She turned her mount while watching him sidelong. ‘I have a secret.’
He stilled, his eyes narrowing. ‘Oh?’
‘Yes. I am, as they say in your fancy aristocratic society – with child.’
‘What?’ He stared, utterly shocked. ‘But that's impossible!’
An arched brow. ‘Has no one told you how all this works, then?’
‘No! I mean, what I meant was … how could you know so soon?’
‘The horsewives told me. They're beside themselves. You should've heard them clucking over me.’
‘Well, you'll have to leave the ranks, of course.’
She faced him squarely. ‘I certainly will not. I'm a sergeant now. Got a pay increase.’
‘I could bust you down.’
‘For what?’ she snapped. ‘Misconduct with an officer?’
Rillish opened his mouth then quickly shut it, thinking that perhaps another assault would be inadvisable at this time. Reconnoitring and observation were clearly called for. Perhaps some judicious probing. Talia rode in a loud pointed silence, her back stiff, face averted. He cleared his throat. ‘Not the reaction you were expecting, I imagine.’
‘Damned straight.’
‘I'm sorry. It's just… quite a surprise. My first reaction is that you don't take any risks …’
‘You think I want to?’ She sighed, eased her mount closer, took his arm. ‘Old Orhan and I can swap duties.’
Orhan, Rillish reflected. The company quartermaster and horse-master. Demanding work, potentially dangerous, but not a battlefield position. A gimp leg and getting slow, yet a canny veteran who'd been in the service all his life. Was a sergeant on the listings.
‘… then I'll find a wetnurse among the Wickans. After that the little tyke can go to stay with my brother in Halas. He's a wood-wright there. Or what about your people?’
Rillish thought about his people. He thought of the high-season house in Unta and the off-season house in Haljhen. The family lands along the Gris River where vineyards, fields and orchards stretched for more than a day's ride in any direction. He thought of the barrels of wine ageing beneath the great manor house, the countless families who lived on and worked those lands.
All lost to him. Lost to Rillish Jal Keth, the family traitor.
And now he had an heir. An heir to the two swords he carried, the bag of coin under his shirt and a name he or she could never claim. He took Talia's hand. ‘So where is this Halas?’
* * *
One of their remaining Seti scouts came roaring up and pulled short at the last moment, his mount stamping, sweaty and lathered. Ghelel recognized Toven, the young smartarse who had teased her and Molk earlier. Now, she was grateful for the lad's love of excitement.
’They're headed for Heng,’ he reported.
The ‘they’ in this case was a huge Kan Confederacy army that had come marching out of the south, consisting of some four thousand lancers and twenty-five thousand infantry. The ‘they’ being the reason the Marquis and his command were now hunkered down in a copse of trees south-west of Heng.
The Marquis nodded his acknowledgement.
Thank you, scout. Get yourself a fresh horse.’
‘Aye, commander.’ A leering grin to Ghelel and the lad kicked his mount onward.
‘Going to get himself killed,’ Prevost Razala said with a kind of reluctant affection.
‘I hope not,’ the Marquis murmured, ‘we're running out of scouts.’
‘So this Kan force – they're our allies?’ Ghelel asked.
The Marquis drew his pipe from his shoulder-pouch, clamped it unlit between his teeth. ‘Not necessarily, they may be with Laseen. But, if I were to lay any wagers on the matter, I'd say they're on the side of the Itko Kan Confederacy.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘Meaning that they may be here to try to take Li Heng.’
‘What? But that's ridiculous! With our army here, and Laseen's!’
A thoughtful frown. ‘Not at all. Itko Kan has always resented the establishment of the Free Cities. Heng is the only reason the entity exists. Now's their chance to rid themselves of it. Not to mention possibly keeping hold of Heng. No, I imagine they plan to negotiate with whoever wins up north, using Heng as their card. Sound strategy.’
‘That's—’ Ghelel stopped herself from saying anything that would reveal any more of her lack of … well, cold-bloodedness.
‘Makes me wish the beast would cross the Idryn,’ Razala grated.
Jhardin shot the woman a look. ‘Believe me, Prevost, you do not wish that.’
‘What of us, then, Marquis?’ Ghelel asked.
‘We withdraw west. To the Falls.’
‘West? West to Broke Earth Falls?’ Ghelel repeated, disbelieving. ‘But that would take us completely from battle! We are needed up north! Choss is facing off against Laseen. Every man and woman is needed!’
‘Five hundred would make precious little difference, Prevost Alil. In any case, our way north is blocked. We are cut off from the Pilgrim Bridge, from Li Heng. The only place we may be able to cross is the Falls.’
‘I differ with you on that point, Commander. A charge of a hundred heavies could make all the difference in any battle. Razala? What of you?’
The commander of heavy cavalry held her gaze long and hard on Ghelel, who caught a storm of suppressed emotions writhing just beneath her sweaty, plain, scarred face: resentment, anger, shame and finally regret. Then the woman lowered her eyes as if studying the backs of her gauntlets crossed before her on the pommel of her saddle. ‘I wish it more than I can say, Prevost. But… I'm sworn to follow the Marquis.’
‘So we go west,’ Jhardin said. ‘The Seti will keep us informed.’ And he kicked his mount into motion.
* * *
‘Kanese forces,’ Sergeant Banath snorted next to Hurl. ‘Ploughboys, fishergals and runaway ‘prentices. Not a backbone in the lot. Don't know why they bother. Might as well pack up and go home.’ He spat over the edge of the tower next to the South Outer Round gate. ‘ ‘Cept their mages. Plenty tricky, them Kan mages. Like the Dal Hon – only not so bad.’
‘Thanks for the tip, Sergeant,’ Hurl said, head in hands. It still hurt. Liss said she was all healed up, but it still hurt. And this Kan parley did not help at all. Gods help its commander; she was in a mood to bite stone. ‘All right. Let's go.’
Hurl rode out accompanied by Silk, Sergeant Banath and a detachment of twenty Hengan cavalry – a good fraction of all that remained to them. Liss was watching the north, Sunny was handling repairs and reconstruction, while Storo lay in bed, barely alive, recovering from the savaging the beast had inflicted upon him. And Jalor; Jalor had fallen doing his job – standing next to Rell. As for Rell, he made it plain these sort of negotiations were not for him. And so it came to Hurl, now Acting-Fist, and commander of the city's defence.
Kan outriders stopped them just a short ride along the road south. Here they waited for the Kan representatives. They had a long wait. Hurl took the opportunity to get as much room as possible between her and the horses. She walked to an abandoned farmhouse and grounds – the trampled garden plot picked clean, the rooms emptied of all furniture, tools. All hints of the family that had occupied the homestead gone. Standing in the thatch-roofed, single-room house, watching the dust swirl in the light from the open door, all she felt was a sense of sadness and loss. Who had lived here? She wondered if their own scavenging parties had been responsible, or the Talian force reportedly in the south, or these very Kanese outriders keeping an eye on them. Eventually, a large carriage drawn by four oxen came rumbling up the south road. Lancers escorted it, and a van of five horsemen preceded it. Hurl went out to meet them.
One dismounted and approached, a man wearing functional armour of banded strips and a long jupon bearing the seven entwined blossoms of the Itko Kan Confederacy – an insignia last seen some hundred years ago. He pulled off his helmet and cloth cap revealing a middle-aged man, darkly featured with a mousta
che and closely trimmed beard. He bowed to Hurl. ‘Commander Pirim ‘J Shall at your service.’ He motioned to the riders. ‘Invigilator Durmis.’ The short robed man bowed. The rest of the riders were obviously guards. ‘Within the carriage is Custodian Kapalet. Sadly, the demands of the expedition have proved wearying for the custodian and she is indisposed.’
‘Acting-Fist Hurl.’ She motioned to her own escort. ‘And this is Silk.’ The commander bowed. Exhaling noisily, he sat on the edge of the broken water trough.
‘Congratulations in forestalling the Talians. It must have been very difficult.’
‘Accepted.’
‘Yet…’ and he was looking off to the west, ‘it has no doubt left you sorely diminished. You must ask yourself, how much more can your men take? How much more must they have left within them?’
‘Enough to turn away your dog and pony act.’
He flashed a tolerant smile and motioned to the surrounding countryside. ‘We of the Confederacy did not come empty-handed, Acting-Fist. We know these lands well – they used to be ours. We know of the shortage of wood and so we brought our own. Enough for many siege towers.’
‘There's nothing I like more than a good fire.’
Again, a smile of forbearance. ‘Consider, commander, can you face us in the south and keep adequate watch on your north? I very much doubt it. Consider well, and offer terms – if only for the sake of your men.’
Hurl pulled on her gloves. The formalities had been observed; she had no interest in jousting with the man. ‘Our terms are that you withdraw to a day's march to the south. Otherwise we consider you a target. Am I understood?’ She finally succeeded in wiping away that smile. The man stood, gave a curt bow and gestured to the horses. Hurl led.
Readying her horse, Hurl saw that the fat bald Invigilator and Silk were locked in something of a staring match. As she mounted, the Invigilator addressed Silk: ‘Many of my brothers and sisters in the south say that now that the Malazan peace has been broken the man-eater has returned, summoned by the bloodshed. What say you?’
‘I would say the current hostilities have much to do with it, yes.’
‘Those responsible for his return deserve to die in his jaws,’ the Invigilator called as Silk turned his horse. ‘Just as the ancient curse prophesies. Wouldn't you agree?’
Silk did not turn. His back stiff, he snapped his reins and rode off.
‘How many has he taken so far?’ the man yelled.
Hurl followed, but she could not help glancing back: the Invigilator pointed a damning finger at her. She urged her mount on to catch up to Silk.
‘What in the name of D'rek was all that about?’
Looking ahead, the mage pushed aside his wind-tossed hair. ‘Nothing, Hurl.’
‘Nothing? You mean there's a real curse? Jalor's dead. Storo is nearly. Shaky's gone—’
‘Shaky died before we did anything, Hurl.’
‘Don't split hairs. I see a trend. How long have you known about this curse?’
Silk gestured helplessly. ‘Hurl, it's nothing to take seriously. Nothing specific. It's probably just something made up by minstrels and such who love the subject. That's all.’
‘Probably … probably? How do you know?’
‘Because neither Kellanved nor Tayschrenn deal in curses, yes? It wasn't to their taste.’
‘So I'm supposed to trust to that?’
‘Yes.’ He faced her, gave his best reassuring smile that she'd seen him lie through hundreds of times. ‘Listen. He was just trying to shake you up. Undermine your confidence. That's all.’
‘Yeah, well, he succeeded.’
They met up with the rest of their detachment and by mutual consent neither said anything more on the subject. Reaching the city, Hurl travelled with her newly assigned six bodyguards to the North Outer Round to check on the repairs. There the seething activity astonished her. Hundreds of workers clearing up, repairing walls, salvaging material. It seemed that the residents of Li Heng had finally come around to their own defence. The cynic in Hurl wondered whether Ryllandaras's appearance had anything to do with their sudden new enthusiasm. But there was another explanation. She could not deny that after Rell's performance forestalling the beast the city had embraced him. It was now common to hear them shouting ‘Protector!’ after him and even throwing flowers. It had got to the point that he didn't go out on to the streets any more. The city, it seemed, had convinced itself that, in its hour of most dire need, it had found its new Protector. And for her part, Hurl was not entirely certain that they hadn't.
At the North Plains Gate she spotted Sunny surrounded by a crowd of shouting tradesmen, and he raised a hand to acknowledge her while heaping insults on them. She climbed stairs to the wall ramparts. The gate, beyond repair, was being permanently sealed. A wall of stone blocks was being raised up behind temporary wood and rubble outer barriers. At the battlements she found Liss. The Seti shamaness, or mage, or whatever she might be, was staring north over the prairie, empty now but for broken, abandoned equipment, humped burials and wind-lashed tatters.
‘How's Storo?’ Hurl asked.
A cocked brow. ‘As good as can be expected. Mending a clean sword cut, a blade puncture, or knitting a broken bone is easy compared to trying to align flesh torn and mangled by talons. He's lost his arm, an eye, and we may yet lose him to his internal wounds. But why ask me? You should go to see him yourself.’
Hurl shook her head. He would not want her to see him as he was, helpless and broken. Liss pursed her lips but said nothing. She returned to moodily watching the plain.
‘Will he be back?’ Hurl asked. Both understood that by he. Hurl now meant someone else.
Liss nodded weakly. ‘Yes. Eventually. Right now there's easy pickings out there.’ The shamaness's demeanour seemed to be falling by the hour. Her hair hung in greasy strings, her skin looked unhealthily pale and, unbelievably, she smelled worse than when Hurl first met her – something which had she been asked at the time she would not have thought possible.
‘And the Seti? Are they safe?’
A tired smile. ‘Thank you, Hurl, my gal. Yes. For the time being. They are safe. Yet can a people be said to be safe from themselves?
This White Jackal worship must not be allowed to gain its stranglehold once more. It is a regression for us – a childlike dependency.’
‘I'm sorry.’ Indeed, she felt very sorry. More and more it was coming to seem that they should not have done what they did. That she had made a terrifying mistake that would haunt her for the rest of her life. Perhaps there really was a curse.
The shamaness slapped Hurl on the back. ‘Don't worry yourself, lass. What's done is done. Now, it's up to me to do something.’
‘You?’ She eyed her suspiciously. ‘What do you mean?’
Liss turned her hands back and forth before her eyes, examined her layered ragged skirts. ‘Just something I've put off for maybe too long, that's all. Maybe the time's come.’
For what? Hurl wanted to ask but something stopped her, a vague unformed dread that whispered you do not want to know. It occurred to her that perhaps she was a coward after all.
* * *
The journey north had been smooth, though the Kite did not perform nearly so lithely as before without Ereko's steady hand at the tiller. Jan, Stalker and Kyle traded off keeping the sail as taut as possible. The brothers kept to the middle of the open boat, preparing the food and generally getting on each other's nerves. Traveller was a dark brooding presence at the prow that everyone avoided. It was as if Ereko, though not human himself, had been the only thing keeping a human presence within the swordsman. Kyle knew that the Lost brothers believed he blamed Traveller for Ereko's death. And for a time he had. But now he wondered how much choice the man had – the entire confrontation had had the air of an inevitable convergence, the long-delayed closure of a circle. Unavoidable. And Ereko had warned of the melancholy spell of the weapon at the man's side. It was clear now to him that what had happened had be
en just as hard on Traveller, if not harder. Hadn't he been friends with the Thel Akai for so much longer? It seemed to him unhealthy that the man be allowed to brood for so long and he realized that if anyone was going to do anything, it could only be him. On the fifth day he worked up the resolve to approach and sit near the prow.
‘So, Quon,’ he said after a time.
Through his long black hair hanging down, the man's dark ocean eyes shifted from his hands hanging limply at his legs to
Kyle. Something stirred, flickering within them, a kind of distant recognition, and a hand came up to squeeze them. He raised his head. ‘Yes. Quon.’
‘May I ask why?’
Return of the Crimson Guard: A Novel of the Malazan Empire Page 66