Bonehunters

by Steven Erikson

  Karsa Orlong was undertaking this journey now as if it had become some kind of quest. Driven by the need to deliver judgement, upon whomsoever he chose, no matter what the circumstances. She had begun to understand just how frightening this savage could be, and how it fed her own growing fascination with him. She half-believed this man could cut a swath through an entire pantheon of gods.

  A dip in the trail brought them onto mossy ground, through which broken branches thrust up jagged grey fingers. To the right was a thick, twisted scrub oak, centuries old and scarred by lightning strikes; all the lesser trees that had begun growth around it were dead, as if the battered sentinel exuded some belligerent poison. To the left was the earthen wall of a toppled pine tree’s root-mat, vertical and as tall as Karsa, rising from a pool of black water.

  Havok came to an abrupt halt and Samar Dev heard a grunt from Karsa Orlong. She worked her way round the Jhag horse until she could clearly see that wall of twisted roots. In which was snared a withered corpse, the flesh wrinkled and blackened, limbs stretched out, neck exposed but of the head only the lower jaw line visible. The chest area seemed to have imploded, the hollow space reaching up into the heart of the huge tree itself. Boatfinder stood opposite, his left hand inscribing gestures in the air.

  ‘This toppled but recently,’ Karsa Orlong said. ‘Yet this body, it has been there a long time, see how the black water that once gathered about the roots has stained its skin. Samar Dev,’ he said, facing her, ‘there is a hole in its chest – how did such a thing come to be?’

  She shook her head. ‘I cannot even determine what manner of creature this is.’

  ‘Jaghut,’ the Toblakai replied. ‘I have seen the like before. Flesh becomes wood, yet the spirit remains alive within—’

  ‘You’re saying this thing is still alive?’

  ‘I do not know – the tree has fallen over, after all, and so it is dying—’

  ‘Death is not sure,’ Boatfinder cut in, his eyes wide with superstitious terror. ‘Often, the tree reaches once more skyward. But this dweller, so terribly imprisoned, it cannot be alive. It has no heart. It has no head.’

  Samar Dev stepped closer to examine the body’s sunken chest. After a time she backed away, made uneasy by something she could not define. ‘The bones beneath the flesh continued growing,’ she said, ‘but not as bone. Wood. The sorcery belongs to D’riss, I suspect. Boatfinder, how old would you judge this tree?’

  ‘Frozen time, perhaps thirty generations. Since it fell, seven days, no more. And, it is pushed over.’

  ‘I smell something,’ Karsa Orlong said, passing the reins to Boatfinder.

  Samar Dev watched the giant warrior walk ahead, up the opposite slope of the depression, halting on the summit of the basolith. He slowly unslung his stone sword.

  And now she too caught a faint sourness in the air, the smell of death. She made her way to Karsa’s side.

  Beyond the dome of rock the trail wound quickly downward to debouch on the edge of a small boggy lake. To one side, on a slight shelf above the shoreline, was a clearing in which sat the remnants of a rough camp – three round structures, sapling-framed and hide-walled. Two were half-burnt, the third knocked down in a mass of shattered wood and torn buckskin. She counted six bodies lying motionless here and there, in and around the camp, one face-down, torso, shoulders and head in the water, long hair flowing like bleached seaweed. Three canoes formed a row on the other side of the trail, their bark hulls stove in.

  Boatfinder joined her and Karsa on the rise. A small keening sound rose from him.

  Karsa took the lead down the trail. After a moment, Samar Dev followed.

  ‘Stay back from the camp,’ Karsa told her. ‘I must read the tracks.’

  She watched him move from one motionless form to the next, his eyes scanning the scuffed ground, the places where humus had been kicked aside. He went to the hearth and ran his fingers through the ash and coals, down to the stained earth beneath. Somewhere on the lake beyond, a loon called, its cry mournful and haunting. The light had grown steely, the sun now behind the forest line to the west. On the rise above the trail, Boatfinder’s keening rose in pitch.

  ‘Tell him to be quiet,’ Karsa said in a growl.

  ‘I don’t think I can do that,’ she replied. ‘Leave him his grief.’

  ‘His grief will soon be ours.’

  ‘You fear this unseen enemy, Karsa Orlong?’

  He straightened from where he had been examining the holed canoes. ‘A four-legged beast has passed through here recently – a large one. It collected one of the corpses… but I do not think it has gone far.’

  ‘Then it has already heard us,’ Samar Dev said. ‘What is it, a bear?’ Boatfinder had said that black bears used the same trails as the Anibar, and he’d pointed out their scat on the path. He had explained that they were not dangerous, normally. Still, wild creatures were ever unpredictable, and if one had come upon these bodies it might well now view the kill-site as its own.

  ‘A bear? Perhaps, Samar Dev. Such as the kind from my homeland, a dweller in caves, and on its hind legs half again as tall as a Teblor. But this one is yet different, for the pads of its paws are sheathed in scales.’

  ‘Scales?’

  ‘And I judge it would weigh more than four adult warriors of the Teblor.’ He eyed her. ‘A formidable creature.’

  ‘Boatfinder has said nothing of such beasts in this forest.’

  ‘Not the only intruder,’ the Toblakai said. ‘These Anibar were murdered with spears and curved blades. They were then stripped of all ornaments, weapons and tools. There was a child among them but it was dragged away. The killers came from the lake, in wooden-keeled longboats. At least ten adults, two of them wearing boots of some sort, although the heel pattern is unfamiliar. The others wore moccasins made of sewn strips, each one overlapping on one side.’

  ‘Overlapping? Ridged – that would improve purchase, I think.’

  ‘Samar Dev, I know who these intruders are.’

  ‘Old friends of yours?’

  ‘We did not speak of friendship at the time. Call down Boatfinder, I have questions for him—’

  The sentence was unfinished. Samar Dev looked over to find Karsa standing stock-still, his gaze on the trees beyond the three canoes. She turned and saw a massive hulking shape pushing its forefront clear of bending saplings. An enormous, scaled head lifted from steep shoulders, eyes fixing on the Toblakai.

  Who raised his stone sword in a two-handed grip, then surged forward.

  The giant beast’s roar ended in a high-pitched squeal, as it bolted – backward, into the thicket. Sudden crashing, heavy thumps—

  Karsa plunged into the stand, pursuing.

  Samar Dev found that she was holding her dagger in her right hand, knuckles white.

  The crashing sounds grew more distant, as did the frantic squeals of the scaled bear.

  She turned at scrabbling from the slope and watched Boatfinder come down to huddle at her side. His lips were moving in silent prayers, eyes on the broken hole in the stand of trees.

  Samar sheathed her dagger and crossed her arms. ‘What is it with him and monsters?’ she demanded.

  Boatfinder sat down in the damp mulch, began rocking back and forth.

  Samar Dev was just completing her second burial when Karsa Orlong returned. He walked up to the hearth she had lit earlier and beside which Boatfinder sat hunched over and swathed in furs, voicing a low moaning sound of intractable sorrow. The Toblakai set his sword down.

  ‘Did you kill it?’ she asked. ‘Did you cut its paws off, skin it alive, add its ears to your belt and crush its chest in with your embrace?’

  ‘Escaped,’ he said in a grunt.

  ‘Probably halfway to Ehrlitan by now.’

  ‘No, it is hungry. It will return, but not before we have moved on.’ He gestured to the remaining bodies. ‘There is no point – it will dig them up.’

  ‘Hungry, you said.’

  ‘Starvin
g. It is not from this world. And this land here, it offers little – the beast would do better on the plains to the south.’

  ‘The map calls this the Olphara Mountains. Many lakes are marked, and I believe the small one before us is joined to others, further north, by a river.’

  ‘These are not mountains.’

  ‘They once were, millennia past. They have been worn down. We are on a much higher elevation than we were just south of here.’

  ‘Nothing can gnaw mountains down to mere stubs, witch.’

  ‘Nonetheless. We should see if we can repair these canoes – it would be much easier—’

  ‘I shall not abandon Havok.’

  ‘Then we will never catch up with our quarry, Karsa Orlong.’

  ‘They are not fleeing. They are exploring. Searching.’

  ‘For what?’

  The Toblakai did not answer.

  Samar Dev wiped dirt from her hands, then walked over to the hearth. ‘I think this hunt we are on is a mistake. The Anibar should simply flee, leave this broken land, at least until the intruders have left.’

  ‘You are a strange woman,’ Karsa pronounced. ‘You wished to explore this land, yet find yourself made helpless by it.’

  She started. ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Here, one must be as an animal. Passing through, quiet, for this is a place that yields little and speaks in silence. Thrice in our journey we have been tracked by a bear, silent as a ghost on this bedrock. Crossing and re-crossing our trail. You would think such a large beast would be easy to see, but it is not. There are omens here, Samar Dev, more than I have ever seen before in any place, even my homeland. Hawks circle overhead. Owls watch us pass from hollows in dead trees. Tell me, witch, what is happening to the moon?’

  She stared into the fire. ‘I don’t know. It seems to be breaking up. Crumbling. There is no record of anything like that happening before, neither the way it has grown larger, nor the strange corona surrounding it.’ She shook her head. ‘If it is an omen, it is one all the world can see.’

  ‘The desert folk believe gods dwell there. Perhaps they wage war among themselves.’

  ‘Superstitious nonsense,’ she said. ‘The moon is this world’s child, the last child, for there were others, once. She hesitated. ‘It may be that two have collided, but it is difficult to be sure – the others were never very visible, even in the best of times. Dark, smudged, distant, always in the shadow cast by this world, or that of the largest moon – the one we see most clearly. Of late, there has been much dust in the air.’

  ‘There are more fireswords in the sky,’ Karsa said. ‘Just before dawn, you may see ten in the span of three breaths, each slashing down through the dark. Every night.’

  ‘We may learn more when we reach the coast, for the tides will have changed.’

  ‘Changed, how?’

  ‘The moon’s own breath,’ she replied. ‘We can measure that breath… in the ebb and flood of the tides. Such are the laws of existence.’

  The Toblakai snorted. ‘Laws are broken. Existence holds to no laws. Existence is what persists, and to persist is to struggle. In the end, the struggle fails.’ He was removing strips of smoked bhederin meat from his pack. ‘That is the only law worthy of the name.’

  She studied him. ‘Is that what the Teblor believe?’

  He bared his teeth. ‘One day I will return to my people. And I will shatter all that they believe. And I will say to my father, “Forgive me. You were right to disbelieve. You were right to despise the laws that chained us.” And to my grandfather, I shall say nothing at all.’

  ‘Have you a wife in your tribe?’

  ‘I have victims, no wives.’

  A brutal admission, she reflected. ‘Do you intend reparation, Karsa Orlong?’

  ‘That would be seen as weakness.’

  ‘Then the chains still bind you.’

  ‘There was a Nathii settlement, beside a lake, where the Nathii had made slaves of my people. Each night, after hauling nets on the lake, those slaves were all shackled to a single chain. Not a single Teblor so bound could break that chain. Together, their strengths and wills combined, no chain could have held them.’

  ‘So, for all your claims of returning to your people and shattering all that they believe, you will, in truth, need their help to manage such a thing. It sounds as if it is not just your father from whom you require forgiveness, Karsa Orlong.’

  ‘I shall take what I require, witch.’

  ‘Were you one of those slaves in the Nathii fishing village?’

  ‘For a time.’

  ‘And, to escape – and clearly you did escape – you ended up needing the help of your fellow Teblor.’ She nodded. ‘I can see how that might gnaw on your soul.’

  He eyed her. ‘You are truly clever, Samar Dev, to discover how all things fit so neatly in place.’

  ‘I have made long study of human nature, the motivations that guide us, the truths that haunt us. I do not think you Teblor are much different from us in such things.’

  ‘Unless, of course, you begin with an illusion – one that suits the conclusion you sought from the start.’

  ‘I try not to assume veracity,’ she replied.

  ‘Indeed.’ He handed her a strip of meat.

  She crossed her arms, refusing the offer for the moment. ‘You suggest I have made an assumption, an erroneous one, and so, although I claim to understand you, in truth I understand nothing. A convenient argument, but not very convincing, unless you care to be specific.’

  ‘I am Karsa Orlong. I know the measure of each step I have taken since I first became a warrior. Your self-satisfaction does not offend me, witch.’

  ‘The savage now patronizes me! Gods below!’

  He proffered the meat again. ‘Eat, Samar Dev, lest you grow too weak for outrage.’

  She glared at him, then accepted the strip of bhederin. ‘Karsa Orlong, your people live with a lack of sophistication similar to these Anibar here. It is clear that, once, the citizens of the great civilizations of Seven Cities lived in a similar state of simplicity and stolid ignorance, haunted by omens and fleeing the unfathomable. And no doubt we too concocted elaborate belief systems, quaint and ridiculous, to justify all those necessities and restrictions imposed upon us by the struggle to survive. Fortunately, however, we left all that behind. We discovered the glory of civilization – and you, Teblor, hold still to your misplaced pride, holding up your ignorance of such glory as a virtue. And so you still do not comprehend the great gift of civilization—’

  ‘I comprehend it fine,’ Karsa Orlong replied around a mouthful of meat. ‘The savage proceeds into civilization through improvements—’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Improvements in the manner and efficiency of killing people.’

  ‘Hold on—’

  ‘Improvements in the unassailable rules of degradation and misery.’

  ‘Karsa—’

  ‘Improvements in ways to humiliate, impose suffering and justify slaughtering those savages too stupid and too trusting to resist what you hold as inevitable. Namely, their extinction. Between you and me, Samar Dev,’ he added, swallowing, ‘who should the Anibar fear more?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘Why don’t we ask him?’

  Boatfinder lifted his head and studied Samar Dev with hooded eyes. ‘In the frozen time,’ he said in a low voice, ‘Iskar Jarak spoke of the Unfound.’

  ‘Iskar Jarak was not a god, Boatfinder. He was a mortal, with a handful of wise words – it’s easy to voice warnings. Actually staying around to help prepare for them is another thing altogether!’

  ‘Iskar Jarak gave us the secrets, Samar Dev, and so we have prepared in the frozen time, and prepare now, and will prepare in the Unfound.’

  Karsa barked a laugh. ‘Would that I had travelled here with Iskar Jarak. We would find little to argue over, I think.’

  ‘This is what I get,’ muttered Samar Dev, ‘in the company of ba
rbarians.’

  The Toblakai’s tone suddenly changed, ‘The intruders who have come here, witch, believe themselves civilized. And so they kill Anibar. Why? Because they can. They seek no other reason. To them, Samar Dev, Karsa Orlong will give answer. This savage is not stupid, not trusting, and by the souls of my sword, I shall give answer.’

  All at once, night had arrived, and there in that silent forest it was cold.

  From somewhere far to the west, rose the howl of wolves, and Samar Dev saw Karsa Orlong smile.

  Once, long ago, Mappo Runt had stood with a thousand other Trell warriors. Surmounting the Orstanz Ridge overlooking the Valley of Bayen Eckar, so named for the shallow, stony river that flowed northward to a distant, mythical sea – mythical for the Trell at least, none of whom had ever travelled that far from their homeland steppes and plains. Arrayed on the slope opposite and down on the river’s western bank, fifteen hundred paces distant, was the Nemil army, commanded in those days by a much-feared general, Saylan’mathas.

  So many of the Trell had already fallen, not in battle, but to the weakness of life encamped around the trader posts, forts and settlements that now made the borderlands a hazy, ephemeral notion and little more. Mappo himself had fled such a settlement, finding refuge among the still-belligerent hill clans.

  A thousand Trell warriors, facing an army eight times their number. Mace, axe and sword hammering shield-rims, a song of death-promise rising from their throats, a sound like earth-thunder rolling down into the valley where birds flew low and strangely frenzied, as if in terror they had forgotten the sky’s sanctuary overhead, instead swooping and wheeling between the grey-leaved trees clumped close to the river on both sides, seeming to swarm through thickets and shrubs.

  Upon the valley’s other side, units of soldiers moved in ever-shifting presentation: units of archers, of slingers, of pike-wielding infantry and the much feared Nemil cataphracts – heavy in armour atop massive horses, round-shields at the ready although their lances remained at rest in stirrup-sockets, as they trooped at the trot to the far wings, making plain their intention to flank once the foot soldiers and Trell warriors were fully engaged in the basin of the valley.