Orb Sceptre Throne

by Ian Cameron Esslemont

  And Spindle knew what anchored it.

  So loud were the near-continuous eruptions of munitions that he and Fisher could not speak. He caught the bard’s eye then jerked his head to the woods and ran. Hunched, bottles banging, they jogged through the park forest. At least Spindle knew exactly where he was headed.

  He didn’t mean to slam down the crate of wine bottles but in the dark he tripped on a root and fell right on top of it. He rolled off immediately and brushed frantically at his front – which would have been a stupid thing to do if one of the bottles had broken and spilled on him. Should’ve just started yanking off the damn hauberk.

  Through the trees he could see the Moranth arcing overhead on their quorls and tossing their charges over Majesty Hall.

  Most of the cussers blew far overhead but a few landed now and then on the unprotected hilltop and shook the ground. Off to one side a crater smoked in a reminder of what might happen to them at any moment. The bard didn’t know Malazan hand signs so Spindle was forced to wave and point. He’d found the site of their old excavation.

  He threw himself to his knees and started digging in a feverish panic. Fisher joined him.

  To make things even worse, through the trees he could see that the Seguleh were out as well. They were keeping to the doors and walls of the many buildings of the Majesty Hall complex. Waiting, watching, masks tilted upwards to follow the Moranth in their circling.

  Spindle thought he knew what they were waiting for and he prayed it wouldn’t come to that. Things would get far too crowded then.

  Best to have a hidey-hole in that case. And he dug and dug.

  Togg, things might get so desperate he might even have to raise his Warren! Gods, that it should come to that …

  *

  Barathol was out of bed with the first burst. He peered through the slats of the shutters.

  ‘What is it?’ Scillara asked from the dark.

  A much closer blast; the house shook. A few things fell downstairs. Little Chaur set up a wail. ‘Get him,’ he said, pulling on trousers. ‘I’ll grab some food and water.’

  She stood quickly, dressing as well. ‘You’re coming with us, yes?’ she said sharply.

  He paused, glancing at her shadowed silhouette. ‘Yes. I’m coming with you.’

  Outside, it was jarringly dark. He’d never seen the streets unlit. Now it was the Scimitar’s ill-omened glow that cast shadows across the shopfronts. They joined a swelling crowd jamming the street. He peered to the east, to the higher tiers where flashes lit the night. Flames rose from much closer, however.

  Then something slashed overhead, raising shrieks of fear. It hissed arrow-straight up the road, lower than the rooftops. Moranth … attacking? Cover. It’s using the streets to hide. Hide from what?

  Another close burst sent up a new wave of shrieks and panic through the pressing crowd.

  Barathol turned to Scillara, who carried Chaur pressed against her chest. ‘I’m going to—’

  ‘No, you’re not!’ she cut in. ‘We’re all going together.’ She twisted a fist in his shirtsleeve, yanking. ‘And we’re going in this goddamned direction!’

  He smiled at the admonishment and pressed a hand over hers. ‘Yes. Let’s get out of here.’ He moved out in front of her and started pushing a way through the crowd.

  *

  Studious Lock pushed open the main front door of the Nom manor house and regarded the night. It was very dark and very noisy. There was some sort of local celebration going on nearby. Very annoying. No doubt this was what the Mistress’s odd instructions regarded.

  ‘Guards,’ he called.

  Three figures approached from the gloom.

  Studious paused, a finger raised. Three? Was his vision going? Seeing triples now? He counted: ‘One, two … three.’

  He decided to fall back on the elegance of logic and biology – the process of elimination.

  Let us see, now. The tall fat one, Madrun, I know. As do I the tall skinny one, Lazan. That leaves the one in the middle who is neither as tall nor as fat nor as skinny as the other two. There we have it! Logic and biology clarify all issues.

  He extended a gauze-wrapped finger towards the middle guard. ‘And you are, what? A polyp? A bud? Has one of you reproduced?’

  ‘Nay, Studlock,’ the fat one boomed. ‘What we have here is our first apprentice.’

  First? Most alarming. ‘Apprentice? Apprentice in what? Guarding?’

  ‘Our philosophy and concomitant way of life,’ Lazan explained.

  Ah, there you have it. All is clear now. ‘Very good.’ He examined the newcomer: wide loose pantaloons ballooning down to tight high leather boots. A wide gold sash over a loose silk shirt of the brightest verdant green. Studious knew himself no reliable judge of expressions and emotions, but it appeared to him as if the man standing before him was a touch embarrassed.

  ‘Dressed appropriately, I see,’ Studious commented, hoping to set him at ease. ‘Now. I have instructions for you from the Mistress. Please pay due attention and enact due diligence.’

  ‘Of course,’ Madrun assured him smoothly. ‘We are all seriousness.’

  And the man’s face is straight as he says this – humorous byplay perhaps? How quaint.

  ‘Attend now, please.’

  *

  In the Eldra Iron Mongers in the far west of the city a man stood watching from the highest window of the old manor house. Leaning closer to the dirty glazing, he rubbed an even filthier rag over the glass, then hunched, peering. Through the rippled glazing the bursts of munitions reached him like flashes of fireworks during any one of the many religious festivals – fireworks ironically supplied by the Moranth. Beneath the barrage a broad pale dome flickered and winked in and out of sight.

  Even at this great distance the window shuddered and rattled lightly.

  He glanced to the card he held. So ancient. The Orb of Rulership. A white sphere held upraised in the hand of a cloaked figure.

  He squeezed the card until the varnish cracked and shattered.

  He only wanted to be safe. He only wanted the city to be strong.

  How could he have been so blind?

  *

  Rallick was already on the roof when the assault began. For this reason he had mixed feelings regarding the Moranth’s failure to penetrate the Legate’s sorcerous defences. In either case, he felt that he had the best seat in the house, as they say, standing out on the roof peering up at the blinding eruptions where the munitions struck the clear opalescent wall of the Legate’s dome.

  He blamed those blasts for his own failure to sense the approach of light slippered feet, and his failure to twist aside soon enough to completely avoid the blades that thrust for his back.

  He rolled away but not quickly enough as blazing agony yammered down his back. He faced her now across the run of tiles, his own heavier curved blades out. She advanced, darting in and out. They tested each other’s skill, she stepping lightly with a hungry smile at her lips; he slower, careful on the sloped and shifting ceramic roof tiles.

  ‘You were a fool to return,’ she shouted over the blasts that rocked them in flashing chiaroscuro.

  He said nothing, tensed, waiting for her to commit herself.

  He did not have long to wait. She dodged in, feinting side to side, both blades spinning. A run of alternating high and low slashes backed Rallick up to the side of a gable. Here he pushed off, kicking her in the chest, throwing her back two steps. Her face betrayed open shock.

  Rallick allowed himself an inward smile. Those slippered tracks at Baruk’s: small but heavy. He’d struck her with all his weight, treating her like an infantryman. Her reaction told him not many ever had.

  Her lips pulled back from her small pointed teeth and she readied again, raising her arms high, both blades pointing down. Rallick shuffled away from the gable to clear his retreat. Multiple shadows flashed across them and waves of concussive force popped his ears. ‘There are greater threats,’ he yelled, motioning to the
circling Moranth.

  ‘Their turn will come,’ she answered.

  Time to surprise her again, he decided, and rushed. He was right: she was taken off guard. Yet every swing was met by a parrying blade, every spin and slash avoided, every thrust turned or slid aside. His charge ended when a circling counter-parry threw one of his blades wide, opening him to a thrust he avoided only by falling backwards.

  He righted himself on the narrow level run along the spine of the roof, now rather surprised himself.

  ‘Ready?’ the girl asked, grinning.

  Despite the agony shooting up his back he crouched, blades out.

  The girl daintily slipped a foot forward on the tiled run. To either side the steep roof led down to a fall from the height of the Great Hall.

  Rallick braced a foot behind, determined not to give ground this time.

  She closed the distance in one leap. Blades clashed, scraping and rebounding again and again in a weaving dance of strike and immediate counter-strike until suddenly the girl pushed herself backwards. She snarled her frustration, her thin chest heaving.

  ‘Enough,’ she grated, and thrust out a hand.

  A wave of pressure washed over Rallick: something like a strong wind or a splash of cold water. It passed on, leaving him untouched. The girl gaped at him. ‘How …’

  He lunged and his blade caught her front, slashing scarves and flesh as she twisted sideways, slipping and tumbling down the roof. She bellowed, spat and hissed all the way down the slope until she disappeared over the edge.

  Rallick hunched his shoulders and winced at the pain slashing into his back. He knew that that was certainly not the end of the creature. Under the cover of an eaves he knelt, untied a pouch and pulled out a shallow dish that contained a thick honey-like salve. This he scooped up in his hand and, reaching behind under his leather jerkin and shirting, rubbed into the warm wetness smeared there.

  Almost immediately the pain lost its cut-glass sharpness and his breath came more easily. Some would think it ironic, he knew, using the alchemist’s offerings while engaged in a battle against him. Rallick wondered whether the term just was more appropriate. He remembered applying another alchemical product on a rather similar night a long time ago: dust of the magic-deadening mineral otataral. And on both nights it saved his life.

  *

  They circled high above the complex of Majesty Hall, over the flickering dome that so far seemed to have absorbed every munition dropped upon it. So tightly did they circle that Torvald sat sideways while the wide waist straps of the saddle harness held him tight. Below, the majority of the swooping quorls continued their runs. Blasting up to meet them came the magics of these mage-slaves who the Moranth claimed served the returned Tyrant himself. Torvald had a hard time accepting that, but what he had witnessed so far this night convinced him that something terrible had happened – perhaps deals had been struck with these mages themselves. Exactly what, he didn’t know for certain yet.

  Ducking down from the wind he peered into the packs. ‘Last one!’ he called to Galene.

  She nodded and adjusted the jesses. They swooped anew and Torvald was thrown backwards, scraping his lower back yet again against the sharp cantle behind. The flashing pale glow of the sorcerous dome rose up to meet them.

  Directly over the top Galene shouted, ‘Now!’

  Leaning even further over he let the last cusser go. He twisted in his saddle to follow its tumbling descent. It erupted in yet another empty blast against the opalescent curve of the dome. The pressure wave pushed the quorl sideways, slapping him and Galene over for an instant. She fought again to regain control.

  ‘What now?’ he called.

  She turned back to regard him through her narrow visor. ‘Now? Now we land, Councillor!’

  Torvald’s stomach twisted more sharply than it had all evening.

  They swooped low over the estate district, weaving between lesser hills topped by noble family manors. The coruscating counterattacks of the mages blasted over them. Quorls fell over the city, either spinning tightly or limp like dead weights, to fall in bursts of light and erupting debris of broken brick and shattered wood. He caught glimpses of pockets of fire raging through the city. Thank all the gods the gas seemed to have been cut.

  ‘You have a quick-release,’ Galene shouted. ‘Pull it and jump when we land.’

  ‘Yes,’ he answered, though he had no idea what he would do after that. Re-join the Council was what Galene had suggested.

  She began her run, angling for Majesty Hill, jerking the quorl from side to side, rolling and swooping. Torvald gripped the sunken handles with hands almost numb. The ribbed thorax of the insectile beast was hot beneath him; the poor thing was probably worn out and couldn’t have carried them much further anyway.

  Galene had started to climb when an invisible fist struck them. The air exploded from him in a wet grunt. Galene’s helmed head struck him in the chest. For an instant his vision went black. When he could see again they were spinning sickeningly. Galene yanked the jesses but the quorl responded only fitfully, wings hardly fluttering.

  ‘Hang on!’ she yelled.

  The side of the hill came up suddenly and they struck it a glancing blow, then slid backwards down the slope. They came to rest in a grassy parkland between the hill and the city wall.

  Torvald pulled his quick-release and fell from the saddle. ‘Let’s go!’

  Galene remained slumped in the saddle. He reached round to pull her release then dragged her down to lie in the tall grass.

  ‘Galene!’

  She moved her arms listlessly. When they had been struck she had obviously taken the brunt and thereby protected him from most of it. Her poor mount was clearly dying.

  The bursts and pressure waves thumping his chest lessened. He peered up to see more and more of the circling quorls now swooping down. They alighted for only the briefest pause while both riders jumped from them, and then took off again to flit away far more nimbly than they had come.

  They promised a full assault. The munitions failed; now comes the old-fashioned push.

  Heaving Galene up by an arm, he headed to a set of rickety stairs that climbed the slope. A sort of servants’ access.

  *

  Jan stood with Iralt, Fifteenth, near the main front entrance of Majesty Hall, watching the circling Moranth. Personally, Jan marvelled at the accomplishments of these people: their alchemical researches, their taming, breeding and training of their insectile mounts. An extraordinary race. A pity their ambitions and those of Darujhistan clashed. But then, is that not always the way between any two ascendant peoples?

  He could not help but flinch as closer blasts sent invisible shock waves punching his chest. Now he knew something of what Gall had endured. A completely one-sided slaughter. Shameful, some of his brothers and sisters called it. But he did not share that view. Why submit to an opponent’s strengths? If at all possible one must work to avoid them.

  As they did now, waiting beneath the protection of the Legate’s sorcery. Too bad such protection could not be removed.

  The bursts lessened. The riders appeared to have exhausted their munitions.

  Failure, Iralt signed. We have won.

  No, Jan signed. They will come at us soon.

  An assault? Iralt gestured her surprise. Surely not. They know us – they would not be so foolish.

  Do not dismiss the enemy, Jan chided. They are brave. Remember: a challenging opponent is a blessing to one’s skill.

  Iralt bowed her head. Thank you, Second.

  Go now. Warn for readiness.

  Iralt ran from his side. Jan raised his mask to the circling riders, the explosions few and far between now. So, they will land and we will win this engagement. But the war? He looked to the great unprotected spread of the city below and the fires glowing in nearby precincts. As to the war, he knew it was already lost.

  Above, a massed flight of the quorl mounts came diving in upon them.

  Ah. Now it is ou
r turn.

  *

  ‘What’s that?’ Yusek asked as something caught her eye from the north: a flickering and winking of lights. Like nothing she’d ever seen before. The Seventh halted, suddenly immobile. Everyone else stopped as well. Then she heard it: a thunderous murmur as of a storm far away.

  They were passing through another town beyond the walls and people were leaning out of upper-storey windows, peering at the night sky.

  ‘A summer storm over the lake?’ she wondered aloud.

  ‘No,’ the Seventh grated. ‘Another kind of storm. We’ll head on to Worrytown.’

  Yusek was outraged. ‘What? Aren’t we going in?’

  ‘Eventually.’ He headed off, striking a quicker pace.

  Sall and Lo, she saw, shared a long look but followed without dispute.

  She fell in next to Sall, whispered, ‘What’s going on?’

  He answered, just as quietly, ‘I believe it is fighting.’

  ‘Fighting? Who?’

  ‘I – should not say yet.’

  Oh, this is just great! I finally get to Darujhistan only there’s some kinda damned war on? Just my Twins-cursed luck! I mean, why does everything have to happen to me?

  *

  Spindle paused in his frantic digging. Straightening, he peered up over the lip of his and Fisher’s uneven pit. He glanced to the night sky, squinting. Yeah – looks like they’ve thrown the lot. Question is, what’s next?

  ‘What is it?’ Fisher whispered.

  ‘Winding down. Gotta hurry.’

  He returned to thrusting his shovel into the dirt. Good thing they’d dug here already; the backfill was nice and loose. Moments later a distant staccato popping snapped Spindle’s head up again. Sharpers?

  He peered round, keeping his eyes just over the dirt surface. He saw some way off in the grounds a flight of quorls come diving in to land and Moranth throw themselves from the saddles, unslinging heavy shields and forming small squares. In ones and twos Seguleh ran to engage with them.