‘Precisely,’ said the Admiral.
Keneb glanced at Tavore. ‘Forgive me, Adjunct—’
‘After I sent you out to gauge the loading of troops, the subject of command structure was concluded, to the satisfaction.of all.’ A certain dryness to that, and Blistig snorted. Tavore continued, ‘Admiral Nok has finally relayed to us the command of the Empress, that we are to return to Unta. The difficulty before us now lies in deciding our return route.’
Keneb blinked. ‘Why, east and then south, of course. The other way would take—’
‘Longer, yes,’ Nok interrupted. ‘Nonetheless, at this time of year, we would be aided by currents and prevailing winds. Granted, the course is less well charted, and most of our maps for the western coast of this continent are derived from foreign sources, making their reliability open to challenge.’ He rubbed at his weathered, lined face. ‘All of that is, alas, not relevant. The issue is the plague. Adjunct, we have sought one port after another on our way to this rendezvous, and not one was safe to enter. Our own supplies are perilously low.’
Blistig asked, ‘So where do you believe we can resupply anywhere west of here, Admiral?’
‘Sepik, to begin with. The island is remote, sufficiently so that I believe it remains plague-free. South of that, there is Nemil, and a number of lesser kingdoms all the way down to Shal-Morzinn. From the southern tip of the continent the journey down to the northwest coast of Quon Tali is in fact shorter than the Falar lanes. Once we have cleared the risk that is Drift Avalii we will find ourselves in the Genii Straits, with the coast of Dal Hon to our north. At that time the currents will once again be with us.’
‘All very well,’ Blistig said in a growl, ‘but what happens if Nemil and those other “lesser kingdoms” decide they’re not interested in selling us food and fresh water?’
‘We shall have to convince them,’ the Adjunct said, ‘by whatever means necessary.’
‘Let’s hope it’s not by the sword.’
As soon as Blistig said that his regret was obvious – the statement should have sounded reasonable; instead, it simply revealed the man’s lack of confidence in the Adjunct’s army.
She was regarding her Fist now, expressionless, yet a certain chill crept into the chamber, filling the silence.
On Admiral Nok’s face, a look of disappointment. Then he reached for his sealskin cloak. ‘I must return now to my flagship. Thrice on our journey here, the outrider escorts sighted an unknown fleet to the north. No doubt the sightings were mutual but no closer contact occurred, so I believe it poses no threat to us.’
‘A fleet,’ Keneb said. ‘Nemil?’
‘Possibly. There was said to be a Meckros city west of Sepik Sea – that report is a few years old. Then again,’ he glanced over at the Adjunct as he reached the flap, ‘how fast can a floating city move? In any case, Meckros raid and trade, and it may well be that Nemil has dispatched ships to ward them from their coast.’
They watched the Admiral leave.
Blistig said, ‘Your pardon, Adjunct—’
‘Save your apology,’ she cut in, turning away from him. ‘One day I shall call upon you, Blistig, to voice it again. But not to me; rather, to your soldiers. Now, please visit Fist Tene Baralta and relay to him the essence of this meeting.’
‘He has no interest—’
‘His interests do not concern me, Fist Blistig.’
Lips pressed together, the man saluted, then left.
‘A moment,’ the Adjunct said as Keneb prepared to follow suit. ‘How fare the soldiers, Fist?’
He hesitated, then said, ‘For the most part, Adjunct, they are relieved.’
‘I am not surprised,’ she said.
‘Shall I inform them that we are returning home?’
She half-smiled. ‘I have no doubt the rumour is already among them. By all means, Fist. There is no reason to keep it a secret.’
‘Unta,’ Keneb mused, ‘my wife and children are likely there. Of course, it stands to reason that the Fourteenth will not stay long in Unta.’
‘True. Our ranks will be refilled.’
‘And then?’
She shrugged. ‘Korel, I expect. Nok thinks the assault on Theft will be renewed.’
It was a moment before Keneb realized that she did not believe a word she was saying to him. Why not Korel? What might Laseen have in store for us, if not another campaign? What does Tavore suspect? He hid his confusion by fumbling over the cloak’s clasps for a few heartbeats.
When he glanced up again, the Adjunct seemed to be staring at one of the tent’s mottled walls.
Standing, always standing – he could not recall ever having seen her seated, except on a horse. ‘Adjunct?’
She started, then nodded and said, ‘You are dismissed, Keneb.’
He felt like a coward as he made his way outside, angry at his own sense of relief. Still, a new unease now plagued him. Unta. His wife. What was, is no longer. I’m old enough to know the truth of that. Things change. We change—
‘Make it three days.’
Keneb blinked, looked down to see Grub, flanked by Bent and Roach. The huge cattle-dog’s attention was fixed elsewhere – southeastward – while the lapdog sniffed at one of Grub’s worn moccasins, where the child’s big toe protruded from a split in the upper seam. ‘Make what three days, Grub?’
‘Until we leave. Three days.’ The boy wiped his nose.
‘Dig into one of the spare kits,’ Keneb said, ‘and find some warmer clothes, Grub. This sea is a cold one, and it’s going to get colder yet.’
‘I’m fine. My nose runs, but so does Bent’s, so does Roach’s. We’re fine. Three days.’
‘We’ll be gone in two.’
‘No. It has to be three days, or we will never get anywhere. We’ll die in the sea, two days after we leave Sepik Island.’
A chill rippled through the Fist. ‘How did you know we were headed west, Grub?’
The boy looked down, watched as Roach licked clean his big toe. ‘Sepik, but that will be bad. Nemil will be good. Then bad. And after that, we find friends, twice. And then we end up where it all started, and that will be very bad. But that’s when she realizes everything, almost everything, I mean, enough of everything to be enough. And the big man with the cut hands says yes.’ He looked up, eyes bright. ‘I found a bone whistle and I’m keeping it for him because he’ll want it back. We’re off to collect seashells!’
With that all three ran off, down towards the beach.
Three days, not two. Or we all die. ‘Don’t worry, Grub,’ he said in a whisper, ‘not all grown-ups are stupid.’
Lieutenant Pores looked down at the soldier’s collection. ‘What in Hood’s name are these?’
‘Bones, sir,’ the woman replied. ‘Bird bones. They was coming out of the cliff – look, they’re hard as rock – we’re going to add them to our collection, us heavies, I mean. Hanfeno, he’s drilling holes in ’em – the others, I mean, we got hundreds. You want us to make you some, sir?’
‘Give me a few,’ he said, reaching out.
She dropped into his hand two leg bones, each the length of his thumb, then another that looked like a knuckle, slightly broader than his own. ‘You idiot. This one’s not from a bird.’
‘Well I don’t know, sir. Could be a skull?’
‘It’s solid.’
‘A woodpecker?’
‘Go back to your squad, Senny. When are you on the ramp?’
‘Looks like tomorrow now, sir. Fist Keneb’s soldiers got delayed – he pulled half of ’em back off, it was complete chaos! There’s no figuring officers, uh, sir.’
A wave sent the woman scurrying. Lieutenant Pores nestled the small bones into his palm, closing his fingers over to hold them in place, then he walked back to where Captain Kindly stood beside the four trunks that comprised his camp kit. Two retainers were busy repacking one of the trunks, and Pores saw, arranged on a camel-hair blanket, an assortment of combs – two dozen, maybe more, no two alike. Bone, shell
, antler, tortoiseshell, ivory, wood, slate, silver, gold and blood-copper. Clearly, they had been collected over years of travel, the captain’s sojourn as a soldier laid out, the succession of cultures, the tribes and peoples he had either befriended or annihilated. Even so… Pores frowned. Combs?
Kindly was mostly bald.
The captain was instructing his retainers on how to pack the items. ‘… those cotton buds, and the goat wool or whatever you call it. Each one, and carefully – if I find a scratch, a nick or a broken tooth I will have no choice but to kill you both. Ah, Lieutenant, I trust you are now fully recovered from your wounds? Good. What’s wrong, man? Are you choking?’
Gagging, his face reddening, Pores waited until Kindly stepped closer, then he let loose a cough, loud and bursting and from his right hand – held before his mouth – three bones were spat out to clunk and bounce on the ground. Pores drew in a deep breath, shook his head and cleared his throat.
‘Apologies, Captain,’ he said in a rasp. ‘Some broken bones still in me, I guess. Been wanting to come out for a while now.’
‘Well,’ Kindly said, ‘are you done?’
‘Yes sir.’
The two retainers were staring at the bones. One reached over and collected the knuckle.
Pores wiped imaginary sweat from his brow. ‘That was some cough, wasn’t it? I’d swear someone punched me in the gut.’
The retainer reached over with the knuckle. ‘He left you this, Lieutenant.’
‘Ah, thank you, soldier.’
‘If you think any of this is amusing, Lieutenant,’ Kindly said. ‘You are mistaken. Now, explain to me this damned delay.’
‘I can’t, Captain. Fist Keneb’s soldiers, some kind of recall. There doesn’t seem to be a reasonable explanation.’
‘Typical. Armies are run by fools. If I had an army you’d see things done differently. I can’t abide lazy soldiers. I’ve personally killed more lazy soldiers than enemies of the empire. If this was my army, Lieutenant, we would have been on those ships in two days flat, and anybody still on shore by then we’d leave behind, stripped naked with only a crust of bread in their hands and the order to march to Quon Tali.’
‘Across the sea.’
‘I’m glad we’re understood. Now, stand here and guard my kit, Lieutenant. I must find my fellow captains Madan’Tul Rada and Ruthan Gudd – they’re complete idiots but I mean to fix that.’
Pores watched his captain walk away, then he looked back down at the retainers and smiled. ‘Now wouldn’t that be something? High Fist Kindly, commanding all the Malazan armies.’
‘Leastways,’ one of the men said, ‘we’d always know what we was up to.’
The lieutenant’s eyes narrowed. ‘You would like Kindly doing your thinking for you?’
‘I’m a soldier, ain’t I?’
‘And what if I told you Captain Kindly was insane?’
‘You be testing us? Anyway, don’t matter if’n he is or not, so long as he knows what he’s doing and he keeps telling us what we’re supposed to be doing.’ He nudged his companion, ‘Ain’t that right, Thikburd?’
‘Right enough,’ the other mumbled, examining one of the combs.
‘The Malazan soldier is trained to think,’ Pores said. ‘That tradition has been with us since Kellanved and Dassem Ultor. Have you forgotten that?’
‘No, sir, we ain’t. There’s thinkin’ and there’s thinkin’ and that’s jus’ the way it is. Soldiers do one kind and leaders do the other. Ain’t good the two gettin’ mixed up.’
‘Must make life easy for you.’
A nod. ‘Aye, sir, that it does.’
‘If your friend scratches that comb he’s admiring, Captain Kindly will kill you both.’
‘Thikburd! Put that down!’
‘But it’s pretty!’
‘So’s a mouthful of teeth and you want to keep yours, don’t ya?’
And with soldiers like these, we won an empire.
The horses were past their prime, but they would have to do. A lone mule would carry the bulk of their supplies, including the wrapped corpse of Heboric Ghost Hands. The beasts stood waiting on the east end of the main street, tails flicking to fend off the flies, already enervated by the heat, although it was but mid-morning.
Barathol Mekhar made one last adjustment to his weapons belt, bemused to find that he’d put on weight in his midriff, then he squinted over as Cutter and Scillara emerged from the inn and made their way towards the horses.
The woman’s conversation with the two Jessas had been an admirable display of brevity, devoid of advice and ending with a most perfunctory thanks. So, the baby was now the youngest resident of this forgotten hamlet. The girl would grow up playing with scorpions, rhizan and meer rats, her horizons seemingly limitless, the sun overhead the harsh, blinding and brutal face of a god. But all in all, she would be safe, and loved.
The blacksmith noted a figure nearby, hovering in the shadow of a doorway. Ah, well, at least someone will miss us.
Feeling oddly sad, Barathol made his way over to the others.
‘Your horse will collapse under you,’ Cutter said. ‘It’s too old and you’re too big, Barathol. That axe alone would stagger a mule.’
‘Who’s that standing over there?’ Scillara asked.
‘Chaur.’ The blacksmith swung himself onto his horse, the beast sidestepping beneath him as he settled his weight in the saddle. ‘Come to see us off, I expect. Mount up, you two.’
‘This is the hottest part of the day,’ Cutter said. ‘It seems we’re always travelling through the worst this damned land can throw at us.’
‘We will reach a spring by dusk,’ Barathol said, ‘when we’ll all need it most. We lie over there, until the following dusk, because the next leg of the journey will be a long one.’
They set out on the road, that quickly became a track. A short while later, Scillara said, ‘We have company, Barathol.’
Glancing back, they saw Chaur, carrying a canvas bundle against his chest. There was a dogged expression on his sweaty face.
Sighing, the blacksmith halted his horse.
‘Can you convince him to go home?’ Scillara asked.
‘Not likely,’ Barathol admitted. ‘Simple and stubborn – that’s a miserable combination.’ He slipped down to the ground and walked back to the huge young man. ‘Here, Chaur, let’s tie your kit to the mule’s pack.’
Smiling, Chaur handed it over.
‘We have a long way to go, Chaur. And for the next few days at least, you will have to walk – do you understand? Now, let’s see what you’re wearing on your feet – Hood’s breath—’
‘He’s barefoot!’ Cutter said, incredulous.
‘Chaur,’ Barathol tried to explain, ‘this track is nothing but sharp stones and hot sand.’
‘There’s some thick bhederin hide in our kit,’ Scillara said, lighting her pipe, ‘somewhere. Tonight I can make him sandals. Unless you want us to stop right now.’
The blacksmith unslung his axe, then crouched and began pulling at his boots. ‘Since I’ll be riding, he can wear these until then.’
Cutter watched as Chaur struggled to pull on Barathol’s boots. Most men, he knew, would have left Chaur to his fate. Just a child in a giant’s body, after all, foolish and mostly useless, a burden. In fact, most men would have beaten the simpleton until he fled back to the hamlet – a beating for Chaur’s own good, and in some ways very nearly justifiable. But this blacksmith… he hardly seemed the mass murderer he was purported to be. The betrayer of Aren, the man who assassinated a Fist. And now, their escort to the coast.
Cutter found himself oddly comforted by that notion. Kalam’s cousin… assassinations must run in the family. That huge double-bladed axe hardly seemed an assassin’s weapon. He considered asking Barathol – getting from him his version of what had happened at Aren all those years ago – but the blacksmith was a reluctant conversationalist, and besides, if he had his secrets he was within his right to hold on to
them. The way I hold on to mine.
They set out again, Chaur trailing, stumbling every now and then as if unfamiliar with footwear of any kind. But he was smiling.
‘Damn these leaking tits,’ Scillara said beside him.
Cutter stared over at her, not knowing how he should reply to that particular complaint.
‘And I’m running out of rustleaf, too.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘What have you to be sorry about?’
‘Well, it took me so long to recover from my wounds.’
‘Cutter, you had your guts wrapped round your ankles – how do you feel, by the way?’
‘Uncomfortable, but I never was much of a rider. I grew up in a city, after all. Alleys, rooftops, taverns, estate balconies, that was my world before all this. Gods below, I do miss Darujhistan. You would love it, Scillara—’
‘You must be mad. I don’t remember cities. It’s all desert and dried-up hills for me. Tents and mud-brick hovels.’
‘There are caverns of gas beneath Darujhistan, and that gas is piped up to light the streets with this beautiful blue fire. It’s the most magnificent city in the world, Scillara—
‘Then why did you ever leave it?’
Cutter fell silent.
‘All right,’ she said after a moment, ‘how about this? We’re taking Heboric’s body… where, precisely?’
‘Otataral Island.’
‘It’s a big island, Cutter. Any place in particular?’
‘Heboric spoke of the desert, four or five days north and west of Dosin Pali. He said there’s a giant temple there, or at least the statue from one.’
‘So you were listening, after all.’
‘Sometimes he got lucid, yes. Something he called the Jade, a power both gift and curse… and he wanted to give it back. Somehow.’
‘Since he’s now dead,’ Scillara asked, ‘how do you expect him to do anything like returning power to some statue? Cutter, how do we find a statue in the middle of a desert? You might want to consider that whatever Heboric wanted doesn’t mean anything any more. The T’lan Imass killed him, and so Treach needs to find a new Destriant, and if Heboric had any other kind of power, it must have dissipated by now, or followed him through Hood’s Gate – either way, there is nothing we can do about it.’
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