The Malazan Empire Read online

  He scratched the edges of the wound that had taken his left eye, and muttered under his breath. Something was wrong. He should have met her two days past. Nothing was going as planned these days. What with Captain Paran vanishing before even meeting Whiskeyjack and the story making the rounds about a Hound attacking the 2nd’s last-surviving mage and leaving fourteen dead marines in its wake, he supposed he shouldn’t be surprised that this rendezvous had gone awry as well.

  Chaos seemed a sign of the times. Toc straightened and rose in his saddle. Though there was no true road as such on the Plain, merchant caravans had mapped a rough track running north–south along the western edge. Trade had since died out, but the passing of generations of wagons and horse trains had left its mark. The center of the Plain was home to the Rhivi, those small brown-skinned people who moved with the herds in a seasonal cycle. Though not warlike, the Malazan Empire had forced their hand, and now they fought and scouted alongside Caladan Brood’s Tiste Andii legions against the Empire.

  Moranth reports placed the Rhivi far to the north and east, and Toc was thankful for that. He was feeling very alone out in this wasteland, yet loneliness was a lesser evil, all things considered.

  Toc’s single eye widened. It seemed he wasn’t so alone, after all. Perhaps a league ahead ravens wheeled. The man cursed and loosened the scimitar sheathed at his hip. He fought the urge to push his horse into a gallop and settled for a quick trot.

  As he neared he saw trampled grass off to one side of the trader’s track. The cackling laughter of the ravens was the only sound to break the stillness. They had already begun feeding. Toc reined in his horse and sat unmoving in his saddle, hunched forward. None of the bodies he saw looked as if they were apt to start moving, and the ravens’ preoccupied squabbling was good evidence that any survivors had long gone. Still, he had a bad feeling about this. Something hung in the air, something between a smell and a taste.

  He waited, for what he wasn’t certain, but a reluctance to move gripped him. All at once he identified the strangeness he felt: magic. It had been unleashed here. “I hate this,” he muttered, then dismounted.

  The ravens gave him room, but not much. Ignoring their outraged shrieks he approached the bodies. They numbered twelve in all. Eight wore the uniforms of Malazan Marines—but these weren’t average soldiers. His gaze narrowed on the silver sigils on their helmets. “Jakatakan,” he said. Élites. They’d been cut to pieces.

  He turned his attention to the remaining bodies and felt a tremor of fear run through him. No wonder the Jakatakan had taken such a beating. Toc strode to one of the bodies and crouched beside it. He knew something of the clan markings among the Barghast, how each hunter group was identified through their woad tattooing. The breath hissed between his teeth and he reached out to turn the savage’s face toward him, then he nodded. These were Ilgres Clan. Before the Crimson Guard had enlisted them, their home territory had been fifteen hundred leagues to the east, among the mountains just south of the Porule. Slowly Toc rose. The Ilgres numbered among the strongest of those who had joined the Crimson Guard at Blackdog Forest, but that was four hundred leagues north. So what had brought them here?

  The stench of spilled magic wafted across his face and he turned, his eye fixing on a body he hadn’t noticed before. It lay beside scorched grass. “So,” he said, “my question’s answered.” This band had been led by a Barghast shaman. Somehow, they’d stumbled onto a trail and this shaman had recognized it for what it was. Toc studied the shaman’s body. Killed by a sword wound in the throat. The unleashing of sorcery had been the shaman’s, but no magic had opposed him. And that was odd, particularly since it was the shaman who had died, rather than whomever he’d attacked.

  Toc grunted. “Well, she’s said to be tough on mages.” He walked a slow circle around the kill site, and found the trail with little difficulty. Some of the Jakatakan had survived, and from the smaller set of boot-prints, so had their charge. And overlaying these tracks were half a dozen moccasin prints. The trail veered westerly from the trader’s track, yet still led south.

  Returning to his horse, Toc mounted and swung the animal around. He removed the short bow from its saddle holster and strung it, then nocked an arrow. There was no hope of coming up on the Barghast undetected. Out on this plain he’d be visible a long time before entering arrow-range—and that range had become much closer now that he’d lost an eye. So they’d be waiting for him, with those damn lances. But he knew he had no choice; he hoped only to take down one or two of them before they skewered him.

  Toc spat again, then wrapped the reins around his left forearm and adjusted his grip on the bow. He gave the wide red scar crossing his face a vigorous, painful scratch, realizing that the maddening itch would return in moments anyway. “Oh well,” he said, then drove his heels into the horse’s flanks.

  The lone hill that rose up before Adjunct Lorn was not a natural one. The tops of mostly buried stones encircled its base. She wondered what might be entombed within it, then dismissed her misgivings. If those standing stones were of the size she’d seen rising around the mysterious barrows outside Genabaris, this mound dated back millennia. She turned to the two exhausted marines stumbling in her wake. “We’ll make our stand here. You with the crossbow, I want you lying up top.”

  The man ducked his head in answer and staggered to the mound’s grassy summit. Both he and his comrade seemed almost relieved that she’d called a halt, though they knew their death was but minutes away.

  Lorn eyed the other soldier. He’d taken a lance barb in his left shoulder and the blood still flowed profusely down the front of his breastplate. How he had stayed on his feet in the last hour was beyond Lorn’s understanding. He looked upon her with eyes dulled by resignation, showing nothing of the pain he must be feeling.

  “I’ll hold your left,” he said, shifting his grip on the curved tulwar in his right hand.

  Lorn unsheathed her own longsword and fixed her attention northward. Only four of the six Barghast were visible, approaching slowly. “We’re being flanked,” she called out to her crossbowman. “Take the one on your left.”

  The soldier beside her grunted. “My life need not be sheltered,” he said. “We were charged with your protection, Adjunct—”

  “Quiet,” Lorn commanded. “The longer you stand the better protected I’ll be,” she said.

  The soldier grunted again.

  The four Barghast were lingering now, just out of bowshot range. Two still carried their lances; the other two gripped short axes. Then a voice cried out far to Lorn’s right and she whirled to see a lance speeding toward her, and behind it a charging Barghast.

  Lorn brought her blade across her body and dropped into a crouch as she raised the weapon over her head. Her sword caught the lance’s shaft and even as it did so she was turning, pulling her weapon to one side. The deflected lance sped past and cracked into the hillside off to her right.

  Behind her she heard the crossbowman release a quarrel. As she spun back to the four charging Barghast there came a scream of pain from the other side of the mound. The soldier beside her seemed to have forgotten his wound, as he gripped his tulwar with both hands and planted his feet wide.

  “Attend, Adjunct,” he said.

  The Barghast off to the right cried out and she turned to see him spinning with the impact of a quarrel.

  The four warriors before them were no more than thirty feet away. The two with lances now launched them. Lorn made no move, realizing almost immediately that the one aimed at her would fly wide. The soldier beside her dropped away to his left, but not enough to avoid the lance as it thudded into his right thigh. It struck with such force as to drive right through his leg and embed itself in the earth. The soldier was pinned, but his only response was a soft gasp, and he raised his sword to parry an ax swinging at his head.

  In this time Lorn had already closed with the Barghast rushing at her. His ax was a shorter weapon, and she took advantage of this with a thrus
t before he came into his own range. He brought the copper-sheathed haft up to parry, but Lorn had already flicked her wrist, completing the feint and dipping under the ax. Her lunge buried the sword point in the Barghast’s chest, slicing the leather armor as if it were cloth.

  Her attack had committed her, and her sword was nearly wrenched from her hand as the savage toppled backward. Off-balance, she staggered a step, expecting the crushing blow of an ax. But it did not arrive. Regaining her balance she spun round, to find her crossbowman, now wielding his tulwar, engaging the other Barghast. Lorn snapped her attention to see how her other guard fared.

  Somehow, he still lived, though he faced two Barghast. He’d managed to drag the lance out of the earth, but the weapon’s shaft remained in his leg. That he was able to move at all, much less defend himself, spoke eloquently of Jakatakan discipline and training.

  Lorn rushed to engage the Barghast on the man’s right, nearest her. Even as she did so, an ax slipped past the soldier’s guard and struck him across the chest. Scale snapped as the heavy weapon’s edge ripped through armor. The soldier groaned and fell to one knee, blood spraying onto the ground.

  Lorn was in no position to defend him and could only watch in horror as the ax swung again, this time striking the man in the head. The helmet collapsed inward and his neck broke. He toppled sideways, landing at Lorn’s feet. Her forward momentum carried her right over him.

  A curse broke from her lips as she sprawled, crashing into the Barghast in front of her. She tried to bring the point of her sword up behind him but he twisted lithely to one side and leaped away. Lorn took a wild swing at him, missing, even as she fell. She felt her shoulder dislocate as she hit the hard ground, and the sword dropped from her numbed hand.

  Now, she thought, the only thing left to do is die. She rolled onto her back.

  With a growl the Barghast was standing beside her, ax raised high.

  Lorn was in a good position to see the skeletal hand bursting from the earth beneath the Barghast. It grasped an ankle. Bones snapped and the warrior screamed. Vaguely, as she watched, she wondered where the other two savages had gone. All sounds of fighting seemed to have stopped, but the ground rumbled with a growing, urgent thunder.

  The Barghast stared down at the hand crushing his shin. He screamed again as the wide, rippled blade of a flint sword shot up between his legs. The ax left the warrior’s hands as he frantically brought them down in an effort to deflect the sword, twisting to one side and kicking out with his free leg. It all came too late. The sword impaled him, jamming against his hipbone and lifting him from the ground. His dying shriek rose skyward.

  Lorn climbed to her feet with difficulty, her right arm hanging useless at her side. She identified the thundering sound as the beat of hoofs, and turned in the direction from which they came. A Malazan. As that fact sank in, she swung her attention from the rider and looked around. Both her guards were dead, and arrows jutted from two Barghast bodies.

  She took a shallow breath—all she could manage as pain spread across her chest—and gazed upon the creature that had risen from the earth. It was cloaked in rotting furs, and it stood over the warrior’s body, one leg still clutched in its hand. The other hand gripped the sword, which had been pushed the length of the Barghast’s body, the point emerging from his neck.

  “I was expecting you days ago,” Lorn said, glaring at the figure.

  It turned to regard her, its face hidden in shadow beneath the yellowed bone shelf of its helmet. The helmet, she saw, was the skull-cap of some horned beast, one horn broken off at its base.

  The rider arrived behind her. “Adjunct!” he called out, dismounting. He came to her side, bow still in his hand and arrow nocked. His lone eye glanced across Lorn and, seeming satisfied that her wound was not mortal, fixed on the massive but squat creature facing them. “Hood’s Breath, a T’lan Imass.”

  Lorn continued glaring at the T’lan Imass. “I knew you were about. It’s the only thing that explains a Barghast shaman bringing himself and his hand-picked hunters into the area. He must have used a Warren to get here. So where were you?”

  Toc the Younger stared at the Adjunct, amazed at her outburst. His gaze flicked back to the T’lan Imass. The last time he’d seen one was in Seven Cities, eight years past, and then it had been from a distance as the undead legions marched out into the western wastelands on some mission even the Empress could learn nothing about. At this close range, Toc eagerly studied the T’lan Imass. Not much left of it, he concluded. Despite the sorcery, three hundred thousand years had taken their toll. The skin that stretched across the squat man’s robust bones was a shiny nut brown in color, the texture of leather. Whatever flesh it had once covered had contracted to thin strips the consistency of oak roots—such muscles showed through torn patches here and there. The creature’s face, what Toc could see of it, bore a heavy chinless jawbone, high cheeks and a pronounced brow ridge. The eye sockets were dark holes.

  “I asked you a question,” Lorn grated. “Where were you?”

  The head creaked as the Imass looked down at its feet. “Exploring,” it said quietly in a voice born of stones and dust.

  Lorn demanded, “Your name, T’lan?”

  “Onos T’oolan, once of the Tarad Clan, of the Logros T’lan. I was birthed in the autumn of the Bleak Year, the ninth son to the Clan whetted as warrior in the Sixth Jaghut War—”

  “Enough,” Lorn said. She sagged wearily and Toc moved to her side. Glancing up at him she scowled, “You look grim.” Then a small smile came to her lips. “But good to me.”

  Toc grinned. “First things first, Adjunct. A place for you to rest.” She did not protest as he guided her to a grassy knoll near the barrow and gently pushed her to her knees. He glanced back to see the T’lan Imass still standing where it had first emerged from the ground. It had turned, however, and seemed to be studying the barrow. “We must make your arm immobile,” Toc said to the worn, weathered woman kneeling before him. “I am named Toc the Younger,” he said, squatting down.

  She raised her gaze at this. “I knew your father,” she said. Her smile returned. “Also a great bowman.”

  He ducked his head in reply.

  “He was a fine commander too,” Lorn continued, studying the ravaged youth who was now tending to her arm. “The Empress has regretted his death—”

  “Not dead for sure,” Toc interrupted, his tone tight and his single eye averted as he began removing the gauntlet from her hand. “Disappeared.”

  “Yes,” Lorn said softly. “Disappeared since the Emperor’s death.” She winced as he pulled away the gauntlet and tossed it aside.

  “I’ll need some strips of cloth,” he said, rising.

  Lorn watched him stride to one of the Barghast bodies. She had not known who her Claw contact would be, only that he was the last left alive among Dujek’s forces. She wondered why he had veered so sharply from his father’s path. There was nothing pleasant, or proud, in being a Claw. Only efficiency and fear.

  He took a knife to the body’s tanned leather armor, slicing it back to reveal a rough woolen shirt, into which he cut. Then he returned to her side, a handful of long strips in one hand. “I didn’t know you had an Imass for company,” he said, as he crouched beside her again.

  “They choose their own modes of travel,” Lorn said, a hint of anger in her voice. “And come when they please. But yes, he’s an integral player in my mission.” She fell silent, gritting her teeth in pain as Toc slipped the rude sling over her shoulder and under her arm.

  “I have little good to report,” Toc said, and he told her of Paran’s disappearance, and of Whiskeyjack and his squad departing without the captain in attendance. By the time he had finished he had adjusted the sling to his own satisfaction, and sat back on his haunches with a sigh.

  “Damn,” Lorn hissed. “Help me to my feet.”

  After he’d done so, she wobbled a bit and gripped his shoulder to steady herself. Then she nodded. “Get me my sword
.”

  Toc strode to the spot she’d indicated. After a brief search he found the longsword in the grass, and his eye thinned to a slit upon seeing the weapon’s dusty red blade. He brought it to her, and said, “An Otataral sword, Adjunct, the ore that kills magic.”

  “And mages,” Lorn said, taking the weapon awkwardly in her left hand and sheathing it.

  “I came upon the dead shaman,” Toc said.

  “Well,” Lorn said, “Otataral is no mystery to you of the Seven Cities, but few here know it, and I would keep it that way.”

  “Understood.” Toc turned to regard the immobile Imass.

  Lorn seemed to read his thought. “Otataral cannot quench their magic—believe me, it’s been tried. The Warrens of the Imass are similar to those of the Jaghut and the Forkrul Assail—Elder-, blood-, and earthbound—that flint sword of his will never break, and it cuts through the finest iron as easily as it will flesh and bone.”

  Toc shivered and spat. “I’ll not envy you your company, Adjunct.”

  Lorn smiled. “You’ll be sharing it for the next few days, Toc the Younger. We’ve a long walk to Pale.”

  “Six, seven days,” Toc said. “I expected you to be mounted.”

  Lorn’s sigh was heartfelt. “The Barghast shaman worked his talents on them. A disease took them all, even my stallion, which I brought with me through the Warren.” Her lined face softened momentarily, and Toc could feel her genuine sorrow.

  It surprised him. All that he’d heard of the Adjunct had painted for him a picture of a cold-blooded monster, the gauntleted hand of death that could descend from anywhere at any time. Perhaps this side of her existed; he hoped he would not have to see it. Then again, he corrected himself, she’d not spared her soldiers a second glance. Toc spoke, “You’ll ride my mare, Adjunct. She’s no warhorse, but she’s quick and long on endurance.”