The wait lengthened. Everyone sat in an agony of tense anticipation. After what seemed half the night one of the Stormguard squinted up the narrow chute of stairs and then back at them. ‘Sleep,’ he said.
Shell did not sleep. She sat back, eyes slitted, while the man next to her nodded off — though perhaps he simply passed out in an utter exhaustion of dread. At intervals, one Stormguard paced the chamber. She watched him when he passed. Who were these soldiers? Their manner struck her as one of a military order, one dedicated to their Blessed Lady. She’d heard of them all her life, of course; they were always cited in admiration. And she could admit to having once shared that awe for what seemed — from far away — an honourable calling. Once.
Now, they’d rather fallen in her regard.
Eventually, inevitably, their turn came. The Stormguard struck them from the chain and pushed them up the narrow stone stairway. Her partner went first, and when he reached the top someone passed him a spear, which he flinched from before shakily taking.
Fanderay help us. The shield was thrust at her. It was a broad curved rectangle of layered wood, bone and bronze. The narrow chute of the stairway opened on to a small frigid room with one door; that door was lined in rime, its threshold wet with melted ice and slush. She knew where that door led.
While she fought with the shield’s old strapping the entire structure around and beneath her shuddered, jerking, and a great booming burst through the room like a thunderclap. She rocked, taking a step. Ice fell like glass shards from the walls. The regular guards holding cocked crossbows on her and her partner grinned at them over the stocks of their weapons.
The outer door slammed open and in came a Stormguard. Sleet and wind-tossed salt spume coated his cloak. His longsword was drawn and he gestured to them with it. Her partner, to whom she was linked by a few arms’ length of chain, gaped at the Chosen, frozen in terror, or disbelief. His eyes blazing within his narrow vision slit, the Stormguard snatched the spear close to its wide leaf-shaped blade and yanked the man forward.
In this undignified manner they stumbled out on to the marshalling walk of the Stormwall. A brutal wind cut at Shell while sleet slashed almost level. The coming dawn brightened the east behind massed heavy clouds. The Stormguard urged them along, now tugging on the chain linking them. As he force-marched them he was yelling: ‘You will face the enemy. You will fight! If you flinch or cringe I will kill you myself! And believe me… you have a better chance against them than against me!’
He led them up stairs that were no more than flows of ice cascading down from a higher wall, a machicolation perhaps. Here the cut stones sloped downward, no doubt to cast the wash of the crashing waves back over the face of the wall.
Shell reached the top and had her breath stolen from her. The sea raged beneath a horizon-wide ceiling of black cloud. White caps tossed up scarves of spume while overhead curtains of blue-green bands shimmered and danced.
The Stormguard was hammering their chain to a pin close to the lip of the wall. Shell’s partner stared at her, horror and despair in his eyes. Past him, through a gap in the blowing snow, she caught two figures crouched in the middle distance.
Straightening, the Stormguard faced them. ‘Fight, and there’s a good chance you’ll live. Refuse to fight and I’ll slit you like a dog. Remember that.’ And he jogged away down the stairs.
The man with her threw down his spear.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Give me the shield!’ he demanded, shivering as if palsied.
‘What?’
‘Give me the shield!’
She considered breaking his neck right then and there, but couldn’t bring herself to do it. She thrust the shield at him and retrieved the spear. ‘You cover me with that blasted thing,’ she told him, but he didn’t seem to be listening.
They didn’t have long to wait. From the east came a distant rumbling as of a roll of thunder. A wave’s coming. The Riders come with the crest, probing for weaknesses. She readied the spear, opted for a broad stance, the haft extended out as far ahead as possible. Best then not appear weak.
The sea appeared to swell as a great rolling comber heaved itself shoreward. It came at an angle, striking to the east first, rumbling down the wall like an avalanche. Phosphorescent light gleamed within, shimmering and winking. The Riders.
As the wave drew abreast it crested the wall to send a wash over her numb feet and legs up to her knees. Some thing flowed past, a shape, gleaming in oily rainbow shades of mother-of-pearl. Her partner recoiled, bumping her — for a moment she was afraid he was going to try to clutch her.
‘You saw it!’ he stammered. ‘They are daemons!’ He threw down the shield to claw at the ring and pin imprisoning them.
‘Pick up the shield,’ she told him, fighting to keep her voice calm. A secondary swell grew following the main crest. ‘Hurry.’
He yanked, sobbing. Blood from his frozen, torn fingers smeared the naked iron.
‘Pick it up.’
The swell rolled abreast of them. The man reached out to her. ‘Use the spear! Lever-’
A slim jagged weapon thrust from the face of the water to burst through the man’s chest. It withdrew before Shell could respond. Something reared, lunging, a humanoid figure, armoured, helmed. Steam plumed from it as it thrust at her. Despite her shock Shell parried, then the Rider’s own momentum carried it off and away with the receding wave.
Shell was left alone, chained to a corpse in the blowing snow. To the west she watched another pair engage the wave as it passed their station, then all was quiet as the sea withdrew. It seemed to be readying itself as lesser waves hammered and clashed. She shivered; her feet were now far beyond any feeling whatsoever. She wondered whether she could walk even if she had the chance.
It seemed she would have to wait. She considered the body hardening at her feet, the chain linked to its ankle fetter, the razor edge of the spear. A lever, he had suggested… but no. He wasn’t impeding her. Not yet.
No relief came. Shell knelt down on her haunches, blew on her fingers while hugging her frigid legs to her. Damn the shield; she’d use the spear two-handed.
The temptation to reach out to her Warren was almost irresistible. Just the quickest summoning of power and she would be free — but then where would she go? And the Lady would sear her mind more surely than these Riders might skewer her. She might be a mage foremost… but she was also an Avowed of the Crimson Guard, and she would show these Riders what that meant.
The huge cut stones of the wall shuddering beneath her feet announced the arrival of another wave. She watched its ice-skeined bulge as it came rolling in from the north-east. Flashes of lightning accompanied it, and greenish light danced above. Like mast-fire it was
… the brilliance that sometimes possessed a vessel.
Shell readied herself, searched for purchase over the treacherous ice-sheathed stone. Her hands, she noticed, alarmed, were now frozen to the spear’s haft. The wave rolled along the fortifications, cresting over the top as it came. When it swelled abreast of her a figure seemed to lift itself from the water, carrying lance and shield. It reared, heaved the lance at her. She parried. As it went for the sword sheathed at its side she thrust with her spear, taking him, or it, on the shield. In a practised move the Rider took hold of her spear haft then threw itself backwards into the water, taking the weapon with it. Her hands flamed as skin was torn in strips.
She cursed in a blind white fury worse than any she had known before. Damn these scum! I will not die here! The vow I swore was against the Malazans! A second Rider reared before her on whatever it was they rode — water animate as half wave, half beast-like mount. Weaponless, there was nothing for it but to hammer an arm across the front of the attacker, unhorsing him. As he fell she grabbed the pommel of his sheathed sword but the touch burned her hand as if she’d sunk it into embers and she cried out, recoiling.