Night of knives: a novel of the malazan empire by Ian C. Esslemont

Author:Ian C. Esslemont [Ian C. Esslemont]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SF
ISBN: 9780765323712
Published: 2009-05-12T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOUR

OLD ENEMIES, OLD FRIENDS

A

LONE ORANGE EMBER FLICKERED DULLY WITHIN A maelstrom at the heart of an icy ocean. It bobbed and surged with each heave of the fisherman’s oars that cracked and clattered off chunks of ice. Circling at a distance, Riders plunged and reared, darting in close then submerging. Javelins of ice hurled at the skiff burst into clouds of mist. The fisherman forced his chant through lips frozen to his teeth.

One Rider dared to lunge within the circle of calm surrounding the fisherman. Wave-borne, it reared close only to howl and beat at its arms as its glittering pearl armour melted, then it plunged beneath the boiling surface. Far off, amid the whitecaps and rafts of ice, five indigo-robed Riders watched, conferring. They cradled amethyst wands at their chests. Cold pulsed from them as an expanding sphere. Kneeing their churning wave-mounts, they dispersed. One raised its wand to the south.

Out of the heaving waters from far under the clouds came yet another crag of ice, this one the smallest of the flotilla. Riders at all sides shepherded its progress. The fisherman rowed on oblivious, back hunched, his whole being focused on the effort of rowing and his song. The berg loomed closer, a dark shape frozen at its heart.

The instant vapour burst from the iceberg’s leading spur the Riders plunged beneath the ice-mulched surface. Water poured in torrents down the crag’s shoulders while the gale tore streamers of frost smoke from its peak. When a shard of glacial emerald calved from its front, it raised a fountain of spray that rolled north to the skiff and disappeared under its bow. Now from the heart of the berg jutted a prow of wood. Water streamed from it, driving wisps of cloud into the wind. Caught in a mountain of ice, it bore down on the tiny skiff.

The fisherman, his back against the thrashing wind, continued rowing as the berg entombing Rheni’s Dream shattered and slid into the waves. He chanted on even as the prow of Rheni’s Dream loomed over him. He was pulling on the oars as the skiff was smashed to shards and the glowing brazier extinguished in an explosion of steam as it was driven beneath the waves. Rheni’s Dream bore on, listing, its planks heaved and warped. Caught broadside by a massive wave, it rolled further, seemed to hesitate, then ploughed into the sea. Amid the wreckage left behind one oar floated. A sheath of ice gleamed over it already. Stormriders surged past the wreck. Some raised their ice-lances high overhead and brought them down, pointing north. At the horizon of cloud and storm-tossed sea, lightning revealed a dark smudge of land.

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