Authors: Steven Erikson
Taloned hands snatched her up. She shrieked—the K’Chain Che’Malle were suddenly running, low, faster than she had thought possible—and she hung in the grip of Gunth Mach like a bhederin flank torn from a kill.
They fled the storm. North and east. For Kalyth, a blurred passage, nightmarish in her helplessness. Tufts of yellow grass spun past like tumbled balls of dull fire. Sweeps of bedded cobbles, sinkholes of water-worn gravel, and then low, flattened hills of layered slate. Stunted, leafless trees, a scattered knee-high forest, dead and every branch and twig spun with spider’s webs. And then through, on to a pan of parched clay crusted with ridged knuckles of salt. The heavy thump of three-toed reptilian feet, the heave and drumming creak of breaths drawn and then hissed loose in whistling gusts.
A sudden skidding halt—K’ell Hunters weaving outward, pace falling off—they
had ascended a hill, and had come face to face with the Shi’gal Assassin. Towering, wings folded like spiked, barbed shoulders framing the wide-snouted head—the glisten of eyes above and below that needle-fanged mouth.
Kalyth’s breath caught—she could feel its rage, its contempt.
Gunth Mach’s arms sagged down, and the Destriant twisted to find purchase with her feet.
Kor Thuran and Rythok stood to either side, ten or more paces distant, heads lowered and chests heaving, swords dug point-first into the hard stony earth. Positioned directly before Gu’Rull was Sag’Churok, standing motionless, almost defiant. Unashamed, hide gleaming with exuded oils.
The bitter reek of violence swirled in the air.
Gu’Rull tilted his head, as if amused by Sag’Churok, but his four eyes held unwavering on the huge K’ell Hunter, as if not too proud to admit to a measure of respect. This was, to Kalyth, a startling concession. The Shi’gal Assassin was almost twice Sag’Churok’s height, and even without swords in his hands his reach matched that of the K’ell Hunter’s weapon-extended arms.
This thing was bred to kill, born to an intensity of intention that beggared the K’ell Hunters’, that would make the Ve’Gath Soldiers appear clumsy and thick.
She knew he could kill them all, here, now, with barely a lone drip of oil to mar his sleek, glistening hide. She knew it in her soul.
Gunth Mach released Kalyth, and she stumbled, needing both hands before she managed to regain her feet. ‘Listen,’ she said, surprised to find that her own voice was steady, if a little raw, ‘I knew a camp dog, once. Could face down an okral. But at the first rise of wind, or the mutter of thunder, it was transformed into a quivering wreck.’ She paused, and then said, ‘Assassin. They took me away from that storm, at my command.’ She forced herself closer, and coming up alongside Sag’Churok she reached out and set a hand against the Hunter’s flank.
Sag’Churok need not have moved to the shove she gave him—she did not possess the strength for that—but he stepped aside none the less, so that she now stood directly in front of Gu’Rull. ‘Be the okral, then.’
The head tilted further as the Assassin regarded her.
She flinched when his huge wings snapped open, and staggered back a step as they swept down to buffet the air—a minor thunder as if mocking what lay far behind them now—before he launched himself skyward, tail snaking in his wake.
Swearing under her breath, Kalyth turned to Gunth Mach. ‘It’s almost dusk. Let us camp here—every one of my bones feels rattled loose and my head aches.’
And that was not true fear, was it? Not blind terror. So I tell myself, words that give comfort.
And we know how useful those ones are.
Zaravow of the Snakehunter, a minor sub-clan of the Gadra, was a huge man, a warrior of twenty-four years, and for all his bulk he was known to be quick, lithe in battle. The Snakehunter had once been among the most powerful political forces, not just among the Gadra, but throughout all the White Face Clans, until the war
with the Malazans. Zaravow’s own mother had died to a Bridgeburner’s quarrel in the One Eye Cat Mountains, in the chaos of a turned ambush. The death had broken his father, dragged him down to a trader town where he wallowed for six months, drinking himself into a state of such bedraggled pathos that Zaravow had with his own hands suffocated the wretch.
The Malazans had assailed the Snakehunter, until, its power among the Barghast shattered, its encampment was forced to fend on its own, leagues from Stolmen’s own. Snakehunter warriors lost mates to other clans, an incessant bleeding away that nothing could stem. Even Zaravow, who had once claimed three wives from rivals he’d slain, was now down to one, and she had proved barren and spent all her time with widows complaining about Zaravow and every other warrior who had failed the Snakehunter.
Rubbish littered the paths between rows of tents. The herds were scrawny and ill-kempt. Bitterness and misery were a plague. Young warriors were getting drunk every night on D’ras beer, and in the mornings they huddled round smouldering hearths, shivering in the aftermath of the yellow bitterroot they’d become addicted to. Even now, when the word had gone out that the Gadra would soon unleash war upon the liars and cheaters of this land, the mood remained sour and sickly.
This great journey across the ocean, through foul warrens with all those lost years heaving up one upon another, had been a mistake. A terrible, grievous mistake.
Zaravow knew that Warleader Tool had once been an ally of the Malazans, and if he had possessed greater influence in the council, he would have insisted that Tool be rejected—and more, flayed alive. His beget throat-slit. His wife raped and the toes clipped from her feet, so making her a Hobbler, lower than a camp cur, forced to lift her backside to any man at any time and in any place. And all of that, well, even then it would not be enough.
He had been forced to apply his own deathmask this day—his damned wife was nowhere to be found among the five hundred yurts in the Snakehunter camp—and he was crouched in front of the cookfire, face thrust to the rising heat to hasten the hardening of the paint, when he saw her appear up on the goat trail of the hill to the north, walking loosely—maybe she was drunk, but no, that gait recalled to him something else—in the mornings long ago now, after a night of sex—as if in spreading her legs she untied all the knots inside her.
And a moment later he saw, farther up the trail, Benden Ledag, that scrawny young warrior with the quick smile that always made Zaravow want to smash his even white teeth into bloody stumps. Tall, thin, awkward, with hands big as the wooden paddles used to pattern grain pots.
And, in a flash, Zaravow knew what those hands had been doing a short time earlier. And he knew, as well, the mocking secret behind the smile he offered Zaravow every time their paths crossed.
Not widows after all, for his wife. She’d moved past complaining about her husband. She’d decided to shame him.
He would make the shame hers.
This day, then, he would challenge Benden. He would cut the bastard to
pieces, with his wife right there in the crowd, a witness, and she would know—everyone would know—that her punishment would follow. He’d take the front half of her feet, a single merciful chop of his cutlass, once, twice. And then he’d rape her. And then he’d throw her out and all his friends would take their turn. They’d fill her. Her mouth, the places between her thighs and cheeks. Three could take her all at once—
Breath hissed from his nostrils. He was growing hard.
No, there would be time for that later. Zaravow unsheathed his cutlass and worked a thumb crossways, back and forth down the cutting edge. The iron lived for the blood it would soon drink. He’d never liked Benden anyway.
He rose, adjusting his patchy bhederin half-cloak with a rippling shrug of his broad shoulders, and leaned the cutlass against the side of his right leg as he worked the chain gauntlets on to his hands.
His wife, he saw from the corner of his eye, had seen him, had halted at the last low ridge girdling the hill, and was watching. With sudden, icy comprehension. Hearing her shout back up the hill, he collected his cutlass and, mind blackening with rage, wheeled round—no, that rutting shit wasn’t going to get away—
But her screams were not being flung back at Benden. And she was still facing the camp, and even at this distance Zaravow could see her terror.
Behind him, other voices rose in scattered alarm.
Zaravow spun.
The bank of storm clouds filled half the sky—he had not even seen their approach—why, he could have sworn—
Dust descended like the boles of enormous columns beneath each of at least a dozen distinct thunderheads, and those grey, impenetrable pillars formed a cordon that was marching straight for the camp.
Zaravow stared, mouth suddenly dry.
As the base of those pillars began to dissolve, revealing—
Some titles were worthy of pride, and Sekara, wife to Warchief Stolmen and known to all as Sekara the Vile, was proud of hers. She would burn to the touch and everyone knew it, knew the acid of her sweat, the vitriol of her breath. Wherever she walked, the path was clear, and when the sun’s light cut upon her, someone would always move to stand so that blessed shade settled over her. The tough gristle that would make her gums bleed was chewed first by someone else. The paint she used to awaken her husband’s Face of Slaying was ground from the finest pigments—by someone else’s hand—and all of this was what her vileness had won her.
Sekara’s mother had taught her daughter well. The most rewarding ways of living—rewarding in the sense of personal gain, which was all that truly counted—demanded a ruthlessness in the manipulation of others. All that was needed was a honed intelligence and an eye that saw clearly every weakness, every possible advantage to exploit. And a hand that did not hesitate, ever, to deliver pain, to render punishment for offences real or fabricated.
By how she was seen, by all that she had made of herself, she was a presence
that could now slink into the heads of every Gadran, vicious as a wardog patrolling the perimeter of the camp, cruel as an adder in the bedding. And this was power.
Her husband’s power was less subtle, and because it was less subtle, it was not nearly as efficient as her own. It could not work the language of silent threat and deadly promise. Besides, he was as a child in her hands; he had always been, from the very first, and that would never change.
She was regal in her attire, bedecked in gifts from the most talented among the tribe’s weavers, spinners, seamstresses, bone and antler carvers, jewel-smiths and tanners—gifts that were given to win favour, or deflect Sekara’s envy. When one had power, after all, envy ceased to be a flaw of character; instead, it became a weapon, a threat; and Sekara worked it well, so that now she was counted among the wealthiest of all the White Face Barghast.
She walked, back straight, head held high, reminding all who saw her that the role of Barghast Queen belonged to her, though that bitch Hetan might hold to that title—one that she refused, stupid woman. No, Sekara was known to all as its rightful bearer. By virtue of breeding, and by the brilliance of her cruelty. And were her husband not a pathetic oaf, why, they would have long since wrested control away from that bestial Tool and his insatiable slut of a wife.
The cape of sewn hides she wore trailed in the dust behind her as she traversed the stony path, slipping in and out of the shadows cast by the X-shaped crucifixes lining the ridge. It would not do to glance up at the skinless lumps hanging from the crosses—the now lifeless Akrynnai, D’ras and Saphii traders, the merchants and horsemongers, their stupid, useless guards, their fat mates and dough-fleshed children. In this stately promenade, Sekara was simply laying claim to the expression of her power. To walk this path, eyes fixed straight ahead, was enough proof of possession. Yes, she owned the tortured deaths of these foreigners.
She was Sekara the Vile.
Soon, she would see the same done to Tool, Hetan and their spoiled runts. So much had already been achieved, her allies in place and waiting for her command.
She thought back to her husband, and the soft ache between her legs throbbed with the memory of his mouth, his tongue, that made obvious his abject servility. Yes, she made him work, scabbing his knees, and gave him nothing in return. The insides of her thighs were caked in white paint, and she had slyly revealed that detail to her handmaidens when they dressed her—and now word would be out once again among all the women. Chatter and giggles, snorts of contempt. She’d left her husband hastily reapplying the paint on his face.
She noted the storm clouds to the west, but they were too distant to be of any concern, once she had determined that they were not drawing any closer. And through the thick soles of her beaded bhederin moccasins, she felt nothing of the thunder. And when a pack of camp dogs cut across just ahead, she saw in their cowering gaits nothing more than their natural fear of her, and was content.
______
Hetan lounged in the yurt, watching her fat imp of a son scrabbling about on the huge wardog lying on the cheap Akryn rug they had traded for when it finally became obvious that child and dog had adopted each other. She was ever amazed at the dog’s forbearance beneath the siege of grubby, tugging, poking and yanking hands—the beast was big even by Barghast standards, eight or nine years old and scarred with the vicious scraps for dominance among the pack—no other dog risked its ire these days. Even so, permitting the rank creature into the confines of the yurt was virtually unheard of—another one of her husband’s strange indulgences. Well, it could foul up that ugly foreign rug, and it seemed it knew the range of this unnatural gift and would push things no further.