He inclined his head in acceptance. ‘Very good, Shimmer. Yes. Duke. At the least — and the most.’
Shimmer tilted her helmeted head to excuse herself and fell back. K’azz bent to talk with his old teacher and adviser mounted at his side: Stoop, siegemaster to the D’Avore family for nearly half a century.
She found herself between Blues and Smoky. Blues rode easily with a leg negligently curled up around his pommel, Seti-style. His hands free, he practised with two sticks, twisting and flicking them in blurred mesmerizing patterns. Smoky, on the other hand, rode with both hands in a death-grip on his pommel, legs clamped tight. He appeared terrified, as if his mount, desperate to murder him, was about to throw itself off the ledge they walked.
‘What word?’ Blues asked.
‘He wouldn’t say.’
Smoky let out an angry snort. ‘Why am I not surprised?’
Blues eyed the surrounding rocky slopes and the distant peaks. ‘There’s power in these mountains,’ he murmured.
‘I feel it too,’ Smoky growled and he hunched even lower on his mount. It seemed to Shimmer that the horse almost sighed its exasperation. ‘Nothing familiar though. Can’t place it.’
The sticks clacked together in one of Blues’ hands. He eyed the ridge ahead. ‘Gettin’ closer.’
Shimmer glanced back down the column where it twisted along the narrow trail. She spied Skinner in his long coat of armour riding close to the rear. Cowl was next to him, wrapped as usual in his shroud-like dirty ash-grey cloak. Together again, those two. That damned sneering assassin disturbed her like none other she’d met over a lifetime’s career of war and conflict. But even she, grudgingly, had to give the man his due: he did his job and kept Dancer’s Talons at bay.
Still, it saddened her to see Skinner drifting more and more into that one’s company. Once he’d been inseparable from K’azz. Always at his side. Their champion, many had even thought him — then. Their answer to Dassem Ultor. But each defeat and setback in their campaigning seemed to drive the man ever further from K’azz’s side. There was an element, she knew, among the guard who were of the opinion that a company’s lack of success was the fault of its commander. And this was especially true of any mercenary company.
Riding the trail, the cool wind brushing at her hair where it escaped her helmet, Shimmer tightened the reins round her fist and pulled on her mail coat where it caught at her thigh. She’d been against that from the start — the idea of their turning mercenary. She’d never quite fully understood K’azz’s rationale. Something about ease of movement across Quon Tali, and not being a threat to local suzerainty.
At least so it was on the face of the papers and treaties they signed with the various princes, kings, chieftains, councillors and nobles with whom they’d taken ‘employment’. Papers these representatives were quick to throw to the wind the moment Kellanved and his motley army appeared on their borders.
In any case, turning mercenary did swell their numbers. The lustre of K’azz’s family name drew many, together with those associated with him: Skinner, Blues, Lazar, Cal-Brinn and Bars. Even the name Cowl drew recruits who wished to work with him — and learn his trade. The sort of men and women she thought they could do without. Such as Isha, Lacy and the Wickan renegade, Tarkhan.
Now, though, those who fought for money alone had long since drifted away. Now, only those who’d always regarded themselves as part of the personal guard of the Red Duke remained.
Or so she’d thought at the time.
K’azz led them up on to a narrow natural plateau hidden away among the climbing ridges of the Fenn Range. It was thickly grassed, the air cold. Nearby, a herd of wild horses startled Shimmer as they thundered off, wary of their advance.
Here K’azz had them dismount and gather in a circle. Pushing her way through the thigh-high grasses, Shimmer noted dark fisted knots of stone poking up here and there. Standing stones. But hardly cyclopean. Small and eroded. No more than headstones.
‘Feel it sizzle?’ she heard Blues murmur to the skinny young mage now at his side, Fingers.
‘It’s like ten stones pressing down on my skull,’ the kid groaned, and he held a hand to his forehead.
‘Gather round!’ K’azz called from the dusk.
‘Have a care, K’azz. This is no ordinary field,’ Smoky answered, warning.
‘I know. Gather round.’
Shimmer pressed forward into the tightening ring of the remaining guard encircling K’azz. The faces of some, she noted, held an anxious worry. And then it came to her like a sudden panic: was this it? All their battles and struggle to come to an end here in this isolated, inauspicious place? Had he brought them here to disband? Here, this very night? The suspicion clenched her heart and made it hard to breathe.
Yet across the small clear circle Stoop was not concerned. To the contrary, the old saboteur looked positively pleased. He held a crooked smile behind his grizzled beard while he scratched at his chin with the stump of his elbow.
K’azz raised his arms for silence. Yet even as he did so Skinner pressed forward, frowning, as if sharing Shimmer’s fears. Shimmer felt a brief echo of the attraction she once held for him as his blond hair blew about his still handsome features. ‘Why have we ventured so far north, K’azz?’ he demanded. ‘Are we yielding the fight?’ He turned to address the crowded company. ‘I have always maintained we should head to Tali. The city would rise to our banner. We could lead a liberating force eastward.’
The audacity! The man had just announced his plans should K’azz dissolve the company. Shimmer drew breath to shout him down, but K’azz merely raised a hand for silence and she reluctantly subsided. ‘Are you vowing that you will never abandon the fight?’ he asked in a manner remarkably composed, given this implied challenge to his authority.
Skinner now frowned in earnest. He peered about, gauging the mood of the company, and Shimmer was relieved to see hardly any support for him in the hard, disapproving expressions around the circle. ‘Of course,’ he answered easily, as if to shrug off the ridiculous question. ‘That is my very point. I counsel that we return to the struggle.’
K’azz merely gave a small nod of assent, and in this guarded reaction — giving away nothing — Shimmer recognized the commander at his most dangerous. He had somehow manoeuvred Skinner exactly where he wanted him, she realized. Yet of course he reveals nothing of it. ‘Very good. For that is my intent. That is why I have brought us here.’ He raised his chin to address the entire gathered company. ‘We are here to swear a vow!’ he began, loudly, catching everyone’s attention. ‘As many of you have already noticed, this is no random field. It is an ancient site. A place of power. Holy to our family, to our ancestors, and, some say, even to those ancient ones who preceded us upon these lands.
‘We gather here on this day in the sight of one another to swear a binding oath. What we here swear is unrelenting and unending opposition to the Malazan Empire for so long as it shall endure. To never abandon or turn away from such opposition. To this cause all gathered here must give their individual agreement and binding commitment. Those of you who know doubt, or who feel unable to pledge yourselves utterly to this cause, are free to go. Nay, are encouraged to go. And all without rancour or ill-feelings.’
While talking K’azz turned full circle to peer at every face, to fix a hard gauging eye upon every member of his remaining guard. ‘So … this is my Vow. This is what I here pledge and what I, in turn, ask of anyone who would choose to follow me. Now … what say you, Stoop?’
The wiry old siegemaster gave an easy shrug. ‘I so swear, a course.’
‘Blues?’
Their unofficial weaponmaster nodded solemnly. ‘I so swear.’