Assail

by Ian C. Esslemont

  She surprised him by studying him narrowly, as if wondering why he would ask such a question. Then she shrugged. ‘No one. Just stranded travellers.’

  ‘You do have a name?’

  For a moment he thought she wouldn’t answer, but she gestured to the lad. ‘Dorrin. I am Lyan.’

  ‘Kyle. You are of north Genabackis, yes?’

  The young woman visibly flinched. She turned away, waved Dorrin off. ‘Get the gear.’

  Once the boy had gone, she allowed, reluctantly, ‘Yes.’

  He opened his arms to encompass the surrounding leagues of steppe. ‘May I ask what in the name of the jesting Twins are you doing here?’

  She gave a snort of disgust. ‘Money, of course. Word came of gold in northern Assail. Rivers of it. We came to win our fortune. But,’ and she waved a hand, ‘fate had other plans for us. Damned ship’s master didn’t know the coast nearly as well as he claimed.’

  ‘No one does,’ Kyle remarked.

  She nodded her agreement. ‘Forty of us made it to shore. Been fighting our way north ever since.’ Dorrin reappeared, dragging two packs. He dropped one before Lyan and shouldered the other.

  ‘Well, I’m headed east.’

  She searched his face. ‘You would abandon us? Just like that? A woman and a child?’

  He didn’t bother pointing out that she could probably cut him in half with her longsword. He glanced back to scan the western hills. ‘It’s best that I travel alone.’

  ‘Oh, I see. On the run and we would only slow you down. Is that it?’

  ‘No, it’s not … I’m being hunted.’

  She eyed him up and down. ‘I can see that – you’re a right mess. But we’re being stalked as well.’

  ‘Trust me. It’s not quite the same.’

  ‘All trespassers are hunted down and killed here. There is only security in numbers. But go on …’ She waved him off. ‘I do not want any company I cannot rely upon.’ She started walking. Dorrin followed. The lad cast him a last wistful glance.

  ‘Well … where are you headed?’ he called.

  She pointed a mailed arm to the north where foothills rose all alone like boulders from the surrounding steppes. ‘There may be water, and shelter.’

  ‘And then?’

  She glanced over her shoulder, offered a mocking smile. ‘Then east … to this Sea of Gold.’

  He pressed a hand to his forehead then hissed, yanking it from the swollen cut. Damn it to Hood’s own pit. Damned difficult woman! Could have just said … He cast one last glance to the west, then followed.

  *

  That evening they found a stream coming down out of the hills, and shelter in a cave. He watched the approach while she bedded the lad down. When she emerged, she wore only a long quilted gambeson, stained with sweat, and cut through in places from old sword-strokes. She glanced about in the twilight and frowned.

  ‘No fire?’

  ‘No.’

  She grunted her understanding and returned to the cave to come out carrying her sword. She sat on a rock, unsheathed the weapon, and began working its edges.

  ‘A handsome weapon.’

  ‘Thank you. It was my father’s. I wish it had never come to me.’

  ‘You did not want it?’

  She scowled as if this was an idiotic question. ‘My grandfather carried this weapon against the Malazans. As did my father.’ She took a heavy breath. ‘No. I prayed to the gods every day that it would never need to come to me.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘As am I.’

  ‘Your family fought the Malazans in the north. Where? In the west? The east?’

  It was obvious to Kyle from her hesitation that she was reluctant to discuss it. Yet she drew a breath and said, ‘The east coast. Taph.’

  Kyle dredged through what he’d heard of the northern Genabackan campaigns. Taph, he believed, had been among the very last cities to fall to the Malazans. ‘Those eastern Free Cities hired the Crimson Guard. Did you see them?’

  She blew out a long breath. ‘Togg’s teeth, man. I was a just a child. I met one. Blues was his name. He seemed kind. Why?’

  He considered telling her that he’d been of the Crimson Guard but decided it best not to say anything. Given his present unimpressive condition she’d probably think him the worst liar she’d ever met. He shrugged. ‘Just curious. I’ve heard much of them.’

  ‘They’re fools.’

  He raised his brows. ‘Oh?’

  ‘You can’t defeat an empire. It’s just too damned huge.’

  ‘Then what have your family been doing all these years?’

  She ran her sharpening stone down the blade’s length. ‘Only thing you can do when facing such a giant beast. Make your own little patch of ground too much trouble to bother with and it’ll just lumber on and swallow someone else.’

  He thought about that. Sound, he supposed. Provided everything you cared for hadn’t been swallowed yet. He realized, with a small start, that once more he’d taken hold of the amber stone hanging about his neck and was rubbing it between finger and thumb as he considered his options. He let his hand fall.

  A call sounded then from the dark and he stilled, listening. Lyan also froze, her hand poised above her weapon. It called again. Neither beast nor bird. It was a girl’s voice in a rising and falling song, taunting from the night: ‘White … blade …’ it beckoned, ‘white … blade …’

  His gaze went to Lyan. She closed her hand on the grip of her weapon. He signed a negative, shot his gaze to the cave. She nodded and began backing away to the cave mouth. He went out to meet the challenger.

  She stood plainly lit in the open among the monochrome grasses under the moon’s watery silver light. He pushed his way to her through the knee-high stiff blades, thinking; Ruthen’el must have lasted far longer than he’d imagined. Long enough to talk to whoever it was who had found him.

  When he was close enough, he shouted: ‘Listen, whatever your name is – just turn around and head home. I’m tired of this. I don’t want to kill—’

  Something crashed into his head from the side and the next thing he knew he was staring up, blinking, at two faces peering down at him. What was strange was that the faces were practically identical. He wondered whether he was seeing double.

  ‘We could’ve killed you,’ one girl said.

  ‘But we want you alive,’ said the other.

  ‘For the moment,’ finished the first.

  Kyle felt his head; his fingers came away wet dark and wet. A birding arrow, or a sling stone. He felt for his weapons, but they were all gone. One of the girls, he saw, carried the sheathed sword.

  ‘We want you to take our names with you,’ the second said, ‘so that you can tell our forefathers and foremothers who killed you.’ She pointed to herself: ‘I am Neese.’

  ‘And I am Niala,’ said the one holding his blade. ‘You killed our cousin and our uncle.’

  ‘Ruthen’el will be ashamed to hear you avenged him with an ambush,’ Kyle croaked.

  ‘You killed all the ones with honour,’ Neese said. ‘We decided to win instead. Isn’t that so, Niala?’

  ‘It is so, Neese.’

  Niala hefted the blade. ‘So this is it … We have heard the stories. I will use this to cut you to pieces. Then it will rest among our clan heirlooms as proof of our power.’ She took hold of the sheath to draw it.

  ‘Careful with that,’ Kyle warned. ‘You have to know how …’

  Sneering, Niala yanked – and the blade slid through the leather and wood of the sheath taking her fingers with it. She stared at the streaming bloody stumps of her four fingers then screamed, dropping the blade to clench her hand.

  Kyle lashed out with his foot, catching Neese in the knee as she leaned to take the weapon. She fell. He threw himself on her and they wrestled for the blade. Something crashed against Kyle’s head. Once more stars burst in his vision: it was Niala, standing over him, her crippled hand gripped in the other.

 
; ‘Bastard,’ she hissed, and drew back her foot for another kick.

  A war-cry froze her for an instant. Something silver blurred the air over her shoulders and her head toppled from her neck. Blood jetted. Neese screamed. Lyan lunged, turning the blade, and impaled the other sister to the ground through her chest. Kyle climbed awkwardly to his feet.

  ‘Couldn’t take two damned girls?’ Lyan said.

  ‘I was on top of things.’

  ‘They were all over you.’

  ‘I didn’t want to kill them.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  A wet cough brought their attention to Neese. She’d turned her head to where the blade lay in the grasses. It glowed with a gold-tinged light, like coming dawn when the moon is still high. ‘We thought …’ she breathed, ‘just stories …’

  Kyle limped to the blade, took it up. He raised his gaze to meet Lyan’s staring, wide eyes. Grimacing, he picked up the sheath and hid the blade within, holding it edge down. He wrapped it in a leather belt. ‘Can’t leave them here,’ he said.

  ‘There’s a pit over there.’

  He nodded. ‘I will head east tomorrow.’

  Lyan hesitated, cleaned her blade on Neese’s leathers, then bent her head in assent. ‘We will go east tomorrow.’

  ‘You’re better off—’

  ‘We’re better off together,’ she cut in, firm.

  Kyle chose not to argue the point. There was no way he could stop them from following him if they would. And he was grateful, though twice as worried now. There was no way he would see them killed because of him. He studied the bodies. ‘We should take their gear.’

  They journeyed east for three days without catching sight of another human being. On the third day Kyle found his attention wandering to his travelling companions. Dorrin kept up as they jogged through the days until loosing their breath, walked for a time to recover, then set off once more. Kyle had shouldered the other pack and so the lad ran unencumbered. Kyle hoped this was the main reason Dorrin could keep up. Not that he was getting old.

  The boy also did exactly as Lyan told him. All without complaint, or face-making, or rebellion, and this struck Kyle as unlike any brother-sister relationship he’d ever heard of. He wondered whether they were in fact mother and son. But nothing in their manner reflected that: he saw no gestures of affection from either, no hugs or touches. Their behaviour to one another was in fact very formal, almost businesslike.

  This drove him to say to her, as they walked along, and Dorrin was distant for the moment: ‘You are not brother and sister, are you?’

  Lyan bristled at first, taking breath to mount a strong objection. But she seemed to reconsider and subsided, shaking her head. ‘No. We are not related.’

  ‘Yet you are more than just chance survivors. You have been together for some time.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He simply waited, walking in silence until she sighed and waved as if capitulating. ‘I am his guard. The last of his bodyguard.’

  Kyle peered over at the blond-haired lad where he walked, his shirt dark with sweat, swishing a stick through the tall grasses as he went. ‘He is of noble blood?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘From north Genabackis?’

  Again the woman paused, reluctant to continue. Kyle just shrugged. ‘I am from the south of these lands. Bael, it is sometimes called. I haven’t even been to Genabackis.’

  Lyan sighed again, accepting this. ‘Well – you have heard that the fighting in the north-east of the continent was far more savage than the west?’ Kyle nodded; he had heard. ‘There were … powers there,’ she continued, ‘that the Malazans only overcame with great difficulty.’

  ‘Caladan Brood commanded the Free City armies of the north.’

  ‘That was later,’ she said. ‘There was no alliance of “Free Cities” before the Malazans arrived. Only competing city-states and personalities. One of the most powerful cities was Anklos. Its ruling family – the Batarius family – was the one that originally hired Caladan. They were the ancestral rulers of Anklos until the Malazans forced them out and they fled into exile.’

  Kyle felt his brows rising higher and higher. ‘Are you saying that Dorrin …’

  Lyan jerked her head in assent. ‘With the death of his father he is now king in exile, rightful ruler of Anklos.’

  ‘Then … may I ask – why here? Why in the name of the Sky-King are you here?’

  Lyan gave a long troubled breath. ‘I advised against it. But his father insisted. You see, word had come of gold in Assail. Rivers of gold.’ She eyed him sidelong. ‘Do you have any idea how much gold it takes to mount a rebellion? To build an army? A very great amount indeed.’

  Now Kyle was even more troubled. He walked in silence for a time, frowning. ‘And why are you telling me all this?’

  ‘Because,’ and her gaze was constant upon him now, ‘I have also heard songs of the Malazan campaign in Fist. Of its leader, Greymane, Stonewielder … and of his companion, now known as Whiteblade. Who, I have also heard, abandoned the Malazans with the death of Greymane, his friend. Such a champion would have no use for the empire that used his friend so cruelly, I imagine.’

  He lowered his gaze. ‘I walked away from all that. I have no intention of returning.’

  ‘You will do what you must. In the meantime one can at least keep watch while the other sleeps.’

  He gave a stiff nod of acceptance. ‘At the very least.’

  Towards the end of the afternoon, as the light darkened to a deep amber, he raised a hand in a halt. Lyan, who had been walking with Dorrin, jogged to him.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I smell smoke – and worse.’

  Her gaze went to Dorrin, who crouched now in cover, as he’d been instructed. ‘I see.’

  ‘Should I scout ahead?’

  She shook a negative. ‘Let us keep together.’

  ‘Very well.’

  They advanced warily. Lyan hovered close to Dorrin, sword out. Kyle scanned the hillsides. In time, he spotted the source: a long patch of flattened and disturbed grass stretching between hills. They passed outliers of the attack: a burst wooden chest, spilled trampled clothes. A child’s rag doll. The smouldering remains of a two-wheeled ox cart. Staked out amid the wreckage lay bodies, and seeing this, Lyan steered Dorrin aside. Kyle approached.

  They had been left alive but had had their skin flayed from their bodies. Eyes gouged out, hands hacked off. Incredibly, two still breathed. Kyle crouched next to one: a thing that might have once been an old man. ‘Can you hear me, oldster?’

  The head moved as if its owner were searching for the source of the voice. Kyle allowed a few drops of water to fall on to the man’s split and mangled lips. ‘Who are you?’ he asked. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Alana?’ the oldster whispered hoarsely. ‘Little Gerrol? Reena?’

  Kyle had seen no remains of women or children. He did not wonder as to their fate: the clans here were similar enough to his own. Children adopted into the clan; women of childbearing years taken to replenish their numbers.

  ‘Taken,’ he said.

  The man’s head fell back. He moaned long and low – a sort of keening.

  ‘Old man …’ The fellow did not answer. He now seemed oblivious, lost in his pain. Kyle glanced to the surrounding hillsides: had the clans left scouts? Had they eyes on the remains?

  ‘Old man!’ The head shifted once more, blindly searching. ‘Why are you here? Why are you trespassing?’

  ‘For the gold. We came north. Trains of travellers. Heading north … for the gold …’

  Kyle straightened. The fools. As if the various clans of the Silent People would allow them to cross their lands. He jogged to where Lyan waited, her hands on Dorrin’s shoulders.

  ‘Trains of wagons travelling north,’ he explained. ‘It’s a rush to collect this gold of yours.’

  She squinted to the south, appalled. ‘The clans are slaughtering them all.’

  ‘Yes.’ H
e examined Dorrin, who peered up at him, quite direct in his gaze. ‘You have a weapon?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You know how to use it?’

  ‘The Shieldmaiden is training me.’

  He raised his gaze. Well, it seems he was not the only one with secrets. One of the legendary shieldmaidens of north Genabackis. Her lips remained tight and her eyes wary as her thick auburn hair blew about her. ‘Well, lad, here’s another one.’ He handed over one of his extra hatchets. To Lyan he said: ‘We’d best get going.’

  She gave a curt nod of agreement.

  Two days later the wind again brought hints of smoke. Lyan had the lad kneel in the grass and keep watch as she and Kyle advanced up a hillside. From this rise they could see another hilltop, this one fortified and occupied. Kyle counted more than thirty swords.

  ‘We should go round,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, we should. But … who are they?’

  ‘I should warn them.’

  ‘Warn them? Warn them about what?’

  He handed her his weapons, water, and gear. ‘Take these. Hunker down. If I’m taken, just go on without me.’

  Lyan stared, uncomprehending. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m going to talk to them.’ Hunched, he edged down the hillside.

  ‘Don’t be some kind of fool hero!’ she hissed after him.

  This gave him pause. It reminded him of Ruthen’el’s words. But he wasn’t trying to be a hero; he was just trying to do these people a favour.

  When he got close enough, he shouted, ‘You there! On the hilltop! Let me speak to your commander.’

  The men and women guarding the perimeter of heaped wrecked carts and baggage all sprang to their feet. They scanned the hillsides, readied crossbows.

  After a moment a gruff voice called out: ‘Yes? What is it? Show yourself.’

  ‘You can’t stay here,’ Kyle shouted. ‘You have to keep moving.’

  ‘Show yourself! Are you one of them?’

  Damned fools. Couldn’t they tell he couldn’t possibly … oh, fine! He stood. The guards pointed. A man climbed the barricade: a fat fellow, in leather armour.