Orb Sceptre Throne

by Ian Cameron Esslemont

  Now when I say ‘Butcher’s the name’ I just get funny looks. Even outright laughs. What’s wrong with everyone? There’s a guy in the 10th named ‘Rabbit.’ What kinda name’s that for a soldier?

  His squad spent the days digging a big-arse ditch to surround the new fort. Other squads were dragging logs from the nearest woods, raising a palisade. It was a damned crowded camp: all the remnants of the Second, Fifth and Sixth from Pale all jammed together on one round hilltop surrounded by a deep ditch that put the top of the palisade logs a good three man-heights above the head of any attacker. And on top of that Fist Steppen had them sharpening a forest of stakes to set leaning out like the quills on one of them mythical spiny lizards.

  It was gettin’ so troops were starting to call her ‘Scaredy-Step’. Bendan just called her a dumb-arse granma hiding behind her walls when everyone knew the way to win was to go break heads. He had said as much to his squaddies and Corporal Little had come back with some watery talk about how winning was control of ground, not battles. Ground? He understood that. In Maiten town he and his brothers and sisters had had theirs – and defending it meant fighting! You had to be out there every day showing those rivals you were strong and so crazy-arse violent they’d better leave you alone. That he knew and understood.

  Then Corporal Little had said something really loopy. She said that the best way to win was not to have to fight at all! How the fuck was that possible? You had to fight to win. You had to tear the head off the other guy – otherwise it was you without a head! He was starting to suspect that maybe Little was some kinda gutless woman hiding behind her fancy book-learned ideas.

  Not to mention how she slapped his hand away when he grabbed her tit. Imagine that? Turning him down? Back in Maiten town every girl he cornered went along with it in the end. All it took was a little playful arm-twisting – not like he was gonna really hurt them. This corporal must prefer women, not like a proper gal at all.

  Then orders came for a march west. Minimal gear. The squads formed up, including his, thank the gods! And they were off even though it was near dusk. Rumours flew up and down the column as they trotted along. Some of theirs under attack, apparently.

  They jogged through half the night until they came over the rise of a gentle valley slope and there before them, under the bright starlight and emerald glare of the Scimitar, churned a horde of horsemen all circling a dark knot.

  Sergeant Hektar slapped him on the back as they headed down without a pause. ‘Now there’s action, hey, Butcher?’

  ‘But look how fucking many there are!’

  The big black fellow made a face. ‘Naw – that’s just an advance force. Just a few thousand. Enough for you to butcher, hey?’

  ‘Well … yeah,’ he answered as they picked up their pace. I suppose so … but why? Just to rescue a few troopers stupid enough to get caught out in the open? What a dumb waste.

  ‘Ready shields!’ came the order.

  Bendan struggled with his big rectangular burden as he trotted along.

  ‘Form square!’

  The column thickened and slowed to a steady march. And just in time, as elements of the cavalry swung off to encircle them.

  ‘Halt!’

  Once the manoeuvring was done Bendan’s squad was far back from the front rank. They would wait for their turn to cycle through to the shield wall. Dust blew up, obscuring his view beyond the square. Riders, men and women – Rhivi, he recognized – circled them, firing their short-bows and hurling javelins.

  What’s gotten them all riled up?

  Then the frantic call came: ‘Merge! Merge!’ and the square shuddered, shields scraping shields. Everyone shifted position as men and women came surging into the centre, many supporting others or even carrying them over their backs. All grimed and dirt-smeared, battered, and gulping down air.

  Useless bastards. Gonna get killed ’cause of you. Hope you’re happy.

  Being near the centre he saw the captain commanding the column salute some beat-up burly fellow and heads around him craned, gawking, and people whispered: ‘K’ess.’

  ‘So who’s this K’ess?’ he asked Bone next to him.

  The man gave him one of those funny looks as he struggled to keep his shield overhead. ‘Served on Onearm’s staff. Put in charge of Pale when the Host headed south. Now he’s in charge of this whole mess. Other than the Ambassador, o’ course.’

  Shit! And we had to rescue him? Piss-poor start if you ask me.

  Orders to reverse sounded and they turned to face the way they’d come. Then started the inevitable grinding march back. Bendan’s squad cycled through to a turn in the shield wall. The Rhivi circled past, whooping and shouting and throwing their slim javelins. He watched from over the lip of his shield, fuming. ‘Why don’t the order come to rush ’em?’ he demanded. ‘We’re just hidin’ here behind our shields like cowards!’

  ‘Be my guest!’ Bone laughed, and he hawked up a mouthful of all the dust they’d been swallowing.

  ‘Hey, Tarat!’ Bendan shouted to their squad scout. ‘Them’s your people out there, ain’t they?’

  ‘Just bone-headed fools tiring their horses for no good reason,’ she commented, sour.

  ‘Looks like they’re havin’ fun,’ Hektar said, a wide smile on his face.

  ‘What’re you smiling about?’ Bendan snapped.

  The big man turned his bright teeth on him. ‘I’m smilin’ ’cause I see we got nothin’ to worry about from these Rhivi. Another day’s soldierin’ under the belt, lads!’ he added.

  Laughter all around answered that.

  What was with these fools? Why were they laughing? Couldn’t they see that one of these arrows or javelins could easily take any of them?

  The sun was just topping hills to the east when their slogging retreat brought them within sight of the fort. The shield on Bendan’s arm seemed to weigh as much as a horse itself. His arm was screaming and numb all at the same time. Dust coated his mouth and he was stumbling on his feet. Horns sounded then, pealing from behind the palisade as if welcoming the sun, and from all around, amid the fields of tall grass, crossbow ranks rose as if sprouting from the ground. The circling Rhivi flinched aside, their cartwheeling attack broken as wings of the cavalry swung to either side. Orders were shouted and salvos of bolts shot to either side of their square. Men and women in the formation shouted and bashed their shields, sending the Rhivi on.

  Bendan rested his bronze-faced shield on the ground. Gods almighty! It was about Burn-damned time. What a useless errand! They’d been safe in the fort – why should they have to stick their necks out for these fools? And all they did was hide behind their shields. They didn’t kick anyone’s head!

  New clarion calls sounded from the fort. The men and women around Bendan searched the horizons. Sergeant Hektar, one of the tallest of them all, grunted as he peered to the west.

  ‘What is it?’ Bendan demanded.

  ‘Company. They almost succeeded.’

  ‘Who succeeded? At what? What d’you mean?’

  A woman’s voice bellowed astonishingly loud from within the square: ‘To the fort! Double-time! Move out!’

  The entire detachment immediately set off, jogging swiftly. Troopers ran carrying others on their backs, or supporting wounded between them.

  Then thunder reached Bendan. Thunder on a mostly clear dawn. He squinted back over his shoulder to see a dark tide flowing over the distant hills. A flood that seemed to extend from horizon to horizon. Dead god’s bones! Thousands upon thousands of the bastards!

  He heeled and toed it even faster for the cover of the fort.

  Krute heard first-hand from many in the guild the doubts raised by the arrival of these Seguleh. Their prowess was said to be unsurpassed. And perhaps it was. But he was now in agreement with Grand Master Seba. The guild in the recent past seemed to have lost its way. They were assassins. Their art was concealment and murder. To have to fight meant one had failed already. Rallick’s unsanctioned storied feats of
the past seemed to have convinced some that fighting ability actually had something to do with murdering people. The unromantic and ugly truth was that it really didn’t.

  Much as he admired Rallick – and was saddened by his betrayal – he thought the man had done this one disservice to the guild. In his opinion the best assassination was the one no one even suspected. And Rallick had succeeded in that requirement when he hid the act behind the façade of a duel. But most seemed to have misread that moment. Dazzled by the romanticism of the confrontation, they’d taken away the wrong lesson. The real lesson was not his prowess with his chosen weapons, but rather the stratagem of hitting upon one fatal weakness to reach the target, in that case the latter’s overconfidence and bloated pride.

  And in this case he believed they’d found the correct weakness as well. Surrounded by these Seguleh the Legate seemed to consider himself invulnerable. He slept entirely unguarded in a small chamber behind the Great Hall, or the ‘throne room’, as it was now officially known. Word from informants within the Wardens was that the Legate had even gone so far as to forbid anyone from entering the throne room at night, Seguleh or otherwise.

  Squatting on his haunches on the roof of that selfsame hall, Krute looked to the three guild talents accompanying him as team leader. Hardly qualifying for the title mage, these two lads and one lass did have some small abilities in sensing the presence of Warren magics and powers. They nodded their approval and so Krute signed the all clear to the team assembled on the roof. These six tossed their hair-thin lines down the open windows and rappelled down. They would execute the target within and return in a matter of minutes – should all go as planned.

  He glanced back to the three guild talents. The youths exchanged looks. One pressed a hand to the roof. The second raised her face to the gusting warm wind as if sniffing for scent. The third held his hands cupped close to one eye. Krute knew that in his hands the lad held four night bugs, the sort of flying insects that light up. What do they do when a haunt’s around? Dance a jig?

  The wind was high this night. Thin feathery clouds did nothing to diminish the combined light from the reborn moon and the Scimitar. Light that was both a blessing and a curse, depending upon when you wanted it, and when you didn’t. He studied the ropes again and saw all still slack. The sight made him uneasy. Should be climbing by now. He signed that he would go to investigate.

  Closer, he saw that one of the ropes was now taut. In fact it fairly vibrated under some immense strain. As he watched, it narrowed even further to the thickness of a reed; then, instantly, it was gone. Snapped. He heard a muted thump from below.

  Damn the fates! What was it? A hidden guard? Yet no alarm.

  He clambered down to the window to peer in. The interior was as black as a cloudy night. But far below, in the shafting silver and jade light, he made out a figure climbing to its feet, cloaked. As he peered down, straining to see, the figure raised its face to him and revealed the bright pale oval of the mask of the Legate.

  Krute was a hard man in a hard calling but even he felt a preternatural dread at the sight of that graven half-smile – hinting at so many uncanny secrets – and a hand beckoning him down. He scuttled back up the rope, his flesh cold. Ye gods, spare him … what were they facing here?

  Crouched, the wind snapping his cloak, he ran along the centre line back to the jumbled tiled slopes of the Majesty Hall roof. Where not one sign remained of the three guild practitioners.

  Togg take it!

  Then the instinct of decades of stalking and striking screamed at him and he threw himself flat, rolling.

  Twin blades hissed through the air and he stared, astonished, at a young girl snarling down at him, her clothes no more than diaphanous wind-whipped scarves. She raised the blades again only to jerk aside, howling, grasping at a crossbow bolt now standing from her side. She staggered, then tumbled down the sloped tiled roof and disappeared from sight.

  A fist at his collar yanked Krute: Rallick. The man threw his crossbow aside, drew his twinned curved blades. ‘She’ll be back – or another. Go now. Run.’ He shouldered Krute back.

  ‘That’s not Vorcan …’ the assassin managed, still stunned.

  ‘No. Go on.’ The man pushed him on to the maze of canted roofs. ‘Run.’

  Krute needed no further urging.

  Rallick slipped into the cover of a gable that offered a view of the throne-room roof and squatted, arms over his knees, curved knives pointed out, ready.

  A band of low clouds driven off the lake came wafting across the long scar in the night sky that was the Banner – what he’d once heard Vorcan call the Strangers. In the rippling light the rooftop was empty, then in the next instant a figure stood tall right before him, staff planted and leather shoes poking out from under thick layered robes.

  Rallick slowly straightened to stand before the man who had employed him for years, who had healed his broken bones and brought him back from near death. High Alchemist Baruk. He struck a ready stance, blades raised, one foot back. ‘Baruk.’

  ‘Barukanal, now,’ the man grated. ‘Do not make the mistake of forgetting that.’ His hands were white fists upon the staff. The scars that traced his face like a tangled net darkened now as blood pounded behind the man’s features. The wind snagged his long unbound iron-grey hair. ‘I am sent to find assassins who have made an attempt upon the Legate,’ he said, his voice whip-tight. ‘You haven’t … by any chance … seen them. Have you?’

  Rallick edged his weapons down. He cleared his throat and straightened, almost believing himself dreaming. In a voice full of wonder he managed, ‘I saw some men running to the east. They looked suspicious.’

  ‘Thank you, citizen. Tell me … have you also seen the new construction encircling the hill?’

  ‘In fact I have.’ Rallick noted with alarm that the flesh upon the man’s face and neck was cracking and smoking along the fault lines of the scars. Baruk’s frame shuddered and he staggered aside as if yanked. He spoke, grinding out every word as if each were a droplet of agony: ‘There is a man in the city, a Malazan … He may have a unique insight into its … peculiar … qualities …’

  ‘I will ask around,’ Rallick assured him. Then, sheathing his knives, he could not help reaching out to the tortured figure. ‘Baruk … tell me … what can I—’

  ‘No!’ The staff snapped up and the man staggered backwards. ‘Stay away!’ Turning, he flung himself from the roof, robes flapping, and disappeared.

  Rallick leaned over the edge but saw no sign of him. Then, hunching, he ran as fast as he dared across the forest of mismatched tiled roofs.

  Moments after Rallick left the roof the wavering commingled olive and silver light of the night revealed another figure that uncurled itself from a window to stand, stretching. The man wore a cloak that shone almost emerald in the light. He tapped one gloved finger to his pursed lips and whispered aloud, ‘Again, some go in … yet none come out. The lesson being …’ he held up his gloved hands and examined them as if the answer were written there, ‘don’t go in.’

  He clasped his hands behind his back and set off, whistling soundlessly, tracing more or less the route taken by the ex-assassin.

  When Rallick judged it safe to return to the Phoenix Inn he walked straight to the old table and sat facing the door in the seat where Kruppe usually held court. Rather disconcertingly, the empty seat was already warm and he was thinking of shifting to another chair when Sulty thumped down a tankard of beer, gave him a wink, and moved on to serve the rest of the crowd. Rallick pushed back his seat, held the tankard in both hands before him, and studied that crowd.

  Guarded optimism he judged the mood. People seemed to think that things would get better now that the Seguleh had arrived to guard the city. Rumours were that the Legate had somehow contracted to have them come. Never mind the utter impossibility of such a notion to anyone who knew the least shred about those people. And to guard the city against whom? The Malazans? They hadn’t the troops to pacify the c
ity in the first place. That left … who? No one he could think of. The city was without threats, as it had been for decades before the arrival of the Seguleh. And so the disconcerting thought: what were they here for?

  His roving eye caught a man watching him from the bar. A tall, very dark foreigner, all in green. In a gesture like a mockery of some conspirator, the fellow offered him an exaggerated wink and shifted his gaze to the rear. As usual Rallick chose to reveal no hint of his mood – which was one of extreme annoyance – and he got up to push out through the crowd to the back door.

  He waited leaning against a wall, arms crossed, hands on the grips of his knives. The stranger ambled out after a moment, hands clasped behind his back. ‘What do you want?’ Rallick said, trying to keep his voice as flat as possible.

  The man held up his gloved hands, a smirk at his lips. ‘Parley, as they say.’

  ‘Claw?’

  The fellow merely shrugged.

  ‘Say your piece.’

  The man waved a hand in an airy manner and Rallick clamped down even harder on his irritation. ‘Oh … a pooling of intelligence and a uniting of efforts.’

  ‘I’m not with the guild. You got the wrong man.’

  A smile from the man – the kind of crazy grin that Rallick had known from some as an affectation of unpredictable menace. But he now saw with a tensing of chilling certainty that from this fellow the pose was utterly genuine. A very dangerous sort – the kind who truly just doesn’t give a damn. ‘The guild, such as it is, doesn’t interest me. But you do.’