The Malazan Empire, page 625
‘Something like that,’ she replied. ‘Alas, it seems we’re having trouble getting, uh, permission. There’s the biggest damned ship I’ve ever seen blocking the harbour mouth right now, and a sleek war galley of some kind is making for berth at the main pier. You know,’ she added, with another quick smile, ‘it’s all starting to look like some kind of…well…blockade.’
The knife-point left Brullyg’s back and Masan Gilani, sliding the weapon into its scabbard, stepped round. When she spoke this time, it was in a language Brullyg had never heard before.
Lobe levelled the crossbow again, aiming towards Brullyg, and answered Masan in the same tongue.
Skorgen, who had been kneeling beside the cask, thumping at the spigot with the heel of one hand, now rose. ‘What in the Errant’s name is going on here, Brullyg?’
A voice spoke from the doorway, ‘Just this. Your captain’s right. Our waiting’s done.’
The soldier named Throatslitter was leaning against the door frame, arms crossed. He was smiling across at Masan Gilani. ‘Good news ain’t it? Now you can take your delicious curves and such and dance your way down to the pier – I’m sure Urb and the rest are missing ’em something awful.’
Shurq Elalle, who had not moved from her chair, sighed loudly then said, ‘Pretty, I don’t think we’ll be leaving this room for a while. Find us some tankards and pour, why don’t you?’
‘We’re hostages?’
‘No no,’ his captain replied. ‘Guests.’
Masan Gilani, hips swaying considerably more than was necessary, sauntered out of the chamber.
Under his breath, Brullyg groaned.
‘As I said earlier,’ Shurq murmured, ‘men don’t change.’ She glanced over at Galt, who had drawn up the other chair. ‘I assume you won’t let me strangle this odious worm.’
‘Sorry, no.’ A quick smile. ‘Not yet anyway.’
‘So, who are your friends in the harbour?’
Galt winked. ‘We’ve a little work to do, Captain. And we’ve decided this island will do just fine as headquarters.’
‘Your skill with Letherii has noticeably improved.’
‘Must be your fine company, Captain.’
‘Don’t bother,’ Throatslitter said from the doorway. ‘Deadsmell says she’s standing on the wrong side of Hood’s gate, despite what you see or think you see.’
Galt slowly paled.
‘Not sure what he means by all that,’ Shurq Elalle said, her sultry eyes settling on Galt, ‘but my appetites are as lively as ever.’
‘That’s…disgusting.’
‘Explains the sweat on your brow, I suppose.’
Galt hastily wiped his forehead. ‘This one’s worse than Masan Gilani,’ he complained.
Brullyg shifted nervously in his chair. Timing. These damned Malazans had it by the bucketful. Freedom should’ve lasted longer than this. ‘Hurry up with that ale, Pretty.’
Finding yourself standing, alone, cut loose, with an unhappy army squirming in your hands, was a commander’s greatest nightmare. And when you got them running straight into the wilderness of an ocean at the time, it’s about as bad as it can get.
Fury had united them, for a while. Until the truth started to sink in, like botfly worms under the skin. Their homeland wanted them all dead. There’d be no seeing family – no wives, husbands, mothers, fathers. No children to bounce on one knee while working numbers in the head – wondering which neighbour’s eyes you’re looking down at. No chasms to cross, no breaches to mend. Every loved one as good as dead.
Armies get unruly when that happens. Almost as bad as no loot and no pay.
We were soldiers of the empire. Our families depended on the wages, the tax relief, the buy-outs and the pensions. And a lot of us were young enough to think about signing out, making a new life, one that didn’t involve swinging a sword and looking in the eye of some snarling thug wanting to cut you in two. Some of us were damned tired.
So, what kept us together?
Well, no ship likes to sail alone, does it?
But Fist Blistig knew that there was more to it. Dried blood holding everyone in place like glue. The seared burn of betrayal, the sting of fury. And a commander who sacrificed her own love to see them all survive.
He had spent too many days and nights on the Froth Wolf standing no less than five paces from the Adjunct, studying her stiff back as she faced the surly seas. A woman who showed nothing, but some things no mortal could hide, and one of those things was grief. He had stared and he had wondered. Was she going to come through this?
Someone – might have been Keneb, who at times seemed to understand Tavore better than anyone else, maybe even Tavore herself – had then made a fateful decision. The Adjunct had lost her aide. In Malaz City. Aide, and lover. Now, maybe nothing could be done about the lover, but the role of aide was an official position, a necessary one for any commander. Not a man, of course – would have to be a woman for certain.
Blistig recalled that night, even as the eleventh bell was sounded on deck – the ragged fleet, flanked by the Perish Thrones of War, was three days east of Kartool, beginning a northward-wending arc to take them round the tumultuous, deadly straits between Malaz Island and the coast of Korel – and the Adjunct was standing alone just beyond the forecastle mast, the wind tugging fitfully at her rain cape, making Blistig think of a broken-winged crow. A second figure appeared, halting close to Tavore on her left. Where T’amber would stand, where any aide to a commander would stand.
Tavore’s head had turned in startlement, and words were exchanged – too low for Blistig’s ears – followed by a salute from the newcomer.
The Adjunct is alone. So too is another woman, seemingly as bound up in grief as Tavore herself, yet this one possesses an edge, an anger tempered like Aren steel. Short on patience, which might be precisely what’s needed here.
Was it you, Keneb?
Of course, Lostara Yil, once a captain in the Red Blades, now just one more outlawed soldier, had revealed no inclinations to take a woman to her bed. Not anyone, in fact. Yet she was no torture to look at, if one had a taste for broken glass made pretty. That and Pardu tattoos. But it was just as likely that the Adjunct wasn’t thinking in those terms. Too soon. Wrong woman.
Throughout the fleet, officers had been reporting talk of mutiny among the soldiers – excepting, oddly enough, the marines, who never seemed capable of thinking past the next meal or game of Troughs. A succession of reports, delivered in increasingly nervous tones, and it had seemed the Adjunct was unwilling or unable to even so much as care.
You can heal wounds of the flesh well enough, but it’s the other ones that can bleed out a soul.
After that night, Lostara Yil clung to a resentful Tavore like a damned tick. Commander’s aide. She understood the role. In the absence of actual direction from her commander, Lostara Yil assumed the task of managing nearly eight thousand miserable soldiers. The first necessity was clearing up the matter of pay. The fleet was making sail for Theft, a paltry kingdom torn to tatters by Malazan incursions and civil war. Supplies needed to be purchased, but more than that, the soldiers needed leave and for that there must be not only coin but the promise of more to come, lest the entire army disappear into the back streets of the first port of call.
The army’s chests could not feed what was owed.
So Lostara hunted down Banaschar, the once-priest of D’rek. Hunted him down and cornered him. And all at once, those treasury chests were overflowing.
Now, why Banaschar? How did Lostara know?
Grub, of course. That scrawny runt climbing the rigging with those not-quite-right bhok’aral – I ain’t once seen him come down, no matter how brutal the weather. Yet Grub somehow knew about Banaschar’s hidden purse, and somehow got the word to Lostara Yil.
The Fourteenth Army was suddenly rich. Too much handed out all at once would have been disastrous, but Lostara knew that. Enough that it be seen, that the rumours were let loose to scamper like stoats through every ship in the fleet.
Soldiers being what they were, it wasn’t long before they were griping about something else, and this time the Adjunct’s aide could do nothing to give answer.
Where in Hood’s name are we going?
Are we still an army and if we are, who are we fighting for? The notion of becoming mercenaries did not sit well, it turned out.
The story went that Lostara Yil had it out with Tavore one night in the Adjunct’s cabin. A night of screams, curses and, maybe, tears. Or something else happened. Something as simple as Lostara wearing her commander down, like D’rek’s own soldier worms gnawing the ankles of the earth, snap snick right through. Whatever the details, the Adjunct was…awakened. The entire Fourteenth was days from falling to pieces.
A call was issued for the Fists and officers ranking captain and higher to assemble on the Froth Wolf. And, to the astonishment of everyone, Tavore Paran appeared on deck and delivered a speech. Sinn and Banaschar were present, and through sorcery the Adjunct’s words were heard by everyone, even crew high in the riggings and crow’s nests.
A Hood-damned speech.
From Tavore. Tighter-lipped than a cat at Togg’s teats, but she talked. Not long, not complicated. And there was no brilliance, no genius. It was plain, every word picked up from dusty ground, strung together on a chewed thong, not even spat on to bring out a gleam. Not a precious stone to be found. No pearls, no opals, no sapphires.
Raw garnet at best.
At best.
Tied to Tavore’s sword belt, there had been a finger bone. Yellowed, charred at one end. She stood in silence for a time, her plain features looking drawn, aged, her eyes dull as smudged slate. When at last she spoke, her voice was low, strangely measured, devoid of all emotion.
Blistig could still remember every word.
‘There have been armies. Burdened with names, the legacy of meetings, of battles, of betrayals. The history behind the name is each army’s secret language – one that no-one else can understand, much less share. The First Sword of Dassem Ultor – the Plains of Unta, the Grissian Hills, Li Heng, Y’Ghatan. The Bridgeburners – Raraku, Black Dog, Mott Wood, Pale, Black Coral. Coltaine’s Seventh – Gelor Ridge, Vathar Crossing and the Day of Pure Blood, Sanimon, the Fall.
‘Some of you share a few of those – with comrades now fallen, now dust. They are, for you, the cracked vessels of your grief and your pride. And you cannot stand in one place for long, lest the ground turn to depthless mud around your feet.’ Her eyes fell then, a heartbeat, another, before she looked up once more, scanning the array of sombre faces before her.
‘Among us, among the Bonehunters, our secret language has begun. Cruel in its birth at Aren, sordid in a river of old blood. Coltaine’s blood. You know this. I need tell you none of this. We have our own Raraku. We have our own Y’Ghatan. We have Malaz City.
‘In the civil war on Theft, a warlord who captured a rival’s army then destroyed them – not by slaughter; no, he simply gave the order that each soldier’s weapon hand lose its index finger. The maimed soldiers were then sent back to the warlord’s rival. Twelve thousand useless men and women. To feed, to send home, to swallow the bitter taste of defeat. I was…I was reminded of that story, not long ago.’
Yes, Blistig thought then, and I think I know by whom. Gods, we all do.
‘We too are maimed. In our hearts. Each of you knows this.
‘And so we carry, tied to our belts, a piece of bone. Legacy of a severed finger. And yes, we cannot help but know bitterness.’ She paused, held back for a long moment, and it seemed the silence itself grated in his skull.
Tavore resumed. ‘The Bonehunters will speak in our secret language. We sail to add another name to our burden, and it may be it will prove our last. I do not believe so, but there are clouds before the face of the future – we cannot see. We cannot know.
‘The island of Sepik, a protectorate of the Malazan Empire, is now empty of human life. Sentenced to senseless slaughter, every man, child and woman. We know the face of the slayer. We have seen the dark ships. We have seen the harsh magic unveiled.
‘We are Malazan. We remain so, no matter the judgement of the Empress. Is this enough reason to give answer?
‘No, it is not. Compassion is never enough. Nor is the hunger for vengeance. But, for now, for what awaits us, perhaps they will do. We are the Bonehunters, and sail to another name. Beyond Aren, beyond Raraku and beyond Y’Ghatan, we now cross the world to find the first name that will be truly our own. Shared by none other. We sail to give answer.
‘There is more. But I will not speak of that beyond these words: “What awaits you in the dusk of the old world’s passing, shall go…unwitnessed.” T’amber’s words.’ Another long spell of pained silence.
‘They are hard and well might they feed spite, if in weakness we permit such. But to those words I say this, as your commander: we shall be our own witness, and that will be enough. It must be enough. It must ever be enough.’
Even now, over a year later, Blistig wondered if she had said what was needed. In truth, he was not quite certain what she had said. The meaning of it. Witnessed, unwitnessed, does it really make a difference? But he knew the answer to that, even if he could not articulate precisely what it was he knew. Something stirred deep in the pit of his soul, as if his thoughts were black waters caressing unseen rocks, bending to shapes that even ignorance could not alter.
Well, how can any of this make sense? I do not have the words.
But damn me, she did. Back then. She did.
Unwitnessed. There was crime in that notion. A profound injustice against which he railed. In silence. Like every other soldier in the Bonehunters. Maybe. No, I am not mistaken – I see something in their eyes. I can see it. We rail against injustice, yes. That what we do will be seen by no-one. Our fate unmeasured.
Tavore, what have you awakened? And, Hood take us, what makes you think we are equal to any of this?
There had been no desertions. He did not understand. He didn’t think he would ever understand. What had happened that night, what had happened in that strange speech.
She told us we would never see our loved ones again. That is what she told us. Isn’t it?
Leaving us with what?
With each other, I suppose.
‘We shall be our own witness.’
And was that enough?
Maybe. So far.
But now we are here. We have arrived. The fleet, the fleet burns – gods, that she would do that. Not a single transport left. Burned, sunk to the bottom off this damned shore. We are…cut away.
Welcome, Bonehunters, to the empire of Lether.
Alas, we are not here in festive spirit.
The treacherous ice was behind them now, the broken mountains that had filled the sea and clambered onto the Fent Reach, crushing everything on it to dust. No ruins to ponder over in some distant future, not a single sign of human existence left on that scraped rock. Ice was annihilation. It did not do what sand did, did not simply bury every trace. It was as the Jaghut had meant it: negation, a scouring down to bare rock.
Lostara Yil drew her fur-lined cloak tighter about herself as she followed the Adjunct to the forecastle deck of the Froth Wolf. The sheltered harbour was before them, a half-dozen ships anchored in the bay, including the Silanda – its heap of Tiste Andii heads hidden beneath thick tarpaulin. Getting the bone whistle from Gesler hadn’t been easy, she recalled; and among the soldiers of the two squads left to command the haunted craft, the only one willing to use it had been that corporal, Deadsmell. Not even Sinn would touch it.
Before the splitting of the fleet there had been a flurry of shifting about among the squads and companies. The strategy for this war demanded certain adjustments, and, as was expected, few had been thrilled with the changes. Soldiers are such conservative bastards.
But at least we pulled Blistig away from real command – worse than a rheumy old dog, that one.
Lostara, still waiting for her commander to speak, turned for a glance back at the Throne of War blockading the mouth of the harbour. The last Perish ship in these waters, for now. She hoped it would be enough for what was to come.
‘Where is Sergeant Cord’s squad now?’ the Adjunct asked.
‘Northwest tip of the island,’ Lostara replied. ‘Sinn is keeping the ice away—’
‘How?’ Tavore demanded, not for the first time.
And Lostara could but give the same answer she had given countless times before. ‘I don’t know, Adjunct.’ She hesitated, then added, ‘Ebron believes that this ice is dying. A Jaghut ritual, crumbling. He notes the water lines on this island’s cliffs – well past any earlier high water mark.’
To this the Adjunct said nothing. She seemed unaffected by the cold, damp wind, barring an absence of colour on her features, as if her blood had withdrawn from the surface of her flesh. Her hair was cut very short, as if to discard every hint of femininity.
‘Grub says the world is drowning,’ Lostara said.
Tavore turned slightly and looked up at the unlit shrouds high overhead. ‘Grub. Another mystery,’ she said.
‘He seems able to communicate with the Nachts, which is, well, remarkable.’
‘Communicate? It’s become hard to tell them apart.’
The Froth Wolf was sidling past the anchored ships, angling towards the stone pier, on which stood two figures. Probably Sergeant Balm and Deadsmell.
Tavore said, ‘Go below, Captain, and inform the others we are about to disembark.’
‘Aye, sir.’
Remain a soldier, Lostara Yil told herself, a statement that whispered through her mind a hundred times a day. Remain a soldier, and all the rest will go away.
With dawn’s first light paling the eastern sky, the mounted troop of Letherii thundered down the narrow coastal track, the berm of the old beach ridge on their left, the impenetrable, tangled forest on their right. The rain had dissolved into a clammy mist, strengthening the night’s last grip of darkness, and the pounding of hoofs was oddly muted, quick to dwindle once the last rider was out of sight.
