Ian Esslemont - Assail

She fell to her knees, the water at her breast, her face in her hands. Failure! Utter wretched failure once more! The cold waves splashed over her. The surge of bodies fighting around her died away.

‘It is over,’ Pran Chole said unnecessarily. ‘They have fled. My warriors pursue.’

She raised her face. Her tears felt hot on her chilled wet cheeks. ‘Your numbers are diminishing, Pran. Some time soon too many will arrive and you will be overrun. What then?’ she yelled. ‘What then!’

‘You will not be harmed.’

She lunged to her feet. Her wet hides slapped about her, almost pulling her over. She threw up a hand as if to strike his stone-hard face. ‘I do not speak of myself!’ She jabbed a finger to the north. ‘I speak of them! Them! What will happen to all those thousands … so many. A crime beyond imagining, Pran! And you Imass the perpetrators. Mass murderers …’ The enormity of it made her dizzy and she could not continue.

‘Omtose Phellack remains active in the north. It protects them yet.

‘For how long!’ she threw back at him. ‘It is weakening. You know this! In the little time we’ve been here I have felt it weakening.’

To this Pran could only offer the wordless gesture of those who live long enough in the indifferent world: the subtle lift of the shoulders that says, who is to know?

* * *

Fisher Kel Tath found the Bone Peninsula much the same as when he’d left it so very long ago. Which is to say: insular, murderous, and savage. The pocket city-states still jostled and warred amongst themselves seeking supremacy. And each, in its turn, succeeded in grasping a taste of said supremacy only to be dragged down eventually by some new alliance of their neighbours, said alliance then flying apart in the inevitable betrayals and killings. And so it went. On and on. Endlessly repeating itself and none apparently learning a thing from it. Fisher was even more disheartened and disgusted than when he’d fled it all originally.

Yet he’d returned. Drawn not by the steep inlets and forested mountain slopes that so figured in his youth, but by hints from readings in the divinatory Dragons deck, by whispered rumours, and by plain gut instincts that told him that things were about to change here in the lands of Assail, so very ancient and clinging to the old ways of family, clan and blood-feud.

He lingered in Holly, at the top of the mountainous peninsula. It was one of the more northerly of the coastal kingdoms. They were named kingdoms here along the coast, though in any other region they would rate as little more than baronies, or minor city-states. He lingered because when he arrived he found himself anticipated by a horde of foreigners all come ashore from the outland vessels now crowding the tiny fishing harbour of this modest fortress and town.

It seemed that for all his seeking out of subtle readers of the deck, paying of noted prophets, and even time spent insinuating himself into the good graces of a certain priestess of the Queen of Dreams for hints of future events, he had failed to discover the news that was clearly common knowledge: that streams bedded in gold had been discovered in northern Assail lands.

He did not know whether to consider it a personal failing, or a sad comment on the skills of said clairvoyants. In any case, he now had a seat in a tavern quite taken over by foreigners — and he thought by everyone to be among them — while strategy was being hammered out around the captain’s table.

It was a raucous affair of banged fists, yelled insults, and daggers half drawn while their owners, hired swords, and plain men-at-arms watched one another suspiciously.

‘We must all march together overland.’ This was Marshal Teal of Lether, tall, pole-slim and sour-faced, who possessed the largest force: a pocket army of forty armed fortune-hunters, all probable ex-soldiers. He called himself ‘Marshal’, though Fisher couldn’t recall such a rank associated with the Letherii military.

‘Overland is too slow!’ This from Enguf, called the Broad, a man who couldn’t be more opposite to the pale-lipped Letherii commander: a squat, flame-haired south Genabackan pirate who’d landed with a crew of twenty armed, lean and hungry swordsmen. ‘Those who continue on to the inland sea will take everything!’

‘We have no time for such games,’ cut in the third commander at the table, a Malazan aristocrat, Malle of Gris. She was an older woman, wiry, in thick layered finery of the sort that was fashionable in Unta two decades ago. Thick silver wristlets gleamed at her wrists like manacles, and kohl lined her eyes giving her something of the look of an owl. ‘That you landed here betrays your intent clearly.’

‘And that is?’ Enguf answered, not the least intimidated by the woman’s haughty manner.

She dismissed him with a wave of a skinny hand. ‘We three must have seen maps or heard accounts that hint of the dangers all along the inland sea. The Sea of Dread, many style it. The Anguish Coast. Are we three not betting that few of these vessels will reach the inland Sea of Gold? Better to cut across the top of the peninsula, neh? Though the mountain passes of the Bone range no doubt hold their own dangers.’

‘Quite so, Malle,’ put in Marshal Teal. ‘We will march for the top of the Demon Narrows. To a settlement named Desolation Bay.’

‘Hardly encouraging, that,’ muttered Enguf.

‘Not to worry,’ said Malle. Her lips thinned into a humourless predatory smile. ‘I believe that to be a description of what awaits those foolish enough to attempt the narrows.’

‘We are resolved then?’ enquired Teal. He signed to his second, who drew a sheet of parchment from a pouch. ‘We the undersigned,’ he began, dictating, ‘agree to equal shares of all profits accruing, after shared expenses, from our venture in gathering mineral resources from the Salt range.’ When his aide had finished, he signed the document then slid it and the quill across to Malle, who also signed. She offered it to Enguf, who scowled at the sheet and the other two commanders.

‘Must I?’ he growled distastefully.

‘Mercantile contracts must be signed and witnessed,’ insisted Teal.

Enguf snatched up a candle and tilted it over the document. ‘All this paper waving and scratching is nothing more than hollow mummery. What matters is a man or a woman’s word.’

‘Nevertheless …’ Malle murmured.

Wax dripped to the page and Enguf pressed a ring into the cooling droplet. He pushed the sheet to Teal. ‘Done. Meaningless charade though it is.’

‘In a barbaric country perhaps,’ allowed Teal. His second rolled the document and slipped it away. ‘But in Lether the rule of law is respected.’

Enguf stroked his thick russet beard. ‘Oh yes. I forgot that being civilized means constructing laws that favour yourself while at the same time disadvantaging everyone else.’

Teal offered a bloodless smile. ‘My friend, if in some manner you find yourself disadvantaged by the law then by definition you must be a criminal.’

‘You take my point exactly.’

Malle threw up a hand for silence. ‘We are outside our purview. I suggest we ready for the morrow.’

Teal nodded his assent. ‘Of course. My thanks, Malle of Gris.’

‘What?’ Enguf objected, quite disbelieving. ‘Not one drink to our partnership? Come now, we must drink. All mercantile agreements must be sealed by a toast.’

Teal’s mouth tightened even more as his jaws clenched.

‘If we must,’ said Malle. ‘Myself, I favour liqueurs. Wormwood, or dhenrabi blood, preferably.’

Enguf raised his brows, impressed. ‘Well — I doubt we’ll find such rare delicacies here. But we can only try.’ He clapped his hands. ‘Innkeep? Hello? Demons and gods, has the man fled?’ He gestured to his crew and two men got to their feet and ambled to the rear, where, Fisher imagined, the man was probably cowering, overcome by this crowd of foreigners who had taken over his business.