Perhaps it was the rumours that had drawn Tavore out here to the Fall, but already Gamet regretted her decision to bring him along. This place showed him nothing he wanted to see. Nor, he suspected, was the Adjunct well pleased with what they had found.
Red-stained braids, woven into chains, draped across the summit, and coiled around the twin stumps of the cross that had once stood there. Dog skulls crowded with indecipherable hieroglyphs looked out along the crest through empty sockets. Crow feathers dangled from upright-thrust broken arrow shafts. Ragged banners lay pinned to the ground on which were painted various representations of a broken Wickan long-knife. Icons, fetishes, a mass of detritus to mark the death of a single man.
And all of it was aswarm in ants. Like mindless keepers of this now hallowed ground.
The three riders sat in their saddles in silence.
Finally, after a long while, Tavore spoke. ‘Tene Baralta.’ Inflectionless.
‘Aye, Adjunct?’
‘Who—who is responsible for…for all of this? Malazans from Aren? Your Red Blades?’
Tene Baralta did not immediately reply. Instead, he dismounted and strode forward, his eyes on the ground. Near one of the dog skulls he halted and crouched down. ‘Adjunct, these skulls—the runes on them are Khundryl.’ He pointed towards the wooden stumps. ‘The woven chains, Kherahn Dhobri.’ A gesture to the slope. ‘The banners…unknown, possibly Bhilard. Crow feathers? The beads at their stems are Semk.’
‘Semk!’ Gamet could not keep the disbelief from his voice. ‘From the other side of Vathar River! Tene, you must be in error…’
The large warrior shrugged. He straightened and gestured towards the rumpled hills directly north of them. ‘The pilgrims only come at night—unseen, which is how they will have it. They’re hiding out there, even now. Waiting for night.’
Tavore cleared her throat. ‘Semk. Bhilard—these tribes fought against him. And now they come to worship. How is this? Explain, please, Tene Baralta.’
‘I cannot, Adjunct.’ He eyed her, then added, ‘But, from what I understand, this is…modest, compared with what lines the Aren Way.’
There was silence once more, though Gamet did not need to hear her speak to know Tavore’s thoughts.
This—this is the path we now take. We must walk, step by step, the legacy. We? No. Tavore. Alone. ‘This is no longer Coltaine’s war!’ she said to Temul. But it seems it remains just that. And she now realizes, down in the depths of her soul, that she will stride that man’s shadow…all the way to Raraku.
‘You will both leave me now,’ the Adjunct said. ‘I shall rejoin you on the Aren Way.’
Gamet hesitated, then said, ‘Adjunct, the Crow Clan still claim the right to ride at the forefront. They will not accept Temul as their commander.’
‘I will see to their disposition,’ she replied. ‘For now, go.’
He watched Tene Baralta swing back onto his horse. They exchanged a glance, then both wheeled their mounts and set off at a canter along the track leading to the west gate.
Gamet scanned the rock-studded ground rolling past beneath his horse’s hoofs. This was where the historian Duiker drove the refugees towards the city—this very sweep of empty ground. Where, at the last, that old man drew rein on his weary, loyal mare—the mare that Temul now rode—and watched as the last of his charge was helped through the gate.
Whereupon, it was said, he finally rode into the city.
Gamet wondered what had gone through the man’s mind at that moment. Knowing that Coltaine and the remnants of the Seventh were still out there, fighting their desperate rearguard action. Knowing that they had achieved the impossible.
Duiker had delivered the refugees.
Only to end up staked to a tree. It was beyond him, Gamet realized, to comprehend the depth of that betrayal.
A body never recovered. No bones laid to rest.
‘There is so much,’ Tene Baralta rumbled at Gamet’s side.
‘So much?’
‘To give answer to, Gamet. Indeed, it takes words from the throat, yet the silence it leaves behind—that silence screams.’
Discomforted by Tene’s admission, Gamet said nothing.
‘Pray remind me,’ the Red Blade went on, ‘that Tavore is equal to this task.’
Is that even possible? ‘She is.’ She must be. Else we are lost.
‘One day, Gamet, you shall have to tell me what she has done, to earn such loyalty as you display.’
Gods, what answer to make to that? Damn you, Tene, can you not see the truth before you? She has done…nothing. I beg you. Leave an old man to his faith.
‘Wish whatever you like,’ Gesler growled, ‘but faith is for fools.’
Strings cleared the dust from his throat and spat onto the side of the track. Their pace was torturously slow, the three squads trailing the wagon loaded down with their supplies. ‘What’s your point?’ he asked the sergeant beside him. ‘A soldier knows but one truth, and that truth is, without faith, you are already as good as dead. Faith in the soldier at your side. But even more important—and no matter how delusional it is in truth—there is the faith that you cannot be killed. Those two and those two alone—they are the legs holding up every army.’
The amber-skinned man grunted, then waved at the nearest of the trees lining Aren Way. ‘Look there and tell me what you see—no, not those Hood-damned fetishes—but what’s still visible under all that mess. The spike holes, the dark stains of bile and blood. Ask the ghost of the soldier who was on that tree—ask that soldier about faith.’
‘A faith betrayed does not destroy the notion of faith itself,’ Strings retorted. ‘In fact, it does the very opposite—’
‘Maybe for you, but there are some things you can’t step around with words and lofty ideals, Fid. And that comes down to who is in that vanguard somewhere up ahead. The Adjunct. Who just lost an argument with that pack of hoary Wickans. You’ve been lucky—you had Whiskeyjack, and Dujek. Do you know who my last commander was—before I was sentenced to the coastal guard? Korbolo Dom. I’d swear that man had a shrine to Whiskeyjack in his tent—but not the Whiskeyjack you know. Korbolo saw him differently. Unfulfilled potential, that’s what he saw.’
Strings glanced over at Gesler. Stormy and Tarr were walking in step behind the two sergeants, close enough to hear, though neither had ventured a comment or opinion. ‘Unfulfilled potential? What in Beru’s name are you talking about?’
‘Not me. Korbolo Dom. “If only the bastard had been hard enough,” he used to say, “he could’ve taken the damned throne. Should’ve.” As far as Dom is concerned, Whiskeyjack betrayed him, betrayed us all—and that’s something that renegade Napan won’t forgive.’
‘Too bad for him,’ Strings growled, ‘since there’s a good chance the Empress will send the whole Genabackan army over in time for the final battle. Dom can take his complaints to Whiskeyjack himself.’
‘A pleasant thought,’ Gesler laughed. ‘But my point was, you’ve had commanders worthy of the faith you put in them. Most of the rest of us didn’t have that luxury. So we got a different feeling about it all. That’s it, that’s all I was trying to say.’
The Aren Way marched past on both sides. Transformed into a vast, open-air temple, each tree cluttered with fetishes, cloths braided into chains, figures painted on the rough bark to approximate the soldiers who had once writhed there on spikes driven in by Korbolo Dom’s warriors. Most of the soldiers ahead and behind Strings walked in silence. Despite the vast, empty expanse of blue sky overhead, the road was oppressive.
There had been talk of cutting the trees down, but one of the Adjunct’s first commands upon arriving in Aren had been to forbid it. Strings wondered if she now regretted her decision.
His gaze travelled up to one of the Fourteenth’s new standards, barely visible through clouds of roiling dust up ahead. She had understood the whole thing with the finger bones well enough, understood the turning of the omen. The new standard well attested
to that. A grimy, thin-limbed figure holding a bone aloft, the details in shades of dun colours that were barely visible on the yellow ochre field, the border a woven braid of the imperial magenta and dark grey. A defiant figure standing before a sandstorm. That the standard could as easily apply to Sha’ik’s army of the Apocalypse was a curious coincidence. As if Tavore and Sha’ik—the two armies, the forces in opposition—are in some way mirrored reflections of the other.
There were many strange…occurrences in all this, nibbling and squirming beneath Strings’s skin like bot-fly larvae, and it seemed indeed that he was feeling strangely fevered throughout the day. Strains of a barely heard song rose up from the depths of his mind on occasion, a haunting song that made his flesh prickle. And stranger still, the song was entirely unfamiliar.
Mirrored reflections. Perhaps not just Tavore and Sha’ik. What of Tavore and Coltaine? Here we are, reversing the path on that blood-soaked road. And it was that road that proved Coltaine to most of those he led. Will we see the same with our journey? How will we see Tavore the day we stand before the Whirlwind? And what of my own return? To Raraku, the desert that saw me destroyed only to rise once more, mysteriously renewed—a renewal that persists, since for an old man I neither look nor feel old. And so it remains for all of us Bridgeburners, as if Raraku stole something of our mortality, and replaced it with…with something else.
He glanced back to check on his squad. None were lagging, which was a good sign. He doubted any of them were in the shape required for the journey they were now on. The early days would prove the most difficult, before marching in full armour and weapons became second nature—not that it would ever prove a comfortable second nature—this land was murderously hot and dry, and the handful of minor healers in each of the companies would recall this march as a seemingly endless nightmare of fending off heat prostration and dehydration.
There was no way yet to measure the worth of his squad. Koryk certainly had the look, the nature, of the mailed fist that every squad needed. And the stubborn set to Tarr’s blockish features hinted at a will not easily turned aside. There was something about the lass, Smiles, that reminded Strings all too much of Sorry—the remorseless chill of her eyes belonged to those of a murderer, and he wondered at her past. Bottle had all the diffident bluster of a young mage, probably one versed in a handful of spells from some minor warren. The last soldier in his squad, of course, the sergeant had no worries about. He’d known men like Cuttle all his life. A burlier, more miserable version of Hedge. Having Cuttle there was like…coming home.
The testing would come, and it would probably be brutal, but it would temper those who survived.
They were emerging from the Aren Way, and Gesler gestured to the last tree on their left. ‘That’s where we found him,’ he said in a low tone.
‘Who?’
‘Duiker. We didn’t let on, since the lad—Truth—was so hopeful. Next time we came out, though, the historian’s body was gone. Stolen. You’ve seen the markets in Aren—the withered pieces of flesh the hawkers claim belonged to Coltaine, or Bult, or Duiker. The broken long-knives, the scraps of feathered cape…’
Strings was thoughtful for a moment, then he sighed. ‘I saw Duiker but once, and that at a distance. Just a soldier the Emperor decided was worth schooling.’
‘A soldier indeed. He stood on the front line with all the others. A crusty old bastard with his short-sword and shield.’
‘Clearly, something about him caught Coltaine’s eye—after all, Duiker was the one Coltaine chose to lead the refugees.’
‘I’d guess it wasn’t Duiker’s soldiering that decided Coltaine, Strings. It was that he was the Imperial Historian. He wanted the tale to be told, and told right.’
‘Well, it’s turned out that Coltaine told his own tale—he didn’t need a historian, did he?’
Gesler shrugged. ‘As you say. We weren’t in their company long, just long enough to take on a shipload of wounded. I talked a bit with Duiker, and Captain Lull. And then Coltaine broke his hand punching me in the face—’
‘He what?’ Strings laughed. ‘No doubt you deserved it—’
Stormy spoke behind them. ‘Broke his hand, aye, Gesler. And your nose, too.’
‘My nose has been broke so many times it does it on instinct,’ the sergeant replied. ‘It wasn’t much of a punch.’
Stormy snorted. ‘He dropped you to the ground like a sack of turnips! That punch rivalled Urko’s, the time he—’
‘Not even close,’ Gesler drawled. ‘I once saw Urko punch down the side of a mudbrick house. Three blows, no more than four, anyway, and the whole thing toppled in a cloud of dust. That Napan bastard could punch.’
‘And that’s important to you?’ Strings asked.
Gesler’s nod was serious. ‘The only way any commander will ever earn my respect, Fid.’
‘Planning on testing the Adjunct soon?’
‘Maybe. Of course, I’ll make allowances, she being nobleborn and all.’
Once beyond Aren Way’s battered gate and the abandoned ruins of a small village, they could now see the Seti and Wickan outriders on their flanks—a comforting sight to Strings. The raiding and sniping could begin at any time, now that the army had left the walls of Aren behind. Most of the tribes had, if the rumours were true, conveniently forgotten the truces they had won from the Malazan Empire. The old ways did naught but sleep restless beneath the surface of such peoples.
The landscape ahead and to either side was sun-blasted and broken, a place where even wild goats grew lean and listless. The mounded, flat-topped heaps of rubble that marked long-dead cities were visible on every horizon. Ancient raised roads, now mostly dismantled, stitched the rugged hillsides and ridges.
Strings wiped sweat from his brow. ‘Green as we are, it’s about time she called—’
Horns sounded along the massive train’s length. Motion ceased, and the shouts of the water crews rose into the dusty air as they scrambled for the barrels. Strings swung about and studied his squad—they were already on the ground, sitting or sprawled, their long-sleeved undershirts darkened with sweat.
Among Gesler’s and Borduke’s squads, the reaction to the rest-halt had been identical, and Borduke’s mage, Balgrid—slightly overweight and clearly unused to the armour he was wearing—looked pale and shivering. That squad’s healer, a quiet, small man named Lutes, was already moving towards him.
‘A Seti summer,’ Koryk said, offering Strings a carnivorous smile. ‘When the grasslands are driven to dust by the herds, when the earth underfoot clicks like breaking metal.’
‘Hood take you,’ Smiles snapped. ‘This land’s full of dead things for a reason.’
‘Aye,’ the Seti half-blood replied, ‘only the tough survive. There are tribes aplenty out there—they’ve left enough sign in passing.’
‘You have seen that, have you?’ Strings said. ‘Good. You’re now the squad’s scout.’
Koryk’s white grin broadened. ‘If you insist, Sergeant.’
‘Unless it’s night,’ Strings added. ‘Then it’ll be Smiles. And Bottle, assuming his warren is suitable.’
Bottle scowled, then nodded. ‘Well enough, Sergeant.’
‘So what’s Cuttle’s role, then?’ Smiles demanded. ‘Lying around like a beached porpoise?’
Beached porpoise? Grew up by the sea, did you? Strings glanced over at the veteran soldier. The man was asleep. I used to do that, back in the days when nothing was expected of me, when I wasn’t in charge of a damned thing. I miss those days. ‘Cuttle’s task,’ Strings replied, ‘is keeping the rest of you alive when I’m not close by.’
‘Then why isn’t he the corporal?’ Smiles wanted to know, a belligerent set to her petite features.
‘Because he’s a sapper, and you don’t want a sapper for a corporal, lass.’ Of course, I’m a sapper, too. Best keep that to myself…
Three soldiers from the company’s infantry arrived with waterskins.
‘Drink it down
slow,’ Strings instructed. Gesler caught his eye from a few paces away, near the wagon, and Strings headed over. Borduke joined them.
‘Well, this is curious,’ Gesler muttered. ‘Borduke’s sickly mage—his warren’s Meanas. And my mage is Tavos Pond, and he’s the same. Now, Strings, your lad, Bottle…’
‘I’m not sure yet.’
‘He’s also Meanas,’ Borduke growled, pulling at his beard in a habitual gesture Strings knew would come to irritate him. ‘Balgrid’s confirmed it. They’re all Meanas.’
‘Like I said.’ Gesler sighed. ‘Curious.’
‘That could be put to use,’ Strings said. ‘Get all three of them working on rituals—illusions are damned useful, when done right. Quick Ben could pull a few—the key is in the details. We should drag them all together tonight—’
‘Ah,’ said a voice from beyond the wagon, and Lieutenant Ranal strode into view, ‘all my sergeants together in one place. Convenient.’
‘Come to eat dust with the rest of us?’ Gesler asked. ‘Damned generous of you.’
‘Don’t think I haven’t heard about you,’ Ranal sneered.
‘Had it been my choice, you’d be one of the lads carrying those waterskins, Gesler—’
‘You’d go thirsty if I was,’ the sergeant replied.
Ranal’s face darkened. ‘Captain Keneb wants to know if there’s any mages in your squads. The Adjunct needs a tally of what’s available.’
‘None—’
‘Three,’ Strings interrupted, ignoring Gesler’s glare. ‘All minor, as would be expected. Tell the captain we’ll be good for covert actions.’
‘Keep your opinions to yourself, Strings. Three, you said. Very well.’ He wheeled about and marched off.
Gesler rounded on Strings. ‘We could lose those mages—’
‘We won’t. Go easy on the lieutenant, Gesler, at least for now. The lad knows nothing of being an officer in the field. Imagine, telling sergeants to keep their opinions quiet. With Oponn’s luck, Keneb will explain a few things to the lieutenant, eventually.’
‘Assuming Keneb’s any better,’ Borduke muttered. He combed his beard. ‘Rumour has it he was the only one of his company to survive. And you know what that likely means.’
The Malazan Empire Page 317