‘Better start talking,’ Gesler said. He saw a waterskin and pointed at it.
She nodded.
Gesler reached over, tugged loose the stopper and drank down three quick mouthfuls. An odd flavour came off his lips and his head spun momentarily. ‘Hood’s knocker, what did I do last night?’ He glared at the woman. ‘You understanding me?’
‘Trader tongue,’ she said.
It was a moment before he comprehended her words. Her accent was one he’d never heard before. ‘Good, there’s that at least. Where am I? Who are you? Where’s my damned army?’
She gestured. Gone. And then said, ‘You are for me, with me. By me?’ She shook her head, clearly frustrated with her limited knowledge of the language. ‘Kalyth my name.’ Her eyes shifted away. ‘Destriant Kalyth.’
‘Destriant? That’s not a title people just throw around. If it doesn’t belong to you, you and your whole damned line are cursed. For ever more. You don’t use titles like that—Destriant, to what god?’
‘God no. No god. K’Chain Che’Malle. Acyl Nest, Matron Gunth’an Acyl. Kalyth me, Elan—’
He raised a hand. ‘Hold it, hold it, I’m not understanding much of that. K’Chain Che’Malle, aye. You’re a Destriant to the K’Chain Che’Malle. But that can’t be. You got it wrong—’
‘Wrong no. I wish, yes.’ She shifted slightly and pointed at Stormy. ‘He Shield Anvil.’ Then she pointed at Gesler. ‘You Mortal Sword.’
‘We ain’t …’ and Gesler trailed off, gaze straying over to Stormy. ‘Someone called him Shield Anvil, once. I think. Can’t recall who it was, though. Actually, maybe it was Mortal Sword, come to that.’ He glared at her. ‘Whoever it was, though, it wasn’t no K’Chain Che’Malle.’
She shrugged. ‘There is war. You lead. Him and you. Gunth’an Acyl send me to find you. I find you. You are fire. Gu’Rull see you, fill my head with you. Burning. Beacons, you and him. Blinding. Gu’Rull collect you.’
Collect? Gesler abruptly stood, earning yet another gasp as his head reeled. ‘You snatched us!’
‘Me not—not me. Gu’Rull.’
‘Who is Gu’Rull? Where is the bastard? I got to cut his throat and maybe yours too. Then we can try to find the army—’
‘Gone. Your army, many leagues away. Gu’Rull fly all night. With you. All night. You must lead K’Chain Che’Malle army. Eight Furies, coming now. Close. There is war.’
Gesler walked over and kicked Stormy.
The big man grunted, and then clutched the sides of his head. ‘Go piss yourself, Ges,’ he mumbled. ‘It ain’t morning yet.’
‘Really?’ Stormy had spoken in Falari and so Gesler did the same.
‘Bugle wakes me every time, you know that. Miserable sh—’
‘Open your eyes, soldier! On your damned feet!’
Stormy lashed out with one bare foot, forcing Gesler back a step. He’d felt those kicks before. But Stormy then sat, eyes open and widening as he looked around. ‘What did you do to me, Ges? Where’s … where’s everything?’
‘We got ourselves kidnapped last night, Stormy.’
Stormy’s bright blue eyes fixed on Kalyth. ‘Her? She’s stronger than she looks—’
‘Fener’s sake, Stormy, she had help. Someone named Gu’Rull, and whoever he is, he’s got wings. And he’s strong enough to have carried us away, all night.’
Stormy’s eyes flashed. ‘What did I tell you, Gesler! My dreams! I saw—’
‘What you said you saw made no sense. Still doesn’t! The point is, this woman here calls herself the Destriant to the K’Chain Che’Malle, and if that’s not dumb enough, she’s calling me the Mortal Sword and you the Shield Anvil.’
Stormy flinched, hands up covering his face. He spoke behind his palms. ‘Where’s my sword? Where’s my boots? Where the fuck is breakfast?’
‘Didn’t you hear me?’
‘I heard you, Gesler. Dreams. It was those damned scaled rats. Every time I saw one on the trail I got the shivers.’
‘Rats ain’t K’Chain Che’Malle. You know, if you had even half a brain maybe you could’ve figured out your dreams, and maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess!’
Stormy dropped his hands, swung his shaggy head to regard Kalyth. ‘Look at her,’ he muttered.
‘What about her?’
‘Reminds me of my mother.’
Gesler’s hands twitched, closed into fists. ‘Don’t even think it, Stormy.’
‘Can’t help it. She does—’
‘No, she doesn’t. Your mother had red hair—’
‘Not the point. Around her eyes, see it? You should know, Ges, you went and bedded her enough times—’
‘That was an accident—’
‘A what?’
‘I mean, how did I know she went around seducing your friends?’
‘She didn’t. Just you.’
‘But you said—’
‘So I lied! I was just trying to make you feel better! No, fuck that, I was trying to make you feel that you’re nobody important—your head’s swelled up bad enough as it is. Anyway, it don’t matter any more, does it? Forget it. I forgave you, remember—’
‘You were drunk and we’d just trashed an alley trying to kill each other—’
‘Then I forgave you. Forget it, I said.’
‘I wish I could! Now you go and say this one looks like—’
‘But she does!’
‘I know she does! Now just shut the fuck up! We ain’t—we ain’t—’
‘Yes, we are. You know it, Ges. You don’t like it, but you know it. We been cut loose. We got us a destiny. Right here. Right now. She’s Destriant and you’re Shield Anvil and I’m Mortal Sword—’
‘Wrong way round,’ Gesler snarled. ‘I’m the Mortal Sword—’
‘Good. Glad we got that settled. Now get her to cook us something—’
‘Oh, is that what Destriants do, then? Cook for us?’
‘I’m hungry and I got no food!’
‘Then ask her. Politely.’
Stormy scowled at Kalyth.
‘Trader tongue,’ Gesler said.
Instead, Stormy pointed at his mouth and then patted his stomach.
Kalyth said, ‘You eat.’
‘Hungry, aye.’
‘Food,’ she said, nodding, and then pointed to a small leather satchel to one side.
Gesler laughed.
Kalyth then rose. ‘They come.’
‘Who come?’ Gesler asked.
‘K’Chain Che’Malle. Army. Soon … war.’
At that moment Gesler felt the trembling ground underfoot. Stormy did the same and as one they both turned to face north.
Fener’s holy crotch.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I am the face you would not own
Though you carve your place
Hidden in the crowd
Mine are the features you never saw
As you stack your thin days
In the tick of tonight’s straw
My legion is the unexpected
A forest turned to masts
Grass blades to swords
And this is the face you would not own
A brother with bad news
Hiding in the crowd
HARBINGER
FISHER
S
he’d had an uncle, a prince high on the rungs but, alas, the wrong ladder. He had attempted a coup, only to find that all his agents were someone else’s agents. Was it this conceit that had led to his death? Which choice made it all inevitable? Queen Abrastal had thought many times on the man’s fate. The curious thing was, he’d actually made his escape, out from the city, all the way to the eastern border, in fact. But on the morning of his last ride, a farmer had woken with crippling rheumatism in his legs. This man was fifty-seven years old and, for thirty-odd years, each month through the summers and autumns he had taken the harvest of his own family’s plot up to the village a league and a half away. And he had done this by pulling a two-wheeled c
art.
He must have awoken that morning in the turgid miasma of his own mortality. Wearing down, wearing out. And studying the mists wreathing the low hills and glades edging the fields, he must have held a silence in his hands, and in his heart. We pass on. All that was effortless becomes an ordeal, yet the mind remains lucid, trapped inside a failing body. Though the morning promised a fine day, night’s cold darkness remained lodged within him.
He had three sons but all were in the levy and off fighting somewhere. Rumours of some uprising; the old man knew little about it and cared even less. Except for the fact that his sons were not with him. In motions stiff with pain he had hitched up the mule to a rickety flatbed wagon. He could as easily have chosen the cart, but the one mule he owned that wasn’t too old or lame was a strangely long-bodied specimen, too long for the cart’s yoke and spar.
The efforts of preparation, concluding with loading the flatbed, had taken most of the morning, even with his half-blind wife’s help. And when he set out on the road, quirting the beast along, the mists had burned off and the sun was high and strong. The stony track leading to the section road was more suited to a cart than a wagon, and so the going was slow, and upon reaching the section track and drawing close to the high road, he had the sun in his eyes.
On this day, in a heap of stones in the corner of a field just next to the high road, a civil war was erupting in a wild beehive. And only a few moments before the farmer arrived, the hive swarmed.
The old man, half-dozing, had been listening to the rapid approach of a rider, but there was room on the road—it had been built for moving armies to and from the border, after all—and so he was not particularly concerned as those drumming hoofs drew ever closer. Yes, the rider was coming fast. Likely some garrison messenger carrying bad news and all such news was bad, as far as the farmer was concerned. He’d had a moment of worry over his sons, and then the swarm lifted from the side of the road and spun in a frenzied cloud to engulf his mule.
The creature panicked, bolting forward with a bleat. Such was its strength, born of terror, that the old man was flung backward over the low seat back, losing his grip on the traces. The wagon jumped under him and then slewed to one side, spilling him from it. He struck the road in a cloud of dust and crazed bees.
The rider, on his third horse since fleeing the city, arrived at this precise moment. Skill and instinct led him round the mule and wagon, but the sudden appearance of the farmer, directly in the horse’s path, occurred so swiftly, so unexpectedly, that neither he nor his mount had the time to react. Forelegs clipped the farmer, breaking a collar bone and striking the man’s head with stunning impact. The horse stumbled, slammed down on to its chest, and its rider was thrown forward.
Her uncle had removed his helm some time that day—the heat was fierce, after all—and while it was debatable whether that made any difference, Abrastal suspected—or, perhaps, chose to believe—that if he’d been wearing it, he might well have survived the fall. As it was, his neck was snapped clean.
She had studied those events with almost fanatic obsession. Her agents had travelled out to that remote region of the kingdom. Interviews with sons and relatives and indeed, the old farmer himself—who had miraculously survived, though now prone to the falling sickness—all seeking to map out, with precision, the sequence of events.
In truth, she’d cared neither way for the fate of her uncle. The man had been a fool. No, what fascinated and indeed haunted her was that such a convergence of chance events could so perfectly conspire to take a man’s life. From this one example, Abrastal quickly comprehended that such patterns existed everywhere, and could be assembled for virtually every accidental death.
People spoke of ill luck. Mischance. They spoke of unruly spirits and vengeful gods. And some spoke of the most terrible truth of all—that the world and all life in it was nothing but a blind concatenation of random occurrences. Cause and effect did nothing but map out the absurdity of things, before which even the gods were helpless.
Some truths could haunt, colder, crueller than any ghost. Some truths were shaped by a mouth open in horror.
When she stumbled from her tent, guards and aides swarming round her, there had been no time for musings, no time for thoughts on past obsessions. There had been nothing but the moment itself, red as blood in the eyes, loud as a howl trapped inside a skull.
Her daughter had found her. Felash, lost somewhere inside a savage storm at sea, had bargained with a god, and as the echoes of cries from drowning sailors sounded faint and hollow beneath the shrieking winds, the god had opened a path. Ancient, appalling, brutal as a rape. In the tears swimming before Abrastal’s eyes, her fourteenth daughter’s face found shape, as if rising from unfathomable depths; and Abrastal had tasted the salt sea on her tongue, had felt the numbing cold of its immortal hunger.
Mother. Remember the tale of your uncle. The wagon crawls, the mule’s head nods. Thunder in the distance. Remember the tale as you told it to me, as you live it each and every day. Mother, the high road is the Wastelands. And I can hear the swarm—I can hear it!
Elder Gods were reluctant, belligerent oracles. In the grip of such a power, no mortal could speak in freedom. Clarity was defied, precision denied. Only twisted words and images could come forth. Only misdirection played true.
But Felash was clever, the cleverest of all her beloved daughters. And so Abrastal understood. She comprehended the warning.
The moment vanished, but the pain of that assault remained. Weeping blood-clouded tears, she struggled and pushed her way through panicked staff and bodyguards, stumbled outside, naked above the hips, her fiery hair snarled and matted with sweat. On her skin the salt already rimed and she stank as would a body pulled up from the sea bottom.
Arms held out to keep everyone away, she stood, gasping, head hanging down, struggling to recover her breath. And, finally, she managed to speak.
‘Spax. Get me Spax. Now.’
Gilk warriors gathered in their kin groups, checking weapons and gear. Warchief Spax stood watching, scratching his beard, the sour ale from the cask the night before swirling ominously in his belly. Or maybe it was the goat shank, or that fist-sized brick of bitter chocolate—something he’d never seen nor tasted before arriving in Bolkando, but if the good gods shat it was surely chocolate.
He saw Firehair’s runner long before the man arrived. One of those scrawny court mice, all red-faced from the exertion, his quivering lip visible from ten paces away. His own scouts had informed him that they were perhaps a day away from the Bonehunters—they’d made good time, damn near impoverishing Saphinand’s traders in the process, and for all his bravado Spax was forced to admit that both the Khundryl Burned Tears and the Perish were as tough as a cactus-eater’s tongue. Almost as tough as his own Barghast. Common opinion had it that armies with trains were slow beasts even on the most level ground, but clearly neither Gall of the Burned Tears nor Krughava of the Perish paid any heed to common opinion.
Glancing at his own warriors one more time before the runner arrived, he saw that they were showing fatigue. Not enough to worry him, of course. One more day, after all, and then Abrastal could have her parley with the Malazans and they could all turn round and head home at a far more reasonable pace.
‘Warchief!’
‘What’s got her excited now?’ Spax asked, ever pleased to bait these fops, but this time the young man did not react to the overfamiliarity with the usual expression of shock. In fact, he continued as if he’d not heard Spax.
‘The Queen demands your presence. At once.’
Normally, even this command would have elicited a sarcastic comment or two, but Spax finally registered the runner’s fear. ‘Lead on then,’ he replied in a growl.
Dressed now in armour, Queen Abrastal was in no mood for banter, and she’d already said enough to the Gilk Warchief to keep him silent as he rode at her side towards the Perish camp. The morning’s light was clawing details down the furrowed scape of the m
ountains to the west. Dust hung over the raw tracks leading to and from the Saphinand border, and already lines of wagons and carriages were streaming out from the three camps, beds empty barring chests of coin, merchant guards and prostitutes. They would be back out here and waiting, she knew, for the return of the Evertine Legion.
They might have a long wait.
She had told Spax of the sending, had registered with little surprise his scowl. The Barghast knew enough to have no doubt about such things. He had even commented that his own warlocks and witches had been complaining of weakness and blindness—as if the Barghast gods had been driven away, or did not possess the strength to manifest in the Wastelands.
As the horses were being readied, he’d spoken of the belief in convergence, and she had been impressed to discover that behind his white skull paint and turtle-shelled armour, this barbarian knew of the world beyond his own tribe and his own people. The notion of power drawing power, however, did not seem to draw close to her sense of what was coming.
‘You say that such forces are fated to meet, Spax. But … this is not the same.’
‘How do you mean, Highness?’
‘Is chance the weapon of fate? One might say so, I imagine, but what is drawing close before us, Spax, is something crueller. Random, unpredictable. Stupid, in fact. It is the curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
He’d chewed on that for a moment, and then he said, ‘Will you seek to turn them away? Firehair, this Krughava is rooted like a mountain. Her path is the river of its melting crown. You will fail, I think.’
‘I know, Spax. And this forces upon me a dire decision, doesn’t it?’
But he would not see it that way, and he didn’t—she was certain of it, though he’d said nothing, and now the horses were brought forward and they mounted up and kicked the beasts into a quick canter, and then, once beyond the Evertine pickets, into a gallop. Such a pace did not invite conversation beyond a few terse words at best. Neither bothered.
Perish pickets marked them and the banner rising from the socket on Abrastal’s saddle. They quickly and efficiently cleared a path straight to the camp’s centre. As they rode into the main avenue between officer tents, Abrastal and Spax found themselves the subject of growing interest, as soldiers formed lines to either side to watch them pass. Certain moments, fraught and crowded, could spread a chilling fever.
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