Intruders into this realm rode an ill tide, arriving like vanguards to legions of chaos. Change stained the world the hue of fresh blood more often than not. When the truth was, the one thing all Imass desired was peace, affirmed in the ritual of living, secure and stable and exquisitely predictable. Heat and smoke from the hearths, the aromas of cooking meats, tubers, melted marrow. The nasal voices of the women singing as they went about their day’s modest demands. The grunts and gasps of love-making, the chants of children. Someone might be working an antler tine, the spiral edge of a split long-bone, or a core of flint. Another kneeling by the stream, scraping down a hide with polished blades and thumbnail scrapers, and nearby there was the faint depression marking a pit of sand where other skins had been buried. When anyone needed to urinate they would squat over the pit to send their stream down. To cure the hides.
Elders sat on boulders and watched the camp and all their kin going about their tasks, and they dreamed of the hidden places and the pathways that opened in the fever of droning voices and drumming and swirling scenes painted on torch-lit stone, deep in the seethe of night when spirits blossomed before the eyes in myriad colours, when the patterns rose to the surface and floated and flowed in the smoky air.
The hunt and the feast, the gathering and the shaping. Days and nights, births and deaths, laughter and grief, tales told and retold, the mind within unfolding to reveal itself like a gift to every kin, every warm, familiar face.
This, Onrack knew, was all that mattered. Every appeasement of the spirits sought the protection of that precious peace, that perfect continuity. The ghosts of ancestors hovered close to stand sentinel over the living. Memories wove strands that bound everyone together, and when those memories were shared, that binding grew ever stronger.
In the camp behind him, his beloved mate, Kilava, reclined on heaps of soft furs, only days away from giving birth to their second child. Shoulder-women brought her wooden bowls filled with fat, delicious grubs still steaming from the hot flat-rocks lining the hearths. And cones of honey and pungent teas of berry and bark. They fed her continuously and would do so until her labour pains began, to give her the strength and reserves she would need.
He recalled the night he and Kilava went to the home of Seren Pedac, in that strange, damaged city of Letheras. To hear of Trull Sengar’s death had been one of the hardest moments of Onrack’s life. But to find himself standing before his friend’s widow had proved even more devastating. Setting eyes upon her, he had felt himself collapse inside and he had wept, beyond any consolation, and he had—some time later—wondered at Seren’s fortitude, her preternatural calm, and he had told himself that she must have gone through her own grief in the days and nights immediately following her love’s murder. She had watched him weep with sorrow in her eyes but no tears. She’d made tea, then, methodical in its preparation, while Onrack huddled inside the embrace of Kilava’s arms.
Only later would he rail at the injustice, the appalling senselessness of his friend’s death. And for the duration of that night, as he struggled to speak to her of Trull—of the things they had shared since that moment of frail sympathy when Onrack elected to free the warrior from his Shorning—he was reminded again and again of fierce battles, defiant stands, acts of breathtaking courage, any one of which would have marked a worthy end, a death swollen with meaning, shining with sacrifice. And yet Trull Sengar had survived those, every one of them, fashioning a kind of triumph in the midst of pain and loss.
Had Onrack been there, in the blood-splashed arena of sand, Trull’s back would not have been unguarded. The murderer would never have succeeded in his act of brutal treachery. And Trull Sengar would have lived to see his own child growing in Seren Pedac’s belly, would have witnessed, in awe and wonder, that glow of focused inwardness in the expression of the Acquitor. No male could know such a sense of completeness, of course, for she had become a vessel of that continuity, an icon of hope and optimism for the future world.
Oh, if Trull could have witnessed that—no one deserved it more, after all the battles, the wounds, the ordeals and the vast solitude that Onrack could never pierce—so many betrayals and yet he had stood unbowed and had given of himself all that he could. No, there had been nothing fair in this.
Seren Pedac had been kind and gracious. She had permitted Kilava’s ritual ensuring a safe birth. But she had also made it clear that she desired nothing else, that this journey would be her own, and indeed, she was strong enough to make it.
Yes, women could be frightening. In their strengths, their capacity to endure.
As much as Onrack would have treasured being close to Kilava now, to treat her with gifts and morsels, any such attempt would have been met with ridicule from the shoulder-women and a warning snarl from Kilava herself. He had learned to keep his distance, now that the birthing was imminent.
In any case, he had grown fond of Udinaas. True, a man far more inclined to edged commentary than Trull had been, prone to irony and sarcasm, since these were the only weapons Udinaas could wield with skill. Yet Onrack had come to appreciate his wry wit, and more than that, the man had displayed unexpected virtues in his newfound role as father—ones that Onrack noted and resolved to emulate when his time arrived.
He had missed such an opportunity the first time round, and the man who was his first son, Ulshun Pral, had been raised by others, by adopted uncles, brothers, aunts. Even Kilava had been absent more often than not. And so, while Ulshun was indeed of their shared blood, he belonged more to his people than he did to his parents. There was only faint sorrow in this, Onrack told himself, fragments of regret that could find no fit in his memories of the Ritual’s deathless existence.
So much had changed. This world seemed to rush past, ephemeral and elusive, days and nights slipping through his hands. Time and again he was almost paralysed by a sense of loss, overwhelmed with anguish at the thought of another moment gone, another instant dwindling in his wake. He struggled to remain mindful, senses bristling to every blessed arrival, to absorb and devour and luxuriate in its taste, and then would come a moment when everything flooded over him and he would be engulfed, flailing in the blinding, deafening deluge.
Too many feelings, and it seemed weeping was his answer to so much in this mortal life—in joy, in sorrow, in gifts received and in the losses suffered. Perhaps he had forgotten all the other possible ways of responding. Perhaps they were the first to go once time became meaningless, cruel as a curse, leaving tears as the last thing to dry up.
Udinaas and Silchas Ruin drew closer.
And once more, Onrack felt like weeping.
The D’rhasilhani coast looked gnawed and rotted, with murky silt-laden rollers thrashing amidst pitted limestone outcrops and submerged sandbars overgrown with mangroves. Heaps of foam the hue of pale flesh lifted and sagged with every breaker, and through the eyeglass Shield Anvil Tanakalian could see, above the tideline where crescent pockets of sand and gravel were visible, mounds of dead fish, swarmed by gulls and something else—long, low and possibly reptilian—that heaved and bulled through the slaughter every now and then, sending the gulls flapping and screeching.
He was relieved he was not standing on that shore, so alien from the coast he had known almost all of his life—where the water was deep, clear and deathly cold; where every inlet and reach was shrouded in the gloom of black cliffs and thick forests of pine and fir. He had not imagined that such shorelines as he was seeing now even existed. Squalid, fetid, like some overripe pig slough. Northeastward along the coastline, at the base of a young range of mountains angling south, what must be a huge river emptied out into this vast bay, filling the waters with its silts. The constant inflow of fresh water, thick and milky-white, had poisoned most of the bay, as far as Tanakalian could determine. And this did not seem right. He felt as if he was looking upon the scene of a vast crime of some sort, a fundamental wrongness spreading like sepsis.
‘What is your wish, sir?’
The Shield
Anvil lowered the eyeglass and frowned at the coast filling the view to the north. ‘Make for the river mouth, Captain. I gauge the outflow channel lies upon the other side, closest to that eastern shore—the cliffs seem sheer.’
‘Even from here, sir,’ said the captain, ‘the barely submerged banks upon this side are plain to our sight.’ He hesitated. ‘It is the ones we cannot see that concern me, Shield Anvil. I am not even appeased should we await the tide.’
‘Can we not withdraw, further out to sea, and then make our approach closer to the eastern coastline?’
‘Into the head of the river’s current? Possibly, although in the clash with the tide, that current will be treacherous. Shield Anvil, this delegation we seek—not a seafaring people, I assume?’
Tanakalian smiled. ‘A range of virtually impassable mountains blocks the kingdom from the coast, and even on the landward side of that range a strip of territory is claimed by pastoral tribes—there is peace between them and the Bolkando. Nonetheless, to answer you, sir, no, the Bolkando are not a seafaring people.’
‘Thus, this river mouth . . .’
‘Yes, Captain. By gracious agreement with the D’rhasilhani, the Bolkando delegation is permitted an encampment on the east side of the river.’
‘The threat of invasion can make lifelong enemies into the closest allies,’ observed the captain.
‘So it seems,’ agreed Tanakalian. ‘What is extraordinary is that the alliances seem to be holding, even now when there will be no invasion from the Lether Empire. I suspect certain benefits from peace became evident.’
‘Profitable, you mean.’
‘Mutually so, yes, Captain.’
‘I must attend to the ship now, sir, if we are to revise our approach to the place of landing.’
The Shield Anvil nodded and, as the captain departed, Tanakalian raised the eyeglass once more, leaning for support against the starboard figurehead as he steadied himself. The seas were not especially rough this far inside the nameless bay, but in moments the Throne of War would begin to come about, and he was intent on making use of the hard pitch to scan further along the sheer cliffs of the eastern shoreline.
The Mortal Sword Krughava remained in her cabin. Since his return from visiting the Adjunct, Destriant Run’Thurvian had elected to begin an extended period of secluded meditation, and was also below decks. The presence of either one would have imposed a degree of formality that Tanakalian found increasingly chafing. He understood the necessity for propriety, and the burden of tradition that ensured meaning to all that they did—and all that they were—but he had spent time on the command ship of the Adjunct, in the company of Malazans. They displayed an ease in shared hardship that had at first shocked the Shield Anvil, until he comprehended the value of such behaviour. There could be no challenging the discipline of the Bonehunters when battle was summoned. But the force that truly held them together was found in the camaraderie they displayed during those interminably long periods of inactivity, such as all armies were forced to endure. Indeed, Tanakalian had come to delight in their brash lack of decorum, their open irreverence and their strange penchant for revelling in the absurd.
Perhaps an ill influence, as Run’Thurvian’s faintly disapproving frowns implied, whenever Tanakalian attempted his own ironic commentary. Of course, the Destriant possessed no shortage in his list of disappointments regarding the Order’s new Shield Anvil. Too young, woefully inexperienced, and dismayingly inclined to rash judgement—this last flaw simply unacceptable in one bearing the title of Shield Anvil.
‘Your mind is too active, sir,’ the Destriant had said once. ‘It is not for the Shield Anvil to make judgement. Not for you to decide who is worthy of your embrace. No, sir, but you have never disguised your predilections. I give you that.’
Generous of the man, all things considered.
As the ship lost headway in its long, creaking coming-about, Tanakalian studied that forbidding coast, the tortured mountains—many of them with cones shrouded in smoke and foul gases. It would not do to find themselves thrown against that deadly shoreline, although given the natural inclination of outflow currents, the risk was very real. Leading the Shield Anvil to one of those ghastly judgements, and in this case, even the Destriant could not find fault.
With a faint smile, Tanakalian lowered the eyeglass once more and returned it to its sealskin sheath slung beneath his left arm. He descended from the forecastle and made his way below decks. They would require Run’Thurvian and his sorcery to ensure safe passage into the river mouth, and this, Tanakalian concluded, was fair justification for interrupting the Destriant’s meditation, which had been going on for days now. Run’Thurvian might well cherish his privilege of solitude and unmitigated isolation, but certain necessities could not be avoided even by the Order’s Destriant. The old man could do with the fresh air, besides.
The command ship was alone in this bay. The remaining twenty-four serviceable Thrones of War held position far out to sea, more than capable of weathering whatever the southern ocean could muster, barring a typhoon, of course, and that season had passed, according to local pilots.
Since they had relinquished the Froth Wolf to the Adjunct, the Listral now served as the Order’s flagship. The oldest ship in the fleet—almost four decades since the laying of the keels—the Listral was the last survivor of the first line of trimarans, bearing antiquated details in style and decoration. This lent the ship a ferocious aspect, with every visible span of ironwood carved into the semblance of a snarling wolf’s head, and the centre hull was entirely shaped as a lunging wolf, three-quarters submerged so that the crest of foam at the bow churned from the beast’s gaping, fanged mouth.
Tanakalian loved this ship, even the archaic row of inside-facing cabins lining the corridor of the first level below deck. Listral could manage but half as many passengers as could the second and third lines of Thrones of War. At the same time, each cabin was comparatively spacious, indeed, almost luxurious.
The Destriant’s abode encompassed the last two cabins of this, the starboard hull. The wall between them now bore a narrow, low door. The stern chamber served as Run’Thurvian’s private residence, whilst the forward cabin had been sanctified as a temple of the Wolves. As expected, Tanakalian found the Destriant kneeling, head bowed, before the twin-headed altar. Yet something was wrong—the air reeked of charred flesh, burnt hair, and Run’Thurvian, his back to Tanakalian, remained motionless as the Shield Anvil swung in through the corridor hatch.
‘Destriant?’
‘Come no closer,’ croaked Run’Thurvian, his voice almost unrecognizable, and Tanakalian now heard the old man’s desperate wheezing of breath. ‘There is not much time, Shield Anvil. I had . . . concluded . . . that none would disturb me after all, no matter how overlong my absence.’ A hacking, bitter laugh. ‘I had forgotten your . . . temerity, sir.’
Tanakalian drew a step closer. ‘Sir, what has happened?’
‘Stay back, I beg you!’ gasped the Destriant. ‘You must take my words to the Mortal Sword.’
Something glittered on the polished wooden floor around the kneeling form, as if the man had leaked out on all sides—but the smell was not one of urine, and the liquid, while thick as blood, seemed almost golden in the faint lantern light. Real fear flowed through Tanakalian upon seeing it, and the Destriant’s words barely reached him over the thumping of his own heart. ‘Destriant—’
‘I travelled far,’ Run’Thurvian said. ‘Doubts . . . a growing unease. Listen! She is not as we believed. There will be . . . betrayal. Tell Krughava! The vow—we have made a mistake!’
The puddle was spreading, thick as honey, and it seemed the robed shape of the Destriant was diminishing, collapsing into itself.
He is dying. By the Wolves, he is dying. ‘Destriant,’ Tanakalian said, forcing his terror down, swallowing against the horror of what he was witnessing, ‘will you accept my embrace?’
The laugh that made its way out sounded as if it had bubbled up
through mud. ‘No. I do not.’
Stunned, the Shield Anvil staggered back.
‘You . . . you are . . . insufficient. You always were—another one of Krughava’s errors in . . . in judgement. You fail me, and so you shall fail her. The Wolves shall abandon us. The vow betrays them, do you understand? I have seen our deaths—this one here before you, and the ones to come. You, Tanakalian. The Mortal Sword too, and every brother and sister of the Grey Helms.’ He coughed, and something gushed out in the convulsion, spraying the altar with liquid and shapeless gobbets that slid down into the folds of stone fur, traversing the necks of the Wolves.
The kneeling figure slumped, folded in the middle at an impossible angle. The sound made when Run’Thurvian’s forehead struck the floor was that of a hen’s egg breaking, and that span of bone offered little resistance, so that the man’s face collapsed as well.
As Tanakalian stared, drawn forward once more, he saw watery streams leaking out from the Destriant’s ruined head.
The man had simply . . . melted. He could see that greyish pulp boiling, thinning down into clear streams of fat.
And he so wanted to scream, to unleash his horror, but a deeper dread had claimed him. He would not accept my embrace. I have failed him, he said. I will fail them all, he said.
Betrayal?
No, that I cannot believe.
I will not.
Although he knew Run’Thurvian was dead, Tanakalian spoke to him nonetheless. ‘The failure, Destriant, was yours, not mine. You journeyed far, did you? I suggest . . . not far enough.’ He paused, struggling to quell the trembling that had come to him. ‘Destriant. Sir. It pleases me that you rejected my embrace. For I see now that you did not deserve it.’
No, he was not simply a Shield Anvil, in the manner of all those who had come before, all those who had lived and died beneath the burden of that title. He was not interested in passive acceptance. He would take upon himself mortal pain, yes, but not indiscriminately.