The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (16 page)

Tattersail nodded. “I have a task for you. I’ll see that you get your weapons—but not the tinny ones your friends are about to receive. If a superior officer questions your absence, refer him to me.”

“Yes, Sorceress.”

A pang of regret hit Tattersail upon meeting the boy’s bright, eager gaze. Chances were, he’d be dead within a few months. The Empire had many crimes staining its banner, but this was the worst of them. She sighed. “Deliver, in person, this message to Sergeant Whiskeyjack, Bridgeburners. The fat lady with the spells wants to talk. You have it, soldier?”

The boy blanched.

“Let’s hear it.”

The marine repeated the message in a deadpan tone.

Tattersail smiled. “Very good. Now run along, and don’t forget to get an answer from him. I’ll be in my quarters.”

Captain Paran swung around for a last look at the Black Moranth. The squad had just reached the plateau’s crest. He watched until they disappeared from view, then shifted his gaze back to the city in the east.

From this distance, with the wide, flat plain in between, Pale seemed peaceful enough, although the ground outside the walls was studded with black
basaltic rubble and the memory of smoke and fire clung to the air. Along the wall scaffolding rose in places, tiny figures crowding the frameworks. They appeared to be rebuilding huge gaps in the stonework. From the north gate a sluggish stream of wagons wound out toward the hills, the air above them filled with crows. Along the edge of those hills ran a line of mounds too regular to be natural.

He’d heard the rumors, here and there. Five dead mages, two of them High Mages. The 2nd’s losses enough to fire speculation that it would be merged with the 5th and the 6th to form a new regiment. And Moon’s Spawn had retreated south, across the Tahlyn Mountains to Lake Azur, trailing smoke, drifting and leaning to one side like a spent thunderhead. But one tale reached into the captain’s thoughts deeper than all the rest: the Bridgeburners were gone. Some stories said killed to a man; others insisted that a few squads had made it out of the tunnels before the collapse.

Paran was frustrated. He’d been among Moranth for days. The uncanny warriors hardly ever spoke, and when they did it was to each other in that incomprehensible tongue of theirs. All of his information was out of date, and that put him in an unfamiliar position. Mind you, he thought, since Genabaris it had been one unfamiliar situation after another.

So here he was, on the waiting end of things once again. He readjusted his duffel bag and was preparing for a long wait when he saw a horseman top the far plateau’s crest. The man had an extra mount with him, and he rode straight for the captain.

He sighed. Dealing with the Claw always grated. They were so damn smug. With the exception of that man in Genabaris, none seemed to like him much. It had been a long time since he’d known someone he could call a friend. Over two years, in fact.

The rider arrived. Seeing him up close, Paran took an involuntary step back. Half the man’s face had been burned away. A patch covered the right eye and the man held his head at an odd angle. The man flashed a ghastly grin, then dismounted.

“You’re the one, huh?” he asked in a rasping voice.

“Is it true about the Bridgeburners?” Paran demanded. “Wiped out?”

“More or less. Five squads left, or thereabouts. About forty in all.” His left eye squinted and he reached up to adjust his battered helmet. “Didn’t know where you’d be heading before. Do now. You’re Whiskeyjack’s new captain, huh?”

“Sergeant Whiskeyjack is known to you?” Paran scowled. This Claw wasn’t like the others. Whatever thinking they did about him they kept to themselves, and he preferred it that way.

The man climbed back into his saddle. “Let’s ride. We can talk on the way.”

Paran went to the other horse and tied his bag to the saddle, which was of the Seven Cities style, high-backed and with a hinged horn that folded forward—he’d seen several like this on this continent. It was a detail he’d already filed away. Natives from the Seven Cities had a predisposition for making trouble, and this whole Genabackan Campaign had been a foul-up from the very start.
No coincidence, that
. Most of the 2nd, 5th, and 6th Armies had been recruited from the Seven Cities subcontinent.

He mounted and they settled into a steady canter across the plateau.

The Claw talked. “Sergeant Whiskeyjack’s got a lot of followers around here. Acts like he don’t know it. You got to remember something that’s been damn near forgotten back in Malaz—Whiskeyjack once commanded his own company . . .”

Paran’s head snapped around. That fact had been thoroughly stripped from the annals. As far as Empire history was concerned, it had never happened.

“. . . back in the days when Dassem Ultor ran the military,” the Claw continued blithely. “It was Whiskeyjack’s Seventh Company that ran down the Seven Cities’ mage cabal out in the Panpot’sun Wastes. He ended the war then and there. Of course, everything went bad after that, what with Hood taking Ultor’s daughter. And not long after that, when Ultor died, all his men were pulled down fast. That’s when the bureaucrats swallowed up the Army. Damn jackals. And they’ve been sniping at each other ever since and to Hood’s Gate with the campaigns.” The Claw sat forward, pushing the saddlehorn down, and spat past his horse’s left ear.

Paran shivered, seeing that gesture. In the old days it had announced the beginning of tribal war among the Seven Cities. Now, it had become the symbol of the Malaz 2nd Army. “Are you suggesting,” he cut in, “that the story you’ve just told me is commonplace?”

“Not in detail,” the Claw admitted. “But some old veterans in the Second fought with Ultor, not just in Seven Cities but as far back as Falar.”

Paran thought for a time. The man riding beside him, though a Claw, was also 2nd Army. And he’d been through a lot with them. It made for an interesting perspective. He glanced at the man and saw him grinning. “What’s so funny?”

The man shrugged. “The Bridgeburners are a little hot, these days. They’re getting chaff for recruits and that makes it look like they’re about to be disbanded. You talk with whoever it is you talk with back in Malaz, you tell them they’d end up with a mutiny on their hands, they start messing with the Bridgeburners. That’s in every report I send but no one seems to listen to me.” His grin broadened. “Maybe they think I’ve been turned or something, eh?”

Paran shrugged. “You were called in to meet me, weren’t you?”

The Claw laughed. “You’ve really been out of touch, haven’t you? They called me in because I’m the last Active in the Second. And as for the Fifth and Sixth—forget it. Brood’s Tiste Andii could pick out a Claw from a thousand paces. None of them left, either. My own Claw Master was garotted two days back—that’s something else, ain’t it? You, I inherited, Captain. Once we hit the city, I send you on your way, and that’s probably the last we’ll ever see of each other. You deliver your mission details as Captain of the Ninth Squad, they either laugh in your face or they stick a knife in your eye—it’s even betting what they’ll do. Too bad, but there it is.”

Up ahead loomed the gates of Pale.

“One more thing,” the Claw said, his eyes on the merlons above the gate, “just a bone I’ll throw you in case Oponn’s smiling on you. The High Mage Tayschrenn’s running things here. Dujek’s not happy, especially considering what happened with Moon’s Spawn. It’s a bad situation between them, but the High Mage is relying on his being in close and constant communication with the Empress, and that’s what’s keeping him on top. A warning, then. Dujek’s soldiers will follow him . . .
anywhere
. And that goes for the Fifth and Sixth Armies, too. What’s been gathered here is a storm waiting to break.”

Paran stared at the man. Topper had explained the situation, but Paran had dismissed the man’s assessment—it had seemed too much like a scenario devised to justify the Empress filling the gallows.
Not a tangle I want to get involved in. Leave me to complete my single task—I desire no more than that
.

As they passed into the gate’s shadow, the Claw spoke again. “By the by, Tayschrenn just watched us arrive. Any chance he knows you, Captain?”

“No.” I hope not, he added silently.

As they trotted into the city proper and a wall of sound rose to meet them, Paran’s eyes glazed slightly. Pale was a madhouse, buildings on all sides gutted by fire; the streets, despite being cobble-heaved in places and dented in others, were packed with people, carts, braying animals, and marines. He wondered if he should start measuring his life in minutes. Taking command of a squad that had gone through four captains in three years, then delivering a mission that no sane soldier would consider, coupled with a brewing firestorm of a large-scale insurrection possibly headed by the Empire’s finest military commander, against a High Mage who looked to be carving his own rather big niche in the world—all of this had Paran feeling somewhat dismayed.

He was jolted by a heavy slap on his back. The Claw had moved his horse close and now he leaned over.

“Out of your depth, Captain? Don’t worry, every damn person here’s out of their depth. Some know it, some don’t. It’s the ones who don’t you got to worry about. Start with what’s right in front of you and forget the rest for now. It’ll show up in its own time. Find any marine and ask direction to the Bridgeburners. That’s the easy part.”

Paran nodded.

The Claw hesitated, then leaned closer. “I’ve been thinking, Captain. It’s a hunch, mind you, but I think you’re here to do some good. No, don’t bother answering. Only, if you get into trouble, you get word to Toc the Younger, that’s me. I’m in the Messenger Corps, outrider class, the Second. All right?”

Paran nodded again. “Thank you,” he said, just as a loud crash sounded behind them, followed by a chorus of angry voices. Neither rider turned.

“What’s that you said, Captain?”

Paran smiled. “Better head off. Keep your cover—in case something happens to me. I’ll find myself a guide, by the book.”

“Sure thing, Captain.” Toc the Younger waved, then swung his mount down a side-street. Moments later Paran lost sight of him. He drew a deep breath, then cast his gaze about, searching for a likely soldier.

_____

Paran knew that his early years in the noble courts of his homeland had prepared him well for the kind of deception Adjunct Lorn demanded of him. In the past two years, however, he had begun to recognize more clearly what he was becoming. That brash, honest youth who had spoken with the Empress’s Adjunct that day on the Itko Kanese coast now gnawed at him. He’d dropped right into Lorn’s lap like a lump of unshaped clay. And she had proceeded to do what she did best.

What frightened Paran most, these days, was that he had grown used to being used. He’d been someone else so many times that he saw a thousand faces, heard a thousand voices, all at war with his own. When he thought of himself, of that young noble-born man with the overblown faith in honesty and integrity, the vision that came to him now was of something cold, hard, and dark. It hid in the deepest shadows of his mind, and it watched. No contemplation, no judgment, just icy, clinical observation.

He didn’t think that that young man would see the light of day again. He would just shrink further back, swallowed by darkness, then disappear, leaving no trace.

And Paran wondered if he even cared anymore.

He marched into the barracks that had once housed Pale’s Noble Guard. One old veteran lounged on a nearby cot, her rag-wrapped feet jutting over the end. The mattress had been stripped away and tossed into a corner; the woman lay on the flat boards, her hands behind her head.

Paran’s gaze held on her briefly, then traveled down the ward. With the lone exception of the veteran marine, the place was empty. He returned his attention to her. “Corporal, is it?”

The woman didn’t move. “Yeah, what?”

“I take it,” he said dryly, “that the chain of command has thoroughly disintegrated around here.”

Her eyes opened and managed a lazy sweep of the officer standing before her. “Probably,” she said, then closed her eyes again. “You looking for somebody or what?”

“I’m looking for the Ninth Squad, Corporal.”

“Why? They in trouble again?”

Paran smiled to himself. “Are you the average Bridgeburner, Corporal?”

“All the average ones are dead,” she said.

“Who’s your commander?” Paran asked.

“Antsy, but he’s not here.”

“I can see that.” The captain waited, then sighed. “Well, where is this Antsy?”

“Try Knobb’s Inn, up the street. The last I seen of him he was losing his shirt to Hedge. Antsy’s a card-player, right, only not a good one.” She began picking at a tooth at the back of her mouth.

Paran’s brows rose. “Your commander gambles with his men?”

“Antsy’s a sergeant,” the woman explained. “Our captain’s dead. Anyway, Hedge is not in our squad.”

“Oh, and what squad is he with?”

The woman grinned, swallowing whatever her finger had dislodged. “The Ninth.”

“What’s your name, Corporal?”

“Picker, what’s yours?”

“Captain Paran.”

Picker shot up into a sitting position, her eyes wide. “Oh, you’re the new captain who’s yet to pull a sword, eh?”

Paran smiled. “That’s right.”

“You got any idea of the odds on you right now? It doesn’t look good.”

“What do you mean?”

She smiled a broad smile. “The way I pick it,” she said, leaning back down and closing her eyes again, “the first blood you see on your hands is gonna be your own, Captain Paran. Go back to Quon Tali where it’s safe. Go on, the Empress needs her feet licked.”

“They’re clean enough,” Paran said. He was not sure how to deal with this situation. Part of him wanted to draw his sword and cut Picker in half. Another wanted to laugh, and that one had an edge of hysteria to it.

Behind him the outer door banged open and heavy footsteps sounded on the floorboards. Paran turned. A red-faced sergeant, his face dominated by an enormous handlebar mustache, stormed into the room. Ignoring Paran, he strode up beside Picker’s cot and glowered down at her.