Bonehunters

by Steven Erikson

  Hayrith appeared in the main room, moments earlier a silent witness to the tirade in the side chamber where they’d set Scillara’s cot. The old woman shook her head. ‘Idiots. Pompous, prattling twits! Just listen to all that piety, Barathol! You’d think this babe was the Emperor reborn!’

  ‘Gods forbid,’ the blacksmith muttered.

  ‘Jessa last house on the east road, she’s got that year-old runt with the withered legs that ain’t gonna make it. She’d not refuse the gift, and everyone here knows it.’

  Barathol nodded, somewhat haphazardly, his mind on other matters.

  ‘There’s even Jessa second floor of the old factor house, though she ain’t had any milk t’give in fifteen years. Still, she’d be a good mother and this village could use a wailing child to help drown out all the wailing grown-ups. Get the Jessas together on this and it’ll be fine.’

  ‘It’s L’oric,’ Barathol said.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘L’oric. He’s so proper he burns to the touch. Or, rather, he burns everything he touches.’

  ‘Well, it ain’t his business, is it?’

  ‘People like him make everything their business, Hayrith.’

  The woman dragged a chair close and sat down across from the blacksmith. She studied him with narrowed eyes. ‘How long you going to wait?’ she asked.

  ‘As soon as the lad, Cutter, is able to travel,’ Barathol said. He rubbed at his face. ‘Thank the gods all that rum’s drunk. I’d forgotten what it does to a man’s gut.’

  ‘It was L’oric, wasn’t it?’

  He raised his brows.

  ‘Him showing up here didn’t just burn you – it left you scorched, Barathol. Seems you did some bad things in the past’ – she snorted – ‘as if that makes you different from all the rest of us. But you figured you could hide out here for ever, and now you know that ain’t going to be. Unless, of course,’ her eyes narrowed to slits, ‘you kill L’oric.’

  The blacksmith glanced over at Chaur, who was making faces and cooing sounds down at the baby, while it in turn seemed to be blowing bubbles, as yet blissfully unaware of the sheer ugliness of the monstrous face hovering over it. Barathol sighed. ‘I’m not interested in killing anyone, Hayrith.’

  ‘So you’re going with these people here?’

  ‘As far as the coast, yes.’

  ‘Once L’oric gets word out, they’ll start hunting you again. You reach the coast, Barathol, you find the first ship off this damned continent, is what you do. ’Course, I’ll miss you – the only man with more than half a brain in this whole town. But Hood knows, nothing ever lasts.’

  They both looked over as L’oric appeared. The High Mage’s colour was up, his expression one of baffled disbelief. ‘I just don’t understand it,’ he said.

  Barathol grunted. ‘It’s not for you to understand.’

  ‘This is what civilization has come to,’ the man said, crossing his arms and glaring at the blacksmith.

  ‘You got that right.’ Barathol drew his legs in and stood. ‘I don’t recall Scillara inviting you into her life.’

  ‘My concern is with the child.’

  The blacksmith began walking towards the side chamber. ‘No it isn’t. Your obsession is with propriety. Your version of it, to which everyone else must bend a knee. Only, Scillara’s not impressed. She’s too smart to be impressed.’

  Entering the room, Barathol grasped Nulliss by the scruff of her tunic. ‘You,’ he said in a growl, ‘and the rest of you, get out.’ He guided the spitting, cursing Semk woman out through the doorway, then stood to one side watching the others crowd up in their eagerness to escape.

  A moment later, Barathol and Scillara were alone. The blacksmith faced her. ‘How is the wound?’

  She scowled. ‘The one that’s turned my arm into a withered stick or the one that’ll make me walk like a crab for the rest of my life?’

  ‘The shoulder. I doubt the crab-walk is permanent.’

  ‘And how would you know?’

  He shrugged. ‘Every woman in this hamlet has dropped a babe or three, and they walk just fine.’

  She eyed him with suspicion. ‘You’re the one called Barathol. The blacksmith.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The mayor of this pit you call a hamlet.’

  ‘Mayor? I don’t think we warrant a mayor. No, I’m just the biggest and meanest man living here, which to most minds counts for far too much.’

  ‘Loric says you betrayed Aren. That you’re responsible for the death of thousands, when the T’lan Imass came to crush the rebellion.’

  ‘We all have our bad days, Scillara.’

  She laughed. A rather nasty laugh. ‘Well, thank you for driving those fools away. Unless you plan on picking up where they left off.’

  He shook his head. ‘I have some questions about your friends, the ones you were travelling with. The T’lan Imass ambushed you with the aim, it seems, of stealing the young woman named Felisin Younger.’

  ‘L’oric said as much,’ Scillara replied, sitting up straighter in the bed and wincing with the effort. ‘She wasn’t important to anybody. It doesn’t make sense. I think they came to kill Heboric more than steal her.’

  ‘She was the adopted daughter of Sha’ik.’

  The woman shrugged, winced again. ‘A lot of foundlings in Raraku were.’

  ‘The one named Cutter, where is he from again?’

  ‘Darujhistan.’

  ‘Is that where all of you were headed?’

  Scillara closed her eyes. ‘It doesn’t matter now, does it? Tell me, have you buried Heboric?’

  ‘Yes, he was Malazan, wasn’t he? Besides, out here we’ve a problem with wild dogs, wolves and the like.’

  ‘Might as well dig him up, Barathol. I don’t think Cutter will settle for leaving him here.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Her only answer was a shake of her head.

  Barathol turned back to the doorway. ‘Sleep well, Scillara. Like it or not, you’re the only one here who can feed your little girl. Unless we can convince Jessa last house on the east road. At all events, she’ll be hungry soon enough.’

  ‘Hungry,’ the woman muttered behind him. ‘Like a cat with worms.’

  In the main room the High Mage had taken the babe from Chaur’s arms. The huge simpleton sat with tears streaming down his pocked face, this detail unnoticed by L’oric as he paced with the fidgeting infant in his arms.

  ‘A question,’ Barathol said to L’oric, ‘how old do they have to get before you lose all sympathy for them?’

  The High Mage frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  Ignoring him, the blacksmith walked over to Chaur. ‘You and me,’ he said, ‘we have a corpse to dig up. More shovelling, Chaur, you like that.’

  Chaur nodded and managed a half-smile through his tears and runny nose.

  Outside, Barathol led the man to the smithy where they collected a pick and a shovel, then they set off for the stony plain west of the hamlet. There’d been an unseasonal spatter of rain the night before, but little evidence of that remained after a morning of fiercely hot sunlight. The grave was beside a half-filled pit containing the remnants of the horses after Urdan had finished butchering them. He had been told to burn those remains but had clearly forgotten. Wolves, coyotes and vultures had all found the bones and viscera, and the pit now swarmed with flies and maggots. Twenty paces further west, the now bloated, shapeless carcass of the toad demon lay untouched by any scavenger.

  As Chaur bent to the task of disinterring Heboric’s wrapped corpse, Barathol stared across at that demon’s misshapen body. The now-stretched hide was creased with white lines, as if it had begun cracking. From this distance Barathol could not be certain, but it seemed there was a black stain ringing the ground beneath the carcass, as if something had leaked out.

  ‘I’ll be right back, Chaur.’

  The man smiled.

  As the blacksmith drew closer, his frown deepened. The black stain was de
ad flies, in their thousands. As unpalatable, then, this demon as the handless man had been. His steps slowed, then halted, still five paces from the grisly form. He’d seen it move – there, again, something pushing up against the blistered hide from within.

  And then a voice spoke in Barathol’s head.

  ‘Impatience. Please, be so kind, a blade slicing with utmost caution, this infernal hide.’

  The blacksmith unsheathed his knife and stepped forward. Reaching the demon’s side, he crouched down and ran the finely honed edge along one of the cracks in the thick, leathery skin. It parted suddenly and Barathol leapt back, cursing, as a gush of yellow liquid spurted from the cut.

  Something like a hand, then forearm and elbow pushed through, widening the slice, and moments later the entire beast slithered into view, four eyes blinking in the bright light. Where the carcass had had two limbs missing, there were now new ones, smaller and paler, but clearly functional. ‘Hunger. Have you food, stranger? Are you food?’

  Sheathing his knife, Barathol turned about and walked back to where Chaur was dragging free Heboric’s body. He heard the demon following.

  The blacksmith reached the pick he had left beside the grave pit and collected the tool, turning and hefting it in his hands. ‘Something tells me,’ he said to the demon, ‘you’re not likely to grow a new brain once I drive this pick through your skull.’

  ‘Exaggeration. I quake with terror, stranger. Amused. Greyfrog was but joking, encouraged by your expression of terror.’

  ‘Not terror. Disgust.’

  The demon’s bizarre eyes swivelled in their sockets and the head twitched to look past Barathol. ‘My brother has come. He is there, I sense him.’

  ‘You’d better hurry,’ Barathol said. ‘He’s about to adopt a new familiar.’ The blacksmith lowered the pick and glanced over at Chaur.

  The huge man stood over the wrapped corpse of Heboric, staring with wide eyes at the demon.

  ‘It’s all right, Chaur,’ said Barathol. ‘Now, let’s carry the dead man to the tailings heap back of the smithy.’

  Smiling again, the huge man picked up Heboric’s body. The stench of decaying flesh reached Barathol.

  Shrugging, the blacksmith collected the shovel.

  Greyfrog set off in a loping gait towards the hamlet’s main street.

  Dozing, Scillara’s eyes snapped open as an exultant voice filled her mind. ‘Joy! Dearest Scillara, time of vigil is at an end! Stalwart and brave Greyfrog has defended your sanctity, and the brood even now squirms in Brother L’oric’s arms!’

  ‘Greyfrog? But they said you were dead! What are you doing talking to me? You never talk to me!’

  ‘Female with brood must be sheathed with silence. All slivers and darts of irritation fended off by noble Greyfrog. And now, happily, I am free to infuse your sweet self with my undying love!’

  ‘Gods below, is this what the others had to put up with?’ She reached for her pipe and pouch of rustleaf.

  A moment later the demon squeezed through the doorway, followed by L’oric, who held in his arms the babe.

  Scowling, Scillara struck spark to her pipe.

  ‘The child is hungry,’ L’oric said.

  ‘Fine. Maybe that will ease the pressure and stop this damned leaking. Go on, give me the little leech.’

  The High Mage came closer and handed the infant over. ‘You must acknowledge that this girl belongs to you, Scillara.’

  ‘Oh she’s mine all right. I can tell by the greedy look in her eyes. For the sake of the world, you should pray, L’oric, that all she has of her father is the blue skin.’

  ‘You know, then, who that man was?’

  ‘Korbolo Dom.’

  ‘Ah. He is, I believe, still alive. A guest of the Empress.’

  ‘Do you think I care, L’oric? I was drowning in durhang. If not for Heboric, I’d still be one of Bidithal’s butchered acolytes. Heboric…’ She looked down at the babe suckling from her left breast, squinting through the smoke of the pipe. Then she glared up at L’oric. ‘And now some damned T’lan Imass have killed him – why?’

  ‘He was a servant of Treach. Scillara, there is war now among the gods. And it is us mortals who shall pay the price for that. It is a dangerous time to be a true worshipper – of anyone or anything. Except, perhaps, chaos itself, for if one force is ascendant in this modern age, it is surely that.’

  Greyfrog was busy licking itself, concentrating, it seemed, on its new limbs. The entire demon looked… smaller.

  Scillara said, ‘So you’re reunited with your familiar, L’oric. Which means you can go now, off to wherever and whatever it is you have to do. You can leave, and get as far away from here as possible. I’ll wait for Cutter to wake up. I like him. I think I’ll go where he goes. This grand quest is done. So go away.’

  ‘Not until I am satisfied that you will not surrender your child to an unknown future, Scillara.’

  ‘It’s not unknown. Or at least, no more unknown than any future. There are two women here both named Jessa and they’ll take care of it. They’ll raise it well enough, since they seem to like that sort of thing. Good for them, I say. Besides, I’m being generous here – I’m not selling it, am I? No, like a damned fool, I’m giving the thing away.’

  ‘The longer and the more often you hold that girl,’ L’oric said, ‘the less likely it is that you will do what you presently plan to do. Motherhood is a spiritual state – you will come to that realization before too long.’

  ‘That’s good, so why are you still here? Clearly, I’m already doomed to enslavement, no matter how much I rail.’

  ‘Spiritual epiphany is not enslavement.’

  ‘Shows how much you know, High Mage.’

  ‘I feel obliged to tell you, your words have crushed Greyfrog.’

  ‘He’ll survive it – he seems able to survive everything else. Well, I’m about to switch tits here, you two eager to watch?’

  L’oric spun on his heel and left.

  Greyfrog’s large eyes blinked translucently up at Scillara. ‘I am not crushed. Brother of mine misapprehends. Broods climb free and must fend, each runtling holds to its own life. Recollection. Many dangers. Transitional thought. Sorrow. I must now accompany my poor brother, for he is well and truly distressed by many things in this world. Warmth. I shall harbour well my adoration of you, for it is a pure thing by virtue of being ever unattainable, the consummation thereof. Which would, you must admit, be awkward indeed.’

  ‘Awkward isn’t the first word that comes to my mind, Greyfrog. But thank you for the sentiment, as sick and twisted as it happens to be. Listen, try and teach L’oric, will you? Just a few things, like, maybe, humility. And all that terrible certainty – beat it down, beat it out of him. It’s making him obnoxious.’

  ‘Paternal legacy, alas. Loric’s own parents… ah, never mind. Farewell, Scillara. Delicious fantasies, slow and exquisitely unveiled in the dark swampy waters of my imagination. All that need sustain me in fecund spirit.’

  The demon waddled out.

  Hard gums clamped onto her right nipple. Pain and pleasure, gods what a miserable, confusing alliance. Well, at least all the lopsidedness would go away – Nulliss had been planting the babe on her left ever since it had come out. She felt like a badly packed mule.

  More voices in the outer room, but she didn’t bother listening.

  They’d taken Felisin Younger. That was the cruellest thing of all. For Heboric, at least, there was now some peace, an end to whatever had tormented him, and besides, he’d been an old man. Enough had been asked of him. But Felisin…

  Scillara stared down at the creature on her chest, its tiny grasping hands, then she settled her head against the back wall and began repacking her pipe.

  Something formless filling his mind, what had been timeless and only in the last instants, in the drawing of a few breaths, did awareness arrive, carrying him from one moment to the next. Whereupon Cutter opened his eyes. Old grey tree-trunks spanned the ceili
ng overhead, the joins thick with cobwebs snarled around the carcasses of moths and flies. Two lanterns hung from hooks, their wicks low. He struggled to recall how he had ended up here, in this unfamiliar room.

  Darujhistan… a bouncing coin. Assassins…

  No, that was long ago. Tremorlor, the Azath House, and Moby… that god-possessed girl – Apsalar, oh, my love… Hard words exchanged with Cotillion, the god who had, once, looked through her eyes. He was in Seven Cities; he had been travelling with Heboric Ghost Hands, and Felisin Younger, Scillara, and the demon Greyfrog. He had become a man with knives, a killer, given the chance.

  Flies…

  Cutter groaned, one hand reaching tentatively for his belly beneath the ragged blankets. The slash was naught but a thin seam. He had seen… his insides spilling out. Had felt the sudden absence of weight, the tug that pulled him down to the ground. Cold, so very cold.

  The others were dead. They had to be. Then again, Cutter realized, he too should be dead. They’d cut him wide open. He slowly turned his head, studying the narrow room he found himself in. A storage chamber of some kind, a larder, perhaps. The shelves were mostly empty. He was alone.

  The motion left him exhausted – he did not have the strength to draw his arm back from where it rested on his midsection.

  He closed his eyes.

  A dozen slow, even breaths, and he found himself standing, in some other place. A courtyard garden, unkempt and now withered, as if by years of drought. The sky overhead was white, featureless. A stone-walled pool was before him, the water smooth and unstirred. The air was close and unbearably hot.

  Cutter willed himself forward, but found he could not move. He stood as if rooted to the ground.

  To his left, plants began crackling, curling black as a ragged hole formed in the air. A moment later two figures stumbled through that gate. A woman, then a man. The gate snapped shut in their wake, leaving only a swirl of ash and a ring of scorched plants.

  Cutter tried to speak, but he had no voice, and after a few moments it was clear that they could not see him. He was as a ghost, an unseen witness.

  The woman was as tall as the man, a Malazan which he was certainly not. Handsome in a hard, unyielding way. She slowly straightened.