‘Yes, Rud Elalle.’
‘Then you believe!’
Onrack was silent.
Hostille Rator’s laugh was a soft, bitter rasp. ‘It is this, Rud Elalle. Onrack of the Logros T’lan Imass chooses to fight at your side, chooses to fight for these Bentract, because he cannot abide the thought of returning to what he once was, and so he would rather die here. And death is what Onrack the Broken anticipates – indeed, what he now yearns for.’
Trull studied his friend, and saw on Onrack’s firelit face the veracity of Hostille Rator’s words.
The Tiste Edur did not hesitate. ‘Onrack will not stand alone,’ he said.
Til’aras Benok faced Trull. ‘You surrender your life, Edur, to defend an illusion?’
‘That, Bonecaster, is what we mortals delight in doing. You bind yourself to a clan, to a tribe, to a nation or an empire, but to give force to the illusion of a common bond, you must feed its opposite – that all those not of your clan, or tribe, or empire, do not share that bond. I have seen Onrack the Broken, a T’lan Imass. And now I have seen him, mortal once again. To the joy and the life in the eyes of my friend, I will fight all those who deem him their enemy. For the bond between us is one of friendship, and that, Til’aras Benok, is not an illusion.’
Hostille Rator asked Onrack, ‘In your mercy, as you have now found it alive once more in your soul, will you now reject Trull Sengar of the Tiste Edur?’
And the warrior bowed his head and said, ‘I cannot.’
‘Then, Onrack the Broken, your soul shall never find peace.’
‘I know.’
Trull felt as if he had been punched in the chest. It was all very well to make his bold claims, in ferocious sincerity that could only come of true friendship. It was yet another thing to discover the price it demanded in the soul of the one he called friend. ‘Onrack,’ he whispered in sudden anguish.
But this moment would not await all that might have been said, all that needed to be said, for Hostille Rator had turned to face his Bonecasters, and whatever silent communication passed among these three was quick, decisive, for the clan chief swung round and walked towards Ulshun Pral. Whereupon he fell to one knee and bowed his head. ‘We are humbled, Ulshun Pral. We are shamed by these two strangers. You are the Bentract. As were we, once, long ago. We now choose to remember. We now choose to fight in your name. In our deaths there will be naught but honour, this we vow.’ He then rose and faced Rud Elalle. ‘Soletaken, will you accept us as your soldiers?’
‘As soldiers? No. As friends, as Bentract, yes.’
The three T’lan bowed to him.
All of this passed in a blur before Trull Sengar’s eyes. Since Onrack the Broken’s admission, it seemed as if Trull’s entire world had, with grinding, stone-crushing irresistibility, turned on some vast, unimagined axis – yet he was drawn round again by a hand on his shoulder, and Onrack, now standing before him.
‘There is no need,’ the Imass warrior said. ‘I know something even Rud Elalle does not, and I tell you this, Trull Sengar, there is no need. Not for grief. Nor regret. My friend, listen to me. This world will not die.’
And Trull found no will within him to challenge that assertion, to drive doubt into his friend’s earnest gaze. After a moment, then, he simply sighed and nodded. ‘So be it, Onrack.’
‘And, if we are careful,’ Onrack continued, ‘neither shall we.’
‘As you say, friend.’
Thirty paces away in the darkness, Hedge turned to Quick Ben and hissed, ‘What do you make of all that, wizard?’
Quick Ben shrugged. ‘Seems the confrontation has been averted, if Hostille Rator’s kneeling before Ulshun Pral didn’t involve picking up a dropped fang or something.’
‘A dropped – what?’
‘Never mind. That’s not the point at all, anyway. But I now know I am right in one thing and don’t ask me how I know. I just do. Suspicion into certainty.’
‘Well, go on, damn you.’
‘Just this, Hedge. The Finnest. Of Scabandari Bloodeye. It’s here.’
‘Here? What do you mean, here?’
‘Here, sapper. Right here.’
The gate was a shattered mess on one side. The huge cyclopean stones that had once formed an enormous arch easily five storeys high had the appearance of having been blasted apart by multiple impacts, flinging some of the shaped blocks a hundred paces or more from the entranceway. The platform the arch had once spanned was heaved and buckled as if some earthquake had rippled through the solid bedrock beneath the pavestones. The other side was dominated by a tower of still standing blocks, corkscrew-twisted and seemingly precariously balanced.
The illusion of bright daylight had held during this last part of the journey, as much by the belligerent insistence of Udinaas as by the amused indulgence of Clip. Or, perhaps, Silchas Ruin’s impatience. The foremost consequence of this was that Seren Pedac was exhausted – and Udinaas looked no better. Like the two Tiste Andii, however, Kettle seemed impervious – with all the boundless energy of a child, Seren supposed, raising the possibility that at some moment not too far off she would simply collapse.
Seren could see that Fear Sengar was weary as well, but probably that had more to do with the unpleasant burden settling ever more heavily upon his shoulders. She had been harsh and unforgiving of herself in relating to the Tiste Edur the terrible crime she had committed upon Udinaas, and she had done so in the hope that Fear Sengar would – with a look of unfeigned and most deserving disgust in his eyes – choose to reject her, and his own vow to guard her life.
But the fool had instead held to that vow, although she could see the brutal awakening of regret. He would not – could not – break his word.
It was getting easier to disdain these bold gestures, the severity so readily embraced by males of any species. Some primitive holdover, she reasoned, of the time when possessing a woman meant survival, not of anything so prosaic as one’s own bloodline, but possession in the manner of ownership, and survival in the sense of power. There had been backward tribes all along the fringe territories of the Letherii kingdom where such archaic notions were practised, and not always situations where men were the owners and wielders of power – for sometimes it was the women. In either case, history had shown that such systems could only survive in isolation, and only among peoples for whom magic had stagnated into a chaotic web of proscriptions, taboos and the artifice of nonsensical rules – where the power offered by sorcery had been usurped by profane ambitions and the imperatives of social control.
Contrary to Hull Beddict’s romantic notions of such people, Seren Pedac had come to feel little remorse when she thought about their inevitable and often bloody extinction. Control was ever an illusion, and its maintenance could only persist when in isolation. Not to say, of course, that the Letherii system was one of unfettered freedom and the liberty of individual will. Hardly. One imposition had been replaced by another. But at the very least it’s not one divided by gender.
The Tiste Edur were different. Their notions…primitive. Offer a sword, bury it at the threshold of one’s home, the symbolic exchange of vows so archaic no words were even necessary. In such a ritual, no negotiation was possible, and if marriage did not involve negotiation then it was not marriage. No, just mutual ownership. Or not-so-mutual ownership. Such a thing deserved little respect.
And now, here, it was not even a prospective husband laying claim to her life, but that prospective husband’s damned brother. And, to make the entire situation yet more absurd, the prospective husband was dead. Fear will defend to the death my right to marry a corpse. Or, rather, the corpse’s right to claim me. Well, that is madness and I will not – I do not – accept it. Not for a moment.
Yes, I have moved past self-pity. Now I’m just angry.
Because he refused to let his disgust dissuade him.
For all her notions of defiance, that last thought stung her.
Udinaas had moved past her to study the ruined
gate, and now he turned to Clip. ‘Well, does it yet live?’
The Tiste Andii’s chain and rings were spinning from one finger again, and he offered the Letherii slave a cool smile. ‘The last road to walk,’ he said, ‘lies on the other side of the gate.’
‘So who got mad and kicked it to pieces, Clip?’
‘Of no consequence any more,’ Clip replied, his smile broadening.
‘You have no idea, in other words,’ Udinaas said. ‘Well, if we’re to go through it, let’s stop wasting time. I’ve almost given up hoping that you’ll end up garrotting yourself with that chain. Almost.’
His last comment seemed to startle Clip for some reason.
And all at once Seren Pedac saw that chain with its rings differently. By the Errant! Why did I not see it before? It is a garrotte. Clip is a damned assassin! She snorted. ‘And you claim to be a Mortal Sword! You’re nothing but a murderer, Clip. Yes, Udinaas saw that long ago – which is why you hate him so. He was never fooled by all those weapons you carry. And now, neither am I.’
‘We’re wasting time indeed,’ Clip said, once more seemingly unperturbed, and he turned and approached the huge gate. Silchas Ruin set out after him, and Seren saw that the White Crow had his hands on the grips of his swords.
‘Danger ahead,’ Fear Sengar announced and yes, damn him, he then moved from his position just behind Seren’s right shoulder to directly in front of her. And drew his sword.
Udinaas witnessed all this and grunted dismissively, then half turned and said, ‘Silchas Ruin’s earned his paranoia, Fear. But even that doesn’t mean we’re about to jump into a pit of dragons.’ He then smiled without any humour. ‘Not that dragons live in pits.’
When he walked after the two Tiste Andii, Kettle ran up to take his hand. At first Udinaas reacted as if her touch had burned him, but then his resistance vanished.
Clip reached the threshold, stepped forward and disappeared. A moment later Silchas Ruin did the same.
Neither Udinaas nor Kettle hesitated.
Reaching the same point, Fear Sengar paused and eyed her. ‘What is in your mind, Acquitor?’ he asked.
‘Do you think I might abandon you all, Fear? Watch you step through and, assuming you can’t get back, I just turn round and walk this pointless road – one I probably would never leave? Is that choice left to me?’
‘All choices are left to you, Acquitor.’
‘You too, I would say. Except, of course, for the ones you willingly surrendered.’
‘Yes.’
‘You admit that so easily.’
‘Perhaps it seems that way.’
‘Fear, if anyone should turn round right now, it is you.’
‘We are close, Acquitor. We are perhaps a few strides from Scabandari’s Finnest. How can you imagine I would even consider such a thing?’
‘Some stubborn thread of self-preservation, perhaps. Some last surviving faith of mine that you actually possess a brain, one that can reason, that is. Fear Sengar, you will probably die. If you pass through this gate.’
He shrugged. ‘Perhaps I shall, if only to confound Udinaas’s expectations.’
‘Udinaas?’
A faint smile. ‘The hero fails the quest.’
‘Ah. And that would prove satisfying enough?’
‘Remains to be seen, I suppose. Now, you will follow?’
‘Of course.’
‘You then willingly surrender this choice?’
In answer she set a hand against his chest and pushed him, step by step, into the gate. All pressure vanished when he went through, and Seren stumbled forward, only to collide with the Tiste Edur’s broad, muscled chest.
He righted her before she could fall.
And she saw, before them all, a most unexpected vista. Black volcanic ash, beneath a vast sky nearly as black, despite at least three suns blazing in the sky overhead. And, on this rough plain, stretching on all sides in horrific proliferation, there were dragons.
Humped, motionless. Scores – hundreds.
She heard Kettle’s anguished whisper. ‘Udinaas! They’re all dead!’
Clip, standing twenty paces ahead, was now facing them. The chain spun tight, and then he bowed. ‘Welcome, my dear companions, to Starvald Demelain.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
The shadows lie on the field like the dead
From night’s battle as the sun lifts high its standard
Into the dew-softened air
The children rise like flowers on stalks
To sing unworded songs we long ago surrendered
And the bees dance with great care
You might touch this scene with blessing
Even as you settle the weight of weapon in hand
And gaze across this expanse
And vow to the sun another day of blood
Untitled
Toc Anaster
Gaskaral Traum was the first soldier in Atri-Preda Bivatt’s army to take a life that morning. A large man with faint threads of Tarthenal blood in his veins, he had pitched his tent the night before forty paces from the Tiste Edur encampment. Within it he had lit a small oil lamp and arranged his bedroll over bundles of clothing, spare boots and spare helm. Then he had lain down beside it, on the side nearest the Edur tents, and let the lamp devour the last slick of oil until the darkness within the tent matched that of outside.
With dawn’s false glow ebbing, Gaskaral Traum drew a knife and slit the side of the tent beside him, then silently edged out into the wet grasses, where he laid motionless for a time.
Then, seeing at last what he had been waiting for, he rose and, staying low, made his way across the sodden ground. The rain was still thrumming down on the old seabed of Q’uson Tapi – where waited the hated Awl – and the air smelled of sour mud. Although a large man, Gaskaral could move like a ghost. He reached the first row of Edur tents, paused with held breath for a moment, then edged into the camp.
The tent of Overseer Brohl Handar was centrally positioned, but otherwise unguarded. As Gaskaral came closer, he saw that the flap was untied, hanging loose. Water from the rain just past streamed down the oiled canvas like tears, pooling round the front pole and in the deep footprints crowding the entrance.
Gaskaral slipped his knife beneath his outer shirt and used the grimy undergarment to dry the handle and his left hand – palm and fingers – before withdrawing the weapon once more. Then he crept for that slitted opening.
Within was grainy darkness. The sound of breathing. And there, at the far end, the Overseer’s cot. Brohl Handar was sleeping on his back. The furs covering him had slipped down to the floor. Of his face and chest, Gaskaral could see naught but heavy shadow.
Blackened iron gleamed, betrayed by the honed edge.
Gaskaral Traum took one more step, then he surged forward in a blur.
The figure standing directly over Brohl Handar spun, but not in time, as Gaskaral’s knife sank deep, sliding between ribs, piercing the assassin’s heart.
The black dagger fell and stuck point-first into the floor, and Gaskaral took the body’s weight as, with a faint sigh, the killer slumped.
Atri-Preda Bivatt’s favoured bodyguard – chosen by her outside Drene to safeguard the Overseer against just this eventuality – froze for a moment, eyes fixed on Brohl Handar’s face, on the Edur’s breathing. No stirring awake. And that was good. Very good.
Angling beneath the dead assassin’s weight, Gaskaral slowly sheathed his knife, then reached down and retrieved the black dagger. This was the last of the bastards, he was sure. Seven in all, although only two before this one had got close enough to attempt Brohl’s murder – and both of those had been in the midst of battle. Letur Anict was ever a thorough man, one prone to redundancy in assuring that his desires were satisfied. Alas, not this time.
Gaskaral lowered himself yet further until he could fold the body over one shoulder, then, rising into a bent-knee stance, he padded silently back to the tent-flap. Stepping to avoid the puddl
e and the upright pole, he carefully angled his burden through the opening.
Beneath overcast clouds with yet another fall of rain beginning, Gaskaral Traum quickly made his way back to the Letherii side of the camp. The body could remain in his tent – the day now approaching was going to be a day of battle, which meant plenty of chaos, plenty of opportunities to dispose of the corpse.
He was somewhat concerned, however. It was never a good thing to not sleep the night before a battle. But he was ever sensitive to his instincts, as if he could smell the approach of an assassin, as if he could slip into their minds. Certainly his uncanny timing proved the talent – another handful of heartbeats back there and he would have been too late—
Occasionally, of course, instincts failed.
The two figures that suddenly rushed him from the darkness caught Gaskaral Traum entirely by surprise. A shock blessedly short-lived, as it turned out. Gaskaral threw the body he had been carrying at the assassin on his right. With no time to draw out his knife, he simply charged to meet the other killer. Knocked aside the dagger stabbing for his throat, took the man’s head in both hands and twisted hard.
Hard enough to spin the assassin’s feet out from under him as the neck snapped.
The other killer had been thrown down by the corpse and was just rolling back into a crouch when, upon looking up, he met Gaskaral’s boot – under his chin. The impact lifted the man into the air, arms flung out to the sides, his head separated from his spine, and dead before he thumped back onto the ground.
Gaskaral Traum looked round, saw no more coming, then permitted himself a moment of self-directed anger. Of course they would have realized that someone was intercepting them. So in went one while the other two remained back to see who their unknown hunter was, and then they would deal with that hunter in the usual way.
‘Yeah? Like fuck they did.’
He studied the three bodies for a moment longer. Damn, it was going to be a crowded tent.
The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen Page 672
