The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (289 page)

Her eyes flashed. ‘Oh? And how am I to take
that?
’

‘Try the way it was meant, lass. I’ve not enjoyed the last few days much, and I’d rather we were as before, so I will take what I can get. There, as simple as I can make it.’

She leaned in her saddle and laid a hand against his chain-clothed arm. ‘Thank you. It seems I am the one needing things simple.’

‘To that, my lips are sealed.’

‘You are a wise man, Whiskeyjack.’

The plain before them, at a distance of two thousand paces and closing, swarmed with Tenescowri. There was no order to their ranks, barring the lone rider who rode before them, a thin, gaunt youth, astride a spine-bowed roan dray. Immediately behind the young man – whom Whiskeyjack assumed to be Anaster – ranged a dozen or so women. Wild-haired, loosing random shrieks, there was an aura of madness and dark horror about them.

‘Women of the Dead Seed, presumably,’ Korlat said, noting his gaze. ‘There is sorcerous power there. They are the First Child’s true bodyguard, I believe.’

Whiskeyjack twisted in his saddle to examine the Malazan legions formed up behind him fifty paces away. ‘Where is Anomander Rake? This mob could charge at any moment.’

‘They will not,’ Korlat asserted. ‘Those witches sense my Lord’s nearness. They are made uneasy, and cry out caution to their chosen child.’

‘But will he listen?’

‘He had bett—’

A roaring sound shattered her words.

The Tenescowri were charging, a surging tide of fearless desperation. A wave of power from the Women of the Dead Seed psychically assailed Whiskeyjack, made his heart thunder with a strange panic.

Korlat hissed between her teeth. ‘Resist the fear, my love!’

Snarling, Whiskeyjack drew his sword and wheeled his horse round to face his troops. The sorcerous assault of terror had reached them, battering at the lines. They rippled, but not a single soldier stepped back. A moment later, his Malazans steadied.

‘’Ware!’ Korlat cried. ‘My Lord arrives in his fullest power!’

The air seemed to descend on all sides, groaning beneath a vast, invisible weight. The sky darkened with a palpable dread.

Whiskeyjack’s horse stumbled, legs buckling momentarily before the animal regained its balance. The beast screamed.

A cold, bitter wind whistled fiercely, flattening the grasses before the commander and Korlat, then it struck the charging mass of Tenescowri.

The Women of the Dead Seed were thrown back, staggering, stumbling, onto the ground where they writhed. Behind them, the front runners in the mob tried to stop and were overrun. Within a single heartbeat, the front ranks collapsed into chaos, figures seething over others, bodies trampled or pushed forward in a flailing of limbs.

The silver-maned black dragon swept low over Whiskeyjack’s head, sailing forward on that gelid gale.

The lone figure of Anaster, astride his roan horse that had not even flinched, awaited him. The front line of the Tenescowri was a tumbling wall behind the First Child.

Anomander Rake descended on the youth.

Anaster straightened in his saddle and spread his arms wide.

Huge talons snapped down. Closed around the First Child and plucked him from the horse.

The dragon angled upward with its prize.

Then seemed to stagger in the air.

Korlat cried out. ‘Gods, he is as poison!’

The dragon’s leg whipped to one side, flinging Anaster away. The young man spun, cartwheeling like a tattered doll through the air. To plunge into the mob of Tenescowri on the far right, where he disappeared from view.

Righting himself, Anomander Rake lowered his wedge-shaped head as he closed on the peasant army. Fanged mouth opened.

Raw Kurald Galain issued from that maw. Roiling darkness that Whiskeyjack had seen before, long ago, outside the city of Pale. But then, it had been tightly controlled. And more recently, when led by Korlat through the warren itself; again, calmed. But now, the Elder Warren of Darkness was unleashed, wild.

So there’s another way into the Warren of Kurald Galain – right down that dragon’s throat.

A broad, flattened swathe swept through the Tenescowri. Bodies dissolving to nothing, leaving naught but ragged clothing. The dragon’s flight was unswerving, cutting a path of annihilation that divided the army into two seething, recoiling halves.

The first pass completed, Anomander Rake lifted skyward, banked around for another.

It was not needed. The Tenescowri forces had broken, figures scattering in all directions. Here and there, Whiskeyjack saw, it turned on itself, like a hound biting its own wounds. Senseless murder, self-destruction, all that came of blind, unreasoning terror.

The dragon glided back over the writhing mobs, but did not unleash its warren a second time.

Then Whiskeyjack saw Anomander Rake’s head turn.

The dragon dropped lower, a wide expanse clearing before it as the Tenescowri flung themselves away, leaving only a half-score of figures, lying prone but evincing motion none the less – slowly, agonizingly attempting to regain their feet.

The Women of the Dead Seed.

The dragon, flying now at a man’s height over the ground, sembled, blurred as it closed on the witches, re-formed into the Lord of Moon’s Spawn – who strode towards the old women, hand reaching up to draw his sword.

‘Korlat—’

‘I am sorry, Whiskeyjack.’

‘He’s going to—’

‘I know.’

Whiskeyjack stared in horror as Anomander Rake reached the first of the women, a scrawny, hunchbacked hag half the Tiste Andii’s height, and swung Dragnipur.

Her head dropped to the ground at her feet on a stream of gore. The body managed an eerie side-step, as if dancing, then crumpled.

Anomander Rake walked to the next woman.

‘No – this is not right—’

‘Please—’

Ignoring Korlat’s plea, Whiskeyjack spurred his horse forward, down the slope at a canter, then a gallop as they reached level ground.

Another woman was slain, then a third before the Malazan arrived, sawing his reins to bring his horse to a skidding halt directly in Rake’s path.

The Lord of Moon’s Spawn was forced to halt his stride. He looked up in surprise, then frowned.

‘Stop this,’ Whiskeyjack grated. He realized he still held his sword unsheathed, saw Rake’s unhuman eyes casually note it before the Tiste Andii replied.

‘To one side, my friend. What I do is a mercy—’

‘No, it is a judgement, Anomander Rake. And,’ he added, eyes on Dragnipur’s black blade, ‘a sentence.’

The Lord’s answering smile was oddly wistful. ‘If you would have it as you say, Whiskeyjack. None the less, I claim the right to judgement of these creatures.’

‘I will not oppose that, Anomander Rake.’

‘Ah, it is the … sentence, then.’

‘It is.’

The Lord sheathed his sword. ‘Then it must be by your hand, friend. And quickly, for they recover their powers.’

He flinched in his saddle. ‘I am no executioner.’

‘You’d best become one, or step aside. Now.’

Whiskeyjack wheeled his horse round. The seven remaining women were indeed regaining their senses, though he saw in the one nearest him a glaze of incomprehension lingering still in her aged, yellowed eyes.

Hood take me—

He kicked his mount into motion, readied his blade in time to drive its point into the nearest woman’s chest.

Dry skin parted almost effortlessly. Bones snapped like twigs. The victim reeled back, fell.

Pushing his horse on, Whiskeyjack shook the blood from his sword, then, reaching the next woman, he swung crossways, opened wide her throat.

He forced a cold grip onto his thoughts, holding them still, concentrated on the mechanics of his actions. No errors. No pain-stretched flaws for his victims. Precise executions, one after another, instinctively guiding his horse, shifting his weight, readying his blade, thrusting or slashing as was required.

One, then another, then another.

Until, swinging his mount around, he saw that he was done. It was over.

His horse stamping as it continued circling, Whiskeyjack looked up.

To see Onearm’s Host lining the ridge far to his left – the space between them littered with trampled bodies but otherwise open. Unobstructed.

His soldiers.

Lining the ridge. Silent.

To have witnessed this … Now, I am indeed damned. From this, no return. No matter what the words of explanation, of justification. No matter the crimes committed by my victims. I have slain. Not soldiers, not armed opponents, but creatures assailed by madness, stunned senseless, uncomprehending.

He turned, stared at Anomander Rake.

The Lord of Moon’s Spawn returned the regard without expression.

This burden – you have taken it before, assumed it long ago, haven’t you? This burden, that now assails my soul, it is what you live with – have lived with for centuries. The price for the sword on your back—

‘You should have left it with me, friend,’ the Tiste Andii said quietly. ‘I might have insisted, but I would not cross blades with you. Thus,’ he added with a sorrowful smile, ‘the opening of my heart proves, once more, a curse. Claiming those I care for, by virtue of that very emotion. Would that I had learned my lesson long ago, do you not agree?’

‘It seems,’ Whiskeyjack managed, ‘we have found something new to share.’

Anomander Rake’s eyes narrowed. ‘I would not have wished it.’

‘I know.’ He held hard on his control. ‘I’m sorry I gave you no choice.’

They regarded each other.

‘I believe Korlat’s kin have captured this Anaster,’ Rake said after a moment. ‘Will you join me in attending to him?’

Whiskeyjack flinched.

‘No, my friend,’ Rake said. ‘I yield judgement of him. Let us leave that to others, shall we?’

In proper military fashion, you mean. That rigid structure that so easily absolves personal responsibility. Of course. We’ve time for that, now, haven’t we?
‘Agreed, Lord. Lead on, if you please.’

With another faint, wistful smile, Anomander Rake strode past him.

Whiskeyjack sheathed his bloodied sword, and followed.

He stared at the Tiste Andii’s broad back, at the weapon that hung from it.
Anomander Rake, how can you bear this burden? This burden that has so thoroughly broken my heart?

But no, that is not what so tears at me.

Lord of Moon’s Spawn, you asked me to step aside, and you called it a mercy. I misunderstood you. A mercy, not to the Women of the Dead Seed. But to me. Thus your sorrowed smile when I denied you.

Ah, my friend, I saw only your brutality – and that hurt you.

Better, for us both, had you crossed blades with me.

For us both.

And I – I am not worth such friends. Old man, foolish gestures plague you. Be done with it. Make this your last war.

Make it your last.

*   *   *

Korlat waited with her Tiste Andii kin, surrounding the gaunt figure that was Anaster, First Child of the Dead Seed, at a place near where the youth had landed when thrown by Anomander Rake.

Whiskeyjack saw tears in his lover’s eyes, and the sight of them triggered a painful wrench in his gut. He forced himself to look away. Although he needed her now, and perhaps she in turn needed him to share all that she clearly comprehended, it would have to wait. He resolved to take his lead from Anomander Rake, for whom control was both armour and, if demanded by circumstance, a weapon.

Riders were approaching from the Malazan position, as well as from Brood’s. There would be witnesses to what followed –
and that I now curse such truths is true revelation of how far I have fallen. When, before, did I ever fear witnesses to what I did or said? Queen of Dreams, forgive me. I have found myself in a living nightmare, and the monster that stalks me is none other than myself.

Reining his horse to a halt before the gathered Tiste Andii, Whiskeyjack was able to examine Anaster closely for the first time.

Disarmed, bruised and blood-smeared, his face turned away, he looked pitiful, weak and small.

But that is always the way with leaders who have been broken. Whether kings or commanders, defeat withers them—

And then he saw the youth’s face. Something had gouged out one of his eyes, leaving a welter of deep red blood. The remaining eye lifted, fixed on Whiskeyjack. Intent, yet horrifyingly lifeless, a stare both cold and casual, curious yet vastly – fundamentally – indifferent. ‘The slayer of my mother,’ Anaster said in a lilting voice, cocking his head as he continued to study the Malazan.

Whiskeyjack’s voice was hoarse. ‘I am sorry for that, First Child.’

‘I am not. She was insane. A prisoner of herself, possessed by her own demons. Not alone in that curse, we must presume.’

‘Not any more,’ Whiskeyjack answered.

‘It is as a plague, is it not? Ever spreading. Devouring lives. That is why you will, ultimately, fail. All of you. You become what you destroy.’

The tone of Anomander Rake’s response was shockingly vulgar. ‘No more appropriate words could come from a cannibal. What, Anaster, do you think we should do with you? Be honest, now.’

The young man swung his singular gaze to the Lord of Moon’s Spawn. Whatever self-possession he contained seemed to falter suddenly with that contact, for he reached up a tentative hand to hover before the bloodied eye-socket, and his pale face grew paler. ‘Kill me,’ he whispered.

Rake frowned. ‘Korlat?’

‘Aye, he lost control, then. His fear has a face. One that I have not seen before—’

Anaster turned on her. ‘Shut up! You saw nothing!’

‘There is darkness within you,’ she replied in calm tones. ‘Virulent cousin to Kurald Galain. A darkness of the soul. When you falter, child, we see what hides within it.’

‘Liar!’ he hissed.

‘A soldier’s face,’ Anomander Rake said. He slowly faced westward. ‘From the city. From Capustan.’ He turned back to Anaster. ‘He is still there, isn’t he? It seems, mortal, that you have acquired a nemesis – one who promises something other than death, something far more terrible. Interesting.’