* * *
Walking the plains surrounding Li Heng was a dangerous undertaking now with the Seti riding at will. Worse so, since Silk was headed the wrong direction: that is, away from the city. The young Seti of the various soldier societies, the Wolf, Dog, Ferret and Jackal, were happy to chivvy any refugees or fleeing traders into the city. But for anyone to attempt to leave was another matter altogether. The arrow-tufted bodies of those who tried to run south to Itko Kan lands, or downriver to Cawn, were left to rot within sight of the city walls as object lessons to all.
Silk kept to the lowest-lying of the prairie draws and sunken creekbeds as he headed west, parallel, more or less, with the Idryn. His goal was visible ahead as the source of the thick smoke of green wood and the stink of unwashed bodies and unburied excrement. A refugee camp of the most wretched and sick, those turned away from the city gates and judged too abject to be a worthy of a lancing or an arrow from the Seti warriors.
Faces turned to watch him pass as he walked the rutted trampled mud of the camp. Old men and women sat in the entrances of tents of hide. Children squatted in the mud peering up at him with open mouths. They did not even have the energy to beg. He stopped before one child whom he thought to be ten or so. ‘I'm looking for some Elders, child. Two or three who are always together. Heard of them?’
The child merely stared with liquid brown eyes; she was so dark he suspected mixed Dal Honese blood. One arm hung twisted and stick-thin, some old injury or illness. Sudden compassion for the child caught the breath in Silk's chest. He allowed himself the gesture of touselling her hair despite the crawling vermin. A woman ran up, snatched the child's good hand. ‘What do you want? Go away! If the Seti see us talking with you they'll cut our throats!’
‘I'm looking—’
‘You're looking for the Hooded One, that's what you're doing!’ She dragged the child off. Lurching behind the woman the child glanced back; smiling shyly she raised her crippled arm to point to the river. Silk answered with a sign of the Blessing of the Protectress.
He found the three of them sitting in a line along the muddy shore of the Idryn, fishing. ‘Catch anything?’
None moved. ‘Same as what you're gonna catch,’ said one.
‘Which is …’ said the second.
‘Nothing,’ finished the third.
Sighing, Silk peered about and spotted a young willow with a passable amount of shade. He crouched on his haunches beneath, took out a silk handkerchief and wiped his face. This was not going to be easy. ‘We're going to defend the city—’
‘Wrong. What you're …’
‘Gonna do …’
‘Is lose.’
Silk forced open the fist he'd closed on his handkerchief, pushed it back into his shirt pocket. ‘Look. All that was a long time ago, OK? I'm sorry. We did what we thought was right at the time.’
‘You …’
‘Talkin’ …’
To us?’
Old simmering grudges flared within Silk. ‘Hood take you! She would've lost anyway! There was no way Kellanved would've kept his word! They wiped out all the other local cults! Or made them their own. The same thing would've happened here.’
‘Sounds like …’
‘You're askin’ us …’
‘To trust you?’
Silk stared at their hunched backs. Their bloody stiff backs, all of them. ‘Liss is with me. Together we're going to give it everything we have. This is our best chance in the last century. You know that. Even you can sense it.’ Their heads edged side to side as they shared glances.
‘Been that long?’
‘A damned century?’
‘And I haven't caught a damned fish yet?’
Silk straightened and pushed his way out from under the willow. ‘You know where I'll be. The way's open to you now should you choose. With or without you we're going all the way with this.’ When Silk looked up from straightening his shirt and vest he saw that he'd been speaking to no one; the three were gone, sticks and all. Smartarses.
At noon of that same day Hurl sat uncomfortably on her horse as part of the official Hengan emissary to delegates of the Seti tribal high council, or ‘Urpan-Yelgan’, as it was known. She, Sunny and Liss constituted the representatives of High Fist Storo. Or, as the Hengan Magistrates insisted: ‘Provisional military commander of Li Heng, and Interim governor of the central provinces.’ Or, as Storo described himself, ‘everyone's favourite arrow-butt’.
For her part, Hurl thought it far beyond her duty simply to be mounted on a horse. To her mind if there was anything more evil than Jhags on the face of the earth, it was horses. She rode hers with one hand on the reins and the other on her knife – just in case. The day before a rider had approached under a white flag to request a meet. Storo had out and out refused. ‘I've got nothing to say to them,’ he'd complained. Hurl had been stupid enough to say, ‘Someone has to go.’ So, sure enough, she had to go.
Thankfully, the city magistrates thought it beneath their dignity to meet. As Magistrate Ehrlann put it, ‘I wouldn't know whom to address: them, their horses or their dogs..’
Now, Hurl sat uncomfortable and suspicious on her evil horse next to Sunny on his mount amid a veritable host of the malevolent beasts in the form of the 17th Mounted Hengan Horse. Mounted Horse? What a doubly iniquitous conceit!
The meet would take place on the summit of a hillock within sight of the city walls. Ahead, in the distance, lances tufted with white jackal fur could just be made out marking the spot. As they drew close Hurl motioned for the cavalry captain to hold back; she, Sunny and Liss would go on alone. Hurl kneed her mount onward – forward fiend! It cooperated, content perhaps for the moment to lull her suspicions. Sweat ran down from her helmet though the day was cool. A helmet! She couldn't remember the last time she actually wore a damned helmet. Sunny and Liss moved to flank her as the ‘official’ representative. Three mounted figures became visible climbing the opposite gentle slope, three men, two obvious shamans in their furred regalia, long tufted lances, headdresses and full draping fur cloaks. The lead man was harder to place; a soldier, that much was obvious, and foreign, non-Seti. He wore a plain ringed leather hauberk over a quilted undershirt, a battered blackened helmet under one arm. Dominating his figure though, stood the length of a Seti double recurve bow jutting up from a saddle sheath yet reaching fully as tall as he. His grey hair was brush-cut and barely visible over a balding scalp tanned nut-brown. A grey goatee framed a thin mouth that drew down his long face. He nodded to Hurl, who responded in kind.
‘Whom am I addressing?’ he asked in unaccented Hengan.
‘Hurl, representative of Fist Storo Matash, military commander of Li Heng.’
The man's colourless brows rose. ‘Fist, is it? Not endorsed, I should think.’
‘You are?’
‘I am Warlord of the Seti tribes. They have seen fit to place their confidence in me.‘ He indicated the bearded shaman in jackal furs. ‘This is Imotan.’ He motioned to the shaman in ferret furs. ‘Hipal.’
Hurl motioned to her flankers. ‘Sunny. Liss.’
At the name Liss the jackal shaman started. Beneath his tall furred hat his craggy brows drew down. ‘Liss? Liss in truth?’
Liss let out a throaty laugh and slapped a wide thigh. ‘He knows the story! I am flattered. Yes that was me, the seductive dancing girl – lithesome Liss! I've never forgotten the vows of your predecessor all those years ago. “Come to me, Liss,” he begged. “Let me be your first! I will love you forever!”’
The shaman's eyes bulged further and further with every word from Liss. His face darkened almost blood-red. ‘Quiet, woman!’ he spluttered. ‘Will you shut up!’ He glared about as if the hilltop were crowded. ‘Have you no honour? No modesty?’
‘Honour? Modesty? But that was the last thing he ever wanted from me.’ She leant aside to Hurl and whispered in mock soft-voice: ‘How he begged me to throw aside all modesty, then! And he certainly didn't want my mouth closed, then’
‘Do tell,’ Hurl managed, torn between horror and falling off her horse from stifling her laughter. At her other side Sunny's evil grin was as wide as Hurl had ever seen it.
‘I, ah, take it the two of you require no introduction,’ the warlord offered – showing astounding tact, Hurl thought.
‘None at all,’ Liss answered before anyone could speak again. ‘Let me tell you a story. Long ago I was a young Seeress of the White Sand tribe, the youngest and most gifted in ages. And I was a Sun Dancer, too. Perhaps that was when I caught the eye of a certain youth selected to become a shaman of the feared man-jackal? So long ago, wasn't it, Imotan? But at that time I was too young for wooing and marked as sacred as well, a spirit vessel. But what is that to those who think themselves entitled to anything, eh? What did your predecessor long ago care that by seducing me he destroyed my potential as Sun Dancer? I, who called the sun back to the plains at the year's turn, who interceded for the blessing of rain? Never mind the evil of rape that marked my body and my spirit! Do you remember the vow I swore when it was I who was thrown from the tribe, not he? Do you not know the story, Imotan … ?’
Both shamans now gaped at the old woman. ‘Surely,’ Hipal sneered, ‘you are not standing by that wild claim! Vessel of Baya-Gul! Patroness to Seers and guide of our Sun Mysteries?’
‘I am she.’
Imotan waved to his warlord. ‘I do not know who this poor deluded old woman is, Warlord. Ignore her ravings. There is a story among our people of such a young woman named Liss from long ago and this may even be she, but all that has nothing to do with our business here today.’
The warlord's frown told Hurl that he was not so certain. ‘What is this vow?’
‘It is nothing, Warlord. Just a legend this witch attempts to exploit.’
‘I have heard the name Liss before. But not this vow.’
‘Warlord, she is only trying to—’
‘The vow!’
Hipal bared his sharp teeth, dismissed Liss with a wave. ‘The legend is that the original Liss was exiled as a seductress and disturber of tribal accord. Upon leaving she vowed that the Seti people would wander lost for ever without knowing their true path and that they would never find it again until they welcomed her back into their hearth circles. And,’ Hipal spat, ‘until they begged for her forgiveness.’
Both shamans eyed Liss as if ready to strike her that very moment. Imotan's hands were white upon his reins. ‘Some,’ he ground out, ‘name that Liss's Vow. Others, however, call it Liss's Curse.’
The warlord nodded his understanding. The leather of his saddle creaked as he leaned forward to rest an elbow on the high pommel. ‘So, the story circulated will be that this uprising is just one more wrong path. One more errant turn doomed to fail.’
Liss blew Imotan a kiss.
The warlord offered Hurl a short bow. ‘I see. My compliments to your commander, Hurl. I am sorry to say that I suspect we will be seeing much more of each other. Until then,’ and he gave the old Malazan salute instituted by the emperor, an open hand to the chest. The two shamans merely yanked their mounts around without a word.
Leaving the hilltop, Hurl caught sight of a knot of outlanders among the Seti escort, and among them sat the slim straight figure of Captain Harmin Els D'Shil. The man sent them an ironic salute. Hurl nudged Sunny. ‘Look, there's our old friend, Smiley.’
Sunny waved, leering. ‘He's mine.’
D'Shil offered a courtier's horseback bow.
The ride the rest of the way back was quiet. Hurl concentrated on not giving her mount one chance for mischief. She had a boatload of questions for Liss, of course, should she dare. First, though, she'd have to run all she'd just heard past Silk.
‘So what did you think of our warlord?’ Liss asked of Hurl.
‘I'm impressed – unfortunately. I was hoping for someone less competent-seeming.’
Liss nodded her agreement, her broad mouth widening in a smile. They said he had something of Dassem about him, and they're right. I've seen both.’
Hurl eyed the old woman. ‘Who does?’
‘Why, Toc the Elder, of course. Congratulations! Few come away from any meeting with him in such good form.’ Reaching over she slapped Hurl's thigh. ‘You did well, lass.’
Hurl could only share a wondering look with Sunny. Gods Above! Toc the Elder. They were going to get handed their own asses. Then, all she could think of was her commander. Poor Storo! To stand opposite Toc! He was gonna take this hard. They might not see him sober till the Wolf Soldiers battered down the doors of the last tavern in the city.
They rode in silence until just short of the closed North Gate of the Plains. Hurl had returned to keeping an eye on her mount just in case it thought she'd forgotten all about its horse-evil, when Sunny cleared his throat.
‘Liss,’ said Sunny, and Hurl knew he was about to ask what she was dying to ask but dared not broach. He was always one to dive straight in. ‘You're not really this whatsit, this Baya-Gul thing, are you?’
The old woman just smiled at Sunny. Aside, to Hurl, she said, ‘Here's a tip, lass. Things only have the power people are willing to give them.’
Hurl frowned over that. Sunny snorted, ‘What a crock of shit.’
Liss just kept smiling. ‘That's because you don't believe.’