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

  Rillish felt gut-thrust. Hood preserve them. It’s official. Judgement has been levelled from the throne. The Sixth has gone too far. And how far did the conspiracy go back? Had the governor, and the Fists, had this in mind all along? And Greymane! Was this why he was thrust aside? Rillish studied the man: his old commander. What must he be feeling?

  The big man had drawn a shaky breath and closed his eyes. In the weak light of the cabin he appeared to have paled.

  Devaleth spoke into the silence: ‘This expedition … I take it then that it is less an invasion force …’

  Nok nodded, his lips pursed. ‘You are correct, mage. We are invading, yes. But we are doing so to bring the Sixth to heel.’

  And so, Rillish compiled to himself, we fight not only an entire subcontinent, Marese, Korelri, Theftian and Dourkan, but Malazans as well. Traitorous Malazans. Gods below – are we enough for even one of these enemies?

  Horses were few in the Korel subcontinent and so the Army of Reform walked. What dray animals had been gathered – oxen, mules, and a few cast-off half-dead horses – went to hauling the large high-sided wagons that were under construction day and night. ‘For supplies,’ Ivanr had been told when he’d asked about the non-stop building. He was dubious: who needed such sturdy wagons to haul materiel? But it was none of his business and so he returned to searching for word of the boy among the mass of camp-followers, craftspeople, cooks, butchers, metalsmiths and petty merchants.

  A quiet lad. Head wound. Might not have spoken at all. Came into camp a few days ago. On the fifth day a woman pulling a cart among the train of refugees got a thoughtful look in her eyes.

  ‘May have seen him. What’s he to you?’

  ‘I brought him in. Who’s he with? Do you know?’

  ‘Who’s he with?’ The woman laughed. ‘He’s with all the lads and lasses with two arms that can walk. Taken into the ranks he was.’

  ‘Into the—He’s just a child.’

  Her gaze slitted and she spat to one side. ‘Tall as my Jenny he was, and as hale.’ She eyed him again. ‘Everyone must do their part. No place for layabouts … or cowards.’

  Ivanr stopped walking alongside her. ‘My thanks.’

  She just snorted and continued on, back hunched, hands wrapped in the leads of the two-wheeled cart in which rattled her few remaining possessions. An infant sat in the rear, legs kicking, thumb in mouth. Ivanr headed for the van of this great snaking mass of humanity.

  Army of Reform? What army? He could find no army here in the traditional definition of the word. A mob of displaced farmers and city refugees clinging together out of fear and being issued cumbersome pikes and spears was all he could see. It was suicide. The Jourilan cavalry would sweep them from the field.

  And yet … he had to admit some order lay beneath surface appearances. Far down the valley squads of men and women could be glimpsed scavenging and scouting the route; he’d seen the rags they used to mark the best paths. Dust obscured the main body where the files of infantry marched amid the great swaying hulks that were the wagons. Infantry! If you could call them that: youths in nothing more than cloth gambesons, if as much. Their only weapon these tall unwieldy spears. Not a sword to be shared among them. And riding with her staff up and down the course of the march, Martal all in black: dark dusty hauberk, leggings, boots and gloves. Some had even taken to calling her the ‘Black Queen’.

  Martal … Ivanr wondered, seeing her ride past. Katakan, Beneth had said. He couldn’t recall hearing of any such military commander out of Katakan. He headed for the training grounds: trampled fields of relatively level land downslope where squads of recruits were massed. Stepping on each other’s feet and jabbing each other with their pointy sticks.

  Looking back, he realized he was not alone. He was being followed by a Jourilan officer complete with a rounded iron helmet, a jack of boiled leather, and a thick green winter cloak. Ivanr stopped and waited to see what the fellow would do. The refugees filed by, some carrying great bundles of possessions; two barefoot children pulled an old man along by his rags.

  Instead of stopping dead, or sidling guiltily past, as Ivanr expected, the man returned his glare with a ready smile, and saluted. ‘Lieutenant Carr, at your service, sir.’

  Ivanr sighed inwardly and continued on. ‘My service? You are just passing by, I should think …’

  The man kept pace, hands at his belt. ‘Respectfully, no, sir. I’ve been asked to escort you.’

  ‘Escort me? Escort me where?’

  ‘Why, wherever you should wish, sir.’

  ‘Don’t call me “sir”.’

  ‘I feel that I must, sir. Based upon your accomplishments.’

  ‘Accomplishments?’ Ivanr eyed the man sidelong. Young. ‘What accomplishments? Bashing people with a piece of metal is no accomplishment.’

  But the man was not nonplussed; he grinned, cocking his head. ‘Well, if you put it that way …’

  They passed behind a particularly long train of the tall wagons swaying like the great behemoths of the icefields to the south, and Ivanr waved the dust from his face, coughing. ‘Gods all around us! Why is Beneth burdening himself with these monstrous contraptions? They must halve his rate of march.’

  ‘For supplies, I understand,’ Carr said, sounding as convinced as Ivanr. ‘As to their speed … they are no slower than the refugee train.’

  ‘I’d drop that lot as well.’

  ‘Oh no, sir! They’re why we’re here.’

  Ivanr now examined the officer directly. Just a lad – barely into his shaving. ‘Sounds backwards to me.’

  Carr clasped his hands behind his back. ‘Traditionally speaking, I suppose so. But this is no traditional situation. At least, as far as these lands are concerned.’

  Ivanr grunted and continued walking. Something in the lad’s mannerisms made him ask: ‘What were you doing before you joined?’

  ‘I was a scholar. An acolyte priest.’

  Ivanr grunted again; he’d thought so. ‘And because you could write you were given a commission …’

  ‘A commission in a nonexistent military organization – just so, sir. And, I must admit, my family name is known. But all of us here are fleeing, or seeking, something, yes? Myself, I was fleeing … dogmatic rigidity, let us say.’ A self-deprecating shrug. ‘The army formed itself out of the disaffected, the apostate, or plain refugees of the fighting. It exists to protect and escort them.’

  ‘Escort them? Escort them where?’

  ‘Why, to Blight, of course.’

  ‘Blight? And what will happen when you get there, may I ask?’

  ‘The gates will be thrown open and we shall be welcomed as liberators.’

  Ivanr halted; Carr peered up at him in mild surprise, blinking. ‘You are joking, I hope.’

  The youth almost blushed and coughed into a fist to cover his reaction. ‘Only partially. We have reason to believe that a great proportion of the population is sympathetic to our aims. And that our arrival will be all that is needed to ignite them.’

  Ivanr continued on. Fanatics. All of them. On both sides. ‘That may be so, Lieutenant. But when last I saw them the walls of Blight were tall. And I have the feeling that this army is not the only one on the move.’

  He pushed through to the marching grounds where a knot of trainees – gods, could they even be called that? – milled into each other, their tall spears clattering. They squinted like befuddled children at a fellow red-faced from cursing them. Ivanr pulled a hand down his sweat-grimed face as if to wipe the vision from his sight. Gods protect us all. This will not do. They ought to be given some chance.

  He cupped his hands to his mouth. ‘Halt!’

  A great banging of hafts as half the trainees stopped.

  The red-faced fellow gaped, then gathered himself. ‘Who in the name of the Lady of Lies are you?’

  ‘Temporary replacement.’ He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘Talk to the lieutenant here.’

  From then on Ivanr kept hi
s back to the man and addressed the gathered infantry. Some hundred young lads and lasses, gap-toothed oldsters. The lad could be among them. Still, most are here because they want to be; not the impressed near-prisoners of the Imperial infantry. Well, first things first. ‘Who here knows his or her right hand?’ he bellowed, taking full advantage of his great Thel lung capacity and presence.

  A few right arms rose timorously.

  ‘Very good! Some of you actually got that correct! Now, take that arm and extend it out straight from your shoulder – that’s right, move over! I want an arm’s length between everyone. Let’s go.’

  The majority of the crowd just stared back, uncomprehending.

  He took a great breath and roared: ‘Now!’

  A forest of rattling as everyone ran into everyone else.

  Ivanr turned to the lieutenant, who quickly swapped his stifled laughter for a look of sombre attention. The red-faced would-be drillmaster was nowhere in evidence. ‘Lieutenant Carr.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I will have need of a drum, or some sort of drummer lad.’

  ‘Aye, sir.’

  The identity of the man strapped and immobilized on the table was irrelevant to Ussü. A serum distilled from oil of durhang rendered the subject insensate while, most important, in no way inhibiting the fleshly systems. The body may as well be that of a dog or a sheep. Indeed, he had begun his experimentation with such animals. But – as he had discovered – for his purposes the human essence provided by far the greatest efficacy. He rested a hand upon the naked chest, felt the pounding of the heart. Strong. Excellent. Not the usual sickened or starved prisoner. Perhaps this one will last long enough …

  He nodded to his apprentices. One, Yurgen, made a last circuit of the tower chamber, checking the iron shutters, the barred iron door, then drew his sword and readied his shield. Such experimentation can summon the most alarming manifestations. Ussü once almost lost an arm to an entity that took possession of the corpse of a great boarhound. His two other apprentices, Temeth and Seel, stood at his elbows.

  He extended a hand and Seel gave over a knife of keen knapped obsidian, the handle leather-wrapped. Ussü felt down along the ribs of the subject – yes, just between these – and made an incision up over the barrel of the torso, beginning at the side and ending at the sternum.

  Before he came to Korel none of these elaborate preparations would have been necessary. Indeed, he would have been repulsed by the idea. One merely had to reach out and there would be the Warren at one’s fingertips. Yet here he and all the other lesser Malazan practitioners had been rendered impotent. Some had been driven mad; others had killed themselves, directly or indirectly, through concoctions or drugs meant to facilitate access.

  He held out the knife and Temeth took it away and another instrument was placed in his hand: a tool of wooden wedges and metal screws. Ussü eased the slim leading tips of the wooden wedges into the incision between the ribs. Seel daubed at the blood welling up.

  ‘Gently here,’ he warned the two, who nodded and leaned forward to peer more closely. He began working the screws, one by one. The wedges parted. Turn by turn, a hair’s-breadth at a time, Ussü created a cavity at the body’s side where the ribs curved.

  He, however, had chosen a different path …

  Power existed here in the Korelri subcontinent. The followers of the Lady had access. And the source of that potential, he had discovered, lay in … sacrifice.

  When he judged the opening large enough he nodded and Seel took hold of the spacer. Leaning forward over the subject, almost hugging him, Ussü slipped his hand into the gap at the side. Gently, reverently almost, he eased inward, fingers straight. He felt his way around organs, slipped past ligaments, parted layers of fat, until the tips of his fingers brushed the vibrating, quivering, seat of life. With one last push he cradled the heart and with his other hand he reached out for his Warren.

  Steady pressure on the heart brought to his summoning a tenuous ghost-image of Mockra. He eased his grip tighter; the heart laboured, pulsed in his fist like a terrified animal. He sought out a vision at the limits of the Warren’s divinatory potential – of prescience.

  Grant me a vision of what is to come!

  And he saw – he saw … desolation. Shores scoured clean by a tidal wave invasion of the sea-borne demon Riders. The land poisoned, lifeless. Cities inundated, corpses lolling in the surf in numbers beyond comprehension.

  Annihilation.

  No! How could this be?

  A mere hand’s breadth from his face the eyes of the subject snapped open. The apprentices flinched away, yelping their terror. Yurgen charged forward.

  ‘Halt!’ Ussü returned the corpse’s dead stare, for dead it was, the organ immobile in his hand. ‘Greetings, Lady.’

  A smile, the eyes rolling all white. ‘I have tolerated your heresies, Ussü,’ the corpse barely mouthed, ‘because I sense in you a great potential. Set aside your disbelief. Cleave to the True Path.’

  ‘They are coming, Blessed Lady. New Imperial forces are on their way. We must …’ he wet his lips, ‘join forces.’

  ‘You have seen this? How strong you are, Ussü. Stand at my side.’

  She knows nothing of our prisoner. She is not omniscient.

  Again the dead smile. ‘I allowed you Malazans to land because you brought a renewed vitality to the true faith. You have strengthened me in so many ways. There is nothing like a challenge to inspire and confirm a faith. And so I welcome you again.’

  ‘Yet the true enemy awaits. What of the Riders?’

  The lips twisted, snarling. ‘I have no vision of them. She stymies me yet. That Queen bitch has ever stood in my way!’ The body eased beneath Ussü, the fit seeming to pass. ‘Kneel before me, Ussü. Embrace me as your Goddess.’

  The corpse raised its head to whisper at his ear, intimately close: ‘Let me touch your heart.’

  Revolted, Ussü threw himself from the body. Yurgen swung, the blade passing through the neck to slam into the table. Ussü pushed aside Seel and Temeth to stand swaying, his heart hammering as if brushed by ghostly fingers. Hood preserve them! What were they dealing with here? He crossed to a washbasin and rubbed the gore from his arms. Temeth passed him a towel and he dried himself then rolled down his sleeves.

  He eyed the three. ‘A gag will be the order of the day, next time, Yurgen.’

  All nodded, faces pale as snow.

  They had been at sea for two weeks when Sergeant Goss came down to the jammed quarters below decks and crouched amid the hammocks. It was the beginning of their squad’s sleeping shift and some were bedding down while others were watching games of troughs and dice. Len gestured the squad close. Suth was lying in his hammock and he folded an arm under his head. Wess was snoring above him.

  ‘Guess you been hearing the rumours,’ Goss said when most had gathered round.

  ‘Which rumours? There’s been nothin’ but all this time,’ Pyke said.

  Suth agreed. There was a plague of rumours aboard: that they would yet strike east for Genabackis; that they were headed for Stratem to pursue some mercenary company; that the expedition could not possibly succeed because the Empire had run out of cadre mages; that Greymane was commanding and he was bad luck; that the Emperor had struck a pact with the Stormriders; that Mare vessels had been sighted shadowing them and the sea would take them all. For his part Suth was unperturbed. To him this was just a particularly obvious example of how all talk was, in point of fact, useless.

  ‘First, it’s about Greymane. It’s official. He has command.’

  ‘Oponn’s luck!’ said Pyke. ‘Where’d they dig him up? I heard the man was so incompetent his own officers got rid of him. We’re better off without him.’

  ‘That’s not what I heard,’ Len growled. ‘The old veterans spoke well of him.’

  ‘Nothing we can do about it,’ Yana said from where she knelt, steadying herself on a hammock.

  That observation struck Suth as extraordinarily wi
se and he nodded his sombre agreement.

  ‘The other’s about fighting alongside the Blues,’ Goss went on.

  ‘Yeah, we heard,’ Pyke said. ‘Some damn thing about volunteering to fight with them. Volunteer? What for? Not for damned honour ’n’ glory or any damned shit like that, I hope.’

  ‘Shut that anus you call a mouth,’ Yana murmured – she had less and less time for the man as the days wore on.

  Unperturbed, Goss raised and let fall his shoulders. ‘There’s some as see it that way. But, no. This is for places on the Blues’ vessels that will lead the shore assault. So, you could say it’s a chance for some loot.’

  ‘Loot,’ Pyke snorted, scornful. ‘A gut full of iron more like.’

  Fighting on land. To Suth that sounded preferable to fighting at sea. ‘How are they choosing? Do you just ask?’

  Goss nodded, accepting the question. He leaned aside, clearing his throat into his fist. ‘Well, there’s to be what you might call tryouts. Them Blues is mighty selective. They won’t let just anybody on board.’

  Lard looked up from juggling his dice. One eye was still black and his bald head still bruised from his last fit of brawling. ‘What’s that? Fighting?’

  Pyke rolled his eyes. Goss rubbed the bristles at his cheeks, smiling. ‘Yeah. ’Gainst the Blues themselves.’

  Blowing out a breath, Lard sat back down. Pyke’s laugh was a sneer. ‘Hard lumps. And for what? A chance to get yourself killed? No, the rule is don’t volunteer for nothin’.’

  But Kyle leaned back to stare at the sweat-stained canvas hammock above. He’d been watching these armoured Moranth. Clearly worthy opponents. And he’d been too long without testing himself against anyone.