The Malazan Empire

by Steven Erikson

  You can see me. The realization stunned him. And all at once he could feel something—my own body—and with it jarring pain in his hands, the ache of abuse. He could taste his own sweat, the acrid exhaustion of his muscles. And then it was gone.

  He cried out.

  Help me!

  Sulkit’s reptilian eyes blinked again, and then the drone set off, quickly crossing the room and vanishing down the ramp that led to the domed carapace—the chamber that housed this city’s mind.

  Taxilian barked a laugh. ‘Follow it!’ He hurried after the K’Chain Che’Malle. Breath fell in behind him.

  Once the three were gone, Asane ran to Last and he took her in his arms.

  Rautos, Sheb and Nappet arrived. ‘We got the door open,’ said Sheb, his voice overloud. ‘It just slid to one side. It leads outside, to a balcony—gods, we’re high up!’

  ‘Never mind that,’ growled Nappet. ‘We saw someone, way out on the plain. Walking. Seems we’ve found another wanderer.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Rautos, ‘maybe he’ll know.’

  ‘Know what?’ snapped Sheb, baring his teeth.

  Rautos gestured helplessly.

  Nappet was glaring round, hefting the sledge in his hands. ‘So where’s the fucking demon?’

  ‘It means no harm,’ said Last.

  ‘Too bad for it.’

  ‘Don’t hurt it, Nappet.’

  Nappet advanced on Last. ‘Look at the stupid farmer—found an animal to pet, did you? She’s not much—Breath looks a damned sight better.’

  ‘The demon isn’t even armed,’ said Last.

  ‘Then it’s stupid. Because if I was it, I’d be swinging the biggest damned axe I could find. I’d start by killing you and that hag you’re holding. Then fat, useless Rautos there, with the stupid questions.’

  ‘The first one it’d kill would be you, Nappet,’ laughed Sheb.

  ‘Because I’m the most dangerous one here, aye, it’d try. But I’d smash its skull in.’

  ‘Not the most dangerous,’ corrected Sheb, ‘just the stupidest. It’d kill you out of pity.’

  ‘Let’s go and prepare the meal,’ Last said to Asane, still guarding her with one thick, muscled arm. ‘Sorry, Nappet, there’s not enough for you.’

  The man stepped closer. ‘Try and stop me—’

  Last spun. His fist hammered into Nappet’s face, shattering the man’s nose. In a welter of blood he reeled back. Teeth bounced on the floor. The sledge fell from his hands. After a moment he fell down, and then curled up, covering his broken face.

  The others stared at Last.

  Then Sheb laughed, but it was a weak laugh.

  ‘Come on,’ said Last to Asane.

  They left the chamber.

  After a moment, Sheb said, ‘I’m heading back up to the balcony.’

  Rautos went to his pack and rummaged within it until he found some rags and a flask. He then went over to crouch, grunting, beside Nappet. ‘Let’s see what we can do here, Nappet.’

  Betrayal could lie dead, a cold heap of ashes, only to blaze alight in an instant. What drove me to such slaughter? They were kin. Companions. Loved ones. How could I have done that to them? My wife, she wanted to hurt me—why? What had I done? Gorim’s sister? That was nothing. Meaningless. Not worth all the screaming, she had to have seen that.

  Hurting me like she did, but I won’t ever forget the look in her eyes—her face—when I took her life. And I’ll never understand why she looked like the one betrayed. Not me. Gorim’s sister, that wasn’t anything to do with her. I wasn’t out to hurt her. It just happened. But what she did, that was like a knife stabbed into my heart.

  She had to know I wasn’t the kind of man to let that pass. I got my pride. And that’s why they all had to die, all of them who knew and laughed behind my back. I needed to deliver a lesson, but then, after it was all done, why, there was no one left to heed it. Just me, which didn’t work, because it made it into a different lesson. Didn’t it?

  The dragon waits on the plain. It doesn’t even blink. It did, once, and everything disappeared. Everything and everyone. It won’t ever do that again.

  You blink, you lose that time for ever. You can’t even be sure how long that blink lasted. A moment, a thousand years. You can’t even know for sure that what you see now is the same as what you saw before. You can’t. You think it is. You tell yourself that, convince yourself of that. Just a continuation of everything you knew before. What you see is still there. That’s what you tell yourself. That’s the game of reassurance your mind plays. To keep things sane.

  But think on that one blink—you’ve all known it—when all that you thought was real suddenly changes. From one side of the blink to the other side. It comes with bad news. It comes with soul-plummeting horror and grief. How long was that blink?

  Gods below, it was fucking eternity.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Turn this dark maddening charge

  All you I once knew snagged like moths

  In the still web of younger days

  Rise up from the fresh white foam

  In the face of my seaward plunge

  Howl against my wild run and these wild

  Blazing eyes—but I hear the call

  Of how life once had been and such heat

  In the crushed chirr of locusts rubbing

  The high grasses of a child’s road

  And the summer was unending

  The days refused to close and I played

  Savage and warrior, the heroic nail

  Upon which worlds pitched and wobbled

  Blue as newborn iron and these salt-winds

  Were yet to blow and sink corrosive teeth

  Into my stolid spine and my stiffened ribs

  That could take the golden weight

  Of a thousand destinies

  Where are you now, my unlined faces

  On those rich sighing summers

  When we gods ruled feral the wilding

  World? Hollow husks turning on

  Threads of tired silk so lost in my wake,

  And you that run with me in the blind

  Stampede—this charge we cannot turn

  And the sea awaiting us waits with its

  Promise of dissolution, the fraying of

  Youthful days, the broken nails, the sagging

  Ribs—the summers drifting away and away

  And forever away.

  BROKEN NAIL’S LAMENT

  FISHER

  Someone was screaming in agony, but that was a sound warleader Gall had grown used to. Eyes stinging in the drifting smoke, he swung his horse round on the dirt track and unleashed a stream of curses. At least three raids were swarming out from the village in the valley, lances held high, grisly trophies bobbing and weaving. ‘Coltaine take those fools and crush them under his heel! Jarabb—ride down to that commander. He’s to form up his troop and resume scouting to the south—no more attacks—tell the fool, I’ll have his loot, his wives and his daughters, all of it, if he disobeys me again.’

  Jarabb was squinting. ‘That is Shelemasa, Warleader.’

  ‘Fine. Her husband and her sons—I’ll take them as slaves and then sell them to a D’ras. Bult’s broken nose, she needs better control of her warriors!’

  ‘They’re just following her lead,’ Jarabb said. ‘She’s worse than a rabid she-wolf.’

  ‘Stop chewing my ear,’ Gall said, wanting to pull a foot out of the stirrup and drive it into the man’s chest—too familiar of late, too smug, too many Hood-damned words and too many knowing looks. After Shelemasa was dealt with, he’d send the pup yelping and turn a blind eye to all the wounded looks sure to follow.

  Jarabb tried a smile which faltered as Gall’s scowl deepened. A moment later the young Tear Runner kicked his horse into motion and rode hard for the shouting, yipping raids.

  Above the sickly smears of smoke the sky was cloudless, a canopy of saturated blue and a baleful sun that seemed to boil in the sky. Flocks of
long-tailed birds swooped and cut in erratic patterns, too terrified to land as Khundryl warriors swarmed the ground in all directions. Fat, finger-long locusts crawled through the ruined fields.

  The advance scout troop was returning from up the road, and Gall was pleased to see their disciplined, collected canter, lances shod and upright. Which officer was that one? Making out the leather-wound hoop dangling from the man’s weapon, he knew who it was. Vedith, who had crushed a town garrison early on in the campaign. Heavy losses to his raid, but then, hardly surprising. Young, in that stupid, foolhardy way, but worth taking note of—since he clearly had firm command of his warriors.

  A gesture while they were still some distance away halted all the riders behind Vedith, who then rode up to Gall and reined in. ‘Warleader. A Bolkando army awaits us, two leagues distant. Ten thousand, two full legions, with a supply camp crawling with three times that number. Every stand of trees within a league of them has been cut down. I’d wager they’ve been in place for three or four days.’

  ‘Stupid Bolkando. What value fielding an army that crawls like a bhederin with its legs cut off? We could dance round it and strike straight for the capital. I could drag that King off his throne and plant myself in it sloppy as a drunk, and that would be that.’ He snorted. ‘Generals and commanders understand nothing. They think a battle answers everything, like fists in an alley. Coltaine knew better—war is the means, not the end—the goal is not to wage slaughter—it is to achieve domination in the bargaining that follows.’

  Another scout was riding down from the north, her horse’s hoofs kicking up clods of dirt from the trampled plough-furrows. Hares scattered from her path as she cut through the trampled crops. Gall squinted at her for a moment, and then shifted round in his saddle to glare southward. Yes, there, another rider, in foaming gallop, shouting as he wove through Shelemasa’s whooping mob. The Warleader grunted.

  Vedith had taken note of both riders. ‘We are flanked,’ he said.

  ‘What of it?’ Gall asked, eyes narrowing once more on this young, clever warrior.

  The man shrugged. ‘Even should a fourth element march up our backsides, Warleader, we can slip through the gaps—they’re all on foot, after all.’

  ‘Like a slink between the claws of a hawk. But nothing here can even hope to pluck our tail. Vedith, I give you command of a thousand—yes, fifty raids. Take the north army—they’ll be on the march, dog-tired and choking on dust, likely in column. Give them no time. Sweep and cut, leave them in disarray, and then ride on to their baggage train. Take everything you can carry and burn the rest. Do not lose control of your warriors. Just cut off the enemy’s toes and leave them there, am I understood?’

  Grinning, Vedith nodded. ‘I would hear from that scout,’ he said after a moment.

  ‘Of course you would.’

  Gall saw that Jarabb had caught Shelemasa and both were now riding in the wake of the south scout. He spat to get the taste of the smoke out of his mouth. ‘Duiker’s eyes, what a sorry mess. No one ever learns, do they?’

  ‘Warleader?’

  ‘Would the Bolkando have been content if we had treated them as badly as they treated us? No. Of course not. So, how in their minds did they justify such abuse?’

  ‘They thought they could get away with it.’

  Gall nodded. ‘Do you see the flaw in that thinking, warrior?’

  ‘It’s not hard, Warleader.’

  ‘Have you noticed that it’s the ones who think themselves so very clever that are the stupidest of the lot?’ He tilted in his saddle and loosed a loud, gassy fart. ‘Gods below, the spices they use round here have raised a typhoon in my bowels.’

  The scout from the north arrived, the sweat on her face and forearms coated in dust. ‘Warleader!’

  Gall unslung his own waterskin and tossed it to her. ‘How many and how far away?’

  She paused to drink down a few mouthfuls, and then said above the heavy blows of her horse’s breath, ‘Perhaps two thousand, half of them levies, lightly armoured and ill-equipped. Two leagues away, in column on a too-narrow road.’

  ‘Baggage train?’

  She smiled through all the grit. ‘Not in the middle and not flanked, Warleader. The rearguard’s about three hundred, mixed infantry—looks like the ones with the worst blisters on their feet.’

  ‘And they saw you?’

  ‘No, Warleader, I don’t think so. Their mounted scouts clung close, on the flat farmland to either side of the track. They know there’s raids out in the countryside and don’t want to get stung.’

  ‘Very good. Change mounts and get yourself ready to lead Vedith and his wing to them.’

  Her dark eyes flicked to Vedith in open appraisal.

  ‘Something wrong?’ Gall asked.

  ‘No, Warleader.’

  ‘But he’s young, isn’t he?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Dismissed,’ Gall said.

  The scout tossed the waterskin back and then rode off.

  Gall and Vedith now awaited the riders from the south.

  Vedith twisted to ease his back, and then said, ‘Warleader, who will lead the force against the southern jaw of this trap?’

  ‘Shelemasa.’

  Seeing the young warrior’s brows lift, Gall said, ‘She needs her chance to mend her reputation—or do you question my generosity?’

  ‘I would not think to do that—’

  ‘You should, Vedith. That’s what the Malazans have taught us, if they’ve taught us anything. A smith’s hammer in the hand, or a sword—it’s all business, and each and every one of us is in it. The side with the most people using their brains is the side that wins.’

  ‘Unless they are betrayed.’

  Gall grimaced. ‘Even then, Vedith, the crows—’

  ‘—give answer,’ Vedith finished. And both men made the gesture of the black wing, silently honouring Coltaine’s name, his deeds and his resolute stand against the worst that humans could do.

  A moment later, Gall swung his horse round to face the scout riding in from the south, and the two warriors pelting to catch up behind him. ‘Shit of the Foolish Dog, look at those two.’

  ‘Are you done with me, Warleader?’

  ‘Yes. Go collect your raids.’ And he leaned out one more time to make wind. ‘Gods below.’

  Still stinging from the Warleader’s tirade, Shelemasa rode hard at the head of her wing. Shouts from behind her measured out the raid sergeants struggling to collect their warriors as the ground grew ever more uneven. Deep furrows scarred the stony hills, and many of those hills had been gouged out—the Bolkando had been mining here, for what Shelemasa had no idea. They skirted steep-sided pits half-filled with tepid water mottled with algae blooms, narrow edges thick with reeds and rushes. Bucket winches slumped above overgrown trenches, their wooden frames grey and bowing and strangled in vines. Hummingbirds darted above the lush crimson flowers dangling from those vines, and everywhere iridescent six-winged insects spun and whirled.

  She hated this place. The cruel colours made her think of poisons—after all, on the Khundryl Odhan it was the brightest snakes and lizards that were the deadliest. She had seen a jet-black, purple-eyed spider as big as her damned foot only the day before. It had been eating a hare. Nekeh had woken to find the skin of one leg, hip to ankle, completely peeled away by huge amber ants—she hadn’t felt a thing, and now she was raving with fever in the loot train. She’d heard that someone had smelled a flower only to have his nose rot off. No, they needed to be done with this, all of it. Marching with the Bonehunters was all very well, but the Adjunct wasn’t Coltaine, was she? She wasn’t Bult either, not even Duiker.

  Shelemasa had heard about the goring the marines had suffered during the invasion. Like a desert cat thrown into a pit of starving wolves, if the tales were accurate. It was no wonder they’d been squatting in the capital for so long. The Adjunct had Mincer’s luck, that she did, and Shelemasa wanted no part of it.

  They were co
ming up out of the mining works, and to the south the land levelled out in a floodplain, broken up by blockish stands of bamboo bordered by water-filled ditches and raised tracks. Beyond this ran another row of serried hills, these ones flat-topped and fortified by stone-walled redoubts. Between the fortifications a Bolkando army was forming up, but in obvious disorganization. They’d expected to be one of the trap’s jaws, arriving upon a battle already engaged, the Khundryl muzzle to muzzle with the main force. They’d been planning on driving into an exposed flank.

  For all that, she could see they’d be hard to dislodge from those hills, especially with the enfilading forts. Even worse, she was outnumbered by at least two to one.

  Shelemasa slowed her horse, and then reined in on the edge of the bamboo plantation. She waited for her officers to close on her.

  Jarabb—who had been verbally flayed almost as fiercely as Shelemasa—was the first to arrive. ‘Commander, we won’t knock them off that, will we?’

  Damned puffed-up messenger-boy. ‘When did you last ride to battle?’

  She saw him flinch.

  ‘If you were my son,’ she said, ‘I would’ve dragged you out of the women’s huts long ago. I’ve got no problem with you wearing whatever it is you wear under that armour, it’s the fact that Gall cast a soft eye on you, Jarabb, and that’s not served you well. We are at war, you simpering coodle-ape.’ She turned as her six sub-wing captains rode up. ‘Hanab,’ she called to one, a veteran warrior whose bronze helm was a stylized crow’s head, ‘tell me what you see?’

  ‘An old border is what I see,’ the man said. ‘But the forts got dismantled everywhere but on those tels there. So long as the army stays where they are, they’re stuck like a knuckle under a rug. All we need to do is keep them put.’

  Shelemasa looked to another captain, a tall, hunch-shouldered man with a vulpine face. ‘And how, Kastra, do we do that?’