The Malazan Empire Series: (Night of Knives, Return of the Crimson Guard, Stonewielder, Orb Sceptre Throne, Blood and Bone, Assail) (Novels of the Malazan Empire)

by Ian C. Esslemont

  At the top of Rampart Way Kiska found the Hold’s towering iron-studded gates closed. No lantern or torchlight shone from the slits of the machicolations to either side. Normally, the glinting barbed tips of cross-bow quarrels would have tracked her movements and the watch captain would have hailed her long ago.

  Cut into the timbers of the left-hand gate, the tiny thieves’ door stood ajar. Something lay jammed at its bottom. Kiska slid along the timbers until level with the opening. A forearm, bloodied palm up, stuck out as if offering a macabre greeting. She peered through the gap. It belonged to one of the mercenaries who had kidnapped her. He was dead, the leather armour at his back stitched by cuts. From the way he lay he must have been trying to escape. Darkness obscured the entrance tunnel and she knew she was now outlined by the moonlight glowing behind her. Slipping in, she stepped to one side and stopped dead, listening.

  Nothing but the faint and distant surf. The stink of blood and voided bowels filled the enclosure. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, the twisted shapes of two other mercenaries distinguished themselves from the cobbled lane. Perhaps they’d been left behind to guard the gate and since then, someone had come and made quick work of them. She knelt: a dark trail of blood, still sticky to the touch, traced where one of the men had dragged himself just short of a small side-door in the tunnel; the entrance to gatekeeper Lubben’s quarters. She followed, stood over the body, and listened at the door. After a few heartbeats she was about to step away when the scuff of a shifting foot reached her. Someone was within, perhaps listening just as she was. Did she want to know if it was the hunchback or his murderer? No, she’d leave that alone. Somewhere ahead Artan must be…

  The door whipped open. A thick arm and a hand the size of a small shield grabbed the front of her shirt and yanked her in. A hatchet blade shoved under her chin jammed her against the wall. Close hot breath reeking of wine assaulted her.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, lass,’ Lubben growled. He squinted through his good eye then released her and pushed himself away. ‘Sorry.’

  Kiska caught her breath, straightened her shirt and vest. The room was no more than a nook. A hole overlooked during the fortress’s construction – too short for her to straighten, though tall enough for the hunchback gatekeeper.

  ‘By the Elders, child. I thought you’d better sense than to come here tonight.’ He shoved her aside, closed the door, slammed the bolt.

  ‘What’s happening upstairs?’

  Lubben thumped down into a chair beside a brazier of glowing coals. He took a pull from a skin, wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his stained leather jerkin.

  ‘Don’t know and don’t care.’

  Kiska stood near the door, shivered in the damp air. ‘But you must have some idea.’

  Lubben laughed, coughed hoarsely. ‘Lass, I’ve ideas all right. Plenty. But here they stay.’ He tapped one blunt finger to his temple.

  ‘Well, I’m going to find out.’

  Head tilted to one side, he eyed her as if estimating the degree of her insanity. He pointed to the door. ‘Be my guest.’

  Kiska hesitated. ‘You mean you’re just going to sit here?’

  ‘Indeed I am.’ Grinning, he took another pull from the skin. ‘Listen. It’s a war up there – no prisoners. You understand? This ain’t your regular social affair.’

  ‘Fine. I’ll go alone.’

  Lubben frowned, shoved a wood stopper into the skin and set it down on the floor. He cleared his throat, spat into a corner. ‘You could stay here for the night, y’know. Been safe enough so far.’

  Shifting to warm her hands over the brazier, Kiska shook her head. ‘No. Thanks. I’ve got to look into this. There’s…’ She stopped herself, decided against revealing names or just what might be at stake. ‘This is important. I’ve got to know what’s going on.’

  A deep-throated chuckle shook Lubben. ‘I’m thinking that’s what everyone would like to know.’

  Kiska got the feeling that Lubben knew more than he was revealing. He’d been the Hold’s gatekeeper for as long as she could remember. As a child she and her friends had often gathered at the open gate, daring each other to tease the ‘hunch’ with his crablike walk and the great ring of keys rattling at his side. Remembering that, Kiska felt her face burn with sudden embarrassment. To think she’d almost called him a coward for hiding in his cell. Who was she to judge?

  She sighed. ‘All right. I’ll be going then.’ Lubben nodded, stared at the sullen coals as if reviewing his own painful memories. Struck by a thought, she turned from the door. ‘Can you lend me a weapon?’

  He grunted, pulled a dagger from the wide belt at his waist and handed it over. She took it: one of the meanest-looking blades she’d ever seen on a knife – curved like a hand-scythe.

  ‘Thanks.’

  He grunted again, his gaze averted. She unbolted the door.

  ‘Lass…’

  She turned. ‘Yes?’

  ‘You keep your back to the walls, you hear?’

  ‘Yes. I will.’ Slipping through the door, she pulled it shut behind her.

  The bailey stood empty, unguarded. Just inside the fortified door to the main keep she found four more dead mercenaries. Among them was one of the scarred commander’s picked veterans. No visible wounds – it was as if they’d simply dropped dead. Her back prickled at the possibility of a Warren-laid trap such as a ward. If so, she prayed it was now spent. She wasn’t sure how many men had escaped the hound’s attack: maybe fifteen or twenty. By her rough reckoning that left ten men, including their commander and the woman she believed to be a cadre mage.

  In the reception hall the light was low. The candles had burnt out, leaving only oil-lamps guttering here and there along the walls. Deep shadows swallowed most of the chamber, gaps so dark someone could stand within and she’d never know it. A circular stone stairway hugging the wall started on her right. The high official and her Claws had taken over the top floors of the keep.

  With Lubben’s warning in mind, she eased herself along one wall. In the darkness her foot pushed up against something at the base of the stairs. She crouched down. One of Artan’s two remaining guards, dead, a throwing spike jammed into his throat. Hood’s breath! At this rate no one would be left alive. And who was doing all the killing? So far, the murders stank of the Claws.

  At the second-floor landing a single oil lamp cast a weak glow upon a scene beyond her worst nightmares. The dead lay in heaps, most of them from the mercenary band. Smouldering tapestries and scorched furniture sent wisps of smoke into the air. She gagged at the sweet odour of burnt flesh. Eviscerated and blackened, the head and upper torso of a Claw hung through the smashed planking of a door. Another Claw lay sprawled amidst the thickest pile of dead, virtually hacked to pieces. It looked as though another one of those alchemical bombs – Moranth munitions – had been touched off in the enclosed quarters.

  Holding a portion of her cloak over her nose and mouth to keep out the worst of the stench, Kiska stepped over the bodies to cross the landing. A hall led to a second flight of stairs. Another veteran lay on the floor in a pool of blood, throat slit. From the number of corpses, it looked like the commander couldn’t be left with more than a few survivors at most. The woman didn’t appear to be among the bodies, nor Artan or Hattar.

  Blood dripped down the worn stairs, sticking to her slippers as she followed the curve of the inner wall. She halted just short of the top behind the body of a man who’d dragged himself up from the carnage below. She recognized the lozenged armour: it was the sergeant who’d captured her at Mossy Tors.

  She stepped over him and crouched, head level with the landing above. She paused to listen. Silence. Profound and utter quiet. It made her back itch. Was everyone dead?

  A sough and a slip of cloth sounded beneath her. She looked down, the hair at the nape of her neck rising. The mercenary was not dead. While she watched, a hand rose then snapped at her ankle. She nearly shrieked aloud. It yanked and she fell back onto him, her head c
racking on the stairs. Stars and tearing pain half-blinded her. The mercenary’s arm rose and she blocked his feeble blow, though the effort sent her sliding backwards down the stairs.

  The grip on her ankle weakened and she jerked her leg free. The mercenary lay slumped on his back. Half the flesh of his face had been burned away. He glared at her. ‘You again,’ he chuckled. Oddly, he merely sounded tired.

  Kiska snapped, ‘What in K’rul’s pits are you trying to do?’

  That roused him. He grimaced, foam on his torn lips. ‘What’re we trying to do? Bring back the old glory! Return Malaz to its true path! You know nothing of how it was. He came to us. He promised us!’

  The man coughed up blood, his eye lost focus, then found her again. Kiska did not need to ask who He was. ‘And what happened?’ she whispered.

  ‘A damned free for all, s’what. Claws comin’ out of the woodwork like roaches. Don’t know how many left. Too many is my wager. She came ready for anything.’

  ‘She? Who is she? Tell me.’

  Kiska shook him, but his eye closed and his head eased back to the stairs. His last breath hissed: ‘Surly.’

  So. There it was. Yet he could be wrong. He might be mistaken. It was possible confirmation of what she’d suspected but dared not believe. And now that she knew, or suspected that she knew, fear replaced curiosity. Agayla, Artan, even Lubben, they were right: she had no business here. This was between what everyone in Imperial service called the Old Guard. She – and anyone else – would be killed as unwanted witnesses to old grudges.

  Kiska shrank back down the stairs. At the bottom she leapt back into shadow, spotting someone coming up the hall. Smoke still hung thick in the air, and the lamps cast poor light, but even at noon on a clear day the figure would have sent shivers of dread up her spine. It looked like a hoary shape out of the legendary past, ripped from its grave by the Shadow Moon.

  Two curving longswords out, crouched, the apparition strode heavily through the wreckage. In archaic armour that might’ve been worn decades ago by the Iron Guard or the Heng Lion Legion, a battered, lobster-tailed and visored helmet covered its head. And Kiska was thankful for that, for no one could have survived the ferocious wounds the mangled armour betrayed. Steel scales swung loose from the torn leather and padding. Iron rings clattered to the stone floor as it lumbered forward. Surely this was one of the horrors hinted at in the legends of the Shadow Moon. A demon, or an inhuman Jaghut tyrant clawed from its rest, lusting to settle ancient wrongs.

  Kiska couldn’t move: there was no way past it, and she couldn’t go up. While she watched its implacable advance, a shadow flickered at the edge of her vision. Something thudded from the figure’s layered armour. It grunted, turning awkwardly sideways in the hall like a battered siege tower, one weapon ahead, the other to the rear.

  Two shapes emerged from the shadows before and behind the figure.

  Claws. Needle-thin blades gleamed in their hands. The figure glanced behind, then returned its attention to the front.

  Kiska watched appalled while whatever the thing was shifted to forge ahead. Its body language shouted lunge in footing and balance, and the forward Claw yielded a half-step. Incredibly, at that instant, the armoured giant spun then sped behind as swiftly as a naked runner. The rear Claw parried a blur of blows. The figure pressed on, head-butting the Claw with his steel helm. Stunned, the Claw reeled back, then, as he fell, the figure slashed, ripping open his gut.

  A thrown blade slammed into the armoured back and jammed. Snarling, the warrior whirled around. It and the Claw stood facing each other, poised. Like a boar readying for a charge, the warrior rolled its shoulders. It pointed a mangled gauntleted hand at the Claw. ‘I’ll have your head this time, Possum.’

  Kiska felt a chill from her scalp to her toes. Clearly, this Shadow-summoned fiend could not be stopped. No normal soldier went around dispatching Claws or vowing their destruction. Perhaps it was a warrior from the Emperor’s terrifying T’lan Imass legions. They were said to wear tatters of their ancient armour and to be as irresistible as a typhoon.

  The Claw laughed. ‘Then come. I’ll await you above.’ He stepped back into darkness and disappeared.

  Alone, the figure snorted its disgust. It rubbed its back against a wall like a bhederin scratching itself. The knife clattered to the stones. After that the warrior rolled its shoulders once more and clashed its swords together as if gathering itself to slaughter anyone it found.

  Kiska dashed up the stairs past the dead mercenary. At the top stretched another hall like the one below. This one however displayed no trace of conflict. She knew it held the rooms of senior officers, the military tribunal presided over by Sub-Fist Pell, and a private dining room. The appointments were stark, befitting a military garrison: clay wall lamps, a few hanging banners and moth-eaten standards. Narrow hall tables bore funerary vessels, spent candles, and miniature stone statues of soldiers, the sight of which reminded Kiska of the demonic warrior behind her. The furthest door stood ajar. She pushed it open and slipped into the darkness.

  Though she’d never visited, Kiska knew this for the private dining room where Sub-Fist Pell entertained visiting ship captains and other officers, and where long ago pirate admirals once drank with important hostages dragged out of the dungeons below.

  She backed slowly into the room. Vague outlines of tall-backed chairs swam into view along the walls. Trying to slow her pounding heart, Kiska took deep breaths. This was obviously the largest room on this floor, but she felt crowded, as if she weren’t alone. She stopped moving, poised to turn on the balls of her feet. Sensing something behind her she spun to stare up at Hattar’s flat, anger-twisted face. As a warning he raised a finger for silence, then waved her to the rear of the room. Backing away, she bumped up against someone who steadied her. It was Artan.

  She turned to him, started to speak, but he pressed a gloved finger to her lips. She clamped her mouth shut, nodded.

  He leaned his mouth close to her ear, whispered, ‘You shouldn’t have come.’

  ‘Something’s coming. An armoured demon like a T’lan Imass. Unstoppable. It defeated two Claws.’ Her eyes had adjusted to the gloom, and she saw his brows rise in disbelief, or surprise. She also caught hand signals flying between Artan and Hattar. That startled her; earlier, Hattar’s night vision had struck her as poor. It must since have been augmented. By Warren perhaps. Two long-knives at hand, the plainsman took a position just behind the door. Artan drew her farther back into the long room, to a corner where, through the open door, they could see a section of the lamp-lit hall and the base of the steps to the topmost floor, occupied by the High Official – Surly.

  They heard the armoured fiend long before seeing it: slow, heavy tread, torn scales and strapping rattling the walls.

  As it loomed into view in the doorway, Artan’s breath caught. Kiska wondered if it was in recognition, fear, or both.

  ‘You were right,’ Artan murmured, his voice a bare whisper, ‘a ghost out of the past indeed…’

  Filling the hall like an animated statue, the shape turned to the stairs. It rolled its head in the large helmet, slashed one blade through the air at the base of the narrow curving stairs. Then, swords clashing up into guard, it flinched away.

  Someone stepped down from the stairs and into view.

  A slim figure in an iron-grey cloak. A cultist! Kiska shot Artan a questioning look, but his eyes were wide with amazement. She turned back to the doorway.

  The two appeared to be negotiating. Clearly, they knew each other and no love was lost between them. The cultist’s voice was a soft murmur, the warrior’s a hoarse rumble, both echoing in the stillness of the hallway until, eventually, they seemed to come to some sort of an agreement. The cultist lazily waved one hand and a third shape appeared, prone on the hall’s floor. The armoured being, not lowering its attention from the cultist, nudged the figure with its foot. The new arrival responded groggily. It was the dark woman, the mercenary mage, in her black silk sh
irt and brocaded vest. After a few more exchanges, the armoured figure sheathed its weapons and lifted the woman to its shoulder. It retreated back down the hall, out of sight.

  Why take the woman? Kiska wondered. Some kind of sacrifice? She released her breath. It was over. The ancient revenant was gone. Artan, though, gave her arm a painful squeeze. She peered up.

  Gaze nailed to the doorway, he mouthed, Be still. She looked. Whoever the cultist was, he’d turned and now stared straight at them through the door’s narrow yawn. Yet standing in the lamplight it should have been impossible for him to see them hidden in the dark. At her side, Artan stood as tense as a drawn bow. He swallowed, breathed aloud in wonder, ‘By the Autumn Worm. It is he.’

  When he’d entered the Hold’s main gate Temper had drawn his twin curved longswords at the sight of the four corpses. He recognized them as members of Ash’s rag-tag platoon and noted there were no ex-Bridgeburners among them. Ash was obviously holding his best close to hand. He hoped fervently that Corinn counted among those.

  He paused at the door to Lubben’s quarters, wanting to see if the hunchback still lived, but reconsidered. If alive, there was a chance Lubben might recognize his helmet. There was no telling – the old souse was pretty damned canny in his own way. So Temper passed by the door, stepped out into the empty bailey. He thought of checking the barracks, but dread of what he might discover urged him away. The Claws had perpetrated worse atrocities in their history than the slaughter of one small garrison. After jogging across the bailey, he pushed open the keep’s door with the tip of one sword. More dead chaff here. The Claws, and perhaps even Ash, were thinning their ranks of expendables. He could just imagine Ash figuring that, Twin’s chance, the boys might actually get lucky and kill a Claw or two. Pausing, he tightened his helmet strap, adjusted the frayed rag-ends of gauntlets and shook his shoulders. This was it. Upstairs was the ‘High Official’, her Claw bodyguard, possibly a friend, and perhaps two spectres from his past who had yet to answer for a betrayal they did nothing to prevent. He concentrated, emptied his mind of everything but the objective at the top of the tower.