The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (111 page)

Against the glare of distant Hissar appeared desert capemoths, wheeling and fluttering like flakes of ash as broad across as a splayed hand as they crossed back and forth in front of the historian. They were carrion-eaters, and they were heading in the same direction as Duiker, in growing numbers.

Within minutes the night was alive with the silent, spectral insects, whirling past the historian on all sides. Duiker struggled against the chill dread rising within him. “
The world's harbingers of death are many and varied
.” He frowned, trying to recall where he'd heard those words.
Probably from one of the countless dirges to Hood, sung by the priests during the Season of Rot in Unta
.

The first of the city's outlying slums appeared in the fading gloom ahead, a narrow cluster of shacks and huts clinging to the shelf above the beach. Smoke now rode the air, smelling of burning painted wood and scorched cloth. The smell of a city destroyed, the smell of anger and blind hatred. It was all too familiar to Duiker, and it made him feel old.

Two children raced across the road, ducking between shacks. One voiced a laugh that pealed with madness, too knowing by far to come from one so young. The historian rode past the spot, his skin crawling. He was astonished to feel the fear within him
—afraid of children? Old man, you don't belong here
.

The sky was lightening over the strait on his left. The capemoths were plunging into the city ahead, vanishing inside the roiling clouds of smoke. Duiker reined in. The coastal road split here, the main track leading straight to become a main thoroughfare of the city. A second road, on the right, skirted the city and led to the Malazan barracks compound. The historian gazed down that road, squinting. Black columns of smoke rose half a mile away above the barracks, the columns bending high up where a desert wind caught hold and pushed them seaward.

Butchered in their beds?
The possibility suddenly seemed all too real. He rode toward the barracks. On his right, as shadows appeared with the rising sun, the city of Hissar burned. Support beams were giving way, mudbrick walls tumbling, cut stone shattering explosively in the blistering heat. Smoke covered the scene with its deathly, bitter shawl. Every now and then a distant scream sounded from the city's heart. It was clear that the mutiny's destructive ferocity had turned on itself. Freedom had been won, at the cost of everything.

He reached the trampled earth where the trader encampment had once been—where he and the warlock Sormo had witnessed the divination. The camp had been hastily abandoned, possibly only hours earlier. A pack of dogs from the city now rooted through the rubbish left behind.

Opposite the grounds, and on the other side of the Faladhan road, rose the fortified wall of the Malazan compound. Duiker slowed his mount to a walk, then a halt. Streaks of black scarred the few sections of bleached stone remaining upright. The sorcery that had assailed the wall had breached it in four places that he could see, each one a sundering of stone wide enough to rush a phalanx through. Bodies crowded the breaches, sprawled amidst the tumbled blocks. None wore much in the way of armor, and the weapons Duiker saw scattered about ranged from antique pikes to butcher's cleavers.

The Seventh had fought hard, meeting their attackers at every breach; in the face of savage sorcery, they had cut down their attackers by the score. No one had been caught asleep in his bed. The historian felt a trickle of hope seep into his thoughts.

He glanced down the road, down to where the nut trees lined the cobbled street. There had been a cavalry sortie of some kind, close to the compound's inner city gate. Two horses lay among dozens of Hissari bodies, but no lancers that he could see. Either they'd been lucky enough to lose no one in the attack, or they'd had the time to retrieve their slain and wounded comrades. There was a hand of organization here, a strong one.
Coltaine? Bult?

He saw no one living down the length of the street. If battle continued, it had moved on. Duiker dismounted and approached one of the breaches in the compound wall. He clambered over the rubble, avoiding the stones slick with blood. Most of the attackers, he saw, had been killed by quarrels. Many bodies were virtually pincushioned with the stubby arrows. The range had been devastatingly short, the effect lethal. A frenzied, disorganized rush by a mob of ill-equipped Hissari stood no chance against such concentrated fire. Duiker saw no bodies beyond the ridge of tumbled stone.

The compound's training field was empty. Bulwarks had been raised here and there to establish murderous crossfire should the defense at the breaches fail—but there was no sign that that had occurred.

He stepped down from the ridge of shattered stone. The Malazan headquarters and the barracks had been torched. Duiker now wondered if the Seventh had not done it themselves.
Announcing to all that Coltaine had no intention of hiding behind walls, the Seventh and the Wickans marched out, in formation. How did they fare?

He returned to his waiting horse. Back in the saddle he could see more smoke, billowing heavily from the Malazan Estates district. Dawn had brought a strange calm to the air. To see the city so empty of life made it all seem unreal, as if the bodies sprawled in the streets were but scarecrows left over from a harvest festival. The capemoths had found them, however, covering the forms completely, their large wings slowly fanning as they fed.

As he rode toward the Malazan Estates, he could hear the occasional shout and faint scream in the distance, barking dogs and braying mules. The roar of fires rose and fell like waves clawing a cliff face, carrying gusts of heat down the side streets hissing and rustling through the litter.

Fifty paces from the Estates Duiker found the first scene of true slaughter. The Hissari mutineers had struck the Malazan quarter with sudden ferocity, probably at the same time as the other force had hemmed in the Seventh at the compound. The merchant and noble houses had thrown their own private guards forward in frantic defense, but they were too few and, lacking cohesion, had been quickly and savagely cut down. The mob had poured into the district, battering down estate posterns, dragging out into the wide street Malazan families.

It was then, Duiker saw as his mount picked a careful path through the bodies, that madness had truly arrived. Men had been gutted, their entrails pulled out, wrapped around women—wives and mothers and aunts and sisters—who had been raped before being strangled with the intestinal ropes. The historian saw children with their skulls crushed, babies spitted on tapu skewers. However, many young daughters had been taken by the attackers as they plunged deeper into the district. If anything, their fates would be more horrific than those visited on their kin.

Duiker viewed all he saw with a growing numbness. The terrible agony that had been unleashed here seemed to remain coiled in the air, poised, ready to snatch at his sanity. In self-defense, his soul withdrew, deeper, ever deeper. His power to observe remained, however, detached completely from his feelings—the release would come later, the historian well knew: the shaking limbs, the nightmares, the slow scarification of his faith.

Expecting to see more of the same, Duiker rode toward the first square in the district. What he saw instead jarred him. The Hissari mutineers had been ambushed in the square and slaughtered by the score. Arrows had been used and then retrieved, but some shattered shafts remained. The historian dismounted to pick one up.
Wickan
. He believed he could now piece together what had occurred.

The barracks compound had been besieged. Whoever commanded the Hissari had intended to prevent Coltaine and his forces from striking out into the city, and, if the sorcery's level was any indication, had sought the complete annihilation of the Malazan army. In this the commander had clearly failed. The Wickans had sortied, broken through the encirclement, and had ridden directly to the Estates—where they well knew the planned slaughter would have already begun. Too late to prevent the first attack at the District Gates, they had altered their route, riding around the mob, and set up an ambush in the square. The Hissari, in their thirst for more blood, had plunged forward, crossing the expanse without the foresight of scouts.

The Wickans had then killed them all. There was no risk of reprisal to prevent them later retrieving their arrow shafts. The killing must have been absolute, every escape closed off, then the precise, calculated murder of every Hissari in the square.

Duiker swung about at the sound of approaching footsteps. A band of mutineers approached from the gates behind him. They were well armed, with pikes in their hands and tulwars at their hips. Chain vests glinted from beneath the red telaban they wore. On their heads were the peaked bronze helmets of the City Guard.

“Terrible slaughter!” Duiker wailed, drawing out the Dosii accent. “It must be avenged!”

The sergeant leading the squad eyed the historian warily. “You have the dust of the desert upon you,” he said.

“Aye, I have ridden down from the High Mage's forces to the north. A nephew, who dwelt in the harbor district. I seek to join him—”

“If he yet lives, old man, you shall find him marching with Reloe.”

“We have driven the Mezla from the city,” another soldier said. “Outnumbered, already sorely wounded and burdened with ten thousand refugees—”

“Silence, Geburah!” the sergeant snapped. He narrowed his gaze on Duiker. “We go to Reloe now. Come with us. All of Hissari shall be blessed in joining in the final slaughter of the Mezla.”

Conscription. No wonder there's no one about. They're in the holy army whether they like it or not
. The historian nodded. “I shall. I have vowed to protect the life of my nephew, you see…”

“The vow to scourge Seven Cities of the Mezla is greater,” the sergeant growled. “Dryjhna demands your soul, Dosii. The Apocalypse has come—armies gather all across the land and all must harken to the call.”

“Last night I joined in spilling the blood of a Mezla Coastal Guard—my soul was given to her keeping then, Hissari.” Duiker's tone held a warning to the young sergeant.
Respect your elders, child
.

The man answered the historian with an acknowledging nod.

Leading his horse by the reins, Duiker accompanied the squad as they made their way through the Estates. Kamist Reloe's army, the sergeant explained, was marshalling on the plain to the southwest of the city. Three Odhan tribes were maintaining contact with the hated Mezla, harrying the train of refugees and the too few soldiers trying to protect them. The Mezla were seeking to reach Sialk, another coastal city twenty leagues south of Hissar. What the fools did not know, the man added with a dark grin, was that Sialk had fallen as well, and even now thousands of Mezla nobles and their families were being driven up the north road. The Mezla commander was about to see a doubling of citizens he was sworn to defend.

Kamist Reloe would then encircle the enemy, his forces outnumbering them seven to one, and complete the slaughter. The battle was expected to take place in three days' time.

Duiker made agreeable noises through all this, but his mind was racing. Kamist Reloe was a High Mage, one believed to have been killed in Raraku over ten years ago, in a clash with Sha'ik over who was destined to lead the Apocalypse. Instead of killing her rival, it was now apparent that Sha'ik had won his loyalty. The hint of murderous rivalry, feuds and personality clashes had served Sha'ik well in conveying to the Malazans an impression of internal weaknesses plaguing her cause.
All a lie. We were deceived, and now we are suffering the cost
.

“The Mezla army is as a great beast,” the sergeant said as they neared the city's edge, “wounded by countless strikes, flanks streaming with blood. The beast staggers onward, blind with pain. In three days, Dosii, the beast shall fall.”

The historian nodded thoughtfully, recalling the seasonal boar hunts in the forests of northern Quon Tali. A tracker had told him that among the hunters who were killed in such hunts, most met their fate
after
the boar had taken a fatal wound. An unexpected, final lashing out, a murderous lunge that seemed to defy Hood's grip on the beast. Seeing victory only moments away stripped caution from the hunters. Duiker heard something of that overconfidence in the mutineer's words. The beast streamed with blood, but it was not yet dead.

The sun climbed the sky as they traveled south.

 

The chamber's floor sagged like a bowl, carpeted in thick, felt-like drifts of dust. Almost a third of a league into the hill's stone heart, the rough-cut walls had cracked like glass, fissures reaching down from the vaulted roof. In the center of the room lay a fishing boat resting on one flank, its lone mast's unreached sail hanging like rotted webbing. The dry, hot air had driven the dowels from the joins and the planks had contracted, splaying beneath the boat's own weight.

“This is no surprise,” Mappo said from the portalway.

Icarium's lips quirked slightly, then he stepped past the Trell and approached the craft. “Five years? Not longer—I can still smell the brine. Do you recognize the design?”

“I curse myself for having taken no interest in such things,” Mappo sighed. “Truly I should have anticipated moments like these—what was I thinking?”

“I believe,” Icarium said slowly, resting a hand on the boat's prow, “this is what Iskaral Pust wished us to find.”

“I thought the quest was for a broom,” the Trell muttered.

“No doubt his broom will turn up of its own accord. It was not the goal of the search we were to value, but the journey.”

Mappo's eyes narrowed suspiciously on his friend, then his canines showed in an appreciative grin. “That is always the way, isn't it?” He followed the Jhag into the chamber. His nostrils flared. “I smell no brine.”