The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (816 page)

Taralack Veed stared at the monk's back, saw the trembling that would not still.
No, Senior Assessor, it is you who is mad. To worship Icarium? Does a Gral worship the viper? The scorpion?

Spirits of the rock and sand, I cannot wait much longer. Let us be done with this.

‘The end,' Senior Assessor said, ‘is never what you imagine. Be comforted by that, my friends.'

Varat Taun asked the monk, ‘When do you intend to witness your first contest?'

‘If any – and I am not yet decided – if any, then the Toblakai, of course,' Senior Assessor murmured, finally in control of his amusement – so much so that he twisted round to look up at the Finadd with calm, knowing eyes. ‘The Toblakai.'

 

Rhulad Sengar, Emperor of a Thousand Deaths, stood above the corpse of his third victim. Splashed in blood not his own, sword trembling in his hand, he stared down at the still face with its lifeless eyes as the crowd dutifully roared its pleasure, gave voice to his bitter triumph.

That onrushing wall of noise parted around him, left him untouched. It was, he well knew, a lie. Everything was a lie. The challenge, which had proved anything but. The triumph, which was in truth a failure. The words uttered by his Chancellor, by his bent and twisted Ceda – and every face turned his way was as this one below. A mask, a thing of death, an expression of hidden laughter, hidden mockery. For if it was not death that mocked him, then what?

When last did he see something genuine in a subject's face?
When you did not think of them as subjects. When they were not. When they were friends, brothers, fathers and mothers. I have my throne, I have my sword, I have an empire. But I have…no-one.

He so wanted to die. A true death. To fall and not find his spirit flesh cast up on the strand of that dread god's island.

But it will be different this time. I can feel it. Something…will be different.

Ignoring the crowd and its roar now creeping towards hysteria, Rhulad walked from the arena, through the shimmering ripples rising from the sun-baked sand. His own sweat had thinned the blood splashed upon him, sweat seeping out from between tarnished coins, glistening from the ringed ridges of pocked scars. Sweat and blood merged into these streams of sour victory that could but temporarily stain the surfaces of the coins.

Chancellor Triban Gnol could not understand that, Rhulad knew. How gold and silver outlived the conceits of mortal lives. Nor could Invigilator Karos Invictad.

In many ways Rhulad found himself admiring this Great Traitor, Tehol Beddict.
Beddict, yes, the brother of the one honourable Letherii warrior I was privileged to meet. One, only one. Brys Beddict, who defeated me truly – and in that too he was like no other.
Karos Invictad had wanted to drag Tehol Beddict out here into the arena, to stand before the Emperor, to be shamed and made to hear the frenzied hunger of the crowd. Karos Invictad had thought that such a thing would humiliate Tehol Beddict.
But if Tehol is like Brys, he would but stand, he would but smile, and that smile would be his challenge. To me. His invitation to execute him, cut him down as I never did to Brys. And yes, I would see that knowing, there in his eyes.
Rhulad had forbidden that. Leave Tehol to the Drownings. To that circus of savagery transformed into a game of wagers.

In the meantime, the empire's foundations wobbled, spat dust in grinding protest; the once-firm cornerstones shook as if revealed to be nothing more than clay, still wet from the river. Men who had been wealthy had taken their own lives. Warehouses had been besieged by an ever-growing mob – this thousand-headed beast of need rising in every city and town of the empire. Blood had spilled over a handful of docks, a crust of stale bread, and in the poorest slums mothers smothered their babies rather than see them bloat then wither with starvation.

Rhulad left the harsh sunlight and stood in the tunnel entrance, swallowed by shadows.

My grand empire.

The Chancellor stood before him each day, and lied. All was well, all would be well with the execution of Tehol Beddict. The mines were working overtime, forging more currency, but this needed careful control, because Karos Invictad believed that all that Tehol had stolen would be retrieved. Even so, better a period of inflation than the chaos now plaguing Lether.

But Hannan Mosag told him otherwise, had indeed fashioned rituals permitting Rhulad to see for himself – the riots, the madness, scenes blurred, at times maddeningly faded, yet still they stank of the truth. Where the Ceda lied was in what he would not reveal.

‘What of the invasion, Ceda? Show me these Malazans.'

‘I cannot, alas, Emperor. They protect themselves with strange magics. See, the water in the bowl grows cloudy when I quest their way. As if they could cast in handfuls of flour. Blinding all the water might reveal.'

Lies. Triban Gnol had been more blunt in his assessment – a directness that unveiled the Chancellor's growing concern, perhaps even his fear. The Malazans who had landed on the west coast, who had begun their march inland – towards Letheras itself – were proving themselves both cunning and deadly. To clash with them was to reel back bloodied and battered, a retreat strewn with dead soldiers and dead Tiste Edur. Yes, they were coming for Rhulad. Could the Chancellor stop them?

‘Yes, Emperor. We can. We shall. Hanradi has divided his Edur forces. One waits with our main army just west of the city. The other has travelled fast and light northward and is even now swinging westward, like a sweeping arm, to appear behind these Malazans – but not as has been attempted before. No, your Edur do not ride in column, do not travel the roads now. They fight as they once did, during the unification wars. War-parties, moving silent in the shadows, matching the Malazans and perhaps going one better in their stealth—'

‘Yes! We adapt, not into something new, but into something old – the very heart of our prowess. Whose idea was this? Tell me!'

A bow from Triban Gnol. ‘Sire, did you not place me in charge of this defence?'

‘Then, you.'

Another bow. ‘As I said, Emperor, the guiding hand was yours.'

To be so unctuous was to reveal contempt. Rhulad understood that much. The Ceda lacked such civilized nuances in his reply:
‘The idea was mine and Hanradi's, Emperor. After all, I was the Warlock King and he was my deadliest rival. This can be remade into a war we Edur understand and know well. It is clear enough that attempting to fight these Malazans in the manner of the Letherii has failed—'

‘But there will be a clash, a great battle.'

‘It seems so.'

‘Good.'

‘Perhaps not. Hanradi believes…'

And there the dissembling had begun, the half-truths, the poorly veiled attacks upon the Chancellor and his new role as military commander.

To fashion knowledge to match the reality was difficult, to sift through the lies, to shake free the truths – Rhulad was exhausted by it, yet what else could he do? He was learning, damn them all. He was learning.

‘Tell me, Ceda, of the Bolkando invasion.'

‘Our border forts have been overrun. There have been two battles and in both the Letherii divisions were forced to withdraw, badly wounded. That alliance among the eastern kingdoms is now real, and it appears that they have hired mercenary armies…'

The Bolkando Conspiracy…now real. Meaning it had begun as a lie.
He recalled Triban Gnol's shocked expression when Rhulad had repeated Hannan Mosag's words – as if they were his own.
‘That alliance among the eastern kingdoms is now real, Chancellor…'

Triban Gnol's mask had cracked then – no illusion there, no game brought to a yet deeper level. The man had looked…
guilty
.

We must win these wars. To the west and to the east. We must, as well, refashion this empire. The days of the Indebted will be gone. The days of the coins ruling this body are over. I, Rhulad, Emperor, shall set my hands upon this clay, and make of it something new.

So, let the plague of suicides among the once-rich continue. Let the great merchant houses crash down into ruin. Let the poor rend the nobles limb from limb. Let estates burn. When the ashes have settled, have cooled, then shall Rhulad find fertile ground for his new empire.

Yes, that is what is different, this time. I sense a rebirth. Close. Imminent. I sense it, and maybe it will be enough, maybe it will give me reason again to cherish this life. My life.

Oh, Father Shadow, guide me now.

 

Mael had been careless. It had been that carelessness that the Errant had relied upon. The Elder God so fixed on saving his foolish mortal companion, blundering forward into such a simple trap. A relief to have the meddling bastard out of the way, serving as a kind of counter-balance to the lurid acquisitiveness of Feather Witch, whose disgusting company the Errant had just left.

And now he stood in the dark corridor. Alone.

‘
We will have our Mortal Sword
,' she had announced from her perch on the altar that squatted like an island amidst black floodwater. ‘
The idiot remains blind and stupid.'

Which idiot would that be, Feather Witch? Our imminent Mortal Sword?

‘I do not understand your sarcasm, Errant. Nothing has gone astray. Our cult grows day by day, among the Letherii slaves, and now the Indebted—'

The disaffected, you mean. And what is it you are promising them, Feather Witch? In my name?

‘The golden age of the past. When you stood ascendant among all other gods. When yours was the worship of all the Letherii. Our glory was long ago, and to that we must return.'

There was never a golden age. Worship of me to the exclusion of all other gods has never existed among the Letherii. The time you speak of was an age of plurality, of tolerance, a culture flowering—

‘Never mind the truth. The past is what I say it is. That is the freedom of teaching the ignorant.'

He had laughed then.
The High Priestess stumbles upon a vast wisdom. Yes, gather your disaffected, ignorant fools, then. Fill their heads with the noble glory of a non-existent past, then send them out with their eyes blazing in stupid – but comforting – fervour. And this will begin our new golden age, an exultation in the pleasures of repression and tyrannical control over the lives of everyone. Hail the mighty Errant, the god who brooks no dissent.

‘What you do with your power is up to you. I know what I plan to do with mine.'

Udinaas has rejected you, Feather Witch. You have lost the one you wanted the most.

She had smiled.
‘He will change his mind. You will see. Together, we shall forge a dynasty. He was an Indebted. I need only awaken the greed within him.'

Feather Witch, listen well to your god. To this modest sliver of wisdom. The lives of others are not yours to use. Offer them bliss, yes, but do not be disappointed when they choose misery –
because the misery is theirs, and in deciding to choose someone else's path or their own, they will choose their own. The Shake have a saying: ‘Open to them your hand to the shore, watch them walk into the sea.'

‘No wonder they were wiped out.'

Feather Witch—

‘Listen to my wisdom now, Errant. Wisdom the Shake should have heeded. When it comes to using the lives of others, the first thing to take from them is the privilege of choice. Once you have done that, the rest is easy.'

He had found his High Priestess. Indeed.
Bless us all
.

Another Hood-damned village, worse than mushrooms after a rain. Proof, if they'd needed it – and they didn't – that they were drawing ever closer to the capital. Hamlets, villages, towns, traffic on the roads and cart trails, the thundering passage of horses, horns sounding in the distance like the howl of wolves closing in for the kill.

‘Best life there is,' Fiddler muttered.

‘Sergeant?'

He rolled onto his back and studied his exhausted, cutup, blood-stained, wild-eyed excuses for soldiers. What were they now? And what, as they stared back at him, were they seeing?
Their last hope, and if that isn't bad news
…

He wondered if Gesler and his squad were still alive. They'd been neatly divided the night before by a clever thrust in strength of Edur, bristling with weapons and sniffing the air like the hounds they had become. Edur on their trail, delivering constant pressure, pushing them ever forward, into what Fiddler damn well knew was a wall of soldiers somewhere ahead – no slipping past when that time came. No squeezing north or south either – the Edur bands filled the north a dozen to a copse and not too far away on the south was the wide Lether River grinning like the sun's own smile. Finally, aye, someone on the other side had got clever, had made the necessary adjustments, had turned this entire invasion into a vast funnel about to drive the Malazans into a meat-grinder.

Well, no fun lasts for ever. After Gesler and his Fifth had been pushed away, there had been sounds of fighting somewhere in that direction. And Fiddler had faced the hard choice between leading his handful of soldiers into a flanking charge to break through and relieve the poor bastards, or staying quiet and hurrying on, east on a southerly tack, right into that waiting maw.

The splitting
cracks
of sharpers had decided him – suicide running into that, since those sharpers tended to fly every which way, and they meant that Gesler and his squad were running, carving a path through the enemy, and Fiddler and his squad might simply end up stumbling into their wake, in the sudden midst of scores of enraged Edur.

So I left 'em to it. And the detonations died away, but the screams continued, Hood take me.

Sprawled in the high grasses at the edge of the treeline, his squad. They stank. The glory of the Bonehunters, this taking to the grisliest meaning of that name.
Koryk's curse, aye. Who else?
Severed fingers, ears, pierced through and dangling from belts, harness clasps, rawhide ties. His soldiers: one and all degraded into some ghastly blood-licking barely human savages. No real surprise there. It was one thing to go covert – as marines this was, after all, precisely what they had been trained to do. But it had gone on too long, without relief, with the only end in sight nothing other than Hood's own gate. Fingers and ears, except for Smiles, who'd added to the mix with that which only males could provide.
‘My blecker worms,'
she'd said, referring to some offshore mud-dwelling worm native to the Kanese coast.
‘And just like the worms, they start out purple and blue and then after a day or two in the sun they turn grey. Bleckers, Sergeant.'

Didn't need to lose the path to lose their minds, that much was obvious.
Gods below, look at these fools – how in Hood's name have we lasted this long?

They'd not seen the captain and her runt of a mage in some time, which didn't bode well. Still, threads of brown telltale smoke drifting around here and there in the mornings, and the faint sounds of munitions at night. So, at least some of them were still alive. But even those signs were growing scarce, when they should have been, if anything, increasing as things got nastier.

We've run out. We're used up. Bah, listen to me! Starting to sound like Cuttle there. ‘I'm ready to die now, Fid. Happy to, aye. Now that I seen—'

‘Enough of that,' he snapped.

‘Sergeant?'

‘Stop asking me anything, Bottle. And stop looking at me like I've gone mad or something.'

‘You'd better not, Sergeant. Go mad, that is. You're the only sane one left.'

‘Does that assessment include you?'

Bottle grimaced, then spat out another wad of the grass he'd taken to chewing. Reached for a fresh handful.

Aye, answer enough.

‘Almost dark,' Fiddler said, eyeing once more the quaint village ahead. Crossroads, tavern and stable, a smithy down the main street, in front of a huge pile of tailings, and what seemed too many residences, rows of narrow-laned mews, each abode looking barely enough for a small family. Could be there was some other industry, a quarry or potter's manufactury, somewhere on the other side of the village – he thought he could see a gravel road wending up a hill past the eastern edge.

Strangely quiet for dusk.
Workers still chained to their workbenches? Maybe. But still, not even a damned dog in that street.
‘I don't like the looks of this,' he said. ‘You sure you smell nothing awry, Bottle?'

‘Nothing magical. Doesn't mean there isn't a hundred Edur crouched inside those houses, just waiting for us.'

‘So send in a squirrel or something, damn you.'

‘I'm looking, Sergeant, but if you keep interrupting me…'

‘Lord Hood, please sew up the mouths of mages, I implore you.'

‘Sergeant, I'm begging you. We've got six squads of Edur less than a league behind us, and I'm damned tired of dodging javelins. Let me concentrate.'

Aye, concentrate on this fist down your throat, y'damned rat-kisser. Oh, I'm way too tired, way too old. Maybe, if we get through this – hah! – I'll just creep away, vanish into the streets of this Letheras. Retire. Take up fishing. Or maybe knitting. Funeral shawls. Bound to be a thriving enterprise for a while, I'd wager. Once the Adjunct arrives with the rest of us snarly losers and exacts a pleasant revenge for all us dead marines. No, stop thinking that way. We're still alive.

‘Found a cat, Sergeant. Sleeping in the kitchen of that tavern. It's having bad dreams.'

‘So become its worse nightmare, Bottle, and quick.'

Birds chirping in the trees behind them. Insects busy living and dying in the grasses around them. The extent of his world now, a tiresome travail punctuated by moments of profound terror. He itched with filth and could smell the stale stench of old fear, like redolent stains in the skin.

Who in Hood's name are these damned Letherii anyway? So this damned empire with its Edur overlords scrapped with the Malazan Empire. Laseen's problem, not ours. Damn you, Tavore, we get to this point and vengeance ain't enough—

‘Got her,' Bottle said. ‘Awake…stretching – yes, got to stretch, Sergeant, don't ask me why. All right, three people in the kitchen, all sweating, all rolling their eyes – they look terrified, huddling that way. I hear sounds in the tavern. Someone's singing…'

Fiddler waited for more.

And waited.

‘Bottle—'

‘Slipping into the tavern – ooh, a cockroach! Wait, no, stop playing with it – just eat the damned thing!'

‘Keep your voice down, Bottle!'

‘Done. Woah, crowded in here. That song…up onto the rail, and there—' Bottle halted abruptly, then, swearing under his breath, he rose. Stood for a moment, then snorted and said, ‘Come on, Sergeant. We can just walk right on in.'

‘Marines holding the village? Spit Hood on a stake, yes!'

The others heard that and as one they were on their feet, crowding round in relief.

Fiddler stared at all the stupid grins and was suddenly sober again. ‘Look at you! A damned embarrassment!'

‘Sergeant.' Bottle plucked at his arm. ‘Fid, trust me, no worries on that front.'

 

Hellian had forgotten which song she was singing. Whatever it was, it wasn't what everyone else was singing, not that they were still singing, much. Though her corporal was somehow managing a double warble, stretching out some bizarre word in Old Cawn – foreigners shouldn't sing, since how could people understand them so it could be a mean song, a nasty, insulting song about sergeants, all of which meant her corporal earned that punch in the head and at least the warbling half stopped.

A moment later she realized that the other half had died away, too. And that she herself was the only one still singing, although even to her it sounded like some foreign language was blubbering from her numbed lips – something about sergeants, maybe – well, she could just take out this knife and—

More soldiers suddenly, the tavern even more crowded. Unfamiliar faces that looked familiar and how could that be well it was it just was, so there. Damn, another sergeant – how many sergeants did she have to deal with here in this tavern? First there was Urb, who seemed to have been following her around for weeks now, and then Gesler, staggering in at noon with more wounded than walking. And now here was another one, with the reddish beard and that battered fiddle on his back and there he was, laughing and hugging Gesler like they was long lost brothers or lovers or something – everyone was too damned happy as far as she was concerned. Happier than her, which was of course the same thing.

Things had been better in the morning. Was it this day? Yesterday? No matter. They'd been magicked hard to find – was that Balgrid's doing? Tavos Pond's? And so the three squads of Edur had pretty much walked right on top of them. Which made the killing easier. That wonderful sound of crossbows letting loose.
Thwok! Thwok! Thwokthwokthwok!
And then the swordwork, the in-close stabbing and chopping and slashing then poking and prodding but nope ain't nobody moving any more and that's a relief and being relieved was the happiest feeling.

Until it made you depressed. Standing around surrounded by dead people did that on occasion. The blood on the sword in your hand. The grunt twist and pull of removing quarrels from stubborn muscle, bone and organs. All the flies showing up like they was gathered on a nearby branch just waiting. And the stink of all that stuff poured out of bodies.

Stinking almost as bad as what was on all these marines. Who'd started all that? The fingers and cocks and ears and stuff?

A sudden flood of guilt in Hellian.
It was me!
She stood, reeled, then looked over at the long table that served large parties of travellers, the table that went along the side wall opposite the bar. Edur heads were piled high on it, amidst plenty of buzzing, crawling flies and maggots.
Too heavy on the belt – pulled Maybe's breeches down, hah! No wait, I'm supposed to be feeling bad. There's going to be trouble, because that's what comes when you get nasty with the corpses of your enemies. It just…what's the word?
‘Escalates!'

Faces turned, soldiers stared. Fiddler and Gesler who had been slapping each other on the back pulled apart and then walked over.

‘Hood's pecker, Hellian,' Fiddler said under his breath, ‘what happened to all the townfolk? As if I can't guess,' he added, glancing over at the heaped heads. ‘They've all run away.'

Urb had joined them and he said, ‘They were all those Indebted we heard about. Fifth, sixth generations. Working on blanks.'

‘Blanks?' Gesler asked.

‘For weapons,' Fiddler explained. ‘So, they were slaves, Urb?'

‘In everything but name,' the big man replied, scratching at his beard from which dangled one severed finger, grey and black. ‘Under all those Edur heads is the local Factor's head, some rich bastard in silks. We killed him in front of the Indebted and listened to them cheer. And then they cut off the poor fool's head as a gift, since we come in with all these Edur ones. And then they looted what they could and headed out.'

Gesler's brows had risen at all that. ‘So you've managed what the rest of us haven't – arriving as damned liberators in this town.'

Hellian snorted. ‘We worked that out weeks back. Never mind the Lurrii soljers, since they're all perfessionals and so's they like things jus' fine so's they's the one y'gotta kill no diff'rent from the Edur. No, y'go into the hamlets and villages and kill all the 'ficials—'

‘The what?' Gesler asked.

Urb said, ‘Officials. We kill the officials, Gesler. And anybody with money, and the advocates, too.'

‘The what?'

‘Legal types. Oh, and the money-lenders and debt-holders, and the record-keepers and toll-counters. We kill them all—'

‘Along with the soljers,' Hellian added, nodding – and nodding, for some reason finding herself unable to stop. She kept nodding as she said, ‘An' what happens then is simple. Looting, lotsa sex, then everybody skittles out, and we sleep in soft beds and drink an' eat in the tavern an' if the keepers hang round we pays for it all nice an' honest—'

‘Keepers like the ones hiding in the kitchen?'

Hellian blinked. ‘Hiding? Oh, maybe we've gotten a little wild –'

‘It's the heads,' Urb said, then he shrugged sheepishly. ‘We're getting outa hand, Gesler, I think. Living like animals in the woods and the like—'

‘Like animals,' Hellian agreed, still nodding. ‘In soft beds and lotsa food and drink an' it's not like we carry them heads on our belts or anything. We just leave 'em in the taverns. Every village, right? Jus' to let 'em know we been through.' Unaccountably dizzy, Hellian sat back down, then reached for the flagon of ale on the table – needing to twist Balgrid's fingers from the handle and him fighting as if it was his flagon or something, the idiot. She swallowed a mouthful and leaned back – only it was a stool she was sitting on so there was no back to it, and now she was staring up at the ceiling and puddled whatever was soaking through her ragged shirt all along her back and faces were peering down at her. She glowered at the flagon still in her hand. ‘Did I spill? Did I? Did I spill, dammit?'