‘You sense all that takes place on these plains, Setoc. What do you know of the enemy that killed the scouts?’
‘Only what the rhinazan whisper, Great Warlock.’
Winged lizards again . . . spirits below! ‘In our homeland, on the high desert mesas, there are smaller versions that are called rhizan.’
‘Smaller, yes.’
He frowned. ‘Meaning?’
She shrugged. ‘Just that. Smaller.’
He wanted to shake her, rattle loose her secrets. ‘Who killed our scouts?’
She bared her teeth but did not face him. ‘I have already told you, Great Warlock. Tell me, have you seen the green spears in the sky at night?’
‘Of course.’
‘What are they?’
‘I don’t know. Things have been known to fall from the sky, whilst others simply pass by like wagons set ablaze, crossing the firmament night after night for weeks or months . . . and then vanishing as mysteriously as they arrived.’
‘Uncaring of the world below.’
‘Yes. The firmament is speckled with countless worlds no different from ours. To the stars and to the great burning wagons, we are as motes of dust.’
She turned to study him as he spoke these words. ‘That is . . . interesting. This is what the Barghast believe?’
‘What do the wolves believe, Setoc?’
‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘when a hunter throws a javelin at a fleeing antelope, does the hunter aim at the beast?’
‘Yes and no. To strike true, the hunter must throw into the space in front of the antelope—into the path it will take.’ He studied her. ‘Are you saying that these spears of green fire are the javelins of a hunter, and that we are the antelope?’
‘And if the antelope darts this way, dodges that?’
‘A good hunter will not miss.’
The war-party had reappeared on the ridge, and accompanying it was the Awl warrior on his horse, along with two more dogs.
Cafal said, ‘I will find Stolmen, now. He will want to speak with you, Setoc.’ He hesitated, and then added, ‘Perhaps the Gadra warchief can glean clearer answers from you, for in that I have surely failed.’
‘The wolves are clear enough,’ she replied, ‘when speaking of war. All else confuses them.’
‘So you indeed serve the Lady and Lord of the Beast Throne. As would a priestess.’
She shrugged.
‘Who,’ Cafal asked again, ‘is the enemy?’
Setoc looked at him. ‘The enemy, Great Warlock, is peace.’ And she smiled.
The ribbers had dragged Visto’s body a dozen or so paces out into the flat, until something warned them against eating the wrinkled, leathery flesh of the dead boy. With the dawn, Badalle and a few others walked out to stand round the shrunken, stomach-burst thing that had once been Visto.
The others waited for Badalle to find her words.
Rutt was late in arriving as he had to check on Held and make adjustments to the baby’s wrap. By the time he joined them, Badalle was ready. ‘Hear me, then,’ she said, ‘at Visto’s deading.’
She blew flies from her lips and then scanned the faces arrayed round her. There was an expression she wanted to find, but couldn’t. Even remembering what it looked like was hard, no, impossible. She’d lost it, truth be told. But wanted it, and she knew she would recognize it as soon as she saw it again. An expression . . . some kind of expression . . . what was it? After a moment, she spoke,
‘We all come from some place
And Visto was no different
He come
From some
Place
And it was different and
It was the same no different
If you know what I mean
And you do
You have to
All you standing here
The point is that Visto
He couldn’t remember
Anything about that place
Except that he come from it
And that’s like lots of you
So let’s say now
He’s gone back there
To that place
Where he come from
And everything he sees
He remembers
And everything he remembers
Is new’
They always waited, never knowing if she was finished until it became obvious that she was, and in that time Badalle looked down at Visto. The eggs of the Satra Riders clung like crumbs to Visto’s lips, as if he had been gobbling down cake. The adult riders had chewed out through his stomach and no one knew where they went, maybe into the ground—they did all that at night.
Maybe some of the ribbers had been careless, with their eager jaws and all, which was good since then there’d be fewer of them strong enough to launch attacks on the ribby snake. It wasn’t as bad having them totter along in the distance, keeping pace, getting weaker just as the children did, until they lay down and weren’t trouble any more. You could live with that, no different from the crows and vultures overhead. Animals showed, didn’t they, how to believe in patience.
She lifted her head and as if that was a signal the others turned away and walked slowly back to the trail where the ones who could were standing, getting ready for the day’s march.
Rutt said, ‘I liked Visto.’
‘We all liked Visto.’
‘We shouldn’t have.’
‘No.’
‘Because that makes it harder.’
‘The Satra Riders liked Visto too, even more than we did.’
Rutt shifted Held from the crook of his right arm into the crook of his left arm. ‘I’m mad at Visto now.’
Brayderal, who had showed up to walk at the snake’s head only two days ago—maybe coming from back down the snake’s body, maybe coming from somewhere else—walked out to stand close to them, as if she wanted to be part of something. Something made up of Rutt and Held and Badalle. But whatever that something was, it had no room for Brayderal. Visto’s deading didn’t leave a hole. The space just closed up.
Besides, something about the tall, bony girl made Badalle uneasy. Her face was too white beneath all this sun. She reminded Badalle of the bone-skins—what were they called again? Quisiters? Quitters? Could be, yes, the Quitters, the bone-skins who stood taller than anyone else and from that height they saw everything and commanded everyone and when they said Starve and die, why, that’s just what everyone did.
If they knew about the Chal Managal, they would be angry. They might even chase after it and find the head, find Rutt and Badalle, and then do that quitting thing with the hands, the thing that broke the necks of people like Rutt and Badalle.
‘We would be . . . quitted unto deading.’
‘Badalle?’
She looked at Rutt, blew flies from her lips, and then—ignoring Brayderal as if she wasn’t there—set off to rejoin the ribby snake.
The track stretched westward, straight like an insult to nature, and at the distant end of the stony, lifeless ground, the horizon glittered as if crusted with crushed glass. She heard Rutt’s scrabbling steps coming up behind her, and then veering slightly as he made for the front of the column. She might be his second but Badalle wouldn’t walk with him. Rutt had Held. That was enough for Rutt.
Badalle had her words, and that was almost too much.
She saw Brayderal follow Rutt. They were almost the same height, but Rutt looked the weaker, closer to deading than Brayderal, and seeing that, Badalle felt a flash of anger. It should have been the other way round. They needed Rutt. They didn’t need Brayderal.
Unless she was planning on stepping into Rutt’s place when Rutt finally broke, planning on being the snake’s new head, its slithery tongue, its scaly jaws. Yes, that might be what Badalle was seeing. And Brayderal would take up Held all wrapped tight and safe from the sun, and they’d all set out on another day, with her instead of Rutt leading them.
That made a kind of sense. No different than with the r
ibber packs—when the leader got sick or lame or just wasn’t strong enough any more, why, that other ribber that showed up and started trotting alongside it, it was there just for this moment. To take over. To keep things going.
No different from what sons did to fathers and daughters did to mothers, and princes to kings and princesses to queens.
Brayderal walked almost at Rutt’s side, up there at the head. Maybe she talked with Rutt, maybe she didn’t. Some things didn’t need talking about, and besides, Rutt wasn’t one to say much anyway.
‘I don’t like Brayderal.’
If anyone nearby heard her, they gave no sign.
Badalle blew to scatter the flies. They needed to find water. Even half a day without it and the snake would get too ribby, especially in this heat.
On this morning, she did as she always did. Eating her fill of words, drinking deep the spaces in between, and mad—so mad—that none of it gave her any strength.
Saddic had been Rutt’s second follower, the first being Held. He now walked among the four or so moving in a loose clump a few paces behind Rutt and the new girl. Badalle was a little way back, in the next clump. Saddic worshipped her, but he would not draw close to her, not yet, because there would be no point. He had few words of his own—he’d lost most of them early on in this journey. So long as he was in hearing range of Badalle, he was content.
She fed him. With her sayings and her seeings. She kept Saddic alive.
He thought about what she had said for Visto’s deading. About how some of it wasn’t true, the bit about Visto not remembering anything about where he’d come from. He’d remembered too much, in fact. So, Badalle had knowingly told an untruth about Visto. At his deading. Why had she done that?
Because Visto was gone. Her words weren’t for him because he was gone. They were for us. She was telling us to give up remembering. Give it up so when we find it again it all feels new. Not the remembering itself but the things we remembered. The cities and villages and the families and the laughing. The water and the food and full stomachs. Is that what she was telling us?
Well, he had his meal for the day, didn’t he? She was generous that way.
The feet at the ends of his legs were like wads of leather. They didn’t feel much and that was a relief since the stones on the track were sharp and so many others had bleeding feet making it hard to walk. The ground was even worse to either side of the trail.
Badalle was smart. She was the brain behind the jaws, the tongue. She took what the snake’s eyes saw. She made sense of what the tongue tasted. She gave names to the things of this new world. The moths that pretended to be leaves and the trees that invited the moths to be leaves so that five trees shared one set of leaves between them, and when the trees got hungry off went the leaves, looking for food. No other tree could do that, and so no other tree lived on the Elan.
She talked about the jhaval, the carrion birds no bigger than sparrows, that were the first to swarm a body when it fell, using their sharp beaks to stab and drink. Sometimes the jhaval didn’t even wait for the body to fall. Saddic had seen them attacking a wounded ribber, even vultures and crows. Sometimes each other, too, when the frenzy was on them.
Satra Riders, as what did in poor Visto, and flow-worms that moved in a seething carpet, pushing beneath a corpse to squirm in the shade. They bit and drenched themselves in whatever seeped down and as the ground softened down they went, finally able to pierce the skin of the blistered earth.
Saddic looked in wonder at this new world, listened in awe as Badalle gave the strange things names and made for them all a new language.
Close to noon they found a waterhole. The crumbled foundations of makeshift corrals surrounded the shallow, muddy pit.
The snake halted, and then began a slow, tortured crawl into and out of the churned-up mud. The wait alone killed scores, and even as children emerged from the morass, slathered black, some fell to convulsions, curling round mud-filled guts. Some spilled out their bowels, fouling things for everyone that came after.
It was another bad day for the Chal Managal.
Later in the afternoon, during the worst of the heat, they spied a greyish cloud on the horizon ahead. The ribbers began howling, dancing in terror, and as the cloud rushed closer, the dogs finally fled.
What looked like rain wasn’t rain. What looked like a cloud wasn’t a cloud.
These were locusts, but not the normal kind of locusts.
Wings glittering, the swarm filling half the sky, and then all the sky, the sound a clicking roar—the rasp of wings, the snapping open of jaws—each creature a finger long. Out from within the cloud, as it engulfed the column, lunged buzzing knots where the insects massed almost solid. When one of these hammered into a huddle of children, shrieks of pain and horror erupted—the flash of red meat, and then bone—and then the horde swept on, leaving behind clumps of hair and heaps of gleaming bone.
These locusts ate meat.
This was the first day of the Shards.
Chapter Five
The painter must be mute
The sculptor deaf
Talents are passed out
Singly
As everyone knows
Oh let them dabble
We smile our indulgence
No end to our talent
For allowances
But talents are passed out
Singly
We permit you one
Worth lauding
The rest may do service
In serviceable fashion
But greatness?
That is a title passed out
Singly
Don’t be greedy
Over trying our indulgence
Permission
Belongs to us
Behind the makeshift wall—
The bricks of our
Reasonable scepticism.
A POEM THAT SERVES
ASTATTLE POHM
C
orporal Tarr’s memory of his father could be entirely summed up inside a single recollected quote, ringing like Talian death bells across the breadth of Tarr’s childhood. A raw, stentorian pronouncement battering down on the flinching son. ‘Sympathy? Aye, I have sympathy—for the dead and no one else! Ain’t nobody in this world deserves sympathy unless they’re dead! You understanding me, son?’
‘You understanding me, son?’
Yes, sir. Good words for making a soldier. Kept the brain from getting too . . . cluttered. With things that might get in the way of holding his shield just so, stabbing out with his short sword right there. It was a kind of discipline, what others might call obstinate stupidity, but that simply showed that lots of people didn’t understand soldiering.
Teaching people to be disciplined, he was discovering, wasn’t easy. He walked the length of Letherii soldiers—and aye, that description was a sorry stretch—who stood at what passed for attention for these locals. A row of red faces in the blazing sunlight, dripping like melting wax.
‘Harridict Brigade,’ Tarr said in a snarl, ‘what kind of name is that? Who in Hood’s name was Harridict—no, don’t answer me, you damned fool! Some useless general, I’d imagine, or worse, some merchant house happy to kit you all in its house colours. Merchants! Businesses got no place in the military. We built an empire across three continents by keeping ’em outa things! Businesses are the vultures of war, and maybe those beaks look like smiles, but take it from me, they’re just beaks.’
He halted then, his repertoire of words exhausted, and gestured to Cuttle, who stepped up with a hard grin—the idiot loved this Braven role, as it was being called now (‘Letherii got master sergeants; we Malazans got Braven Sergeants, and say it toothy when you say it, lads, and be sure to keep the joke private’—so said Ruthan Gudd and that, Tarr had decided then and there, was a soldier).
Cuttle was wide and solid, a perfect fit to the role. Wider than Tarr but shorter by half a head, which meant that Tarr was an even better fit. Not one of these miser
able excuses for soldiers could stand toe to toe with either Malazan for anything past twenty heartbeats, and that was the awful truth. They were soft. ‘This brigade,’ Cuttle now said, loud and contemptuous, ‘is a waste of space!’ He paused to glare at the faces, which were slowly hardening under the assault.
About time. Tarr watched on, thumbs hooked now in his weapon belt.
‘Aye,’ Cuttle went on, ‘I’ve listened to your drunken stories—’ and his tone invited them to sit at his table: knowing and wise and damned near . . . sympathetic. ‘And aye, I’ve seen for myself that raw, ugly pig you call magic hereabouts. Undisciplined—no finesse—brutal power but nothing clever. So, for you lot, battle means eating dirt, and a battlefield is where hundreds die for no good reason. Your mages have made war a miserable, useless joke—’ and he spun round and stepped up to one soldier, nose to nose. ‘You! How many times has this brigade taken fifty per cent or more losses in a single battle?’
The soldier—and Cuttle had chosen well—almost bared his teeth. ‘Seven times, Braven Sergeant!’
‘Seventy-five per cent losses?’
‘Four, Braven Sergeant!’
‘Losses at ninety?’
‘Once, Braven Sergeant, but not ninety—one hundred per cent, Braven Sergeant.’
Cuttle let his jaw drop. ‘One hundred?’
‘Yes, Braven Sergeant!’
‘Wiped out to the last soldier?’
‘Yes, Braven Sergeant!’
And Cuttle leaned even closer, his face turning crimson. In a bellowing shout, he said, ‘And has it not once occurred to you—any of you—that you might do better by murdering all your mages at the very start of the battle?’
‘Then the other side would—’
‘You parley with ’em first, of course—you all agree to butcher the bastards!’ He reeled back and threw up his hands. ‘You don’t fight wars! You don’t fight battles! You just all form up and make new cemeteries!’ He wheeled on them. ‘Are you all idiots?’
On a balcony overlooking the parade grounds, Brys Beddict winced. Beside him, standing in the shade, Queen Janath grunted and then said, ‘You know, he has a point.’
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