The Malazan Empire

by Steven Erikson

  She snorted. Breath, that was a good one.

  Her horse was reluctant this morning. Not enough water, not enough forage, hadn’t crapped or pissed in a day and a night. Wouldn’t last much longer, she suspected, unless her companions could conjure up a spring and a heap of hay or a bag or two of oats. Could they do things like that? She had no idea.

  ‘Be serious, woman. They looked as if a sleeping dragon had rolled over them. If they could magic stuff out of nowhere, well, they’d have done something by now.’ She was hungry and thirsty too, and if it came to it she’d slit her horse’s neck and feast until her belly exploded. ‘Put that back together, will you? Thanks.’

  Not far now. By her reckoning, she’d be on the Bonehunters’ trail before noon, and by dusk she’d have caught up with them – no army that size could move very quickly. They were carrying enough supplies to feed a decent-sized town for half a year. She glanced northward, something she found she was doing rather often of late. No surprise in that impulse, however. It wasn’t every day that a mountain grew up out of nowhere in the course of a single day and night, and what a storm accompanied its birth! She thought to hitch to one side for a spit or two, to punctuate the sardonic wonder she’d just chewed on. But spit was worth keeping.

  ‘Hold back one throatful,’ her mother used to say, ‘for Hood’s own face.’ Bless her, the deranged fat cow. She must have given the ragged reaper a bubbly bath the day her time came, a hair-wash, a cave mouth’s spring run-off of black, stinking phlegm just gushing out, aye. Big women had a way, didn’t they? Especially after their fourth or fifth decade, when all their opinions had turned to stone and chipped flinty enough to draw blood with a single glance or sneer.

  She’d moved like a tree, her mother had, and just as shocking to see, too. After all, trees don’t walk much, not on a sober night, just like the earth didn’t move unless Burn was pitching or the man was better than he knew (and how rare was that?). Loomed, old Ma did, like midnight thunder. Death was a crowded chamber for women like her, and the crowd was the kind that parted with her first step into the room: a miracle.

  Masan Gilani wiped at her face – no sweat left. Bad news, especially this early in the morning. ‘I wanted to be big, Ma. I wanted to reach that ripe old age. Fifty, aye. Five bitching, rutting, terror-inspiring decades. I wanted to loom. Thunder in my eyes, thunder in my voice, a thing of great weights and inexorable masses. It ain’t fair, me withering away out here. Dal Hon, do you miss me?

  ‘The day I set foot on that grassy sward, the day I shoo the first mob of flies from my lips and nostrils and eyes, why, that’s the day all will be right with the world once again. No, don’t leave me to die here, Dal Hon. It ain’t fair.’

  She coughed, squinted ahead. Something of a mess up there, those two rises, the valley sprawled in between. Holes in the ground. Craters? The slopes seemed to be swarming. She blinked, wondering if she was imagining that. Deprivation played nasty games, after all. Swarming – it was swarming all right. Rats? No. ‘Orthen.’

  A field of battle. She caught the gleam of picked bones, took note of ashy mounds on the far ridge, from pyres, no doubt. Sound practice, burning the dead, she knew. Kept disease to a minimum. She kicked her horse into a heavy canter. ‘I know, I know, not for long, sweetie.’

  The dust devils whirled out past her now, spinning towards a ridge overlooking the valley.

  Masan Gilani rode after them, to the top of the crest. There she reined in, scanning the wreckage filling the valley, and then the gaping entrenchments slashing across the opposite ridge, beyond which rose the humps of burned bones. Dread slowly seeped in, stealing all the day’s heat from her bones.

  The T’lan Imass of the Unbound solidified in a rough line on her right, also studying the scene. Their sudden appearance after so many days of dust was strangely comforting to Masan Gilani. She’d only had her horse for company for far too long now. ‘Not that I’ll kiss any of you,’ she said.

  Heads turned to regard her. None spoke.

  Thank Hood for that. ‘My horse is dying,’ she announced. ‘And whatever happened here happened to my Bonehunters and it doesn’t look good. So,’ she added, now glaring at the five undead warriors, ‘if you have any good news to tell me, or, gods below, any explanation at all, I really might kiss you.’

  The one named Beroke said, ‘We can answer your horse’s plight, human.’

  ‘Good,’ she snapped, dismounting. ‘Get to it. And a little water and grub for yours truly wouldn’t go amiss either. I won’t be eating orthen any more, just so you know. Who ever thought crossing a lizard with a rat was a good idea?’

  One of the other T’lan Imass stepped out from the line. She couldn’t recall this one’s name, but it was bigger than the others and looked to be composed of body parts from three, maybe four individuals. ‘K’Chain Nah’ruk,’ it said in a low voice. ‘A battle and a harvest.’

  ‘Harvest?’

  The creature pointed at the distant mounds. ‘They butchered. They fed upon their fallen enemy.’

  Masan Gilani shivered. ‘Cannibals?’

  ‘The Nah’ruk are not human.’

  ‘That makes a difference? To me it’s cannibalism. Only white-skinned barbarians from the Fenn Mountains sink so low as to eat other people. Or so I hear.’

  ‘They did not complete their feeding,’ said the oversized T’lan Imass.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘See the newborn mountain to the north?’

  ‘No,’ she drawled, ‘never noticed it.’

  They all studied her again.

  Sighing, Masan said, ‘Aye, the mountain. The storm.’

  ‘Another battle,’ said Beroke. ‘An Azath was born. From this, we conclude that the Nah’ruk were defeated.’

  ‘Oh? We hit them a second time? Good.’

  ‘K’Chain Che’Malle,’ said Beroke. ‘Civil war, Masan Gilani.’ The warrior gestured with a twisted arm. ‘Your army… I do not think they all died. Your commander—’

  ‘Tavore’s alive then?’

  ‘Her sword is.’

  Her sword. Oh. That Otataral blade. ‘Can I send you ahead? Can you find a trail, if there is one?’

  ‘Thenik will scout the path before us,’ Beroke said. ‘It is a risk. Strangers would not welcome us.’

  ‘I can’t imagine why.’

  Another protracted look. Then Beroke said, ‘If our enemies should find us, Masan Gilani, before the moment of our final resurrection, then all we aspire to win will be lost.’

  ‘Win? Win what?’

  ‘Why, our Master’s release.’

  She thought about asking a few more questions, decided against it. Gods below, you’re not who I was sent to find, are you? Still, you wanted to find us, didn’t you? Sinter, I wish you were here, to explain what’s going on. But my gut’s telling me bad things. Your Master? No, don’t tell me. ‘All right. Let’s ride clear of this, and then you feed us like you promised. But decent food, right? I’m civilized. Dal Honese, Malazan Empire. The Emperor himself came from Dal Hon.’

  ‘Masan Gilani,’ said Beroke, ‘we know nothing of this empire of which you speak.’ The T’lan Imass warrior paused, and then added, ‘But the one who was once emperor…him we do know.’

  ‘Really? Before or after he died?’

  The five Imass regarded her once more. Then Beroke asked, ‘Masan Gilani, what is the relevance of that question?’

  She blinked, and then slowly shook her head. ‘None, none at all, I guess.’

  Another T’lan Imass spoke now. ‘Masan Gilani?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your old emperor.’

  ‘What of him?’

  ‘Was he a liar?’

  Masan Gilani scratched her head, and then she gathered up her reins, swung back on to her horse. ‘That depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘On whether you believe all the lies people say about him. Now, let’s get out of this, eat and get watered, and then find Tavore’s
sword, and if Oponn’s smiling down on us, she’ll still be attached to it.’

  She was startled when the five Imass bowed. Then they collapsed into dust and swirled away. ‘Where’s the dignity in that?’ she wondered, and then looked out one more time over the battlefield and its seething orthen. Where’s the dignity in anything, woman?

  For now, keep it all inside. You don’t know what has happened here. You don’t know anything for certain. Not yet. Just hold on.

  There’s plenty of dignity in just holding on. The way Ma did.

  The smell of burning grass. Wetness pressed against one cheek, cold air upon the other, the close sound of a click beetle. Sunlight, filtered through shut lids. Dusty air, seeping into his lungs and then back out again. There were parts of him lying about. In pieces. Or so it felt, but even the idea of it seemed impossible, so he discarded the notion despite what his senses were telling him.

  Thoughts, nice to find he was having them. A notable triumph. Now, if he could just pull his varied bits together, the ones that weren’t there. But that could wait. First, he needed to find some memories.

  His grandmother. Well, an old woman, at least. Assumptions could be dangerous. One of her sayings, maybe. What about parents? What about them? Try to remember, how hard can that be? His parents. Not very bright, those two. Strange in their dullness – he’d always wondered if there wasn’t more to them. There had to be, didn’t there? Hidden interests, secret curiosities. Was Mother really that fascinated by what Widow Thirdly was wearing today? Was that the extent of her engagement with the world? The poor neighbour only owned two tunics and one ankle-length robe, after all, and pretty threadbare at that, as befitted a woman whose husband was a withered corpse in the sands of Seven Cities and the death coin wasn’t much to live by, was it? And that old man from down the street, the one trying to court her, well, he was just out of practice, that’s all. Not worth your sneers, Mother. He’s just doing his best. Dreaming of a happier life, dreaming of waking something up in the widow’s sad eyes.

  It’s an empty world without hope.

  And if Father had a way of puttering about whistling some endless song and pausing every now and then to look distracted by a thought, if not thoroughly confused by its very existence, well, a man of decent years had plenty to think about, didn’t he? It certainly looked like that. And if he had a way of ducking in crowds, of meeting no one’s eyes, well, there was a world of men who’d forgotten how to be men. Or maybe they never learned in the first place. Were these his parents? Or someone else’s?

  Revelations landing with a thud. One, three, scores of them, a veritable landslide, how old had he been? Fifteen? The streets of Jakata suddenly narrowing before his eyes, the houses shrinking, the big men of the block dwindling to boastful midgets with puny eyes.

  There was a whole other world out there, somewhere.

  Grandma, caught a glint in your eyes. You’d beaten the dust out of the gold carpet, rolled it out into my path. For these tender feet of mine. A whole other world out there. Called ‘learning’. Called ‘knowledge’. Called ‘magic’.

  Roots and grubs and tied-off twists of someone’s hair, small puppets and dolls with smeared faces of thread. Webs of gut, bundles of shedding, the plucked backs of crows. Etching on the clay floor, the drip drip of sweat from the brow. Mud was effort, the taste on the tongue that of grit from a licked stylus, and how the candles flickered and the shadows leapt!

  Grandma? Your gem of a boy tore himself apart. He had fangs in his flesh and those fangs were his own, and round and round it went. Biting, tearing, hissing in agony and fury. Plummeting from the smoke-filled sky. Lifting upward again, new wings, joints creaking, a sliding nightmare.

  You can’t come back from that. You can’t.

  I touched my own dull flesh, and it was buried under bodies, all that gore draining down. I was pickled in blood. That body, I mean. What used to be mine. You don’t go back, not to that.

  Dead limbs shifting, slack faces turning, pretending to look at me – but I wasn’t the one so rude as to drag them about. No need to accuse me with those blank eyes. Some fool’s coming down, down here, and maybe my soaked skin feels warm, but that’s all the lost heat from all these other corpses.

  I don’t come back. Not from that.

  Father, if you only knew the things I have seen. Mother, if only you’d opened your own heart, enough to bless that broken widow next door.

  Explain it to this fool, will you? It was a mound of bodies. They’d gathered us. Friend, you weren’t supposed to interfere. Maybe they ignored you, though I can’t figure why. And your touch was cold, gods it was cold!

  Rats, nuzzling close, they’d snatched fragments of me out of the air. In a world where everyone is a soldier, the ones underfoot don’t get noticed, but even ants fight like fiends. My rats. They worked hard, warm bodies like nests.

  They couldn’t get all of me. That wasn’t possible. Maybe you pulled me out, but I was incomplete.

  Or not. Grandma, someone tied strings to me. With everything coming down all around us, he’d knotted strings. To my Hood-damned rats. Oh, clever bastard, Quick. Clever, clever bastard. All there, all here, I’m all here. And then someone dug me out, carried me away. And the Short-Tails looked over every now and then, milled as if contemplating taking objection, but never did.

  He carried me away, melting as he went.

  All the butchering going on. They had a way of puttering about whistling some endless song and pausing every now and then to look distracted by a thought, if not thoroughly confused by its very existence. Like that.

  So he carried me away, and where was everybody?

  The pieces were back together, and Bottle opened his eyes. He was lying on the ground, the sun low to the horizon, dew in the yellow grasses close to his face, smelling of the night just past. Morning. He sighed, slowly sat up, his body feeling crazed with cracks. He looked across at the man crouched near a dung fire. His touch was cold. And then he melted. ‘Captain Ruthan Gudd, sir.’

  The man glanced over, nodded, resumed combing his beard with his fingers. ‘It’s a bird, I think.’

  ‘Sir?’

  He gestured at the rounded lump of scorched meat skewered above the embers. ‘Just sort of fell out of the sky. Had feathers but they’ve burned off.’ He shook his head. ‘Had teeth too, however. Bird. Lizard. It’s an even handful of straws in each hand, as the Strike used to say.’

  ‘We’re alone.’

  ‘For now. We’ve not been gaining on them much – you start getting heavy after a while.’

  ‘Sir, you have been carrying me?’ Melting. Drip drip. ‘How far? How many days?’

  ‘Carrying you? What am I, a Toblakai? No, there’s a travois…behind you. Dragging’s easier than carrying. Somewhat. Wish I had a dog. When I was a child…well, let’s just say that wishing I had a dog has been an unfamiliar experience. But yesterday I’d have cut a god’s throat for one single dog.’

  ‘I can walk now, sir.’

  ‘But can you pull that travois?’

  Frowning, Bottle twisted and looked at the conveyance. Two full length spear shafts, the pieces of two or three others. Webbing from the harnesses of leather armour, the strips stained black. ‘Nothing to pull in it, sir, that I can see.’

  ‘I was thinking me, marine.’

  ‘Well, I can—’

  Ruthan picked up the spit and waved it about. ‘A joke, soldier. Ha ha. Here, this thing looks ready. Cooking is the process of making the familiar unrecognizable, and thus palatable. When intelligence was first born, the first question asked was, “Can this thing be cooked?” After all, try eating a cow’s face – well, true enough, people do – oh, never mind. You must be hungry.’

  Bottle made his way over. Ruthan plucked the bird from the skewer and then tore it in half, handing one section to the marine.

  They ate without conversation.

  At last, sucking and spitting out the last bone, licking grease from his fingers, Bot
tle sighed and eyed the man opposite him. ‘I saw you go down, sir, under about a hundred Short-Tails.’

  Ruthan raked his beard. ‘Aye.’

  Bottle glanced away, tried again. ‘Figured you were dead.’

  ‘Couldn’t get through the armour, but I’m still a mass of bruises. Anyway, they pounded me into the ground for a while and then just, well, gave up.’ He grimaced. ‘Took me some time to dig free. By then, apart from the dead they were collecting, there was no sign of the Bonehunters, or our allies. The Khundryl looked finished – never saw so many dead horses. And the trenches had been overrun. The Letherii had delivered and taken some damage, but hard to guess the extent of either.’

  ‘I think I saw some of that,’ Bottle said.

  ‘I sniffed you out, though,’ the captain said, not meeting Bottle’s eyes.

  ‘How?’

  ‘I just did. You were barely there, but enough. So I pulled you free.’

  ‘And they just watched.’

  ‘Did they? Never noticed that.’ He wiped his hands on his thighs and rose. ‘Ready to walk then, soldier?’

  ‘I think so. Where are we going, sir?’

  ‘To find the ones still left.’

  ‘When was the battle?’

  ‘Four, five days ago, something like that.’

  ‘Sir, are you a Stormrider?’

  ‘A rogue wave?’

  Bottle’s frown deepened.

  ‘Another joke,’ said Ruthan Gudd. ‘Let’s strip what’s on the travois – found you a sword, a few other things you might find useful.’

  ‘It was all a mistake, wasn’t it?’

  The man shot him a look. ‘Everything is, soldier, sooner or later.’

  Chaos foamed in a thrashing maelstrom far below. He stood close to the ledge, looking down. Off to his right the rock tilted, marking the end of the vaguely level base of the pinnacle, and at the far end the Spar, a gnarled thing of black stabbing upward like a giant finger, seemed to cast a penumbra of white mist from its ragged tip.

  Eventually, he turned away, crossed the flat stretch, twelve paces to a sheer wall of rock, and to the mouth of a tunnel where shattered boulders had spilled out to the sides. He clambered over the nearest heap until he found a dusty oilskin cape jammed inside a crevasse. Tugging it aside, he reached down and withdrew a tattered satchel. It was so rotted the base began splitting at the seams and he scrambled quickly to flat ground before the contents spilled out.