The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (260 page)

‘Oh, there’s a woman in one of the rooms on the upper floor – if your evacuation of citizens involved a house-by-house search—’

‘The evacuation was voluntary, sir.’

‘She wouldn’t have agreed to it.’

‘Then she remains where she is.’

Gruntle nodded.

The lieutenant came to the captain’s side. ‘Your cutlasses – time to hone your tiger-claws, sir.’

‘Aye.’ Turning away, Gruntle did not notice the messenger’s head jerk back at the Lestari lieutenant’s words.

*   *   *

Through the dark cage of his visor, Shield Anvil Itkovian studied the hulking caravan captain who now strode towards a swordsmith, the short-legged Lestari trailing a step behind. The blood-stained cutlasses were out, the wide, notched, tip-heavy blades the colour of smoky flames.

He had come to meet this man for himself, to take his fullest measure and fashion a face to accompany the man’s extraordinary talents.

Itkovian already regretted the decision. He muttered a soft, lengthy curse at his own impetuosity.
Fights like a boar? Gods, no, this man is a big, plains-hunting cat. He has bulk, aye, but it passes unnoticed behind a deadly grace. Fener save us all, the Tiger of Summer’s ghost walks in this man’s shadow.

Returning to his horse, Itkovian drew himself up into the saddle. He gathered the reins. Swinging his mount round, he tilted his head back and stared at the morning sun.
The truth of this has burst like fire in my heart. On this, our last day, I have met this unnamed man, this servant of Treach, the Tiger of Summer … Treach ascending.

And Fener? The brutal boar whose savage cunning rides my soul – what of my lord?

Fener … descending. On this, our last day.

A susurrating roar rose in the distance, from all sides. The Tenescowri were on the move.

‘Twin Tusks guard us,’ Itkovian rasped, driving his heels into the horse’s flanks. The animal surged forward, sparks raining as its hooves struck the cobbles.

*   *   *

Grey-faced with exhaustion, Buke made his way towards the necromancers’ estate. It was a large edifice, commanding a long, low hill that looked too regular to be natural, surrounded by a high wall with mock guard towers at the corners. A grand entrance faced onto Kilsban Way, set back from the street itself with a ramped approach. The gate was a miniature version of the Thrall’s, vertically raised and lowered by countersunk centre-holed millstones.

A fireball had struck the gate, blasting it into ruin. The flames had raged for a time, blackening the stone frame and cracking it, but somehow the structure remained upright.

As the old caravan guard limped his way up the ramp towards it, he was startled by the sudden exit of a tall, gaunt, black-robed man. Stumbling, half hopping like a huge ebon-winged vulture, the man spun round to glare at Buke. His face twisted. ‘I am second only to Rath’Shadowthrone himself! Do you not know me? Do
they
not know me? I am Marble! Also known as the Malefic! Feared among all the cowering citizens of Capustan! A sorcerer of powers unimagined! Yet
they
…’ He sputtered with fury. ‘A boot to the backside, no less! I will have my revenge, this I swear!’

‘Ill-advised, priest,’ Buke said, not unkindly. ‘My employers—’

‘Are arrogant scum!’

‘That may be, but they’re not ones to irritate, sir.’

‘
Irritate?
When my master hears of this – this –
insult
delivered to his most valued servant, then, oh then shall the shadows flow!’ With a final snarl, the priest stamped down the walkway, black robe skirling dramatically in his wake.

Buke paused for a long moment, watching until the man named Marble disappeared around a corner.

The sound of fighting was on all sides, but getting no closer. Hours earlier, in the deep of the night when Buke had been helping people from the Camps and from Daru District’s tenements make their way to the Grey Swords’ places of mustering – from which they would be led to the hidden tunnel entrances – the Pannions had reached all the way to the street Buke had just walked. Somehow, Capustan’s motley collection of defenders had managed to drive them back. Bodies from both sides littered Kilsban Way.

Buke pushed himself into motion once more, passing beneath the scorched lintel of the entrance with a firm conviction that he would never again leave Bauchelain and Korbal Broach’s estate. Even as his steps slowed to a sudden surge of self-preservation, he saw it was too late.

Bauchelain stood in the courtyard. ‘Ah, my erstwhile employee. We’d wondered where you’d gone.’

Buke ducked his head. ‘My apologies, sir. I’d delivered the tax exemption writ to the Daru civic authorities as requested—’

‘Excellent, and was our argument well received?’

The old guard winced. ‘The event of siege, alas, offers no relief from property taxes, master. The monies are due. Fortunately, with the evacuation, there is no-one at Daru House to await their arrival.’

‘Yes, the evacuation. Tunnels. Very clever. We declined the offer, of course.’

‘Of course.’ Buke could no longer hold his gaze on the cobbles before him, and found his head turning, lifting slightly to take in the half-score Urdomen bodies lying bloodless, faces mottled black beneath their visors, on all sides.

‘A precipitous rush of these misguided soldiers,’ Bauchelain murmured. ‘Korbal was delighted, and makes preparations to recruit them.’

‘Recruit them, master? Oh, yes sir. Recruit them.’

The necromancer cocked his head. ‘Odd, dear Emancipor Reese uttered those very words, in an identical tone, not half a bell ago.’

‘Indeed, master.’

The two regarded each other for a brief span, then Bauchelain stroked his beard and turned away. ‘The Tenescowri are coming, did you know? Among them, Children of the Dead Seed. Extraordinary, these children. A dying man’s seed … Hmm. It’s said that the eldest among them now commands the entire peasant horde. I look forward to meeting him.’

‘Master? Uh, how, I mean—’

Bauchelain smiled. ‘Korbal is most eager to conduct a thorough examination of this child named Anaster. What flavour is his biology? Even I wonder at this.’

The fallen Urdomen lurched, twitched as one, hands clawing towards dropped weapons, helmed heads lifting.

Buke stared in horror.

‘Ah, you now have guards to command, Buke. I suggest you have them position themselves at the entrance. And perhaps one to each of the four corner towers. Tireless defenders, the best kind, yes?’

Emancipor Reese, clutching his mangy cat tight against his chest, stumbled out from the main house.

Bauchelain and Buke watched as the old man rushed towards one of the now standing Urdomen. Reese came up to the hulking warrior, reached out and tugged frantically at the undead’s chain collar and the jerkin beneath it The old man’s hand reached down beneath both layers, down, down.

Emancipor started gibbering. He pulled his hand clear, staggered back. ‘But – but—’ His lined, pebbled face swung to Bauchelain. ‘That … that man, Korbal – he has – he said – I saw!
He has their hearts!
He’s sewn them together, a bloody, throbbing mass on the kitchen table! But—’ He spun and thumped the Urdomen on the chest. ‘No wound!’

Bauchelain raised one thin eyebrow. ‘Ah, well, with you and friend Buke here interfering with Korbal Broach’s normal nightly activities, my colleague was forced to modify his habits, his modus operandi, if you will. Now, you see, my friends, he has no need to leave his room in order to satisfy his needs of acquisition. None the less, it should be said, please desist in your misguided efforts.’ The necromancer’s flat grey eyes fixed on Buke. ‘And as for the priest Keruli’s peculiar sorcery now residing within you, unveil it not, dear servant. We dislike company when in our Soletaken forms.’

Buke’s legs came close to giving out beneath him.

‘Emancipor,’ Bauchelain murmured, ‘do lend your shoulder to our guard.’

The old man stepped close. His eyes were so wide that Buke could see white all around them. Sweat beaded his wrinkled face. ‘I told you it was madness!’ he hissed. ‘What did Keruli do to you? Damn you, Buke—’

‘Shut up, Mancy,’ Buke growled. ‘You
knew
they were Soletaken. Yet you said nothing – but Keruli knew as well.’

Bauchelain strode towards the main house, humming under his breath.

Buke twisted and gripped Emancipor’s tunic. ‘I can
follow
them now! Keruli’s gift. I can follow those two anywhere!’

‘They’ll kill you. They’ll swat you down, Buke. You Hood-damned idiot—’

Buke managed a sickly grin. ‘Hood-damned? Oh yes, Mancy, we’re all that. Aren’t we just. Hood-damned, aye.’

A distant, terrible roar interrupted them, a sound that shivered through the city, swept in from all sides.

Emancipor paled. ‘The Tenescowri…’

But Buke’s attention had been drawn to the main building’s square tower, to the open shutters of the top, third floor’s room. Where two rooks now perched. ‘Oh yes,’ he muttered, baring his teeth, ‘I see you. You’re going after him, aren’t you? That first child of the Dead Seed. Anaster. You’re going after him.’

The rooks dropped from the ledge, wings spreading, swooped low over the compound, then, with heavy, audible flaps, lifted themselves clear of the compound wall. Flying southeast.

Buke pushed Reese away. ‘I can follow them! Oh yes. Keruli’s sweet gift…’
My own Soletaken form, the shape of wings, the air sliding over and beneath me. Gods, the freedom! What I will … finds form
—He felt his body veering, sweet warmth filling his limbs, the spice of his skin’s breath as it assumed a cloak of feathers. His body dwindling, changing shape. Heavy bones thinning, becoming lighter.

Keruli’s sweet gift, more than he ever imagined. Flight! Away from what I was! From all that I had been! Burdens, vanishing! Oh, I can follow those two dread creatures, those winged nightmares. I can follow, and where they strain and lumber on the unseen currents in the sky, I twist, dart, race like lightning!

Standing in the courtyard, Emancipor Reese watched through watering eyes Buke’s transformation. A blurring of the man, a drawing inward, the air filling with pungent spice. He watched as the sparrow hawk that had been Buke shot upward in a cavorting climbing spiral.

‘Aye,’ he muttered. ‘You can fly circles around them. But, dear Buke, when they decide to swat you down, it won’t be a duel on the wing. It’ll be sorcery. Those plodding rooks have no need for speed, no need for agility – and those gifts will avail you nothing when the time comes. Buke … you poor fool…’

*   *   *

High above Capustan, the sparrowhawk circled. The two rooks, Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, were far below yet perfectly visible to the raptor’s eyes. Flapping ponderously through wreaths of smoke, southeast, past the East Gate …

The city still burned in places, thrusting columns of black smoke skyward. The sparrowhawk studied the siege from a point of view that the world’s generals would die for. Wheeling, circling, watching.

The Tenescowri ringed the city in a thick, seething band. A third of a million, maybe more. Such a mass of people as Buke had never seen before. And the band had begun to constrict. A strangely colourless, writhing noose, drawing ever closer to the city’s feeble, crumbled walls and what seemed but a handful of defenders.

There would be no stopping this assault. An army measured not by bravery, but by something far deadlier, something unopposable: hunger. An army that could not afford to break, that saw only wasting death in retreat.

Capustan was about to be devoured.

The Pannion Seer is a monster in truth. A tyranny of need. And this will spread. Defeat him? You would have to kill every man, woman and child on this world who are bowed to hunger, everyone who faces starvation’s grisly grin. It has begun here, on Genabackis, but that is simply the heart. This tide will spread. It will infect every city, on every continent, it will devour empires and nations from within.

I see you now, Seer. From this height. I understand what you are, and what you will become. We are lost. We are all truly lost.

His thoughts were scattered by a virulent bloom of sorcery to the east. A knot of familiar magic swirled around a small section of the Tenescowri army. Black waves shot through with sickly purple streamed outward, cut down screaming peasants by the hundreds. Grey-streaming sorcery answered.

The sparrowhawk’s eyes saw the twin corbies now, there, in the midst of the magical storm. Demons burst from torn portals on the plain, tore mayhem through the shrieking, flinching ranks. Sorcery lashed back, swarmed over the creatures.

The two rooks swept down, converged on a figure sitting on a bucking roan horse. Waves of magic collided with a midnight flash, the concussion a thunder that reached up to where Buke circled.

The sparrowhawk’s beak opened, loosing a piercing cry. The rooks had peeled away. Sorcery hammered them, battered them as they flapped in hasty retreat.

The figure on the stamping horse was untouched. Surrounded by heaps of bodies, into which fellow Tenescowri now plunged. To feed.

Buke screamed another triumphant cry, dipped his wings, plummeted earthward.

He reached the estate’s courtyard well ahead of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, spiralling, slowing, wings buffeting the air. To hover the briefest of moments, before sembling, returning to his human form.

Emancipor Reese was nowhere to be seen. The undead Urdomen still stood in the positions where they had first arisen.

Feeling heavy and awkward in his body, Buke turned to study them. ‘Six of you to the gate – you’ – he pointed – ‘and the ones directly behind you. And you, to the northwest tower.’ He continued directing the silent warriors, placing them as Bauchelain had suggested. As he barked the last order, twin shadows tracked weaving paths across the cobbles. The rooks landed in the courtyard. Their feathers were in tatters. Smoke rose from one of them.

Buke watched the sembling, smiled at seeing, first Korbal Broach – his armour in shreds, rank tendrils of smoke wreathed around him – then Bauchelain, his pale face bruised along one side of his long jaw, blood crusting his moustache and staining his silver beard.