Burn her! they chanted. Burn her!
He caught the priest’s gaze, horrified. The man pushed ahead, drawing Bakune in his wake. At a tall heap of bracken and firewood two Guardians of the Faith held a girl wearing a torn white slip. Her hair was frizzy and wild, a Malazan half-breed. She was weeping, her hands tied at the wrist.
‘No!’ Bakune heard torn from the priest in a muffled grunt.
‘This one is known to many of you!’ one of the Guardians was shouting. ‘Long has she preached against the Lady! She espouses foreign gods! In our fathers’ time she would have been cleansed long ago… but we have been wayward in our fidelity!’ The man gestured to the east. ‘And look how we are rewarded. Fresh invasions. The insult of foreign occupation!’
He raised both hands over the now silent crowd. ‘My friends — we are being punished! Yes, punished! For we have been lacking. Negligent. Too many of us give lip service only to our guardian, our deliverer, our one and only protector! The Lady is turning her face from us, and rightly so…’
He took a torch from a man next to him. ‘We must rededicate ourselves. Prove our devotion with blood… and with sacrifice…’ He pushed the girl down on to the piled bundled branches. She lay weeping, perhaps crazed with fear. He thrust the torch into the kindling.
Bakune stared, horrified, paralysed with disbelief. How could such an appalling barbaric thing be occurring before his eyes? Were they not all beyond such things? Would no one stop this?
The flames leapt up then almost immediately fell away. It was almost as if they were sucked down and snuffed. At Bakune’s side the priest had simultaneously smacked his hands together in a loud slap. Bakune stared at the man, as did many others nearby.
Oh no. More than a mere priest?
The two Guardians shared a bewildered look, then they peered out over the crowd. ‘Who is here?’ one called. ‘Reveal yourself!’
A woman who had been next to the priest suddenly pointed, shouting: ‘It was this one! I saw!’ She made a sign against evil at her chest. Bakune thought it prudent to join the crowd flinching away from the man.
One Guardian pushed forward. ‘Hold him!’
‘Ha ha!’ a great voice bellowed and a giant figure straightened from among the press, throwing off a cloak. ‘My diversion worked!’ Manask took one long step up on to the heaped bracken. ‘Now, while all eyes are elsewhere I shall snatch this innocent away!’
Everyone stared at the bizarre apparition. ‘Who in the Lady’s name are you?’ the remaining Guardian demanded. In answer Manask kicked the man down into the crowd. He threw the girl over his shoulder and followed. Pilgrims swung at him with staffs and sticks but all rebounded from the man’s rotund figure. He bulled forward. People fell like dry grass before him.
‘And now I make my furtive escape! Where has that phantom gone, the crowd gasps!’ He kicked down a door and ducked inside. The priest pressed a hand to his forehead as if to blot the sight from his eyes.
The Guardians arrived at the doorway. ‘After him!’ one shouted, pushing another fellow to the door. But none appeared willing to chase so gigantic a quarry. Snarling, the two dived within.
‘Disperse now!’ the priest suddenly yelled in a surprisingly strong voice. ‘Go home and examine your consciences, each and every one of you! What if that were your daughter, your wife, or yourself upon that blaze? What then?’
The nearest pilgrims turned on him. Those carrying staves held them in white-knuckled grips. The priest returned their furious stares calmly, almost haughtily. He crossed his thick arms. One by one the press thinned until all had drifted away. Bakune and the priest were left alone in the darkened midnight square. Alone but for two figures across the way sitting on the stone steps of a bakery, heads back as if asleep: Hyuke and Puller.
The priest sighed and waved to invite Bakune to accompany him to the gaping doorway. On the second floor they found the two Guardians unconscious and bound. Manask was standing at a window, eating a wedge of cheese. The girl lay on a child’s pallet. Bakune joined Manask to peer nervously over the streets. ‘More will come,’ he warned.
‘They are too busy, I think,’ the priest answered. He sat on the pallet, brushed the girl’s hair from her face. ‘Ella,’ he whispered gently. ‘Come to me.’
The eyelids fluttered. A gasp, chest heaving. The eyes opened wild, white all round, then found the priest. The trembling limbs eased, relaxing. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I tried. Really I did. After you disappeared I took up your message. They came for me — but I am not as strong as you.’
He brushed her brow. ‘You shouldn’t have taken up the burden, Ella. That was not my intent… I am the one who should be sorry. I should have realized.’
She sat up then, gripping his arm. ‘They have seen you! You must hide!’
Gently, he removed her hand, stood. ‘No. No more hiding or running. In fact, I think it is long past the time when I should have acted. Yes.’ He pressed a hand to her cheek. ‘I go now to confront the demon in her den. You are the one who must hide. Go to the settlement just outside the town. You’ll find sympathizers there. Continue the mission. In secret for a time. Do I have your word?’
‘She will destroy you!’
His frog smile was reassuring, and unconcerned. ‘They have you now, Ella. I am not required.’
Clearly the girl wanted to argue but clearly she also respected his wishes, and so she was silent, tears coursing down her cheeks. The priest went to the window where Manask stood tapping the wedge of cheese against his chin, frowning. ‘I am not so clear on this plan, my friend,’ Manask said. ‘As I see it, your delivering yourself gains us entry to the Cloister. Once there, while they are busy prodding you with red-hot pokers and eviscerating your bowels, I clean out the treasury. Is this the plan?’
‘Something like that,’ the priest growled, glaring.
‘Ah!’ Manask nibbled the cheese. ‘Well, I like my half of it.’
Bakune eyed the priest, uncertain. ‘You’re not really going to walk into the Cloister, are you?’
The priest appeared distracted, his head cocked as if listening to some distant sound. ‘No, not the Cloister,’ he said, his brows furrowing. ‘That’s not where she is… What is that noise?’
Bakune heard it as well. Roaring, yelling. A mob — a riot. ‘Things have gotten out of control,’ he murmured.
‘No. Worse than that. That’s real terror. Come.’ He started to head for the stairs, but stopped and turned to the girl. ‘Leave town now. Speak to no one. Farewell, and may the gods overlook you.’
‘Farewell,’ she managed huskily, barely able to speak.
At the street Hyuke and Puller were waiting for them. ‘Somethin’s up,’ Hyuke drawled. The two ex-Watchmen were eyeing Manask, their truncheons in their hands.
Townsfolk ran past, coming up the street from the waterfront in an ever-thickening torrent. Screaming was clearer now, rising from downslope. ‘What’s going on?’ the priest asked.
Hyuke thrust out a leg, tripping a man, who fell without a sound. He lay on his back struggling to rise while Hyuke held him down with his foot. ‘What’s going on!’ Hyuke demanded.
‘I like your way of tricking information out of people,’ Manask said. ‘Reminds me of my own techniques.’
‘They’re coming!’ the man gasped, his eyes fixed downslope.
‘Who?’
‘The Stormriders! They’re here! In the harbour! Run! It’s the end of the world!’ And the man brushed Hyuke’s foot aside to scramble away.
‘Riders here?’ the priest muttered. ‘Absurd.’
The crowd thickened; all rushed past, ignoring them. Bakune heard more shouts warning of Stormriders. The priest headed down against the rising tide of humanity. Bakune followed. Manask clomped away into a side street. A number of distracted townsfolk ran into the priest, only to rebound as if having encountered an iron post; Bakune kept in his wake. Several shops were aflame on the waterfront — perhaps from abandoned bonfires. And out past the pilgrim ships at anchor, further out on the dark azure blue of the bay, rested a score of far larger vessels.
They were nothing like any ships Bakune had ever seen before, and he’d grown up next to the sea. Three- masted, extraordinarily large, with dark-painted hulls and tall castles at the fore. ‘What are they?’ he asked of the priest.
For the first time Bakune heard awe in the man’s voice as he answered, ‘I’ve never seen them myself, but they match descriptions I’ve heard. Moranth vessels. Moranth Blue.’ The priest faced him, his expression amazed.
