* * *
Crone hopped about in a fury. Brood stood watching the Great Raven. Off to one side was Korlat. Lingering a half-dozen paces away was Kallor. The army marched in wide ranks down the raised road to their left, whilst to their right, at a distance of two thousand paces, rumbled the herd of bhederin.
There were fewer of the beasts, Korlat noted. The crossing had claimed hundreds.
A shrill hiss from Crone recaptured her wandering attention.
The Great Raven had half spread her wings, halting directly in front of the warlord. ‘You still do not grasp the gravity of this! Fool! Ox! Where is Anomander Rake? Tell me! I must speak with him – warn him—’
‘Of what?’ Brood asked. ‘That a few hundred condors have chased you away?’
‘Unknown sorcery hides within those abominable vultures! We are being deliberately kept away, you brainless thug!’
‘From Coral and environs,’ Kallor noted drily. ‘We’ve just come in sight of Lest, Crone. One thing at a time.’
‘Stupid! Do you think they’re just sitting on their hands? They’re preparing—’
‘Of course they are,’ Kallor drawled, sneering down at the Great Raven. ‘What of it?’
‘What’s happened to Moon’s Spawn? We know what Rake planned – has it succeeded? I cannot reach it! I cannot reach him! Where is Moon’s Spawn?’
No-one spoke.
Crone’s head darted down. ‘You know less than I! Don’t you? All this is bravado! We are lost!’The Great Raven wheeled to pin Korlat with her glittering, black eyes. ‘Your Lord has failed, hasn’t he? And taken three-quarters of the Tiste Andii with him! Will you be enough, Korlat? Will you—’
‘Crone,’ Brood rumbled. ‘We’d asked for word on the Malazans, not a list of your fears.’
‘The Malazans? They march! What else would they do? Endless wagons on the road, dust everywhere. Closing on Setta, which is empty but for a handful of sun-withered corpses!’
Kallor grunted. ‘They’re making a swift passage of it, then. As if in a hurry. Warlord, there is deceit here.’
Brood scowled, crossed his arms. ‘You heard the bird, Kallor. The Malazans march. Faster than we’d expected, true, but that is all.’
‘You dissemble,’ Kallor grated.
Ignoring him, Brood faced the Great Raven once more. ‘Have your kin keep an eye on them. As for what’s happening at Coral, we’ll worry about that when we reach Maurik and reunite our forces. Finally, regarding your master, Anomander Rake, have faith, Crone.’
‘Upon faith you hold to success? Madness! We must prepare for the worst!’
Korlat’s attention drifted once more. It had been doing that a lot of late. She’d forgotten what love could do, as it threaded its roots through her entire soul, as it tugged and pulled at her thoughts, obsession ripening like seductive fruit. She felt only its life, thickening within her, claiming all she was.
Fears for her Lord and her kin seemed almost inconsequential. If truly demanded, she could attempt her warren, reach him via the paths of Kurald Galain. But there was no urgency within her to do any such thing. This war would find its own path.
Her wants were held, one and all, in the eyes of a man. A mortal, of angled, edged nobility. A man past his youth, a soul layered in scars – yet he had surrendered it to her.
Almost impossible to believe.
She recalled her first sight of him up close. She had been standing with the Mhybe and Silverfox, the child’s hand in her own. He had ridden towards the place of parley at Dujek’s side. A soldier whose name she had already known – as a feared enemy, whose tactical prowess had defied Brood time and again, despite the odds against the Malazan’s poorly supplied, numerically weakened forces.
Even then, he had been as a lodestone to her eye.
And not just hers alone, she realized. Her Lord had called him friend. The rarity of such a thing still threatened to steal her breath. Anomander Rake, in all the time she had known him, had acknowledged but one friend, and that was Caladan Brood. And between those two men, thousands of years of shared experiences, an alliance never broken. Countless clashes, it was true, but not once a final, irretrievable sundering.
The key to that, Korlat well understood, lay in their maintaining a respectable distance from each other, punctuated by the occasional convergence.
It was, she believed, a relationship that would never be broken. And from it, after centuries, had been born a friendship.
Yet Rake had shared but a few evenings in Whiskeyjack’s company. Conversations of an unknown nature had taken place between them. And it had been enough.
Something in each of them has made them kin in spirit. Yet even I cannot see it. Anomander Rake cannot be reached out to, cannot be so much as touched – not his true self. I have never known what lies behind my Lord’s eyes. I have but sensed its vast capacity – but not the flavour of all that it contains.
But Whiskeyjack – my dear mortal lover – while I cannot see all that is within him, I can see the cost of containment. The bleeding, but not the wound. And I can see his strength – even the last time, when he was so weary …
Directly south, the old walls of Lest were visible. There was no sign that repairs had been made since the Pannion conquest. The air above the city was clear of smoke, empty of birds. The Rhivi scouts had reported that there was naught but a few charred bones littering the streets. There had been raised gardens once, for which Lest had been known, but the flow of water had ceased weeks past and fire had since swept through the city – even at this distance Korlat could see the dark stain of soot on the walls.
‘Devastation!’ moaned Crone. ‘This is the tale before us! All the way to Maurik. Whilst our alliance disintegrates before our eyes.’
‘It does nothing of the sort,’ rumbled Brood, his frown deepening.
‘Oh? And where is Silverfox? What has happened to the Mhybe? Why do the Grey Swords and Trake’s Legion march so far behind us? Why were the Malazans so eager to leave our sides? And now, Anomander Rake and Moon’s Spawn have vanished! The Tiste Andii—’
‘Are alive,’ Korlat cut in, her own patience frayed at last.
Crone wheeled on her. ‘Are you certain?’
Korlat nodded. Yet … am I? No. Shall I then seek them out? No. We shall see what is to be seen at Coral. That is all. Her gaze slowly swung westward. And you, my dear lover, thief of all my thoughts, will you ever release me?
Please. Do not. Ever.
* * *
Riding beside Gruntle, Itkovian watched the two Grey Sword outriders canter towards the Shield Anvil and Destriant.
‘Where are they coming from?’ Gruntle asked.
‘Flanking rearguard,’ Itkovian replied.
‘With news to deliver, it seems.’
‘So it appears, sir.’
‘Well? Aren’t you curious? They’ve both asked you to ride with them – if you’d said yes you’d be hearing that report right now, instead of slouching along with us riffraff. Hey, that’s a thought – I could divide my legion into two companies, call one Riff and the other—’
‘Oh, spare us!’ Stonny snapped behind them.
Gruntle twisted in his saddle. ‘How long have you been in our shadow, woman?’
‘I’m never in your shadow, Gruntle. Not you, not Itkovian. Not any man. Besides, with the sun so low on our right, I’d have to be alongside you to be in your shadow, not that I would be, of course.’
‘So instead,’ the Mortal Sword grinned, ‘you’re the woman behind me.’
‘And what’s that supposed to mean, pig?’
‘Just stating a fact, lass.’
‘Really? Well, you were wrong. I was about to make my way over to the Grey Swords, only you two oafs were in the way.’
‘Stonny, this ain’t a road, it’s a plain. How in Hood’s name could we be in your way when you could ride your horse anywhere?’
‘Oafs. Lazy pigs. Someone here has to be curious. That someone needs a brain, of c
ourse, which is why you’ll both just trot along, wondering what those outriders are reporting, wondering and doing not a damned thing about it. Because you’re both brainless. As for me—’
‘As for you,’ Itkovian said drily, ‘you seem to be talking to us, sir. Indeed, engaged in a conversation—’
‘Which has now ended!’ she snapped, neck-reining her horse to the left, then launching it past them.
They watched her ride towards the other column.
After a moment, Gruntle shrugged, then said, ‘Wonder what she’ll hear.’
‘As do I,’ Itkovian replied.
They rode on, their pace steady if a little slow. Gruntle’s legion marched in their wake, a rabble, clumped like sea-raiders wandering inland in search of a farmhouse to pillage. Itkovian had suggested, some time earlier, that some training might prove beneficial, to which Gruntle had grinned and said nothing.
Trake’s Mortal Sword despised armies; indeed, despised anything even remotely connected to the notion of military practices. He was indifferent to discipline, and had but one officer – a Lestari soldier, fortunately – to manage his now eight-score followers: stony-eyed misfits that he’d laughingly called Trake’s Legion.
Gruntle was, in every respect, Itkovian’s opposite.
‘Here she comes,’ the Mortal Sword growled.
‘She rides,’ Itkovian observed, ‘with much drama.’
‘Aye. A fierceness not unique to sitting a saddle, from all that I’ve heard.’
Itkovian glanced at Gruntle. ‘My apologies. I had assumed you and she—’
‘A few times,’ the man replied. ‘When we were both drunk, alas. Her more drunk than me, I’ll admit. Neither of us talk about it, generally. We stumbled onto the subject once and it turned into an argument about which of us was the more embarrassed – ah, lass! What news?’
She reined in hard, her horse’s hooves kicking up dust. ‘Why in Hood’s name should I tell you?’
‘Then why in Hood’s name did you ride back to us?’
She scowled. ‘I was simply returning to my position, oaf – and you, Itkovian, that had better not be a hint of a smile I see there. If it was, I’d have to kill you.’
‘Most certainly not, sir.’
‘Glad to hear it.’
‘So?’ Gruntle asked her.
‘What?’
‘The news, woman!’
‘Oh, that. Wonderful news, of course, it’s the only kind we hear these days, right? Pleasing revelations. Happy times—’
‘Stonny.’
‘Old friends, Gruntle! Trundling after us about a league back. Big, bone carriage, pulled by a train that ain’t quite what it seems. Dragging a pair of flatbed wagons behind, too, loaded with junk – did I say junk? I meant loot, of course, including more than one sun-blackened corpse. And an old man on the driver’s seat. With a mangy cat in his lap. Well, what do you know? Old friends, yes?’
Gruntle’s expression had flattened, his eyes suddenly cold. ‘No Buke?’
‘Not even his horse. Either he’s flown, or—’
The Mortal Sword wheeled his horse round and drove his heels into the beast’s flanks.
Itkovian hesitated. He glanced at Stonny and was surprised to see undisguised sympathy softening her face. Her green eyes found him. ‘Catch up with him, will you?’ she asked quietly.
He nodded, lowered the visor of his Malazan helm. The faintest shift in weight and a momentary brush of the reins against his horse’s neck brought the animal about.
His mount was pleased with the opportunity to stretch its legs, and given its lighter burden was able to draw Itkovian alongside Gruntle with two-thirds of a league remaining. The Mortal Sword’s horse was already labouring.
‘Sir!’ Itkovian called. ‘Pace, sir! Else we’ll be riding double on the return!’
Gruntle hissed a curse, made as if to urge his horse yet faster, then relented, straightening in the saddle, reins loose, as the beast’s gallop slowed, fell into a canter.
‘Fast trot now, sir,’ Itkovian advised. ‘We’ll drop to a walk in a hundred paces so she can stretch her neck and open full her air passages.’
‘Sorry, Itkovian,’ Gruntle said a short while later. ‘There’s no heat to my temper these days, but that seems to make it all the deadlier, I’m afraid.’
‘Trake would—’
‘No, don’t even try, friend. I’ve said it before. I don’t give a damn what Trake wants or expects of me, and the rest of you had best stop seeing me that way. Mortal Sword – I hate titles. I didn’t even like being called captain when I guarded caravans. I only used it so I could charge more.’
‘Do you intend to attempt harm upon these travellers, sir?’
‘You well know who they are.’
‘I do.’
‘I had a friend …
‘Aye, the one named Buke. I recall him. A man broken by sorrow. I once offered to take his burdens, but he refused me.’
Gruntle’s head snapped round at that. ‘You did? He did?’
Itkovian nodded. ‘Perhaps I should have been more … direct.’
‘You should have grabbed him by the throat and done it no matter what he wanted. That’s what the new Shield Anvil’s done to that one-eyed First Child of the Dead Seed, Anaster, isn’t it? And now the man rides at her side—’
‘Rides unknowing. He is naught but a shell, sir. There was naught else within him but pain. Its taking has stolen his knowledge of himself. Would you have had that as Buke’s fate as well, sir?’
The man grimaced.
Less than a third of a league remained, assuming Stonny’s claim was accurate, but the roll of the eroded beach ridges reduced the line of sight, and indeed it was the sound that the carriage made, a muted clanking riding the wind, that alerted the two men to its proximity.
They crested a ridge and had to rein in quickly to avoid colliding with the train of oxen.
Emancipor Reese was wearing a broad, smudged bandage, wrapped vertically about his head, not quite covering a swollen jaw and puffy right eye. The cat in his lap screamed at the sudden arrival of the two riders, then clawed its way up the servant’s chest, over the left shoulder, and onto the roof of the ghastly carriage, where it vanished into a fold of K’Chain Che’Malle bone and skin. Reese himself jumped in his seat, almost toppling from his perch before recovering his balance.
‘Bathtardth! Why you do tha? Hood’th b’eth!’
‘Apologies, sir,’ Itkovian said, ‘for startling you so. You are injured—’
‘In’ured? Tho. Tooth. B’oke ith. Olib pith.’
Itkovian frowned, glanced at Gruntle.
The Mortal Sword shrugged. ‘Olive pit, maybe?’
‘Aye!’ Reese nodded vigorously, then winced at the motion. ‘Wha you wanth?’
Gruntle drew a deep breath, then said, ‘The truth, Reese. Where’s Buke?’
The servant shrugged. ‘Gone.’
‘Did they—’
‘Tho! Gone! Thlown!’ He jerked his arms up and down. ‘Thlap thlap! Unnerthan?Yeth?’
Gruntle sighed, glanced away, then slowly nodded. ‘Well enough,’ he said a moment later.
The carriage door opened and Bauchelain leaned out. ‘Why have we stop— ah, the caravan captain … and the Grey Sword, I believe, but where, sir, is your uniform?’
‘I see no need—’
‘Never mind,’ Bauchelain interrupted, climbing out, ‘I wasn’t really interested in your answer. Well, gentlemen, you have business to discuss, perhaps? Indulge my rudeness, if you will, I am weary and short of temper of late, alas. Indeed, before you utter another word, I advise you not to irritate me. The next unpleasant interruption is likely to see my temper snap entirely, and that would be a truly fell thing, I assure you. Now, what would you with us?’
‘Nothing,’ Gruntle said.
The necromancer’s thin, black brows rose fractionally. ‘Nothing?’
‘I came to enquire of Buke.’
‘Buke? Who –
oh yes, him. Well, the next time you see him, tell him he is fired.’
‘I’ll do that’
No-one spoke for a moment, then Itkovian cleared his throat. ‘Sir,’ he said to Bauchelain, ‘your servant has broken a tooth and appears to be in considerable discomfort. Surely, with your arts…’
Bauchelain turned and looked up at Reese. ‘Ah, that explains the head garb. I admit I’d been wondering … a newly acquired local fashion, perhaps? But no, as it turns out. Well, Reese, it seems I must once more ask Korbal Broach to make ready for surgery – this is the third such tooth to break, yes? More olives, no doubt. If you still persist in the belief that olive pits are deadly poison, why are you so careless when eating said fruit? Ah, never mind.’
‘Tho thurgery, pleath! Tho! Pleath!’
‘What are you babbling about, man? Be quiet! Wipe that drool away – it’s unsightly. Do you think I cannot see your pain, servant? Tears have sprung from your eyes, and you are white – deathly white. And look at you shake so – not another moment must be wasted! Korbal Broach! Come out, if you will, with your black bag! Korbal!’
The wagon rocked slightly in answer.
Gruntle swung his horse round. Itkovian followed suit.
‘Until later, then, gentlemen!’ Bauchelain called out behind them. ‘Rest assured I am grateful for your advising me of my servant’s condition. As he is equally grateful, no doubt, and were he able to speak coherently I am sure he would tell you so.’
Gruntle lifted a hand in a brusque wave.
They set off to rejoin Trake’s Legion.
Neither spoke for a time, until a soft rumbling from Gruntle drew Itkovian’s attention. The Mortal Sword, he saw, was laughing.
‘What amuses you so, sir?’
‘You, Itkovian. I expect Reese will curse your concern for the rest of his days.’
‘An odd expression of gratitude that would be. Will he not be healed?’
‘Oh, yes, I am sure he will, Itkovian. But here’s something for you to ponder on, if you will. Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.’
The Malazan Empire Page 246