Night of Knives_ A Novel of the Malazan Empire - By Ian C. Esslemont Page 0,59

driven by a freezing wind. A woman, her long black hair and layered skirts snapping, picked her way down the rock-strewn shore. She held a woven shawl close at her shoulders as she took a footpath down to a driftwood and sod hut just above the strand. Pushing open the wooden door, she peered into the dim interior. Within sat a woman, motionless, facing the door, knitting forgotten in her lap. Her bright white eyes glowed in the darkness.

The woman at the door shivered. ‘It’s me, Agayla.’ Her breath hung in the cottage’s frigid air. She stepped closer; hoarfrost crackled beneath her shoes. Ice crystals glittered on the blackened logs in the fireplace. Frost layered the sitting woman’s lips and eyes.

Agayla reached out to gather up the knitting but the wool shattered into fragments.

In what little moonlight penetrated the churning clouds, Agayla walked the edge of the strand where driftwood and old planking lay beached by the high waves. Steam rose from the freshest seawrack of dead fish and seaweed. She gazed steadily to the south, to the horizon of sea and cloud where past the foam of whitecaps flashed a bright glimmer of emerald and azure. Her route took her to a point of tall rock overlooking the shore. Another figure stood there already, an old man in shapeless brown robes, bald but for a fringe of long white hair that whipped in the wind. Arms crossed, he scowled southward.

‘Have you ever seen anything like it, Agayla?’ he said without turning as she drew near. His words reached her easily despite the roaring wind.

Skirts raised in one hand, Agayla picked her path carefully over the rocks. ‘There has never been the lik’e since the earliest assaults, Obo.’ She stopped beside him, pulled her shawl tighter.

He grunted, glowered even more deeply. ‘And the fisherman?’ Obo asked, cocking a brow at her.

‘Overcome. He was out there all alone. They knew how naked we are. They could sense it.’

‘That fool, Surly, trying to outlaw magery on the island. Why didn’t she stop to consider why this island should be such a hotbed of talent? Wind-whistlers, sea-soothers, wax-witches, warlocks, Dragons deck readers. You name it. The Riders dared not come within hundreds of leagues.’

‘She didn’t know because no one knew, Obo,’ Agayla observed.

He spat to one side. ‘I’m leaving. We can’t stop this.’

She lanced him a glare. ‘Certainly. Run back to your tower. We both know you could keep it secure. But what of the island? How would you like living on a lifeless rock continually besieged by the Riders?’

He sniffed. ‘Might have its advantages.’

Scornful, she shook her head. ‘Don’t try that. You’ve anchored yourself here in your tower and it sits on this island. You have to commit yourself. You’ve no choice.’

Obo’s mouth puckered as if tasting something repugnant. He raised his chin to the south. ‘We can’t win anyway. The two of us aren’t enough.’

‘I know. That’s why I asked someone else.’

‘What?’ Obo spun to her. ‘How dare you! Who? Who is it? Who’s coming? It’s not that raving lunatic is it?’

‘By the Powers, no. Not him. He’s chosen another path in any case. No, it’s someone else.’

‘I don’t like it.’

‘I knew you wouldn’t,’ Agayla sighed. ‘In the meantime we must still resist.’

‘If I don’t like who you’ve asked, I’ll leave. I swear.’

‘Yes, Obo.’

As if caught in a sudden gust, Agayla wavered, took a step back to steady herself against an invisible pressure. She reached behind to a waist-high rock to brace herself and leaned against it, massaging her brow. ‘Gods above. I’ve never felt anything so strong.’

Nodding, Obo crossed his arms again. ‘Single-minded bastards, ain’t they?’

Temper opened his eyes to find himself once again at the siege of Y’Ghatan. It was his old nightmare. The one that he relived over and over, dreaming and awake. Yet it had been a long time since it had returned, and it troubled him that he should find himself here now once more.

He heard cloth lashing and snapping in the unrelenting wind, orders barked from somewhere nearby. The air stank of burnt leather and rotting flesh. His doubts and lingering sense of unease dispersed like a pan of water left out under the burning Seven Cities sun. Serried ranks of Malazan regulars stood, backs to him, before a flat field scoured by blowing sand. Bodies dotted the plain and a forest of spears and javelins jutted from the ground at sickening angles. Through the dust rose the dun walls of the first escarpment to