The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (1080 page)

She walked ahead of him, sharing laughter and jests, teasing and teased in the manner of all beloved commanders, and the legend took shape, step by step.

And he walked, silent, smiling, so generous of regard, so seemingly at peace, so content to share the rewards of her indulgence.

Some masks broke in the sun and the heat. But his mask was neither fierce nor hard. It could, in fact, take any shape he pleased, soft as clay, slick and clear as the finest of pressed oils. Some masks, indeed, broke, but his would not, for he understood the real meaning beneath that long-dead Shield Anvil’s words.

It is not heat that breaks the mask, it is the face beneath it, when that mask no longer fits.

Remember well this day, Tanakalian. You are witness to the manufacture of delusion, the shaping of a time of heroes. Generations to come will sing of these lies built here, and there will be such fire in their eyes that all doubt is banished. They will hold up the masks of the past with dramatic fervour, and then bewail their present fallen state.

For this is the weapon of history when born of twisted roots. These are the lies that we are living, and they are all we will give to our children, to be passed down the generations, every catching edge of disbelief worn smooth as they move from hand to hand.

In the lie Krughava walks among her brothers and sisters, binding them with love to the fate awaiting them all. In the lie, this moment of history is pure, caged in the language of heroes. There is nothing to doubt here.

We heroes, after all, know when to don our masks. We know when the eyes of the unborn are upon us.

Show them the lies, all of you.

And so Shield Anvil Tanakalian smiled, and all the cynicism behind that smile stayed hidden from his brothers and sisters. It was not yet time for him. Not yet, but soon.

Warleader Gall drew his black feather cloak about his shoulders, and then strapped on his crow-beaked helm. He adjusted his over-weighted tulwar on to the point of his left hip as he strode to his horse. Insects whirred in the crepuscular air like flecks of winged dust. Gall hacked and spat out a lump of phlegm before swinging into the saddle.

‘Why does war always bring smoke?’

The two young Tear Runners facing him exchanged looks of incomprehension.

‘And not just regular smoke either,’ the Warleader continued, kicking his mount forward to ride between the two warriors. ‘No, it’s the foul kind. Cloth. Hair. Sits like tar on the tongue, eats into the back of your throat. It’s a Fall-damned mess, is what it is.’

Flanked now by the Tear Runners, Gall rode up the track. ‘Yelk, you say there are Barghast among them?’

The scout on his left nodded. ‘Two, maybe three legions, Warleader. They hold the left flank.’

Gall grunted. ‘I’ve never fought Barghast before—there weren’t many left in Seven Cities, and those ones were far to the north and east of our homelands, or so I recall. Do they seem formidable?’

‘Undisciplined is what they seemed,’ said Yelk. ‘Squatter than I’d expected, and wearing armour that looks as if it’s made of turtle shells. Their hair stands straight up, wedge-shaped, and with all the face paint they look half mad.’

Gall glanced over at the Tear Runner. ‘Do you know why you two are accompanying me to this parley, and not any of my officers?’

Yelk nodded. ‘We’re expendable, Warleader.’

‘As am I.’

‘There we do not agree with you.’

‘Glad to hear it. So, should they shit on the flag of peace, what will you and Ganap here do?’

‘We shall offer our bodies between you and their weapons, Warleader, and fight until you can win clear.’

‘Failing to save my life, what then?’

‘We kill their commander.’

‘Arrows?’

‘Knives.’

‘Good,’ said Gall, well pleased. ‘The young are fast. And you two are faster than most, which is why you’re Tear Runners. Perhaps,’ he added, ‘they will think you two my children, eh?’

The track lifted and then wound down over the ridge to converge with a broad cobbled road. At the junction three squat, square granaries plumed columns of black smoke. A waste—the locals had lit their own harvest rather than yield it to the Khundryl. Pernicious attitudes annoyed Gall, as if war was an excuse for anything. He recalled a story he’d heard from a Malazan—Fist Keneb, he believed—about a company of royal guard in the city of Bloor on Quon Tali, who, surrounded in a square, had used children as shields against the Emperor’s archers. Dassem Ultor’s face had darkened with disgust, and he’d had siege weapons brought in to fling nets instead of bolts, and once all the soldiers were tangled and brought down, the First Sword had sent in troops to extricate the children from their clutches. Among all the enemies of the Empire during Dassem Ultor’s command, those guards had been the only ones ever impaled and left to die slowly, in terrible agony. Some things were inexcusable. Gall would have skinned the bastards first.

Destroying perfectly good food wasn’t quite as atrocious, but the sentiment behind the gesture was little different from that of those Bloorian guards, as far as he was concerned. Without the crimes that had launched this war, the Khundryl would have paid good gold for that grain. This was how things fell apart when stupidity stole the crown. War was the ultimate disintegration of civility, and, for that matter, simple logic.

At the far end of the plain, perhaps a fifth of a league distant, the Bolkando army was arrayed across a rumpled range of low hills. Commanding the centre, straddling the road, was a legion of perhaps three thousand heavy infantry, their
armour black but glinting with gold, matching the facing on their rectangular shields. A small forest of standards rose from the centre of this legion.

‘Ganap, your eyes are said to be sharpest among all Tear Runners—tell me what you see on those standards.’

The woman took a moment to dislodge the wad of rustleaf bulging one cheek, sent out a stream of brown juice, and then said, ‘I see a crown.’

Gall nodded. ‘So.’

The Barghast were presented on the left flank, as Yelk had noted. The ranks were uneven, with some of the mercenaries sitting, helms doffed and shields down. The tall standards rising above their companies were all adorned with human skulls and braids of hair.

Right of the centre legion earthworks mottled the crest and slope of the hills, and pikes were visible jutting above the trenches. Probably regulars, Gall surmised. Slippery discipline, ill-trained, but in numbers sufficient to fix any enemy they faced, long enough for the centre and left to wheel round after breaking whatever charge Gall might throw at them.

Behind all three elements and spilling out to the wings were archers and skirmishers.

‘Yelk, tell me how you would engage what you see here.’

‘I wouldn’t, Warleader.’

Gall glanced over, his eyes brightening. ‘Go on. Would you flap your tail in flight? Surrender? Cower in bulging breeches and sue for peace? Spill out endless concessions until the shackles close round the ankles of every living Khundryl?’

‘I’d present our own wings and face them for most of a day, Warleader.’

‘And then?’

‘With dusk, we would retire from the field. Wait until the sun was fully down, and then peel out to either side and ride round the enemy army. We’d strike just before dawn, from behind, with flaming arrows and madness. We’d burn their baggage camp, scatter their archers, and then chew up the backsides of the legions. We’d attack in waves, with half a bell between them. By noon we would be gone.’

‘Leaving them to crawl bloodied back to their city—’

‘We would hit them again and again on that retreat—’

‘And use up all your arrows?’

‘Yes. As if we had millions of them, Warleader, an unending supply. And once we’ve chased them through the city gate, they would be ready to beg for peace.’

‘The Khundryl are Coltaine’s children indeed! Hah! Well done, Yelk! Now, let us meet this Bolkando King, and gauge well the chagrin in his eyes!’

Six slaves brought out the weapons and armour. The gold filigree on the black iron scales of the breastplate gleamed like runnels of sun-fire. The helm’s matching bowl displayed writhing serpents with jaws stretched, while the elongated lobster tail was polished bright silver. The hinged cheek-guards, when swung forward, would click and lock against the iron nasal septum. The Bolkando Royal Crest adorned the vambraces, while the greaves were scaled black. The broad,
straight-bladed, blunt-tipped sword rested in a lacquered scabbard of exquisite workmanship, belying the plain functionality of the weapon it embraced.

Every item was positioned with care upon a thick magenta carpet rolled out on the road, the slaves kneeling and waiting on three of the four sides.

Queen Abrastal walked up on the fourth side and stared down at the assemblage. After a moment she said, ‘This is ridiculous. Give me the helm, sword-belt and those gauntlets—if I have to wear the rest I won’t even be able to move, much less fight. Besides,’ she added, with a glare to her cadre of pallid advisors, ‘it hardly seems likely they’re planning betrayal—the presumed warleader and two pups . . . against my bodyguard of ten. They’d have to be suicidal and they’ve not shown such failings thus far, have they?’

Hethry, her third daughter, stepped forward and said, ‘It is your life that matters, Mother—’

‘Oh, eat my shit. If you could pull off the perfect disguise of a Khundryl to get a knife in my back, there’d be four of ’em riding up to our parley, not three. Go play with your brother, and tell me nothing about what you get up to with him. I’d like to keep my food down for a change.’ She held out her arms and slaves worked the gauntlets on. Another slave cinched the weapon belt round her solid, meaty hips, whilst a fourth one waited cradling the helm in gloved hands.

As Hethry retreated, after a few venomous darts at her mother, the Queen turned to the Gilk Warchief. ‘You coming along to see if they make you a better offer, Spax?’

The Barghast grinned, revealed filed teeth. ‘The Khundryl probably hold more of your treasury than you do, Firehair. But no, the Gilk are true to their word.’

Abastral grunted. ‘I imagine the one you call Tool might piss in laughter at hearing that.’

The Gilk’s broad, flat face lost all traces of humour. ‘If you were not a queen, woman, I’d have you hobbled for that.’

She stepped up to the warrior and slapped him on one shell-armoured shoulder. ‘Let’s see those pointies again, Spax, while you walk beside me and tell me all about this hobbling thing. If it’s as ugly as I suspect, I might adopt it for some of my daughters. Well, most of them, actually.’

Snagging the helm from the slave, she set out down the road, her bodyguard scrabbling to catch up and then flank her and Spax.

‘Your daughters need a whipping,’ the Gilk Warchief said. ‘Those I have met, anyway.’

‘Even Spultatha? You’ve been dimpling her thighs the last three nights straight—some kind of record for her, by the way. Must be she likes your barbarian ways.’

‘Especially her, Firehair. Wilful, demanding—any Barghast but a Gilk would have died of exhaustion by now.’ He barked a laugh. ‘I like you, and so I would never want to see you hobbled.’

‘But the wound that is named Tool is still raw, is it?’

He nodded. ‘Disappointment is a cancer, Queen.’

‘Tell me about it,’ she responded, thinking of her husband, and a few other things besides.

‘A woman hobbled has her feet chopped and can refuse no man or woman or, indeed, camp dog.’

‘I see. Use that word in the same sentence as my name again, Spax, and I’ll chop your cock off and feed it to my favourite corpse-rat.’

He grinned. ‘See these teeth?’

‘That’s better.’

The three Khundryl were waiting on the road, still in their saddles, but as the Bolkando contingent approached, the feather-cloaked warrior in the centre swung down and left his horse behind him as he stepped forward three paces. A moment later his two companions did the same.

‘Look at that,’ Abrastal observed under her breath. ‘Show me a Bolkando horse that just stands there once its reins are dropped.’

‘Horse-warriors,’ said Spax. ‘They are closer to their horses than they are to their wives, husbands and children. They are infuriating to fight against, Queen. Why, I recall the Rhivi—’

‘Not now, Spax. And stay back, among my soldiers. Watch. Listen. Say nothing.’

The Gilk shrugged. ‘As you like, Firehair.’

Despite herself, Abrastal was forced to admit that her first impression of Warleader Gall of the Burned Tears left her uneasy. He had the sharp, avid eyes of a hunting bird. He was well into his sixth decade, she judged, but he had the physique of a blacksmith. The black tattoos of tears tracked down his gaunt cheeks, vanishing into an iron-shot beard. The vast crow-feather cape was too heavy to ride out behind him as he strode towards her, instead flaring to the sides until it seemed he was perpetually emerging from a cavern mouth. The scales of his black-stained hauberk were tear-shaped across his broad chest, elongating into layered feathers on his shoulders.

His two bodyguards looked barely out of their teens, but they had the same predatory glint in their dark eyes. Abrastal had a sudden vision of taking the young men to her bed, and something delicious squirmed below her rounded belly. The young ones were best, not yet sunk into self-serving habits and whatnot, pliable to her domination, her measured techniques of training that some might call corruption. Well, her lovers never complained, did they?

The Queen blinked away the distraction and focused once more upon the Warleader. She had learned something of the cult binding these Khundryl. Struck to awe and then worship upon witnessing an enemy on the field of battle—an extraordinary notion, she had trouble believing it. So . . . foreign. In any case, whoever that commander was—who, in death, had found worshippers among his enemies—he must have possessed unusual virtues. One thing was undeniable, these savages had been fatally underestimated.

‘Warleader Gall,’ she said as the warrior halted two paces in front of her, ‘I am Abrastal, commander of the Evertine Legion and Queen of the Bolkando.’