The Crippled God (11 page)

Setoc had watched the young Awl warrior ride after Olar Ethil, saw when he reached them. An exchange of words, and then they set out once more, walking until the deceptive folds of the landscape swallowed them all. Then she turned, studied Cartographer. ‘The boy was crying in grief. Over his dead dog. You told him to stop. Why? Why should that have so bothered you?’

‘How is it,’ the undead man said, rising from the barrow and shuffling closer, ‘that the weakest among us is the only one so willing to give up his life protecting those children? I do not mean to wound you with my words, Setoc. I but struggle to understand this.’ The withered face tilted to one side, pitted eye sockets seeming to study her. ‘Is it, perhaps, because he has the least to lose?’ He continued on in his awkward steps, to stand over the carcass of the ay.

‘Of course he has,’ she snapped. ‘As you said, just his life.’

Cartographer looked down at the corpse of Baaljagg. ‘And this one had even less.’

‘Go back to your dead world, will you? It’s so much simpler there, I’m sure. You can stop wondering about the things us pathetic mortals get up to.’

‘I am a knower of maps, Setoc. Listen to my words. You cannot cross the Glass Desert. When you reach it, turn southward, on to the South Elan. It is not much better, but there should be enough, at least to give you a chance.’

Enough what? Food? Water? Hope?
‘You are remaining here. Why?’

‘In this place,’ Cartographer gestured, ‘the world of the dead has arrived. Here, you are the unwelcome stranger.’

Suddenly shaken, inexplicably distraught, Setoc shook her head. ‘Gruntle said you were with them almost from the very beginning. Now you’re just stopping. Here?’

‘Must we all have a purpose?’ Cartographer asked. ‘I did, once, but that is done with.’ His head turned, faced northward. ‘Your company was … admirable. But I’d forgotten.’ He hesitated, and she was about to ask what he’d forgotten when he said, ‘Things break.’

‘Yes,’ she whispered, not loud enough for him to hear. She reached down and collected the bundle of her gear. Straightening, she set out. Then paused and glanced back at him. ‘Cartographer, what did Gruntle say to you, at the barrow?’

‘“The past is a demon that not even death can shake.”’

‘What did he mean by that?’

He shrugged, still studying Baaljagg’s carcass. ‘I told him this: I have found the living in my dreams, and they are not well.’

She turned away, began walking.

Dust devils spun and raced along, tracking her on either side. Masan Gilani knew all about this. She’d heard all the old stories of the Seven Cities campaign, how the Logros T’lan Imass had a way of just vanishing, whispering on the winds or twisting along on the currents of some river. Easy for them. Rising from the ground at the end of it all not even out of breath.

She snorted. Breath, that was a good one.

Her horse was reluctant this morning. Not enough water, not enough forage, hadn’t crapped or pissed in a day and a night. Wouldn’t last much longer, she suspected, unless her companions could conjure up a spring and a heap of hay or a bag or two of oats. Could they do things like that? She had no idea.

‘Be serious, woman. They looked as if a sleeping dragon had rolled over them. If they could magic stuff out of nowhere, well, they’d have done something by now.’ She was hungry and thirsty too, and if it came to it she’d slit her horse’s neck and feast until her belly exploded. ‘Put that back together, will you? Thanks.’

Not far now. By her reckoning, she’d be on the Bonehunters’ trail before noon, and by dusk she’d have caught up with them – no army that size could move very quickly. They were carrying enough supplies to feed a decent-sized town for half a year. She glanced northward, something she found she was doing rather often of late. No surprise in that impulse, however. It wasn’t every day that a mountain grew up out of nowhere in the course of a single day and night, and what a storm accompanied its birth! She thought to hitch to one side for a spit or two, to punctuate the sardonic wonder she’d just chewed on. But spit was worth keeping.

‘Hold back one throatful,’ her mother used to say, ‘for Hood’s own face.’ Bless her, the deranged fat cow. She must have given the ragged reaper a bubbly bath the day her time came, a hair-wash, a cave mouth’s spring run-off of black, stinking phlegm just gushing out, aye. Big women had a way, didn’t they? Especially after their fourth or fifth decade, when all their opinions had turned to stone and chipped flinty enough to draw blood with a single glance or sneer.

She’d moved like a tree, her mother had, and just as shocking to see, too. After all, trees don’t walk much, not on a sober night, just like the earth didn’t move unless Burn was pitching or the man was better than he knew (and how rare was that?). Loomed, old Ma did, like midnight thunder. Death was a crowded chamber for women like her, and the crowd was the kind that parted with her first step into the room: a miracle.

Masan Gilani wiped at her face – no sweat left. Bad news, especially this early in the morning. ‘I wanted to be big, Ma. I wanted to reach
that ripe old age. Fifty, aye. Five bitching, rutting, terror-inspiring decades. I wanted to
loom
. Thunder in my eyes, thunder in my voice, a thing of great weights and inexorable masses. It ain’t fair, me withering away out here. Dal Hon, do you miss me?

‘The day I set foot on that grassy sward, the day I shoo the first mob of flies from my lips and nostrils and eyes, why, that’s the day all will be right with the world once again. No, don’t leave me to die here, Dal Hon. It ain’t fair.’

She coughed, squinted ahead. Something of a mess up there, those two rises, the valley sprawled in between. Holes in the ground. Craters? The slopes seemed to be swarming. She blinked, wondering if she was imagining that. Deprivation played nasty games, after all. Swarming – it was swarming all right. Rats? No. ‘Orthen.’

A field of battle. She caught the gleam of picked bones, took note of ashy mounds on the far ridge, from pyres, no doubt. Sound practice, burning the dead, she knew. Kept disease to a minimum. She kicked her horse into a heavy canter. ‘I know, I know, not for long, sweetie.’

The dust devils whirled out past her now, spinning towards a ridge overlooking the valley.

Masan Gilani rode after them, to the top of the crest. There she reined in, scanning the wreckage filling the valley, and then the gaping entrenchments slashing across the opposite ridge, beyond which rose the humps of burned bones. Dread slowly seeped in, stealing all the day’s heat from her bones.

The T’lan Imass of the Unbound solidified in a rough line on her right, also studying the scene. Their sudden appearance after so many days of dust was strangely comforting to Masan Gilani. She’d only had her horse for company for far too long now. ‘Not that I’ll kiss any of you,’ she said.

Heads turned to regard her. None spoke.

Thank Hood for that
. ‘My horse is dying,’ she announced. ‘And whatever happened here happened to my Bonehunters and it doesn’t look good. So,’ she added, now glaring at the five undead warriors, ‘if you have any good news to tell me, or, gods below, any explanation at all, I really
might
kiss you.’

The one named Beroke said, ‘We can answer your horse’s plight, human.’

‘Good,’ she snapped, dismounting. ‘Get to it. And a little water and grub for yours truly wouldn’t go amiss either. I won’t be eating orthen any more, just so you know. Who ever thought crossing a lizard with a rat was a good idea?’

One of the other T’lan Imass stepped out from the line. She couldn’t recall this one’s name, but it was bigger than the others and looked to be
composed of body parts from three, maybe four individuals. ‘K’Chain Nah’ruk,’ it said in a low voice. ‘A battle and a harvest.’

‘Harvest?’

The creature pointed at the distant mounds. ‘They butchered. They fed upon their fallen enemy.’

Masan Gilani shivered. ‘Cannibals?’

‘The Nah’ruk are not human.’

‘That makes a difference? To me it’s cannibalism. Only white-skinned barbarians from the Fenn Mountains sink so low as to eat other people. Or so I hear.’

‘They did not complete their feeding,’ said the oversized T’lan Imass.

‘What do you mean?’

‘See the newborn mountain to the north?’

‘No,’ she drawled, ‘never noticed it.’

They all studied her again.

Sighing, Masan said, ‘Aye, the mountain. The storm.’

‘Another battle,’ said Beroke. ‘An Azath was born. From this, we conclude that the Nah’ruk were defeated.’

‘Oh? We hit them a second time? Good.’

‘K’Chain Che’Malle,’ said Beroke. ‘Civil war, Masan Gilani.’ The warrior gestured with a twisted arm. ‘Your army … I do not think they all died. Your commander—’

‘Tavore’s alive then?’

‘Her sword is.’

Her sword. Oh. That Otataral blade
. ‘Can I send you ahead? Can you find a trail, if there is one?’

‘Thenik will scout the path before us,’ Beroke said. ‘It is a risk. Strangers would not welcome us.’

‘I can’t imagine why.’

Another protracted look. Then Beroke said, ‘If our enemies should find us, Masan Gilani, before the moment of our final resurrection, then all we aspire to win will be lost.’

‘Win? Win what?’

‘Why, our Master’s release.’

She thought about asking a few more questions, decided against it.
Gods below, you’re not who I was sent to find, are you? Still, you wanted to find
us,
didn’t you? Sinter, I wish you were here, to explain what’s going on. But my gut’s telling me bad things. Your Master? No, don’t tell me
. ‘All right. Let’s ride clear of this, and then you feed us like you promised. But decent food, right? I’m civilized. Dal Honese, Malazan Empire. The Emperor himself came from Dal Hon.’

‘Masan Gilani,’ said Beroke, ‘we know nothing of this empire of
which you speak.’ The T’lan Imass warrior paused, and then added, ‘But the one who was once emperor … him we do know.’

‘Really? Before or after he died?’

The five Imass regarded her once more. Then Beroke asked, ‘Masan Gilani, what is the relevance of that question?’

She blinked, and then slowly shook her head. ‘None, none at all, I guess.’

Another T’lan Imass spoke now. ‘Masan Gilani?’

‘What?’

‘Your old emperor.’

‘What of him?’

‘Was he a liar?’

Masan Gilani scratched her head, and then she gathered up her reins, swung back on to her horse. ‘That depends.’

‘On what?’

‘On whether you believe all the lies people say about him. Now, let’s get out of this, eat and get watered, and then find Tavore’s sword, and if Oponn’s smiling down on us, she’ll still be attached to it.’

She was startled when the five Imass bowed. Then they collapsed into dust and swirled away. ‘Where’s the dignity in that?’ she wondered, and then looked out one more time over the battlefield and its seething orthen.
Where’s the dignity in anything, woman?

For now, keep it all inside. You don’t know what has happened here. You don’t know anything for certain. Not yet. Just hold on
.

There’s plenty of dignity in just holding on. The way Ma did
.