Return of the Crimson Guard (79 page)

‘For most of us, I think you'll find.’ Then Ho stopped. Something had been bothering him about the installation. He glanced around again, thinking. ‘Where are the wagons? Where's the track to the coast to deliver the ore?’ He pointed to the haphazardly piled barrels. ‘Those are empty.
Where are all the full ones?’

Grief was looking away, squinting into the distance, the wrinkles around his eyes almost hiding them. ‘I'm sorry.’

‘Sorry?
You're sorry?
What do you mean, Hood take you!’

‘He means they've been dumping them,’ said the woman. Ho spun; she'd followed along.

‘Dumping them? They dump them!’ Ho raised his dirty, broken-nailed hands to Grief. ‘Seventy years of scraping and gouging – halved rations when we missed our quotas – and they … they just…’ Ho lurched off for the barracks.

Grief hurried to catch up. ‘Not at first, I understand. Only the last few, ah, decades. It was all played out, not worth refining. I'm sorry, Ho.’

The door wouldn't open. When Ho turned his shoulder to it as if he would batter it down, Grief stepped in front, pulled out two wedges. Ho pushed it open. He found the guards on the floor, lying down and sitting. Seeing Ho, those who could, stood. Seeing Grief they flinched. Almost all carried bloody head wounds, bruising blossoming deep black and purple. Ho thought again of the short batons Grief had whittled.
So, yes, weapons after all.
‘Who is the senior officer?’

A short, broad fellow with a blond beard stood forward. He straightened his linen shirt. ‘I am Captain Galith. Who in the Abyss are you?’

‘Am I to understand that you have been dumping the ore that we have been sending up?’

A smile of understanding crept up the man's mouth. ‘Yes, it was policy when I arrived five years ago. We tested each delivery and dumped anything below refinable traces.’

Ho ran a hand through his short hair and found drops of sweat running down his temples. ‘And tell me when … how often were these standards met?’

The smile turned down into mocking defiance. ‘Never.’

Ho grasped a handful of the man's shirt. ‘Come with me.’ He walked the man out towards the gaping ledge.

Grief followed along. ‘What are you going to do, Ho? Toss him in? I can't allow that.’

‘You can't—’ Ho stopped, faced the short, muscular Napan. ‘Who do you think you are? You hang around for a few months and you know everything? This goes way back.’

‘These men surrendered to me. Not you. They're under my protection.’

Facing the Malazan officer, Ho took a deep steadying breath then forced his fist open; Captain Galith pulled his bunched shirt free. ‘You didn't have the guts anyway,’ he grated.

Ho swung a backhanded slap that caught the man across the side of his head, sending him off his feet to lie motionless. Grief leapt backwards clasping the grip of one sword. ‘How did you do that!’ he demanded, eyes slitted.

‘How did you have Treat defeat some twenty guards?’

Grief straightened, inclining his head in acknowledgement of the point. He smiled in a wicked humour. ‘We surprised them.’

‘If you two have finished your pissing contest then perhaps we can discuss how we're getting off this island?’

Grief and Ho turned to the dumpy, grey-haired female inmate. ‘Listen,’ Ho said impatiently, ‘what in the Lady's Favour is your name anyway?’

She crossed her thick arms across her wide chest. ‘Devaleth Omptol.’

‘Where are you from?’

‘It wouldn't mean anything to you.’

Ho rolled his eyes. ‘Gods, woman, there are over forty scholars, historians and archivists here.’

‘Mare. Ship's mage, out of Black City.’

‘You're from Fist, then.’

The woman's brows rose, surprised. ‘Yes. That name's not in common usage.’

Grief took the feet of the unconscious captain, began dragging him back to the barracks. ‘Ship's mage, hey? That'll be damned useful.’

‘If either of you think I'm going to summon my Warren with all this Otataral around you're the insane ones.’ She shouted after Grief, ‘How are we getting off this blasted island anyway?’

‘Treat's going to get the rest of our, ah, team, tonight. We have a ship.’

Devaleth snorted something that sounded like ‘Fine!’ and walked away.

‘Where are
you
going?’ Ho called after her.

She pointed to the dunes. ‘There's an ocean out there. I'm going to wash my clothes, scrub my skin with sand, scrub my hair, and then I'm going to do it all over again!’

Ho plucked at his threadbare, dirty jerkin, lifted a foot in its worn leather sandal. All impregnated with the ore. He looked to the barracks, his eyes widening, and he ran after Grief. ‘Wait a moment!’

* * *

Ghelel wanted to curry her own mount. It was an eager mare she'd grown quite fond of, but Molk had warned against it saying that the regulars took care of such things and that she, as a Prevost, ought not to lower herself. She personally saw nothing odd in an officer caring for his or her own horse; Molk, however, was insistent. And so she found herself facing another empty evening of waiting – waiting for intelligence from Li Heng on any development in the siege, which appeared to have settled into a sullen stalemate despite the early victories. Or waiting for intelligence from the east on the progress of the Empress's armada. Or of a new development: the coastal raids of a significant pirate navy that had coalesced to take advantage of the chaos, pillaging Unta and now Cawn. Just two days ago word reached them that these raiders had become so emboldened they were actually marching inland. The betting around the tents was on how far they dared go. Raids on Telo or Ipras were the odds-on favourites.

She therefore faced the same choice that wasn't really a choice this last week since General Urko's army had marched through: lie
staring at the roof of her tent, sitting at the main campfire or visiting the command tent. Spending another useless evening at the campfire meant watching the Falaran cavalrymen led by their fat captain, Tonley, share barbs and boasts with the Seti while swilling enormous quantities of whatever alcohol his men had most recently ‘liberated’. Most often beer, though the occasional cask of distilled spirits appeared, and even skins of mead. Visiting the command tent meant, well, getting even closer to Commander Ullen. Something she found frighteningly easy to do.

What would the Marquis think? Or Choss? Would they approve? Ghelel pulled her gloves tighter against the chill night air, glanced to the east where the land fell away into the Idryn's flat, rich floodplain. Somewhere there just days away marched a ragged horde of pirate raiders. Idly, she wondered why Ullen didn't simply uproot his rearguard battalion together with the Falaran lancers, the Seti scouts and the Marshland cavalry and wipe the brigands from the face of the continent. Well, damn them anyway; they maintained she was the heir of the Talian Hegemony, the Tali of Quon Tali. Therefore she outranked the Marquis and Choss wasn't here. She headed to the command tent.

Reaching a main alley in the encampment, she saw ahead the torches and the posted guards, Malazan regulars of the Falaran brigades, and she slowed. If the League
should
win the coming confrontation and she were installed as the Tali of Quon Tali … how would her behaviour here now come to reflect upon her in the eyes of these regulars everywhere? The thought of their mockery burned upon her face.

The eyes of those guards had her now, glittering in the dark beneath their helmets, and she forced herself to keep moving. Well, damn them too; right now she was nothing more than a lowly cavalry captain, a Prevost. Lowly, and lonely.

As she approached, the guards inclined their heads in acknowledgement and one pushed aside the flap. Ghelel gave as courteous a response as she dared and ducked within. It was warm inside. The golden light of lanterns lit a cluttered table, a scattering of chairs and a low table littered with fruit, meats and carafes of wine. Commander Ullen straightened from pouring wine at the table and bowed. The Marquis Jhardin straightened and bowed as well, though more slowly and perfunctorily – a mere observance of aristocratic courtesy. For her part, Ghelel saluted two superior officers.

Ullen waved the salute aside. ‘Please, Alil. How many times must I ask?’

‘Every time, sir.’ Ghelel drew off her gloves and cloak, draped them over a chair.

‘We were just talking of this pirate army,’ the Marquis said, easing himself back down. ‘They say that at Unta they must have tried to rob the Imperial Arsenal. Blew up half the city and themselves for their trouble.’

‘There's enough of them left,’ Ullen growled into his cup, and sat, stretching out his legs. Ghelel liked the way he did that; and liked the way he watched her from the corner of his pale-blue eyes, almost shyly. She sat at the table, picked up a carafe. ‘I quite understand why we aren't swatting them. I mean, since they number so many …’

A smile from Ullen. One that held no mockery at all, only a bright amusement shared by his eyes. ‘How gigantic have they become now?’

‘I overheard one trooper swear them to be at least thirty thousand.’

The Marquis whistled. ‘Prodigious multiplying indeed. Forget them, Alil. They're just a mob of looters. We don't care about the vultures. We've come for a lioness.’

But Ullen frowned, the lines of care around his mouth deepening. Ghelel caught his eye, arched a questioning brow. ‘We aren't ignoring them, Alil. I have Seti scouts watching from a distance. There have been some rather disturbing, admittedly contrary, rumours about them. But they are – how shall I put it?
Difficult
to credit. And our mage with Urko, Bala, has sent the message that she is troubled. She suspects powerful mages shielding themselves from her questings.’

‘There must be one or two forceful personalities keeping the horde together,’ the Marquis opined. ‘We'll spot them and eliminate them and the mob will evaporate. They should not have come inland – they are obviously overconfident.’

‘Was Kellanved overconfident?’ Ullen mused aloud, eyeing his glass, ‘when he marched inland with his pirate raiders from Malaz? And Heng was one of his first conquests.’

Neither the Marquis nor Ghelel spoke for a time. The Marquis inclined his head to concede the point. ‘I suppose you could say he was the exception that proves the rule.’

Ghelel studied her wine glass. ‘Speaking of the Throne … why don't we go to meet her? Excuse me for asking, but as new to the command – could we not stop her in the narrow plains west of Cawn?’

Another smile from Ullen. ‘True.’ He stretched, ran both hands
through his short blond hair. ‘But then she would simply withdraw to Cawn and wait for us. That we cannot have. As an advocate would say, the burden of proof lies with us. We have to
beat
her; she merely has to stand back and wait for our support to erode.’

For all Ghelel knew Ullen was patronizing her just as Choss and Amaron had, only his manners were smoother. But there was nothing in it that
felt
that way to her; they were merely talking through the options together and he was giving the benefit of his greater experience. She wondered again just how much the man knew of her, how much Urko or the Marquis had told him. It could mean a great deal to know that. ‘Why should our support be eroding – not hers?’

‘Because if we can't take Heng, how can we take anything?’

Ghelel pursed her lips at the truth of that sobering evaluation. Indeed. Why should any of the League's supporters stay with them if they should fail here? They would face wholesale desertions. A return to independent kingdoms with the old war of all against all not far behind. Continent-wide strife, the inevitable dissolution into chaos with starvation, brutality and petty warlordism. Something Ghelel would do anything to avoid.

The Marquis drained his glass and stood. ‘If the Empress commits to the field then Heng can hang itself.’ He saluted Ullen: ‘Commander.’ Bowed to Ghelel: ‘Prevost. I will leave you two to sort out the rest of the problems facing our army and will expect appropriate orders tomorrow. Good night.’