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 cocked his head to one side, wiped his face with the back of a hand, thought of the ramming he’d experienced before. ‘We have near four hundred Malazan heavy infantry on board this vessel, Captain. Their ships might be better than ours, but I’m willing to wager that our marines are more ferocious than theirs. How would you like a vessel that can’t sink under your feet?’

  The ship’s master stroked his whiskered chin. His slit gaze shifted over to one Mare war galley sliding past, forcing a port turn from the sailing master. Then his gaze shifted back to Rillish. A broad smile split the man’s whiskers. He leaned over the railing of the sterncastle. ‘Ready all grapnels! Ready all boathooks! All troops on deck! Ready for boarding!’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir!’ the mate shouted from amidships. ‘Ready for boarding! ’

  Rillish saluted the captain and went to his cabin. His aide helped him strap on his cuirass of banded iron, his vambraces and greaves. Last, he tied on his weapon belt and twinned Untan duelling swords. His helmet he tucked under an arm. Then he returned to the sterncastle. He found the ship’s captain and the sailing master both struggling with the long arm of the tiller.

  ‘Took your time,’ the captain called over the worsening weather. ‘Can’t hold them off any longer.’

  ‘Offer them a fat broadside target, Captain.’

  The man spat with the wind. ‘Don’t tell me my business, landsman. ’

  ‘I’ll be at the side.’

  The captain waved him on. ‘Give them my sharp regards, yes?’

  ‘That’s my business, Captain.’ He descended to amidships and pushed his way through the crowd of heavies. He thrust his helmet at a nearby soldier, then climbed up into the ratlines. The spray of a wave crashing into the transport slashed over him. He regarded the crowded deck. ‘Soldiers of Malaz!’ he bellowed with all his strength. ‘We’re about to be rammed! There’s nothing to be done for it. But I’m glad!’ He pointed over the slate-grey waves. ‘Out there is a much better ship than this damned tub and they’re about to offer it to us! Now … what say you!’

  Fists and swords thrust to the sky. A great answering roar momentarily drowned out the gusting wind, the booming sails. Rillish added his own raised fist. ‘Aye! Now – ready grapnels! Ready ropes! Ready boathooks!’

  ‘For the Fourth!’ rose a shout.

  ‘Eighth!’ came an answering call.

  ‘For the Empire!’ Rillish shouted.

  A great roar answered that: ‘Aye!’

  In no way did Rillish consider himself a sailor but even he could see the attack coming. One war galley threatened their port side, so the sailing master and the captain obligingly pressed their weight upon the arm to show the enemy their stern-plate and in so doing exposed their starboard to the second war galley, which was already lunging in upon them. Its bronze-capped ram thrust down into the dark green of a trough only to leap upwards again, throwing a crest of water high above the sleek vessel’s freeboard.

  One more wave. ‘Brace for ramming!’ Rillish wrapped an arm and a leg in the ratlines.

  The blow came as an enormous shudder, but such was the mass of the transport that it failed even to lurch sideways. Rillish was thrown yet managed to keep his grip on the ropes. Grapnels flew. The Marese crew back-oared powerfully. Canny Malazan marines used the boathooks to snare oars, throwing the banks into confusion. Shattered wood snarled as the master threw the tiller aside, bringing the vessels together. Marese oars snapped or were thrust down as the two ships swung to clash together. Rillish could imagine the carnage that must be occurring within the war galley.

  ‘Board!’ Rillish roared. Men swung down on ropes or jumped. One fell short and grasped an oar, only to disappear with a shriek as the sides pounded together. A rope ladder was tossed, unrolling, and Rillish grasped hold of it. Marese marines waited below in dark leathers. A volley of arrows slashed the side of the Malazan transport. Men and women fell, striking the deck with leaden thumps.

  Rillish crashed heavily to the deck, righted himself. Around him marines pushed forward to the stern. The Marese had raised a shieldwall amidships and from behind this bow-fire raked the boarders. Rillish drew his two slim duelling blades. ‘Forward!’

  More of the heavy infantry reached the deck, adding their weight to the surge against the shieldwall. Rillish clawed his way to the front rank. He danced high, stabbing down over a shield to feel the blade flense cheek, grate from teeth. The man screamed, gurgled, fell. Rillish tumbled down on top of him. In the cramped confines of the narrow vessel a marine fell across Rillish and as she did so a gout of water shot from her mouth and even from her ears. Her dead eyes rolled blood-red, their vessels burst.

  Sea-magics! The ship’s mage! Rillish straightened, wiped the foul water from his face. There! At the stern, hair wild in the wind, gold torcs at his arms, gesturing, and with each wave a swath of marines falling, clutching their throats. Rillish gulped for air. ‘Take the stern, heavies! For the Empire!’

  The press heaved against the shieldwall, but the Marese held. The ship’s mage wreaked murder through the marines. His powers seemed unlimited here in his element. Then a great bull of a trooper in bright mail broke through the wall and, wielding a two-handed blade that he chopped up and down more like an axe, reached the sterncastle stairs. The shieldwall was shattered, disintegrating. The trooper reached the stairway and marines poured up with him. The ship’s mage threw some magery that levelled many, but the trooper in the bright mail coat, the helm cast to resemble a snarling wolf’s head, shook it off to reach the man with a great two-handed blow that severed him from collarbone to sternum.

  Rillish came clambering up to the stern to see the marine pull off the helm to show what he’d suspected: the matted silver hair and flushed sweaty face of Captain Peles. Rillish clapped her on the shoulder. ‘Well fought, Captain.’

  She inclined her head to Rillish. ‘And not many Fists lead a charge against a shieldwall.’

  Rillish waved that aside. ‘The mage – he didn’t slow you down …’

  Panting, the woman gave a modest shrug. ‘The Wolves were with me this day, sir.’

  ‘Well, thank them for that.’

  A sailor saluted Rillish. ‘Captain’s regards, Fist. The transport is stove through, irretrievable.’

  ‘Have all personnel transferred over. Cut the lines.’

  ‘All, sir? That’s far too much weight for a vessel this size. We’ll wallow in these high waves, take on water …’

  Rillish just laughed. ‘Haven’t you heard, man? These vessels are unsinkable.’

  After the sailor left, shaking his head, Peles regarded Rillish. She pushed back her sodden hair. ‘Now what, sir?’

  ‘Well, as the man said. We’re overcrowded.’ He gave Peles a grin. ‘I think we could use another ship.’

  Peles was cleaning her two-handed blade on the robes of the dead mage. ‘Aye, sir. That we could.’

  Suth’s Blue transport was secured side by side with a twin as a kind of gigantic catamaran. They carried suspended between them some sort of beam construction as long as the ships themselves. Despite this awkward arrangement they made good time, had bulled through swaths of burning sea, knocked aside rudderless hulks, submerged countless souls shouting and begging from the waves, and looked to be keeping place as the standard-bearer for the charge to the Fist coast. Dawn was nearing and in the half-light more Marese war galleys could be glimpsed cutting across their bows. ‘Too many,’ Len said, his elbows on the railing. ‘Don’t know how we’ll make it.’

  Orders rang out and Blue sailors, indistinguishable from their marine brethren, climbed the rigging. More sail unfurled, billowed and bellied, taking the wind aslant. Suth watched the tall mainmast, amazed by the sight.

  ‘Still too slow,’ Len grumbled.

  A Moranth sailor in the crow’s nest gave a warning shout.

  ‘Here they come,’ said Len.

  The sleek black war galleys closed from either side, lunging like tossed javelins. As t
hey closed the Blue captain found an extra ounce of speed from somewhere to slip just ahead. The troops sent up a great cheer as the Marese coursed across the transport’s broad foaming wake.

  ‘We won’t surprise them like that—’ Len was beginning when twin reports as of siege arbalests sounded from the Marese galleys and missiles came hissing through the air to crash into the transport’s stern. The vessel lurched almost to a standstill and everyone’s feet were cut from beneath them while barrels tumbled overboard and ropes snapped, singing.

  Recovering, Suth clambered to the rear. Here among the wreckage of broken wood and twisted iron Blue marines were hacking at what appeared to be giant grapnels that had gouged hold of the stern.

  ‘Cut them!’ someone shouted.

  ‘They’re chain!’

  ‘We’re dragging!’

  A Blue officer appeared, yelled orders. Axes emerged. Out amid the brightening waves Suth saw more Mare vessels closing. The grapnels led via lengths of chain to thick ropes that stretched to the two war galleys. Both were backing oars, sending up a great churning froth of water.

  ‘Cut them!’

  ‘Chop the wood!’

  Then the young Adjunct was there. He brushed aside the Blue axemen. ‘Room,’ he shouted, and drew his blade. Sunlight blinded Suth, flashing from the curved ivory blade. The Adjunct swung it overhead two-handed, hacking, raising high piercing shrieks of metal. The transport lurched forward. A marine almost fell overboard but was pulled back. The Adjunct swung again and the ship sprang free, surging ahead. Suth stared where the chains swung, severed cleanly just back from the grapnel.

  The Adjunct sheathed his blade.

  ‘It cut,’ someone whispered. ‘Cut iron …’

  ‘Did you ever see the like …’

  The Adjunct glared with his dark eyes as if expecting some sort of challenge, then turned away without a word.

  Later, Suth, like many, went to examine the severed links. He found the iron mirror-bright and clean. Its edge was so sharp it cut one of his fingers.

  They had pushed on through the greatest concentration of Mare vessels. Behind, bursts of orange glare and a banner of thick black smoke hanging low over the water obscured dawn. A final war galley rammed them on the port forward of the mainmast, but a volley of lobbed munitions from the Moranth left the ship so devastated that it drifted away, seemingly unmanned. As for the transport, while Suth was bent over the gunwale inspecting the great hole punched into the side, a Blue marine just said: ‘Our ships are also hard to sink.’

  Orders came later that day to return to the hold to get some sleep. The assault would come tomorrow. The marines filed back down. Talk now lingered on this Adjunct. Who was he? Where was he from? One crazy rumour had him once serving among the mercenary company the Crimson Guard.

  ‘I hope he’s with us tomorrow,’ Dim said.

  For once, Pyke had nothing to say.

  Their captured Mare war galley rocked dead in the water as it was too jammed with marines to row effectively. Rillish and the Malazan captain, a mariner named Sketh out of the Seven Cities region, argued over everything in their new overcrowded vessel. The captain berated Rillish for heaping everyone into the war galley; Rillish responded by inviting him to rejoin his crippled former command. The captain told him to keep his mouth shut, as he was the captain; Rillish pointed out that Seven Cities was a desert.

  In the midst of another heated exchange, Captain Peles tapped Rillish’s shoulder and gestured aside. ‘We’re not alone.’

  Another Marese war galley was oaring up slowly. It rose and fell with the waves. The crew looked to be curious. Rillish immediately ordered everyone down. ‘Flat!’ he hissed. ‘Lie on top of each other, damn you!’

  Rillish left Sketh standing at the stern with its slim centre-set tiller arm. ‘What am I to do?’ the man whispered, fierce. ‘I am to stand here all alone?’

  ‘Wave them closer.’

  Sketh waved. ‘I will report this to the Admiral, you fool. He will see you in chains.’

  ‘Just get them close.’

  ‘How? I am no foreigner like them.’

  ‘Yell in your Seven Cities dialect.’

  Sketh gaped at Rillish, but kept waving. ‘What?’

  ‘Go ahead!’

  ‘Very well, fool!’ And he shouted something that sounded unpleasant.

  A trooper near Rillish guffawed. ‘Yes?’ Rillish said.

  The man looked uncomfortable, cleared his throat. ‘Ah, well. He said that he could smell their unwashed backsides from here and that he wished they would come no closer.’

  Rillish turned to Peles. ‘That should confuse the Abyss out of them.’

  Sketh yelled some more. This time the trooper almost blushed. Rillish eyed him expectantly.

  ‘Goats … and mothers,’ the man mumbled.

  The Marese war galley was now so close Rillish could hear the crew talking. Someone in the vessel was shouting. Sketh answered in Seven Cities. Rillish heard oars knocking oars.

  ‘They’ve spotted you!’ Sketh shouted.

  Rillish jumped up. ‘Now! Fire!’

  The vessel was frustratingly just beyond a leap away, now backing oars. Malazan marines sprang up to fire crossbows point-blank across the deck and into the oarlocks. ‘Next rank!’ Rillish yelled.

  Those who had fired fell back or squatted to reload. The next rank surged forward, firing almost immediately. ‘Bring us alongside! ’ Rillish bellowed to Sketh.

  ‘We have no headway!’ Sketh answered, furious.

  Fortunately the marines’ fire had raked the stern decking clear and the tiller of the galley swung loose. Anyone who raised a head was the target of a swath of crossbow bolts while wounded oarsmen encumbered their banks. The bronze-sheathed ram was swinging their way. The Malazan marines continued their merciless fusillade.

  The ram bumped their side, slid, gouging the planking with a screech of wet wood. ‘Board!’ Rillish yelled a war cry and jumped with all his strength.

  He didn’t make it. His heart lurched as he realized in mid-leap that he’d fall short. He grasped the gunwale, his face slamming into the wood. Stars burst across his vision and hot blood gushed over his mouth. A sailor reared up over him, sword raised, only to disappear as a Malazan trooper crashed down on to him. Dazed, Rillish struggled to pull himself over the side. Fighting raged across the vessel. Rillish tumbled gasping on to the decking amid the fallen. He straightened, wiped the back of a gauntlet across his wet mouth, clumsily drew one blade, and peered about, blinking. The fight was over. They had their second ship.

  The rest of the morning did not go as satisfactorily. They had to fashion a rough kind of Malazan standard to fly over their captured vessels just to stop the Moranth from shooting fire at them whenever they drew close. Rillish peered up at the black cloth, squinted in the strengthening light, and shook his head. ‘Might as well call ourselves pirates and be done with it, hey, Captain Peles?’

  She was offended. ‘Oh, no, sir. This is a fine ship. Our boatwrights could learn a few things from it, I think.’

  So damned literal. He shrugged. The night and morning had been exhilarating yet disappointing and he was in a poor mood. Exhilarating because they were alive and the engagement was over and they were victorious. Disappointing because they were now spending the majority of the time in a futile chase of other Marese war galleys that always outpaced them. The Malazan sailors were unfamiliar with the rigging, Sketh didn’t have a feel for the vessel’s handling, and they were still overburdened.

  Good enough. He sat, tucked his gauntlets into his belt, and dabbed a wet corner of his surcoat to the dried blood smearing his face. Sketh had command of the other captured vessel while his sailing master was with them. The man had sent them off with a storm of Seven Cities curses.

  Rillish didn’t ask for a translation.

  Now they trailed the transports heading to the coast. Marese war galleys shadowed them, keeping their distance. Somewhere ahead Greymane’s banner mark
ed the straggling tail of the invasion force while behind the majority of the Blue dromonds maintained a screen sweeping southward. Onward to Mare itself … he wished them luck with that.

  For now it was the landing that preoccupied him. How many transports had broken through? Would they succeed in taking Aamil? He knew he’d arrive too late for the first assault. Yet at least he’d arrive; there were too many as couldn’t boast that.

  The day after the Malazan garrison and the city militia marched away inland, Bakune rose, put on his best robes as he had every day, and headed out for his offices close to the centre of town. He’d decided to face things squarely; to find out, for better or worse, where and how things stood. Was he to be arrested? And if not, what of his authority? Was he to be merely closely watched by the Abbot and his self-styled Guardians of the Faith? Or dragged in chains before the holy courts? He did not consider himself a brave man; the anxiety of not knowing was simply burning a hole in his guts.

  His housekeeper wept as she shut and locked the door behind him.

  The streets were unnaturally deserted for this early hour. Indeed, an air of uncertainty hung over the entire city. The harbour was almost empty; news of the renewed Marese blockade had stopped the pilgrim vessels from running; and Yeull, the Malazan Overlord, had ordered all naval and merchant vessels north to Lallit up the coast. To make things worse a bitterly cold front had swept over the Fall Strait to leave remnants of snow in the shaded edges of the streets and roofs. The only institution bustling with energy was the Blessed Cloister and Hospice, as hordes of citizens crowded its halls to pray and seek the intervention of the Lady.

  Two Guardians of the Faith stood before the closed double doors of the city courts. Like all of these self-appointed morality police, they were bearded, wore heavy robes, and carried iron-bound staves. Bakune stopped short, drew a deep breath, and asked more bravely than he felt: ‘Why are these doors closed?’ A scornful superior look from both men sent a cold shiver down his back.

  ‘The civil courts are closed until further notice, petitioner.’