Bonehunters in truth

Published on: Sat Oct 11

Spoilers for the Bonehunters until end of chapter 7

I’m not sure where to begin with the siege of Y’ghatan. Would I talk about the build up to it? Corrab’s character growth? The dream sequence? The sheer horror of war Erikson portrays in the short 120 pages of the chapter? The POV of a minor character dying? The crawl beneath a burning hell?

It’s best to think of this chapter as a short novel. There’s rising actions, a conflict, a climax, and the falling action.

This story begins with everything going to shit. Off the gate, we get someone running through the Malazan camp straight to Y’ghatan, and an accidental explosion from the Malazan side that rains the flesh multiple squad members to start the action. Already there is a omen of sorts for the 14th army. As the wall blows up, a third of the army charges in not letting the accident turn things for the worst on the siege. Leoman’s fanatics are all set for this, immidiately starting combat against the 14th as they enter.

As any good thriller should have, there’s a sense of tension here that forces you to keep reading. What’s going to happen to these characters? Who was that rider? Why is Leomen even bothering with this unwinnable siege? Getting in Corrabb’s head as he tried to understand why this man he was so devoted to was acting the way he was. He ended up asking the same questions I was about Leomen, but his fanatacism didn’t let him step away from Leoman until it was too late. Leomens plan revolved around baiting the Malazan army into the city with oil spread through all of it, and using the fanatacism of the Apocalypse army to have them burn themselves and the city down in the name of Dryjhna.

I’ve always hated getting burns, as anyone should. A fire in someplace I’m at has always been a fear, but never really something I thought about too hard, since I’ve never had to experience a dangerous fire in my life. There’s been wildfire’s here in Canada recently. A lot more then there’s ever been, with every summer some sort of forest burning down, and people nearby have to relocate to other cities. It’s an awful awful experience, and one I am thankful to have never gone through. The burning of Y’ghatan invoced the same sense of dread in me. Erikson wrote of character’s burning, flesh melting, and the heat causing soldiers to pass out, all the while fighting for their lives against people who were willing to throw theirs away in the name of a dead god. Character’s who I’ve been following for three books now, getting completely decimated. The most poignant being Pella. He was a soldier who worked with Duiker in Deadhouse Gates, helping Heboric, Felisin, and Baudin escape Otaterl island. We never got much out of him, but he’s been on the sidelines of the 14th army since that incident, a small reminder of the events on Otatarel island. His death made me sob.

Another concussion – ducking still lower, Pella looked back up at the opposite window—

To see, momentarily, a single flash—

—to feel the shock of surprise—

—as the arrow sped at him. A hard, splintering cracking sound. Pella’s head was thrown back, helm crunching against the wall. Something, wavering, at the upper edge of his vision, but those edges were growing darker. He heard his crossbow clatter to the cobbles at his feet, then distant pain as his knees struck the stones, the jolt peeling skin away – he’d done that once, as a child, playing in the alley. Stumbling, knees skidding on gritty, filthy cobbles—

So filthy, the murk of hidden diseases, infections – his mother had been so angry, angry and frightened. They’d had to go to a healer, and that had cost money – money they had been saving for a move. To a better part of the slum. The dream … put away, all because he’d skinned his knees.

Just like now. And darkness closing in.

Oh Momma, I skinned my knees. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I skinned my knees ..

Death is the most permanent ending you can have (in most books, I’m not talking about you Hedge). I fucking love this. This character who we knew so little about having this flash of a childhood memory as an arrow pierces his head. The only thing he can think of, was a time he messed up as a kid, scraping his knees. Memories coming to characters as they die has always affected me a lot. There’s a death in No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy very similar to this one, where a character is shot in the head and memories of their life flow out of them as they die. But the line here at the end “Oh Momma, I skinned my knees”, means so much. His last moments comparing a scenario that has almost no correlation to his current one, only because his mind is focued on the memories of his past. His last thoughts of his mother, when he was a child with so much life to live. All gone.

A minor death in the grand scheme of the story, but it invokes that feeling that Pella isn’t the only character going through a death like this. Truth dies in a self sacrifice. A bunch of unnamed soldiers die, and with the context of Pella’s death POV, it gives a feeling that their deaths had a similar feelings in their death’s, only building on the horrors of the siege.

On the Apocalypse’s side of the siege, Corrab is letting go of his devotion to Leoman. Corrab tries so hard to understand why Leoman seems to not care to protect the honor of the Apocalypse only to find out that Leoman never had any love for the resistance, he was only part of it as he knew nothing else. Realizing how shallow of a person Leoman is, and understanding that the only reason people followed Leoman was due to that role being pushed on him, not out of a desire to fulfill the Apocalypse’s destiny. Leoman’s selfishness reaches its breaking point when he leaves Y’ghatan through Triss’s warren, letting his followers burn along with the Malazan 14th army. Corrab can’t imagine a world where he doesn’t risk his life for a cause, and seeing Leoman so easily willing to leave it all behind breaks him. He decides to stay in Y’ghatan to protect his “honor”. Where he almost immidiately finds a group of children left behind in the city. Leoman hadn’t even bothered to get all the civilians out.

The accumulation of all this leads to Corrab willing to let down his weapons, instead of fighting for a cause that would commit these horrors. When Fiddler’s squad enters the temple, all Corrab wants is to make sure the kids get out of the city. Disillusionment with the cause finally lets him move past it to accept help from people he would have never even given the chance to speak before. Fiddler’s compassion for Corrab breaks his inner barriers fully. Corrab helps carry Fiddler across the ruins below Y’ghatan, staying behind with Fiddler despite the rest of the trapped squads having little faith Corrab won’t kill Fiddler. The bonding the two do through the journey is very poignant to me, Fiddler’s judge of character, and Corrab’s opening up despite his previous beliefs. Found family as a theme has always affected me greatly, and with it being forged in a literal hellscape after the breaking down of a previous family.

Last on the list is the crawl through the tunnels / ruined city below Y’ghatan to escape. With multiple squads converging at the temple, only to find that Leoman had already escaped. There was no actual reason for any of this anymore, to the Empress the siege will be akin to a failure, to followers of the Apocalypse, Leoman will be a matyr who rained Malazan blood. But down here, where the only danger is the unknown is where Bottle shined.

Up till this point, we’ve gotten Bottle’s POV a few times here and there. His ability to use the Holds is extremely interesting, and he’s done a few good jokes. In this seige is where he where I fell in love with his character. Bottle has an ability to essentially transfer his soul to animals around him. He’s been able to communicate to them this whole time, but this came as a huge shock. He uses the ability to bond with a rat, who’s trying to escape as well but in the way rats do where it just runs away from people to somewhere it doesn’t know. The remaning squads all follow a Bottle who is half there in his own body, and half in the rat. Bottle is described as drooling here and crawling here and I thought it was funny.

During this crawl we get to see more of what the squad members are like and how they react to the kids. Some treat them kindly, otheres tell the kids to shit on the soldiers behind them, so theres a good variety here. Something I adore here is how alive the entire squad feels, we get perspectives, thoughts, and memories of a select few characters here and there, which in turn gives this sense of humanity to all of them. It’s not just a generic cast of soldiers down there, its multiple squadrons who have the chance to escape the fires of hell and rise from its ashes. But it’s not over yet. With no food, no water, and no obvious exit the squads are stuck underground for a few days. They eventually reach some of the ancient cities honey pots. As soon as Bottle reaches it, he starts munching without thinking too much, and soon basically everyone else follows. They all end up passing out and having these lucid dreams that all involve a higher power of sorts. Fiddler sees the ghost of Hedge, Bottle talks to the Eres’al, Smile dreams of her drowned twin sister. Something of note with Smile is the fact that she grew up around Mael worshippers, with knowedge from the last book of how Mael feels about them, it’s no wonder these worshippers kind of sucked.

🏶