Return of the Crimson Guard: A Novel of the Malazan Empire

by Ian C. Esslemont

  ‘Her name is Liss, Captain.’

  ‘Ah. Sorry, Silk.’ Wincing, Storo squeezed his side, drew an experimental breath. ‘How can she help?’

  Silk raised his chin to the distant undulations of the Seti prairie. ‘She knows them, Fist. Knows them well. She was once one of their shamanesses – a Seer. I gather that they're actually rather frightened of her.’

  ‘So am I.’

  A voice called from far along the wall, ‘Sergeant Storo!’ Silk and Storo turned. Magistrate Ehrlann approached, the servant at his side struggling to keep him within the shade of a wide umbrella.

  ‘Sergeant?’ Silk replied. ‘This man is senior officer of this Malazan command—’

  Storo raised a hand to quiet Silk.

  ‘Yes, yes. All very well,’ allowed Ehrlann, waving negligently. ‘However, a ruling body recognized by the Throne really cannot afford to acknowledge a field-promotion until it is approved by military high command.’

  ‘And just when might that be?’ Silk asked, not even bothering to lighten his tone.

  ‘Why, when the paperwork comes through, of course,’ Ehrlann smiled.

  Silk pointed to the prairie. ‘You do understand that the Imperial Warren is now closed to all. That no mage dare risk travelling any of the Warrens now that civil war is upon us. That the Kingdom of Cawn lies between us and Unta and that it has arisen in rebellion against the Imperial Throne!’

  Magistrate Ehrlann frowned. ‘Well, then, it may take some time for the paperwork to reach us here.’

  Storo clamped a hand on Silk's shoulder and squeezed hard. ‘Quite right, magistrate. The City High Court should call an emergency meeting to discuss its course of action. You must settle the positioning of troops, the strategy of the defences, the organization of the civilian population. You must commission a detailed inventory of all logistical necessities and the requisition of the funds to purchase them. And all that is just a beginning.’

  Magistrate Ehrlann blinked at Storo, quite stunned. ‘Of course … well … the process has already begun in special committee—’

  ‘Then you'd best get back in case they decide on some idiotic course of action in your absence.’

  Ehrlann smiled thinly. ‘Thank you. Yes.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Come, Jamaer.’ The magistrate swung to the stairs.

  Storo watched them go then turned away to rest his forearms on the battlements once more. ‘Gods, they'll be talking until the Last Night is upon us.’ He addressed Silk. ‘Until that time comes, what do you suggest?’

  ‘I intend to find us some allies.’

  ‘Good. Please do. As many as possible.’

  ‘And Liss?’

  Storo nodded his assent. ‘Tell her to keep those Seti shamans as far away as she can.’

  Silk's smile was tight with suppressed pleasure. ‘Oh, she'll enjoy that a great deal, I'm sure.’ He bowed and went to the stairs. At the top he paused. ‘Fist, may I ask, just what is our defence strategy in any case?’

  Our defence strategy? An odd one. Kill as many of the Seti bastards as is humanly possible.’

  * * *

  Ho was releaved to find that the newcomers to the Pit intended to keep a low profile. Thinking it over for a time, however, he realized that this worried him just as much. The two were acting less like the potential tyrants he feared, but more like the suspected spies he feared even more. Yet it all seemed too preposterous; an insignificant detail no doubt buried among the chaos and smoke of the uprising: why did Pit not rise in rebellion? Even after guards were pulled away to help pacify Skullcap, Pit remained a model of quiet. Why should this be? What could over a hundred mages, warlocks, seers, thaumaturgs and assorted talents possibly be up to? Not a thing, certainly, sir. No, nothing at all.

  A council meeting would have been called to settle upon a course of action but the problem was the two would be sure to hear every word of the screaming matches yammering down the tunnels. And so Yath and his people kept watch; especially that eerie shadow of his, Sessin.

  On his way to the minehead, Ho scratched the patches of dry raw skin on his arms and legs that so cursed all inhabitants of the Pit. They all had more than enough to keep themselves busy in any case. There was the question of what to do with Iffin; just two weeks ago the fellow was walking down a tunnel when he meets Sulp ‘Ul – a man he'd worked beside peaceably enough for nearly ten years – when suddenly Iffin reaches over and jabs a sharpened stick through Sulp's throat. Sulp dies choking on his own blood. We confine Iffin to a barred cave and question him. Turns out it was a family vendetta from the old Cawn-Itko Kan border wars from before the Empire. And Iffin wasn't even old enough to remember those days!

  Hopping to scratch one ankle, Ho had to shake his head. He'd thought those old rivalries and hatreds had all gone the way of the Jaghut. But now, with rumours arriving of nations seceding from the Empire – Quon, Dal Hon, Gris – and every week the list seeming to grow longer, old, long-quiescent hatreds and rivalries were now raising their noses and sniffing the wind. All the old festering slights that only the heel of the emperor manged to quell. Ho could only dread what was to come if the continent returned to its old destructive ways of shifting alliances and the never-ending feud for dominance.

  At the great round of the mine-head he spotted the two newcomers silently staring upwards at the circle of clear blue sky overhead. Or so it seemed to any casual observer – to Ho it looked more like they were studying the crumbling, rotten stone of the walls searching for a way up. He came up behind them. ‘Those walls won't support the weight of a man.’

  The one who gave his name as Grief slowly turned his head to give Ho a long hard stare. ‘Looks that way.’

  ‘If I were you I wouldn't waste my time trying to scare up an escape plan. Escape attempts only bring reprisals for the rest of us.’

  The one named Treat turned around fully. ‘You warnin’ us? Gonna turn us in?’

  The Napan, Grief, briefly rested a hand on the arm of Treat who eased back a step. So, not equals. This Grief – what a ridiculous name to give! – seemed to outrank his companion. Ho shook his head. ‘No. You'll notice there's no one to turn you in to. I'm just asking that you try to keep the welfare of everyone here in mind.’

  A broad secretive smile lifted Grief's lips and he bowed his assent to Ho. ‘Good idea. We'll try to do just that.’ He patted his companion on the arm and they walked off leaving Ho to watch them go, wondering, what did the fellow mean by that – if anything?

  Turning away, Ho walked straight into the lean but dense form of Sessin. The tanned Seven Cities native glowered down at him. ‘What did he say?’ he demanded in thickly accented Talian.

  ‘Nothing significant.’ Ho scratched at his scalp. Gods, here he was answering to the man as if he were an Official Inquisitor. ‘Listen, do you do this all day? Just follow them around? Aren't they suspicious?’

  The scowl edged into a sneer. ‘Where would they go?’

  OK. The man had a point there. So, they know, he knows, and they know he knows.

  ‘Yath has judged. If they find out anything we will kill them.’

  Yath has judged that, has he? Well, he'd have to have a word with the man about that. As for killing those two, something told Ho they could take a whole lot of killing.

  * * *

  While Traveller slept inside the hut Ereko sat cross-legged in the doorway watching the Moon, strangely mottled as of late, reflecting from the surf. The violent predations of these Edur and Traveller's extreme response had stirred dusty memories in him; ones he'd hoped were buried for ever. Memories that still wrenched after millennia. Memories of ancient vows and the violence of further extreme solutions. Vows of absolute extermination levelled against a people, and answering vows of vengeance. Could a similar cycle of destruction be born out of this new exchange? How similar the ages remain despite the passage of aeons. How disheartening!

  Brooding upon what had he worked so hard to put behind him for ever, Ereko saw ghosts. For an inst
ant he thought them his own – phantom memories of friends and family long gone – but these were human. Since descending the mountains he'd glimpsed them some nights in the woods. Pallid shadows. Always they lingered nearby, drawn to them – to Traveller certainly – but unwilling or unable to approach. Perhaps Traveller could not see them; he'd yet to remark upon them.

  Perhaps it was the blood still wet upon the sands and the presence of alien spirits now wandering these shores, but this night they assembled out among the sighing grasses beyond the glow of the driftwood fire in numbers far greater than any Ereko had yet glimpsed. A troop of opalescent shades. Soldiers in damaged armour revealing ghastly death-wounds. One held a ragged banner that hung limp from a cross-piece: the snake-like twisting of a shimmering bright dragon against a dark field.

  More and more congregated. A spectral host. A great battle must have ravaged this coast some time in history. Somehow, Traveller's presence seemed to call to them. Their empty spirits lusted for his essence. Eyes like torn openings into unending desolation fixed past Ereko into the dark of the hut. Clawed hands reached …

  Ereko waved them away with the back of a hand. He whispered, ‘Be gone spirits! Trouble not the living with your old hatreds.’ Sleep, rest, wait. Be patient. Wait long enough and your time will come. Was he not living proof?

  The spectres dispersed. Some sank into the earth, others drifted away. One remained, however. The standard-bearer. Tall he must've been in life, for a human. He closed upon Ereko. A horrific wound had carried away half his skull. The empty pits of his eyes fixed upon him.

  ‘My name is Surat,’ came his words, achingly faint – such potent yearning to cross an unbridgeable distance. Great must have been this one's power in life. They come,’ he intoned.

  ‘Who comes?’

  ‘The Diaspora ends. The Guard returns. The appointed time has come to us.’ He pointed to the hut. ‘This one shall be destroyed.’

  ‘What is he to you now?’

  Silence, a coldness that bit even at Ereko. ‘Malazan.’

  ‘Whatever he once was he has given all that up now. He is Malazan no longer. Now, I do not even know what he is.’

  The empty pits regarded Ereko and he believed he saw in their depths utter uninterest. ‘The Vow remains.’

  A strange emotion stirred in Ereko's stomach then, roused the hairs upon his neck and forearms. It took him a time to recognize it, so long had it been. Anger. Fury at the plain uselessness of hatreds carried beyond life. Who were these Crimson Guardsmen to awaken such an emotion within him? ‘Then you are fools! Put aside your old rivalries, your precious feuds. But you cannot… You dare not release your desperate grip. Without them you would be nothing … They are all you have left. Not even Death awaits you now.’

  Ghost hands shifted on the haft of the lifeless banner. ‘He waits for you. He is close now. Closer than you think.’

  ‘There are few walking the world today whom I fear.’ Ereko's words were trite but he was intrigued and, he must admit, tense with a new emotion, a touch of dread.

  ‘Such a one you will meet.’

  The tension drained from him in a gust of exhalation. Nothing new. No revelations. No darkness dispelled. That meeting was foretold before humans walked these lands, Surat. You have nothing of interest to me.’

  He waved the spectre away. It sank, reluctantly, into the windswept grasses. As it disappeared it raised a hand, accusing: ‘That one leads you to Him.’

  Ereko nodded. ‘That was the promise made long ago.’

  * * *

  Late in the evening, leaning his chair back against the shack of the Untan harbour guard, Nait banged a knuckle on the clapboard slats.

  ‘What is it?’ Sergeant Tinsmith grumbled.

  ‘Ship just tied up. Looks like that tub, the Rag-what's it. The Ragstopper?

  ‘The Ragstopper sank. Could be his new one, the Ragstopper.’

  Chair legs thumped to the dock. ‘New? You gotta be kidding me.’

  ‘All his new ships are old. He buys them new old. He says he likes them worn in; says they know what to do then.’

  Nait shifted the bird's bone he chewed from one side of his mouth to the other. ‘Well, this one looks like it knows what to do, an’ that's sink.’

  Sergeant Tinsmith came to the open doorway. His white moustache hung to either side of his turned-down mouth. Deep fissures framed the mouth, lancing beneath narrowed brown eyes. ‘All right then,’ he sighed. ‘Let's have a look. Get the boys rousted.’

  Jogging, Nait crossed to a row of waterfront three-storey buildings housing poor merchants, flophouses, inns and a Custom House. The building he headed to featured a tall wooden figurehead cut from a man-o‘-war and subsequently vandalized by countless knives and fists until all semblance of its original build, paint and gilt were gone. All that remained were two clawed feet, perhaps of some demon or fantastic bird. This tavern, The Figurehead, the harbour guard had adopted as their billet. He found a band of the guard sitting around a table engrossed in a game of troughs. Corporal Hands had just thrown. Nait took the bird legbone from his mouth. ‘The old man says to get your gear.’ Hands snatched up the knucklebone dice. Yells burst from around the table.

  ‘Hey! That was a six,’ said Honey Boy. ‘Make the move.’

  Hands slipped the dice into a pouch. ‘You heard the man – get your gear.’

  The biggest man at the table, a Barghast warrior, straightened to his feet, banging the table in the process and sending the counters dancing. Yells of fresh outrage. A shaggy black bhederin cloak hung at his shoulders making them almost as wide as a horse. Twists of cloth and totems swung and clattered in his matted hair. ‘You count that throw or I'll use your head.’

  ‘No fighting, Least,’ said Hands.

  Least frowned. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I might get hurt.’ Hands picked up her weaponbelt from the back of her chair. ‘What's it about?’ she asked Nait.

  ‘How the fuck should I know?’

  ‘Hey! What'd I tell you about that swearing. No swearing.’

  Nait walked away. ‘Hood on his bone throne! Who the fuck cares?’

  Outside Nait stood studying the moonlit forest of masts crowding the harbour. A lot of traffic, even for this time of the season. War was always good for business. He hoped the harbourmaster was keeping his books in good order; their cut had better be up to date. The majority of the company on duty that night came shuffling out, pulling on their guard surcoats and rearranging belts and hauberks. Hands led the way up the dock to Tinsmith who waited, a leather vest over his shirt, long-knives at his waist.

  ‘Let's go.’

  They walked down the pier to the newly berthed ship. It looked worse the closer they got. Nait wondered if it was the original Ragstopper drawn up from the bottom of whatever sea it was that took it. ‘Cap'n!’ Tinsmith called up to the apparently empty deck. A rat waddled along the gunwale.

  ‘Maybe that's him,’ suggested Honey Boy.

  ‘No, he's a bigger one,’ said Tinsmith, sounding tired by the whole thing.

  A head popped up into view from the stern. Wild greasy hair framed a pale smear of a face, eyes bulging. ‘What in the Twins’ name do you want?’

  ‘Harbour guard. You carrying any contraband?’

  The man straightened, lurched to the gunwale, clenched the stained wood in a white-knuckled grip. ‘Contraband? Contraband! I wish we were! Tons of it! D'bayang poppy! Moranth blood liquor! White nectar! Barrels of it! Anything! But no! I'll tell you what we're carrying – Nothing! Not a stitch! The full bounteous mercy of Hood we have in our hold! No! Off we go sailing from port to port – empty! It's a crime I'm telling you! A crime!’

  Least tapped a blunt finger to his temple. Honey Boy nodded. ‘Back home among your people someone like that would be sacred or something, right?’

  ‘No. Back home we'd just kick the shit out of him.’

  ‘What in the infinite Abyss is all the yellin'?’ An old man, his face the pale blue c
ast of a Napan, came to the gunwale. He was wincing, scratching at a halo of white hair standing in all directions, and wore a white patchy beard to match.

  ‘’Evening, Cap'n,’ said Tinsmith.

  ‘Eh? Who's that?’ The man caught sight of Tinsmith, winced anew. ‘Oh, it's you.’ He waved to the squad. ‘Why the army? There's no need for all this between us old friends.’

  ‘These days I'm in charge of the peace down here along the waterfront, Cap'n. Passing strange you showing up here and now. There's those who'd like to know.’

  The captain dragged his fingers through his beard. His tongue worked around his mouth like it was hunting down a bad taste. ‘But you wouldn't do that to an old comrade, now would you?’