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my mantra in favour of calling everything slop while not getting all "downfall of society" about it

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"It seemed to him such a simple truth. Yet he knew that its very banality was fuel for sneering cynicism and mockery. Until such things were taken away, until the price of their loss came to be personal in some terrible, devastating arrival into one's life. Only at that moment of profound extremity did the contempt wash down from that truth, revealing it bare, undeniable.

All the truths that mattered were banal."

-Mappo Trell, in Toll the Hounds

Being the 8th part of the Malazan Book of the Fallen

By Steven Erikson

What held real value in this world? In any world? Friendship, the gifts of love and compassion. The honour one accorded the life of another person. None of this could be bought with wealth.

— Steven Erikson, Toll the Hounds (The Malazan Book of the Fallen, #8)

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I finished it ;_;

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Hellian haters dni

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There was never a golden age. Worship of me to the exclusion of all other gods has never existed among the Letherii. The time you speak of was an age of plurality, of tolerance, a culture flowering -

‘Never mind the truth. The past is what I say it is. That is the freedom of teaching the ignorant.’

He had laughed then. The High Priestess stumbles upon a vast wisdom.

Reaper’s Gale by Steven Erikson

[the-evil-duckling]

Bottle sat looking through the ever-sharp eyes of a cat. Perched on the ridge of the tavern roof, gaze fixing and tracking on birds whenever the mage's concentration slipped – which was getting too often, but exhaustion did that, didn't it?

But now, there was movement there, along the edge of the forest there – where the squad had been hiding not so long ago. And more, to the north of that. And there, an Edur scout, edging out from the south end, other side of the road. Sniffing the air as was their wont – no surprise, the Malazans carried carrion reek with them everywhere they went these days.

Oh, they were cautious, weren't they? They don't want a real engagement. They just want us to bolt. Again. Once their strength's up, they'll show themselves more openly. Show their numbers, lances at the ready.

A little time yet, then. For the other marines to relax. But not too much, lest they all got so drunk they couldn't stand, much less fight. Although, come to think on it, that Hellian seemed capable of fighting no matter how sodden she got – one of her corporals had talked about how she sobered up and turned into ice whenever the fighting started. Whenever orders needed delivering. That was a singular talent indeed. Her soldiers worshipped her. As did Urb and his squad. Worship all bound up with terror and probably more than a little lust, so a mixed- up kind of worship, which probably made it thick as armour and that was why so many were still alive.

Hellian, like a more modest version of, say, Coltaine. Or even Dujek during the Genabackan campaigns. Greymane in Korel. Prince K'azz for the Crimson Guard – from what I've heard.

But not, alas, the Adjunct. And that's too bad. That's worse than too bad—

Twenty Tiste Edur visible now, all eyeing the village – ooh, look at that bird! No, that wasn't them. That was the damned cat. He needed to focus.

Reaper's Gale, by Steven Erikson (Malazan Book of the Fallen #7)

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"You know that as well as I do – my father is with them, is he not? You steal his eyes when it suits you—"

"Not as easy as you think." Her tone was genuine in its bitterness. He . . . baffles me."

Frightens you, you mean. "Silchas Ruin will demand the Finnest."

"Yes, he will! And we both know what he will do with it – and that must not be permitted!"

Are you sure of that, Mother? Because, you see, I am not. Not any more. "Silchas Ruin may well demand. He may well make dire threats, Mother. You have said so often enough."

"And if we stand side by side, my son, he cannot hope to get past us."

"Yes."

"But who will be guarding your back?"

"Enough, Mother. I warned them to silence and I do not think they will attempt anything. Call it faith – not in the measure of their fear. Instead, my faith rests in the measure of . . . wonder."

She stared at him, clearly confused.

He felt no inclination to elaborate. She would see, in time. "I would go to welcome these new ones," he said, eyes returning to the approaching strangers. "Will you join me, Menandore?"

"You must be mad." Words filled with affection – yes, she could never rail at him for very long. Something of his father's ethereal ease, perhaps – an ease even Rud himself could remember from that single, short visit. An ease that would slip over the Letherii's regular, unimpressive features, whenever the wave of pain, dismay – or indeed any harsh emotion – was past and gone, leaving not a ripple in its wake.

That ease, Rud now understood, was the true face of Udinaas. The face of his soul.

Father, I do so look forward to seeing you again.

Reaper's Gale, by Steven Erikson (Malazan Book of the Fallen #7)

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Where is the virtue in any of it? Is possession a virtue? Is a lifetime of working for some rich toad a virtue? Is loyal employment in some merchant house a virtue? Loyal to what? To whom? Oh, have they paid for that loyalty with a hundred docks a week? Like any other commodity? But then, which version is truer – the virtue of self-serving acquisitiveness or the virtue of loyalty to one's employer? Are the merchants at the top of their treasure heaps not ruthless and cut-throat as befits those privileges they have purportedly earned? And if it's good enough for them, why not the same for the lowest worker in their house? Where is the virtue in two sets of rules at odds with each other, and why are those fancy words like "moral" and "ethical" the first ones to bleat out from the mouths of those who lost sight of both in their climb to the top? Since when did ethics and morality become weapons of submission?

— Steven Erikson, Reaper’s Gale (The Malazan Book of the Fallen, #7)

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Shurq Elalle saw Deadsmell’s eyes flick open then, saw them fix hard and unblinking on Yan Tovis.

The Adjunct missed nothing, for she glanced at Deadsmell for a moment, then away again.

‘Twilight, Watch and Rise,’ Deadsmell muttered. ‘Covered the whole night, haven’t ya? But damn me, the blood’s awful thin. Your skin’s the colour of clay - couldn’t have been more than a handful at the start, probably refugees hiding among the local savages. A pathetic handful, but the old titles remained. Guarding the Shores of Night.’

Yan Tovis licked her lips. ‘Just the Shore,’ she said.

Deadsmell smiled. ‘Lost the rest, did you?’

Keep reading

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The last great Malazan sapper.

Cuttle was as close to pissing himself as he had ever been. Not at the prospect of dying - he was fine enough with that and had been ever since finding himself in the Fourteenth - but at what he was witnessing here.

The last great Malazan sapper. No-one else came close. Imagine, shaving cusser shells. With a knife. Eggshell thin. Cuttle had watched, unable to make out much from this distance, as Fiddler had set to work on the first one, the deadliest one of all. And he had prayed, to every god he could think of, to gods he didn’t even know the names of, to spirits and ghosts and every sapper living or dead, each name a benediction to one man’s brilliance. Praying that the one man he truly worshipped wouldn’t…wouldn’t what?

Let me down.

How pathetic. He knew that. He kept telling himself that, in between the breathed-out beseechings. As if he’d have time to rue the failing of his faith.

So there was Fiddler, closer now, at the second hole, doing it all over again. Imagine, Fid and Hedge, the way they must have been together. Gods, those Bridgeburners must have been holy terrors. But now…just Fiddler, and Cuttle here poorer than a shadow of the famous Hedge. It was all coming to an end. But so long as Fiddler stayed alive, well then, damn them all, it was worth holding on. And this arrow lodged in his left shoulder, well, true he’d seen it coming, but he hadn’t exactly leaned into it, had he? Might have looked that way. Might have at that. As if he’d had time to even think, with everything going on around him. He wasn’t superhuman, was he?

- Reaper’s Gale, Malazan Book of the Fallen 7

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All good children's fiction says you are going to have to shoulder responsibility even if you don't want it.

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"If there was a curse, a most vicious kind of curse, whereby a decent person found him or herself in inescapable servitude to a creature of pure, unmitigated evil, then Seerdomin had lived it. Decency did not exculpate. Honour purchased no abeyance on crimes against humanity. And as for duty, well, it increasingly seemed the sole excuse of the morally despicable. He would offer up none of these in defence of the things he had done at his master’s behest. Nor would he speak of duress, of the understandable desire to stay alive under the threat of deadly coercion. None of these was sufficient. When undeniable crimes had been committed, justification was the act of a coward. And it was our cowardice that permitted such crimes in the first place. No tyrant could thrive where every subject said no.

The tyrant thrives when the first fucking fool salutes.

He well understood that many people delighted in such societies – there had been fellow Seerdomin, most of them in fact, who revelled in the fear and the obedience that fear commanded."

-Steven Erikson, Toll the Hounds, Book VIII of the Malazan Book of the Fallen.

Every damn page of this series (a beast to be sure but a beautiful one) hits closer to home.

Semi-related art from Memories of Ice (Book III, and absolutely one of the best books I've read in a very long time. Mind, the whole series is a knockout.)

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For people with such simplistic world views, Banaschar knew, catastrophes were disconnected things, isolated in and of themselves. There was no sense of cause and effect beyond the immediate, beyond the directly observable. A cliff collapses onto a village, killing hundreds. The effect: death. The cause: the cliff's collapse. Of course, if one were to then speak of cutting down every tree within sight, including those above that cliff, as the true cause of the disaster - a cause that, in its essence, lay at the feet ofthe very victims, then fierce denial was the response; or, even more pathetic, blank confusion. And if one were to then elaborate on the economic pressures that demanded such rapacious deforestation, ranging from the need for firewood among the locals and the desire to clear land for pasture to increase herds all the way to the hunger for wood to meet the shipbuilding needs of a port city leagues distant, in order to go to war with a neighbouring kingdom over contested fishing areas - contested because the shoals were vanishing, leading to the threat of starvation in both kingdoms, which in turn might destabilize the ruling families, thus raising the spectre of civil war . . . well, then, the entire notion of cause and effect, suddenly revealing its true level of complexity, simply overwhelmed.

Reaper's Gale by Steven Erikson, book 7 of the Malazan Book of the Fallen

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“There have been armies. Burdened with names, the legacy of meetings, of battles, of betrayals. The history behind the name is each army’s secret language - one that no-one else can understand, much less share. The First Sword of Dassem Ultor - the Plains of Unta, the Grissian Hills, Li Heng, Y’Ghatan. The Bridgeburners - Raraku, Black Dog, Mott Wood, Pale, Black Coral. Coltaine’s Seventh - Gelor Ridge, Vathar Crossing and the Day of Pure Blood, Sanimon, the Fall.”

Some of you share a few of those - with comrades now fallen, now dust. They are, for you, the cracked vessels of your grief and your pride. And you cannot stand in one place for long, lest the ground turn to depthless mud around your feet.

Among us, among the Bonehunters, our secret language has begun. Cruel in its birth in Aren, sordid in a river of old blood. Coltaine’s blood. You know this. I need tell you none of this. We have our own Raraku. We have our own Y’Ghatan. We have Malaz City.

In the civil war on Theft, a warlord who captured a rival’s army then destroyed them - not by slaughter; no, he simply gave the order that each soldier’s weapon hand lose its index finger. The maimed soldiers were then sent back to the warlord’s rival. Twelve thousand useless men and women. To feed, to send home, to swallow the bitter taste of defeat. I was… I was reminded of that story, not long ago. We too are maimed. In our hearts. Each of you knows this.

And so we carry, tied to our belts, a piece of bone. Legacy of a severed finger. And yes, we cannot help but know bitterness.

The Bonehunters will speak in our secret language. We sail to add another name to our burden, and it may be it will prove our last. I do not believe so, but there are clouds before the face of the future - we cannot see. We cannot know.

The island of Sepik, a protectorate of the Malazan Empire, is now empty of human life. Sentenced to senseless slaughter, every man, child and woman. We know the face of the slayer. We have seen the dark ships. We have seen the harsh magic unveiled.

We are Malazan. We remain so, no matter the judgement of the Empress. Is this enough reason to give answer? No, it is not. Compassion is never enough. Nor is the hunger for vengeance. But, for now, for what awaits us, perhaps they will do. We are the Bonehunters, and sail to another name. Beyond Aren, beyond Raraku and beyond Y’Ghatan, we now cross the world to find the first name that will be truly our own. Shared by none other. We sail to give answer. There is more. But I will not speak of that beyond these words: “What awaits you in the dusk of the old world’s passing, shall go… unwitnessed.” T’amber’s words.

They are hard and well might they feed spite, if in weakness we permit such. But to those words I say this, as your commander: we shall be our own witness, and that will be enough. It must be enough. It must ever be enough.” -Tavore’s speech to the Bonehunters as they sail away from Malaz City, Malazan Books of the Fallen by Steven Erikson

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And this mouth, so eager with its words, it has tasted the succulent juices of its kin - remember that?

No, he could not.

But the body can. It knows hunger and desire on the battlefield - walking among the dead and dying, seeing the split flesh, the jutting bones, smelling the reek of spilled blood - ah, how the mouth waters.

Well, everyone had his secrets. And few are worth sharing. Unless you enjoy losing friends.

In a series where so very many people are having a terrible time, it's comforting to know you can always depend on Toc the Younger to be having the worst possible time.

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Does Redmask offer redemption? He promises the defeat of the Letherii – but they were not our enemies, not until we agreed the contract. So, what is redeemed? The extinction of the Grey Swords? Oh, I need to twist and bend to bind those two together, and how am I doing thus far?

Badly. Not a whisper of righteousness – no crow croaks on my shoulder as we march to war.

Oh, Tool, I could use your friendship right now. A few terse words on futility to cheer me up.

Twenty myrid had been killed, gutted and skinned but not hung to drain their blood. The cavities where their organs had been were stuffed solid with a local tuber that had been sweated on hot stones. The carcasses were then wrapped in hides and loaded into a wagon that was kept apart from all the others in the train. Redmask's plans for the batle to come. No more peculiar than all the others. The man has spent years thinking on this inevitable war. That makes me nervous.

Hey, Tool, you'd think after all I've been through, I'd have no nerves left. But I'm no Whiskeyjack. Or Kalam. No, for me, it just gets worse.

Marching to war. Again. Seems the world wants me to be a soldier.

Well, the world can go fuck itself.

Reaper's Gale, by Steven Erikson (Malazan Book of the Fallen #7)