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

  ‘And now the wandering’s over,’ Kyle said, his voice tight, and he felt a searing anger burning in his chest. ‘Then why? Why the contracts? Why come to Bael lands?’ Why…Spur?

  Stoop sighed. ‘Aye. The Diaspora’s ended. We’re going back to reclaim our land. We weren’t just wandering though. We searched everywhere – for the Duke. We didn’t find him. But maybe one of the other companies…I don’t know.’

  They remained side by side in silence for a time. Kurzan sailors clambered around them, raising sail. The embers of Stoop’s pipe died. The saboteur roused himself, stood. ‘I don’t know about you but I’m freezing my arse out here.’ He pulled the blanket higher and went below.

  Kyle stayed for a while longer on the deck, watching the waves without really seeing them. His thoughts kept returning to Stoop’s words that day on the Spur, ‘We knew someone was up here…’

  The next day the storm broke and the Kestral made better time. Word came down from the deck that contact had been lost with all but the Wanderer. Talk went around of wrecks, the Riders and sea monsters, and Slate offered to read Kyle’s future from the Dragons deck.

  Kyle lay in his berth, sick from the storm-cursed crossing. He was a tribesman, for Hood’s sake! What was he doing in a damned ship? Earlier in the voyage he’d laughed at the fat mercenary and his readings but now he welcomed any distraction, no matter how ridiculous. Slate was pleased, he’d done all the other men more times than he could count. Kyle was his last chance for something new.

  ‘The Field, or Realm, as some call it, can be divided into four parts,’ Slate began, brushing off the square of wood. Kyle knelt opposite him on one knee. A lantern hung above swinging wildly as the ship bucked and heaved. The fat Guardsman wore a felt shirt, its lacing open at the front revealing numerous scars and a thick mat of black hair. He took out the cards. These were tied by white silk ribbon and wrapped in black leather. Kyle knew that the corporal carried them in a thin wood box rolled into his blanket. Claimed they’d been in his family for generations.

  Slate searched through the deck. ‘Right now I’m using what we call the “short deck”. These four cards, the Houses, rule the Field.’ He held them up, one after the other. ‘Light, Dark, Life and Death.’ He then held up one other. ‘But when I was young this new House appeared: Shadow.’ He laid the five cards down and began taking out others as he explained them. ‘Each of the four old Houses possess their High Attendants: King, Queen, Knight or Champion, and Low Attendants, or Servants. In some they’re known as Herald, Magi, Soldier, Seamstress, Mason and Wife an’ such. Shadow has its own attendant cards: King, Queen, Knight, Assassin – some say Rope – Priest or Magi, and Hound. In some spreads the Houses each have assigned quarters, or directions, where their influence is greatest. Shadow has no such allocation. It can appear anywhere at any time.’

  ‘There are also these six cards.’ Slate sorted through them. ‘These serve no House: Oponn, signifying chance or odds; Obelisk, meaning the past or future; and these four: Crown, Sceptre, Orb and Throne.’

  ‘And the rest?’ Kyle asked, looking at the cards still in Slate’s hands.

  The mercenary grimaced. ‘These are new additions – they go with a house that appeared just recently. New powers, striving influences, these come and go all the time…don’t know if these’ll last any longer.’ He laid down a card very different from the others. Like those of Shadow House, it differed in manufacture – the rest were obviously a set, cut after the same pattern, painted by the same hand. The Shadow cards were cut from slightly thicker wood, but smoothed now from much handling. Their faces were smoky dark, black almost, hinting at vague shapes and movement. This new card wasn’t even squared like the others. Ragged-edged, its plain unfinished wood face bore a design that had obviously been scored there by a knife-blade. It was of a hut or a shack, some sort of shabby dwelling, and it struck Kyle as a kind of mockery of what Slate had named the others, Houses.

  ‘This new presence is called the House of Chains,’ Slate continued. ‘So far, it supports these Attendants: King, Consort, Reaver, Knight, The Seven, Cripple, Leper and Fool.’

  While Slate talked Kyle eyed the card signifying the King of House of Chains. Like its House card, it was of an unfinished wood. Gouged on its face – perhaps by Slate’s amateur hand – was a high-backed heavy seat, a throne. Drying, the wood of the card had shrunk, cracking from top to bottom through the solid, imposing chair. Compared to the richly varnished and detailed deck, these additions struck Kyle as ridiculous. Yet he could not deny that the clumsy image held a certain strange menace. The splitting wood was blood-red beneath its bleached surface, giving the appearance of streams of blood running down the surface of the throne. Somehow, Kyle would have felt much more at ease had the throne been occupied; at least then he would know where its occupant was. The face of the card appeared to shift and blur in the swinging lantern light; its uneven grain suggested to Kyle blowing dust, such as over the dune fields one can encounter on the steppes. The throne appeared closer now, dominating much more of the face. No, it was as if he or it were moving together, drawing closer, the dunes blurred by speed.

  A hand interposed itself, turned over the card. Kyle pulled his gaze up to Slate’s close, gleaming face, the man’s eyes hooded. A chilling sweat was clammy on his back and arms and he felt strangely dizzy.

  ‘Ain’t good, starin’ like that,’ Slate said, his voice low and tight. He appeared to want to say more, but collected the cards instead, looking down at them. ‘Maybe we’ll give this a try later.’ The Talent’s thick hands shook as he tucked the cards away.

  Kyle went to his berth, clutched his sword and stared at the beads of moisture running down the tarred wood. He pulled the blade a handbreadth from its wood and leather sheath and rubbed at the symbols etched in its iron. Their depth, cut as if the tempered blade were wax, always surprised him. He breathed a short prayer to the Wind King, prayed trying to believe that somehow he was close and watching over him. But could that magus, or Ascendant, have been the one? It was too outrageous. His world had been turned upside down and with every month he saw how naive and impossible was the vow he swore upon the iron of this blade to somehow avenge what had occurred atop that jutting finger of stone.

  That night he tried to dream of a woman’s hand and a fountain that no doubt held the sweetest water he had ever tasted. If he succeeded, he couldn’t remember.

  Nait Simal ’Ap Url, of the Untan harbour guard, sat in the warm afternoon light watching yet another wallowing merchantman loaded with the collected loot of an empire lumber its way from the wharf pulled along by oared launches. Stinking rats. He leaned forward to spit a red stream of kaff juice into the oily waves beneath the piers. Fat rats. They must smell something – not the Imperial rot we regular vermin smell all around – no, their noses must quiver after other scents shifting in the wind. The stink of influence; the perfume of power. Nait smiled, his lips a red smear. He liked that one. The perfume of power. The musk of money? He frowned. Well, no, maybe not that one.

  But where could they expect safe refuge if not here in the capital? Malaz? He chuckled, almost gagged on the wad of leaves tucked into one cheek. Hood no! Maybe a small anchorage somewheres, an isolated bay. Out of the way. Maybe buy protection from the fortified harbours of Nap or Kartool…

  Leaning back, he banged on the wall of the harbour guard shack. ‘Sarge?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I was thinkin’—’

  ‘How many times I gotta tell you not to do that, son. Bad for your health.’

  ‘I was just thinkin’ that maybe we oughta charge an exit fee. You know, like a departure tax. Somethin’ fancy like that. There’s a whole flock o’ sheep skippin’ out unsheared.’

  ‘You think those merchant houses aren’t paid up already? You want a visit from the Claw?’

  ‘The Claw? What’ve they got to do with anything? We got our thing goin’ as do others. Everyone gets a piece of the pie, no one gets hurt. Always
been that way.’

  ‘Some folks want to run the bakery,’ his sergeant said so low Nait barely caught it.

  The gold afternoon light warming Nait was occluded. Squinting, he made out a pair of polished black leather boots that climbed all the way up to wide hips, ending under the canted weaponbelt and broad heavy bosom of the corporal of the guard, Hands.

  ‘You’re chewin’ that outland filth again, Nait,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘That’s “sir” to you, skinny.’

  ‘Yes – sir.’

  ‘Spit it out.’

  ‘Aw, Hands—’

  ‘Sir!’

  ‘It cost me my last—’

  ‘I don’t give a dead rat to Hood what you choose to waste your money on. You’re on duty.’

  ‘That’s right,’ came Sergeant Tinsmith’s voice.

  Scowling, Nait leaned forward opening his mouth wide and pushed out the wad with his tongue. It landed on the grey slats of the pier with a spray of red spit that dappled Hands’ boots.

  ‘Damn you to Fener!’

  Nait wiped his sleeve across his mouth. ‘Sorry – sir.’

  Hands reached up to straighten the braid of auburn hair tucked down the back of her scaled hauberk. Raising her chin to the shack she said, low, ‘We’ll talk later, soldier.’

  As she walked away Nait blew a kiss.

  ‘Like I said, soldier,’ said his sergeant, ‘bad for your health.’

  ‘I’m not scared of her.’

  ‘You should be.’

  Bending down again, Nait picked up the wet lump and shoved it back into his mouth. Ha! He could take her. Maybe that’s what she’s been holding out for all this time – for him to show her who was the boss. Nait smiled again. Then he frowned, puzzled. What the Abyss had that been? He peered out over the edge of the slats. Little pads, like leaves, floating out on the waves. Some appeared to hold copper coins, twists of ribbon, rice, fruit and the stubs of candles, a few still burning. They bobbed along together like some kind of flotilla. It was more of those damned offerings to that ruddy sea god cult. He’d been seeing more of that lately. He spat out a stream, upending a swath of the pads. Ha! Stupid superstitions for fearful times. He could understand such things out in the backwaters of Nap or Geni, but here in Unta? People were supposed to be sophisticated here. He shook his head. What was civilization coming to?

  Fist Genist D’Irdrel of Cawn took one glance at Fort Saran and despaired. A four-year stint in this sore on the hind of a mule? Why couldn’t command have been moved to the settlement of Seti? Pitiable though it may be. He wiped the sweat-caked sleeve of his grey Malazan jupon once more across his face. Squinting against the glare of the sun, he studied the burnt umber of the low rolling grassland hills, the clumps of faded greenery here and there in cut streams and slumps. But what most caught his attention was the surprisingly large number of Seti camps, collections of their felt and hide tents, gathered around the fort in slums of cookfires, corralled horses and mongrel dogs. By the Gods, he vowed, someone back at staff headquarters was going to pay for this insult.

  ‘Not so bad if you squint real hard,’ the man riding behind remarked.

  Genist swung in his saddle, glared. ‘You said something, Captain?’

  The captain, newly transferred to the 15th Horse, shrugged in a way that annoyed Genist. In fact, everything about the man annoyed Genist. The man had only been with the regiment for a few weeks yet almost immediately the sergeants deferred to him – he’d seen how when he gave orders their eyes shifted edge-wise to this captain, Moss, he called himself, for confirmation. Yet there was also something about his sharp eyes, worn gloves and the equally worn sheaths of the two ivory-gripped sabres at his sides that blunted Genist’s usual treatment of his subordinates.

  Behind them, the double-ranked column of two thousand Malazan cavalry waited silent under the beating sun.

  ‘Sign the advance,’ Genist snarled to the signaller.

  Captain Moss cleared his throat.

  ‘What now?’ Genist hissed.

  ‘The scouts haven’t returned from the fort, Commander.’

  ‘Well, what of it? There it is! The fort! What do we need scouts for, by Hood’s own eyes!’

  ‘It’s not regulation.’

  ‘Regulation!’ Genist blinked, lowered his voice. ‘We’re not at the front, you damned fool. This is the centre of the continent.’ Genist took a low breath, turned on the signaller. ‘The advance.’

  As they rode, for once Captain Moss said nothing. The man’s slowly learning his place, Genist decided. In the distance, cresting the hillocks, groups of mounted Seti cavalry raised plumes of dust into the still hot air. Gods, Genist groaned inwardly. Two years among these half-breed barbarians. What might the whores look like? Probably not a decent one in the whole plains. He squinted at the nearest horsemen – grey fur standard. Wolf soldiers. He scanned the hills, searching. There, to the rear, a white fur standard. Jackal soldiers – the legendary aristocracy of the warrior societies, sworn to the terror of the plains, Ryllandaras, the white jackal. An ancient power of the same blood, so legend went, as the First Heroes themselves. Treach, now Trake, the newly risen god of battle, among them.

  Ahead, the tall double doors of Fort Saran opened. The officer of the gate saluted Genist, who nodded his acknowledgement. Within, the central marshalling grounds lay empty. A stone tower stood a squat and broad three storeys at the fort’s north palisade wall. Thank the Lady for that, Genist allowed. A delegation awaited before it.

  ‘Order the assembly,’ he told the signaller, and urged his mount forward. To his irritation, Moss accompanied him. ‘I do not see Fist Darlat.’ Behind them, the cavalry formed up ranks on the grounds.

  ‘Never met her,’ said Moss.

  Instead of Fist Darlat, all that awaited Genist and formal transfer of command was a motley gang of scruffy officers in faded, worn surcoats. Surely they could not be serious! True, Saran was only a fort, but command here was putative Malazan military governor of the entire Seti plains! A region as large as Dal Hon itself to the south. Was this some kind of calculated insult?

  Genist pulled up his mount before the gathered officers, examined them for some sign of who was in charge, but failed. He saw no rank insignia or emblems, nothing to distinguish one from the other. They looked alike in their tanned, wind-raw faces and worn equipage. Veterans, one and all. Why here, in the middle of nowhere? Had they been recently rotated in from Seven Cities? As some of his staff suggested Moss may have been? Damn them for staring like that! How dare they?

  ‘Who commands here? Where is Fist Darlat?’

  ‘Fist Darlat is indisposed,’ said the eldest of the lot, standing on the extreme left.

  Whoever this man was, he had seen many years of hard service. His hacked-short hair stood tufted in all directions. Burn wounding, perhaps. It was sun-bleached pale and grey-shot. His eyes were mere slits in a seamed, wind-scoured face. A black Seti-style recurve bow stood tall at his back.

  ‘And who are you?’

  ‘Name’s Toc. Toc the Elder.’

  After a moment of silence, Genist burst out laughing. ‘Surely you are joking. Not the Toc the Elder, certainly.’

  ‘Only one I know of.’

  Genist glanced to the assembled officers – none were laughing. None, in fact, were smiling. Even Moss now suddenly wore the hardest face Genist had ever seen on the man. ‘But this is fantastic, unheard of. I thought, that is, everyone assumed…you were dead.’

  ‘Good.’ The man stepped up and stroked the neck of Genist’s mount. ‘Fist Genist Urdrel – might I borrow your horse for a few moments?’

  Genist gaped at the man. ‘I’m sorry? You’d like to what? Why?’

  Captain Moss quickly dismounted. ‘Take mine, sir.’

  Toc turned away from Genist. ‘Name, soldier?’

  ‘Moss. Captain Moss.’

  ‘Well, thank you, Captain Moss, for the use of your horse.’ Toc the Elder mounte
d, nodded to the assembled officers and cantered out to the marshalling grounds.

  Two of the officers closed on Genist and pulled the reins from his hands. Genist reached for his sword.

  ‘Wouldn’t do that,’ Moss murmured from his side. ‘We’re rather outnumbered.’

  Genist glared down at him. ‘I have two thousand—’

  ‘Do you? We’ll see.’

  ‘What by Beru’s beard do you mean by that?’

  Moss lifted his chin to the grounds behind Genist who turned to stare.

  Toc the Elder now walked his mount back and forth before the marshalled ranks. ‘Any veterans among you?’ he shouted in a voice that carried all the way to Genist. ‘Any old-timers from the campaigns? Sergeants? Bannermen? Do you know me? Do you recognize me? Who am I? Shout it out!’

  Genist heard responses called but couldn’t make out the words. A general mutter swelled among the ranks. Heads turned to exchange words.

  ‘Do you know me?’ Toc shouted. ‘I was flank commander under Dassem at Valan when Tali fell! I scoured Nom Purge! I brought the Seti into the fold!’

  Genist’s blood ran cold as he began to consider the possibility that this man could indeed be Toc himself, not some opportunist outlaw trying to exploit the name. Hood’s breath! Toc the Elder, the greatest cavalry commander the Empire ever produced! Abyss, there was no Imperial cavalry before this man. Then the man’s words brought a shiver to Genist; he recalled who it was that had negotiated the Seti tribal treaties and whom columns of thousands of Seti lancers had followed from these plains across Quon, even into Falar, and he turned, dreading what he might see, to the open fort gates. There, astride their mounts, five tribal elders watched, white furs at their shoulders, lances tufted by fetishes of white fur.

  Gods Below! What may be unleashed here?

  A call rose from the ranks, gathered cadence to a mounting chant. ‘Toc the Elder! Toc the Elder!’ Blades hissed from sheaths and waved in salute to the sky. ‘Toc the Elder!’