Assail (8 page)

Pran Chole did not answer. After a moment she glanced up to see that she was alone.

Certainty chilled her spine then. Gods, no. Not again. I can’t go. Can’t bear to witness it all again. It tore her apart to see it. But she should; if her words could sway just one …

She threw open the loose hide flap and ran for the breakers crashing beyond the intervening high dunes.

She found Pran Chole standing knee high in the foaming surf, facing the empty ocean. ‘Who comes!’ she shouted over the wind and the surge of waves.

‘I know not,’ he answered, as phlegmatic as ever.

She scanned the water, dark and webbed beneath the chill stars and passing courses of clouds. Her hides, sodden from her thighs, pulled upon her, heavy and clinging. Then darker shapes came emerging from the trough and fall of the waves: ravaged skulls, broken caps of bone and cured leather; the jagged stone tips of spears; the humped shoulders of animal hides. T’lan Imass strode forward from the surf, some dozen or more.

‘They are of the Kerluhm,’ Pran Chole murmured tonelessly. He pushed into the waves.

Though she was dreading it, the news still made her clench her fists and press one to her breast. Gods, no! More of them. Will they not stop coming? Why not others?

Pran Chole raised a hand of bone and cured leathery skin. ‘Greetings, Kerluhm,’ he called. ‘I am Pran Chole of the Kron. We honour you.’

‘I am Othut K’ho,’ one answered. ‘We honour the Kron.’ A ragged cape of sewn animal skins hung from this one’s bare bone shoulders. He turned to Silverfox and lowered himself to one knee in the surf. The others of his band joined him. ‘Summoner,’ he murmured as softly as Pran. ‘We honour you as well.’

She raised a hand for pause. Now, she knew, she had to command when her every instinct urged her to plead. ‘My thanks, Othut. If you honour me I must ask you agree to forestall any action until I have explained fully.’

His battered mien wrinkled up even more as his mostly fleshless brow crinkled. ‘Explain?’ he breathed. His empty sockets edged to the north and he murmured, ‘We are newly reawakened to the world, true. We were caught crossing the Agadal and the ice took us. It seems we slept for ages. And while we slumbered, interned, that river of ice carried us far afield indeed. I awoke on the shore of an unknown sea and freed what companions I could find. Then we heard the Call …’

‘Listen to me, Othut,’ she interjected, speaking with all her power over the roar of the surf. ‘If you honour me you must follow my command. And I command an end to the war, Othut. It is over. No more hostilities. We gather here and I will release you all. Is this understood, Othut? Are you listening?’

The Kerluhm’s rotted head, its tannin-stained skull peeking from behind the mummified flesh, had edged aside to Pran, and it raised a bone-thin arm to point to the north. ‘Is what I sense true?’ it asked, and Silverfox heard the familiar stunned amazement in his words.

Pran answered in a slow firm nod. ‘It is so. And we of the Kron name them beyond the boundary of the Ritual.’

Silverfox stood frozen, fists clenched at her sides, fairly quivering in dread. Now would come the answer, she knew. The T’lan did not dissemble. Nor hide their intent. It would happen now.

‘We Kerluhm,’ Othet answered, his voice even more raw and jagged, ‘do not.’

‘
No!
’ she cried once more – as she always did – but to no effect. The waves boiled about her as Kron warriors surged through the surface and they and the Kerluhm locked blades that clashed and grated. Pran shifted to stand protectively before her, though never in all the battles played out here on these beaches did one Imass ever move to threaten her.

She fell to her knees, the water at her breast, her face in her hands. Failure! Utter wretched failure once more! The cold waves splashed over her. The surge of bodies fighting around her died away.

‘It is over,’ Pran Chole said unnecessarily. ‘They have fled. My warriors pursue.’

She raised her face. Her tears felt hot on her chilled wet cheeks. ‘Your numbers are diminishing, Pran. Some time soon too many will arrive and you will be overrun. What then?’ she yelled. ‘What then!’

‘You will not be harmed.’

She lunged to her feet. Her wet hides slapped about her, almost pulling her over. She threw up a hand as if to strike his stone-hard face. ‘I do not speak of myself!’ She jabbed a finger to the north. ‘I speak of them!
Them!
What will happen to all those thousands … so many. A crime beyond imagining, Pran! And you Imass the perpetrators. Mass murderers …’ The enormity of it made her dizzy and she could not continue.

‘Omtose Phellack remains active in the north. It protects them yet.

‘For how long!’ she threw back at him. ‘It is weakening. You know this! In the little time we’ve been here I have felt it weakening.’

To this Pran could only offer the wordless gesture of those who live long enough in the indifferent world: the subtle lift of the shoulders that says,
who is to know?

* * *

Fisher Kel Tath found the Bone Peninsula much the same as when he’d left it so very long ago. Which is to say: insular, murderous, and savage. The pocket city-states still jostled and warred amongst themselves seeking supremacy. And each, in its turn, succeeded in grasping a taste of said supremacy only to be dragged down eventually by some new alliance of their neighbours, said alliance then flying apart in the inevitable betrayals and killings. And so it went. On and on. Endlessly repeating itself and none apparently learning a thing from it. Fisher was even more disheartened and disgusted than when he’d fled it all originally.

Yet he’d returned. Drawn not by the steep inlets and forested mountain slopes that so figured in his youth, but by hints from readings in the divinatory Dragons deck, by whispered rumours, and by plain gut instincts that told him that things were about to change here in the lands of Assail, so very ancient and clinging to the old ways of family, clan and blood-feud.

He lingered in Holly, at the top of the mountainous peninsula. It was one of the more northerly of the coastal kingdoms. They were named kingdoms here along the coast, though in any other region they would rate as little more than baronies, or minor city-states. He lingered because when he arrived he found himself anticipated by a horde of foreigners all come ashore from the outland vessels now crowding the tiny fishing harbour of this modest fortress and town.

It seemed that for all his seeking out of subtle readers of the deck, paying of noted prophets, and even time spent insinuating himself into the good graces of a certain priestess of the Queen of Dreams for hints of future events, he had failed to discover the news that was clearly common knowledge: that streams bedded in gold had been discovered in northern Assail lands.

He did not know whether to consider it a personal failing, or a sad comment on the skills of said clairvoyants. In any case, he now had a seat in a tavern quite taken over by foreigners – and he thought by everyone to be among them – while strategy was being hammered out around the captain’s table.

It was a raucous affair of banged fists, yelled insults, and daggers half drawn while their owners, hired swords, and plain men-at-arms watched one another suspiciously.

‘We must all march together overland.’ This was Marshal Teal of Lether, tall, pole-slim and sour-faced, who possessed the largest force: a pocket army of forty armed fortune-hunters, all probable ex-soldiers. He called himself ‘Marshal’, though Fisher couldn’t recall such a rank associated with the Letherii military.

‘Overland is too slow!’ This from Enguf, called the Broad, a man who couldn’t be more opposite to the pale-lipped Letherii commander: a squat, flame-haired south Genabackan pirate who’d landed with a crew of twenty armed, lean and hungry swordsmen. ‘Those who continue on to the inland sea will take everything!’

‘We have no time for such games,’ cut in the third commander at the table, a Malazan aristocrat, Malle of Gris. She was an older woman, wiry, in thick layered finery of the sort that was fashionable in Unta two decades ago. Thick silver wristlets gleamed at her wrists like manacles, and kohl lined her eyes giving her something of the look of an owl. ‘That you landed here betrays your intent clearly.’

‘And that is?’ Enguf answered, not the least intimidated by the woman’s haughty manner.

She dismissed him with a wave of a skinny hand. ‘We three must have seen maps or heard accounts that hint of the dangers all along the inland sea. The Sea of Dread, many style it. The Anguish Coast. Are we three not betting that few of these vessels will reach the inland Sea of Gold? Better to cut across the top of the peninsula, neh? Though the mountain passes of the Bone range no doubt hold their own dangers.’

‘Quite so, Malle,’ put in Marshal Teal. ‘We will march for the top of the Demon Narrows. To a settlement named Desolation Bay.’

‘Hardly encouraging, that,’ muttered Enguf.

‘Not to worry,’ said Malle. Her lips thinned into a humourless predatory smile. ‘I believe that to be a description of what awaits those foolish enough to attempt the narrows.’

‘We are resolved then?’ enquired Teal. He signed to his second, who drew a sheet of parchment from a pouch. ‘We the undersigned,’ he began, dictating, ‘agree to equal shares of all profits accruing, after shared expenses, from our venture in gathering mineral resources from the Salt range.’ When his aide had finished, he signed the document then slid it and the quill across to Malle, who also signed. She offered it to Enguf, who scowled at the sheet and the other two commanders.

‘Must I?’ he growled distastefully.

‘Mercantile contracts must be signed and witnessed,’ insisted Teal.

Enguf snatched up a candle and tilted it over the document. ‘All this paper waving and scratching is nothing more than hollow mummery. What matters is a man or a woman’s word.’

‘Nevertheless …’ Malle murmured.

Wax dripped to the page and Enguf pressed a ring into the cooling droplet. He pushed the sheet to Teal. ‘Done. Meaningless charade though it is.’

‘In a barbaric country perhaps,’ allowed Teal. His second rolled the document and slipped it away. ‘But in Lether the rule of law is respected.’

Enguf stroked his thick russet beard. ‘Oh yes. I forgot that being civilized means constructing laws that favour yourself while at the same time disadvantaging everyone else.’

Teal offered a bloodless smile. ‘My friend, if in some manner you find yourself disadvantaged by the law then by definition you must be a criminal.’

‘You take my point exactly.’

Malle threw up a hand for silence. ‘We are outside our purview. I suggest we ready for the morrow.’

Teal nodded his assent. ‘Of course. My thanks, Malle of Gris.’

‘What?’ Enguf objected, quite disbelieving. ‘Not one drink to our partnership? Come now, we must drink. All mercantile agreements must be sealed by a toast.’

Teal’s mouth tightened even more as his jaws clenched.

‘If we must,’ said Malle. ‘Myself, I favour liqueurs. Wormwood, or dhenrabi blood, preferably.’

Enguf raised his brows, impressed. ‘Well – I doubt we’ll find such rare delicacies here. But we can only try.’ He clapped his hands. ‘Innkeep? Hello? Demons and gods, has the man fled?’ He gestured to his crew and two men got to their feet and ambled to the rear, where, Fisher imagined, the man was probably cowering, overcome by this crowd of foreigners who had taken over his business.

Fisher noted a lad lingering about the back door. He was biting his lip and shifting his weight from foot to foot, obviously anxious. He crossed to him. ‘Is something wrong, lad?’

The boy jumped, rather surprised. ‘You don’t talk funny.’

Fisher cursed his mistake, muttered, ‘I’ve travelled a lot. So, what’s troubling you?’

‘Father sent me to give a message – but I don’t know who to talk to.’

‘Can you tell it to me? I’ll pass it along.’

The boy brightened; clearly this was what he’d hoped to hear. He gestured to the north. ‘We found another of you foreigners washed up on the shore. We brought him here but don’t know what to do with him. The Countess’s men won’t take him.’

Iren, Countess of Holly. And north of here was a good part of the Wreckers’ Coast. The gods alone knew how many of the ships making for this region had their bottoms ripped out along that length of treacherous rocks and shoals. To its inhabitants anyone not local was free game to rob and murder. It was, in point of fact, the only industry they had. ‘Why bring him here?’ Fisher asked, now wondering why the lad’s father hadn’t robbed this fellow and pushed him under as he had probably done countless times before.

The boy now got a strange look in his eyes, wary, and touched with fear. ‘He’s a strange one, sir.’

A strange one? ‘Well, let’s take a look.’

The lad bobbed his head, grateful and relieved. He motioned to the rear. ‘We’d best go this way.’

‘The back? Why?’

The boy now squinted to the front. ‘Ah … reasons, sir.’

One of Enguf’s men appeared from the kitchens. ‘Can’t find the innkeep anywhere,’ he bellowed.

Fisher eyed the sturdy hewn planks of the front door. Come to think of it, no one had come or gone for some time. He motioned the lad onward. ‘After you.’