Malazan Empire.’
Rud’s eyes found Hedge again. ‘Tell me, soldier, do you bleed?’
‘What?’
‘You were dead, yes? A spirit willing itself the body it once possessed. But now you are here. Do you bleed?’
Bemused, Hedge looked to Quick Ben. ‘What’s he mean? Like a woman bleeds? I’m too ugly to be a woman, Quick.’
‘Forgive me,’ Rud Elalle said. ‘Onrack proclaims himself a T’lan Imass – yet here he stands, clothed in flesh and bearing the scars of your journey in this realm. And there have been other such guests. T’lan Imass – lone wanderers who have found this place – and they too are clothed in flesh.’
‘Other guests?’ Hedge asked. ‘You almost had one more of those, and she would have been a viper in your midst, Rud Elalle. For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t be trusting those other T’lan Imass, were I you.’
‘Ulshun Pral is a wise leader,’ Rud answered with another smile.
‘I’m still a ghost,’ Hedge said.
‘Are you?’
The sapper frowned. ‘Well, I ain’t gonna cut myself to find out one way or the other.’
‘Because you intend to leave this place, eventually. Of course, I understand.’
‘Sounds like you do at that,’ Hedge snapped. ‘So, maybe you live with these Bentract Imass, Rud Elalle, but that’s about as far as this kinship thing goes. So, who are you?’
‘A friend,’ the man replied with yet another smile.
Aye, and if you knew how I felt about friendly people.
‘You have given me your names, and so now I welcome you among the Bentract Imass. Come, Ulshun Pral is eager to meet you.’
He set off.
They followed. With hand signals, Hedge drew Quick Ben closer to his side and they dropped back a bit from the others. The sapper spoke in very low tones. ‘That furry tree’s standing on the ruins of a dead city, Quick, like he was its Hood-damned prince.’
‘A Meckros City,’ the wizard murmured.
‘Aye, I guessed as much. So where’s the ocean? Glad I never saw the wave that carried it here.’
Quick Ben snorted. ‘Gods and Elder Gods, Hedge. Been here kicking pieces around, I’d wager. And, just maybe, a Jaghut or two. There’s a real mess of residual magic in this place – not just Imass. More Jaghut than Imass, in fact. And…other stuff.’
‘Quick Ben Delat, lucid as a piss-hole.’
‘You really want to know why Cotillion sent us here?’
‘No. Just knowing snares me in his web and I ain’t gonna dance for any god.’
‘And I do, Hedge?’
The sapper grinned. ‘Aye, but you dance, and then you dance.’
‘Rud has a point, by the way.’
‘No, he has a club.’
‘About you bleeding.’
‘Hood above, Quick—’
‘Oh, now that’s a giveaway, Hedge. What’s Hood doing “above”? Just how deep was that hole you crawled out of? And more important, why?’
‘My company soured already? I liked you least, you know. Even Trotts—’
‘Now who’s dancing?’
‘Better we know nothing about why we’re here, is what I’m trying to say.’
‘Relax. I have already figured you out, Hedge, and here’s something that might surprise you. Not only do I have no problem with you being here – neither does Cotillion.’
‘Bastard! What – you and Cotillion sending pigeons back and forth on all this?’
‘I’m not saying Cotillion knows anything about you, Hedge. I’m just saying that if he did, he’d be fine. So would Shadowthrone—’
‘Gods below!’
‘Calm down!’
‘Around you, Quick, that’s impossible. Always was, always will be! Hood, I’m a ghost and I’m still nervous!’
‘You never were good at being calm, were you? One would think dying might have changed you, some, but I guess not.’
‘Funny. Ha ha.’
They were now skirting the ruined city, and came within sight of the burial mounds. Quick Ben grunted. ‘Looks like the Meckros didn’t survive the kick.’
‘Dead or no,’ Hedge said, ‘you’d be nervous too if you was carrying a sack of cussers on your back.’
‘Damn you, Hedge – that was a cusser in your hand back there! When the dragon—’
‘Aye, Quick, so you just keep them kitties away from me, lest I jump back and turn an ankle or something. And stop talking about Shadowthrone and Cotillion, too.’
‘A sack full of cussers. Now I am nervous – you may be dead, but I’m not!’
‘Just so.’
‘I wish Fid was here, too. Instead of you.’
‘That’s not a very nice thing to say! You’re hurting my feelings. Anyway. What I was wanting to tell you was about that T’lan Imass I was travelling with, for a time.’
‘What happened to it? Let me guess, you tossed it a cusser.’
‘Dam
ned right I did, Quick. She was trailing chains, big ones.’
‘Crippled God?’
‘Aye. Everyone wants in on this game here.’
‘That’d be a mistake,’ the wizard asserted as they walked towards a series of rock outcroppings behind which rose thin tendrils of hearth smoke. ‘The Crippled God would find himself seriously outclassed.’
‘Think highly of yourself, don’t you? Some things never change.’
‘Not me, idiot. I meant the dragon. Menandore. Rud Elalle’s mother.’
Hedge dragged the leather cap from his head and pulled at what was left of his hair. ‘This is what drives me mad! You! Things like that, just dropped out like a big stinking lump of – ow!’ He let go of his hair. ‘Hey, that actually hurt!’
‘Tug hard enough to bleed, Hedge?’
Hedge glared across at the wizard, who was now smirking. ‘Look, Quick, this would all be fine if I was planning on building a homestead here, planting a few tubers and raising emlava for their cuddly fur or something. But damn it, I’m just passing through, right? And when I come out the other side, well, I’m back being a ghost, and that’s something I need to get used to, and stay used to.’
Quick Ben shrugged. ‘Just stop pulling your hair and you’ll be fine, then.’
The emlava cubs had grown and were now strong enough to pull Trull Sengar off balance as they strained on their leather leashes, their attention fixed yet again on the Malazan soldier named Hedge, for whom they had acquired a mindless hate. Trull leaned forward to drag the beasts along – it always worked better when the sapper walked ahead, rather than lagging back as he was doing now.
Onrack, noting his struggles, turned and quickly clouted both cubs on their flat foreheads. Suitably cowed, the two emlava ceased their efforts and padded along, heads lowered.
‘Their mother would do the same,’ Onrack said.
‘The paw of discipline,’ Trull said, smiling. ‘I wonder if we might believe the same for our guide here.’
Rud Elalle was ten paces ahead of them – perhaps he could hear, perhaps not.
‘Yes, they share blood,’ Onrack said, nodding. ‘That much was clear when they were standing side by side. And if there is Eleint blood in the mother, then so too in the son.’
‘Soletaken?’
‘Yes.’
‘I wonder if he anticipated this complication?’ Trull meant Cotillion when saying he.
‘Unknown,’ Onrack replied, understanding well enough. ‘The task awaiting us grows ever less certain. Friend Trull, I fear for these Imass. For this entire realm.’
‘Leave the wizard and his sapper to address our benefactor’s needs, then, and we will concern ourselves with protecting this place, and your kin who call it home.’
The Imass glanced across with narrowed eyes. ‘You say this, with such ease?’
‘The wizard, Onrack, is the one who needs to be here. His power – he will be our benefactor’s hand in what is to come. You and me, we were but his escort, his bodyguards, if you will.’
‘You misunderstand me, Trull Sengar. My wonder is in your willingness to risk your life, again. This time for a people who are nothing to you. For a realm not your own.’
‘They are your kin, Onrack.’
‘Distant. Bentract.’
‘If it had been, say, the Den-Ratha tribe of the Edur to gain supremacy among our tribes, Onrack, instead of my own Hiroth, would I not give my life to defend them? They are still my people. For you it is the same, yes? Logros, Bentract – just tribes – but the same people.’
‘There is too much within you, Trull Sengar. You humble me.’
‘Perhaps there lies your own misunderstanding, friend. Perhaps all you see here is my search for a cause, for something to fight for, to die for.’
‘You will not die here.’
‘Oh, Onrack—’
‘I may well fight to protect the Bentract and this realm, but they are not why I am here. You are.’
Trull could not meet his friend’s eyes, and in his heart there was pain. Deep, old, awakened.
‘The son,’ Onrack said after a moment, ‘seems…very young.’
‘Well, so am I.’
‘Not when I look into your eyes. It is not the same with this Soletaken,’ he continued, seemingly unmindful of the wound he had just delivered. ‘No, those yellow eyes are young.’
‘Innocent?’
A nod. ‘Trusting, as a child is trusting.’
‘A gentle mother, then.’
‘She did not raise him,’ Onrack said.
Ah, the Imass, then. And now I begin to see, to understand. ‘We will be vigilant, Onrack.’
‘Yes.’
Rud Elalle led them into a split between two upthrust knobs of layered rock, a trail that then wound between huge boulders before opening out into the Imass village.
Rock shelters along a cliff. Tusk-framed huts, the spindly frames of drying racks on which were stretched hides. Children running like squat imps in the midst of a gathering of perhaps thirty Imass. Men, women, elders. One warrior stood before all the others, while off to one side stood three more Imass, their garb rotted and subtly different in cut and style from that of the Bentract – the strangers, Trull realized – guests yet remaining apart.
Upon seeing them, Onrack’s benign expression hardened. ‘Friend,’ he murmured to Trull, ‘’ware those three.’
‘I decided the same myself,’ Trull replied under his breath.
Rud Elalle moved to stand at the Bentract leader’s side. ‘This is Ulshun Pral,’ he said, setting a hand on the man’s thick shoulder – a gesture of open affection that seemed blissfully unmindful of the growing tension at the edge of this village.
Onrack moved forward. ‘I am Onrack the Broken, once of the Logros T’lan Imass, child of the Ritual. I ask that we be made guests among your tribe, Ulshun Pral.’
The honey-skinned warrior frowned over at Rud Elalle, then said something in his own language.
Rud nodded and faced Onrack. ‘Ulshun Pral asks that you speak in the First Language.’
‘He asked,’ Onrack said, ‘why I chose not to.’
‘Yes.’
‘My friends do not share the knowing of that language. I cannot ask for guesting on their behalf without their understanding, for to be guest is to be bound to the rules of the tribe, and this they must know, before I would venture a promise of peace on their behalf.’
‘Can you not simply translate?’ Rud Elalle asked.
‘Of course, yet I choose to leave that to you, Rud Elalle, for Ulshun Pral knows and trusts you, while he does not know me.’
‘Very well, I shall do so.’
‘Enough with all this,’ Hedge called out, gingerly setting down his pack. ‘We’ll all be good boys, so long as no-one tries to kill us or worse, like making us eat some horrible vegetable rightly extinct on every other realm in the universe.’
Rud Elalle was displaying impressive skill and translating Hedge’s words almost as fast as the sapper spoke them.
Ulshun Pral’s brows lifted in seeming astonishment, then he turned and with a savage gesture yelled at a small crowd of elderly women at one side of the crowd.
Hedge scowled at Onrack, ‘Now what did I say?’ he demanded.
But Trull saw his friend smiling. ‘Ulshun Pral has just directed the cooks to fish the baektar from the stew they have prepared for us.’
‘The baek-what?’
‘A vegetable, Hedge, that will be found nowhere but here.’
All at once the tension was gone. There were smiles, shouts of apparent welcome from other Imass, and many came forward to close, first on Onrack, and then – with expressions of delight and wonder, on Trull Sengar – no, he realized, not on him – on the emlava cubs. Who began purring deep in their throats, as thick, short-fingered hands reached out to stroke fur and scratch behind the small, tufted ears.
‘Look at that, Quick!’ Hedge was staring in disbelief. ‘Now is that fair?’
The wizard slapped the sapper on the back. ‘It’s true, Hedge, the dead stink.’
‘You’re hurting my feelings again!’
Sighing, Trull released the leather leashes and stepped back. He smiled across at Hedge. ‘I smell nothing untoward,’ he said.
But the soldier’s scowl only deepened. ‘Maybe I like you now, Trull Sengar, but you keep being nice and that’ll change, I swear it.’
‘Have I offended you—’
‘Ignore Hedge,’ Quick Ben cut in, ‘at least when he’s talking. Trust me, it was the only way the rest of us in the squad stayed sane. Ignore him…until he reaches into that damned sack of his.’
‘And then?’ Trull asked in complete bewilderment.
‘Then run like Hood himself was on your heels.’
Onrack had separated himself from his welcomers and was now walking towards the strangers.
‘Yes,’ Quick Ben said in a low voice. ‘They’re trouble indeed.’
‘Because they were like Onrack? T’lan Imass?’
‘Of the Ritual, aye. The question is, why are they here?’
‘I would imagine that whatever mission brought them to this place, Quick Ben, the transformation they experienced has shaken them – perhaps, as with Onrack, their spirits have reawakened.’
‘Well, they look unbalanced enough.’
Their conversation with Onrack was short, and Trull watched as his old friend approached.
‘Well?’ the wizard demanded.
Onrack was frowning. ‘They are Bentract, after all. But from those who joined the Ritual. Ulshun Pral’s clan were among the very few who did not, who were swayed by the arguments set forth by Kilava Onass – this is why,’ Onrack added, ‘they greet the emlava as if they were Kilava’s very own children. Thus, there are ancient wounds between the two groups. Ulshun Pral was not a clan chief back then – indeed, the T’lan Bentract do not even know him.’
‘And that is a problem?’
‘It is, because one of the strangers is a chosen chief – chosen by Bentract himself. Hostille Rator.’
‘And the other two?’ Quick Ben asked.
The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen Page 662