The Malazan Empire

by Steven Erikson

Galt was laughing. ‘Our first real scrap, Sergeant. And it’s against Malazans!’

  ‘Well,’ Balm said, ‘laughing’s better’n crying. But shut that mouth anyway.’

  As the fighting intensified at the foot of the jetty, the marines sagged down onto the cobbles or staggered off in search of water. Wiping spattered blood from his eyes, Koryk looked round, bewildered, numbed. He saw two cloaked figures standing near the plank to the Froth Wolf. The Wickan witch and her warlock brother.

  ‘Koryk of the Seti,’ Nether said. ‘Where is Bottle?’

  ‘No idea,’ he replied, squinting at the young woman. ‘Somewhere’ – he nodded towards the city behind him – ‘in there.’

  Nil said, ‘He cannot get back. Not through that horde.’

  Koryk spat onto the cobbles. ‘He’ll find a way,’ he said.

  ‘No worries about that,’ Smiles added, walking up to the half-blood with a waterskin in her hands.

  Nether spoke: ‘You are all very confident.’

  As Smiles handed Koryk the waterskin she said, ‘Your heart’s desire will be fine, is what I’m saying, Nether. He took his rat with him, didn’t he?’

  ‘His what?’

  ‘Keeps it tucked in most of the time, it’s true, but I seen it out more than once—’

  ‘Enough,’ Koryk growled under his breath.

  Smile made a face at him. ‘Spoilsport.’

  ‘You two should get back onto the ship,’ Koryk said to Nil and Nether. ‘It’s safer there – any stray arrow—’

  ‘Soldier,’ Nil cut in. ‘You fight for the Wickans and for the Khundryl Burned Tears this night. We choose to witness.’

  ‘Fine, just do it from the deck. What’s the point of all this if you drop with an arrow through the throat?’

  After a moment, the brother and sister both bowed – to Koryk and the other marines – then they turned about and made their way back up the plank.

  Gods below, I’ve never seen them bow before. To anyone.

  ‘Mind that last step…’

  Kalam moved up directly behind the Adjunct. Twenty steps remained. ‘With six left,’ the assassin murmured, ‘slow down and move to your left.’

  She nodded.

  The four moored dromons were off to one side, no guards present on the jetties. Directly ahead, at the foot of Rampart Way, stretched out a concourse. Opposite the clearing stood three imperial buildings, one a blockhouse and gaol, another a customs and tithes building and the third a solid, heavily fortified armoury for the City Watch. None of the usual guards were present, and the blockhouse was unlit.

  Seven steps from the bottom. Kalam unsheathed his long-knives beneath his rain-cape.

  The Adjunct edged to her left and hesitated.

  In a blur Kalam swept past her, leading with his otataral weapon, and launched himself into the air, down, sailing over the last six steps.

  Five figures seemed to materialize from nothing at the base of Rampart Way. One was crouched in Kalam’s path, but twisted away to avoid a crushing collision. The otataral long-knife slashed out, the edge biting deep into the Claw’s neck, dragging free to loose a jet of arterial blood.

  Landing in a crouch, Kalam parried an attack from his left twice, as the Claw closed with a dagger in each hand. Blackened iron flickered between them, the snick of blade catching blade as, pivoting on his inside leg, Kalam dropped lower, lashing out with his other leg to sweep the Claw from his feet. The killer landed hard on his left hip. Kalam locked both dagger blades hard against the hilts of his long-knives, pushed them to either side, then drove his knee down into the centre of the Claw’s chest. The sternum was punched inward with a sickening crunch, ribs to either side bowing outward. Even as he landed, Kalam threw his weight forward, over the downed man, the tip of one of his long-knives sinking deep into the Claw’s right eye socket as he passed.

  He felt a dagger-blade cut through the rain-cape on his back, then skitter along the chain beneath, and then he was out of range, shoulder dipping, rolling back into a crouch and spinning round.

  The attacker had followed, almost as quick, and Kalam grunted as the Claw slammed into him. A dagger-point plunged through chain links above his left hip and, twisting hard, he felt a shallow opening of his flesh, then the point struck more chain, and was suddenly snagged. In the midst of this movement, and as the attacker seemed to bounce back from the impact – Kalam far outweighing him, or her – another dagger descended from overhead. An upward stop-thrust impaled that arm. The dagger spilled from a spasming hand. Leaving his long-knife there, Kalam slashed down against the other arm, severing tendons below the elbow. He then dropped that weapon as well, left hand inverting as it snapped up to grasp the front of the Claw’s jerkin; his other hand closing on a handful down at the killer’s crotch – male – and Kalam heaved the figure upward, over his left shoulder, then, spinning round, he hammered the Claw headfirst onto the pavestones.

  Skull and entire head seemed to vanish within folds of hood and cloak. White matter spattered out.

  Releasing the flopping body, Kalam collected both long-knives, then turned to face the last two of the Hand.

  Both were already down. The Adjunct stood above one, her sword out and slick with blood. T’amber appeared to have closed to hand-to-hand with the other Claw, somehow breaking the man’s neck even as he plunged both daggers into her. Kalam stared as she tugged the weapons free – lower right shoulder, just beneath a clavicle, and her right waist – and flung them aside as if they were mere slivers.

  He met the young woman’s eyes, and it seemed the gold flared for a moment, before she casually turned away. ‘Stuff those holes,’ Kalam said, ‘or you’ll bleed out.’

  ‘Never mind me,’ she replied. ‘Where to, now?’

  There was anguish on the Adjunct’s face as she looked upon her lover, and it seemed she was struggling not to reach out.

  Kalam collected his other long-knife. ‘Where to now, T’amber? Ambushes set for every direct approach to Centre Docks. Let’s force them to pull up and move to intercept us. West, Adjunct, deeper into the city. We then swing south and keep going, right through Centre District, then take one of the inland bridges across to the Mouse – I know that area well – and, if we get that far, we head to the shoreline and back up north again. If necessary we can steal a fisher boat and scull our way over to the Froth Wolf.’

  ‘Presumably we are being observed right now,’ the Adjunct said.

  Kalam nodded.

  ‘And they understand that their sorcery will fail them.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Forcing them to be more…direct.’

  ‘Before too long,’ Kalam said, ‘more than one Hand will have to come at us at once. That’s when we’re in real trouble.’

  A faint smile.

  Kalam faced T’amber again. ‘We have to move fast—’

  ‘I can keep up.’

  ‘Why didn’t you use your sword on that fool?’

  ‘He was too close to the Adjunct. I got him from behind but he was skilled enough to strike anyway.’

  Damn, talk about a bad start. ‘Well, neither wound looks like much of a bleeder. We should get going.’

  As they set out, westward, the cliff-face of the promontory to their right, the Adjunct said, ‘Do most grown men bounce off when they run into you, Kalam Mekhar?’

  ‘Quick always said I was the densest man he ever knew.’

  ‘A Hand has broken cover,’ T’amber said. ‘They’re moving parallel to us.’

  Kalam glanced to his left. Seeing nothing, no-one. How does she know that? Do I doubt her? Not for a moment. ‘Are they converging on our path?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  More official buildings, and then the first of the major estates of the Lightings District. No marauding riots up here. Naurally. ‘At least we’ve got the streets to ourselves,’ he muttered. More or less.

  ‘There are but three gates leading down to Old Upper Estates,’ the Adjunct said after a moment, ‘an
d we are fast coming opposite the last of them.’

  ‘Aye, any further west and it’s all wall, an ever higher drop the farther we go. But there’s an old estate, abandoned for years and hopefully still empty. There’s a way down, and if we’re lucky the Claw don’t know about it.’

  ‘Another Hand’s just come up through the last gate,’ T’amber said. ‘They’re linking up with the other one.’

  ‘Just the two here in Lightings?’

  ‘So far.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  She glanced across at him. ‘I have a keen sense of smell, Kalam Mekhar.’

  Smell? ‘I didn’t know Claw assassins have stopped bathing.’

  ‘Not that kind of smell. Aggression, and fear.’

  ‘Fear? There’s only the three of us, for Hood’s sake!’

  ‘And one of them is you, Kalam. Even so, they all want to be the Hand that takes you down. They will compete for that honour.’

  ‘Idiots.’ He gestured ahead. ‘That one, with the high walls. I see no lights—’

  ‘The gate is ajar,’ the Adjunct said as they drew closer.

  ‘Never mind that,’ T’amber said. ‘Here they come.’

  All three spun round.

  The deadening effect of the Adjunct’s unsheathed sword was far more efficacious than that of Kalam’s long-knife, and its range was revealed as, thirty paces up the street, ten cloaked figures shimmered into existence. ‘Take cover!’ Kalam hissed, ducking down.

  Silvery quarrels flashed, barbed heads flickering in the faint moonlight as they corkscrewed in flight. Multiple impacts on the moss-stained wall behind them. Straightening, Kalam cursed to see T’amber rushing the killers.

  There’s ten of them, you fool!

  He raced forward.

  Five paces from the fast-closing Claws, T’amber drew her sword.

  There was an old saying, that for all the terror waiting in the gloved hands of an assassin, it was as nothing against a professional soldier. T’amber did not even slow down, her blade weaving to either side in a blur. Bodies sprawled in her wake, blood splashing out, knives clattering on the cobbles. A dagger hissed through the air, caught the woman on the right side of her chest, sinking deep. She ignored it – Kalam’s eyes widened as he saw a severed head tumble away from what seemed the lightest slash of T’amber’s longsword, and then he joined the fight.

  Two Claws had darted past, out of T’amber’s reach, and set off towards the Adjunct. Kalam shifted to come at them from their left. The nearer one leapt into his path, seeking to hold Kalam long enough for the other killer to close on Tavore.

  A dancing flurry of parries from the Claw had begun even before Kalam engaged with his own weapons – and he recognized that form – the Web – ‘Gods below, you fool,’ he said in a snarl as he reached both long-knives into the skein of parries, feinted with minute jabs then, breaking his timing, evaded the knife-blades as they snapped across, and neatly impaled both hands.

  The man screamed as Kalam closed in, pushing both stuck hands out to the sides, and head-butted him. Hooded head snapped back – and met the point of Kalam’s right-hand long-knife as it completed its disengage to come up behind the Claw. A grating crunch as the point drove up into the base of his brain. Even as he crumpled Kalam was stepping over him, into the wake of the last killer.

  The Adjunct watched calmly as the Claw launched himself at her. Her stop-thrust took him in the cup of his throat, between the breastbones, the heavy blade punching through windpipe, then spine, and out the back, stretching but not cutting the cloak.

  The Claw had thrown both daggers a heartbeat before spitting himself on the sword, and the Adjunct had lithely evaded both as she turned her body sideways in extending the stop-thrust.

  Kalam slowed down, turned round, to see T’amber walking back towards them.

  Eight dead Claws. Damned impressive. Even if it took a knife in the lung to do it.

  There was frothy blood trickling onto T’amber’s chin. She had pulled out the knife and more blood soaked her tunic. Yet her strides were steady.

  ‘Through the gate, then,’ Kalam said.

  They entered the courtyard. Overgrown, filled with rubbish. A fountain commanded the centre, the pool entirely sheathed in gleaming algae. Insects rose from it in a cloud that spun and whirled towards them. Kalam pointed with one weapon to the far wall. ‘That old well. There was once a natural cistern in the limestone under all of this. Some enterprising thief broke into it from below. Stole an entire fortune from the family living here. Left them destitute. This was long ago – that hoard of wealth bankrolled Kellanved’s early ventures in piracy on the lanes between here and the Napan Isles.’

  The Adjunct glanced over. ‘Kellanved was the enterprising thief?’

  ‘More likely Dancer. The estate was Mock’s family, and, accordingly, the hoard was takings from twenty years of piracy. Not long after, Kellanved usurped Mock and annexed the whole island. Birth of the Malazan Empire. Among the few who know about it, this is called the Well of Plenty.’

  A cough from T’amber, and she spat out a gout of blood.

  Kalam eyed her in the gloom. That perfect face had grown very pale. He faced the well once more. ‘I’ll go first. The drop is about two and half man-heights – if you can, use the side walls to work your way down as far as possible. Adjunct, do you hear music?’

  ‘Yes. Faint.’

  Nodding, Kalam vaulted onto the lip of the well, then worked his way down. Not just me, then. Fiddler, you’re breaking my heart.

  Four Hands, weapons out, hooded eyes scanning in every direction. Pearl stood above a body. The poor man’s head had been driven into the street, hard enough to turn it into pulp, to push the jaw and the base of the skull into the column of the neck between the shoulders, turing the spine into a coiled, splintered mess.

  That was the one thing about Kalam Mekhar that one tended to forget, or even more erroneously, disregard. The bastard’s animal strength.

  ‘Westward,’ one of his lieutenants said in a whisper. ‘Along Lightings, likely to the last gate. They will seek to circle round, pulling loose our established ambushes—’

  ‘Not all of them,’ Pearl murmured. ‘I did not for a moment believe he would attempt the direct route. In fact, he’s about to run into the bulk of my small army.’

  The lieutenant actually chuckled – Pearl faced him, stared for a long moment, then said, ‘Take two Hands and trail him. Don’t close, just get in sight every now and then. Push them onward.’

  ‘They’ll turn and ambush us, Clawmaster—’

  ‘Probably. Enjoy your evening. Now go.’

  An evil snicker would have been worse, but the chuckle was bad enough.

  Pearl drew back the left sleeve of his loose silk shirt. The head of the quarrel set in the wrist-strapped crossbow was sheathed in thick wax. Easily pulled off when the time was propitious. In the meantime, he would not risk any possible contact with the paralt smeared on the head’s edges. No, this taste is for you, Kalam.

  You’ve eliminated sorcery, after all. So, you leave me little choice, and no, I do not care about the Code.

  He rolled the sleeve back down, looked over at his two chosen Hands, his favoured, elite assassins. Not one of them a mage. Theirs was the most direct kind of talent. Tall, well-muscled, a match for Kalam’s brawn. ‘We position ourselves south of Admiral Bridge, at the edge of the Mouse.’

  One spoke: ‘You believe they will get that far, Clawmaster?’

  Pearl simply turned away. ‘Let’s go.’

  Kalam edged down the low, narrow tunnel. He could see the brush of the garden disguising the cave mouth ahead. There were broken branches among it, and the air stank of bile and blood. What’s this, then? Weapons out, he drew closer, came to the threshold.

  There had been a Hand, positioned around the tunnel entrance. Five corpses, limbs sprawled. Kalam pushed through the brush.

  They had been cut to pieces. Arms broken. Legs snapped. Blood every
where, still dripping from some low branches on the tree commanding the abandoned orchard. Two had been cleanly eviscerated, their intestines tumbled out, trailing across the leaf-littered ground like bloated worms.

  Movement behind him and he turned. The Adjunct and T’amber pushed their way into the clearing.

  ‘That was fast,’ Tavore said in a whisper.

  ‘Not me, Adjunct.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I realized that. We have friends, it seems.’

  ‘Don’t count on it,’ Kalam said. ‘This has the look of vendetta – someone or ones took out a whole lot of anger on these poor bastards. I don’t think it has anything to do with us. As you said, the Claw is a compromised organization.’

  ‘Have they turned on themselves?’

  ‘Certainly looks that way.’

  ‘Still in our favour, Kalam.’

  ‘Well,’ he muttered after a moment, ‘that’s not as important as the revelation that taking the long way round was anticipated. We’ve real trouble ahead, Adjunct.’

  ‘There are sounds,’ T’amber said, ‘from the top of the well, I think. Hands. Two.’

  ‘Fast,’ said Kalam, baring his teeth. ‘They want to flush us forward. To Hood with that. Stay here, you two.’ He set off back into the tunnel. Top of the well. Meaning you’ve got to come down…one at a time. You were impatient, fools. And now it’s going to cost you.

  Reaching the cistern, he saw the first set of moccasined feet appear, dangling from the hole in the ceiling. Kalam moved closer.

  The Claw dropped, landed lightly, and died with a knife-blade through an eye socket. Kalam tugged his weapon free and pulled the slumping corpse to one side. Looking up, he waited for the next one.

  Then he heard, echoing down, a voice.

  Gathered round the well, the two Hands hesitated, looking down into the darkness. ‘Lieutenant said he’d call up,’ one of them hissed. ‘I don’t hear a thing down there.’

  There then came a faint call, three fast clicks. A recognized signal. The assassins relaxed. ‘Was checking out the entrance, I guess – Kalam must have got past the ambush in the orchard.’

  ‘They say he’s the meanest Claw there ever was. Not even Dancer wanted to mess with him.’