The Malazan Empire, page 201
The wizard nodded. ‘Talamandas. I thought you were returning to the White Faces.’
‘And so I did, Mage, thanks solely to your cleverness.’
‘You’ve an odd way of showing your gratitude, Old One.’ Quick Ben looked around. ‘Where are we?’
‘The First Landing. Here wait the warriors who did not survive the journey’s end. Our fleet was vast, Mage, yet when the voyage was done, fully half of the canoes held only corpses. We had crossed an ocean in ceaseless battle.’
‘And where do the Barghast dead go now?’
‘Nowhere, and everywhere. They are lost. Wizard, your challenger has slain Humbrall Taur’s champion. The spirits have drawn breath and hold it still, for the man may yet die.’
Quick Ben flinched. He was silent for a moment, then he said, ‘And if he does?’
‘Your soldiers will die. Humbrall Taur has no choice. He will face civil war. The spirits themselves will lose their unity. You would be too great a distraction, a source of greater divisiveness. But this is not why I have had you brought here.’ The small sticksnare gestured at the figures standing silent behind him. ‘These are the warriors. The army. Yet … our warchiefs are not among us. The Founding Spirits were lost long ago. Mage, a child of Humbrall Taur has found them. Found them!’
‘But there’s a problem.’
Talamandas seemed to slump. ‘There is. They are trapped … within the city of Capustan.’
The implications of that slowly edged into place in the wizard’s mind. ‘Does Humbrall Taur know?’
‘He does not. I was driven away by his shouldermen. The most ancient of spirits are not welcome. Only the young ones are allowed to be present, for they have little power. Their gift is comfort, and comfort has come to mean a great deal among the Barghast. It was not always so. You see before you a pantheon divided, and the vast schism between us is time – and the loss of memory. We are as strangers to our children; they will not listen to our wisdom and they fear our potential power.’
‘Was it Humbrall Taur’s hope that his child would find these Founding Spirits?’
‘He embraces a grave risk, yet he knows the White Face clans are vulnerable. The young spirits are too weak to resist the Pannion Domin. They will be enslaved or destroyed. When comfort is torn away, all that will be revealed is a weakness of faith, an absence of strength. The clans will be crushed by the Domin’s armies. Humbrall Taur reaches for power, yet he gropes blindly.’
‘And when I tell him that the ancient spirits have been found … will he believe me?’
‘You are our only hope. You must convince him.’
‘I freed you from the wards,’ Quick Ben said.
‘What do you ask in return?’
‘Trotts needs to survive his wounds. He must be recognized as champion, so that he can legitimately take his place among the council of chiefs. We need a position of strength, Talamandas.’
‘I cannot return to the tribes, Wizard. I will only be driven away once again.’
‘Can you channel your power through a mortal?’
The sticksnare slowly cocked his head.
‘We’ve a Denul healer, but like me, he’s having trouble making use of his warren – the Pannion’s poison—’
‘To be gifted with our power,’ Talamandas said, ‘he must be led to this warren, to this place.’
‘Well,’ Quick Ben said, ‘why don’t we figure out a way to achieve that?’
Talamandas slowly turned to survey his spirit kin. After a moment he faced the wizard once again. ‘Agreed.’
* * *
A rogue javelin arced up towards Twist as the Black Moranth and his passenger began their descent. The quorl darted to one side, then quickly dropped towards the Circle. Laughter and cursing voices rose from the gathered warriors, but no further gestures were made.
Paran cast one last scan over the squad standing guard around Trotts and Mulch, then jogged to where Twist and a blistered Mallet were dismounting amidst challenges and threatening weapons.
‘Clear them a path, damn you!’ the captain bellowed, thrusting a Senan tribesman aside as he pushed closer. The man righted himself with a growl, then showed his filed teeth in a challenge. Paran ignored it. Five jostling strides later, he reached Twist and Mallet.
The healer’s eyes were wide with alarm. ‘Captain—’
‘Aye, it’s heating up, Mallet. Come with me. Twist, you might want to get the Abyss out of here—’
‘Agreed. I shall return to Sergeant Antsy’s squad. What has happened?’
‘Trotts won the fight, but we might lose the war. Get going, before you get skewered.’
‘Yes, Captain.’
Taking the healer by one arm, Paran swung about and began pushing through the crowd. ‘Trotts needs you,’ he said as they walked. ‘It’s bad. A crushed throat—’
‘Then how in Hood’s name is he still alive?’
‘Mulch opened a hole above his lungs and the bastard’s breathing through that.’
Mallet frowned, then slowly nodded. ‘Clever. But Captain, I may not be much use to you, or Trotts—’
Paran’s head snapped around. ‘You’d better be. If he dies, so do we.’
‘My warren—’
‘Never mind the excuses, just heal the man, damn you!’
‘Yes, sir, but just so you know, it’ll probably kill me.’
‘Fener’s balls!’
‘It’s a good exchange, sir. I can see that. Don’t worry, I’ll heal Trotts – you’ll all get out of this, and that’s what matters right now.’
Paran stopped. He closed his eyes, fighting the sudden waves of pain from his stomach. Through clenched teeth, he said, ‘As you say, Mallet.’
‘Aimless is waving us over—’
‘Aye, go on, then, Healer.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Mallet disengaged his arm and headed over to the squad.
Paran forced open his eyes.
Look at the bastard. Not a falter in his step. Not a blink at his fate. Who – what are these soldiers?
* * *
Mallet pushed Mulch aside, knelt next to Trotts, met the warrior’s hard eyes and reached out a hand.
‘Mallet!’ Mulch hissed. ‘Your warren—’
‘Shut up,’ Mallet said, eyes closing as his fingers touched the collapsed, mangled throat.
He opened his warren, and his mind shrieked as virulent power rushed into him. He felt his flesh swelling, splitting, heard the blood spurt and Mulch’s shocked cry. Then the physical world vanished within a thrashing sea of pain.
Find the path, dammit! The mending way, the vein of order – gods! Stay sane, Healer. Hold on …
But he felt his sanity being torn away, devoured. His sense of self was being shredded to pieces before his mind’s eye, and he could do nothing. He drew on that core of health within his own soul, drew on its power, felt it pour through his fingertips to the ravaged cartilage of Trotts’s throat. But the core began to dissolve …
Hands grasped him, tore at him – a new assault. His spirit struggled, tried to pull away. Screams engulfed him from all sides, as of countless souls being destroyed. Hands fell away from his limbs, were replaced by new ones. He was being dragged, his mind yielding to the savage determination of those grasping, clawing hands.
Sudden calm. Mallet found himself kneeling in a fetid pool, shrouded in silence. Then a murmuring arose all around him. He looked up.
Take from us, a thousand voices whispered in susurrating unison. Take our power. Return to your place, and use all that we give to you. But hurry – the path we have laid is a costly one – so costly …
Mallet opened himself to the power swirling around him. He had no choice, he was helpless before its demand. His limbs, his body, felt like wet clay, moulded anew. From the bones outward, his tattered soul was being reassembled.
He lurched upright, swung round, and began walking. A lumpy, yielding ground was underfoot. He did not look down, simply pushed on. The Denul warren was all around him now, savage and deadly, yet held back from him. Unable to reclaim his soul, the poison howled.
Mallet could feel his fingers once more, still pressed against the broken throat of his friend, yet within his mind he still walked. Step by step, inexorably pushed onward. This is the journey to my flesh. Who has done this for me? Why?
The warren began to dim around him. He was almost home. Mallet looked down, to see what he knew he would see. He walked a carpet of corpses – his path through the poisoned horror of his warren. Costly – so costly …
The healer’s eyes blinked open. Bruised skin beneath his fingers, yet no more than that. He blinked sweat away, met Trotts’s gaze.
Two paths, it seems. One for me, and one for you, friend.
The Barghast weakly lifted his right arm. Mallet clasped it with an iron grip. ‘You’re back,’ the healer whispered, ‘you shark-toothed bastard.’
‘Who?’ Trotts croaked, the skin around his eyes tightening at the effort. ‘Who paid?’
Mallet shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Not me.’
The Barghast’s eyes flicked down to the split and bleeding flesh of the healer’s arms.
Mallet shook his head again. ‘Not me, Trotts.’
* * *
Paran could not move, dared not approach closer. All he could see was a huddle of soldiers around where Trotts lay and Mallet knelt. Gods forgive me, I ordered that healer to kill himself. If this is the true face of command, then it is a skull’s grin. I want none of it. No more, Paran, you cannot steel yourself to this life, to these choices. Who are you to balance lives? To gauge worth, to measure flesh by the pound? No, this is a nightmare. I’m done with it.
Mulch staggered into view, swung to the captain. The man’s face was white, his eyes wide. He stumbled over.
No, tell me nothing. Go away, damn you. ‘Let’s hear it, Healer.’
‘It’s – it’s all right, Captain. Trotts will make it—’
‘And Mallet?’
‘Superficial wounds – I’ll take care of those, sir. He lives – don’t ask me how—’
‘Leave me, Mulch.’
‘Sir?’
‘Go. Back to Mallet. Get out of my sight.’
Paran swung his back to the man, listened to him scurrying away. The captain shut his eyes, waiting for the agony of his gut to resume, to rise once again like a fist of fire. But all was quiescent within him. He wiped at his eyes, drew a deep breath. No-one dies. We’re all getting out of here. Better tell Humbrall Taur. Trotts has won his claim … and damn the rest of you to Hood!
* * *
Fifteen paces away, Mulch and Aimless crouched, watching their captain’s back straighten, watching as Paran adjusted his sword belt, watching as he strode towards Humbrall Taur’s command tent.
‘He’s a hard bastard,’ the healer muttered.
‘Cold as a Jaghut winter,’ Aimless said, face twisting. ‘Mallet looked a dead man there for a time.’
‘For a time, he damn near was.’
The two men were silent for a while, then Mulch leaned to one side and spat. ‘Captain might make it after all,’ he said.
‘Aye,’ Aimless said. ‘He might.’
‘Hey!’ one of the soldiers nearby shouted. ‘Look at that ridge! Ain’t that Detoran? And there’s Spindle – they’re carrying somebody between ’em!’
‘Probably Quick Ben,’ Mulch said, straightening. ‘Played too long in his warrens. Idiot.’
‘Mages,’ Aimless sneered. ‘Who needs the lazy bastards anyway?’
‘Mages, huh? And what about healers, Corporal?’
The man’s long face suddenly lengthened even more as his jaw dropped. ‘Uh, healers are good, Mulch. Damned good. I meant wizards and sorcerors and the like—’
‘Stow it before you say something real stupid, Aimless. Well, we’re all here, now. Wonder what these White Faces will do to us?’
‘Trotts won!’
‘So?’
The corporal’s jaw dropped a second time.
* * *
Woodsmoke filled Humbrall Taur’s hide tent. The huge warchief stood alone, his back to the round hearth, silhouetted by the fire’s light. ‘What have you to tell me?’ he rumbled as Paran let the hide flap drop behind him.
‘Trotts lives. He asserts his claim to leadership.’
‘Yet he has no tribe—’
‘He has a tribe, Warchief. Thirty-eight Bridgeburners. He showed you that, in the style he chose for the duel.’
‘I know what he showed us—’
‘Yet who understood?’
‘I did, and that is all that matters.’
There was silence. Paran studied the tent and its meagre scatter of contents, seeking clues as to the nature of the warrior who stood before him. The floor was covered in bhederin hides. A half-dozen spears lay to one side, one of them splintered. A lone wooden chest carved from a single tree trunk, big enough to hold a three-deep stack of stretched-out corpses, dominated the far wall. The lid was thrown back, revealing on its underside a huge, massively complex locking mechanism. An unruly tumble of blankets ran parallel to the chest where Taur evidently slept. Coins, stitched into the hide walls, glittered dully on all sides, and on the conical ceiling more coins hung like tassels – these ones blackened by years of smoke.
‘You have lost your command, Captain.’
Paran blinked, met the warchief’s dark eyes. ‘That is a relief,’ he said.
‘Never admit your unwillingness to rule, Malazan. What you fear in yourself will cloud your judgement of all that your successor does. Your fear will blind you to his wisdom and stupidity both. Trotts has never been a commander – I saw that in his eyes when he first stepped forward from your ranks. You must watch him, now. With clear vision.’ The man turned and walked to the chest. ‘I have mead. Drink with me.’
Gods, my stomach … ‘Thank you, Warchief.’
Humbrall Taur withdrew from the chest a clay jug and two wooden mugs. He unstoppered the jug, sniffed tentatively, then nodded and poured. ‘We shall wait another day,’ he said. ‘Then I shall address the clans. Trotts will have leave to speak, he has earned his place among the chiefs. But I tell you this now, Captain.’ He handed Paran a mug. ‘We shall not march on Capustan. We owe those people nothing. Each year we lose more of our youths to that city, to their way of life. Their traders come among us with nothing of value, bold with claims and offers, and would strip my people naked if they could.’
Paran took a sip of the heady mead, felt it burn down his throat. ‘Capustan is not your true enemy, Warchief—’
‘The Pannion Domin will wage war on us. I know this, Malazan. They will take Capustan and use it to marshal their armies on our very borders. Then they will march.’
‘If you understand all that, then why—’
‘Twenty-seven tribes, Captain Paran.’ Humbrall Taur drained his mug, then wiped his mouth. ‘Of those, only eight chiefs will stand with me. Not enough. I need them all. Tell me, your new chief. Can he sway minds with his words?’
Paran grimaced. ‘I don’t know. He rarely uses them. Then again, up until now, he’s had little need. We shall see tomorrow, I suppose.’
‘Your Bridgeburners are still in danger.’
The captain stiffened, studied the thick honey wine in his mug. ‘Why?’ he asked after a moment.
‘The Barahn, the Gilk, the Ahkrata – these clans are united against you. Even now, they spread tales of duplicity. Your healers are necromancers – they are conducting a ritual of resurrection to bring Trotts back to life. The White Faces have no love of Malazans. You are allied with the Moranth. You conquered the north – how soon will you turn your hungry gaze on us? You are the plains bear at our side, urging us to lock talons with the southern tiger. A hunter always knows the mind of a tiger, but never the mind of a plains bear.’
‘So it seems our fate still hangs in the balance,’ Paran said.
‘Come the morrow,’ Humbrall Taur said.
The captain drained his mug and set it down on the edge of the chest. Spot-fires were growing in his stomach. Behind the cloying mead numbing his tongue, he could taste blood. ‘I must attend to my soldiers,’ he said.
‘Give them this night, Captain.’
Paran nodded, then made his way out of the tent.
Ten paces away, Picker and Blend stood waiting for him. The captain scowled as the two women hurried over. ‘More good news, I take it,’ he growled under his breath.
‘Captain.’
‘What is it, Corporal?’
Picker blinked. ‘Well, uh, we’ve made it. I thought I should report—’
‘Where’s Antsy?’
‘He ain’t feeling too good, sir.’
‘Something he ate?’
Blend grinned. ‘That’s a good one. Something he ate.’
‘Captain,’ Picker interjected hastily, shooting Blend a warning glare. ‘We lost Quick Ben for a while, then got him back, only he ain’t woken up. Spindle figures it’s some kind of shock. He was pulled into a Barghast warren—’
Paran started. ‘He was what? Take me to him. Blend, get Mallet and join us, double-time! Well, Picker? Why are you just standing there? Lead on.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The Seventh squad had dropped their gear in the Bridgeburner encampment. Detoran and Hedge were unfolding tents, watched morosely by a pale, shivering Antsy. Spindle sat beside Quick Ben, fingers combing absently through his tattered hairshirt as he frowned down at the unconscious wizard. The Black Moranth, Twist, stood nearby. Soldiers from other squads sat in their respective groups, watchful of the newcomers and coming no closer.
Paran followed the corporal to Spindle and Quick Ben. The captain glanced at the other squads. ‘What’s with them?’ he wondered aloud.
Picker grunted. ‘See Hedge’s swollen face? Detoran’s in a temper, sir. We’re all thinking she’s got a crush on the poor sapper.’
‘And she showed her affection by beating him up?’
‘She’s a rough sort, sir.’
The captain sighed, guiding Spindle to one side as he crouched to study Quick Ben. ‘Tell me what happened, Spin. Picker said a Barghast warren.’
‘Aye, sir. Mind you, I’m just guessing. We was crossing a barrow—’
