The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen

by Steven Erikson

  The occasional thought filtered weakly through the miasma of pain and confusion as he was roughly carried to the nearest gaol. He’d known a cell before. It wasn’t so bad, so long as the gaolers weren’t into torture. Yes, he could make a tour of gaol cells, country to country, continent to continent. All he needed to do was start up a smithy without the local Guild’s approval.

  Simple enough.

  Then these fragmented notions went away, and the bliss of unconsciousness was unbroken, for a time.

  ‘’Tis the grand stupidity of our kind, dear Cutter, to see all the errors of our ways, yet find in ourselves the inability to do anything about them. We sit, dumbfounded by despair, and for all our ingenuity, our perceptivity, for all our extraordinary capacity to see the truth of things, we hunker down like snails in a flood, sucked tight to our precious pebble, fearing the moment it is dislodged beneath us. Until that terrible calamity, we do nothing but cling.

  ‘Can you even imagine a world where all crimes are punished, where justice is truly blind and holds out no hands happy to yield to the weight of coin and influence? Where one takes responsibility for his or her mistakes, acts of negligence, the deadly consequences of indifference or laziness? Nay, instead we slip and duck, dance and dodge, dance the dodge slip duck dance, feet ablur! Our selves transformed into shadows that flit in chaotic discord. We are indeed masters of evasion – no doubt originally a survival trait, at least in the physical sense, but to have such instincts applied to the soul is perhaps our most egregious crime against morality. What we will do so that we may continue living with ourselves. In this we might assert that a survival trait can ultimately prove its own antithesis, and in the cancelling out thereof, why, we are left with the blank, dull, vacuous expression that Kruppe now sees before him.’

  ‘Sorry, what?’

  ‘Dear Cutter, this is a grave day, I am saying. A day of the misguided and the misapprehended, a day of mischance and misery. A day in which to grieve the unanticipated, this yawning stretch of too-late that follows fell decisions, and the stars will plummet and if we truly possessed courage we would ease ourselves with great temerity into that high, tottering footwear of the gods, and in seeing what they see, in knowing what they have come to know, we would at last comprehend the madness of struggle, the absurdity of hope, and off we would stumble, wailing our way into the dark future. We would weep, my friend, we would weep.’

  ‘Maybe I have learned all about killing,’ Cutter said in a mumble, his glazy eyes seemingly fixed on the tankard in his hand. ‘And maybe assassins don’t spare a thought as to who deserves what, or even motivations. Coin in hand, or love in the heart – reward has so many…flavours. But is this what she really wants? Or was that some kind of careless…burst, like a flask never meant to be opened – shatters, everything pours out – staining your hands, staining…everything.’

  ‘Cutter,’ said Kruppe in a low, soft but determined tone. ‘Cutter. You must listen to Kruppe, now. You must listen – he is done with rambling, with his own bout of terrible, grievous helplessness. Listen! Cutter, there are paths that must not be walked. Paths where going back is impossible – no matter how deeply you would wish it, no matter how loud the cry in your soul. Dearest friend, you must—’

  Shaking himself, Cutter rose suddenly. ‘I need a walk,’ he said. ‘She couldn’t have meant it. That future she paints…it’s a fairy tale. Of course it is. Has to be. No, and no, and no. But…’

  Kruppe watched as the young man walked away, watched as Cutter slipped through the doorway of the Phoenix Inn, and was gone from sight.

  ‘Sad truth,’ Kruppe said – his audience of none sighing in agreement – ‘that a tendency towards verbal excess can so defeat the precision of meaning. That intent can be so well disguised in majestic plethora of nuance, of rhythm both serious and mocking, of this penchant for self-referential slyness, that the unwitting simply skip on past – imagining their time to be so precious, imagining themselves above all manner of conviction, save that of their own witty perfection. Sigh and sigh again.

  ‘See Kruppe totter in these high shoes – nay, even his balance is not always precise, no matter how condign he may be in so many things. Totter, I say, as down fall the stars and off wail the gods and helplessness is an ocean in flood, ever rising – but we shall not drown alone, shall we? No, we shall have plenty of company in this chill comfort. The guilty and the innocent, the quick and the thick, the wise and the dumb, the righteous and the wicked – the flood levels all, faces down in the swells, oh my.

  ‘Oh my…’

  A miracle, better than merely recounted second or third hand – witnessed. Witnessed: the four bearers would have carried their charge directly past, but then – see – a gnarled, feeble hand reached out, damp fingertips pressing against Myrla’s forehead.

  And the bearers – who were experienced in such random gestures of deliverance – halted.

  She stared up into the Prophet’s eyes and saw terrible pain, a misery so profound it purified, and knowledge beyond anything her useless, dross-filled mind could comprehend. ‘My son,’ she gasped. ‘My son…my self – oh my heart—’

  ‘Self, yes,’ he said, fingers pressing against her forehead like four iron nails, pinning her guilt and shame, her weakness, her useless stupidity. ‘I can bless that. So I shall. Do you feel my touch, dear woman?’

  And Myrla could not but nod, for she did feel it, oh, yes, she felt it.

  From behind her Bedek’s quavering voice drifted past. ‘Glorious One – our son has been taken. Kidnapped. We know not where, and we thought, we thought…’

  ‘Your son is beyond salvation,’ said the Prophet. ‘He has the vileness of knowledge within his soul. I can sense how you two merged in his creation – yes, your blood was his poison of birth. He understands compassion, but he chooses it not. He understands love, but uses it as a weapon. He understands the future, and knows it does not wait for anyone, not even him. He is a living maw, your son, a living maw, which all of the world must feed.’

  The hand withdrew, leaving four precise spots of ice on Myrla’s forehead – every nerve dead there, for ever more. ‘Even the Crippled God must reject such a creature. But you, Myrla, and you, Bedek, I bless. I bless you both in your lifelong blindness, your insensitive touch, the fugue of your malnourished minds. I bless you in the crumpling of the two delicate flowers in your hands – your two girls – for you have made of them versions no different from you, no better, perhaps much worse. Myrla. Bedek. I bless you in the name of empty pity. Now go.’

  And she staggered back, stumbled into the cart, knocking it and Bedek over. He cried out, falling hard on to the cobbles, and a moment later she landed on top of him. The snap of his left arm was loud in the wake of the now-resumed procession of bearers and Prophet, the swirling press of begging worshippers sweeping in, stepping without care, without regard. A heavy boot stamped down on Myrla’s hip and she shrieked as something broke, lancing agony into her right leg. Another foot collided with her face, toenails slashing one cheek. Heels on hands, fingers, ankles.

  Bedek caught a momentary glimpse upward, to see the face of a man desperate to climb over them, for they were in his way and he wanted to reach the Prophet, and the man looked down, his pleading expression transforming into one of black hate. And he drove the point of his boot into Bedek’s throat, crushing the trachea.

  Unable to breathe past the devastation that had once been his throat, Bedek stared up with bulging eyes. His face deepened to a shade of blue-grey, and then purple. The awareness in the eyes flattened out, went away, and away.

  Still screaming, Myrla dragged herself over her husband – noting his stillness but otherwise uncomprehending – and pulled herself through a forest of hard, shifting legs – shins and knees, jabbing feet, out into a space, suddenly open, clear, the cobbles slick beneath her.

  Although she was not yet aware of them, four spots of gangrene were spreading across her forehead – she could smell something foul,
horribly foul, as though someone had dropped something in passing, somewhere close; she just couldn’t see it yet. The pain of her broken hip was now a throbbing thing, a deadweight she dragged behind her, growing ever more distant in her mind.

  We run from our place of wounding. No different from any other beast, we run from our place of wounding. Run, or crawl, crawl or drag, drag or reach. She realized that even such efforts had failed her. She was broken everywhere. She was dying.

  See me? I have been blessed. He has blessed me.

  Bless you all.

  He could barely stand, and now he must duel. Murillio untied his coin pouch and tossed it towards the foreman who had just returned, gasping and red-faced. The bag landed in a cloud of dust, a heavy thud. ‘I came for the boy,’ Murillio said. ‘That’s more than he’s worth – do you accept the payment, foreman?’

  ‘He does not,’ said Gorlas. ‘No, I have something special in mind for little Harllo.’

  ‘He’s not part of any of this—’

  ‘You just made him so, Murillio. One of your clan, maybe even a whelp of one of your useless friends in the Phoenix Inn – your favoured hangout, yes? Hanut knows everything there is to know about you. No, the boy’s in this, and that’s why you won’t have him. I will, to do with as I please.’

  Murillio drew his rapier. ‘What makes people like you, Gorlas?’

  ‘I could well ask the same of you.’

  Well, a lifetime of mistakes. And so we are perhaps more alike than either of us would care to admit. He saw the foreman bend down to collect the purse. The odious man hefted it and grinned. ‘About those interest payments, Councillor…’

  Gorlas smiled. ‘Why, it seems you can clear your debt after all.’

  Murillio assumed his stance, point extended, sword arm bent slightly at the elbow, left shoulder thrown back to reduce the plane of his exposed torso. He settled his weight, gingerly, down through the centre of his hips.

  Smiling still, Gorlas Vidikas moved into a matching pose, although he was leaning slightly forward. Not a duellist ready to retreat, then. Murillio recalled that from the fight he’d seen the very end of, the way Gorlas would not step back, unwilling to yield ground, unwilling to accept that sometimes pulling away earned advantages. No, he would push, and push, surrendering nothing.

  He rapped Murillio’s blade with his own, a contemptuous batting aside to gauge response.

  There was none. Murillio simply resumed his line.

  Gorlas probed with the rapier’s point, jabbing here and there round the bell hilt, teasing and gambling with the quillons that could trap his blade, but for Murillio to do so he would have to twist and fold his wrist – not much, but enough for Gorlas to make a darting thrust into the opened guard, and so Murillio let the man play with that. He was in no hurry; footsore and weary as he was, he suspected he would have but one solid chance, sooner or later, to end this. Point to lead kneecap, or down to lead boot, or a flicking slash into wrist tendons, crippling the sword arm – possibly for ever. Or higher, into the shoulder, stop-hitting a lunge.

  Gorlas pressed, closing the distance, and Murillio stepped back.

  And that hurt.

  He could feel wetness in his boots, that wretched clear liquid oozing out from the broken blisters.

  ‘I think,’ ventured Gorlas, ‘there’s something wrong with your feet, Murillio. You move like a man standing on nails.’

  Murillio shrugged. He was past conversation; it was hard enough concentrating through the stabs of pain.

  ‘Such an old-style stance you have, old man. So…upright.’ Gorlas resumed the flitting, wavering motions of his rapier, minute threats here and there. He had begun a rhythmic rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, attempting to lull Murillio into that motion.

  When he finally launched into his attack, the move was explosive, lightning fast.

  Murillio tracked the feints, caught and parried the lunge, and snapped out a riposte – but he was stepping back as he did so, and his point snipped the cloth of Gorlas’s sleeve. Before he could ready himself, the younger duellist extended his attack with a hard parrying beat and then a second lunge, throwing his upper body far forward – closing enough to make Murillio’s retreat insufficient, as was his parry.

  Sizzling fire in his left shoulder. Staggering back, the motion tugging the point free of his flesh, Murillio righted himself and then straightened. ‘Blood drawn,’ he said, voice tightened by pain.

  ‘Oh, that,’ said Gorlas, resuming his rocking motion once more, ‘I’ve changed my mind.’

  One insult too many. I never learn.

  Murillio felt his heart pounding. The scar of his last, near fatal wounding seemed to be throbbing as if eager to reopen. He could feel blood pulsing down from his pierced shoulder muscle, could feel warm trickles running down the length of his upper arm to soak the cloth at his elbow.

  ‘Blood drawn,’ he repeated. ‘As you guessed, I am in no shape to duel beyond that, Gorlas. We were agreed, before a witness.’

  Gorlas glanced over at his foreman. ‘Do you recall, precisely, what you heard?’

  The old man shrugged. ‘Thought there was something about wounding…’

  Gorlas frowned.

  The foreman cleared his throat. ‘…but that’s all. A discussion, I think. I heard nothing, er, firmed up between you.’

  Gorlas nodded. ‘Our witness speaks.’

  A few hundred onlookers in the pit below were making restless sounds. Murillio wondered if Harllo was among them.

  ‘Ready yourself,’ Gorlas said.

  So, it was to be this way. A decade past Murillio would have been standing over this man’s corpse, regretful, of course, wishing it all could have been handled peacefully. And that was the luxury of days gone past, that cleaner world, while everything here, now, ever proved so…messy.

  I didn’t come here to die this day. I’d better do something about that. I need to survive this. For Harllo. He resumed his stance. Well, he was debilitated, enough to pretty much ensure that he would fight defensively, seeking only ripostes and perhaps a counterattack – taking a wound to deliver a death. All of that would be in Gorlas’s mind, would shape his tactics. Time, then, to surprise the bastard.

  His step and lunge was elegant, a fluid forward motion rather quick for a man his age. Gorlas, caught on the forward tilt of his rocking, was forced to jump a half-step back, parrying hard and without precision. His riposte was wild and inaccurate, and Murillio caught it with a high parry of his own, following through with a second attack – the one he had wanted to count from the very first – a fully extended lunge straight for his opponent’s chest – heart or lungs, it didn’t matter which—

  But somehow, impossibly, Gorlas had stepped close, inside and to one side of that lunge – his half-step back had not been accompanied by any shift in weight, simply a repositioning of his upper body, and this time his thrust was not at all wild.

  Murillio caught a flash along the length of Daru steel, and then he could not breathe. Something was pouring down the front of his chest, and spurting up into his mouth.

  He felt part of his throat tearing from the inside out as Gorlas slashed his blade free and stepped to the right.

  Murillio twisted round to track him, but the motion lost all control, and he continued on, legs collapsing under him, and now he was lying on the stony ground.

  The world darkened.

  He heard Gorlas say something, possibly regretful, but probably not.

  Oh, Harllo, I am so sorry. So sorry—

  And the darkness closed in.

  He was rocked momentarily awake by a kick to his face, but that pain quickly flushed away, along with everything else.

  Gorlas Vidikas stood over Murillio’s corpse. ‘Get that carter to take the body back,’ he said to the foreman, bending down to clean his blade on the threadbare silk sleeve of his victim’s weapon arm. ‘Have him deliver it to the Phoenix Inn, rapier and all.’

  From the pit below
, people were cheering and clanging their tools like some ragtag mob of barbarians. Gorlas faced them and raised his weapon in salute. The cheering redoubled. He turned back to the foreman. ‘An extra tankard of ale for the crews tonight.’

  ‘They will toast your name, Councillor!’

  ‘Oh, and have someone collect the boy for me.’

  ‘It’s his shift in the tunnels, I think, but I can send someone to get him.’

  ‘Good, and they don’t have to be gentle about it, either. But make sure – nothing so bad he won’t recover. If they kill him, I will personally disembowel every one of them – make sure they understand.’

  ‘I will, Councillor.’ The foreman hesitated. ‘I never seen such skill, I never seen such skill – I thought he had you—’

  ‘I’m sure he thought so, too. Go find that carter, now.’

  ‘On my way, Councillor.’

  ‘Oh, and I’ll take that purse, so we’re clear.’

  The foreman rushed over to deliver it. Feeling the bag’s weight for the first time, Gorlas raised his brows – a damned year’s wages for this foreman, right here – probably all Murillio had, cleaned right out. Three times as much as the interest this fool owed him. Then again, if the foreman had stopped to count out the right amount, intending to keep the rest, well, Gorlas would have had two bodies to dispose of rather than just one, so maybe the old man wasn’t so stupid after all.

  It had, Gorlas decided, been a good day.

  And so the ox began its long journey back into the city, clumping along the cobbled road, and in the cart’s bed lay the body of a man who might have been precipitous, who might indeed have been too old for such deadly ventures, but no one could say that his heart had not been in the right place. Nor could anyone speak of a lack of courage.

  Raising a most grave question – if courage and heart are not enough, what is?