Orb Sceptre Throne

by Ian Cameron Esslemont

  ‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘An accident?’ He asked but he didn’t believe it: the fire had spread far too swiftly. The shake of her head confirmed his suspicions. Sabotage, act of rebellion, call it what you will. They never wanted us here.

  And now this new Legate down in Darujhistan to goad them on.

  He waved the captain further back to talk. ‘Any suspects?’

  She’d pulled off her helmet and now ran a hand through her matted dark hair. K’ess noted how her features seemed to glow – a combination of sweat from the heat and the grease of the smoke. He realized she had a strange look in her eyes even as he studied them.

  She glanced away, clearing her throat. ‘One of the kitchen staff, probably. Or one of the local servants.’

  ‘You have them?’

  ‘A few. They all claim innocence, of course. What do you want done with them? We could … send a message.’

  ‘I very much doubt that the one who set this hung about to get caught.’

  ‘I agree, Fist.’

  ‘So … let them know what we could do with them should we be so inclined. Then let them go.’

  Her thick black brows rose. ‘Let them … go?’

  ‘Yes. We’re soldiers, not executioners, or some sort of police. It’s subjugation that requires brutality, and I’m not willing to stoop to that yet. Do you understand, Captain?’

  The woman’s face hardened as if struck. ‘I am from Seven Cities, Fist.’

  K’ess cursed himself for his obvious misstep but kept his expression blank. He inclined his head in acknowledgement. ‘My apologies – then you more than understand.’

  A lieutenant arrived, rescuing the Fist from his discomfort. ‘A mob at the gates, sir. Blocking the exit.’

  ‘Armed?’

  ‘Haphazardly so. Though there may be veterans mixed in among ’em.’

  K’ess turned to Fal-ej. ‘My apologies again, Captain. You were correct. Perhaps we should have withdrawn earlier. It seems we’re always underestimating Pale.’ He motioned to the lieutenant. ‘Have the entire command salvage what they can then form up before the gates. We’re evacuating.’

  The lieutenant saluted. ‘Aye, sir.’ He ran off, bellowing.

  ‘North, sir?’ Fal-ej asked.

  They flinched at another thundering reverberation accompanied by curtains of sparks from the collapsing barracks. Did we have any Moranth munitions stored there? Well, I understand they aren’t flammable anyway.

  Their few horses, pulled from the stalls, began screaming their terror as the flames drew nearer the mustering square. ‘No, Captain. South. We’ll catch up with the Twenty-second.’

  ‘Aye. And the gates?’

  ‘I understand they’re designed to be unhinged, if need be.’

  The Captain’s full lips drew up in a feral grin of anticipation. ‘I’ll see to it.’

  ‘Very good.’ K’ess saluted. Fal-ej jogged for the gates. He wiped his sweat-slick face. Now to toss everything from my office into these damned flames.

  A short time later, mounting amid the column, K’ess slapped his gauntlets against his cape to put out drifting sparks. Then he nodded to the bannerman, who dipped the black, grey and silver standard of the Fifth. At the gates Fal-ej oversaw the saboteurs who struck the hinges. At her wave, K’ess motioned that the banner be pointed forward and the entire garrison charged into the broad timber doors. For an instant the gates wavered, creaking, then shouts of alarm from beyond signalled their leaning outwards.

  K’ess drew his longsword, bellowing, ‘Onward, Fifth!’

  The entire column leaned forward, shields to backs, pressing. The gates groaned, gave, toppled. Screams sounded beyond. The broad timber leaves crashed down – but they did not lie flat – far from it, in truth. The front ranks stepped up on to the planks, ignoring the cries beneath. The garrison marched out, stamping over a good portion of the crushed mob while the rest fled. Even halfway back in the column, when K’ess urged his mount up on to the planking the flattened gate still settled slightly.

  Watching from across the square, the Lord Mayor stared in utter horror at the slaughter done by the Malazans in one murderous gesture. He turned to the shadowy figure next to him. ‘This is unspeakable! What have we done?’

  ‘We?’ intoned the shade of Hinter. ‘As yet I have done nothing. This is all your doing, Lord Mayor.’

  The man’s plump hands clasped the furred robes at his neck as if he were strangling himself. ‘What?’ he spluttered. ‘But you assured me …’

  The shade made a gesture as if to remove dust from one translucent sleeve. ‘All I assured you was that you would be rid of the Malazans. And behold – am I not good to my word?’

  ‘But … these deaths!’

  ‘Not nearly so many as when they arrived, I understand.’

  That comment, so calmly delivered, touched something in the Lord Mayor and he clenched his fists around the rich material. ‘You will fare no better! Darujhistan has no more army than we!’

  The tall shade’s regard seemed to radiate an almost godlike disinterest. ‘We shall see. In any case, I suppose we do owe you our thanks for sending them off. Therefore – you are now on your own.’ The shimmering figure bowed mockingly, murmuring, ‘Better luck to come.’

  The Lord Mayor’s eyes bulged. ‘You are … leaving? But what of the Rhivi raiders? Barghast war bands? The Moranth? You said you would protect us!’ The mayor, nearly breathless, ceased his objections when he saw he was alone; the shade had faded from view. He glanced, terrified, at the shadows surrounding him in the empty night, then quickly scuttled away.

  *

  The Malazans had not entirely abandoned southern Genabackis. After the crushing of the Pannion Seer Dujek embarked with the battered remnants of his Host for some distant continent, while Captain Paran collected his remaining columns and also departed. Not all elements withdrew, however. A small portion consisting mainly of the last under-strength legion of the Second Army was left behind. Its mandate, straight from Dujek, was to maintain order while the surviving inhabitants of the region rebuilt their lives, their cities, and their defences. Command of this garrison fell to a veteran who had risen through the logistics and supply side of campaigning. Her name was Argell Steppen and she was awarded the honorary rank of Fist.

  What she was entrusted with some thought no honour. Many soldiers muttered that these last fragments of the Second, Fifth and Sixth armies were shattered, if not irrevocably broken. Whether the blunt-talking, short, and some thought rather unattractive woman agreed with this estimation she never said. What she did do was order a general withdrawal from the festering wrecks that were the one-time urban centres of the south – Bastion, Capustan and others – to a hillock near the headwaters of the River Eryn, close by the verges of the Cinnamon Wastes. And here she ordered a fortress built. Most of her command thought her mad to be constructing a redoubt in the middle of nowhere so far from the coast.

  Then the raids began.

  Bendan, son of Hurule, had grown up among the huts, open sewers and garbage heaps of the Gadrobi slums west of Darujhistan. Being a young lad kicking about the alleys with no income or any likelihood of it, he naturally joined together with other youths of his background to form a brotherhood for mutual support and protection. And for the generation of gainful profit. An organization that the city Wardens and ruling Council of Darujhistan denounced as a gang.

  After a successful run of thefts, beatings and a few murders, the ire of the wealthier class of merchants was finally roused and the Wardens were spurred to corner Bendan and his fellows in the abandoned two-storey house they used as their base. By this time he had acquired a nickname, the Butcher, of which he was extremely proud, but which stood him in no stead against the armour and shortswords of the Wardens.

  He escaped the encirclement, unlike most of the brothers and sisters of his gang, the last remaining friends of or ties to his youth. Hunted, with nowhere to turn, he naturally sought out the final option avai
lable for someone without any attachments to his homeland: enlistment among the invading Malazans.

  He watched now, under the cover of night, from the crest of a shoreward dune on the coast just north of Coral, close to Maurik, while four ships stole quietly up on to the strand. He glanced to his right, down the line of his fellow squad-members, anxious for the signal. Eventually, the sergeant, a giant of a man with skin so black Bendan had thought it paint, gave the sign.

  As one the squad slithered down the rear of the crest then jogged for the narrow streambed the raiders had been using. Here, under cover of the scraggy brittle brush, they readied crossbows and javelins. Somewhere in the dark across the steep-sided cut waited the 33rd. Once his squad, the 23rd, opened fire and engaged the raiders, they’d charge in from the rear. Meanwhile, the 4th was perhaps even now coming up the shore, ready to cut off retreat to the ships.

  ‘Like herding sheep,’ the corporal, Little, had told him, winking. ‘Just keep them from breaking out.’

  ‘More like wolves,’ the oldest of the squad had warned, a hairy and very dirty fellow in tattered leathers everyone called Bone. ‘These Confederation boys are pirates and slavers. Been raiding this coast for generations. Think it’s their gods-given right. This’ll be right sharp.’

  ‘I’m not afraid of no fight,’ he’d said.

  ‘Right, Butcher,’ Bone had answered.

  He’d given that name when asked. And surprisingly, they used it. Only when they said it they used the same tone they used for arse, or idiot. And somehow there was no way he could call them on it. So he’d shrunk back, glowering, determined to show them what fighting was all about. After all, it was the one thing he’d had to do every day of his life, and since he wasn’t dead yet he was obviously good at it.

  ‘Let none escape,’ had been bald Sergeant Hektar’s last rumbled instruction. ‘This is our warning stroke. Our last chance before we go.’

  Before they left. Marching out! Bendan had seen everyone’s reaction to that stunning news. Crazy as one of them Tenescowri! Abandoning the fortress before it’s even finished. Who was this ambassador to order them out? Couldn’t Steppen have just sent ten or twenty for that marionette to inspect?

  Everyone in his squad was disgusted at this typical army stupidity. All except Bone, who’d muttered through a mouthful of the leaves he chewed, ‘The ways of officers is a mystery to regular people.’

  Bendan thought it an improvement – he was damned sick of hammering rocks and humping dirt. He’d take a bit of marching over that backbreaking work any time.

  Now, it seemed, was their last chance for any real action and everyone was eager to make it count. Beneath them, tracing the bed of the dry cut, came the Confederacy raiders jogging along to their target, another defenceless farming hamlet. He struggled with his crossbow in the disorienting light of the silvery bright reborn moon, and the greenish glow of the swelling arc of light in the sky that some named the Sword of God – though just which god varied.

  The mechanism of the crossbow defeated him once again. He couldn’t seem to master the damned foreign thing. He set it down and readied one of the wicked barbed javelins he’d brought against just such a possibility. And just in time as well, as the whistled signal came to fire.

  Everyone straightened, letting loose. Crossbows thumped, soldiers shouted, tossing javelins. Bendan hurled his, then, without waiting to see whether he’d struck anyone or not, he started down the slope readying his shortsword and shield. What he glimpsed below worried him. Instead of the milling chaos he’d been told to expect the line of warriors had simply knelt behind large shields, taken the initial barrage, and even now was counter-charging up through the rock and brush.

  And damn his dead and gone ancestors but there were a lot of them.

  No more time to think as his headlong run brought him smack into the first of the raiders. He shield-bashed the man and knocked him backwards off his feet. That shock absorbed almost all his inertia and now he traded blows with two others. His squad was ridiculously outnumbered. Bendan released all the ferocity he’d learned in life or death fights before he’d even grown hair on his chin. He gave himself into the blazing rage completely, whirling, screaming, attacking without let-up. Raiders backpedalled before him, overborne. Blades struck his hauberk of leather hardened with mail and iron lozenges but he ignored the blows in a determination to carry on until dead. Only this complete abandon had seen him walk away from all his fights – bloodied and punished, but upright.

  Then in what seemed like an instant all that stood before him wore the black of Malaz and he lowered his arm, weaving, sucking in great ragged breaths, near to vomiting. The other squad had pushed through from the other side. The column of raiders had broken and men were running for their ships. Bendan and his squad mates left them for the others.

  Someone offered him a skin of water and he sucked in a small mouthful and splashed one spray over his face. The blows he’d taken were agony and he knew he’d be hardly able to move tomorrow but he’d been lucky: none was serious enough to take him down.

  Sergeant Hektar came by and cuffed his shoulder. ‘Damn, Butcher,’ he rumbled. ‘I can see we’re gonna have to rein you in some.’

  Nearby Bone had a cloth pressed to his blood-smeared face, still grinning. ‘Lookin’ forward to a full day’s march tomorrow, lad?’ He laughed.

  Bendan waved that off.

  ‘What about these wounded, Hek?’ someone called.

  The massive Dal Hon ran a hand over his gleaming nut-brown scalp. ‘These are slavers … give them a taste of it. We sell them.’

  ‘Can’t do that,’ Bone shouted from where he was rifling the bodies, one-handed. ‘Empire don’t sell slaves.’

  ‘Indentureship is so much better, is it?’ the Dal Hon muttered, and shrugged. ‘So we give them away to the Coral merchants.’

  Bone’s answering laugh was genuine, but it wasn’t pleasant.

  Later that night as he was walking back to camp it occurred to Bendan that when Hektar had called him ‘Butcher’ he hadn’t used that tone. The sergeant had seemed to mean it. He felt grateful, but also a little embarrassed. Because for the entire fight he’d been so terrified he’d pissed himself.

  Awareness came to Ebbin in brief disconnected instants. Like startling flashes of lightning in an otherwise terrifying pitch-black landscape of lashing, spinning winds. Each illuminated an instant tableau frozen in stark contrast of light and shadow: he huddled among the bones of a hilltop sepulchre, its stone door shattered; he was chiselling layers of barnacles and sea-growths from a stone revealing it white and pure as mountain snow; he was being kicked aside by Aman while the girl Taya danced frenziedly before a cloaked figure with the face of the sun; his hands held before his face cracked and bloodied, sleeves in tatters.

  At other times, the worst times, he was called to writhe in abject terror before that cloaked figure. During these times, lost in the eternal storm that now raged in his mind, the being’s face shone silver like the moon. At other times he raged insane against this monster, shook his fists, swore himself hoarse.

  All his tormentor ever gave in return was lofty mocking amusement. As if not only his life and ambitions were meaningless, puerile, but the hopes, struggles and dreams of everyone in the city and beyond were nothing more than puffery and self-important vacuousness. This god-like overview of the entire sweep of human civilization on the continent sent Ebbin once more into the eternal raging storm within his mind.

  Yet the stones are important. He is worried about the stones. Will there be enough to complete the base?

  At other times they shook him from his tortured nightmare trance to perform tasks for them. The girl – though hardly a girl, Taya – always accompanied him. He helped oversee the salvaging of these very stone blocks being taken from the city mole. He hired craftsmen, answered queries. In short, he was the human face before the operations these fiends wished to complete.

  And all the while he was powerless to speak
of any of it. He tried – gods, how he fought to utter a word of objection or defiance! But the moment he contemplated such rebellion his mouth and throat constricted as if throttled. Not even his hands would cooperate to scrawl a plea for help. And so, like a prisoner within his own skull, he could only watch and speculate.

  Whatever these fiends planned, it reached back all the way to their internment. A resurrection of their rule as one of the legendary Tyrants. Yet why the elaborate charade? Why wait to declare their return? Why the mask? Ebbin was frustrated beyond measure by the mystery. He felt that he had almost all the pieces, yet arranging a meaningful pattern defied him.

  One strange moment seemed to almost shock him out of his fugue. He was working in the tent on the salvage site near the shore at the base of Majesty Hill when someone stopped before his table and spoke to him. He looked up from the wage lists, blinking, to see a dark muscled fellow with a wide mane of black hair peering down at him; startling honest concern creased the man’s features. ‘Yes …?’

  ‘Are you sure you are all right?’ the fellow asked.

  Something squeezed Ebbin’s chest painfully – and it was no outside coercion from the masked fiend. He fought to find his voice. ‘Yes … yes. Thank you.’ Emboldened, he took another breath.

  ‘Your name …?’

  ‘Barathol Mekhar.’

  Ebbin searched his mental lists, found the man. Foreigner, skilled, unregistered blacksmith. Something in that sketch moved him to lurch forward, saying, ‘You have to—’ Then came the clenching fist at his throat. He struggled to continue, even to breathe.

  The man’s puzzled concern returned. ‘Yes?’

  Then Taya was there at his side to wrap an arm about his shoulders, and squeeze, painfully. ‘My uncle has a lot on his mind,’ she explained sweetly. ‘He is ashamed. He gambled, you see. And he lost. He lost everything.’ She squeezed him again, digging in the nails of a hand. ‘Isn’t that so, Uncle?’