Assail (Malazan Empire, #6)(33)
‘Anything else?’ Malle enquired.
Fisher nodded. ‘Then there are the supernatural dangers.’
Holden chuckled and winked. ‘Ah yes. The legendary ghoulies, ghosties and giants of Assail.’
Fisher did not share the man’s amusement. ‘The ghosts are real, my friend. The further north you go the worse they get. That and the cold.’
Alca leaned forward. She slid her forearms along her thighs to her knees. ‘These stories of cold and ice interest me. Since we landed I have sensed it. It is Elder. Omtose Phellack. This land was once held by the Jaghut – is that not so?’
Fisher studied the girl more closely; not so young as he had thought. And a scholar. Perhaps a researcher into the Warrens. He crossed one leg over the other and clasped his hands over his knee. ‘Some say all lands were once held by the Jaghut. But yes. It is thought that their mark lingers.’
‘And beyond the Jaghut there lies the threat of the namesake of this region,’ said Malle.
Fisher simply blinked at her. ‘Those are just stories, m’lady.’
‘Indeed? Let us hope so.’
Her tone told Fisher that his audience was at an end. He bowed his head and rose.
‘You had wished to speak of some matter?’ she enquired.
Fisher’s brows shot up – ah yes. He’d quite forgotten. ‘Our guest is awake and I wish to request equipment for him. Warm sturdy clothes and a weapon.’
‘And does our guest possess a name?’
Fisher shook his head. ‘Unfortunately, he remembers nothing. The shock of nearly drowning, perhaps.’
The old woman’s smile of sympathy was cold. ‘Perhaps.’ She gestured curtly to Holden. ‘See to it.’
‘Aye, ma’am.’
Bowing to all, Fisher ducked from the tent. As he crossed the camp it occurred to him that he’d entered to make a request only to find himself the object of an intense cross-examination regarding the peninsula and the lands beyond. Understandable, he supposed, given that they intended to penetrate within. Yet among the rolled charts and pressed fibre sheets he’d glimpsed a flat wooden box, closed and clasped. And he knew such boxes. They held draughting instruments: compasses, tools for measuring angles and scales. These people were not only consulting maps – they were assembling their own.
The party might in truth be after gold, but he considered it a good bet that these Malazans were after something else as well.
* * *
Once Jute Hernan, late of Delanss, was certain the Silver Dawn had passed beyond of the maze of rocks that choked the entrance to the aptly named Fear Narrows, he loosed the terror that squeezed his own chest like bound cordage and inhaled fully. He allowed his gaze to rise inland, up the calm channel of the long twisting narrows itself.
What he saw waiting ahead did not give him much cheer. Tall sheer cliffs on both sides offered little or no anchorage. And the Dawn was in desperate need of refit and repairs after threading through the Guardian Rocks; she was leaking at the seams, stores were water-spoiled, and she was desperately short of sweet water. Once more, he did his best to dredge up the tales of this region that he’d soaked up with his warm milk and bread when a boy. They told of how those vessels with enough luck, or piloted with enough skill, to navigate the Guardian Rocks could look forward to shelter within a protected port called Old Ruse, itself one of the many wonders of the region.
Scanning the rearing cliff walls, he saw no hint of any such tranquil or welcoming harbourage. Perhaps it was all sailors’ fancies and flights of tale-telling round the alehouses. Yet so far the stories had proved accurate to some degree: yes, the lands could be found more or less south of Genabackis; yes, the north-east coast was warded and ringed by hidden rocks and shoals; and, yes, an even worse hazard along this stretch of shore was its inhabitants, who, having no interest in trade or relations with the outside world, treated any vessels within their reach as sheep to be slaughtered, thus supporting the mariners’ universal wariness of the Wrecker’s Coast. And if one did pass beyond all this, one did come to a narrow inlet warded by series after series of jagged rocks. A formation any vessel would only dare attempt during the hours of highest tides. The Guardian Rocks.
Now, according to all the tales, what lay before his crew of the pick of all the mariners and pirates of Falar was Fear Narrows: a hostile inhospitable chute which allowed access to the broad calm Sea of Dread. Deceptively calm. Or so the stories always went.
Jute headed for the Dawn’s quarterdeck, nodding encouragement to the men and women of the crew as he went. Not that he felt it – it was simply his role as he saw it: reassuring these volunteers, each of them daring and intrepid enough to answer his call to join a voyage like none before. A voyage to the ends of the world in search of riches, though for most, including himself, such a voyage was a reward in itself.
He thought of what might lie in wait for them beyond the Sea of Dread: fortresses constructed from the bones of earlier travellers foolish enough to trespass there; strangling mists; limitless fields of ice taller than any city tower; forests guarded by giants of ice and rime. And beyond all these, mountains harbouring a race said to be willing to offer any gift a traveller daring and tenacious enough to reach them might think to request, yet no gift worth the harrowing price demanded by these legendary Assail.
Jute mentally cast all such unknowns overboard. One threat at a time! Right now his job was to see to finding safe anchorage for the Dawn, and such harbourage looked to be scarce indeed.