The Malazan Empire

by Steven Erikson

  ‘Care to translate what you just said?’

  ‘No. Useless. You have one word for one thought. We have many thoughts for one word! You all speak too slow and we have to slow down too and we get bored talking to you humans!’

  Gasping, Spax shook his head. ‘Right now – no more words from me – at all!’

  ‘I should carry you?’

  Oh, and watch me try and live that down – in front of all my warriors? They’d die laughing, never mind enemy pikes and swords! ‘Don’t even touch me!’ he growled.

  ‘Hah hah hah!’

  The Kolansii wasted little time, pouring down from the road to form up opposite the Perish on the field, and then, once the shields were locked and swords drawn, they advanced, matching step by step the troops remaining on the road.

  Syndecan stood one row back from the front line. Much as he wanted to be with his fellow cutters amongst the buildings, he was now commanding and his place was here, with his brothers and sisters.

  They were still winded, their legs sagging under them – he knew the signs of muscle exhaustion and there was no time to fully recover. This is going to be unpleasant.

  The Kolansii closed to within six paces and then charged.

  Gillimada dropped back again. ‘There is fighting!’

  ‘For Hood’s sake, Teblor – we may be slow but we’re not deaf!’

  ‘Should we join them from here?’

  ‘Not unless you want to fight on the damned slope! No, we’ll move past the whole mess and come up behind the Perish, and then move forward.’

  ‘But I want to kill the mixed-blood!’

  ‘Maybe you’ll get a chance at that—’

  ‘No! I want to kill him right away! It’s important!’

  ‘Fine! You can lead a counter-attack once we’re up there, all right?’

  Gillimada smiled broadly, her teeth even and white as snow. ‘And we will cut down every tree we see!’

  He glared at her back as she loped ahead. His heart felt ready to burst and he wondered if it might, the moment he stepped up to fight – a sudden clenching in his chest, or whatever happened when the thing seized up. He was certain that it’d hurt. Probably a lot.

  Glancing upslope to his left, he saw rising dust, and there – the flash of spears or perhaps pikes, or even swords. Ahead, the Teblor raised a shout – and Spax squinted to see bodies sliding down the slope, limbs flailing, weapons skirling away.

  ‘Go past! Go past!’

  His warriors were pressing up behind him. Spax snarled. ‘Go round me then, damn you all! I’ll catch up!’ They poured past on either side in a clatter of armour and drawn weapons.

  My beloved fools, all of you.

  Forty more heaving paces, another ten, five, and then, looking up, he saw his Barghast scrambling in the wake of the Teblor, up the valley side, many of them using their hands where they could. And above them the Perish falling back, spinning away from blows, tumbling and skidding down into the midst of the climbing warriors.

  Gods curse us all!

  ‘Climb! Get up there!’

  He saw the Teblor reach the summit, saw them plunge forward and out of sight, weapons swinging. And then, behind them, the first of the Gilk, armour grey with dust, their white faces running with stained sweat.

  Spax reached the base, clambered upward. His legs were half numb under him. Blisters roared with pain on his ankles, his heels. He coughed out dust, was almost knocked over by a descending corpse – a Perish, most of his face cut away – and struggled yet higher.

  Is there no end to this damned hillside?

  And then a hand reached down, took hold of his wrist, and Spax was dragged on to level ground.

  They were in the midst of farm buildings, and the Kolansii were on all sides, sweeping down from the road, driving the buckling clumps of Perish back towards the valley edge.

  His first sight of this told him that the Grey Helms had been flanked, and though they fought on, with a ferocity worthy of their gods, they were dying by the score. His Gilk had slammed into this press, but even as they did so more Kolansii surged forward, fully encircling the defenders – with the valley side the only possible retreat.

  Dark fury raged in Spax as he staggered forward, readying his weapons. We failed, Firehair. May all the swamp gods rot in Hood’s own bog! We should have set out earlier – we should have marched with the Perish!

  The Teblor had formed a solid square and were pushing through the enemy, but even they were not enough.

  On the road, Spax could see massive elements of the Kolansii army simply driving forward, eastward, ignoring the vicious last stand on their right.

  We didn’t even slow them down.

  ‘Withdraw! Barghast! Perish! Teblor! Withdraw – down the hillside! Back down the hillside!’

  Seeing warrior and soldier stumbling back, seeing them twist and pour down from the summit, the Warchief’s heart felt cold, buried in ashes. Gesler, ’ware your flank. We couldn’t hold them. We just couldn’t.

  The press of retreating warriors, bloodied and desperate, gathered him up and they all slid ragged paths back down the slope. He was pulled along unresisting. All this way – for this? We could have done more. But he knew that any stand would have been doomed – there were just too many Kolansii, and they fought with demonic valour.

  He had lost both his weapons on the descent, and his soul howled at the appropriateness of that. Tilting his head back, he stared up at the sun.

  It was barely noon.

  In the depths of night rain was pouring down in Darujhistan. Karsa Orlong had walked into the city, and now he stood, water streaming from him, waiting. Opposite him was the temple, and the vow that he had made so long ago now, in the savage intensity of youth, was a heat in his flesh, so fierce that he thought he could see steam rising from his limbs.

  Almost time.

  He’d seen no one else in the street since dusk, and during the day, while he had stood in place, the people of this city had swept past, unwilling to fix eyes upon him for very long. A troop of city guards had lingered for a time, nervous, half circling his position where he had stood, his huge stone sword resting point down, his hands wrapped about its leather-bound grip. Then they had simply moved on.

  He would have been irritated at having to kill them, and no doubt there would have been alarms, and yet more guards, and more killing. But, rather than being heaped with the dead, the cobbled width of the street before him remained unobstructed.

  Eyes half closed, he experienced again the echo of the life he had watched seething back and forth in the day now gone. He wondered at all those lives, the way few would meet the gazes of their fellows, as if crowds demanded wilful anonymity, when the truth was they were all in it together – all these people, facing much the same struggles, the same fears. And yet, it seemed, each one was determined to survive them alone, or with but a few kin and friends offering paltry allegiance. Perhaps they each believed themselves unique, like a knot-stone in the centre of the world’s mill wheel, but the truth was there were very few who could truly make claim to such a pivotal existence.

  After all, there was only one Karsa Orlong. Standing here across from a modest temple with stained walls and faded friezes, standing here with the fate of the world in his hands.

  He had known a time in chains. He had lived in that wretched house, his hands closed into fists against the slavery in which so many insisted he reside – meek, uncomplaining, accepting of his fate. He thought back to the citizens he’d seen here. So many had been dragging chains. So many had walked bowed and twisted by their weight. So many had with their own hands hammered tight the shackles, believing that this was how it was supposed to be. Sweating at another person’s behest, the muscles and will given away and now owned by someone claiming to be their better in all things. Year after year, a lifetime of enslavement.

  This was the conversation of the civilized, and it repulsed Karsa Orlong to the very core of his being.

 
Who was the slavemaster? Nothing but a host of cruel ideas. Nothing but a deceitful argument. A sleight of hand deception between things of value, where one wins and the other always loses. He had heard bartering, had witnessed bargains made, and it all had the illusion of fairness, and it all played out as if it was a ritual deemed necessary, made iron like a natural law.

  But where was the joy in that ceaseless struggle? Where was the proper indolence of the predator, and just how many fangs needed pulling to make this precious civilization?

  Of course, not everyone suffered the same emasculation, and this was where all the lies finally gathered. The hungriest maws, fangs dripping, hid in the cool upper rooms of the estates, in the fountained gardens of the rich – and these ones, oh, they indulged all the indolence they desired. While the crowds of their lessers looked on, wide-eyed and ever eager for details.

  A broken and suffering god in chains had haunted him. It had flung weapons in his path. It had whispered all manner of enticements. It had, in all its desperate pain, rushed down a thousand tracks, only to find not a moment of blessed relief.

  Karsa now understood that god. The times that he had been chained, he had felt that terrible panic, that animal frenzy to escape. No mortal, human or Toblakai, should ever feel such feelings. Nor, he knew now, should a god.

  ‘He cannot know compassion, from whom compassion has been taken. He cannot know love, with love denied him. But he will know pain, when pain is all that is given him.’

  Compassion. Love. It was not civilization that birthed these gentle gifts – though its followers might claim otherwise. Nor was civilization the sweetest garden for such things to blossom in – though those trapped within it might imagine it so. No, as far as he could see, civilization was a madman’s mechanism that, for all its good intentions, ended up ensnaring the gentle gifts, stifling them, leaving them to wander mazes only to die alone and in the dark.

  A mechanism, a cagework, and in its chaos the slaves bred like flies – until the world itself groaned under the assault of their appetites.

  ‘You have made many vows, Karsa Orlong.’

  A civilization was the means by which too many people could live together despite their mutual hatred. And those moments where love and community burgeoned forth, the cynics descended like vultures eager to feed, and the skies soured, and the moment died away.

  ‘Upon my heart, Karsa Orlong. Do you hear me? Upon my heart!’

  Blinking, Karsa looked down to see a crippled man drawn up against his feet. The rain streamed around him, gushed and swirled, and the face that had twisted up to look at him seemed to be shedding from blinded eyes the tears of the world.

  ‘Is it time then?’ Karsa demanded.

  ‘Will you kill it all?’

  The Toblakai showed his teeth. ‘If I can.’

  ‘It will simply grow up again, like a weed from the ashes. For all that we are made to kneel, Karsa Orlong, we yearn to fly.’

  ‘Yes, rare and noble and precious as pigeons. I’ve seen the statues of old heroes in the square, old man. I’ve seen their crowns of birdshit.’

  ‘I – I was an artist once. These hands – so deformed now, so bent and frozen – can you understand? All this talent, but no way to release it, no way to give it shape. But perhaps we are all like that, and only the lucky few are able to find talent’s path unbarred.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Karsa replied.

  Thunder rumbled from beyond the lake.

  The crippled man coughed. ‘I am drowning. I have enjoyed our conversation on the merits of the civilized, Karsa Orlong, but now I must surrender. I must die. Sick. Fevered. The needs burn too hot. I have given you the words you shall use. Upon my heart. Upon my heart.’

  Karsa stared at the wretched shape at his feet. He set his sword to lean against the wall behind him, and then crouched down.

  The crippled man’s face lifted, the sightless eyes white as polished coins. ‘What are you doing?’

  Karsa reached down, gathered the skeletal figure into his arms, and then settled back. ‘I stepped over corpses on the way here,’ the Toblakai said. ‘People no one cared about, dying alone. In my barbaric village this would never happen, but here in this city, this civilized jewel, it happens all the time.’

  The ravaged face was turned upward, the last of the raindrops dripping away as he huddled beneath the cover Karsa provided. The mouth worked, but no sounds came forth.

  ‘What is your name?’ Karsa asked.

  ‘Munug.’

  ‘Munug. This night – before I must rise and walk into the temple – I am a village. And you are here, in my arms. You will not die uncared for.’

  ‘You – you would do this for me? A stranger?’

  ‘In my village no one is a stranger – and this is what civilization has turned its back on. One day, Munug, I will make a world of villages, and the age of cities will be over. And slavery will be dead, and there shall be no chains – tell your god. Tonight, I am his knight.’

  Munug’s shivering was fading. The old man smiled. ‘He knows.’

  It wasn’t too much, to take a frail figure into one’s arms for those last moments of life. Better than a cot, or even a bed in a room filled with loved ones. Better, too, than an empty street in the cold rain. To die in someone’s arms – could there be anything more forgiving?

  Every savage barbarian in the world knew the truth of this.

  Behind their massive shields the Ve’Gath soldiers of the K’Chain Che’Malle advanced into a hailstorm of arrows and heavy quarrels. Impacts staggered some of them, quarrels shattering against the shields. Others reeled, heads, necks and chests sprouting shafts, and as they fell their kin moved up to take their places, and the reptilian assault drew ever closer to the trenches and redoubts.

  In the centre of the advance, the T’lan Imass weathered a similar deluge of missile fire, but they held no shields, and where the oversized quarrels struck the bodies shattered, bones exploding into shards and splinters. Those that could then picked themselves back up and continued on. But many were too broken to rise again, lying amid the wreckage of their own bones.

  The withering fusillade lashed into the attacking forces again and again. Scores of Ve’Gath went down, legs kicking, tails whipping or striking the ground. Deep gaps opened in the T’lan Imass lines. Yet there were no screams, no terrible cries of agony or horror.

  Sister Reverence stood high above the battle, winds both hot and bitter cold whipping about her, and watched as the enemy forces pushed ever closer to her soldiers waiting in their trenches and raised redoubts. The sorcery of Akhrast Korvalain streaming from her, she held fast her Kolansii heavy infantry, leaving no room for fear, and she could feel them bristling as she fed them her hunger. Do not yield. Slay them all! Do not yield! They would hold – they had to – and then High Watered Festian would arrive, to strike at the K’Chain flank, driving deep a mortal wound against these hated enemies of old.

  She swore under her breath upon seeing masses of K’ell Hunters break out along the high rock-studded sides, rushing the fortified onager positions – and she watched as the crews frantically swung the heavy weapons round. They managed a single salvo, the scores of quarrels tearing into the ranks of Hunters, before the rest reached the base of the hill and swarmed upward, their terrible swords lifting high.

  As the helpless crews were slaughtered, their machines smashed into splinters, Sister Reverence dismissed the scene from her mind. She had seen ten or more K’ell Hunters go down, and if each fortlet could match or better that toll, then she was satisfied. She would rely on attrition – there was no other choice.

  Now that the battle was under way, her panic had subsided, though the murder of Brother Diligence still sent trembling waves of shock through her. She remained uncertain as to the manner of his death, and that still disturbed her; if she gave her dread free rein, she knew her fear would return. Humans were duplicitous and brazen – they should have known better than to underestimate their treacherou
s, deceitful natures. His power had been turned back upon him. Somehow. He had drowned in a deluge of words, and she could not comprehend how that was even possible.

  But in this battle below she could see but two humans. Riding Ve’Gath, by the Abyss. Do they command? No, that cannot be. The K’Chain Che’Malle would never yield to human rule. They are ever commanded by their Matron and none other. It has always been so and so it remains.

  A formidable Matron, however, to have spawned so many Ve’Gath. She stays hidden. She evades my questing. That alone speaks of impressive power.

  But when this is done, when her army is destroyed, I will find her. I will eviscerate her. This day is the last gasp of the K’Chain Che’Malle. There are no other Matrons left – I am certain of it. They must have discovered the alliance I made with the Nah’ruk, and so they have come here, seeking vengeance.

  Am I a child with a hand to be slapped?

  Of the four ancient races, who was always the most feared, if not the Forkrul Assail?

  She knew there were other Pures, on distant continents. And, once Akhrast Korvalain’s power was made unassailable in this place, she would quest to find them. She would invite them to share in this power, and the cleansing could begin in earnest. We shall unleash such justice as to—

  A frigid blast of air swept up around her and Sister Reverence turned from the battle below. Facing into that icy wind, she made her way across the platform to the side looking out over the sea.

  What she saw stunned her.

  Kolanse Bay was filling with ice. Mountains, glowing emerald and sapphire, were rising up from the depths, and as she stared she saw the churning water bleach white, saw every wave freeze solid. The Perish ships, which had been broken and smashed and swallowed by the sea, had now reappeared, the wreckage sealed in ice – and there were more ships, ones long buried in the silts of the sea bottom, heaving to the surface. Directly below, the sheltered Kolansii galleys and triremes, now locked in ice, began to shatter, hulls collapsing. The sound of that destruction, rising up to where she stood, was a chorus of detonations, as of trees battered down by winds.