Assail

by Ian C. Esslemont

  Jands was crying now. ‘It’s just not fair! That’s what it is. How could you have killed me? It just ain’t fair!’

  Reuth had to pause to gather his own breath. He reached down for the pin – and couldn’t find it. In a sudden horror he fell to his knees, pawing at the cleft where it had been. Where was it? How could he have lost it? What a fool!

  Then he spotted it on the deck where it lay amid the curled chips, still driven through its link of chain. Relief surged through him. Thank Ruse! He thought he’d lost it. He picked it up, or tried to, as when he raised the thing it was yanked from his hand.

  Reuth stood blinking at the clattering loose end of chain for some time. Then he realized – oh yes.

  He went to the anchor stanchion, found the storm release, and pulled it free. The length of anchor chain went rattling and slithering free like a hound released from its leash.

  The next thing would require him to make it to the bows. And that would mean … Jands lay in his way. He edged as close as he dared. The man was still alive. He was panting as if running, his lower torso, crotch and thighs a wet mess of blood. His eyes were open and glaring murder and hatred upon Reuth’s head.

  Reuth gingerly raised his leg and stepped over the man.

  A wet slick hand snapped up to grip his sailcloth trousers. Reuth almost screamed his horror. ‘Save poor Jands,’ the man begged. ‘Please … be a good lad and bring help for your old friend … poor Jands.’

  Smothering his terror, Reuth reached down and brushed the hand from its clutching grip the way one might remove a clinging piece of dirt or mud.

  The hand fell to the deck timbers with a heavy thud. ‘Heartless murdering piece of shit!’

  Reuth then did the hardest thing. He walked away from a man who would soon be dead. A man he had killed. The first – well, the second – man he had killed. He felt diminished as a person as he limped away. But he also felt a childish sort of surge of triumph and energy.

  What followed was so much easer: the plain setting of the small foresail, the return to tie off the rudder. Only then did he dare allow himself to relax. He sat in a small stool the steersman was sometimes allowed to pull out, and leaned upon the arm.

  The night seemed somehow darker. He blinked, jerked his head up. Then he slid from the stool and banged his head on the deck. He couldn’t stop the spinning after that and he was unable to get up.

  Voice roused him to wakefulness. Someone spoke: ‘Hasn’t pulled free. Been a fight.’ A heavy step sounded close by. ‘Look at this.’

  Another voice: ‘Mutineer?’

  Chain rattled. Someone yanked his leg. ‘An escaped prisoner. Or a slave.’

  Reuth forced open his eyes, or tried to: one was glued shut. He saw a giant towering over him. A bearded soldier in a long mail coat that hung to his knees. Over his armour the man wore a pale cloth surcoat.

  ‘You are safe now, lad,’ he said. ‘We offer you sanctuary. And we among the Blue Shields take such offers very seriously.’

  Reuth let his head fall back to the decking. Sanctuary? The word troubled him; sounded too much like the pious mouthings of the Stormguard. Was he no better off? After all that … The idea was just too much for him and he had to choose between weeping or slipping away into darkness.

  He chose the easier of the two.

  * * *

  Orman and the Reddin brothers returned to the Sayer Greathall as swiftly as they could. They jog-trotted up the forested valleys, splashed through streams of runoff, and laboured their way up steep bare rocky ridge-slopes. When at last Orman broke through the forest surrounding the cleared fields he was relieved, and also vaguely uneasy, to see the hall still standing, but quietly so, as if abandoned. No one walked the fields or patrolled the yards, though a thin white plume was climbing from the longhouse’s smoke-hole.

  Was it truly abandoned? Would they enter to find slain corpses? But of course not – the Greathall would certainly be aflame if that were so.

  He shook off his dread and continued on. The Reddin brothers, as was their wont, said nothing of their thoughts.

  No one challenged them as they leapt up the wooden stairs to the wide open entrance. Just within the darkness of the long hall, Heavyhand awaited them. He was armoured for war in a long mail coat over leathers manufactured in the old fashion: the rings as large as coins and riveted to the leather hauberk. His wild mane of greying hair was pulled back and braided, his beard tied off with strips of leather. The spear he held carried a blade as large as an axe.

  He allowed them to pass, but offered no greeting, and his gaze was reserved. Beyond, Jaochim and Yrain waited in their raised wooden chairs, one to either side of the central empty one. Orman crossed to stand directly before them and inclined his head.

  ‘I am sorry,’ he began. ‘But …’ He found he could not speak the news he’d run all this way to give. His throat constricted as if in rebellion. The words for what he had to say remained burning in his chest.

  Jaochim raised a hand in acknowledgement. ‘The Eithjar have informed us, Orman. They say also that you slew Lotji with Svalthbrul.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That is good. They are gone then. More blood has been spilled, but the feud between us is done.’

  Orman could not prevent himself from frowning his amazement and disapproval. This was their main concern? He glanced between the two. ‘Good? What of the invading army? They will return. The Bain Greathall is only the first …’

  He broke off because Yrain surged to her feet. ‘Do not presume to lecture us, hearthguard. The Bain Holding is merely the most recent of some twenty others. All gone. Every disappearance witnessed by us. Do not think us unmoved by this creeping valley by valley pogrom we have been forced to endure. You presume to judge us by your standards. Please do not do so. It is misguided – and in error.’

  Her gaze was so severe Orman almost thought himself personally responsible for the centuries of murders and purgings her story implied.

  She lowered her gaze then, releasing him, and sat once more. ‘We are the last. We few remaining Holdings. It is up to us how to greet this final nightfall of our kind. We choose to meet it at our hearth’s side, face on. Without running. Without flight. For truly … there remains nowhere to run.’

  Still panting, Orman wiped the sweat from his eyes and turned to the Reddin brothers. They shared a silent glance and nodded. Deep down, Orman wanted to run. He desperately wanted to live. But he could not shame himself in front of the brothers, or Jaochim, nor of course the memory of Jass. So he swallowed his fears, his yammering need to flee, and nodded as well.

  Jaochim and Yrain smiled as if this was to be expected, then stood. ‘Very good,’ Jaochim announced. ‘We were right in offering you the roof of our hall and the food of our table, and the rings from our own hands. Sayer Greathall shall not fall so easily.’ He raised his gaze to Bernal. ‘Heavyhand, what say you?’

  Bernal crossed his thick arms, hugging the haft of his pole-arm to his chest. ‘The outbuildings should all be burned. All the stored grain and foodstuffs should be moved inside. The animals should be scattered.’

  Jaochim nodded his agreement. He motioned them out. ‘See to it.’

  The Reddin brothers turned and went. Orman was slow to follow; he still had so many questions. But the two Icebloods descended to the rear of the raised wood platform. He reluctantly followed the brothers out.

  In the muddy open ground before the Greathall he hurried to match strides with Bernal. ‘They really cannot expect to withstand a siege, do they?’ he demanded. ‘We cannot defend against fifty, or a hundred. They’ll just burn the place down around us.’

  The veteran huffed into his thick russet beard. ‘Do not dismiss Iceblood magics, lad. They’re still powerful up here in the highlands.’

  ‘But Vala …’

  Bernal pulled a hand through his beard. ‘What I heard suggests she chose her end, lad. She chose to pass beyond with Jass.’

  Orman felt tears welling
up once more. He wiped his sleeve across his eyes. Yes. She did that, didn’t she.

  ‘Now, as for us,’ Bernal began, ‘you lot can start bundling all the useful supplies into the Greathall.’

  Rather than answering, the Reddin brothers inclined their heads and jogged off. Orman coughed to try to clear the burning heat from his throat, and followed.

  * * *

  It began before Jute noticed it. He and Ieleen had been surprised, and pleased, to see a longboat come their way from Tyvar’s vessel, the Resolute. In it came a contingent of Blue Shields together with its commander himself. One trooper carried what appeared to be a wounded sailor up the rope ladder and brought him immediately to Jute. It was a young man, and he was unconscious,.

  ‘An escapee from the besiegers,’ Tyvar announced. ‘Perhaps a slave or a prisoner.’

  Jute called to his wife: ‘Ieleen, a patient for you.’

  She stood. ‘Bring him to the crew’s quarters – and someone must guide me.’

  Jute signed to his crewmen to obey. Tyvar motioned to his troopers to follow the sailors’ lead.

  Once the wounded fellow and Ieleen were below, Jute turned to the commander. ‘Why all the fuss? There must be many such deserters and escapees.’

  ‘His hands,’ Tyvar replied, rather enigmatically.

  Jute frowned. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Soft, pale, unscarred, and stained black under the nails. No oarsman or servant, that one. Literate. And the ship we pulled him from was a Mare war galley.’

  Jute’s brows rose. A Mare vessel? Quite the prize.

  Tyvar reached into his belt and pulled forth an instrument Jute instantly recognized: an alidade. ‘And he carried this.’

  Jute reached out and Tyvar set it in his hands. It was a beautiful piece of cast and polished bronze. Crude by Falaran standards, of course, what with their tradition of open-water exploration. But more important, he could see this one had been designed to personal order. He shook his head, amazed. What an accomplishment for someone coming from a region of shallow-water navigation!

  He blew out a breath. ‘I see … Well, won’t you stay for a drink, commander?’

  Tyvar pulled a hand down his beard and offered Jute a wink. ‘I do believe I shall.’

  In his cabin, Jute poured two tiny thimbles of Falaran distilled spirit made from the seeds of a low bush that grew on the islands of their archipelago. They called it Peuch. When he turned from the cupboards, however, he found that they were not two, but three. He was annoyed, and rather alarmed, to find that Khall-head hanger-on from the Wrongway camp sitting at the table.

  ‘What in the name of the damned Mael are you doing here?’ He pointed to the door. ‘Get the Abyss out.’

  Tyvar raised a hand to beg permission to intercede. ‘If I may, captain?’ Jute subsided, grumbling beneath his breath. The Blue Shield commander then surprised Jute immensely by saying slowly, and gently, as if addressing an infant: ‘You really should ask permission before entering the captain’s quarters.’

  The Khall-head raised his brows in slow-motion surprise. His yellowed eyes roamed the chamber as if only now fully aware of his surroundings – which Jute did not doubt.

  Tyvar continued: ‘So wait outside, won’t you?’

  The fellow smiled then – his eerie empty raising of the lips – and bestirred himself. Despite his antagonism, the state of his limbs raised a wince of empathy from Jute: emaciated, scabbed by sores and the old weeping cuts of an unhealthy body hardly functioning, let alone healing.

  He shambled from the cabin. Jute eyed the huge commander. ‘Who is he to you?’

  Tyvar cleared his throat, tossed back his thimble of spirit and sucked his teeth. ‘Cartheron told me his tale. A man worthy of our pity. A sad tale that …’ His voice tailed off and his gaze swung across the cabin to the door.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s begun,’ Tyvar announced.

  ‘What? What’s begun?’

  ‘An attack on Mantle.’ Two broad steps took the man to the door and out. Jute hurriedly knocked back his shot of Peuch, coughed slightly, and followed.

  He found Lieutenant Jalaz also on deck. She wore only a plain padded undershirt that hung to her knees. She was gazing up at the cliff top.

  ‘What—’ Jute began, but Tyvar lifted his hand. Jute strained to listen, but all he could hear was a strange sort of murmuring from above, as of many voices and sharp sounds commingled.

  ‘They’ve rushed the walls,’ Tyvar announced.

  ‘Really? How can you …’

  ‘By time we climb those stairs it’ll be over,’ Giana grumbled.

  Tyvar nodded his grim assent. ‘Still, the effort must be made. Prepare yourself, Lieutenant. You and I must climb to see who now holds Mantle.’

  ‘I will come too,’ Jute added, rather surprising himself.

  Instead of scoffing, as he feared, the two warriors merely shared a knowing, amused smile. Tyvar pulled a hand down his beard, trying to hide his grin. ‘Your wife,’ the Blue Shield commander said. ‘She has complained of your penchant for rushing in where you shouldn’t. She made us swear not to … ah, encourage it.’

  Something in him felt very annoyed by Ieleen going behind his back like that. ‘I’ve come damned far and I swore I’d see this through!’

  Tyvar raised a hand in surrender. ‘I cannot argue with that, captain. And you may of course travel where you would. However, we ask one thing …’

  ‘Yes?’

  Tyvar shared a wink with Giana. ‘That you face her when we return.’

  ‘Leave her to me.’

  Giana burst out with a laugh and headed off to get ready, saying, ‘I’d rather face these invaders, myself.’

  Tyvar held out a hand and his sword, sheathed and wrapped in its belt, was pressed into his grip by one of his troopers. He fastened it round the long quilted aketon that he wore as part of his armour’s underpadding, and gestured an invitation to Jute. ‘Shall we?’

  Giana rushed up to join them as they left the ship. She wore leathers, and carried a Malazan-issue shortsword at her side. ‘Cartheron?’ she asked.

  Tyvar shook his head. ‘He made it plain he would not be travelling up and down those stairs. “Like a weasel popping out of its hole” I believe were his exact words.’

  Jute smiled at that, but was saddened as well. The man clearly hadn’t recovered from his gut wound – and probably never would, as he was so very old.

  The Genabackan reiver Enguf met them on the dock. His cheery greeting was, to Jute’s ears, rather forced. ‘Going topside, are we?’ The man laughed. ‘Good, good. You’ll enquire as to the plans, yes? Perhaps I and my crew should be sent for help? Yes? Gather reinforcements?’ The crewmen on the dock behind him all nodded their heads enthusiastically.

  ‘I’ll … suggest it,’ Tyvar promised.

  ‘Good, good!’ The reiver waved an enthusiastic farewell as they passed.

  Starting up the stairs, Giana muttered: ‘Fifty Malazan orbs says they won’t be here when we return.’

  ‘They will be,’ Tyvar answered, sounding amused.

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Because they know they can’t get past my men without my approval. They are, effectively, trapped.’

  Jute climbed unhappily, already resenting the effort. Above, the shouts and clash of battle rose and fell like a surf washing a distant shore. The Blue Shield commander’s pace was steady and a touch faster than his; he hurried to keep up. His thoughts turned to the man’s predicament. He had said that the Genabackan pirate was trapped – what then of Tyvar himself? Was he? Jute cleared his throat. ‘Commander?’

  ‘Just Tyvar to you, captain.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. If I may … with all due respect. Are you not disheartened?’

  The wooden slats of the stairs creaked ominously as the man paused to glance back over his shoulder, a brow raised. ‘Disheartened?’

  Jute decided that perhaps that was too strong a word. ‘Ah, concerned?�
��

  Tyvar resumed climbing. ‘Concerned?’

  ‘To have come all this way – followed the commandment of your god – only to find yourself held aside. Hindered.’

  The Blue Shield commander nodded profoundly as he continued up the twisting scaffolding. ‘I understand. In answer to your question … No. We do not. We have faith in Togg, my friend, absent though he may be. All shall be as he foretold. Never fear. Our fate has not come yet … but it shall.’

  They took another turn in the scaffolding. Giana was gamely following along behind Jute, grinding her teeth in her frustration, either at the delay, or the rickety construction. After mulling over the Genabackan’s words, Jute called up: ‘But as you say, many of the gods are gone from this world. Our offerings no longer reach them directly. How … isn’t it too late?’

  Tyvar nodded once more, clasped his hands behind his back – a dangerous move considering their wobbling footholds. ‘Haagen and I have spoken much on this. It used to be that guardianship of the spirits of our brothers and sisters resided with us, the Shield Anvil and the Sword. Now, however, with Hood’s grip upon all of us released, things have changed.’ He spared Jute one quick glance, as if checking to make certain he was keeping up. ‘Are you familiar with the old belief that no one truly dies?’

  Jute paused in his climbing to blink his confusion. ‘I’m sorry …?’ Tyvar paused as well, turned back to face him. ‘Oh yes. Reincarnation they call it. We – that is, our spirits, our souls, are reborn from life to life. No one truly ever goes away. It is a very old idea, in point of fact. Ancient.’

  For some reason such an assertion profoundly offended Jute. He started climbing once more. ‘But … what would be the point of that? Is there no purpose to life, then?’

  Resuming his climb, his back to Jute, Tyvar raised a finger. ‘A-ha. You have grasped the crux of it. What is the point? Or is there any at all? That is the dread. Perhaps one answer is that each life is an opportunity.’

  ‘An opportunity?’

  ‘Yes. For improvement. Or perfection.’

  Jute felt quite bewildered by the idea. ‘Do you believe this?’

  Tyvar glanced back once more. ‘Myself? No. It is too far from my previous beliefs. However, Haagen and I agree that we are mortal, yet there resides within us some portion that is non-corporeal, imperishable. Just as some element of Togg and all the various gods remains imperishable. And that now, it is to this that we join or are enfolded after death. And whatever that is could be named the Divine. To that will we dedicate our prayers and the care of our spirit.’