Bonehunters

by Steven Erikson

  The Malazan Empire had changed all that, of course. While many adults among the tribes stayed put, even in Masan Gilani’s time, more and more men and women had set out to explore the world, and at younger ages. Fewer children were born; mixed-bloods were more common, once warriors returned home with new husbands or wives, and new ways suffused the lives of the Dal Honese. For that was one thing that had not changed over time – we ever return home. When our wandering is done.

  She missed those rich grasslands and their young, fresh winds. The heaving clouds of the coming rains, the thunder in the earth as wild herds passed in their annual migrations. And her riding, always on the strong, barely tamed cross-bred horses of the Dal Honese, the faint streaks of their zebra heritage as subtle on their hides as the play of sunlight on reeds. Beasts as likely to buck as gallop, hungry to bite with pure evil in their red-rimmed eyes. Oh, how she loved those horses.

  Apsalar’s mount was a far finer breed, of course. Long-limbed and graceful, and Masan Gilani could not resist admiring the play of sleek muscles beneath her and the intelligence in its dark, liquid eyes.

  The horse shied suddenly in the growing gloom, head lifting. Startled, Masan Gilani reached for the kethra knife she had slipped into a fold in the saddle.

  Shadows took shape on all sides, lunged. The horse reared, screaming as blood sprayed.

  Masan Gilani rolled backward in a tight somersault, clearing the rump of the staggering beast and landing lightly in a half-crouch. Slashing the heavy knife to her right as a midnight-limbed creature rushed her. She felt the blade cut deep, scoring across two out-thrust forelimbs. A bestial cry of pain, then the thing reared back, dropping to all fours – and stumbling on those crippled forelimbs.

  Reversing grip, she leapt to close on the apparition, and drove the knife down into the back of its scaled, feline neck. The beast collapsed, sagging against her shins.

  A heavy sound to her left, as the horse fell onto its side, four more of the demons tearing into it. Legs kicked spasmodically, then swung upward as the horse was rolled onto its back, exposing its belly. Terrible snarling sounds accompanied the savage evisceration.

  Leaping over the dead demon, Masan Gilani ran into the darkness.

  A demon pursued her.

  It was too fast. Footfalls sounded close behind her, then ceased.

  She threw herself down into a hard, bruising roll, saw the blur of the demon’s long body pass over her. Masan Gilani slashed out with the knife, cutting through a tendon on the creature’s right back leg.

  It shrieked, careening in mid-air, the cut-through leg folding beneath its haunches as it landed and its hips twisting round with the momentum.

  Masan Gilani flung the knife. The weighted blade struck its shoulder, point and edge slicing through muscle to caroom off the scapula and spin into the night.

  Regaining her feet, the Dal Honese plunged after it, launching herself over the spitting beast.

  Talons raked down her left thigh, pitching her round, off-balance. She landed awkwardly against a slope of stones, the impact numbing her left shoulder. Sliding downward, back towards the demon, Masan dug her feet into the slope’s side, then scrambled up the incline, flinging out handfuls of sand and gravel into her wake.

  A sharp edge sliced along the back of her left hand, down to the bone – she’d found the kethra, lying on the slope. Grasping the grip with suddenly slick fingers, Masan Gilani continued her desperate clamber upward.

  Another leap from behind brought the demon close, but it slid back down, spitting and hissing as the bank sagged in a clatter of stones and dust.

  Reaching the crest, Masan pulled herself onto her feet, then ran, half-blind in the darkness. She heard the demon make another attempt, followed by another shower of sliding stones and rubble. Ahead she could make out a gully of some sort, high-walled and narrow. Two strides from it, she threw herself to the ground in response to a deafening howl that tore through the night.

  Another howl answered it, reverberating among the crags, a sound like a thousand souls plunging into the Abyss. Gelid terror froze Masan Gilani’s limbs, drained from her all strength, all will. She lay in the grit, her gasps puffing tiny clouds of dust before her face, her eyes wide and seeing nothing but the scatter of rocks marking the gully’s fan.

  From somewhere beyond the slope, down where her horse had died, came the sound of hissing, rising from three, perhaps four throats. Something in those eerie, almost-human voices whispered terror and panic.

  A third howl filled the dark, coming from somewhere to the south, close enough to rattle her sanity. She found her forearms reaching out, her right hand clawing furrows in the scree, the kethra knife still gripped tight as she could manage with her blood-smeared left hand.

  Not wolves. Gods below, the throats that loosed those howls—

  A sudden heavy gusting sound, to her right, too close. She twisted her head round, the motion involuntary, and cold seeped down through her paralysed body as if sinking roots into the hard ground. A wolf but not a wolf, padding down a steep slope to land silent on the same broad ledge Masan Gilani was lying on – a wolf, but huge, as big as a Dal Honese horse, deep grey or black – there was no way to be certain. It paused, stood motionless for a moment in full profile, its attention clearly fixed on something ahead, down on the road.

  Then the massive beast’s head swung round, and Masan Gilani found herself staring into lambent, amber eyes, like twin pits into madness.

  Her heart stopped in her chest. She could not draw breath, could not pull her gaze from that creature’s deathly regard.

  Then, a slow – so very slow – closing of those eyes, down to the thinnest slits – and the head swung back.

  The beast padded towards the crest. Stared down for a time, then slipped down over the edge. And vanished from sight.

  Sudden air flooded her lungs, thick with dust. She coughed – impossible not to – twisting round into a ball, hacking and gagging, spitting out gobs of gritty phlegm. Helpless, giving herself – giving everything – away. Still coughing, Masan Gilani waited for the beast to return, to pick her up in its huge jaws, to shake her once, hard, hard enough to snap her neck, her spine, to crunch down on her ribcage, crushing everything inside.

  She slowly regained control of her breathing, still lying on sweat-soaked ground, shivers rippling through her.

  From somewhere far overhead, in that dark sky, she heard birds, crying out. A thousand voices, ten thousand. She did not know that birds flew at night. Celestial voices, winging south as fast as unseen wings could take them.

  Closer by… no sound at all.

  Masan Gilani rolled onto her back, stared unseeing upward, feeling blood streaming down her slashed thigh. Wait till Saltlick and the rest hear about this one…

  Dejim Nebrahl raced through the darkness, three beasts in full flight, a fourth limping in their wake, already far behind. Too weak, made mindless with hunger, all cunning lost, and now yet one more D’ivers kin was dead. Killed effortlessly by a mere human, who then crippled another with a lazy flick of that knife.

  The T’rolbarahl needed to feed. The horse’s blood had barely begun to slake a depthless thirst, yet with it came a whisper of strength, a return to sanity.

  Dejim Nebrahl was being hunted. An outrage, that such a thing could be. The stench of the creatures rode the wind, seeming to gust in from all sides except directly ahead. Fierce, ancient life and deadly desire, bitter to the T’rolbarahl’s senses. What manner of beasts were these?

  The fourth kin, lagging half a league behind now, could feel the nearness of the pursuers, loping unseen, seemingly content to keep pace, almost uninterested in closing, in finishing off this wounded D’ivers. They had announced themselves with their howls, but since then, naught but silence, and the palpable nearness of their presence.

  They were but toying with Dejim Nebrahl. A truth that infuriated the T’rolbarahl, that burned like acid through their thumping hearts. Were they fully healed, and seven o
nce again rather than three and scant more, those creatures would know terror and pain. Even now, Dejim Nebrahl contemplated laying an ambush, using the wounded kin as bait. But the risks were too great – there was no telling how many of these hunters were out there.

  And so there was little choice. Flee, desperate as hares, helpless in this absurd game.

  For the first three kin, the scent of the hunters had begun to fade. It was true – few creatures could keep pace with Dejim Nebrahl for very long. It seemed, then, that they would content themselves with the crippled trailer, giving the D’ivers an opportunity to see them for the first time, to mark them for the others, until such time as vengeance could be exacted.

  And yet, the mysterious beasts did not lunge into view, did not tear into the fourth kin. And even for that one, the scent was fading.

  It made no sense.

  Dejim Nebrahl slowed his flight, wondering, curious, and not yet in the least suspicious.

  From cool relief to growing chill, the night descended among the trudging soldiers, raising a mutter of new complaints. A sleeping child in his arms, Fiddler walked two strides behind Kalam and Quick Ben, while in his wake strode Apsalar, her footfalls the barest of whispers.

  Better than scorching sun and heat… but not much better. Burnt and blistered skin on shoulders now radiated away all the warmth the flesh could create. Among the worst afflicted, fever awoke like a child lost in the woods, filling shadows with apparitions. Twice in the past hundred paces one of the soldiers had cried out in fear – seeing great moving shapes out in the night. Lumbering, swaggering, with eyes flashing like embers the hue of murky blood. Or so Mayfly had said, surprising everyone with the poetic turn of phrase.

  But like the monsters conjured from the imaginations of frightened babes, they never came closer, never quite revealed themselves. Both Mayfly and Galt swore that they had seen… something. Moving parallel with the column, but quicker, and soon past. Fevered minds, Fiddler told himself again, that and nothing more.

  Yet, he felt in himself a growing unease. As if they did indeed have company along this broken track, out there in the darkness, among the trenches and gullies and jumbled rockfalls. A short time earlier he’d thought he had heard voices, distant and seeming to descend from the night sky, but that had since faded. Nonetheless, his nerves were growing frayed – likely weariness, likely an awakening fever within his own mind.

  Ahead, Quick Ben’s head suddenly turned, stared out to the right, scanned the darkness.

  ‘Something?’ Fiddler asked in a low voice.

  The wizard glanced back at him, then away again, and said nothing.

  Ten paces later, Fiddler saw Kalam loosen the long-knives in their scabbards.

  Shit.

  He dropped back until he was alongside Apsalar, and was about to speak when she cut him off.

  ‘Be on your guard, sapper,’ she said quietly. ‘I believe we have nothing to fear… but I cannot be certain.’

  ‘What’s out there?’ he demanded.

  ‘Part of a bargain.’

  ‘What is that supposed to mean?’

  She suddenly lifted her head, as if testing the wind, and her voice hardened as she said in a loud voice, ‘Everyone off the road – south side only – now.’

  At the command, thin fear whispered along the ancient road. Unarmed, unarmoured – this was a soldier’s worst nightmare. Crouching down, huddling in the shadows, eyes wide and unblinking, breaths drawing still, the Malazans strained for any telltale sound in the darkness beyond.

  Staying low to the ground, Fiddler made his way along to rejoin his squad. If something was coming for them, better he died with his soldiers. As he scrabbled he sensed a presence catching up from behind, and turned to see Corabb Bhilan Thenu’alas. The warrior held a solid, clublike piece of wood, too thick to be a branch, more like a tap-root from some ancient guldindha. ‘Where did you find that?’ Fiddler demanded in a hiss.

  A shrug was the only answer.

  Reaching his squad, the sergeant halted and Bottle crawled over to him. ‘Demons,’ the soldier whispered, ‘out there—’ a jerk of the head indicated the north side of the road. ‘At first I thought it was the pall of evil offshore, the one that flushed the birds from the salt-marshes beyond the bay—’

  ‘The pall of what?’ Fiddler asked.

  ‘But it wasn’t that. Something a lot closer. Had a rhizan wheeling round out there – it came close to a beast. A damned big beast, Sergeant. Halfway between wolf and bear, only the size of a bull bhederin. It was headed west—’

  ‘You still linked to that rhizan, Bottle?’

  ‘No, it was hungry enough to break loose – I’m not quite recovered, Sergeant—’

  ‘Never mind. It was a good try. So, the bear-wolf or wolf-bhederin was heading west…’

  ‘Aye, not fifty paces across from us – no way it didn’t know we were here,’ Bottle said. ‘It’s not like we was sneaking along, was it?’

  ‘So it ain’t interested in us.’

  ‘Maybe not yet, Sergeant.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Well, I’d sent a capemoth ahead of us up the road, used it to test the air – they can sense things when those things are moving, stirring the air, giving off heat into the night – that heat is sometimes visible from a long way away, especially the colder the night gets. Capemoths need all that to avoid rhizan, although it doesn’t always—’

  ‘Bottle, I ain’t no naturalist – what did you see or sense or hear or whatever through that damned capemoth?’

  ‘Well, creatures up ahead, closing fast—’

  ‘Oh, thanks for that minor detail, Bottle! Glad you finally got round to it!’

  ‘Shh, uh, Sergeant. Please. I think we should just lie low – whatever’s about to happen’s got nothing to do with us.’

  Corabb Bhilan Thenu’alas spoke: ‘Are you certain of that?’

  ‘Well, no, but it stands to reason—’

  ‘Unless they’re all working together, closing a trap—’

  ‘Sergeant,’ Bottle said, ‘we ain’t that important.’

  ‘Maybe you ain’t, but we got Kalam and Quick Ben, and Sinn and Apsalar—’

  ‘I don’t know much about them, Sergeant,’ Bottle said, ‘but you might want to warn them what’s coming, if they don’t know already.’

  If Quick hasn’t smelled all this out he deserves to get his tiny head ripped off. ‘Never mind them.’ Twisting round, Fiddler squinted into the darkness south of them. ‘Any chance of moving to better cover? This ditch ain’t worth a damned thing.’

  ‘Sergeant,’ Bottle hissed, his voice tightening, ‘we ain’t got time.’

  Ten paces apart and moving now parallel along the route of the old road, one taking the centre of the track, the flankers in the rough ditches to either side, Dejim Nebrahl glided low to the ground, tipped leathery ears pricked forward, eyes scanning the way ahead.

  Something wasn’t right. Half a league behind the three the fourth kin limped along, weak with blood-loss and exhausted by fear, and if the hunters remained close, they were now stalking in absolute silence. The kin halted, sinking low, head swivelling as its sharp eyes searched the night. Nothing, no movement beyond the flit of rhizan and capemoths.

  The three on the road caught the scent of humans, not far, and savage hunger engulfed all other thoughts. They stank of terror – it would taint their blood when he drank deep, a taste metallic and sour, a flavour Dejim Nebrahl had grown to cherish.

  Something lumbered onto the track thirty strides ahead.

  Huge, black, familiar.

  Deragoth. Impossible – they were gone, swallowed by a nightmare of their own making. This was all wrong.

  A sudden howl from far to the south, well behind the fourth kin, who spun, snarling at the sound.

  The first three D’ivers spread out, eyes on the lone beast padding towards them. If but one, then she is doomed—

  The beast surged forward in a charge, v
oicing a bellowing roar.

  Dejim Nebrahl sprinted to meet it.

  The flanking D’ivers twisted outward as more huge shapes pounded to close with them, two to each side. Jaws spread wide, lips peeling back, the Deragoth reached Dejim Nebrahl, giving voice to thunder. Massive canines sank down into the kin, slicing through muscle, crushing bone. Limbs snapped, ribs splintered and tore into view through ruptured flesh and hide.

  Pain – such pain – the centre D’ivers sprang into the air to meet the charge of the Deragoth ahead. And his right leg was caught in huge jaws, jolting Dejim Nebrahl to a halt in mid-flight. Joints popped even as the leg bones were crunched into shards.

  Flung hard to the ground, Dejim sought to spin round, talons lashing out at his attacker’s broad head. He tore into one eye and ripped it loose, sending it whirling off into the darkness.

  The Deragoth flinched back with a squeal of agony.

  Then a second set of jaws closed round the back of the kin’s neck. Blood sprayed as the teeth ground and cut inward, crushing cartilage, then bone.

  Blood filled Dejim Nebrahl’s throat.

  No, it cannot end like this—

  The other two kin were dying as well, as the Deragoth tore them to pieces.

  Far to the west, the lone survivor crouched, trembling.

  The Hounds attacked, three appearing in front of the last D’ivers. Moments before they closed, all three twisted away – a feint – which meant—