She grasped that hand in both of hers, fell to her knees whimpering.
'These are naught but guests, Mother. Come too late, alas, to partake of the… royal feast.'
Someone screamed a laugh.
On the centre of the table was a huge silver plate, on which had been made a fire from snapped chair legs and picture frames—mostly charcoal now. Spitted above it was the remains of a skinned human torso, no longer being turned, underside blackening. Severed at the knees, the two thighs bound as one by copper wire. Arms pulled off at the shoulders, though they too had once been tied. Head left on, split and charred.
Knives had sliced off the flesh in places all over the body. Thighs, buttocks, chest, back, face. But this, Itkovian knew, had not been a feast born of hunger. These Tenescowri in this room looked better fed than any other he had yet seen. No, here, this night, had been a celebration. To the left of the throne, half in shadow, was an X-shaped cross made from two pikes. On it was stretched Prince Jelarkan's skin.
'The dear prince was dead before we began cooking,' the young man on the throne said. 'We are not consciously cruel, after all. You are not Brukhalian, for Brukhalian is dead. You must be Itkovian, the so-called Shield Anvil of Fener.'
Seerdomin appeared from behind the throne, pale-armoured and helmed, fur-backed, their faces hidden by grilled face-baskets, heavy battleaxes in their gauntleted hands. Four, eight, a dozen. Twenty. And still more filed out.
The man on the throne smiled. 'Your soldiers look… tired. Unequal to this particular task. Do you know me, Itkovian? I am Anaster, First Child of the Dead Seed. Tell me, where are the people of this city? What have you done with them? Oh, let me guess. They cower in tunnels beneath the streets. Guarded by a handful of surviving Gidrath, a company or two of your Grey Swords, some of the prince's Capan Guard. I imagine Prince Arard hides below as well. A shame, that. We have wanted him a long time. Well, the search for the hidden entrances continues. They shall be found. Capustan shall be cleansed, Shield Anvil, though, alas, you will not live to see that glorious day.'
Itkovian studied the young man, and saw what he had not expected to see. 'First Child,' he said. 'There is despair within you. I will take it from you, sir, and with it your burdens.'
Anaster jolted as if he had been physically struck. He drew his knees up, climbed onto the seat of the throne, face twitching. A hand closed on the strange obsidian dagger in his belt, then flinched away as if the stone was hot.
His mother screamed, clawed up her son's outstretched arm. Snarling, he pulled himself free. She sank down to the floor, curled up.
'I am not your father,' Itkovian continued, 'but I shall be as him. Unleash your flood, First Child.'
The young man stared, lips peeling back to bare his teeth. 'Who—what are you?' he hissed.
The captain stepped forward. 'We forgive your ignorance, sir,' she said. 'He is the Shield Anvil. Fener knows grief, so much grief that it is beyond his capacity to withstand it. And so he chooses a human heart. Armoured. A mortal soul, to assume the sorrow of the world. The Shield Anvil.
'These days and nights have witnessed vast sorrow, profound shame—all of which, we see now, is writ as plain knowledge in your eyes. You cannot deceive yourself, sir, can you?'
'You never could,' Itkovian said. 'Give me your despair, First Child. I am ready to receive it.'
Anaster's wail rang through the main hall. He clambered still further up the throne's high back, arms wrapping around himself.
All eyes held on him.
No-one moved.
Chest heaving, the First Child stared at Itkovian. Then he shook his head. 'No,' he whispered, 'you shall not have my—my despair.'
The captain hissed. 'This is a gift! First Child—'
'Not!'
Itkovian seemed to sag. Sword-point wavering, lowering. The recruit moved close to support the Shield Anvil.
'You cannot have it! You cannot have it!'
The captain's eyes were wide as she turned to Itkovian. 'Sir, I am unable to countenance this—'
The Shield Anvil shook his head, slowly straightened once more. 'No, I understand. The First Child—within him there is naught but despair. Without it…'
He is as nothing.
'I want them all killed!' Anaster shrieked brokenly. 'Seerdomin! Kill them all!'
Forty Seerdomin surged forward to either side of the table.
The captain snapped a command. The front line behind her dropped in unison to one knee. The second line raised into view their crossbows. Twenty-four quarrels crossed the room. Not one missed.
From the flanking guest-room entrances, more quarrels flashed.
The front line behind Itkovian rose and readied their weapons.
Only six Seerdomin remained standing. Figures both writhing and motionless covered the floor.
The Tenescowri at the table were fleeing towards the portal behind the throne.
Anaster himself was the first to reach it, his mother a step behind him.
The Seerdomin charged Itkovian.
I am not yet done.
His blade flashed. A helmed head leapt from its shoulders. A backhand slash snapped chain links and opened wide another Seerdomin's belly.
Crossbows sounded once more.
And the Grey Swords stood unopposed.
The Shield Anvil lowered his weapon. 'Captain,' he said after a moment. 'Retrieve the prince's body. Have the skin taken down. We shall return Prince Jelarkan to his throne, to his rightful place. And this room, we shall now hold. For a time. In the name of the prince.'
'The First Child—'
Itkovian faced her. 'We will meet him again. I am his only salvation, sir, and I shall not fail him.'
'You are the Shield Anvil,' she intoned.
'I am the Shield Anvil.' I am Fener's grief. I am the world's grief. And I will hold. I will hold it all, for we are not yet done.
Chapter Seventeen
What the soul can house, flesh cannot fathom.
The Reve of Fener Imarak
First Destriant
HOT, FEVERED, THE PEBBLED SKIN MOVED LIKE A DAMP ROCK-FILLED sack. The Matron's body exuded an acrid oil. It had permeated Toc the Younger's ragged clothes. He slid between folds of flesh as the huge, bloated K'Chain Che'Malle shifted about on the gritty floor, massive arms wrapped around him in a fierce embrace.
Darkness commanded the cave. The glimmers of light he saw were born within his mind. Illusions that might have been memories. Torn, fragmented scenes, of yellow-grassed low hills beneath warm sunlight. Figures, caught at the very edge of his vision. Some wore masks. One was naught but dead skin stretched over robust bone. Another was… beauty. Perfection. He believed in none of them. Their faces were the faces of his madness, looming ever closer, hovering at his shoulder.
When sleep took him he dreamed of wolves. Hunting, not to feed, but to deliver… something else; he knew not what. The quarry wandered alone, the quarry fled when it saw him. Brothers and sisters at his side, he pursued. Relentless, leagues passing effortlessly beneath his paws. The small, frightened creature could not elude them. He and his kin drew nearer, exhausting it against the slopes of hills, until finally it faltered, then collapsed. They surrounded it.
As they closed in, to deliver… what was to be delivered… the quarry vanished.
Shock, then despair.
He and his kin would circle the spot where she'd lain. Heads lifted skyward, mournful howls issuing from their throats. Howling without surcease. Until Toc the Younger blinked awake, in the embrace of the Matron, the turgid air of the cave seeming to dance with the fading echoes of his howls. The creature would tighten her hold, then. Whimpering, prodding the back of his neck with a fanged snout, her breath like sugared milk.
The cycles of his life. Sleep, then wakefulness punctuated by hallucinations. Smeared scenes of figures in golden sunlight, delusions of being a babe in his mother's arms, suckling at her breast—the Matron possessed no breasts, so he knew these to be delu
sions, yet was sustained by them none the less—and times when he began voiding his bladder and bowels, and she held him out when he did this, so he fouled only himself. She would then lick him clean, a gesture that stripped him of his last shreds of dignity.
Her embrace broke bones. The more he screamed with the pain, the tighter she held him. He had learned to suffer in silence. His bones knitted with preternatural swiftness. Sometimes unevenly. He knew himself to be malformed—his chest, his hips, the blades of his shoulders.
Then there came the visitations. A ghostly face, sheathed in the wrinkled visage of an old man, the hint of gleaming tusks, took form within his mind. Yellowed eyes that shone with glee fixed on his own. Familiar, those overlapping faces, but Toc was unable to take his recognition any further.
The visitor would speak to him.
They are trapped, my friend. All but the T'lan Imass, who fears solitude. Why else would he not leave his companions? Swallowed in ice. Helpless. Frozen. The Seguleh—no need to fear them. Never was. I but played. And the woman! My rimed beauteous statue! Wolf and dog have vanished. Fled. Aye, the kin, brother of your eyes… fled. Tail between legs, hee hee!And again.
Your Malazan army is too late! Too late to save Capustan! The city is mine. Your fellow soldiers are still a week away, my friend. We shall await them. We shall greet them as we greet all enemies.
I will bring you the head of the Malazan general. I will bring you his cooked flesh, and we shall dine together, you and I, once more.
How much blood can one world shed? Have you ever wondered, Toc the Younger? Shall we see? Let us see, then. You and I, and dear Mother here—oh, is that horror I see in her eyes? Some sanity still resides in her rotted brain, it seems. How unfortunate… for her.
And now, after a long absence, he returned once more. The false skin of the old man was taut against the unhuman visage. The tusks were visible as if through a transparent sheath. The eyes burned, but not, this time, with glee.
Deceit! They are not mortal beasts! How dare they assail my defences! Here, at the very gates! And now the T'lan Imass has vanished—I can find him nowhere! Does he come as well?
So be it. They shall not find you. We journey, the three of us. North, far beyond their reach. I have prepared another… nest for you two.
The inconvenience…
But Toc no longer heard him. His mind had been snatched away. He saw brittle white sunlight, a painful glare shimmering from ice-clad mountains and valleys buried in rivers of snow. In the sky, wheeling condors. And then, far more immediate, there was smoke, wooden structures shattered, stone walls tumbled. Figures running, screaming. Crimson spattering the snow, filling the milky puddles of a gravel road.
The point of view—eyes that saw through a red haze—shifted, swung to one side. A mottled black and grey hound kept pace, shoulders at eye level to the armoured figures it was tearing into with blurred savagery. The creature was driving towards a second set of gates, an arched portal at the base of a towering fortress. None could stand before it, none could slow its momentum.
Grey dust swirled from the hound's shoulders. Swirled. Spun, twisted into arms, legs gripping the creature's flanks, a bone-helmed head, torn fur a ragged wing behind it. Raised high, a rippled sword the colour of old blood.
His bones are well, his flesh is not. My flesh is well, my bones are not. Are we brothers?
Hound and rider—nightmare vision—struck the huge, iron-banded gates.
Wood exploded. In the archway's gloom, terror plunged among a reeling knot of Seerdomin.
Loping towards the breached portal, Toc rode his wolf's vision, saw into the shadows, where huge, reptilian shapes stepped into view to either side of the hound and its undead rider.
The K'ell Hunters raised their broad blades.
Snarling, the wolf sprinted. His focus was the gate, every detail there sharp as broken glass whilst all that lay to either side blurred. A shift of weight brought him to the Ke'll Hunter closing from the hound and rider's left.
The creature pivoted, sword slashing to intercept his charge.
The wolf ducked beneath it, then surged upward, jaws wide. Leathery throat filled his mouth. His canines sank deep into lifeless flesh. Jaw muscles bunched. Bone cracked, then crumbled as the wolf inexorably closed its vice-grip, even as the momentum of his charge drove the K'ell Hunter back onto its tail, crashing against a wall that shuddered with the impact. Upper and lower canines met. Jagged molars ground together, slicing through wood-like tendon and dry muscle.
The wolf was severing the head from the body.
The K'Chain Che'Malle shook beneath him, spasmed. A flailing blade sliced into the wolf's right haunch.
Toc and beast flinched at the pain, yet did not relent.
The ornately helmed head fell back, away, thumped as it struck the slush-covered cobbles.
Snarling, lifeless shreds snagged on his teeth, the wolf spun round. The hound crouched, spine hunched, in a corner of the archway. Blood poured from it. Alone, to battle its wounds.
The undead swordsman—my brother—was on his leather-wrapped feet now, his flint sword trading blows with the other K'ell Hunter's twin blades. At speeds unimaginable. Chunks of the K'Chain Che'Malle flew. A sword-bound forearm spun end over end to land near the flinching hound.
The K'ell Hunter lurched back in the face of the onslaught. Shin-bones snapped with a brittle report. The huge creature fell over, spraying slush out to all sides.
The undead warrior clambered onto it, systematically swinging his sword to dismember the K'Chain Che'Malle. It was a task swiftly completed.
The wolf approached the wounded hound. The animal snapped a warning to stay away—
Toc was suddenly blind, ripped away from the wolf's vision.
Bitter winds tore at him, but the Matron held him tight. On the move. Swiftly. They travelled a warren, a path of riven ice. They were, he realized, fleeing Outlook, fleeing the fortress that had just been breached.
By Baaljagg. And Garath and Tool. Garath—those wounds—
'Silence!' a voice shrieked.
The Seer was with them, leading the way through Omtose Phellack.
The gift of clarity remained in Toc's mind. His laugh was a ragged gurgle. 'Shut up!' The entire warren shook to distant thunder, the sound of vast ice… cracking, exploding in a conflagration of sorcery.
Lady Envy. With us once more—
The Seer screamed.
Reptilian arms clenched Toc. Bones cracked, splintered. Pain shoved him over a precipice. My kin, my brothers—He blacked out.
The night sky to the south was lit red. Though over a league distant, from the slope of the sparsely wooded hill, Capustan's death was plain to see, drawing the witnesses to silence apart from the rustle of armour and weapons, and the squelch of boots and moccasins in mud.
Leaves dripped a steady susurration. The soaked humus filled the warm air with its fecundity. Somewhere nearby a man coughed.
Captain Paran drew a dagger and began scraping the mud from his boots. He had known what to expect at this moment—his first sight of the city. Humbrall Taur's scouts had brought word back earlier in the day. The siege was over. The Grey Swords might well have demanded an emperor's ransom for their services, but fire-charred, tooth-gnawed bones could not collect it. Even so, knowing what to expect did little to diminish the pathos of a dying city.
Had those Grey Swords been Crimson Guard, the scene before Paran might well be different. With the lone exception of Prince K'azz D'Avore's Company of the Avowed, mercenaries were less than worthless as far as the captain was concerned. Tough talk and little else.
Let's hope those children of Humbrall Taur have fared better. It did not seem likely. Pockets of resistance perhaps remained. Small knots of cornered soldiers, knowing mercy was out of the question, would fight to the last. In alleys, in houses, in rooms. Capustan's death-throes would be protracted. Then again, if these damned Barghast can actually manage a doubletime—instead of this squabblin
g saunter—we might be able to adjust that particular fate's conclusion.
Paran turned at the arrival of his new commander, Trotts.
The huge Barghast's eyes glittered as he studied the burning city. 'The rains have done little to dim the flames,' he rumbled, scowling.
'Perhaps it's not as bad as it looks,' Paran said. 'I can make out maybe five major fires. It could be worse—I've heard tales of firestorms…'
'Aye. We saw one from afar, in Seven Cities, once.'
'What's Humbrall Taur had to say, Warchief? Do we pick up our pace or do we just stand here?'
Trotts bared his filed teeth. 'He will send the Barahn and the Ahkrata clans southeast. They are tasked with taking the landings and the floating bridges and barges. His own Senan and the Gilk will strike towards Capustan. The remaining clans will seize the Septarch's main supply camp, which lies between the landings and the city.'
'That's all very well, but if we keep dawdling—'
'Hetan and Cafal, Taur's children, are alive and not at risk. So the shouldermen insist. The bones are being protected, by strange sorceries. Strange, yet profoundly powerful. There is—'
'Damn you, Trotts! People are dying down there! People are being devoured!'
The Barghast's grin broadened. 'Thus, I have been given leave… to lead my clan at a pace of my own choosing. Captain, are you eager to be first among the White Faces into Capustan?'
Paran growled under his breath. He felt a need to draw his sword, felt a need to deliver vengeance, to finally—after all this time—strike a blow against the Pannion Domin. Quick Ben, in those moments when he was lucid and not raving with fever, had made it clear that the Domin held dire secrets, and a malevolence stained its heart. The fact of the Tenescowri was proof enough of that to the captain's mind.
But there was more to his need. He lived with pain. His stomach raged with spotfires. He had thrown up acidic bile and blood—revealing that truth to no-one. The pain bound him within himself, and those bindings were getting tighter.
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