‘What is your name?’ she asked the girl.
‘Ena.’ The child she carried in her arm was fighting to open her blouse to reach a swollen teat. She brushed the small hands aside. ‘You?’
‘Shell. Where will you go?’
She shrugged. ‘We go to Theft.’
‘What will you do there?’
Again the indifferent shrug. ‘Same as here.’
You are wiser than you know, young woman-child. For you, things are sadly unlikely to change.
Ena was eyeing her soft leathers under her thick travelling cloak, her leather gloves and tall boots. ‘Where you come from?’
‘The south. Far to the south. Before that, far to the north.’
An older woman, exact relationship uncertain, came and took the child from Ena, then the two argued back and forth for a time until the old woman marched off enraged.
‘What is it?’ Shell asked.
A smile. ‘Mother says I am lazy. Work to be done. But I tell her I am no longer a child to be ordered about. The… Blessed Lady… she is known where you are from?’
Shell was surprised by the non-sequitur. It was a moment before she could reply. ‘No. She is not known. She is only known here.’
Ena tucked a hand under the swell of her belly. Her many relations tramped back and forth readying the boats. Blues was arguing with Orzu next to one particularly overloaded skiff; he appeared to be miming sinking.
‘Yes. We thought so, no matter the words of her priests.’
‘Her priests? You have heard them?’
Ena nodded with child-like earnestness. ‘Oh yes. They come here. Half-starved wanderers. They stay and preach to us. Lady this and Lady that. They try to convert us.’
‘Convert you? You do not worship the Lady?’
She nodded, so serious. ‘Oh no. We are the Sea-Folk. We follow the old ways. Oh, the last of the priests seemed harmless enough until he tried to use the boys to satisfy himself. So we bound him and threw him to the Sea-Father.’
‘The Sea-Father? Oh, yes. The old ways.’
‘Yes. The Sea-Father. The Sky-Father. The Dark-Taker. The fertile Mother. And the Enchantress. The priests spoke against her the most. But we do not listen. We know the Lady by her ancient name. Shrikasmil — the Destroyer.’
Shell studied the child-woman while she stared out to sea. She was pretty despite her greasy hair, the grimed unwashed face. Pretty perhaps only because of her youth and her pregnancy. ‘Why travel to Theft, then? Surely you will not be welcome.’
Again the uncaring shrug, though tinged by a wry smile. ‘Nowhere are we welcome. We are the Sea-Folk. We come and go as we please. We choose to harbour at Theft till they chase us off. It was strange, you know…’ and she cocked her head, her brows wrinkling, ‘he was glad when we threw him in. Happy. He wanted to be martyr to the Lady. They all want to die for her. It is perverse. Shouldn’t faith seek life?’
Shell said nothing. Ena answered her own question with what seemed her response to everything: a shrug of dismissal. Then, rousing herself, she walked off to lend her family a hand. Shell remained, facing the sea, troubled. Something the girl had said. Dying for her. They all want to die for her. Something in that clawed at her instincts. She did not know what it was, yet. But there was something there. She could feel it the way she could feel the Lady’s own baleful hot gaze glaring from the north. From this point onward none of them should dare summon their Warrens.
Esslemont, Ian Cameron
Stonewielder
BOOK II
On the subcontinent known to some as Korel, to others as Fist, the Chosen who defend the Stormwall against the attacks of the ocean-borne ‘Riders’ foretell that should these Riders broach the wall they shall sweep on to engulf the world entire in an eternal reign of ice and storm.
Despite these claims, the Malazan Emperor Kellanved ordered his armies to invade Korel lands. This confronted the Stormguard with a horrifying choice: defend the wall or defend their lands. Skilfully, Kellanved swiftly withdrew the necessity for said choice by offering to limit his holdings to territory currently occupied. The Chosen readily agreed to these terms. In this, and many other pacts, it may be said that Kellanved manoeuvred and negotiated his way to Empire. Few in these times appreciate this distinction.
CHAPTER VI
History consists of nothing more than the lies we tell ourselves to justify the present.
After the tenth wave of the night Lord Protector Hiam discovered his endurance was failing him. Times were he could stand two watches of back-to-back fighting without feeling the strain. But in the weakened parry of a Rider’s lance-thrust, his spear nearly wrenched from his grasp, he saw instantly that he would not last to the dawn.
He abandoned the counter-strike, readying instead, content to let that Rider slide past. The men of his bodyguard urged it on. Yet there was no time to recuperate as the next wave came crashing in far higher than he could ever remember this early in the season. It inundated the lowest defences. Hiam charged down where Chosen wallowed in the knee-deep, frigid water. Riders now walked the outer machicolations. Their shell-like scaled armour hung as ragged skirting all the way down to the waters. They dropped their lances and drew saw-bladed longswords.
He and his six bodyguards crashed into the Riders like their own wave. Hiam faced one, lunging high to draw his parry while his bodyguard thrust low to impale the demon, who grunted and grasped the spear, only to have his hand slashed as the guard yanked free the broad leaf-shaped blade. This one fell into the shallow water to dissolve like ice rotting. Another Rider shook off the attacks of two Chosen to charge Hiam. He parried the Rider’s swing but the ice-blade caught at the haft of his spear like a gripping fist to heave it aside.
A kind of calm acceptance took Hiam then. The Rider was inside his guard — this was how it should end for him. The fiend’s sword swung, but a spear from a guard deflected the blade enough for it to clash from Hiam’s full helm like a bell. The blow brought him to one knee.
His guards pressed close, defending. Hiam regained his footing, launched his spear at the Rider then shrugged his broad round shield from his back and drew his thrusting blade. By this time his guards had finished the last Rider.
So be it. The spirit is willing but age has wrought its betrayal. Imagine, to have survived nearly thirty seasons upon the wall only to fall to so pedestrian an enemy — the snail’s crawl of the years.
Out amid the chop of the surging breakers the Riders did not press their advantage. The nearest reined in its horse-like mount of glowing sapphire ice and pearl-like spume to sink beneath the surface. As it went Hiam believed he saw it raise its lance in salute. Lady damn them for this facade of honour and courtesy. They fool no one.
The attack upon this section of the wall was over for now. A tap on his shoulder let the Lord Protector know his shift might as well end. He rotated out, accompanied by his guard of six, back to the marshalling walk behind the layered walltop defences. Shaking, he drew off his lined gauntlets to warm his hands over a nearby brazier. He told himself the shaking was the cold… only the cold.
I’m slowing. Twice the age of these men around me. Might not last the season. All it takes is one mistake, or the mounting sluggishness of exhaustion. Better this way, though. Better to fall now on the ramparts than perhaps to live to see… No! That is unworthy — Lady forgive me! Now is my trial of weakness.
He pushed down his steaming hands until the heat seared them and he groaned, yanking them away. Tears started from his eyes. How I will miss these men! He felt as if his heart were squeezing to a knot in his chest. That is my regret. That I will share no more time with my brothers. These are the best of men. Our cause is just and our hearts are pure.