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

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Very good. And…well done, Sergeant.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ Chord saluted, went off.

  Sighing, Rillish drew his helmet on again, began walking. That being the case, he now had to give thought to what to do once he’d discharged his responsibilities. Return his command to his regional superior in Unta? Face summary court-martial, execution? Would Fist D’Ebbin be satisfied with just his head, or would he imprison the men as mutineers? He could always appeal to High Fist Anand; the man had a reputation for fairness. Perhaps he should disband his command and return alone. Or not at all. Presumed dead would be the official conclusion. He thought of his family estate hard up by the Gris border; the sweetgourds should be ripening now.

  The images of his fever-induced hallucinations returned to him and he snorted at the ridiculous self-aggrandizement of it. His command at Korel had been decimated, his command here at the Wickan frontier had been decimated; it would seem to be best for all if he just threw down his helmet. Yet the face of Tajin would not go away. Tajin had been the boy’s name. He could not shut his eyes without seeing Tajin.

  Later that afternoon outrunners came scrambling in from the south. They threw themselves down next to the boy’s travois. Mane ran up and a fierce argument raged over the seated child until Mane ducked her head with a curt bow. Chord had come to Rillish’s side. ‘Riders closing from the south,’ he said aside.

  ‘Not Wickan, I gather.’

  ‘Lad, no.’

  Mane ran up to Rillish, a hand tight on the grip of her long-knife. She stopped before him, but her face was turned away, glaring back to the travois. ‘I have been ordered – that is, we are to place ourselves under your command.’ She would not raise her gaze.

  ‘Have they spotted us yet?’

  ‘We don’t believe so.’

  Rillish cast about, pointed to the nearest hillock. ‘Retreat to that hill. Lie low, maybe they’ll miss us.’

  ‘As you order.’ She passed on low commands.

  Chord raised a hand, signing to the men and women regulars. Everyone jogged for the rise.

  A dry wash cut the rear of the rise allowing for no approach, but eliminating any retreat as well. The regulars crouched in the grass in a double arc around the base. Rillish knelt with a relief of six near the top next to the travois. The guard of youths surrounded the boy; the rest had spread themselves out. Everyone waited, silent, while the pounding of horses’ hooves closed upon them. Riders stormed past, pell-mell; armed citizenry without uniform or order, a kind of self-authorized militia. Some eighty men. Their route brought them curving past the rise and on, north-west. It pleased Rillish to see a paucity of bows and crossbows at their backs. He gestured a runner to him. ‘Give them time,’ he whispered. The girl scrambled down among the grasses on all fours.

  Rillish waited, listening. The dull drone of insects and the hiss of the lazy afternoon breeze through the grass returned. The sun was nearing the uneven western horizon – the reason behind the Golden hills? Then a return of hooves. Two mounted figures, heads lowered, studying the ground as they walked their mounts south. Both Wickan in their torn deer-hide shirts, long matted black hair.

  ‘Renegade scouts,’ Mane hissed, suddenly at Rillish’s side.

  The two straightened, galvanized; they’d realized they were being watched. Rillish knew he’d now lost all his options. ‘Fire!’

  Crossbow bolts and arrows whipped from the grass like angry insects. One scout fell, thrown backwards by the blows of four missiles. The other had rolled from his mount. Figures rose from the grasses around the man, threw themselves upon him. A quick high yell; silence. One mount, hit by several crossbow bolts reared its pain, squealing, then fell kicking. Damn. The other stood motionless until a youth rose next to it to send it running with a slap at its flank.

  The ground thrummed with the return of the main column, but slower, cantering. They rounded the rise bunched up, the van conferring, their words lost in the din. Closing, they spotted the fallen mount. They milled their confusion, peered about at the surrounding hillsides. Men dismounted. Shit. ‘Fire at will!’ Rillish yelled.

  A volley of missiles took down mounted and dismounted alike. The rest spurred their horses up the hill, swords flashing from their sheaths.

  Rillish’s command rose from the grasses to meet them. They slashed mounts, engaged riders. A Wickan girl pulled herself up on to the back of a mount behind one fellow and sank her knife into him then rolled off taking him with her. Most of the invader militia fared better, however, slashing down with their longer weapons, raking the youths from their sides, advancing. Rillish pulled out his twinned Untan duelling swords and raced down the slope.

  He engaged the nearest, parrying the down-stroke, thrust the groin, and allowed the man to pass; he’d be faint with shock and blood loss in moments. Another attempted to ride him down but he threw himself aside, rolling. Regaining his feet he turned, expecting to be trampled, but the rider was preoccupied; he was swiping at his face bellowing his frustration. Yells that turned to pain, even terror. The sword flew from his grip, his hands pressed themselves to his face. A dark cloud of insects surrounded the man. Screaming, he fell from the mount that raced off, unnerved. Rillish crossed to the flailing and gurgling figure in the grasses. All about the hillside the men were falling, clutching at themselves, screaming their pain and blood-chilling horror.

  The figure at Rillish’s feet stilled. A cloud of insects spiralled from it, dispersing. In their wake was revealed the glistening pink and white curve of fresh bone where the man’s face had been. Like an explosion, a mass of chiggers, wasps and deer flies as large as roaches vomited up from between the corpse’s gaping teeth like an exhalation of pestilence. Rillish flinched away and puked up the thin contents of his own stomach.

  Coughing, wiping his mouth, he straightened to see new riders closing upon them. A column of Wickan cavalry. They encircled the base of the rise. Two riders launched themselves from their tall painted mounts to run up the hill. Both wore black crow-feather capes, both also youths themselves. Rillish cleaned his swords on the grasses then slowly made his way up to the travois. His thigh ached as if broken.

  Atop the rise he found the two riders had thrown themselves down at the side of the travois and were both kissing the boy, squeezing his hand, holding his chin, studying his face in wonder, babbling in Wickan. Tears streamed down their faces unnoticed. Chord came to Rillish’s side. ‘Trake’s Wonder, sir,’ he breathed, awed. ‘Do you know who those two are?’

  ‘Aye, Sergeant. I know.’

  ‘There’ll be blood and Hood’s own butcher’s bill to pay on the frontier now, I think.’

  ‘Yes, Sergeant. I think you’re right.’ Rillish sat, pulled off his helmet and wiped the sweat from his face. He took a mouthful of water, swished it around his mouth.

  Eventually, as the evening gathered, the two – twins, a young man and a young woman – came to stand before Rillish. He roused himself to stand as well, bowed an acknowledgment that the two waved aside.

  ‘We owe you more than we can repay, Lieutenant,’ the boy said.

  ‘Just doing my duty.’

  ‘In truth?’ the girl said sharply, her eyes dark and glittering like a crow’s own. ‘Counter to your duty it would seem.’

  ‘My duty to the Empire.’

  The two shared a glance, an unspoken communication. ‘Our thanks in any case,’ the boy said, and he turned to go. ‘We will escort you to the Golden Hills.’

  Rillish almost spoke a reflexive, yes sir. He watched them go while they spoke to Mane and the others who crowded around, touching them reverently and pulling at their leathers. Grown now into gangly long-limbed adolescents but with the weathered faces and distant evaluative gaze of seasoned veterans who have come through Hood’s own trials – Nil and Nether. Living legends of the Seven Cities campaign. Possibly the most dangerous mages alive on the continent, and angry, damned angry it seemed to him. And rightfully so,
too.

  Kyle awoke to a light kick of his heel. Keeping himself still he glanced over to see Stalker silently wave him up. Awkward, he pushed himself up by his off-hand, his right wrapped tight in a sling. The night was bright, the mottled moon low and glowing. Unaccountably, Kyle thought of ancient legends from the youth of his people when multiple moons of many sizes and hues painted the nights in multicoloured shadow. Even this one had been discoloured as of late. And the nights have been lit by far more falling stars than when he was a child. He glanced to the glittering arc of stars demarking Father’s Cast where his people’s Skyfather first tossed the handful of bright dirt that would be Creation. As glowing and dense as ever despite his fears.

  Stalker brought his head close. ‘We have a problem.’ In answer to Kyle’s querying look he motioned to Coots waiting at the dark tree-edge.

  As Kyle approached, Coots adjusted his armoured hauberk of iron rings sewn to leather and checked his sheathed long-knives. His mouth was his habitual sour grimace behind his thickening moustache and beard. ‘We’ve spotted the boat’s owner. He’s a Togg-damned giant of a fellow. Bigger than any I ever heard of. Bigger’n any Thelomen.’

  A shiver of dread ran through Kyle; giants, Jhogen, were creatures from the nightmares of his people. ‘A Jhogen?’

  ‘What’s that? Jhogen?’ Comprehension dawned on Coots with a quiet humourless smile. ‘No. Not one of them.’

  ‘I heard talk in the Guard about giants who live in Stratem. In the East. Toblakai.’

  Coots grunted. ‘No, not like them.’

  ‘The bigger they are, the slower,’ Stalker said, urging them on.

  ‘That from personal experience, there, Stalk?’ asked Coots, arching a brow. Stalker signed for silence. Making his way through the woods, Kyle wanted to ask Coots more of this giant but the time for that had passed. They moved silent through the trees, reached tended fields cut from the forest edge that led down to a loosely scattered collection of huts and pens that in turn straggled down to a strand of black rock and the grey choppy waters of the White Sea beyond. A biting landward wind stole through Kyle’s armour, quilted padding and linen shirts. He pulled his cloak tighter. The gusts seemed to carry the sharpness of the ice that had given birth to it somewhere far out past the western horizon.

  Hunched, Coots jogged down between the open ground of the fields. Kyle scanned the scattered huts; not one fire or lamp showed, though white tendrils climbed from some roof smoke-holes. Stalker followed, Kyle brought up the rear. Amid the huts Badlands emerged from behind a stick-pen holding goats. The four of them jogged down to the dark strand where the boat rested slightly aslant, bright against the black water-worn gravel, its single mast tall and gracefully slim.

  Badlands pressed a shoulder to the raised stern, feet scraping amid the rocks. He pushed again, gasping. ‘Lad take it! Here’s a complication.’

  ‘Keep watch,’ Stalker told Kyle. The three bent their shoulders to the boat. They strained, breathing in sharp gasps. Their sandalled feet dug into the gravel. Keening loudly, the boat scraped forward a hand’s breadth on its log bedding.

  Glancing away from their efforts, Kyle was shocked to see two men already approaching. One stunned him by his size, nearly twice the height of a normal man, carrying a spear fully half again as tall as him. The man at the side of this giant of a being, Jhogen or not, was somehow not in the least diminished. Dark, muscular, he moved with an easy grace that captured Kyle’s attention. ‘Here they come,’ he murmured, aside. The three cousins straightened from their efforts. The boat had moved a bare arm’s span.

  As the two closed, Kyle found that he did not feel fear so much as an unaccountable chagrin and embarrassment – as if he were a common thief caught in the act – which, he reflected, was pretty much the truth of it. ‘You surprise me,’ the man said in Talian, motioning to the boat. ‘I didn’t think anyone but my friend here could move it.’

  ‘Yeah, well, we’re just full of surprises,’ Stalker ground out, a hand close to his sword.

  The man’s bright gaze moved to Kyle. ‘Young for the Crimson Guard, aren’t you?’

  Kyle glanced down; he still wore his sigil. ‘We quit.’

  One dark brow rose. ‘Really? I did not think that possible.’

  Through this exchange the giant stood straight, arms crossed, though a smile played at his mouth. His startling golden eyes held something like wonder as his gaze roved about them.

  ‘We need your boat,’ Stalker said.

  ‘If the Guard is after you, no wonder,’ the man observed dryly.

  ‘How much do you want for it?’ Kyle asked, surprising himself.

  ‘It’s not for sale.’ The man’s eyes were flat though his mouth quirked up in a half-smile. ‘But it is for hire.’

  Stalker grunted something that sounded like a long curse of all the meddling Gods.

  ‘Where are you headed?’ the giant fellow asked in flowing musical Talian. His voice was taut, expectant, almost febrile in its intensity. It was a question Kyle had been giving much thought of late. Where could he possibly head in all the open world? Back to home, Bael lands? Or off to a new land, this Genabackis of which he heard so much among the Guard? But in the end he did not need to wonder; one place, one name, haunted him since overheard accidentally while he hid in the woods. A locale, and a possible mission as well. He addressed the two, ‘Have either of you heard of the “Dolmans”?’

  Their reaction startled Kyle. To the man the name clearly meant nothing; his gaze remained flat, though it shifted to his companion. The giant flinched as if gut-punched. A shiver took him like the swaying of a tree trunk and he expended a hissed breath in a long murmuring supplication. ‘Yes,’ he managed, his voice thick with emotion. ‘I know it well. The Dolmans of Tien. It is of my homeland, Jacuruku.’

  ‘What fee, then, to take us there?’ asked Stalker, his gaze narrow on Kyle.

  The man had already half-turned away. He said over his shoulder, ‘You’ve just paid it. We’ll get our supplies then we will leave immediately.’

  Though clearly unhappy, Stalker nodded. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Traveller. This is Ereko.’

  Stalker gave their names. Ereko inclined his head in greetings. ‘Well met, comrades,’ he said grinning now, having regained his composure. ‘We sail shortly into the maw of the Ice Dancer. It is a sea I know well, and judging from this frigid wind, it is readying itself for us.’ The two walked back up the strand.

  While Stalker eyed Kyle, Badlands let out a long thankful breath. ‘Payment might still have to be made…’

  ‘Don’t know if I’m looking forward to that scrap,’ said Coots.

  Stalker refused to release Kyle. ‘The Dolmans…that the place Skinner mentioned?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And his contact. It was in Jacuruku, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And now this Thelomen fellow, or whatever he is, says he’s of Jacuruku.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Stalker spun away, disgusted. ‘Dark Lady, someone’s meddling here. I don’t like it. Too overt. There’s going to be trouble. Pushback. I know it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He rubbed his hands on the planks of the boat. ‘A slapping down. A dispersal. Lad,’ he said, turning back, ‘the Gods are just scheming children. One is attempting to build a castle in the sand here. Soon the others will see this, or they have seen it. They’ll come and kick it down.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they can’t let the schemes of others succeed, Kyle. They each of them only want their own to succeed.’

  ‘I don’t know if I agree with that.’

  The tall scout shrugged. ‘Agree or not, that is how it is. In any case, seems we’re still working for the Guard after all.’

  ‘One direction is as good as any other,’ said Coots with a dismissive wave.

  ‘Except home,’ said Badlands, hawking up a great throatful of phlegm and spitting on to the rocks.r />
  Coots nodded. ‘Yeah. That would be the worst.’

  Traveller and Ereko returned quite quickly. Kyle had to kick the cousins awake; they’d lain down on their cloaks and gone right to sleep. The two tossed their bundles in then Traveller waved everyone to the boat. One-armed, Kyle had barely touched the overlapping planks of the sides when the boat took off sliding down the logs; Ereko had merely leant his shoulder to the stern and it fairly flew down the strand. It gave a nerve-grating screech of wood-against-wood then charged prow-first into the grey water. Ereko had continued on with it and now stood in what for him was waist-deep water; Kyle, short himself, suspected it would come up near his shoulders. Traveller pointed to a row of sealed earthenware pots. ‘Those hold sweet-water. Get them aboard.’

  Stalker didn’t move, but after an ‘Aye, Captain’ from Coots the brothers bent to the task.

  ‘Those bundles of charcoal,’ Traveller told Kyle, indicating a ready-made pile.

  ‘Aye,’ Kyle responded without thought. Eventually, Stalker lent a hand to the loading of wrapped dried fish and roots.

  Ereko had manoeuvred the boat closer to shore. They climbed aboard, getting wet only to the knees. Ereko pushed off then pulled himself in over the gunwale. He took the side-tiller while Traveller sat at the high prow.

  ‘Raise sail,’ Ereko called. The brothers set to, pulling on ropes. A patchwork square sail rose, luffed full in the strong wind. Ereko steered them north, parallel to the shore and slightly seaward. Already a false dawn brightened the east. They’d worked all night preparing the craft.

  Kyle sat close to the stern, wrapped himself in his cloak. ‘What’s the boat’s name?’ he asked the giant.

  ‘We call her the Kite,’ he answered with an easy and pleased smile. ‘Let’s hope she flies just as swift, hey?’

  Kyle could only nod his uncertain agreement. Why must they hurry? Were they afraid the Guard might give chase? Or, more likely, the fellow had his own reasons for speed. The one who’d given his name as Traveller – what an odd choice! – had installed himself at the very prow, looking ahead past the tall spit. Stalker, Badlands and Coots sat amidships, wrapped themselves in cloaks, and promptly went to sleep. Kyle tried to sleep but found that while he was exhausted by the night’s work, he was too excited. He was on his way – but to what? Would it prove to be the meeting or the discovery he hoped? But it was too late now for second thoughts. It seemed to him that the splash of the Kite’s prow into the water had set a tumble of events into motion that could not be stopped. Not by men nor even these meddling Gods who may have – foolishly! – interfered. They had set off on a chosen path. One path among many that like any in hindsight becomes Fated. And their destination, their future, awaited them.