The Bonehunters

by Steven Erikson

  'Oh!' the Falah'd cried suddenly. 'I am melting!'

  'Wait!' Inashan said. 'Was that a bellow of some sort?'

  'He's probably raping someone!'

  ****

  He found the creature hobbling down a corridor, its head wagging from side to side, pitching into one wall then the other. Karsa ran after it.

  It must have heard him, for it wheeled round, jaws open­ing in a hiss, moments before he closed. Battering a raking hand aside, the Toblakai kneed the beast in the belly. The reptile doubled over, chest-ridge cracking down onto Karsa's right shoulder. He drove his thumb up under its left arm, where it found doeskin-soft tissue. Puncturing it, the thumb plunging into meat, curling round ligaments. Closing his hand, Karsa yanked on those ligaments.

  Dagger-sharp teeth raked the side of his head, slicing a flap of skin away. Blood gushed into Karsa's right eye. He pulled harder, throwing himself back.

  The beast plunged with him. Twisting to one side, Karsa narrowly escaped the crashing weight, and was close enough to see the unnatural splaying of its ribs at the impact.

  It struggled to rise, but Karsa was faster. Straddling it once more. Fists hammering down on its skull. With each blow the lower jaws cracked against the floor, and he could feel a sagging give in the plates of the skull's bones beneath his fists. He kept pounding.

  A dozen wild heartbeats later and he slowed, realizing the beast was no longer moving beneath him, the head flat on the floor, getting wider and flatter with each impact of his battered fists. Fluids were leaking out. Karsa stopped swinging. He drew in a ragged, agony-filled breath, held it against the sudden waves of darkness thundering through his brain, then released it steady and long. Another mouth­ful of bloody phlegm to spit out, onto the dead beast's shattered skull.

  Lifting his head, Karsa glared about. A doorway on his right. In the room beyond, a long table and chairs. Groaning, he slowly rose, stumbled into the chamber.

  A jug of wine sat on the table. Cups were lined up in even rows down both sides, each one opposite a chair. Karsa swept them from the table, collected the jug, then lay down on the stained wood surface. He stared up at the ceiling, where someone had painted a pantheon of unknown gods, all looking down.

  Mocking expressions one and all.

  Karsa pushed the flap of loose skin back against his temple, then sneered at the faces on the ceiling, before lift­ing the jug to his lips.

  ****

  Blessed cool wind, now that the sun was so close to the horizon. Silence for a while now, too, since that last bellow.

  A number of soldiers, standing for bell after bell all after­noon, had passed out and were being tended to by the lone slave the Falah'd had relinquished from his entourage.

  Captain Inashan had been assembling a squad to lead into the keep for some time now.

  The Falah'd was having his feet massaged and bathed in mint-leaves chewed in mouthfuls of oil by the slaves. 'You are taking too long, Captain!' he said. 'Look at that demonic horse, the way it eyes us! It will be dark by the time you storm the keep!'

  'Torches are being brought along, Falah'd,' Inashan said. 'We're almost ready.'

  His reluctance was almost comical, and Samar Dev dared not meet his eye again, not after the expression her wink earlier had elicited.

  A shout from the besiegers' encampment.

  Toblakai had appeared, climbing down from the ledge, back onto the makeshift steps. Samar Dev and Inashan made their way to the moat, arriving in time to see him emerge. The bear fur was in ribbons, dark with blood. He had tied a strip of cloth about his head, holding the skin in place over one temple. Most of his upper clothing had been torn away, revealing countless gouges and puncture wounds.

  And he was covered in shit.

  From the Falah'd twenty paces behind them came a querulous enquiry: 'Toblakai! The negotiations went well?'

  In a low voice, Inashan said, 'No Malazans left, I take it?'

  Karsa Orlong scowled. 'Didn't see any.' He strode past them.

  Turning, Samar Dev flinched at the horror of the warrior's ravaged back. 'What happened in there?' she demanded.

  A shrug that jostled the slung stone sword. 'Nothing important, witch.'

  Not slowing, not turning, he continued on.

  ****

  A smudge of light far to the south, like a cluster of dying stars on the horizon, marked the city of Kayhum. The dust of the storm a week past had settled and the night sky was bright with the twin sweeps of the Roads of the Abyss. There were scholars, Corabb Bhilan Thenu'alas had heard, who asserted that those broad roads were nothing more than stars, crowded in multitudes beyond counting, but Corabb knew that was folly. They could be naught but celestial roads, the paths walked by the dragons of the deep, and Elder Gods and the blacksmiths with suns for eyes who hammered stars into life; and the worlds spinning round those stars were simply dross, cast-offs from the forges, pale and smudged, on which crawled creatures preening with conceit.

  Preening with conceit. An old seer had told him that once, and for some reason the phrase lodged in Corabb's mind, allowing him to pull it free every now and then to play with, his inner eye bright with shining wonder. People did that, yes. He had seen them, again and again. Like birds. Obsessed with self-importance, thinking themselves tall, as tall as the night sky. That seer had been a genius, to have seen so clearly, and to manage so much in three simple words. Not that conceit was a simple thing, and Corabb recalled having to ask an old woman what the word meant, and she had cackled and reached under his tunic to tug on his penis, which had been unexpected and, instinctive response notwithstanding, unwelcome. A faint wave of embarrassment accompanied the recollection, and he spat into the fire flickering before him.

  Leoman of the Flails sat opposite him, a hookah filled with wine-soaked durhang at the man's side, at his thin lips the mouthpiece of hard wood carved into the semblance of a woman's nipple and stained magenta to add to the likeness. His leader's eyes glistened dark red in the fire's light, the lids low, the gaze seemingly fixed on the licking flames.

  Corabb had found a piece of wood the length of his arm, light as a woman's breath — telling him that a birit slug dwelt within — and he had just dug it out with the point of his knife. The creature squirmed on the blade's tip, and it had been the sight of this that had, alas, reminded him of the debacle with his penis. Feeling morose, he bit the slug in half and began chewing, juices spurting down into his beard. 'Ah,' he said around the mouthful, 'she has roe. Delicious.'

  Leoman looked over, then he drew once more on the mouthpiece. 'We're running out of horses,' he said.

  Corabb swallowed. The other half of the slug was writhing on the knife tip, threads of pink eggs dangling like tiny pearls. 'We'll make it, Commander,' he said, then poked out his tongue to lap up the roe, following up by inserting the rest of the slug into his mouth. He chewed, then swallowed. 'Four, five days, I would judge.'

  Leoman's eyes glittered. 'You know, then.'

  'Where we're going? Yes.'

  'Do you know why?'

  Corabb tossed the piece of wood onto the fire. 'Y'Ghatan. The First Holy City. Where Dassem Ultor, curse his name, died in betrayal. Y'Ghatan, the oldest city in the world. Built atop the forge of a blacksmith of the Abyss, built on his very bones. Seven Y'Ghatans, seven great cities to mark the ages we have seen, the one we see now crouched on the bones of the other six. City of the Olive Groves, city of the sweet oils—' Corabb paused, frowned. 'What was your question, Commander?'

  'Why.'

  'Oh, yes. Do I know why you have chosen Y'Ghatan? Because we invite a siege. It. is a difficult city to conquer. The fool Malazans will bleed themselves to death attempting to storm its walls. We shall add their bones to all the others, to Dassem Ultor's very own—'

  'He didn't die there, Corabb.'

  'What? But there were witnesses—'

  'To his wounding, yes. To the assassination... attempt. But no, my friend, the First Sword did not die, and he lives still
.'

  'Then where is he?'

  'Where doesn't matter. You should ask: Who is he? Ask that, Corabb Bhilan Thenu'alas, and I will give you answer.'

  Corabb thought about that. Even swimming in the fumes of durhang, Leoman of the Flails was too smart for him. Clever, able to see all that Corabb could not. He was the greatest commander Seven Cities had ever produced. He would have defeated Coltaine. Honourably. And, had he been left to it, he would have crushed Adjunct Tavore, and then Dujek Onearm. There would have been true liberation, for all Seven Cities, and from here the rebellion against the damned empire would have rippled outward, until the yoke was thrown off by all. This was the tragedy, the true tragedy. 'Blessed Dessembrae hounds our heels...'

  Leoman coughed a cloud of smoke. He doubled over, still coughing.

  Corabb reached for a skin of water and thrust it into his leader's hands. The man finally drew breath, then drank deep. He leaned back with a gusty sigh, and then grinned. 'You are a wonder, Corabb Bhilan Thenu'alas! To answer you, I certainly hope not!'

  Corabb felt sad. He said, 'You mock me, Commander.'

  'Not at all, you Oponn-blessed madman — my only friend left breathing — not at all. It is the cult, you see. The Lord of Tragedy. Dessembrae. That is Dassem Ultor. I don't doubt you understood that, but consider this — for there to be a cult, a religion, with priests and such, there must be a god. A living god.'

  'Dassem Ultor is ascended?'

  'I believe so, although he is a reluctant god. A denier, like Anomander Rake of the Tiste Andii. And so he wanders, in eternal flight, and in, perhaps, eternal hunt as well.'

  'For what?'

  Leoman shook his head. Then said, 'Y'Ghatan. Yes, my friend. There, we will make our stand, and the name shall be a curse among the Malazans, for all time, a curse, bitter on their tongues.' His eyes hardened suddenly on Corabb. 'Are you with me? No matter what I command, no matter the madness that will seem to afflict me?'

  Something in his leader's gaze frightened Corabb, but he nodded. 'I am with you, Leoman of the Flails. Do not doubt that.'

  A wry smile. 'I shall not hold you to that. But I thank you for your words nonetheless.'

  'Why would you doubt them?'

  'Because only I know what I intend to do.'

  'Tell me.'

  'No, my friend. This burden is mine.'

  'You lead us, Leoman of the Flails. We shall follow. As you say, you carry all of us. We are the weight of history, of liberty, and yet you are not bowed—'

  'Ah, Corabb...'

  'I only say what is known but has never before been said aloud, Commander.'

  'There is mercy in silence, my friend. But no mind. It is done, you have indeed spoken.'

  'I have assailed you further. I am sorry, Leoman of the Flails.'

  Leoman drank again from the waterskin, then spat into the fire. 'We need say no more of it. Y'Ghatan. This shall be our city. Four, five days. It is just past crushing season, yes?'

  'The olives? Yes, we shall arrive when the grovers have gathered. A thousand merchants will be there, and workers out on the road leading to the coast, setting new stones. And potters, and barrel-makers, and wagoners and caravans. The air shall be gold with dust and dusted with gold—'

  'You are a poet indeed, Corabb. Merchants, and their hired guards. Tell me, will they bow to my authority, do you think?'

  'They must.'

  'Who is the city's Faiah'd?'

  'Vedor.'

  'Which one?'

  'The ferret-faced one, Leoman. His fish-faced brother was found dead in his lover's bed, the whore nowhere to be found, but likely rich and in hiding or in a shallow grave. It's the old story among the Fala'dhan.'

  'And we are certain Vedor continues to deny the Malazans?'

  'No fleet or army could have reached them yet. You know this, Leoman of the Flails.'

  The man slowly nodded, eyes once more on the flames.

  Corabb looked up at the night sky. 'One day,' he said, 'we shall walk the Roads to the Abyss. And so witness all the wonders of the universe.'

  Leoman squinted upward. 'Where the stars are thick as veins?'

  'They are roads, Leoman. Surely you do not believe those insane scholars?'

  'All scholars are insane, yes. They say nothing worth believing. The roads, then. The trail of fire.'

  'Of course,' Corabb continued, 'that shall be many years from now…'

  'As you say, friend. Now, best get some sleep.'

  Corabb rose, bones cracking. 'May you dream of glory this night, Commander.'

  'Glory? Oh, yes, my friend. Our trail of fire...'

  'Aai, that slug has given me indigestion. It was the roe.'

  ****

  'The bastard's heading for Y'Ghatan.'

  Sergeant Strings glanced over at Bottle. 'You've been thinking, haven't you? That's not good, soldier. Not good at all.'

  'Can't help it.'

  'That's even worse. Now I have to keep an eye on you.'

  Koryk was on his hands and knees, head lowered as he sought to breathe life back into the bed of coals from the night just past. He suddenly coughed as he inhaled a cloud of ashes and ducked away, blinking and hacking.

  Smiles laughed. 'The wise plainsman does it again. You were asleep, Koryk, but I should tell you, Tarr pissed that fire out last night.'

  'What!?'

  'She's lying,' Tarr said from where he crouched beside his pack, repairing a strap. 'Even so, it was a good one. You should have seen your expression, Koryk.'

  'How can anyone, with that white mask he's wearing? Shouldn't you be painting death lines through that ash, Koryk? Isn't that what Seti do?'

  'Only when going into battle, Smiles,' the sergeant said. 'Now, leave off, woman. You're as bad as that damned Hengese lapdog. It bit a Khundryl's ankle last night and wouldn't let go.'

  'Hope they skewered it,' Smiles said.

  'Not a chance. Bent was standing guard. Anyway, they had to get Temul to pry the thing off. My point is, Smiles, you ain't got a Wickan cattle-dog to guard your back, so the less you snipe the safer you'll be.'

  No-one mentioned the knife Koryk had taken in the leg a week past.

  Cuttle came wandering into the camp. He'd found a squad that had already brewed some foul-smelling tea and was sipping from his tin cup. 'They're here,' he said.

  'Who?' Smiles demanded.

  Bottle watched as their sergeant settled back down, lean­ing against his pack. 'All right,' Strings said, sighing. 'March will be delayed. Someone help Koryk get the fire going — we're going to have a real breakfast. Cuttle the cook.'

  'Me? All right, just don't blame me.'

  'For what?' Strings asked with an innocent smile.

  Cuttle walked over to the hearth, reaching into a pouch. 'Got some sealed Flamer dust—'

  Everyone scattered, Strings included. Suddenly, Cuttle was alone, looking round bemusedly at his fellow soldiers, now one and all at least fifteen paces distant. He scowled. 'A grain or two, nothing more. Damn, do you think I'm mad?'

  Everyone looked to Strings, who shrugged. 'Instinctive reaction, Cuttle. Surprised you ain't used to it by now.'

  'Yeah? And how come you were the first belting out of here, Fid?'

  'Who'd know better than me?'

  Cuttle crouched down beside the hearth. 'Well,' he muttered, 'I'm absolutely crushed.' He withdrew a small clay disk from the pouch. It was a playing piece for the board-game called Troughs, the game being Cuttle's favourite pastime. The sapper spat on it, then tossed it into the coals. And quickly backed away.

  No-one else moved.

  'Hey,' Koryk said, 'that wasn't a real Troughs piece, was it?'

  Cuttle glanced over. 'Why wouldn't it be?'

  'Because those things get thrown around!'

  'Only when I lose,' the sapper replied.

  A burst of ash, sudden flames. Cuttle walked back and began flinging pieces of dung on the fire. 'All right, some­body tend to this. I'll get what passes for food aroun
d here and figure something out.'

  'Bottle has some lizards,' Smiles said.

  'Forget it,' Bottle shot back. 'They're my, uh, friends.' He flinched as the other squad members turned to regard him.

  'Friends?' Strings asked. He scratched his beard, studying his soldier.

  'What,' Smiles said, 'the rest of us too smart for you, Bottle? All these confounding words we use? The fact we can read those squiggly etchings on clay and wax tablets and scrolls? Well, except for Koryk, of course. Anyway. Feeling insufficient, Bottle? I don't mean physically — that goes without saying. But, mentally, right? Is that the problem?'

  Bottle glared at her. 'You'll regret all that, Smiles.'

  'Oh, he's going to send his lizard friends after me! Help!'

  'That's enough, Smiles,' Strings said in a warning growl.

  She rose, ran her hands through her still-unbound hair. 'Well, I'm off to gossip with Flashwit and Uru Hela. Flash said she saw Neffarias Bredd a couple of days ago. A horse had died and he carried it back to his squad's camp. They roasted it. Nothing but bones left.'

  'The squad ate an entire horse?' Koryk snorted. 'How come I've never seen this Neffarias Bredd, anyway? Has anybody here seen him?'

  'I have,' Smiles replied.

  'When?' Koryk demanded.

  'A few days ago. I'm bored talking to you. Your fire's going out.' She walked off.

  The sergeant was still tugging at his beard. 'Gods below, I need to hack this thing off,' he muttered.

  'But the chicks ain't left the nest yet,' Cuttle said, settling down with an armful of foodstuffs. 'Who's been collecting snakes?' he asked, letting the various objects drop. He picked up a long, rope-like thing. 'They stink—'

  'That's the vinegar,' Koryk said. 'It's an old Seti delicacy. The vinegar cooks the meat, you see, for when you ain't got the time to smoke it slow.'

  'What are you doing killing snakes?' Bottle demanded. 'They're useful, you know.'

  Strings rose. 'Bottle, walk with me.'

  Oh damn. I've got to learn to say nothing. 'Aye, Sergeant.'

  They crossed the ditch and headed onto the broken sweep of the Lato Odhan, the mostly level, dusty ground home to a scattering of shattered rock, no piece larger than a man's head. Somewhere far to the southwest was the city of Kayhum, still out of sight, whilst behind them rose the Thalas Mountains, treeless for centuries and now eroded like rotting teeth. No cloud relieved the bright morning sun, already hot.