Kalam saw a man half dead on his feet. Short and wide, he wore the tattered remnants of an Outpost detachment uniform, light-gray leather jerkin, dark-gray surcoat. His face was covered in a network of scratches, as were his hands and forearms. A deep wound marred his bristly chin, and the helm shadowing his eyes was dented. The clasp of his surcoat ranked him a captain.
The assassin’s eyes widened upon seeing that. “Though a captain deserting is a rare thing…”
“He didn’t desert,” the woman said, now fully recovered and sorting through the weapons of the dead bandits. She found a lightweight tulwar and tested its balance with a few swings. In the firelight Kalam could see she was attractive, medium-boned, her hair streaked with iron. Her eyes were a startling light gray. She collected a belted sword-hoop and strapped it on.
“We rode out of Orbal,” the captain said, pain evident in his voice. “A whole company escorting out refugees—our families. Ran smack into a Hood-damned army on the march south.”
“We’re all that’s left,” the woman said, turning to gesture into the darkness. Another woman—a younger, thinner version of the other one—and two children stepped cautiously into the light, then rushed to the captain’s side.
The man continued to aim an unsteady crossbow at Kalam. “Selv, my wife,” he said, gesturing to the woman now at his side. “Our children, there. And Selv’s sister Minala. That’s us. Now, let’s hear your story.”
“Corporal Kalam, Ninth Squad…Bridgeburners. Now you know why I’m out of uniform, sir.”
The man grinned. “You’ve been outlawed. So why aren’t you marching with Dujek? Unless you’ve returned to your homeland to join the Whirlwind.”
“Is that your horse?” Minala asked.
The assassin turned to see his mount step casually into the camp. “Aye.”
“You know your horses,” she said.
“It cost me a virgin’s ransom. I figure if something’s expensive it’s probably good, and that’s how much I know horses.”
“You still haven’t explained why you’re here,” the captain muttered, but Kalam could see he was relaxing his guard.
“Smelled the uprising in the wind,” the assassin said. “The Empire brought peace to Seven Cities. Sha’ik wants a return to the old days—tyrants, border wars and slaughter. I ride for Aren. That’s where the punitive force will land—and if I’m lucky I can slip myself in, maybe as a guide.”
“You’ll ride with us, then, Corporal,” the captain said. “If you’re truly a Bridgeburner you’ll know how to soldier, and if that’s what you show me on the way to Aren, I’ll see you rejoin the Imperial ranks without fuss.”
Kalam nodded. “Can I retrieve my weapons now, Captain?”
“Go ahead.”
The assassin crouched down, reached for his long-knife, paused. “Oh, one thing, Captain…”
The man had sagged against his wife. He swung bleary eyes on Kalam. “What?”
“Better my name should change…I mean, officially. I wouldn’t welcome the gallows if I’m marked in Aren. Granted, Kalam is common enough, but there’s always the chance I’d be recognized—”
“You’re that Kalam? You said the Ninth, didn’t you? Hood’s breath!” If the captain had planned to say more it was lost as the man’s knees buckled. With a soft whimper his wife eased him down to the ground, looked up at her sister with frightened eyes, then over at Kalam.
“Relax, lass,” the assassin said, straightening. He grinned. “I’m back in the army now.”
The two boys, one about seven and the other four, moved with exaggerated caution toward the unconscious man and his wife. She saw them and opened her arms. They rushed to her embrace.
“He was trampled,” Minala said. “One of the bandits dragged him behind his horse. Sixty paces before he cut himself free.”
Women who lived with garrisons were either harlots or wives—there was little doubt which one Minala had been. “Your husband was in the company as well?”
“He commanded it, but he’s dead.”
It could have been a statement about the weather for all the emotion expressed, and Kalam sensed the rigid control that held the woman. “And the captain’s your brother-in-law?”
“His name is Keneb. You’ve met my sister Selv. The older boy is Kesen, the younger Vaneb.”
“You’re from Quon?”
“Long ago.”
Not the talkative type. The assassin glanced over at Keneb. “Will he live?”
“I don’t know. He has dizzy spells. Blackouts.”
“Sagging face, slurred words?”
“No.”
Kalam went to his horse and gathered up the reins.
“Where are you going?” Minala demanded.
“There’s one bandit standing guard over food, water and horses. We need all three.”
“Then we all go.”
Kalam started to argue but Minala raised a hand. “Think, Corporal. We have the bandits’ horses. We can ride, all of us. The boys sat in saddles before they could walk. And who guards us when you’re gone? What happens if you get wounded fighting that last bandit?” She spun to her sister. “We’ll get Keneb over a saddle, Selv. Agreed?”
She nodded.
The assassin sighed. “But leave the guard to me.”
“We will. It seems you’ve a reputation, by Keneb’s reaction.”
“Fame, or notoriety?”
“I expect he’ll say more when he comes around.”
I hope not. The less they know about me the better.
The sun was still an hour from rising when Kalam raised a hand to bring the party to a halt. “That old river bed,” he hissed, gesturing a thousand paces ahead. “All of you wait here. I won’t be long.”
Kalam removed the best of the bandits’ recurved bows from its saddle sheath and selected two of the least tattered arrows. “Load that crossbow,” he said to Minala. “In case something goes wrong.”
“How will I know?”
The assassin shrugged. “In your gut.” He glanced at Keneb. The captain was laid over a saddle, still unconscious. That wasn’t good. Head injuries were always unpredictable.
“He’s still breathing,” Minala said quietly.
Kalam grunted, then set off at a dogtrot across the plain.
He saw the glow of the campfire well before he reached the high grass lining the bank. Still careless. A good sign. The voices he could hear weren’t. He dropped down and slid forward through the dew-wet grass on his stomach.
Another party of raiders had arrived. Bearing gifts. Kalam saw the motionless, sprawled bodies of five women flung down around the camp. All had been raped, then murdered. In addition to Bordu’s guard there were seven others, all sitting around the fire. All well armed and armored in boiled leather.
Bordu’s guard was speaking a dozen words for every breath. “—won’t tire the horses. So the prisoners will walk. Two women. Two boys. Like I said. Bordu plans these things. And a horse worthy of a prince. You’ll see soon enough—”
“Bordu will gift the horse,” one of the newcomers growled. Not a question.
“Of course he will. And a boy too. Bordu is a generous commander, sir. Very generous…”
Sir. True soldiers of the Whirlwind, then.
Kalam edged back, then hesitated. A moment later, his eyes coming to rest again on the murdered women, he breathed a silent curse.
A soft clack sounded almost at his shoulder. The assassin went rigid, then slowly turned his head. Apt crouched beside him, head ducked low, a long thread of drool hanging from its jaws. It blinked knowingly.
“This time, then?” Kalam whispered. “Or come to watch?”
The demon gave nothing away. Naturally.
The assassin nocked the better of the two arrows, licked his fingers and ran them along the feather guides. There was little gain in elaborate planning. He had eight men to kill.
Still concealed by the high grass, he rose into a crouch, drawing the bowstrin
g as he took a deep breath. He held both for a long moment.
It was the shot he needed. The arrow entered the troop commander’s left eye and went straight through to the back of the skull, the iron point making a solid crunching sound as it drove into the bone. The man’s head snapped back, skullcap helmet flying from his head.
Kalam was drawing for his second shot even as the body rocked, falling forward from the waist. He chose the man fastest to react, a big warrior with his back to the assassin.
The arrow went high—betrayed by a warped shaft. Sinking into the warrior’s right shoulder, it was deflected off the blade and up under the rim of the helmet. Kalam’s luck held as the man pitched forward onto the fire, instantly dead. Sparks rose as the body swallowed up the flames. Darkness swept down like a cloak.
The assassin dropped the bow and closed swiftly on the shouting, frightened men. A brace of knives in his right hand, Kalam selected his targets. His left hand was a blur as he threw the first knife. A warrior screamed. Another caught sight of the assassin.
Kalam unsheathed his long-knife and close-work dagger. A tulwar flashed at his head. He ducked, stepped close and stabbed the man under the chin. With no solid bone to bite down on the dagger blade, he was instantly able to withdraw it, in time to parry a lance thrust, take another step and stab the long-knife’s point into a man’s throat.
A tulwar skidded across his shoulders, the blow too wild to penetrate the chain under Kalam’s telaba. He spun, a back-hand slice opening the attacker’s cheek and nose. The man reeled.
The assassin kicked him away. The three warriors still prepared to fight, and Bordu’s guard, all backed off to regroup. Their reaction made it clear that they imagined that a whole squad had attacked them. Kalam took advantage of their frantic searching of the shadows to finish off the man whose face he’d cut.
“Spread out!” one of the warriors hissed. “Jelem, Hanor, get the crossbows—”
Waiting for that was suicide. Kalam attacked, rushing the man who’d taken command. He backed off desperately, the tulwar in his hand twitching in every direction as he tried to follow the assassin’s intricate feints, hoping to catch the one feint that was in fact the genuine attack. Then instinct made the man abandon the effort and lash out in a counterattack.
Which the assassin had been waiting for. He intercepted the downward swing at the man’s wrist—with the point of his dagger. Spitting his arm on the blade, the warrior screamed in pain, weapon flying from a spasming hand.
Kalam thrust the long-knife into the man’s chest, ducked and spun to evade a rushing attack from Bordu’s guard. The move was a surprise, since the assassin had not expected to find much courage in the man. He came very close to dying then. Straightening inside the guard’s reach was all that saved him. Kalam drove his dagger low, stabbing just under the man’s belt buckle. Hot fluid gushed over the assassin’s forearm. The guard shrieked, doubling over, trapping both knife and the hand gripping it.
The assassin surrendered the weapon and stepped around the guard.
The remaining two warriors crouched twenty feet away, loading their crossbows. The weapons were Malazan, assault-issue, and both men revealed a fatal lack of familiarity with the loading mechanisms. Kalam himself could ready such a crossbow in four seconds.
He did not grant the warriors even that, closing with them in a flash. One still tried to lock the crank, his frantic terror undoing his efforts as the quarrel jumped from its slot and fell to the ground. The other man tossed his crossbow down with a snarl and retrieved his tulwar in time to meet Kalam’s charge. He had advantage in both the reach and weight of his weapon, yet neither availed him when a sudden loss of courage froze him in his tracks.
“Please—”
The word rode his last breath as Kalam batted the tulwar aside and cross-swung his long-knife’s razor-sharp edge, opening the warrior’s throat. The swing continued, spinning to transform into a sideways thrust that pierced the other man’s chest, through boiled leather, skin, between ribs and into the lung. Choking, the warrior crumpled. The assassin finished him with another thrust.
Behind the moans of Bordu’s guard lay silence. From a copse of low trees thirty paces down the river bed came the first peeps of birds awakening to dawn. Kalam dropped to one knee, sucking in lungfuls of sweet, cool air.
He heard a horse descend the south bank and turned to see Minala. The crossbow in her hands pointed from one corpse to the next as she checked the clearing, then she visibly relaxed, fixing Kalam with wide eyes. “I count eight.”
Still struggling for breath, the assassin nodded. He reached out and cleaned his long-knife’s blade and hilt on his last victim’s telaba, then checked the weapon’s edge before sheathing it at his side.
Bordu’s guard finally fell silent.
“Eight.”
“How’s the captain?”
“Awake. Groggy, maybe fevered.”
“There’s another clearing about forty paces east of here,” Kalam said. “I suggest we camp there for the day. I need some sleep.”
“Yes.”
“We need to strip this camp…the bodies…”
“Leave that to Selv and me. We don’t shock easily. Any more…”
With a grunt the assassin straightened and went to retrieve his other weapons. Minala watched him.
“There were two others,” she said.
Kalam paused over a body, looked up. “What?”
“Guarding the horses. They look…” She hesitated, then continued grimly, “They were torn to pieces. Big chunks…missing. Bite marks.”
The assassin voiced a second grunt, rose slowly. “I hadn’t had much to eat lately,” he muttered.
“Maybe a plains bear, the big brown kind. Took advantage of the ruckus to ambush the two guards. Did you hear the horses screaming?”
“Maybe.” He studied her face, wondering what was going on behind those almost silver eyes.
“I didn’t but there were plenty of screams and sound does jump around in river beds like these. Anyway, it’ll do as an explanation, don’t you think?”
“Just might.”
“Good. I’ll ride back for the others now. I won’t be long.”
She swung her mount around without using the reins, since she still held the crossbow in her hands. Kalam wasn’t sure how she managed it. He recalled her crouch over one stirrup hours earlier, her dance across the saddles. This woman can sit a horse.
As she rode back up the bank, the assassin surveyed the grisly camp. “Hood,” he breathed, “I need a rest.”
“Kalam, who rode with Whiskeyjack across Raraku…” Captain Keneb shook his head and poked again at the fire.
It was dusk. The assassin had just awakened from a long, deep sleep. His first hour was never a pleasant one. Aching joints, old wounds—his years always caught up with him while he slept. Selv had brewed a strong tea. She poured Kalam a cup. He stared into the dying flames.
Minala said, “I would never have believed that one man could kill eight, all within minutes.”
“Kalam was recruited into the Claw,” Keneb said. “That’s rare. They usually take children, train them—”
“Train?” the assassin grunted. “Indoctrination.” He looked up at Minala. “Attacking a group of warriors isn’t as impossible as you think. For the lone attacker, there’s no one else to make the first move. Eight—ten men…well, they figure they should just all close in and hack me down. Only, who goes first? They all pause, they all look for an opening. It’s my job to keep moving, make sure every opening is closed before they can react. Mind you, a good veteran squad knows how to work together…”
“Then you were lucky they didn’t.”
“I was lucky.”
The older boy, Kesen, spoke up. “Can you teach me how to fight like that, sir?”
Kalam grunted. “I expect your father has a better life in mind for you, lad. Fighting is for people who fail at everything else.”
“But fighting isn’t
the same as soldiering,” Keneb said.
“That’s a fact,” the assassin agreed, sensing that he’d somehow stung the captain’s pride. “Soldiers are worth respect, and it’s true that sometimes fighting’s required. Soldiering means standing firm when that time comes. So, lad, if you still want to learn how to fight, learn how to soldier first.”
“In other words, listen to your father,” Minala said, giving Kalam a quick, wry smile.
Following some gesture or look the assassin did not catch, Selv rose and led the boys off to finish breaking camp. As soon as they were out of earshot Keneb said, “Aren’s what, three months away? Hood’s breath, there has to be a Malazanheld city or fortification that’s closer than that, Corporal.”
“All the news I’ve heard has been bad,” Kalam said. “Everything south of here is tribal lands, all the way to the River Vathar. Ubaryd’s close to the river, but I’d guess it’s been taken by Sha’ik’s Apocalypse—too valuable a port to leave unsecured. Secondly, I would think most of the tribes between here and Aren have set off to join Kamist Reloe.”
Keneb looked startled. “Reloe?”
Kalam frowned. “The bandits spoke of him as being southeast of here…”
“More east than south. Reloe is chasing Fist Coltaine and the Seventh Army. He’s probably wiped them out by now, but even so his forces are east of the Sekala River and that’s the territory he’s been charged to hold.”
“You know much more of this than I,” the assassin said.
“We had Tithansi servants,” Minala explained. “Loyal.”
“They paid for that with their lives,” the captain added.
“Then is there an army of the Apocalypse south of here?”
Keneb nodded. “Aye, preparing to march on Aren.”
The assassin frowned. “Tell me, Captain…you ever heard the word ‘Jhistal?’ ”
“No, not Seven Cities. Why?”
“The bandits spoke of ‘a jhistal inside’ Aren. As if it was a shaved knuckle.” He fell silent for a moment, then sighed. “Who commands this army?”
“That bastard Korbolo Dom.”
Kalam’s eyes narrowed. “But he’s a Fist—”
The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen Page 101
