A brutal, knowing glare in Bairoth’s eyes, fixed solely on Karsa, even as the sword flashed towards his neck. He would tell the lowlanders nothing, yet it was a defiance without meaning-but no, there was meaning… for Bairoth chose to abandon me.
A sudden shiver took him. Urugal, have my brothers betrayed me? Delum Thord’s flight, Bairoth Gild’s death-am I to know abandonment again and again? What of the Uryd awaiting my return? Will they not follow when I proclaim war against the lowlanders?
Perhaps not at first. No, he realized, there would be arguments, and opinions, and, seated around the camp hearths, the elders would poke smouldering sticks into the fire and shake their heads.
Until word came that the lowlander armies were coming.
And then they will have no choice. Would we flee into the laps of the Phalyd? No. There will be no choice but to fight, and I, Karsa Orlong, will be looked upon then, to lead the Uryd.
The thought calmed him.
He slowly rolled over, blinking in the gloom, flies scattering all around his face.
It took a few moments of groping in the sludge to find the arrowhead and its stubby, splintered fragment of shaft. He then crouched down beside the centre log to examine the fittings holding the chains.
There were two sets of chains, one for his arms and one for his legs, each fixed to a long iron rod that had been driven through the trunk, the opposite end flattened out. The links were large and solid, forged with Teblor strength in mind. But the wood on the underside had begun to rot.
Using the arrow-head, he began gouging and digging into the sewage-softened wood around the flange.
Bairoth had betrayed him, betrayed the Uryd. There had been nothing of courage in his last act of defiance. Indeed, the very opposite. They had discovered enemies to the Teblor. Hunters, who collected Teblor trophies. These were truths that the warriors of all the tribes needed to hear, and delivering those truths was now Karsa’s sole task. He was not Sunyd, as the lowlanders were about to discover. The rot had been drawn up the hole. Karsa dug out the soaked, pulpy mass as far as the arrow-head could reach. He then moved on to the second fitting. The iron bar holding his leg chains would be tested first. There was no way to tell if it was day or night outside. Heavy boots occasionally crossed the plank floor above him, too random to indicate a set passage of time. Karsa worked unceasingly, listening to the coughs and moans of the lowlanders chained further down the trunk. He could not imagine what those sad children had done, to warrant such punishment from their kin. Banishment was the harshest sentence the Teblor inflicted on those among the tribe whose actions had, with deliberate intent, endangered the survival of the village, actions that ranged from carelessness to kin-murder. Banishment led, usually, to death, but that came of starvation of the spirit within the one punished. Torture was not a Teblor way, nor was prolonged imprisonment.
Of course, he reconsidered, it may be that these lowlanders were sick because their spirits were dying. Among the legends, there were fragments whispering that the Teblor had once owned slaves-the word, the concept, was known to him. Possession of another’s life, to do with as one wished. A slave’s spirit could do naught but starve.
Karsa had no intention of starving. Urugal’s shadow protected his spirit.
He tucked the arrow-head into his belt. Setting his back against the slope, he planted his feet against the log, one to either side of the fitting, then slowly extended his legs. The chain tautened. On the underside of the trunk, the flange was pulled into the wood with a steady splintering, grinding sound.
The shackles dug into his hide-wrapped ankles.
He began to push harder. There was a solid crunch, then the flange would go no further. Karsa slowly relaxed. A kick sent the bar thumping free on the other end. He rested for a few moments, then resumed the process once more.
After a dozen tries he had managed to pull the bar up the span of three fingers from where it had been at the beginning. The flange’s edges were bent now, battered by their assault on the wood. His leggings had been cut through and blood gleamed on the shackles.
He leaned his head back on the damp clay of the slope, his legs trembling.
More boots thumped overhead, then the trapdoor was lifted. The glow of lantern light descended the steps, and within it Karsa saw the nameless guard.
‘Uryd,’ he called out. ‘Do you still breathe?’
‘Come closer,’ Karsa challenged in a low voice, ‘and I will show you the extent of my recovery.’
The lowlander laughed. ‘Master Silgar saw true, it seems. It will take some effort to break your spirit, I suspect.’ The guard remained standing halfway down the steps. ‘Your Sunyd kin will be returning in a day or two.’
‘I have no kin who accept the life of slavery.’
‘That’s odd, since you clearly have, else you would have contrived to kill yourself by now.’
‘You think I am a slave because I am in chains? Come closer, then, child.’
‘ “Child,” yes. Your strange affectation persists, even while we children have you at our mercy. Well, never mind. The chains are but the beginning, Karsa Orlong. You will indeed be broken, and had you been captured by the bounty hunters high on the plateau, by the time they’d delivered you to this town you’d have had nothing left of Teblor pride, much less defiance. The Sunyd will worship you, Karsa Orlong, for killing an entire camp of bounty hunters.’
‘What is your name?’ Karsa asked.
‘Why?’
The Uryd warrior smiled in the gloom. ‘For all your words, you still fear me.’
‘Hardly.’ But Karsa heard the strain in the guard’s tone and his smile broadened. ‘Then tell me your name.’
‘Damisk. My name is Damisk. I was once a tracker in the Greydog army during the Malazan conquest.’
‘Conquest. You lost, then. Which of our spirits has broken, Damisk Greydog? When I attacked your party on the ridge, you fled. Left the ones who had hired you to their fates. You fled, as would a coward, a broken man. And this is why you are here, now. For I am chained and you are beyond my reach. You come, not to tell me things, but because you cannot help yourself. You seek the pleasure of gloating, yet you devour yourself inside, and so feel no true satisfaction. Yet we both know, you will come again. And again.’
‘I shall advise,’ Damisk said, his voice ragged, ‘my master to give you to the surviving bounty hunters, to do with you as they will. And I will watch-’
‘Of course you will, Damisk Greydog.’
The man backed up the stairs, the lantern’s light swinging wildly.
Karsa laughed.
A mornent later the trapdoor slammed down once more, and there was darkness.
The Teblor warrior fell silent, then planted his feet on the log yet again.
A weak voice from the far end of the trench stopped him. ‘Giant.’
The tongue was Sunyd, the voice a child’s. ‘I have no words for you, lowlander,’ Karsa growled.
‘I do not ask for words. I can feel you working on this Hood-damned tree. Will you succeed at whatever it is you are doing?’
‘I am doing nothing.’
‘All right, then. Must be my imagination. We’re dying here, the rest of us. In a most terrible, undignified manner.’
‘You must have done great wrong-’
The answering laugh was a rasping cough. ‘Oh indeed, giant. Indeed. We’re the ones who would not accept Malazan rule, so we held on to our weapons and hid in the hills and forests. Raiding, ambushing, making nuisances of ourselves. It was great fun. Until the bastards caught us.’
‘Careless.’
‘Three of you and a handful of your damned dogs, raiding an entire town! And you call me careless? Well, I suppose we both were, since we’re here.’
Karsa grimaced at the truth of that. ‘What is it you want, lowlander?’