Jatal nodded, taking a shaky breath. He rubbed the sleeve of his light cotton robe across his slick face. ‘Yes. I am fine. I was just thinking … that is a very good question, my princess. Perhaps I should strive to learn more of this man. Where he is from. Why he knows so much.’
A curt nod. ‘Yes. Do so. For the time will come when we will no longer need him.’
Jatal now eyed the woman sidelong in suspicion. Did she plan on not honouring their agreement with the mercenary? Perhaps she was merely considering all the possible alternatives. So … beautiful, cunning, passionate … and ruthless.
Their force of picked Adwami mounted men-at-arms formed column as the first element. The Warleader’s mercenary troops would follow. While the troops ordered themselves, the Warleader rode up on his dappled pale stallion. He saluted Jatal and Andanii. ‘As commanders, you shall lead. I will ride with my troops. We make for the central administrative compound.’ For an instant it seemed a mocking half-smile cracked the man’s severe features. He turned his mount aside and trotted back along the column.
Jatal was more than irritated; the Warleader possessed the best intelligence regarding the city, its environs and defences. That they should lead was, well … was worse than ridiculous. It was inviting disaster. He waved over Gorot, his master-at-arms. The squat veteran urged his horse closer. ‘Send out your swiftest riders. Scout the damned city.’ Gorot saluted and fell back. Jatal watched him go, thinking himself wise not to have gone to the lancer knights, where, usually, such an ‘honour’ would be bestowed. Better now to find an actual scout who could ride rather than some young minor noble’s scion out to make a name for him or her self.
It was halfway into the night when they reached the valley floor to knee their mounts up on to a wide cobbled road that would take them to the city. Visibility remained excellent as the moon was high and waxing, while the great arc of the Scimitar very nearly overpowered it. Again Jatal admired the Thaumaturgs’ engineering works: not only the road, but the canals and reservoirs they passed – all interlocking elements of a complex system of irrigation.
A stream of mounted scouts came and went reporting on the way ahead. No roadblocks, no fielded army. Hamlets and farmers’ cottages all remained dark and quiet as the column clattered past. The glow of the city swelled ahead, though it was not as bright as Jatal imagined it ought to have been, given that Isana Pura was the southern capital.
Further scouts reported no barricades or columns massed in the streets to challenge them. Many of the surrounding bodyguard lancers grinned at the news but Jatal was not encouraged. What did they imagine was going on? That these mages had surrendered already? Fled? No. These reports only troubled him. If the magi and their soldiers and yakshaka guardians were not in the streets – then where were they?
Across the front of the column he caught Andanii’s eye and in her pale moonlit features, framed by her tall helmet, her lips held as a hardened slash, he thought he read similar misgivings. Regardless, onward they swept, passing field after farmed field, the alien sprawl of Isana Pura, population perhaps a million souls, spreading out before them.
After a series of outlying collections of farmers’ huts, wayside travellers’ compounds, and what appeared to be merchants’ staging areas, they rode on to the city proper. Here, the streets narrowed to a point where only three could ride abreast. The houses and shops lined the ways as solid walls of sun-dried brick relieved only by small barred windows and shut doors. Each street lay before them eerily empty and the jangle and clatter of their advance echoed loudly until Jatal believed that the entire city must be wincing with the racket of it. Yet no door cracked open and no gawping residents came pouring forth to crowd the way – which itself would have been an effective enough deterrent to stop their advance.
He expected imminent ambush or counter-attack and couldn’t suppress a flinch at each intersection. He and his flanking guards, and Princess Andanii ahead with her guards, all rode now with reins in one hand and naked blade in the other. Each turn brought them to a street nearly identical to the one before. It was a grim and unadorned urban conglomeration that Jatal knew from travellers’ accounts to be typical of Thaumaturg architecture and planning. Yet it remained a city of ghosts – for where was everyone? From what he knew of these mages’ firm hand of rule, he suspected the inhabitants were all cringing in root cellars and back larders: helpless and unarmed, forbidden weapons by their imperious masters.
By now he was utterly without a sense of which way to turn either to advance or to retreat. He could see no further than the looming two-storey walls surrounding him in this puzzle-box of a city. Yet hovering over these brick walls floated the pointed bell-like towers of what he imagined must be the Thaumaturgs’ quarters. In their twistings and turnings at every intersection, Andanii and her bodyguards appeared to be attempting to reach it. At one meeting of five crooked narrow ways they came roaring to a halt, drawing reins, the hooves of their mounts loud on the cobbles as they stamped and reared.
‘Where are our damned scouts!’ Andanii called to him.
‘I do not know!’ This apparent disappearance of their forward riders troubled him greatly, but he wasn’t about to say that aloud. He worked to settle Ash – who champed and twisted his neck as he had been trained for fighting – and noted to the rear of their column that the Warleader and his troops no longer followed. Damn the man! Had they lost him? Or had this been his intent all along?
He’d been desperately trying to dredge up a traveller’s brief description of the city that he’d read some time ago and it came to him then and he gestured with his bared sword. ‘Keep inward. I’m fairly sure—’
‘Very good!’ Andanii sawed her mount’s head about and kicked its sides to send it leaping onward. Jatal followed, hoping to all the foreign gods that he had the right of it.
They charged through a series of long, relatively straight roads each no wider than two arm-spans. Jatal had spent every night of his life in his family gathering of tents where the wind brushed freely, and wide uninterrupted vistas spread on all sides. If these cramped ways and grim squat dwellings were typical of city life then he knew he wanted none of it. Also, his stomach clenched and churned, anticipating at any moment ambush or raking arrow-fire. The curious bell-shaped domed towers of the Thaumaturgs, however, reared steadily ever closer.
A turn brought Andanii into a near collision with a mounted Adwami scout – a youth of the Manahir. The column crowded to a stamping, clattering, sudden halt.
‘What news?’ the princess demanded of the young unblooded boy as each struggled to settle their mounts.
‘The streets are deserted, my lady,’ he answered, stammering, quite flustered to be directly addressing so prominent a noble.
‘I can see that,’ she snapped. ‘Where are your fellows? Were you attacked?’
‘No, m’lady. I believe they have, ah, lost their way.’
‘Lost their way…’ she echoed in disbelief. ‘Lost!’
The youth winced, ducking his head. He waved to the surroundings. ‘These strange twisting ways … I have never seen the like.’
Andanii rubbed and patted her mount’s neck to soothe it. ‘Well … true enough,’ she allowed.
Separated by the guards, Jatal reared high in his saddle to point to the blunt towers. ‘Know you the way?’
The scout jerked a nod. ‘Aye, noble born. A large walled compound. But its doors are shut.’
‘Take us immediately, damn you!’ Andanii snapped and the young man gaped, not knowing what to say. In Jatal’s opinion he made the right choice by merely hauling his mount around and stamping off without delay. The column followed.
After more twistings and turnings – the horses trampling abandoned baskets of goods and wares along the way – the alley ended abruptly at an even narrower path that ran along an unadorned wall of dark stone blocks. The wall of the compound. Andanii followed at the heels of the scout, sheering to the right, slowing in her headlong dash. The extra
ordinary narrowness of the channel forced them to ride single file. Jatal’s boots nearly scraped the walls to either side as he went.
The constricted path continued ruler-straight along the border of the Thaumaturgs’ quarters, but the scout halted at a set of slim stone stairs that led up to a portal in the wall. The opening was just large enough for a person to duck within. A door of plain wooden planks barred it. Andanii dismounted and threw herself against it.
‘Locked – or barred!’ she announced.
The door did not look too strong to Jatal. He dismounted and shook it: ironmongery rattled thinly. He raised a booted foot and slammed the aged planks. The door swung inward with a snap of metal. One of Andanii’s bodyguards laughed his scorn at this, but Jatal did not share the man’s confidence. Rather, this apparent lack of preparedness or concern for any direct assault only added to his unease. Something was wrong here. Profoundly wrong. He felt it in the acid filling his stomach, his sand-dry mouth, and a cruel iron band that was tightening about his skull.
Yet he dared speak none of this out loud. He knew that among these Vehajarwi, and the larger circle of Adwami nobles, his reputation was that of scholar and philosopher, not a warrior such as his brothers. And so he knew how any disquiet voiced by him would be received. Better, then, not to give this one guard any chance for further scorn.
And there was always Andanii, as well.
Spurred by the heat of her standing now so close, her quick panting breath in his ears, her face flushed and sweaty with anticipation, he stepped through first. The way led down into an inner open court, also quite narrow, rather like an encircling flagged path that allowed access to the many enclosed buildings. This too was deserted. The air here was much hotter and drier than the narrow shaded alleyways still cool with the night air. The sun’s heat now penetrating to the surrounding walls of dressed blue-black stone. From his readings, Jatal knew the rock to be of volcanic origin, even to the point of containing tiny shards of black glass. The guards crowded protectively about him and Andanii.
‘Now what?’ she asked him in the profound quiet. At first Jatal could not answer, such was the clash of emotions and thoughts the question elicited: elation that perhaps she truly did rely upon his judgement, versus anger and resentment that perhaps she thought him so weak as to be in need of such bolstering. ‘We should leave a quarter of the lancers with the horses,’ he managed coolly. ‘The rest should secure this court.’
Andanii nodded to the captain of her guard, who went to relay the orders. The quiet of the surroundings made Jatal suppress his breath as he listened. He caught distant yells over the brush and jangle of the troops’ armour as they spread out. Perhaps the Warleader and his men had reached the compound before them. Oddly enough, though no plants or flowers were in evidence, a cloyingly sweet perfume choked the air making him faintly nauseous.
‘M’lady,’ a lancer called from one of the neighbouring buildings. Andanii crossed in response and Jatal followed. They passed through the crowd of troops to an airy stone hall, perhaps a meditation space, or classroom. Within, a field of corpses lay sprawled across the flagged stone floor. All dead Thaumaturg magi. Or, since most were quite young, a class of their acolytes, students or postulants. The nearest was a girl. Her dark hair was cropped close to her skull, almost like fur, and her flesh was snowy pale where her legs and arms showed beyond her plain robes. The seeming reason her flesh was so unnaturally ashen was that her blood was now all pooled across the stones. The same was true of all the others.
A grisly assemblage of some thirty freshly dead.
‘Those fool mercenaries!’ Andanii snarled, and she pressed the back of a hand to her mouth. ‘They will bring the yakshaka down upon us!’
Jatal was not so certain of this; the mercenaries seemed to be across the compound. And the students lay toppled forward from cross-legged positions – a pose of meditation. Their features were still serene, though smeared in drying gore. The Warleader’s men were mercenaries, true, but they did not strike him as so coldblooded. Besides, if one of the mercenaries had come across such a pretty girl as this, Jatal had no doubt he would have done more than merely strike her down.
He turned to his second, Gorot. ‘Take charge of the main body – secure that courtyard.’
The old campaigner saluted and jogged off.
‘M’lady,’ Andanii’s guard captain called. He’d been examining the bodies and he peered up now, wonderment and a touch of unease in his gaze. ‘I see no wounds among them.’
A set of prints crossed the pooled gore. A calm unhurried set of bare splay-toed feet that walked on across the next court leaving behind a trail of drying blood. The killer? None of the mercenaries went barefoot. A fellow Thaumaturg? Yet the acolytes’ slippers lay in a jumbled heap next to the entrance – these people did not go barefoot.
Someone did. The detail nagged at Jatal. It was familiar but he could not quite place it. The prints somehow mesmerized him; he could not help but follow them. They climbed on to a raised colonnaded walk of a series of stone arches, where Andanii joined him. ‘We have to stop these fools from spilling any more blood.’
Jatal peered up from the path of blood. ‘We should not move on until we’ve secured this area.’
The princess slammed her sword home. ‘We have to link up with the Warleader and his troops in any case. And where in the name of the holy sun is everyone?’
‘The cowards have fled,’ Andanii’s captain put in, coming abreast of them.
Jatal studied the man. Did he really think it would be this easy? He raised a hand for patience. ‘We mustn’t wander willy-nilly like a lost wind searching. We’ll send out small scouting parties to locate them.’
Andanii’s clenched brows rose and for an instant Jatal thought he saw something like admiration touch her eyes. She gave a fierce nod. ‘Very good, Prince of the Hafinaj. Sound strategy.’ She waved to her captain, who bowed and jogged off.
‘This Warleader had better have an excellent excuse,’ she growled, hands on her armoured hips.
‘He will no doubt claim to have lost us in that maze.’
‘Yes. He shows a strong head,’ she said, grinning. ‘We’ll have to keep him on a shorter rope.’
Jatal answered the grin. Yes, the language of horse-breaking for their hired Warleader. The man seemed to have forgotten that he worked for them.
The sudden crash of metal and a man’s scream of agony made Jatal flinch. Andanii spun, sword drawn instantly. Their guards converged on a tall stone altar-like plinth where one figure towered over all – one of the Thaumaturgs’ armoured bodyguards, the yakshaka.
Even as the princess moved to close two guards blocked her way. From his raised position on the steps Jatal could see that this yakshaka had been in a fight: it wielded its great yataghan one-handed. Its other arm hung useless, its bright inset stones now smeared in dark wetness. Yet in just a few blows two of their men-at-arms had already fallen.
Yells of alarm now sounded to their rear. Jatal turned a slow circle: on every side the fearsome yakshaka had stepped ponderously from the cover of walls and open portals. They had been encircled. ‘Make for the exit!’ he bellowed. He urged one of Andanii’s guards to shuffle her onward.
And where was Gorot now when he needed him most? Organizing the main body!
‘This way, my nobles,’ the guard captain called, waving aside. Their party made for an open-sided building and onward to another alleyway. Andanii’s guards hurried them along between a series of cell-like stone buildings.
Here the noise and shouts of fighting echoed and re-echoed in a dull directionless roar. Jatal suspected that this captain had no idea where he was taking them – just that he was fleeing a potential slaughter. They stumbled into a tiny flagged yard enclosed on three sides.
‘Now which way?’ Andanii demanded.
The man did not respond. Instead, he directed one of the twelve guards to the way they had come. ‘Watch the entrance.’
‘You have no
idea, have you?’
He turned to regard her. A small smile raised the edge of his mouth. ‘We will, ah, circle round, my princess.’
‘Captain!’ a guard called from a wall. This enclosure appeared to be a dormitory, open to the central shared space, complete with a fire-pit and a few pots. Jatal thought it perhaps servant’s quarters. Andanii and he crossed to the guard. Under the narrow stone roof lay scattered straw, covered here and there by thin blankets. The guard waved to a tiny opening where a stone staircase led down into darkness. The moist air emerging carried a repellent stink of rot.
‘Perhaps this is where everyone has gone,’ Jatal mused.
‘The serpents’ den,’ the captain snarled. A shouted alarm snapped everyone’s attention to their rear, where yakshaka now closed with their ponderous loud steps. Iron clashed as the guards blocked and slipped the first massive swings. ‘Nothing for it,’ the captain said, and waved down four men. Two of these were Jatal’s, and he gave his own assent to their questioning glances.
The captain invited Andanii onward. ‘My princess…’
Andanii shot him a glare as if determined not to betray any hint of disgust or dread. She drew her slim sabre and started down – even she had to turn sideways to manage the pit-like opening. The captain turned next to Jatal. ‘My lord?’
‘After you.’
‘I must organize the retreat.’
‘Then do so.’
The captain inclined his helmeted head just a touch, and Jatal was reminded that this man had spent his entire career skirmishing and raiding against him and his allies. ‘Wait here then, if you would … my lord.’
From the pit’s opening Jatal watched while the captain jogged to the line of defence. Four of their guards had fallen to the lumbering monstrosities and now the captain waved the rest into a retreating rearguard action, yielding ground towards the stairs.
Jatal waited until they had nearly reached him then hurried down into the dark and near solid stomach-gagging stink. Beneath, it was not so murky as it had seemed from above. Slim corridors lined with dressed stone led off in three directions. It seemed that slits and chutes cunningly hidden among the stonework allowed shafts of light from the Fallen One’s Chariot to play down among them. Andanii waited here with her two guards. Of the other two, Jatal’s, he saw no sign.
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 290
