And all these people gathered to honour the one who had died, was it a man, a woman, a warrior, a king, a fool, and where were the statues, the likenesses painted on plaster and stone? yet so they stood or sat, the wine spilling at their feet, dripping red from their hands, with wasps in their dying season spinning about in sweet thirst and drunken voices cried out, stung awake voices blended in confused profusion, the question asked again then again – why? But this is where a truth finds its own wonder, for the question was not why did this one die, or such to justify for in their heart of milling lives there were none for whom this gathering was naught but an echo, of former selves.
They asked, again and yet again, why are we here?
The one who died had no name but every name, no face but every face of those who had gathered, and so it was we who learned among wasps swept past living yet nerve-firing one last piercing that we were the dead and all in an unseen mind stood or sat a man, or a woman, a warrior, queen or fool, who in drunken leisure gave a moment's thought to all passed by in life.
Fountain Gathering
Fisher Kel Tath Even with four new wheels, the Trygalle carriage was a battered, decrepit wreck. Two of the horses had died in the fall. Three shareholders had been crushed and a fourth had broken his neck.
Karpolan Demesand sat on a folding camp-stool, his head swathed in a bloodstained bandage, sipping herbal tea in successive winces.
They had left Ganath's warren of Omtose Phellack, and now the familiar desert, scrubland and barren hills of Seven Cities surrounded them, the sun reaching towards noon behind a ceiling of cloud. The smell of rain tinged the unusually humid air. Insects spun and swirled overhead.
'This comes,' said Ganath, 'with the rebirth of the inland sea.'
Paran glanced over at her, then resumed cinching tight the girth strap on his horse – the beast had taken to holding its breath, chest swollen in an effort to keep the strap loose, likely hoping Paran would slide off from its back at some perfectly inopportune moment.
Horses were reluctant companions in so many human escapades, disasters and foibles – Paran could not resent the animal's well-earned belligerence. 'Ganath,' he said, 'do you know precisely where we are?'
'This valley leads west to Raraku Sea, beyond the inside range; and east, through a little-used pass, down to the city of G'danisban.' She hesitated, then added, 'It has been a long time since I have been this far east… this close to the cities of your kind.'
'G'danisban. Well, I have need of supplies.'
She faced him. 'You have completed your task, Master of the Deck. The Deragoth unleashed, the D'ivers known as Dejim Nebrahl, the hunter, now the hunted. Do you now return to Darujhistan?'
He grimaced. 'Not yet, alas.'
'There are still more forces you intend to release upon the world?'
A certain edge to her voice brought him round. 'Not if I can help it, Ganath. Where do you now go?'
'West.'
'Ah, yes, to repair the damage to that ritual of yours. I'm curious, what did it imprison?'
'A sky keep of the K'Chain Che'Malle. And… other things.'
A sky keep? Gods below. 'Where did it come from?'
'A warren, I suppose,' she said.
She knew more than that, he suspected, but he did not press the issue.
Paran made some final adjustments to the saddle, and said, 'Thank you, Ganath, for accompanying us – we would not have survived without you.'
'Perhaps, some day, I can ask of you a favour in return.'
'Agreed.' He drew out a long, cloth-wrapped object that had been strapped to the saddle, carried it over to Karpolan Demesand.
'High Mage,' he said.
The corpulent man looked up. 'Ah, our payment.'
'For services rendered,' Paran said. 'Do you wish me to unwrap it?'
'Hood no, Ganoes Paran – sorcery's the only thing keeping my skull intact right now. Even scabbarded and bundled as that sword now is, I can feel its entropy.'
'Yes, it is an unpleasant weapon,' Paran said.
'In any case, there is yet one more thing to be done.' A gesture from Karpolan and one of the Pardu shareholders came over, collected the otataral sword that had once belonged to Adjunct Lorn. She carried it a short distance, then set it on the ground and backed away. Another shareholder arrived, cradling in his arms a large two-handed mace. He positioned himself over the wrapped weapon, then swung the mace down.
And again, and again. Each blow further shattered the otataral blade.
Breathing hard, the man stepped back and looked over at Karpolan Demesand.
Who then faced Paran once more. 'Collect your shard, Master of the Deck.'
'Thank you,' the Malazan replied, walking over. Crouching, he pulled aside the cut and battered hide. He stared down at the rust-hued slivers of metal for a half-dozen heartbeats, then selected a shard about the length of his index finger and not much wider. Carefully folding it inside a fragment of hide, he then tucked it into his belt pouch. He straightened and strode back to the High Mage.
Karpolan Demesand sighed, slowly rose from the stool. 'It is time for us to go home.'
'Have a safe journey, High Mage,' Paran said with a bow.
The man attempted a smile, and the effort stole all colour from his face. Turning away and helped by one of the shareholders, he made his way to the carriage.
'Pray,' Ganath said in a low voice at Paran's side, 'he encounters no untoward opposition in the warrens.'
Paran went to his horse. Then, arms resting on the saddle, he looked over at Ganath. 'In this war,' he said, 'Elder forces will be involved. Are involved. The T'lan Imass may well believe that they have annihilated the Jaghut, but clearly that isn't the case. Here you stand, and there are others, aren't there?'
She shrugged.
From behind them came the tearing sound of a warren opening. Snapping traces, then the rumble of wheels.
'Ganath-'
'Jaghut are not interested in war.'
Paran studied her for a moment longer, then he nodded. Setting a foot in the stirrup, he pulled himself onto the horse and collected the reins. 'Like you,' he said to the Jaghut, 'I'm feeling a long way from home. Fare well in your travels, Ganath.'
'And you, Master of the Deck.'
Eastward Paran rode along the length of the valley. The river that had once carved through this land was long gone, although the winding path of its course was evident, with stands of brush and withered trees clustered here and there where the last sinkholes had been, old oxbows and flats of alluvial sands fanning out on the bends. After a league the valley opened out into a shallow basin, raw cliffs to the north and long, sloping slides of rubble to the south. Directly ahead, a trail was visible climbing between deep-cut runoff channels.
Reaching its base, Paran dismounted and led his mount up the track.
The afternoon heat was building, all the more cloying for its unnatural humidity. Far to the west, likely above the Raraku Sea, massive clouds were building. By the time he reached the summit, those clouds had devoured the sun and the breeze at his back was sweet with the promise of rain.
Paran found himself with a view far to the east, down onto rolling hills dotted with domestic goats, the path leading towards a more substantial road that cut north-south along the edge of the plain, the southern route swinging eastward towards a distant smudge of smoke and dust that was, he suspected, G'danisban.
Astride his horse once more, he set off at a canter.
Before long, Paran came to the first herder's hovel, burned and gutted, where goats were now gathering, driven by habit alone as the day's light faded. He discerned no obvious sign of graves, and was not inclined to search among the ruins. Plague, the silent, invisible breath of the Grey Goddess. It was likely, he realized, the city ahead was in the grip of that terror.
The first spatters of rain struck his back, and a moment later, in a rushing sizzle, the downpour was upon him. The rocky trail was suddenly treacherous, forcing Paran to slow his horse to a cautious trot. Visibility reduced to a dozen paces on all sides, the world beyond washed away behind a silver wall. Warm water trickling beneath his clothes, Paran drew up the tattered hood of the military rain-cape covering his shoulders, then hunched over as the rain hammered down.
The worn trail became a stream, muddy water sluicing along amidst rocks and cobbles. Horse slowing to a walk, they pressed on. Between two low hills, the track sprawling out into a shallow lake, and Paran found himself flanked by two soldiers.
One gauntleted hand reached out to take the reins. 'You're headed the wrong way, stranger,' growled the man, in Malazan.
The other held cradled in his arms a crossbow, but it wasn't loaded, and he now spoke from the shadows beneath his hood: 'Is that cape loot? Dragged it from the body of a Malazan soldier, did you?'
'No,' Paran replied. 'Issued to me, just like your capes were to you, soldier.' Ahead, he could just make out in a brief easing of the downpour, was an encampment. Two, perhaps three legions, the tents cloaking a series of hills beneath a low ceiling of smoke from cookfires dying in the rain. Beyond it, with the road winding down a slope, rose the walls of G'danisban. He returned his attention to the soldiers. 'Who commands this army?'
The one with the crossbow said, 'How 'bout you answer the questions to start? You a deserter?'
Well, technically speaking, yes. Then again, I'm supposed to be dead.
'I wish to speak with your commanding officer.'
'You pretty much ain't got no choice, now. Off the horse, stranger.
We're arresting you on suspicion of desertion.'
Paran slipped down from the horse. 'Fine. Now will you tell me whose army this is?'
'The lad's push for you. You're now a prisoner of Onearm's Host.'
For all the outward signs, it slowly dawned on Paran that this was not a siege. Companies held the roads leading into G'danisban, and the camp itself formed a half-ring cordon along the north and west sides, no pickets closer than four hundred paces from the unmanned walls.
One of the soldiers led Paran's horse towards the temporary stables, whilst the other one guided Paran down avenues between sodden tents.
Figures moved about, cloaked and hooded, but none wearing full battle regalia.
They entered an officer's tent.
'Captain,' the soldier said, flipping back his hood, 'we come upon this man trying to ride into G'danisban from the Raraku road. You see, sir, he's wearing a Malazan military rain-cape. We think he's a deserter, probably from the Adjunct's Fourteenth.'
The woman he addressed was lying on her back on a cot that ran parallel to the back wall. She was fair-skinned, her petite features surrounded by a mass of long red hair. Head tilting to take in her soldier and Paran, she was silent for a moment, then resumed her stare at the dipping ceiling above her. 'Take him to the stockade – we have a stockade, don't we? Oh, and get his details – what regiment, which legion and all that. So it can be recorded somewhere before he's executed. Now get out, the both of you, you're dripping water everywhere.'
'Just a moment, Captain,' Paran said. 'I wish to speak with the High Fist.'
'Not possible, and I don't recall giving you permission to speak. Pull out his fingernails for that, Futhgar, will you? When it's time, of course.'
Years ago, Paran would have done… nothing. Succumbed to the rules, the written ones and the unwritten ones. He would have simply bided his time. But he was soaked through, in need of a hot bath. He was tired. And, he had gone through something like this once before, long ago and on a distant continent. Back then, of course, it had been a sergeant – same red hair, but a moustache under the nose – even so, the similarity was there, like the poke of an assassin's knife.
The soldier, Futhgar, was standing on his left, half a pace back.
Paran gave nothing away, simply stepping to his right then driving his left elbow into the soldier's face. Breaking his nose. The man dropped to the ground like a sack of melons.
The captain sat up, legs swinging round, and was on her feet in time for Paran to take a forward step and punch her hard, his knuckles cracking against her jaw. Eyes rolling up, she collapsed back down onto the cot, breaking its wooden legs.
Massaging his hand, Paran looked round. Futhgar was out cold, as was the captain. The steady downpour outside had ensured that no sounds from the brief fight had been heard beyond the tent.
He walked over to the captain's travel chest. Unlocked. He tilted back the lid and began rummaging through the clothes lying atop armour.
Before long, he had enough lengths of material suitable to gag and bind the two soldiers. Dragging Futhgar from near the entrance, he removed the man's eating knife, his sticker and a broad-bladed Kethra gutting knife, then his sword belt. He prepared a wad of cloth for a gag, then bent close to determine if enough air was getting through the man's broken nose. Not even close. Leaving that for the moment, he tightly bound the wrists and ankles, using a harness strap to link the two behind Futhgar's back. He then tied a strip round Futhgar's head, hard against the gaping mouth, leaving room to breathe but no room for the tongue to push outward. He'd be able to make groaning sounds, but not much more than that.
He bound the captain in an identical manner, then added the wad of cloth fixed in place with another strip of material torn from one of the captain's shirts. And, finally, he tied both of them to either side of the cot, and the cot to the tent's centre pole, to hinder their squirming from the tent – which he hoped would give him sufficient time. Satisfied, he took one last look round, then, drawing up his hood, he stepped back outside.
He found the main avenue and made his way towards the large command tent at the centre of the encampment. Soldiers walked past, paying him no heed. This was Onearm's Host, but he'd yet to see a single familiar face, which wasn't too surprising – he had commanded the Bridgeburners, and the Bridgeburners were gone. Most of these soldiers would be newcomers to the army, drawn in from garrisons at Pale, Genabaris and Nathilog. They would have arrived since the Pannion War.
Nonetheless, he expected to find at least someone from the original force that had marched all the way to Coral, someone who had been part of that devastating battle.
Four soldiers stood guard outside Dujek's command tent. A fifth figure was nearby, holding the reins of a mud-spattered horse.
Paran walked closer, eyes on the horseman. Familiar – he'd found what he had been looking for. An outrider – but one who'd belonged to Caladan Brood's army, he believed – though I might be wrong in that.
Now, what was his name?
The man's pale brown eyes fixed on him as Paran approached. From within the shadow of the hood, there came the flicker of recognition, then confusion. The outrider straightened, then saluted.
Paran shook his head, but it was too late for that. The four guards all stood to attention as well. Paran answered the salute with a vague, sloppy gesture, then stepped close to the outrider. 'Soldier,' he murmured, 'do you know me? Make your answer quiet, if you please.'
A nod. 'Captain Ganoes Paran. I don't forget faces or names, sir, but we'd heard you were-'
'Aye, and that's how it stays. Your name?'
'Hurlochel.'
'Now I remember. You acted as chronicler on occasion, didn't you?'
A shrug. 'I keep an account of things, yes, sir. What are you doing here?'
'I need to speak with Dujek.'
Hurlochel glanced over at the guards, then scowled. 'Walk with me, sir. Don't mind them, they're new enough not to know all the officers.'
Leading the horse, Hurlochel guided Paran away, down a side alley nearby, where he halted.
'Hurlochel,' Paran said, 'why is Dujek's tent guarded by green soldiers? That doesn't make sense at all. What's happened and why are you camped outside G'danisban?'
'Yes, sir, we've had a hard time of it. It's the plague, you see – the legion healers were keeping it from us, but what it's done to Seven Cities… gods, Captain, there's bodies in the tens of thousands.
Maybe hundreds of thousands. Every city. Every village. Caravan camps – everywhere, sir. We had a Gold Moranth accompanying us, you see, a renegade of sorts. Anyway, there's a temple, in G'danisban. The Grand Temple of Poliel, and it's where this foul wind is coming from, and it's getting stronger.' Hurlochel paused to wipe rain from his eyes.
'So Dujek decided to strike at the heart, didn't he?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Go on, Hurlochel.'
'We arrived, a month back, and the High Fist formed up companies of his veterans, along with the Gold Moranth. They planned an assault on that damned temple. Well, they expected at least a High Priestess or some other sort, but they were ready for it. What nobody planned on, though, was the Grey Goddess herself.'
Paran's eyes widened. 'Who made it back out?'
'Most of them, sir, except the Gold Moranth. But… they're all sick, sir. The plague's got hold of them and they're only still alive because of the healers… only the healers are losing the battle. So, here we are. Stuck, and nobody skank enough to take real command and make some real decisions.' Hurlochel hesitated, then said, 'Unless that's why you're here, Captain. I sure hope so.'
Paran looked away. 'I'm officially dead, Outrider. Dujek threw us out of the army, myself and a few others-'
'Bridgeburners.'
'Yes.'
'Well, sir, if anybody earned their days in the sweet sun…'
Paran grimaced. 'Aye, I'm sure that sun's around somewhere. Anyway, I can hardly take command – besides, I'm just a captain-'
'With absolute seniority, sir. Dujek took his officers with him – they were the veterans, after all. So, we got nearly ten thousand soldiers camped here, and the nearest thing to a commander is Captain Sweetcreek, who's a Falari princess, if you can believe that.'
'Red hair?'
'Wild red, aye, and a pretty face-'
'With a swollen jaw. We've met.'
'A swollen jaw?'
'It wasn't a pleasant meeting.' Still Paran hesitated, then he swore and nodded. 'All right. I'll keep the rank of captain… with seniority. But I need a new name-'
'Captain Kindly, sir.'
'Kindly?'
'Old soldiers talk about him like grandmothers talk monsters to the brats, to keep them in line, sir. Nobody here's met him – at least nobody who's not fevered and half out of their minds.'
'Well, where was Kindly last posted?'
'Fourteenth, sir. The Adjunct's army out west of Raraku. Which direction did you come in from?'
'West.'
'That'll do, sir, I think. I'll make it so's I recognize you. Nobody knows a thing about me, only that the High Fist used me to run messages.'
'So why would I let two soldiers arrest me if I'm supposed to take over command?'
'You did? Well, maybe you wanted to see how we were running things here.'
'All right. One more question, Hurlochel. Why aren't you still with Caladan Brood on Genabackis?'
'The alliance broke up, sir, not long after the Tiste Andii settled in Black Coral. Rhivi back to the plains, the Barghast back to their hills. The Crimson Guard, who were up north, just vanished – no-one knows where they went. When Onearm shipped out, well, seemed like they were headed somewhere interesting.'
'Regrets?'
'With every heartbeat, sir.' Hurlochel then frowned. 'Captain Sweetcreek's got a swollen jaw, you said?'
'I punched her. Along with some soldier named Futhgar. They're bound and gagged in the captain's tent. They might have come round by now.'
The man grinned, but it was not a pleasant grin. 'Captain, you knocked out cold a Falari princess – that's perfect. It fits with what people have heard about Kindly. That's brilliant.'
Paran winced, then rubbed at his face. Gods below, what is it with me and royalty?
She had slowly emerged from the hidden temple to see a straggling line of battered figures walking the road below. Making her way down the dusty, stony slope, she was within fifteen paces before anyone noticed her. There was a strangeness in that moment of meeting, survivors eye to eye, both recognition and disbelief. Acceptance, a sense of something shared, and beneath it the ineffable flow of sorrow. Few words were exchanged.
Joining the soldiers in their march, Lostara Yil found herself alongside Captain Faradan Sort, who told her something of Y'Ghatan's aftermath. 'Your Fist, Tene Baralta, was hovering on the edge of death, if not of the flesh, then of the spirit. He has lost an arm – it was burned beyond repair – and there was other damage… to his face. I believe he was a vain man.'
Lostara grunted. 'That damned beard of his, slick with oil.' She thought about Tene Baralta for a time. She'd never liked him much.
More than just vain. Perhaps, truth be told, something of a coward, despite all his belligerence and posturing. She remembered the way he had led the retreat following her assassination of the elder Sha'ik, and his eagerness to take credit for every success whilst dancing from the path of disaster. There had been a sadistic streak in the man, and Lostara now feared that it would burgeon, as Tene Baralta sought means to feed all that was wounded within him. 'Why did the army leave all of you behind?'
Faradan Sort shrugged. 'They assumed no-one who had been trapped within the city could have survived the firestorm.' She paused, then added, 'It was a reasonable assumption. Only Sinn knew otherwise, and something told me to trust the girl. So we kept looking.'
'They're all wearing rags… and they're unarmed.'
'Aye, which is why we need to rejoin the army as soon as possible.'
'Can Sinn magically contact the Fourteenth? Or Quick Ben?'
'I have not asked her. I do not know how much of her ability is unformed talent – such creatures occur occasionally, and without the discipline of schooling as an apprentice, they tend to become avatars of chaos. Power, yes, but undirected, wild. Even so, she was able to defeat the wall of fire and so save Fist Keneb's companies… well, some of them.'
Lostara glanced over at the captain, then back at the soldiers in their wake for a moment before saying, 'You are Korelri?'
'I am.'
'And you stood the Wall?'
A tight smile, there for an instant then gone. 'None are permitted to leave that service.'
'It's said the Stormriders wield terrible sorcery in their eternal assault upon the Wall.'
'All sorcery is terrible – to kill indiscriminately, often from a great distance, there is nothing more damaging to the mortal who wields such power, whether it is human or something else.'
'Is it better to look your foe in the eye as you take his life?'
'At the very least,' Faradan replied, 'you gave them the chance to defend themselves. And Oponn decides in the end, decides in which set of eyes the light shall fade.'
'Oponn – I thought it was skill.'
'You're still young, Captain Lostara Yil.'
'I am?'
Faradan Sort smiled. 'With each battle I find myself in, my faith in skill diminishes. No, it is the Lord's push or the Lady's pull, each time, every time.'
Lostara said nothing. She could not agree with that assessment, even disregarding the irritation of the other woman's condescension. A clever, skilled soldier lived where dim-witted, clumsy soldiers died.
Skill was a currency that purchased Oponn's favour – how could it be otherwise? 'You survived Y'Ghatan,' Faradan Sort said. 'How much of that was the Lady's pull?'
Lostara considered for a moment, then replied, 'None.'
Once, years ago, a few score soldiers had stumbled clear of a vast swamp. Bloodied, half-mad, their very skin hanging in discoloured strips from weeks slogging through mud and black water. Kalam Mekhar had been among them, along with the three he now walked beside, and it seemed that, in the end, only the details had changed.
Black Dog had brutally culled the Bridgeburners, a protracted nightmare war conducted in black spruce stands, in lagoons and bogs, clashing with the Mott Irregulars, the Nathii First Army and the Crimson Guard. The survivors were numbed – to step free of the horror was to cast aside despair, yet whatever came to replace it was slow in awakening. Leaving… very little. Look at us, he remembered Hedge saying, we're nothing but hollowed-out logs. We done rotted from the inside out, just like every other damned thing in that swamp. Well, Hedge had never been one for optimism.
'You're looking thoughtful,' Quick Ben observed at his side.
Kalam grunted, then glanced over. 'Was wondering, Quick. You ever get tired of your own memories?'
'That's not a good idea,' the wizard replied.
'No, I suppose it isn't. I'm not just getting old, I'm feeling old. I look at all those soldiers behind us – gods below, they're young.
Except in their eyes. I suppose we were like that, once. Only… from then till now, Quick, what have we done? Damned little that meant anything.'
'I admit I've been wondering a few things about you myself,' Quick Ben said. 'That Claw, Pearl, for example.'
'The one that stabbed me in the back? What about him?'
'Why you ain't killed him already, Kalam. I mean, it's not something you'd normally set aside, is it? Unless, of course, you're not sure you can take him.'
From behind the two men, Fiddler spoke: 'It was Pearl that night in Malaz City? Hood's breath, Kalam, the bastard's been strutting round in the Fourteenth since Raraku, no wonder he's wearing a sly smile every time he sees you.'
'I don't give a damn about Pearl, not about killing him, anyway,'
Kalam said in a low voice. 'We got bigger things to worry about. What' s our Adjunct got in mind? What's she planning?'
'Who says she's planning anything?' Fiddler retorted. He was carrying one of the children in his arms, a girl, fast asleep with her thumb in her mouth. 'She went after Leoman, and now she's fleeing a plague and trying to link up with the transport fleet. And then? My guess is, we' re on our way back to Genabackis, or maybe the Korel Peninsula. It's more of the same 'cause that's what soldiers do, that's how soldiers live.'
'I think you're wrong,' Kalam said. 'It's all snarled, now.'
'What do you mean?'
'Pearl's the key, sapper,' the assassin said. 'Why is he still around?
What's the point of spying on the Adjunct? What's the point of dogging the Fourteenth's heels? I'm telling you, Fid, what the Adjunct does next depends on Empress Laseen, her and nobody else.'
'She won't cut us all loose,' Fiddler said. 'Not the Adjunct, not the Fourteenth. We're her only mobile army worthy of the name. There ain't no more commanders out there – well, there are, but the only salute I' d give 'em is point first. Bloody or not, Tavore's put an end to the rebellion here, and that's got to count for something.'
'Fid,' Quick Ben said, 'the war's a lot bigger than you might think, and it's just starting. There's no telling which side the Empress is on.'
'What in Hood's name are you talking about?'
Apsalar spoke. 'A war among the gods, Sergeant. Captain Paran talked of such a war, at length-'
Both Kalam and Quick Ben turned at this.
'Ganoes Paran?' the assassin asked. 'Quick said he left him in Darujhistan. What's he to do with all of this? And when did you speak with him?'
She was leading her horse by the reins three paces behind Fiddler; in the saddle sat three children, dull-eyed in the heat. At Kalam's questions she shrugged, then said, 'He is Master of the Deck of Dragons. In that capacity, he has come here, to Seven Cities. We were north of Raraku when we parted ways. Kalam Mekhar, I have no doubt that you and Quick Ben are in the midst of yet another scheme. For what it is worth, I would advise caution. Too many unknown forces are in this game, and among them will be found Elder Gods and, indeed, Elder Races. Perhaps you believe you comprehend the ultimate stakes, but I suggest that you do not-'
'And you do?' Quick Ben demanded.
'Not entirely, but then, I have constrained my… goals… seeking only what is achievable.'
'Now you got me curious,' Fiddler said. 'Here you are, marching with us once again, Apsalar, when I'd figured you'd be settled in some coastal village back in Itko Kan, knitting greasy sweaters for your da. Maybe you left Crokus behind, but it seems to me you ain't left nothing else behind.'
'We travel this same road,' she said, 'for the moment. Sergeant, you need fear nothing from me.'
'And what about the rest of us?' Quick Ben asked.
She did not reply.
Sudden unease whispered through Kalam. He met Quick's eyes for a brief moment, then faced forward once more. 'Let's just catch up with that damned army first.'
'I'd like to see Pearl disposed of,' Quick Ben said.
No-one spoke for a long moment. It wasn't often that the wizard voiced his desire so… brazenly, and Kalam realized, with a chill, that things were getting bad. Maybe even desperate. But it wasn't that easy. Like that rooftop in Darujhistan – invisible enemies on all sides – you look and look but see nothing.
Pearl, who was once Salk Elan. Mockra warren… and a blade sliding like fire into my back. Everyone thinks Topper's the master in the Claw, but I wonder… can you take him, Kalam? Quick's got his doubts – he's just offered to help. Gods below, maybe I am getting old. 'You never answered me, friend,' the assassin said to Quick Ben.
'What was the question again?'
'Ever get tired of your own memories?'
'Oh, that one.'
'Well?'
'Kalam, you have no idea.'
Fiddler didn't like this conversation. In fact, he hated it, and was relieved as everyone fell silent once more, walking the dusty track, every step pushing that damned ruin of a city further behind them. He knew he should be back in the column, with his squad, or maybe up ahead, trying to pry stuff loose from Faradan Sort – that captain was full of surprises, wasn't she just. She'd saved all their lives – there was no doubting that – but that didn't mean that he had to trust her. Not yet, despite the truth that he wanted to, for some arcane reason he'd yet to comprehend.
The little girl with the runny nose sniffled in her sleep, one small hand clutching his left shoulder. Her other hand was at her mouth, and her sucking on her thumb made tiny squeaking sounds. In his arms, she weighed next to nothing.
His squad had come through intact. Only Balm, and maybe Hellian, could say the same. So, three squads out of what, ten? Eleven? Thirty? Moak' s soldiers had been entirely wiped out – the Eleventh Squad was gone, and that was a number that would never be resurrected in the future history of the Fourteenth. The captain had settled on the numbers, adding the Thirteenth for Sergeant Urb, and it turned out that Fiddler's own, the Fourth, was the lowest number on the rung. This part of Ninth Company had taken a beating, and Fiddler had few hopes for the rest, the ones that hadn't made it to the Grand Temple. Worse yet, they'd lost too many sergeants. Borduke, Mosel, Moak, Sobelone, Tugg.
Well, all right, we're beaten up, but we're alive.
He dropped back a few paces, resumed his march alongside Corabb Bhilan Thenu'alas. The last survivor of Leoman's rebel army – barring Leoman himself – had said little, although the scowl knotting his expression suggested his thoughts were anything but calm. A scrawny boy was riding his shoulders, head bobbing and dipping as he dozed.
'I was thinking,' Fiddler said, 'of attaching you to my squad. We were always one short.'
'Is it that simple, Sergeant?' Corabb asked. 'You Malazans are strange. I cannot yet be a soldier in your army, for I have not yet impaled a babe on a spear.'
'Corabb, the sliding bed is a Seven Cities invention, not a Malazan one.'
'What has that to do with it?'
'I mean, Malazans don't stick babes on spears.'
'Is it not your rite of passage?'
'Who has been telling you this rubbish? Leoman?'
The man frowned. 'No. But such beliefs were held to among the followers of the Apocalypse.'
'Isn't Leoman one such follower?'
'I think not. No, never. I was blind to that. Leoman believed in himself and no other. Until that Mezla bitch he found in Y'Ghatan.'
'He found himself a woman, did he? No wonder he went south.'
'He did not go south, Sergeant. He fled into a warren.'
'A figure of speech.'
'He went with his woman. She will destroy him, I am sure of that, and now I say that is only what Leoman deserves. Let Dunsparrow ruin him, utterly-'
'Hold on,' Fiddler cut in, as an uncanny shiver rose through him, 'did you call her Dunsparrow?'
'Yes, for such she named herself.'
'A Malazan?'
'Yes, tall and miserable. She would mock me. Me, Corabb Bhilan Thenu' alas, Leoman's Second, until I became his Third, the one he was content to leave behind. To die with all the others.'
Fiddler barely heard him. 'Dunsparrow,' he repeated.
'Do you know the hag? The witch? The seductress and corrupter?'
Gods, I once tossed her on my knee. He realized of a sudden that he was clawing a hand through the remnants of his singed, snarled hair, unmindful of the snags, indifferent to the tears that started from his eyes. The girl squirmed. He stared over at Corabb, unseeing, then hurried ahead, feeling dizzy, feeling… appalled. Dunsparrow… she'd be in her twenties now. Middle twenties, I suppose. What was she doing in Y'Ghatan?
He pushed between Kalam and Quick Ben, startling both men.
'Fid?'
'Tug Hood's snake till he shrieks,' the sapper said. 'Drown the damned Queen of Dreams in her own damned pool. Friends, you won't believe who went with Leoman into that warren. You won't believe who shared Leoman's bed in Y'Ghatan. No, you won't believe anything I say.'
'Abyss take you, Fid,' Kalam said in exasperation, 'what are you talking about?'
'Dunsparrow. That's who's at Leoman's side right now. Dunsparrow.
Whiskeyjack's little sister and I don't know – I don't know anything – what to think, only I want to scream and I don't know why even there, no, I don't know anything any more. Gods, Quick – Kalam – what does it mean? What does any of it mean?'
'Calm down,' Quick Ben said, but his voice was strangely high, tight.
'For us, for us, I mean, it doesn't necessarily mean anything. It's a damned coincidence and even if it isn't, it's not like it means anything, not really. It's just… peculiar, that's all. We knew she was a stubborn, wild little demon, we knew that, even then – and you knew her better than us, me and Kalam, we only met her once, in Malaz City. But you, you were like her uncle, which means you got some explaining to do!'
Fiddler stared at the man, at his wide eyes. 'Me? You've lost your mind, Quick. Listen to you! Blaming me, for her! Wasn't nothing to do with me!'
'Stop it, both of you,' Kalam said. 'You're frightening the soldiers behind us. Look, we're all too nervous right now, about all sorts of things, to be able to make sense of any of this, assuming there's any sense to be made. People choose their own lives, what they do, where they end up, it don't mean some god's playing around. So, Whiskeyjack' s little sister is now Leoman's lover, and they're both hiding out in the Queen of Dreams' warren. All right, better that than crumbling bones in the ashes of Y'Ghatan, right? Well?'
'Maybe, maybe not,' Fiddler said.
'What in Hood's name does that mean?' Kalam demanded.
Fiddler drew a deep, shaky breath. 'We must have told you, it's not like it was secret or anything, and we always used it as an excuse, to explain her, the way she was and all that. Never so she could hear, of course, and we said it to take its power away-'
'Fiddler!'
The sapper winced at Kalam's outburst. 'Now who's frightening everyone-'
'You are! And never mind everyone else – you're frightening me, damn you!'
'All right. She was born to a dead woman – Whiskeyjack's stepmother, she died that morning, and the baby – Dunsparrow – well, she was long in coming out, she should have died inside, if you know what I mean.
That's why the town elders gave her up to the temple, to Hood's own.
The father was already dead, killed outside Quon, and Whiskeyjack, well, he was finishing his prenticeship. We was young then. So me and him, we had to break in and steal her back, but she'd already been consecrated, blessed in Hood's name – so we took its power away by talking about it, ha ha, making light and all that, and she grew up normal enough. More or less. Sort of…' He trailed away, refused to meet the two sets of staring eyes, then scratched at his singed face.
'We need us a Deck of Dragons, I think…'
Apsalar, four paces behind the trio, smiled as the wizard and assassin both simultaneously cuffed Sergeant Fiddler. A short-lived smile. Such revelations were troubling. Whiskeyjack had always been more than a little reticent about where he'd come from, about the life before he became a soldier. Mysteries as locked away as the ruins beneath the sands. He'd been a mason, once, a worker in stone. She knew that much.
A fraught profession among the arcana of divination and symbolism.
Builder of barrows, the one who could make solid all of history, every monument to grandeur, every dolmen raised in eternal gestures of surrender. There were masons among many of the Houses in the Deck of Dragons, a signifier of both permanence and its illusion. Whiskeyjack, a mason who set his tools down, to embrace slaughter. Was it Hood's own hand that guided him?
It was believed by many that Laseen had arranged Dassem Ultor's death, and Dassem had been the Mortal Sword of Hood – in reality if not in name – and the centre of a growing cult among the ranks of the Malazan armies. The empire sought no patron from among the gods, no matter how seductive the invitation, and in that Laseen had acted with singular wisdom, and quite possibly at the command of the Emperor. Had Whiskeyjack belonged to Dassem's cult? Possibly – still, she had seen nothing to suggest that was so. If anything, he had been a man entirely devoid of faith.
Nor did it seem likely that the Queen of Dreams would knowingly accept the presence of an avatar of Hood within her realm. Unless the two gods are now allies in this war. The very notion of war depressed her, for gods were as cruel and merciless as mortals. Whiskeyjack's sister may be as much an unwitting player in all this as the rest of us. She was not prepared to condemn the woman, and not yet ready to consider her an ally, either.
She wondered again at what Kalam and Quick Ben were planning. Both were formidable in their own right, yet intrinsic in their methods was staying low, beneath notice. What was obvious – all that lay on the surface – was invariably an illusion, a deceit. When the time came to choose sides, out in the open, they were likely to surprise everyone.
Two men, then, whom no-one could truly trust. Two men whom not even the gods could trust, for that matter.
She realized that, in joining this column, in coming among these soldiers, she had become ensnared in yet another web, and there was no guarantee she would be able to cut herself free. Not in time.
The entanglement worried her. She could not be certain that she'd walk away from a fight with Kalam. Not a fight that was face to face, that is. And now his guard was up. In fact, she'd invited it. Partly from bravado, and partly to gauge his reaction. And just a little… misdirection.
Well, there was plenty of that going round.
The two undead lizards, Curdle and Telorast, were maintaining some distance from the party of soldiers, although Apsalar sensed that they were keeping pace, somewhere out in the scrubland south of the raised road. Whatever their hidden motives in accompanying her, they were for the moment content to simply follow. That they possessed secrets and a hidden purpose was obvious to her, as was the possibility that that purpose involved, on some level, betrayal. And that too is something that we all share.
Sergeant Balm was cursing behind Bottle as they walked the stony road.
Scorched boots, soles flapping, mere rags covering the man's shoulders beneath the kiln-hot sun, Balm was giving voice to the miseries afflicting everyone who had crawled out from under Y'Ghatan. Their pace was slowing, as feet blistered and sharp rocks cut into tender skin, and the sun raised a resisting wall of blinding heat before them. Clawing through it had become a vicious, enervating struggle.
Where others among the squads carried children, Bottle found himself carrying a mother rat and her brood of pups, the former perched on his shoulder and the latter swathed in rags in the crook of one arm. More sordid than comic, and even he could see that, but he would not relinquish his new… allies.
Striding at Bottle's side was the halfblood Seti, Koryk. Freshly adorned in human finger bones and not much else. He'd knotted them in the singed strands of his hair, and with each step there was a soft clack and clatter, the music grisly to Bottle's ears.
Koryk carried more in a clay pot with a cracked rim that he'd found in the pit of a looted grave. No doubt he planned on distributing them to the other soldiers. As soon as we've found enough clothes to wear.
He caught a skittering sound off among the withered scrub to his left.
Those damned lizard skeletons. Chasing down my scouts. He wondered to whom they belonged. Reasonable to assume they were death-aspected, which possibly made them servants of Hood. He knew of no mages among the squads who used Hood's Warren – then again those who did rarely advertised the fact. Maybe that healer, Deadsmell, but why would he want familiars now? He sure didn't have them down in the tunnels.
Besides, you'd need to be a powerful mage or priest to be able to conjure up and bind two familiars. No, not Deadsmell. Who, then?
Quick Ben. That wizard had far too many warrens swirling round him.
Fiddler had vowed to drag Bottle up to the man, and that was an introduction Bottle had no desire to make. Fortunately, the sergeant seemed to have forgotten his squad, caught up as he was in this sordid reunion of old-timers.
'Hungry enough yet?' Koryk asked.
Startled, Bottle glanced over at the man. 'What do you mean?'
'Skewered pinkies to start, then braised rat – it's why you've brought them along, isn't it?'
'You're sick.'
Just ahead, Smiles turned to fling back a nasty laugh. 'Good one. You can stop now, Koryk – you've reached your quota for the year. Besides, Bottle ain't gonna eat them rats. He's married the momma and adopted the whelps – you missed the ceremony, Koryk, when you was off hunting bones. Too bad, we all cried.'
'We missed our chance,' Koryk said to Bottle. 'We could've beat her unconscious and left her in the tunnels.'
A good sign. Things are getting back to normal. Everything except the haunted look in the eyes. It was there, in every soldier who'd gone through the buried bones of Y'Ghatan. Some cultures, he knew, used a ritual of burial and resurrection to mark a rite of passage. But if this was a rebirth, it was a dour one. They'd not emerged innocent, or cleansed. If anything, the burdens seemed heavier. The elation of having survived, of having slipped out from the shadow of Hood's Gates, had proved woefully shortlived.
It should have felt… different. Something was missing. The Bridgeburners had been forged by the Holy Desert Raraku – so for us, wasn't Y'Ghatan enough? It seemed that, for these soldiers here, the tempering had gone too far, creating something pitted and brittle, as if one more blow would shatter them.
Up ahead, the captain called out a halt, her voice eliciting a chorus of curses and groans of relief. Although there was no shade to be found, walking through this furnace was far worse than sitting by the roadside easing burnt, cut and blistered feet. Bottle stumbled down into the ditch and sat on a boulder. He watched, sweat stinging his eyes, as Deadsmell and Lutes moved among the soldiers, doing what they could to heal the wounds.
'Did you see that Red Blade captain?' Smiles asked, crouching nearby.
'Looking like she'd just come from a parade ground.'
'No she didn't,' Corporal Tarr said. 'She's smoke-stained and scorched, just like you'd expect.'
'Only she's got all her hair.'
'So that's what's got you snarly,' Koryk observed. 'Poor Smiles. You know it won't grow back, don't you? Never. You're bald now for the rest of your life-'
'Liar.'
Hearing the sudden doubt in her voice, Bottle said, 'Yes, he is.'
'I knew that. And what's with the black-haired woman on the horse?
Anybody here know who she is?'
'Fiddler recognized her,' Tarr said. 'A Bridgeburner, I'd guess.'
'She makes me nervous,' Smiles said. 'She's like that assassin, Kalam.
Eager to kill someone.'
I suspect you're right. And Fid wasn't exactly thrilled to see her, either.
Tarr spoke: 'Koryk, when you going to share those finger bones you collected?'
'Want yours now?'
'Aye, I do.'
Her throat parched, her skin layered in sweat even as shivers rippled through her, Hellian stood on the road. Too tired to walk, too sick to sit down – she feared she'd never get up again, just curl into a little juddering ball until the ants under her skin finished their work and all that skin just peeled away like deer hide, whereupon they'd all march off with it, singing songs of triumph in tiny squeaking voices. It was the drink, she knew. Or, rather, the lack of it. The world around her was too sharp, too clear; none of it looked right, not right at all. Faces revealed too many details, all the flaws and wrinkles unveiled for the first time. She was shocked to realize that she wasn't the oldest soldier there barring that ogre Cuttle. Well, that was the one good thing that had come of this enforced sobriety. Now, if only those damned faces could disappear just like the wrinkles on them, then she'd be happier. No, wait, it was the opposite, wasn't it? No wonder she wasn't happy.
Ugly people in an ugly world. That's what came from seeing it all the way it really was. Better when it was blurred – all farther away back then, it had seemed, so far away she'd not noticed the stinks, the stains, the errant hairs rising from volcanic pores, the miserable opinions and suspicious expressions, the whisperings behind her back.
Turning, Hellian glared down at her two corporals. 'You think I can't hear you? Now be quiet, or I'll rip one of my ears off and won't you two feel bad.'
Touchy and Brethless exchanged a glance, then Touchy said, 'We ain't said nothing, Sergeant.'
'Nice try.'
The problem was, the world was a lot bigger than she had ever imagined. More crannies for spiders than a mortal could count in a thousand lifetimes. Just look around for proof of that. And it wasn't just spiders any more. No, here there were flies that bit and the bite sank an egg under the skin. And giant grey moths that fluttered in the night and liked eating scabs from sores when you were sleeping. Waking up to soft crunching way too close by. Scorpions that split into two when you stepped on them. Fleas that rode the winds. Worms that showed up in the corners of your eyes and made red swirling patterns through your eye lids, and when they got big enough they crawled out your nostrils. Sand ticks and leather leeches, flying lizards and beetles living in dung.
Her entire body was crawling with parasites – she could feel them.
Tiny ants and slithering worms under her skin, burrowing into her flesh, eating her brain. And now that the sweet taste of alcohol was gone, they all wanted out.
She expected, at any moment, to suddenly erupt all over, all the horrid creatures clambering out and her body deflating like a punctured bladder. Ten thousand wriggling things, all desperate for a drink.
'I'm going to find him,' she said. 'One day.'
'Who?' Touchy asked.
'That priest, the one who ran away. I'm going to find him, and I'm going to tie him up and fill his body with worms. Push 'em into his mouth, his nose, his eyes and ears and other places, too.'
No, she wouldn't let herself explode. Not yet. This sack of skin was going to stay intact. She'd make a deal with all the worms and ants, some kind of deal. A truce. Who said you can't reason with bugs? 'It sure is hot,' Touchy said.
Everyone looked at him.
Gesler scanned the soldiers where they sat or sprawled alongside the track. What the fire hadn't burned the sun now had. Soldiers on the march wore their clothes like skin, and for those whose skin wasn't dark, the burnished bronze of hands, faces and necks contrasted sharply with pallid arms, legs and torsos. But what had once been pale was now bright red. Among all those light-skinned soldiers who'd survived Y'Ghatan, Gesler himself was the only exception. The golden hue of his skin seemed unaffected by this scorching desert sun.
'Gods, these people need clothes,' he said.
Beside him, Stormy grunted. About the extent of his communication lately, ever since he'd heard of Truth's death.
'They'll start blistering soon,' Gesler went on, 'and Deadsmell and Lutes can only do so much. We got to catch up with the Fourteenth.' He turned his head, squinted towards the front of the column. Then he rose. 'Ain't nobody thinking straight, not even the captain.'
Gesler made his way up the track. He approached the gathering of old Bridgeburners. 'We been missing the obvious,' he said.
'Nothing new in that,' Fiddler said, looking miserable.
Gesler nodded towards Apsalar. 'She's got to ride ahead and halt the army. She's got to get 'em to bring us horses, and clothes and armour and weapons. And water and food. We won't even catch up otherwise.'
Apsalar slowly straightened, brushing dust from her leggings. 'I can do that,' she said in a quiet voice.
Kalam rose and faced Captain Faradan Sort, who stood nearby. 'The sergeant's right. We missed the obvious.'
'Except that there is no guarantee that anyone will believe her,' the captain replied after a moment. 'Perhaps, if one of us borrowed her horse.'
Apsalar frowned, then shrugged. 'As you like.'
'Who's our best rider?' Kalam asked.
'Masan Gilani,' Fiddler said. 'Sure, she's heavy infantry, but still…'
Faradan Sort squinted down the road. 'Which squad?'
'Urb's, the Thirteenth.' Fiddler pointed. 'The one who's standing, the tall one, the Dal Honese.'
Masan Gilani's elongated, almond-shaped eyes narrowed as she watched the old soldiers approaching.
'You're in trouble,' Scant said. 'You did something, Gilani, and now they want your blood.'
It certainly looked that way, so Masan made no reply to Scant's words.
She thought back over all of the things she had done of late. Plenty to consider, but none came to mind that anyone might find out about, not after all this time. 'Hey, Scant,' she said.
The soldier looked up. 'What?'
'You know that big hook-blade I keep with my gear?'
Scant's eyes brightened. 'Yes?'
'You can't have it,' she said. 'Saltlick can have it.'
'Thanks, Masan,' Saltlick said.
'I always knew,' Hanno said, 'you had designs on Salty. I could tell, you know.'
'No I don't, I just don't like Scant, that's all.'
'Why don't you like me?'
'I just don't, that's all.'
They fell silent as the veterans arrived. Sergeant Gesler, his eyes on Masan, said, 'We need you, soldier.'
'That's nice.' She noted the way his eyes travelled her mostly naked frame, lingering on her bared breasts with their large, dark nipples, before, with a rapid blinking, he met her eyes once more.
'We want you to take Apsalar's horse and catch up with the Fourteenth.' This was from Sergeant Strings or Fiddler or whatever his name was these days. It seemed Gesler had forgotten how to talk.
'That's it?'
'Aye.'
'All right. It's a nice horse.'
'We need you to convince the Adjunct we're actually alive,' Fiddler went on. 'Then get her to send us mounts and supplies.'
'All right.'
The woman presumably named Apsalar led her horse forward and handed Masan Gilani the reins.
She swung up into the saddle, then said, 'Anybody got a spare knife or something?'
Apsalar produced one from beneath her cloak and passed it up to her.
Masan Gilani's fine brows rose. 'A Kethra. That will do. I'll give it back to you when we meet up again.'
Apsalar nodded.
The Dal Honese set off.
'Shouldn't take long,' Gesler said, watching as the woman, riding clear of the column, urged her horse into a canter.
'We'll rest for a while longer here,' Faradan Sort said, then resume our march.'
'We could just wait,' Fiddler said.
The captain shook her head, but offered no explanation.
The sun settled on the horizon, bleeding red out to the sides like blood beneath flayed skin. The sky overhead was raucous with sound and motion as thousands of birds winged southward. They were high up, mere black specks, flying without formation, yet their cries reached down in a chorus of terror.
To the north, beyond the range of broken, lifeless hills and steppeland ribboned by seasonal run-off, the plain descended to form a white-crusted salt marsh, beyond which lay the sea. The marsh had once been a modest plateau, subsiding over millennia as underground streams and springs gnawed through the limestone. The caves, once high and vast, were now crushed flat or partially collapsed, and those cramped remnants were flooded or packed with silts, sealing in darkness the walls and vaulted ceilings crowded with paintings, and side chambers still home to the fossilized bones of Imass.
Surmounting this plateau there had been a walled settlement, small and modest, a chaotic array of attached residences that would have housed perhaps twenty families at the height of its occupation. The defensive walls were solid, with no gates, and for the dwellers within, ingress and egress came via the rooftops and single-pole ladders.
Yadeth Garath, the first human city, was now little more than saltrotted rubble swallowed in silts, buried deep and unseen beneath the marsh. No history beyond the countless derivations from its ancient name remained, and of the lives and deaths and tales of all who had once lived there, not even bones survived.
Dejim Nebrahl recalled the fisher folk who had dwelt upon its ruins, living in their squalid huts on stilts, plying the waters in their round, hide boats, and walking the raised wooden platforms that crossed the natural canals wending through the swamp. They were not descendants of Yadeth Garath. They knew nothing of what swirled beneath the black silts, and this itself was an undeniable truth, that memory withered and died in the end. There was no single tree of life, no matter how unique and primary this Yadeth Garath – no, there was a forest, and time and again, a tree, its bole rotted through, toppled to swiftly vanish in the airless muck.
Dejim Nebrahl recalled those fisher folk, the way their blood tasted of fish and molluscs, dull and turgid and clouded with stupidity. If man and woman cannot – will not – remember, then they deserved all that was delivered upon them. Death, destruction and devastation. This was no god's judgement – it was the world's, nature's own. Exacted in that conspiracy of indifference that so terrified and baffled humankind.
Lands subside. Waters rush in. The rains come, then never come.
Forests die, rise again, then die once more. Men and women huddle with their broods in dark rooms in all their belated begging, and their eyes fill with dumb failure, and now they are crumbled specks of grey and white in black silt, motionless as the memory of stars in a longdead night sky.
Exacting nature's judgement, such was Dejim Nebrahl's purpose. For the forgetful, their very shadows stalk them. For the forgetful, death ever arrives unexpectedly.
The T'rolbarahl had returned to the site of Yadeth Garath, as if drawn by some desperate instinct. Dejim Nebrahl was starving. Since his clash with the mage near the caravan, his wanderings had taken him through lands foul with rotted death. Nothing but bloated, blackened corpses, redolent with disease. Such things could not feed him.
The intelligence within the D'ivers had succumbed to visceral urgency, a terrible geas that drove him onward on the path of old memories, of places where he had once fed, the blood hot and fresh pouring down his throats.
Kanarbar Belid, now nothing but dust. Vithan Ta'ur, the great city in the cliff-face – now even the cliff was gone. A swath of potsherds reduced to gravel was all that remained of Minikenar, once a thriving city on the banks of a river now extinct. The string of villages north of Minikenar revealed no signs that they had ever existed. Dejim Nebrahl had begun to doubt his own memories.
Driven on, across the gnawed hills and into the fetid marsh, seeking yet another village of fisher folk. But he had been too thorough the last time, all those centuries past, and none had come to take the place of the slaughtered. Perhaps some dark recollection held true, casting a haunted pall upon the swamp. Perhaps the bubbling gases still loosed ancient screams and shrieks and the boatmen from the isles, passing close, made warding gestures before swinging the tiller hard about.
Fevered, weakening, Dejim Nebrahl wandered the rotted landscape.
Until a faint scent reached the D'ivers.
Beast, and human. Vibrant, alive, and close.
The T'rolbarahl, five shadow-thewed creatures of nightmare, lifted heads and looked south, eyes narrowing. There, just beyond the hills, on the crumbling track that had once been a level road leading to Minikenar. The D'ivers set off, as dusk settled on the land.
Masan Gilani slowed her horse's canter when the shadows thickened with the promise of night. The track was treacherous with loose cobbles and narrow gullies formed by run-off. It had been years since she'd last ridden wearing so little – nothing more than a wrap about her hips – and her thoughts travelled far back to her life on the Dal Honese plains. She'd carried less weight back then. Tall, lithe, smoothskinned and bright with innocence. The heaviness of her full breasts and the swell of her belly and hips came much later, after the two children she'd left behind to be raised by her mother and her aunts and uncles. It was the right of all adults, man or woman, to take the path of wandering; before the empire conquered the Dal Honese, such a choice had been rare enough, and for the children, raised by kin on all sides, their health tended by shamans, midwives and shoulderwitches, the abandonment of a parent was rarely felt.
The Malazan Empire had changed all that, of course. While many adults among the tribes stayed put, even in Masan Gilani's time, more and more men and women had set out to explore the world, and at younger ages. Fewer children were born; mixed-bloods were more common, once warriors returned home with new husbands or wives, and new ways suffused the lives of the Dal Honese. For that was one thing that had not changed over time – we ever return home. When our wandering is done.
She missed those rich grasslands and their young, fresh winds. The heaving clouds of the coming rains, the thunder in the earth as wild herds passed in their annual migrations. And her riding, always on the strong, barely tamed cross-bred horses of the Dal Honese, the faint streaks of their zebra heritage as subtle on their hides as the play of sunlight on reeds. Beasts as likely to buck as gallop, hungry to bite with pure evil in their red-rimmed eyes. Oh, how she loved those horses.
Apsalar's mount was a far finer breed, of course. Long-limbed and graceful, and Masan Gilani could not resist admiring the play of sleek muscles beneath her and the intelligence in its dark, liquid eyes.
The horse shied suddenly in the growing gloom, head lifting. Startled, Masan Gilani reached for the kethra knife she had slipped into a fold in the saddle.
Shadows took shape on all sides, lunged. The horse reared, screaming as blood sprayed.
Masan Gilani rolled backward in a tight somersault, clearing the rump of the staggering beast and landing lightly in a half-crouch. Slashing the heavy knife to her right as a midnight-limbed creature rushed her.
She felt the blade cut deep, scoring across two out-thrust forelimbs.
A bestial cry of pain, then the thing reared back, dropping to all fours – and stumbling on those crippled forelimbs.
Reversing grip, she leapt to close on the apparition, and drove the knife down into the back of its scaled, feline neck. The beast collapsed, sagging against her shins.
A heavy sound to her left, as the horse fell onto its side, four more of the demons tearing into it. Legs kicked spasmodically, then swung upward as the horse was rolled onto its back, exposing its belly.
Terrible snarling sounds accompanied the savage evisceration.
Leaping over the dead demon, Masan Gilani ran into the darkness.
A demon pursued her.
It was too fast. Footfalls sounded close behind her, then ceased.
She threw herself down into a hard, bruising roll, saw the blur of the demon's long body pass over her. Masan Gilani slashed out with the knife, cutting through a tendon on the creature's right back leg.
It shrieked, careening in mid-air, the cut-through leg folding beneath its haunches as it landed and its hips twisting round with the momentum.
Masan Gilani flung the knife. The weighted blade struck its shoulder, point and edge slicing through muscle to caroom off the scapula and spin into the night.
Regaining her feet, the Dal Honese plunged after it, launching herself over the spitting beast.
Talons raked down her left thigh, pitching her round, off-balance. She landed awkwardly against a slope of stones, the impact numbing her left shoulder. Sliding downward, back towards the demon, Masan dug her feet into the slope's side, then scrambled up the incline, flinging out handfuls of sand and gravel into her wake.
A sharp edge sliced along the back of her left hand, down to the bone – she'd found the kethra, lying on the slope. Grasping the grip with suddenly slick fingers, Masan Gilani continued her desperate clamber upward.
Another leap from behind brought the demon close, but it slid back down, spitting and hissing as the bank sagged in a clatter of stones and dust.
Reaching the crest, Masan pulled herself onto her feet, then ran, half-blind in the darkness. She heard the demon make another attempt, followed by another shower of sliding stones and rubble. Ahead she could make out a gully of some sort, high-walled and narrow. Two strides from it, she threw herself to the ground in response to a deafening howl that tore through the night.
Another howl answered it, reverberating among the crags, a sound like a thousand souls plunging into the Abyss. Gelid terror froze Masan Gilani's limbs, drained from her all strength, all will. She lay in the grit, her gasps puffing tiny clouds of dust before her face, her eyes wide and seeing nothing but the scatter of rocks marking the gully's fan.
From somewhere beyond the slope, down where her horse had died, came the sound of hissing, rising from three, perhaps four throats.
Something in those eerie, almost-human voices whispered terror and panic.
A third howl filled the dark, coming from somewhere to the south, close enough to rattle her sanity. She found her forearms reaching out, her right hand clawing furrows in the scree, the kethra knife still gripped tight as she could manage with her blood-smeared left hand.
Not wolves. Gods below, the throats that loosed those howlsA sudden heavy gusting sound, to her right, too close. She twisted her head round, the motion involuntary, and cold seeped down through her paralysed body as if sinking roots into the hard ground. A wolf but not a wolf, padding down a steep slope to land silent on the same broad ledge Masan Gilani was lying on – a wolf, but huge, as big as a Dal Honese horse, deep grey or black – there was no way to be certain.
It paused, stood motionless for a moment in full profile, its attention clearly fixed on something ahead, down on the road.
Then the massive beast's head swung round, and Masan Gilani found herself staring into lambent, amber eyes, like twin pits into madness.
Her heart stopped in her chest. She could not draw breath, could not pull her gaze from that creature's deathly regard.
Then, a slow – so very slow – closing of those eyes, down to the thinnest slits – and the head swung back.
The beast padded towards the crest. Stared down for a time, then slipped down over the edge. And vanished from sight.
Sudden air flooded her lungs, thick with dust. She coughed – impossible not to – twisting round into a ball, hacking and gagging, spitting out gobs of gritty phlegm. Helpless, giving herself – giving everything – away. Still coughing, Masan Gilani waited for the beast to return, to pick her up in its huge jaws, to shake her once, hard, hard enough to snap her neck, her spine, to crunch down on her ribcage, crushing everything inside.
She slowly regained control of her breathing, still lying on sweatsoaked ground, shivers rippling through her.
From somewhere far overhead, in that dark sky, she heard birds, crying out. A thousand voices, ten thousand. She did not know that birds flew at night. Celestial voices, winging south as fast as unseen wings could take them.
Closer by… no sound at all.
Masan Gilani rolled onto her back, stared unseeing upward, feeling blood streaming down her slashed thigh. Wait till Saltlick and the rest hear about this one…
Dejim Nebrahl raced through the darkness, three beasts in full flight, a fourth limping in their wake, already far behind. Too weak, made mindless with hunger, all cunning lost, and now yet one more D'ivers kin was dead. Killed effortlessly by a mere human, who then crippled another with a lazy flick of that knife.
The T'rolbarahl needed to feed. The horse's blood had barely begun to slake a depthless thirst, yet with it came a whisper of strength, a return to sanity.
Dejim Nebrahl was being hunted. An outrage, that such a thing could be. The stench of the creatures rode the wind, seeming to gust in from all sides except directly ahead. Fierce, ancient life and deadly desire, bitter to the T'rolbarahl's senses. What manner of beasts were these?
The fourth kin, lagging half a league behind now, could feel the nearness of the pursuers, loping unseen, seemingly content to keep pace, almost uninterested in closing, in finishing off this wounded D' ivers. They had announced themselves with their howls, but since then, naught but silence, and the palpable nearness of their presence.
They were but toying with Dejim Nebrahl. A truth that infuriated the T'rolbarahl, that burned like acid through their thumping hearts. Were they fully healed, and seven once again rather than three and scant more, those creatures would know terror and pain. Even now, Dejim Nebrahl contemplated laying an ambush, using the wounded kin as bait.
But the risks were too great – there was no telling how many of these hunters were out there.
And so there was little choice. Flee, desperate as hares, helpless in this absurd game.
For the first three kin, the scent of the hunters had begun to fade.
It was true – few creatures could keep pace with Dejim Nebrahl for very long. It seemed, then, that they would content themselves with the crippled trailer, giving the D'ivers an opportunity to see them for the first time, to mark them for the others, until such time as vengeance could be exacted.
And yet, the mysterious beasts did not lunge into view, did not tear into the fourth kin. And even for that one, the scent was fading.
It made no sense.
Dejim Nebrahl slowed his flight, wondering, curious, and not yet in the least suspicious.
From cool relief to growing chill, the night descended among the trudging soldiers, raising a mutter of new complaints. A sleeping child in his arms, Fiddler walked two strides behind Kalam and Quick Ben, while in his wake strode Apsalar, her footfalls the barest of whispers.
Better than scorching sun and heat… but not much better. Burnt and blistered skin on shoulders now radiated away all the warmth the flesh could create. Among the worst afflicted, fever awoke like a child lost in the woods, filling shadows with apparitions. Twice in the past hundred paces one of the soldiers had cried out in fear – seeing great moving shapes out in the night. Lumbering, swaggering, with eyes flashing like embers the hue of murky blood. Or so Mayfly had said, surprising everyone with the poetic turn of phrase.
But like the monsters conjured from the imaginations of frightened babes, they never came closer, never quite revealed themselves. Both Mayfly and Galt swore that they had seen… something. Moving parallel with the column, but quicker, and soon past. Fevered minds, Fiddler told himself again, that and nothing more.
Yet, he felt in himself a growing unease. As if they did indeed have company along this broken track, out there in the darkness, among the trenches and gullies and jumbled rockfalls. A short time earlier he'd thought he had heard voices, distant and seeming to descend from the night sky, but that had since faded. Nonetheless, his nerves were growing frayed – likely weariness, likely an awakening fever within his own mind.
Ahead, Quick Ben's head suddenly turned, stared out to the right, scanned the darkness.
'Something?' Fiddler asked in a low voice.
The wizard glanced back at him, then away again, and said nothing.
Ten paces later, Fiddler saw Kalam loosen the long-knives in their scabbards.
Shit.
He dropped back until he was alongside Apsalar, and was about to speak when she cut him off.
'Be on your guard, sapper,' she said quietly. 'I believe we have nothing to fear… but I cannot be certain.'
'What's out there?' he demanded.
'Part of a bargain.'
'What is that supposed to mean?'
She suddenly lifted her head, as if testing the wind, and her voice hardened as she said in a loud voice, 'Everyone off the road – south side only – now.'
At the command, thin fear whispered along the ancient road. Unarmed, unarmoured – this was a soldier's worst nightmare. Crouching down, huddling in the shadows, eyes wide and unblinking, breaths drawing still, the Malazans strained for any telltale sound in the darkness beyond.
Staying low to the ground, Fiddler made his way along to rejoin his squad. If something was coming for them, better he died with his soldiers. As he scrabbled he sensed a presence catching up from behind, and turned to see Corabb Bhilan Thenu'alas. The warrior held a solid, clublike piece of wood, too thick to be a branch, more like a tap-root from some ancient guldindha. 'Where did you find that?'
Fiddler demanded in a hiss.
A shrug was the only answer.
Reaching his squad, the sergeant halted and Bottle crawled over to him. 'Demons,' the soldier whispered, 'out there-' a jerk of the head indicated the north side of the road. 'At first I thought it was the pall of evil offshore, the one that flushed the birds from the saltmarshes beyond the bay-'
'The pall of what?' Fiddler asked.
'But it wasn't that. Something a lot closer. Had a rhizan wheeling round out there – it came close to a beast. A damned big beast, Sergeant. Halfway between wolf and bear, only the size of a bull bhederin. It was headed west-'
'You still linked to that rhizan, Bottle?'
'No, it was hungry enough to break loose – I'm not quite recovered, Sergeant-'
'Never mind. It was a good try. So, the bear-wolf or wolf-bhederin was heading west…'
'Aye, not fifty paces across from us – no way it didn't know we were here,' Bottle said. 'It's not like we was sneaking along, was it?'
'So it ain't interested in us.'
'Maybe not yet, Sergeant.'
'What do you mean by that?'
'Well, I'd sent a capemoth ahead of us up the road, used it to test the air – they can sense things when those things are moving, stirring the air, giving off heat into the night – that heat is sometimes visible from a long way away, especially the colder the night gets.
Capemoths need all that to avoid rhizan, although it doesn't always-'
'Bottle, I ain't no naturalist – what did you see or sense or hear or whatever through that damned capemoth?'
'Well, creatures up ahead, closing fast-'
'Oh, thanks for that minor detail, Bottle! Glad you finally got round to it!'
'Shh, uh, Sergeant. Please. I think we should just lie low – whatever' s about to happen's got nothing to do with us.'
Corabb Bhilan Thenu'alas spoke: 'Are you certain of that?'
'Well, no, but it stands to reason-'
'Unless they're all working together, closing a trap-'
'Sergeant,' Bottle said, 'we ain't that important.'
'Maybe you ain't, but we got Kalam and Quick Ben, and Sinn and Apsalar-'
'I don't know much about them, Sergeant,' Bottle said, 'but you might want to warn them what's coming, if they don't know already.'
If Quick hasn't smelled all this out he deserves to get his tiny head ripped off. 'Never mind them.' Twisting round, Fiddler squinted into the darkness south of them. 'Any chance of moving to better cover?
This ditch ain't worth a damned thing.'
'Sergeant,' Bottle hissed, his voice tightening, 'we ain't got time.'
Ten paces apart and moving now parallel along the route of the old road, one taking the centre of the track, the flankers in the rough ditches to either side, Dejim Nebrahl glided low to the ground, tipped leathery ears pricked forward, eyes scanning the way ahead.
Something wasn't right. Half a league behind the three the fourth kin limped along, weak with blood-loss and exhausted by fear, and if the hunters remained close, they were now stalking in absolute silence.
The kin halted, sinking low, head swivelling as its sharp eyes searched the night. Nothing, no movement beyond the flit of rhizan and capemoths.
The three on the road caught the scent of humans, not far, and savage hunger engulfed all other thoughts. They stank of terror – it would taint their blood when he drank deep, a taste metallic and sour, a flavour Dejim Nebrahl had grown to cherish.
Something lumbered onto the track thirty strides ahead.
Huge, black, familiar.
Deragoth. Impossible – they were gone, swallowed by a nightmare of their own making. This was all wrong.
A sudden howl from far to the south, well behind the fourth kin, who spun, snarling at the sound.
The first three D'ivers spread out, eyes on the lone beast padding towards them. If but one, then she is doomedThe beast surged forward in a charge, voicing a bellowing roar.
Dejim Nebrahl sprinted to meet it.
The flanking D'ivers twisted outward as more huge shapes pounded to close with them, two to each side. Jaws spread wide, lips peeling back, the Deragoth reached Dejim Nebrahl, giving voice to thunder.
Massive canines sank down into the kin, slicing through muscle, crushing bone. Limbs snapped, ribs splintered and tore into view through ruptured flesh and hide.
Pain – such pain – the centre D'ivers sprang into the air to meet the charge of the Deragoth ahead. And his right leg was caught in huge jaws, jolting Dejim Nebrahl to a halt in mid-flight. Joints popped even as the leg bones were crunched into shards.
Flung hard to the ground, Dejim sought to spin round, talons lashing out at his attacker's broad head. He tore into one eye and ripped it loose, sending it whirling off into the darkness.
The Deragoth flinched back with a squeal of agony.
Then a second set of jaws closed round the back of the kin's neck.
Blood sprayed as the teeth ground and cut inward, crushing cartilage, then bone.
Blood filled Dejim Nebrahl's throat.
No, it cannot end like thisThe other two kin were dying as well, as the Deragoth tore them to pieces.
Far to the west, the lone survivor crouched, trembling.
The Hounds attacked, three appearing in front of the last D'ivers.
Moments before they closed, all three twisted away – a feint – which meantWolf jaws ripped into the back of Dejim Nebrahl's neck, and lifted the D'ivers from the ground.
The T'rolbarahl waited for the clenching, the killing, but it never came. Instead, the beast that held it was running fast over the ground, others of its kind to either side. West, and north, then, eventually, swinging southward, out into the wastes.
Untiring, on and on through the cold night.
Helpless in the grip of those jaws, the last D'ivers of Dejim Nebrahl did not struggle, for struggle was pointless. There would be no quick death, for these creatures had some other purpose in mind for him.
Unlike the Deragoth, he realized, these Hounds possessed a master.
A master who found reason to keep Dejim Nebrahl alive. A curious, fraught salvation – but I still live, and that is enough. I still live.
The fierce battle was over. Kalam, lying near Quick Ben, narrowed his gaze, just barely making out the huge shapes of the demons as they set off, without a backward glance, westward along the track.
'Looks like their hunt's not yet over,' the assassin muttered, reaching up to wipe the sweat that had been stinging his eyes.
'Gods below,' Quick Ben said in a whisper.
'Did you hear those distant howls?' Kalam asked, sitting up. 'Hounds of Shadow – I'm right, aren't I, Quick? So, we got lizard cats, and giant bear-dogs like the one Toblakai killed in Raraku, and the Hounds… wizard, I don't want to walk this road no more.'
'Gods below,' the man at his side whispered again.
Lieutenant Pores's cheerful embrace with the Lady went sour with an ambush of a patrol he'd led inland from the marching army, three days west of Y'Ghatan. Starving bandits, of all things. They'd beaten them off, but he had taken a crossbow quarrel clean through his upper left arm, and a sword-slash just above his right knee, deep enough to sever muscle down to the bone. The healers had mended the damage, sufficient to roughly knit torn flesh and close scar tissue over the wounds, but the pain remained excruciating. He had been convalescing on the back of a crowded wagon, until they came within sight of the north sea and the army encamped, whereupon Captain Kindly had appeared.
Saying nothing, Kindly had clambered into the bed of the wagon, grasped Pores by his good arm, and dragged him from the pallet. Down off the back, the lieutenant nearly buckling under his weak leg, then staggering and stumbling as the captain tugged him along.
Gasping, Pores had asked, 'What's the emergency, Captain? I heard no alarms-'
'Then you ain't been listening,' Kindly replied.
Pores looked round, somewhat wildly, but he could seel no-one else rushing about, no general call to arms – the camp was settling down, cookfires lit and figures huddled beneath rain-capes against the chill carried on the sea breeze. 'Captain-'
'My officers don't lie about plucking nose hairs, Lieutenant. There's real injured soldiers in those wagons, and you're just in their way.
Healers are done with you. Time to stretch out that bad leg. Time to be a soldier again – stop limping, damn you – you're setting a miserable example here, Lieutenant.'
'Sorry, sir.' Sodden with sweat, Pores struggled to keep up with his captain. 'Might I ask, where are we going?'
'To look at the sea,' Kindly replied. 'Then you're taking charge of the inland pickets, first watch, and I strongly suggest you do a weapons and armour inspection, Lieutenant, since there is the chance that I will take a walk along those posts.'
'Yes, sir.'
Up ahead, on a rise overlooking the grey, white-capped sea, stood the Fourteenth's command. The Adjunct, Nil and Nether, Fists Blistig, Temul and Keneb, and, slightly apart and wrapped in a long leather cloak, T'amber. Just behind them stood Warleader Gall and his ancient aide Imrahl, along with captains Ruthan Gudd and Madan'Tul Rada. The only one missing was Fist Tene Baralta, but Pores had heard that the man was still in a bad way, one-armed and one-eyed, his face ravaged by burning oil, and he didn't have Kindly in charge of him either, which meant he was being left to heal in peace.
Ruthan Gudd was speaking in a low voice, his audience Madan'Tul Rada and the two Khundryl warriors, '… just fell into the sea – those breakers, that tumult in the middle of the bay, that's where the citadel stood. A tier of raised land surrounded it – the island itself – and there was a causeway linking it to this shore – nothing left of that but those pillars just topping the sands above the tideline. It's said the shattering of a Jaghut enclave far to the north was responsible-'
'How could that sink this island?' Gall demanded. 'You make no sense, Captain.'
'The T'lan Imass broke the Jaghut sorcery – the ice lost its power, melted into the seas, and the water levels rose. Enough to eat into the island, deluging the tier, then devouring the feet of the citadel itself. In any case, this was thousands of years ago-'
'Are you an historian as well as a soldier?' the Warleader asked, glancing over, his tear-tattooed face bathed red like a mask in the setting sun's lurid light.
The captain shrugged. 'The first map I ever saw of Seven Cities was Falari, a sea-current map marking out the treacherous areas along this coast – and every other coastline, all the way to Nemil. It had been copied countless times, but the original dated from the days when the only metals being traded were tin, copper, lead and gold. Falar's trade with Seven Cities goes back a long way, Warleader Gall. Which makes sense, since Falar is halfway between Quon Tali and Seven Cities.'
Captain Kindly observed, 'It's odd, Ruthan Gudd, you do not look Falari. Nor is your name Falari.'
'I am from the island of Strike, Kindly, which lies against the Outer Reach Deeps. Strike is the most isolated of all the islands in the chain, and our legends hold that we are all that remains of the original inhabitants of Falar – the red- and gold-haired folk you see and think of as Falari were in fact invaders from the eastern ocean, from the other side of Seeker's Deep, or some unknown islands well away from the charted courses across that ocean. They themselves do not even recall their homelands, and most of them believe they have always lived in Falar. But our old maps show different names, Strike names for all the islands and the kingdoms and peoples, and the word "
Falar" does not appear among them.'
If the Adjunct and her retinue were speaking, Pores could hear nothing. Ruthan Gudd's words and the stiff wind drowned out all else.
The lieutenant's leg throbbed with pain; there was no angle at which he could hold his injured arm comfortably. And now he was chilled, the old sweat like ice against his skin, thinking only of the warm blankets he had left behind.
There were times, he reflected morosely, when he wanted to kill Captain Kindly.
Keneb stared out at the heaving waters of the Kokakal Sea. The Fourteenth had circumvented Sotka and were now thirteen leagues west of the city. He could make out snatches of conversation from the officers behind them, but the wind swept enough words away to make comprehension a chore, and likely not worth the effort. Among the foremost line of officers and mages, no-one had spoken in some time.
Weariness, and, perhaps, the end of this dread, miserable chapter in the history of the Fourteenth..
They had pushed hard on the march, first west and then northward.
Somewhere in the seas beyond was the transport fleet and its escort of dromons. Gods, an intercept must be possible, and with that, these battered legions could get off this plague-ridden continent.
To sail away… but where?
Back home, he hoped. Quon Tali, at least for a time. To regroup, to take on replacements. To spit out the last grains of sand from this Hood-taken land. He could return to his wife and children, with all the confusion and trepidation such a reunion would entail. There'd been too many mistakes in their lives together, and even those few moments of redemption had been tainted and bitter. Minala. His sisterin-law, who had done what so many victims did, hidden away her hurts, finding normality in brutal abuse, and had come to believe the fault lay with her, rather than the madman she had married.
Killing the bastard hadn't been enough, as far as Keneb was concerned.
What still needed to be expunged was a deeper, more pervasive rot, the knots and threads all bound in a chaotic web that defined the time at that fell garrison. One life tied to every other by invisible, thrumming threads, unspoken hurts and unanswered expectations, the constant deceits and conceits – it had taken a continent-wide uprising to shatter all of that. And we are not mended.
Not so long a reach, to see how the Adjunct and this damned army was bound in the same tangled net, the legacies of betrayal, the hard, almost unbearable truth that some things could not be answered.
Broad-bellied pots crowding market stalls, their flanks a mass of intricately painted yellow butterflies, swarming barely seen figures and all sweeping down the currents of a silt-laden river. Scabbards bearing black feathers. A painted line of dogs along a city wall, each beast linked to the next by a chain of bones. Bazaars selling reliquaries purportedly containing remnants of great heroes of the Seventh Army. Bult, Lull, Chenned and Duiker. And, of course, Coltaine himself.
When one's enemy embraces the heroes of one's own side, one feels strangely… cheated, as if the theft of life was but the beginning, and now the legends themselves have been stolen away, transformed in ways beyond control. But Coltaine belongs to us. How dare you do this?
Such sentiments, sprung free from the dark knot in his soul, made no real sense. Even voicing them felt awkward, absurd. The dead are ever refashioned, for they have no defence against those who would use or abuse them – who they were, what their deeds meant. And this was the anguish… this… injustice.
These new cults with their grisly icons, they did nothing to honour the Chain of Dogs. They were never intended to. Instead, they seemed to Keneb pathetic efforts to force a link with past greatness, with a time and a place of momentous significance. He had no doubt that the Last Siege of Y'Ghatan would soon acquire similar mythical status, and he hated the thought, wanted to be as far away from the land birthing and nurturing such blasphemies as was possible.
Blistig was speaking now: 'These are ugly waters to anchor a fleet, Adjunct, perhaps we could move on a few leagues-'
'No,' she said.
Blistig glanced at Keneb.
'The weather shall turn,' Nil said.
A child with lines on his face. This is the true legacy of the Chain of Dogs. Lines on his face, and hands stained red.
And Temul, the young Wickan commanding resentful, embittered elders who still dreamed of vengeance against the slayers of Coltaine. He rode Duiker's horse, a lean mare with eyes that Keneb could have sworn were filled with sorrow. Temul carried scrolls, presumably containing the historian's own writings, although he would not show them to anyone. This warrior of so few years, carrying the burden of memory, carrying the last months of life in an old man once soldier among the Old Guard who had, inexplicably, somehow touched this Wickan youth.
That alone, Keneb suspected, was a worthy story, but it would remain forever untold, for Temul alone understood it, holding within himself each and every detail, and Temul was not one to explain, not a teller of stories. No, he just lives them. And this is what those cultists yearn for, for themselves, and what they will never truly possess.
Keneb could hear nothing of the huge encampment behind him. Yet one tent in particular within that makeshift city dominated his mind. The man within it had not spoken in days. His lone eye seemingly stared at nothing. What remained of Tene Baralta had been healed, at least insofar as flesh and bone was concerned. The man's spirit was, alas, another matter. The Red Blade's homeland had not been kind to him.
Keneb wondered if the man was as eager to leave Seven Cities as he was.
Nether said, 'The plague is growing more virulent. The Grey Goddess hunts us.'
The Adjunct's head turned at that.
Blistig cursed, then said, 'Since when is Poliel eager to side with some damned rebels – she's already killed most of them, hasn't she?'
'I do not understand this need,' Nether replied, shaking her head. '
But it seems she has set her deathly eyes upon Malazans. She hunts us, and comes ever closer.'
Keneb closed his eyes. Haven't we been hurt enough?
They came upon the dead horse shortly after dawn. Amidst the swarm of capemoths feeding on the carcass were two skeletal lizards, standing on their hind legs, heads ducking and darting as they crunched and flayed the bird-sized insects.
'Hood's breath,' Lostara muttered, 'what are those?'
'Telorast and Curdle,' Apsalar replied. 'Ghosts bound to those small frames. They have been my companions for some time now.'
Kalam moved closer and crouched beside the horse. 'Those lizard cats,' he said. 'Came in from all sides.' He straightened, scanning the rocks. 'I can't imagine Masan Gilani surviving the ambush.'
'You'd be wrong,' said a voice from the slope to their right.
The soldier sat on the crest, legs sprawled down the slope. One of those legs was crimson from upper thigh to the cracked leather boot.
Masan Gilani's dark skin was ashen, her eyes dull. 'Can't stop the bleeding, but I got one of the bastards and wounded another. Then the Hounds came…'
Captain Faradan Sort turned to the column. 'Deadsmell! Up front, quick!'
'Thank you for the knife,' Masan Gilani said to Apsalar.
'Keep it,' the Kanese woman said.
'Sorry about your horse.'
'So am I, but you are not to blame.'
Kalam said, 'Well, it seems we're in for a long walk after all.'
Bottle made his way to the front of the column in Deadsmell's wake, close enough to look long and hard at the two bird-like reptile skeletons perched on the horse carcass and intent on killing capemoths. He watched their darting movements, the flicking of their bony tails, the way the darkness of their souls bled out like smoke from a cracked water-pipe.
Someone came to his side and he glanced over. Fiddler, the man's blue eyes fixed on the undead creatures. 'What do you see, Bottle?'
'Sergeant?'
Fiddler took him by the arm and pulled him off to one side. 'Out with it.'
'Ghosts, possessing those bound-up bones.'
The sergeant nodded. 'Apsalar said as much. Now, what kind of ghosts?'
Frowning, Bottle hesitated.
Fiddler hissed a curse. 'Bottle.'
'Well, I was assuming she knows, only has her reasons for not mentioning it, so I was thinking, it wouldn't be polite-'
'Soldier-'
'I mean, she was a squad-mate of yours, and-'
'A squad-mate who just happened to have been possessed herself, by the Rope, almost all the time that I knew her. So if she's not talking, it's no surprise. Tell me Bottle, what manner of flesh did those souls call home?'
'Are you saying you don't trust her?'
'I don't even trust you.'
Frowning, Bottle looked away, watched Deadsmell working on Masan Gilani on the slope, sensed the whisper of Denul sorcery… and something like Hood's own breath. The bastard is a necromancer, damn him! 'Bottle.'
'Sergeant? Oh, sorry. I was just wondering.'
'Wondering what?'
'Well, why Apsalar has two dragons in tow.'
'They're not dragons. They're tiny lizards-'
'No, Sergeant, they're dragons.'
Slowly, Fiddler's eyes widened.
Bottle'd known he wouldn't like it.