Stonewielder

CHAPTER III

Courtiers in bright finery once crowded the reception hall of Fortress Paliss, capital of the once sovereign Kingdom of Rool. Tapestries lined its stone walls. Long tables offered up delicacies and wines from distant exotic lands in this, the most powerful state on Fist — rival to Korelri.

Once.

Now, the broad hall stood empty, dark and cold. A single occupant — other than his guards — sat at one bare table, his back to a blazing conflagration roaring within a stone fireplace four paces across.

Ussu entered and crossed the wide unlit hall. Shadows danced over him, flickering from the distant fire. His master, Yeull ’ul Taith, commander of what remained of the Malazan Sixth Army, Overlord of Fist, sat as no more than a silhouette of night, awaiting him.

With Ussu walked Borun, Black Moranth, leader of a contingent of that race shipwrecked on Fist some fifteen years ago and now Yeull’s second. Commander of what the locals cursed as Yeull’s ‘Black Hands’.

Ussu noted how Borun’s armoured boots grated on the stone while his footfalls came in comparative silence. He looked down to his leather sandals almost hidden beneath layered robes. Quiet. Hidden. And so it has always been. Who was to know that he, Ussu, once a mage of little note within the Empire, now pursued power by other, darker, means?

They halted before their commander. Yes, commander, now. Yeull ’ul Taith. Overlord. High Fist, after a fashion. First went Greymane — ousted on account of his outrageous leanings. Then that Imperial-appointed governor — what had his name been? Found dead. Then Fist Udara — but her suicide had appeared genuine. And now Yeull — clinging on like a man gripping a plank in a storm. Terrified of betrayal. Yet hanging on just the same, even more terrified of letting go.

Yeull straightened, a thick bearhide wrap falling from his shoulders. His long black hair hung wet with sweat over a pale scarred face. Dark eyes darted between Ussu and Borun. ‘Yes? What is it?’

‘News, m’lord. Of a kind.’

Yeull leaned in his tall chair, draped an arm over its back. ‘Look at you two.’ He gestured to Ussu: ‘White,’ then to Borun, ‘and black.’

Ussu favoured pale hues such as ivory and cream. And his hair was long and thoroughly grey. While Borun was, of course, black.

‘Is one to suggest caution, the other haste?’

‘M’lord…’

‘Is one to prove trustworthy, the other… well… not so trustworthy?’

‘M’lord!’

The dark eyes sharpened. ‘Overlord.’

Ussu bowed. ‘Yes, Overlord.’

‘What is it?’ He poured himself a glass of wine from an earthenware decanter. ‘Is it cold in here? I feel cold.’

As he stood before the roaring bonfire sweat now prickled Ussu’s underarms, chest and face. ‘No, m- Overlord. I am not cold.’

‘No? You’re not?’ He tossed back the glass in one swallow. ‘I am. To the bones.’

‘He is calling for you.’

Yeull looked up from studying the empty glass. ‘What? Someone calling me? Who?’

‘The prisoner,’ Borun said, his voice a coarse growl.

Yeull set down the glass carefully, straightened in his seat. ‘Ah. Him. What does he want?’

‘He must have news for us, High Fist. Something to offer, in any case.’

‘It is cold — I swear it is cold.’ Yeull turned aside. ‘More wood for the fire.’

Ussu turned a quick look to Borun but could see nothing within the vision slit of his lowered visor. These Moranth and their armour! The man must be sweltering.

‘So?’ Yeull demanded. ‘Why are you here speaking to me then? Speak to him.’

‘He will only talk to you.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes, High Fist.’

‘Out of the question.’ The High Fist drew the bearhide cloak tighter about his shoulders.

Ussu suppressed his irritation. ‘We have been through this before, High Fist. It must be you. None other.’

The man was looking aside, his gaze distant, almost empty. ‘It will be cold down there. So far below.’

‘We will bring torches.’

‘What’s that? Torches? Yes. Fire. We must bring fire.’

They walked the dark empty halls of Fortress Paliss. Guards — all Malazan regulars — saluted and unlocked doors to the deeper passageways. Ussu noted the many grey beards among them. They were none of them getting any younger, including himself. Who would carry on? They had trained and recruited thousands of soldiers from among the Rool and Skolati citizens, organized an army of over seventy thousand, but hardly any of the locals held a rank above captain.

Original Malazan officers constituted the ruling body. It was, in effect, the permanent rule of an occupying military elite. Yet their generation was passing away. Who would take up the sceptre — or the mace, in this instance — of rulership? Most had children, grown to men and women now, but these formed the new pampered aristocracy, not the least interested in service, or the world beyond their own sprawling estates. No, it seemed to Ussu more surely with every passing year that the local Fistian and Korelri policy was simply to ignore these invaders until they faded away. As surely they would, soldier by soldier, until nothing was left but for mouldering armour and dusty pennants from forgotten distant lands high on a wall.

The stalemate of initial invasion had ossified into formalized relations. It seemed that as far as the Korelri were concerned the Malazans simply ran the island of Fist now, as had the last Roolian dynasty before them. A mere change in administration. Frustration was not the word. Failure, perhaps, came closer to describing the acid bite in Ussu’s stomach and soul whenever his thoughts turned to it. He had failed his superiors, each commander in turn, failed in attaining his one assigned task: achieving Malazan domination in this theatre. Decades ago, before the invasion fleet left Unta, Kellanved himself had set the task upon him.

He remembered his surprise and terror that day, so long ago now, when the old ogre had taken his arm and walked him out along Unta’s harbour mole. Dancer had followed; how the man’s gaze had tracked their every move! ‘Ussu,’ Kellanved had said, ‘I will tell you this: in the end conquering is not about what territory or resources you control… it is about recasting the deck entirely.’

And he had mouthed something insipid about certainly meaning to and the Emperor had pulled his arm free to jab his walking stick impatiently to the south. ‘Everywhere, for every region — for every person — hands are dealt from the Dragons deck. To create true fundamental change you must force a complete reshuffling and recasting of all hands. Turn your thoughts to that.’ And the man had smiled slyly then, leaning on the silver hound’s head walking stick, staring out over the water and Ussu remembered thinking: As you have, wherever you have gone.

They reached the lowest levels of construction. A locked iron door barred entrance to deeper tunnels carved from the native rock. Here Ussu used a key from his own belt to unlock the portal; no guards remained. Beyond, Borun and Yeull lit torches from lanterns and continued; Ussu locked the door behind them.

He believed these rough winding ways dated back to before the establishment of Paliss itself as a state capital, or even as a settlement. It seemed to him the dust their footfalls kicked up carried with it a tang of smoke and sulphur. Perhaps a remnant of the immense crater lake that dominated the big island.

The torch Yeull carried spluttered and hissed as the man shivered ahead of Ussu, muttering beneath his breath as if in conversation with himself. Ussu wondered, not for the first time, just when a new overlord might be necessary. Not he or Borun; both had found their place. One of the remaining division commanders perhaps, Genarin, or Tesh kel. Yeull had never been popular with the men, given as he was to brooding. But he’d been getting less and less reliable of late.

Borun led the way into a chamber carved from stone. Along one side stood a row of smaller alcoves, each barred. Cells. And around the main room instruments of… punishment and persuasion.

Just as Ussu had found them so long ago when the fortress fell. Very bloodthirsty, that last Roolian dynasty. And forgotten in the most distant pit, enduring, perhaps older even than that generation itself, the last occupant. Had he been overlooked during those last days of panic as the Malazan fist closed? Or had he already been forgotten — slipping from the living memory of humanity as dynasty followed dynasty in their cycles of rebellion and decline? Who was to say? He himself refused to enlighten them.

Borun stopped at a great iron sarcophagus some three paces in length lying within a metal framework upon the bare stone. He set his torch in a brazier, then took hold of a tall iron wheel next to the frame. This he ratcheted, his breath harsh with effort. As the wheel turned long iron spikes slowly withdrew from holes set all down the sides of the sarcophagus, and in rows across its front.

When the ends of these countless iron spikes emerged from within the stained openings a thick black fluid, blood of a kind, dripped viscous and thick from their needle tips. A slow rumbling exhalation of breath sounded then. It stirred the dust surrounding the sarcophagus.

Ussu bent over the coffin. ‘Cherghem? You can hear me?’

A voice no more substantial than that breath sounded from within. I hear you.

‘You say you have information for us? You sense something?’

Food. Water.

‘Not until you speak.’

Water.

Ussu took a ladle from a nearby bucket and dashed its contents across the spike holes in the iron masking the head of the casket. ‘There. You have water. Now speak!’

And the Overlord? He is here?

‘Yes.’ Ussu gestured Yeull forward.

But the Overlord would not move; he stood immobile, staring, one hand clenching the fur hide at his neck, the other white upon the haft of a torch held so close as to nearly set his hair aflame. His face appeared drained of all blood, its skein of scars livid.

‘High Fist…’ Ussu began, coaxing, ‘you must speak.’

The mouth opened but no sound emerged.

I sense him there, his heart pounding like a star in the night. Overlord, I have news for you.

‘Yes? News?’ the man croaked, stricken. ‘What news?’

They are coming for you, Yeull.

‘What’s that? Who?’

Ussu cast an uncertain glance across the sarcophagus to Borun who had cocked his armoured head aside, gauntlets clenching.

You did not think they would allow you your own personal fiefdom, did you? Your superiors, far to the north, they are coming to reassert control of their territory. No doubt you will hang as a usurper.

‘How can you know this?’ Ussu demanded.

I sense their approach.

‘From whence will they come? The west or the east?’

The east.

Ussu did not think it possible for the High Fist to pale any further, yet he did. ‘High Fist… we cannot be sure…’

But Yeull was backing away, shaking his head in terrified denial, his eyes huge dark pits. ‘No, they are coming… they will never stop. Never leave me alone.’

Ussu moved to follow. ‘High Fist…’

And can you guess who leads them?

Though Ussu knew this ancient being was laughing within, savouring his power over them, he turned to regard the impassive scarred iron mask, had to ask, ‘Who?’

Your old friend, Overlord… the one some name Stonewielder.

Yeull leapt to the wheel, torch falling. ‘How do you know this?’ he demanded.

I sense what he carries at his side — an artefact unique in all existence, but for one other.

The ratcheting of the mechanism shocked Ussu as it spun under Yeull’s hand.

The spikes thrust their way irresistibly into Cherghem’s flesh — such as it was — much deeper than ever, as far as they could, and the prisoner groaned, convulsing in a shudder that shook the stone beneath their feet. Then, silence. Ussu listened for an intake of breath, heard none.

‘That’s enough from you,’ Yeull ground out, snarling. He retrieved his torch, motioned to the stairs. As they walked the Moranth commander fell back to join Ussu. ‘Think you he was lying?’

‘No. It was inevitable… just sooner than I had hoped.’

‘What must we do?’

Ussu eyed the back of the Overlord, almost invisible in the gloom. ‘More germane to my mind is the question… what will you do?’

The Moranth’s chitinous armour plates grated in an indifferent shrug. ‘I am pledged to Yeull, my commander. He orders, I obey.’

‘I see.’ Ussu did not bother disguising his relief. Over a thousand Black Moranth — our iron core. We may yet have a chance. ‘Through my contacts I will warn Mare, let them know another invasion fleet will be approaching.’ They reached the locked iron door and Overlord Yeull, waiting, jaws clenched rigid in irritation and frustrated rage. ‘With any luck,’ Ussu finished, ‘not one ship will escape them as before.’

No less than five times Tal, First of the Chase, promised her war band blood. Each time the trespassers slipped their grasp. No ambush succeeded. Not even the gathering cold slowed the passage of these foreigners across the icefields. Now the Chase, the premiere Jhek war party, must content itself with a protracted hunt across the crevasses of the Great Northern Agal.

Tal signalled a halt, pulled off her bulky fur and hide mitts. Her breath clouded the air. Hemtl, her second, stopped next to her. His furred hood and ivory eye-shield obscured his face, but she could well imagine his boyish sulk. He motioned to the tracks scuffing the snow. ‘Still they remain ahead. They must be of the demons of old, the Forkul.’

‘The Forkul would not run,’ said a third voice and Tal suppressed a jerked start of surprise — Ruk had done it again. She turned: there he stood, arms and legs all crooked, in his hides of white, hair whiter still, the pale silver of frost. ‘At least not from us,’ he finished.

‘What would you know of the Forkul?’ Hemtl demanded. Wincing, Tal turned away. You are second, Hemtl. Ruk did not seek the position. No need to remind anyone — except yourself.

Ruk was silent, allowing the wind to whisper his answer to each: More than you.

The rest of the hunt had halted a distance back and crouched, indistinguishable among the wind-blown drifts. ‘This is a waste,’ Tal said to the blinding white horizon. ‘I have lost count of the spoor we’ve passed.’

‘Five snow bear and stragglers of the Ice River herd,’ supplied Ruk.

‘The insult must be answered!’ Hemtl snarled.

Still facing away, Tal let out a long pluming breath. ‘What does the land say?’

‘Stone and rock are far away, Tal,’ said Ruk. ‘The Jaghut ice smothers all other voices.’

‘Yet?’

‘Yet there are whispers…’

She turned to the old man. Why the reluctance? His shielded gaze was turned aside. His hair blew free. Did the man not feel their old enemy’s biting cold? For the first time in the hunt Tal felt the tightening in her throat that comes with the cornering of a snow bear or a giant tusker. Who were these strangers? ‘Whispers of what?’ she breathed.

‘Of the ancestral Hold. Tellann.’

‘Impossible!’ burst out Hemtl. ‘That cannot be.’

‘Not impossible,’ answered Tal, thoughtful. ‘The Elders still walk the land. Logros, Kron, Ifayle. The path is still open — we have just lost the way.’

‘The Jag curse of ice has smothered it,’ Ruk agreed.

‘There are other ways…’ Hemtl said, his voice sullen. ‘The Broken God beckons.’

‘He is not of the land,’ Ruk answered, his dismissal complete.

Tal raised a hand to sign for a halt. ‘Ruk and I will go ahead, see if they will speak to us.’

‘Speak?’ said Hemtl. ‘To what end?’

‘Who knows?’ And she laughed to chide Hemtl. ‘Perhaps they will surrender, hey?’

Tal and Ruk jogged onward. They picked up their pace from their normal league-sustaining trot of pursuit, closing the distance between them and their quarry. After a time the change in tactics was discovered and the party of four ahead slowed then stopped, awaiting them far across the ice. Closing, she and Ruk slowed as well, came to a halt themselves. Tal held out her gloved hands. ‘Do you understand me?’ she called in Korelri.

‘We do,’ an accented voice answered from over the windswept field. ‘What is there for us to talk of?’

What was there for them to talk of? Where could she possibly start? ‘By what right do you so arrogantly cross our lands?’

The four spoke among themselves. One raised his hands to his mouth. ‘Your lands? We thought these wastes empty. Why do you chase us?’

Why? What fools these foreigners were! ‘Why? Because these are our lands! You are trespassers. You eat caribou — that is food taken from our families.’

The four spoke again. ‘We offer our apologies. But there are so many. That herd numbered thousands!’

Tal and Ruk could not help but exchange looks of exasperation. Foreigners! Elder Gods deliver them from the uncomprehending fools. Tal called across the ice, ‘Yes, so it would seem. Yet every one of those spoken for, and that all our families have! What of the herds of your lords? What if they were kept all together and someone, seeing all their number, helped himself to one seeing as they numbered so? What would then happen to him?’

‘He would be imprisoned, or maimed,’ admitted the foreign trespasser, his voice now sounding tired. ‘Very well. Come forward. Perhaps we should speak.’

Tal looked to Ruk, who nodded his assent. They found three men and one woman, all four ill dressed for the cold, shivering, the leathers under their cloaks soaked in sweat that froze into frost and ice before Tal’s eyes. How could these ill-prepared wretches have forestalled them time and again? But the spokesman, a muscular squat fellow, dark-skinned, was sitting on his haunches calmly awaiting them. Tal squatted down with him. ‘Greetings.’

‘Greetings. It would seem we owe you our apologies and reparation of some kind. That is acceptable to us if it is acceptable to you. What repayment would you require?’

Astonished, Tal glanced up at Ruk but found the man grinning at one of the strangers, a skinny youth bearing an unruly thatch of thick black hair. This one wore a brooch on his wool cloak, a silver snake or dragon over a red field. The sight of that insignia triggered a distant recognition within Tal. Thinking of that vague impression, she asked, ‘Your names, first.’

The four exchanged uncertain glances. Why the uneasiness? What could they possibly have to hide? But then the spokesman shrugged. ‘Fair enough. I am Blues. This is Fingers, Lazar, Shell. We are of the Crimson Guard.’

Tal rocked back on her heels. That name she knew. Crimson Guard — they had ruled Stratem to the south in her grandfather’s time. Warriors and mages, her grandfather had told her. War is for them as is the hunt for us. Examining the four, Tal now wondered who had let who escape back there so many times on the trail.

The two named Fingers and Shell straightened then, their gazes roving about. Blues frowned. ‘What…?’

‘It’s a trap,’ Fingers said. ‘We’re surrounded.’

Ruk thrust himself to his feet, cursing. ‘The young fool!’

Tal straightened as well, knowing what she would see. Hemtl had cast the Chase out in a broad encirclement and they closed now, he coming forward. He pointed his spear, calling, ‘Harm our two and you all die!’

None of the four had made any move to defend themselves or restrain Tal and Ruk. Tal raised her hands to Blues. ‘We had no knowledge of this.’

Blues gave his gentle assent. ‘I know — you wouldn’t have delivered yourselves otherwise.’

‘Let me speak to him.’

‘You’d better,’ the man answered quietly.

That gentle warning moved Tal to run to Hemtl. Ruk remained, as if offering himself out of shame as hostage.

‘You fool!’ she snarled, closing.

The young man was panting, his face flushed. ‘We have them. Your trick stopped them.’

‘It wasn’t a trick. This isn’t a game. I was close to terms. Now, thanks to you, I doubt I’ll be able to salvage this…’

But Hemtl wasn’t facing her. Spear levelled, he shouted, ‘Release our man or you will all die!’

Tal slapped him. The blow sent his visor flying, loosed his mane of long kinked hair to blow in the wind. His eyes went huge. ‘I see it now,’ he breathed. ‘You would betray us — allow them to escape for payment. You are a whore…’

She raised her arm to slap him again but he was quicker and it was as if instantly the man’s spear was through her stomach. She felt the broad flint head glance from the bone of her pelvis. How easy it is to die, she thought, amazed, before a sea of pain erased all else. To her shame she screamed but over that she heard the roar of Ruk’s bull outrage.

Tal did not expect to ever awaken again, yet she did. It was night. The lights of the Holds shimmered pink and green in the black starry sky. A fire burned nearby. A woman’s face loomed close. The foreigner, Shell. Then Ruk, face wet with tears. ‘What… what…’ she murmured before sleep took her once more.

When she awoke again it was light and she was strapped in a travois. The men and women of her hunt all gathered around. Ruk pushed his way forward. He took her head in his rough hands. ‘I thought we’d lost you.’

‘What happened?’

‘You were healed. The foreigners healed you. It was far beyond our skills. We’re taking you home now.’

‘Ruk!’ she snarled, then gasped her pain. ‘What happened?’

The old man glanced away. The wind threw his long snow-bright hair about. ‘I killed him.’

She’d thought so. Good — in that he’d managed to keep it among themselves. No new blood feud. Now Ruk would present himself at the Guth-Ull, the council of chiefs, and hear their judgement. They should be lenient, considering.

‘And the foreigners?’

‘Gone.’

‘Gone? I can’t even thank them?’

Ruk shook his head in wonderment at the strange ways of all those not blessed enough to be of the Jhek. ‘They left as soon as they knew you were mended. Would not wait. Said they’d been in a rush because they were in a hurry to rescue a friend. Damned odd these strangers, yes?’

No. Perhaps not so odd, old friend.

‘So where, in the name of all the buggering Faladah, are we?’

Kiska eyed the man. Her… what? Protector? She’d frankly rather die. Guide? Obviously not. Partner? Hardly. Ally?… Perhaps. To be generous — perhaps. She knew nothing of the man, though she’d like to think that the Enchantress was no fool. He was wrapping a cloth about his face and neck in a manner that spoke of long practice and easy familiarity. She scanned the horizon: league after league of desolate near-desert prostrate beneath a dull slate sky. She knew this place. It had been a long time, yet how could anyone ever forget?

‘Shadow. We are in the Shadow Realm.’

The man grunted his distaste. ‘The Kingdom of the Deceiver? He is reviled in my lands.’

Kneeling, Kiska laid her roll on the ground. She took articles from her pockets and waist, including a water skin, wrapped dried meat and the sack, and folded them tightly into the roll, which she then tied off with rope. This went on to her back. She pulled a grey cloth from beneath her leather hauberk, and, like Jheval, wrapped it round her head and face. Thin leather gloves finished the change; she yanked them tight, then checked the ties of the two long-knives she carried towards the back of each hip.

Jheval looked her up and down, from her now dusty knee-high boots up her trousers to her full-sleeved hauberk and the headscarf she was tucking in. ‘You’re too lightly armoured,’ he observed.

‘Have to do.’

‘It won’t.’

‘That’s my problem.’

‘Not if I have to carry you.’

‘You won’t.’

The Seven Cities native had half turned away, scanning the surroundings. Now he eyed her sidelong, bemused. ‘How did you know that?’

Arsehole. She gestured to one side. ‘Let’s take a look from that rise,’ she said, and headed off. After a moment she heard him follow. At least he hasn’t tried to take charge. That’s something. And he had the grace, or the confidence, to admit he had no idea where they were. Nothing too insufferable yet.

The yielding sands pulled at her feet; already she felt tired. From the modest rise she now saw what she presumed to be the hills the Enchantress spoke of. They were no more than lumps on the distant horizon — or what she assumed must be distant; there was no way of knowing here in Shadow. Beside her Jheval grunted upon spotting the feature, and in that single vocalization Kiska read his frustration and disgust at the sight.

Smiling behind her headscarf, she headed down the slope.

Some time later — and she had no way of knowing how long that might’ve been — as they walked more or less side by side, yet apart, she grew tired of squinting into the distances, searching for a hint of the geography she’d encountered during earlier visits to this realm. She saw nothing familiar, and decided it was ridiculous to search for it; Shadow must be vast, and any traveller in Genabackis may as well hope for a glimpse of the Fenn Mountains.

During all this time she hadn’t spoken. But then, neither had Jheval. Clearing her throat, her gaze fixed ahead, she began, ‘So. Strictly speaking, should we be enemies?’

A silent pause; perhaps long enough for a shrug. ‘Not at all. Are you some sort of Imperial fanatic?’

‘No! I withdrew from service.’ She glared to see his eyes amused above what must be a smile hidden by his scarf. ‘I was a private bodyguard.’

It was hard to tell, but she thought the smile disappeared. ‘Not so unalike after all, then.’

‘We are quite unalike, thank you,’ she sniffed, and regretted it instantly — that priggish superior tone. He just gave a low knowing chuckle and Kiska was then very glad of her scarf for it hid her flushed embarrassment.

For all their walking the range of hills appeared no closer. The dune fields interspersed by flats of hardpan passed monotonously. They passed occasional ruins of canted pillars and shattered stone walls half buried in the sands. The emptiness struck Kiska as odd; her memories were of a much more crowded place.

‘We were enemies once, I suppose,’ the man said after a time, perhaps only to hear a human voice in all this silence. ‘For you were a Claw.’

Kiska turned on him, about to demand who said so, and to deny it utterly, but then the absurdity of it all came to her and she deflated, her shoulders falling. She gave a dismissive wave and continued on. ‘How did you know? Did the Enchantress tell you?’

‘No. It’s in your walk. The way you move.’

‘Seen many, have you, up there in Seven Cities?’

‘I was stalked by a number of them,’ he answered, without any note of boasting.

She glanced over, attempting to penetrate the layers of his armour, his face-masking headscarf. ‘I’m impressed.’

It was his turn to wave the issue aside. ‘Don’t be. My friend killed most of them. He’s very good at killing. I’m not.’

Kiska was caught off guard by this surprising claim, or confession. ‘Really? What are you good at then?’

Now came an unmistakable broad smile behind the scarf. ‘Living.’

Kiska almost shared the contagious smile before quickly turning away. After walking again for a while, she began, ‘Yes. I was a Claw. I trained as one. Was offered command of a Hand. But I refused. I withdrew.’

‘I thought they wouldn’t allow that,’ he said. ‘That they’d just kill you.’

‘Sometimes. If you go independent. Not if you join the regular ranks. Or, as I did, serve as a bodyguard within the Imperium.’

‘It must have been hard… walking away from all that…’

‘Not at all. It was simplicity-’ She stopped, peering aside. ‘What’s that?’

The undulating terrain had brought a hollow into view where a large dark shape lay twisted among broken ground. Jumbled tracks led from it off to their right.

‘It’s not moving,’ said Jheval.

Kiska gestured onward. ‘Let’s just keep going.’

‘We should at least take a look.’

She shook her head. ‘No. This is Shadow — we mustn’t involve ourselves.’

But Jheval was already heading down the slope. ‘Aren’t you even curious?’

‘This is no place for curiosity… or stupidity,’ she added under her breath, peering warily about. Yet follow she did. It was the fresh corpse of a titanic lizard beast. Upright, it would have stood twice her height. Its forearms ended in curved blades, battered and stained. Jheval was crouched by its great head. He had pulled down his face scarf.

‘So… this is K’Chain Che’Malle,’ he said, musing.

‘Yes. A warrior. One of their Kell Hunters.’

‘What is it doing here, I wonder.’

‘I have no idea.’ Whatever had happened, the beast’s death had not been easy. Great savage wounds gouged its sides and legs. Dried blood sheathed its scaled skin. Kiska noted a track close by and she knelt: an enormous paw-print wider across than the span of her hand. She straightened, rigid. ‘Jheval…’

The sandpaper hiss of the tail shifting warned them and one forelimb scythed through the air where Jheval had been crouching. His morningstars appeared almost instantly as blurs. The beast twisted, lumbered to its clawed feet. A kind of harness of leather and metal hung from it in tattered ruins. Kiska saw there was no point in running: the thing’s stride was greater than her height. Jheval desperately gave ground in a series of clashing parries, somehow deflecting each of the Kell Hunter’s ponderous slashes. Kiska was appalled; it seemed to her that any one of those blows could have levelled a building.

Since they could not outrun it she had to slow it down. And it seemed to be ignoring her. She lunged after the beast, long-knives drawn. A forward roll brought her within reach of its trailing leg and she slashed. A bellow of pain rewarded her, together with a blow from its tail that crushed the breath from her and sent her tumbling across the sands.

She awoke coughing and gagging. Jheval was crouched over her, water skin raised. She wiped her face and peered about. Off in the distance a trumpet roar of pain and frustration blasted the air.

‘You carried me.’

He sat heavily, out of breath. ‘No. I dragged you.’

‘Thank you so much.’

‘You’re welcome.’

She suddenly remembered what she’d found next to the fallen Kell Hunter and struggled to rise. ‘We have to move.’

He pressed her down gently. ‘No, no. You crippled it. And it was too stupid to know it was dead anyway.’

She batted his hand aside. ‘No, you fool.’ Then, failing to stand, she grabbed the hand. ‘Oh, help me up.’

He pulled her to her feet and she hissed, cradling her side. It felt as if someone had swung a tree at her. ‘We have to go,’ she gasped. ‘They might return.’

The man was eyeing her, suspicious. ‘Who?’

Clutching his shoulder, she tried a step. ‘The creatures that tore that Kell Hunter apart. The hounds. The Hounds of Shadow.’

‘Even they could not-’

‘Trust me,’ she said, impatient. ‘I’ve seen them.’ She took a tentative step all on her own. ‘Now, we have to go.’

The man was scanning the surroundings, scowling, clearly dubious. But at length he shrugged, acquiescing. ‘If you insist.’ He took her elbow to help her along.

The corpses may have been fishermen unlucky enough to have had their boat sink, or overturn. Perhaps. They were found tangled on the shore of the tiny Isle of Skytower, a rocky outcropping at the centre of Tower Sea. Yet since the sea, and the isle, were forbidden to all by order of the Korelri Chosen, it was unlikely they had arrived by choice.

Summoned by the watch, Tower Marshal Colberant, commander of the garrison, reluctantly climbed his way down the bare jumbled rocks of the isle’s steep shore. He was old, and frankly cared nothing for the world beyond his life’s duty overseeing this, the most isolated and secure fortress of the Korelri Chosen. Living fishermen or sailors from nearby Jasston or Dourkan barely interested him; their dead remains could hardly be worthy of his attention. But Javus, their youngest recruit to this, the most demanding and important posting achievable for all Chosen, had been very insistent. Such keenness ought to be encouraged.

So Colberant hiked up his long cloak and steadied himself with the haft of his spear as he carefully tested each foothold among the jagged black rocks that led down to the island’s desolate shore. Desolate because within Tower Sea no fish swam, no bird nested, and no plant spread its green leaves. For here against Skytower ages ago the full fury of the demon Riders smashed winter after winter while Colberant’s ancestors fought to complete the final sections of the great Stormwall. And here even now, after so many thousands of years, the land had yet to heal and find its life again.

Downslope, Javus waited a good man-height above the tallest of the high-water marks. At least, Colberant mused, the lad knew better than to extend an arm to help his ageing commander. Planting his spear, Colberant made a show of peering about. ‘So where are these bodies that have so spooked you, young Javus?’

The youth smiled, already familiar with his commander’s teasing manner. He slipped an arm from his wrapped cloak. ‘Just there, Marshal. And it is not the corpses that are unsettling — rather the manner of their passing.’

Colberant arched a sharp brow. ‘Oh?’ But the young Chosen, his gaze lowered, would say no more. The marshal probed the rocks and continued on a few more paces. Here he halted, then lowered himself to his haunches, both fists tight on the spear haft.

He would not have thought them corpses had he come across them alone. Tangled lengths of sun-dried driftwood, perhaps. More than ten individuals certainly, deposited high above the highest of all the tide lines. Yet each was as browned and desiccated as if found within a cave.

It had been many years since he, an elder among the Order of the Chosen, had heard of such things. Squatting on his aching haunches he glanced up at the heights of the black volcanic rock tower looming above them. They say the Blessed Lady spurns many and that few achieve permission to sit at her right hand. Is this a warning? Have we angered her with our weakness of late? Who was to know? Not even he, considered the most ardent in his devotion, dared guess her moods. He straightened, returned to the waiting Javus.

He smiled his reassurance. ‘Drowned fishermen. Their boat must have overturned. No matter how many times we tell them not to enter Tower Sea, still they come.’

The young man remained troubled. ‘With all respect, Marshal, I’ve seen drowned bodies. Those men and women have not been in the sea.’

Colberant shrugged his indifference, began searching for a way up. ‘The sun, then, has dried them since.’

‘I only say, Marshal, because I am from Skolati originally…’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes… and in Fist is a similar inland sea, Fist Sea. And there on its shores we sometimes find similar… things.’

Colberant turned to face the recruit squarely. ‘I do not find it surprising, Javus, that people should drown in either sea.’

‘But as I said, none of-’

The marshal had raised a hand for silence. ‘Your diligence is to be commended… but this is a matter for the Order now. You will speak to no one regarding this.’

Drawing himself up taut, the youth bowed curtly. ‘As you say, Marshal.’

‘Thank you. Now, perhaps you could show an old man the easiest path back up to the tower, yes?’

Another stiff bow. ‘Of course, Marshal.’

Colberant had asked for Javus’ guidance but he did not need it; he had been walking these rocks for decades. His sandalled feet sought purchase on their own as his thoughts flew far ahead. I must send word to Hiam immediately. The supply launch must be readied. Javus will wonder… but to be honoured with this posting his loyalty must already stand beyond reproach. For here in this tower, secluded from the Stormwall, guarded by four hundred most dedicated of the Chosen, are sequestered the Order’s holiest of relics. Including, so our ancient lore has it, the gift responsible for the founding of our Order, given from the hand of the Blessed Lady herself.

All that day Ivanr knew of the army’s approach. He said nothing about it to the boy. Smoke and dust was a distant haze obscuring the higher valley. The hint of cook fires and the miasmic pong of stale human sweat and poorly cured leather made him wince; he had been a long time away from any human settlement.

He set camp in the evening, hobbled the mounts. The boy sat, arms tight around his shins, watching, silent still.

Not a word since leaving that pathetic village. Seeing one’s family butchered before one’s eyes might put a halt to discussion.

Yet look at me…

‘Hungry?’

No response, chin on knees, eyes big and hair unkempt.

Ivanr cleared his throat. ‘We have bread. Meat. Preserves. Care for some cheese?’

Nothing. A shudder from the gathering cool.

Ivanr sighed.

I have been alone in the mountains for a month and the one human being I choose to travel with won’t say a damned word. Serves me right, I suppose.

He set to gathering firewood.

While he collected the dry bracken and sticks, he called, ‘A man has only two hands, you know. Be nice to have a warm fire going by now

…’

He paused, glanced over his shoulder. The boy was watching him over his. ‘Never mind. Tricky business this, stalking twigs. Maybe when you’re older…’

He sat facing the camp fire, finishing off the bread; the boy stared back, the tear of dried meat that Ivanr had placed in his hand still there. Ivanr was waiting for the advance scouts of the force up-valley to decide they were harmless.

‘Am I evil?’ the boy asked, so sudden, so unbidden, that Ivanr thought someone else had spoken from the dark.

‘I’m sorry, lad. What was that?’

The earnestness of the boy’s gaze was a needle to Ivanr’s chest. ‘Am I evil?’

‘By all the gods true or false — no! Of course not. Who would say such a thing?’

‘My father did. When he gathered us all together. Ma and the little ‘uns. Said we were evil in the sight of the Lady and had to die for it.’

Ivanr stared through the fire between them. He felt his face darkening and a heart-squeezing pain. All the unholy gods. What can anyone say to that? ‘No, lad,’ he managed, fighting to keep his voice light. ‘That’s wrong. Your father was… led wrongly.’

He heard them approaching then through the rough chaparral. Encircling — at least they got that right. As the scouts emerged from the dark — two men and two women — the boy jolted upright mouthing an inarticulate yelp. Ivanr quickly crossed to set a hand on his shoulder. Beneath his palm the lad was shivering like a colt. ‘Who are you?’ Ivanr demanded, if only because they had said nothing.

‘Where are you from, Thel?’ one of the women demanded.

‘I’ve been farming. There’s a village beneath the slope here. They’re killing everyone. We fled.’

She studied him while the other three collected his gear and un-hobbled his mount. ‘Hey! That’s my horse.’

‘Not any longer,’ said the woman. She was hardly older than a girl. ‘Why did you flee?’

‘I’ve had enough of killing.’

That struck the woman as funny and she gave a derisive snort. ‘Then you should’ve kept to your fields, because you are now part of the Army of Reform.’

‘Reform? Who came up with that?’

The woman pressed the tip of her Jourilan longsword to his chest. ‘Careful, recruit.’ The lad’s eyes were huge on the woman’s sword.

‘You don’t kill your recruits, do you?’

‘Just the spies and infiltrators.’

‘I’m not the type.’

‘No? Then what are you?’

‘I’m a pacifist. I’ve renounced killing.’

Another derisive snort and the woman lowered her blade, sheathing it. She shook her head in disbelief. ‘A damned Thel pacifist. Now I’ve seen everything.’ She scanned the others. ‘We ready?’

‘Aye.’

‘Okay. Back to camp.’ She waved Ivanr onward. ‘Beneth might want a word with you.’

Walking through the night, a comforting arm over the lad’s shoulders, Ivanr wondered on that name, Beneth. Could it really be the same he’d heard so much of over the years? The heretic mystic of the mountains, hunted for so long. Had he now gathered to himself an army of followers? Or had refugees merely coaleesced naturally around him? The appearance of these scouts supported that theory: scruffy mismatched armour, no uniform. The possibility was troubling; he did not relish being pressed into an army of religious fanatics. He knew his history. There had been uprisings in the past, millennial movements, charismatics, schismatics, peasant rebellions. All crushed beneath the hooves of the Jourilan Imperial cavalry and the banner of the Blessed Lady.

Late in the night they passed between pickets and reached the army encampment. Here the woman stopped him. ‘Just you.’

The boy peered up, his brows troubled. Ivanr patted his shoulders. ‘He’s with me.’

The woman’s sour scowl, apparently her normal expression, eased into something like mild distaste. ‘We have a large train of followers. Refugees. Families. He can join the camp.’

It occurred to Ivanr that from all he’d seen so far this assemblage was nothing more than one bloated congregation of refugees, but he thought it imprudent to say so at the moment. He crouched before the lad. ‘Go with this girl here. She’ll take you to a family. They’ll feed you. Take you in. Okay?’

The boy just stared back, the crusted dried blood Ivanr couldn’t remove black in the dim torchlight. The eyes remained just as empty as before. Show something, damn you! Anything. Even fear.

He straightened, nodded to the woman. She took the lad’s hand. ‘Is he…’ and she gestured to her head.

Ivanr almost slapped the young scout. ‘No!’ He softened his voice. ‘He’s seen some terrible things.’

She grunted, dubious, pulled him away. The lad went without a sound. He looked back once over a shoulder, his eyes big and gleaming in the dark. It somehow saddened Ivanr that he should go so easily and he felt a stab of pain as he wondered if perhaps he’d been forgotten already. One of the remaining scouts gestured. ‘This way.’

The tent was large but no different from any of the others surrounding it. Guards stood before the closed flap. They searched him then waved him in. When he ducked within, the first thing that struck Ivanr was the heat, that and the bright light of a fire and numerous lamps. He stood blinking, hunched beneath the low roof.

‘Take a seat,’ said someone, a man. ‘You’re making me uncomfortable just looking at you.’

Squinting, he made out scattered blankets and cushions. He sat. ‘My thanks.’

‘So, you are just up from the lowlands.’

‘More or less.’

‘And what awaits us there?’

‘Chaos and bloodshed.’

A barked laugh. ‘You were just there, weren’t you?’

His vision adjusting, Ivanr made out three occupants. The speaker was middle-aged, bearded, well dressed in a tailored shirt and jacket of the kind once fashionable in the Jourilan courts. That and his accent placed him as a Jourilan aristocrat. The second occupant was a woman, thick-boned, dressed in a battered plain coat such as might also serve as underpadding for heavy armour. Her hair was hacked short, touched with grey, and her nose was flattened and canted aside, crushed long ago by some fearsome blow. He could not place her background — Katakan, perhaps. The last occupant was farther into shadows, a hump of piled blankets topped by an old man’s bald gleaming head, a cloth wrapped round the eyes. ‘What do you want with me?’ Ivanr asked. ‘I’m just a refugee.’

The old man’s face drew up in a wrinkled smile. ‘Greetings, refugee.’ He cocked his head to one side and raised it as if looking off just above Ivanr. ‘My name is Beneth. Describe him, Hegil.’

‘He’s the closest to a full-breed Thel that I’ve ever seen,’ said the bearded man. ‘Was once better fed but has lost weight recently. Carries himself like a soldier — is probably a veteran. And rides a horse recently stolen from the army.’

‘What do you say to that, Thel?’

‘I’d say your friend’s right — and that he’s been in the army too.’

The old man — blind for some time, Ivanr decided — seemed to wink behind the cloth wrap. ‘You are both correct, of course. I would hazard the guess that you are Ivanr. Welcome to our camp.’

Ivanr couldn’t help starting, amazed. ‘How did-’

‘Ivanr the Grand Champion?’ said Hegil, equally amazed.

The blind old man’s expression was unchanged, maddeningly secretive, almost mischievous. ‘As a soothsayer might say, I saw it in a dream. Now come. We have tea, and meat.’

Ivanr did not object when trenchers of food were passed round: goat on skewers, yoghurt, and freshly baked flatbread.

‘So someone here knows me,’ he said to the old man.

Beneth was chewing thoughtfully on his bread. ‘Not that I know of. Do you know him, Hegil?’

Hegil, obviously once a Jourilan officer, was now eyeing Ivanr with open hostility. ‘Only by reputation.’

Beneth nodded. ‘There you are. But let us not get ahead of ourselves. I guessed correctly because I was forewarned you might come to us.’

‘Forewarned by whom?’

‘By the Priestess.’

Ivanr almost choked on the goat. ‘Is she here?’

Again the knowing smile. ‘I hear in your voice that you’ve met her. No, she is not, but many of those gathered here are adherents of hers. They passed along the information. In any case, as I said, let us not get ahead of ourselves. Introductions first.’ He motioned to his left, where the woman in the functional-looking coat sat. ‘This is Martal, of Katakan.’ She inclined her chin in wary greeting. ‘Martal is in charge of organizing our forces.’

Best of luck to you, Martal.

‘Hegil is the commander of our cavalry.’

Ivanr nodded to the aristocrat. An odd arrangement — just who was in charge then? Hegil or the woman? He shifted uncomfortably and stretched a leg that threatened to seize in a knot. ‘Well, thank you for the meal and I wish you well, but I must be getting on. I’m sure you have better intelligence than I can provide.’

Beneth again cocked his head in thought, as if listening to distant voices only he could hear. ‘May I ask where you might be getting on to, Ivanr? Have you given any thought to where you might be headed?’

Ivanr chewed a mouthful of flatbread. He shrugged. ‘Well, no offence, but I would hardly tell you that, would I?’

The old man nodded at such prudence. ‘True. But let me guess. You were thinking of heading across the inland sea to the Blight Plains, and perhaps continuing east to the coast to take ship to other lands where the name of Ivanr is not known.’

Ivanr coughed on his flatbread, washed it down with a mouthful of goat’s milk. He glowered at the innocently beaming fellow. ‘Your point, old man?’

‘My point is that everyone here was drawn to this place for a reason. We are assembled here and in other locations for a purpose. What that purpose is I cannot say exactly. I can only perceive its vague outlines. But I do assure you this — it is a far greater end than that which any of us could achieve in the pursuit of our own individual goals.’

Ivanr stared at the blind old fellow. Delusional. And a demagogue. The two tended to go hand in hand. Prosecute someone, chase them into the wasteland, and they can’t help but be driven to the conclusion that it’s all for some sort of higher good — after all, the alternative would just be too crushing. It takes an unusually philosophic mind to accept that all one’s suffering might be to no end, really, in the larger scheme of things.

After a long thoughtful sip of goat’s milk, Ivanr raised and lowered his shoulders. ‘I can assure you that I was not drawn here.’

Beneth appeared untroubled. He waved a quavering, age-spotted hand. ‘A poor analogy maybe. Guided. Spurred along by events, perhaps.’

Scowling at his own foolishness in actually attempting to debate with the old hermit, Ivanr shrugged. He would get nowhere in this. ‘Well, again, thank you for the meal. Am I to assume that I am your prisoner? After all, you could hardly allow me to leave and possibly reveal your presence here in the hills.’

‘They know we’re here,’ said Hegil.

‘They’ve placed spies among us,’ added Martal, speaking for the first time.

Ivanr found it hard to penetrate her accent. ‘Really? Why don’t you get rid of them?’

The old man’s mouth crooked up. ‘Better that we know who the spies are than not. And we can use them to send along the information we want sent.’

Not quite so otherworldly, are you, holy man? Ivanr could not deny feeling a certain degree of admiration for such subtlety in thinking and tactics.

‘In any case,’ Beneth continued, ‘we could hardly deter Grand Champion Ivanr from leaving our modest camp, should he choose to. Yes?’

Ivanr merely raised an eyebrow. You damned well know you could should you choose to. About ten spearmen who knew what they were doing ought to take care of that.

‘But before we retire why don’t I tell you a story? My story, to be exact. One that I hope might shed some light on why we are here, and what we hope to accomplish. I am old, as you see. Very old. I was born long before the Malazans came to our shores with their foreign ways and foreign gods. I was also born different. All my life I could see things other people could not. Shadows of other things. These shadows spoke to me, showed me strange visions. When I spoke of these things to my parents, I was beaten and told never to entertain such evil again. For such is how all those born different are treated here among the Korelri and Roolians — all those you Thel name invaders.

‘Foolishly though, or stubbornly, I persisted in indulging my gifts, for they were my solace, my company, the only thing I had left after I had been named touched. And so one day representatives of the priesthood, the Lady’s examiners, came for me. Since you persist in your evil visions, they said, we will put a permanent end to your perverted ways. And they heated irons and put out my eyes. I was but fourteen years of age at the time.’

The old man cleared his throat. Martal pressed a skin of water into one of his hands, which he took and drank. ‘I was left to starve, blind, in the foothills of the mountains south of Stygg. The Ebon range. But I did not die. When I awoke I found that I possessed another kind of vision. The vision of a land like this but subtly different — a kind of shadow version. I wandered the wilderness, the ice wastes, the snow-topped Iceback range. There I was shown images of the past and present that lacerated my spirit, horrified me beyond recounting. I was shown that these lands are in the grip of a great evil, a monstrous deformation of life that has persisted, entwining itself into our ways here in these lands for thousands of years. One that must be rooted out and cleansed. And to that end we are all of us gathered here.’

Ivanr glanced from face to face searching for scepticism or ridicule, but saw only a kind of gentle affection for the old man. Hegil was nodding, his gaze downcast. Even Martal — who appeared the most hardened veteran Ivanr had met in a long time — was affected: her flat broad face twisted in a ferocious scowl. Lady preserve him, this was far worse than he’d imagined. Crusaders. The Priestess had infected all these people with her madness. Right then he saw that he had to confront her. Visions came of this refugee rabble marching to be mowed down by Jourilan Imperials. Mass murder. All in her name. Someone had to make her see her responsibility for all these deaths. To make her stop this hopeless cause. And it surely would not be any of them.

He cleared his throat and raised his hands, gesturing helplessly. ‘I’m sorry for all that you have suffered, Beneth. But again, none of this has anything to do with me. I wish you luck. Though I have to say that I do not think you will fare well against the Jourilan Army.’

‘We are not fighting the Jourilan Army. Or even the Jourilan Emperor himself. But that aside, I am surprised to hear you say that none of this has anything to do with you.’

He could not suppress a shiver of unease. ‘What do you mean?’ He could have sworn the old man cocked a brow behind the bandage across his eyes.

‘Why… she sought you out, of course. And now you have found your way here among us. Surely you do not think this mere coincidence?’

And why did the tree fall on my house? Because the hundred other ones that fell did not, old man. We invent patterns when we look back on what has brought us to wherever we happen to be. This particular choice, or that particular turn. All in hindsight… when in truth all was mere chance. This is where people go to flee the carnage below and so — wonders of wonders — here we have all congregated. That is all there is to it, old man. Nothing more. Ivanr finished his goat’s milk. ‘Well, we simply disagree there.’

Again, the knowing, indulgent smile. ‘So you say. But it is late. I must sleep. A guard will show you a billet. Good night.’

Ivanr nodded his assent. ‘Good night. It is an honour to meet you, none the less.’

‘The honour is mine, Ivanr.’

Once the Thel had quit the tent, the Jourilan aristocrat cleared his throat.

‘Yes, Hegil,’ Beneth said, somehow conveying an exact knowledge of what the man would say.

‘You did not tell him.’

The old man shook his head. ‘That would have been too cruel.’

‘He will find out eventually — perhaps in a worse way,’ Martal warned, her voice rough and flat, perhaps from her mashed nose.

‘Perhaps,’ the old man allowed. ‘Yet he will hardly bandy his name about, nor will we. And few of the cult have reached us as yet.’

Hegil snorted. ‘The cult of Ivanr. A pacifist cult in the name of a bloodthirsty Grand Champion! Surely things have gone too far in this proliferation of schisms and sects, Beneth.’

‘Hundreds have been inspired to refuse service. How many more have been imprisoned, or tortured to death? All in his name.’ The old man shook his head in rigid finality. ‘No. I would spare him that burden. At least for as long as we dare.’

When frost glittered on the hinges of his cell door, Corlo knew it was time for them to come for him. This season the wait was not long. He was meditating. Though the otataral torc at his neck precluded all access to the Warrens, as did the malign watchful presence of the Lady, he could still practise the mental disciplines that facilitated and deepened his reach.

The lock clattered and the door grated open to reveal the usual Chosen guard, backed by crossbowmen. The man motioned him up. ‘Time to go.’

Corlo eased himself from the cold stone floor, straightened his jerkin. ‘Time to move him?’

As usual, the Korelri did not answer. They marched him through the rambling tunnels of cells and storerooms; this time they passed many open doors, doors normally shut and locked at any other time of the year. What he saw puzzled him greatly: empty… so many empty rooms!

Outside, the cold clasped his throat like an enemy and Corlo gasped. Hood take them, but the Riders were upon them with a vengeance. His guards pushed him on to the stone stairs up to the barracks behind the jumbled rock slope at the wall’s base. It was a familiar path, the way to Bars’ chambers, and Corlo dragged his heels to enjoy the too brief period of relative freedom.

A troop of impressed guardsmen — shackled veterans of the wall — was coming down. A man came abreast and Corlo’s breath caught in recognition even as the man’s mouth opened in shocked mute surprise. Halfpeck! Corlo craned his neck to watch the man descend. Shackled at the ankles, the fellow Crimson Guardsman thrust up a fist, defiant, waving.

Corlo answered that fist with his own. The stock of a crossbow struck his head, sending him stumbling on. Halfpeck living! How many more might there still be? Last he’d been sure there were seven including him and Bars. All of the Blade alone. Of the fate of the crew, he knew little. Bars insisted on treating the surviving crew of their ship, the Ardent, as part of his command. But for his part, Corlo really only counted the Blade. Perhaps Halfpeck knew of others… where was that contingent headed?

Corlo climbed the stairs, his mind seething. And where might each survivor be? Where among the thousands of bodies and leagues of wall could they be hidden? Should he slip free of the otataral he might know in an instant — but so too would the Lady become aware of him. And he’d seen too much of the cruel insanity that resulted from her touch to risk that.

At the door to Bars’ quarters the Chosen ordered the crossbow be pressed against Corlo’s head, then banged the pommel of his sword to the boards. No one answered.

After a time the Chosen motioned for Corlo to speak. ‘It’s me, Corlo. They’re here to move you.’

Nothing from the other side. The Chosen unlatched the bar that crossed the door, lowered it, and stepped back. The door swung open, pushed from within.

Corlo stared, appalled. His commander’s hair hung in a ropy unwashed tangle. His eyes glared beneath, red-rimmed and bleary. A grey beard added decades to his appearance, not to mention the stained and torn linen shirt hanging loose. He held an earthenware jug in one fist. This he threw over a shoulder to fall somewhere with a crash. ‘Off to winter quarters, are we?’

The crossbow rammed its warning hard against the back of Corlo’s head. Corlo raised his hands. ‘Take it easy, Commander. Just a short walk.’

Weaving, Bars waved his reassurances. ‘Yes, yes. A nice ocean view for me, hey?’

The Chosen pointed the way with his naked blade.

The entire march up to the main walk of the wall Corlo wrestled with the decision whether to tell or not. He’d seen Halfpeck! How many more survivors might there be? Yet how much of a favour would the news be?

They walked a stretch of the main marshalling pavement, the top of the wall proper, just behind the raised walkways of the outer machicolations. Corlo felt the waves pounding up through his boots and icy drops burned his cheeks. Pennants hung heavy and stiff, already sheathed in frozen spray. Soldiers from all parts of the subcontinent came and went: Jourilan, Dourkan, Styggian, and others. These were honoured veterans, but not true Korelri Chosen of the Stormguard. Those could be seen up on the walls. Every twenty paces stood an erect figure wrapped in its deep-blue cloak, tall silver-chased spear held upright, facing the sea.

The Chosen assigned to lead their party directed them along the curve of the curtain wall to the nearby tower, the Tower of Stars, the main garrison of this section of the Stormwall.

As they entered its narrow stone passages and stairways, again Corlo was stricken. Should he tell? Opportunities were rapidly dwindling. Soon they would reach Bars’ holding cell. Indeed, it was not long before the Chosen called a halt and unlatched an ironbound door.

Bars stood eyeing the man, a crooked, almost fey grin on his lips. Corlo’s breath caught. Gods, no — don’t do it! The Chosen stepped away, gestured him in with his blade. Bars’ glacier-blue eyes shifted to Corlo and the mage winced to see seething rage, yes, and a bright fevered tinge of madness, but no despair. No flat resignation. He made his decision then.

Bars entered and the door was pushed shut behind him.

Corlo would wait for despair.

As he and Captain Peles rode through Unta’s yawning north gate, Rillish had to admit that the capital’s rebuilding was coming along well. One had to give this new Emperor his due. In the wake of the emergencies and chaos of the Insurrection — as it had come to be known — the plenipotentiary authorities the man so generously granted himself had allowed him to brush aside any resistance to his plans. He probably now had more personal authority than the old Emperor ever did.

And the capital’s old attitude of arrogant superiority was, if anything, even greater now. Captain Peles and he at the van of their troop had to press their way forward through an indifferent — even dismissive — mass of foot traffic and general cartage. It was an experience of the capital new to Rillish, who most recently had been a member of the Wickan delegation to the throne. Then, he had travelled with an honour guard of the Clans. Then, much scowling and moustache-brushing from his escort had met the harsh stares and glowers of the citizens. The veterans assigned as his bodyguard had savoured it. But Rillish had been disheartened. Was there to be no accord between these mistrusting neighbours?

Now, he couldn’t even urge aside a runny-nosed youth yanking a bow-legged donkey. He hunched forward to rest his leather and bronze vambraces on the pommel of his saddle and cast an ironic glance to Captain Peles. The woman held her helm under one arm, her long snow-white hair pulled back in a single tight braid. Sweat shone on her neck and she was scanning the crowd, her pale eyes narrowed. A large silver earring caught Rillish’s eye, a wolf, rampant, paws outstretched, loping, tongue lolling. He recalled the twin silver wolfheads, jaws interlocking, that was the clip of her weapon belt.

‘You are an adherent of the Wolves of War, Captain?’

Her head snapped around, startled, then she smiled shyly. ‘Yes, sir. “The Wolves of Winter”, we name them. I am sworn.’

Rillish waved aside a bundle of scented sticks a spice hawker thrust at him. ‘Sworn, Captain?’

The smile faltered and the woman looked away. ‘Our local faith.’

Much more there, of course — but any business of his?

‘Fist Rillish?’ a voice called from the press. ‘Rillish Jal Keth?’

He scanned the crowd, caught a face upturned, arm raised, straining. ‘Yes?’

It was a young woman, a servant. She offered a folded slip of paper. ‘For you, sir.’

‘My thanks.’ He opened the missive and found himself confronting runes — the written glyphs of the Wickan tongue. Dear Mowri spare him! Hours spent cracking his skull over these as a member of the Wickan delegation returned to him. He frowned over the symbols.

Come. Su.

Ah. One did not refuse the imperative form issued by the shaman Su. Especially when that elder was so respected — or feared — that she ordered about the most potent and famed Wickan witch and warlock, the twins Nil and Nether, as if they were her own children. A relationship not too far from the truth, Rillish mused, in a culture that named all elders ‘father’ and ‘mother’.

And that message conveyed in a manner assuring secrecy as well. He imagined no one else in the entire Imperial capital, other than a Wickan, could parse their runes. He tucked the slip into his glove, regarded Captain Peles. ‘We part ways here, Captain. I have an errand.’

She frowned, disapproving.

A worrier this one, always earnest.

‘My orders…’

‘Were to convey me to the capital. You have done so. Now I have business to attend to.’

A cool inclination of the head: ‘Very good, Fist.’

Rillish reined his mount aside. Not happy, this one, that I should wander off on my own. Perhaps to some tryst… He stopped, turned back on his saddle. ‘Captain, perhaps you would like to accompany me. Have an officer lead the troop to the garrison.’

The woman saluted, the surprise and confusion obvious on her broad open face.

Always wrong-foot them — keeps them on their toes.

Rillish led the captain to the east quarter of the city, a rich estate district. Just last year during the days of the Insurrection the mercenary army the Crimson Guard, an old enemy of the Empire, had attempted to destroy the capital by blowing up the Imperial arsenal. The firestorms that arose after that great blast had raged for days through several of the great family holdings: D’Arl, Isuneth, Harad ’Ul, Paran, and his own, Jal Keth. The devastation had been so widespread because, frankly, the general populace had not been particularly motivated to help out.

And so we reap what we sow.

He hooked a leg around the high pommel of his saddle, easing into a Wickan sitting style — though with a twinge as an old wound cramped his thigh. ‘My family is from here, you know, Captain.’

‘Is that so, Fist.’

‘Yes.’ Not too loquacious this one, either. ‘And what of you? Where are your people from?’

The broad jaws clenched, bunching. Then, reluctantly, ‘A land west of the region you name Seven Cities. A mountainous land of steep coasts.’

‘And does this land have a name?’

The woman actually appeared to blush. Or was it the heat beneath all that armour? ‘Perish, Fist.’

Perish? Don’t know it — though, somehow familiar. ‘Not an Imperial holding, then.’

Now a confident, amused smile curled the lips, almost wolfish.

‘No. And I would counsel against the Empire ever making the attempt.’

‘It seems we may get along well after all, Captain. The Wickans feel the same way — Imperial claims to the contrary.’ Rillish pulled up before the remains of a fire-eaten gateway. ‘And here we are.’

The woman wrinkled her nose at the lingering stink of old fire damage. ‘Are you sure, sir?’

Two figures straightened from the waist-tall weeds choking the gateway: two old veteran Wickans. One was missing an arm, the other an eye. Both offered Rillish savage grins and waved him in. He urged his mount up the bricked approach.

‘They seemed to know you well, sir,’ Peles noted.

‘We shared a long difficult ride once.’

Ahead, the fire-gutted stone walls of a manor house loomed in the deepening afternoon light. Already vines had climbed some galleries. In his mind’s eye Rillish saw those empty gaping windows glowing lantern-lit, carriages arriving up this very approach bearing guests for evening fetes. He could almost hear the clack of wooden swords in the countless wars he and his cousins had fought through these once manicured grounds. He shook his head to clear it of all the old echoes. Now weeds tangled the blackened brick. Fountains stood silent, the water scummed. Outbuildings, guesthouses, stables, stood as empty stone hulks. And in the midst of it all, smoke rising from cook fires, like conquerors amid the ruins, lay an encampment of Wickan yurts.

Rillish swung a leg over his saddle to slide easily down. The captain struggled with her mount, which seemed disgusted by her inexperience and just as determined to let her know it. Wickan youths ran up to yank its bit. ‘What is this?’ she asked, amazed.

‘Welcome to the Wickan delegation. This estate is now the property of the throne. I suggested that perhaps they could be housed here.’ Not that anyone else would take them. ‘Wan ma Su?’ he asked a girl.

She pointed. ‘Othre.’

‘This way, Captain.’ He led Peles across the grounds to the base of a towering ironwood tree, the only survivor of the firestorm that had raged through the district. The Wickan Elder and shaman, Su, seemed to live here, tucked in amid its exposed roots. The giant had been a favourite of his youth, though its limbs stood too tall for climbing. Rillish wondered whether the tree owed its continuing survival to her presence, or, judging from the woman’s extraordinary age, perhaps it was the other way round.

In either case he found the old woman’s gaze as sharp as ever, following their approach with a hawk-like measure. ‘And who is this great giant of a woman?’ she demanded, displaying all her usual tact.

But Rillish only smiled. He remembered achieving certain difficult clauses in the Wickan treaty of alliance merely by bringing Su into the chambers — how Mallick squirmed under her gaze! Whereas the Emperor still made his skin crawl. ‘Su, may I introduce Captain Peles of Perish.’

Su cocked her head, her black eyes sharpening even further. ‘Perish, you say? Interesting… Come here, child.’

Rillish wondered whether Su had ever heard of Perish; the woman had an annoying way of acting as if her every utterance or act was pregnant with meaning. Yet he’d learned to keep his doubts to himself as any questioning earned a terrifying tongue-lashing. And Peles, to her credit, knelt obediently.

‘Yes,’ Su murmured, peering up at the woman. ‘I see the wolves running in your eyes. Whatever you do, Peleshar Arkoveneth, you must not abandon hope. Hold to it! Do not give in to despair.’ She waved the captain off. ‘That is my warning for you. Now go.’ Peles straightened, bowing. She appeared, if anything, even more pale than before. Those sharp eyes now dug into Rillish. ‘And what of you? How many children have you now?’

‘Another on the way.’

The old shaman sniffed. ‘Very well. At least you are good for something still.’

‘You have some news then? Or did you ask me here just for the pleasantries?’

A crooked finger rose. ‘Careful, friend of my people. You remind me of a fellow I know from Li Heng. My patience is not boundless. You are off for Korel, that tortured land. Here is my warning. You Malazans go to fight a war in the name of the Emperor, but you go to fight the wrong war. Swords cannot win this war. Though the Empire sends many swords, perhaps even the most potent of all its swords, peace can never be brought to that land through force of arms. As the Sixth has discovered to its own shamed failure.’

She gestured to one side, snapping her fingers. ‘I have arranged to have attached to your command this woman as cadre mage…’

A figure emerged from a nearby yurt, a woman, middle-aged, thick-waisted, her hair a mousy brown tangle. ‘This is Devaleth. She is of Korel. From Fist, actually.’

Rillish was surprised. ‘A Korel mage? How can we possibly-’

‘Trust her? Rillish Jal Keth! As an Untan noble who negotiated a treaty for the Wickans I am disappointed in you. No, we have spoken long and she is concerned, Rillish. Concerned for her people and for her land. She will not betray you.’

He offered the woman a guarded nod.

‘So this is the fellow,’ the woman said to Su, her accent thick.

‘Yes. The best that could be arranged. Time was short, after all.’

Rillish glanced between them. ‘Now wait a moment…’

‘He has been apprised?’

‘Yes. To the extent that he is capable of understanding.’

‘Su!’ Rillish looked to Peles to find the woman hiding a grin behind her hand. He gave the Wickan shaman a curt nod and turned away. ‘It would seem I am outnumbered.’

‘A prudent withdrawal, sir?’ Peles offered, following.

‘Indeed, Captain. Indeed.’

At Imperial Command, Rillish’s honorary Fist rank could not even win him an audience with the secretary to the High Fist D’Ebbin. Instead, a clerk lieutenant studied the packet of orders supplied by Captain Peles and pursed his lips in disbelief. ‘You should have been through here weeks ago.’

Already Rillish’s teeth ached from clenching them. ‘That’s Fist, Lieutenant.’

‘Yes, Fist.’ The lieutenant’s stress made it clear that such a commonplace rank could not possibly impress anyone here at Command. He flipped shut the leather satchel and held it out. ‘Report to the West Tower.’

‘The Tower of Dust? Hasn’t that been given over to the mage cadre?’ The clerk’s tired look told Rillish that he had just been demoted to village idiot. He took the packet from the man’s limp hand.

‘The tower is-’

‘I know the way, Lieutenant.’

Rillish turned to Captain Peles, who had been standing a discreet distance off, helm under her arm.

‘It seems I am for the West Tower.’

Peles saluted, her bright blue eyes puzzled. ‘You are not to accompany us? We embark with the tide. We and some last elements are to catch up with the fleet.’

‘It looks as though they have something else in mind for me.’

Peles bowed, accepting the capriciousness of orders. Rillish answered the bow. Very much at ease with the chain of command, this one, he reflected.

Rillish had not even passed through the main entrance to the West Tower when his papers elicited shocked disbelief from the officious-looking woman challenging all comers. ‘You’re late,’ she accused. Knowing the army, Rillish didn’t bother pointing out that he had only accepted the reactivation a few days ago.

‘This way.’ Her tone allowed no doubt just how much trouble his existence was causing her.

She led him down a circular stairway. Rillish had never before been within the Tower of Dust, or beneath the old palace, and the sensation troubled him. Yet this is my birth city. Is it the taint of the old Emperor that seems to hang over these dusty passages?

They entered a round chamber floored by set stones. Rillish noted graven wards and symbols in silver encircling the floor’s circumference. Black gritty dust lay in heaps kicked aside here and there. Within waited two nondescript cadre mages, a man and a woman, their robes discoloured by the dust. Also waiting was the Fistian mage, Devaleth.

Rillish bowed to the woman. ‘Why did you not mention…’

‘I didn’t know myself,’ she ground out. Clearly she was even more put out than Rillish; her pale round face glistened with sweat even in this cool air, and her hands were clamped to her sides. ‘I have a horror of this,’ she hissed.

‘Of what?’

‘Warren travel.’

Now Rillish understood and he felt his mouth crook up in dry irony. ‘I have no fond memories of it myself.’

The two cadre mages clapped their hands and motioned them aside. Facing one another, they began tracing an intricate series of gestures and motions. While Rillish watched, the space between them darkened. Streaks of grey appeared behind each gesture, as if the mages were painting or slashing the air. Presently, the slashes broadened, thickened, and connected. A great gust of warm dusty air burst into the chamber. Rillish, blinking, hand raised before his face, saw a ragged gap opening on to a dark lifeless plain.

The two mages stepped within. One impatiently beckoned Rillish and Devaleth to follow. He gingerly stepped through. Almost immediately a gust of air pushed him forward. He peered round to find the four of them all alone in the midst of an ugly landscape of ash and gritty dead soil.

The two mages headed off without comment. Rillish let Devaleth go ahead. ‘Where are we?’ he asked.

‘The Imperial Warren,’ the male cadre mage called back over his shoulder, disgusted.

Devaleth barked a cutting laugh. The man glared, but said nothing. Presently he turned away, shoulders hunched.

‘Pray, what amuses?’ Rillish asked as they walked along. The sandals of the mages and his own riding boots raised small clouds of dust that hung lifeless in the heavy air.

‘The Imperial Warren?’ the woman sneered. ‘What arrogance. So may the fleas of a dog name the dog the Fleas’ Dog.’

The mage’s shoulders flinched even higher.

‘You say we are trespassers here?’

Clearing her throat of the dust, the woman spat. ‘Less than that. Cockroaches invading the abandoned house of a lost god. Maggots wiggling across a corpse and claiming it as theirs…’

‘I get the idea,’ Rillish offered, turning away to clear his own throat of the itching dust. Gods, what pleasant companionship. This was to be his cadre mage? ‘So, you are of Fist?’

‘Yes. From Mare.’

Rillish eyed her anew. Mare! A sea-witch of Mare, adept of Ruse! What could possibly have turned her against her own people? ‘I am a veteran of the invasion, you know.’

‘Yes. Su told me.’

‘And… if I may be so indelicate…’

The woman eyed him sidelong. ‘Why am I here now with you Malazans?’

‘Yes.’

She shrugged her rounded shoulders. ‘Travel broadens the mind, my Fist.’

Rillish was about to prod for further clarification but she was staring off into the distance, her mouth tight. He decided to wait, thereby granting the time for her to work through what appeared a natural — and to him understandable — reluctance to speak.

‘Having all you know or have ever been taught overturned as a deep pit of lies is a humbling experience,’ she eventually said, still staring away. ‘It is no wonder no one is allowed to travel from our homelands.’ The thick lips turned upwards in a humourless smile. ‘We were told it was because ours was the happiest and richest of all lands, and that anyone leaving would return to corrupt it with inferior ideologies and ways.’ She eyed the dull leaden sky, pensive. ‘And I suppose that is true — at least the half of it.’

‘I see.’ The woman’s views agreed with what little intelligence Rillish had gathered from interviewing natives of the archipelago. He hoped he could count on her. She would be an invaluable asset. Though she would not last long once exposed as a traitor. She would be marked for death, just as Greymane was for his heresies against their local cult.

He glanced to her as she walked along: head down as if studying the dust, hands clasped at her back.

She knows this far better than I.

Arrival was an anticlimax, even after the dull monotonous walk. The cadre mages merely re-enacted their ritual then curtly waved them through. No doubt in a hurry themselves to quit this unnerving, enervating realm. They stepped into an empty stone-flagged room, torchlit, disconcertingly similar to the one they’d just left. Rillish’s perplexity was eased by the entrance of an unfamiliar Malazan cadre mage, this one a cadaverous old man.

‘Welcome to Kartool, sir,’ the fellow wheezed. ‘The fleet is assembling. You are just in time.’

‘My thanks.’ Kartool. Vile place. Never did like it. ‘By any chance, would you know who is commanding the force?’

The old mage blinked his rheumy eyes, surprised. ‘Why, yes, Fist. Have you not heard? It is all the talk.’

Rillish waited for the man to continue, then cleared his throat. ‘Yes? Who?’

‘Why, the Emperor has pardoned the old High Fist, Greymane. Reinstated him. Is that not amazing news?’

Rillish was stunned, but he forgot his shock at the grunt of surprise and alarm from Devaleth. The woman had gone white and staggered as if about to faint. Despite his own reeling amazement — his old commander! Whom he had turned his back on! — Rillish caught the woman’s arm, steadying her.

Devaleth shook him off. ‘My apologies. It is one thing to join the enemy. But it is quite another to find oneself serving under a man condemned as the greatest fiend of the age. The Betrayer, they named him, the Korelri. The Great Betrayer.’

Betrayer? Gods! Wouldn’t the man regard him, Rillish, as just that? Didn’t they know at Command? No. They couldn’t have, could they? How the Twins must be helpless with laughter. For was it not his own silence that damned him now?

A mad laugh almost burst from him then as he contemplated the utter ruin he had prepared for himself.

No sooner did one of Bakune’s clerks appear at the door of his office to hurriedly announce, ‘Karien’el, Captain of the Watch,’ than the man himself entered and closed the door gently, but firmly, behind him.

Bakune sat staring, quill upraised, his surprise painfully obvious. Recovering, the Assessor returned the quill to the inkwell and opened his mouth to invite the man to sit, but the Watch captain thumped down heavily before Bakune could speak.

Clamping his mouth shut, Bakune nodded a neutral greeting, which the newcomer ignored, peering about the office, studying the many shelves groaning beneath their burdens of scrolls and heaped files.

‘Might I offer some Styggian wine?’ Bakune suggested, motioning to a side table.

‘No.’ The man still hadn’t glanced at him. ‘Have anything stronger?’

‘No.’

‘Pity.’ The small hard eyes swung to Bakune. ‘How long have we known each other, Assessor?’

Oh dear, very bad news. ‘A long time, Captain.’

Karien’el nodded, his neck bulging. Studying the man, it occurred to Bakune that all those intervening years had not been good to him. He’d put on weight, was unshaven, and generally looked unhealthy, with red-shot narrowed eyes, grey teeth, and a pasty complexion. Drank far too much as well. He, on the other hand, was wasting away with his thinning hair, constant stomach pains, and stiffening of the joints.

‘What can I do for you?’

An amused snort followed by a one-eyed calculating gaze. ‘Ever wonder why you’ve been here at Banith all this time… not one promotion while so many others went on from Homdo or Thol to the capital?’

Bakune pushed himself back from his desk. ‘I suppose I’m just not one to curry favour or agitate for consideration.’

‘Obviously.’

Bakune could not keep his irritation from tightening his face. ‘What is it you want, Captain?’

‘And your wife left you, didn’t she?’

‘Captain! I consider this interview finished. Please leave.’

But the man did not move; he just sat there, his wide blunt hands tucked into his belt at his stomach. He cocked his head aside as if evaluating the effects of his comments. Bakune had a flash of insight that raised the hair on his neck: just as he must when interrogating a suspect.

Swallowing, Bakune steadied his voice to ask, cautiously, ‘What is this about?’

A satisfied nod from the captain. ‘Truth be told, Assessor, I really shouldn’t be here at all. I’m here as a favour because of all the years we’ve worked together. It’s about your investigation.’

‘And which investigation would that be?’

The man cocked his gaze to the locked cabinet.

Dizzied, Bakune felt the blood draining from his face. ‘Your men have searched my office.’

An indifferent shrug from the captain. ‘Just doing my job.’

‘Your job is to enforce the law.’

The unshaven, pale moon face moved from side to side. ‘No, Assessor. Here is where you have failed to question far enough. I enforce the will of those who decide what is the law.’

So, there it was. The brutal truth of power. Was this why I failed to question further? A selective self-serving blindness? An inability, or a reluctance, to admit to this unflattering truth behind everything I stood for, or believed in? Or was it simply the everyday pedestrian distaste of peeling back the mask and revealing the ugliness behind?

‘In any case,’ Karien’el said, ‘we have our suspect.’

‘You do?’

A slow firm nod. ‘Oh yes. We’ve had our eye on him for some time now. A foreigner, and a priest of one of those degenerate foreign gods as well.’

Bakune pressed his hands to his cluttered desk. ‘And how long has the man been in the city?’

Again the man hunched his shoulders in an uncaring shrug. ‘A few years now.’

Bakune did not have to say that the killings went back decades.

Sighing, Karien’el straightened, pushed himself to his feet. ‘So, Assessor. You need not continue your investigation. We have our man. As soon as he makes a mistake we’ll bring him in.’

Meaning when the next body surfaces you’ll arrest him, trot out a few paid witnesses, then execute the man before anyone can pause to think.

And it occurred to Bakune that for that execution to be enacted he would have to draw up and sign the papers. My name will be the authority behind this execution.

Bakune hardly noticed Karien’el bow and leave the office, quietly shutting the door behind him. He sat unmoving, staring into the now empty space above the chair, silent.

And if I refuse? Who would write my name into that blank?

Would Karien?

Yes, he would.

But he does not have the authority.

Bakune rose, went to the tiny glass-paned window of his office, stared out at the pebbled rippling view of the Banith rooftops to the tall spires and gables of the Cloister beyond. But there was one other in the city who did.

You, dear Abbot. And you have sent your message by way of Karien. It seems that perhaps I have questioned enough. Come close enough for you to finally act.

The Assessor’s gaze shifted to the tall locked cabinet and a cold dread coiled in his stomach — that all too familiar pain sank its teeth into his middle. He crossed to the cabinet, the sturdiest piece of furniture in his office, and examined its doors. Unmarred, as far as he could tell. He drew the key from the set at his waist, pushed it in and gave it two turns.

He swung the doors open and stared within.

Swirling dust. Torn scraps. Empty shelves.

Failure.

A decades-long career of sifted evidence, signed statements, maps, birth certificates, and so many — too many — certificates of death. Affidavits, registries, and witnessed accounts.

Gone. All gone.

Bakune fell back into his chair. He hugged himself as the pain in his stomach doubled him over, retching and dry-heaving.

He wiped his mouth, leaving a smear of blood down his sleeve.

Damn them. Damn everyone. Damn the Abbot and his damned precious damned Lady.

The soldier was most definitely dead. Limp, looking boneless on the deck of the Lasana, he — and most definitely a he, being naked and such — had died a most ugly and agonizing death.

‘Take a good look, soldiers of the 4th!’ Captain Betteries shouted.

Not that he had to shout. Suth noted how the fish-pale corpse dumped on the decking silenced the constant chatter more surely than any sergeant’s bellow.

‘This soldier chose to desert… a crime punishable by death.’

The soldiers of 4th Company craned their necks, peering round their companions. Betteries, hailing from the archipelago region of Falar, shook his head disgusted, scowling behind his rust-red goatee and moustache.

‘But the real mistake this soldier made was trying to desert here and now on the island of Kartool.’ Suth, and everyone else on board, glanced towards the beckoning, oh-so-near, treed and shaded shore of Kartool. ‘Terrible mistake! And why?’

‘The spiders,’ everyone repeated on cue, halfheartedly.

‘That’s right, boys and girls. The yellow-banded paralt spiders to be exact. You’ve been repeatedly warned! The island’s overrun with them. Look how the poison attacks the nerves and muscles. I’m told the unbearable agony alone can kill.’

The man’s face was hideously contorted; so much so it was painful just to look at it. Suth didn’t think anyone could even recognize the fellow. And his limbs were twisted as if someone had broken the joints.

‘… look at the crotch and neck where the nodes of your clear humours are gathered. They have swollen and burst…’

Suth’s gaze skittered away from the crotch where — yes — the flesh was horribly mangled by exploded pustules.

‘… poor fellow. I almost feel sorry for the bugger. Better a clean sword-thrust, yes? Anyone care for a closer look?’

No one volunteered. Captain Betteries ordered the corpse be left lying on the boards. In less than one ship’s bell under the glaring sun its stink drove everyone to the stern decking behind the mast. Lard, Suth knew, was on punishment detail for the day. That detail would have to dispose of the body and scour the deck come sundown. Suth could only shake his head; the fool might mutiny.

Grisly though it was, opinion on board the Lasana was that the company captain’s display had been the highlight of the month, a welcome relief from the cloying boredom of weeks of confinement waiting like prisoners on board a flotilla of assembled hulks. Shore leave came in rotation once every five days and then strictly within the grounds of the Imperial garrison in Kartool city. And that was a full day of close-order drilling that left everyone wrung out like wet leather.

Other than more drilling and cleaning details on board the crowded ships, there was little else to do but engage in the soldier’s favourite pastime of out-strategizing Command. Suth was crouched on his haunches next to the ship’s side with his squadmates Dim, Len, Keri, Yana, Pyke and Wess. The two squad saboteurs, Len and Keri, had a line over the side; Dim could sit content to stare at nothing all day; Yana was inspecting her armour; Wess was apparently asleep; and Pyke was holding forth as he usually did.

‘Gonna get us all killed, the officers running this circus.’

Dim roused himself to shade his eyes. ‘Why’s that?’

The squad corporal gave the big Bloorian recruit a sneer of lazy contempt. ‘Don’t got us any squad mages, do we? Or healers or priests worth the name.’

‘Maybe they’re aware of that,’ Yana drawled without looking up from rubbing the rust from the mail of one sleeve.

A spasm of irritation twisted the man’s face and he glared down from the duffels and crates he reclined on. ‘Then maybe they should do something about it!’

‘Maybe they have — why should they tell you?’ she said distractedly, and scoured the mail with a handful of sand she kept in a pouch.

Pyke just made a face; he narrowed his gaze on Len, who was peering out over the gunwale, line in hand. ‘And what about you, Len? Still think we’re headed for Korel?’

‘It’s a good bet,’ the saboteur answered, his voice hushed, as if a fish were close to his bait of old rotting leather.

‘Ha! A pail of shit, that’s what that is! Korel! Might as well jump over the side with a stone tied round your neck right now. Save the Marese the trouble of doing it for you later. You lot are fools. No one’s gotten through that blockade.’

‘Some have,’ Len answered, still hushed.

Pyke again pulled a mocking face and this time his gaze settled on Suth. ‘What about you, Dal Hon? What’s your name again? Sooth? Hello? You speak Talian?’

A number of responses occurred to Suth as he crouched, testing his balance against the motions of the ship, and alternately tensing one arm, then the other. The traditional jamya dagger sheathed at his side thrown into the man’s neck was one. But murdering a fellow soldier — no matter how irritating — would get in the way of his testing himself against whichever enemy they were to face. And so he exhaled, easing the muscles of his shoulders, and said without looking up: ‘There is much running of vomit and faeces on board this ship. Please stop adding to it.’

Pyke, a native of Tali, just gaped a moment, uncomprehending. Then Dim chortled, having sorted his way through the comment, and the corporal leapt from the piled equipment, drawing a fighting knife from the rear of his belt. ‘Ignorant Dal Hon! I’ll teach you respect.’

Suth straightened as well. His curved jamya blade slipped easily from its oiled ironwood sheath. ‘Your constant chatter bores me.’

‘Give them room!’ Yana bellowed, straightening and using her armour to push back the crowd.

Word spread like an alarm through the hundreds of men and women gathered on the deck and they jostled for a view, climbing the piled crates and bales and lining the upper decking. So far no one had managed to force his or her way through to put a stop to the confrontation.

Pyke made a show of pointing the straight blade. His dark eyes were wide with a silky love of violence. ‘Talk? How ’bout if I cut your tongue out?’

Suth just bent his knees, arms spread. So far Pyke had squirmed out of every drill, ducked any practice, and shirked all work details. But he was a tall fellow, solidly built, a veteran of combat. And he gave every appearance of being experienced in killing — but so was Suth. This sort of one-on-one challenge was his specialty; he’d grown up practising it with his friends — and rivals — every day. What was new to him was all this Malazan organized soldiering.

‘Put them away!’ a new voice bellowed.

Suth edged sideways. Sergeant Goss had pushed his way into the cleared circle. Since the corporal gave no indication of complying, Suth chose not to as well. Goss pointed to Pyke. ‘Do I have to say that twice?’

Scowling, Pyke straightened, let his arms fall. ‘This recruit needs a lesson, sergeant.’

‘Knifing him won’t give it.’ Goss turned on Suth. ‘Put that away, trooper.’

Suth complied.

Goss raised his chin to the some three hundred infantry crowded on deck. ‘I know tempers are short. I know we’re all jammed in here like sheep with nothing to do. But the waiting’s near done. Remember, discipline is what will keep you alive! And…’ here the burly man lowered his voice, ‘on board ship naval punishment is the rule. And believe me… you don’t want to be whipped by the barbs of the daemon fish. You’ll wish you were dead. That’s all. Fall out.’

As the crowd turned away the sergeant motioned his squad to him. ‘Pyke,’ he said, his voice even softer, ‘you are hereby stripped of rank-’

‘What!’

Goss merely watched the taller man, his eyes almost lazy in their nests of wrinkles. He cocked his head ever so slightly. Pyke hunched, grumbling under his breath, ‘… better off on my own…’

‘Yana-’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘I’m not going to mother these apes.’

Goss grunted his understanding. ‘Len, you have it.’

‘Many thanks,’ the older saboteur answered, sounding far from pleased.

‘That’s all.’ Suth and the others saluted; Pyke merely flicked his hand as he turned away.

After a lunch of fish, hot grain porridge, and fruit fresh from the island, Suth sought out Len. At least, he reflected, these Malazans were making sure they ate well before being thrust into whatever in the Abyss awaited them…

He found that the saboteur had returned to his fishing. ‘Catch anything?’

‘Nothing edible. All the fish off the coast of this D’rek-damned island are poisonous — just like the spiders.’

‘What do you know of the sergeant?’

‘Goss?’

‘Yes. Everyone’s wary of him. We’re more crowded here on board this ship than a herd of thanu at a river crossing. I have to fight my way to get anywhere. I’ve watched him walk the deck here — everyone gets out of his way.’

Len turned to face him, set his elbows on the gunwale. Gulls and other seabirds swooped and dived over the waves between the anchored troop transports, squabbling over the trash and leavings cast overboard. Though it was nearing winter the sun’s heat prickled Suth’s back and chest. Growing up he’d rarely worn any sort of shirting; now Malazan military standardization had him and everyone in thick long-sleeved jerkins of wool, felt, leather or layered linen — the undergarments of their heavy armour.

‘Goss, hey?’ the old saboteur repeated thoughtfully, and he rubbed the crushed and uneven left side of his throat and jaw responsible for his hoarseness. ‘All I know is talk. Rumour. You know how it is. All kinds of stories get bandied about but no one really knows anything. Anyway, he’s served all his life and now he’s pushing fifty. Thing is, he’s new to the regulars. So, question is… what outfit was he with all that time?’ The man offered Suth a wink. ‘Some think maybe the Claw.’

The Claw. Imperial assassins. Trained slayers. These soldiers spoke of them with awe and fear. For his part Suth yearned to test himself against one. He nodded his understanding. ‘That saboteur lieutenant, Urfa. She called him “Hunter”.’

‘That’s right. The old hands, that’s their code for a Claw.’

Suth scanned the crowded deck; amidships room had been cleared for close-order drills and shield work. A detail was checking for rot in the sails of the three-masted vessel.

Len yawned expansively. ‘But it’s all talk. No one knows for sure. And he’s not saying.’

Across the way Suth caught Pyke watching. The man pointed as if still gripping his blade, and smiled a promise. Suth just looked away; it was his experience that those who made the most show and bluster were the least dangerous.

‘Listen,’ Len tapped him on the chest and raised his chin in the direction Suth was staring, ‘don’t worry about Pyke. He would’ve ridden you until you broke. Now he knows he can’t.’

Too bad. I’ve been too long without practice. ‘And the little mean-looking one, Faro?’

‘Faro?’ Len waved his disgust. ‘Faugh! The man’s wanted for murder in more cities and provinces than I can name. He just loves to pick fights and knife people. You stay out of his way.’

‘Yet he listens to Goss.’

‘Yeah… strange, that.’ And the saboteur offered a sly sidelong glance before returning to his fishing.

That night their squad had the last watch. Pyke didn’t even report. Wess showed up but promptly lay down among the piled equipment and went back to sleep. Lard was still on punishment detail for brawling. Suth had arrived on deck to find Len already fishing; best time of day for it, the saboteur had whispered hoarsely. That left him, Keri, Yana and Dim. Faro, of course, was nowhere to be seen. Suth didn’t mind standing alongside Keri and Yana, both veterans. But Dim — well, it wasn’t his fault, but the man was just painfully dim.

The water with its moods was alien to him, growing up as he had on the plains of Dal Hon. There, one’s ears were as important as one’s eyes — more so of course in the night. Dawn came differently as well, a distant flame-orange glow gathering across the sea’s clouded east and a diffuse bluish light all around. The bay was calm, as was the slate-grey expanse of Reacher’s Ocean beyond. A mild wind brought the surge of the heavier surf out beyond the bay. Cordage shifting and the planking of the ship’s hull creaking sounded unnaturally loud in the stillness. From another of the anchored vessels five bells rang.

Suth stopped his slow pacing to face east. The wind brought something else. Another noise rose and fell behind it. He cocked his head to one side, listening. A distant call? Horns? At sea?

‘Did you hear that?’ Keri had come to his side, whispering.

‘Something… There!’ Far out in the open waters a ship nosed into view beyond the bay’s headland. One far larger than any of the cargo vessels and coastal raiders Suth had seen so far. While he and Keri watched, another slid into view, identical in silhouette, three banks of oars flashing in the sunrise. And another.

‘Moranth Blue warships.’ Len now stood with them. ‘See the towers on the forecastles?’

Suth nodded, eyes slitted. Horns brayed all around, the assembled fleet welcoming the newcomers.

‘Our escort.’

Suth turned to Len. ‘How so?’

‘Built for naval warfare only, those ships. Not raiders. Not transports. Deepwater only. Hood, they draw too much even to enter a harbour.’ The old saboteur spat over the side. ‘No question where we’re headed.’ Suth, Keri, Dim and Yana now all studied the saboteur. ‘A naval battle such as hasn’t been seen since the crushing of the Falar fleets. The Empire never forgets a thing. It finally means to respond to these Marese defeats. So it’s Korel.’

Yana and Keri were clearly shaken. Suth’s reaction was merely relief. It was good that the waiting was finally over.

That morning the troop vessels were unnaturally quiet as the recruits and veterans of the 4th lined the sides, watching the fleet assemble. Even Wess found the interest, or the energy, to rouse himself from the folds of his cloak to join the crowd at the gunwale. Suth was surprised to see that the man was far older and more grizzled than he’d thought, and he wondered just how many campaigns the veteran had slept through.

Len pointed out Falar vessels, sleek and swift; broad Seven Cities galleys; and three-masted Quon men-of-war. But the Moranth Blue warships held everyone’s interest. They lumbered over all like the tusked behemoths of Suth’s native Dal Hon savannah. Armoured towers at the bows rose some three storeys tall.

Through the day, as their transports manoeuvred to join the convoy, talk turned to their presumed destination. Many still held out hope for Genabackis; perhaps a new southern front cutting across to join Black Coral. But Len just shook his head. The old saboteur gathered a great many dark looks, as if his broaching Korel had doomed them all to it.

‘What about these Korelri Chosen, the Stormguard?’ Yana asked Len as they sat in the shade of a reefed sail.

The veteran frowned. ‘I haven’t faced them, but they say they’re the best soldiers out there, man for man.’

Yana looked affronted. ‘Then it’s up to us women — as usual.’

Keri nodded her fierce support. But Len raised a hand. ‘I mean among them. They say there’re damn few women in their ranks, for some reason or ’nother.’

Pyke had been listening, clearly unimpressed. ‘I hear these Genabackan Seguleh are far more dangerous.’

‘The Seguleh aren’t soldiers,’ Len answered. He eyed the man directly. ‘Never forget that. If it came to war with them — we’d win.’

Pyke laughed, waved Len’s claim aside like nonsense.

‘The Korelri fight only one enemy,’ Wess announced from under the folds of his cloak, surprising everyone.

Suth took a bite of fruit fresh from shore and watched Len nod his assent. ‘True enough. You face a wall o’ water thirty feet high comin’ at you every winter and that breeds some discipline. It’s the other soldiers we’ll face, the Dourkan, Roolian and Jourilan. They fight because they know the Korelri are right there behind them and they won’t yield. They never yield. They can’t.’

‘If we even reach them,’ added the disembodied voice of Wess.

Len just pursed his lips, obviously displeased by Wess’ comment. Looking troubled, Yana said nothing as well. Suth searched their faces; there was something here. Something he was missing.

It was Pyke who broke the silence. Laughing, he pointed at Suth. ‘Dumbass Dal Hon! Better learn to swim before we get there. ’Cause none of you are even going to see the shore. No Malazan ship has reached Korelri in over twenty years.’

‘Shut the Hood up, Pyke,’ Len snarled. But he didn’t deny the man’s claim. No one did.

The snow was slashing almost diagonal in the chill wind streaming over the forward crenellations of the Stormwall here next to the Tower of Stars. Lord Protector Hiam watched the fat flakes stick like ash to his cloak. They glowed against the dark blue weave then melted with an almost audible hiss. Below, the heavy waves coming in from the strait heaved sullenly against the base of the wall. Their scum of slush and ice grated like the massed teeth of a thousand demons of the deep. Which was a poetic image not too far from the truth, if a touch overused by all the singers and bards. The numbness in his fingertips told Hiam what this weather presaged. The season of storms was upon them. From this evening onward the iron braziers and torchpoles all along the curtain walls and watchtowers would stay lit day and night against the arrival of the enemy, the alien wave-borne demon Riders.

But not their only enemy.

They were coming. The mindless expansionists from the north. Hiam stamped the iron heel of his spear to the stone flagging and continued his informal tour of the wall. Word had come from the Roolian priesthood of the Lady: a marshalling of all troops, the nation lumbering to a war footing. Columns marching east to the Skolati frontier. And word from their agents among the Mare ports: all available vessels being stocked and readied. What could these invaders possibly want here in this — and it had to be said — rather impoverished and frankly out-of-the-way region?

As Chosen officers and regular soldiers appeared out of the driven snow before the Lord Protector each hastily saluted, spear crossing chest. Hiam answered, offering a reassuring word, or a chiding joke where his instincts told him it would not be taken ill. Could the priests have been right all along? They said there was only one thing here in these lands that could attract any foreign power: the faith of the Blessed Lady. That these Malazans had come to crush the true religion.

It seemed inconceivable. But why else come? He could think of no other explanation. Surely these Malazans had lands enough all over the world. All that blood and treasure expended. And for what? One measly island the inhabitants of which were so self-centred, so self-deluded, that they actually named their island a continent?

A great dark knot of men and equipment loomed ahead through the blizzard. Though it was morning, clouds as low and thick as smoke lent the day the twilight pall of evening. Next to a wall-mounted giant crossbow scorpion, a work crew stood gathered, blowing on hands and stamping feet and peering out over the lip of the most outward machicolations. The cart of a movable winch rested with them, rope extending out and down.

Hiam waited while word of his presence spread through nudges and glances. Their blue jupons over leathers marked them as sworn apprentice engineers, not a compulsory work crew. They saluted, arm across chest. Hiam acknowledged then indicated the rope. ‘Fishing for Riders already?’

Grins all around. ‘It’s Master Stimins, sir,’ one answered. ‘We’ve been checking repairs all up and down the wall these last days.’

Hiam peered over the edge; the rope disappeared into bottomless swirling white. ‘Rather late in the season…’

Another salute. ‘Yes, sir.’ Tis.’

Hiam set a wry grin at his lips. ‘Our Master Stimins is afraid of nothing, hey? He’d push aside the Riders themselves to inspect a crack, yes?’

A few chuckles of appreciation answered, all of which Hiam thought a touch forced. He motioned to the winch. ‘Let him know he has to come up.’

‘Aye, sir.’

Hiam set his gaze northward into the churning slate grey where sky and sea melded into one brooding curtain. What could be so pressing? The time for repairs had long passed… though, Lady knew, they never had enough. Each summer it seemed all they could manage was to shore up the worst of the damage, let alone begin a course of rebuilding. His thoughts touched upon, but refused to pursue, the logical consequences of years of such makeshift repair: degradation, decay. Creeping structural weakness The clatter of the winch’s iron teeth interrupted the Lord Protector’s reverie. He watched the rope as it played in. It continued for some time. By all the false infernal gods, that was a lot of yardage. Was the man testing the water? The fool! Didn’t he know advance scouts had sometimes been spotted this early?

One particularly ugly snarl in the rope caught Hiam’s eye. Was that a splice? The man was trusting his life to a spliced rope? He could only shake his head. For all the man’s many faults, a lack of courage was not one.

Eventually a great yelling and spluttering reached them from below the machicolations. ‘I said I’m not done yet, you damned whoresons! Listen to me! Would you — oh, just help me up!’

A hand in fingerless gloves appeared, scrabbled at the stone ledge. The crew leaned over the edge to drag the man up. ‘Lady damn you all!’ he snarled, straightening, and pushing them away. He was shuddering with cold. ‘I’ll let you know-’ He caught sight of Hiam, clamped shut his lips.

‘A word please, Master Engineer.’

Mouth still set, the old man fumbled with the buckles of his harness. His hands were too numb and an apprentice untied them for him. He shouldered himself out of the leather strapping. ‘Take the winch to th’ fourteenth tower,’ he told the crew. ‘Wai’ for me there.’

The crew began packing the equipment. Hiam motioned for Stimins to follow him aside. When they were a distance off he asked: ‘Why are you still carrying out inspections, Toral? You’ve got that crew wondering.’

The old man was kneading and blowing on his hands. A shudder took his spider-like frame. Behind his grey beard his lips were blue. He was looking off into the distance, his mind clearly elsewhere. ‘We’re just behind, tha’s all.’

‘We’re behind every year. That’s no excuse. You’re checking something. What is it?’

‘Just… some old research.’

‘Does it have to do with what we spoke of…’ Hiam stepped closer, lowered his voice despite the moan of surf and wind. ‘The degradation?’

The Master Engineer was staring off into the middle distance once more, his lined face almost wistful. ‘Yes… That is, no. It bears upon it.’

Hiam fought down the urge to take hold of the man. What had so shaken him? ‘What is it? Tell me. I order you to tell me.’

But Stimins just glanced over, studying him, his rheumy eyes swimming, and then his lips twisted up into a grotesque attempt at a reassuring smile. Hiam was shocked to see in that expression the same face he turned to his own subordinates when they asked about undermanned patrols and empty seats at the messes. ‘Do not worry, sir,’ the old man said. ‘You’ve enough to concern yourself with.’

And he walked away to disappear into the driving snow, leaving Hiam alone to stare into that churning white that seemed to be consuming the wall while he spun on his own small island of stone and all he could think was… the fourteenth tower. Ice Tower. The lowest point in all the leagues of Stormwall.

Esslemont, Ian Cameron

Stonewielder