The Malazan Empire, page 872
The one closest to her flung the stained grasses to one side. ‘A nest of vipers,’ she said. ‘Every clump of sagebrush and rillfire swarms with them.’
‘Such omens haunt us,’ the other one muttered.
Hessanrala scowled. ‘A knife to your words, Ralata.’ She waved one hand. ‘Look at this good fortune. Horses for each of us and three more to spare, a bag of coins and mint-soaked bhederin and three skins of water—and did we not amuse ourselves with the pathetic creature? Did we not teach him the gifts of pain?’
‘This is all true,’ said Ralata, ‘but I have felt shadows in the night, and the whisper of dread wings. Something stalks us, Hessanrala.’
In reply the warleader snarled and turned away. She vaulted on to her horse. ‘We are Ahkrata Barghast. Skincuts—and who does not fear the women slayers of the Ahkrata?’ She glared at the others, as if seeking the proper acknowledgement, and seemed satisfied as they drew their mounts round to face her.
Ralata spat into her hands and took charge of the only saddled horse—the Akrynnai trader’s very own, which she had claimed by right of being the first to touch her blade to the man’s flesh. She set a boot into the stirrup and swung on to the beast’s back. Hessanrala was young. This was her first time as warleader, and she was trying too hard. It was custom that a seasoned warrior volunteer to accompany a new warleader’s troop, lest matters go awry. But Hessanrala was not interested in heeding Ralata, seeing wisdom as fear, caution as cowardice.
She adjusted the fragments of Moranth chitin that served as armour among the Ahkrata, and made sure the chest-plate of Gold was properly centred. Then took a moment to resettle into her nostrils the broad hollow bone plugs that made Ahkrata women the most beautiful among all the White Face Barghast. She swung her horse to face Hessanrala.
‘This trader,’ said the warleader with a faint snarl directed at Ralata, ‘was returning to his kin as we all know, having chased him from our camp. We can see the ancient trail he was using. We shall follow it, find the Akrynnai huts, and kill everyone we find.’
‘The path leads north,’ said Ralata. ‘We know nothing of what lies in that direction—we might ride into a camp of a thousand Akrynnai warriors.’
‘Ralata bleats like a newborn kid, but I hear no pierce-cry of a hawk.’ Hessanrala looked to the others. ‘Do any of you hear the winged hunter? No, only Ralata.’
Sighing, Ralata made a gesture of release. ‘I am done with you, Hessanrala. I return to our camp, and how many women will come to my Skincut cry? Not five. No, I shall be warleader to a hundred, perhaps more. You, Hessanrala, shall not live long—’ and she looked to the others, was dismayed to see their expressions of disgust and contempt—but they too were young. ‘Follow her into the north, warriors, and you may not return. Those who would join me, do so now.’
When none made a move, Ralata shrugged and swung her horse round. She set off, southward.
Once past a rise and out of sight of the troop—which had cantered off in the opposite direction—Ralata reined in. She would have the blood of five foolish girls on her hands. Most would understand her reasons for leaving. They knew Hessanrala, after all. But the families that lost daughters would turn away.
There was a hawk out there. She knew it with certainty. And the five kids had no shepherd, no hound to guard them. Well, she would be that hound, low in the grasses on their trail, ever watchful. And, should the hawk strike, she would save as many as she could.
She set out to follow them.
______
The low cairns set in a row across the hill’s summit and leading down the slope were almost entirely overgrown. Windblown soils had heaped up along one side, providing purchase for rillfire trees, their gnarled, low branches spreading out in swaths of sharp thorns. High grasses knotted the other sides. But Tool knew the piles of stone for what they were—ancient blinds and runs built by Imass hunters—and so he was not surprised when they reached the end of the slope and found themselves at the edge of a precipice. Below was a sinkhole, its base thick with skalberry trees. Buried beneath that soil, he knew, there were bones, stacked thick, two or even three times the height of a grown man. In this place, Imass had driven herds to their deaths in great seasonal hunts. If one were to dig beneath the skalberry trees, one would find the remains of bhed and tenag: their bones and shattered horns, tusks, and embedded spear-points of grey chert; one would find, here and there, the skeletons of ay that had been dragged over the cliff’s edge in their zeal—the wolves’ canines filed down to mark them as pups found in the wild, too fierce to have their massive fangs left in place; and perhaps the occasional okral, for the plains bears often tracked the bhed herds and found themselves caught up in the stampedes, especially when fire was used.
Generation upon generation of deadly hunts mapped out in those layers, until all the tenag were gone, and with them the okral, and indeed the ay—and the wind was hollow and empty of life, no howls, no shrill trumpeting from bull tenag, and even the bhed had given way to their smaller cousins, the bhederin—who would have vanished too, had their two-legged hunters thrived.
But they did not thrive, and Onos T’oolan knew the reason for that.
He stood at the edge of the sinkhole, anguish deep in his soul, and he longed for the return of the great beasts of his youth. Eyes scanning the lie of the land to the sides of the pit, he could see where the harvest had been processed—the slabs of meat brought up to the women who waited beside smaller, skin-lined pits filled with water that steamed as heated stones built it to boiling—and yes, he could see the rumpled ground evincing those cooking pits, and clumps of greenery marking hearths—and there, to one side, a huge flattened boulder, its slightly concave surface pocked where longbones had been split to extract the marrow.
He could almost smell the reek, could almost hear the droning chants and buzzing insects. Coyotes out on the fringes, awaiting their turn. Carrion birds scolding in the sky overhead, the flit of rhizan and the whisper of capemoths. Drifts of smoke redolent with sizzling fat and scorched hair.
There had been a last hunt, a last season, a last night of contented songs round fires. The following year saw no one in this place. The wind wandered alone, the half-butchered carcasses grew tough as leather in the sinkhole, and flowers fluttered where blood had once pooled.
Did the wind mourn with no song to carry on its breath? Or did it hover, waiting in terror for the first cries of bestial pain and fear, only to find that they never came? Did the land yearn for the tremble of thousands of hoofs and the padded feet of tenag? Did it hunger for that flood of nutrients to feed its children? Or was the silence it found a blessed peace to its tortured skin?
There had been seasons when the herds came late. And then, with greater frequency, seasons when the herds did not come at all. And the Imass went hungry. Starved, forced into new lands in a desperate search for food.
The Ritual of Tellann had circumvented the natural, inevitable demise of the Imass. Had eluded the rightful consequences of their profligacy, their shortsightedness.
He wondered if, among the uppermost level of bones, one might find, here and there, the scattered skeletons of Imass. A handful that had come to this place to see what could be salvaged from the previous year’s hunt, down beneath the picked carcasses—a few desiccated strips of meat and hide, the tacky gel of hoofs. Did they kneel in helpless confusion? Did the hollow in their bellies call out to the hollow wind outside, joined in the truth that the two empty silences belonged to one another?
If not for Tellann, the Imass would have known regret—not as a ghost memory—but as a cruel hunter tracking them down to their very last, staggering steps. And that, Tool told himself, would have been just.
‘Vultures in the sky,’ said the Barghast warrior at his side.
Tool grimaced. ‘Yes, Bakal, we are close.’
‘It is as you have said, then. Barghast have died.’ The Senan paused, and then said, ‘yet our shouldermen sensed nothing. You are not of our blood. How did you know, Onos Toolan?’
The suspicion never went away, Tool reflected. This gauging, uneasy regard of the foreigner who would lead the mighty White Faces to what all believed was a righteous, indeed a holy war. ‘This is a place of endings, Bakal. Yet, if you know where to look—if you know how to see—you find that some endings never end. The very absence howls like a wounded beast.’
Bakal uttered a sceptical grunt, and then said, ‘Every death-cry finds a place to die, until only silence waits beyond. You speak of echoes that cannot be.’
‘And you speak with the conviction of a deaf man insisting that what you do not hear does not exist—in such thinking you will find yourself besieged, Bakal.’ He finally faced the Barghast warrior. ‘When will you people discover that your will does not rule the world?’
‘I ask how you knew,’ Bakal said, expression darkening, ‘and you answer with insults?’
‘It is curious what you choose to take offence to,’ Tool replied.
‘It is your cowardice that offends us, Warleader.’
‘I refuse your challenge, Bakal. As I did that of Riggis, and as I will all others that come my way—until our return to our camp.’
‘And once there? A hundred warriors shall vie to be first to spill your blood. A thousand. Do you imagine you can withstand them all?’
Tool was silent for a moment. ‘Bakal, have you seen me fight?’
The warrior bared his filed teeth. ‘None of us have. Again you evade my questions!’
Behind them, close to a hundred disgruntled Senan warriors listened to their every word. But Tool would not face them. He found he could not look away from the sinkhole. I could have drawn my sword. With shouts and fierce faces, enough to terrify them all. And I could have driven them before me, chased them, shrieking at seeing them run, seeing their direction shift, as the ancient rows of cairns channelled them unwittingly on to the proper path—
—and then see them tumble over the cliff’s edge. Cries of fear, screams of pain—the snap of bones, the thunder of crushed bodies—oh, listen to the echoes of all that!
‘I have a question for you, Bakal.’
‘Ah! Yes, ask it and hear how a Barghast answers what is asked of him!’
‘Can the Senan afford to lose a thousand warriors?’
Bakal snorted.
‘Can the Warleader of the White Face Barghast justify killing a thousand of his own warriors? Just to make a point?’
‘You will not survive one, never mind a thousand!’
Tool nodded. ‘See how difficult it is, Bakal, to answer questions?’
He set out, skirting the sinkhole’s edge, and made his way down the slope to the left—a much gentler descent into the valley, and had the beasts been clever, they would have used it. But fear drove them on, and on. Blinding them, deafening them. Fear led them to the cliff’s edge. Fear chased them into death.
Look on, my warriors, and see me run.
But it is not you that I fear. A detail without relevance, because, you see, the cliff edge does not care.
‘Which damned tribe is this one?’ Sceptre Irkullas asked.
The scout frowned. ‘The traders call them the Nith’rithal—the blue streaks in their white face paint distinguish them.’
The Akrynnai warleader twisted to ease the muscles of his lower back. He had thought such days were past him—a damned war! Had he not seen enough to earn some respite? When all he sought was a quiet life in his clan, playing bear to his grandchildren, growling as they swarmed all over him with squeals and leather knives stabbing everywhere they could reach. He so enjoyed his lengthy death-throes, always saving one last shocking lunge when all were convinced the giant bear was well and truly dead. They’d shriek and scatter and he would lie back, laughing until he struggled to catch his breath.
By the host of spirits, he had earned peace. Instead, he had . . . this. ‘How many yurts did you say again?’ His memory leaked like a worm-holed bladder these days.
‘Six, maybe seven thousand, Sceptre.’
Irkullas grunted. ‘No wonder they’ve devoured half that bhederin herd in the month since they corralled them.’ He considered for a time, scratching the white bristles on his chin. ‘Twenty thousand inhabitants then. Would you say that a fair count?’
‘There’s the track of a large war-party that headed out—eastward—a day or so ago.’
‘Thus diminishing the number of combatants even more—tracks, you say? These Barghast have grown careless, then.’
‘Arrogant, Sceptre—after all, they’ve slaughtered hundreds of Akrynnai already—’
‘Poorly armed and ill-guarded merchants! And that makes them strut? Well, this time they shall face true warriors of the Akrynnai—descendants of warriors who crushed invaders from Awl, Lether and D’rhasilhani!’ He collected his reins and twisted round towards his second in command. ‘Gavat! Prepare the wings to the canter—as soon as their pickets see us, sound the Gathering. Upon sighting the encampment, we charge.’
There were enough warriors nearby to hear his commands and a low, ominous hhunn chant rumbled through the ranks.
Irkullas squinted at the scout. ‘Ride back out to your wing, Ildas—ride down their pickets if you can.’
‘It’s said the Barghast women are as dangerous as the men.’
‘No doubt. We kill every adult and every youth near blooding—the children we will make Akrynnai and those who resist we will sell as slaves to the Bolkando. Now, enough talking—loosen the arrows in your quiver, Ildas—we have kin to avenge!’
Sceptre Irkullas liked playing the bear to his grandchildren. He was well suited to the role. Stubborn, slow to anger, but as the Letherii and others had discovered, ware the flash of red in his eyes—he had led the warriors of the Akrynnai for three decades, at the head of the most-feared cavalry on the plains, and not once had he been defeated.
A commander needed more than ferocity, of course. A dozen dead Letherii generals had made the mistake of underestimating the Sceptre’s cunning.
The Barghast had lashed out to slay traders and drovers. Irkullas was not interested in chasing the damned raiding parties this way and that—not yet, in any case. No, he would strike at the very homes of these White Face Barghast—and leave in his wake nothing but bones and ashes.
Twenty thousand. Seven to ten thousand combatants is probably a high estimate—although it’s said they’ve few old and lame, for their journey into these lands was evidently a hard one.
These Barghast were formidable warriors; of that Irkullas had no doubt. But they thought like thieves and rapists, with the belligerence and arrogance of bullies. Eager for war, were they? Then Sceptre Irkullas shall bring them war.
Formidable warriors, yes, these White Faces.
He wondered how long they would last.
Kamz’tryld despised picket duty. Tripping over bhederin dung—and more than a few bones of late, as the slaughter to ready for winter had begun—while biting flies chased him about and the wind drove grit and sand into his face so that by day’s end his white deathmask was somewhere between grey and brown. Besides, he was not so old that he could not have trotted out with Talt’s war-party yesterday—not that Talt agreed, the one-fanged bastard.
Kamz was reaching an age when loot became less a luxury than a need. He had a legacy to build, something to leave his kin—he should not be wasting his last years of prowess here, so far from—
Thunder?
No. Horses.
He was on a ridge that faced a yet higher one just to the north—he probably should have walked out to that one, but he’d decided it was too far—and as he turned to squint in that direction he caught sight of the first outriders.
Akrynnai. A raid—ah, we shall have plenty of blood to spill after all! He snapped out a command and his three wardogs spun and bolted for the camp. Kamz voiced a cry and saw that his fellow sentinels, two off to his left, three to his right, had all seen and heard the enemy, and dogs were tearing down towards the camp—where he discerned a sudden flurry of activity—
Yes, these Akrynnai had made a terrible mistake.
He shifted grip on his lance, as he saw one of the riders charging directly for him. A fine horse: it would make his first trophy of this day.
And then, along the ridge behind the first scatter of riders, a mass of peaked helms—a blinding glare rising like the crest of an iron wave, and then the flash of scaled armour—
Kamz involuntarily stepped back, the rider closing on him forgotten in his shock.
He was a seasoned warrior. He could gauge numbers in an instant, and he counted as he watched the ranks roll down the slope. Spirits below! Twenty—no, thirty thousand—and still more! I need to—
The first arrow took him high between his neck and right shoulder. Staggered by the blow, he recovered and looked up only to greet the second arrow, tearing like fire into his throat.
As blood spurted down his chest, the biting flies rushed in.
Warleader Talt probed with his tongue his single remaining upper canine and then glared at the distant horse-warriors. ‘They lead us ever on, and not once do they turn and fight! We are in a land of cowards!’
‘So we must scrape it clean,’ said Bedit in a growl.
Talt nodded. ‘Your words ring like swords on shields, old friend. These Akrynnai start and dance away like antelope, but their villages are not so fleet, are they? When we are killing their children and raping their young ones, when we are burning their huts and slaughtering their puny horses, then they will fight us!’
‘Or run in terror, Warleader. Torture kills them quick—we’ve seen that. They are spineless.’ He pointed with the tip of his spear. ‘We must choose our own path here, I think, for it is likely they seek to lead us away from their village.’
Talt studied the distant riders. No more than thirty—they had spied them at dawn, waiting, it seemed, on a distant rise. Talt had half-exhausted his warriors attempting to chase them down. A few scattered arrows sent their way was the extent of their belligerence. It was pathetic. The warleader glanced back at his warriors. Eight hundred men and women, their white paint streaked now with sweat, most of them sitting, hunched over in the heat. ‘We shall rest for a time,’ he said.
