The Malazan Empire, page 640
Her eyes flashed. ‘Yes. And with that, we will give answer.’
‘And their shamans? What of the Awl shamans?’
‘Useless, Overseer. Their rituals are too slow for combat. Nor can they make use of raw power. We will have at them this day, Brohl Handar.’
‘You have positioned the Tiste Edur once again to the rear. Are we to guard the dung left by the oxen, Atri-Preda?’
‘Not at all. I believe you will see plenty of fighting today. There are bound to be flanking strikes, seeking our supplies, and I will need you and your Edur to throw them back. Recall, as well, those two demons.’
‘They are difficult to forget,’ he replied. ‘Very well, we shall position ourselves defensively.’ He collected his reins. ‘Enjoy your battle, Atri-Preda.’
Bivatt watched the Overseer ride off, irritated with his questions, his scepticism. Redmask was as mortal as any man. He was not immune to mistakes, and this day he had made one. The defender was ever at an advantage, and the general rule was that an attacker required substantial numerical superiority. Bivatt had lost to death or wounding over eight hundred of her soldiers in the debacle that was Bast Fulmar. Even with that, Redmask did not possess sufficient numbers, assuming he intended to advance beyond initial sighting.
Ideally, she would have liked to position her forces along the ridge to the south, but there had been no time for that; and by staying where she was, she would prevent that ridge from factoring in the battle to come. There was the chance that Redmask would simply take the ridge then await her, but she would not play into his hands again. If he sought battle this day, he would have to advance. And quickly. Standing and waiting on the ridge would not be tolerated, not when Bivatt had her mages. Stand there if you dare, Redmask, in the face of wave upon wave of sorcery.
But he was coming. Bivatt did not believe he would seek the ridge then simply wait, expecting her to yield her defensive formation in order to march upon him.
No, he has lost his patience. Revealed his weakness.
She scanned the positioning of her troops. Crimson Rampant heavy infantry to anchor the far left, the easternmost end of her line. Merchants’ Battalion heavy infantry to the far right. Artisan Battalion heavy infantry at the centre. To their flanks, extending out and at double-depth – twenty rather than ten lines – were the assorted medium infantry of her force. Reserve elements of her remaining skirmishers, the Drene Garrison and medium infantry were arrayed closer to the square of wagons. The Bluerose cavalry, divided into two wings, she held back to await a quick response, as either counter-attack or riding to close a breach.
Brohl Handar’s Tiste Edur guarded the north. They would be facing away from the main battle, yet Bivatt was certain there would be an attack on them, another strike for the supplies. And she suspected it would come from the high grasses on the north side of the track.
Rising on her stirrups, she studied the approaching dust cloud. Her scouts had confirmed that this was indeed Redmask, leading what had to be the majority of his warriors. That haze of dust seemed to be angling towards the ridge. The Atri-Preda sneered, then gestured a messenger over. ‘Bring me my mages. On the double.’
The old man had been found dead in his tent that morning. The imprints of the hands that had strangled him left a mottled map of brutality below his bloated face and bulging eyes. His murderer had sat atop him, staring down to witness death’s arrival. The last elder of the Renfayar, Redmask’s own tribe, perhaps the most ancient man among the entire Awl. The Blind Stalker that was death should have reached out a most gentle touch upon such a man.
In the camp fear and dismay whistled and spun like a trapped wind in a gorge, punctuated by terrible wails from the crones and cries announcing ill omen. Redmask had arrived to look down upon the corpse when it had been carried into the open, and of course none could see what lay behind his scaled mask, but he did not fall to his knees beside the body of his kin, his wise adviser. He had stood, motionless, cadaran whip wrapped crossways about his torso, the rygtha crescent axe held loose in his left hand.
Dogs were howling, their voices awakened by the mourners, and on the flanks of the slopes to the south the rodara herds shifted this way and that, nervous and fretful.
Redmask had turned away, then. His copper-masked officers drew closer, along with Masarch and, trailing a few steps behind, Toc Anaster.
‘We are done fleeing,’ Redmask said. ‘Today, we will spill yet more Letherii blood.’
This was what the Awl warriors had been waiting to hear. Their loyalty was not in question, not since Bast Fulmar, yet they were young and they had tasted blood. They wanted to taste it again. The elaborate hare-dance in which they had led the Letherii had gone on too long. Even the clever ambushes sprung on the enemy outriders and scouts had not been enough. The wending, chaotic march had seemed too much like flight.
The warriors were assembled north of the encampment with dawn still fresh in the air, the dog-masters and their helpers leashing the snapping, restless beasts and positioning their charges slightly to the east. Horses stamped on the dew-smeared ground, clan pennons wavering like tall reeds. Scouts were sent off with horse-archers to make contact with the Letherii outriders and drive them back to their nest. This would ensure that the specific presentation of Redmask’s forces would remain unknown for as long as possible.
Moments before the army set out, Torrent arrived to position himself at Toc’s side. The warrior was scowling, as he did most mornings – and afternoons and evenings – when he had forgotten to don his mask of paint. Since it had begun to give him a blotchy rash on cheeks, chin and forehead, he ‘forgot’ more often these days – and Toc answered that belligerent expression with a bright smile.
‘Swords unsheathed this day, Torrent.’
‘Has Redmask given you leave to ride to battle?’
Toc shrugged. ‘He’s said nothing either way, which I suppose is leave enough.’
‘It is not.’ Torrent backed his horse away, then swung it round to ride to where Redmask sat astride his Letherii mount beyond the rough line of readied riders.
Settling back in the strange boxy Awl saddle, Toc examined once again his bow, then the arrows in the quiver strapped to his right thigh. He wasn’t much interested in actually fighting, but at the very least he would be ready to defend himself if necessary. Ill omens. Clearly Redmask was indifferent to such notions. Toc scratched at the lurid tissue surrounding his eyeless socket. I miss that eye, gift of High Denul in what seems ages past. Gods knew, made me a real archer again – these days I’m damned near useless. Fast and inaccurate, that’s Toc the Unlucky.
Would Redmask forbid him his ride this day? Toc did not think so. He could see Torrent exchanging words with the war leader, the unmasked warrior’s horse sidestepping and tossing its head. True enough, how the beast comes to resemble its master. Imagine all the one-eyed dogs I might have owned. Torrent then wheeled his mount and made his way back towards Toc at a quick canter.
The scowl had darkened. Toc smiled once more. ‘Swords unsheathed this day, Torrent.’
‘You’ve said that before.’
‘I thought we might start over.’
‘He wants you out of danger.’
‘But I can still ride with the army.’
‘I do not trust you, so do not think that anything you do will not be unwitnessed.’
‘Too many nots there, I think, Torrent. But I’m feeling generous this morning so I’ll leave the reins loose.’
‘One must never knot his reins,’ Torrent said. ‘Any fool knows that.’
‘As you say.’
The army set out, all mounted for the moment – including the dog-masters – but that would not last. Nor, Toc suspected, would the force remain united. Redmask saw no battle as a singular event. Rather, he saw a collection of clashes, an engagement of wills; where one was blunted he would shift his attention to resume the sparring elsewhere, and it was in the orchestration of these numerous meetings that a battle was won or lost. Flanking elements would spin off from the main column. More than one attack, more than one objective.
Toc understood this well enough. It was, he suspected, the essence of tactics among successful commanders the world over. Certainly the Malazans had fought that way, with great success. Eschewing the notion of feints, every engagement was deliberate and deliberately intended to lock an enemy down, into fierce, desperate combat.
‘Leave feints to the nobility,’ Kellanved had once said. ‘And they can take their clever elegance to the barrow.’ That had been while he and Dassem Ultor had observed the Untan knights on the field of battle east of Jurda. Riding back and forth, back and forth. Tiring their burdened warhorses, sowing confusion in the dust-clouds engulfing their own ranks. Feint and blind. Dassem had ignored the pureblood fools, and before the day’s battle was done he had shattered the entire Untan army, including those vaunted, once-feared knights.
The Letherii did not possess heavy cavalry. But if they did, Toc believed, they would play feint and blind all day long.
Or perhaps not. Their sorcery in battle was neither subtle nor elegant. Ugly as a Fenn’s fist, in fact. This suggested a certain pragmatism, an interest in efficiency over pomp, and, indeed, a kind of impatience regarding the mannerisms of war.
Sorcery. Had Redmask forgotten the Letherii mages?
The vast level plain where the enemy waited – the Awl called it Pradegar, Old Salt – was not magically dead. Redmask’s shamans had made use of the residual magic there to track the movements of the enemy army, after all.
Redmask, have you lost your mind?
The Awl rode on.
More than swords unsheathed this day, I fear. He scratched again at his gaping socket, then kicked his horse into motion.
Orbyn Truthfinder disliked the feel of soft ground beneath him. Earth, loam, sand, anything that seemed uneasy beneath his weight. He would suffer a ride in a carriage, since the wheels were solid enough, the side to side lurching above the rocky trail serving to reassure him whenever he thought of that uncertainty below. He stood now on firm stone, a bulge of scraped bedrock just up from the trail that wound the length of the valley floor.
The air’s breath was sun-warmed, smelling of cold water and pine. Midges wandered in swarms along the streams of ice-melt threading down the mountainsides, slanting this way and that whenever a dragonfly darted into their midst. The sky was cloudless, the blue so sharp and clean compared to the dusty atmosphere of Drene – or any other city for that matter – that Orbyn found himself glancing upward again and again, struggling with something like disbelief.
When not looking skyward, the Patriotist’s eyes were fixed on the three riders descending from the pass ahead. They had moved well in advance of his company, climbing the heights, then traversing the spine of the mountains to the far pass, where a garrison had been slaughtered. Where, more importantly, a certain shipment of weapons had not arrived. In the grander scheme, such a loss meant little, but Factor Letur Anict was not a man of grand schemes. His motivations were truncated, parsed into a language of precision, intolerant of deviation, almost neurotic when faced with anything messy. And this, indeed, was messy. In short, Letur Anict, for all his wealth and power, was a bureaucrat in the truest sense of the word.
The advance riders were returning, at long last, but Orbyn was not particularly pleased by that. They would have nothing good to say, he knew. Tales of rotting corpses, charred wood, squalling ravens and mice among mouldering bones. At the very least, he could force himself once again into the Factor’s carriage to sit opposite that obnoxious number-chewer, and counsel – with greater veracity this time – that they turn their column round and head back to Drene.
Not that he would succeed, he knew. For Letur Anict, every insult was grievous, and every failure was an insult. Someone would pay. Someone always did.
Some instinct made Orbyn glance back at the camp and he saw the Factor emerging from his carriage. Well, that was a relief, since Orbyn was in the habit of sweating profusely in Letur’s cramped contrivance. He watched as the washed-out man picked a delicate path up to where stood Orbyn. Overdressed for the mild air, his lank, white hair covered by a broad-rimmed hat to keep the sun from pallid skin, his strangely round face already flushed with exertion.
‘Truthfinder,’ he said as soon as he reached the bulge of bedrock, ‘we both know what our scouts will tell us.’
‘Indeed, Factor.’
‘So…where are they?’
Orbyn’s thin brows rose, and he blinked to clear the sudden sweat stinging his eyes. ‘As you know, they never descended farther than this – where we are camped right now. Leaving three possibilities. One, they turned round, back up and through the pass—’
‘They were not seen to do that.’
‘No. Two, they left the trail here and went south, perhaps seeking the Pearls Pass into south Bluerose.’
‘Travelling the spine of the mountains? That seems unlikely, Truthfinder.’
‘Three, they went north from here.’
The Factor licked his lips, as if considering something. Inflectionless, he asked, ‘Why would they do that?’
Orbyn shrugged. ‘One could, if one so desired, skirt the range until one reached the coast, then hire a craft to take one to virtually any coastal village or port of the Bluerose Sea.’
‘Months.’
‘Fear Sengar and his companions are well used to that, Factor. No fugitive party has ever fled for as long within the confines of the empire as have they.’
‘Not through skill alone, Truthfinder. We both know that the Edur could have taken them a hundred times, in a hundred different places. And further, we both know why they have not done so. The question you and I have danced round for a long, long time is what, if anything, are we going to do regarding all of that.’
‘That question, alas,’ said Orbyn, ‘is one that can only be addressed by our masters, back in Letheras.’
‘Masters?’ Letur Anict snorted. ‘They have other, more pressing concerns. We must act independently, in keeping with the responsibilities granted us; indeed, in keeping with the very expectation that we will meet those responsibilities. Do we stand aside while Fear Sengar searches for the Edur god? Do we stand aside while Hannan Mosag and his so-called hunters work their deft incompetence in this so-called pursuit? Is there any doubt in your mind, Orbyn Truthfinder, that Hannan Mosag is committing treason? Against the Emperor? Against the empire?’
‘Karos Invictad, and, I’m sure, the Chancellor, are dealing with the matter of the Warlock King’s treason.’
‘No doubt. Yet what might occur to their plans if Fear Sengar should succeed? What will happen to all of our plans, should the Edur God of Shadows rise again?’
‘That, Factor, is highly unlikely.’ No, it is in fact impossible.
‘I am well acquainted,’ Letur Anict said testily, ‘with probabilities and risk assessment, Truthfinder.’
‘What is it you desire?’ Orbyn asked.
Letur Anict’s smile was tight. He faced north. ‘They are hiding. And we both know where.’
Orbyn was not happy. ‘The extent of your knowledge surprises me, Factor.’
‘You have underestimated me.’
‘It seems I have at that.’
‘Truthfinder. I have with me twenty of my finest guard. You have forty soldiers and two mages. We have enough lanterns to cast out darkness and so steal the power of those decrepit warlocks. How many remain in that hidden fastness? If we strike quickly, we can rid ourselves of this damnable cult and that alone is worth the effort. Capturing Fear Sengar in the bargain would sweeten the repast. Consider the delight, the accolades, should we deliver to Karos and the Chancellor the terrible traitor, Fear Sengar, and that fool, Udinaas. Consider, if you will, the rewards.’
Orbyn Truthfinder sighed, then he said, ‘Very well.’
‘Then you know the secret path. I suspected as much.’
And you do not, and I knew as much. He withdrew a handkerchief and mopped the sweat from his face, then along the wattle beneath his chin. ‘The climb is strenuous. We shall have to leave the carriages and horses here.’
‘Your three scouts can serve to guard the camp. They have earned a rest. When do we leave, Truthfinder?’
Orbyn grimaced. ‘Immediately.’
Two of the three scouts were sitting beside a fire on which sat a soot-stained pot of simmering tea, while the third one rose, arched to ease his back, then sauntered towards the modest train that had spent most of the day descending into the valley.
The usual greetings were exchanged, along with invitations to share this night and this camp. The leader of the train walked wearily over to join the scout.
‘Is that not the Drene Factor’s seal on that carriage?’ he asked.
The scout nodded. ‘So it is.’ His gaze strayed past the rather unimpressive man standing opposite him. ‘You are not traders, I see. Yet, plenty of guards.’
‘A wise investment, I should judge,’ the man replied, nodding. ‘The garrison fort gave proof enough of that. It stands abandoned still, half burnt down and strewn with the bones of slaughtered soldiers.’
The scout shrugged. ‘The west side of the range is notorious for bandits. I heard they was hunted down and killed.’
‘Is that so?’
‘So I heard. And there’s a new detachment on its way, along with carpenters, tree-fellers and a blacksmith. The fort should be rebuilt before season’s end.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s the risk of the road.’
Venitt Sathad nodded again. ‘We passed no-one on the trail. Is the Factor coming to join you here, then?’
‘He is.’
‘Is it not unusual, this journey? Drene, after all, is on the far side of the sea.’
‘Factor’s business is his own,’ the scout replied, a little tersely. ‘You never answered me, sir.’
‘I did not? What was your question again?’
