Assail (Malazan Empire, #6)(2)

‘I flee destruction,’ she answered, her voice tight with suppressed pain.

Others of the Imass warband now walked the ridge. The bones of their feet clattered on the rocks like so many stones. ‘Caves above, Ut’el,’ one of their number announced, pointing a flint blade higher up.

The Imass, Ut’el, returned its attention to her. ‘You would seek to lure us to ambush,’ it announced.

‘If you say so.’

‘I am disappointed. You have brought death to your kin as well.’ It faced one of the band. ‘Take scouts. They are occupied?’

This Imass dipped its hoary skull where the flesh and hair had fallen away in patches. ‘Yes, Bonecaster.’

Bonecaster! the woman marvelled. A mage, shaman, of the breed! If she should bring this one to destruction then all would have been worth the struggle.

The bonecaster returned its attention to her. She sensed its mood of disappointment. ‘I had thought you a more worthy prize,’ it murmured, displeased.

‘As we had hoped for more worthy successors.’

‘Victory is the only measure of that, Jaghut.’

‘So the victors would soothe themselves.’

The undying creature raised its bony shoulders in an eloquent shrug. ‘It is simply existence. Ours or yours.’

She allowed herself to slump back as if in utter defeat. ‘You mean the elimination of all other than you. That is the flaw of your kind. You can only countenance your family or tribe to live.’

‘So it is with all others.’

‘No, it is not. You are merely unable to see this.’

‘Look about, Jaghut. Raw nature teaches us …’ Ut’el’s whisper-faint voice dwindled away as he slowly raised his fleshless face to the higher slope.

‘How fare your scouts, Bonecaster?’ she asked, unable to keep a savage grin from her face.

‘They are gone,’ he announced. His gaze fell to her. ‘Others are there.’ He now shook his nearly fleshless head in admiration, and, it seemed to her, even horror. ‘My apologies, Jaghut. I would never have believed any entity would dare …’ He drew his flint blade. ‘You are a desperate fool. You have doomed us all – and more.’

‘I am merely returning the favour.’

All about, the remaining Imass warriors flinched as if stung, drawing their blades of razor-thin flint. ‘Purchase us what moments you can,’ he told them flatly. His brown tannin-stained visage remained fixed upon her.

The warriors dipped their heads. ‘Farewell,’ one answered, and they disappeared into snatches of dust.

Above, figures now came pouring from the cave mouths: stone-grey shapes that ran on oddly jointed legs, or all four limbs at a time.

‘I am tempted to leave you to them,’ Ut’el said. ‘But we Imass are not a cruel people.’

‘So you would absolve yourselves over the centuries, yes?’ She took hold of the spear haft. ‘That is fortunate. Because we Jaghut are not a judgemental people.’ And she heaved herself backwards in one motion, yanking the spearhead from the ground to tumble off the ledge, spear in hand.

He swung, but the blade cut just short of her as she fell off the narrow ridge. Her buckskins snapped in the wind. ‘I leave you to …’ she yelled as she plummeted from sight down the sheer thousand-foot drop.

… your doom, Ut’el Anag, Bonecaster to the Kerluhm T’lan Imass, finished for her. He turned to face the high slope. The grey tide of creatures had finished his band and now closed upon him.

In what he considered his last moments, he raised his flint blade to his face. He watched how the knapped facets reflected the clouds overhead, how the reflections rippled like waves on clear lake water.

No. This is not yet done. I so swear.

He stepped into the realm of Tellann as the first of the clawed hands snapped closed upon the space he once occupied.

* * *

Hel’eth Jal Im (Pogrom of the White Stag)



51st Jaghut War



6,031 years before Burn’s Sleep



Here evergreen forest descended mountain slopes to a rocky shore. Shorebirds hunted for crabs and beetles among tide-pools and stretches of black sand beaches. From their perches on tree limbs and among the taller rocks larger birds of prey watched the shorebirds and the glimmer of fingerlings in the shallows.

A morning mist hung over the bay. The air was still enough for sounds to cross from one curve of the shore to the other. The figure that arose from the seaweed-skirted boulders was not out of keeping with the scene. The tattered remains of leathers hung from its withered, mummified shoulders and hips. A nut-brown flint blade hung thrust through a crude twisted-hair belt tied about its fleshless waist. Over its head of patches of stringy hair and exposed browned skull it wore a cap cut from the cured grey hide of a beast more at home on sundrenched savanna than temperate boreal forest.

Similar figures arose, one by one, here and there about the shore. They gathered around the first arrival, and though gender was almost impossible to tell among their fleshless desiccated bodies, skin little more than paper-thin flesh over bone, this one was female and her name was Shalt Li’gar, and she was of the Ifayle T’lan Imass.

‘What land is this?’ one of the band, J’arl, asked. In answer, she raised her head as if taking the earth’s scent through the exposed twin gaps of her nostrils. ‘I know it not,’ she judged. ‘No account of it has been shared with me, nor with those with whom I have shared.’