The Malazan Empire, page 612
But, Fear, there is no value in honouring one who is dead.
‘Trull is dead,’ she said, stunning herself with her own brutality as she saw Fear visibly flinch. ‘He is dead.’ And so am I. There is no point in honouring the dead. I have seen too much to believe otherwise. Grieve for lost potential, the end of possibilities, the eternally silent demise of promise. Grieve for that, Fear Sengar, and you will understand, finally, how grief is but a mirror, held close to one’s own face.
And every tear springs from the choices we ourselves did not make.
When I grieve, Fear, I cannot even see the bloom of my own breath – what does that tell you?
They resumed walking. Silent.
A hundred paces above the group, Clip spun his chain and rings. ‘What was all that about?’ he asked.
‘You have lived in your tidy cave for too long,’ the white-skinned Tiste Andii said.
‘Oh, I get out often enough. Carousing in Bluerose – the gods know how many bastards have been brewed by my seed. Why—’
‘One day, Mortal Sword,’ Silchas Ruin interrupted, ‘you will discover what cuts deeper than any weapon of iron.’
‘Wise words from the one who smells still of barrows and rotting cobwebs.’
‘If the dead could speak, Clip, what would they tell you?’
‘Little, I expect, beyond complaints about this and that.’
‘Perhaps, then, that is all you deserve.’
‘Oh, I lack honour, do I?’
‘I am not sure what you lack,’ Silchas Ruin replied, ‘but I am certain I will comprehend before we are done.’
Rings and chain snapped taut. ‘Here they come. Shall we continue onward and upward?’
There was so much that Toc the Younger – Anaster, Firstborn of the Dead Seed, the Thrice-blinded, Chosen by the Wolf Gods, the Unlucky – did not wish to remember. His other body for one; the body he had been born into, the first home to his soul. Detonations against Moon’s Spawn above the doomed city of Pale, fire and searing, blazing heat – oh, don’t stand there. Then that damned puppet, Hairlock, delivering oblivion, wherein his soul had found a rider, another force – a wolf, one-eyed and grieving.
How the Pannion Seer had lusted for its death. Toc recalled the cage, that spiritual prison, and the torment as his body was broken, healed, then broken yet again, a procession seemingly without end. But these memories and pain and anguish persisted as little more than abstract notions. Yet, mangled and twisted as that body had been, at least it was mine.
Strip away years, course sudden in new blood, feel these strange limbs so vulnerable to cold. To awaken in another’s flesh, to start against muscle memories, to struggle with those that were suddenly gone. Toc wondered if any other mortal soul had ever before staggered this tortured path. Stone and fire had marked him, as Tool once told him. To lose an eye delivers the gift of preternatural sight. And what of leaving a used-up body for a younger, healthier one? Surely a gift – so the wolves desired, or was it Silverfox?
But wait. A closer look at this Anaster – who lost an eye, was given a new one, then lost it yet again. Whose mind – before it was broken and flung away – was twisted with terror, haunted by a mother’s terrible love; who had lived the life of a tyrant among cannibals – oh yes, look closely at these limbs, the muscles beneath, and remember – this body has grown with the eating of human flesh. And this mouth, so eager with its words, it has tasted the succulent juices of its kin – remember that?
No, he could not.
But the body can. It knows hunger and desire on the battlefield – walking among the dead and dying, seeing the split flesh, the jutting bones, smelling the reek of spilled blood – ah, how the mouth waters.
Well, everyone had his secrets. And few are worth sharing. Unless you enjoy losing friends.
He rode apart from the train, ostensibly taking an outrider flank, as he had done as a soldier, long ago. The Awl army of Redmask, fourteen thousand or so warriors, half again as many in the trailing support train – weaponsmiths, healers, horsewives, elders, old women, the lame and the once-born children, and, of course, twenty or so thousand rodara. Along with wagons, travois, and almost three thousand herd dogs and the larger wolf-hunters the Awl called dray. If anything could trigger cold fear in Toc it was these beasts. Too many by far, and rarely fed, they ranged in packs, running down every creature on the plains for leagues around.
But let us not forget the K’Chain Che’Malle. Living, breathing ones. Tool – or perhaps it was Lady Envy – had told him that they had been extinct for thousands of years – tens, hundreds of thousands, even. Their civilization was dust. And wounds in the sky that never heal; now there’s a detail worth remembering, Toc.
The huge creatures provided Redmask’s bodyguard at the head of the vanguard – no risk of assassination, to be sure. The male – Sag’Churok – was a K’ell Hunter, bred to kill, the elite guard of a Matron. So where is the Matron? Where is his Queen?
Perhaps it was the young female in the K’ell’s company. Gunth Mach. Toc had asked Redmask how he had come to know their names, but the war leader had refused him an answer. Reticent bastard. A leader must have his secrets, perhaps more so than anyone else. But Redmask’s secrets are driving me mad. K’Chain Che’Malle, for Hood’s sake!
Outcast, the young warrior had journeyed into the eastern wastelands. So went the tale, although after that initial statement it was a tale that in truth went nowhere, since virtually nothing else was known of Redmask’s adventures during those decades – yet at some point, this man donned a red-scaled mask. And found himself flesh and blood K’Chain Che’Malle. Who did not chop him to pieces. Who somehow communicated to him their names. Then swore allegiance. What is it, then, about this story that I really do not like?
How about all of it.
The eastern wastelands. A typical description for a place the name-givers found inhospitable or unconquerable. We can’t claim it so it is worthless, a wasted land, a wasteland. Hah, and you thought us without imaginations!
Haunted by ghosts, or demons, the earth blasted, where every blade of grass clings to a neighbour in abject terror. The sun’s light is darker, its warmth colder. Shadows are smudged. Water brackish and quite possibly poisonous. Two-headed babies are common. Every tribe needed such a place. For heroic war leaders to wander into on some fraught quest rife with obscure motivations that could easily be bludgeoned into morality tales. And, alas, this particular tale is far from done. The hero needs to return, to deliver his people. Or annihilate them.
Toc had his memories, a whole battlefield’s worth, and as the last man left standing he held few illusions of grandeur, either as witness or as player. So this lone eye cannot help but look askance. Is it any wonder I’ve taken to poetry?
The Grey Swords had been cut to pieces. Slaughtered. Oh, they’d yielded their lives in blood enough to pay the Hound’s Toll, as the Gadrobi were wont to say. But what had their deaths meant? Nothing. A waste. Yet here he rode, in the company of his betrayers.
Does Redmask offer redemption? He promises the defeat of the Letherii – but they were not our enemies, not until we agreed the contract. So, what is redeemed? The extinction of the Grey Swords? Oh, I need to twist and bend to bind those two together, and how am I doing thus far?
Badly. Not a whisper of righteousness – no crow croaks on my shoulder as we march to war.
Oh, Tool, I could use your friendship right now. A few terse words on futility to cheer me up.
Twenty myrid had been killed, gutted and skinned but not hung to drain their blood. The cavities where their organs had been were stuffed solid with a local tuber that had been sweated on hot stones. The carcasses were then wrapped in hides and loaded into a wagon that was kept apart from all the others in the train. Redmask’s plans for the battle to come. No more peculiar than all the others. The man has spent years thinking on this inevitable war. That makes me nervous.
Hey, Tool, you’d think after all I’ve been through, I’d have no nerves left. But I’m no Whiskeyjack. Or Kalam. No, for me, it just gets worse.
Marching to war. Again. Seems the world wants me to be a soldier.
Well, the world can go fuck itself.
‘A haunted man,’ the elder said in his broken growl as he reached up and scratched the savage red scar marring his neck. ‘He should not be with us. Fey in darkness, that one. He dreams of running with wolves.’
Redmask shrugged, wondering yet again what this old man wanted with him. An elder who did not fear the K’Chain Che’Malle, who was so bold as to guide his ancient horse between Redmask and Sag’Churok.
‘You should have killed him.’
‘I do not ask for your advice, Elder,’ Redmask said. ‘He is owed respite. We must redeem our people in his eyes.’
‘Pointless,’ the old man snapped. ‘Kill him and we need redeem ourselves to no-one. Kill him and we are free.’
‘One cannot flee the past.’
‘Indeed? That belief must taste bitter for one such as you, Redmask. Best discard it.’
Redmask slowly faced the man. ‘Of me, Elder, you know nothing.’
A twisted smile. ‘Alas, I do. You do not recognize me, Redmask. You should.’
‘You are Renfayar – my tribe. You share blood with Masarch.’
‘Yes, but more than that. I am old. Do you understand? I am the oldest among our people, the last one left…who was there, who remembers. Everything.’ The smile broadened, revealing rotted teeth, a pointed red – almost purple – tongue. ‘I know your secret, Redmask. I know what she meant to you, and I know why.’ The eyes glittered, black and red-rimmed. ‘You had best fear me, Redmask. You had best heed my words – my advice. I shall ride your shoulder, yes? From this moment on, until the very day of battle. And I shall speak with the voice of the Awl, my voice the voice of their souls. And know this, Redmask: I shall not countenance their betrayal. Not by you, not by that one-eyed stranger and his bloodthirsty wolves.’
Redmask studied the old man a moment longer, then fixed his gaze ahead once more.
A soft, ragged laugh at his side, then, ‘You dare say nothing. You dare do nothing. I am a dagger hovering over your heart. Do not fear me – there is no need, unless you intend evil. I wish you great glory in this war. I wish the end of the Letherii, for all time. Perhaps such glory shall come by your hand – together, you and I, let us strive for that, yes?’
A long moment of silence.
‘Speak, Redmask,’ the elder growled. ‘Lest I suspect defiance.’
‘An end to the Letherii, yes,’ Redmask finally said, in a grating voice. ‘Victory for the Awl.’
‘Good,’ grunted the old man. ‘Good.’
The magic world had ended abruptly, an ending as sudden as the slamming of a trunk lid – a sound that had always shocked her, frozen her in place. Back in the city, that place of reeks and noise, there had been a house steward, a tyrant, who would hunt down slave children who had, in his words, disappointed him. A night spent in the musty confines of the bronze box would teach them a thing or two, wouldn’t it?
Stayandi had spent one such night, enclosed in cramped darkness, two months or so before the slaves joined the colonists out on the plain. The solid clunk of the lid had truly seemed, then, the end of the world. Her shrieks had filled the close air of the trunk until something broke in her throat, until every scream was naught but a hiss of air.
Since that time, she had been mute, yet this had proved a gift, for she had been selected to enter the Mistress’s domain as a handmaiden in training. No secrets would pass her lips, after all. And she would have been there still, if not for the homesteading.
A magic world. So much space, so much air. The freedom of blue skies, unending wind and darkness lit by countless stars – she had not imagined such a world existed, all within reach.
And then one night, it ended. A fierce nightmare made real in screams of slaughter.
Abasard—
She had fled into the darkness, stunned with the knowledge of his death – her brother, who had flung himself into the demon’s path, who had died in her place. Her bared feet, feather-light, carrying her away, the hiss of grasses soon the only sound to reach her ears. Stars glittering, the plain bathed silver, the wind cooling the sweat on her skin.
In her mind, her feet carried her across an entire continent. Away from the realm of people, of slaves and masters, of herds and soldiers and demons. She was alone now, witness to a succession of dawns, smeared sunsets, alone on a plain that stretched out unbroken on all sides. She saw wild creatures, always at a distance. Darting hares, antelope watching from ridgelines, hawks wheeling in the sky. At night she heard the howl of wolves and coyotes and, once, the guttural bellow of a bear.
She did not eat, and the pangs of hunger soon passed, so that she floated, and all that her eyes witnessed shone with a luminous clarity. Water she licked from dew-laden grasses, the cupped holes of deer and elk tracks in basins, and once she found a spring, almost hidden by thick brush in which flitted hundreds of tiny birds. It had been their chittering songs that had drawn her attention.
An eternity of running later, she had fallen. And found no strength to rise once more, to resume the wondrous journey through this glowing land.
Night then stole upon her, and not long after came the four-legged people. They wore furs smelling of wind and dust, and they gathered close, lying down, sharing the warmth of their thick, soft cloaks. There were children among them, tiny babes that crawled as did their parents, squirming and snuggling up against her.
And when they fed on milk, so did Stayandi.
The four-legged people were as mute as she was, until they began their mournful cries, when night was at its deepest; crying – she knew – to summon the sun.
They stayed with her, guardians with their gifts of warmth and food. After the milk, there was meat. Crushed, mangled carcasses – mice, shrews, a headless snake – she ate all they gave her, tiny bones crunching in her mouth, damp fur and chewy skin.
This too seemed timeless, a foreverness. The grown-ups came and went. The children grew burlier, and she now crawled with them when it was time to wander.
When the bear appeared and rushed towards them, she was not afraid. It wanted the children, that much was obvious, but the grown-ups attacked and drove it off. Her people were strong, fearless. They ruled this world.
Until one morning she awoke to find herself alone. Forcing herself to her hind legs, helpless whimpering coming from her throat in jolts of pain, she scanned the land in all directions—
And saw the giant. Bare above the waist, the deep hue of sun-darkened skin almost entirely obscured beneath white paint – paint that transformed his chest, shoulders and face into bone. His eyes, as he walked closer, were black pits in the caked mask skull. He carried weapons: a long spear, a sword with a broad, curved blade. The fur of the four-legged people was wrapped about his hips, and the small but deadly knives strung in a necklace about the warrior’s neck, they too belonged to her people.
Frightened, angry, she bared her teeth at the stranger, even as she cowered in the fold of a small hummock – nowhere to run, knowing he could catch her effortlessly. Knowing that yet another of her worlds had shattered. Fear was her bronze box, and she was trapped, unable to move.
He studied her for a time, cocking his head as she snapped and snarled. Then slowly crouched down until his eyes were level with her own.
And she fell silent.
Remembering…things.
They were not kind eyes, but they were – she knew – like her own. As was his hairless face beneath that deathly paint.
She had run away, she now recalled, until it seemed her fleeing mind had outstripped her flesh and bone, had darted out into something unknown and unknowable.
And this savage face, across from her, was slowly bringing her mind back. And she understood, now, who the four-legged people were, what they were. She remembered what it was to stand upright, to run with two legs instead of four. She remembered an encampment, the digging of cellar pits, the first of the sod-walled houses. She remembered her family – her brother – and the night the demons came to steal it all away.
After a time of mutual silent regard, he straightened, settled the weapons and gear about himself once more, then set out.
She hesitated, then rose.
And, at a distance, she followed.
He walked towards the rising sun.
Scratching at the scarred, gaping hole where one eye had been, Toc watched the children running back and forth as the first cookfires were lit. Elders hobbled about with iron pots and wrapped foodstuffs – they were wiry, weathered folk, but days of marching had dulled the fire in their eyes, and more than a few snapped at the young ones who passed too close.
He saw Redmask, trailed by Masarch and Natarkas and another bearing the red face-paint, appear near the area laid out for the war leader’s yurt. Seeing Toc, Redmask approached.
‘Tell me, Toc Anaster, you flanked our march on the north this day – did you see tracks?’
‘What sort do you mean?’
Redmask turned to Natarkas’s companion. ‘Torrent rode to the south. He made out a trail that followed an antelope track – a dozen men on foot—’
‘Or more,’ the one named Torrent said. ‘They were skilled.’
‘Not Letherii, then,’ Toc guessed.
‘Moccasined,’ Redmask replied, his tone betraying slight irritation at Torrent’s interruption. ‘Tall, heavy.’
‘I noted nothing like that,’ said Toc. ‘Although I admit I was mostly scanning horizon lines.’
‘This place shall be our camp,’ Redmask said after a moment. ‘We will meet the Letherii three leagues from here, in the valley known as Bast Fulmar. Toc Anaster, will you stay with the elders and children or accompany us?’
‘I have had my fill of fields of battle, Redmask. I said I’d found myself a soldier again, but even an army’s train needs guards, and that is about all I am up to right now.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe from now on.’
