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

by Ian C. Esslemont

  ‘Well?’ he stared up at her, demanding an answer, some kind of explanation for the horror that bruised his eyes. Hurl opened her mouth, but no sound came. She tried again, wetted her cracked lips.

  ‘We're going to put an end to this.’

  ‘Good. Do so. Or do not come back. Because after this night … this atrocity … you are no longer welcome here.’

  Part of her wanted to object, to argue the injustice of that charge. But another part accepted the judgment. So be it. History's condemnation made clear. They were damned. Unless – unless they managed to end things this night. She gave a rigid curt nod to the man and pulled her reins aside, kicking her mount.

  After they exited the camp, riding north across the plain lit silvery in the clear night, Hurl waved Liss to her. ‘Can you track him now?’ she demanded, her voice unrecognizable to herself.

  ‘Yes, now that we've found his trail.’ The Seti shamaness was uncharacteristically subdued. ‘Hurl,’ she began, ‘it's not your—’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  The shamaness appeared about to object or dispute further, but reconsidered. She pursed her lips, looking away, then frowned. ‘Where are the brothers?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The three – I don't see them.’

  Hurl raised a hand for a halt. The troop slowed, stopped. ‘Sergeant!’

  Banath rode up. ‘Sir?’

  ‘Find the brothers.’

  The man jerked a nod, sawed his reins around, rode off. After a brief time he returned. ‘Not with the column, sir. Left us.’

  Hurl turned to look back, the leather of her saddle creaking. Flashes lit the distant battlefield like lightning, and a dark cloud hung low over it like a thunderstorm – smoke? ‘They never wanted Ryllandaras,’ she said, thinking aloud. ‘They came for something else.’

  ‘Should we go back?’ Banath asked.

  ‘No – let them go. Personally, I hope never to see them again.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Liss added, sounding relieved.

  Hurl eyed her – the shamaness had hated them from the start. Named them an abomination. She'd never asked what she'd meant by that exactly. But after having spent some time with them she knew in her gut that she'd felt it all along. ‘You still have the trail, Liss?’

  ‘Yes. He's had his fill for one night. Heading north.’

  ‘Good. We'll follow for as long as it takes.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Rell said. ‘He's a menace to all.’

  Hurl urged her mount on. But we didn't stop to think about that, did we – or at least we were willing to turn a blind eye to it. Well, now we're paying the price. Heng's curse, reborn. We're pariahs. No one will come within a hundred leagues of us until we can rid ourselves of him.

  * * *

  Shadow was damned monotonous. Such was the conclusion Kyle was drawing. They walked and walked and then walked some more. It occurred to him that he ought to be tired, or hungry, but so far nothing like that came upon him. What he felt instead was a kind of draining lassitude, a strange feeling of eternal waiting – not despair – no, not hopelessness, but rather a sensation of time suspended, of eternity. Just how long had the five of them been walking? Who was to know? Their bizarre guide would presumably let them know once they'd reached Quon. No sun rose, no day, or night, came. Eternal dusk. He felt like a ghost walking he knew not where.

  All of them, Jan, the Lost brothers, seemed to have fallen beneath the same spell, as conversation stopped and all walked apart, alone with their thoughts. For a time they drew abreast of a large lake. Figures fished it from boats, casting nets; they appeared huge, inhuman. Their guide swerved them away from the coast. The ground became rougher. Steep-sided canyons rose to their right, cutting through flat-topped hills of layered rock. The Shadow priest Hethe led them around the canyons and out on to a level desert-like landscape of broken rock and thick, sword-like clumped grasses.

  Jan, it seemed, had finally had enough and he jogged ahead to take hold of their guide's frayed robes to pull him to a halt. ‘Where are we?’ he demanded.

  Hethe's hood fell back revealing his wild, kinky black hair like a thin halo around his bumpy skull. His tangled brows rose. ‘Wearwy?’ he said. ‘No, my name is Hethe.’

  ‘No,’ Jan snarled. ‘Where … are … we … going?’

  The man looked insulted. He pulled his robes from Jan's grip. ‘That's rather personal!’ and he stormed off.

  ‘Where are you taking us!’ Jan yelled after him.

  ‘Wartegenus?’ he called back. ‘I know of no such place.’

  Jan pressed a hand to his brow, hung his head. Coming abreast of him, Stalker urged him on with a hand. They continued on. This desert, or what resembled a desert, extended for leagues. Ruins dotted it: no more than scattered fragments of wind-gnawed worked stone.

  After a time all but their guide halted as the calls of more than one hound echoed across the bleak landscape. They exchanged uneasy glances. Some unknowable time later Jan suddenly let out a surprised gasp. His hands went to his neck. The rest of them, but for the guide, halted. The man stared ahead into the distance, amazement in his eyes. Kyle looked to Stalker and the scout shrugged, at a loss. A moment later Jan staggered, caught himself from falling and glared around at the empty landscape. ‘We're close,’ he said, and he set off at a faster pace leaving the four of them to eye one another in complete confusion. Finally, Stalker shrugged again and set off. The brothers followed.

  Kyle refused to move. The thought came to him: what difference would it make? Why should they walk on and on forever like this? He sat down on the gritty, pebbled desert plain. Why return to Quon, to where the Guard was, when they'd just kill him? Unless Jan was who he thought – but could he trust his life to a chance like that?

  Footsteps crunched on the wind-scoured dirt around him. He looked up to see the four of them peering down at him – their guide was nowhere to be seen. Stalker bent down on his haunches in front of him. ‘You comin’?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  The scout glanced up to the others, puzzled. ‘Maybe?’

  ‘If this guy comes clean,’ and he tossed a stone to Jan's feet.

  Stalker gave a long thoughtful nod, looked up at Jan. ‘Well, how about it?’

  The old man pushed back his hair, long and thin enough to be blown by the feeble wind that seemed to haunt the warren. He gave a quick nod of consent, motioned Kyle up. ‘Very well, Kyle. From what I understand, you deserve better.’ Kyle stood, brushed off the dust. Jan fished out the object he carried around his neck, broke the thong, and put what was a ring on his finger. ‘As you suspect, Kyle. I am K'azz D'Avore. Jan, by the way, is part of my full name.’

  ‘I knew it all along!’ Badlands exclaimed, elbowing Coots. ‘Didn't I say so?’

  ‘You didn't say.’

  ‘But you're—’ began Kyle.

  ‘Old?’

  Kyle shrugged, sheepish. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I wasn't when I made the Vow, Kyle. Since then, though, I have aged. But I don't think ageing is the right word for it. I find that I am toughening up, losing flesh, so to speak. I eat little, hardly sleep. It is as if I were transforming somehow.’

  ‘Into what?’ Stalker asked, his gaze narrowed.

  ‘I don't know for certain. I suspect that something in the Vow is transforming me, perhaps all of us Avowed, preserving us. Sustaining us so long as it should hold. Until we complete it.’

  The brothers shared shocked glances, Stalker scowling. ‘That's impossible.’

  A shrug from K'azz invited Stalker to come up with his own explanation. The news meant nothing to Kyle. All it did was confirm that something strange was going on – as though he needed to be told that!

  ‘Where's the little rat?’ Coots asked.

  Everyone glanced around. K'azz pointed, ‘There.’

  Kyle squinted: a tiny dark dot out on the unrelentingly uniform wind-scoured waste.

  ‘For the love of the Infinite,’ Badlands breathed, ‘doesn't he even know we
've stopped?’

  K'azz set out at a jog, waving them on, ‘C'mon. We mustn't lose him.’

  They all set out at a jogging run. At first they seemed to make no progress; the tiny dot seemed to get no larger. Kyle already knew distances and proportions were strange here in Shadow. They trotted for a time, then set out at a run again; they were gaining ground. Kyle's lungs burned, his feet and thighs ached. None of the others evidenced any signs of exertion. He bit down on the pain and kept going. Quite suddenly, they caught up. The man had stopped and was waiting for them, an irked expression on his wrinkled, hairy face.

  ‘Yes?’ he demanded.

  They halted. Kyle bent over to pant, hands on his knees. Stalker faced the fellow, ‘Well? Is this it?’

  Hethe cupped a hand to his ear. ‘What? What was that? You think I can't hear? Well I can! Perfectly!’ He turned around and set off again in his awkward bowed-legged walk.

  ‘I swear I'm gonna kill ‘im,’ Coots ground out.

  K'azz waved them forward. ‘Let's go.’

  They continued on. Coots muttered darkly about strangulation and torture, then, louder, ‘I swear he's leadin’ us in circles!’

  ‘We have no choice,’ K'azz answered tiredly.

  Kyle shifted to walk alongside K'azz. The man caught him studying him sidelong. ‘Yes?’

  Wetting his lips, Kyle ventured, ‘So – you're really him?’

  An amused smile. ‘Yes, Kyle.’

  He'd done it! Actually found him! But they were a long way from Quon. ‘I knew Stoop.’

  The smile broadened. ‘Yes, Stoop. I learned a lot from him when I was a lad.’

  ‘Are you really a Prince?’

  K'azz tilted his head aside, thinking. ‘Some call me that. I was a Duke. During the wars I defended a principality for a time. But that fell too …’

  Kyle glanced away. Oaf! Reminding him of all that.

  Coots shouted, pointing ahead: ‘Look there! There's some poor bastard he led out here to die before.’

  It was a skeleton in verdigrised armour sprawled in the desert sands. The wind had piled little dunes of dust and sand up over its limbs. Reaching it Hethe stopped, jerking as if startled. They caught up with him.

  ‘What is it?’ K'azz asked.

  In a sighing of sands and creaking of leather-cured sinew and tendons, the skeleton stood. All five of them leapt back, drawing weapons; their scout remained where he stood. The animated corpse took hold of the front of Hethe's robes and raised him from the ground, shook him like a dog. Coots edged forward for a blow. The thing raised a hand. ‘Hold!’

  Out of the bottom of the ragged robes fell the little winged and tailed monkey they'd followed before. It hung its head before the skeleton, kicked at the dirt like a guilty child. ‘This has gone far enough,’ the being said. ‘I do not want Shadow becoming embroiled in this. Now go.’ Brightening, the monkey-thing puffed up its chest and marched off. After it had gone a few paces it shot back a glance, wrinkled up its wizened features, stuck out its tongue, then scampered off at a run.

  All six of them watched it go. It seemed to Kyle to shrink down into the distance with impossible speed. He faced the corpse – for upon closer inspection it resembled more a desiccated body, dried cured flesh and all. Like the Imass he'd heard so much of. Thinking of that, he glanced to K'azz who likewise was examining the creature, wonder – and suspicion – on his face. ‘Who are you?’ K'azz asked.

  ‘My name is Edgewalker,’ came the breathless dry response, like wind over heated sand. ‘Though it means nothing to you. What is important is that you do not belong here. I am sending you back.’

  ‘About damned time,’ Coots said aside to Kyle.

  ‘To Quon?’ K'azz asked, but the being merely waved. ‘Quon Tali!’ K'azz shouted, demanding. The grey gloom of the Warren gathered around them, choking off all vision. It was not dark or night, merely so dim Kyle could barely see. Ahead, a pale glow asserted itself; he and the rest headed for it. Kyle found himself in a cave hacked from loose sandy rock. He headed for its opening where starlight shone cold but bright. He had to step over several figures wrapped in thin blankets asleep around a dead fire-pit. He came out into a clear cold night. Cliffs surrounded them, marred by dark openings, a multitude of caves. A road passed before them climbing the incline. In the distance roaring and flashes bruised the night like lightning to both the north and south. K'azz climbed down ahead and now faced the south, staring. They joined him.

  The road switchbacked down cliffs to a long, narrow stone bridge over a wide river. The far bank was swarming with figures lit by countless torches. The mass of them were all crowded around the far end of the bridge and filled its length to about the halfway point where the press stopped, held back by what appeared to be just a few men. Avowed? He looked to K'azz; the man was studying the bridge, his eyes narrowed to slits. ‘Cole,’ he whispered, ‘Amatt, Lean, Black and Turgal.’

  ‘Brethren!’ K#x0027;azz roared. ‘Attend!’

  Silence and stillness. Dogs ran away, loping through the rocks, tails down. Kyle studied the bridge. Such a mass of soldiers facing such a thin barrier … why not just cut them down with arrows and bolts? But then, the bridge appeared to have stone sides, and the press was so close – any flights of missiles would account for far more of the attackers.

  Stalker nudged him, lifted his chin to across the way. Something obscured the many dark cave openings opposite – gauzy grey shapes came emerging from the shadows. They filed down, approaching, silent. Kyle jumped as more stepped out from behind him. Shades in the hundreds. All the Avowed dead. They surrounded the party. All empty dead sockets stared fixed upon K'azz and Kyle could feel the heat, the awful will of that regard. It seemed as if the rest of the party need not even have existed to these shades. Just a year ago such a visitation would have sent Kyle screaming into the night; but by now he felt inured to any horror. He even recognized two of the fallen.

  K'azz studied them in turn, nodding to many. ‘This attack is against my wishes. Who leads this invasion?’

  Hissed from hundreds of indistinct throats: ‘Skinner.’

  A nod from K'azz, who'd known all along. ‘Obey no more orders from him. He is expelled from our company. He is disavowed.’ The Brethren inclined their heads in acquiescence.

  ‘Not so easy, I suspect,’ Stalker whispered aside to Kyle.

  ‘Now, give my regards to those defending the bridge and ask if they can hold much longer. And send word to all – I am returned.’

  The Brethren bowed and as one they bent to a knee. Then, to Kyle's eye they seemed to slowly disperse, disappearing as a haze in the sun. All but one: the shade of a short thin man with one hand – Stoop – who approached, smiling. ‘Well done, lad. Well done. Knew you'd pull it off.’

  To this outrageous claim Kyle could only shake his head.

  A shade materialized next to K'azz. ‘Cole sends his welcome and asks how many days you require.’

  A tight grin from K'azz. ‘Tell Cole I'll send relief as soon as I can.’

  The shade remained. K'azz, who had started for the road, stopped short. ‘Yes?’

  ‘The truth is they are badly wounded and may not last much longer.’

  The Crimson Guard commander spun, faced the bridge – glanced back to the north where battle-magics glowed like auroras brought to earth and combat shook the ground.

  Kyle glanced between the two as well. Gods, what a choice! He faced Stoop. ‘What do you think?’

  The shade examined the bridge and the thousands behind. He scratched his chin. ‘Don't know what's goin’ on up north but we can't let them through.’

  ‘I agree,‘ K'azz said, making Kyle jump – he didn't think him close enough to overhear. ‘Thank you, Kyle.’ To Stoop: ‘Tell Cole I'm coming.’

  ‘Queen forgive me,’ Kyle breathed. Beside him, Badlands sent an entreating look to the sky as if asking – why me, Hood? Why me?

  * * *

  Ullen was in the north-west when word came of the
attack and complete slaughter of the field hospital. He stared for a time wordlessly to the north, numb of all feeling. What had he not done that he should've? A larger rearguard? More messengers? A tighter distribution of the command? Vve failed my soldiers. The men and women who look to me to protect them. Standing before him, the pallid-faced messenger cleared his throat. ‘Sir?’

  Ullen blinked, confused. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Your … orders, sir?’