Stonewielder (43 page)

The Adjunct opened the door.

Reaching the street, Rillish said nothing. Ranks of infantry marched past. Smoke plumed up from still-burning buildings. Broken rubble choked a side street. None of it registered clearly with him; everything spun as his pulse throbbed in his chest and temple. As they walked side by side, Devaleth and he, the Adjunct having remained behind for now, Devaleth said quietly, ‘You show great forbearance, Fist.’

Rillish glanced behind to Captain Peles and his guard, gave a curt wave as if to cut the memory away. ‘Whether I bellow and bluster, he remains my commanding officer. There is nothing I can do. Therefore, I’d rather cultivate equanimity. For my peace of mind.’

‘His paranoia threatens to incite the very actions he suspects.’

Rillish shot her a hard stare. ‘I’ll thank you not to talk of such things again, High Mage.’

She inclined her head. ‘As you prefer, Fist.’

‘For now let us get the 4th organized. I will hold a staff meeting at noon.’

‘Very good, sir.’

*    *    *

Orzu had fished the inland seas of Korel and its archipelagos all his life. He’d been born on a boat, part of no nation or state, had grown
up knowing loyalty to no land or lands. Lately he and his clan had been living in a tiny fishing hamlet so small it appeared on no map. It was a collection of slate-roofed stone huts on the shores of the Plains of Blight. And if one climbed the tallest hill within a day’s walk and squinted hard to the south one could just make out the snowy peaks of the Iceback range. So it was quite a surprise to him when three men and a woman came tramping down the barren shore of black wave-smoothed stones to where he sat mending his nets in the lee of his boat.

He watched them approach, making no secret of his open examination. Seen hard travel. A shipwreck further up the coast, maybe? Armed and armoured. Soldiers. But whose? Stygg? Jasston? None had the look. The shortest was distinctly foreign-looking with his dark, almost bluish hue.

If they were raiders they were the sorriest-arsed brigands Orzu had ever seen. Thieves did come through occasionally: outlaws from Jasston, thugs from Stygg. He and his fellow villagers had no particular weapons or armour to oppose them; their main defence was in appearing to have nothing. And so he just eyed the four while they walked up and the foremost, the bluish-hued fellow, rested a hand on the side of his boat drawn up on the strand and addressed him in mangled Katakan: ‘You sell boat?’

Orzu took the pipe from his mouth. ‘No, I no sell boat.’

‘We pay much gold, many coin.’

‘Fish don’t want coin.’

The four talked then, their language foreign, but with a very familiar lilt to it. Orzu thought he could almost catch the odd word or two. Closer now, he also noticed how the tip of one’s nose was black, the edges of another’s ears. The skin of all four was cracked and bloodied, flaking. Frostbite. Damned severe, too. They couldn’t have come down from the Ice Barrens, could they? But that was a desolate emptiness.

‘We pay you to take us. To Korelri. Yes?’

Orzu thought about that. ‘How much coin?’

The spokesman gestured to the tallest of them, a great thick warrior in a mail shirt that hung to his ankles, a wide shield on his back, and a helm tied to his belt. His long black hair was a great mane. This one handed over a fat leather sack. The spokesman gave it to Orzu. It was amazingly hefty. Orzu peered in, took out a coin. Gold. More fortune than he’d ever dreamed to touch. He cinched the bag up tight. ‘I take you. But must bring wife, children.’

The four eyed one another, confused. ‘Take your … family?’ said the spokesman.

‘Yes. My price. Bring wife, children. Go tomorrow morning. Yes?’

‘Why …’

‘My price. Not so high, yes?’

‘Well…’

‘My name Orzu. We have deal, yes?’

‘Blues. We have a deal.’

Blues?
What an odd name. Must be for the hue of his skin. Orzu shrugged inwardly. No matter. He set down his mending and stood. ‘First we eat. My wife make you fish stew. Is good, you see.’

That caught their interest. All four perked up at the mention of hot food.

Shipwrecked. Must be. What other possible explanation could there be? This was good. They would eat well, meet the family.

And he had such a very large family.

The stench was the hardest thing for Shell to endure. She sat near the doorway – nothing more than a gaping hole in the piled stones of the walls of the hut – and held the clay bowl down away from her face. All the while the fat woman, this fellow’s wife, grinned toothlessly at her, the only other woman present. At their feet a great gang of children cried, fought among themselves, gaped at her so close she could smell their stale breath, and gobbled down the rotten stew. Whose were they? Not this old couple, surely.

‘Blues,’ she called, edging aside a youth who seemed determined to find something hidden far up his nose. ‘Let’s just take a boat and go. We’re wasting time.’

From where he sat next to the gabbling old fellow, apparently the patriarch of this horde, Blues shook his head. ‘It’s their livelihood, Shell. They’d starve.’

Lazar stuck his head in. ‘There’s more coming outside. Two more boats are pulled up.’

‘Thanks.’ More of them! A damned family reunion.

At least Fingers seemed in his element: fascinating the kids with tricks of sleight of hand. They squealed when he made stones appear from their noses and mouths. She called to Blues: ‘There’s more of them outside.’

He spoke to the old man, listened, cocked his head in concentration. In-laws. His daughters’ and sons’ spouses’ brothers and sisters and their children.

‘Well, who in the Queen’s name are
these
kids?’

Blues looked surprised. ‘Haven’t you been listening? Grandchildren, of course.’

‘Blues …’

‘How do you like the food?’

‘It’s vile. Why?’

A laugh. ‘Just wondering, because it looks like we’re in for a lot more.’

‘What do you mean?’

Blues waved to encompass the kids, the men and women sitting outside on the bare smoothed stones, watching and waiting. ‘Because it looks like we just hired the entire clan.’

‘
Blues!
’

The next morning twelve broad fishing boats, longboats Shell imagined you might call them, lay pulled up on the strand. Orzu’s clan of fisherfolk was busy piling them up with their meagre smelly possessions. Now that she’d had time to reflect upon it, she couldn’t blame them. This was their chance to escape this desolate shore. Others had now found the courage to speak; a girl, fat with child and carrying yet another, seemed to have attached herself to Shell.

‘What is your name?’ she asked the girl.

‘Ena.’ The child she carried in her arm was fighting to open her blouse to reach a swollen teat. She brushed the small hands aside. ‘You?’

‘Shell. Where will you go?’

She shrugged. ‘We go to Theft.’

‘What will you do there?’

Again the indifferent shrug. ‘Same as here.’

You are wiser than you know, young woman-child. For you, things are sadly unlikely to change
.

Ena was eyeing her soft leathers under her thick travelling cloak, her leather gloves and tall boots. ‘Where you come from?’

‘The south. Far to the south. Before that, far to the north.’

An older woman, exact relationship uncertain, came and took the child from Ena, then the two argued back and forth for a time until the old woman marched off enraged.

‘What is it?’ Shell asked.

A smile. ‘Mother says I am lazy. Work to be done. But I tell her I am no longer a child to be ordered about. The … Blessed Lady … she is known where you are from?’

Shell was surprised by the non-sequitur. It was a moment before she could reply. ‘No. She is not known. She is only known here.’

Ena tucked a hand under the swell of her belly. Her many relations tramped back and forth readying the boats. Blues was arguing with Orzu next to one particularly overloaded skiff; he appeared to be miming sinking.

‘Yes. We thought so, no matter the words of her priests.’

‘Her priests? You have heard them?’

Ena nodded with child-like earnestness. ‘Oh yes. They come here. Half-starved wanderers. They stay and preach to us. Lady this and Lady that. They try to convert us.’

‘
Convert
you? You do not worship the Lady?’

She nodded, so serious. ‘Oh no. We are the Sea-Folk. We follow the old ways. Oh, the last of the priests seemed harmless enough until he tried to use the boys to satisfy himself. So we bound him and threw him to the Sea-Father.’

‘The Sea-Father? Oh, yes. The old ways.’

‘Yes. The Sea-Father. The Sky-Father. The Dark-Taker. The fertile Mother. And the Enchantress. The priests spoke against her the most. But we do not listen. We know the Lady by her ancient name. Shrikasmil – the Destroyer.’

Shell studied the child-woman while she stared out to sea. She was pretty despite her greasy hair, the grimed unwashed face. Pretty perhaps only because of her youth and her pregnancy. ‘Why travel to Theft, then? Surely you will not be welcome.’

Again the uncaring shrug, though tinged by a wry smile. ‘Nowhere are we welcome. We are the Sea-Folk. We come and go as we please. We choose to harbour at Theft till they chase us off. It was strange, you know …’ and she cocked her head, her brows wrinkling, ‘he was glad when we threw him in. Happy. He wanted to be martyr to the Lady. They all want to die for her. It is perverse. Shouldn’t faith seek life?’

Shell said nothing. Ena answered her own question with what seemed her response to everything: a shrug of dismissal. Then, rousing herself, she walked off to lend her family a hand. Shell remained, facing the sea, troubled. Something the girl had said. Dying for her.
They all want to die for her
. Something in that clawed at her instincts. She did not know what it was, yet. But there was something there. She could feel it the way she could feel the Lady’s own baleful hot gaze glaring from the north. From this point onward none of them should dare summon their Warrens.

The Land

On the subcontinent known to some as Korel, to others as Fist, the Chosen who defend the Stormwall against the attacks of the ocean-borne ‘Riders’ foretell that should these Riders broach the wall they shall sweep on to engulf the world entire in an eternal reign of ice and storm.

Despite these claims, the Malazan Emperor Kellanved ordered his armies to invade Korel lands. This confronted the Stormguard with a horrifying choice: defend the wall or defend their lands. Skilfully, Kellanved swiftly withdrew the necessity for said choice by offering to limit his holdings to territory currently occupied. The Chosen readily agreed to these terms. In this, and many other pacts, it may be said that Kellanved manoeuvred and negotiated his way to Empire. Few in these times appreciate this distinction.

Sketches of History
Ordren Stennist
Academe, Kartool

History consists of nothing more than the lies we tell ourselves to justify the present.

Book of Forbidden Knowledge
Odwin Innist, condemned scholar

A
FTER THE TENTH WAVE OF THE NIGHT LORD PROTECTOR HIAM
discovered his endurance was failing him. Times were he could stand two watches of back-to-back fighting without feeling the strain. But in the weakened parry of a Rider’s lance-thrust, his spear nearly wrenched from his grasp, he saw instantly that he would not last to the dawn.

He abandoned the counter-strike, readying instead, content to let that Rider slide past. The men of his bodyguard urged it on. Yet there was no time to recuperate as the next wave came crashing in far higher than he could ever remember this early in the season. It inundated the lowest defences. Hiam charged down where Chosen wallowed in the knee-deep, frigid water. Riders now walked the outer machicolations. Their shell-like scaled armour hung as ragged skirting all the way down to the waters. They dropped their lances and drew saw-bladed longswords.

He and his six bodyguards crashed into the Riders like their own wave. Hiam faced one, lunging high to draw his parry while his bodyguard thrust low to impale the demon, who grunted and grasped the spear, only to have his hand slashed as the guard yanked free the broad leaf-shaped blade. This one fell into the shallow water to dissolve like ice rotting. Another Rider shook off the attacks of two Chosen to charge Hiam. He parried the Rider’s swing but the
ice-blade caught at the haft of his spear like a gripping fist to heave it aside.

A kind of calm acceptance took Hiam then. The Rider was inside his guard – this was how it should end for him. The fiend’s sword swung, but a spear from a guard deflected the blade enough for it to clash from Hiam’s full helm like a bell. The blow brought him to one knee.

His guards pressed close, defending. Hiam regained his footing, launched his spear at the Rider then shrugged his broad round shield from his back and drew his thrusting blade. By this time his guards had finished the last Rider.