Dust of Dreams: Book Nine of The Malazan Book of the Fallen - By Steven Erikson Page 0,249

Bolkando Royal Crest adorned the vambraces, while the greaves were scaled black. The broad, straight-bladed, blunt-tipped sword rested in a lacquered scabbard of exquisite workmanship, belying the plain functionality of the weapon it embraced.

Every item was positioned with care upon a thick magenta carpet rolled out on the road, the slaves kneeling and waiting on three of the four sides.

Queen Abrastal walked up on the fourth side and stared down at the assemblage. After a moment she said, ‘This is ridiculous. Give me the helm, sword-belt and those gauntlets—if I have to wear the rest I won’t even be able to move, much less fight. Besides,’ she added, with a glare to her cadre of pallid advisors, ‘it hardly seems likely they’re planning betrayal—the presumed warleader and two pups . . . against my bodyguard of ten. They’d have to be suicidal and they’ve not shown such failings thus far, have they?’

Hethry, her third daughter, stepped forward and said, ‘It is your life that matters, Mother—’

‘Oh, eat my shit. If you could pull off the perfect disguise of a Khundryl to get a knife in my back, there’d be four of ’em riding up to our parley, not three. Go play with your brother, and tell me nothing about what you get up to with him. I’d like to keep my food down for a change.’ She held out her arms and slaves worked the gauntlets on. Another slave cinched the weapon belt round her solid, meaty hips, whilst a fourth one waited cradling the helm in gloved hands.

As Hethry retreated, after a few venomous darts at her mother, the Queen turned to the Gilk Warchief. ‘You coming along to see if they make you a better offer, Spax?’

The Barghast grinned, revealed filed teeth. ‘The Khundryl probably hold more of your treasury than you do, Firehair. But no, the Gilk are true to their word.’

Abastral grunted. ‘I imagine the one you call Tool might piss in laughter at hearing that.’

The Gilk’s broad, flat face lost all traces of humour. ‘If you were not a queen, woman, I’d have you hobbled for that.’

She stepped up to the warrior and slapped him on one shell-armoured shoulder. ‘Let’s see those pointies again, Spax, while you walk beside me and tell me all about this hobbling thing. If it’s as ugly as I suspect, I might adopt it for some of my daughters. Well, most of them, actually.’

Snagging the helm from the slave, she set out down the road, her bodyguard scrabbling to catch up and then flank her and Spax.

‘Your daughters need a whipping,’ the Gilk Warchief said. ‘Those I have met, anyway.’

‘Even Spultatha? You’ve been dimpling her thighs the last three nights straight—some kind of record for her, by the way. Must be she likes your barbarian ways.’

‘Especially her, Firehair. Wilful, demanding—any Barghast but a Gilk would have died of exhaustion by now.’ He barked a laugh. ‘I like you, and so I would never want to see you hobbled.’

‘But the wound that is named Tool is still raw, is it?’

He nodded. ‘Disappointment is a cancer, Queen.’

‘Tell me about it,’ she responded, thinking of her husband, and a few other things besides.

‘A woman hobbled has her feet chopped and can refuse no man or woman or, indeed, camp dog.’

‘I see. Use that word in the same sentence as my name again, Spax, and I’ll chop your cock off and feed it to my favourite corpse-rat.’

He grinned. ‘See these teeth?’

‘That’s better.’

The three Khundryl were waiting on the road, still in their saddles, but as the Bolkando contingent approached, the feather-cloaked warrior in the centre swung down and left his horse behind him as he stepped forward three paces. A moment later his two companions did the same.

‘Look at that,’ Abrastal observed under her breath. ‘Show me a Bolkando horse that just stands there once its reins are dropped.’

‘Horse-warriors,’ said Spax. ‘They are closer to their horses than they are to their wives, husbands and children. They are infuriating to fight against, Queen. Why, I recall the Rhivi—’

‘Not now, Spax. And stay back, among my soldiers. Watch. Listen. Say nothing.’

The Gilk shrugged. ‘As you like, Firehair.’

Despite herself, Abrastal was forced to admit that her first impression of Warleader Gall of the Burned Tears left her uneasy. He had the sharp, avid eyes of a hunting bird. He was well into his sixth decade, she judged, but he had the physique of a blacksmith. The black tattoos of tears tracked down his gaunt cheeks, vanishing