The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (354 page)

‘Good. Ebron, inform the squads that we are departing this picturesque town. As soon as possible. Sergeant Cord, your squad will see to the loading of supplies. That will be all, soldiers.'

‘What of this warrior?' Ebron asked.

‘How long will this sorcerous net last?'

‘As long as you like, sir. But the pain—'

‘He seems to be bearing up. Leave him as he is, and in the meantime think of a way to load him onto the bed of a wagon.'

‘Yes, sir. We'll need long poles—'

‘Whatever,' Captain Kindly muttered, striding away.

Karsa sensed the sorcerer staring down on him. The pain had long since faded, no matter what Ebron's claims, and indeed, the steady, slow tensing and easing of the Teblor's muscles had begun to weaken it.

Not long, now…

‘I missed you, Karsa Orlong.'

Torvald Nom's face was mottled blue and black, his right eye swollen shut. He had been chained to the wagon's forward wall and was slouched down amidst rotting straw, watching as the Malazan soldiers levered the Teblor onto the bed using stripped-down saplings that had been inserted beneath the limbs of the huge, net-wrapped warrior. The wagon shifted and groaned as Karsa's weight settled on it.

‘Pity the damned oxen,' Shard said, dragging one of the saplings free, his breath harsh and his face red with exertion.

A second wagon stood nearby, just within the field of Karsa's vision as he lay motionless on the weathered boards. In its back sat Silgar, Damisk, and three other Nathii lowlanders. The slavemaster's face was white and patchy, the blue and gold trim of his expensive clothes stained and wrinkled. Seeing him, Karsa laughed.

Silgar's head snapped around, dark eyes fixing like knives on the Uryd warrior.

‘Taker of slaves!' Karsa sneered.

The Malazan soldier, Shard, climbed onto the wagon's wall and leaned over to study Karsa for a moment, then he shook his head. ‘Ebron!' he called out. ‘Come look. That web ain't what it was.'

The sorcerer clambered up beside him. His eyes narrowed. ‘Hood take him,' he muttered. ‘Get us some chains, Shard. Heavy ones, and lots of them. Tell the captain, too, and hurry.'

The soldier dropped out of sight.

Ebron scowled down at Karsa. ‘You got otataral in your veins? Nerruse knows, that spell should have killed you long ago. What's it been, three days now. Failing that, the pain should have driven you mad. But you're no madder than you were a week ago, are you?' His scowl deepened. ‘There's something about you…something…'

Soldiers were suddenly clambering up on all sides, some dragging chains whilst others held back slightly with crossbows cocked.

‘Can we touch this?' one asked, hesitating over Karsa.

‘You can now,' Ebron replied, then spat.

Karsa tested the magical constraints in a single, concerted surge that forced a bellow from his throat. Strands snapped.

Answering shouts. Wild panic.

As the Uryd began dragging himself free, his sword still in his right hand, something hard cracked into the side of his head.

Blackness swept over him.

He awoke lying on his back, spread-eagled on the bed of the wagon as it rocked and jolted beneath him. His limbs were wrapped in heavy chains that had been spiked to the boards. Others crisscrossed his chest and stomach. Dried blood crusted the left side of his face, sealing the lid of that eye. He could smell dust, wafting up from between the boards, as well as his own bile.

Torvald spoke from somewhere beyond Karsa's head. ‘So you're alive after all. Despite what the soldiers were saying, you looked pretty much dead to me. You certainly smell that way. Well, almost. In case you're wondering, friend, it's been six days. That gold-toothed sergeant hit you hard. Broke the shovel's shaft.'

A sharp, throbbing pain bloomed in Karsa's head as soon as he tried to lift it clear of the foul-smelling boards. He grimaced, settling once more. ‘Too many words, lowlander. Be quiet.'

‘Quiet's not in my nature, alas. Of course, you don't have to listen. Now, you might think otherwise, but we should be celebrating our good fortune. Prisoners of the Malazans is an improvement over being Silgar's slaves. Granted, I might end up getting executed as a common criminal—which is, of course, precisely what I am—but more likely we're both off to work in the imperial mines in Seven Cities. Never been there, but even so, it's a long trip, land and sea. There might be pirates. Storms. Who knows? Might even be the mines aren't so bad as people say. What's a little digging? I can't wait for the day they put a pickaxe in your hands—oh my, won't you have some fun? Lots to look forward to, don't you think?'

‘Including cutting out your tongue.'

‘Humour? Hood take me, I didn't think you had it in you, Karsa Orlong. Anything else you want to say? Feel free.'

‘I'm hungry.'

‘We'll reach Culvern Crossing by tonight—the pace has been torturously slow, thanks to you, since it appears you weigh more than you should, more even than Silgar and his four thugs. Ebron says you don't have normal flesh—same for the Sunyd, of course—but with you it's even more so. Purer blood, I suppose. Meaner blood, that's for sure. I remember, once, in Darujhistan, I was just a lad, a troop arrived with a grey bear, all chained up. Had it in a huge tent just outside Worry-town, charged a sliver to see it. First day, I was there. The crowd was huge. Everyone'd thought grey bears had died out centuries ago—'

‘Then you are all fools,' Karsa growled.

‘So we were, because there it was. Collared, chained down, with red in its eyes. The crowd rushed in, me in it, and that damned thing went wild. Broke loose like those chains were braids of grass. You wouldn't believe the panic. I got trampled
on, but managed to crawl out from under the tent with my scrawny but lovely body mostly intact. That bear—bodies were flying from its path. It charged straight for the Gadrobi Hills and was never seen again. Sure, there's rumours to this day that the bastard's still there, eating the occasional herder…and herd. Anyway, you remind me of that grey bear, Uryd. The same look in your eyes. A look that says:
Chains will not hold me.
And that's what has me so eager to see what will happen next.'

‘I shall not hide in the hills, Torvald Nom.'

‘Didn't think you would. Do you know how you will be loaded onto the prison ship? Shard told me. They'll take the wheels off this wagon. That's it. You'll be riding this damned bed all the way to Seven Cities.'

The wagon's wheels slid down into deep, stony ruts, the jarring motion sending waves of pain through Karsa's head.

‘You still here?' Torvald asked after a moment.

Karsa remained silent.

‘Oh well,' the Daru sighed.

Lead me, Warleader.

Lead me.

This was not the world he had expected. The lowlanders were both weak and strong, in ways he found difficult to comprehend. He had seen huts built one atop another; he had seen watercraft the size of entire Teblor houses.

Expecting a farmstead, they had found a town. Anticipating the slaughter of fleeing cowards, they had instead been met with fierce opponents who stood their ground.

And Sunyd slaves.
The most horrifying discovery of all. Teblor, their spirits broken. He had not thought such a thing was possible.

I shall snap those chains on the Sunyd. This, I vow before the Seven. I shall give the Sunyd lowlander slaves in turn—no. To do such would be as wrong as what the lowlanders have done to the Sunyd, have done, indeed, to their own kin.
No, his sword's gathering of souls was a far cleaner, a far purer deliverance.

He wondered about these Malazans. They were, it was clear, a tribe that was fundamentally different from the Nathii. Conquerors, it seemed, from a distant land. Holders to strict laws. Their captives not slaves, but prisoners, though it had begun to appear that the distinction lay in name only. He would be set to work.

Yet he had no desire to work. Thus, it was punishment, intended to bow his warrior spirit, to—in time—break it. In this, a fate to match that of the Sunyd.

But that shall not happen, for I am Uryd, not Sunyd. They shall have to kill me, once they realize that they cannot control me. And so, the truth is before me. Should I hasten that realization, I shall never see release from this wagon.

Torvald Nom spoke of patience—the prisoner's code. Urugal, forgive me, for I must now avow to that code. I must seem to relent.

Even as he thought it, he knew it would not work. These Malazans were too clever. They would be fools to trust a sudden, inexplicable passivity. No, he needed to fashion a different kind of illusion.

Delum Thord. You shall now be my guide. Your loss is now my gift. You walked the path before me, showing me the steps. I shall awaken yet again, but it shall not be with a broken spirit, but with a broken mind.

Indeed, the Malazan sergeant had struck him hard. The muscles of his neck had seized, clenched tight around his spine. Even breathing triggered lancing stabs of pain. He sought to slow it, shifting his thoughts away from the low roar of his nerves.

The Teblor had lived in blindness for centuries, oblivious of the growing numbers—and growing threat—of the lowlanders. Borders, once defended with vicious determination, had for some reason been abandoned, left open to the poisoning influences from the south. It was important, Karsa realized, to discover the cause of this moral failing. The Sunyd had never been among the strongest of the tribes, yet they were Teblor none the less, and what befell them could, in time, befall all the others. This was a difficult truth, but to close one's eyes to it would be to walk the same path yet again.

There were failings that must be faced. Pahlk, his own grandfather, had been something far less than the warrior of glorious deeds that he pretended to be. Had Pahlk returned to the tribe with truthful tales, then the warnings within them would have been heard. A slow but inexorable invasion was under way, one step at a time. A war on the Teblor that assailed their spirit as much as it did their lands. Perhaps such warnings would have proved sufficient to unite the tribes.

He considered this, and darkness settled upon his thoughts. No. Pahlk's failing had been a deeper one; it was not his lies that were the greatest crime, it was his lack of courage, for he had shown himself unable to wrest free of the strictures binding the Teblor. His people's rules of conduct, the narrowly crafted confines of expectations—its innate conservatism that crushed dissent with the threat of deadly isolation—these were what had defeated his grandfather's courage.

Yet not, perhaps, my father's.

The wagon jolted once more beneath him.

I saw your mistrust as weakness. Your unwillingness to participate in our tribe's endless, deadly games of pride and retribution—I saw this as cowardice. Even so, what have you done to challenge our ways? Nothing. Your only answer was to hide yourself away—and to belittle all that I did, to mock my zeal…

Preparing me for this moment.

Very well, Father, I can see the gleam of satisfaction in your eyes, now. But I tell you this, you delivered naught but wounds upon your son. And I have had enough of wounds.

Urugal was with him. All the Seven were with him. Their power would make him impervious to all that besieged his Teblor spirit. He would, one day, return to his people, and he would shatter their rules. He would unite the Teblor, and they would march behind him…down into the lowlands.

Until that moment, all that came before—all that afflicted him now—was but preparation. He would be the weapon of retribution, and it was the enemy itself that now honed him.

Blindness curses both sides, it seems. Thus, the truth of my words shall be shown.

Such were his last thoughts before consciousness once more faded away.

 

Excited voices awoke him. It was dusk and the air was filled with the smell of horses, dust and spiced foods. The wagon was motionless under him, and he could now hear, mingled with the voices, the sounds of many people and a multitude of activities, underscored by the rush of a river.

‘Ah, awake once more,' Torvald Nom said.

Karsa opened his eyes but did not otherwise move.

‘This is Culvern Crossing,' the Daru went on, ‘and it's a storm swirling with the latest news from the south. All right, a small storm, given the size of this latrine pit of a town. The scum of the Nathii, which is saying a lot. The Malazan company's pretty excited, though. Pale's just fallen, you see. A big battle, lots of sorcery, and Moon's Spawn retreated—likely headed to Darujhistan, in fact. Beru take me, I wish I was there right now, watching it crossing the lake, what a sight that'd be. The company, of course, are wishing they'd been there for the battle. Idiots, but that's soldiers for you—'

‘And why not?' Shard's voice snapped as the wagon rocked slightly and the man appeared. ‘The Ashok Regiment deserves better than to be stuck up here hunting bandits and slavers.'

‘The Ashok Regiment is you, I presume,' Torvald said.

‘Aye. Damned veterans, too, one and all.'

‘So why
aren't
you down south, Corporal?'

Shard made a face, then turned away with narrowed eyes. ‘She don't trust us, that's why,' he murmured. ‘We're Seven Cities, and the bitch don't trust us.'

‘Excuse me,' Torvald said, ‘but if she—and by that I take you to mean your Empress—doesn't trust you, then why is she sending you home? Isn't Seven Cities supposedly on the edge of rebellion? If there's a chance of you turning renegade, wouldn't she rather have you here on Genabackis?'

Shard stared down at Torvald Nom. ‘Why am I talking to you, thief? You might damn well be one of her spies. A Claw, for all I know.'

‘If I am, Corporal, you haven't been treating me very well. A detail I'd be sure to put in my report—this secret one, the one I'm secretly writing, that is.
Shard
, wasn't it? As in a piece of broken glass, yes? And you called the Empress “bitch”—'

‘Shut up,' the Malazan snarled.

‘Just making a rather obvious point, Corporal.'

‘That's what you think,' Shard sneered as he dropped back down from the side of the wagon and was lost from sight.

Torvald Nom said nothing for a long moment, then, ‘Karsa Orlong, do you have any idea what that man meant by that last statement?'

Karsa spoke in a low voice, ‘Torvald Nom, listen well. A warrior who followed me, Delum Thord, was struck on the head. His skull cracked and leaked thought-
blood. His mind could not walk back up the path. He was left helpless, harmless. I, too, have been struck on the head. My skull is cracked and I have leaked thought-blood—'