The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (149 page)

 

The count of losses was a numbing litany to war's futility. To the historian's mind, only Hood himself could smile in triumph.

The Weasel Clan had awaited the Tithansi lancers and the godling commander who led them. An ambush by earth spirits had taken the Semk warleader down, tearing his flesh to pieces in their hunger to rip apart and devour the Semk god's remnant. Then the Weasel Clan had sprung their own trap, and it had held its own horror, for the refugees had been the bait, and hundreds had been killed or wounded in the trap's clinical, cold-blooded execution.

The Weasel Clan's warleaders could claim that they had been outnumbered four to one, that some among those they were sworn to protect had been sacrificed to save the rest. All true, and providing a defensible justification for what they did. Yet the warleaders said nothing, and though that silence was met with outrage by the refugees and especially by the Council of Nobles, Duiker saw it in a different light. The Wickan tribe held voiced reasons and excuses in contempt—they accepted none from others and were derisive of those who tried. And in turn, they offered none, because, Duiker suspected, they held those who were sacrificed—and their kin—in a respect that could not survive something so base and self-serving as its utterance.

It was unfortunate for them that the refugees understood none of this, that for them the Wickans' silence was in itself an expression of contempt, a disdain for the lives lost.

The Weasel Clan had, however, offered yet another salute to those refugees who had died. With the slaughter of the Tithansi archers in the basin added to the Weasel Clan's actions, an entire plains tribe had effectively ceased to exist. The Wickans' retribution had been absolute. Nor had they stopped there, for they had found Kamist's army, arriving late to the battle from the east. The slaughter exacted there was a graphic revelation of the fate the Tithansi sought to inflict on the Malazans. This lesson, too, was lost on the refugees.

For all that scholars tried, Duiker knew there was no explanation possible for the dark currents of human thought that roiled in the wake of bloodshed. He need only look upon his own reaction, when stumbling down to where Nil and Nether stood, their hands gummed with congealing sweat and blood on the flanks of a mare standing dead. Life forces were powerful, almost beyond comprehension, and the sacrifice of one animal to gift close to five thousand others with appalling strength and force of will was on the face of it worthy and noble.

If not for a dumb beast's incomprehension at its own destruction beneath the loving hands of two heartbroken children
.

 

The Imperial Warren's horizon was a gray shroud on all sides. Details were blurred behind the gauze of the still, thick air. No wind stirred, yet echoes of death and destruction remained, suspended as if trapped outside time itself.

Kalam settled back in his saddle, eyes on the scene before him.

Ashes and dust shrouded the tiled dome. It had collapsed in one place, revealing the raw edges of the bronze plates that covered it. A gray haze lay over the gaping hole. From the dome's curvature, it was clear that less than a third of it was above the surface.

The assassin dismounted. He paused to pluck at the cloth wrapped over his nose and mouth to loosen the caked grit, glanced back at the others, then approached the structure.

Somewhere beneath their feet stood a palace or a temple. Reaching the dome, the assassin leaned forward and brushed the ash from one of the bronze tiles. A deeply carved symbol revealed itself.

A breath of cold recognition swept through him. He had last seen that stylized crown on another continent, in an unexpected war against resistance that had been purchased by desperate enemies.
Caladan Brood and Anomander Rake, and the Rhivi and the Crimson Guard. A gathering of disparate foes to challenge the Malazan Empire's plans for conquest. The Free Cities of Genabackis were a squabbling, back-stabbing lot. Gold-hungry rulers and thieving factors squealed loudest at the threat to their freedom…

His mind over a thousand leagues away, Kalam lightly touched the engraved sigil.
Blackdog…we were warring against mosquitoes and leeches, poisonous snakes and blood-sucking lizards. Supply lines cut, the Moranth pulling back when we needed them the most…and this sigil I remember, there on a ragged standard, rising above a select company of Brood's forces
.

What did that bastard call himself? The High King? Kallor…the High King without a kingdom. Thousands of years old, if legends speak true, perhaps tens of thousands. He claimed to have once commanded empires, each one making the Malazan Empire no larger than a province. He then claimed to have destroyed them by his own hand, destroyed them utterly. Kallor boasted he had made worlds lifeless…

And this man now stands as Caladan Brood's second in command. And when I left, Dujek, the Bridgeburners and the reformed Fifth Army were about to seek an alliance with Brood
.

Whiskeyjack…Quick Ben…keep your heads low, friends. There's a madman in your midst….

“If you're done daydreaming…”

“The thing I hate most about this place,” Kalam said, “is how the ground swallows footfalls.”

Minala's startling gray eyes were narrow above the scarf covering the lower half of her face as she studied the assassin. “You look frightened.”

Kalam scowled, turning back to the others. He raised his voice. “We're leaving this warren now.”

“What?” Minala scoffed. “I see no gate!”

No, but it feels right. We've covered enough distance, and I've suddenly realized that the power of deliberation is not as much in the traveling as in the arriving
. He closed his eyes, shutting Minala and everyone else out as he forced his mind into stillness. One final thought escaped:
I hope I'm right
.

A moment later a portal formed, making a tearing sound as it spread wider.

“You thick-headed bastard,” Minala snapped with sharp comprehension. “A little discussion might have led us to this a little sooner—unless you were deliberately delaying our progress. Hood knows what you're about, Corporal.”

Interesting choice of words, woman. I imagine he does
.

Kalam opened his eyes. The gate was an impenetrable black stain a dozen paces away. He grimaced.
As simple as that. Kalam, you are a thick-headed bastard. Mind you, fear can focus even the most insipid of creatures
.

“Follow closely,” the assassin said, loosening the long-knife in its sheath before striding toward the portal and plunging through.

His moccasins slid on sandy cobbles. It was night, stars bright overhead through the narrow slit between two high brick buildings. The alley wound on ahead in a tortuous path that Kalam knew well. There was no one in sight.

The assassin moved to the wall on his left. Minala appeared, leading her own horse and Kalam's. She blinked, head turning. “Kalam? Where—”

“Right here,” the assassin replied.

She started, then hissed in frustration. “Three breaths in a city and you're already skulking.”

“Habit.”

“No doubt.” She led the horses farther on. A moment later Keneb and Selv appeared, followed by the two children.

The captain glared around until he spotted Kalam. “Aren?”

“Aye.”

“Damned quiet.”

“We're in an alley that winds through a necropolis.”

“How pleasant,” Minala remarked. She gestured at the buildings flanking them. “But these look like tenements.”

“They are…for the dead. The poor stay poor in Aren.”

Keneb asked, “How close are we to the garrison?”

“Three thousand paces,” Kalam replied, unwinding the scarf from his face.

“We need to wash,” Minala said.

“I'm thirsty,” Vaneb said, still astride his horse.

“Hungry,” added Kesen.

Kalam sighed, then nodded.

“I hope,” added Minala, “a walk through dead streets isn't an omen.”

“The necropolis is ringed by mourners' taverns,” the assassin muttered. “We won't have much of a walk.”

 

Squall Inn claimed to have seen better days, but Kalam suspected it never had. The floor of the main room sagged like an enormous bowl, tilting every wall inward until angled wooden posts were needed to keep them upright. Rotting food and dead rats had with inert patience migrated to the floor's center, creating a mouldering, redolent heap like an offering to some dissolute god.

Chairs and tables stood on creatively sawed legs in a ring around the pit, only one still occupied by a denizen not yet drunk into senselessness. A back room no less disreputable provided the more privileged customers with some privacy, and it was there that Kalam had deposited his group to eat while a washtub was being prepared in the tangled garden. The assassin had then made his way to the main room and sat himself down opposite the solitary conscious customer.

“It's the food, isn't it?” the grizzled Napan said as soon as the assassin took his seat.

“Best in the city.”

“Or so voted the council of cockroaches.”

Kalam watched the blue-skinned man raise the mug to his lips, watched his large Adam's apple bob. “Looks like you'll have another one.”

“Easily.”

The assassin twisted slightly in his chair, caught the drooped gaze of the old woman leaning against a support post beside the ale keg, raised two fingers. She sighed, pushed herself upright, paused to adjust the rat-cleaver tucked through her apron belt, then went off in search of two tankards.

“She'll break your arm if you paw,” the stranger said.

Kalam leaned back and regarded the man. He could have been anywhere between thirty and sixty, depending on his life's toll. Deeply weathered skin was visible beneath the iron-streaked snarl of beard. The dark eyes roved restlessly and had yet to fix on the assassin. The man was dressed in baggy, thread-bare rags. “You force the question,” the assassin said. “Who are you and what's your story?”

The man straightened up. “You think I tell that to just anyone?”

Kalam waited.

“Well,” the man continued. “Not everyone. Some people get rude and stop listening.”

An unconscious patron at a nearby table toppled from his chair, his head crunching as it struck the flagstones. Kalam, the stranger and the serving woman—who had just reappeared with two tin mugs—all watched as the drunk slid down on grease and vomit to join the central heap.

It turned out one of the rats had been just playing at being dead, and it popped free and clambered onto the patron's body, nose twitching.

The stranger opposite the assassin grunted. “Everyone's a philosopher.”

The serving woman delivered the drinks, her peculiar shuffle to their table displaying long familiarity with the pitched floor. Eyeing Kalam, she spoke in Dhebral. “Your friends in the back have asked for soap.”

“Aye, I imagine they have.”

“We got no soap.”

“I have just realized that.”

She wandered away.

“Newly arrived, I take it,” the stranger said. “North gate?”

“Aye.”

“That's quite a climb, with horses yet.”

“Meaning the north gate's locked.”

“Sealed, along with all the others. Maybe you arrived by the harborside.”

“Maybe.”

“Harbor's closed.”

“How do you close Aren Harbor?”

“All right, it's not closed.”

Kalam took a mouthful of ale, swallowed it down and went perfectly still.

“Gets even worse after a few,” the stranger said.

The assassin set the tankard back down on the table. He struggled a moment to find his voice. “Tell me some news.”

“Why should I?”

“I've bought you a drink.”

“And I should be grateful? Hood's breath, man, you've tasted it!”

“I'm not usually this patient.”

“Oh, very well, why didn't you say so?” He finished the first tankard, picked up the new one. “Some ales grow on you. Some grow
in
you. To your health, sir.” He quaffed the ale down.

“I have slit uglier throats than yours,” the assassin said.

The man paused, his eyes flicking for the briefest of moments to skitter over Kalam, then he set his tankard down. “Kornobol's wives locked him out last night—the poor bastard was left wandering the streets till one of the High Fist's patrols picked him up for breaking curfew. It's becoming common practice. Wives all over the city are having revelations. What else? Can't get a decent fillet without paying an arm and a leg for it—there's more maimed beggars than ever crowding the streets where the markets used to be. Can't buy a reading without Hood's Herald poking up on the field—tell me, do you think it's even possible that the High Fist is casting someone else's shadow like they say? Of course, who can cast a shadow hiding in the palace wardrobe? Fish ain't the only slippery things in this city, let me tell you. Why, I've been arrested four times in the last two days, had to identify myself and show my Imperial charter, if you can believe it. Turned out lucky, though, since I found my crew in one of those gaols. With Oponn's smile I'll have them out come tomorrow—got a deck to scrub and believe you me, those drunken louts will be scrubbing till the Abyss swallows the world. What's worse is the way some people step right around that charter, make demands of a person so he's left with an aching head delivering messages beneath common words, as if life's not complicated enough—any idea how a hold groans when it's full of gold? And now you're going to say, ‘Well, Captain, it just so happens that I'm looking to buy passage back to Unta,' and I'll say, ‘The gods are smiling upon you, sir! It just so happens that I'm sailing in two days' time, with twenty marines, the High Fist's treasurer and half of Aren's riches on board—but we've room, sir, oh, yes indeed. Welcome aboard!' ”