Authors: Steven Erikson
‘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.
I too am mortal, after all. It is my essence that I am able to weigh my judgement. Of what is worthy. And what is not.
No, I shall not be as other Shield Anvils. The world has changed—we must change with it. We must change to meet it.
He stared down at the heaped mess that was all that remained of Destriant Run’Thurvian.
There would be shock. Dismay and faces twisted into distraught fear. The Order would be flung into disarray, and it would fall to the Mortal Sword, and to the Shield Anvil, to steady the rudder, until such time as a new Destriant was raised among the brothers and sisters.
Of more immediate concern, however, as far as Tanakalian was concerned, was that there would be no sorcerous protection in traversing the channel. In his assessment—shaky as it might be at the moment—he judged that news to be paramount.
The Mortal Sword would have to wait.
He had nothing to tell her in any case.
‘Did you embrace our brother, Shield Anvil?’
‘Of course, Mortal Sword. His pain is with me, now, as is his salvation.’
The mind shaped its habits and habits reshaped the body. A lifelong rider walked with bowed legs, a seafarer stood wide no matter how sure the purchase. Women who twirled strands of their hair would in time come to sit with heads tilted to one side. Some people prone to worry might grind their teeth, and years of this would thicken the muscles of the jaws and file the molars down to smooth lumps, bereft of spurs and crowns.
Yedan Derryg, the Watch, wandered down to the water’s edge. The night sky, so familiar to one who had wrapped his life about this late stretch of time preceding the sun’s rise, was now revealed to him as strange, jarred free of the predictable, the known, and the muscles of his jaw worked in steady, unceasing rhythm.
The reflected smear of vaguely green comets rode the calm surface of the inlet, like slashes of luminous glow-spirits, as were wont to gather in the wake of ships. There were strangers in the sky. Drawing closer night after night, as if summoned. The blurred moon had set, which was something of a relief, but Yedan could still observe the troubled behaviour of the tide—the things that had once been certain were certain no longer. He was right to worry.
Suffering was coming to the shore, and the Shake would not be spared. This
was a knowledge he shared with Twilight, and he had seen the growing fear in the rheumy eyes of the witches and warlocks, leading him to suspect that they too had sensed the approach of something vast and terrible. Alas, shared fears did not forge any renewed commitment to co-operation—for them the political struggle remained, had indeed intensified.
Fools.
Yedan Derryg was not a loquacious man. He might well possess a hundred thousand words in his head, open to virtually infinite rearrangement, but that did not mean he laboured under the need to give them voice. There seemed to be little point in that, and in his experience comprehension diminished as complexity deepened—this was not a failing of skills in communication, he believed, but one of investment and capacity. People dwelt in a swamp of feelings that stuck like gobs of mud to every thought, slowing those thoughts down, making them almost shapeless. The inner discipline demanded in order to cleanse such maladroit tendencies was usually too fierce, too trying, just too damned hard. This, then, marked the unwillingness to make the necessary investment. The other issue was a far crueller judgement, in that it had to do with the recognition that in the world there were numerically far more stupid people than there were smart ones. The difficulty was in the innate cleverness of the stupid in disguising their own stupidity. The truth was rarely displayed in an honest frown or a sincere knotting of the brow. Instead, it was revealed in a flash of suspicion, the hint of diffidence in an offhand dismissal, or, perversely, muteness offered up to convey a level of thoughtful consideration which, in truth, did not exist.
Yedan Derryg had little time for such games. He could smell an idiot from fifty paces off. He watched their sly evasions, listened to their bluster, and wondered again and again why they could never reach that essential realization, which was that the amount of effort engaged in hiding their own stupidity would serve them better used in cogent exercise of what little wits they possessed. Assuming, of course, that improvement was even possible.
There were too many mechanisms in society designed to hide and indeed coddle its myriad fools, particularly since fools generally held the majority. In addition to such mechanisms, one could also find various snares and traps and ambushes, one and all fashioned with the aim of isolating and then destroying smart people. No argument, no matter how brilliant, can defeat a knife in the groin, after all. Nor an executioner’s axe. And the bloodlust of a mob was always louder than a lone, reasonable voice.