The Crippled God (16 page)

‘Mostly, aye. But then, maybe not.’ He swallowed down a mouthful, wiped his beard. ‘Possession only counts for too much in a man afraid of losing whatever he has. If he’s settled he doesn’t need to own, but then how many of us are settled? Few, I’d wager. We’re restless enough, and the older we get, the more restless we are. The misery is, the one thing an old man wants to possess the most is the one thing he can’t have.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Add a couple of decades to that man in the village and his wife won’t have to stare into any rival’s eyes.’

She grunted, collected up her stick and pushed it beneath the splints binding her leg. Scratched vigorously. ‘Whatever happened to decent healing?’

‘They’re saying magic’s damn near dead in these lands. How nimble are you?’

‘Nimble enough.’

‘How drunk are you?’

‘Drunk enough.’

‘Just what a man twice her age wants to hear from a woman.’

A figure stepped into the firelight. ‘Warchief, the queen summons you.’

Sighing, Spax rose. To Kisswhere he said, ‘Hold that thought.’

‘Doesn’t work that way,’ she replied. ‘We flowers blossom but it’s a brief blooming. If you miss your chance, well, too bad for you. This night, at least.’

‘You’re a damned tease, Malazan.’

‘Keeps you coming back.’

He thought about that, and then snorted. ‘Maybe, but don’t count on it.’

‘What you never find out will haunt you to the end of your days, Barghast.’

‘I doubt I’ll miss my chance, Kisswhere. After all, how fast can you run?’

‘And how sharp is my knife?’

Spax laughed. ‘I’d best not keep her highness waiting. Save me some rum, will you?’

She shrugged. ‘I’m not one for promises.’

Once he’d left, Kisswhere sat alone. Her own private fire out beyond the useless pickets, her own promise of blisters and searing guilt, if that was how she wanted it.
Do I? Might be I do. So they’re not all dead. That’s good. So we arrived too late. That’s bad, or not. And this leg, well, it’s hardly a coward’s ploy, is it? I tried riding with the Khundryl, didn’t I? At least, I think I did. At least, that’s how it looked. Good enough
.

She drank down some more of the Bolkando rum.

Spax was a man who liked women. She’d always preferred the company of such men over that of wilting, timid excuses who thought a shy batting of the eyes was – gods below – attractive. No, bold was better. Coy was a stupid game played by pathetic cowards, as far as she was concerned.
All those stumbling words, the shifting about, what’s the point? If you want me, come and get me. I might even say yes
.

More likely, of course, I’ll just laugh. To see the sting
.

They were marching towards whatever was left of the Bonehunters. No one seemed to know how grim it was, or at any rate they weren’t telling her. She’d witnessed the sorcery, tearing up the horizon, even as the hobnailed boots of the Evertine Legion thundered closer behind her. She’d seen the moonspawn – a cloud- and fire-wreathed mountain in the sky.

Was there betrayal in this? Was this what Sinter feared? Sister, are you even alive?

Of course I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to know. I should just say what I’m feeling
. ‘
Go to Hood, Queen. And you too, Spax. I’m riding south.’ I don’t want to see their faces, those pathetic survivors. Not the shock, not the horror, not all those things you see in the faces of people who don’t know why they’re still alive, when so many of their comrades are dead
.

Every army is a cauldron, with the flames getting higher and higher on all sides. We stew, we boil, we turn into grey lumps of meat
. ‘
Queen Abrastal, it’s you and people like you whose appetites
are never sated. Your maws gape, and in we go, and it sickens me
.’

When the two Khundryl riders appeared, three days past, Kisswhere had turned away. In her mind she drew a knife and murdered her curiosity, a quick slash, a sudden spray and then silence. What was the point of knowing, when knowing was nothing more than the taste of salt and iron on the tongue?

She drank more rum, pleased at the numbness of her throat. Eating fire was easy and getting easier.

A sudden memory. Their first time standing in a ragged line, the first day of their service in the marines. Some gnarled master sergeant had walked up to them, wearing the smile of a hyena approaching a crippled gazelle. Sinter had straightened beside Kisswhere, trying to affect the appropriate attention. Badan Gruk, she’d seen with a quick sidelong glance, was looking miserable – with the face of a man who’d just realized where love had taken him.

You damned fool. I can play their game. You two can’t, because for you there are no games. They don’t exist in your Hood-shitting world of honour and duty
.

‘Twelve, is it?’ the master sergeant had said, his grin broadening. ‘I’d wager three of you are going to make it. The rest, well, we’ll bury half of ’em and the other half we’ll send on to the regular infantry, where all the losers live.’

‘Which half?’ Kisswhere had asked.

Lizard eyes fixed on her. ‘What’s that, sweet roundworm?’

‘Which half of the one you cut in two goes in the ground, and which half goes to the regulars? The legs half, well, that solves the marching bit. But—’

‘You’re one of those, are ya?’

‘What? One who can count? Three make it, nine don’t. Nine can’t get split in half. Of course,’ she added with her own broad smile, ‘maybe marines don’t need to know how to count, and maybe master sergeants are the thickest of the lot. Which is what I’m starting to think, anyway.’

She’d never got close to completing the thousand push-ups.
Arsehole. Men who smile like that need a sense of humour, but I’m not one to believe in miracles
.

She scratched some more with her stick.
Should’ve broken him, right here between my legs. Aye, save the last laugh for Kisswhere. She wins every game
. ‘Every one of them, aye, isn’t it obvious?’

Spax made a point of keeping his shell-armour loose, the plates clacking freely, and with all the fetishes tied everywhere he was well pleased with the concatenation of sounds when he walked. Had he been a
thin runt, the effect would not have worked, but he was big enough and loud enough to be his own squad, a martial apparition that could not help but make a dramatic entrance no matter how sumptuous the destination.

In this case, the queen’s command tent was as close to a palace as he was likely to find in these Wastelands, and shouldering in between the curtains of silk and the slap of his heavy gauntlets on the map table gave him no small amount of satisfaction. ‘Highness, I am here.’

Queen Abrastal lounged in her ornate chair, legs stretched out, watching him from under lowered lids. Her red hair was unbound and hanging loose, freshly washed and combed out, and the Barghast’s loins stirred as he observed her in turn.

‘Wipe off that damned grin,’ Abrastal said in a growl.

His brows lifted. ‘Something wrong, Firehair?’

‘Only everything I know you’re thinking right now, Spax.’

‘Highness, if you’d been born in an alley behind a bar, you’d still be a queen in my eyes. Deride me for my admiration all you like, it changes nothing in my heart.’

She snorted. ‘You stink of rum.’

‘I was pursuing a mystery, Highness.’

‘Oh?’

‘The onyx-skinned woman. The Malazan.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Gods below, you’re worse than a crocodile in the mating season.’

‘Not that mystery, Firehair, though I’ll chase that one down given the chance. No, what makes me curious is her, well, her lack of zeal. This is not the soldier I would have expected.’

Abrastal waved one hand. ‘There is no mystery there, Spax. The woman’s a coward. Every army has them, why should the Malazan one be any different?’

‘Because she’s a marine,’ he replied.

‘So?’

‘The marines damn near singlehandedly conquered Lether, Highness, and she was one of them. On Genabackis whole armies would desert if they heard they’d be facing an assault by Malazan marines. They stank with magic and Moranth munitions, and they never broke – you needed to cut them down to the last man and woman.’

‘Even the hardest soldier reaches an end to their endurance, Spax.’

‘Well, she’s been a prisoner to the Letherii, so perhaps you are right. Now then, Highness, what did you wish of your loyal warchief?’

‘I want you with me at the parley.’

‘Of course.’

‘Sober.’

‘If you insist, but I warn you, what plagues me also plagues my
warriors. We yearn for a fight – we only hired on with you Bolkando because we expected an invasion or two. Instead, we’re marching like damned soldiers. Could we have reached the Bonehunters in time—’

‘You’d likely be regretting it,’ Abrastal said, her expression darkening.

Spax tried on a scowl. ‘You believe those Khundryl?’

‘I do. Especially after Felash’s warning – though I am coming to suspect that my Fourteenth Daughter’s foresight was focused on something still awaiting us.’

‘More of these two-legged giant lizards?’

She shrugged, and then shook her head. ‘No, I don’t think so, but unfortunately it’s only a gut feeling. We’ll see what we see at the parley.’

‘The Malazans never conquered the Gilk Barghast,’ Spax said.

‘Gods below, if you show up with your hackles raised—’

‘Spirits forbid the thought, Highness. Facing them, I will be like the one hare the eagle missed. I’m as likely to freeze as fill my breeches.’

Slowly, Abrastal’s eyes widened. ‘Warchief,’ she said in wonder, ‘you are frightened of them.’

He grimaced, and then nodded.

The queen of the Bolkando abruptly rose, taking a deep breath, and Spax’s eyes could not help but fall to her swelling chest. ‘I will meet this Adjunct,’ Abrastal said with sudden vigour. Her eyes found the Barghast and pinned him in place. ‘If indeed we are to face more of the giant two-legged lizards with their terrible magic … Spax, what will you now claim of the courage of your people?’

‘Courage, Highness? You will have that. But can we hope to do what those Khundryl said the Malazans did?’ He hesitated, and then shook his head. ‘Firehair, I too will look hard upon those soldiers, and I fear I already know what I will see. They have known the crucible.’

‘And you do not wish to see that truth, do you?’

He grunted. ‘Let’s just say it’s both a good and a bad thing your stores of rum are nearly done.’

‘Was this our betrayal?’

Tanakalian faced the question, and the eyes of the hard, iron woman who had just voiced it, for as long as he could before shying away. ‘Mortal Sword, you well know we simply could not reach them in time. As such, our failure was one of circumstance, not loyalty.’

‘For once,’ she replied, ‘you speak wisely, sir. Tomorrow we ride out to the Bonehunter camp. Prepare an escort of fifty of our brothers and sisters – I want healers and our most senior veterans.’

‘I understand, Mortal Sword.’

She glanced at him, studied his face for a moment, and then returned her gaze to the jade-lit southeastern sky. ‘If you do not, sir, they will.’

You hound me into a corner, Mortal Sword. You seem bent on forcing my hand. Is there only room for one on that pedestal of yours? What will you do when you stand face to face with the Adjunct? With Brys Beddict?

But, more to the point, what do you know of this betrayal? I see a sword in our future. I see blood on its blade. I see the Perish standing alone, against impossible odds
.

‘At the parley,’ Krughava said, ‘you will keep our own counsel, sir.’

He bowed. ‘As you wish.’

‘She has been wounded,’ Krughava went on. ‘We will close about her with our utmost diligence to her protection.’

‘Protection, sir?’

‘In the manner of hunter whales, Shield Anvil, when one of their clan is unwell.’

‘Mortal Sword, this shall be a parley of comrades, more or less. Our clan, as you might call it, is unassailed. No sharks. No dhenrabi or gahrelit. Against whom do we protect her?’

‘The darkness of her own doubts if nothing else. Though I cannot be certain, I fear she is one who would gnaw upon her own scars, eager to watch them bleed, thirsty for the taste of blood in her mouth.’

‘Mortal Sword, how can we defend her against herself?’

Krughava was silent for a time, and then she sighed. ‘Make stern your regard, banish all shadows from your mind, anneal in brightest silver your certainty. We return to the path, with all resolve. Can I make it any clearer, Shield Anvil?’

He bowed again.

‘Leave me now,’ she said.

Tanakalian swung round and walked down from the rise. The even rows of cookfires flickered in the basin before him, painting the canvas tents with light and shadow. Five thousand paces to the west rose another glow – the Bolkando encampment.
A parley of comrades, a clan. Or perhaps not. The Bolkando have no place in this scheme
.