The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (145 page)

Teeth clenched, Lostara Yil twisted around.

The Semk demon was ten paces away, huge and unstoppable. Pearl crouched between them, holding knives that dripped red fire. Lostara knew he considered himself already dead.

The thing that suddenly closed from the demon's left was a nightmare. Black, three-limbed, a jutting shoulder blade like a cowl behind a long-necked head, a grinning jaw crowded with fangs, and a single, flat black eye that glistened wetly.

Even more terrifying was the humanoid figure that sat behind that shoulder blade, its face a mocking mimicry of the beast it rode, the lips peeled back to reveal daggerlike fangs as long as a toddler's fingers, its lone eye flashing.

The apparition struck the Semk demon like a runaway armored wagon. The single forelimb snapped forward to plunge deep into the demon's belly, then pulled back in an explosion of spurting fluids. Clenched in that forelimb's grip was something that radiated fury in palpable waves. The air went icy.

Pearl backed away until his heels struck Lostara, then he reached down one hand, eyes still on the scene, and gripped her weapon harness.

The Semk's body seemed to fold in on itself as it staggered back. The apparition reared, still clutching the fleshy, dripping object.

Its rider made a grab for it, but the creature hissed, twisting to keep it out of his reach. Instead it flung the object away into the mists.

The Semk stumbled after it.

The apparition's long head swung to face Lostara and Pearl with that ghastly grin.

“Thank you,” Pearl whispered.

A portal blossomed around them.

Lostara blinked up at a dull, ash-laden sky. There was no sound but their breathing.
Safe
. A moment later unconsciousness slipped over her like a shroud.

As Duiker strode between the large, spacious tents, a chorus of shouts erupted ahead. A moment later one of the Wickan dogs appeared, head low, a surging rush of muscle, heading straight for the historian. Duiker fumbled for his sword, already knowing it was far too late. At the last instant the huge animal dodged lithely around him, and the historian saw that it held in its mouth a lapdog, its eyes dark pools of terror.

The cattle-dog ran on, slipping between two tents and disappearing from sight.

Ahead of the historian, a number of figures appeared, armed with large rocks and—bizarrely—Kanese parasols. One and all, they were dressed as if about to attend a royal function, although in their expressions Duiker saw raw fury.

“You there!” one yelled imperiously. “Old man! Did you see a mad hound just now?”

“I saw a running cattle-dog, aye,” the historian quietly replied.

“With a rare Hengese roach dog in its mouth?”

A dog that eats cockroaches?
“Rare? I assumed it was raw.”

The nobles grew quiet as gazes focused on Duiker.

“A foolish time for humor, old man,” the spokesman growled. He was younger than the others, his honey-colored skin and large eyes denoting his Quon Talian lineage. He was lean, with the physical assurance of a duellist—the identification confirmed by the basket-hilted rapier at his belt. Moreover, there was something in the man's eyes that suggested to Duiker that here was someone who enjoyed killing.

The man approached, his walk becoming a swagger. “An apology, peasant—though I'll grant it won't save you from a beating, at least you'll stay breathing…”

A horseman approached from behind at a canter.

Duiker saw the duellist's eyes dart over the historian's shoulder.

Corporal List reined in, ignoring the nobleman. “My apologies, sir,” he said. “I was delayed at the smithy. Where is your horse?”

“With the main herd,” Duiker replied. “A day off for the poor beast—long overdue.”

For a young man of low rank, List managed an impressive expression of cold regard as he finally looked down at the nobleman. “If we arrive late, sir,” he said to Duiker, “Coltaine will demand an explanation.”

The historian addressed the nobleman. “Are we done here?”

The man gave a curt nod. “For now,” he said.

Escorted by the corporal, Duiker resumed his journey through the nobles' camp. When they had gone a dozen paces, List leaned over his saddle. “Alar looked ready to call you out, Historian.”

“He's known, then? Alar.”

“Pullyk Alar—”

“How unfortunate for him.”

List grinned.

They came to a central clearing in the encampment and discovered a whipping underway. The short, wide man with the leather cat-tail in one heat-bloated hand was familiar. The victim was a servant. Three other servants stood off to one side, their eyes averted. A few other nobleborn stood nearby, gathered around a weeping woman and voicing murmurs of consolation.

Lenestro's gold-brocaded cloak had lost some of its brilliant sheen, and in his red-faced frenzy as he swung the cat-tail he looked like a frothing ape performing the traditional King's Mirror farce at a village fair.

“I see the nobles are pleased by the return of their servantfolk,” List said dryly.

“I suspect this has more to do with a snatched lapdog,” the historian muttered. “In any case, this stops now.”

The corporal glanced over. “He'll simply resume it later, sir.”

Duiker said nothing.

“Who would steal a lapdog?” List wondered, staying alongside the historian as he approached Lenestro.

“Who wouldn't? We've water but we're still hungry. In any case, one of the Wickan cattle-dogs thought it up before the rest of us—to our collective embarrassment.”

“I blame preoccupation, sir.”

Lenestro noted their approach and paused his whipping, his breath loud as a bellows.

Ignoring the nobleman, Duiker went to the servant. The man was old, down on his elbows and knees, hands held protectively behind his head. Red welts rode his knuckles, his neck and down the length of his bony back. Beneath the ruin were the tracks of older scars. A jewel-studded leash with a broken collar lay in the dust beside him.

“Not your business, Historian,” Lenestro snapped.

“These servants stood a Tithansi charge at Sekala,” Duiker said. “That defense helped to keep your head on your shoulders, Lenestro.”

“Coltaine stole property!” the nobleman squealed. “The Council so judged him, the fine has been issued!”

“Issued,” List said, “and duly pissed on.”

Lenestro wheeled on the corporal, raised his whip.

“A warning,” Duiker said, straightening. “Striking a soldier of the Seventh—or, for that matter, his horse—will see you hung.”

Lenestro visibly struggled with his temper, his arm still raised, the whip quivering.

Others were gathering, their sympathy clearly united with Lenestro. Even so, the historian did not anticipate violence. The nobles might well possess unrealistic notions, but they were anything but suicidal.

Duiker spoke, “Corporal, we'll take this man to the Seventh's healers.”

“Yes, sir,” List replied, briskly dismounting.

The servant had passed out. Together they carried him to the horse and laid him belly-down across the saddle.

“He shall be returned to me once healed,” Lenestro said.

“So you can do it all over again? Wrong, he'll not be returned to you.”
And if you and your comrades are outraged, wait till an hour from now
.

“All such acts contrary to Malazan law are being noted,” the nobleman said shrilly. “There shall be recompense, with interest.”

Duiker had heard enough. He suddenly closed the distance to grasp Lenestro's cloak collar with both hands, and gave the man a teeth-rattling shake. The whip fell to the ground. The nobleman's eyes were wide with terror—reminding the historian of the lapdog's as it rode the hound's mouth.

“You probably think,” Duiker whispered, “that I'm about to tell you about the situation we're all in. But it's already quite evident that there'd be little point. You are a small-brained thug, Lenestro. Push me again, and I'll have you eating pigshit and liking it.” He shook the pathetic creature again, then dropped him.

Lenestro collapsed.

Duiker frowned down at the man.

“He's fainted, sir,” List said.

“So he has.”
Old man scared you, did he?

“Was that really necessary?” a voice asked plaintively. Nethpara emerged from the crowd. “As if our ongoing petition is not crowded enough, now we have personal bullying to add to our grievances. Shame on you, Historian—”

“Excuse me, sir,” List said, “but you might wish to know—before you resume berating the historian—that scholarship came late to this man. You will find his name among the Noted on the First Army's Column at Unta, and had you not just come late to this scene, you would have witnessed an old soldier's temper. Indeed, it was admirable restraint that the historian elected to use both hands to grip Lenestro's cloak, lest he use one to unsheathe that well-worn sword at his hip and drive it through the toad's heart.”

Nethpara blinked sweat from his eyes.

Duiker slowly swung to face List.

The corporal noted the dismay in the historian's face and answered it with a wink. “We'd best move on, sir,” he said.

They left behind a gathering in the clearing that broke its silence only after they'd entered the opposite aisle.

List walked alongside the historian, leading his horse by the reins. “It still astonishes me that they persist in the notion that we will survive this journey.”

Duiker glanced over in surprise. “Are you lacking such faith, then, Corporal?”

“We'll never reach Aren, Historian. Yet the fools compile their petitions, their grievances—against the very people keeping them alive.”

“There's great need to maintain the illusion of order, List. In us all.”

The young man's expression turned wry. “I missed your moment of sympathy back there, sir.”

“Obviously.”

They left the nobles' encampment and entered the mayhem of the wagons bearing wounded. Voices moaned a constant chorus of pain. A chill crept over Duiker. Even wheeled hospitals carried with them that pervasive atmosphere of fear, the sounds of defiance and the silence of surrender. Mortality's many comforting layers had been stripped away, revealing wracked bones, a sudden comprehension of death that throbbed like an exposed nerve.

Awareness and revelations thickened the prairie air in a manner priests could only dream of for their temples.
To fear the gods is to fear death. In places where men and women are dying, the gods no longer stand in the spaces in between. The soothing intercession is gone. They've stepped back, back through the gates, and watch from the other side. Watch and wait
.

“We should've gone around,” List muttered.

“Even without that man in need on your horse,” Duiker said, “I would have insisted we pass through this place, Corporal.”

“I've learned this lesson already,” List replied, a tautness in his tone.

“From your earlier words, I would suggest that the lesson you have learned is different from mine, lad.”

“This place encourages you, Historian?”

“Strengthens, Corporal, though in a cold way, I admit. Never mind the games of Ascendants. This is what we are. The endless struggle laid bare. Gone is the idyllic, the deceit of self-import as well as the false humility of insignificance. Even as we battle wholly personal battles, we are unified. This is the place of level earth, Corporal. That is its lesson, and I wonder if it is an accident that that deluded mob in gold threads must walk in the wake of these wagons.”

“Either way, few revelations have bled back to stain noble sentiments.”

“No? I smelled desperation back there, Corporal.”

List spied a healer and they delivered the servant into the woman's blood-smeared hands.

The sun was low on the horizon directly ahead by the time they reached the Seventh's main camp. The faint smoke from the dung fires hung like gilded gauze over the ordered rows of tents. Off to one side two squads of infantry had set to in a contest of belt-grip, using a leather-strapped skullcap for a ball. A ring of cheering, jeering onlookers had gathered. Laughter rang in the air.

Duiker remembered the words of an old marine from his soldiering days.
Some times you just have to grin and spit in Hood's face
. The contesting squads were doing just that, running themselves ragged to sneer at their own exhaustion besides, and well aware that Tithansi eyes watched from a distance.

They were a day away from the River P'atha, and the impending battle was a promise that thickened the dusk.

Two of the Seventh's marines flanked Coltaine's command tent, and the historian recognized one of them.

She nodded. “Historian.”

There was a look in her pale eyes that seemed to lay an invisible hand against his chest, and Duiker was stilled to silence, though he managed a smile.

As they passed between the drawn flaps, List murmured, “Well now, Historian.”

“Enough of that, Corporal.” But he did not glance over to nail the young man's grin, as he was tempted to do.
A man gets to an age where he's wise not to banter on desire with a comrade half his age. Too pathetic by far, that illusion of competition. Besides, that look of hers was likely more pitying than anything else, no matter what my heart whispered. Put an end to your foolish thoughts, old man
.

Coltaine stood near the center pole, his expression dark. Duiker and List's arrival had interrupted a conversation. Bult and Captain Lull sat on saddle-chairs, looking glum. Sormo stood wrapped in an antelope hide, his back to the tent's far wall, his eyes hooded in shadow. The air was sweltering and tense.

Bult cleared his throat. “Sormo was explaining about the Semk godling,” he said. “The spirits say something damaged it. Badly. The night of the raid—a demon walked the land. Lightly, I gather, leaving a spoor not easily sniffed out. In any case, it appeared, mauled the Semk, then left. It seems, Historian, that the Claw had company.”

“An Imperial demon?”

Bult shrugged and swung his flat gaze to Sormo.

The warlock, looking like a black vulture perched on a fence pole, stirred slightly. “There is precedent,” he admitted. “Yet Nil believes otherwise.”

“Why?” Duiker asked.

There was a long pause before Sormo answered. “When Nil fled into himself that night…no, that is, he
believed
that it was his own mind that sheltered him from the Semk's sorcerous attack…” It was clear that the warlock was in difficulty with his words. “The Tano Spiritwalkers of this land are said to be able to quest through a hidden world—not a true warren, but a realm where souls are freed of flesh and bone. It seems that Nil stumbled into such a place, and there he came face to face with…someone else. At first he thought it but an aspect of himself, a monstrous reflection—”

“Monstrous?” Duiker asked.

“A boy of Nil's own age, yet with a demonic face. Nil believes it was bonded with the apparition that attacked the Semk. Imperial demons rarely possess human familiars.”

“Then who sent it?”

“Perhaps no one.”

No wonder Coltaine's had his black feathers ruffled
.

After a few minutes Bult sighed loudly, stretching out his gnarled, bandy legs. “Kamist Reloe has prepared a welcome for us the other side of the River P'atha. We cannot afford to go around him. Therefore we shall go through him.”

“You ride with the marines,” Coltaine told Duiker.

The historian glanced at Captain Lull.