Assail (Malazan Empire, #6)(142)

‘And what of Jass?’ Vala spoke from behind and Orman spun. She stood breathing deeply, her long-knives bloodied to the grips, her forearms splashed.

‘He said to try the Greathall.’

The news rocked the woman. Open dread filled her alien oval eyes. ‘The Greathall is more than a day south of here,’ she breathed, appalled.

Orman wasn’t certain he understood. ‘But then …’

Vala did not pause to answer. She spun and ran. He took a few faltering steps after her, calling, ‘Vala! Vala … Dammit to the Abyss.’

Twin figures came jogging up through the thinning fog: the Reddin brothers. Both appeared hale, if sliced and cut by minor wounds. Neither carried his shield, which must have been battered to pieces in the fighting. ‘Here you are,’ said one, Keth perhaps.

‘Where is Bain Greathall?’ he demanded.

‘South of here,’ answered the other.

‘South? Where?’

One brother extended an arm, gesturing downhill. ‘South.’

Orman took off at a jog. After a short time he found the brothers flanking him. ‘What is it?’ one asked.

‘Jass is at the Greathall.’

They entered a more mature forest of tall pine and birch and the ground opened up. They had left behind the localized banks of fog. Orman glimpsed other figures also fleeing south through the woods. He ignored them.

‘If there are any Bains left they will be defending the Greathall,’ one brother offered.

‘Let us hope,’ Orman muttered beneath his breath.

Through the rest of the day and into the night they alternated between walking and jogging. The sky was clear and bright. The Great Ice Bridge could clearly be seen spanning the entire inverted bowl above. It glittered from one horizon to the other. The moon, battered and blurry still from the strange fires that burst upon it years ago, was a sickle blade waxing.

They ran straight past camps of some few stragglers, or latecomers. These men and women watched them without a shouted curse, a yell, or a fired arrow. It was as if they considered them some sort of ghosts, such as the Eithjar.

Dawn’s orange light brightened behind an eastern ridge. In its glow Orman spotted the faint smudge of black smoke rising from the forest canopy below. He broke into a run.

The pall was quite distant; he had to splash through two small streams while he pushed his way through the underbrush. He heard the brothers following. He burst through to cleared fields and saw ahead the Bain Greathall, aflame. Figures surrounded it.

Orman could not be certain, but believed he howled something as he charged. Faces turned his way. He crashed into armed men and women, thrust right and left. He was now truly blind in a red mist of fury and a crushing dread. More lowlanders came closing in from surrounding the hall. The brothers joined him but instead of remaining within their cover he charged from one man or woman to the next. Some remaining rational part of him seemed to watch this and wonder whether Old Bear’s talent of ferocious shapeshifting had passed to him.

He then became aware of himself standing motionless, spellbound, exhausted, his limbs quivering, before the dark opening of the gaping entrance. The arrow-pierced corpse of an Iceblood, an old man, lay upon the stairs. Vala held the doorway. Smoke gouted out about her in a black river. Embers glowed in her hair. Her leathers were slashed over countless wounds – but that was as nothing to the agony in her wild staring eyes. Devastation had hollowed them completely. But most of all what held him breathless and fascinated was their grim and absolute despair.

He reached out to her; she flinched away as if some wild beast, turned, and ran within to disappear among the licking flames and smoke. He lunged up the stairs but hands held him back. He believe he howled and fought then froze, transfixed.

Through the billowing smoke he’d glimpsed something.

Amid the churning coils, the collapsing roof-timbers, something hung from the immense log that was the roof crossbeam. A small figure swinging ever so slightly. His leathers were curling and smoking in the intense heat. His hands were tied behind his back and he’d been thrust through the chest.

Thrust through by Svalthbrul – the weapon he now held in his hands. A burden he now knew to be wholly and inescapably cursed.

He screamed then. Bellowed to the sky. Howled on and on until something struck him and he fell, knowing nothing more.

*

He awoke in an out-building, a small hut of chinked logs. He smelled stale smoke. Svalthbrul stood leaning next to his cot. He left it there and arose to push open the door of thin wooden slats. It was late in the day. White smoke wafted from the collapsed ruins of the burnt Greathall.

Keth Reddin stood without, arms crossed. Orman nodded him a greeting.

‘The Bains are no more,’ Keth said.

‘Yes.’

‘I am sorry for the loss of your half-brother.’

‘Thank you.’

Keth nodded; he’d said what he meant to say and was finished.

Orman took a deep breath of the reviving air. ‘We must return to Sayer Hall to bring word of this … this loss.’ Keth nodded again.

The Reddin brother shifted to peer back through the open door. Orman followed his gaze. Yes. Svalthbrul. He took a hard breath to steel himself and re-entered the hut. Yes. He closed a fist upon the weapon. Though he now hated it, it was his. His burden to carry. His curse. If it could speak, he now understood it would be laughing at all the blood it had drunk, the discord and violence it had sown.