The malazan empire, p.978
The Malazan Empire, page 978
‘You possess hidden knowledge,’ said Kindly, ‘acquired from who knows where. And because no one knows where, they all invent their own explanations.’
‘But in each,’ said Ruthan Gudd, now eyeing Tavore, ‘you are kneeling before a god. And, well, what Malazan soldier doesn’t get a bitter taste from that? What Malazan soldier doesn’t know the story of Dassem Ultor? Homage to a god by a commander is ever served by the blood of those under his or her command. Look around, Adjunct. We’re not serving the Malazan Empire any more. We’re serving you.’
In a voice little more than whisper, the Adjunct said, ‘You are all serving me, are you? You are all about to risk your lives for me? Please, any of you here, tell me, what have I done to deserve that?’
The tone of her question left a shocked silence.
Tavore Paran looked from one to the next, and in her eyes there was no anger, no outrage, no indignation. Rather, in her eyes Lostara Yil saw something helpless. Confused.
After a long, brittle moment, Kindly said, ‘Adjunct, we march to save the Crippled God. The problem is, as far as gods go, he’s not much liked. You won’t find a single worshipper of him in the Bonehunters.’
‘Indeed?’ Suddenly her voice was harsh. ‘And not one soldier in this army – in this tent – has not suffered? Not one here has not broken, not even once? Not wept? Not grieved?’
‘But we will not worship that!’ Kindly retorted. ‘We will not kneel to such things!’
‘I am relieved to hear you say so,’ she replied, as if the fires inside had died down as quickly as they had flared. Eyes on the map, trying to find a way through. ‘So look across, then, across that vast divide. Look into that god’s eyes, Fist Kindly, and make your thoughts hard. Make them cold. Unfeeling. Make them all the things you need to in order to feel not a single pang, not a lone tremor. Look into his eyes, Kindly, before you choose to turn away. Will you do that?’
‘I cannot, Adjunct,’ Kindly replied, in a shaken voice. ‘For he does not stand before me.’
And Tavore met his eyes once more. ‘Doesn’t he?’
One heartbeat, and then two, before Kindly rocked back. Only to turn away.
Lostara Yil gasped. As you said he would.
But Tavore would not let him go. ‘Do you need a temple, Kindly? A graven image? Do you need priests? Sacred texts? Do you need to close your eyes to see a god? So noble on his throne, so lofty in his regard, and oh, let’s not forget, that hand of mercy, ever reaching down. Do you need all of that, Kindly? You others? Do you all need it in order to be blessed with the truth?’
The tent flap was roughly pulled aside and Banaschar entered. ‘Was I summoned?’ And the grin he gave them was a thing of horror, a slash opening to them all the turmoil inside the man, the torment of his life. ‘I caught some of that, just outside. Too much, in fact.’ He looked to the Adjunct. ‘“Blessed with the truth.” My dear Adjunct, you must know by now. Truth blesses no one. Truth can only curse.’
The Adjunct seemed to sag inside. Gaze dropping back down to the map on the table, she said, ‘Then please, Septarch, do curse us with a few words of truth.’
‘I rather doubt there’s need,’ he replied. ‘We have walked it this night, and will again, beneath the glow of the Jade Strangers.’ He paused and frowned at those gathered. ‘Adjunct, were you under siege? And have I, by some unwitting miracle, broken it?’
Kindly reached for his helm. ‘I must assemble my officers,’ he said. He waited, standing at attention, until Tavore lifted a hand in dismissal, her eyes still on the map.
Faradan Sort followed him out.
Lostara Yil caught Ruthan Gudd’s eye, and gestured him to accompany her. ‘Adjunct, we shall be outside the tent.’
‘Rest, both of you,’ said Tavore.
‘Aye, Adjunct, if you will.’
From the plain woman, a faint smile. ‘Soon. Go.’
Lostara saw Banaschar settling on to the leather saddle of a stool. Gods, with company like his, is it any wonder she is as she is?
The High Priest pointed a finger at Ruthan Gudd as he stepped past, and made a strange gesture, as if inscribing in the air.
Ruthan Gudd hesitated for a moment, and then, with a wry expression, he combed one hand through his beard, and went out of the tent. Lostara fell in behind him.
‘Are you all right?’ Faradan Sort asked.
Kindly’s expression darkened. ‘Of course I’m not all right.’
‘Listen,’ she said. ‘We tried—’
‘You can’t ask soldiers to open their hearts. If they did they’d never take another life.’ He faced her. ‘How can she not understand that? We need to harden ourselves – to all that we have to do. We need to make ourselves harder than our enemy. Instead, she wants us to go soft. To feel.’ He shook his head, and she saw that he was trembling – with fury or frustration.
She turned as Ruthan Gudd and Lostara Yil emerged from the command tent.
Kindly looked at Ruthan. ‘Whoever you really are, Captain, you’d better talk some sense into her – because it’s turning out that no one else can.’
Ruthan Gudd frowned. ‘What sense would that be, Fist?’
‘We kill people for a living,’ Kindly growled.
‘I don’t think she wants that to change,’ the captain replied.
‘She wants us to bleed for the Crippled God!’
‘Keep it down, Kindly,’ warned Faradan Sort. ‘Better yet, let’s walk a little way beyond camp.’
They set out. Ruthan hesitated, but was nudged along by Lostara Yil. No one spoke until they’d left the haphazard picket stations well behind. Out under the sun, the heat swarmed against them, the glare blinding their eyes.
‘It won’t work,’ announced Kindly, crossing his arms. ‘There will be mutiny, and then fighting – over the water – and before it’s all done most of us will be dead. Not even the damned marines and heavies at full strength could keep this army together—’
‘You clearly don’t think highly of my regulars,’ said Faradan Sort.
‘Just how many volunteered, Sort?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Malazan policy is to take the eager ones and make ’em marines or heavies. The convicts and the destitute and the press-ganged, they all end up as regulars. Faradan, are you really certain of your soldiers? Be honest – no one here is likely to indulge in gossip.’
She looked away, squinted. ‘The only odd thing about them that I have noticed, Kindly, is that they don’t say much. About anything. You’d have to twist an arm to force out an opinion.’ She shrugged. ‘They know they’re faceless. They always have been, most of them, long before they ended up in the military. This – this is just more of the same.’
‘Maybe they say nothing within range of your hearing, Sort,’ Kindly muttered, ‘but I’d wager they have plenty to say to each other, when no one else is around.’
‘I’m not sure about that.’
‘Have you forgotten your own days as a lowly soldier?’
She flinched, and then said, ‘No, Kindly, I have not forgotten. But I can stand fifty paces from a campfire, close enough to see mouths moving, to see the gestures that accompany argument – and there’s none of it. I admit, it’s uncanny, but my soldiers seem to have nothing to say, not even to each other.’
No one spoke for a time.
Ruthan Gudd stood combing his beard with his fingers, his expression thoughtful yet somehow abstracted, as if he’d not been listening, as if he was wrestling with something a thousand leagues away. Or maybe a thousand years.
Faradan Sort sighed. ‘Mutiny. That’s an ugly word, Kindly. You seem ready to throw it at the feet of my regulars.’
‘It’s what I fear, Faradan. I am not questioning your command – you do know that, don’t you?’
She thought about that, and then grunted. ‘Well, actually, that’s precisely what you’re questioning. I’m not Fist Blistig, and I dare say my reputation is decent enough among my soldiers. Aye, I might be hated, but it’s not a murderous hate.’ She regarded Kindly. ‘Didn’t you once speak about making a point of being hated by your soldiers? We are to be their lodestones, and when they see us bear it, when they see how none of it can buckle us, they are in turn strengthened. Or did I misunderstand you?’
‘You didn’t. But we’re not being looked at like that any more, Sort. Now, they’re seeing us as potential allies. Against her.’
Ruthan Gudd’s voice was dry, ‘Ready to lead a revolt, Kindly?’
‘Ask that again and I’ll do my level best to kill you, Captain.’
Ruthan Gudd’s grin was cold. ‘Sorry, I’m not here to give you an easy way out, Fist.’
‘No, you’re not giving any of us anything.’
‘What would you have me say? She doesn’t want her soldiers weeping or bleeding out all over the ground because they’ve gone soft. She wants them to be the opposite. Not just hard.’ He eyed the three of them. ‘Savage. Unyielding. Stubborn as cliffs against the sea.’
‘In the command tent—’
‘You missed the point,’ Ruthan cut in. ‘I now think you all did. She said to look across, into the eyes of the Crippled God. To look, and to feel. But you couldn’t do it, Kindly, could you? Could you, Fist Sort? Lostara? Any of you?’
‘And what of you?’ Kindly snapped.
‘Not a chance.’
‘So she knocked us all down – what was the point of that?’
‘Why shouldn’t she?’ Ruthan Gudd retorted. ‘You asked for more from her. And then I nailed her to a damned tree with that madness about serving her. She struck back, and that, friends, was the most human moment from the Adjunct I’ve yet seen.’ He faced them. ‘Until then, I was undecided. Would I stay on? Would I ride out, away from all this? And if I left, well, it’s not as though anyone could stop me, is it?’
‘But,’ said Faradan Sort, ‘here you are.’
‘Yes. I’m with her now for as long as she needs me.’
Fist Kindly raised one hand, as if to strike out at Ruthan Gudd. ‘But why?’
‘You still don’t get it. None of you. Listen. We don’t dare look across into the eyes of a suffering god. But, Kindly, she dares. You asked for more from her – gods below, what more can she give? She’ll feel all the compassion none of you can afford to feel. Behind that cold iron, she will feel what we can’t.’ His eyes went flat on Kindly. ‘And you asked for more.’
The stones ticked in the heat. A few insects spun on glittering wings.
Ruthan Gudd turned to Faradan Sort. ‘Your regulars are not saying anything? Be relieved, Fist. Maybe they’re finally realizing, on some instinctive level, what she’s taken from them. What she’s holding inside, for safekeeping. The best they have.’
Faradan Sort shook her head. ‘Now who is the one with too much faith, Ruthan Gudd?’
He shrugged. ‘It’s hot out here.’
They watched as he headed off, a lone figure trudging back to the pickets, and to the camp beyond. There was no dust in the air – this desert didn’t make dust.
Eventually, Kindly turned to Lostara Yil. ‘Did you suspect he was about to bolt?’
‘What? No. The man’s a damned cipher, Fist.’
‘How,’ asked Faradan, ‘is this going to work? When I need to stiffen the spines of my soldiers, what in Hood’s name can I say to them?’
After a moment, Lostara Yil cleared her throat and said, ‘I don’t think you have to tell them anything, Fist.’
‘What do you mean? And don’t go spewing out Ruthan’s words – he places far too much in the hearts and minds of the common soldier. Just because your life is devoted to killing, it doesn’t accord you any special wisdom.’
‘I don’t agree with that,’ Lostara said. ‘Look, just by standing with her, with the Adjunct, you’re saying all that needs saying. The real threat to this army is Fist Blistig, who’s hardly kept secret his opposition to the Adjunct, and by extension to all of you. If he starts gathering followers…well, that’s when the trouble will start.’
Kindly reached up and wiped the sweat from his brow. ‘There is wisdom, Faradan. The wisdom that comes with knowing – right to the very core of your soul – just how fragile life really is. You earn that wisdom when you take someone else’s life.’
‘And what about the ones who don’t think twice about it? Wisdom? Hardly. More like…a growing taste for it. That dark rush of pleasure that’s so…addictive.’ She looked away. I know. I stood the Wall.
Lostara pointed. ‘There’s a runner coming…for one of us.’
They waited until the thin, round-faced soldier arrived. A soldier with mutilated hands. He saluted with the right one and proffered Kindly a wax tablet with the other. ‘Compl’ments of Lieutenant Master-Sergeant Quartermaster Pores, sir.’
Kindly took the tablet and studied it. ‘Soldier,’ he said.
‘Sir?’
‘The sun’s heat has melted the wax. I do hope you committed the message to memory.’
‘Sir, I have.’
‘Let’s hear it.’
‘Sir, the missive was private.’
‘From Pores? I really don’t have time for this. We’re past all the duelling. Spit it out, soldier.’
‘Sir. To quote: “Private missive, from Lieutenant Master-Sergeant Field Quartermaster Pores, to Fist Kindly. Warmest salutations and congratulations on your promotion, sir. As one might observe from your advancement and, indeed, mine, cream doth rise, etc. In as much as I am ever delighted in corresponding with you, discussing all manner of subjects in all possible idioms, alas, this subject is rather more official in nature. In short, we are faced with a crisis of the highest order. Accordingly, I humbly seek your advice and would suggest we arrange a most private meeting at the earliest convenience. Yours affectionately, Pores.”’ The soldier then saluted again and said, ‘I’m t’wait yer answer, sir.’
In the bemused silence that followed, Faradan Sort narrowed her eyes on the soldier. ‘You were heavy infantry, weren’t you?’
‘Corporal Himble Thrup, Fist.’
‘How stands the rank and file, soldier?’
‘Standin’ true, Fist.’
‘Do the enlisted say much about the Adjunct, soldier? Off the record here.’
The watery eyes flicked momentarily to her, then away again. ‘Occasionally, sir.’
‘And what do they say?’
‘Not much, sir. Mostly, it’s all them rumours.’
‘You discuss them.’
‘No sir. We chew ’em up till there’s nothing left. And then invent new ones, sir.’
‘To sow dissension?’
Brows lifted beneath the rim of the helm. ‘No, Fist. It’s…er…entertainment. Beats boredom, sir. Boredom leads to laziness, sir, and laziness can get a soldier up and killt. Or the one beside ’im, which is e’en worse. We hate being bored, sir, that’s all.’
Kindly said, ‘Tell Pores to find me at my command tent, whenever he likes.’
‘Sir.’
‘Dismissed, soldier.’
The man saluted a third time, wheeled and set off.
Kindly grunted.
‘That’s a heavy for you,’ Faradan Sort muttered, and then snorted. ‘Inventing nasty rumours for fun.’
‘They’re only nasty, I suppose, once someone decides one’s for real.’
‘If you say so, Kindly. As for my regulars, well, now I know where the barrage is coming from.’
‘Even if it is coming down on them,’ observed Lostara Yil, ‘from what you said it’s not stirring up much dust.’
Faradan met Kindly’s eyes. ‘Are we panicking over nothing, Kindly?’
‘To be honest,’ he admitted, ‘I don’t really know any more.’
Ruthan Gudd drew off his gambeson and paused to luxuriate in the sudden escape from unbearable heat as his sweat-slicked skin cooled.
‘Well,’ said Skanarow from her cot, ‘that woke me up.’
‘My godlike physique?’
‘The smell, Ruthan.’
‘Ah, thank you, woman, you’ve left me positively glowing.’ He unclipped his sword belt and let it fall to the ground, then slumped down on the edge of his cot and settled his head in his hands.
Skanarow sat up. ‘Another one?’
Through his fingers he said, ‘Not sure how many more of those she can weather.’
‘We’re barely two days into the desert, Ruthan – I hope she’s tougher than you think.’
He let his hands fall and glanced at her. ‘So do I.’ He studied her for a moment and then said, ‘I should probably tell you, I was considering…leaving.’
‘Oh.’
‘Not you. This army.’
‘Ruthan, I’m in this army.’
‘I planned on kidnapping you.’
‘I see.’
He sighed. ‘Today, she changed my mind. So, my love, we’re in this till the bitter end.’
‘If that’s a marriage proposal… I kind of like it.’
He studied her. Gods, I’d forgotten…
Loud clattering came from behind the cook tents, where the scullions were scrubbing pots with handfuls of rocks and pebbles. Cuttle cinched tight a strap on his kit bag. Straightening, he arched his back and winced. ‘Gods, it’s a young un’s game, ain’t it just. Koryk, you giving up on those?’
The Seti half-blood had thrown his military issue hobnailed boots to one side, and was using a rounded stone to work out the creases in a pair of worn, tribal moccasins. ‘Too hot,’ he said.
‘Won’t those get cut to shreds?’ Smiles asked from where she sat on her pack. ‘You start limping, Koryk, don’t look to me for help.’
‘Toss the boots on to the wagon,’ Cuttle said. ‘Just in case, Koryk.’
The man shrugged.
Sergeant Tarr returned from the company command tent. ‘Finish loading up,’ he said. ‘We’re getting a quick start here.’ He paused. ‘Anybody managed to sleep?’
Silence answered him.
Tarr grunted. ‘Right. I doubt it’ll be the same come tomorrow. It’s a long haul ahead of us. Weapons fit to use? Everybody? Shortnose?’
