I looked to the west and saw a thousand suns setting.
– Sidivar Trelus
The earthy smell of the dung fires preceded the first sighting of the Awl army. Beneath the smudged light of a dull moon, the Atri-Preda and Brohl Handar rode with the scout troop to the base of a ridge, where they dismounted and, leaving one soldier with the horses, set out on foot up the slope.
The summit was almost devoid of grasses, knobs of angular bedrock pushing through where the ceaseless winds had eroded away the scant soil. Dropping down low, the half-dozen Letherii and one Tiste Edur edged up between the outcroppings, filling the spaces in the broken spine of basalt.
Beyond, perhaps a third of a league distant, burned the cookfires of the enemy. A sea of fallen, smouldering stars, spreading out to fill the basin of an entire valley, then up the far slope, defining its contours.
‘How many do you judge?’ Brohl Handar asked the Atri-Preda in a low voice.
Bivatt sighed. ‘Combatants? Maybe ten, eleven thousand. These armies are more like migrations, Overseer. Everyone tags along.’
‘Then where are the herds?’
‘Probably the other side of the far valley.’
‘So tomorrow, we ride to battle.’
‘Yes. And again, I advise that you and your bodyguard remain with the train-’
‘That will not be necessary,’ Brohl Handar cut in, repeating words he had uttered a dozen times in the past three days and nights. ‘There are Edur warriors with you, and they will be used, yes?’
‘If needed, Overseer. But the fight awaiting us looks to be no different from all the others we Letherii have had against these people of the plains. It looks as if Redmask was not able to sway the elders with any new schemes. It’s the old tactics-the ones that fail them time and again.’ She was silent for a moment, then she continued, ‘The valley behind us is called Bast Fulmar. It has some arcane significance for the Awl. That is where we will meet.’
He turned his head and studied her in the gloom. ‘You are content to let them choose the place of battle?’
She snorted. ‘Overseer, if these lands were filled with defiles, canyons, arroyos or impassable rivers-or forests-then indeed I would think carefully about engaging the enemy where they want us to. But not here. Visibility is not in issue-with our mages the Awl cannot hide in any case. There are no difficult avenues of retreat, no blinds. The light tomorrow will be brutal in its simplicity. Awl ferocity anainst Letherii discipline.’
And with this Redmask leading them, they will be fere cious indeed.’
‘Yes. But it will fail in the end.’
‘You are confident, Atri-Preda.’
He caught her smile. ‘Relieved, Overseer. This night, I see only what I have seen a dozen times before. Do not imagine, however, that I am dismissing the enemy. It will be hloody.’ With that she gestured, and the group began withdrawing from the ridgeline.
As they made their way down to the waiting horses, Brohl Handar said, ‘I saw no pickets, Atri-Preda. Nor mounted outriders. Does that not seem odd to you?’
‘No. They know we are close. They wanted us to see that camp.’
‘To achieve what? Some pointless effort to overawe us?’
‘Something like that, yes.’
You invite me to feel contempt for these Awl. Why? So that you can justify not using the Tiste Edur? The K’risnan? You want this victory on the morrow to be Letherii. You do not want to find yourself beholden to the Edur-not for this grand theft of land and beast, this harvesting of slaves.
So, I suspect, the Factor instructed, hetur Anict is not one to share the spoils.
I, Atri-Preda, am not relieved.
‘Stone-tipped arrows-you are truly a fool. They will break against Letherii armour. I can expect nothing from you. At least I discover that now, instead of in the midst of battle.
Toe Anaster settled back on his haunches and watched Torrent march out of the firelight. Off… somewhere. Somewhere important. Like the latrines. He resumed examin-ing the fletching on the Imass arrows. Gift of an old friend That clunking, creaking collection of droll bones. He could barely recall the last time he was among friends. Gruntle perhaps. Another continent. A drunken evening-wa: that Saltoan wine? Gredfallan ale? He couldn’t recall.
Surrounding him, the murmur of thousands-their moving through the camp, their quiet conversations around the cookfires. Old men and old women, the lame, the young. A fire burning for each and every Awl.
And somewhere out on the plain, Redmask and his warriors-a night without fires, without conversations. Nothing, I imagine, but the soft honing of weapon edges. Iron and stone whispering in the night.
A simple deceit, its success dependent on Letherii expectations. Enemy scouts had spotted this camp, after all, As predicted. Countless fires in the darkness, appropriately close to Bast Fulmar, the site of the impending battle. All the way it was supposed to be.
But Redmask had other plans. And to aid in the deception, Toc suspected, some arcane sorcery from the K’Chain Che’Malle.
An elder appeared, walking into the fire’s glow on bowed legs. Toc had seen this one speaking to Redmask, often riding at the war leader’s side. He crouched down opposite Toc and studied him for a dozen heartbeats, then spat into the flames, nodded at the answering sizzle, and spoke: ‘I do not trust you.’
‘I’m crushed.’
‘Those arrows, they are bound in ritual magic. Yet no spirit has blessed them. What sort of sorcery is that? Letherii? Are you a creature of the Tiles and Holds? A traitor in our midst. You plot betrayal, vengeance against our abandoning you.’
Trying to inspire me, Elder? Sorry to disappoint you, but there are no embers in the ashes, nothing to stir to life.’
‘You are young.’
‘Not as young as you think. Besides, what has that to do with anything?’
‘Redmask likes you.’
Toc scratched the scar where an eye had been. ‘Are your wits addled by age?’
A grunt. ‘I know secrets.’
‘Me too.’
‘None to compare with mine. I was there when Redmask’s sister killed herself.’
‘And I suckled at the tit of a K’Chain Che’Malle Matron. If tit is the right word.’
The old man’s face twisted in disbelief. ‘That is a good lie. But it is not the game I am playing. I saw with my own eyes the great sea canoes. Upon the north shore. Thousands upon thousands.’
Toc began returning the arrows to the hide quiver.
‘These arrows were made by a dead man. Dead for a hundred thousand years, or more.’
The wrinkled scowl opposite him deepened. ‘I have seen skeletons running in the night-on this very plain.’
‘This body you see isn’t mine. I stole it.’
‘I alone know the truth of Bast Fulmar.’
‘This body’s father was a dead man-he gasped his last breath even as his seed was taken on a field of battle.’
‘The victory of long ago was in truth a defeat.’
‘This body grew strong on human meat.’
‘Redmask will betray us.’
‘This mouth waters as I look at you.’
The old man pushed himself to his feet. ‘Evil speaks in lies.’
‘And the good know only one truth. But it’s a lie, because there’s always more than one truth.’
Another throatful of phlegm into the campfire. Then a complicated series of gestures, the inscribing in the air above the flames of a skein of wards that seemed to swirl for a moment in the thin smoke. ‘You are banished,’ the elder then pronounced.
‘You have no idea, old man.’
‘I think you should have died long ago.’
‘More times than I can count. Started with a piece of a moon. Then a damned puppet, then… oh, never mind.’
‘Torrent says you will run. In the end. He says your courage is broken.’
Toc looked down into the flames. ‘That may well be,’ he said.
‘He will kill you then.’
‘Assuming he can catch me. If there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s ride a horse.’
With a snarl, the elder stormed off.
‘Courage,’ Toc muttered to himself. ‘Yes, there is that. And maybe cowardice truly is bred in the very bones.’ Because let’s face it, Arxaster was no cold iron. Nor hot, for that matter.
From somewhere in the night came the keening howl of a wolf.
Toc grunted. ‘Yes, well, it’s not as if I had the privilege of choice, is it? I wonder if any of us has. Ever.’ He raised his voice slightly, ‘You know, Torrent-yes, I see you hulking out there-it occurs to me, given the precedent, that the question of cowardice is one your Awl must face, tomorrow. I have no doubt Redmask-if he has any concerns-is thinking on that right now. Wondering. Can he bully all of you into honour?’
The vague shape that was Torrent moved off.
Toc fell silent, tossed yet another lump of rodara dung onto the fire, and thought about old friends long gone.
The lone line of scuffed footprints ended with a figure, trudging up the distant slope of clay and pebbles. That was the thing about following a trail, Hedge reminded himself. Easy to forget the damned prints belonged to something real, especially after what seemed weeks of tracking the bastard.
T’lan Imass, as he had suspected. Those splayed, bony feet dragged too much, especially with an arch so high it left no imprint. True, some bowlegged Wickan might leave something similar, but not walking at a pace that stayed ahead of Hedge for this long. Not a chance of that. Still, it was odd that the ancient undead warrior was walking at all.
Easier traversing this wasteland as dust.
Maybe it’s too damp. Maybe it’s no fun being mud. I’ll have to ask it that.
Assuming it doesn’t kill me outright. Or try to, I mean. I keep forgetting that I’m already dead. If there’s one thing the dead should remember, it’s that crucial detail, don’t you think, Fid? Bah, what would you know. You’re still alive. And not here either.
Hood take me, I’m in need of company.
Not that damned whispering wind, though. Good thing it had fled, in tatters, unable to draw any closer to this T’lan Imass with-yes-but one arm. Beat up thing, ain’t i just?
He was sure it knew he was here, a thousand pace behind it. Probably knows I’m a ghost, too. Which is why i hasn’t bothered attacking me.
I think I’m getting used to this.
Another third of a league passed before Hedge was able to draw close enough to finally snare the undead warrior’s regard. Halting, slowly turning about. The flint weapon in its lone hand was more a cutlass than a sword, its end strangely hooked. A hilt had been fashioned from the palmate portion of an antler, creating a shallow, tined bell-guard polished brown with age. Part of the warrior’s face had been brutally smashed: but one side of its heavy jaw was intact, giving its ghastly mien a lopsided cant.
‘Begone, ghost,’ the T’lan Imass said in a ravaged voice.
‘Well I would,’ Hedge replied, ‘only it seems we’re heading in the same direction.’
‘That cannot be.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you do not know where I am going.’
‘Oh, perfect Imass logic. In other words, absurd idiocy. No, I don’t know precisely where you are going, but it i| undeniably to be found in the same direction as where I am headed. Is that too sharp an observation for you?’
‘Why do you hold to your flesh?’
‘The same reason, I suppose, why you hold on to what’s left of yours. Listen, I am named Hedge. I was once a soldier, a Bridgeburner. Malazan marines. Are you some cast-off from Logros T’lan Imass?’
The warrior said nothing for a moment, then, ‘I was once of Kron T’lan Imass. Born in the Season of Blood-from-the-Mountain to the clan of Eptr Phinana. My own blood arrived on the shores of Jagra Til. I am Emroth.’
‘A woman?’
A clattering, uneven shrug.
‘Well, Emroth, what are you doing walking across Hood’s forgotten ice-pit?’
‘There is no pit here.’
‘As you say.’ Hedge looked round. ‘Is this where abandoned T’lan Imass go, then?’
‘Not here,’ Emroth replied. Then the cutlass lifted and slowly pointed.
Ahead. The direction Hedge had decided to call north. ‘What, are we headed towards a huge pile of frozen bones, then?’
Emroth turned and began walking once more.
Hedge moved up alongside the undead creature. ‘Were you beautiful once, Emroth?’
‘I do not remember.’
‘I was hopeless with women,’ Hedge said. ‘My ears are too big-yes, that’s why I wear this leather cap. And I got knobby knees. It’s why I became a soldier, you know. To meet women. And then I discovered that women soldiers are scary. I mean, a lot more scary than normal women, which is saying something. I guess with you Imass, well, everyone was a warrior, right?’
‘I understand,’ Emroth said.
‘You do? Understand what?’
‘Why you have no companions, Hedge of the Bridgeburners.’
‘You’re not going to turn into a cloud of dust on me, are you?’
‘In this place, I cannot. Alas.’
Grinning, Hedge resumed, ‘It’s not like I died a virgin or anything, of course. Even ugly bastards like me-well, so long as there’s enough coin in your hand. But I’ll tell you something, Emroth, that’s not what you’d call love now, is it? So anyway, the truth of it is, 1 never shared that with anybody. Love. I mean, from the time I stopped being a child, right up until I died.
‘Now there was this soldier, once. She was big and mean. Named Detoran. She decided she loved me, and showed it by beating me senseless. So how do you figure that one? Well, I’ve got it worked out. You see, she was even less lovable than me. Poor old cow. Wish I’d understood that at the time. But I was too busy running away from her. Funny how that is, isn’t it?
‘She died, too. And so I had a chance to, you know, talk to her. Since we found ourselves in the same place. Her problem was, she couldn’t put enough words together to make a real sentence. Not thick, much, just inarticulate. People like that, how can you guess what’s in their mind? They can’t tell you, so the guessing stays guessing and most of the time you’re so wrong it’s pathetic. Well, we worked it out, more or less. I think. She said even less as a ghost.
‘But that’s the thing with it all, Emroth. There’s the big explosion, the white, then black, then you’re stirring awake all over again. A damned ghost with nowhere worthwhile to go, and all you’re left with is realizations and regrets. And a list of wishes longer than Hood’s-’
‘No more, Hedge of the Bridgeburners,’ Emroth interjected, the tremor of emotion in its voice. ‘I am not a fool. I comprehend this game of yours. But my memories are not for you.’
Hedge shrugged. ‘Not for you either, I gather. Gave them all away to wage war against the Jaghut. They were so evil, so dangerous, you made of yourselves your first victims. Kind of a backwards kind of vengeance, wouldn’t you say? Like you went and done their work for them. And the real joke is, they weren’t much evil or dangerous at all. Oh, maybe a handful, but those handful earned the wrath of their kin real fast-often long before you and your armies even showed up. They could police themselves just fine. They flung glaciers at you, so what did you do to defeat that? Why, you made your hearts even colder, even more lifeless than any glacier. Hood knows, that’s irony for you.’
‘I am unbound,’ Emroth said in a rasp. ‘My memories remain with me. It is these memories that have broken me.’
‘Broken?’
Another shrug. ‘Hedge of the Bridgeburners, unlike you, I remember love.’
Neither spoke for a time after that. The wind whipped bitter and dry. The crusted remnants of snow crackled underfoot in the beds of moss and lichen. On the horizon ahead there was a slate-grey ridge of some sort, angular like a massed line of toppled buildings. Above it the sky was milky white. Hedge gestured northward. ‘So, Emroth, is that it?’
The half-shattered head lifted. ‘Omtose Phellack.’
‘Really? But-’
‘We must cross it.’
‘Oh, and what lies beyond?’
The T’lan Imass halted and stared at Hedge with its withered, shadow-shrunken eyes. ‘I am not sure,’ it replied. ‘But, I now believe, it may be… home.’
Damn you, Emroth. You’ve just made things a lot harder.
The temple stood on a low hill, the land barren on all sides. Its huge cyclopean walls looked battered, shoved inward as if by ten thousand stone fists. Crooked fissures tracked the dark grey granite from ground level to the massive lintel stone leaning drunkenly above what had once been a grand, noble entranceway. The remnants of statues jutted from pedestals set to either side of the broad, now sagging steps.
Udinaas did not know where he was. Just another dream, or what started as a dream. Doomed, like all the others, to slide into something far worse.
And so he waited, trembling, his legs crippled, broken and lifeless beneath him-a new variation on the theme of incapacity. Bludgeoning symbol to his many flaws. The last time, he recalled, he had been squirming on the ground, limbless, a broken-backed snake. It seemed his subconscious lacked subtlety, a most bitter admission.
Unless, of course, someone or something else was send-ing these visitations.
And now, corpses had appeared on the stony slopes beneath the temple. Scores, then hundreds.
Tall, skin pale as the shell of turtle eggs, red-rimmed eyes set deep in elongated, chiselled faces, and too many joints on their long limbs, transforming their stiff expressions of death into something surreal, fevered-but that last detail was no surprise.
And now, a smudge of motion in the darkness beneath the lintel stone. A figure staggering into view. Unlike the dead. No, this one looked… human.
Splashed in blood from head to toe, the man reeled forward, halted at the top of the steps and looked round with wild, enraged eyes. Then, flinging his head back, he screamed at the colourless sky.
No words. Just fury.
Udinaas recoiled, sought to drag himself away.
And the figure saw him. One crimson, dripping hand, lifting, reaching out for him. Beckoning.
As if grasped by the throat, Udinaas lurched closer to the man, to the temple, to the cold scree of corpses. ‘No,’ he muttered, ‘not me. Choose someone else. Not me.’
‘Can you feel this grief, mortal?’
‘Not for me!’
‘But it is. You are the only one left. Are their deaths to be empty, forgotten, without meaning?’
‘
Udinaas tried to hold on to the ground, but the stones pulled loose under his hands, the sandy soil broke free as his nails dragged furrows in his wake. ‘Find someone else!’ His shriek echoed, as if launched directly at the temple, in through the gaping entrance, and echoing within-trapped, stolen away, rebounding until it was no longer his own voice, but that of the temple itself-a mournful cry of dying, of desperate defiance. The temple, voicing its thirst.
And something shook the sky then. Lightning without fire, thunder without sound-an arrival, jarring loose the world.
The entire temple heaved sideways, clouds of dust gasping out from between mortarless joins. It was moments from collapse-
‘No!’ bellowed the figure at the top of the stairs, even as he staggered to regain his balance. ‘This one is mine! My T’orrud Segul! Look at these dead-they must be saved, delivered, they must be-’
And now another voice sounded, behind Udinaas, high, distant, a voice of the sky itself. ‘No, Errant. These dead are Forkrul Assail. Dead by your own hand. You cannot kill them to save them-’
‘Dread witch, you know nothing! They’re the only ones l can save!’
‘The curse of Elder Gods-look at the blood on your hands. It is all of your own making. All of it.’
A huge shadow swept over Udinaas then. Wheeled round.
Wind gusting, tossing tangled black hair upward from corpses, buffeting the torn fragments of their clothes; then, a sudden pressure, as of vast weight descending, and the dragon was there-between Udinaas and the Errant-long hind limbs stretching downward, claws plunging through cold bodies, crushing them in the snapping of bones as the enormous creature settled on the slope. Sinuous neck curling round, the huge head drawing closer to Udinaas, eyes of white fire.
Its voice filled his skull. ‘Do you know me?’
Argent flames rippling along the golden scales, a presence exuding incandescent heat-Forkrul Assail bodies blackened beneath her, skin crinkling, peeling back. Fats melting, popping from sudden blisters, weeping from joints.
Udinaas nodded. ‘Menandore. Sister Dawn. Rapist.’
Thick, liquid laughter. The head swung away, angled up towards the Errant. ‘This one is mine,’ she said. ‘I claimed him long ago.’
‘Claim what you like, Menandore. Before we are done here, you will give him to me. Of your own will.’
‘Indeed?’
‘As… payment.’
‘For what?’
‘For news of your sisters.’
She laughed again. ‘Do you imagine I don’t know?’
‘But I offer more.’ The god raised his red hands. ‘I can ensure they are removed from your path, Menandore. A simple… nudge.’
The dragon shifted round, regarded Udinaas once more. ‘For this one?’
‘Yes.’
‘Very well, you can have him. But not our child.’
It was the Errant’s turn to laugh. ‘When last did you visit that… child, Menandore?’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Only this. He is grown now. His mind is his own. Not yours, Menandore. You are warned, and this time 1 demand nothing in return. Elder Gods, my dear, can on occasion know mercy.’
She snorted-a gust of raw power. ‘I have heard that. Fine propaganda, the morsel you feed to your starving, pathetic worshippers. This man, this father of my child, he will fail you. T’orrud Segul. He has no faith. The compassion within him is like a meer-rat in a pit of lions-dancing faster than you can see, ever but moments from annihilation. He has played with it for a long time, Errant. You will not catch it, cannot claim it, cannot bind it to your cause.’ She voiced her cruel laughter once more. ‘I took more from him than you realize.’
Including, hitch, my fear of you. ‘You think you can give me away, Menandore?’
The eyes flared with amusement or contempt or both. ‘Speak then, Udinaas, let us hear your bold claims.’
‘You both think you summoned me here, don’t you? For your stupid tug of war. But the truth is, I summoned the two of you.’
‘You are mad-’
‘Maybe so, Menandore. But this is my dream. Not yours. Not his. Mine.’
‘You fool,’ she spat. ‘Just try banishing us-’
Udinaas opened his eyes, stared up at a cold, clear night sky, and allowed himself a smile. My dream, your nightmare. He pulled the furs tighter about himself, drawing up his legs-making sure they weren’t broken. Stiffness in the knees-normal, what came of scrabbling oyer rock and ice-but warm with life. ‘All is well,’ he whispered.
‘Good,’ said Kettle.
Udinaas turned, looked up. She was crouched at his side. ‘Why are you awake?’ he demanded.
‘I’m not. And neither are you. That temple, it fell over. After you left.’
‘Hope it crushed the Errant flat, then.’
‘No. You’d already sent him away. Her too.’
‘But not you.’
‘No. You didn’t know I was there.’
All right, so I am still dreaming. What do you want?’
‘That temple. It couldn’t have held all those souls. All that grief. It was broken and that’s why it fell over. That was what you were supposed to see. So you’d understand when everything happens. And not be sad. And be able to do what he wants you to do, just not in the way he thought it would be. That’s all.’
‘Good. Now crawl back to your own dreams, Kettle.’
‘Okay. Just remember, don’t cry too soon. You have to wait.’
‘Really. How long before I do this crying?’
But she was gone.
He’d caught some damn fever from the rotting ice. Shivering and hallucinating for three-maybe four-nights now. Bizarre dreams inside dreams and on and on. Delusions of warmth, the comfort of furs not sodden with sweat, the balm of mysterious conversations where meaning wasn’t an issue. I like this life. It’s predictable. Mostly. And when it isn’t, it feels no different. 1 take whatever comes at me. As if each night 1 receive lessons in… in taking control.
Now it was time for the huge table heaped with all his favourite foods.
They said he was gaunt as a wraith.
But every night he ate his fill.
With the dawn light pushing the shadows into the clefts and valleys and transforming the snow-clad peaks into molten gold, Seren Pedac rose from her furs and stood, feeling grimy and dishevelled. The high altitude left her throat sore and her eyes dry, and her allergies only exasperated those conditions. Shivering in the cutting wind, she watched Fear Sengar struggling to relight the fire. Long-frozen wood was reluctant to burn. Kettle had been gathering grasses and she now squatted down beside the Tiste Edur with her offerings.
A ragged cough from where Udinaas lay still buried in furs. After a moment, he slowly sat up. Face flushed with fever, sweat on his brow, his eyes dull. He hacked out a noise Seren belatedly realized was laughter.
Fear’s head snapped round as if wasp-stung. ‘This amuses you? You’d rather another cold meal to start the day?’
Udinaas blinked over at the Tiste Edur, then shrugged and looked away.
Seren cleared her throat. ‘Whatever amused him, Fear, had nothing to do with you.’
‘Speaking for me now?’ Udinaas asked her. He tottered weakly to his feet, still wrapped in the furs. ‘This might be another dream,’ he said. ‘At any moment that white-skinned warrior perched over there might transform into a dragon. And the child Kettle will open her mouth like a door, into which Fear Sengar will plunge, devoured by his own hunger to betray.’ The flat, murky eyes fixed on Seren Pedac. ‘And you will conjure lost ages, Acquitor, as if the follies of history had any relevance, any at all.’
The whirl and snap of a chain punctuated the bizarre pronouncements.
Udinaas glanced over at Clip, and smiled. ‘And you’re dreaming of sinking your hands into a pool of blood, but not any old blood. The question is, can you manipulate events to achieve that red torrent?’
‘Your fever has boiled your brain,’ the Tiste Andii warrior said with an answering smile. He faced Silchas Ruin. ‘Kill him or leave him behind.’
Seren Pedac sighed, then said, ‘Clip, when will we begin our descent? Lower down, there will be herbs to defeat his fever.’
‘Not for days,’ he replied, spinning the chain in his right hand. And even then… well, I doubt you’ll find what you’re looking for. Besides,’ he added, ‘what ails him isn’t entirely natural.’
Silchas Ruin, facing the trail they would climb this day, said, ‘He speaks true. Old sorcery fills this fetid air.’
‘What kind?’ Seren asked.
‘It is fragmented. Perhaps… K’Chain Che’Malle-they rarely used their magic in ways easily understood. Never in battle. I do recall something… necromantic’
And is that what this is?’
‘I cannot say, Acquitor.’
‘So why is Udinaas the one afflicted? What about the rest of us?’
No-one ventured a response, barring another broken laugh from Udinaas.
Rings clacked. ‘I have made my suggestion,’ Clip said.
Again, the conversation seemed to die. Kettle walked over to stand close to Udinaas, as if conferring protection.
The small campfire was finally alight, if feebly so. Seren collected a tin pot and set out to find some clean snow, which should have been a simple enough task. But the rotted patches were foul with detritus. Smears of decaying vegetation, speckled layers of charcoal and ash, the carcasses of some kind of ice-dwelling worm or beetle, wood and pieces of countless animals. Hardly palatable. She was surprised they weren’t all sick.
She halted before a long, narrow stretch of ice-crusted snow that filled a crack or fold in the rock. She drew her knife, knelt down and began pecking at it. Chunks broke away. She examined each one, discarding those too dis-coloured with filth, setting the others into the pot. Not much like normal glaciers-those few she had seen up close. After all, they were made of successive snowfalls as much as creeping ice. Those snowfalls normally produced relatively pristine strata. But here, it was as if the air through which the snow fell had been thick with drifting refuse, clogging every descending flake. Air thick with smoke, ash, pieces of once living things. What could have done that? If just ash then she could interpret it as the result of some volcanic eruption. But not damned fragments of skin and meat. What secret hides in these mountains?
She managed to dig the knife-point deep into the ice, j then settled her weight on it. The entire remaining slab of ice lifted suddenly, prised away from the crack. And there, lying beneath it, a spear.
The shaft, long as Seren was tall, was not wood. Polished, mottled amber and brown, it looked almost… scaled. The broad head was of one piece, blade and stem, ground jade, milky smooth and leaf-shaped. No obvious glue or binding held the socket onto the shaft.
She pulled the weapon loose. The scaled texture, she saw, was created by successive, intricate layering of horn, which explained the mottled appearance. Again, she could discern no indication of how the layers were fixed. The spear was surprisingly heavy, as if the shaft had mineralized.
A voice spoke behind her. ‘Now that is an interesting find.’
She turned, studied Clip’s mocking expression, and felt a flash of irritation. ‘In the habit of following people around, Clip?’
‘No, mostly I lead them. I know, that task serves to push you to one side. Leaves you feeling useless.’
‘Any other bright observations you want to make?’
He shrugged, spinning the damned chain back and forth. ‘That spear you found. It’s T’lan Imass.’
‘Is that supposed to mean something to me?’
‘It will.’
‘It’s not a weapon you fight with, is it?’
‘No. And I don’t hide in trees and throw fruit either.’
She frowned.
He laughed, turning away. ‘I was born in Darkness, Acquitor.’
And?’
He paused, glanced back at her. ‘Why do you think I am rhe Mortal Sword of the Black-Winged Lord? My good looks? My charming personality? My skill with these blades here?’
‘Well,’ she replied, ‘you’ve just exhausted my list of reasons.’
‘Ha ha. Hear me. Born in Darkness. Blessed by our Mother. The first in thousands of years-she turned away, you know. From her chosen sons. Thousands of years? More like tens of thousands. But not from me. I can walk the Darkness, Acquitor.’ He waved his chain-spinning hand back towards the others. ‘Not even Silchas Ruin can make that claim.’
‘Does he know?’
‘No. This is our secret for as long as you choose.’
And why would I choose to not tell him this, Clip?’
‘Because I am the only one here who can keep him from killing you. You and Udinaas-the two he considers most useless. Indeed, potential enemies.’
‘Enemies? Why would he think that?’ She shook her head in disbelief. ‘We’re just bugs he can crush underfoot any time he likes. An enemy is one who poses a threat. We don’t.’
‘Well, on that count, I see no need to enlighten you. Yet.’
Snorting, she turned and collected the pot with its chunks of glittering ice.
‘Plan on keeping your find?’ Clip asked.
She looked down at the weapon in her right hand. ‘Udinaas can use it as a crutch.’
Clip’s laugh was bitterly cruel. ‘Oh, the injustice, Acquitor. For a storied weapon such as that one.’
She frowned at him. ‘You speak as if you recognise it. Do you?’
‘Let’s just say it belongs with us.’
Frustrated, she moved past him, back towards the camp.
The spear drew attention, frighteningly fast from Silchas Ruin, who-before he spun round to face her-seemed to flinch. Udinaas, too-his head snapping up as she walked towards him. She felt her heart lurch in her chest and was suddenly afraid.
She sought to hide it by holding stubbornly to her original thought. ‘Udinaas, I found this-you can use it to keep your balance.’
He grunted, then nodded. ‘A ground-stone tip-can’t have much of an edge, can it? At least I won’t stumble and poke my eye out, unless I work hard at it, and why would I do that?’
‘Do not mock it,’ Silchas Ruin said. ‘Use it in the manner the Acquitor has suggested, by all means. But know that it is not yours. You will have to surrender it-know that, Udinaas.’
‘Surrender it-to you, perchance?’
Again the flinch. ‘No.’ And Silchas Ruin turned away once more.
Udinaas grinned weakly at Seren. ‘Have you just given me a cursed weapon, Acquitor?’
‘I don’t know.’
He leaned on it. ‘Well, never mind. I’ve a whole collection of curses-one more won’t make much difference.’
Ice was melted, waterskins refilled. Another pot of frozen snow provided the water for a broth of herbs, rinds of myrid fat, berries and nuggets of sap taken from maple trees-the last of which they had seen ten days ago, at an elevation where the air was invigorating and sweetly pungent with life. Here, there were no trees. Not even shrubs. The vast forest surrounding them was barely ankle high-a tangled world of lichen and mosses.
Holding a bowl of the soup in trembling hands, Udinaas spoke to Seren. ‘So, just to get things straight in this epic farce of ours, did you find this spear or did it find you?’
She shook her head. ‘No matter. It’s yours now.’
‘No. Silchas is right. You’ve but loaned it to me, Acquitor. It slides like grease in my hands. I couldn’t use it to fight-even if I knew how, which I don’t.’
‘Not hard,’ Clip said. ‘Just don’t hold it at the sharp end and poke people with it until they fall over. I’ve yet to face a warrior with a spear I couldn’t cut to pieces.’
Fear Sengar snorted.
And Seren knew why. It was enough to brighten this morning, enough to bring a wry smile to her lips.
Clip noted it and sneered, but said nothing.
‘Pack up,’ Silchas Ruin said after a moment. ‘I weary of waiting.’
‘I keep telling you,’ Clip said, spinning the rings once more, ‘it’ll all come in its own time, Silchas Ruin.’
Seren turned to face the rearing peaks to the north. The gold had paled, as if drained of all life, all wonder. Another day of weary travel awaited them. Her mood plunged and she sighed.
Given the choice, this game should have been his own. Not Cotillion’s, not Shadowthrone’s. But enough details had drifted down to Ben Adaephon Delat, heavy and grim as the ash from a forest fire, to make him content, for the moment, to choke on someone else’s problems. Since the Enfilade at Pale, his life had been rather headlong. He felt as if he was plunging down a steep hill, for ever but one step from bone-snapping, blood-spraying disaster.
Used to be he thrived on such feelings. Proof that he was alive.
Yet… too many friends had fallen to the wayside on the journey. Far too many, and he was reluctant to let others take their places-not even this humble Tiste Edur with his too-full heart, his raw wound of grief; nor that damned T’lan Imass who now waded through a turgid sea of memories, as if seeking one-just one-that did not sob with futility. The wrong company indeed for Quick Ben-they were such open invitations to friendship. Not pity-which would have been easier. No, their damned nobility demolished that possibility.
And look where all his friends had gone. Whiskeyjack, Hedge, Trotts, Dujek Onearm, Kalam… well, wasn’t it always the way, that the pain of loss so easily overwhelmed the… the not-yetAost? And that sad list was only the most recent version. All since Pale. What of all the others, from long ago? Us damned survivors don’t have it easy. Not even close.
The thought made him sneer inside. What was this feeling sorry for himself? Pathetic indulgence and nothing else.
Skirting the edge of a submerged ravine, they sloshed through tepid, waist-deep water, their passage swirling up clouds of silts that had rested lightly on some unseen, interminably paved lake-bottom. Tracked now by-some kind of fish, their humped backs appearing every now and then to one side or the other, the dorsal fin ribbed, the bulge of water hinting at sizes a little too large for restful contemplation.
Least pleasant of all, Trull Sengar’s comment only moments past that these fish were probably the same kind that had once tried to eat him.
And Onrack the Broken had replied, ‘Yes, they are the same as the ones we fought on the floodwall, although of course they were then in their land-dwelling stage of life.’
‘So why are they here?’ Trull then asked.
‘Hungry,’ Onrack answered.
Enough, right then and there, to stir Quick Ben from his morose taciturnity. ‘Listen to you two! We’re about to be attacked by giant wizard-eating fish and you’re reminiscing! Look, are we in real danger or what?’
Onrack’s robust, prognathous face swung to regard him for a moment, then the T’lan Imass said, ‘We were assuming that you were warding us from them, Quick Ben.’
‘Me?’ He looked about, seeking any sign of dry land-but the milky water stretched on and on.
‘Is it time, then, to make use of your gate?’
Quick Ben licked his lips. ‘I think so. I mean, I’ve recovered from the last time, more or less. And I found somewhere to go. It’s just…’
Trull Sengar leaned on his spear. ‘You came out of that magical journey, Quick Ben, wearing the grin of the condemned. If indeed our destination is as fraught as it must be, I can understand your reluctance. Also, having observed you for some time now, it is clear to me that your battle against Icarium has weakened you at some fundamental level-perhaps you fear you will not be able to fashion a gate durable enough to permit the passage of all three of us? If so-’
‘Wait,’ the wizard interjected, silently cursing. ‘All right, I am a little… fragile. Ever since Icarium. You see far too much, Trull Sengar. But I can take us all through. That’s a promise. It’s just…’ He glanced over at Onrack. ‘Well, there may be some… unanticipated, uh, developments.’
Onrack spoke, ‘I am at risk?’
‘I’m not sure. Maybe.’
‘This should not unduly affect your decision,’ the T’lan I mass replied. ‘I am expendable. These fish cannot eat me, after all.’
‘If we leave,’ Quick Ben said, ‘you will be trapped here for ever.’
‘No. I will abandon this form. I will join oblivion in these waters.’
‘Onrack-’ Trull began in clear alarm.
But Quick Ben cut in, ‘You’re coming with us, Onrack. I’m just saying there’s a little uncertainty with what will happen to you. I can’t explain more. It just relates to where we will find ourselves. To the aspect of that realm, I mean.’
Trull Sengar snorted. ‘Sometimes,’ he said with a wry smile, ‘you are truly hopeless, wizard. Best open the gate now, before we end up in the belly of a fish.’ He then pointed behind Quick Ben. ‘That one looks to be the biggest yet-see the others scatter-and it’s coming straight for us.’
Turning, the wizard’s eyes widened.
The waist-deep water did not even reach its eyes, and the monstrous fish was simply bulling its way through the shallows. A damned catfish of some sort, longer than a Napan galley-
Quick Ben raised his arms and shouted in a loud, oddly high-pitched voice: ‘It’s time to leave!’
Fragile. Oh yes, there is that. I poured too much through me trying to beat him back. There’s only so much mortal flesh and bone can take. The oldest rule of all, for Hood’s sake.
He forced open the gate, heard the explosive plunge of water into the realm beyond-the current wrapping round his legs-and he lunged forward, shouting, ‘Follow me!’
Once again, that nauseating, dreadful moment of suffocation, then he was staggering through a stream, water splashing out on all sides, rushing away-and cold wintry air closed in amidst clouds of vapour.
Trull Sengar stumbled past him, using the spear to right himself a moment before falling.
Gasping, Quick Ben turned.
And saw a figure emerge from the white mists.
Trull Sengar’s shout of surprise startled into the air birds from a nearby swath of knee-high trees, and as they raced skyward they spun in a half-circle over the head of Onrack the Broken. At their cries, at the swarm of tiny shadows darting around him, the warrior looked up, then halted.
Quick Ben saw Onrack’s chest swell with an indrawn breath that seemed without end.
The head then tilted down once more.
And the wizard stared into a face of smooth, wind-burnished skin. Eyes of green glittered beneath the heavy ridge of the brow. Twin streams of cold air then plumed down from Onrack’s broad, flattened, oft-broken nose.
From Trull Sengar, ‘Onrack? By the Sisters, Onrack!’
The small eyes, buried in epicanthic folds, shifted. A low, reverberating voice rumbled from the flesh and blood warrior. ‘Trull Sengar. Is this… is this mortality?’
The Tiste Edur drew a step closer. ‘You don’t remember? How it feels to be alive?’
‘I-I… yes.’ A sudden look of wonder in that heavy, broadly featured face. ‘Yes.’ Another deep breath, then a gust that was nearly savage in its exultation. The strange gaze fixed on Quick Ben once more. ‘Wizard, is this illusion? Dream? A journey of my spirit?’
‘I don’t think so. I mean, I think it’s real enough.’
‘Then… this realm. It is Tellann.’
‘Maybe. I’m not sure.’
Trull Sengar was suddenly on his knees, and Quick Ben saw tears streaming down the Tiste Edur’s lean, dusky face.
The burly, muscled warrior before them, still wearing the rotted remnants of fur, slowly looked round at the withered landscape of open tundra. ‘Tellann,’ he whispered. ‘Tellann.’
‘When the world was young,’ Redmask began, ‘these plains surrounding us were higher, closer to the sky. The earth was as a thin hide, covering thick flesh that was nothing but Irozen wood and leaves. The rotted corpse of ancient lorests. Beneath summer sun, unseen rivers flowed through that forest, between every twig, every crushed-down branch. And with each summer, the sun’s heat was greater, the season longer, and the rivers flowed, draining the vast buried forest. And so the plains descended, settled as the dried-out forest crumbled to dust, and with the rains more water would sink down, sweeping away that dust, southward, northward, eastward, westward, following valleys, rising to join streams. All directions, ever flowing away.’
Masarch sat silent with the other warriors-a score or more now, gathering to hear the ancient tale. None, however-Masarch included-had heard it told in quite this way, the words emerging from the red-scaled mask-from a warrior who rarely spoke yet who spoke now with ease, matching the cadence of elders with perfect precision.
The K’Chain Che’Malle stood nearby, hulking and motionless like a pair of grotesque statues. Yet Masarch imagined that they were listening, even as he and his companions were.
‘The land left the sky. The land settled onto stone, the very bone of the world. In this manner, the land changed to echo the cursed sorceries of the Shamans of the Antlers, the ones who kneel among boulders, the worshippers of stone, the weapon-makers.’ He paused, then said, ‘This was no accident. What I have just described is but one truth. There is another.’ A longer hesitation, then a long, drawn-out sigh. ‘Shamans of the Antlers, gnarled as tree roots, those few left, those few still haunting our dreams even as they haunt this ancient plain. They hide in cracks in the world’s bone. Sometimes their bodies are all but gone, until only their withered faces stare out from those cracks, challenging eternity as befits their terrible curse.’
Masarch was not alone in shivering in the pre-dawn chill, at the images Redmask’s words conjured. Every child knew of those twisted, malevolent spirits, the husks of shamans long, long dead, yet unable to truly die. Rolling stones into strange patterns beneath star-strewn night skies, chewing with their teeth the faces of boulders to make frightening scenes that only appeared at dusk or dawn, when the sun’s light was newborn or fading into death-and far more often the boulders were so angled that it was at the moments of dusk that the deep magic was awakened, the images rising into being from what had seemed random pecules in the stone. Magic to murder the wind in that place-
‘In the time before the plains descended, the shamans and their dread followers made music at the sun’s dying, on the night of its shortest passage, and at other holy times before the snows came. They did not use skin drums. There was no need. No, they used the hide of the earth, the buried forest beneath. They pounded the skin of the world until every beast of the plain trembled, until the bhederin burst into motion, tens of thousands as one, and ran wild through the night-and so they too echoed the music of the Shamans of the Antlers, feeding their dark power.
‘But the land fell away in the end-in grasping eternity, the shamans slew the very earth itself. This curse is without rest. This curse would close about our necks-each and every one of us here-this very night, if it could.’
Redmask was silent for a time then, as if allowing the terror to run free through the hearts of his audience. Eventually he resumed. ‘The Shamans of the Antlers gathered their deathless warriors then, and set out to wage war. Abandoning this plain-and from that time, only those who fell in battle were returned here. Broken pieces. Failed and withered as the plain itself, never again to reach or even look skyward. Such was their curse.
‘We do not forgive. It is not in us to forgive. But nor will we forget.
‘Bast Fulmar, the Valley of Drums. The Letherii believe we hold it in great awe. They believe this valley was the site of an ancient war between the Awl and the K’Chain Che’Malle-although the Letherii know not the true name of our ancient enemy. Perhaps indeed there were.skirmishes, such that memory survives, only to twist and bind anew in false shapes. Many of you hold to those new shapes, believing them true. An ancient battle. One we won. One we lost-there are elders who are bold with the latter secret, as if defeat was a knife hidden in their heart-hand.’ Redmask shrugged at the notion, dismissing it. Pale light was creeping close. Birdsong rose from the low shrubs.
‘Bast Fulmar,’ Redmask said again. ‘Valley of Drums. Here, then, is its secret truth. The Shamans of the Antlers drummed the hide of this valley before us. Until all life was stolen, all the waters fled. They drank deep, until nothing was left. For at this time, the shamans were not alone, not for that fell ritual. No, others of their kind had joined them-on distant continents, hundreds, thousands of leagues away, each and all on that one night. To sever their life from the earth, to sever this earth from its own life.’
Silence, then, not a single warrior even so much as drawing breath. Held-too long-
Redmask released them with another sigh. ‘Bast Fulmar. We rise now to make war. In the Valley of Drums, my warriors, Letherii sorcery will fail. Edur sorcery will fail. In Bast Fulmar, there is no water of magic, no stream of power from which to steal. All used up, all taken to quench the fire that is life. Our enemy is not aware. They will find the truth this day. Too late. Today, my warriors, shall be iron against iron. That and nothing more.’
Redmask then rose. ‘Release the truth-to every warrior. Then make ready. We march to battle. To victory.’
Courage surged through Masarch’s chest, and he found he was on his feet, trembling, and now moving off into the fading gloom, whispering his words to all that he passed. Again and again.
‘Bast Fulmar sings this day. It sings: there is no magic. There is no magic!’
Stablers gathering the horses and leading them across the courtyard behind her, Atri-Preda Yan Tovis left the reins of her mount in the hands of an aide, then strode towards the estate’s squat, brooding entrance. Thirty leagues south of the port town of Rennis, Boaral Keep was the birthplace of the Grass Jackets Brigade, but that was a long century past and now some third or fourth son of a remotely related Boaral held this fortress, clinging to the antiquated noble title of Dresh-Preda, or Demesne Lord. And in his command, a garrison consisting of barely a dozen soldiers, at least two of whom-at the outer gate-were drunk.
Weary, saddlesore, and feeling decidedly short on patience, Yan Tovis ascended the four broad, shallow steps to the lintel-capped main doors. No guard in sight. She wrenched the latch clear, then kicked open the heavy door and marched into the gloomy foyer within, startling two old women with buckets and khalit vine mops.
They flinched back, eyes down, hastily genuflecting.
‘Where is Dresh Boaral?’ Twilight demanded as she tugged free her gauntlets.
The hags exchanged glances, then one attempted some-ihing like a curtsy before saying, ‘Ma’am, he be well sleeping it off, aye. An’ us, we be well cleaning up his supper.’
A muffled snort from the other servant.
Only now did Yan Tovis detect the acrid smell of bile beneath that of lye soap. ‘Where then is the Master at Arms?’
‘Ma’am,’ another curtsy, then, ‘he be ridin’ off wi’ four soljers, west as they say, t’reach the coast fast as a clam squirt, an’ that’s a cloud ain’t e’en settled yet.’
‘He left recently then? What was the reason? And how far is the coast from here?’
‘Ma’am, would be unner a bell, fast-goin’ as he was.’
And the reason?’
Another mysterious exchange of glances, then, ‘Ma’am, coast be well black an’ whispery of late. Got fishers vanishin’ an’ demon eyes flashin’ from the deeps. Got islands be well ice an’ all, pale an’ deathly as the innards of a murderer’s skull.’
‘The Master at Arms rode off after superstitious rumours?’
‘Ma’am, I be well ‘ave a cousin on the shore-’
‘The ditsy one, aye,’ interjected the other hag.
‘Be well ditsy but that don’t matter in this, in this being the voices of the sea, which she heard an’ heard more’n once too. Voices, ma’am, like the ghosts of the drowned as she says, havin’ heard them an’ heard them more’n once too.’
Two of her sergeants were now behind the Atri-Preda, listening. Twilight loosened the strap on her helm. ‘This Master stays sober?’ she asked.
‘One a them hast, be well an’ all.’
‘It be him,’ the other agreed. ‘An’ that a curse what make us worse at bad times of the night like now-’
‘Shush you! This ma’am be a soljer outrankin’ Dresh himself!’
‘You don’t know that, Pully! Why-’
‘But I do! Whose nephew dug latrines for the Grass Jackets, be well he did! It’s ranks an’ neck tores an’ the cut of the cape an’ all-’
Yan Tovis turned to one of her sergeants. ‘Are there fresh horses in the stables?’
A nod. ‘Four, Atri-Preda.’
The first old woman pushed at the other at that and said, ‘Tolya! Be well I did!’
Yan Tovis tilted her head back in an effort to loosen the muscles of her neck. She closed her eyes for a moment, then sighed. ‘Saddle them up, Sergeant. Pick me three of the least exhausted riders. I am off to find our missing Master at Arms.’
‘Sir.’ The man saluted and departed.
Turning back to the old women, the Atri-Preda asked, ‘Where is the nearest detachment of Tiste Edur?’
A half-dozen heartbeats of non-verbal communication between the two hags, then the first one nodded and said, ‘Rennis, ma’am. An’ they be well not once visited neither.’
‘Be glad they haven’t,’ Twilight said. ‘They would have separated Boaral’s head from his shoulders.’
The second woman snorted. ‘Not so’s he’d notice-’
‘Shush!’ scolded the first one. Then, to Twilight, ‘Ma’am, Dresh Boaral, he lost mostly alia his kin when the Edur come down. Lost his wife, too, in Noose Bog, what, now be well three years-’
The other hag spat onto the floor they had just cleaned. ‘Lost? Be well strangled and dumped, Pully, by his master himself! So now he drowns on his own drinkin’! But oh she was fire wasn’t she-no time for mewlin’ husbands only he likes his mewlin’ and be well likes it enough to murder his own wife!’
Twilight said to the sergeant who had remained, ‘We will stay for a few days. I want the Dresh here under house arrest. Send a rider to Rennis to request adjudication by the Tiste Edur. The investigation will involve some sorcery, specifically speaking with the dead.’
The sergeant saluted and left.
‘Best be well not speak wi’ the mistress, ma’am.’
Twilight frowned at the woman. ‘Why not?’
‘Liable she is t’start talkin’ and ne’er stop. Master drunk an’ she’s fire, all fire-she’s a might claw his eyes out, be well an’ that.’
‘Are you two witches?’
More silent communication between the two hags, then the first one edged one knobby, hairy foot forward and care-fully wiped at the gobbet of spit on the pavestones. The toes, Twilight saw, were taloned.
‘You are Shake? Shoulderwomen of the Old Ways?’
Wrinkled brows rose, then the one named Pully curtsied again. ‘Local born you be well as we’d known, aye. It’s there, ma’am, you’re a child of the shore an’ ain’t you gone far, but not so far as to f’get. Mistress ne’er liked us much.’
‘So who strangled her and dumped her corpse in Noose Bog, Pully?’
The other seemed to choke, then she said, ‘Dresh give ‘is orders plain as web on a trail, didn’t he, Pully? Give ‘is orders an’ wi’ us we be well here since the Keep’s first Mack stone was laid. Loyal, aye. Boaral blood was Letherii blood, the first t’these lands, the first masters a’all. Dresh the First give us ‘is blood in full knowing, t’blacken the Black Stone.’
‘The first Dresh here found you and forced your blessing?’
A cackle from the second woman. ‘What he be well think were blessing!’
Twilight looked away, then stepped to one side and leaned a shoulder against the grimy wall. She was too tired for this. Boaral line cursed by Shake witches-who remained, alive and watchful, through generation after generation. She closed her eyes. ‘Pully, how many wives have you two murdered?’
‘None wi’out Dresh’s command, ma’am.’
‘But your curse drives them mad, every one of them. Don’t make me ask the question again.’
‘Ma’am, be well twenty and one. Once their bearin’ days are done. Mostly.’
‘And you have been working hard at keeping the Tiste Edur away.’
‘No business a theirs, ma’am.’
Nor mine. Yet… not entirely true, is it? ‘End the curse, Pully. You’ve done enough.’
‘Boaral killed more Shake than any other Dresh, ma’am. You know that.’
‘End it,’ Twilight said, opening her eyes and facing the two women, ‘or your heads will be in sacks and buried deep in Noose Bog before this night is out.’
Pully and her companion grinned at each other.
‘I am of the shore,’ Yan Tovis said in a hard voice. ‘My Shake name is Twilight.’
The hags suddenly backed away, then sank down onto their knees, heads bowed.
‘End the curse,’ Twilight said again. ‘Will you defy princess of the Last Blood?’
‘Princess no longer,’ Pully said to the floor.
Yan Tovis felt the blood drain from her face-if not for the wall she leaned against she would have staggered.
‘Your mother died be well a year past,’ Pully said in a soft, sad voice.
The other witch added, ‘Crossin’ from the Isle, the boat overturning. They say it was some demon o’ the deep, pushed too close by dark magic out at sea-the same magic, my Queen, as could be well squirted Master at Arms west as they say. A demon, up unner the boat, an’ all drowned. Whisperin’ from the waters, my Queen, dark and well nigh black.’
Yan Tovis drew a deep breath. To be Shake was to know grief. Her mother was dead, now a face emptied of life. Well, she had not seen the woman in over a decade, had she? So, why this pain? Because there is something else. ‘What is the name of the Master at Arms, Pully?’
‘Yedan Derryg, Highness. The Watch.’
The half-brother I have never met. The one who ran-from his blood, from everything. Ran nearly as far as I did. And yet, was that old tale even true? The Watch was here, after all, a mere bell’s ride from the shore. She understood now why he had ridden out on this night. Something else, and this is it.
Yan Tovis drew her cloak about herself, began pulling on her gauntlets. ‘Feed well my soldiers. I will return with Derryg by dawn.’ As she turned to the door she paused. The madness afflicting the Dresh, Pully.’
Behind her the witch replied, ‘Be well too late for him, Highness. But we will scour the Black Stone this night. Before the Edur arrive.’
Oh, yes, I sent for them, didn’t I? ‘I imagine,’ she said, her gaze fixed on the door, ‘the summary execution of Dresh Boaral will be something of a mercy for the poor man.’
You mean to do it before the Edur come here as they say, Highness?’
Yes, Pully. He will die, I suppose, trying to flee arrest.’ After a moment, she asked, ‘Pully, how many shoulder-women are left?’
‘More than two hundred, Highness.’
‘I see.’
‘My Queen,’ ventured the other, ‘word will be sent out, cob to web as they say, before the sun’s rise. You have been j chosen a betrothed.’
‘I have, have I? Who?’
‘Shake Brullyg, of the Isle.’
‘And does my betrothed remain on Second Maiden Fort?’
‘We think so, Highness,’ Pully replied.
At that she turned round. ‘You don’t know?’
‘The web’s been snapped, Highness. Almost a month now. Ice an’ dark and whisperings, we cannot reach across the waves. The shore is blind to the sea, Highness.’
The shore is blind to the sea. ‘Has such a thing ever occurred before?’
Both witches shook their heads.
Twilight swung about and hastened outside. Her riders awaited her, already mounted, silent with fatigue. She strode to the horse bearing her saddle-a chestnut gelding, the fittest of the lot, she could see in the torchlight-and pulled herself onto its broad back.
‘Atri-Preda?’
‘To the coast,’ she said, gathering the reins. ‘At the canter.’
‘What’s wrong with them?’
The Hound Master’s face was ravaged with distress, tears streaming down his wind-burned cheeks and glistening like sweat in his beard. ‘They’ve been poisoned, Atri-Preda! Poisoned meat, left on the ground-I’m going to lose them all!’
Bivatt cursed under her breath, then said, ‘Then we shall have to do without.’
‘But the Edur mages-’
‘If our own cannot treat them, Bellict, then neither can the warlocks-the Edur tribes do not breed dogs for war, do they? I am sorry. Leave me now.’
Just one more unpleasant surprise to greet this dawn. Her army had marched through the last two bells of night to reach the valley-she wanted to be the first to array her troops for the battle to come, to force Redmask to react rather than initiate. Given the location of the Awl encampment, she had not felt rushed in conducting that march, anticipating it would be midday at the earliest before the savages appeared on the east side of Bast Fulmar, thus negating any advantage of a bright morning sun at their backs.
But that enemy encampment had been a deceit.
Less than a half-league from the valley, scouts had returned to the column to report enemy in strength at Bast Fulmar.
How had her mages not found them? They had no answer, barring a disquieting fear in their eyes. Even Brohl Handar’s Den-Ratha K’risnan and his four warlocks had been at a loss to explain the success of Redmask’s deception. The news had left the sour taste of self-recrimination in Bivatt-relying upon mages had been a mistake, laziness leaning heavy on past successes. Outriding scouts would have discovered the ruse days ago, had she bothered to send them beyond line of sight. Keeping them close ensured no raids or ambushes, both gambits for which I he Awl were renowned. She had been following doctrine, to the letter.
Damn this Redmask. Clearly he knows that doctrine as well as I do. And used it against us.
Now, the battle awaiting them was imminent, and the bright dawn sun would indeed blaze into the eyes of her soldiers even as the first blood was spilled.
Rising in her stirrups, she squinted once more at the valley’s far side. Mounted Awl in swirling motion, in seeming chaos, riding back and forth, lifting clouds of dust that burned gold in the morning light. Horse-archers for the most part. Tending to mass in front of one of the broader slopes to the south, on her right. A second gentle incline was situated slightly to her left, and there, shifting restlessly, were five distinct wedges of Awl warriors on foot, lining what passed for a ridge-and she could see their long spears waving like reeds on a shore. Spears, not those flimsy swords sold them by the Factor’s agents. She judged around a thousand warriors per wedge formation-too disciplined even now, before the fighting began. They should be drunk. Pounding on shields. Their shamans should be rushing about in front, down all the way to the riverbed. Showing us their back’ sides as they defecate. Screaming curses, dancing to summon dread spirits and all the rest. Instead, this…
Well, how likely is it those wedges will survive contact with my soldiers? They are not trained to this kind of war-nor did Redmask have the time to manage anything but mis thin shell of organization. I have over sixteen thousand with me. Eighteen if I include the Tiste Edur. This one army of mine outnumbers the entire Awl population of warriors-and while it looks indeed as if Redmask has gathered them all, still they are not enough.
But he wasn’t making it easy to gauge numbers. The tumultuous back and forth of the horse-archers, the clouds of dust, the truncated line of sight beyond the valley’s ridge-he was keeping her blind.
Brohl Handar reined in at her side, speaking loudly to be heard over the movement of her troops and the officers bellowing orders. ‘Atri-Preda, you seem to intend to hold most of your medium infantry in reserve.’ He gestured behind them to punctuate his words. Then, when it was clear she would not respond, he waved ahead. ‘This valley’s flanks, while not steeply inclined, are ribboned with drainage channels-’
‘Narrow,’ she cut in. ‘Not deep.’
‘True, but they serve to separate the field of battle into segments nonetheless.’
She glanced across at him. ‘We have three such channels on our side, and all of them on my right. They have four, one to my right, two before me and one to my left-and in that direction, north, the valley narrows.’ She pointed. ‘See the bluff on our side there, where the Dresh ballistae are being emplaced? It cannot be assaulted from the valley floor. That shall be our rock in the stream. And before the day is through, not simply a rock, but an anvil.’
‘Provided you can hold the debouch beneath it,’ the Tiste Edur observed.
‘I pray to the Errant that the Awl seek to flee down that defile. It may not look deadly but I assure you, push a few thousand panicking barbarians into that chokepoint and as many will die underfoot as we ourselves slaughter.’
‘So you intend to sweep down and in with your right flank, pushing the enemy on the valley floor north to that narrowing. Cannot Redmask see the same?’
‘He chose this site, Overseer.’
‘Suggesting he sees what you see-that this place invites a half-encirclement to funnel his warriors north-to their deaths. You said, did you not, that this Redmask is no fool. How then will he counter what you seek?’
She faced the valley once again. ‘Overseer, I am afraid I do not have time for this-’
‘Would not a slow placing of your forces be to our advantage, given the sun’s position?’
‘I believe he is ready, even now,’ she replied, biting back her irritation. ‘He could advance at any time-and we are not ready.’
‘Then why not withdraw?’
‘Because the plain behind us is level for leagues-he will have more mounted warriors than I, lighter-armoured than my Bluerose lancers, and on rested horses-they can harry us at will, Overseer. Worse, we have lost our wardogs, while from the sounds of that barking, Redmask has hundreds if not thousands of his drays and herders. Your suggestion invites chaos, a messy succession of skirmishes, attacks, feints, raids-’
‘Very well,’ Brohl Handar interrupted. ‘Atri-Preda, my K’risnan tells me this valley is dead.’
‘What does he mean, dead7.’
‘Bereft of the energies one uses to create magic. It has been… murdered.’
‘This is why none of the mages sensed the Awl army?’
Brohl Handar nodded.
Murdered? By Redmask? Never mind. ‘Did you ask your K’risnan about the impending battle? Will he be able to use sorcery?’
‘No. Nor can your mages. As he said, there will be no magic here. In this valley. That is why I again advise we withdraw. Even on the plain, exposed as you say we are, at least we will have sorcery.’
Bivatt was silent, considering. She had already known her mages would be ineffective in the valley below, although they could not explain why it was so. That the Edur warlocks had found the reason confirmed that spirit magic was involved. After a long moment, she swore and shook her head. ‘We still outnumber them, with better-disciplined, better-armoured troops. Iron to iron, we will crush the Awl today. An end to this war, Overseer. Did you not counsel a quick, succinct campaign?’
‘I did. But I am uneasy, Atri-Preda-’
‘A battle awaits-we are all uneasy.’
‘Not in that way.’
Bivatt grimaced. ‘Retain your warriors, Overseer, midway between our baggage camp and my reserve units-those medium infantry, by the way, are arrayed into discrete platoons of five hundred at the minimum, and each one protects one of my mages. They are not in the valley.’
‘Thus, if you are forced to retreat-’
‘We will be positioned to blunt the pursuit with sorcery, yes.’
‘Is this your plan? A feigned retreat, Atri-Preda?’
‘One of them, but I do not believe it will be necessary.’
Brohl Handar studied her for a long moment, then he gathered his reins and swung his horse round. ‘I will reposition my warriors, then.’
As he rode away, signal horns were sounding from various locations along the western side of the valley as units announced they were in place and at the ready. Bivatt rose once more on her stirrups and scanned her lines.
This section of the valley certainly invited a horned advance-the west edge curved, marking what had once been a broad bend in the course of the long-dead river. The enemy’s side was more undulating, bulging in the centre. The widest approach for the Awl was to her right. To counter that she had set three legions of the Crimson Rampant Brigade in shield-wall formation at the top of the slope, fifteen hundred medium infantry, flanked on the nearer inside by five hundred heavies of the Harridict Brigade. To the furthest right and already edging down into t he valley were a thousand skirmishing light infantry of the Crimson Rampant. Inside of the heavies another fifteen hundred skirmishers, these of the Artisan Battalion, were likewise slowly, raggedly, working their way down. The foot soldiers on this side screened three wings of Bluerose cavalry!; fifteen hundred lancers who would, when she gave the signal, sweep down between the south skirmishers and the Crimson Rampant shield-wall to begin the hard push of the enemy northward along the floor of the valley, even as that shield-wall advanced towards the riverbed.
On her immediate right, at a modest bulge in the ridge line, the Atri-Preda had positioned the Drene Garrison-fifteen hundred medium infantry-looking down on an approach narrowed by two drainage channels. Directly in front of her waited the conjoined wedges of a thousand heavy infantry of the Merchants’ Battalion-a sawtooth lormation that she would advance down then swing either right or left, depending on the state of battle. Rightward was problematic in that they would have to cross a drainage channel, but they would do that so early in the march down that she was not unduly concerned.
To her immediate left waited three half-legions of heavies from the Artisan Battalion, screened in front by a thousand Harridict skirmishers just beginning their move down towards the broad, flat riverbed. Just north of these units waited the Atri-Preda’s mailed fist, a thousand heavies of the Crimson Rampant, again in sawtooth form-ation, against whom she expected Redmask to throw his main force of warriors-who were already directly opposite, still holding to their spearhead forms, five in all.
Behind this solid wall of heavy infantry waited the remaining three companies of Bluerose lancers, although this was a feint, since Bivatt intended to send them northward, round behind the ballistae knoll and down into the riverbed beyond the chokepoint.
North of the Crimson Rampant heavy infantry was another shield-wall of the brigade’s medium infantry, positioned to guard the flank of the heavies to their right and the approach to the knoll to their left.
Settling back onto her saddle, Bivatt gestured and an aide hurried to her side. ‘Signal the Crimson Rampant heavy to advance into the valley and halt midway between their present position and the riverbed. Confirm that the Dresh ballistae are properly sighted for enfilade.’
The runner rushed off to the block of flag signallers gathered on the raised platform behind her. Without mages they were resorting to the ancient practices of communication. Far from ideal, she admitted, and once the clouds of dust rose above the engagement… well, at that point such signalling often became irrelevant.
She waved another aide forward. ‘Send the left flanl lancers to north of the chokepoint.’
Right and left on the valley slope before her, Letherii skirmishers were reaching the flats of the riverbed, still unchallenged. The sound of masses of soldiers in motion rose in a whisper above the thunder of horse-hoofs from the other side of the valley.
On that side the clouds of sunlit dust obscured almost everything, but she noted that those clouds stretched both north and south, well beyond the battle site. Well, one Of those marks a feint, likely the north one. He knows which of my horns will strike deepest and turn. She called out to a third message-bearer. ‘Signal the right flank lancers to advano to the edge of the riverbed, widely arrayed in case the skirmishers need to withdraw in haste. Crimson Rampant mediums and the Harridict heavies to march down in their wake.’
Let’s get this damned thing started, Redmask.
She couldn’t see him. No knot of standards or banners marked his command position. No riders converging in one place then back out again.
But, finally, movement. Lightly armoured skirmishers were pelting down to meet her right advance. Slingers, shortbow archers, javelin-hurlers, round hide shields and scimitars. The mass of horse-archers that had been riding back and forth along that ridge line was suddenly gone.
‘Have the south lancers hold!’ Bivatt snapped. Those Awl skirmishers were an invitation to charge, at which point her cavalry’s flank would be swept by those mounted archers-and whatever lurked hidden behind them.
Light engagement now between skirmishers, directly down from the Drene Garrison. The javelins were an unexpected inclusion, and were proving bloodily effective.
The southernmost Crimson Rampant skirmishers had crossed the riverbed and were angling northward-still a i housand or more paces from contacting their Awl counterparts. Then arrows began descending in their midst-horse-archers, crowding the ridge just above its steepest bank. Hardly clouds of missiles, but enough to make those lightly armoured skirmishers flinch, then contract slightly kick towards the riverbed.
Where the hand-to-hand fighting was occurring, the Artisan skirmishers-weathering the javelin strike-were now driving the Awl back.
The early morning air remained infuriatingly still-no wind at all, and the dust swirled and rolled and spread in an ever-thickening haze.
At sighting the half-thousand heavy infantry of the Harridict appear at the west edge of the riverbed, the Awl skirmishers began a wholesale retreat, many flinging away their round-shields.
Redmask does not have their hearts. Oh, we can break them here. Hard and fast. ‘Signal the Merchants’ heavies to advance and swing south!’
To her left, the only movement was from her own forces, the skirmishers of the Harridict and, just north of them, the Crimson Rampant heavy infantry-almost to the riverbed now. She squinted at the valley’s opposite side. Perhaps this chaos she was seeing was evidence of Redmask’s loss of control. No, wait on this. Wait until we take the valley’s south end.
The Artisan skirmishers were seeking to maintain contact with the retreating Awl, but Bivatt could see the sergeants holding them in check, keeping them just ahead of the advancing heavies on their right flank. Still, throwing away their damned shields…
Then, directly before her, horse-archers appeared, a narrow spear driving down the centre of the battlefield, with only skirmishers opposite them-who quickly backed up the slope at a southerly angle to draw in behind her advancing Merchants’ Battalion of heavy infantry. Is 1 Redmask mad? That spear’point will be smashed against the heavies-this is not how cavalry charge-they’re only horse-archers!
Whereupon the mounted archers wheeled, the spear becoming a line-a thousand or more-suddenly sweeping southward.
Catching the Artisan skirmishers in the flank.
Arrows flashed.
The Letherii light infantry seemed to melt away, bodies tumbling down. Survivors ran for their lives.
That broad line of horse-archers then began a complicated, stunning manoeuvre, its tailing, easternmost end now slowing, swinging up, west, pulling to shift the line south-north, now launching sweeping arrow-fire across the front ranks of the Harridict heavy infantry, then the Crimson Rampant medium, before the head of the line swung back eastward, more missiles arcing across to the Bluerose lancers, who responded with a blare of horns, surging forward to close with the Awl.
Yet they were not interested in such an engagement. The line broke apart, as riders spurred hard back towards the east ridge.
‘Halt that charge!’ Bivatt shouted. Stung, we lash out-who commands that wing?
As the lancers spread out in their hard pursuit, three wings of heavier-armed and armoured Awl horse-warriors appeared on the ridge line, then plunged down the slope to take the Bluerose companies in the flank. Three wings, outnumbering the lancers by two to one.
Bivatt watched in fury as her cavalry sought to wheel to meet the attack, whilst others responded to her command
– and so lost all momentum.
‘Sound the withdrawal for those lancers!’
Too late.
The Awl horse-warriors swept through scattered skirmishers of the Crimson Rampant, then slammed into the Bluerose companies.
She heard animals scream, felt the impact tremble through the ground-enough to make her mount sidestep
– and then dust obscured the scene. ‘Advance the heavies at the double!’
‘Which heavies, Atri-Preda?’
‘Harridict and Merchants’, you fool! And same command for the Crimson Rampant medium! Quickly!’
She saw riders and riderless horses plunge into view from the roiling dust clouds. Her lancers had been shattered-were the Awl pursuing? Their blood must be high-oh, let them lose control, let them meet the fists of my heavies!
But no, there they were, rising up the far slope, waving weapons in the air to announce their triumph.
She saw the Awl skirmishers reappearing on the ridge line, in blocks with avenues in between to let the riders pass through-but those light infantry were transformed, Equipped now with rectangular, copper-sheathed shields and bearing long spears, they closed ranks after the last horse-warriors were through, and steadied their line at the very edge of the ridge.
On the valley floor, dust climbed skyward, slowly revealing the devastating effects of that flank charge into the Bluerose companies. Errant below, they’ve been wiped out. Hundreds of dead and dying skirmishers covered the grounds to either side of that fateful impact.
Her right advance had been deeply wounded-not yet mortal, even so-‘Advance the medium and the two heavies across the valley-order to engage that line on the ridge. Wedge formations!’ Those skirmishers are too thinly arrayed to hold.
‘Atri-Preda!’ called an aide. ‘Movement to the north side!’
She cantered her horse to the very edge of the rise and scanned the scene below and to her left. ‘Report!’
‘Bluerose lancers in retreat, Atri-Preda-the valley floor beyond the chokepoint is theirs-’
‘What? How many damned horse-archers does he have?’
The officer shook her head. ‘Wardogs, sir. Close on two thousand of the damned things-moving through the high grasses in the basin-they were on the lancers before they knew it. The horses went wild, sir-’
‘Shit!’ Then, upon seeing the messenger’s widening eyes, she steeled herself. ‘Very well. Move the reserve medium to the north flank of the knoll.’ Seven hundred and fifty, Merchants’ Battalion-I doubt they’d try sending dogs against that. I can still advance them to retake the chokepoint’s debouch, when the time comes.
As she thought this, she was scanning the array before her. Directly opposite, the thousand Harridict skirmishers had crossed the riverbed, even as the Crimson Rampant sawtooth advance moved onto level ground.
And Redmask’s five wedges of warriors were marching to meet them. Excellent. We’ll lock that engagement-with ballistae enfilade to weaken their north flank-then down come the Crimson Rampant medium, to wheel into their flank.
Surprisingly the Awl wedges more or less held to their formations, although they were each maintaining considerable distance from their flanking neighbours-once the space drew tighter, she suspected, the wedges would start mixing, edges pulled ragged. Marching in time was the most difficult battlefield manoeuvre, after all. Between each of them, then, could be found the weak points. Perhaps enough to push through with the saw’s teeth and begin isolating each wedge.
‘Wardogs on the knoll!’
She spun at the cry. ‘Errant’s kick!’ Frenzied barking, shrieks from the weapon crews-‘Second reserve legion-the Artisan! Advance on the double-butcher those damned things!’
Obscurely, she suddenly recalled a scene months ago-wounded but alive, less than a handful of the beasts on a hill overlooking an Awl camp, watching the Letherii slaughtering the last of their masters. And she wondered, with a shiver of superstitious fear, if those beasts were now exacting ferocious vengeance. Dammit, Bivatt-never mind all that.
The Awl spear-heads were not drawing together, she saw-nor was there need to, now that she’d temporarily lost her ballistae. Indeed, the two northernmost of those wedges were now angling to challenge her Crimson Rampant medium. But this would be old-style fighting, she knew-and the Awl did not possess the discipline nor the training for this kind of steeled butchery.
Yet, Redmask is not waging this battle in the Awl fashion, is he? No, this is something else. He’s treating this like a plains engagement in miniature-the. way those horse-archers wheeled, reformed, then reformed again-a hit and run tactic, all on a compacted scale.
I see now-hut it will not work for much longer.
Once his warriors locked with her mailed fist.
The Awl spear-heads were now nearing the flat of the riverbed-the two sides would engage on the hardpacked sand of the bed itself. No advantage of slope to either side-until the tide shifts. One way or the other-no, do not think-
A new reverberation trembled through the ground now. Deeper, rolling, ominous.
From the dust, between the Awl wedges, huge shapes loomed, rumbled forward.
Wagons. Awl wagons, the six-wheeled bastards-not drawn, but pushed. Their beds were crowded with half-naked warriors, spears bristling. The entire front end of each rocking, pitching wagon was a horizontal forest of oversized spears. Round-shields overlapped to form a half-turtleshell that encased the forward section.
They now thundered through the broad gaps between the wedges-twenty, fifty, a hundred-lumbering yet rolling so swiftly after the long descent into the valley that the masses of burly warriors who had been pushing them now trailed in their wake, sprinting to catch up.
The wagons plunged straight into the face of the Crimson Rampant heavy infantry.
Armoured bodies cartwheeled above the press as the entire saw-tooth formation was torn apart-and now the bare-chested fanatics riding those wagons launched themselves out to all sides, screaming like demons.
The three wedges facing the heavy infantry then thrust into the chaotic wake, delivering frenzied slaughter.
Bivatt stared, disbelieving, then snapped, Artisan heavy, advance down at the double, crescent, and prepare to cover the retreat.’
The aide beside her stared. ‘Retreat, Atri-Preda?’
‘You heard me! Signal general withdrawal and sound the Crimson Rampant to retreat! Quickly, before every damned one of them is butchered!’
Will Redmask follow? Oh, I’ll lose heavily if he does-but I’ll also hit back hard-on the plain. I’ll see his bones burst into flames-
She heard more wagons, this time to her right. My other advance-‘Sound general withdrawal!’
Horns blared.
Shouts behind her. ‘Attack on the baggage camp!
Attack-’
‘Quiet! Do you think the Edur cannot deal with that?’ She prayed Brohl Handar could. Without supplies this campaign was over. Without supplies, we’ll never make it back to Drene. Errant fend, I have been outwitted at every turn-
And now the sound behind her was rising to challenge that in the valley below. With sick dread, she tugged her horse round and rode back, past the signallers’ platform.
Her remaining reserve units had all wheeled round, reversing their facing. Seeing an officer riding between two of the squares, Bivatt spurred to catch him.
‘What in the Errant’s name is happening over there?’ she demanded. Distant screams, the reek of smoke, thunder-
The helmed head swung round, the face beneath it pale. ‘Demons, Atri-Preda! The mages pursue them-’
‘They what? Recall them, damn you! Recall them now!’
Brohl Handar sat astride his horse in the company of eight Arapay war leaders, four warlocks and the Den-Ratha K’risnan. The two thousand foot soldiers-Tiste Edur warriors, categorized in Letherii military terms as medium to light infantry-were arranged into eight distinct blocks, fully caparisoned in armour and awaiting the word to march.
The supply train’s camp was sprawled on a broad, mostly level hill fifteen hundred paces to the west, the corralled beasts of burden milling beneath dust and slowly drifting dung-smoke. The Overseer could see hospital tents rising along the near side, the canvas sides bright in the morning light. Above another hill, north of the train’s camp, wheeled two hawks or perhaps eagles. The sky was otherwise empty, a span of deep blue slowly paling as the sun climbed higher.
Butterflies flitted among small yellow flowers-their wings matched precisely the colour of the petals, Brohl realized, surprised that he had not noted such a detail before. Nature understands disguise and deceit. Nature reminds us what it is to survive. The Tiste Edur had well grasped those truths-grey as the shadows from which they had been born; grey as the boles of the trees in the murky forests of this world; grey as the shrouds of dusk.
‘What have we forgotten?’ he murmured.
An Arapay war leader-a Preda-turned his helmed head, the scarred face beneath its jutting rim hidden in shadow. ‘Overseer? We are positioned as you commanded-’
‘Never mind,’ Brohl Handar cut in, inexplicably irritated by the veteran’s attention. ‘What is the guard at the camp?’
‘Four hundred mixed infantry,’ the warrior replied, then shrugged. ‘These Letherii are ever confident.’
‘Comes with overwhelming superiority,’ another Arapay drawled.
The first Preda nodded. ‘I do well recall, old friend, the surprise on their faces the day we shattered them outside Letheras. As if, all at once, the world revealed itself to be other than what they had always believed. That look-it was disbelief.’ The warrior grunted a laugh. ‘Too busy with their denial to adapt when it was needed most.’
‘Enough of this,’ Brohl Handar snapped. ‘The Atri-Preda’s forces have engaged the Awl-can you not hear?’ He twisted on his saddle and squinted eastward. ‘See the dust.’ He was silent for a dozen heartbeats, then he turned to the first Arapay Preda. ‘Take two cohorts to the camp. Four hundred Letherii are not enough.’
‘Overseer, what if we are called on to reinforce the Atri-Preda?’
‘If we are, then this day is lost. I have given you my order.’
A nod, and the Preda spurred his horse towards the arrayed Edur warriors.
Brohl Handar studied the K’risnan at his side for a moment. The bent creature sat hunched in his saddle like a bloated crow. He was hooded, ho doubt to hide the twisted ravaging of his once-handsome features. A chief’s son, transformed into a ghastly icon of the chaotic power before which the Tiste Edur now knelt. He saw the figure twitch. ‘What assails you?’ the Overseer demanded.
‘Something, nothing.’ The reply was guttural, the words misshaped by a malformed throat. It was the sound of pain, enduring and unyielding.
‘Which?’
Another twitch, passing, Brohl realized, for a shrug. ‘Footfalls on dead land.’
‘An Awl war-party?’
‘No.’ The hooded head pivoted until the shadow-swallowed face was directed at the Overseer. ‘Heavier.’
All at once Brohl Handar recalled the enormous taloned tracks found at the destroyed homestead. He straightened, one hand reaching for the Arapay scimitar at his side. ‘Where? Which direction?’
A long pause, then the K’risnan pointed with a clawed hand.
Towards the supply camp.
Where sudden screams erupted.
‘Cohorts at the double!’ Brohl Handar bellowed. ‘K’risnan, you and your warlocks-with me!’ With that he spurred his horse, kicking the startled beast into a canter, then a gallop.
Ahead, he saw, the Arapay Preda who had been escorting the two cohorts had already commanded them into a half-jog. The warrior’s helmed head turned and tracked the Overseer and his cadre of mages as they pounded past.
Ahead, the braying of terrified oxen and mules rose, mournful and helpless, above the sounds of slaughter. Tents had gone down, guide-ropes whipping into the air, and Brohl saw figures now, fleeing the camp, pelting northward-
– where a perfect Awl ambush awaited them. Rising from the high grasses. Arrows, javelins, sleeting through the air. Bodies sprawling, tumbling, then the savages, loosing war-cries, rushing to close with spears, axes and swords.
Nothing to be done for them-poor bastards. We need to save our supplies.
They reached the faint slope and rode hard towards the row of hospital tents.
The beast that burst into view directly before them was indeed a demon-an image that closed like talons in his mind-the shock of recognition. Our ancient enemy-it must be-the Edur cannot forget-
Head thrust forward on a sinuous neck, broad jaw open to reveal dagger fangs. Massive shoulders behind the neck, long heavily muscled arms with huge curved blades of iron strapped where hands should have been. Leaning far forward as it ran towards them on enormous hind legs, the huge tail thrust straight back for balance, the beast was suddenly in their midst.
Horses screamed. Brohl found himself to the demon’s right, almost within reach of those scything sword blades, and he stared in horror as that viper’s head snapped forward, jaws closing on the neck of a horse, closing, crunching, then tearing loose, blood spraying, its mouth still filled with meat and bone, the horse’s spine half ripping loose from the horrid gap left in the wake of those savage jaws. A blade cut in half the warlock astride that mount. The other sword slashed down, chopping through another warlock’s thigh, the saddle, then deep into the horse’s shoulder, smashing scapula, then ribs. The beast collapsed beneath the blow, as the rider-the severed stump of his leg gushing blood-pitched over, balanced for a moment on the one stirrup, then sprawled to land on the ground, even as another horse’s stamping hoof descended onto his upturned face.
The Overseer’s horse seemed to collide with something, snapping both front legs. The animal’s plunging fall threw Brohl over its head. He struck, rolled, the scimitar’s blade biting into his left leg, and came to a stop facing his thrashing mount. The demon’s tail had swept into and through their path.
He saw it wheel for a return attack.
A foaming wave of sorcery rose into its path, lifting, climbing with power.
The demon vanished from Brohl’s view behind that churning wave.
Sun’s light suddenly blotted-
– the demon in the air, arcing over the crest of the K’risnan’s magic, then down, the talons of its hind feet outstretched. One closing on another warlock, pushing the head down at an impossible angle into the cup between the man’s shoulders as the demon’s weight descended-the horse crumpling beneath that overwhelming force, legs snapping like twigs. The other raking towards the K’risnan, a glancing blow that flung him from the back of his bolting horse, the claws catching the horse’s rump before it could lunge out of reach, the talons sinking deep, then tearing free a mass of meat to reveal-in a gory flash-the bones of its hips and upper legs.
The horse crashed down in a twisting fall that cracked ribs, less than three strides away from where Brohl was lying. He saw the whites of the beast’s eyes-shock and terror, death’s own spectre-
The Overseer sought to rise, but something was wrong with his left leg-drained of all strength, strangely heavy, sodden in the tangled grass. He looked down. Red from the hip down-his own scimitar had opened a deep, welling gash at an angle over his thigh, the cut ending just above the knee.
A killing wound-blood pouring out-Brohl Handar fell back, staring up at the sky, disbelieving. I have killed myself.
He heard the thump of the demon’s feet, swift, moving away-then a deeper sound, the rush of warriors, closing now around him, weapons drawn. Heads turned, faces stretched as words were shouted-he could not understand them, the sounds fading, retreating-a figure crawling to his side, hooded, blood dripping from its nose-the only part of the face that was visible-a gnarled hand reaching for him-and Brohl Handar closed his eyes.
Atri-Preda Bivatt sawed the reins of her horse as she came between two units of her reserve medium infantry, Artisan on her right, Harridict on her left, and beyond them, where another Artisan unit was positioned, there was the commotion of fighting.
She saw a reptilian monstrosity plunging into their ranks-soldiers seeming to melt from its path, others lifting into the air on both sides, in welters of blood, as the beast’s taloned hands slashed right and left. Dark-hued, perfectly balanced on two massive hind legs, the demon tore a path straight to the heart of the packed square-
Reaching out, both hands closing on a single figure, a woman, a mage-plucking her flailing into the air, then dismembering her as would a child a straw doll.
Beyond, she could see, the southernmost unit, seven hundred and fifty medium infantry of the Merchants’ Battalion, were a milling mass strewn with dead and dying soldiers.
‘Sorcery!’ she screamed, wheeling towards the Artisan unit on her right-seeking out the mage in its midst-motion, someone pushing through the ranks.
Dust clouds caught her eye-the camp-the Edur legion was nowhere in sight-they had rushed to its defence.
Against more of these demons?
The creature barrelled free of the Artisan soldiers south of the now-retreating Harridict unit, where a second sorceror stumbled into view, running towards the other mage. She could see his mouth moving as he wove magic, adding his power to that of the first.
The demon had spun to its left instead of continuing its attack, launching itself into a run, wheeling round the unit it had just torn through, placing them between itself and the sorcery now bursting loose in a refulgent tumult from the ground in front of the mages.
Leaning far forward, the demon’s speed was astonishing as it fled.
Bivatt heard the ritual sputter and die and she twisted on her saddle. ‘Damn you! Hit it!’
‘Your soldiers!’
‘You took too long!’ She spied a Preda from the Harridict unit. ‘Draw all the reserves behind the mages! North, you fool-sound the order! Cadre, keep that damned magic at the ready!’
‘We are, Atri-Preda!’
Chilled despite the burgeoning heat, Bivatt swung her horse round once more and rode hard back towards the valley. I am outwitted. Flinching on every side, recoiling, reacting-Redmask, this one is yours.
But I will have you in the end. I swear it.
Ahead, she could see her troops appearing on the rise, withdrawing in order, in what was clearly an uncontested retreat. Redmask, it seemed, was satisfied-he would not be drawn out from the valley, even with his demonic allies-
The camp. She needed to get her soldiers back to that damned camp-pray the Edur beat off the attack. Pray Brohl Handar has not forgotten how to think like a soldier.
Pray he fared better than I did this day.
The shore is blind to the sea. Might as well say the moon has for ever fled the night sky. Chilled, exhausted, Yan Tovis rode with her three soldiers down the level, narrow road. Thick stands of trees on either side, the leaves black where the moon’s light did not reach, the banks high and steep evincing the antiquity of this trail to the shore, roots reaching down witch-braided, gnarled and dripping in the clammy darkness. Stones snapping beneath hooves, the gusts of breath from the horses, the muted crackle of shifting armour. Dawn was still two bells away.
Blind to the sea. The sea’s thirst was ceaseless. The truth of that could be seen in its endless gnawing of the shore, could be heard in its hungry voice, could be found in the bitter poison of its taste. The Shake knew that in the beginning the world had been nothing but sea, and that in the end it would be the same. The water rising, devouring all, and this was an inexorable fate to which the Shake were helpless witness.
The shore’s battle had ever been the battle of her people. The Isle, which had once been sacred, had been desecrated, made a fetid prison by the Letherii. Yet now it is freed once again. Too late. Generations past there had been land bridges linking the many islands south of the Reach. Now gone. The Isle itself rose from the sea with high cliffs, everywhere but the single harbour now. Such was the dying world.
Often among the Shake there had been born demon-kissed children. Some would be chosen by the coven and taught the Old Ways; the rest would be flung from those cliffs, down into the thirsty sea. Gift of mortal blood; momentary, pathetic easing of its need.
She had run, years ago, for a reason. The noble blood within her had burned like poison, the barbaric legacy of her people overwhelmed her with shame and guilt. With the raw vigour of youth she had refused to accept the barbaric brutality of her ancestors, refused to wallow in the cloying, suffocating nihilism of a self-inflicted crime.
All of the defiance within her was obliterated when she had seen for herself the birth of a demon-kissed monstrosity-the taloned hands and feet, the scaled, elongated face, the blunt tail twitching like a headless worm, the eyes of lurid green. If naught but the taloned hands and feet had marked the demon’s seed, the coven would have chosen this newborn, for there was true power in demonic blood when no more than a single drop trickled in the child’s veins. More than that, and the creation was an abomination.
Grotesque babes crawling in the muck of the sea’s floor, claws gouging furrows in the dark, the sea’s legion, the army awaiting us all.
The seeds thrived in the foaming waves where they met the land, generation upon generation. Flung high onto the shore, they sank into the ground. Dwelling within living creatures, prey and predator; bound inside plants; adhering to the very blades of grass, the leaves of the trees-these seeds could not be escaped: another bitter truth among the Shake. When they found a woman’s womb where a child was already growing, the seed stole its fate. Seeking… something, yet yielding naught but a shape that warred with that of the human.
The demons had been pure, once. Birthing their own kind, a world of mothers and offspring. The seeds had dwelt in the sea found in demonic wombs. Until the war that saw the bellies of those mothers slit open, spilling what belonged inside out into this world-the seeds even the sea sought to reject. A war of slaughter-yet the demons had found a way to survive, to this very day. In the swirling spume of tidal pools, in the rush of tumbling, crashing waves. Lost, yet not defeated. Gone, yet poised to return.
Seeking the right mother.
So the witches remained. Yan Tovis had believed the coven obliterated, crushed into extinction-the Letherii well knew that resistance to tyranny was nurtured in schools of faith, espoused by old, bitter priests and priestesses, by elders who would work through the foolish young use them like weapons, flung away when broken, melodramatically mourned when destroyed. Priests and priestesses whose version of faith justified the abuse of their own followers.
The birth of a priesthood, Yan Tovis now understood, forced a hierarchy upon piety, as if the rules of servitude were malleable, where such a scheme-shrouded in mysterious knowledge and learning-conveyed upon the life of a priest or priestess greater value and virtue than those of the ignorant common folk.
In.her years of Letherii education, Yan Tovis had seen how the arrival of shouldermen-of warlocks and witches-was in truth a devolution among the Shake, a devolution from truly knowing the god that was the shore. Artifice and secular ambition, withholding sacred knowledge from those never to be initiated-these were not the shore’s will. No, only what the warlocks and witches wanted.
Taloned hands and feet have proved iconic indeed.
But power came with demonic blood. And so long as every child born with such power and allowed to survive was initiated into the coven, then that power remained exclusive.
The Letherii in their conquest of the Shake had conducted a pogrom against the coven.
And had failed.
With all her being, Yan Tovis wished they had succeeded.
The Shake were gone as a people. Even the. soldiers of her company-each one carefully selected over the years on the basis of Shake remnants in their blood-were in truth more Letherii than Shake. She had done little, after all, to awaken their heritage.
Yet I chose them, did I not? I wanted their loyalty, beyond that of a Letherii soldier for his or her Atri-Preda.
Admit it, Twilight. You are a queen now, and these soldiers-these Shake-know it. And it is what you sought in the depths of your own ambition. And now, it seemed, she would have to face the truth of that ambition, the stirring of her noble blood-seeking its proper pre-eminence, its right.
What has brought my half-brother to the shore? Did he ride as a Shake, or a Letherii Master at Arms for a Dresh-Preda? But she found she could not believe her own question. She knew the answer, quivering like a knife in her soul. The shore is blind…
They rode on in the dark.
We were never as the Nerek, the Tarthenal and the others. We could raise no army against the invaders. Our belief in the shore held no vast power, for it is a belief in the mutable, in transformation. A god with no face but every face. Our temple is the strand where the eternal war between land and sea is waged, a temple that rises only to crumble yet again. Temple of sound, of smell, taste and tears upon every fingertip.
Our coven healed wounds, scoured away diseases, and murdered babies.
The Tarthenal viewed us with horror. The Nerek hunted our folk in the forests. For the Faered, we were child’Snatchers in the night. They would leave us husks of bread on tree stumps, as if we were no better than malignant crows.
Of these people, these Shake, 1 am now Queen.
And a man who would be her husband awaited her. On the Isle.
Errant take me, 1 am too tired for this.
Horse-hoofs splashing through puddles where the old road dipped-they were nearing the shore. Ahead, the land rose again-some long-ago high tide mark, a broad ridge of smoothed stones and cobbles bedded in sandy clay-the kind of clay that became shale beneath the weight of time, pocked by the restless stones. In that shale one could find embedded shells, mollusc fragments, proof of the sea’s many victories.
The trees were sparser here, bent down by the wind that she could not yet feel on her face-a calm that surprised her, given the season. The smell of the shore was heavy in the air, motionless and fetid.
They slowed their mounts. From the as yet unseen sea there was no sound, not even the whisper of gentle waves. As if the world on the other side of the ridge had vanished.
‘Tracks here, sir,’ one of her soldiers said as they drew to a halt close to the slope. ‘Riders, skirting the bank, north and south both.’
‘As if they were hunting someone,’ another observed.
Yan Tovis held up a gauntleted hand.
Horses to the north, riding at the canter, approaching.
Struck by a sudden, almost superstitious fear, Yan Tovis made a gesture, and her soldiers drew their swords. She reached for her own.
The first of the riders appeared.
Letherii.
Relaxing, Yan Tovis released her breath. ‘Hold, soldier!’
The sudden command clearly startled the figure and the three other riders behind it. Hoofs skidding on loose pebbles.
Armoured as if for battle-chain hauberks, the blackened rings glistening, visors drawn down on their helms. The lead rider held a long-handled single-bladed axe in his right hand; those behind him wielded lances, the heads wide and barbed as if the troop had been hunting boar.
Yan Tovis nudged her horse round and guided it a few steps closer. ‘1 am Atri-Preda Yan Tovis,’ she said.
A tilt of the helmed head from the lead man. ‘Yedan Derryg,’ he said in a low voice, ‘Master at Arms, Boaral Keep.’
She hesitated, then said, ‘The Watch.’
‘Twilight,’ he replied. ‘Even in this gloom, I can see it is you.’
‘I find that difficult to believe-you fled-’
‘Fled, my Queen?’
‘The House of our mother, yes.’
‘Your father and I did not get along, Twilight. You were but a toddler when last 1 saw you. But that does not matter. I see now in your face what I saw then. No mistaking it.’
Sighing, she dismounted.
After a moment, the others did the same. Yedan gestured with a tilt of his head and he and Yan Tovis walked off a short distance. Stood beneath the tallest tree this close to the ridge-a dead pine-as a light rain began to fall.
‘I have just come from the Keep,’ she said. ‘Your Dresh attempted to escape arrest and is dead. Or will be soon. I
have had a word with the witches. There will be Tiste Edur, from Rennis, but by the time they arrive the investigation will be over and I will have to apologize for wasting their time.’
Yedan said nothing. The grilled visor thoroughly hid his features, although the black snarl of his beard was visible-it seemed he was slowly chewing something.
‘Watch,’ she resumed, ‘you called me “Queen” in front of your soldiers.’
‘They are Shake.’
‘I see. Then, you are here… at the shore-’
‘Because I am the Watch, yes.’
‘That title is without meaning,’ she said, rather more harshly than she had intended. ‘It’s an honorific, some old remnant-’
‘I believed the same,’ he cut in-like an older brother, damn him-‘until three nights ago.’
‘Why are you here, then? Who are you looking for?’
‘I wish I could answer you better than I can. I am not sure why I am here, only that I am summoned.’
‘By whom?’
He seemed to chew some more, then he said, ‘By the shore.’
‘I see.’
‘As for who-or what-I am looking for, I cannot say at all. Strangers have arrived. We heard them this night, yet no matter where we rode, no matter how quickly we arrived, we found no-one. Nor any sign-no tracks, nothing. Yet… they are here.’
‘Perhaps ghosts then.’
‘Perhaps.’
Twilight slowly turned. ‘From the sea?’
‘Again, no tracks on the strand. Sister, since we have arrived, the air has not stirred. Not so much as a sigh. Day and night, the shore is still.’ He tilted his head upward. ‘Now, this rain-the first time.’
A murmur from the soldiers drew their attention. They were facing the ridge, six motionless spectres, metal and leather gleaming.
Beyond the ridge, the fitful rise and ebb of a glow.
‘This,’ Yedan said, and he set off.
Yan Tovis followed.
They scrambled through loose stones, stripped branches and naked roots, pulling themselves onto the rise. The six soldiers in their wake now on the slope, Yan Tovis moved to her half-brother’s side, pushing through the soft brush until they both emerged onto the shoreline.
Where they halted, staring out to sea.
Ships.
A row of ships, all well offshore. Reaching to the north, to the south.
All burning.
‘Errant’s blessing,’ Yan Tovis whispered.
Hundreds of ships. Burning.
Flames playing over still water, columns of smoke rising, lit from beneath like enormous ash-dusted coals in the bed of the black sky.
‘Those,’ Yedan said, ‘are not Letherii ships. Nor Edur.’
‘No,’ Twilight whispered, ‘they are not.’
Strangers have arrived.
‘What means this?’ There was raw fear in the question, and Yan Tovis turned to look at the soldier who had spoken. Faint on his features, the orange glow of the distant flames.
She looked back at the ships. ‘Dromons,’ she said. Her heart was pounding hard in her chest, a kind of febrile excitement-strangely dark with malice and… savage delight.
‘What name is that?’ Yedan asked.
‘I know them-those prows, the rigging. Our search-a distant continent. An empire. We killed hundreds-thousands-of its subjects. We clashed with its fleets.’ She was silent for a dozen breaths, then she turned to one of her soldiers. ‘Ride back to the Keep. Make sure the Dresh is dead. The company is to leave immediately-we will meet you north of Rennis on the coast road. Oh, and bring those damned witches with you.’
Yedan said, ‘What-’
She cut off her half-brother with cruel glee. ‘You are the Watch. Your Queen needs you.’ She glared at him. ‘You will ride with us, Yedan. With your troop.’
The bearded jaw bunched, then, ‘Where?’
‘The Isle.’
‘What of the Letherii and their masters? We should send warning.’
Eyes on the burning hulks in the sea, she almost snarled her reply. ‘We killed their subjects. And clearly they will not let that pass. Errant take the Letherii and the Edur.’ She spun round, making for her horse. The others scrambled after her. ‘Strangers, Yedan? Not to me. They followed us.’ She swung herself onto her horse and tugged it towards the north trail. ‘We left a debt in blood,’ she said, baring her teeth. ‘Malazan blood. And it seems they will not let that stand.’
They are here. On this shore.
The Malazans are on our shore.