The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (1245 page)

Charms. I remember you giving them away. Toys, you said, head bobbing. Free toys! And they all ran up to you, laughing.

But you wove protections into those dolls. Blessings, wards against illness. Nothing powerful, nothing to stop, say, a flash flood or an avalanche. But the father that lashed out with his fists. The uncle who slipped under the blankets in the dead of night. Those ones paid for what they did.

And the cuts that healed. The fevers that went away.

So, Grandmother, I'll walk this last walk. In your memory. Make me a doll, for this pain.

And take this child by the hand. And tell him again, how they will pay for what they did.

 

For years, before her nails were worn down to bloody shreds by all that she clawed at, Smiles had carried a dream, carried it around like a pearl inside a battered shell. Of a day in the future when she was a mother, and she'd given birth to twins. Two girls, squalling and hissing the way girls do. Playing on the beach under her watchful eye.

And then, in a dark, desolate season – with the skies grey and the seas swollen – the older ones would come to her.
‘The fish are gone,'
they'd say.
‘The spirits must be appeased. Choose one, Mother, and make of her the gift of our people, our gift to the thirsty waters.'
And she would walk away, calling her daughters back to the hut.

They were lowborn. The whole family. Her husband and the father of the twins was gone, maybe dead. It was all down to her. One child to be blessed, the other cursed. Yet arguments could be made as to who was which. She knew all about that.

A night of bitter winds, of fires doused by spray. And Smiles would set out, knives in hand. And she would kill every one of those elders – in all their hunger, in all their needs now that they were too old to fish, now that the only authority they still possessed came with their threats and warnings about angry, vengeful spirits. Aye, she would show them a vengeful, angry spirit, and the gifts it would make to the hungry sea would appease a thousand spirits of the deep.

Those kinds of dreams were honey on the tongue, heady with the juices of pleasure and satisfaction. She suspected such dreams hid in the hearts of everyone. Desires for justice, for redress, for a settling of the scales. And of course, that sour undercurrent of knowledge, that none of it was possible, that so much would rise in opposition, in self-preservation even, to crush that dream, its frail bones, its pattering heart – even that could not take away the sweet delight, the precious hope.

Wells for the coin, league-stones for the wreaths, barrows for the widdershins dance – the world was filled with magical places awaiting wishes. And empires raised lotteries, opened games, sought to lift high heroes among the common folk –
and everyone rushes up with their dreams. But stop. Look back. Gods, look around! If all we seek is an escape, what does that say about the world we live in? That village, that city, that life?

We are desperate with our dreams. What – oh, what – does that say?

So those two children had forgotten about toys. She wasn't surprised. She remembered the day she sat with the last dolls she owned, but across from her sat no one. Where was her sister? They'd taken her.
But how can I play?

‘Child, she was taken long ago. You cannot remember what you never had. Go out now and play with Skella.'

‘Skella is highborn – she just orders me around.'

‘That's the way it is, child. Best you get used to it.'

In her dream, she saved murdering Skella for last.

 

Cuttle's brothers had been on the wall when it came down. He remembered his shock. Their city was falling. His brothers had just died defending it. Hengese soldiers were in the gap, clambering over the wreckage, coming out of the dust howling like demons.

Lessons, then. No wall was impenetrable. And the resolute in spirit could die as easily as could the coward. He would have liked to believe it wasn't like that, none of it – this whole mess. And that children could be left to play and not worry about the life ahead. To play the way he and his brothers had played, unmindful of the irony as they charged each other with wooden swords and fought to defend a midden behind the fishworks, dying one by one like heroes in some imagined last stand, giving their lives to save the swarming flies, the screeching gulls and the heaps of shells. Where knelt a helpless maiden, or some such thing.

Maiden, stolen crown, the jewelled eye of a goddess. They wove fine stories around their deeds, didn't they? In those long winters when it seemed that all the grey, sickly sky wanted to do was collapse down on the whole city, crush it for ever, they lived and died their shining epics.

A backside kick sent him out from childhood. He'd not forgotten those games, however. They lived with him and would until this – his last damned day. But not for the obvious reasons. Nostalgia was like a disease, one that crept in and stole the colour from the world and the time you lived in. Made for bitter people. Dangerous people, when they wanted back what never was.
And it wasn't even our innocence back then – we never felt innocent.
They spent day after day living older than their years, after all. And no, not even the ties of family blood, those so-familiar faces he grew up alongside, and all the safety and protection and comfort they offered. No, those games stayed with him because of something else, something he now understood to have been with him, undying, since those days.

Maiden, stolen crown, the jewelled eye of a god. Die for a reason. That's all. Cuttle, you're the last brother left who can do this. The others didn't make it, not to this epic's end. So you carry them now, here on your back, those boys with their flushed faces, you carry them. You're carrying them right past their useless deaths on that wall in a war that meant nothing. Take them now to where they need to go.

We're going to die for a reason. That's not too much to ask, is it?

You should've seen our last stands. They were something.

 

Corabb was thinking about Leoman of the Flails. Not that he wanted to, but that evil, lying, murdering bastard was like a friend you didn't want any more who just kept showing up with a stupid grin on his ugly face. He was covered in dust, too, and he had no idea why and no, he didn't care either.

That's what came of believing in people. All sorts of people, with their foreheads all hot and burning and not a drink of water in sight. The man burned a city to the ground. Tried killing fifty million people, too, or however many were in Y'Ghatan when the army broke through and the temple caught fire and the priest's head was rolling around on the floor like a kick-ball with a face on it.

Corabb had wanted to be good. He'd grown up wanting that and nothing else. The world was bad and he wanted it to be good. Was that stupid? What was that his tutor used to say, after the man had cried himself dry and in his fists were tangled clumps of his own hair – what was his name again? Baldy? He'd look over at young Corabb and say, ‘Good? You don't know the meaning of the word. In fact, you're about the worst student I have ever had the horror of entertaining.'

That was fine. He didn't entertain very good either, Corabb recalled, old Baldy. In fact, he was the most boring man in the whole village, which was why they voted him to teach the young ones, because the young ones were causing so much trouble getting underfoot and all the grown-ups decided they needed to be talked at until they turned into motionless lumps and their eyes fell out and rolled like marbles.

But those fists, holding clumps of hair. That was exciting. Birds could use that for nests. So maybe Baldy really
was
entertaining, when he did his red-face thing and bounced around on his stool.

Leoman was no better. It was just Corabb's luck, all these bad teachers.

He remembered the day he made his mother cry. The Gafan brothers had been teasing him, for what he couldn't recall, so he'd chased them down, softened them up a bit, and then used a rope he stole from a rag man to tie them all together, wrist to ankle, the four of them, their faces like burst gourds, and dragged them into the house. ‘Ma! Cook these!'

Grunter Gafan had shown up to get his children back. Had the gall to threaten Corabb's mother, and since Canarab his father was still off in the wars it fell to Corabb to stand up to the pig-faced bully. But she'd been cooking a stew in that pot, and besides, once Grunter's head was inside it there was no more room for the boys. They said he smelled like onions for weeks.

It was the spilled supper that made his ma cry. At least, that's what Corabb worked out, eventually. Couldn't have been anything else, and if they had to move to get away from the Gafan clan, the new neighbourhood was nicer anyway. And the day Grunter got killed, well, he should've known better than trying to slide all the way under that wagon, and Corabb's kicking him in the head a few times had nothing to do with his tragic end. Nobody liked Grunter anyway, though Corabb probably shouldn't have used that for his defence at the trial.

So it was the priest pits for young Corabb. Cutting limestone wasn't that bad a job, except when people got crushed, or coughed their lungs out spraying blood everywhere. And this was where he started listening to stories people told. Passing the time. It had been a mistake. Of course, if not for the uprising he'd probably still be there, getting crushed and coughing his lungs out. And the uprising – well, if he looked back on it, that had been the beginning of his own rebellion, which later led him to join the bigger one. All because people told stories about freedom and the days before the Malazans. Stories that probably weren't even true.

Leoman. Leoman of the Flails. And Sha'ik, and Toblakai. And all the fanatics. And all the bodies. Nothing good in any of that.
When you believe people telling all those lies.

Was the Adjunct any different? He wasn't sure any more. He didn't understand all this business about being unwitnessed. That was what he'd been fighting against all his life.

But now I got a kick-ball head and it's burning up in the sun. And by dawn we'll all be done with, finished. Dead and no one left to see. Is that what she meant? But…what's the point of that?

 

He had been born stubborn. Or so everyone said. Maybe it had made for problems in his life, but Tarr wasn't one to dwell on them. Here, this night, stubbornness was all he had left. Sergeant to a squad of marines – he'd never thought he'd make it this far. Not with Fiddler there, taking care of everything that needed taking care of. But now Fid wasn't running this squad any more.
Now it's mine. I'm the one gets to walk it into the ground. I'm the one gets to watch them die like flies on the sill.

He planned on being the last to go down – he had his stubbornness, after all. His way of pushing, and pushing, until he pushed through.

He remembered the day they formed up, officially, in Aren. The chaos, the guarded looks, all the bitching that went on. Unruly, unhappy, close to falling apart. Then a few veterans stepped up. Fiddler. Cuttle. Gesler, Stormy. And did what was needed.
And that's when I knew that I was going to stick with this. Be a soldier. I had them to follow, and that was good enough.

It still is. It has to be.

Fiddler's up ahead somewhere. Cuttle's right behind me. Only ever had the Adjunct as commander, and she's kept me alive this long. She wants another march, she'll get it. No questions, no complaining.

He twisted round, glared at his squad. ‘First one falls, I will personally curse to the Thirteen Gates of the Abyss. Am I understood?'

‘That calls for a drink,' said Cuttle.

The others laughed. It wasn't much of a laugh, but for Tarr it was good enough.
They'll make it through this night. Past that, I won't ask them for a damned thing.

Unless I need to.

 

Himble Thrup had picked up a new name. Shorthand. He liked it. The old family line of Thrups, well, his brothers were welcome to it. That long, ropy thing tying him to where he'd come from, and who he'd been, well, he'd just cut it. Gone. All the shit going one way, all the shit going back the other way, the rotted birth cord no Thrup dared touch.
Snick. Gone. Good riddance.

Shorthand it is, on account of my short hands, y'see? A damned giant lizard took 'em. No, boys, it's all true. A giant lizard. Chain Kemalles they was called, but we called 'em Stumpies, on account of their tails. This was back when I was a heavy. Aye, I don't look like a heavy. I know that. But it ain't just size makes a heavy. In fact, I know a Dal Honese heavy no bigger than a toad, and no prettier either. It's all attitude.

Just look at the ones hauling those ropes – the ones just up ahead. What in Hood's name are they doing, dragging these wagons? It don't matter. They're heavies and someone told 'em, ‘Haul these wagons,' and so that's what they're doing. Y'see? Attitude.

Aye, we stopped 'em cold, those Stumpies. They swung high, we ducked low. They gave us the blade, we gave 'em the shield. That's how it's done. True, I won't lie, not many of us left. We was outnumbered, badly outnumbered.

These days? I'm working for Master-Sergeant Lieutenant Quartermaster Pores. He's just gone back to check on a cracked axle three wagons back. Be with us shortly. Me? I'm waiting for our squad of marines, t'stand guard, aye. But they had a scrap last night, got cut up a bit, but it never went further, since nobody's got the strength to take it further, if you see what I mean. Still, needed some sewing and the like. I'm expectin' them any time.