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

by Ian C. Esslemont

  With his Malazan command Rillish had been assigned the barricading of a crossroads on the main road south out of D'Avig. They found it to be the centre of a small hamlet. A wayside inn, a corral and a carpenter's workshop lined the crossroads. Rillish promptly had the men toss everything big and moveable across the road. Watching the glow of the sacked castle, he took the waterskin from his side and drank, easing back on the high cantle of his saddle. His leg throbbed; the wild ride through the hills and down in the rich Untan farmlands had re-torn the freshly healed muscle. He sought out and caught his sergeant's eye. ‘No one gets past, Chord.’

  ‘No chance, sir. There's Wickans crawling all over the hillsides. Like the old days it is, so I understand.’

  Yes. The old border warfare all along the Wickan frontier. How appropriate; the central authority collapses and it's a quick return to the tried and true old ways of doing things. No one's learned a thing. Cocking his head, he listened: distant panicked cries only, no clash of sustained resistance. From where he sat it looked as if D'Avig had well and truly been overrun. Surprise had been complete. His job was to keep it so. ‘Sergeant.’

  ‘Aye, sir.’

  ‘Gather the freshest horses and send a squad all the way south to the fortress at Jurda. I want eyes on that stronghold.’

  ‘Aye, sir.’ Chord spat out a wad of rustleaf, bellowed, ‘Talia! Get your squad provisioned and ready to move!’

  Rillish shot a glance to the rear. Talia – newly promoted squad sergeant and his lover – signed her acknowledgement to Chord and flashed a bright mocking smile to Rillish. The lieutenant spun to stiffly face the front. Were those grins he'd caught on the faces of his soldiers? Damn Togg, woman, show some discretion. He ached to glance back once more but dared not now. The most dangerous assignment he'd be asking of his command and she pulls it. What if he was to countermand Chord's selection? He'd just undermine the man's authority – never mind what he'd be doing to his own. No, he would just have to trust his senior sergeant's judgment in the matter. And wish her Oponn's favour.

  ‘Cavalry, sir!’ came a shout. ‘And it ain't Wickan!’

  ‘Form up!’ Chord barked.

  The double ranks of regulars levelled the spears they'd collected to assemble the traditional hedgehog. Rillish glanced to the second-storey windows of the inn and the lofts of the stable and woodworking shop opposite, and eased his swords in their scabbards. Soon the crash of horses at full gallop reached them and the horsemen – perhaps twenty – reined up before the barricade of upturned carts. Untan white and red surcoats declared their allegiance. Among their milling numbers one pointed, ordering, ‘Remove the barrier, fools! Are you blind! We're no Wickans!’

  ‘Then who are you?’ Rillish called.

  ‘Who? Who!’ the man yelled, outraged, his face darkened above his full grey and black beard. ‘Dol D'Avig, you fool!’

  Rillish felt his insides twist sickeningly. Curse Fener, it was the man. He recognized him now, brother to the count. They had met once or twice at functions in the capital. Rillish tightened his stomach muscles and clenched his jaw against a vertigo as it came home that now was the time he would cut his own past from himself as surely as if he had lost a limb. Either with this man or another, sooner or later – it was just a shock for it to have come so soon. ‘Then I ask you, Dol, for the sake of your men, to throw down your weapons and surrender.’

  The brother to the count yanked the reins of his mount, shearing the beast's head aside. ‘What! Surrender?’ His thick brows clenched as he studied more closely the forces arrayed before him. ‘You wear Imperial colours – where in Hood's Arse did you come from?’

  Not there, I assure you. ‘Never mind. I ask you again – throw down your weapons.’

  Teeth shone white in a savage, knowing smile. And something surfaced in Rillish's mind, a memory of chatter during those dreary social gatherings at the capital: ‘Dol D'Avig – a better mage than his brother is count.’ Queen take it! He drew breath to shout but at the same instant Dol waved curtly and Rillish's throat constricted shut. All around him spears and swords clattered to the cobbles as his men gasped, choking, tearing at their throats.

  The same overwhelming need for breath flamed in Rillish's chest and it was all he could do to draw a sword and hold it high. The shutters of the inn's second-storey windows banged open and in the loft doors opposite crossbowmen rose to their knees. Bolts raked the Untan cavalry. Get him! Gods, please! His sight was darkening, the sword fell from his grip.

  Then, thank Soliel!, breath, sweet clean air. Rillish sucked great lungfuls deep into his chest. ‘Where is he?’ he gasped as soon as he could manage, righting himself in his saddle.

  ‘Gone, sir. Rode off.’

  ‘Well-get him!’

  ‘Where?’ asked Chord.

  Cursing, Rillish sawed his mount around and kneed it into motion. ‘South, of course!’

  ‘Sir! Wait!’

  But Rillish could not wait. Only he was mounted. Only he stood any chance of catching the man. Storming through the modest hamlet he left it behind almost immediately and entered the unrelieved darkness of an overcast night. Empty flat fields lined the way in monochrome pewter, interrupted occasionally by black lines of low stone walls and the darkness of small copses. His leg screamed its pain at him, making him squirm in his saddle. A cool mist, the beginnings of rain, chilled his face and neck. Where he imagined he should have caught up with the fellow his mount balked at the road ahead, almost throwing him over its neck. He grunted the agony of using his legs to rescue his seating. When he'd recovered a mounted rider blocked the way. Rillish reached for one sword but found an empty sheath only. Damn! He drew the left.

  ‘Wrong rider,’ called the figure in a young woman's familiar voice. Rillish peered into the gloom. ‘Nether?’

  ‘Come. We must hurry.’

  Rillish kneed his mount forward, clenching his teeth. ‘How did you …’ But of course – the Warrens. He sheathed the sword.

  ‘He's good, this one. Eluded us all night but betrayed himself at your roadblock.’

  ‘He is headed south?’

  Nether tossed her wild black hair, hacked unevenly to a medium length and damp with sweat. ‘You could ride all the way to Fist and not meet him. He's taken to the Warrens but I have his scent – come!’ Her mount lunged away at a gallop.

  Cursing, Rillish struggled to urge his sweating horse onward. ‘C'mon, boy. That's a handsome mare she's riding. C'mon.’

  Either she reined in to wait for him or he had coaxed renewed vigour from his mount but he gained upon her and they raced single file. She glanced back, grinning the pleasure of a daughter of the steppes who had ridden before walking. ‘Hold on, Malazan!’

  Not knowing what to expect Rillish flinched and thereby missed the transition. When he opened his eyes the fields were gone as was the road and the low rain clouds. Instead, his mount's hooves sank noiselessly into deep moss and rotting humus while all around squat trees loomed from a shadowed silver night. Nether pulled up savagely.

  ‘The arrogant fool! He has no idea the risks he runs here!’

  ‘Where is here?’ Rillish's mount shuddered beneath him, muscles flinching in exhaustion, and perhaps in fear.

  ‘Shadow. Meneas and Mockra skeined together I sensed in his weavings. Now we have proof. But illusion will not save him from this,’ and she waved to the forest.

  Rillish slipped a hand to the grip of his remaining weapon. ‘What is it?’

  She regarded him closely. The flat light of shadow cast her face into sharp planes of light and dark. Gods, she looked to Rillish like the ground-down mother of nine who had seen most of those into the dirt. Yet she was young enough to be his daughter. Child, life has been so unfair to you. She asked, ‘What do you know of the houses of the Azath?’

  He shrugged. ‘Some. Stories, legends.’

  ‘They capture any foolish enough to enter their grounds. Sometimes with vines or trees.’ She gestured to the forest. ‘As those tree
s are to the Azath, so is this forest to Shadow. None who enter escape …’ Cocking her head she raised a hand to forestall any comment. ‘And this raises a disturbing question – what could be so difficult, or important, to imprison that an entire forest is required?’

  Rillish stared at the girl, or rather young woman. Damn these mages and their unfathomable academic minds. He waved the question aside. ‘He's getting away.’

  ‘Is he?’ And she smiled again. ‘I do not ask that you accompany me, but will you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then stay close – as your saboteurs say, things are about to get hairy.’ She kneed her mount forward. Rillish followed, gasping as he too kneed his mount. What trail Nether followed he had no idea – some sort of magical wake of warren manipulation perhaps. In any case, she did not hesitate, leaping fallen rotting logs, dodging trunks and ducking low branches. Rillish struggled to keep up. Glancing ahead, it seemed to him that the thick leafless branches were becoming more numerous, were perhaps even swinging into their path. Now, a yellow glow spread out ahead of Nether, almost like ripples, which pushed back against the branches while she and he slipped through. Then, in the distance, Rillish heard a sound that raised the hairs of his neck and forearms: the angry baying of a hound. Nether's head snapped around, and though her face was no more than a pale oval, Rillish thought he saw fear in the witch's eyes.

  Roots now writhed through the moss and heaps of steaming fallen leaves. Nether's mount stumbled, legs stamping, snorting its alarm. Pulling up, she pointed. ‘There! His horse was taken. He is afoot.’ She urged her mount onward but it baulked, dancing aside. ‘What?’

  A yell of outrage reached them from ahead, then the ground erupted, sending their mounts rearing. Rillish shielded his face from a driven spray of dirt and smoke. Blinking, arm raised over his eyes, he made out Nether standing tall in her saddle, peering ahead. ‘What was that!’ he yelled through the roaring in his ears.

  ‘I thought I saw …’

  Bellowing as loud as a bull's snapped their heads around. Something huge thrashed in the forest back along their trail. Wood cracked sounding like explosions. He and Nether shared a grin of terrified amusement – the forest, it seemed, wasn't too particular. ‘We have to go!’

  Nether was nodding, but her gaze was captured by what lay ahead. ‘He has escaped again. But I believe I know …’ She snapped a gesture and the surroundings wavered, lightening to a grey dusk. At that instant her mount shrieked a death-cry.

  The transition felt like the worst hangover Rillish had ever experienced. He held his blazing forehead, blinked away tears. As his eyes refocused, he found he was still mounted, but Nether lay on the ground at his horse's hooves, her mount splayed dead in a pool of its own viscera. Half the animal had not made the shift. ‘Nether!’

  An arm wrapped around her side, she pointed, snarling, ‘Get him!’

  Rillish kicked his mount into motion. He had a blurred impression of a dirt plain scattered with boulders, a flat dull sky, then his mount carried him over the lip of a ridge to slide dancing and side-stepping down a long scree slope to a narrow, dry valley floor. Coughing, he waved at the dust cloud while dirt and rocks skittered down around him. Nearby, someone else was coughing.

  As the dust thinned Rillish saw Dol lying among the rocks, both hands clenching the empty rags of one trouser leg. He was looking up at him, anger and a touch of bitter amusement twisting his face. ‘Damned trees took my leg,’ he said, his teeth flashing behind his beard. Rillish allowed himself to relax, massaged his thigh.

  ‘You know,’ Dol said conversationally, ‘in the songs, the hero jumps from Warren to Warren always landing on his feet. He never appears on a Hood-be-damned hillside and falls on his arse.’

  Rillish nodded his tired agreement. ‘I don't think the minstrels have been there.’

  A fierce grin of suppressed agony, then the man squinted up at him. ‘The Keth family, right? Rillish?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Gone over to the barbarians, hey?’

  ‘Let's say I disagree with the Empress's policies.’

  Dol stared, then laughed ending with a snarl of pain. ‘The Empress? Oh yes, her’

  Rillish eyed the man uncertainly and opened his mouth to ask the obvious question when the man glanced aside and gaped his surprise. Someone else was walking up, picking his way between the rocks of the valley: slim, wild grey hair, the tattered rags of what once must have been expensive finery hanging from him. ‘What in Hood's paths is that?' Dol said, speaking Rillish's own thoughts.

  The bizarre figure closed on Dol to peer down with an antic grin that seemed about to break into laughter. Dol gaped up doubtfully at him. Rillish clasped his sword grip. ‘Who—’

  A foot lashed out, taking Dol in the throat. The mage's blood-splashed hands leapt from the ruins of his thigh to his neck. His eyes bulged his disbelief.

  ‘Damn you!’ Rillish drew, but his numb leg couldn't restore his balance and he slid sideways off his horse. He lay on his back like an upturned turtle, his leg twisted in the stirrup.

  The man came around the horse. He rubbed a hand over the animal's quivering sweaty flanks and studied it with open approval. ‘Falling off your horse like that … was that some sort of fiendishly cunning manoeuvre meant to confuse me?’ Rillish had no idea what to say or do; his leg was useless and he lay helpless before this insane murderous beggar.

  ‘No, I just fell off my horse.’

  A barked laugh. ‘I like you,’ a sudden frown, ‘a pity.’

  Closer now, the man's wild filthy hair was perhaps very light beneath the dirt and the hue of his flesh underneath the caked grime was quite dark. Rillish wondered if the fellow were part Napan. But the eyes were wrong; the eyes were … almost inhuman. ‘Who are you?’

  The quick rictus of a smile, gone just as suddenly as it appeared. ‘A lie. A lost letter. A message whispered to the wind. A dart tossed into a cyclone.’

  A madman. Rillish wet his lips. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Nothing you—’ the man stopped himself, glanced up the valley slope. His brows rose. ‘Not who I was expecting,’ he said. He may not even have been aware he was speaking aloud. ‘No, not yet, I think.’ He backed away, pointed to Rillish. The Lady is with you today. Do not imagine she will be tomorrow.’

  ‘Who … ?’ But the harlequin figure disappeared among the boulders.

  Moments later Nether came hobbling around the horse, still clenching her side. She nodded to Rillish then returned her stare to where the apparition had gone. ‘You saw him?’ he demanded, as if doubting his own sanity.

  ‘Yes. You spoke with him?’

  ‘Yes – you know who he is?’

  A long slow affirmation. ‘Oh yes. And I will tell you in all honesty, Jal Keth. I seriously debated whether or not to come down here.’

  ‘Well, who i5 he?’

  A shake of the head. ‘No. It is safer for you not to know – for now. Someone who was supposed to be out of the game.’

  Rillish allowed himself to lie limp on the ground. ‘Gods, woman! Well, at least help me up.’

  ‘Who, me?’ Together, each aiding the other, with much trial and error, they mounted with Nether behind holding Rillish steady. She nickered to start his mount walking; it picked a path between the boulders.

  ‘Just where in all the Realms are we anyway?’ Rillish asked.

  ‘The Imperial Warren.’

  ‘Oh. I thought no one was supposed to come here any more.’

  ‘That's right.’

  ‘Did we perhaps just meet the reason behind that prohibition?’

  She whispered in his ear, ‘How could we when we've never been here?’

  While Nether gently weaved their transition from the Warren Rillish tried to fight his sudden keen awareness of the warmth of the young warlock's embrace. It did not help later that night, close to dawn, as Nether and he and their exhausted mount were walking the road north through a cold drizzle, when soldiers straightened from
hedgerows alongside the road and Rillish pulled up suddenly to see Talia watching him from over the stock of a levelled crossbow. She did lower the weapon, but the look she gave him there on the horse in Nether's arms was a caution for when they next met.

  * * *

  To Kyle the coast of this land seemed to consist of nothing more than league after league of empty sand beaches leading up to dense jungle. Ereko skilfully wove the Kite through gaps in reefs as they skirted north-west. White and black seabirds hovered and dived in their wake. Peering over the gunwale was like staring down from a great height – undersea mountains of coral passed majestically beneath them. The sun glared with a ferocity Kyle had never known. It seemed to bake the top of his head. The brothers had used leather strips to tie rags over their heads and Stalker had even removed his armour and now sat in his leathers, a sash around his head and face like a scarf. Only Traveller and Ereko seemed unmoved by the oppressive heat. Kyle itched with sweat and rashes seemed to be creeping over his entire body.