Last to disappear up the broad mud-churned track to be swallowed into the jungle’s hanging fat leaves went the great groaning siege wains, oxen-pulled, their tall wheels of solid wood levered along by hunched slaves and labourers, mud-smeared, straining and chanting in unison.
For the first time in his life Pon-lor was left entirely in charge. It struck him as exhilarating and terrifying all at once. Exhilarating to finally be out from the suffocating fist of his superiors; to have the opportunity to prove his competence or perhaps, more important, his reliability. Terrifying for the now very real prospect of failure and disappointing said superiors.
He drew his robes about himself and nodded to Overseer Tun to see to the arrangement of his troops. The overseer bowed in his iron-studded leather armour and set to kicking and cajoling the soldiers into column. Pon-lor took his place at the centre of the column. The train of his troops’ bearers followed at the rear beneath their loads of equipment and supplies.
For three days they backtracked the route the army had hacked through the jungle. The way was a mire of trampled paths. They filed through abandoned villages where all was ghostly quiet but for the calls of birds and the hooting of monkeys, the inhabitants having fled with food and valuables to avoid confiscation and impressment.
On the third day word came to him from Overseer Tun at the van: a civilian had approached wishing to speak to him and was being brought. Pon-lor cast about and spotted the impressive broad trunk of an ancient kapok tree from which vines hung like a collection of ropes and whose roots gripped the jungle floor like the fists of giants. He chose to receive the fellow while standing beneath it, his men arrayed around him.
Tun pushed the fellow down on to his knees and he bowed, head lowered, arms straight forward in obeisance. ‘What is your name, peasant?’ Pon-lor asked.
‘Jak, Great Lord Thaumaturg.’
‘And you would speak with me?’
‘Yes, Great Lord.’
‘You realize that if you are wasting my time you will be killed.’
‘Yes, Lord Thaumaturg.’
Pon-lor was intrigued to see that this pronouncement had not evoked the usual shudder and tightness of voice that it did from other peasants. He stepped closer and saw that the fellow was young, probably new to his twenties – much like himself. He also noted that the man’s shirt and trousers betrayed the wear pattern of having lain under armour; that the man’s belt was scraped where a sheath would hang; and that his hair was pressed and rubbed away in places as if habitually beneath a helmet.
‘You are a deserter.’
This evoked a satisfying squirm and abject writhing in the rotting humus and mud. ‘No, m’lord. A private guard and bounty man.’
‘You have papers?’
‘Yes, m’lord.’
The man reached for his neck but Tun slapped the hand away and yanked free the pouch that hung there, snapping its leather thong. He knelt, proffering it in both hands. Pon-lor opened the pouch and studied the cheap reed-paper certificates. Water-smeared and half rotten, they might have been valid, years ago. He handed the documents to Tun. ‘These have long expired. Private guard, you say? For whom?’
‘Khun-Sen, lord.’
Pon-lor was quite surprised. ‘Khun-Sen? The warlord? He is still alive?’
‘Yes, lord.’
The news seemed hard to credit; that old general had been exiled in his grandfather’s time. Some sort of political falling-out among the Circle of Masters. He’d fled to the border region and claimed an outpost in the mountains. ‘You are far from Chanar Keep and Sen has no business interfering in Thaumaturg lands.’
‘He does not seek any influence, m’lord.’
‘Yet here you are – with a band of men, no doubt. Taking advantage of the army’s passage to raid a few villages?’
‘No, lord. We are collecting recruits for the army.’
‘To sell to the army, you mean. Very well. Have you a message from Sen?’
‘No, lord. But—’
‘No? No message? Then you are wasting my time.’ He waved for Tun to take the man away. ‘This one will now follow all those whom he has sent ahead into the ranks, Overseer. No doubt they will be pleased to see him.’
‘Yes, lord.’ Tun yanked the man up by his shirt.
‘We were attacked by a witch!’ the fellow gasped, now upright and glaring furiously. ‘A servant of the Night-Queen.’ Remembering his place he quickly lowered his gaze.
Pon-lor stepped even closer to peer down at the much shorter young man. A witch. So that’s what this is all about. They have some poor village woman they hope to sell as a witch. He made a show of sighing his utter lack of interest and clasped his hands at his back. ‘Believe me, fool. If you had met a servant of the demoness you would be either dead or insane. I do not have the time for a court of inquiry. You’ll just have to let the old woman go back to selling her moss-unguents and d’bayang tea.’ He waved to Tun, who smacked the pommel of his sword across the man’s head, sending him face first into the mud.
He stopped short as the fellow spoke from the muck. His voice was slow and tight with suppressed rage. ‘You will be interested in this witch, I think … Magister.’ Pon-lor turned: the man was actually levering himself up to his hands and knees. Tun stood over him, sword raised, a brow cocking a question.
Pon-lor raised a hand for a halt. ‘Very well. You wish me to ask … why?’
‘Because this one,’ the man coughed and brought his hand away from his head, red and wet with blood, ‘has enslaved a yakshaka soldier.’
After a long pause Pon-lor said, ‘That is impossible.’ Tun swung the sword up to finish the man but another curt sign halted the execution. ‘You realize that if you cannot support this claim you will be slain?’
‘Yes, lord.’
‘And so what happened?’
The man straightened, wincing and touching gingerly at his head. ‘The witch escaped us through the use of her arts and her yakshaka guard.’
‘I see. She escaped you. How unfortunate. Is it too much to expect that you can produce witnesses to these events?’
‘There are witnesses, Magister. I can lead you to where it happened.’
‘Very well. You will do so. And if I find that you have lied I will have you beheaded. Is that understood?’
The man bowed even lower. ‘Yes, m’lord.’
Pon-lor turned away. Tun grabbed the fellow’s arm and pulled him aside. The man kept glancing back, his gaze hardly that of a browbeaten peasant or servant, but Pon-lor did not notice. He was barely aware of his surroundings, hands clasped behind his back as he walked. His thoughts were a roil of unease. The yakshaka captured? How unlikely. Yet, if this so-called witch should succeed in fetching it to the Demon-Queen’s court, all the alchemical secrets and rituals of their creation could be penetrated. This was the most deadly threat the Circle had faced in generations. If it should be true … Ancient Ones, let it not be true.
* * *
As he was being pulled along, Kenjak kept his head low and worked hard to keep the satisfied smirk from his mouth. Yet he could not help sneaking quick glances to the retreating back of this young Thaumaturg mage. He’d given his name as Jak, the true nickname of his youth, but until most recently he’d been known as Kenjak Ashevajak, the ‘Bandit Lord’ of the borderlands. At least until a damned witch showed up and destroyed his authority and scattered his men to the seven winds. But he would have her head and a fat bounty for it. And this upstart Thaumaturg would not come between him and any bounty. He did not fear the yakshaka: he could easily outrun those lumbering elephants. This was his gods-sent chance to avenge the insults his family had so long suffered at the hands of these self-appointed nobles and rulers. And if the witch were to die along the way, well, no matter. Imagine what the demoness Queen of the Night herself would pay for a trussed-up yakshaka warrior.
CHAPTER III
When the functionaries of this nation [the Thaumaturg] go out in public, their insignia
and the number of their attendants are regulated according to rank. The highest dignitaries are protected by four parasols with golden handles, the next, two parasols with golden handles, and finally there are those protected by a single parasol with a golden handle. Further down the line come those permitted only parasols with silver handles. Likewise so with their rods of office, and their palanquins …
Ular Takeq
Customs of Ancient Jakal-Uku
For Shimmer, it did come to seem as if they moved within a dream as the changeless days of travel upon the river slipped from one on to the next until all became one. The unruffled earthen-brown waters flowed beneath the ship as smoothly as if they traversed a slide of mud. Not a breath stirred the leaden air between the walls of verdant green where flowers blazed bright as flames. The sails hung limp, damp and rotting. Yet the vessel moved upriver against the sluggish current. As the days passed, the crew came to huddle listless and dozing in the heat on the deck. They watched with fever-glazed eyes the vine-burdened branches brushing overhead. All came to speak in hushed whispers as if afraid of breaking the spell of stillness that hung upon the river.
As evening came on, clouds gathered as predictably as the sun’s own setting and a torrential downpour would hammer them through the night. So dense was the warm rain that it seemed that they had sunk into the river. Nothing of either shore could be seen through the solid sheets. To be heard one had to press one’s mouth to another’s ear. Figures would appear suddenly from the roaring downpour, emerging like ghosts. Come the dawn the clouds would be gone as if they’d thrown themselves to the ground and the day’s heat would gather like a sticky tar. Heavy mist arose to smother the river. To Shimmer it appeared so dense it could actually snag and catch at passing branches and hanging vines. Her sodden clothes gave off a vapour as if she were boiling – and she had long given up her armour as a useless rusted heap.
Throughout, she kept a wary eye on the vessel itself. At times it appeared terrifyingly derelict, as if everyone had been snatched away, or become ghosts. Its shrouds hung in loose tatters. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d glimpsed a sailor among the spars or in the rigging. Yet it continued to move, silently gliding. In the dawn and dusk it resembled to her nothing more than a mist-cast shadow, or their own ghost.
One dawn she emerged from below to find the crew sprawled asleep and no one at the tiller. Of the Avowed, Cole was on watch and she spotted him standing near the bow. ‘Cole,’ she called. The man did not answer. ‘Cole!’ Still he did not respond. She crossed to his side and leaned close; he was staring down over the side at the passing blood-hued water. She reached out and gently touched his shoulder. The man slowly blinked. ‘Cole? Can you hear me?’ He frowned now and his gaze rose to her; for a moment he stared as if not recognizing her, then he drew a sudden breath, as if broaching a great depth.
‘There are things in the water, Shimmer,’ he pronounced as if imparting a profound secret.
‘Where’s the pilot – what’s his name? Gods, I can’t even remember his name…’
Blinking heavily, Cole peered about, frowning. ‘I’m sorry, Shimmer – it’s morning already?’
She squeezed his arm. ‘It’s all right. I feel it too.’ She headed for the afterdeck. ‘Captain! You are needed! Captain!’
The men and women of the crew stirred yet none moved to set to work. Shimmer took hold of the tiller arm. The captain arrived, unshaven, in a stained shirt that hung to his knees. He was followed by Rutana and K’azz. ‘Where is the pilot, Captain?’
The man rubbed his jowls, his brows rising. ‘We’ll have a look for him,’ and he lumbered off.
‘Shimmer,’ K’azz said, ‘what happened?’
‘I found the tiller unmanned.’
Rutana snorted at that, as if scornful.
‘You have something to say?’ Shimmer asked.
The woman nodded, her gaze defiant. ‘We may have had a pilot, Isturé, but another has been in control of the vessel for some time.’
‘Another? Who?’
Rutana smiled as she squeezed the bands indenting her upper arms. ‘Ardata, of course.’
The captain reappeared. ‘He’s not on the ship. Must’ve fallen overboard. We’ll have to go back to look for him.’
‘We are not going back, Captain,’ Rutana announced without breaking gaze with Shimmer.
‘Yes, we are,’ K’azz said. He motioned to Shimmer. ‘Turn us round.’
She clasped both hands on the long arm of battered wood and pushed. The broad tiller swung but somehow the ship did not respond. It continued its slow sluggish advance.
Rutana’s contemptuous smile climbed even higher. ‘There is no turning back now, Isturé.’ And she walked off.
Shimmer’s gaze found K’azz, who was eyeing the tiller arm, his mouth sour and tight. ‘What now?’ she asked.
He drew breath to answer but a shout went up from the crow’s nest. ‘A village ahead! People!’ The crew surged to the larboard rail. Even the crewman from the crow’s nest came swinging hand over hand down the ropes. The Avowed gathered at the stern with K’azz. Banners of mist painted the river’s surface and coiled along the jungle shore. Through them, Shimmer glimpsed a clearing dotted by leaf-topped huts standing on tall stilts. Figures lined the shore. Most were in loincloths and bright feathers decorated their hair and hung at arms and legs. The crewmen and women waved, shouting. ‘Hello! Help! Help us! We are ensorcelled!’
‘Back to work, damn you all!’ the captain bellowed in answer.
‘We’re cursed!’ one shouted and jumped overboard.
‘Not a good idea…’ Rutana warned.
The rest of the crew followed in a surge, as if terrified they would be held back. They jumped, arms waving, and splashed into the murky water to emerge blowing and gasping. The captain managed to catch one woman by the arm only to be smacked down for his trouble. He lay holding his head and groaning. The entire crew swam for the shore. Shimmer shot a questioning look to K’azz who motioned a negative. ‘Let them go,’ he murmured. ‘Perhaps they will find their way to the coast.’
‘Or perhaps they will all be eaten,’ Rutana offered, laughing her harsh cackle.
K’azz faced her. ‘Then see that they are not…’
Her hands, closed about her neck, seemed to squeeze off her laugh in a hiss. She jerked her head to Nagal at the bow. The big man climbed up among the loose rotten rigging and yelled to the shore in a language Shimmer had never heard before. A banner of mist wafted across the river and the bank and when it had passed the figures were gone, disappearing as if they had never been.
‘Thank you,’ K’azz said.
But Rutana only sneered and turned away.
Through the scarves of fog Shimmer caught glimpses of the crew dragging themselves up the muddy shore and running into the jungle. Then a curve in the river’s course carried them from sight. She turned to K’azz. Their commander had a hand on the tiller arm, which jerked this way and that, yet to no apparent shift in the vessel’s course. ‘What is it?’ she asked.
He shook his head as if awakening from a reverie and his gaze jerked from hers – as if terrified, she thought. Terrified of what? Our situation? Or of what he may reveal?
‘A lesson here, Shimmer,’ he murmured, his mouth tight. ‘One can squirm and fight against it, but everyone is drawn inexorably along to the fate awaiting them.’
‘I don’t believe in that self-serving predestiny justification that religions flog.’
He nodded his understanding and she was struck by how skull-like his features appeared. ‘Well, let us call it a natural proclivity then,’ and he offered a smile that struck her as heart-achingly sad. ‘No one’s alone from now on,’ he called, raising his voice. ‘Watches at all times. A mage on each watch.’
Shimmer saluted. ‘Yes, Commander.’
* * *
Yet the spell that clung over the river and surrounding impenetrable walls of forest somehow made the distinction of being on or of
f watch irrelevant. Shimmer, and, as it seemed, the rest of them, found it increasingly difficult to sleep. She would lie only to stare at the damp mouldering wood unable to slip into any dreams. And so she would arise and go above and here she would find the majority of the party, eyes on the river or passing shores, silent and watchful, like a standing troop of mist-shrouded statues.
She saw, or thought she saw, bizarre creatures among the branches of the trees: enormous vultures and bats the size of people, hanging upside down. On the shore one of the long-snouted alligator-like creatures that swam along pacing the vessel heaved itself up on the mud slope and she was only mildly surprised to see it stand erect on two thick trunk-like legs, a wide pale belly hanging over a bare crotch. It followed them with its unblinking baleful eyes.
At one point she found herself next to Gwynn, the one-time mage of First Company, Skinner’s command, and she asked him, ‘Was this how it was when you were last here?’
The man shook himself, rubbing his eyes and frowning. ‘We weren’t here, Shimmer. We stayed on the south coast. It was pleasant there – much cooler.’
‘You didn’t travel through the countryside?’
The man laughed and waved to the shore. ‘Gods, no.’
The Malazan Empire Series: (Night of Knives, Return of the Crimson Guard, Stonewielder, Orb Sceptre Throne, Blood and Bone, Assail) (Novels of the Malazan Empire) Page 273
