Wolf jaws ripped into the back of Dejim Nebrahl’s neck, and lifted the D’ivers from the ground.
The T’rolbarahl waited for the clenching, the killing, but it never came. Instead, the beast that held it was running fast over the ground, others of its kind to either side. West, and north, then, eventually, swinging southward, out into the wastes.
Untiring, on and on through the cold night.
Helpless in the grip of those jaws, the last D’ivers of Dejim Nebrahl did not struggle, for struggle was pointless. There would be no quick death, for these creatures had some other purpose in mind for him. Unlike the Deragoth, he realized, these Hounds possessed a master.
A master who found reason to keep Dejim Nebrahl alive. A curious, fraught salvation – but I still live, and that is enough. I still live.
The fierce battle was over. Kalam, lying near Quick Ben, narrowed his gaze, just barely making out the huge shapes of the demons as they set off, without a backward glance, westward along the track.
‘Looks like their hunt’s not yet over,’ the assassin muttered, reaching up to wipe the sweat that had been stinging his eyes.
‘Gods below,’ Quick Ben said in a whisper.
‘Did you hear those distant howls?’ Kalam asked, sitting up. ‘Hounds of Shadow – I’m right, aren’t I, Quick? So, we got lizard cats, and giant bear-dogs like the one Toblakai killed in Raraku, and the Hounds… wizard, I don’t want to walk this road no more.’
‘Gods below,’ the man at his side whispered again.
Lieutenant Pores’s cheerful embrace with the Lady went sour with an ambush of a patrol he’d led inland from the marching army, three days west of Y’Ghatan. Starving bandits, of all things. They’d beaten them off, but he had taken a crossbow quarrel clean through his upper left arm, and a sword-slash just above his right knee, deep enough to sever muscle down to the bone. The healers had mended the damage, sufficient to roughly knit torn flesh and close scar tissue over the wounds, but the pain remained excruciating. He had been convalescing on the back of a crowded wagon, until they came within sight of the north sea and the army encamped, whereupon Captain Kindly had appeared.
Saying nothing, Kindly had clambered into the bed of the wagon, grasped Pores by his good arm, and dragged him from the pallet. Down off the back, the lieutenant nearly buckling under his weak leg, then staggering and stumbling as the captain tugged him along.
Gasping, Pores had asked, ‘What’s the emergency, Captain? I heard no alarms—’
‘Then you ain’t been listening,’ Kindly replied.
Pores looked round, somewhat wildly, but he could seel no-one else rushing about, no general call to arms – the camp was settling down, cookfires lit and figures huddled beneath rain-capes against the chill carried on the sea breeze. ‘Captain—’
‘My officers don’t lie about plucking nose hairs, Lieutenant. There’s real injured soldiers in those wagons, and you’re just in their way. Healers are done with you. Time to stretch out that bad leg. Time to be a soldier again – stop limping, damn you – you’re setting a miserable example here, Lieutenant.’
‘Sorry, sir.’ Sodden with sweat, Pores struggled to keep up with his captain. ‘Might I ask, where are we going?’
‘To look at the sea,’ Kindly replied. ‘Then you’re taking charge of the inland pickets, first watch, and I strongly suggest you do a weapons and armour inspection, Lieutenant, since there is the chance that I will take a walk along those posts.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Up ahead, on a rise overlooking the grey, white-capped sea, stood the Fourteenth’s command. The Adjunct, Nil and Nether, Fists Blistig, Temul and Keneb, and, slightly apart and wrapped in a long leather cloak, T’amber. Just behind them stood Warleader Gall and his ancient aide Imrahl, along with captains Ruthan Gudd and Madan’Tul Rada. The only one missing was Fist Tene Baralta, but Pores had heard that the man was still in a bad way, one-armed and one-eyed, his face ravaged by burning oil, and he didn’t have Kindly in charge of him either, which meant he was being left to heal in peace.
Ruthan Gudd was speaking in a low voice, his audience Madan’Tul Rada and the two Khundryl warriors, ‘… just fell into the sea – those breakers, that tumult in the middle of the bay, that’s where the citadel stood. A tier of raised land surrounded it – the island itself – and there was a causeway linking it to this shore – nothing left of that but those pillars just topping the sands above the tideline. It’s said the shattering of a Jaghut enclave far to the north was responsible—’
‘How could that sink this island?’ Gall demanded. ‘You make no sense, Captain.’
‘The T’lan Imass broke the Jaghut sorcery – the ice lost its power, melted into the seas, and the water levels rose. Enough to eat into the island, deluging the tier, then devouring the feet of the citadel itself. In any case, this was thousands of years ago—’
‘Are you an historian as well as a soldier?’ the Warleader asked, glancing over, his tear-tattooed face bathed red like a mask in the setting sun’s lurid light.
The captain shrugged. ‘The first map I ever saw of Seven Cities was Falari, a sea-current map marking out the treacherous areas along this coast – and every other coastline, all the way to Nemil. It had been copied countless times, but the original dated from the days when the only metals being traded were tin, copper, lead and gold. Falar’s trade with Seven Cities goes back a long way, Warleader Gall. Which makes sense, since Falar is halfway between Quon Tali and Seven Cities.’
Captain Kindly observed, ‘It’s odd, Ruthan Gudd, you do not look Falari. Nor is your name Falari.’
‘I am from the island of Strike, Kindly, which lies against the Outer Reach Deeps. Strike is the most isolated of all the islands in the chain, and our legends hold that we are all that remains of the original inhabitants of Falar – the red-and gold-haired folk you see and think of as Falari were in fact invaders from the eastern ocean, from the other side of Seeker’s Deep, or some unknown islands well away from the charted courses across that ocean. They themselves do not even recall their homelands, and most of them believe they have always lived in Falar. But our old maps show different names, Strike names for all the islands and the kingdoms and peoples, and the word “Falar” does not appear among them.’
If the Adjunct and her retinue were speaking, Pores could hear nothing. Ruthan Gudd’s words and the stiff wind drowned out all else. The lieutenant’s leg throbbed with pain; there was no angle at which he could hold his injured arm comfortably. And now he was chilled, the old sweat like ice against his skin, thinking only of the warm blankets he had left behind.
There were times, he reflected morosely, when he wanted to kill Captain Kindly.
Keneb stared out at the heaving waters of the Kokakal Sea. The Fourteenth had circumvented Sotka and were now thirteen leagues west of the city. He could make out snatches of conversation from the officers behind them, but the wind swept enough words away to make comprehension a chore, and likely not worth the effort. Among the foremost line of officers and mages, no-one had spoken in some time.
Weariness, and, perhaps, the end of this dread, miserable chapter in the history of the Fourteenth..
They had pushed hard on the march, first west and then northward. Somewhere in the seas beyond was the transport fleet and its escort of dromons. Gods, an intercept must be possible, and with that, these battered legions could get off this plague-ridden continent.
To sail away… but where?
Back home, he hoped. Quon Tali, at least for a time. To regroup, to take on replacements. To spit out the last grains of sand from this Hood-taken land. He could return to his wife and children, with all the confusion and trepidation such a reunion would entail. There’d been too many mistakes in their lives together, and even those few moments of redemption had been tainted and bitter. Minala. His sister-in-law, who had done what so many victims did, hidden away her hurts, finding normality in brutal abuse, and had come to believe the fault lay with her, rather than the
madman she had married.
Killing the bastard hadn’t been enough, as far as Keneb was concerned. What still needed to be expunged was a deeper, more pervasive rot, the knots and threads all bound in a chaotic web that defined the time at that fell garrison. One life tied to every other by invisible, thrumming threads, unspoken hurts and unanswered expectations, the constant deceits and conceits – it had taken a continent-wide uprising to shatter all of that. And we are not mended.
Not so long a reach, to see how the Adjunct and this damned army was bound in the same tangled net, the legacies of betrayal, the hard, almost unbearable truth that some things could not be answered.
Broad-bellied pots crowding market stalls, their flanks a mass of intricately painted yellow butterflies, swarming barely seen figures and all sweeping down the currents of a silt-laden river. Scabbards bearing black feathers. A painted line of dogs along a city wall, each beast linked to the next by a chain of bones. Bazaars selling reliquaries purportedly containing remnants of great heroes of the Seventh Army. Bult, Lull, Chenned and Duiker. And, of course, Coltaine himself.
When one’s enemy embraces the heroes of one’s own side, one feels strangely… cheated, as if the theft of life was but the beginning, and now the legends themselves have been stolen away, transformed in ways beyond control. But Coltaine belongs to us. How dare you do this? Such sentiments, sprung free from the dark knot in his soul, made no real sense. Even voicing them felt awkward, absurd. The dead are ever refashioned, for they have no defence against those who would use or abuse them – who they were, what their deeds meant. And this was the anguish… this… injustice.
These new cults with their grisly icons, they did nothing to honour the Chain of Dogs. They were never intended to. Instead, they seemed to Keneb pathetic efforts to force a link with past greatness, with a time and a place of momentous significance. He had no doubt that the Last Siege of Y’Ghatan would soon acquire similar mythical status, and he hated the thought, wanted to be as far away from the land birthing and nurturing such blasphemies as was possible.
Blistig was speaking now: ‘These are ugly waters to anchor a fleet, Adjunct, perhaps we could move on a few leagues—’
‘No,’ she said.
Blistig glanced at Keneb.
‘The weather shall turn,’ Nil said.
A child with lines on his face. This is the true legacy of the Chain of Dogs. Lines on his face, and hands stained red.
And Temul, the young Wickan commanding resentful, embittered elders who still dreamed of vengeance against the slayers of Coltaine. He rode Duiker’s horse, a lean mare with eyes that Keneb could have sworn were filled with sorrow. Temul carried scrolls, presumably containing the historian’s own writings, although he would not show them to anyone. This warrior of so few years, carrying the burden of memory, carrying the last months of life in an old man once soldier among the Old Guard who had, inexplicably, somehow touched this Wickan youth. That alone, Keneb suspected, was a worthy story, but it would remain forever untold, for Temul alone understood it, holding within himself each and every detail, and Temul was not one to explain, not a teller of stories. No, he just lives them. And this is what those cultists yearn for, for themselves, and what they will never truly possess.
Keneb could hear nothing of the huge encampment behind him. Yet one tent in particular within that makeshift city dominated his mind. The man within it had not spoken in days. His lone eye seemingly stared at nothing. What remained of Tene Baralta had been healed, at least insofar as flesh and bone was concerned. The man’s spirit was, alas, another matter. The Red Blade’s homeland had not been kind to him. Keneb wondered if the man was as eager to leave Seven Cities as he was.
Nether said, ‘The plague is growing more virulent. The Grey Goddess hunts us.’
The Adjunct’s head turned at that.
Blistig cursed, then said, ‘Since when is Poliel eager to side with some damned rebels – she’s already killed most of them, hasn’t she?’
‘I do not understand this need,’ Nether replied, shaking her head. ‘But it seems she has set her deathly eyes upon Malazans. She hunts us, and comes ever closer.’
Keneb closed his eyes. Haven’t we been hurt enough?
They came upon the dead horse shortly after dawn. Amidst the swarm of capemoths feeding on the carcass were two skeletal lizards, standing on their hind legs, heads ducking and darting as they crunched and flayed the bird-sized insects.
‘Hood’s breath,’ Lostara muttered, ‘what are those?’
‘Telorast and Curdle,’ Apsalar replied. ‘Ghosts bound to those small frames. They have been my companions for some time now.’
Kalam moved closer and crouched beside the horse. ‘Those lizard cats,’ he said. ‘Came in from all sides.’ He straightened, scanning the rocks. ‘I can’t imagine Masan Gilani surviving the ambush.’
‘You’d be wrong,’ said a voice from the slope to their right.
The soldier sat on the crest, legs sprawled down the slope. One of those legs was crimson from upper thigh to the cracked leather boot. Masan Gilani’s dark skin was ashen, her eyes dull. ‘Can’t stop the bleeding, but I got one of the bastards and wounded another. Then the Hounds came…’
Captain Faradan Sort turned to the column. ‘Deadsmell! Up front, quick!’
‘Thank you for the knife,’ Masan Gilani said to Apsalar.
‘Keep it,’ the Kanese woman said.
‘Sorry about your horse.’
‘So am I, but you are not to blame.’
Kalam said, ‘Well, it seems we’re in for a long walk after all.’
Bottle made his way to the front of the column in Deadsmell’s wake, close enough to look long and hard at the two bird-like reptile skeletons perched on the horse carcass and intent on killing capemoths. He watched their darting movements, the flicking of their bony tails, the way the darkness of their souls bled out like smoke from a cracked waterpipe.
Someone came to his side and he glanced over. Fiddler, the man’s blue eyes fixed on the undead creatures. ‘What do you see, Bottle?’
‘Sergeant?’
Fiddler took him by the arm and pulled him off to one side. ‘Out with it.’
‘Ghosts, possessing those bound-up bones.’
The sergeant nodded. ‘Apsalar said as much. Now, what kind of ghosts?’
Frowning, Bottle hesitated.
Fiddler hissed a curse. ‘Bottle.’
‘Well, I was assuming she knows, only has her reasons for not mentioning it, so I was thinking, it wouldn’t be polite—’
‘Soldier—’
‘I mean, she was a squad-mate of yours, and—’
‘A squad-mate who just happened to have been possessed herself, by the Rope, almost all the time that I knew her. So if she’s not talking, it’s no surprise. Tell me Bottle, what manner of flesh did those souls call home?’
‘Are you saying you don’t trust her?’
‘I don’t even trust you.’
Frowning, Bottle looked away, watched Deadsmell working on Masan Gilani on the slope, sensed the whisper of Denul sorcery… and something like Hood’s own breath. The bastard is a necromancer, damn him!
‘Bottle.’
‘Sergeant? Oh, sorry. I was just wondering.’
‘Wondering what?’
‘Well, why Apsalar has two dragons in tow.’
‘They’re not dragons. They’re tiny lizards—’
‘No, Sergeant, they’re dragons.’
Slowly, Fiddler’s eyes widened.
Bottle’d known he wouldn’t like it.
Chapter Fourteen
There is something profoundly cynical, my friends, in the notion of paradise after death. The lure is evasion. The promise is excusative. One need not accept responsibility for the world as it is, and by extension, one need do nothing about it. To strive for change, for true goodness in this mortal world, one must acknowledge and accept, within one’s own soul, that this mortal reality has purpose in itself
, that its greatest value is not for us, but for our children and their children. To view life as but a quick passage along a foul, tortured path – made foul and tortured by our own indifference – is to excuse all manner of misery and depravity, and to exact cruel punishment upon the innocent lives to come.
I defy this notion of paradise beyond the gates of bone. If the soul truly survives the passage, then it behooves us – each of us, my friends – to nurture a faith in similitude: what awaits us is a reflection of what we leave behind, and in the squandering of our mortal existence, we surrender the opportunity to learn the ways of goodness, the practice of sympathy, empathy, compassion and healing – all passed by in our rush to arrive at a place of glory and beauty, a place we did not earn, and most certainly do not deserve.
The Apocryphal Teachings of Tanno Spiritwalker Kimloc
The Decade in Ehrlitan
*
Chaur held out the baby as if to begin bouncing it on one knee, but Barathol reached out to rest a hand on the huge man’s wrist. The blacksmith shook his head. ‘Not old enough for that yet. Hold her close, Chaur, so as not to break anything.’
The man answered with a broad smile and resumed cuddling and rocking the swaddled infant.
Barathol Mekhar leaned back in his chair, stretching out his legs, and briefly closed his eyes, making a point of not listening to the argument in the side room where the woman, Scillara, resisted the combined efforts of L’oric, Nulliss, Filiad and Urdan, all of whom insisted she accept the baby, as was a mother’s responsibility, a mother’s duty and a host of other guilt-laden terms they flung at her like stones. Barathol could not recall the last time the villagers in question had displayed such vehement zeal over anything. Of course, in this instance, their virtue came easy, for it cost them nothing.
The blacksmith admitted to a certain admiration for the woman. Children were indeed burdensome, and as this one was clearly not the creation of love, Scillara’s lack of attachment seemed wholly reasonable. On the opposite side, the ferocity of his fellow townsfolk was leaving him disgusted and vaguely nauseous.
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