The sticks clacked together in one of Blues’ hands. He eyed the ridge ahead. ‘Gettin’ closer.’
Shimmer glanced back down the column where it twisted along the narrow trail. She spied Skinner in his long coat of armour riding close to the rear. Cowl was next to him, wrapped as usual in his shroud-like dirty ash-grey cloak. Together again, those two. That damned sneering assassin disturbed her like none other she’d met over a lifetime’s career of war and conflict. But even she, grudgingly, had to give the man his due: he did his job and kept Dancer’s Talons at bay.
Still, it saddened her to see Skinner drifting more and more into that one’s company. Once he’d been inseparable from K’azz. Always at his side. Their champion, many had even thought him – then. Their answer to Dassem Ultor. But each defeat and setback in their campaigning seemed to drive the man ever further from K’azz’s side. There was an element, she knew, among the guard who were of the opinion that a company’s lack of success was the fault of its commander. And this was especially true of any mercenary company.
Riding the trail, the cool wind brushing at her hair where it escaped her helmet, Shimmer tightened the reins round her fist and pulled on her mail coat where it caught at her thigh. She’d been against that from the start – the idea of their turning mercenary. She’d never quite fully understood K’azz’s rationale. Something about ease of movement across Quon Tali, and not being a threat to local suzerainty.
At least so it was on the face of the papers and treaties they signed with the various princes, kings, chieftains, councillors and nobles with whom they’d taken ‘employment’. Papers these representatives were quick to throw to the wind the moment Kellanved and his motley army appeared on their borders.
In any case, turning mercenary did swell their numbers. The lustre of K’azz’s family name drew many, together with those associated with him: Skinner, Blues, Lazar, Cal-Brinn and Bars. Even the name Cowl drew recruits who wished to work with him – and learn his trade. The sort of men and women she thought they could do without. Such as Isha, Lacy and the Wickan renegade, Tarkhan.
Now, though, those who fought for money alone had long since drifted away. Now, only those who’d always regarded themselves as part of the personal guard of the Red Duke remained.
Or so she’d thought at the time.
K’azz led them up on to a narrow natural plateau hidden away among the climbing ridges of the Fenn Range. It was thickly grassed, the air cold. Nearby, a herd of wild horses startled Shimmer as they thundered off, wary of their advance.
Here K’azz had them dismount and gather in a circle. Pushing her way through the thigh-high grasses, Shimmer noted dark fisted knots of stone poking up here and there. Standing stones. But hardly cyclopean. Small and eroded. No more than headstones.
‘Feel it sizzle?’ she heard Blues murmur to the skinny young mage now at his side, Fingers.
‘It’s like ten stones pressing down on my skull,’ the kid groaned, and he held a hand to his forehead.
‘Gather round!’ K’azz called from the dusk.
‘Have a care, K’azz. This is no ordinary field,’ Smoky answered, warning.
‘I know. Gather round.’
Shimmer pressed forward into the tightening ring of the remaining guard encircling K’azz. The faces of some, she noted, held an anxious worry. And then it came to her like a sudden panic: was this it? All their battles and struggle to come to an end here in this isolated, inauspicious place? Had he brought them here to disband? Here, this very night? The suspicion clenched her heart and made it hard to breathe.
Yet across the small clear circle Stoop was not concerned. To the contrary, the old saboteur looked positively pleased. He held a
crooked
smile behind his grizzled beard while he scratched at his chin with the stump of his elbow.
K’azz raised his arms for silence. Yet even as he did so Skinner pressed forward, frowning, as if sharing Shimmer’s fears. Shimmer felt a brief echo of the attraction she once held for him as his blond hair blew about his still handsome features. ‘Why have we ventured so far north, K’azz?’ he demanded. ‘Are we yielding the fight?’ He turned to address the crowded company. ‘I have always maintained we should head to Tali. The city would rise to our banner.
We
could lead a liberating force eastward.’
The audacity!
The man had just announced his plans should K’azz dissolve the company. Shimmer drew breath to shout him down, but K’azz merely raised a hand for silence and she reluctantly subsided. ‘Are you vowing that you will never abandon the fight?’ he asked in a manner remarkably composed, given this implied challenge to his authority.
Skinner now frowned in earnest. He peered about, gauging the mood of the company, and Shimmer was relieved to see hardly any support for him in the hard, disapproving expressions around the circle. ‘Of course,’ he answered easily, as if to shrug off the ridiculous question. ‘That is my very point. I counsel that we return to the struggle.’
K’azz merely gave a small nod of assent, and in this guarded reaction – giving away nothing – Shimmer recognized the commander at his most dangerous. He had somehow manoeuvred Skinner exactly where he wanted him, she realized.
Yet of course he reveals nothing of it
. ‘Very good. For that is my intent. That is why I have brought us here.’ He raised his chin to address the entire gathered company. ‘We are here to swear a vow!’ he began, loudly, catching everyone’s attention. ‘As many of you have already noticed, this is no random field. It is an ancient site. A place of power. Holy to our family, to our ancestors, and, some say, even to those ancient ones who preceded us upon these lands.
‘We gather here on this day in the sight of one another to swear a binding oath. What we here swear is unrelenting and unending opposition to the Malazan Empire for so long as it shall endure. To never abandon or turn away from such opposition. To this cause all gathered here must give their individual agreement and binding commitment. Those of you who know doubt, or who feel unable to pledge yourselves utterly to this cause, are free to go. Nay, are encouraged to go. And all without rancour or ill-feelings.’
While talking K’azz turned full circle to peer at every face, to fix
a
hard gauging eye upon every member of his remaining guard. ‘So … this is my Vow. This is what I here pledge and what I, in turn, ask of anyone who would choose to follow me. Now … what say you, Stoop?’
The wiry old siegemaster gave an easy shrug. ‘I so swear, a course.’
‘Blues?’
Their unofficial weaponmaster nodded solemnly. ‘I so swear.’
K’azz then faced Skinner. ‘Skinner? What of you?’
He was still frowning, as if sensing a trap but unable to pin it down. Finally he shrugged as well. ‘Of course. I also swear. Fighting on has been my intent all along.’
K’azz’s hard gaze now fell upon Shimmer and a cold finger seemed to press itself upon her spine. She felt a sudden weight, as if she were being sucked down into the earth beneath her feet, or the earth itself were rising up to swallow her. The pounding of hooves returned to her ears and she thought perhaps the herd of wild horses had returned. But the thunder was too deep for mere horses.
Something immense moving across the land. Or is it simply my heart?
She tried to speak but could make no sound. After what seemed an eternity the words escaped her numb lips.
‘I so swear.’
The punishing weight of that gaze moved on and she could breathe again. All that must have been as an instant. Blinking to clear inexplicable tears from her gaze she peered out across the tall stands of grasses weaving in the evening winds and there she spied a lone dark figure, watching. It was a woman; that much was clear. But broad, powerful and dark-skinned, her long kinky black hair wind-tossed.
Strangely panicked by the appearance of one woman – some sort of displaced tribal, Seti or Wickan – Shimmer glanced to K’azz, now asking Lean to swear. Dare she interrupt? She returned her gaze to the grasses but the woman was gone. Moved on. A refugee, perhaps, from the fighting in the south. Odd that she should be alone.
The swearing continued, K’azz demanding a personal pledge from all gathered. For some reason the ritual awakened another memory in Shimmer and she found herself drifting back even further in time to when she was a child.
‘
Shimmer
…’
Had that been the wind? A distant voice calling her name?
If she tried very hard she could remember a little of her youth. A farm in one of the more rural Kan provinces. She could recall feeding chickens and pigs. Harvesting rice. Playing with an army of brothers and sisters in the dry dusty ground before their family hut.
A hard upbringing. But for the most part a happy one. Until all came to an end.
Until
he
came. A man so old as to be nothing more than dried flesh and wisps of white hair. Or so it appeared to the child she was at the time.
She remembered her father bending down before her. He took her shoulders in his big hard farmer’s hands. ‘You will go with this man, Iko. It is a great merit to your family that he has chosen you. Be studious. Learn his teachings. But above all – be obedient! For it is by honouring him that you honour us. Your parents and all your ancestors before you. Do you understand?’
And she looking up at him, blinking through tears, hardly understanding. ‘Yes, Father. I swear.’
‘Very good, Iko. Do not cry. You go now to the capital. To a great school. Dance well. Bring us merit.’
‘Yes, Father.’
Then a cruel dry grip upon her wrist tugging her along and a rasping mutter. ‘I do not know why I bother. Too short you are. Too short by far. But,’ and the hand swung her up on to a cart, ‘one must do the best one can with what the gods provide.’
And if her childhood had been deprived but benign, the school proved a hundred times as harsh and in no way benign. For the discipline of the dance of the whipsword was unforgiving.
‘
Shimmer
.’
There it was again. That voice. Calling. More insistent this time.
The school’s lessons had been brutal but she’d survived. She wondered if she was the last of the whipsword dancers, now that the Kan court had been obliterated. Thinking back, she couldn’t exactly remember how or why she’d survived the Malazan encirclement and siege. She, the last of the Kan king’s bodyguards.
‘
Shimmer!
’
The voice had a presence now. An image coalesced to impose itself upon her. It was the ghostly figure of Stoop, their old siegemaster. He was peering at her closely, anxiety on his crimped brows. ‘You’ve drifted far, lass. Any further and you’ll not make it back, I think. Best to return, yes?’
She peered at him, confused. ‘You’re not supposed to be here …’
‘No less than you, lass. Now stop your daydreaming. We’re in a dangerous place. Most dangerous the Guard’s ever been, I’m thinking.’
‘Dreaming?’ She frowned, glanced about at the drifting and wavering images that surrounded her. They appeared to her like the rippling reflections from a lake.
Or a river.
Her gaze snapped back to Stoop. ‘Where am I?’
‘Lost among your memories.’
‘How do I …’
He raised a brow. ‘Get back?’ He started off, but paused when she did not move. He beckoned her onward. ‘Just you follow me, lass. Any way’ll do.’ And he set off once more.
She stalked after him, full of wonder, but touched by anger as well. She now knew she was not physically present wherever this place was – her own mind, no doubt – yet she took a great deal of reassurance from the hiss and shift of her long mail coat as she moved.
She came to herself once more at the railing of the
Serpent
. Only now the river was hardly wider than a stream. Its dense jungle verges reached out to one another almost closing out the sun and blue sky overhead. And the vessel was not moving. They appeared to have run aground on a sand bar, or shallows. She now wore only thin linen trousers, a shirt and leather sandals. The heat and close humidity was unbearable. She could barely breathe the thick miasma. And who knew for how long they had been marooned here, the ship rotting beneath them?
Yet could this not be another dream?
‘This isn’t a dream,’ said the voice of Stoop.
She glanced aside to see him standing with her at the railing. The macabre humour of such a claim coming from him, a dead man, raised a smile to her lips. ‘It is if you’re here,’ she answered.
‘I’m close now, aye. We all are. All the Brethren. We’re frightened, Shimmer.’
The half-amused smile fell away. ‘Frightened?’
‘Aye. Of where we’re headed. Of who is awaiting us there. She’s like nothing else here in the world – ’cept maybe the Shattered God.’ He raised dead eyes to peer at her directly. ‘She has the power to steal us away, Shimmer. You won’t let that happen, yes?’
‘I promise, Stoop. I won’t let that happen to you.’
‘To me? I’m talking about all of us, lass. Now close your eyes.’
She could not help but shut them for an instant. When she opened them he was gone. She peered about the ship’s side. The rest of her companions sat about, or sprawled as if asleep. She pulled her hands from their clawed grip of the dried and splitting wood. The nails were blackened and broken. Insect bites dotted the flesh of her arms, livid and swollen, most unhealed. The noise from the surrounding jungle was now deafening: a cacophony of bird shrieks and whistles,
insect
whirrings, and the warning calls of unseen large animals. She went to find K’azz.