Assail (Malazan Empire, #6)(208)



For a time no one spoke, until Jethiss broke the silence, saying, ‘It is not safe here.’

The Jaghut elder tilted her head as she looked him up and down. ‘You, I did not see.’ She glanced to K’azz. ‘Nor you.’ She limped to Orman and extended the weapon. The lad’s face actually wrinkled in loathing, but none the less, he took it from her hands. ‘But you are right,’ she said. ‘We must go higher.’

Kyle squinted to the south: he could just make out small dark shapes pushing through the field of white: a broad line of them that seemed to extend all the way across the ice-plain. He began backing up. ‘They are coming,’ he said, though he was sure they all knew.

‘This way,’ the elder said, and she started up the slight incline that led to the peaks.

The three Sayers followed with the Heels and the Myrni girl. Kyle and Jethiss came after, followed by the four Crimson Guard, who spread out as a laughably slim rear guard. They climbed the shallow rise. The snowfall thinned, as did the ground-hugging clouds. Looking back, Kyle was amazed to catch glimpses of the level tops of the packed cloud cover below looking like the calm surface of the ocean itself, extending off as far as he could see.

The wide face of the nearest peak closed before them, dominating the north. It appeared to consist of nothing more than jagged rock cliffs and heaps of broken talus. Their boots crunched upon loose stones as they climbed. His chest burned now; he felt as if he could never catch enough breath.

Past the snowfall, higher on the rock slope they climbed. Ahead, Fisher straightened from among the boulders to await them. As the woman limped onward, swinging her leg awkwardly as she came, he called down, ‘Come no higher.’

She paused, glanced back briefly and answered: ‘They will not relent.’

The lines of the bard’s mouth appeared graven in stone. His grey-streaked long hair whipped in the strong winds and his gloved hand was upon the grip of his Darujhistani longsword. ‘Go east or west. Hide anywhere but here.’

The elder continued to close. ‘You would draw a weapon upon me?’

‘If I must. You mustn’t disturb what lies above.’

‘What lies above is our only chance of escape.’

The bard’s features appeared ready to crack. He gasped as if in pain: ‘There are other ways.’

Kyle’s own hand went to the blade at his belt as he saw how the Sayer lad’s fists tightened upon the spear, and the two with him prepared to draw their longswords.

The elder shook her head as she advanced right up into sword-range. ‘Will you draw upon me?’

Some terrible emotion shuddered through the bard and his face broke as he groaned, defeated. His hand fell from the sword grip and he slumped to the rocks to sit hunched, his head in his hands.

The elder passed him. She rested a hand upon his head for a time, as in blessing, then walked on. When Kyle reached him he extended a hand. At first the bard refused to raise his head. But then he held up a hand, which Kyle took to pull him upright.

‘There is no dishonour here,’ he told him.

Fisher shook his head, fierce. ‘She is a fool if she thinks she can control them. Or dictate terms. No one can.’

‘We shall see,’ Jethiss said. His gaze was on the heights, where a blasting wind punished the bare rock above.

‘The same goes for you,’ Fisher told him.

A peculiar smile came to the Andii’s lips. ‘I merely have one simple wish.’ And he passed them, climbing once more.

The Crimson Guard reached them. Kyle noted how the bard regarded them now with a bruised look in his eyes of which the mercenaries seemed oblivious. Blues carried his sticks in his hands and he gestured back with them. ‘They’re gaining and there’re too many of them.’

‘Our guide believes she has a secret weapon,’ Fisher spat, hugging himself.

‘Well, we’d better find it damned soon,’ Blues grumbled. He urged them on.

Kyle almost groaned himself as he forced his legs to move. Dizzy spells came and went and he had to rest, sitting a few times, until one of the Guard appeared to chivvy him along. He had no idea how long they’d been climbing, though the sky was clear now and he could see that it was late in the afternoon. He felt as if he’d been wandering across the entire mountain range for an eternity.

*

Shimmer found that she climbed in a fog, even though they had left the mists and snow of the cloud cover far behind. Above, the Jaghut elder, the obvious matriarch of all these northern clans, led the way. Her distant descendants followed. The ex-Guardsman Kyle came after them, filled out now to a rangy, fierce-looking plainsman and fitting bearer of a storied blade. He kept fitting company as well; the strange Andii, and the legendary bard.

K’azz had them spread out to serve as a rear guard. She could not stop peering over to Cal – just to make certain he really was still with them. What a shock it had been, finding him. The man hadn’t appeared much different, only more careworn than before. Yet she must have changed; she saw the distress of it in his eyes when they embraced. And his shock upon seeing K’azz’s condition couldn’t be hidden from any of them.

‘The others?’ K’azz had asked, and he had replied: ‘Waiting below,’ and that had been the extent of the conversation. Then they fell in together and it was as if nothing had intervened and no time had passed at all – though in truth, nearly two decades had come and gone.

Ian C. Esslemont's Books