Ian Esslemont - Stonewielder

‘The old sea god’s been awakened. And he’s angry.’ Orzu gestured urgently. ‘Mother! Drop that baggage and jump in now!’

The boat lurched. Ena peered over the side: the waters had risen. She glanced back west in time to see some dark wall advancing like night, consuming the leagues of waving grasses.

‘Here it comes!’ Orzu bellowed.

The vessel slammed sideways, twisting like a thrown top. Ena banged her head against the side, struggled to shield the babe pressed to her breast. When she next looked up they were charging north, water-borne, bobbing amid a storm of wreckage: uprooted trees, the roofs of huts, driftwood logs, all in a churning mulch of detritus mixed with a flux of mud. She watched a cousin’s boat become wedged between the boles of two enormous logs and crushed to shards. Her family members jumped to the roof of a hut spinning nearby.

The wave carried them over the sand cliffs bordering the marshlands and on inland, ever slowing, diminishing, thinning. Until finally, in its last ebbing gasp, it lifted them up to lie canted on the slope of a hillside far from the sight of the coast. She sat watching in wordless amazement as the waters swept back as if sucked, leaving behind in their wake a trail of ugly churned mud, soil, and stranded oddities such as the wall of a reed hut, or their boat itself: a curious ornament for a farmer’s field.

Orzu thumped down next to her and gave her head a look. ‘Are you all right then, child?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the babe?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you, mother!’ he yelled.

‘Fine, no thanks to you!’ she grumbled.

‘Do you think our friends had something to do with this?’ Ena asked, still rather dazed.

Orzu slapped the boat’s side. ‘Well… that I don’t know. But now I guess I’ll have to do what I’ve been threatening to do all this time.’

‘Which is?’ She wasn’t certain which of his threats he might be referring to.

‘Take up farming.’

Ena snorted. That might last a day.

‘Let’s round everyone up then,’ he said, patting all his pockets in search of his pipe.

The reassembled armies of Rool waited while its commanders, led by their Overlord himself, debated strategy. The camp had been cleaned up from the fires and panic of the series of tremors. Thankfully, while there had been some property damage, and some horses had been lost as they ran terrified, there had been little loss of life.

In a new tent, huddled next to a brazier, though he somehow felt warm enough for the first time in a decade, the Overlord Yeull was of the opinion that these invader Malazans, elements of the Fourth and Eighth Armies, must have fared much more poorly in the rough highlands, where landslides and rockfalls were so common.

A knot of army officers stood together, rather nervously eyeing the Overlord where he sat slumped, his face set in its habitual glower.

‘Do they mean to come upon Kor from the mountains?’ a young captain wondered aloud.

Yeull snorted. ‘They’re fools. They don’t know the country. The Barrier range is a maze of defiles and razorback ridges. They’ll starve.’

The officers, none of whom had ever set foot in Korel, nodded sagely.

A messenger entered, bowed next to the Overlord to whisper, his voice low. The Overlord frowned even more. ‘What?’

The messenger gestured outside. Scowling, Yeull pushed himself erect, straightened his thick bear cloak — though he was tempted to throw off the suffocating thing — and headed for the entrance. ‘Let’s have a look.’

The officers followed. Outside, Yeull shaded his eyes to gaze to the south-west where the coast curved in a bay that gave way to a headland. The tide appeared to have withdrawn significantly when it should be in. Mudflats lay exposed in an ugly brown and grey swath. Yeull ground his teeth. More Ruse trickery from that traitor bitch? What could she have in mind?

Ussu’s warning came to him but he pushed it aside. The man had reached the end of his usefulness. The Lady appeared to have finally dragged him into senility. In any case, they were safe here so far from the shore — he’d made sure of that. Nothing to… He squinted out past the bay, where the strait appeared to be experiencing unusually rough conditions. Something was coming into the bay. A tall bulge of water like a tidal bore, but fast, faster than any wave he’d ever heard of.

Amazed shouts sounded around him; soldiers pointing.

That was a lot of water and the bay was very shallow. Yeull’s gaze traced the long gentle rise up from the shore cliffs to their camp.

Lady, no… It could not be possible. No. I refuse to believe it.

The great rolling bulge was not only impossibly tall, it was also impossibly broad: it stretched all the way across the bay, perhaps even across the strait itself.

It numbed his imagination just to try to conceive of that volume of water, and that amount of destructive potential bearing down upon him.

The damned end of the world, just like these crazy Korelri were always going on about.

The wave did not strike the shore so much as absorb it, continuing on without any hesitation. Soldiers now broke to run in open panic.

Yeull stood his ground. Officers called begging for instructions but he ignored them. No. Impossible. It will not happen.

The churning front of mud, silt, sand, tumbling shore wreckage, even suspended hulks from the shore assault, all crashing and spinning, now came flying up the grade towards them. Its blasting roar was as of an avalanche. Yeull’s shoulders sagged. Gods damn you, Greymane. This is you, isn’t it? This is why these Chosen hated you so. These Korelri fanatics finally met someone as crazy as them. Don’t you know your name will go down as the greatest villain this region has ever known? Malazans won’t be able to enter this region for generations — you’ve lost all these lands for ever…

Inexorable, blasting two stone farmhouses to rubble and splinters as it came, the wavefront ploughed into the camp. It swept over tents, collected supplies, masses of men. Yeull’s last sight was of a maw of crashing tree trunks headed right for him.

On board the Malazan flagship, the Star of Unta, Devaleth had waited through the night and the dawn of the next day. At her urging the combined Malazan and Blue fleet had withdrawn to the centre of Crack Strait. Here they’d waited while, as far as she could tell, nothing happened. To their credit, neither Nok nor the Blue Admiral Swirl approached to pester her with questions or demands for explanations. They had accorded her the title High Mage, and seemed also willing to grant her due credibility as well.

All that changed in the early morning when a rumbling as of a thunderstorm rolled over the massed fleet. Devaleth looked to the west. That was a much greater report than she’d been expecting. To have reached them this far, so loudly…

Then far off, through the Warren of Ruse, she felt the sea lurch. Sea-Father forgive them! It was like the undersea tremors they taught about at the Ruse Academy. Immense volumes of water displaced, creating… She backed away from the side of the vessel. Nok stood nearby, concern on his craggy narrow face.

‘What is it, High Mage?’ he asked.

She found her voice, pulled her hand from her neck. ‘A wave, Admiral. Much larger than I had anticipated. A great flood. We must run before it. Order the fleet to spread out, head east — now. I will do all I can smooth our passage.’

Nok bowed, went to give the orders. After he went Devaleth gripped the side to stop her weakened legs from giving way. Smooth our passage! Laugh, great Sea-Father! May as well try to hold back an earth tremor with one’s bare hands. Everyone must be warned of this.

Captain Fullen, temporarily in command of the garrison at Banith, had a heart-stopping moment shaving when an apparition flickered into existence in his tent. He almost cut himself fatally when he jerked, surprised, as a hollow distorted voice spoke: ‘Commander…’