Ahead, the tall double doors of Fort Saran opened. The officer of the gate saluted Genist, who nodded his acknowledgement. Within, the central marshalling grounds lay empty. A stone tower stood a squat and broad three storeys at the fort's north palisade wall. Thank the Lady for that, Genist allowed. A delegation awaited before it.
‘Order the assembly,’ he told the signaller, and urged his mount forward. To his irritation, Moss accompanied him. ‘I do not see Fist Darlat.’ Behind them, the cavalry formed up ranks on the grounds.
‘Never met her,’ said Moss.
Instead of Fist Darlat, all that awaited Genist and formal transfer of command was a motley gang of scruffy officers in faded, worn surcoats. Surely they could not be serious! True, Saran was only a fort, but command here was putative Malazan military governor of the entire Seti plains! A region as large as Dal Hon itself to the south. Was this some kind of calculated insult?
Genist pulled up his mount before the gathered officers, examined them for some sign of who was in charge, but failed. He saw no rank insignia or emblems, nothing to distinguish one from the other. They looked alike in their tanned, wind-raw faces and worn equipage. Veterans, one and all. Why here, in the middle of nowhere? Had they been recently rotated in from Seven Cities? As some of his staff suggested Moss may have been? Damn them for staring like that! How dare they?
‘Who commands here? Where is Fist Darlat?’
‘Fist Darlat is indisposed,’ said the eldest of the lot, standing on the extreme left.
Whoever this man was, he had seen many years of hard service. His hacked-short hair stood tufted in all directions. Burn wounding, perhaps. It was sun-bleached pale and grey-shot. His eyes were mere slits in a seamed, wind-scoured face. A black Seti-style recurve bow stood tall at his back.
‘And who are you?’
‘Name's Toc. Toc the Elder.’
After a moment of silence, Genist burst out laughing. ‘Surely you are joking. Not the Toc the Elder, certainly.’
‘Only one I know of.’
Genist glanced to the assembled officers – none were laughing. None, in fact, were smiling. Even Moss now suddenly wore the hardest face Genist had ever seen on the man. ‘But this is fantastic, unheard of. I thought, that is, everyone assumed… you were dead.’
‘Good.’ The man stepped up and stroked the neck of Genist's mount. ‘Fist Genist Urdrel – might I borrow your horse for a few moments?’
Genist gaped at the man. ‘I'm sorry? You'd like to what? Why?’
Captain Moss quickly dismounted. ‘Take mine, sir.’
Toc turned away from Genist. ‘Name, soldier?’
‘Moss. Captain Moss.’
‘Well, thank you, Captain Moss, for the use of your horse.’ Toc the Elder mounted, nodded to the assembled officers and cantered out to the marshalling grounds.
Two of the officers closed on Genist and pulled the reins from his hands. Genist reached for his sword.
‘Wouldn't do that,’ Moss murmured from his side. ‘We're rather outnumbered.’
Genist glared down at him. ‘I have two thousand-’
‘Do you? We'll see.’
‘What by Beru's beard do you mean by that?’
Moss lifted his chin to the grounds behind Genist who turned to stare.
Toc the Elder now walked his mount back and forth before the marshalled ranks. ‘Any veterans among you?’ he shouted in a voice that carried all the way to Genist. ‘Any old-timers from the campaigns? Sergeants? Bannermen? Do you know me? Do you recognize me? Who am I? Shout it out!’
Genist heard responses called but couldn't make out the words. A general mutter swelled among the ranks. Heads turned to exchange words.
‘Do you know me?’ Toc shouted. ‘I was flank commander under Dassem at Valan when Tali fell! I scoured Nom Purge! I brought the Seti into the fold!’
Genist's blood ran cold as he began to consider the possibility that this man could indeed be Toc himself, not some opportunist outlaw trying to exploit the name. Hood's breath! Toc the Elder, the greatest cavalry commander the Empire ever produced! Abyss, there was no Imperial cavalry before this man. Then the man's words brought a shiver to Genist; he recalled who it was that had negotiated the Seti tribal treaties and whom columns of thousands of Seti lancers had followed from these plains across Quon, even into Falar, and he turned, dreading what he might see, to the open fort gates. There, astride their mounts, five tribal elders watched, white furs at their shoulders, lances tufted by fetishes of white fur.
Gods Below! What may be unleashed here?
A call rose from the ranks, gathered cadence to a mounting chant. Toc the Elder! Toc the Elder!’ Blades hissed from sheaths and waved in salute to the sky. ‘Toc the Elder!’
Even Moss, standing beside Genist's mount, thumb brushing his lips, breathed musingly, ‘Toc the Elder…’
CHAPTER III
And so Trake ascends. Who can say what influence this casts upon his brothers and sisters? First Heroes All. Shall they too ascend? Is now the time of savage uncivilized gods? Brutal gods for a depressingly brutal age? Tol Geth, Aesthete Darujhistan
THE ROD AND SCEPTRE STOOD WITHIN THE SOUTH QUARTER OF the Outer Round of Li Heng. This address means nothing to those new to the city, but to any long-time resident it spelled one thing and one thing only: poverty. For Li Heng was a city of Rounds, or nested circular precincts. At its centre was set the Inner Focus, containing at its hub the Palace, and within the Palace, at its cynosure, the City Temple – once sanctified to the Protectress – and now, under Malazan administration, re-sanctified to the full pantheon of Quon Talian Gods, Heroes and Guardian Spirits. Surrounding the Inner Focus lay the Greater Intermediate Round, home to the ancient aristocrat families of Li Heng, the wealthier merchant houses and the government officials. Next came the Lesser Intermediate, wider yet. Here, the majority of city commerce was pursued, for Li Heng stood at the centre of Quon Tali, halfway between coasts astride the main trade artery connecting Unta with distant Tali province to the far west, and trade was the city's lifeblood. Encircling the Lesser Intermediate was the Outer Round, the fourth and widest. Here stood the crowded tenements of the labourers, the manufacturies, the animal corrals and the ghettoes of Seti tribals and other outsiders.
As to what might reside outside its legendary walls – it is telling that within the particular merchant cant of Li Heng there was not even a word for that. Banished, then, to the Outer Precinct, the Rod and Sceptre could not even claim the distinction of proximity to one of the two main gates of the city: the eastward-facing Gate of the Dawn and the westward-facing Gate of the Dusk. No, the inn rested within sight of the far less distinguished or profitable southward-facing Gate of the Mountains. At least, its owner and patrons could congratulate themselves, it was nowhere near the wretched northward-facing Gate of the Plains.
The Rod and Sceptre was also by tradition a martial establishment. In the golden days – before the murder of the Blessed Protectress and the yoke of Malazan occupation – the inn hosted merchant bodyguards and elements of the Protectress's own City Guard. Now, the inn quartered caravan guards and housed Malazan soldiery.
The Malazan contingent currently billeted was of the Malazan Marines, 7th Army, 4th Division, a field-assembled provisional saboteur squad, the 11th, currently attached to the 4th Army Central Command, under Fist Rheena, military governor of Li Heng.
The commander of the 11th saboteurs, field-promoted, was Captain Storo Matash, a Falaran native, of the island of Strike. Currently, Captain Storo was sitting at a table, drinking steadily while listening to a ranking saboteur, Shaky.