Without warning barred gates thrust across the narrow corridor they walked, separating Lazar at the front and Fingers at the rear. Lazar tensed to fight but a sharp sign from Blues stood him down, and he relaxed, reluctantly. The guards unlatched the big fighter from the chain gang and led him off down another corridor; the same was done to Fingers, who called after them: ‘See you around!’ Shell and Blues were left together for the moment until a Chosen soldier in his silvered blue-black armour and dark blue cloak unhitched Blues and led him off.
She was alone. After the Chosen escorting Blues up another corridor had disappeared, a regular local guard pulled at her blonde hair. ‘You’re for the wall, then,’ he said, so close she could smell his foul breath. ‘What a waste. How ’bout a last screw before you die? Hmm?’
She kneed him in the groin and he fell gasping. Before the rest of the escort could react she stomped on his upturned face, spraying blood all down his chest. Only then did they grab her arms and she allowed them to pull her away – that had been enough of a demonstration. Two of her escort remained behind to walk the injured guard to an infirmary, leaving only three to restrain her. She realized she could easily overpower these, but that was not her intent. She could hardly find Bars as a fugitive on the run. And so she meekly submitted to their amateurish cuffs and prodding.
Now she sat in a holding pen, fettered at the ankles, legs drawn up tight to her chest to help conserve her warmth. Lining both walls of the long narrow chamber were her putative co-combatants: a more surly and unimpressive lot she couldn’t have imagined. Prisoners all, unwilling, uncooperative, more like those condemned to die by execution than fighting men and women who believed they possessed any chance for survival. Shell was mystified. With these tools the Chosen expected to defend the wall? They might as well throw these people off the top for all the difference it would make.
‘Who here is a veteran?’ she called out to the entire chamber. ‘Anyone stood before?’
In the torchlit gloom eyes glittered as they shifted to her. A brazier in the centre of the room crackled and hissed in the silence. ‘Who in the Lady’s name are you?’ someone shouted.
‘Foreign bitch!’
‘Malazan whore!’
A man who had been ladling out stew up and down the line knelt before her. ‘There’s no point,’ he murmured as he dropped a portion of stew into a bowl at her feet.
‘We’d have a better chance if we—’
‘Chance? What chance is it you think most here have?’ On his haunches he studied her, his gaze sympathetic. ‘You are Malazan, yes?’ She nodded. ‘Already then they hate you. What’s worse, you are a veteran, yes?’ She nodded again, but puzzled now. ‘So most here hate you even more. And why? Because already you stand a much greater chance of surviving than they – you see?’
‘If we worked together we’d all stand a much greater chance.’
He shook his head. ‘No. It does not work that way.’
His accent was strange to her. ‘You’re not from round here either.’
‘No. I’m from south Genabackis.’ He stood, motioned to a man apparently asleep two places down, older, with a touch of grey in his hair. ‘Ask him how it works.’
‘Thank you – what’s your name?’
He paused, looking back. ‘Jemain.’
‘Shell.’
‘Good luck, Shell.’
She squinted over at the older fellow, ignored the continuing insults regarding her person and what she might do with a spear. ‘Hey, you – old man!’
The fellow did not stir. He must be awake; no one could sleep amid all this uproar. She found a piece of stone and threw it at him. He cracked open an eye, rubbed his unshaven jaw.
‘What’s the routine?’ she demanded.
He sighed as if already exhausted by her, said, ‘It’s in pairs. One shieldman. One spearman – or woman,’ he added, nodding to her.
‘That’s stupid. We should mass together, fend them off.’
He was shaking his head. ‘That’s not the Stormguard’s priority. Their priority is to cover the wall. There’s a good stone’s throw between you and the next pair.’
‘That’s stupid,’ she repeated. This entire exercise struck her as stupid. An utter waste.
The older fellow shrugged. He was eyeing her now, narrowly. ‘You’re not Sixth Army.’
‘No. I’m not.’
‘What’re you doing here then?’
‘Shipwrecked on the west coast.’
‘What in Hood’s name you doin’ there?’
It was her turn to shrug. He bared his yellowed teeth in answer to his own question. ‘Reconnaissance, hey?’
She didn’t reply and he leaned his head back against the stone wall. ‘Don’t matter. We’re not goin’ anywhere.’
Two days later the Chosen came for them.
The bronze-bound door slammed open and a detail entered to unlatch the chain securing their ankle fetters. Covered by crossbowmen, the lines along both walls stood. At an order one file, Shell’s, began shuffling along out of the door. The line walked corridors, ever upwards, the air getting colder and steadily more damp. They came out into a night-time snowstorm. Guards pushed them up steep ice-slick stairs cut from naked stone. The cold snatched Shell’s breath away and bit at her hands and feet. To left and right lay slopes of heaped boulders rising up to disappear into the driven snow that came blasting from the darkness. The guards urged them on with blows from the flat of their blades. As she walked she tore a strip of cloth from her inner shirt and wrapped it round her hands.
From down beneath the rock came a great shudder that struck Shell like a blow. Stones tumbled and grated amid the boulders. A roar sounded above, a waterfall thundering, which slowly passed. The file of prisoners exchanged wide-eyed, terrified glances.
The Stormwall. She was to stand it. Only now did the certitude of such an unreal and outrageous fate strike home. Who would’ve imagined it? The stairs led up into a tower and a circular staircase. In a chamber within the tower two Chosen Stormguard awaited them at the only other exit, a portal leading to narrow ascending stairs. A single brazier cast a weak circle of warmth in the centre of the room. ‘Sit,’ one of the Stormguard told them.
While they waited, regular guards distributed sets of battered armour, mostly studded leathers, some boiled cuirasses, a few leather caps. All the equipment bore the gouges and scars of terrible blows – many obviously mortal. Just for the warmth, Shell grabbed a cap and strapped it on tight. No one spoke. Two men vomited where they sat. One shuffled to the piss-hole in a corner at least five times. The vomit froze solid on the stone-flagged floor.
Shell saw piled rags and took a bunch to wrap round her head, neck and hands. The old veteran, she noticed, had unwound a scarf from his waist and wrapped it round his head and neck.
A shout echoed from the stairway and the Stormguard closed on the front of the line. While one watched, the other struck the chain from the fetters. The first two, the first ‘pair’, were pushed up the stairs.
Counting off, Shell looked at the man next to her, her partner to be. He was skinny and shuddering uncontrollably – either from the cold or from terror. ‘What’s your name?’
The man flinched as if she’d struck him. ‘What?’
‘Your name … what is it?’
‘What does that matter? We’re dead, aren’t we?’
‘Quiet,’ one of the Stormguard warned.
‘We’re planning!’ she answered, glaring. The man scowled but didn’t answer. ‘Have you used a spear?’
The fellow looked on the verge of tears. ‘What? A spear? You think it matters? You think we have a chance?’
‘This is your last warning,’ the Stormguard said quietly.
Shell muttered a response. Shit! I’m going to be chained to this fool? I’d be better off on my own. She leaned forward, trying to pull more warmth from the brazier. Well … it may just come to that …
The wait lengthened. Everyone sat in an ago
ny of tense anticipation. After what seemed half the night one of the Stormguard squinted up the narrow chute of stairs and then back at them. ‘Sleep,’ he said.
Shell did not sleep. She sat back, eyes slitted, while the man next to her nodded off – though perhaps he simply passed out in an utter exhaustion of dread. At intervals, one Stormguard paced the chamber. She watched him when he passed. Who were these soldiers? Their manner struck her as one of a military order, one dedicated to their Blessed Lady. She’d heard of them all her life, of course; they were always cited in admiration. And she could admit to having once shared that awe for what seemed – from far away – an honourable calling. Once.
Now, they’d rather fallen in her regard.
Eventually, inevitably, their turn came. The Stormguard struck them from the chain and pushed them up the narrow stone stairway. Her partner went first, and when he reached the top someone passed him a spear, which he flinched from before shakily taking.
Fanderay help us. The shield was thrust at her. It was a broad curved rectangle of layered wood, bone and bronze. The narrow chute of the stairway opened on to a small frigid room with one door; that door was lined in rime, its threshold wet with melted ice and slush. She knew where that door led.
While she fought with the shield’s old strapping the entire structure around and beneath her shuddered, jerking, and a great booming burst through the room like a thunderclap. She rocked, taking a step. Ice fell like glass shards from the walls. The regular guards holding cocked crossbows on her and her partner grinned at them over the stocks of their weapons.
The outer door slammed open and in came a Stormguard. Sleet and wind-tossed salt spume coated his cloak. His longsword was drawn and he gestured to them with it. Her partner, to whom she was linked by a few arms’ length of chain, gaped at the Chosen, frozen in terror, or disbelief. His eyes blazing within his narrow vision slit, the Stormguard snatched the spear close to its wide leaf-shaped blade and yanked the man forward.
In this undignified manner they stumbled out on to the marshalling walk of the Stormwall. A brutal wind cut at Shell while sleet slashed almost level. The coming dawn brightened the east behind massed heavy clouds. The Stormguard urged them along, now tugging on the chain linking them. As he force-marched them he was yelling: ‘You will face the enemy. You will fight! If you flinch or cringe I will kill you myself! And believe me … you have a better chance against them than against me!’
He led them up stairs that were no more than flows of ice cascading down from a higher wall, a machicolation perhaps. Here the cut stones sloped downward, no doubt to cast the wash of the crashing waves back over the face of the wall.
Shell reached the top and had her breath stolen from her. The sea raged beneath a horizon-wide ceiling of black cloud. White caps tossed up scarves of spume while overhead curtains of blue-green bands shimmered and danced.
The Stormguard was hammering their chain to a pin close to the lip of the wall. Shell’s partner stared at her, horror and despair in his eyes. Past him, through a gap in the blowing snow, she caught two figures crouched in the middle distance.
Straightening, the Stormguard faced them. ‘Fight, and there’s a good chance you’ll live. Refuse to fight and I’ll slit you like a dog. Remember that.’ And he jogged away down the stairs.
The man with her threw down his spear.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Give me the shield!’ he demanded, shivering as if palsied.
‘What?’
‘Give me the shield!’
She considered breaking his neck right then and there, but couldn’t bring herself to do it. She thrust the shield at him and retrieved the spear. ‘You cover me with that blasted thing,’ she told him, but he didn’t seem to be listening.
They didn’t have long to wait. From the east came a distant rumbling as of a roll of thunder. A wave’s coming. The Riders come with the crest, probing for weaknesses. She readied the spear, opted for a broad stance, the haft extended out as far ahead as possible. Best then not appear weak.
The sea appeared to swell as a great rolling comber heaved itself shoreward. It came at an angle, striking to the east first, rumbling down the wall like an avalanche. Phosphorescent light gleamed within, shimmering and winking. The Riders.
As the wave drew abreast it crested the wall to send a wash over her numb feet and legs up to her knees. Some thing flowed past, a shape, gleaming in oily rainbow shades of mother-of-pearl. Her partner recoiled, bumping her – for a moment she was afraid he was going to try to clutch her.
‘You saw it!’ he stammered. ‘They are daemons!’ He threw down the shield to claw at the ring and pin imprisoning them.
‘Pick up the shield,’ she told him, fighting to keep her voice calm. A secondary swell grew following the main crest. ‘Hurry.’
He yanked, sobbing. Blood from his frozen, torn fingers smeared the naked iron.
‘Pick it up.’
The swell rolled abreast of them. The man reached out to her. ‘Use the spear! Lever—’
A slim jagged weapon thrust from the face of the water to burst through the man’s chest. It withdrew before Shell could respond. Something reared, lunging, a humanoid figure, armoured, helmed. Steam plumed from it as it thrust at her. Despite her shock Shell parried, then the Rider’s own momentum carried it off and away with the receding wave.
Shell was left alone, chained to a corpse in the blowing snow. To the west she watched another pair engage the wave as it passed their station, then all was quiet as the sea withdrew. It seemed to be readying itself as lesser waves hammered and clashed. She shivered; her feet were now far beyond any feeling whatsoever. She wondered whether she could walk even if she had the chance.
It seemed she would have to wait. She considered the body hardening at her feet, the chain linked to its ankle fetter, the razor edge of the spear. A lever, he had suggested … but no. He wasn’t impeding her. Not yet.
No relief came. Shell knelt down on her haunches, blew on her fingers while hugging her frigid legs to her. Damn the shield; she’d use the spear two-handed.
The temptation to reach out to her Warren was almost irresistible. Just the quickest summoning of power and she would be free – but then where would she go? And the Lady would sear her mind more surely than these Riders might skewer her. She might be a mage foremost … but she was also an Avowed of the Crimson Guard, and she would show these Riders what that meant.
The huge cut stones of the wall shuddering beneath her feet announced the arrival of another wave. She watched its ice-skeined bulge as it came rolling in from the north-east. Flashes of lightning accompanied it, and greenish light danced above. Like mast-fire it was … the brilliance that sometimes possessed a vessel.
Shell readied herself, searched for purchase over the treacherous ice-sheathed stone. Her hands, she noticed, alarmed, were now frozen to the spear’s haft. The wave rolled along the fortifications, cresting over the top as it came. When it swelled abreast of her a figure seemed to lift itself from the water, carrying lance and shield. It reared, heaved the lance at her. She parried. As it went for the sword sheathed at its side she thrust with her spear, taking him, or it, on the shield. In a practised move the Rider took hold of her spear haft then threw itself backwards into the water, taking the weapon with it. Her hands flamed as skin was torn in strips.
She cursed in a blind white fury worse than any she had known before. Damn these scum! I will not die here! The vow I swore was against the Malazans! A second Rider reared before her on whatever it was they rode – water animate as half wave, half beast-like mount. Weaponless, there was nothing for it but to hammer an arm across the front of the attacker, unhorsing him. As he fell she grabbed the pommel of his sheathed sword but the touch burned her hand as if she’d sunk it into embers and she cried out, recoiling.
Thankfully, the wave subsided, rolling on. She sank to her knees, cradling her numb hand to her chest. Damn them all! Stupid fucking waste!
Still no relief came. She knelt, panting; blood froze in a sheath on her hands. She felt so sluggish, utterly numb. Strangely, there was no pain. It was as if she were floating. Maybe if I just lie down for a moment …
Rattling shook her to wakefulness. Someone was hammering at the ice-encrusted ring and pin imprisoning her. Her chains came free and he reached for her. Standing, she straight-armed the man from her. She swore at him but her lips were numb and she could only mumble. He seemed to study her for a time through the narrow vision slit of his helm, then he grasped the chains and dragged them, pulling her and the corpse off the wall.
They knocked the fetters from her in the tiny marshalling room, then she was prodded back down the stairs. A guard kept her moving, a bared blade levelled against her. In the prison chamber she was reattached to the main gang-chain and she allowed herself to slide down the wall in what felt like the most luxurious warmth imaginable.
Almost immediately she fell asleep. Some time later she awoke to a touch on her foot. It was the prisoner who’d fed them earlier, Jemain. He knelt to rub a greasy unguent on her face, arms, legs and hands. ‘It will prevent infection and aid healing,’ he told her.
She saw his bare ankles. ‘You’re not chained,’ she noted belatedly.
‘I’m a trustee.’ Lowering his voice, he added, ‘That was quite a show you put on. Be careful or they will move you to a hot spot.’
She laughed, hurting her cracked lips. ‘That wasn’t hot?’
He smiled. ‘Oh no. First they put you on a slow station – see what you can do.’
A new Chosen entered the chamber, blue cloak wrapped tight about him. He spoke in low tones with the two Stormguard. Jemain lowered his head to mutter, ‘Too late.’
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) Page 168