The Malazan Empire, page 547
The weapon, then, that promises peace. Why, you foolish Trell, did you ever flee from this?
North of the Olphara Peninsula, the winds freshened, filling the sails, and the ships seemed to surge like migrating dhenrabi across the midnight blue of the seas. Despite her shallow draught, the Silanda struggled to keep pace with the dromons and enormous transports.
Almost as bored as the other marines, Bottle walked up and down the deck, trying to ignore their bickering, trying to nail down this sense of unease growing within him. Something…in this wind…something…
‘Bone monger,’ Smiles said, pointing her knife at Koryk. ‘That’s what you remind me of, with all those bones hanging from you. I remember one who used to come through the village – the village outside our estate, I mean. Collecting from kitchen middens. Grinding up all kinds and sticking them in flasks. With labels. Dog jaws for toothaches, horse hips for making babies, bird skulls for failing eyes—’
‘Penis bones for homely little girls,’ Koryk cut in.
In a blur, the knife in Smiles’s hand reversed grip and she held the point between thumb and fingers.
‘Don’t even think it,’ Cuttle said in a growl.
‘Besides,’ Tarr observed, ‘Koryk ain’t the only one wearing lots of bones – Hood’s breath, Smiles, you’re wearing your own—’
‘Tastefully,’ she retorted, still holding the knife by its point. ‘It’s the excess that makes it crass.’
‘Latest court fashion in Unta, you mean?’ Cuttle asked, one brow lifting.
Tarr laughed. ‘Subtle and understated, that modest tiny finger bone, dangling just so – the ladies swooned with envy.’
In all of this, Bottle noted in passing, Corabb Bhilan Thenu’alas simply stared, from one soldier to the next as they bantered. On the man’s face baffled incomprehension.
From the cabin house, voices rising in argument. Again. Gesler, Balm, Stormy and Fiddler.
One of Y’Ghatan’s pups was listening, but Bottle paid little attention, since the clash was an old one, as both Stormy and Balm sought to convince Fiddler to play games with the Deck of Dragons. Besides, what was important was out here, a whisper in the air, in this steady, unceasing near-gale, a scent mostly obscured by the salty seaspray…
Pausing at the port rail, Bottle looked out at that distant ridge of land to the south. Hazy, strangely blurred, it seemed to be visibly sweeping by, although at this distance such a perception should have been impossible. The wind itself was brown-tinged, as if it had skirled out from some desert.
We have left Seven Cities. Thank the gods. He never wanted to set foot on that land again. Its sand was a gritty patina on his soul, fused by heat, storms, and uncounted people whose bodies had been incinerated – remnants of them were in him now, and would never be fully expunged from his flesh, his lungs. He could taste their death, hear the echo of their screams.
Shortnose and Flashwit were wrestling over the deck, growling and biting like a pair of dogs. Some festering argument – Bottle wondered what part of Shortnose would get bitten off this time – and there were shouts and curses as the two rolled into soldiers of Balm’s squad who had been throwing bones, scattering the cast. Moments later fights were erupting everywhere.
As Bottle turned, Mayfly had picked up Lobe and he saw the hapless soldier flung through the air – to crash up against the mound of severed heads.
Screams, as the ghastly things rolled about, eyes blinking in the sudden light—
And the fight was over, soldiers hurrying to return the trophies to their pile beneath the tarpaulin.
Fiddler emerged from the cabin, looking harried. He paused, scanning the scene, then, shaking his head, he walked over to where Bottle leaned on the rail.
‘Corabb should’ve left me in the tunnel,’ the sergeant said, scratching at his beard. ‘At least then I’d get some peace.’
‘It’s just Balm,’ Bottle said, then snapped his mouth shut – but too late.
‘I knew it, you damned bastard. Fine, it stays between you and me, but in exchange I want to hear your thoughts. What about Balm?’
‘He’s Dal Honese.’
‘I know that, idiot.’
‘Well, his skin’s crawling, is my guess.’
‘So’s mine, Bottle.’
Ah, that explains it, then. ‘She’s with us, now. Again, I mean.’
‘She?’
‘You know who.’
‘The one who plays with your—’
‘The one who also healed you, Sergeant.’
‘What’s she got to do with Balm?’
‘I’m not sure. More like where his people live, I think.’
‘Why is she helping us?’
‘Is she, Sergeant?’ Bottle turned to study Fiddler. ‘Helping us, I mean. True, the last time…Quick Ben’s illusion that chased off that enemy fleet. But so what? Now we’ve got this gale at our backs, and it’s driving us west, fast, maybe faster than should be possible – look at that coast – our lead ships must be due south of Monkan by now. At this pace, we’ll reach Sepik before night falls. We’re being pushed, and that makes me very nervous – what’s the damned hurry?’
‘Maybe just putting distance between us and those grey-skinned barbarians.’
‘Tiste Edur. Hardly barbarians, Sergeant.’
Fiddler grunted. ‘I’ve clashed with the Tiste Andii, and they used Elder magic – Kurald Galain – and it was nothing like what we saw a week ago.’
‘No, that wasn’t warrens. It was Holds – older, raw, way too close to chaos.’
‘What it was,’ Fiddler said, ‘doesn’t belong in war.’
Bottle laughed. He could not help it. ‘You mean, a little bit of wholesale slaughter is all right, Sergeant? Like what we do on the battlefield? Chasing down fleeing soldiers and caving their skulls in from behind, that’s all right?’
‘Never said I was making sense, Bottle,’ Fiddler retorted. ‘It’s just what my gut tells me. I’ve been in battles where sorcery was let loose – really let loose – and it was nothing like what those Edur were up to. They want to win wars without drawing a sword.’
‘And that makes a difference?’
‘It makes victory unearned, is what it does.’
‘And does the Empress earn her victories, Sergeant?’
‘Careful, Bottle.’
‘Well,’ he persisted, ‘she’s just sitting there on her throne, while we’re out here—’
‘You think I fight for her, Bottle?’
‘Well—’
‘If that’s what you think, you wasn’t taught a damned thing at Y’Ghatan.’ He turned and strode off.
Bottle stared after him a moment, then returned his attention to the distant horizon. Fine, he’s right. But still, what we’re earning is her currency and that’s that.
‘What in Hood’s name are you doing down here?’
‘Hiding, what’s it look like? That’s always been your problem, Kal, your lack of subtlety. Sooner or later it’s going to get you into trouble. Is it dark yet?’
‘No. Listen, what’s with this damned gale up top? It’s all wrong—’
‘You just noticed?’
Kalam scowled in the gloom. Well, at least he’d found the wizard. The High Mage of the Fourteenth, hiding between crates and casks and bales. Oh, how bloody encouraging is that? ‘The Adjunct wants to talk to you.’
‘Of course she does. I would too if I was her. But I’m not her, am I? No, she’s a mystery – you notice how she almost never wears that sword? Now, I’ll grant you, I’m glad, now that I’ve been chained to this damned army. Remember those sky keeps? We’re in the midst of something, Kal. And the Adjunct knows more than she’s letting on. A lot more. Somehow. The Empress has recalled us. Why? What now?’
‘You’re babbling, Quick. It’s embarrassing.’
‘You want babbling, try this. Has it not occurred to you that we lost this one?’
‘What?’
‘Dryjhna, the Apocalyptic, the whole prophecy – we didn’t get it, we never did – and you and me, Kal, we should have, you know. The Uprising, what did it achieve? How about slaughter, anarchy, rotting corpses everywhere. And what arrived in the wake of that? Plague. The apocalypse, Kalam, wasn’t the war, it was the plague. So maybe we won and maybe we lost. Both, do you see?’
‘Dryjhna never belonged to the Crippled God. Nor Poliel—’
‘Hardly matters. It’s ended up serving them both, hasn’t it?’
‘We can’t fight all that, Quick,’ Kalam said. ‘We had a rebellion. We put it down. What these damned gods and goddesses are up to – it’s not our fight. Not the empire’s fight, and that includes Laseen. She’s not going to see all this as some kind of failure. Tavore did what she had to do, and now we’re going back, and then we’ll get sent elsewhere. That’s the way it is.’
‘Tavore sent us into the Imperial Warren, Kal. Why?’
The assassin shrugged. ‘All right, like you said, she’s a mystery.’
Quick Ben moved further into the narrow space between cargo. ‘Here, there’s room.’
After a moment, Kalam joined him. ‘You got anything to eat? Drink?’
‘Naturally.’
‘Good.’
As the lookouts cried out the sighting of Sepik, Apsalar made her way forward. The Adjunct, Nil, Keneb and Nether were already on the forecastle. The sun, low on the horizon to the west, lit the rising mass of land two pegs to starboard with a golden glow. Ahead, the lead ships of the fleet, two dromons, were drawing near.
Reaching the rail, Apsalar found she could now make out the harbour city tucked in its halfmoon bay. No smoke rose from the tiers, and in the harbour itself, a mere handful of ships rode at anchor; the nearest one had clearly lost its bow anchor – some snag had hung the trader craft up, heeling it to one side so that its starboard rail was very nearly under water.
Keneb was speaking, ‘Sighting Sepik,’ he said in a tone that suggested he was repeating himself, ‘should have been four, maybe five days away.’
Apsalar watched the two dromons work into the city’s bay. One of them was Nok’s own flagship.
‘Something is wrong,’ Nether said.
‘Fist Keneb,’ the Adjunct said quietly, ‘stand down the marines.’
‘Adjunct?’
‘We shall be making no landfall—’
At that moment, Apsalar saw the foremost dromon suddenly balk, as if it had inexplicably lost headway – and its crew raced like frenzied ants, sails buckling overhead. A moment later the same activity struck Nok’s ship, and a signal flag began working its way upward.
Beyond the two warcraft, the city of Sepik exploded into life.
Gulls. Tens of thousands, rising from the streets, the buildings. In their midst, the black tatters of crows, island vultures, lifting like flakes of ash amidst the swirling smoke of the white gulls. Rising, billowing, casting a chaotic shadow over the city.
Nether whispered, ‘They’re all dead.’
‘The Tiste Edur have visited,’ Apsalar said.
Tavore faced her. ‘Is slaughter their answer to everything?’
‘They found their own kind, Adjunct, a remnant population. Subject, little more than slaves. They are not reluctant to unleash their fury, these Edur.’
‘How do you know this, Bridgeburner?’
She eyed the woman. ‘How did you know, Adjunct?’
At that, Tavore turned away.
Keneb stood looking at the two women, one to the other, then back again.
Apsalar fixed her gaze back upon the harbour, the gulls settling again to their feast as the two lead dromons worked clear of the bay, sails filling once more. The ships in their immediate wake also began changing course.
‘We shall seek resupply with Nemil,’ the Adjunct said. As she turned away, she paused. ‘Apsalar, find Quick Ben. Use your skeletal servants if you must.’
‘The High Mage hides among the cargo below,’ she replied.
Tavore’s brows lifted. ‘Nothing sorcerous, then?’
‘No.’
As the sound of the Adjunct’s boots receded, Fist Keneb stepped closer to Apsalar. ‘The Edur fleet – do you think it pursues us even now, Apsalar?’
‘No. They’re going home.’
‘And how do you come by this knowledge?’
Nether spoke: ‘Because a god visits her, Fist. He comes to break her heart. Again and again.’
Apsalar felt as if she had been punched in the chest, the impact reverberating through her bones, the beat inside suddenly erratic, tightening as heat flooded through her veins. Yet, outwardly, she revealed nothing.
Keneb’s voice was taut with fury. ‘Was that necessary, Nether?’
‘Don’t mind my sister,’ Nil said. ‘She lusts after someone—’
‘Bastard!’
The young Wickan woman rushed off. Nil watched her for a moment, then he looked over at Keneb and Apsalar, and shrugged.
A moment later he too left.
‘My apologies,’ Keneb said to Apsalar. ‘I would never have invited such a cruel answer – had I known what Nether would say—’
‘No matter, Fist. You need not apologize.’
‘Even so, I shall not pry again.’
She studied him for a moment.
Looking uncomfortable, he managed a nod, then walked away.
The island was now on the ship’s starboard, almost five pegs along. ‘He comes to break her heart. Again and again.’ Oh, there could be so few secrets on a ship such as this one. And yet, it seemed, the Adjunct was defying that notion.
No wonder Quick Ben is hiding.
‘They killed everyone,’ Bottle said, shivering. ‘A whole damned island’s worth of people. And Monkan Isle, too – it’s in the wind, now, the truth of that.’
‘Be glad for that wind,’ Koryk said. ‘We’ve left that nightmare behind fast, damned fast, and that’s good, isn’t it?’
Cuttle sat straighter and looked at Fiddler. ‘Sergeant, wasn’t Sepik an Imperial principality?’
Fiddler nodded.
‘So, what these Tiste Edur did, it’s an act of war, isn’t it?’
Bottle and the others looked over at the sergeant, who was scowling – and clearly chewing over Cuttle’s words. Then he said, ‘Technically, aye. Is the Empress going to see it that way? Or even care? We got us enough enemies as it is.’
‘The Adjunct,’ Tarr said, ‘she’ll have to report it even so. And the fact that we already clashed once with that damned fleet of theirs.’
‘It’s probably tracking us right now,’ Cuttle said, grimacing. ‘And we’re going to lead it straight back to the heart of the empire.’
‘Good,’ Tarr said. ‘Then we can crush the bastards.’
‘That,’ Bottle muttered, ‘or they crush us. What Quick Ben did, it wasn’t real—’
‘To start,’ Fiddler said.
Bottle said nothing. Then, ‘Some allies you’re better off without.’
‘Why?’ the sergeant demanded.
‘Well,’ Bottle elaborated, ‘the allies that can’t be figured out, the ones with motives and goals that stay forever outside our comprehension – that’s what we’re talking about here, Sergeant. And believe me, we don’t want a war fought with the sorcery of the Holds. We don’t.’
The others were staring at him.
Bottle looked away.
‘Drag ’im round the hull,’ Cuttle said. ‘That’ll get him to cough it all up.’
‘Tempting,’ Fiddler said, ‘but we got time. Lots of time.’
You fools. Time is the last thing we got. That’s what she’s trying to tell us. With this eerie wind, thrusting like a fist through Mael’s realm – and there’s not a thing he can do about it. Take that, Mael, you crusty barnacle!
Time? Forget it. She’s driving us into the heart of a storm.
Chapter Twenty
Discipline is the greatest weapon against the self-righteous. We must measure the virtue of our own controlled response when answering the atrocities of fanatics. And yet, let it not be claimed, in our own oratory of piety, that we are without our own fanatics; for the self-righteous breed wherever tradition holds, and most often when there exists the perception that tradition is under assault. Fanatics can be created as easily in an environment of moral decay (whether real or imagined) as in an environment of legitimate inequity or under the banner of a common cause.
Discipline is as much facing the enemy within as the enemy before you; for without critical judgement, the weapon you wield delivers – and let us not be coy here – naught but murder.
And its first victim is the moral probity of your cause.
(Words to the Adherents)
Mortal Sword Brukhalian
The Grey Swords
It was growing harder, Ganoes Paran realized, not to regret certain choices he had made. While scouts reported that the Deragoth were not trailing his army as it marched north and east across virtually empty lands, this very absence led to suspicion and trepidation. After all, if those hoary beasts were not following them, what were they up to?
Ganath, the Jaghut sorceress, had more or less intimated that Paran’s decision to unleash those beasts was a terrible mistake. He probably should have listened to her. It was a conceit to imagine he could manipulate indefinitely all the forces he had let loose to deal with the T’rolbarahl. And, perhaps, there had been a lack of confidence in the capabilities of ascendants already active in this realm. The Deragoth were primal, but sometimes, that which was primal found itself assailed by a world that no longer permitted its unmitigated freedom.
Well, enough of that. It’s done, isn’t it. Let someone else clean up the mess I made, just for a change.
Then he frowned. Granted, that’s probably not the proper attitude for the Master of the Deck. But I didn’t ask for the title, did I?
Paran rode in the company of soldiers, somewhere in the middle of the column. He didn’t like the notion of an entourage, or a vanguard. Fist Rythe Bude was leading the way at the moment, although that position rotated among the Fists. While Paran remained where he was, with only Noto Boil beside him and, occasionally, Hurlochel, who appeared when there was some message to deliver – and there were, blissfully, scant few of those.
