Assail (Malazan Empire, #6)(127)

‘Less dangerous than the Holdings, I think.’

‘Perhaps.’

Yullveig did not argue the point further. ‘Sleep here tonight. Rest. Tomorrow I will escort you to the edge of the Holdings. You can make your way from there.’

‘Well … thank you, Yullveig. I am grateful for your kindness.’ A thought occurred and he ventured a question. ‘Did you say surviving Holdings?’

‘Yes. Far more existed once. Larger Holdings covered the south. They extended down all the way to what you call the Bone Peninsula and the Dread Sea. I and my daughter Erta are from one such. The Fanyar, we were named. Gone now with the retreat of the cold and ice. Cull took us in when others would not.’

‘I am sorry, Yullveig. I did not know.’

She shrugged again. ‘Few do in this day and age.’

Kyle did not know what to say after that. Yullveig went to the rear of the cabin. ‘We have a few hides and blankets. You can sleep by the hearth.’

‘My thanks.’

‘Save your thanks till the morning – the nights are very cold up here.’

Kyle did not doubt her. And true enough, no matter how closely he crowded the stones of the hearth, no warmth seemed to reach him through the frigid bite of the night air.

In the morning, Yullveig had no hot tea or drink to offer. She handed over slices of the smoked venison wrapped in burlap, then collected an immense spear from next to the door and headed out. Kyle followed. They spoke little the entire time; Yullveig proved a far more sombre guide than her voluble husband. She struck a south-east route and four days’ hard journeying brought them to a stretch of forest that betrayed patches of recent clearing.

‘Homesteaders,’ she explained.

Kyle listened but heard no reports of further chopping, nor voices calling out. He wondered if Baran and Erta had been through recently.

‘You are on your own from here, cousin. Give our regards to the Losts.’

‘I shall. Give my thanks to Cull, won’t you?’

‘Yes. Fare you well. Oh,’ she gestured to his side, ‘I’d cover a weapon such as that if I were you.’

‘Ah – yes. I usually do. Goodbye.’

Yullveig turned and jogged off. She disappeared in what seemed an instant among the dark trunks of the spruce and pine. He thought there must be some sort of magic in how these Icebloods came and went so quietly and suddenly here within their Holdings.

He did indeed wrap the sword in leather before heading into the clearing. But he kept it at his side in case he had call to use it. He travelled easily down among the foothills; parties crossed his path now and then, but none challenged or harassed him. He supposed he looked too much like what he was: just another ragged fortune-hunter.

He met more and more gold-chasers the further he went. They were a friendly lot away from the actual bearing fields and stream beds. Some invited him to join them at their fires. They told tall tales of the difficulties of their passages north – and of the hard knocks and precious few rewards since. And every day Kyle listened for the mention of a fierce warrior-woman, a shieldmaiden. For most of the men and women he met hailed from nearby Genabackis, and would know her as such.

The trails that had been newly tramped out of the wilderness led him down to the shores of the Sea of Gold, and a rambling tent city its fortune-hunter founders named, ironically perhaps, Wrongway.

At a tent-tavern, he heard that a band of Malazan marauders had attacked and half burned the place to the ground. After this, the thug who ran the town, one Lying Gell, died of a mysterious knife-thrust and most of the gold-hunters decamped to join the crowd pressing the siege of the last independent local settlement, Mantle. The prospect of loot on hand, it seemed, was preferable to trying to track it down and dig it up. Kyle reflected that an invasion of fortune-hunters had now made the transition into a plain invasion. Inevitable, he supposed, when these rootless blades appeared to outnumber the locals by far.

‘Who are the leaders?’ he asked the crowded table.

It turned out the captains were from all over, though none were Malazan, given the recent attack – which everyone seemed to regard as some sort of betrayal. A betrayal of what, Kyle couldn’t quite understand. There was a Lether captain who called himself Marshal Teal; a number of ex-ship’s captains who’d kept their crews together, and a Genabackan troop pulled together by a woman who’d actually served in the north, under the Warlord Caladan Brood.

‘This woman,’ Kyle asked, ‘what’s her name?’

The fortune-hunters glanced to one another, uncertain. One fellow spoke up. ‘Don’t know her name,’ he offered. ‘Only know what they call her.’

‘What’s that?’

‘They call her the Shieldmaiden.’

And Kyle sat back, sipping his drink of watered ale. Lyan. Served under Brood? Neglected to mention that … But then, she knew he’d served with the Malazans, didn’t she?

He stood from the table.

‘Headed out?’ someone asked.

Kyle finished his drink and saluted the table. ‘Yes. Going to join up.’

* * *

The seventh day after they entered the Sea of Dread, a long low vessel came storming out of the west to intercept them. The Crimson Guard led the convoy of twelve in their captured local raider ship, which Captain Ghelath insisted on rechristening Mael’s Forbearance.