Karsa got his feet under him and he dove sideways, once more evading the descending claws. Up against another chair, this one massive. Grasping the legs, Karsa heaved it into the path of the creature – it had launched itself into the air. The chair caught both its outstretched legs, snapped them out to the side.
The beast crashed down, cracking its head, broken tiles flying.
Karsa kicked it in the throat.
The beast kicked him in the chest, and he was pitched backward once more, landing on a discarded helmet that rolled, momentarily, sending him back further, up against a wall.
Pain thundering in his chest, the Toblakai climbed to his feet.
The beast was doing the same, slowly, wagging its head from side to side, its breath coming in rough wheezes punctuated by sharp, barking coughs.
Karsa flung himself at it. His hands closed on its right wrist and he ducked under, twisting the arm as he went, then spun round yet again, turning the arm until it popped at the shoulder.
The creature squealed.
Karsa clambered onto its back, his fists hammering on the dome of its skull. Each blow shook the beast’s bones. Teeth snapped, the head driven down at each blow, springing back up in time to meet the next one. Staggering beneath him, the right arm hanging limp, the left one attempting to reach up to scrape him off, the creature careened across the room.
Karsa continued swinging, his own hands numbed by the impacts.
Finally, he heard the skull crack.
A rattling gasp of breath – from him or the beast, he wasn’t sure which – then the creature dropped and rolled.
Most of its immense weight settled for a brief moment between Karsa’s thighs, and a roar burst from his throat as he clenched the muscles of his legs to keep that ridged spine away from his crotch. Then the reptile pitched sideways, pinning his left leg. He reached up to wrap an arm around its thrashing neck.
Rolling further, it freed its own left arm, scythed it up and around. Talons sank into Karsa’s left shoulder. A surge of overpowering strength dragged the Toblakai off, sending him tumbling into the wreckage of the collapsed table.
Karsa’s grasping hand found one of the table legs. He scrambled up and swung it hard against the beast’s outstretched arm.
The leg shattered, and the arm was snatched back with a squeal.
The beast reared upright once more.
Karsa charged again.
Was met by a kick, high on his chest.
Sudden blackness.
His eyes opened. Gloom. Silence. The stink of faeces and blood and settling dust. Groaning, he sat up.
A distant crash. From somewhere above.
He studied his surroundings, until he spied the side doorway. He rose, limped towards it. A wide hallway beyond, leading to a staircase.
‘Was that a scream, Captain?’
‘I am not sure, Falah’d.’
Samar Dev squinted in the bright light at the soldier beside her. He had been muttering under his breath since Toblakai’s breach of the iron doors. Stone swords, iron and locks seemed to have been the focus of his private monologue, periodically spiced with some choice curses. That, and the need to get the giant barbarian as far away from Ugarat as possible.
She wiped sweat from her brow, returned her attention to the keep’s entrance. Still nothing.
‘They’re negotiating,’ the Falah’d said, restless on the saddle as servants stood to either side, alternately sweeping the large papyrus fans to cool Ugarat’s beloved ruler.
‘It did sound like a scream, Holy One,’ Captain Inashan said after a moment.
‘Then it is a belligerent negotiation, Captain. What else can be taking so long? Were they all starved and dead, that barbarian would have returned. Unless, of course, there’s loot. Hah, am I wrong in that? I think not! He’s a savage, after all. Cut loose from Sha’ik’s leash, yes? Why did he not die protecting her?’
‘If the tales are true,’ Inashan said uncomfortably, ‘Sha’ik sought a personal duel with the Adjunct, Falah’d.’
‘Too much convenience in that tale. Told by the survivors, the ones who abandoned her. I am unconvinced by this Toblakai. He is too rude.’
‘Yes, Falah’d,’ Inashan said, ‘he is that.’
Samar Dev cleared her throat. ‘Holy One, there is no loot to be found in Moraval Keep.’
‘Oh, witch? And how can you be so certain?’
‘It is an ancient structure, older even than Ugarat itself. True, alterations have been made every now and then – all the old mechanisms were beyond our understanding, Falah’d, even to this day, and all we have now from them is a handful of pieces. I have made long study of those few fragments, and have learned much—’
‘You bore me, now, witch. You have still not explained why there is no loot.’
‘I am sorry, Falah’d. To answer you, the keep has been explored countless times, and nothing of value has ever been found, barring those dismantled mechanisms—’
‘Worthless junk. Very well, the barbarian is not looting. He is negotiating with the squalid, vile Malazans – whom we shall have to kneel before once again. I am betrayed into humiliation by the cowardly rebels of Raraku. Oh, one can count on no-one these days.’
‘It would seem not, Falah’d,’ Samar Dev murmured.
Inashan shot her a look.
Samar wiped another sheath of sweat from her brow.
‘Oh!’ the Falah’d cried suddenly. ‘I am melting!’
‘Wait!’ Inashan said. ‘Was that a bellow of some sort?’
‘He’s probably raping someone!’
He found the creature hobbling down a corridor, its head wagging from side to side, pitching into one wall then the other. Karsa ran after it.
It must have heard him, for it wheeled round, jaws opening in a hiss, moments before he closed. Battering a raking hand aside, the Toblakai kneed the beast in the belly. The reptile doubled over, chest-ridge cracking down onto Karsa’s right shoulder. He drove his thumb up under its left arm, where it found doeskin-soft tissue. Puncturing it, the thumb plunging into meat, curling round ligaments. Closing his hand, Karsa yanked on those ligaments.
Dagger-sharp teeth raked the side of his head, slicing a flap of skin away. Blood gushed into Karsa’s right eye. He pulled harder, throwing himself back.
The beast plunged with him. Twisting to one side, Karsa narrowly escaped the crashing weight, and was close enough to see the unnatural splaying of its ribs at the impact.
It struggled to rise, but Karsa was faster. Straddling it once more. Fists hammering down on its skull. With each blow the lower jaws cracked against the floor, and he could feel a sagging give in the plates of the skull’s bones beneath his fists. He kept pounding.
A dozen wild heartbeats later and he slowed, realizing the beast was no longer moving beneath him, the head flat on the floor, getting wider and flatter with each impact of his battered fists. Fluids were leaking out. Karsa stopped swinging. He drew in a ragged, agony-filled breath, held it against the sudden waves of darkness thundering through his brain, then released it steady and long. Another mouthful of bloody phlegm to spit out, onto the dead beast’s shattered skull.
Lifting his head, Karsa glared about. A doorway on his right. In the room beyond, a long table and chairs. Groaning, he slowly rose, stumbled into the chamber.
A jug of wine sat on the table. Cups were lined up in even rows down both sides, each one opposite a chair. Karsa swept them from the table, collected the jug, then lay down on the stained wood surface. He stared up at the ceiling, where someone had painted a pantheon of unknown gods, all looking down.
Mocking expressions one and all.
Karsa pushed the flap of loose skin back against his temple, then sneered at the faces on the ceiling, before lifting the jug to his lips.
Blessed cool wind, now that the sun was so close to the horizon. Silence for a while now, too, since that last bellow.
A number of soldiers, standing for bell after bell al
l afternoon, had passed out and were being tended to by the lone slave the Falah’d had relinquished from his entourage.
Captain Inashan had been assembling a squad to lead into the keep for some time now.
The Falah’d was having his feet massaged and bathed in mint-leaves chewed in mouthfuls of oil by the slaves. ‘You are taking too long, Captain!’ he said. ‘Look at that demonic horse, the way it eyes us! It will be dark by the time you storm the keep!’
‘Torches are being brought along, Falah’d,’ Inashan said. ‘We’re almost ready.’
His reluctance was almost comical, and Samar Dev dared not meet his eye again, not after the expression her wink earlier had elicited.
A shout from the besiegers’ encampment.
Toblakai had appeared, climbing down from the ledge, back onto the makeshift steps. Samar Dev and Inashan made their way to the moat, arriving in time to see him emerge. The bear fur was in ribbons, dark with blood. He had tied a strip of cloth about his head, holding the skin in place over one temple. Most of his upper clothing had been torn away, revealing countless gouges and puncture wounds.
And he was covered in shit.
From the Falah’d twenty paces behind them came a querulous enquiry: ‘Toblakai! The negotiations went well?’
In a low voice, Inashan said, ‘No Malazans left, I take it?’
Karsa Orlong scowled. ‘Didn’t see any.’ He strode past them.
Turning, Samar Dev flinched at the horror of the warrior’s ravaged back. ‘What happened in there?’ she demanded.
A shrug that jostled the slung stone sword. ‘Nothing important, witch.’
Not slowing, not turning, he continued on.
A smudge of light far to the south, like a cluster of dying stars on the horizon, marked the city of Kayhum. The dust of the storm a week past had settled and the night sky was bright with the twin sweeps of the Roads of the Abyss. There were scholars, Corabb Bhilan Thenu’alas had heard, who asserted that those broad roads were nothing more than stars, crowded in multitudes beyond counting, but Corabb knew that was folly. They could be naught but celestial roads, the paths walked by the dragons of the deep, and Elder Gods and the blacksmiths with suns for eyes who hammered stars into life; and the worlds spinning round those stars were simply dross, cast-offs from the forges, pale and smudged, on which crawled creatures preening with conceit.
Preening with conceit. An old seer had told him that once, and for some reason the phrase lodged in Corabb’s mind, allowing him to pull it free every now and then to play with, his inner eye bright with shining wonder. People did that, yes. He had seen them, again and again. Like birds. Obsessed with self-importance, thinking themselves tall, as tall as the night sky. That seer had been a genius, to have seen so clearly, and to manage so much in three simple words. Not that conceit was a simple thing, and Corabb recalled having to ask an old woman what the word meant, and she had cackled and reached under his tunic to tug on his penis, which had been unexpected and, instinctive response notwithstanding, unwelcome. A faint wave of embarrassment accompanied the recollection, and he spat into the fire flickering before him.
Leoman of the Flails sat opposite him, a hookah filled with wine-soaked durhang at the man’s side, at his thin lips the mouthpiece of hard wood carved into the semblance of a woman’s nipple and stained magenta to add to the likeness. His leader’s eyes glistened dark red in the fire’s light, the lids low, the gaze seemingly fixed on the licking flames.
Corabb had found a piece of wood the length of his arm, light as a woman’s breath – telling him that a birit slug dwelt within – and he had just dug it out with the point of his knife. The creature squirmed on the blade’s tip, and it had been the sight of this that had, alas, reminded him of the debacle with his penis. Feeling morose, he bit the slug in half and began chewing, juices spurting down into his beard. ‘Ah,’ he said around the mouthful, ‘she has roe. Delicious.’
Leoman looked over, then he drew once more on the mouthpiece. ‘We’re running out of horses,’ he said.
Corabb swallowed. The other half of the slug was writhing on the knife tip, threads of pink eggs dangling like tiny pearls. ‘We’ll make it, Commander,’ he said, then poked out his tongue to lap up the roe, following up by inserting the rest of the slug into his mouth. He chewed, then swallowed. ‘Four, five days, I would judge.’
Leoman’s eyes glittered. ‘You know, then.’
‘Where we’re going? Yes.’
‘Do you know why?’
Corabb tossed the piece of wood onto the fire. ‘Y’Ghatan. The First Holy City. Where Dassem Ultor, curse his name, died in betrayal. Y’Ghatan, the oldest city in the world. Built atop the forge of a blacksmith of the Abyss, built on his very bones. Seven Y’Ghatans, seven great cities to mark the ages we have seen, the one we see now crouched on the bones of the other six. City of the Olive Groves, city of the sweet oils—’ Corabb paused, frowned. ‘What was your question, Commander?’
‘Why.’
‘Oh, yes. Do I know why you have chosen Y’Ghatan? Because we invite a siege. It is a difficult city to conquer. The fool Malazans will bleed themselves to death attempting to storm its walls. We shall add their bones to all the others, to Dassem Ultor’s very own—’
‘He didn’t die there, Corabb.’
‘What? But there were witnesses—’
‘To his wounding, yes. To the assassination… attempt. But no, my friend, the First Sword did not die, and he lives still.’
‘Then where is he?’
‘Where doesn’t matter. You should ask: Who is he? Ask that, Corabb Bhilan Thenu’alas, and I will give you answer.’
Corabb thought about that. Even swimming in the fumes of durhang, Leoman of the Flails was too smart for him. Clever, able to see all that Corabb could not. He was the greatest commander Seven Cities had ever produced. He would have defeated Coltaine. Honourably. And, had he been left to it, he would have crushed Adjunct Tavore, and then Dujek Onearm. There would have been true liberation, for all Seven Cities, and from here the rebellion against the damned empire would have rippled outward, until the yoke was thrown off by all. This was the tragedy, the true tragedy. ‘Blessed Dessembrae hounds our heels…’
Leoman coughed a cloud of smoke. He doubled over, still coughing.
Corabb reached for a skin of water and thrust it into his leader’s hands. The man finally drew breath, then drank deep. He leaned back with a gusty sigh, and then grinned. ‘You are a wonder, Corabb Bhilan Thenu’alas! To answer you, I certainly hope not!’
Corabb felt sad. He said, ‘You mock me, Commander.’
‘Not at all, you Oponn-blessed madman – my only friend left breathing – not at all. It is the cult, you see. The Lord of Tragedy. Dessembrae. That is Dassem Ultor. I don’t doubt you understood that, but consider this – for there to be a cult, a religion, with priests and such, there must be a god. A living god.’
‘Dassem Ultor is ascended?’
‘I believe so, although he is a reluctant god. A denier, like Anomander Rake of the Tiste Andii. And so he wanders, in eternal flight, and in, perhaps, eternal hunt as well.’
‘For what?’
Leoman shook his head. Then said, ‘Y’Ghatan. Yes, my friend. There, we will make our stand, and the name shall be a curse among the Malazans, for all time, a curse, bitter on their tongues.’ His eyes hardened suddenly on Corabb. ‘Are you with me? No matter what I command, no matter the madness that will seem to afflict me?’
Something in his leader’s gaze frightened Corabb, but he nodded. ‘I am with you, Leoman of the Flails. Do not doubt that.’
A wry smile. ‘I shall not hold you to that. But I thank you for your words nonetheless.’
‘Why would you doubt them?’
‘Because only I know what I intend to do.’
‘Tell me.’
‘No, my friend. This burden is mine.’
‘You lead us, Leoman of the Flails. We shall follow. As you say, you carry all of u
s. We are the weight of history, of liberty, and yet you are not bowed—’
‘Ah, Corabb…’
‘I only say what is known but has never before been said aloud, Commander.’
‘There is mercy in silence, my friend. But no mind. It is done, you have indeed spoken.’
‘I have assailed you further. I am sorry, Leoman of the Flails.’
Leoman drank again from the waterskin, then spat into the fire. ‘We need say no more of it. Y’Ghatan. This shall be our city. Four, five days. It is just past crushing season, yes?’
‘The olives? Yes, we shall arrive when the grovers have gathered. A thousand merchants will be there, and workers out on the road leading to the coast, setting new stones. And potters, and barrel-makers, and wagoners and caravans. The air shall be gold with dust and dusted with gold—’
‘You are a poet indeed, Corabb. Merchants, and their hired guards. Tell me, will they bow to my authority, do you think?’
‘They must.’
‘Who is the city’s Faiah’d?’
‘Vedor.’
‘Which one?’
‘The ferret-faced one, Leoman. His fish-faced brother was found dead in his lover’s bed, the whore nowhere to be found, but likely rich and in hiding or in a shallow grave. It’s the old story among the Fala’dhan.’
‘And we are certain Vedor continues to deny the Malazans?’
‘No fleet or army could have reached them yet. You know this, Leoman of the Flails.’
The man slowly nodded, eyes once more on the flames.
Corabb looked up at the night sky. ‘One day,’ he said, ‘we shall walk the Roads to the Abyss. And so witness all the wonders of the universe.’
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