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

  He found the lieutenant to the rear of the brigade, flanked by messengers. Carr bowed. ‘Ivanr.’

  Ivanr answered the salute. ‘Permission to join the front line, Lieutenant.’

  The man’s brows wrinkled. ‘I thought you took a vow against killing …’

  ‘True. But I never said anything about horses.’

  The lieutenant seemed to be taken by a coughing fit. ‘Ah! Well, then, by all means …’

  Saluting, Ivanr chose a pike from the weapons standing in reserve and joined the lines. He took a kind of cruel satisfaction seeing the five men and three women of his guard likewise take up pikes to join him. Good! If they really are skilled, then maybe we’ve just strengthened this unit more than our presence disturbs it.

  The heat of the climbing sun thinned the clouds, though they did not disperse entirely. The fog clung to the lowest hollows and coursed over the neighbouring cohorts, leaving only the tops of the pikes pointing up like a forest of markers. The hillsides drifted into view, revealing rank after rank of horsemen, each as still as a statue. The only movement was the occasional shake of a horse’s head, the only noise the faint jingle of harness. Ivanr studied the lines. Lady’s curse, there were a lot of them. More must have arrived in the night. He saw few of the heaviest of the heavies: the mailed Jourilan aristocrat on a fully caparisoned warhorse. The vast majority were Imperial lancers supported by light cavalry.

  Then horns sounded from the hillsides: the Imperial call to readiness. Ivanr wiped the cold mist from his face, raised an arm. ‘Stay firm! They’ll break if you stay firm!’ Another blast of the horns and the front ranks started forward. The low rumbling of the thousands of hooves reached him as a distant shudder in the ground. ‘Crowd up! Brace yourselves!’

  The enemy’s pace quickened, reaching a gallop. Lances came levering down to be tucked firmly under arms. Even Ivanr, who had faced countless opponents over a lifetime of training and combat, felt the almost overwhelming urge to run, to flinch away, to be anywhere but in front of this mountain of horseflesh about to crush him. That these men and women, ex-villagers, farmers, burgher craftsmen and women, should somehow find the determination and courage to stand firm shamed and awed him. All gods, true and false, where do people find such resolve? Where does it come from? Ivanr was the closest he’d yet come to conversion to some idea of divine inspiration.

  Then the landslide struck.

  He’d deliberately aimed low, meaning to take a horse in the chest. But despite their training and the rough spurring of their lancer masters, the mounts could not be forced to wade straight into the solid wall of unmoving humans. They sawed aside at the last instant, or reared. Ivanr’s pike took one low in the shoulder and was almost torn from his grasp as the horse continued on aslant of the formation. Elsewhere, the formation was uneven in places where a horse tumbled into the lines, kicking and thrashing, screaming amid the cohort. But the majority of the charge milled ineffectually at the rear of the first wave, only to edge on round, picking up speed once more, aiming for another unit.

  ‘Form up!’ Ivanr bellowed, panting, his blood thrumming within him. He strained to watch the manoeuvring. Would they take on another cohort? Or would they make for the train? Where were the blasted skirmishers? He realized they couldn’t take charge of the field without breaking formation. There was no way to stop the charges. Where were all those blasted archers Martal was training?

  He watched with tightening dread as a second charge formed up unmolested, the horses nickering and stamping.

  Damn the gods! They could keep this up all day. All they needed was one solid strike. A bit of luck. He and the troopers were safe in their cohorts – but they were also just as effectively trapped.

  From a wooded hillock overlooking the camp of the Army of Reform, Sister Nebras sat next to her smouldering fire and knitted. She pulled her layered shawls tighter, keeping one eye on the gathered camp, the assembled carriages, the corralled horses, staked dray animals, carts and tents. Somewhere within that train the heart of the movement against the Lady, its voice and rallying point for nearly half a century, lay dying.

  And she did what she could to help him hang on.

  The uproar of warfare reached her as animal screams, the commingled roaring of thousands of throats and the rumbling of massed hooves somewhere beyond the misted rain where slanting shafts of sunlight broke through here and there. But all that commotion was no business of hers. She was embroiled in the real battle; the true duel of wills and intent that would guide these lands for the next century. She and her sisters and brothers had committed themselves, finally stepped out into the open to declare their opposition.

  And it was about damned time, too.

  Yet Beneth was dying. He’d directly resisted the Lady for decades. She had no idea how he’d done it. Sister Nebras was a witch, a manipulator of chthonic spirits and the lingering wells of power at ancient shrines, cairns and ritual sites. And she had no illusions regarding her strength. In her youth she’d travelled abroad, sensed the aura of true magi – in Malaz she knew she’d be regarded as no more than a hedge-witch. Yet Beneth delved into none of these sources. He merely set his will against the Lady, whom Sister Nebras regarded not as the goddess she claimed to be, but rather as a sort of force of nature, if not a natural one. How did he do it? His very success unfortunately undermined her own personal thesis that one need not resort to the divine to explain any of this. She knitted with greater fury, the wooden needles a blur.

  It was most irksome.

  A presence nearby, and she tilted her head to peer aside through her thick pewter-grey hair. ‘I see you there, Totsin. No sneaking up on ol’ Nebras.’

  Totsin bowed, a hand at his ragged beard. ‘Sister Nebras.’ He stepped up out of the woods.

  ‘What are you doing here? The Lady’s gaze is near.’

  Totsin nodded gravely. ‘Yes. That’s why I’ve come.’ He sighed, rueful. ‘I’ve come to lend a hand.’

  ‘Ha! There’s a turn to startle everyone! Well, though damned late, you’re welcome. I would be lying if I said I did not need the help. The burden is—’

  Sister Nebras froze, needles poised. Glaring off to the woods she leapt to her feet. ‘By all the—She’s here! She slipped in behind you!’

  Totsin spun, mouth open. ‘I sensed nothing …’

  ‘Idiot! Well, too late now.’ She dropped her knitting to raise her hands. ‘Ready yourself – we must fight.’

  ‘Yes, Sister Nebras. We must fight,’ he answered, his voice pained.

  She glanced aside, unsure at his tone. ‘What … ?’

  Totsin unleashed a blast of force that threw Sister Nebras from her feet to fly crashing into a thick birch trunk that quivered from the blow. She fell in a heap, back broken, staring up at the sky. He stood over her, peering down.

  ‘Any last insults?’ he asked.

  ‘You will die …’ she breathed.

  He shrugged. ‘Undoubtedly – but long after you.’

  She mouthed: ‘ … why … ?’

  A shining light was approaching, casting stark shadows of light and dark among the trees. Totsin bowed to the source somewhere out of her vision then returned to her. ‘Why, you ask? Surely that ought to be clear. You and the others pay me no deference. You mock me. Defy my wishes. I have seniority. I am a founding member. I am in charge! I will recruit a new Synod. One where it will be absolutely clear that I am the ranking member and no one will dare challenge me!’

  ‘Totsin …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You couldn’t be in charge of a privy.’ And Sister Nebras laughed, coughing, to heave up a mouthful of blood that drenched her chin and shirt-front.

  Totsin frowned his disgust and turned away. He bowed down on one knee before a floating brightness that held the wavering outline of a robed woman.

  ‘Well done, Totsin Jurth the Third,’ came a woman’s soft voice, filling the clearing. ‘The Synod is yours to mould as you wish. For is that not your right?
Your obligation? As founding member and most senior practitioner?’

  ‘I am yours, Most Blessed Lady.’

  ‘And now I must go,’ said the vision, regret tingeing its voice. ‘I am so very late for a much overdue visit. Until later, most loyal servant.’

  Totsin bowed his head to the ground. When he raised it she was gone and the clearing was dark once more. He straightened his vest, brushed his sleeves, then walked off into the woods already thinking ahead, wondering which minor – very minor – talents he might approach once all this unpleasantness was behind him.

  Ivanr held the broken haft of his pike in one hand while waving back the line. ‘One step back!’ Twice already he’d nearly tripped over the fallen – theirs and the enemy’s. He also limped where a wounded Imperial had stabbed him in the foot. That was the problem with twelve-foot pikes … useless for infighting. Panting, he regripped the broken haft, squinted into the thinning mist. Was it another rush? Disembodied horns sounded a recall across the slope. Somewhere to the east a cohort had shattered and the Imperials had descended like kites on meat to run down the fleeing refugees. Now the cavalry were re-forming higher on the hillside, readying for another rush and choosing their targets at will. Damn Martal! Had she placed all the skirmishers with the train? Where were they? He was of half a mind to find her. But of course he wouldn’t: not because of the likelihood of being trampled, but because of what the men and women would think seeing him run off.

  A great mass of lancers, the largest remaining body of them, came thundering down to the west, thinning across their front as they went. Ivanr watched them pass – damn them! Bored with taking runs at us they’re off for the train!

  Troops of about fifty lancers coursed among the cohorts to keep them pinned. They swung about, charging, but mostly sawing off at the last instant to avoid the pikes. At least they too had no archers, Ivanr thought ruefully. The men and women of the cohort peered about, blinking. ‘Keep formation!’ Ivanr bellowed. ‘They’ll be back!’

  He swallowed, parched, glancing down to the south, waiting for the telltale plume of smoke, the screams, the refugees fleeing the wreckage of the train.

  But nothing appeared. Silence. Occasionally the smaller troops thundered past, threatening them, but by now the cohorts mostly ignored them – they hadn’t the mass to press any attack. Then, from the west, one by one, and in larger squads, bowmen and women appeared – theirs. They halted to pull back their child-like short-bows to loose in unison then retreated back to the distant woods.

  The lancers curved in upon them, charging across the field, only to suddenly rein up as a great dark cloud came arcing overhead, descending in a hissing swath, smacking into chests, limbs, shoulders. Horses screamed, rearing. Men fell unhorsed or dead already. The nearest cohort roared and charged. Pikes took mounts and men in ghastly impaling slashing wounds to heave them over. Ivanr felt his own cohort quivering to join the melee and he raised an arm: ‘Steady! Keep formation!’

  To the west a deep roar sounded from the misted lowlands and out charged muddy waves of archers numbering in the thousands. Ivanr felt the knotted tension of battle uncoil in his stomach. He straightened, resting his weight on the shattered pike haft, letting out a long low breath.

  ‘At ease!’ came Lieutenant Carr’s command from the rear. The waves of archers overran them, searching for more cavalry. Men and women among the cohort cheered them as they dashed past, some grinning. Ivanr noted muddy Imperial cavalry helmets bouncing from the belts of some of those who ran by. He turned to congratulate the men and women around him, squeezing shoulders and murmuring a few compliments. Then he limped off to find Carr.

  The lieutenant was still at the rear, and he saluted. Responding, Ivanr saw a sabre cut across the man’s shoulder. He knew the rear had been charged a number of times; he’d felt it in the animal-like flinching of the cohort as the impact reverberated through the tightly packed ranks. It seemed the lieutenant had been fighting outside the lines the entire time. ‘Permission to leave formation.’

  Grinning, Carr nodded, wiped his face. ‘Of course. And thank you. You steadied the front enormously … no one wanted to be seen giving way.’

  Ivanr waved that aside. ‘Congratulations, Lieutenant. Well done.’

  He limped off across the churned slope, heading west. His bodyguard, the remaining two men and two women, followed closely.

  As he walked the gentle slope the dark bodies of fallen horses and riders emerged from the mist. The grisly humps gathered in numbers until a swath of butchered cavalry choked the landscape. Ivanr flinched back as one sandal sank into oozing yielding mush. A marsh? There had been no such feature here yesterday. Horses thrashed weakly, exhausted and mud-smeared, disturbing the ghostly scene. Every lancer had been cut down by bow-fire right where they’d stuck. A merciless slaughter. Tracing the route, Ivanr saw it all in his mind’s eye: the swooping charge, the sudden lurching massing, the milling confusion. Then from the woods archers emerging to fire at will. And this boggy lowland; Sister Gosh’s skystones abetted by his own blood?

  A horse nickered nearby; he turned to see Martal herself coming, followed by a coterie of officers and aides. She stopped her mount next to him. Kicked-up mud dotted her black armour. She drew off her helmet, leaned forward on the pommel of the saddle and peered down at him. He thought she looked pale, her eyes bruised and puffy with exhaustion, her hair matted with sweat.

  ‘Congratulations,’ he ground out, his voice a croak.

  Her gaze flicked to the killing-fields. ‘You disapprove.’

  ‘They were trapped, helpless. You murdered them all without mercy.’ He eyed her: ‘You’re proud of it?’

  The woman visibly controlled herself – bit down a curt retort. ‘This is no duel in some fencing school, Ivanr. This is war. They were prepared to cut down all of us – you included.’

  ‘Enough died there. We had no support!’

  ‘It had to be convincing. They had to have control of the field.’

  He shook his head, appalled by the chances she’d taken. ‘An awful gamble.’

  ‘Every battle is.’

  Shaking his head he felt hot tears rush to his eyes and wiped them away. ‘I know. That’s why I swore off it all.’ He laughed. ‘Imagine that, yes? Ridiculous.’

  Martal cleared her throat, drew off one gauntlet to rub her own sweaty face. ‘Ivanr …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Beneth is dead.’

  He stared. ‘What? When?’

  ‘During the battle.’

  He turned to the forces coming together on the field, troopers embracing, cheering, and he felt desolate. ‘This will break them.’

  ‘No it will not,’ Martal forced through clenched teeth.

  He eyed her, unsure. ‘You can’t hope to withhold it …’

  Her lips tightened once more against an angry response. ‘I wouldn’t do something like that. And besides, word has already gotten out. No, it won’t break them because they have you.’

  He regarded her warily. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean his last wish – his last command to me. That you take his place.’

  ‘Me? That’s ridiculous.’ It seemed to him that Martal privately agreed with the evaluation. He considered her words: ‘his last command to me’. She’s only doing this because of her extraordinary faith in and devotion to that man.

  And what of him? Had he no faith in anything? Anyone?

  He examined his hands: bloodied, torn and blistered. He squeezed them together. ‘Well, perhaps I shouldn’t be in the lines now anyway … rather awkward place for someone who’s sworn a vow against killing.’

  The foreign woman peered down at him with something new in her gaze. ‘Yes. About that … a rare thing to have done. Beneth did not mention it, but did you know that some fifty years ago he swore the same vow?’

  Ivanr could only stare, struck speechless. Martal pulled her helmet back on, twisted a fist in her reins. ‘No matter. You have me to spill the
blood. The Black Queen will be the murderess, the scourge.’

  He watched her ride off and he wondered: had he also heard in her tone … the scapegoat? A mystery there, for certain, that feyness. It occurred to him that perhaps she was no more relishing her role than he. And just what is my role? What was it Beneth did? I’ve no idea at all. All the foreign gods … I have to find Sister Gosh.

  The Shadow priest, Warran, led Kiska and Jheval across the dune field out on to a kind of flat desert of shattered black rocks over hardpan. The lightning-lanced storm of the Whorl coursed ahead, seemingly so close Kiska thought she could reach out and touch it.

  The two great ravens kept with them. They coursed high overhead, occasionally stooping over the priest, cawing their mocking calls. Warran ignored them, or tried his best to, back taut, shoulders high and tight as if he could wish the birds away.

  After a time Jheval finally let out an impatient breath and gestured ahead. ‘All right, priest. There it is. You’ve guided us to a horizonto-horizon front that we could hardly have missed. You’ve done your job. Now you can go.’

  The priest squinted as if seeing the mountain-tall front for the first time. ‘I think I will come along,’ he said.

  ‘Come along?’ Jheval motioned for Kiska to say something.

  ‘You don’t have to,’ she offered.

  Warran gave a deprecating wave. ‘Oh, it’s quite all right. I want to.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Oh yes. I’m curious.’

  Jheval sent Kiska a this-is-all-your-fault glare.

  ‘Curious?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh yes.’ He stroked his unshaven cheeks, his beady eyes narrowed. ‘For one thing – where did all the fish go?’

  Jheval made a move as if to cuff the fellow. Kiska glared at the Seven Cities native. ‘I think,’ she said, slowly and gently, ‘they’re probably all dead.’

  Warran examined Kiska closely as if gauging her intelligence. ‘Of course they are, you crazy woman! What does that have to do with anything?’