The Malazan Empire Read online

  Lorn’s eyes narrowed on the young man. He’d reached the edge of the depression, stopping to relay orders to the work crews. He leaned back in his saddle then and glanced in their direction. “Paran. From House Paran?”

  “Aye, gold in his veins and all that.”

  “Call him up here.”

  The captain gestured and the lieutenant kicked his mount’s flanks. Moments later he reined in beside the captain and saluted.

  The man and his horse were covered from head to toe in blood and bits of flesh. Flies and wasps buzzed hungrily around them. Lorn saw in Lieutenant Paran’s face none of the youth that rightly belonged there. For all that, it was an easy face to rest eyes upon.

  “You checked the other side, Lieutenant?” the captain asked.

  Paran nodded. “Yes, sir. There’s a small fishing settlement down from the promontory. A dozen or so huts. Bodies in all but two. Most of the barques look to be in, though there’s one empty mooring pole.”

  Lorn cut in. “Lieutenant, describe the empty huts.”

  He batted at a threatening wasp before answering. “One was at the top of the strand, just off the trail from the road. We think it belonged to an old woman we found dead on the road, about half a league south of here.”

  “Why?”

  “Adjunct, the hut’s contents were that of an old woman. Also, she seemed in the habit of burning candles. Tallow candles, in fact. The old woman on the road had a sack full of turnips and a handful of tallow candles. Tallow’s expensive here, Adjunct.”

  Lorn asked, “How many times have you ridden through this battlefield, Lieutenant?”

  “Enough to be getting used to it, Adjunct.” He grimaced.

  “And the second empty hut?”

  “A man and a girl, we think. The hut’s close to the tidemark, opposite the empty mooring pole.”

  “No sign of them?”

  “None, Adjunct. Of course, we’re still finding bodies, along the road, out in the fields.”

  “But not on the beach.”

  “No.”

  The Adjunct frowned, aware that both men were watching her. “Captain, what kind of weapons killed your soldiers?”

  The captain hesitated, then turned a glare on the lieutenant. “You’ve been crawling around down there, Paran, let’s hear your opinion.”

  Paran’s answering smile was tight. “Yes, sir. Natural weapons.”

  The captain felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. He’d hoped he’d been wrong.

  “What do you mean,” Lorn asked, “natural weapons?”

  “Teeth, mostly. Very big, very sharp ones.”

  The captain cleared his throat, then said, “There haven’t been wolves in Itko Kan for a hundred years. In any case, no carcasses around—”

  “If it was wolves,” Paran said, turning to eye the basin, “they were as big as mules. No tracks, Adjunct. Not even a tuft of hair.”

  “Not wolves, then,” Lorn said.

  Paran shrugged.

  The Adjunct drew a deep breath, held it, then let it out in a slow sigh. “I want to see this fishing village.”

  The captain made ready to don his helmet, but the Adjunct shook her head. “Lieutenant Paran will suffice, Captain. I suggest you take personal command of your guard in the meantime. The dead must be removed as quickly as possible. All evidence of the massacre is to be erased.”

  “Understood, Adjunct,” the captain said, hoping he’d kept the relief out of his voice.

  Lorn turned to the young noble. “Well, Lieutenant?”

  He nodded and clucked his horse into motion.

  It was when the birds scattered from their path that the Adjunct found herself envying the captain. Before her the roused carrion-eaters exposed a carpet of armor, broken bones, and meat. The air was hot, turgid and cloying. She saw soldiers, still helmed, their heads crushed by what must have been huge, terribly powerful jaws. She saw torn mail, crumpled shields, and limbs that had been ripped from bodies. Lorn managed only a few moments of careful examination of the scene around them before she fixed her gaze on the promontory ahead, unable to encompass the magnitude of the slaughter. Her stallion, bred of the finest lines of Seven Cities stock, a warhorse trained in the blood for generations, had lost its proud, unyielding strut, and now picked its way carefully along the road.

  Lorn realized she needed a distraction, and sought it in conversation. “Lieutenant, have you received your commission yet?”

  “No, Adjunct. I expect to be stationed in the capital.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Indeed. And how will you manage that?”

  Paran squinted ahead, a tight smile on his lips. “It will be arranged.”

  “I see.” Lorn fell silent. “The nobles have refrained from seeking military commissions, kept their heads low for a long time, haven’t they?”

  “Since the first days of the Empire. The Emperor held no love for us. Whereas Empress Laseen’s concerns seem to lie elsewhere.”

  Lorn eyed the young man. “I see you like taking risks, Lieutenant,” she said. “Unless your presumption extends to goading the Adjunct to the Empress. Are you that confident of your blood’s invincibility?”

  “Since when is speaking the truth presumptuous?”

  “You are young, aren’t you?”

  This seemed to sting Paran. A flush rose in his smooth-shaven cheeks. “Adjunct, for the past seven hours I have been knee-deep in torn flesh and spilled blood. I’ve been fighting crows and gulls for bodies—do you know what these birds are doing here? Precisely? They’re tearing off strips of meat and fighting over them; they’re getting fat on eyeballs and tongues, livers and hearts. In their frantic greed they fling the meat around . . .” He paused, visibly regaining control over himself as he straightened in his saddle. “I’m not young anymore, Adjunct. As for presumption, I honestly couldn’t care less. Truth can’t be danced around, not out here, not now, not ever again.”

  They reached the far slope. Off to the left a narrow track led down toward the sea. Paran gestured to it, then angled his horse forward.

  Lorn followed, her thoughtful expression holding on the lieutenant’s broad back, before she turned her attention to the route they took. The path was narrow, skirting the promontory’s bluff. Off to the left the trail’s edge dropped away to rocks sixty feet below. The tide was out, the waves breaking on a reef a few hundred yards offshore. Pools filled the black bedrock’s cracks and basins, dully reflecting an overcast sky.

  They came to a bend, and beyond and below stretched a crescent-shaped beach. Above it, at the promontory’s foot, lay a broad, grassy shelf on which squatted a dozen huts.

  The Adjunct swung her gaze seaward. The barques rested on their low flanks beside their mooring poles. The air above the beach and the tidal flat was empty—not a bird in sight.

  She halted her mount. A moment later Paran glanced back at her then did the same. He watched her as she removed her helmet and shook out her long, auburn hair. It was wet and stringy with sweat. The lieutenant rode back to her side, a questioning look in his eyes.

  “Lieutenant Paran, your words were well spoken.” She breathed in the salty air, then met his gaze. “You won’t be stationed in Unta, I’m afraid. You will be taking your orders from me as a commissioned officer on my staff.”

  His eyes slowly narrowed. “What happened to those soldiers, Adjunct?”

  She didn’t answer immediately, leaning back on her saddle and scanning the distant sea. “Someone’s been here,” she said. “A sorcerer of great power. Something’s happened, and we’re being diverted from discovering it.”

  Paran’s mouth dropped open. “Killing four hundred people was a diversion?”

  “If that man and his daughter had been out fishing, they’d have come in with the tide.”

  “But—”

  “You won’t find their bodies, Lieutenant.”

  Paran was puzzled. “Now what?”

  She glanced at him, then swung her horse around. “We go ba
ck.”

  “That’s it?” He stared after her as she directed her mount back up the trail, then rode to catch up. “Wait a minute, Adjunct,” he said, as he came alongside.

  She gave him a warning look.

  Paran shook his head. “No. If I’m now on your staff, I have to know more about what’s going on.”

  She placed her helmet back on and cinched tight the strap under her chin. Her long hair dangled in tattered ropes down over her Imperial cape. “Very well. As you know, Lieutenant, I’m no mage—”

  “No,” Paran cut in, with a cold grin, “you just hunt them down and kill them.”

  “Don’t interrupt me again. As I was saying, I am anathema to sorcery. That means, Lieutenant, that, even though I’m not a practitioner, I have a relationship with magic. Of sorts. We know each other, if you will. I know the patterns of sorcery, and I know the patterns of the minds that use it. We were meant to conclude that the slaughter was thorough, and random. It was neither. There’s a path here, and we have to find it.”

  Slowly Paran nodded.

  “Your first task, Lieutenant, is to ride to the market town—what’s its name again?”

  “Gerrom.”

  “Yes, Gerrom. They’ll know this fishing village, since that’s where the catch is sold. Ask around, find out which fisher family consisted of a father and daughter. Get me their names, and their descriptions. Use the militia if the locals are recalcitrant.”

  “They won’t be,” Paran said. “The Kanese are cooperative folk.”

  They reached the top of the trail and stopped at the road. Below, wagons rocked among the bodies, the oxen braying and stamping their blood-soaked hoofs. Soldiers shouted in the press, while overhead wheeled thousands of birds. The scene stank of panic. At the far end stood the captain, his helmet hanging from its strap in one hand.

  The Adjunct stared down on the scene with hard eyes. “For their sake,” she said, “I hope you’re right, Lieutenant.”

  As he watched the two riders approach, something told the captain that his days of ease in Itko Kan were numbered. His helmet felt heavy in his hand. He eyed Paran. That thin-blooded bastard had it made. A hundred strings pulling him every step of the way to some cushy posting in some peaceful city.

  He saw Lorn studying him as they came to the crest. “Captain, I have a request for you.”

  The captain grunted. Request, hell. The Empress has to check her slippers every morning to make sure this one isn’t already in them. “Of course, Adjunct.”

  The woman dismounted, as did Paran. The lieutenant’s expression was impassive. Was that arrogance, or had the Adjunct given him something to think about?

  “Captain,” Lorn began, “I understand there’s a recruiting drive under way in Kan. Do you pull in people from outside the city?”

  “To join? Sure, more of them than anyone else. City folk got too much to give up. Besides, they get the bad news first. Most of the peasants don’t know everything’s gone to Hood’s Gate on Genabackis. A lot of them figure city folk whine too much anyway. May I ask why?”

  “You may.” Lorn turned to watch the soldiers cleaning up the road. “I need a list of recent recruits. Within the last two days. Forget the ones born in the city, just the outlying ones. And only the women and/or old men.”

  The captain grunted again. “Should be a short list, Adjunct.”

  “I hope so, Captain.”

  “You figured out what’s behind all this?”

  Still following the activity on the road below, Lorn said, “No idea.”

  Yes, the captain thought, and I’m the Emperor reincarnated. “Too bad,” he muttered.

  “Oh.” The Adjunct faced him. “Lieutenant Paran is now on my staff. I trust you’ll make the necessary adjustments.”

  “As you wish, Adjunct. I love paperwork.”

  That earned him a slight smile. Then it was gone. “Lieutenant Paran will be leaving now.”

  The captain looked at the young noble and smiled, letting the smile say everything. Working for the Adjunct was like being the worm on the hook. The Adjunct was the hook, and at the other end of the line was the Empress. Let him squirm.

  A sour expression flitted across Paran’s face. “Yes, Adjunct.” He climbed back into the saddle, saluted, then rode off down the road.

  The captain watched him leave, then said, “Anything else, Adjunct?”

  “Yes.”

  Her tone brought him around.

  “I would like to hear a soldier’s opinion of the nobility’s present inroads on the Imperial command structure.”

  The captain stared hard at her. “It ain’t pretty, Adjunct.”

  “Go on.”

  The captain talked.

  It was the eighth day of recruiting and Staff Sergeant Aragan sat bleary-eyed behind his desk as yet another whelp was prodded forward by the corporal. They’d had some luck here in Kan. Fishing’s best in the backwaters, Kan’s Fist had said. All they get around here is stories. Stories don’t make you bleed. Stories don’t make you go hungry, don’t give you sore feet. When you’re young and smelling of pigshit and convinced there ain’t a weapon in all the damn world that’s going to hurt you, all stories do is make you want to be part of them.

  The old woman was right. As usual. These people had been under the boot so long they actually liked it. Well, Aragan thought, the education begins here.

  It had been a bad day, with the local captain roaring off with three companies and leaving not one solid rumor in their wake about what was going on. And if that wasn’t bad enough, Laseen’s Adjunct arrived from Unta shortly afterward, using one of those eerie magical Warrens to get here. Though he’d never seen her, just her name on the hot, dry wind was enough to give him the shakes. Mage killer, the scorpion in the Imperial pocket.

  Aragan scowled down at the writing tablet and waited until the corporal cleared his throat. Then he looked up.

  The recruit standing before him took the staff sergeant aback. He opened his mouth, on his tongue a lashing tirade designed to send the young ones scampering. A second later he shut it again, the words unspoken. Kan’s Fist had made her instructions abundantly clear: if they had two arms, two legs and a head, take them. The Genabackis campaign was a mess. Fresh bodies were needed.

  He grinned at the girl. She matched the Fist’s description perfectly. Still. “All right, lass, you understand you’re in line to join the Malazan Marines, right?”

  The girl nodded, her gaze steady and cool and fixed on Aragan.

  The recruiter’s expression tightened. Damn, she can’t be more than twelve or thirteen. If this was my daughter . . .

  What’s got her eyes looking so bloody old? The last time he’d seen anything like them had been outside Mott Forest, on Genabackis—he’d been marching through farmland hit by five years’ drought and a war twice as long. Those old eyes were brought by hunger, or death. He scowled. “What’s your name, girl?”

  “Am I in, then?” she asked quietly.

  Aragan nodded, a sudden headache pounding against the inside of his skull. “You’ll get your assignment in a week’s time, unless you got a preference.”

  “Genabackan campaign,” the girl answered immediately. “Under the command of High Fist Dujek Onearm. Onearm’s Host.”

  Aragan blinked. “I’ll make a note,” he said softly. “Your name, soldier?”

  “Sorry. My name is Sorry.”

  Aragan jotted the name down on his tablet. “Dismissed, soldier. The corporal will tell you where to go.” He looked up as she was near the door. “And wash all that mud off your feet.” Aragan continued writing for a moment, then stopped. It hadn’t rained in weeks. And the mud around here was halfway between green and gray, not dark red. He tossed down the stylus and massaged his temples. Well, at least the headache’s fading.

  Gerrom was a league and a half inland along the Old Kan Road, a pre-Empire thoroughfare rarely used since the Imperial raised coast road had been constructed. The traffic on it these da
ys was mostly on foot, local farmers and fishers with their goods. Of them only unraveled and torn bundles of clothing, broken baskets and trampled vegetables littering the track remained to give evidence of their passage. A lame mule, the last sentinel overseeing the refuse of an exodus, stood dumbly nearby, ankle-deep in a rice paddy. It spared Paran a single forlorn glance as he rode past.

  The detritus looked to be no more than a day old, the fruits and green-leaved vegetables only now beginning to rot in the afternoon heat.

  His horse carrying him at a slow walk, Paran watched as the first outbuildings of the small trader town came into view through the dusty haze. No one moved between the shabby mudbrick houses; no dogs came out to challenge him, and the only cart in sight leaned on a single wheel. To add to the uncanny scene, the air was still, empty of birdsong. Paran loosened the sword in its scabbard.

  As he neared the outbuildings he halted his mount. The exodus had been swift, a panicked flight. Yet he saw no bodies, no signs of violence beyond the haste evident in those leaving. He drew a deep breath, slowly released it, then clicked his horse forward. The main street was in effect the town’s only street, leading at its far end to a T intersection marked by a single two-story stone building: the Imperial Constabulary. Its tin-backed shutters were closed, its heavy banded door shut. As he approached Paran held his eyes on the building.

  He dismounted before it, tying his mare to the hitching rail then looking back up the street. No movement. Unsheathing his blade, Paran swung back to the Constabulary door.

  A soft, steady sound from within stopped him, too low to be heard from any distance but now, as he stood before the huge door, he could hear a liquid murmuring that raised the hairs on his neck. Paran reached out with his sword and set its point under the latch. He lifted the iron handle upward until it disengaged, then pushed open the door.

  Movement rippled in the gloom within, a flap and soft thumping of air carrying to Paran the redolent stench of putrifying flesh. Breathing hard and with a mouth dry as old cotton, he waited for his eyes to adjust.

  He stared into the Constabulary’s outer room, and it was a mass of movement, a chilling soft sussuration of throats giving voice. The chamber was filled with black pigeons cooing in icy calm. Uniformed human shapes lay in their midst, stretched haphazardly across the floor amid droppings and drifting black down. Sweat and death clung to the air thick as gauze.