Return of the Crimson Guard (45 page)

Drawing close, he recognized the shaman, Clearwater, sunk to his knees. Horribly, two spears supported him, thrust downward through his back and crossed beneath his chest, impaling him on his knees. Blood ran drying in rivulets down the wood hafts, pooling beneath him.

incredibly, the shaman's head rose, sending Rillish backwards, gripping his swords. ‘Greetings, Malazan,’ the apparition breathed, wetly.

Rillish could not speak. Above, boots stamped the timber floor, shouts for relief for the bulwark beyond the door sounded. Should they yield that, he knew, the end would not be far behind. He found his voice. ‘Clearwater – what have you done?’

The shaman's smile was ferocious, and victorious. He glanced to the eerie darkness past the torchlight. ‘Forbidden one fight, we found another. And succeeded, though the cost was dear. Go now, bring your men. A way has been bought.’

‘What do you mean? Bought? What kind of bargain is
this?’

A shudder took the shaman and his torso slipped a hand's width down the shafts. The man spoke through lips drained pale. ‘An escape, fool. Life for our children and your men. This site was holy once. To our ancestors. Blood called, just as it always did. But hungry! So hungry … there were barely enough of us. Now go, send your men. I hold the way.’

‘A way where?’

A clipped laugh cut off by an agonized grunt. ‘Not far. Go.’

Rillish ran to the stairs, his boots slipping and sliding. He roared up the passage, ‘Send Sergeant Chord down here!’

In the end he managed to evacuate thirty-two men and women of his command before the building's burning roof forced him into the passage. His last act was to help those wounded who volunteered to carry out the ones who couldn't walk. Bent over, his leg stabbing with pain, he could wait no longer. A soldier rearguard steadied him on the stairs. Together, they pulled shut the trapdoor against the furnace roar of the barracks.

‘Sergeant Chord?’

‘First through, sir,’ she said.

‘Very good. Our turn now.’

‘Yes, sir. After you, sir.’

‘No. I'll go last.’

The woman smiled – dark, Talian or part Dal Hon, her mailed shoulders as broad as any man's. ‘Not the sergeant's orders, beggin’ your pardon.’

A glow licked its way between the thick timbers of the trapdoor. They backed away, hunched. ‘No time for that, soldier. After you.’

A salute. ‘Aye, sir.’

At the darkness, the soldier drew her shortsword, readied the wide shield from her back. ‘Good luck, soldier,’ Rillish said.

‘Aye. Hood spare me,’ she spat, muttered a short prayer, then launched herself forward, disappearing.

Rillish turned to the now still form of Clearwater; the shaman's head was sunk to his chest, his greasy hair obscuring his face. He knelt beside him. ‘Clearwater? Can you hear me? I don't know what to say… Thank you. Thank you for my men.’

‘Thank not for a fair bargain,’ came a hoarse whisper. ‘Honour it.’

Rillish straightened, ‘Yes.’ He faced the darkness, a hand on the grip of one Untan duelling sword, stepped forward …

… And walked into a forest – tall conifers, birdsong, sunlight shafting down through boughs, movement between the thick trunks, a kind of large deer? – then one more step and into cool night. Hands steadied him, Chord and the female soldier. He looked up and was reassured to see familiar constellations: the Twins, the Wolf, the broad Path of Light. ‘Where are we?’

‘Just west of the fort, seems,’ supplied Chord. ‘You can see the flames from the hilltop.’

Rillish peered about, getting his bearings. They were in a deep gully, a dry river bed. Around them was – no one. ‘Where is everyone? The children?’

‘Headed off north-west already, sir. Couldn't stop them. Said they had directions from Clearwater. I sent the men with them.’

‘Very well, Sergeant.’

‘Shall we go?’ East, a pale orange glow backlit a hill. Rillish watched it for a time. ‘Care to take one last look, sir?’

Wincing, Rillish squeezed his leg and brushed the night flies from his face. ‘No, Sergeant. It's all right. We best go.’

‘Yes, sir. There's our guide.’ Chord gestured up the gully where the dim figure of a Wickan girl stood waving them on impatiently.

The female soldier slipped her shield to her back, offered an arm. Rillish accepted.

* * *

The weather of the Western Explorer's Sea had proven remarkably calm these last few days. The morning of the sixth day Shimmer took her usual place next to Jhep, her tillerman on the
Wanderer,
She wore only her long linen undershirt and pantaloons but the cold dawn wind did not chill her. A sailor brought her hot tea that she sipped, her eyes fixed on the waters far ahead on the north horizon. There an emerald nimbus grew, wavering like the lights one sometimes saw in the night sky.
Cowl's ritual.
It made her uneasy, this relying on Ruse's uncharacteristic, how had the High Mage put it,
compliance.
Shimmer's instincts told her to mistrust any such pose – for pose it surely must be. Especially when an Elder is involved. And this demonic rush to reach Quon … There was no need as far as she could see; and every reason for the opposite. Again, especially with unfinished business left behind.

She looked to the
Gedrand,
the captured Kurzan three-tiered warship Skinner had taken as his flag vessel. Despite the incalculable advantage his presence brought to their Vow, Shimmer could not help wishing he had never returned. Simply catching sight of him now made her wince – where was the man she'd known? Who was this impostor? Her sources told her they'd yet to see him outside his armour. Reportedly, he slept sitting up, fully accoutred. And that armour; she had never seen anything like it. What was that dark patina that covered it with a crystal-like glitter? Skinner did not hide that his patron, Ardata of Jacuruku, had gifted it to him. She was some sort of witch queen, perhaps an Ascendant herself of those alien lands. And he made no secret they had been close. Lovers? Shimmer felt the cold wind and she wrapped her arms about herself. The Vow still drove him; of that she was sure. Yet what other, lesser, vows might he have sworn during all those years away? She dashed the cold tea over the side.

‘Send for Smoky,’ she called to a guardsman.

‘Aye.’

Shortly afterwards the mage came working his way sternward, hand over hand along the gunwale, his face sickly pale. Shimmer could not help but smile. Never one to find his sea-legs was Smoky. ‘No further word from the investigation?’ she asked as he came close.

‘No, Commander.’ The mage's face was milky beneath his greasy
tangled locks. His eyes narrowed ahead where a greenish curtain of light now climbed from the waves.

Her sergeants brought Shimmer her armour. She raised her arms for them to slip the quilted aketon over her head, followed by her mail shirt that they shook to hang down to her calves, slit back and front. ‘You have questioned the Brethren?’

‘Yes. They maintain they saw nothing that night. Indeed, they even claim that nothing happened – because they did not see it.’

‘And Stoop has not appeared among them?’

‘No. No sign of him.’

‘Have they been suborned?’

The question startled Smoky. His glance to Shimmer was alarmed. He answered, thoughtfully, ‘I don't think that possible …’

‘Then we are left with this youth as an enemy agent. A spy with powerful allies.’

‘Yes. His escape would suggest such a conclusion.’

Shimmer took her helmet and sword and waved the soldiers away. ‘Unless those searching were not trying so very hard.’

The mage's hairless brows rose. ‘I had not considered that. It points in, ah,
unhealthy
directions.’

She pulled on her helmet, swung closed the lower face guard. ‘Greymane suggested it.’

Smoky's gaze flicked to the broad back of the man at the bow. ‘I see … Yes, that makes sense. Close to the matter, but not Vowed, and thus not sharing our blindnesses. It would take an outsider, wouldn't it? Thank you, Commander.’

‘The Brethren fully back Skinner, of course.’

‘They never stopped demanding it. A strike against Quon.’

‘Exactly. Their priorities are not necessarily ours.’

‘True. Yet perhaps
suborned
is too strong.’ Smoky pushed his wind-blown hair from his face. ‘Perhaps seduced, or swayed?’

Shimmer belted on her whipsword, adjusted its weight at her hips. ‘Perhaps. Now, shouldn't you be lending your strength to the ritual?’

‘Gods, no. I'm just a minor battle mage of Telas – though I admit to some glimpses into Elder Thryllan in moments of inspiration. Not conducive, you imagine, to current shared efforts on the bridling of Ruse.’

‘If you say so, mage.’ Again, how she wished she had kept Blues and his blade close! But theirs was a desperate gamble they'd decided worth the throw. It was too late for regret. And what of Cal-Brinn? What had happened to his command? His opinion on these ritual magics she would accede to.

‘Shimmer …’

‘Yes?’

‘Be careful.’

A nod. ‘I could say the same to you.’

Snorting, Smoky headed to the bow.

The glow strengthened through the morning, thickening into a wavering curtain of green and deep violet accompanied by a constant thunder ahead. As Cowl and the other Avowed mages readied themselves for just the right moment the partition, or portal, whatever it was, paced them, maintaining its distance some hundred cables before them. The sea that emerged from beneath reached them emerald with foaming bubbles as if churned by energies and, more troubling, flecked by driftwood and litter such as that which gathers along any shore. At mid-deck, the Kurzani first mate bellowed orders: sails were being lowered, men were securing materiel. Shimmer recognized preparations for a coming gale.

What did that screen disguise? Shimmer had heard the ususal legends and stories of whirlpools and ship-shredding storms that awaited any fool impudent enough, or desperate enough, to try Mael's realm. But all such tales came down to them from long ago and might be just no more than that – imaginings. Truth told, no one knew what awaited them; not any of their twelve mages, Avowed or not, nor any of their sailors, for none had ever heard again from anyone who had actually dared.

Why this unholy hurry? Why this quick thrust for Quon – just three vessels darting ahead of the fleet – the
Wanderer
’,
Gedrand
and
Kestral
? They carried the majority of the Avowed, yes. But what could Skinner hope to accomplish with a mere two thousand men?

Flags waved from the sides of the neighbouring
Gedrand.
At the bow, Smoky's arms were raised as he communicated with his fellow mages.
Any moment now.
Shimmer wrapped one arm around the stern-mast. Ahead, the gate had stopped its backward sweep and now awaited them, fathoms tall. It resembled an enormous waterfall, appearing from empty air. Shimmer was assaulted by the disorienting impression that the gate that awaited them was in fact the surface of the sea and it was they who were racing uncontrollably down a chute to their destruction.
Togg, Oponn, Burn and Fanderay protect us. But Hood … look on you who can never have us!

As the bow pierced the barrier Shimmer had one last impression of Smoky, arms raised as if to fend off some vision of ruin, Greymane,
the Malazan renegade, knees bent in a ready stance, one arm stretched tight, a rope twisted around it, then the roaring – no, hissing, seething, gate was upon them and she was blinded …

A shuddering crash – an arm-wrenching blow threw Shimmer down as if hammered. The screech of wood cracking, the heavy slow creak of an enormous weight slamming into the deck – a split mast – and men shrieking. Water splashing and washing sullenly, turgid, followed by silence leaving only the groan of wounded. Shimmer pulled herself to her feet, rubbed her shoulder where she had collided with the mast.