Part 35 (1/2)

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

'Instead,' Samar Dev said, 'Karsa was sent for first.'

'What happened?'

Her smile was sad. 'They fought.'

'Samar Dev,' Traveller said, 'that makes no sense. The Toblakai still lives.'

'Karsa killed the Emperor. With finality.'

'How?'

'I have some suspicions. I believe that, somewhere, somehow, Karsa Orlong spoke with the Crippled G.o.d not a pleasant conversation, I'm sure. Karsa rarely has those.'

'Then the Emperor of a Thousand Deaths-' 'Gone, delivered unto a final death. I like to believe Rhulad thanked Karsa with his last breath.'

If there was need for such a thought she was welcome to it. 'And the sword? Does the Toblakai now carry it as his own?'

She collected her reins and nudged her mount onward. 'I don't know,' she said. 'Another reason why I have to find him.'

You are not alone in that, woman. 'He bargained with the Crippled G.o.d. He 'He bargained with the Crippled G.o.d. He replaced replaced the Emperor.' the Emperor.'

'Did he?'

He urged his horse forward, came up alongside her once more. 'What other possibility is there?'

And to that she grinned. 'Ah, but that is where I know something you don't, Traveller. I know Karsa Orlong.'

'What does that mean?'

'It's his favourite game, you see, pretending to be so . . . obvious. Blunt, lacking all subtlety, all decorum. Just a savage, after all. The only possibility is the obvious one, isn't it? That's why I don't believe that's what he's done.'

'You don't wish to believe, you mean. Now I will speak plain, Samar Dev. If your Toblakai wields the sword of the Crippled G.o.d, he shall have to either yield it or draw it against me. Such a weapon must be destroyed.'

'You set yourself as an enemy of the Crippled G.o.d? Well, you're hardly alone in that, are you?'

He frowned. 'I did not then,' he said, 'nor do I desire to do so now. But he goes too far.'

'Who are you, Traveller?'

'I played the game of civilization, once, Samar Dev. But in the end I remain as I am, a savage.'

'Too many have put themselves into Karsa Orlong's path,' she said. 'They do not stand there long.' A pause, and then, 'Civilized or barbarian those are but words the cruel killer can wear all the costumes he wants, can pretend to great causes and hard necessities. G.o.ds below, it all sickens me, the way you fools carry on. Over the whole d.a.m.ned world it's ever the same.'

He answered this rant with silence, for he believed it was was ever the same, and that it would never change. Animals remained just that, whether sentient or not, and they fought, they killed, they died. Life was suffered until it was over, and then . . . ever the same, and that it would never change. Animals remained just that, whether sentient or not, and they fought, they killed, they died. Life was suffered until it was over, and then . . . then what? then what?

An end. It had to be that. It must must be that. be that.

Riding on, now, no words between them. Already past the telling of stories, the recounting of adventures. All that mattered, for each of them, was what lay ahead.

With the Toblakai named Karsa Orlong.

Some time in his past, the man known as the Captain had been a prisoner to someone. At some point he had outlived his usefulness and had been staked out on the plain, wooden spikes driven through his hands, his feet, hammered to the hard earth to feed the ants, to feed all the carrion hunters of Lamatath. But he'd not been ready to die just then. He had pulled his hands through the spikes, had worked his feet free, and had crawled on elbows and knees half a league, down into a valley where a once-mighty river had dwindled to a stream fringed by cottonwoods.

His hands were ruined. His feet could not bear his weight. And, he was convinced, the ants that had crawled into his ears had never left, trapped in the tunnels of his skull, making of his brain a veritable nest he could taste their acidic exudations on his swollen, blackened tongue.

If the legend was true, and it was, h.o.a.ry long-forgotten river spirits had squirmed up from the mud beneath the exposed bank's cracked skin, clawing like vermin to where he huddled fevered and s.h.i.+vering. To give life was no gift for such creatures; no, to give was in turn to take. As the king feeds his heir all he needs to survive, so the heir feeds the king with the illusion of immortality. And the hand reaches between the bars of one cage, out to the hand reaching between the bars of the other cage. They exchange more than just touch.

The spirits fed him life. And he took them into his soul and gave them a new home. They proved, alas, restless, uncivil guests.

The journey and the transformation into a nomadic tyrant of the Lamatath Plains was long, difficult, and miraculous to any who could have seen the wretched, maimed creature the Captain had once been. Countless tales spun like dust-devils about him, many invented, some barely brus.h.i.+ng the truth.

His ruined feet made walking an ordeal. His fingers had curled into hook-like things, the bones beneath calcifying into unsightly k.n.o.bs and protrusions. To see his hands was to be reminded of the feet of vultures clutched in death.

He rode on a throne set on the forward-facing balcony of the carriage's second tier, protected from the midday sun by a faded red canvas awning. Before him walked somewhere between four hundred and five hundred slaves, yoked to the carriage, each one leaning forward as they strained to pull the enormous wheeled palace over the rough ground. An equal number rested in the wagons of the entourage, helping the cooks and the weavers and the carpenters until their turn came in the harnesses.

The Captain did not believe in stopping. No camps were established. Motion was everything. Motion was eternal. His two wings of cavalry, each a hundred knights strong, rode in flanking positions, caparisoned in full banded armour and ebony cloaks, helmed and carrying barbed lances, the heads glinting in the sunlight. Behind the palace was a mobile kraal of three hundred horses, his greatest pride, for the bloodlines were strong and much of his wealth (that which he did not attain through raiding) came from them. Horse-traders from far to the south sought him out on this wasteland, and paid solid gold for the robust destriers.

A third troop of horse warriors, lighter-armoured, ranged far and wide on all sides of his caravan, ensuring that no enemy threatened, and seeking out possible targets this was the season, after all, and there were rarely these days, true enough bands of savages eking out a meagre existence on the gra.s.slands, including those who bred grotesque mockeries of horses, wide-rumped and bristle-maned, that if nothing else proved good eating. These ranging troops included raiding parties of thirty or more, and at any one time the Captain had four or five such groups out scouring the plains.

Merchants had begun hiring mercenary troops, setting out to hunt him down. But those he could not buy off he destroyed. His knights were terrible in battle.

The Captain's kingdom had been on the move for seven years now, rolling in a vast circle that encompa.s.sed most of the Lamatath. This territory he claimed as his own, and to this end he had recently dispatched emissaries to all the bordering cities Darujhistan, Kurl and Saltoan to the north, New Callows to the southwest, Bastion and Sarn to the northeast Elingarth to the south was in the midst of civil war, so he would wait that out.

In all, the Captain was pleased with his kingdom. His slaves were breeding, providing what would be the next generation to draw his palace. Hunting parties carried in bhederin and antelope to supplement the finer foodstuffs looted from pa.s.sing caravans. The husbands and wives of his soldiers brought with them all the necessary skills to maintain his court and his people, and they too were thriving.

So like a river, meandering over the land, this kingdom of his. The ancient, half-mad spirits were most pleased.

Though he never much thought about it, the nature of his tyranny was, as far as he was concerned, relatively benign. Not with respect to foreigners, of course, but then who gave a d.a.m.n for them? Not his blood, not his adopted kin, not his responsibility. And if they could not withstand his kingdom's appet.i.tes, then whose fault was that? Not his.

Creation demands destruction. Survival demands that something else fails to survive. No existence was truly benign.

Still, the Captain often dreamed of finding those who had nailed him to the ground all those years ago his memories of that time were maddeningly vague. He could not make out their faces, or their garb. He could not recall the details of their camp, and as for who and what he had been before that time, well, he had no memory at all. Reborn in a riverbed. He would, when drunk, laugh and proclaim that he was but eleven years old, eleven from that day of rebirth, that day of beginning anew.

He noted the lone rider coming in from the southwest, the man pus.h.i.+ng his horse hard, and the Captain frowned the fool had better have a good reason for abusing the beast in that manner. He didn't appreciate his soldiers posturing and seeking to make bold impressions. He decided that, if the reason was insufficient, he would have the man executed in the traditional manner trampled into b.l.o.o.d.y ruin beneath the hoofs of his horses.

The rider drew up alongside the palace, a servant on the side platform taking the reins of the horse as the man stepped aboard. An exchange of words with the Master Sergeant, and then the man was climbing the steep steps to the ledge surrounding the balcony. Where, his head level with the Captain's knees, he bowed.

'Sire, Fourth Troop, adjudged ablest rider to deliver this message.'

'Go on,' said the Captain.

'Another raiding party was found, sire, all slain in the same manner as the first one. Near a Kindaru camp this time.'

'The Kindaru? They are useless. Against thirty of my soldiers? That cannot be.'

'Troop Leader Uludan agrees, sire. The proximity of the Kindaru was but coincidental or it was the raiding party's plan to ambush them.'

Yes, that was likely. The d.a.m.ned Kindaru and their delicious horses were getting hard to find of late. 'Does Uludan now track the murderers?'