* * *
Escorted by a bodyguard of Malazan regulars, Storo climbed the Inner Round wall where Hurl waited. His surcoat was rent, blood smeared his gauntlets and his face glistened with sweat and soot. ‘This had better be good,’ he warned, his voice hoarse from shouting commands. ‘We're barely hanging on out there. We'd be overrun if it weren't for those three brothers. They're a right horror, they are.’
Hurl said nothing, her eyes avoiding his. Storo drew breath to speak but something in the timbre of the noise here stopped him; it was different from the tumult elsewhere: rather than rage, screams sounded alongside shouts of panic. And no escalade persisted here. He drew off his helmet, pulled back his mail hood revealing smeared blood where a blow had struck. ‘What is it?’
Hurl raised her chin to the parapet where, opposite, the north gate of the Outer Round wall stood. ‘It's begun.’
Storo climbed the parapet. A milling mass of humanity. Torches waved, Talian soldiers shouted and fought to maintain lines facing the half-closed North Plains Gate. Civilians crammed the portal, fought to pass the soldiers, screaming, pale hands grasping at armour. Nearby in the press, one of the few mounted figures gestured, shouting orders, his short grey hair and moustache bright in the gloom. He held a black recurve bow in one hand, emphasizing his orders with it.
‘Gods, Storo blurted as if gut-punched. ‘Toc. Toc himself.’ He glanced to Hurl. ‘Have you any bowmen here?’
‘No.’
‘Huh! The man's luck still holds.’ He stepped down, faced Hurl squarely. ‘Wait ‘til they're clear then do it.’
‘Must we?’
‘Yes, dammit! Otherwise we're lost.’
‘They'll be slaughtered. Soldiers and civilians alike.’
Storo pulled up his mail hood. ‘Then they should've stayed home. As for the civilians, they were warned. I have to go. May the Lady favour you.’
‘And you.’
Storo tramped back down the stairs. Hurl remained with her sergeant and squads of regulars guarding this section of the curtain wall. While she watched, passage was made for the clamouring civilians. The Talians formed lines of crossbowmen facing the gate as others struggled to close it. The last man staggering through was memorable, his dark surcoat and mail coat hanging in tatters, the remains of a shattered helmet swinging from his neck, twin sabres in his hands. Had he actually survived a melee with the man-eater? She'd probably never know. The second wing of the gate was levered shut and iron crossbars frantically lowered into place. Hurl turned to Sergeant Banath. ‘I want you down there.’
He saluted, jogged down the stairs. Along the Outer Wall Talian soldiers climbed to the parapets, scanned down beyond. Hands pointed, alarm was raised, crossbows fired. Hurl waited until the civilians were far clear of the gate then went to the inner lip of the stone walk. She peered down to torches lighting a crew, Sergeant Banath with them, in a trench dug tight against the wall. She looked to her right and left up and down the wall. ‘Brace yourselves!’ she shouted to the men. She raised a hand, thinking, with this hand I doom more men and women than I can imagine. What has happened to me that I could do such a thing? Was it Shaky's death? The attack of Fat Kepten's men? What did she care if Heng fell? Not at all, to tell the truth. No, the mean selfish fact of it was that she wanted to live and if the city fell she'd no doubt be executed.
She dropped her hand and threw herself down, covering her head. Below her, she could imagine a sledge being swung to bash a pipe that ran out underground across the entire breadth of the Outer Round to a stash of carefully ordered and bound Moranth munitions snug against the left gate jamb. There its pointed end would crack a sharper nestled within four cussors. The resultant explosion—
A shockwave kicked the breath from her. The thunderous blast of the munitions was lost on her deafened ears. A bloated roaring filled her head. Tiny rocks peppered her back. Blinking, shaking her head, she climbed to her feet. Smoke obscured the gates. Down in the Outer Round, strewn in wreckage, men and women were picking themselves up. Wounded staggered from the smoke carrying appalling wounds and Hurl's stomach churned. She'd known that not everyone had been far enough away, but most had – or so she told herself. Nearby buildings burned in ruins. And through the smoke something ran. She couldn't be sure; it had been too fast. Just a glimpse of paleness, but huge, smooth and terrifyingly fluid. Then it was gone.
She slumped down against the parapet. It was done. Now she too shared Quon's Curse. The blood it would spill from this night forward would now also steep her. She covered her face and great shuddering sobs shook her.
The report of the explosion startled Toc's mount and it sidestepped into a stall, became tangled in ropes and boxes, tripped and fell. He hit the cobbled road hard, losing his breath. The press around him closed in, hands raised him. Shouts and screams continued, only doubled now by the blast. Everyone was asking what had happened; Toc ignored them. He pushed to where his mount thrashed screaming among the shattered slats of the stall, leg broken. He drew his sword – poor animal – one of his favourites, but he couldn't leave it like this.
The instant the report of the eruption reached him he knew what had happened. They'd blown the outer gate. The fierce calculated cruelty of the plan left him awed. Enfilade. Here they were drawn in and trapped between high walls. Death hunting them. By morning the Outer Round would be one long slaughterhouse as Ryllandaras slaked a near century of blood thirst. He had to get to Choss. He raised his sword high in both hands and swung.
Picking up his bow he straightened, shouted, ‘Get indoors, hide. Defend yourselves.’
Soldiers looked to him and the pleading in their eyes clawed at his conscience. He wanted to offer reassuring words but he had none. The most despairing of the men and women did not even bother searching out his gaze for commands. He gathered himself, set one tip of his horn recurve bow to the cobbles and, leaning all his weight upon it, strung it in one quick motion. ‘Form square here for a fighting retreat. Spears, lances, poleaxes, anything you can find on the outside. Crossbowmen and archers within.’
A civilian woman shrieked at him, ‘What of us!’
‘And get these people off the street!’
A nearby soldier, a lieutenant by his arm-tore, snapped a salute. ‘You heard the commander! Set to. Form up!’
‘Slow retreat, lieutenant,’ Toc repeated. ‘I have to find the commander.’
‘Aye, sir. Oponn with you, sir.’
Toc answered the man's salute and jogged up the street.
Burning buildings near the Inner Round wall lit the night. Toc met soldiers assembling hasty barricades on the main thoroughfare. He almost ordered them to abandon the effort but decided not to add to the confusion and chaos of the night. Yet it was a forlorn hope: the beast would easily sidestep any such position. Soldiers directed him to the rooftop of a sturdy brick warehouse. Here he found Choss, surrounded by staff.
‘Thank Beru!’ the big man exploded upon spotting him. ‘What in the Chained One's name is going on out there? I'm getting all kinds of outrageous reports.’
‘It's Ryllandaras returned, beyond a doubt. And we're pressed in here with him.’
Choss's horrified stare was the worst vision yet for Toc that night. A wind, pulled up by all the fires, blew the commander's great mane of hair across his face. He spat to the roof. ‘So they've been saying. Well, you'd know, Toc’ He looked to the sections of curtain wall visible from this position, drew in a deep breath, held it, then released it in a long slow exhalation of regret. ‘We captured a tower, Toc,’ he said, wistful. ‘We were so close. Now I have to turn around and come up with a way to salvage this.’
Screams of utter terror pulled their gazes aside to the maze of streets and lanes. Toc's back crawled at the hopelessness of those cries. Ryllandaras was murdering their soldiers – and he would not stop. Toc studied Choss. The man's regard had returned to the distant battlements where figures could be seen firing down, dropping torches. Toc was silent, thinking of how closely this man had worked with that great general, Dujek, and how it was he who saw the army through the shock of Y'Ghatan where Dassem fell. ‘If I remember rightly,’ Choss said, his gaze narrowed, ‘his feud is with Heng. It's Heng he hates. You could say we're just in the way.’ The hazel eyes shifted to Toc, calculating. ‘Is that not so?’
‘I think you could say that.’
‘All right then. If this Storo wants to play for all the stakes then we'll match his roll.’ He turned to a messenger, ‘Bring up all the munitions! Tell the sappers, every single last secret cache upon pain of death! Double-time.’
‘Aye, sir.’
Toc watched as Choss returned to studying the walls. What did he intend? Toc had spent most of his time with the cavalry and so didn't know the man as well as he would like. But munitions? Would it work? Every trap and trick known had been tried on the man-beast and none had succeeded. The creature's wariness and cunning were legendary. Still, munitions ought to be new to the cursed fiend.
*
Hurl found Storo at a stair-tower close by the Inner Round Gate. ‘They're retreating to the Gate of the Dawn,’ she told him. ‘Abandoning the assault.’
He wiped a bundled handful of his surcoat across his face. ‘Looks like. Can't fight him and us at the same time.’
‘What do you think they'll do?’
‘Withdraw. Redeploy to face Laseen. Get off the plains as fast as Oponn will allow.’
Yells and firing at the Inner Round Gate drew Hurl's attention. She peered out to see that the assault continued there. Bowmen behind mantlets and among the ruins of the burnt buildings close by exchanged fire with their crossbowmen. Ladders lay broken like straw on the road amid bodies, some burning. ‘What's going on there?’
‘Keeping up appearances. They're running sappers up against the gates, to no use.’
‘Why? Are they digging?’
‘Yes. But the foundations go down far too deep. You know that.’
Hurl's chest tightened with an inchoate dread. ‘I don't like it, Storo. Clear them off.’
‘Fast as we can.’ He turned to a messenger. ‘Tell them to bring up more stones.’
‘Aye.’
Storo pulled his helmet off, sighed his exhaustion and obvious unshielded relief. ‘I thought they really—’
A blast rocked their footing, throwing them both down. Hurl smashed her head to the stone floor. ‘Hood preserve us!’ Storo gasped. Together they leapt to the east arch. Hurl held her head and fought back a darkness gathering at the edges of her vision. Smoke and dust obscured the gate but from the strength of the eruption Hurl knew it was shattered. Storo's eyes met hers. Her legs buckled and he reached out quickly to support her. He cupped her head then brought his hand away wet with blood. Hurl tried to say what she now knew but there was no need; she saw it in Storo's stricken gaze.
Ryllandaras was now their curse.
Hurl awoke to screams and a guttural snarled bellowing that raised the hair at her neck and shook the stones beneath her back. She lay in a room crowded with many other wounded. Groans and cursing along with the tang of blood and spilt bile assaulted her on all sides. She pushed herself up, dizzy, her head throbbing as if a spike were being hammered into it. Her munitions bag still hung from her side. She made her way to the door, stepping carefully over wounded, some of whom helped steady her. At the door a guard watched the street, crossbow raised. Hengan urban cohorts ran past the opening, weapons abandoned.
It was still night. The fitful light from fires lit the street. Hurl peeked out to see that she occupied a guardhouse hard up by the blown gate. A shuffling, yelling wall of men armed with spears and poleaxes fought something. A thing that when it reared back rose fully three times their height. It was covered in pale creamy-white fur with darker streaks down its back in grey and dirty yellow. A great maw, black-lipped, twisted from enormous canines. Carmine eyes as dark as heart-blood glared hotly and blood stained its entire front. It punched out with unnaturally long cabled arms ending in black talons to claw men and toss them aside like handfuls of straw.
A sound like a whimper brought Hurl's gaze around; the guard met her gaze. Terror and uncomprehending despair filled the man's wide staring eyes. ‘It is be,’ he gasped. The man-eater.’ After a last look of utter hopelessness, the guard threw down his crossbow and ran.
Hurl reached down to gently take up the weapon. Yes, it was he. The creature some named a God, brother to an ascending God. Some even claimed him to be a last remnant of those ancient primordial terrors who hunted humanity's ancestors so long ago out beyond the firelight. Hurl did not know; she knew only that he had sworn to level Heng, and that should he get within he would do so. And the Talians would lay claim to what was left with the sunrise.
She pushed her way out on to the rubble-strewn street, pulled the bolt from the weapon. She slid round the crowd to begin climbing the heaped fallen stones to one side of the blasted opening. At times dizziness took her and she paused on all fours, breathing heavily. She reached a vantage on the piled stones and spread her booted feet for stability. She could now see that one soldier led the defence: he wore a long coat of armour and a visored helm, and wielded twinned longswords. Rell. The monster racked at him but he slipped every swing and the blades flicked inward, slashing so fast only the reflected torchlight marked their movement. The beast's roar of rage and pain shook the stones beneath Hurl's feet. From the bag at her side she took a bolt armed with a sharper, slotted it and punched the air. Warning shouts sounded below. Grunting her effort, she raised the weapon, steadied it. She marked the littered ground just behind the beast, fired. The kick knocked her backwards from her feet. An instant later an explosion spat stones against her entire front. She lay among the broken smoking rocks until roused by renewed roaring that was a constant thunder snarl of rage. Using her elbows and knees she pulled herself up to a sitting position. Men still faced the fiend but it had pulled down or swept aside most. Blood now flecked the pelt on its back. It dodged right and left, blurringly quick, but always the same fighter forestalled it, twin swords raised. Hurl was hardly conscious but even she could sense that something miraculous was occurring – no man ought to be doing what Rell was managing. Through the blown gate she saw Talian troops standing still, watching, mouths open. They held bows and crossbows loose at their sides as if it were inconceivable to interfere in the duel. Ryllandaras's wild swings, ducked or slipped by Rell, knocked the very stone blocks of the wall flying – stones heavier than any man could lift. Spittle flew as the beast threw back its head in such a bellowing eruption of blind incandescent rage that more stones were torn from the fractured walls and Hurl cried, attempting to cover her ears.
Through eyes slitted and blurred, she saw that Rell alone now faced the man-beast. He struck a guard position, one slim blade low, the other high above his head, point down. Ryllandaras’ jaws worked, taloned bloodied hands gestured. Was it speaking to him? The thunder in Hurl's ears deadened them to all sounds. A sudden leap inward made her flinch, so quick was it, yet Rell met it in a flurry of counter-attacks that slashed arms, torso and legs. Now Hurl was amazed by the man-beast: how could any living thing absorb such punishment? Was it truly something of a god itself – akin to Trake? Was Rell doomed to tire, to slow and fail?
Rousing herself, she fought to cock the crossbow, gave it up as futile. She threw it down, drew another bolt from her satchel, pulled the sharper from its mount. With it held high in one fist she struggled to climb down the rubble slope closer to the beast. Now Rell was shouting something, pointing a blade. Hurl looked up to meet the lambent flame-red eyes of the beast watching her. The eyes tracked the munition in her hand. A leg moved as it stepped toward her - Gods, what a stride! An arm stretched out, talons closing – what reach!
Hurl threw at its feet, falling flat.
Some unknown time later she came to as hands pulled her, stones scraped along gouging her back. She tried to cry out, couldn't. Soldiers bent over her; it was still night. The clash of fighting still nearby. Someone took her shoulderbag, another cupped her head on his lap. She looked up into the worried face of Fallow, the squad healer. ‘I'm getting to be a regular,’ she chuckled.
‘You and your commander. Now quiet.’
‘Storo? What… ?’
‘Quiet. Relax.’ He closed her eyes with his palm and that was the last she knew.
Toc and Choss remained behind at the Gate of the Dawn with a contingent of seventy spearmen backed up by fifty archers and cross-bowmen. They waited until the last of their elements had withdrawn, then their men pulled the gates shut behind them. Smoke, dust and exhaustion made Toc's eyes gritty and he pressed his fingers into them. As it was after every battle his mouth was as dry as dust and held an iron tinge of – and he could admit it – terror. He spat into the charred remains of a building next to the road burned by the defenders to deny them the wood for siege engines. When he turned from the gate dawn's light struck his gaze and he raised a hand to blot it out. Horsemen were galloping up from the east. Choss and he went to meet them,
‘Felicitations from Commander Urko!’ the leader announced, a fat ginger-haired Falaran in bronze scale armour. ‘I am to report that as per your intelligence Urko has begun excavation of ramparts and is raising a palisade to fortify his position.’
Choss nodded. ‘Thank you, ah …’
‘Captain Tonley.’
‘My thanks, Captain Tonley. Tell him our divisions will redeploy to join him by tonight.’
‘Very good, Commander.’
While they spoke, spare horses had been brought up led by the bloodied Captain Moss. Toc took one, nodding his thanks. Choss mounted as well. Captain Tonley leaned forward on his saddle. ‘Ah, tell me, sirs … what's this I hear of a great giant beastie?’
Toc, Choss and Moss exchanged exhausted glances. ‘It's the truth,’ Choss said flatly.
Captain Tonley shook his head, amazed. ‘You Quon Talians seem fearful of everything. First a band of hireswords and now a beastie. How you ever got the better of us I'll never know.’
Choss stared at the man. A grin pulled at his lips and he chuckled, then laughed outright. ‘It's a mystery, Captain. You may report back.’
A sloppy salute. ‘Very good, Commander. Let's go, boys. No drink to be had here.’ The troop stormed off. Toc turned to Choss.
‘So, now Laseen … And what of the Crimson Guard?’
‘We'll make them an offer. They want the Empire broken, don't they?’
‘And Heng?’
‘Heng and Ryllandaras can bugger each other. What of your Seti?’
Toc scanned the empty hillsides. ‘I don't know. I'll have to speak with them. Imotan's spent all his life praying for his patron God and now that he's come he's probably terrified.’
Choss grunted his scepticism. ‘Well, go. We still need them.’
‘Aye.’
They rode back to camp, silent for a time. ‘That soldier,’ Toc finally said, ‘who faced Ryllandaras. Have you ever seen the like?’
‘Dassem drove him off as well,’ Choss said. ‘But he was favoured by Hood.’
‘I've seen it,’ Moss said.
Toc and Choss glanced to the captain. He shifted uncomfortably in his saddle, touched the raw livid tear across his face. ‘Well, not seen exactly. Had it described to me by someone who had seen it in Genabackis. That style of fighting. That fellow, he's Seguleh.’
‘Seguleh?’ Choss repeated in wonder. ‘I've heard the name. What's he doing here?’
‘Storo's company was stationed in Genabackis,’ Moss said.
Toc studied his captain sidelong. ‘You know a lot about this Storo
Moss rubbed his gouged nose, wincing. ‘Ah, yes, sir. Gathering intelligence. Know your enemy, and such.’
‘In which case, captain,’ Toc said. ‘Would you like to go on a mission to the Crimson Guard? We have a proposal for them.’
The man smiled. The talon slash across his face cracked and fresh blood welled up. ‘Yes, sir. It would be a privilege.’
Though exhausted, his joints aflame with pain, Toc mounted a fresh horse that morning and set out alone to track down the Seti. He found their camp deserted, but here he also found unusual tracks. Something had visited the camp before him. Like wolf tracks, they were, except far larger, more the size of the largest bear track. And of an enormous breadth of gait. He knew this man-beast Ryllandaras could cover ground faster even than a horse. Though it was common lore that the creature hunted only at night, Toc suddenly felt very exposed out all alone on the plains. A part of him wondered if that was just a detail of atmosphere the jongleurs had tossed into the songs they recited of him. He could just hear Kellanved snarl: never mind what you imagine to be the case, what do you know? Not one to let reputations or legends stand in his way, was he. After all, he trapped the fiend, didn't he? And how did he manage that? A piece of information perhaps relegated to some archive somewhere is suddenly now not so trivial any longer. Knowing how wild Kellanved had been back then, he'd probably used himself as bait.
Towards noon, as he crossed a shallow valley, horsemen appeared in small bands all around him and moved in. He stopped to await them, crossed his arms on the high cantle of his saddle. They circled him from a distance until one broke through and closed. He was a burly fellow, wearing only deerskin trousers, a thick leather vest and wide leather vambraces. His curly hair was shot with grey, as was his matted chest hair. He looked Toc up and down in open evaluation. ‘You are Toc the Elder,’ he said in Talian.
‘And you are the Wildman of the Plains.’
A nod. ‘You ride to speak with Imotan. I think you shouldn't go.’
‘May I ask why?’
‘He has his white-haired God now. What need does he have for you?’
‘There's a lot of history between us. We've exchanged many vows.’
‘Between you and the Seti, yes. Not him.’
Toc flexed his back to ease its nagging pain. He studied the man before him: sword- and knife-scarred, speaks Talian fluently. An Imperial veteran, perhaps a noncommissioned officer. ‘What of you?’ he asked. ‘You might not accept Imotan's authority but we could use you and your warriors to throw off the Empire just the same.’
The man bared his sharp yellow teeth. ‘Do not insult me. Empire, League. It's all the same.’
‘Not at all … You and others would be nearly independent.’
‘Empty promises at best. Lies at worst. We've heard all that before.’
‘You should consider my offer carefully, veteran. We are set to defeat Laseen. She is so short of proper troops she's desperate. I've heard she's even dragooned all the old veterans on Malaz to bolster her numbers.’
The old Seti veteran grew still. His tight disapproving frown vanished. ‘What was that?’
Toc shrugged, puzzled. ‘I just said that she'd sent out the call to gather up everyone she can, even from Malaz.’
The Wildman tightened his reins. ‘I'm going now. I will tell you one more time, Toc – do not pursue this allegiance.’ He clucked his mount into motion and signed his warriors to follow. They thundered away.
Toc sat still for a time, watching them while they rode from sight. Something. Something had just happened there, but exactly what it could have been, he had no idea. Shaking his head, he urged his horse on.
He rode through most of the rest of the day before catching any sign beyond empty horse tracks. Dust rose to the north-east. He kicked his mount to pick up his pace a touch. He was just becoming worried about being caught out in the dark when he topped a gentle grassed rise to see below a horde of mounted warriors circling in a slow churning gyre, calling war chants in crowded rings around tents of the shamans. The clouds of yellow dust they raised plumed into the now darkening sky. He approached and waited but the young bloods ignored him. Most of the youths carried white hair fetishes on their lances, around their arms or in their hair. Eventually, perhaps at a command from within, grudging space was allowed for Toc's mount to push through.
In past the flank-to-flank pressing rings of hundreds of horsemen the atamans were sitting before the central tent, that of Imotan, the White Jackal shaman. Toc bowed and Imotan gestured him forward, patting the ground next to him. He sat and greeted the atamans while Imotan eyed him with a steady, weighing gaze. Toc met it, waiting. ‘I am sorry for your dead, Toc,’ the shaman finally said.
‘My thanks. It is him, then? The very one named Ryllandaras?’
Imotan used a short eating knife to cut meat from a haunch. ‘Yes, it is he. We've hoped and prayed for generations and now he is returned to us.’
‘Hoped? You hoped? If it is him, who do you think he'll turn to once we're gone?’
‘That is our concern, Malazan. We lived with him long before you ever came.’
‘We rid you of a predator.’
‘You interfered.’
‘We freed you!’
The old man stabbed the knife into the ground between them. ‘Freed us! Can you free a man from himself? A people from themselves?’ Taking a long hard breath to master himself he turned to the platter of food and gathered a handful of grapes. He laughed and shook his head at some thought that struck him. ‘Liss's curse! We are a lost people, wandering lost. Lost from ourselves. But now our way has returned to us.’
‘I see no true path.’
‘You are not Seti.’ The shaman was silent for a time. He appeared troubled while he pulled and studied the blade of his knife. Toc the Elder,’ he began carefully, ‘we honour you for what we have accomplished together in the past, but you should not have come.’
‘The old agreements still stand, Imotan.’
‘Do they?’ The shaman glanced aside to Hipal, the ferret shaman, who grinned, evilly, Toc thought, then he scanned a circuit of the men and women sitting in a circle before him. Many glanced away when his gaze reached them. Toc was struck by how much had changed in one night. Before, at the councils, Toc spoke with the atamans, the warrior society warchiefs and tribal Assembly chiefs, while Imotan and Hipal sat relegated to the rear. Now, though, Imotan occupied the seat of honour while the atamans sat at his feet, looking like no more than supplicants.
Having reviewed his council, Imotan sighed, thrust his knife into his sash. ‘What is it you ask, Toc?’
‘This coming battle will be the final arbiter of all. After it, you may consider all agreements fulfilled, all obligations met. It is the last and final request I shall make of you.’
The White Jackal shaman had nodded through Toc's statement. He held his thickly-veined hands up open. ‘So be it. We will be there. Now, for obvious reasons I suggest you spend the night here in our encampment. You will be safe with us. Tomorrow you may join your command.’
Toc bowed. ‘I thank you, Imotan of the White Jackal.’