The Crippled God

CHAPTER ONE

COTILLION DREW TWO DAGGERS. HIS GAZE FELL TO THE BLADES. The blackened iron surfaces seemed to swirl, two pewter rivers oozing across pits and gouges, the edges ragged where armour and bone had slowed their thrusts. He studied the sickly sky’s lurid reflections for a moment longer, and then said, ‘I have no intention of explaining a damned thing.’ He looked up, eyes locking. ‘Do you understand me?’

The figure facing him was incapable of expression. The tatters of rotted sinew and strips of skin were motionless upon the bones of temple, cheek and jaw. The eyes held nothing, nothing at all.

Better, Cotillion decided, than jaded scepticism. Oh, how he was sick of that. ‘Tell me,’ he resumed, ‘what do you think you’re seeing here? Desperation? Panic? A failing of will, some inevitable decline crumbling to incompetence? Do you believe in failure, Edgewalker?’

The apparition remained silent for a time, and then spoke in a broken, rasping voice. ‘You cannot be so … audacious.’

‘I asked if you believed in failure. Because I don’t.’

‘Even should you succeed, Cotillion. Beyond all expectation, beyond, even, all desire. They will still speak of your failure.’

He sheathed his daggers. ‘And you know what they can do to themselves.’

The head cocked, strands of hair dangling and drifting. ‘Arrogance?’

‘Competence,’ Cotillion snapped in reply. ‘Doubt me at your peril.’

‘They will not believe you.’

‘I do not care, Edgewalker. This is what it is.’

When he set out, he was not surprised that the deathless guardian followed. We have done this before. Dust and ashes puffed with each step. The wind moaned as if trapped in a crypt. ‘Almost time, Edgewalker.’

‘I know. You cannot win.’

Cotillion paused, half turned. He smiled a ravaged smile. ‘That doesn’t mean I have to lose, does it?’

Dust lifted, twisting, in her wake. From her shoulders trailed dozens of ghastly chains: bones bent and folded into irregular links, ancient bones in a thousand shades between white and deep brown. Scores of individuals made up each chain, malformed skulls matted with hair, fused spines, long bones, clacking and clattering. They drifted out behind her like a tyrant’s legacy and left a tangled skein of furrows in the withered earth that stretched for leagues.

Her pace did not slow, as steady as the sun’s own crawl to the horizon ahead, as inexorable as the darkness overtaking her. She was indifferent to notions of irony, and the bitter taste of irreverent mockery that could so sting the palate. In this there was only necessity, the hungriest of gods. She had known imprisonment. The memories remained fierce, but such recollections were not those of crypt walls and unlit tombs. Darkness, indeed, but also pressure. Terrible, unbearable pressure.

Madness was a demon and it lived in a world of helpless need, a thousand desires unanswered, a world without resolution. Madness, yes, she had known that demon. They had bargained with coins of pain, and those coins came from a vault that never emptied. She’d once known such wealth.

And still the darkness pursued.

Walking, a thing of hairless pate, skin the hue of bleached papyrus, elongated limbs that moved with uncanny grace. The landscape surrounding her was empty, flat on all sides but ahead, where a worn-down range of colourless hills ran a wavering claw along the horizon.

She had brought her ancestors with her and they rattled a chaotic chorus. She had not left a single one behind. Every tomb of her line now gaped empty, as hollowed out as the skulls she’d plundered from their sarcophagi. Silence ever spoke of absence. Silence was the enemy of life and she would have none of it. No, they talked in mutters and grating scrapes, her perfect ancestors, and they were the voices of her private song, keeping the demon at bay. She was done with bargains.

Long ago, she knew, the worlds – pallid islands in the Abyss – crawled with creatures. Their thoughts were blunt and simple, and beyond those thoughts there was nothing but murk, an abyss of ignorance and fear. When the first glimmers awakened in that confused gloom, they quickly flickered alight, burning like spot fires. But the mind did not awaken to itself on strains of glory. Not beauty, not even love. It did not stir with laughter or triumph. Those fires, snapping to life, all belonged to one thing and one thing only.

The first word of sentience was justice. A word to feed indignation. A word empowering the will to change the world and all its cruel circumstances, a word to bring righteousness to brutal infamy. Justice, bursting to life in the black soil of indifferent nature. Justice, to bind families, to build cities, to invent and to defend, to fashion laws and prohibitions, to hammer the unruly mettle of gods into religions. All the prescribed beliefs rose out twisting and branching from that single root, losing themselves in the blinding sky.

But she and her kind had stayed wrapped about the base of that vast tree, forgotten, crushed down; and in their place, beneath stones, bound in roots and dark earth, they were witness to the corruption of justice, to its loss of meaning, to its betrayal.

Gods and mortals, twisting truths, had in a host of deeds stained what once had been pure.

Well, the end was coming. The end, dear ones, is coming. There would be no more children, rising from the bones and rubble, to build anew all that had been lost. Was there even one among them, after all, who had not suckled at the teat of corruption? Oh, they fed their inner fires, yet they hoarded the light, the warmth, as if justice belonged to them alone.

She was appalled. She seethed with contempt. Justice was incandescent within her, and it was a fire growing day by day, as the wretched heart of the Chained One leaked out its endless streams of blood. Twelve Pures remained, feeding. Twelve. Perhaps there were others, lost in far-flung places, but she knew nothing of them. No, these twelve, they would be the faces of the final storm, and, pre-eminent among them all, she would stand at that storm’s centre.

She had been given her name for this very purpose, long ago now. The Forkrul Assail were nothing if not patient. But patience itself was yet one more lost virtue.

Chains of bone trailing, Calm walked across the plain, as the day’s light died behind her.

‘God failed us.’

Trembling, sick to his stomach as something cold, foreign, coursed through his veins, Aparal Forge clenched his jaw to stifle a retort. This vengeance is older than any cause you care to invent, and no matter how often you utter those words, Son of Light, the lies and madness open like flowers beneath the sun. And before me I see nothing but lurid fields of red, stretching out on all sides.

This wasn’t their battle, not their war. Who fashioned this law that said the child must pick up the father’s sword? And dear Father, did you really mean this to be? Did she not abandon her consort and take you for her own? Did you not command us to peace? Did you not say to us that we children must be as one beneath the newborn sky of your union?

What crime awoke us to this?

I can’t even remember.

‘Do you feel it, Aparal? The power?’

‘I feel it, Kadagar.’ They’d moved away from the others, but not so far as to escape the agonized cries, the growl of the Hounds, or, drifting out over the broken rocks in ghostly streams, the blistering breath of cold upon their backs. Before them rose the infernal barrier. A wall of imprisoned souls. An eternally crashing wave of despair. He stared at the gaping faces through the mottled veil, studied the pitted horror in their eyes. You were no different, were you? Awkward with your inheritance, the heavy blade turning this way and that in your hand.

Why should we pay for someone else’s hatred?

‘What so troubles you, Aparal?’

‘We cannot know the reason for our god’s absence, Lord. I fear it is presumptuous of us to speak of his failure.’

Kadagar Fant was silent.

Aparal closed his eyes. He should never have spoken. I do not learn. He walked a bloody path to rule and the pools in the mud still gleam red. The air about Kadagar remains brittle. This flower shivers to secret winds. He is dangerous, so very dangerous.

‘The Priests spoke of impostors and tricksters, Aparal.’ Kadagar’s tone was even, devoid of inflection. It was the voice he used when furious. ‘What god would permit that? We are abandoned. The path before us now belongs to no one else – it is ours to choose.’

Ours. Yes, you speak for us all, even as we cringe at our own confessions. ‘Forgive my words, Lord. I am made ill – the taste—’

‘We had no choice in that, Aparal. What sickens you is the bitter flavour of its pain. It passes.’ Kadagar smiled and clapped him on the back. ‘I understand your momentary weakness. We shall forget your doubts, yes? And never again speak of them. We are friends, after all, and I would be most distressed to be forced to brand you a traitor. Set upon the White Wall … I would kneel and weep, my friend. I would.’

A spasm of alien fury hissed through Aparal and he shivered. Abyss! Mane of Chaos, I feel you! ‘My life is yours to command, Lord.’

‘Lord of Light!’

Aparal turned, as did Kadagar.

Blood streaming from his mouth, Iparth Erule staggered closer, eyes wide and fixed upon Kadagar. ‘My lord, Uhandahl, who was last to drink, has just died. He – he tore out his own throat!’

‘Then it is done,’ Kadagar replied. ‘How many?’

Iparth licked his lips, visibly flinched at the taste, and then said, ‘You are the First of Thirteen, Lord.’

Smiling, Kadagar stepped past Iparth. ‘Kessobahn still breathes?’

‘Yes. It is said it can bleed for centuries—’

‘But the blood is now poison,’ Kadagar said, nodding. ‘The wounding must be fresh, the power clean. Thirteen, you say. Excellent.’

Aparal stared at the dragon staked to the slope behind Iparth Erule. The enormous spears pinning it to the ground were black with gore and dried blood. He could feel the Eleint’s pain, pouring from it in waves. Again and again it tried to lift its head, eyes blazing, jaws snapping, but the vast trap held. The four surviving Hounds of Light circled at a distance, hackles raised as they eyed the dragon. Seeing them, Aparal hugged himself. Another mad gamble. Another bitter failure. Lord of Light, Kadagar Fant, you have not done well in the world beyond.

Beyond this terrible vista, and facing the vertical ocean of deathless souls as if in mocking madness, rose the White Wall, which hid the decrepit remnants of the Liosan city of Saranas. The faint elongated dark streaks lining it, descending just beneath the crenellated battlements, were all he could make out of the brothers and sisters who had been condemned as traitors to the cause. Below their withered corpses ran the stains from everything their bodies had drained down the alabaster facing. You would kneel and weep, would you, my friend?

Iparth asked, ‘My lord, do we leave the Eleint as it is?’

‘No. I propose something far more fitting. Assemble the others. We shall veer.’

Aparal started but did not turn. ‘Lord—’

‘We are Kessobahn’s children now, Aparal. A new father, to replace the one who abandoned us. Osserc is dead in our eyes and shall remain so. Even Father Light kneels broken, useless and blind.’

Aparal’s eyes held on Kessobahn. Utter such blasphemies often enough and they become banal, and all shock fades. The gods lose their power, and we rise to stand in their stead. The ancient dragon wept blood, and in those vast, alien eyes there was nothing but rage. Our father. Your pain, your blood, our gift to you. Alas, it is the only gift we understand. ‘And once we have veered?’

‘Why, Aparal, we shall tear the Eleint apart.’

He’d known what the answer would be and he nodded. Our father.

Your pain, your blood, our gift. Celebrate our rebirth, O Father Kessobahn, with your death. And for you, there shall be no return.

‘I have nothing with which to bargain. What brings you to me? No, I see that. My broken servant cannot travel far, even in his dreams. Crippled, yes, my precious flesh and bones upon this wretched world. Have you seen his flock? What blessing can he bestow? Why, naught but misery and suffering, and still they gather, the mobs, the clamouring, beseeching mobs. Oh, I once looked upon them with contempt. I once revelled in their pathos, their ill choices and their sorry luck. Their stupidity.

‘But no one chooses their span of wits. They are each and all born with what they have, that and nothing more. Through my servant I see into their eyes – when I so dare – and they give me a look, a strange look, one that for a long time I could not understand. Hungry, of course, so brimming with need. But I am the Foreign God. The Chained One. The Fallen One, and my holy word is Pain.

‘Yet those eyes implored.

‘I now comprehend. What do they ask of me? Those dull fools glittering with fears, those horrid expressions to make a witness cringe. What do they want? I will answer you. They want my pity.

‘They understand, you see, their own paltry scant coins in their bag of wits. They know they lack intelligence, and that this has cursed them and their lives. They have struggled and lashed out, from the very beginning. No, do not look at me that way, you of smooth and subtle thought, you give your sympathy too quickly and therein hide your belief in your own superiority. I do not deny your cleverness, but I question your compassion.

‘They wanted my pity. They have it. I am the god that answers prayers – can you or any other god make that claim? See how I have changed. My pain, which I held on to so selfishly, now reaches out like a broken hand. We touch in understanding, we flinch at the touch. I am one with them all, now.

‘You surprise me. I had not believed this to be a thing of value. What worth compassion? How many columns of coins balance the scales? My servant once dreamed of wealth. A buried treasure in the hills. Sitting on his withered legs, he pleaded with passers-by in the street. Now you look at me here, too broken to move, deep in the fumes, and the wind slaps these tent walls without rest. No need to bargain. My servant and I have both lost the desire to beg. You want my pity? I give it. Freely.

‘Need I tell you of my pain? I look in your eyes and find the answer.

‘It is my last play, but you understand that. My last. Should I fail …

‘Very well. There is no secret to this. I will gather the poison, then. In the thunder of my pain, yes. Where else?

‘Death? Since when is death failure?

‘Forgive the cough. It was meant to be laughter. Go then, wring your promises with those upstarts.

‘That is all faith is, you know. Pity for our souls. Ask my servant and he will tell you. God looks into your eyes, and God cringes.’

Three dragons chained for their sins. At the thought Cotillion sighed, suddenly morose. He stood twenty paces away, ankle deep in soft ash. Ascendancy, he reflected, was not quite as long a stride from the mundane as he would have liked. His throat felt tight, as if his air passages were constricted. The muscles of his shoulders ached and dull thunder pounded behind his eyes. He stared at the imprisoned Eleint lying so gaunt and deathly amidst drifts of dust, feeling … mortal. Abyss take me, but I’m tired.

Edgewalker moved up alongside him, silent and spectral.

‘Bones and not much else,’ Cotillion muttered.

‘Do not be fooled,’ Edgewalker warned. ‘Flesh, skin, they are raiment. Worn or cast off as suits them. See the chains? They have been tested. Heads lifting … the scent of freedom.’

‘How did you feel, Edgewalker, when everything you held fell to pieces in your hands? Did failure arrive like a wall of fire?’ He turned to regard the apparition. ‘Those tatters have the look of scorching, come to think of it. Do you remember that moment, when you lost everything? Did the world echo to your howl?’

‘If you seek to torment me, Cotillion—’

‘No, I would not do that. Forgive me.’

‘If these are your fears, however …’

‘No, not my fears. Not at all. They are my weapons.’

Edgewalker seemed to shiver, or perhaps some shift of the ash beneath his rotted moccasins sent a tremble through him, a brief moment of imbalance. Settling once more, the Elder fixed Cotillion with the withered dark of its eyes. ‘You, Lord of Assassins, are no healer.’

No. Someone cut out my unease, please. Make clean the incision, take out what’s ill and leave me free of it. We are sickened by the unknown, but knowledge can prove poisonous. And drifting lost between the two is no better. ‘There is more than one path to salvation.’

‘It is curious.’

‘What is?’

‘Your words … in another voice, coming from … someone else, would leave a listener calmed, reassured. From you, alas, they could chill a mortal soul to its very core.’

‘This is what I am,’ Cotillion said.

Edgewalker nodded. ‘It is what you are, yes.’

Cotillion advanced another six paces, eyes on the nearest dragon, the gleaming bones of the skull visible between strips of rotted hide. ‘Eloth,’ he said, ‘I would hear your voice.’

‘Shall we bargain again, Usurper?’

The voice was male, but such details were in the habit of changing on a whim. Still, he frowned, trying to recall the last time. ‘Kalse, Ampelas, you will each have your turn. Do I now speak with Eloth?’

‘I am Eloth. What is it about my voice that so troubles you, Usurper? I sense your suspicion.’

‘I needed to be certain,’ Cotillion replied. ‘And now I am. You are indeed Mockra.’

A new draconic voice rumbled laughter through Cotillion’s skull, and then said, ‘Be careful, Assassin, she is the mistress of deceit.’

Cotillion’s brows lifted. ‘Deceit? Pray not, I beg you. I am too innocent to know much about such things. Eloth, I see you here in chains, and yet in mortal realms your voice has been heard. It seems you are not quite the prisoner you once were.’

‘Sleep slips the cruellest chains, Usurper. My dreams rise on wings and I am free. Do you now tell me that such freedom was more than delusion? I am shocked unto disbelief.’

Cotillion grimaced. ‘Kalse, what do you dream of?’

‘Ice.’

Does that surprise me? ‘Ampelas?’

‘The rain that burns, Lord of Assassins, deep in shadow. And such a grisly shadow. Shall we three whisper divinations now? All my truths are chained here, it is only the lies that fly free. Yet there was one dream, one that still burns fresh in my mind. Will you hear my confession?’

‘My rope is not quite as frayed as you think, Ampelas. You would do better to describe your dream to Kalse. Consider that advice my gift.’ He paused, glanced back at Edgewalker for a moment, and then faced the dragons once more. ‘Now then, let us bargain for real.’

‘There is no value in that,’ Ampelas said. ‘You have nothing to give us.’

‘But I do.’

Edgewalker suddenly spoke behind him. ‘Cotillion—’

‘Freedom,’ said Cotillion.

Silence.

He smiled. ‘A fine start. Eloth, will you dream for me?’

‘Kalse and Ampelas have shared your gift. They looked upon one another with faces of stone. There was pain. There was fire. An eye opened and it looked upon the Abyss. Lord of Knives, my kin in chains are … dismayed. Lord, I will dream for you. Speak on.’

‘Listen carefully then,’ Cotillion said. ‘This is how it must be.’

The depths of the canyon were unlit, swallowed in eternal night far beneath the ocean’s surface. Crevasses gaped in darkness, a world’s death and decay streaming down in ceaseless rain, and the currents whipped in fierce torrents that stirred sediments into spinning vortices, lifting like whirlwinds. Flanked by the submerged crags of the canyon’s ravaged cliffs, a flat plain stretched out, and in the centre a lurid red flame flickered to life, solitary, almost lost in the vastness.

Shifting the almost weightless burden resting on one shoulder, Mael paused to squint at that improbable fire. Then he set out, making straight for it.

Lifeless rain falling to the depths, savage currents whipping it back up into the light, where living creatures fed on the rich soup, only to eventually die and sink back down. Such an elegant exchange, the living and the dead, the light and the lightless, the world above and the world below. Almost as if someone had planned it.

He could now make out the hunched figure beside the flames, hands held out to the dubious heat. Tiny sea creatures swarmed in the reddish bloom of light like moths. The fire emerged pulsing from a rent in the floor of the canyon, gases bubbling upward.

Mael halted before the figure, shrugging off the wrapped corpse that had been balanced on his shoulder. As it rocked down to the silts tiny scavengers rushed towards it, only to spin away without alighting. Faint clouds billowed as the wrapped body settled in the mud.

The voice of K’rul, Elder God of the Warrens, drifted out from within his hood. ‘If all existence is a dialogue, how is it there is still so much left unsaid?’

Mael scratched the stubble on his jaw. ‘Me with mine, you with yours, him with his, and yet still we fail to convince the world of its inherent absurdity.’

K’rul shrugged. ‘Him with his. Yes. Odd that of all the gods, he alone discovered this mad, and maddening, secret. The dawn to come … shall we leave it to him?’

‘Well,’ Mael grunted, ‘first we need to survive the night. I have brought the one you sought.’

‘I see that. Thank you, old friend. Now tell me, what of the Old Witch?’

Mael grimaced. ‘The same. She tries again, but the one she has chosen … well, let us say that Onos T’oolan possesses depths Olar Ethil cannot hope to comprehend, and she will, I fear, come to rue her choice.’

‘A man rides before him.’

Mael nodded. ‘A man rides before him. It is … heartbreaking.’

‘“Against a broken heart, even absurdity falters.”’

‘“Because words fall away.”’

Fingers fluttered in the glow. ‘“A dialogue of silence.”’

‘“That deafens.”’ Mael looked off into the gloomy distance. ‘Blind Gallan and his damnable poems.’ Across the colourless floor armies of sightless crabs were on the march, drawn to the alien light and heat. He squinted at them. ‘Many died.’

‘Errastas had his suspicions, and that is all the Errant needs. Terrible mischance, or deadly nudge. They were as she said they would be. Unwitnessed.’ K’rul lifted his head, the empty hood now gaping in Mael’s direction. ‘Has he won, then?’

Mael’s wiry brows rose. ‘You do not know?’

‘That close to Kaminsod’s heart, the warrens are a mass of wounds and violence.’

Mael glanced down at the wrapped corpse. ‘Brys was there. Through his tears I saw.’ He was silent for a long moment, reliving someone else’s memories. He suddenly hugged himself, released a ragged breath. ‘In the name of the Abyss, those Bonehunters were something to behold!’

The vague hints of a face seemed to find shape inside the hood’s darkness, a gleam of teeth. ‘Truly? Mael – truly?’

Emotion growled out in his words. ‘This is not done. Errastas has made a terrible mistake. Gods, they all have!’

After a long moment, K’rul sighed, gaze returning to the fire. His pallid hands hovered above the pulsing glow of burning rock. ‘I shall not remain blind. Two children. Twins. Mael, it seems we shall defy the Adjunct Tavore Paran’s wish to be for ever unknown to us, unknown to everyone. What does it mean, this desire to be unwitnessed? I do not understand.’

Mael shook his head. ‘There is such pain in her … no, I dare not get close. She stood before us, in the throne room, like a child with a terrible secret, guilt and shame beyond all measure.’

‘Perhaps my guest here will have the answer.’

‘Is this why you wanted him? To salve mere curiosity? Is this to be a voyeur’s game, K’rul? Into a woman’s broken heart?’

‘Partly,’ K’rul acknowledged. ‘But not out of cruelty, or the lure of the forbidden. Her heart must remain her own, immune to all assault.’ The god regarded the wrapped corpse. ‘No, this one’s flesh is dead, but his soul remains strong, trapped in its own nightmare of guilt. I would see it freed of that.’

‘How?’

‘Poised to act, when the moment comes. Poised to act. A life for a death, and it will have to do.’

Mael sighed unevenly. ‘Then it falls on her shoulders. A lone woman. An army already mauled. With allies fevered with lust for the coming war. An enemy awaiting them all, unbowed, with inhuman confidence, so eager to spring the perfect trap.’ He lifted his hands to his face. ‘A mortal woman who refuses to speak.’

‘Yet they follow.’

‘They follow.’

‘Mael, do they truly have a chance?’

He looked down at K’rul. ‘The Malazan Empire conjured them out of nothing. Dassem’s First Sword, the Bridgeburners, and now the Bonehunters. What can I tell you? It is as if they were born of another age, a golden age lost to the past, and the thing of it is: they don’t even know it. Perhaps that is why she wishes them to remain unwitnessed in all that they do.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She doesn’t want the rest of the world to be reminded of what they once were.’

K’rul seemed to study the fire. Eventually, he said, ‘In these dark waters, one cannot feel one’s own tears.’

Mael’s reply was bitter. ‘Why do you think I live here?’

‘If I have not challenged myself, if I have not striven to give it all I have, then will I stand head bowed before the world’s judgement. But if I am to be accused of being cleverer than I am – and how is this even possible? – or, gods forbid, too aware of every echo sent charging out into the night, to bounce and cavort, to reverberate like a sword’s edge on a shield rim, if, in other words, I am to be castigated for heeding my sensitivities, well, then something rises like fire within me. I am, and I use the word most cogently, incensed.’

Udinaas snorted. The page was torn below this, as if the author’s anger had sent him or her into an apoplectic frenzy. He wondered at this unknown writer’s detractors, real or imagined, and he thought back to the times, long ago, when someone’s fist had answered his own too-quick, too-sharp wits. Children were skilled at sensing such things, the boy too smart for his own good, and they knew what needed doing about it. Beat him down, lads. Serves him right. So he was sympathetic to the spirit of the long-dead writer.

‘But then, you old fool, they’re dust and your words live on. Who now has the last laugh?’

The rotting wood surrounding him gave back no answer. Sighing, Udinaas tossed the fragment aside, watched flakes of parchment drift down like ashes. ‘Oh, what do I care? Not much longer, no, not much longer.’ The oil lamp was guttering out, used up, and the chill had crept back in. He couldn’t feel his hands. Old legacies, no one could shake them, these grinning stalkers.

Ulshun Pral had predicted more snow, and snow was something he had grown to despise. ‘As if the sky itself was dying. You hear that, Fear Sengar? I’m almost ready to take up your tale. Who could have imagined that legacy?’

Groaning at the stiffness in his limbs, he clambered out of the ship’s hold, emerged blinking on the slanted deck, the wind battering at his face. ‘World of white, what are you telling us? That all is not well. That the fates have set a siege upon us.’

He had taken to talking to himself. That way, no one else had to cry, and he was tired of those glistening tears on weathered faces. Yes, he could thaw them all with a handful of words. But that heat inside, well, it had nowhere to go, did it? He gave it to the cold, empty air instead. Not a single frozen tear in sight.

Udinaas climbed over the ship’s side, dropped down into knee-deep snow, and then took a fresh path back to the camp in the shelter of rocks, his thick, fur-lined moccasins forcing him to waddle as he ploughed through the drifts. He could smell woodsmoke.

He caught sight of the emlava halfway to the camp. The two enormous cats stood perched on high rocks, their silvered backs blending with the white sky. Watching him. ‘So, you’re back. That’s not good, is it?’ He felt their eyes tracking him as he went on. Time was slowing down. He knew that was impossible, but he could imagine an entire world buried deep in snow, a place devoid of animals, a place where seasons froze into one and that season did not end, ever. He could imagine the choking down of every choice until not a single one was left.

‘A man can do it. Why not an entire world?’ The snow and wind gave no answer, beyond the brutal retort that was indifference.

In between the rocks, now, the bitter wind falling off, the smoke stinging awake his nostrils. There was hunger in the camp, there was white everywhere else. And still the Imass sang their songs. ‘Not enough,’ Udinaas muttered, breath pluming. ‘It’s just not, my friends. Face it, she’s dying. Our dear little child.’

He wondered if Silchas Ruin had known all along. This imminent failure. ‘All dreams die in the end. Of all people I should know that. Dreams of sleep, dreams of the future, sooner or later comes the cold, hard dawn.’ Walking past the snow-humped yurts, scowling against the droning songs drifting out around the hide flaps, he made for the trail leading to the cave.

Dirty ice crusted the rocky maw, like frozen froth. Once within its shelter the air warmed around him, damp and smelling of salts. He stamped the snow from his moccasins, and then strode into the twisting, stony corridor, hands out to the sides, fingertips brushing the wet stone. ‘Oh,’ he said under his breath, ‘but you’re a cold womb, aren’t you?’

Ahead he heard voices, or, rather, one voice. Heed your sensitivities now, Udinaas. She stands unbowed, for ever unbowed. This is what love can do, I suppose.

The old stains on the stone floor remained, timeless reminders of blood spilled and lives lost in this wretched chamber. He could almost hear the echoes, sword and spear, the gasp of desperate breaths. Fear Sengar, I would swear your brother stands there still. Silchas Ruin staggering back, step by step, his scowl of disbelief like a mask he’d never worn before, and was it not ill-fitting? It surely was. Onrack T’emlava stood to the right of his wife. Ulshun Pral crouched a few paces to Kilava’s left. Before them all reared a withered, sickly edifice. Dying House, your cauldron is cracked. She was a flawed seed.

Kilava turned upon his arrival, her dark animal eyes narrowing as would a hunting cat’s as it gathered to pounce. ‘Thought you might have sailed away, Udinaas.’

‘The charts lead nowhere, Kilava Onass, as I’m sure the pilot observed upon arriving in the middle of a plain. Is there anything more forlorn than a foundered ship, I wonder?’

Onrack spoke. ‘Friend Udinaas, I welcome your wisdom. Kilava speaks of the awakening of the Jaghut, the hunger of the Eleint, and the hand of the Forkrul Assail, which never trembles. Rud Elalle and Silchas Ruin have vanished – she cannot sense them and she fears the worst.’

‘My son lives.’

Kilava stepped closer. ‘You cannot know that.’

Udinaas shrugged. ‘He took more from his mother than Menandore ever imagined. When she faced that Malazan wizard, when she sought to draw upon her power, well, it was one of many fatal surprises that day.’ His gaze fell to those blackened stains. ‘What happened to our heroic outcome, Fear? To the salvation you gave your life to win? “If I have not challenged myself, if I have not striven to give it all I have, then will I stand head bowed before the world’s judgement.” But the world’s judgement is cruel.’

‘We contemplate a journey from this realm,’ said Onrack.

Udinaas glanced at Ulshun Pral. ‘Do you agree?’

The warrior freed one hand to a flurry of fluid gestures.

Udinaas grunted. Before the spoken word, before song, there was this. But the hand speaks in broken tongue. The cipher here belongs to his posture – a nomad’s squat. No one fears walking, or the unfolding of a new world. Errant take me, this innocence stabs the heart. ‘You won’t like what you will find. Not the fiercest beast of this world stands a chance against my kind.’ He glared at Onrack. ‘What do you think that Ritual was all about? The one that stole death from your people?’

‘Hurtful as his words are,’ growled Kilava, ‘Udinaas speaks the truth.’ She faced the Azath once more. ‘We can defend this gate. We can stop them.’

‘And die,’ snapped Udinaas.

‘No,’ she retorted, wheeling to face him. ‘You will lead my children from here, Udinaas. Into your world. I will remain.’

‘I thought you said “we”, Kilava.’

‘Summon your son.’

‘No.’

Her eyes flared.

‘Find someone else to join you in your last battle.’

‘I will stand with her,’ said Onrack.

‘You will not,’ hissed Kilava. ‘You are mortal—’

‘And you are not, my love?’

‘I am a Bonecaster. I bore a First Hero who became a god.’ Her face twisted but there was anguish in her eyes. ‘Husband, I shall indeed summon allies to this battle. But you, you must go with our son, and with Udinaas.’ She pointed a taloned finger at the Letherii. ‘Lead them into your world. Find a place for them—’

‘A place? Kilava, they are as the beasts of my world – there are no places left!’

‘You must find one.’

Do you hear this, Fear Sengar? I am not to be you after all. No, I am to be Hull Beddict, another doomed brother. ‘Follow me! Listen to all my promises! Die.’ ‘There is nowhere,’ he said, throat tight with grief, ‘In all the world … nowhere. We leave nothing well enough alone. Not ever. The Imass can make claim to empty lands, yes, until someone casts upon it a covetous eye. And then they will begin killing you. Collecting hides and scalps. They will poison your food. Rape your daughters. All in the name of pacification, or resettlement, or whatever other euphemistic bhederin shit they choose to spit out. And the sooner you’re all dead the better, so they can forget you ever existed in the first place. Guilt is the first weed we pluck, to keep the garden pretty and smelling sweet. That is what we do, and you cannot stop us – you never could. No one can.’

Kilava’s expression was flat. ‘You can be stopped. You will be stopped.’

Udinaas shook his head.

‘Lead them into your world, Udinaas. Fight for them. I do not mean to fall here, and if you imagine I am not capable of protecting my children, then you do not know me.’

‘You condemn me, Kilava.’

‘Summon your son.’

‘No.’

‘Then you condemn yourself, Udinaas.’

‘Will you speak so coolly when my fate extends to your children as well?’

When it seemed that no answer was forthcoming, Udinaas sighed and, turning about, set off for the outside, for the cold and the snow, and the whiteness and the freezing of time itself. To his anguish, Onrack followed.

‘My friend.’

‘I’m sorry, Onrack, I can’t tell you anything helpful – nothing to ease your mind.’

‘Yet,’ rumbled the warrior, ‘you believe you have an answer.’

‘Hardly.’

‘Nonetheless.’

Errant’s nudge, it’s hopeless. Oh, watch me walk with such resolve. Lead you all, yes. Bold Hull Beddict has returned, to repeat his host of crimes one more time.

Still hunting for heroes, Fear Sengar? Best turn away, now.

‘You will lead us, Udinaas.’

‘So it seems.’

Onrack sighed.

Beyond the cave mouth, the snow whipped down.

He had sought a way out. He had flung himself from the conflagration. But even the power of the Azath could not breach Akhrast Korvalain, and so he had been cast down, his mind shattered, the fragments drowning in a sea of alien blood. Would he recover? Calm did not know for certain, but she intended to take no chances. Besides, the latent power within him remained dangerous, a threat to all their plans. It could be used against them, and that was not acceptable. No, better to turn this weapon, to take it into my own hand and wield it against the enemies I know I must soon face. Or, if that need proves unnecessary, kill him.

Before either could ever happen, however, she would have to return here. And do what must be done. I would do it now, if not for the risk. Should he awaken, should he force my hand … no, too soon. We are not ready for that.

Calm stood over the body, studying him, the angular features, the tusks, the faint flush that hinted of fever. Then she spoke to her ancestors. ‘Take him. Bind him. Weave your sorcery – he must remain unconscious. The risk of his awakening is too great. I will return before too long. Take him. Bind him.’ The chains of bones slithered out like serpents, plunging into the hard ground, ensnaring the body’s limbs, round the neck, across the torso, stitching him spread-eagled to this hilltop.

She saw the bones trembling. ‘Yes, I understand. His power is too immense – that is why he must be kept unconscious. But there is something else I can do.’ She stepped closer and crouched. Her right hand darted out, the fingers stiff as blades, and stabbed a deep hole in the man’s side. She gasped and almost reeled back – was it too much? Had she awoken him?

Blood seeped down from the wound.

But Icarium did not move.

Calm released a long, unsteady breath. ‘Keep the blood trickling,’ she told her ancestors. ‘Feed on his power.’

Straightening, she lifted her gaze, studied the horizon on all sides. The old lands of the Elan. But they had done away with them, leaving nothing but the elliptical boulders that once held down the sides of tents, and the old blinds and runs from an even older time; of the great animals that once dwelt in this plain not even a single herd remained, domestic or wild. There was, she observed, admirable perfection in this new state of things. Without criminals, there can be no crime. Without crime, no victims. The wind moaned and none stood against it to give answer.

Perfect adjudication, it tasted of paradise.

Reborn. Paradise reborn. From this empty plain, the world. From this promise, the future.

Soon.

She set out, leaving the hill behind, and with it the body of Icarium, bound to the earth in chains of bone. When she returned again to this place, she would be flush with triumph. Or in desperate need. If the latter, she would awaken him. If the former, she would grasp his head in her hands, and with a single, savage twist, break the abomination’s neck.

And no matter which decision awaited her, on that day her ancestors would sing with joy.

Crooked upon the mound of rubbish, the stronghold’s throne was burning in the courtyard below. Smoke, grey and black, rose in a column until it lifted past the ramparts, where the wind tore it apart, shreds drifting like banners high above the ravaged valley.

Half-naked children scampered across the battlements, their voices cutting sharp through the clatter and groan from the main gate, where the masons were repairing yesterday’s damage. A watch was turning over and the High Fist listened to commands snapping like flags behind him. He blinked sweat and grit from his eyes and leaned, with some caution, on the eroded merlon, his narrowed gaze scanning the well-ordered enemy camp spread out along the valley floor.

From the rooftop platform of the square tower on his right a child of no more than nine or ten years was struggling with what had once been a signal kite, straining to hold it overhead, until with thudding wing-flaps the tattered silk dragon lifted suddenly into the air, spinning and wheeling. Ganoes Paran squinted up at it. The dragon’s long tail flashed silver in the midday sunlight. The same tail, he recalled, that had been in the sky above the stronghold the day of the conquest.

What had the defenders been signalling then?

Distress. Help.

He stared up at the kite, watched it climb ever higher. Until the wind-spun smoke devoured it.

Hearing a familiar curse, he turned to see the Host’s High Mage struggling past a knot of children at the top of the stairs, his face twisted in disgust as if navigating a mob of lepers. The fish spine clenched between his teeth jerking up and down in agitation, he strode up to the High Fist.

‘I swear there’re more of them than yesterday, and how is that possible? They don’t leap out of someone’s hip already half grown, do they?’

‘Still creeping out from the caves,’ Ganoes Paran said, fixing his attention on the enemy ranks once more.

Noto Boil grunted. ‘And that’s another thing. Whoever thought a cave was a decent place to live? Rank, dripping, crawling with vermin. There will be disease, mark my words, High Fist, and the Host has had quite enough of that.’

‘Instruct Fist Bude to assemble a clean-up crew,’ Paran said. ‘Which squads got into the rum store?’

‘Seventh, Tenth and Third, Second Company.’

‘Captain Sweetcreek’s sappers.’

Noto Boil plucked the spine from his mouth and examined the pink point. He then leaned over the wall and spat something red. ‘Aye, sir. Hers.’

Paran smiled. ‘Well then.’

‘Aye, serves them right. So, if they stir up more vermin—’

‘They are children, mage, not rats. Orphaned children.’

‘Really? Those white bony ones make my skin crawl, that’s all I’m saying, sir.’ He reinserted the spine and it went up and down. ‘Tell me again how this is better than Aren.’

‘Noto Boil, as High Fist I answer only to the Empress.’

The mage snorted. ‘Only she’s dead.’

‘Which means I answer to no one, not even you.’

‘And that’s the problem, nailed straight to the tree, sir. Nailed to the tree.’ Seemingly satisfied with that statement, he pointed with a nod and jab of the fish spine in his mouth. ‘Lots of scurrying about over there. Another attack coming?’

Paran shrugged. ‘They’re still … upset.’

‘You know, if they ever decide to call our bluff—’

‘Who says I’m bluffing, Boil?’

The man bit something that made him wince. ‘What I mean is, sir, no one’s denying you got talents and such, but those two commanders over there, well, if they get tired of throwing Watered and Shriven against us – if they just up and march themselves over here, in person, well … that’s what I meant, sir.’

‘I believe I gave you a command a short while ago.’

Noto scowled. ‘Fist Bude, aye. The caves.’ He turned to leave and then paused and looked back. ‘They see you, you know. Standing here day after day. Taunting them.’

‘I wonder,’ Paran mused as he returned his attention to the enemy camp.

‘Sir?’

‘The Siege of Pale. Moon’s Spawn just sat over the city. Months, years. Its lord never showed himself, until the day Tayschrenn decided he was ready to try him. But here’s the thing, what if he had? What if, every damned day, he’d stepped out on to that ledge? So Onearm and all the rest could pause, look up, and see him standing there? Silver hair blowing, Dragnipur a black god-shitting stain spreading out behind him.’

Noto Boil worked his pick for a moment, and then said, ‘What if he had, sir?’

‘Fear, High Mage, takes time. Real fear, the kind that eats your courage, weakens your legs.’ He shook his head and glanced at Noto Boil. ‘Anyway, that was never his style, was it? I miss him, you know.’ He grunted. ‘Imagine that.’

‘Who, Tayschrenn?’

‘Noto, do you understand anything I say? Ever?’

‘I try not to, sir. No offence. It’s that fear thing you talked about.’

‘Don’t trample any children on your way down.’

‘That’s up to them, High Fist. Besides, the numbers could do with some thinning.’

‘Noto.’

‘We’re an army, not a crèche, that’s all I’m saying. An army under siege. Outnumbered, overcrowded, confused, bored – except when we’re terrified.’ He plucked out his fish spine again, whistled in a breath between his teeth. ‘Caves filled with children – what were they doing with them all? Where are their parents?’

‘Noto.’

‘We should just hand them back, that’s all I’m saying, sir.’

‘Haven’t you noticed, today’s the first day they’re finally behaving like normal children. What does that tell you?’

‘Doesn’t tell me nothing, sir.’

‘Fist Rythe Bude. Now.’

‘Aye sir, on my way.’

Ganoes Paran settled his attention on the besieging army, the precise rows of tents like bone tesserae on a buckled floor, the figures scrambling tiny as fleas over the trebuchets and Great Wagons. The foul air of battle never seemed to leave this valley. They look ready to try us again. Worth another sortie? Mathok keeps skewering me with that hungry look. He wants at them. He rubbed at his face. The shock of feeling his beard caught him yet again, and he grimaced. No one likes change much, do they? But that’s precisely my point.

The silk dragon cut across his vision, diving down out of the reams of smoke. He glanced over to the boy on the tower, saw him struggling to keep his footing. A scrawny thing, one of the ones from up south. A Shriven. When it gets too much, lad, be sure to let go.

Seething motion now in the distant camp. The glint of pikes, the chained slaves marching out to the yokes of the Great Wagons, High Watered emerging surrounded by runners. Dust slowly lifting in the sky above the trebuchets as they were wheeled forward.

Aye, they’re still upset all right.

‘I knew a warrior once. Awakening from a wound to the head believing he was a dog, and what are dogs if not loyalty lacking wits? So here I stand, woman, and my eyes are filled with tears. For that warrior, who was my friend, who died thinking he was a dog. Too loyal to be sent home, too filled with faith to leave. These are the world’s fallen. When I dream, I see them in their thousands, chewing at their own wounds. So, do not speak to me of freedom. He was right all along. We live in chains. Beliefs to shackle, vows to choke our throats, the cage of a mortal life, this is our fate. Who do I blame? I blame the gods. And curse them with fire in my heart.

‘When she comes to me, when she says that it’s time, I shall take my sword in hand. You say that I am a man of too few words, but against the sea of needs, words are weak as sand. Now, woman, tell me again of your boredom, this stretch of days and nights outside a city obsessed with mourning. I stand before you, eyes leaking with the grief of a dead friend, and all I get from you is a siege of silence.’

She said, ‘You have a damned miserable way of talking your way into my bed, Karsa Orlong. Fine then, get in. Just don’t break me.’

‘I only break what I do not want.’

‘And if the days of this relationship are numbered?’

‘They are,’ he replied, and then he grinned. ‘But not the nights.’

Faintly, the distant city’s bells tolled their grief at the fall of darkness, and in the blue-lit streets and alleys, dogs howled.

In the innermost chamber of the palace of the city’s lord, she stood in shadows, watching as he moved away from the hearth, brushing charcoal from his hands. There was no mistaking his legacy of blood, and it seemed the weight his father had borne was settling like an old cloak on his son’s surprisingly broad shoulders. She could never understand such creatures. Their willingness to martyrdom. The burdens by which they measured self-worth. This embrace of duty.

He settled into the high-backed chair, stretched out his legs, the awakening fire’s flickering light licking the studs ringing his knee-high leather boots. Resting his head back, eyes closed, he spoke. ‘Hood knows how you managed to get in here, and I imagine Silanah’s hackles are lifting at this very moment, but if you are not here to kill me, there is wine on the table to your left. Help yourself.’

Scowling, she edged out from the shadows. All at once the chamber seemed too small, its walls threatening to snap tight around her. To so willingly abandon the sky in favour of heavy stone and blackened timbers, no, she did not understand this at all. ‘Nothing but wine?’ Her voice cracked slightly, reminding her that it had been some time since she’d last used it.

His elongated eyes opened and he observed her with unfeigned curiosity. ‘You prefer?’

‘Ale.’

‘Sorry. You will need to go to the kitchens below for that.’

‘Mare’s milk, then.’

His brows lifted. ‘Down to the palace gate, turn left, walk half a thousand leagues. And that is just a guess, mind you.’

Shrugging, she edged closer to the hearth. ‘The gift struggles.’

‘Gift? I do not understand.’

She gestured at the flames.

‘Ah,’ he said, nodding. ‘Well, you stand in the breath of Mother Dark—’ and then he started. ‘Does she know you’re here? But then,’ he settled back again, ‘how could she not?’

‘Do you know who I am?’ she asked.

‘An Imass.’

‘I am Apsal’ara. His night within the Sword, his one night, he freed me. He had the time for that. For me.’ She found she was trembling.

He was still studying her. ‘And so you have come here.’

She nodded.

‘You didn’t expect that from him, did you?’

‘No. Your father – he had no reason for regret.’

He rose then, walked over to the table and poured himself a goblet of wine. He stood with the cup in hand, staring down at it. ‘You know,’ he muttered, ‘I don’t even want this. The need … to do something.’ He snorted. ‘“No reason for regret”, well …’

‘They look for him – in you. Don’t they?’

He grunted. ‘Even in my name you will find him. Nimander. No, I’m not his only son. Not even his favoured one – I don’t think he had any of those, come to think of it. Yet,’ and he gestured with the goblet, ‘there I sit, in his chair, before his fire. This palace feels like … feels like—’

‘His bones?’

Nimander flinched, looked away. ‘Too many empty rooms, that’s all.’

‘I need some clothes,’ she said.

He nodded distractedly. ‘I noticed.’

‘Furs. Skins.’

‘You intend to stay, Apsal’ara?’

‘At your side, yes.’

He turned at that, eyes searching her face.

‘But,’ she added, ‘I will not be his burden.’

A wry smile. ‘Mine, then?’

‘Name your closest advisers, Lord.’

He swallowed half the wine, and then set the goblet down on the table. ‘The High Priestess. Chaste now, and I fear that does not serve her well. Skintick, a brother. Desra, a sister. Korlat, Spinnock, my father’s most trusted servants.’

‘Tiste Andii.’

‘Of course.’

‘And the one below?’

‘The one?’

‘Did he once advise you, Lord? Do you stand at the bars in the door’s window, to watch him mutter and pace? Do you torment him? I wish to know the man I will serve.’

She saw clear anger in his face. ‘Are you to be my jester now? I have heard of such roles in human courts. Will you cut the sinews of my legs and laugh as I stumble and fall?’ He bared his teeth. ‘If yours is to be my face of conscience, Apsal’ara, should you not be prettier?’

She cocked her head, made no reply.

Abruptly his fury collapsed, and his eyes fell away. ‘It is the exile he has chosen. Did you test the lock on that door? It is barred from within. But then, we have no problem forgiving him. Advise me, then. I am a lord and it is in my power to do such things. To pardon the condemned. Yet you have seen the crypts below us. How many prisoners cringe beneath my iron hand?’

‘One.’

‘And I cannot free him. Surely that is worth a joke or two.’

‘Is he mad?’

‘Clip? Possibly.’

‘Then no, not even you can free him. Your father took scores for the chains of Dragnipur, scores just like this Clip.’

‘I dare say he did not call it freedom.’

‘Nor mercy,’ she replied. ‘They are beyond a lord’s reach, even that of a god.’

‘Then we fail them all. Both lords and gods – we fail them, our broken children.’

This, she realized, would not be an easy man to serve. ‘He drew others to him – your father. Others who were not Tiste Andii. I remember, in his court, in Moon’s Spawn.’

Nimander’s eyes narrowed.

She hesitated, unsure, and then resumed. ‘Your kind are blind to many things. You need others close to you, Lord. Servants who are not Tiste Andii. I am not one of these … jesters you speak of. Nor, it seems, can I be your conscience, ugly as I am to your eyes—’

He held up a hand. ‘Forgive me for that, I beg you. I sought to wound and so spoke an untruth, just to see it sting.’

‘I believe I stung you first, my lord.’

He reached again for the wine, and then stood looking into the hearth’s flames. ‘Apsal’ara, Mistress of Thieves. Will you now abandon that life, to become an adviser to a Tiste Andii lord? All because my father, at the very end, showed you mercy?’

‘I never blamed him for what he did. I gave him no choice. He did not free me out of mercy, Nimander.’

‘Then why?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. But I mean to find out.’

‘And this pursuit – for an answer – has brought you here, to Black Coral. To … me.’

‘Yes.’

‘And how long will you stand at my side, Apsal’ara, whilst I govern a city, sign writs, debate policies? Whilst I slowly rot in the shadow of a father I barely knew and a legacy I cannot hope to fill?’

Her eyes widened. ‘Lord, that is not your fate.’

He wheeled to her. ‘Really? Why not? Please, advise me.’

She cocked her head a second time, studied the tall warrior with the bitter, helpless eyes. ‘For so long you Tiste Andii prayed for Mother Dark’s loving regard. For so long you yearned to be reborn to purpose, to life itself. He gave it all back to you. All of it. He did what he knew had to be done, for your sake. You, Nimander, and all the rest. And now you sit here, in his chair, in his city, among his children. And her holy breath, it embraces you all. Shall I give you what I possess of wisdom? Very well. Lord, even Mother Dark cannot hold her breath for ever.’

‘She does not—’

‘When a child is born it must cry.’

‘You—’

‘With its voice, it enters the world, and it must enter the world. Now,’ she crossed her arms, ‘will you continue hiding here in this city? I am the Mistress of Thieves, Lord. I know every path. I have walked them all. And I have seen what there is to be seen. If you and your people hide here, Lord, you will all die. And so will Mother Dark. Be her breath. Be cast out.’

‘But we are in this world, Apsal’ara!’

‘One world is not enough.’

‘Then what must we do?’

‘What your father wanted.’

‘And what is that?’

She smiled. ‘Shall we find out?’

‘You have some nerve, Dragon Master.’

A child shrieked from somewhere down the walkway.

Without turning, Ganoes Paran sighed and said, ‘You’re frightening the young ones again.’

‘Not nearly enough.’ The iron-shod heel of a cane cracked hard on the stone. ‘Isn’t that always the way, hee hee!’

‘I don’t think I appreciate the new title you’re giving me, Shadowthrone.’

A vague dark smear, the god moved up alongside Paran. The cane’s gleaming head swung its silver snarl out over the valley. ‘Master of the Deck of Dragons. Too much of a mouthful. It’s your … abuses. I so dislike unpredictable people.’ He giggled again. ‘People. Ascendants. Gods. Thick-skulled dogs. Children.’

‘Where is Cotillion, Shadowthrone?’

‘You should be tired of that question by now.’

‘I am tired of waiting for an answer.’

‘Then stop asking it!’ The god’s manic shriek echoed through the fortress, rattled wild along corridors and through hallways before echoing back to where they stood atop the wall.

‘That has certainly caught their attention,’ Paran observed, nodding to a distant barrow where two tall, almost skeletal figures now stood.

Shadowthrone sniffed. ‘They see nothing.’ He hissed a laugh. ‘Blinded by justice.’

Ganoes Paran scratched at his beard. ‘What do you want?’

‘Whence comes your faith?’

‘Excuse me?’

The cane rapped and skittered on the stone. ‘You sit with the Host in Aren, defying every imperial summons. And then you assault the Warrens with this.’ He suddenly cackled. ‘You should have seen the Emperor’s face! And the names he called you, my, even the court scribers cringed!’ He paused. ‘Where was I? Yes, I was berating you, Dragon Master. Are you a genius? I doubt it. Leaving me no choice but to conclude that you’re an idiot.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Is she out there?’

‘You don’t know?’

‘Do you?’

Paran slowly nodded. ‘Now I understand. It’s all about faith. A notion unfamiliar to you, I take it.’

‘This siege is meaningless!’

‘Is it?’

Shadowthrone hissed, one ethereal hand reaching out, as if to claw at Paran’s face. Instead, it hovered, twisted and then shrank into something vaguely fist-shaped. ‘You don’t understand anything!’

‘I understand this,’ Paran replied. ‘Dragons are creatures of chaos. There can be no Dragon Master, making the title meaningless.’

‘Exactly.’ Shadowthrone reached out to gather up a tangled snarl of spider’s web from beneath the wall’s casing. He held it up, apparently studying the cocooned remnant of a desiccated insect.

Miserable turd. ‘Here is what I know, Shadowthrone. The end begins here. Do you deny it? No, you can’t, else you wouldn’t be haunting me—’

‘Not even you can breach the power surrounding this keep,’ the god said. ‘You have blinded yourself. Open your gate again, Ganoes Paran, find somewhere else to lodge your army. This is pointless.’ He flung the web away and gestured with the head of his cane. ‘You cannot defeat those two, we both know that.’

‘But they don’t, do they?’

‘They will test you. Sooner or later.’

‘I’m still waiting.’

‘Perhaps even today.’

‘Will you wager on that, Shadowthrone?’

The god snorted. ‘You have nothing I want.’

‘Liar.’

‘Then I have nothing you want.’

‘Actually, as it happens …’

‘Do you see me holding a leash? He’s not here. He’s off doing other things. We’re allies, do you understand? An alliance. Not a damned marriage!’

Paran grinned. ‘Oddly enough, I wasn’t even thinking of Cotillion.’

‘A pointless wager in any case. If you lose you die. Or abandon your army to die, which I can’t see you doing. Besides, you’re nowhere near as devious as I am. You want this wager? Truly? Even when I lose, I win. Even when I lose … I win!’

Paran nodded. ‘And that has ever been your game, Shadowthrone. You see, I know you better than you think. Yes, I would wager with you. They shall not try me this day. We shall repulse their assault … again. And more Shriven and Watered will die. We shall remain the itch they cannot scratch.’

‘All because you have faith? Fool!’

‘Those are the conditions of this wager. Agreed?’

The god’s form seemed to shift about, almost vanishing entirely at one moment before reappearing, and the cane head struck chips from the merlon’s worn edge. ‘Agreed!’

‘If you win and I survive,’ resumed Paran, ‘you get what you want from me, whatever that is, and assuming it’s in my power to grant. If I win, I get what I want from you.’

‘If it’s in my power—’

‘It is.’

Shadowthrone muttered something under his breath, and then hissed. ‘Very well, tell me what you want.’

And so Paran told him.

The god cackled. ‘And you think that’s in my power? You think Cotillion has no say in the matter?’

‘If he does, best you go and ask him, then. Unless,’ Paran added, ‘it turns out that, as I suspect, you have no idea where your ally has got to. In which case, Lord of Shadows, you will do as I ask, and answer to him later.’

‘I answer to no one!’ Another shriek, the echoes racing.

Paran smiled. ‘Why, Shadowthrone, I know precisely how you feel. Now, what is it you seek from me?’

‘I seek the source of your faith.’ The cane waggled. ‘That she’s out there. That she seeks what you seek. That, upon the Plain of Blood and Chains, you will find her, and stand facing her – as if you two had planned this all along, when I damned well know you haven’t! You don’t even like each other!’

‘Shadowthrone, I cannot sell you faith.’

‘So lie, damn you, just do it convincingly!’

He could hear silk wings flapping, the sound a shredding of the wind itself. A boy with a kite. Dragon Master. Ruler over all that cannot be ruled. Ride the howling chaos and call it mastery – who are you fooling? Lad, let go now. It’s too much. But he would not, he didn’t know how.

The man with the greying beard watches, and can say nothing.

Distress.

He glanced to his left, but the shadow was gone.

A crash from the courtyard below drew him round. The throne, a mass of flames, had broken through the mound beneath it. And the smoke leapt skyward, like a beast unchained.

CHAPTER TWO

FROM HERE ONWARDS, HE COULD NOT TRUST THE SKY. THE ALTERNATIVE, he observed as he examined the desiccated, rotted state of his limbs, invited despondency. Tulas Shorn looked round, noting with faint dismay the truncated lines of sight, an affliction cursing all who must walk the land’s battered surface. Scars he had looked down upon from a great height only a short time earlier now posed daunting obstacles, a host of furrowed trenches carving deep, jagged gouges across his intended path.

She is wounded but does not bleed. Not yet, at any rate. No, I see now. This flesh is dead. Yet I am drawn to this place. Why? He walked, haltingly, up to the edge of the closest crevasse. Peered down. Darkness, a breath cool and slightly sour with decay. And … something else.

Tulas Shorn paused for a moment, and then stepped out into space, and plunged downward.

Threadbare clothing tore loose, whipped wild as his body struck rough walls, skidded and rebounded in a knock of withered limbs, tumbling amidst hissing grit and sand, the feathery brush and then snag of grass roots, and now stones spilling to follow him down.

Bones snapped when he struck the boulder-studded floor of the fissure. More sand poured down on all sides with the sound of serpents.

He did not move for a time. The dust, billowing in the gloom, slowly settled. Eventually, he sat up. One leg had broken just above the knee. The lower part of the limb remained attached by little more than a few stretches of skin and sinew. He set the break and waited while the two ragged ends slowly fused. The four ribs that now thrust broken tips out from the right side of his chest were not particularly debilitating, so he left them, conserving his power.

A short while later he managed to stand, his shoulders scraping walls. He could make out the usual assortment of splintered bones littering the uneven floor, but these were only of mild interest, the fragments of bestial souls clinging to them writhing like ghostly worms, disturbed by the new currents in the air.

He began walking, following the odd scent he had detected from above. It was stronger down here, of course, and with each awkward step along the winding channel there arose within him a certain anticipation, bordering on excitement. Close, now.

The skull was set on a spear shaft of corroded bronze, rising to chest height and blocking the path. In a heap at the shaft’s base was the rest of the skeleton, every bone systematically shattered.

Tulas Shorn halted two paces from the skull. ‘Tartheno?’

The voice rumbling through his head spoke, however, in the language of the Imass. ‘Bentract. Skan Ahl greets you, Revenant.’

‘Your bones are too large for a T’lan Imass.’

‘Yes, but no salvation came of that.’

‘Who did this to you, Skan Ahl?’

‘Her body lies a few paces behind me, Revenant.’

‘If you so wounded her in your battle that she died, how was it that she could destroy your body with such vigour?’

‘I did not say she was dead.’

Tulas Shorn hesitated, and then snorted. ‘No, nothing lives here. Either she is dead or she is gone.’

‘I can hardly argue with you, Revenant. Now then, do this one thing: look behind you.’

Bemused, he did so. Sunlight fighting its way down through dust. ‘I see nothing.’

‘That is your privilege.’

‘I do not understand.’

‘I saw her step past me. I heard her slide to the ground. I heard her cry out in pain, and then weep, and when the weeping was done, all that remained was her breathing, until that too slowed. But … I can still hear it. The lift and fall of her chest, with each rise of the moon – when its faint light reaches down – how many times? Many. I have lost count. Why does she remain? What does she want? She will not answer. She never answers.’

Saying nothing, Tulas Shorn edged past the stake and its dusty skull. Five strides further on, he halted, stared down.

‘Does she sleep, Revenant?’

Tulas slowly crouched. He reached down and touched the delicate rib cage lying in a shallow depression at his feet. A newborn’s fossilized bones, glued to the ground by calcified limestone. Born to the tide of the moon, were you, little one? Did you draw even a single breath? I think not. ‘T’lan Imass, was this the end of your chase?’

‘She was formidable.’

‘A Jaghut. A woman.’

‘I was the last on her trail. I failed.’

‘And is it that failure that torments you, Skan Ahl? Or that she now haunts you, here behind you, for ever hidden from your sight?’

‘Awaken her! Or better still, slay her, Revenant. Destroy her. For all we know, she is the very last Jaghut. Kill her and the war will be over, and I will know peace.’

‘There is little peace in death, T’lan Imass.’ Ah, child, the wind at night moans through you, does it? Night’s very own breath, to haunt him for all eternity.

‘Revenant, turn my skull. I would see her again.’

Tulas Shorn straightened. ‘I will not step between you in this war.’

‘But it is a war you can end!’

‘I cannot. Nor, it is clear, can you. Skan Ahl, I must leave you now.’ He looked down at the tiny bones. ‘Both of you.’

‘Since my failure, Revenant, I have entertained not a single visitor. You are the first to find me. Are you of such cruelty as to condemn me to an eternity in this state? She defeated me. I accept this. But I beg of you, grant me the dignity of facing my slayer.’

‘You pose a dilemma,’ Tulas Shorn said after a moment’s consideration. ‘What you imagine to be mercy may not prove any such thing, should I acquiesce. And then there is this: I am not particularly inclined to mercy, Skan Ahl. Not with respect to you. Do you begin to comprehend my difficulty? I could indeed reach out and swing your skull round, and you may curse me for all time. Or I could elect to do nothing, to leave everything as I have found it – as if I was never here – and so earn your darkest resentment. In either case, you will see me as cruel. Now, this does not offend me overmuch. As I said, I am not stirred to kindness. The matter I face is: how cruel do I wish to be?’

‘Think on that privilege I spoke of earlier, Revenant. Your simple gift of being able to turn yourself round, to see what hides behind you. We both understand that what is seen may not be welcome.’

Tulas Shorn grunted. ‘T’lan Imass, I know all about looking over my shoulder.’ He walked back to the skull. ‘Shall I be the brush of wind, then? A single turn, a new world to unfold.’

‘Will she awaken?’

‘I think not,’ he replied, reaching out and settling one withered fingertip against the huge skull. ‘But you can try.’ A slow increase in pressure, and with a grating squeal the skull swung round.

The T’lan Imass began howling in Tulas Shorn’s wake as he walked back up the channel.

Gifts are never what they seem. And the punishing hand? It, too, is not what it seems. Yes, these two thoughts are worthy of long echoes, stretching into this wretched future.

As if anyone will listen.

Vengeance, held tight like an iron-shod spear in her hand, and how it burned. Ralata could feel its searing heat, and the pain was now a gift, something she could feed upon, like a hunter crouched over a fresh kill. She’d lost her horse. She’d lost her people. Everything had been taken away from her, everything except this final gift.

The broken moon was a blurred smear almost lost in the green glow of the Strangers in the Sky. The Skincut Barghast stood facing east, her back to the smouldering coals from the hearth, and looked out upon a plain that seemed to seethe in the jade and silver light.

Behind her the black-haired warrior named Draconus spoke in low tones with the Teblor giant. They talked often in some foreign tongue – Letherii, she supposed, not that she’d ever cared to learn it. Even the simpler trader’s language made her head ache, but on occasion she caught some Letherii word that had made its way into the pidgin cant, so she knew they were speaking of the journey ahead.

East. It was, for the moment, convenient for her to travel in their company, despite having to constantly fend off the Teblor’s clumsy advances. Draconus was able to find game where none seemed to exist. He could call water up from cracked bedrock. More than just a warrior. A shaman. And in a scabbard of midnight wood strapped to his back there was a sword of magic.

She wanted it. She meant to have it. A weapon suited to the vengeance she desired. With such a sword, she could kill the winged slayer of her sisters.

In her mind she worked through scenarios. A knife across the man’s throat when he slept, and then a stab through an eye for the Teblor. Simple, quick, and she would have what she wanted. If not for the emptiness of this land. If not for the thirst and starvation that would follow – no, for the time being Draconus must live. For Ublala, however, if she could arrange a terrible accident, then she would not have him to worry about on the night she went for the sword. The dilemma of finding for the oaf a fatal demise here on this featureless plain still defeated her. But she had time.

‘Come back to the fire, beloved,’ the Teblor called, ‘and drink some tea. It has real leaves in it and stuff that smells nice.’

Ralata massaged her temples for a moment, and then turned about. ‘I am not your beloved. I belong to no one. I never will.’

At seeing the half-smile on the face of Draconus as he tossed another dung chip on to the fire, Ralata scowled. ‘It is rude,’ she pronounced as she walked over, squatted down and took the cup Ublala proffered, ‘to talk in a language I don’t understand. You could be plotting my rape and murder for all I know.’

The warrior’s brows arched. ‘Now, why would we want to do that, Barghast? Besides,’ he added, ‘Ublala is courting you.’

‘He might as well give up now. I don’t want him.’

Draconus shrugged. ‘I have explained to him that most of what we call courting boils down to just being there. Every time you turn, you see him, until his company feels perfectly natural to you. “Courting is the art of growing like mould on the one you want.”’ He paused, scratched at the stubble on his jaw. ‘I can’t lay claim to that observation, but I don’t recall who said it first.’

Ralata spat into the fire to announce her disgust. ‘We’re not all like Hetan, you know. She used to say she gauged the attractiveness of a man by imagining how he looked when she was staring up at his red face and bulging eyes.’ She spat again. ‘I am a Skincut, a slayer, a collector of scalps. When I look upon a man, I imagine what he’ll look like with the skin of his face sliced away.’

‘She’s not very nice, is she?’ Ublala asked Draconus.

‘Trying hard, you mean,’ Draconus replied.

‘Makes me want to sex her even more than before.’

‘That’s how these things work.’

‘It’s torture. I don’t like it. No, I do. No, I don’t. I do. Oh, I’m going to polish my hammer.’

Ralata stared at Ublala as he surged to his feet and thumped off.

Low and in the language of the White Faces, Draconus murmured, ‘He means that literally, by the way.’

She shot him a look, and snorted. ‘I knew that. He has no wits for anything else.’ She hesitated, and then said, ‘His armour looks expensive.’

‘It cost dearly, aye, Ralata. He wears it well, better than one might have hoped.’ He nodded, mostly to himself, she suspected, and said, ‘He will stand well, I think, when the time comes.’

She remembered this warrior killing Sekara the Vile, snapping the old woman’s neck. The ease of the gesture, the way he seemed to embrace her to keep her from falling, as if her lifeless body still clung to something like dignity. He was not a man easily understood. ‘What are you two seeking? You walk into the east. Why?’

‘There are unfortunate things in the world, Ralata.’

She frowned. ‘I don’t know what that means.’

He sighed, studied the fire. ‘Have you ever stepped on something unintentionally? Out through a doorway, a sudden crunching underfoot. What was it? An insect? A snail? A lizard?’ He lifted his head and fixed her with his dark eyes, the embers gleaming in lurid reflection. ‘Not worth a second thought, was it? Such are the vagaries of life. An ant dreaming of war, a wasp devouring a spider, a lizard stalking the wasp. All these dramas, and crunch – all over with. What to make of it? Nothing, I suppose. If you’ve a heart, you apportion out some small measure of guilt and remorse, and then continue on your way.’

She shook her head, baffled. ‘You stepped on something?’

‘In a manner of speaking.’ He nudged the embers and watched as sparks spun upward. ‘No matter. A few ants survived. No end to the little bastards, in fact. I could crush a thousand nests under heel and it’d not make a whit of difference. That’s the best way of thinking about it, in fact.’ He met her eyes again. ‘Does that make me cold? What did I leave behind in those chains, I wonder, still shackled there, a host of forlorn virtues … whatever. I am having odd dreams of late.’

‘I dream only of vengeance.’

‘The more you dream of one particular and pleasing thing, Ralata, the quicker it palls. The edges get worn down, the lustre fades. To leave such obsessions behind, dream of them often.’

‘You speak like an old man, a Barghast shaman. Riddles and bad advice, Onos Toolan was right to discount them all.’ She almost looked to the west, past his shoulder, as if she might find her people and the Warleader, all marching straight for them. Instead, she finished the last of the tea in her cup.

‘Onos Toolan,’ Draconus muttered, ‘an Imass name. A strange warleader for the Barghast to have … will you tell me the tale of that, Ralata?’

She grunted. ‘I have no skill for tales. Hetan took him for a husband. He was from the Gathering, when all the T’lan Imass answered the summons of Silverfox. She returned to him his life, ending his immortality, and then Hetan found him. After the end of the Pannion War. Hetan’s father was Humbrall Taur, who had united the White Face clans, but he drowned during the landing upon the shores of this continent—’

‘A moment, please. Your tribes are not native to this continent?’

She shrugged. ‘The Barghast gods were awakened to some peril. They filled the brains of the shamans with their panic, like sour piss. We must return here, to our original homeland, to face an ancient enemy. So we were told, but not much else. We thought the enemy was the Tiste Edur. Then the Letherii, and then the Akrynnai. But it wasn’t any of them, and now we are destroyed, and if Sekara spoke truly, then Onos Toolan is dead, and so is Hetan. They’re all dead. I hope the Barghast gods died with them.’

‘Can you tell me more about these T’lan Imass?’

‘They knelt before a mortal man. In the midst of battle, they turned their backs on the enemy. I will say no more of them.’

‘Yet you chose to follow Onos Toolan—’

‘He was not among those. He stood alone before Silverfox, a thing of bones, and demanded—’

But Draconus had leaned forward, almost over the fire. ‘“A thing of bones”? T’lan – Tellann! Abyss below!’ He suddenly rose, startling Ralata further, and she watched as he paced, and it seemed black ink was bleeding out from the scabbard at his back, a stain that hurt her eyes. ‘That bitch,’ he said in a low growl. ‘You selfish, spiteful hag!’

Ublala heard the outburst and he suddenly loomed into the dull glow of the fire, his huge mace leaning over one shoulder. ‘What’d she do, Draconus?’ He glared at Ralata. ‘Should I kill her? If she’s being spelfish and sightful – what’s rape mean, anyway? It’s got to do with sex? Can I—’

‘Ublala,’ Draconus cut in, ‘I was not speaking of Ralata.’

The Teblor looked round. ‘I don’t see no one else, Draconus. She’s hiding? Whoever she is, I hate her, unless she’s pretty. Is she pretty? Mean is all right if they’re pretty.’

The warrior was staring at Ublala. ‘Best climb into your furs, Ublala, and get some sleep. I’ll stand first watch.’

‘All right. I wasn’t tired anyway.’ He swung about and set off for his bedroll.

‘Be careful with those curses,’ Ralata said in a hiss, rising to her feet. ‘What if he strikes first and then asks questions?’

He glanced across at her. ‘The T’lan Imass were undead.’

She nodded.

‘She never let them go?’

‘Silverfox? No. They asked, I think, but no.’

He seemed to stagger. And, turning away, he slowly sank down on to one knee, facing away from her. The pose was one of dismay, or grief – she could not be sure. Confused, Ralata took a step towards him, and then stopped. He was saying something, but in a language she knew not. A phrase, over and over again, his voice hoarse, thick.

‘Draconus?’

His shoulders shook, and then she heard the rumble of laughter, a deathly, humourless sound. ‘And I thought my penance was long.’ Head still lowered, he said, ‘This Onos Toolan … is he now truly dead, Ralata?’

‘So Sekara said.’

‘Then he is at peace. At long last. At peace.’

‘I doubt it,’ she said.

He twisted round to regard her. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘They killed his wife. They killed his children. If I was Onos Toolan, even death would not keep me from my revenge.’

He drew a sharp breath, and it caught as if on a hook, and once more he turned away.

The scabbard dripped blackness as if from an open wound.

Oh, how I want that sword.

Wants and needs could starve and die, no different from love. All the grand gestures of honour and faithful loyalty meant nothing when the only witnesses were grass, wind and empty sky. It seemed to Mappo that his nobler virtues had withered on the vine, and the garden of his soul, once so verdant, now rattled skeletal branches against stone walls.

Where was his promise? What of the vows he had uttered, so sober and grim in youth, so shiny of portent, as befitted the broad-shouldered brave he had once been? Mappo could feel dread inside, hard as a fist-sized tumour in his chest. His ribs ached with the pressure of it, but it was an ache he had lived with for so long now, it had become a part of him, a scar far larger than the wound it covered. And this is how words are made flesh. This is how our very bones become the rack of our own penance, and the muscles twitch in slick skins of sweat, the head hangs loose – I see you, Mappo – so slumped down in pathetic surrender.

He was taken from you, like a bauble stolen from your purse. The theft stung, it stings still. You feel outraged. Violated. This is pride and indignation, isn’t it? These are the sigils on your banner of war, your lust for vengeance. Look upon yourself, Mappo, you mouth the arguments of tyrants now, and all shrink from your path.

But I want him back. At my side. I swore my life to protecting him, sheltering him. How can that be taken away from me? Can you not hear the empty howl in my heart? This is a pit without light, and upon all the close walls surrounding me I can feel nothing but the gouges my claws have made.

The green sheen upon the broken land was sickly to his eyes, unnatural, an ominous imposition that made the shattering of the moon seem almost incidental. But worlds heal, when we do not. Mustiness clung to the night air, as of distant corpses left to rot.

There have been so many deaths in this wasteland. I don’t understand it. Was this by Icarium’s sword? His rage? I should have felt that, but the very ground barely breathes; like an old woman in her death-cot she can but tremble to faraway sounds. Thunder and a darkness upon the sky.

‘There is war.’

Mappo grunted. They’d been silent for so long he’d almost forgotten Gruntle’s presence, standing here at his side. ‘What do you know of it?’ he asked, pulling his gaze away from the eastern horizon.

The barb-tattooed caravan guard shrugged. ‘What is there to know? Deaths beyond counting. Slaughter to make my mouth water. Hackles rise – even in this gloom I can see the dismay in your face, Trell, and I share it. War, it is what it was and always will be. What else is there to say?’

‘You yearn to join the fray?’

‘My dreams tell me different.’

Mappo glanced back at the camp. The humped forms of their sleeping companions, the more regular mound of the fresh burial cairn. The desiccated shape of Cartographer seated upon the stones, a tattered wolf lying at his feet. Two horses, the scatter of packs and supplies. An air of death and sorrow. ‘If there is war,’ he said, facing Gruntle again, ‘who profits?’

The man rolled his shoulders, a habit of his, Mappo now knew, as if Trake’s Mortal Sword sought to shift a burden no one else could see. ‘Ever the question, as if answers meant anything, which they don’t. Soldiers are herded into the iron maw and the ground turns to red mud, and someone on a nearby hill raises a fist in triumph, while another flees the field on a white horse.’

‘I warrant Trake takes little pleasure in his chosen warrior’s views on the matter.’

‘Warrant more how little I care, Mappo. A Soletaken tiger, but such beasts keep no company, why should Trake expect anything different? We are solitary hunters; what manner of war can we hope to find? That is the irony in the whole mess: the Tiger of Summer is doomed to hunt the perfect war, but never find it. See how his tail lashes.’

No, I see that. For the true visage of war, best turn to the snarling jaws of wolves. ‘Setoc,’ he said in a murmur.

‘She has dreams of her own, I’m sure,’ Gruntle said.

‘Traditional wars,’ Mappo mused, ‘are fomented in the winter, when the walls close in and there is too much time on one’s hands. The barons brood, the kings scheme, raiders plot their passages through borderlands. The wolves howl in winter. But come the season’s turn, summer is born to the savagery of blades and spears – the savagery of the tiger.’ He shrugged. ‘I see no conflict there. You and Setoc, and the gods bound to you, you all complement one another—’

‘It is more complicated than that, Trell. Cold iron belongs to the Wolves. Trake is hot iron, a fatal flaw to my mind. Oh, we do well in the bloody press, but then you must ask, how in Hood’s name did we get into such a mess in the first place? Because we don’t think.’ Gruntle’s tone was both amused and bitter.

‘And so your dreams visit visions upon you, Mortal Sword? Troubling ones?’

‘No one remembers the nice ones, do they? Yes, troubling. Old friends long dead stalk the jungle. They walk lost, arms groping. Their mouths work but no sound reaches me. I see a panther, my mistress of the hunt, in these dreams, by the way – she lies gored and bloody, panting fast in shock, dumb misery in her eyes.’

‘Gored?’

‘Boar’s tusk.’

‘Fener?’

‘As the god of war, he was unchallenged. Vicious as any tiger, and cunning as any pack of wolves. With Fener in the ascendant, we knelt with heads bowed.’

‘Your mistress lies dying?’

‘Dying? Maybe. I see her, and rage fills my eyes in a flood of crimson. Gored, raped, and someone will pay for that. Someone will pay.’

Mappo was silent. Raped?

Gruntle then growled as befitted his patron god, and Mappo’s nape-hairs stiffened at the sound. The Trell said, ‘I will part this company on the morrow.’

‘You seek the battlefield.’

‘Which none of you need witness, I think. He was there, you see. I felt him, his power. I will find the trail. I hope. And you, Gruntle? Where will you lead this troop?’

‘East, a little south of your path, but I am not content to walk at the side of the Wolves for much longer. Setoc speaks of a child in a city of ice—’

‘Crystal.’ Mappo briefly closed his eyes. ‘A crystal city.’

‘And Precious Thimble believes there is power there, something she might be able to use, to take the Shareholders home. They have a destination, but it is not mine.’

‘Do you seek your mistress? There are no jungles east of here, unless they exist on the far coast.’

Gruntle started. ‘Jungles? No. You think too literally, Mappo. I seek a place at her side, to fight a battle. If I am not there, she will indeed die. So my ghosts tell me in their haunting. It is not enough to arrive too late, to see the wound in her eyes, to know that all that you can hope to do is avenge what was done to her. Not enough, Trell. Never enough.’

The wound in her eyes … you do this all for love? Mortal Sword, do your ribs ache? Dose she haunt you, whoever she was, or is Trake simply feeding you the ripest meat? It is not enough to arrive too late. Oh, I know the truth of that.

Violated.

Raped.

Now comes the dark question. Who profits from this?

Faint huddled under her furs, feeling as if she’d been dragged behind a carriage for a league or two. There was nothing worse than cracked ribs. Well, if she’d sat up only to find her severed head resting on her lap, that would be worse. But probably painless, all things considered. Not like this. Miserable ache, a thousand twinges vying for attention, until everything turns white and then red and then purple and finally blissful black. Where’s the black? I’m waiting, been waiting all night.

At dusk Setoc had drawn close to tell her that the Trell would be leaving on the morrow. How she knew was anyone’s guess, since Mappo wasn’t in any mood to talk, except to Gruntle, who was one of those men it was too easy to talk to, a man who just invited confession, as if giving off a scent or something. Hood knew, she wanted to—

A spasm. She stifled a gasp, waited out the throbs, and then sought to shift position once more, not that one was more comfortable than any other. More a matter of duration. Twenty breaths lying this way, fifteen that way, and flat on her back was impossible – she’d never imagined how the weight of her own tits could crush the breath from her, and the gentle sweep of the furs threatened to close like a vice when she thought of settling her arms. It was all impossible, and come the dawn she’d be ready to snap off heads.

‘Then Gruntle will leave us too. Not yet. But he won’t stay. He can’t.’

Setoc had a way with words, the heaps of good news she stacked like the coins of a private treasure. Maybe the grasses whispered in her ears, as she lay there so gentle and damnably asleep, or the crickets and just listen to them – no, that was her spine crackling away. She fought back a moan.

So, before long, it would be the Shareholders and the barbarian, Torrent, along with the three runts and Setoc herself. She didn’t count Cartographer, the wolf or the horses. Not for any particular reason, even if only the horses were actually alive. I don’t count them, that’s all. So, just them, and who among them was tough enough to fight off the next attack from that winged lizard? Torrent? He looked too young, with the eyes of a hunted hare.

And only one Bole left, and that’s bad. Poor boy’s miserable. Here’s the deal, let’s not bury any more friends, shall we?

But Precious Thimble was adamant. Raw power waited in the east. She thought she could do something with it. Open a warren, get the Hood out of here. Can’t argue with that. Wouldn’t want to. Sure, she’s just a cherry of a lass is our Precious. And if she’s now regretting her tease, why, that will make her more careful from now on, which isn’t a bad thing.

A roll with Gruntle would be delicious. But it’d kill me. Besides, I’m all scarred up. Lopsided, hah. Who’d want a freak, except out of pity? Be rational, and don’t shy from its jagged edge. Your days of crooking a finger to get a tumble are done. Find some other hobby, woman. Spinning, maybe. Butter churning – is that a hobby? Probably not.

You can’t sleep through this. Face it. It’ll be months before a decent night … sleeping. Or otherwise.

‘Gruntle thinks he’s going someplace to die. He doesn’t want us to die with him.’

That’s nice, Setoc, thanks for that.

‘In the Crystal City there is a child … beware the opening of his eyes.’

Listen, sweetie, the little one right here needs his butt wiped and the twins are pretending not to notice but the smell’s getting a tad rank, right? Take this handful of grass.

Life was so much better on the carriage, off delivering whatever.

Faint grunted and then flinched at the pain. Gods, woman, you’re completely insane.

Let me dream of a tavern. Smoky, crowded, a perfect table. We’re all sitting there, working out the shakes. Quell duck-walks to the loo. The Boles make faces at each other and then laugh. Reccanto’s broken a thumb and he’s putting it back in place. Glanno can’t see the barman. He can’t even see the table in front of him. Sweetest Sufferance is looking like a plump cat with a rat’s tail hanging from her mouth.

Another pitcher arrives.

Reccanto looks up. ‘Who’s paying for this?’ he asks.

Faint cautiously lifted one hand, moved it up to brush her cheeks. Blissful black, you seem so far away.

In the false dawn, Torrent opened his eyes. Some violence still rocked in his skull – a dream, but already the memory of its details faded. Blinking, he sat up. Chill air stole in beneath his rodara wool blanket, plucking at the beads of sweat on his chest. He glanced over at the horses, but the beasts stood calm, dozing. In the camp the shapes of the others were motionless in the grainy half-light.

Casting the blanket aside, he rose. The greenish glow was paling to the east. The warrior walked over to his horse, greeted it with a low murmur and settled a hand upon its warm neck. Tales of cities and empires, of gas that burned with blue flame, of secret ways through the world that his eyes could not see, all left him disturbed, agitated, though he was not sure why.

He knew Toc had come from such an empire, far away across the ocean, and his lone eye had looked upon scenes Torrent could not imagine. Yet around the Awl warrior now was a more familiar landscape, rougher than the Awl’dan, true, but just as open, sweeping, the earth levelled beneath the vast sky. What other sort of place could an honest man desire? The eyes could reach, the mind could stretch. There was space for everything. A tent or yurt for nightly shelter, a ring of stones to embrace the cookfire, the steam rising from the backs of the herds as the dawn gently broke.

He longed for such a scene, the morning’s greeting one he had always known. Dogs rising from their beds of grass, the soft cry of a hungry babe from one of the yurts, the smell of smoke as hearths were awakened once more.

Sudden emotion gripped him and he fought back a sob. All gone. Why am I still alive? Why do I cling to this misery, this empty life? When you are the last, there is no reason to keep living. All of your veins are cut, the blood drains and drains and there’s no end to it.

Redmask, you murdered us all.

Did his kin await him in the spirit world? He wished he could believe. He wished his faith had never been shattered, crushed under the heel of Letherii soldiers. If the Awl spirits had been stronger, if they had been all the shamans said they were … we would not have died. Not have failed. We would never have fallen. But, if they existed at all, they were weak, ignorant and helpless against change. Balanced on a bowstring, and when that string snapped their world was done with, for ever.

He saw Setoc awaken, watched her stand up, running fingers through the tangles in her hair. Wiping at his eyes, Torrent turned back to his horse, leaned his forehead against the slick coat of its neck. I feel you, friend. You do not question your life. You are in its midst and know no other place, nothing outside it. How I envy you.

She approached him, the faint crunch of stones underfoot, the slow pulse of her breathing. She came up on his left, reaching to stroke the horse in the softness between its nostrils, giving it her scent. ‘Torrent,’ she whispered, ‘who is out there?’

He grunted. ‘Your wolf ghosts are torn, aren’t they? Curious, frightened …’

‘They smell death, and yet power. So much power.’

The hide against his brow was now damp. ‘She calls herself a Bonecaster. A shaman. A witch. Her name is Olar Ethil, and no life burns in her body.’

‘She comes before the dawn, three mornings in a row now. But draws no closer. She hides like a hare, and when the sun’s light finally arrives, she vanishes. Like dust.’

‘Like dust,’ he agreed.

‘What does she want?’

He stepped back from his horse, ran the back of one wrist against his brow, and looked away. ‘Nothing good, Setoc.’

She said nothing for a time, standing at his side, her furs wrapped tight about her shoulders. Then she seemed to shiver, and said, ‘A snake writhes in each of her hands, but they’re laughing.’

Telorast. Curdle. They dance in my dreams. ‘They’re dead, too. They’re all dead, Setoc. But still they hunger … for something.’ He shrugged. ‘We are all lost out here. I feel this, like a rot in my bones.’

‘I told Gruntle of my visions, the Wolves and the throne they guard. Do you know what he asked me?’

Torrent shook his head.

‘He asked me if I’ve seen the Wolves lift a leg against that throne.’

He snorted a laugh, but the sound shook him in an unexpected way. When did I last laugh? Spirits below.

‘It’s how they mark territory,’ Setoc went on, her tone wry. ‘How they take possession of something. I was shocked, but not for long. They’re beasts, after all. So what is it we worship when we worship them?’

‘I worship no one any more, Setoc.’

‘Gruntle says worship is nothing more than the surrender to things beyond our control. He says the comfort from that is false, because there is nothing comfortable in the struggle to live. He kneels to no one, not even his Tiger of Summer, who would dare compel him.’ She hesitated, and then sighed and added, ‘I will miss Gruntle.’

‘He intends to leave us?’

‘A thousand people can dream of war, but no two dreams are the same. Soon he will be gone, and Mappo, too. The boy will be upset.’

The two horses shied suddenly, stumbling in their hobbles. Stepping past them, Torrent scowled. ‘This dawn,’ he said in a growl, ‘the hare is bold.’

Precious Thimble bit back a shriek, clawed herself awake with a gasp. Traces of fire raced along her nerves. Kicking her bedding aside, she scrambled to her feet.

Torrent and Setoc stood near the horses, facing north. Someone was coming. The ground underfoot seemed to recoil in waves sweeping past her, like ripples passing just beneath the surface. Precious struggled to slow her gasping breaths. She set out to join the warrior and the girl, leaning forward as if fighting an invisible current. Hearing heavy footfalls behind her, she glanced back to see Gruntle and Mappo.

‘Be careful, Precious,’ Gruntle said. ‘Against this one …’ He shook his head. The barbed tattoos covering his skin were visibly deepening, and in his eyes there was nothing human. He’d yet to draw his cutlasses.

Her gaze flicked to the Trell, but his expression revealed nothing.

I didn’t kill Jula. It wasn’t my fault.

She spun back, pushed on.

The figure striding towards them was withered, a crone swathed in snakeskins. As she drew closer, Precious could see the ravaged state of her broad face, the emptiness of her eye sockets. Behind her Gruntle unleashed a feline hiss. ‘T’lan Imass. No weapons, meaning she’s a Bonecaster. Precious Thimble, do not bargain with this one. She will offer you power, to get what she wants. Refuse her.’

Through gritted teeth, she replied, ‘We need to get home.’

‘Not that way.’

She shook her head.

The crone halted ten paces away, and to Precious Thimble’s surprise it was Torrent who spoke first.

‘Leave them alone, Olar Ethil.’

The hag cocked her head, wisps of hair drifting out like strands of spider silk. ‘There is only one, warrior. It is no concern of yours. I am here to claim my kin.’

‘Your what? Witch, there’s—’

‘You cannot have him,’ Gruntle rumbled, edging past Torrent.

‘Stay out of this, whelp,’ Olar Ethil warned. ‘Look to your god, and see how he cowers before me.’ She then pointed a gnarled finger at Mappo. ‘And you, Trell, this is not your battle. Stand aside, and I will tell you all you need know of the one you seek.’

Mappo seemed to stagger, and then, his face twisting in anguish, he stepped back.

Precious gasped.

Setoc spoke. ‘Who is this kin of yours, witch?’

‘He is named Absi.’

‘Absi? There is no—’

‘The boy,’ snapped Olar Ethil. ‘The son of Onos Toolan. Bring him to me.’

Gruntle drew his swords.

‘Don’t be a fool!’ the Bonecaster snarled. ‘Your own god will stop you! Treach will not simply let you throw away your life on this. You think to veer? You will fail. I will kill you, Mortal Sword, do not doubt that. The boy. Bring him to me.’

The rest were awake now, and Precious turned round to see Absi standing between the twins, his eyes wide and bright. Baaljagg was slowly coming forward, closer to where Setoc stood, its massive head lowered. Amby Bole remained close to his brother’s barrow, closed in and silent, his once young face now old, and whatever love there had been in his eyes had vanished. Cartographer stood with one foot in the coals of the hearth, staring at something to the east – perhaps the rising sun – while Sweetest Sufferance was helping Faint to her feet. I need to try some more healing on her. I can show Amby I don’t always fail. I can – no, think about what is before us now! She gave Mappo what he wants, as easy as that. She bargains quick, she speaks true. Precious faced the Bonecaster. ‘Ancient One, we in the Trygalle are stranded here. I have not the power to take us home.’

‘You will not interfere if I bless you with what you need?’ Olar Ethil nodded. ‘Agreed. Collect the child.’

‘Don’t even think it,’ Gruntle warned, the look in his unhuman eyes halting Precious in her tracks. The barbs on his bared arms seemed to blur a moment, then grew sharp once again.

The Bonecaster said, ‘The boy is mine, whelp, because his father belongs to me. The First Sword serves me once again. Would you truly desire to prevent me from reuniting the son with the father?’

Stavi and Storii rushed closer, their questions tumbling together. ‘Father – he’s alive? Where is he?’

Gruntle barred their way with a levelled cutlass. ‘Hold a moment, you two. Something is not right here. Wait, I beg you. Guard your brother.’ He turned back to Olar Ethil. ‘If the boy’s father now serves you, where is he?’

‘Not far.’

‘Then bring him to us,’ Gruntle said. ‘He can collect his children himself.’

‘The daughters are not of his blood,’ Olar Ethil replied. ‘I have no use for them.’

‘You? What of Onos Toolan?’

‘Give them to me, then, and I will see to their disposal.’

Torrent spun round. ‘Slitting their throats is what she means, Gruntle.’

‘I did not say that, warrior,’ the Bonecaster retorted. ‘I will take the three, this I offer.’

Baaljagg was edging closer to Olar Ethil, and she beckoned to it. ‘Blessed Ay, I greet you and invite you into my comp—’

The huge beast lunged, massive jaws crunching as they closed round the Bonecaster’s right shoulder. The ay then spun, whipping Olar Ethil from her feet. Strips of reptile hide, fetishes of bone and shell flailed and snapped. The giant wolf did not release its grip, instead reared a second time, slamming Olar Ethil hard on to the ground. Bones splintered in its jaws, and the body struggled feebly, as would a victim stunned.

Baaljagg tore loose its grip on her crushed shoulder and closed its fangs about her skull. It then whipped her into the air.

Olar Ethil’s left hand was suddenly stabbing into the ay’s throat, punching through withered hide and closing on its spinal column. Even as the wolf flung her upward, she caught hold. The momentum from Baaljagg’s surge added force to her grip. A sudden, terrible ripping sound erupted from the ay, and like a serpent a length of the beast’s spinal column tore free of its throat, still clutched in the witch’s bony hand.

The Bonecaster spun away from the ay, landing hard in a clatter of bones.

Baaljagg collapsed, head lolling like a stone in a sack.

Absi wailed.

As Olar Ethil was picking herself up, Gruntle marched towards her, his two weapons readied. Seeing him, she flung the spinal column to one side.

And began to veer.

When he reached her, she was nothing but a blur, moments from expanding into something huge. He punched where her head had been a moment earlier, and the bell hilt of the cutlass cracked hard against something. The veering abruptly vanished. Reeling back, her face crushed, Olar Ethil sprawled on her back.

‘Spit on the tiger god,’ Gruntle said, standing directly over her. ‘Hood take your stupid veering, and mine!’ Clashing his blades together, he brought them down in an X pattern beneath her jaw. ‘Now, Bonecaster, I happen to know that if you hit even T’lan Imass bones hard enough, they shatter.’

‘No mortal—’

‘Piss on that. I will leave you in pieces, do you understand me? Pieces. How’s it done again? Head in a niche? On a pole? The crook of a tree? No trees here, witch, but a hole in the ground, that’s easy.’

‘The child is mine.’

‘He won’t have you.’

‘Why not?’

‘You just killed his dog.’

Precious Thimble hurried forward, feeling half fevered, her knees wobbly beneath her. ‘Bonecaster—’

‘I am considering withdrawing my offers,’ Olar Ethil said. ‘All of them. Now, Mortal Sword, will you remove your weapons and let me rise?’

‘I haven’t decided.’

‘What must I promise? To leave Absi in your care? Will you guard his life, Mortal Sword?’

Precious saw Gruntle hesitate.

‘I came to bargain with you all,’ Olar Ethil continued. ‘In faith. The undead ay was a slave to ancient memories, ancient betrayals. I will not hold it against any of you. Mortal Sword, look upon your friends – who among them is capable of protecting the children? You will not. The Trell waits only to hear my words whispering through his mind, and then he will quit your company. The Awl warrior is a pup, and a disrespectful one at that. The Jhag Bolead spawn is broken inside. I mean to bring to Onos Toolan his children—’

‘He’s a T’lan Imass, isn’t he?’

The Bonecaster was silent.

‘It’s the only way he would still serve you,’ Gruntle said. ‘He died, just as his daughters believed, and you resurrected him. Will you do the same to the boy? The gift of your deathly touch?’

‘Of course not. He must live.’

‘Why?’

She hesitated, and then said, ‘Because he is the hope of my people, Mortal Sword. I need him – for my army and for the First Sword who commands them. The child, Absi, shall be their cause, their reason to fight.’

Gruntle, Precious saw, was suddenly pale. ‘A child? Their cause?’

‘Their banner, yes. You do not understand – I cannot hold on to his anger … the First Sword’s. It is dark, a beast unchained, a leviathan – he must not be unleashed, not this way. Burn’s dream, Mortal Sword, let me rise!’

Gruntle withdrew his weapons, stumbled back a step. He was muttering something under his breath. Precious Thimble caught only a few words. In the Daru tongue. ‘The banner … child’s tunic, was that it? The colour … began red, ended … black.’

Olar Ethil struggled to her feet. Her face was barely recognizable, a crushed, splintered knot of bone and torn hide. The gouges from Baaljagg’s canines had scored deep, white grooves on her temples and the base of her mandible on both sides. The ruined shoulder slumped, its arm hanging useless.

As Gruntle backed still further, an anguished cry came from Setoc. ‘Has she won you all then? Will no one protect him? Please! Please!’

The twins were weeping. Absi was kneeling beside Baaljagg’s desiccated body, moaning in a strange cadence.

Cartographer clattered closer to the boy, one foot blackened and smouldering. ‘Make him stop that. Someone. Make him stop that.’

Precious frowned, but the others ignored the undead man’s pleas. What does he mean by that? She turned to Olar Ethil. ‘Bonecaster—’

‘East, woman. That is where you will find all you need. I have touched your soul. I have made it into a Mahybe, a vessel that waits. East.’

Precious Thimble crossed her arms, eyes closing for a moment. She wanted to look at Faint and Sweetest, to see the satisfaction, the relief, in their eyes. She wanted to, but knew she would see nothing of the sort, not from those two. They were women, after all, and three children were being surrendered. Thrown into undead arms. They will thank me in the end. When the memory of this moment fades, when we are all safe and home again.

Well … not all of us. But what can we do?

Setoc, with Torrent at her side, was all that stood between Olar Ethil and the three children. Tears streamed down Setoc’s cheeks, and in the Awl warrior’s stance Precious Thimble saw a man facing his execution. He’d drawn his sabre, but the look in his eyes was bleak. Yet he did not waver. Among them all, this young warrior was the only one not to turn away. Damn you, Setoc, will you see this brave boy die?

‘We can’t stop her,’ Precious said to Setoc. ‘You must see that. Torrent – tell her.’

‘I gave up the last of the Awl children to the Barghast,’ said Torrent. ‘And now they are all dead. Gone.’ He shook his head.

‘Can you protect these ones any better?’ Precious demanded.

It was as if he’d been slapped. He looked away. ‘Giving up children is the one thing I seem to do well.’ He sheathed his weapon and grasped Setoc’s upper arm. ‘Come with me. We will talk where no one else can hear us.’

Setoc shot the warrior a wild look, started to struggle, and then abruptly sagged in his grip.

Precious watched him drag her away. He broke like a frail twig. Are you proud of yourself now, Precious?

But the path is finally clear.

Olar Ethil walked with a hitching gait she’d not shown before, joints grinding and snapping, up to where the boy knelt. She reached down with her good arm and scooped him up by the collar of his Barghast tunic. Held him out to study his face, and he in turn looked steadily back at her, dry-eyed, flat. The Bonecaster grunted. ‘Your father’s son all right, by the Abyss.’

She turned round and set off, northward, the boy hanging from her grip. After a moment, the twins followed, neither one looking back. There’s no end to losing everything, is there? It just goes on and on. Their mother, their father, their people. No, they won’t be looking back.

And why should they? We failed them. She came, she cut us apart, bought us like an empress scattering a handful of coins. And they were what she bought. Them, and our turning away. And it was easy, because this is what we are.

Mahybe? What in Hood’s name is that?

With horror in his heart, Mappo set out from the camp, leaving the others, leaving behind this terrible dawn. He struggled to keep from breaking into a run, as if that would help. Besides, if they all watched him, they did so with consciences as stained as his own. Was there comfort in that? Should there be? We are nothing but our own needs. She but showed each of us the face we hide from ourselves and everyone else. She shamed us by exposing our truths.

He fought to remind himself of his purpose, of all that his vow demanded, and the horrifying things it could make him do.

Icarium lives. Remember that. Focus on it. He waits for me. I will find him. I will make it all right once again. Our small world, closed up and impervious to everything outside it. A world where none will challenge us, where none will question our deeds, the hateful decisions we once made.

Give me this world, please, I beg you.

My most precious lies – she stole them all. They saw.

Setoc, dear gods, the betrayal in your face!

No. I will find him. I will protect him from the world. I will protect the world from him. And from everything else, from hurt eyes and broken hearts, I will protect myself. And you all called it my sacrifice, my heartbreaking loyalty – there on the Path of Hands, I took your breaths away.

Bonecaster, you stole my lies. See me now.

He knew his ancestors were far, far away. Their bones crumbled to dust in chambers beneath heaped mounds of stone and earth. He knew he had forsaken them long ago.

Then why could he hear their howls?

Mappo clapped his hands over his ears, but that did not help. The howling went on, and on. And on this vast empty plain, he suddenly felt small, shrinking still further with each step. My heart. My honour … shrinking, withering down … with each step. He’s only a child. They all are. He curled up in Gruntle’s arms. The girls, they held on to Setoc’s hands and sang songs.

Is it not the one inescapable responsibility of an adult to protect and defend a child?

I am not as I once was. What have I done?

Memories. The past. All so precious – I want it back, I want it all back. Icarium, I will find you.

Icarium, please, save me.

Torrent climbed into his saddle. He looked down and met Setoc’s eyes, and then nodded.

He could see the fear and the doubt in her face, and wished he had more words worth saying, but he’d used them all up. Was it not enough that he was doing this? The question, asked so boldly and self-righteously in his own mind, almost made him laugh out loud. Still, he had to do this. He had to try. ‘I will ward them, I promise.’

‘You owe them nothing,’ she said, hugging herself with such severity he thought her ribs might crack. ‘Not your charge, but mine. Why do you do this?’

‘I knew Toc.’

‘Yes.’

‘I think: what would he do? That is my answer, Setoc.’

Tears ran down her face. She held her lips tight, as if to speak would be to loose her grief, a wailing demon that would never again be chained, or beaten down.

‘I left children to die once,’ he continued. ‘I let Toc down. But this time,’ he shrugged, ‘I hope to do better. Besides, she knows me. She will use me, she’s done it before.’ He glanced over at the others. The camp was packed up. Faint and Sweetest Sufferance had already begun walking, like two broken refugees. Precious Thimble trailed them by a few steps, like a child uncertain of her welcome in their company. Amby walked on his own, off to the right of the others, staring straight ahead, his stride stiff, brittle. And Gruntle, after a few words with Cartographer who once more sat on Jula’s barrow, had set off, shoulders rounded as if in visceral pain. Cartographer, it seemed, was staying behind. It comes together only to fall apart. ‘Setoc, your wolf ghosts were frightened of her.’

‘Terrified.’

‘You could do nothing.’

Her eyes flashed. ‘Is that supposed to help? Words like that just dig big holes and invite us to jump.’

He glanced away. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Go, catch up to them.’

He collected his reins, swung his mount round and tapped its flanks with his heels.

Did you gamble on this, too, Olar Ethil? How smug will you sound in your greeting?

Well now, enjoy your time, because it won’t last for ever. Not if I have any say in the matter. Do not worry, Toc, I’ve not forgotten. For you, I will do this, or die in the effort.

He rode at a canter across the empty land, until he drew within sight of the Bonecaster and her three charges. When the twins turned and cried out in relief, it very nearly broke him.

Setoc had watched the young Awl warrior ride after Olar Ethil, saw when he reached them. An exchange of words, and then they set out once more, walking until the deceptive folds of the landscape swallowed them all. Then she turned, studied Cartographer. ‘The boy was crying in grief. Over his dead dog. You told him to stop. Why? Why should that have so bothered you?’

‘How is it,’ the undead man said, rising from the barrow and shuffling closer, ‘that the weakest among us is the only one so willing to give up his life protecting those children? I do not mean to wound you with my words, Setoc. I but struggle to understand this.’ The withered face tilted to one side, pitted eye sockets seeming to study her. ‘Is it, perhaps, because he has the least to lose?’ He continued on in his awkward steps, to stand over the carcass of the ay.

‘Of course he has,’ she snapped. ‘As you said, just his life.’

Cartographer looked down at the corpse of Baaljagg. ‘And this one had even less.’

‘Go back to your dead world, will you? It’s so much simpler there, I’m sure. You can stop wondering about the things us pathetic mortals get up to.’

‘I am a knower of maps, Setoc. Listen to my words. You cannot cross the Glass Desert. When you reach it, turn southward, on to the South Elan. It is not much better, but there should be enough, at least to give you a chance.’

Enough what? Food? Water? Hope? ‘You are remaining here. Why?’

‘In this place,’ Cartographer gestured, ‘the world of the dead has arrived. Here, you are the unwelcome stranger.’

Suddenly shaken, inexplicably distraught, Setoc shook her head. ‘Gruntle said you were with them almost from the very beginning. Now you’re just stopping. Here?’

‘Must we all have a purpose?’ Cartographer asked. ‘I did, once, but that is done with.’ His head turned, faced northward. ‘Your company was … admirable. But I’d forgotten.’ He hesitated, and she was about to ask what he’d forgotten when he said, ‘Things break.’

‘Yes,’ she whispered, not loud enough for him to hear. She reached down and collected the bundle of her gear. Straightening, she set out. Then paused and glanced back at him. ‘Cartographer, what did Gruntle say to you, at the barrow?’

‘“The past is a demon that not even death can shake.”’

‘What did he mean by that?’

He shrugged, still studying Baaljagg’s carcass. ‘I told him this: I have found the living in my dreams, and they are not well.’

She turned away, began walking.

Dust devils spun and raced along, tracking her on either side. Masan Gilani knew all about this. She’d heard all the old stories of the Seven Cities campaign, how the Logros T’lan Imass had a way of just vanishing, whispering on the winds or twisting along on the currents of some river. Easy for them. Rising from the ground at the end of it all not even out of breath.

She snorted. Breath, that was a good one.

Her horse was reluctant this morning. Not enough water, not enough forage, hadn’t crapped or pissed in a day and a night. Wouldn’t last much longer, she suspected, unless her companions could conjure up a spring and a heap of hay or a bag or two of oats. Could they do things like that? She had no idea.

‘Be serious, woman. They looked as if a sleeping dragon had rolled over them. If they could magic stuff out of nowhere, well, they’d have done something by now.’ She was hungry and thirsty too, and if it came to it she’d slit her horse’s neck and feast until her belly exploded. ‘Put that back together, will you? Thanks.’

Not far now. By her reckoning, she’d be on the Bonehunters’ trail before noon, and by dusk she’d have caught up with them – no army that size could move very quickly. They were carrying enough supplies to feed a decent-sized town for half a year. She glanced northward, something she found she was doing rather often of late. No surprise in that impulse, however. It wasn’t every day that a mountain grew up out of nowhere in the course of a single day and night, and what a storm accompanied its birth! She thought to hitch to one side for a spit or two, to punctuate the sardonic wonder she’d just chewed on. But spit was worth keeping.

‘Hold back one throatful,’ her mother used to say, ‘for Hood’s own face.’ Bless her, the deranged fat cow. She must have given the ragged reaper a bubbly bath the day her time came, a hair-wash, a cave mouth’s spring run-off of black, stinking phlegm just gushing out, aye. Big women had a way, didn’t they? Especially after their fourth or fifth decade, when all their opinions had turned to stone and chipped flinty enough to draw blood with a single glance or sneer.

She’d moved like a tree, her mother had, and just as shocking to see, too. After all, trees don’t walk much, not on a sober night, just like the earth didn’t move unless Burn was pitching or the man was better than he knew (and how rare was that?). Loomed, old Ma did, like midnight thunder. Death was a crowded chamber for women like her, and the crowd was the kind that parted with her first step into the room: a miracle.

Masan Gilani wiped at her face – no sweat left. Bad news, especially this early in the morning. ‘I wanted to be big, Ma. I wanted to reach that ripe old age. Fifty, aye. Five bitching, rutting, terror-inspiring decades. I wanted to loom. Thunder in my eyes, thunder in my voice, a thing of great weights and inexorable masses. It ain’t fair, me withering away out here. Dal Hon, do you miss me?

‘The day I set foot on that grassy sward, the day I shoo the first mob of flies from my lips and nostrils and eyes, why, that’s the day all will be right with the world once again. No, don’t leave me to die here, Dal Hon. It ain’t fair.’

She coughed, squinted ahead. Something of a mess up there, those two rises, the valley sprawled in between. Holes in the ground. Craters? The slopes seemed to be swarming. She blinked, wondering if she was imagining that. Deprivation played nasty games, after all. Swarming – it was swarming all right. Rats? No. ‘Orthen.’

A field of battle. She caught the gleam of picked bones, took note of ashy mounds on the far ridge, from pyres, no doubt. Sound practice, burning the dead, she knew. Kept disease to a minimum. She kicked her horse into a heavy canter. ‘I know, I know, not for long, sweetie.’

The dust devils whirled out past her now, spinning towards a ridge overlooking the valley.

Masan Gilani rode after them, to the top of the crest. There she reined in, scanning the wreckage filling the valley, and then the gaping entrenchments slashing across the opposite ridge, beyond which rose the humps of burned bones. Dread slowly seeped in, stealing all the day’s heat from her bones.

The T’lan Imass of the Unbound solidified in a rough line on her right, also studying the scene. Their sudden appearance after so many days of dust was strangely comforting to Masan Gilani. She’d only had her horse for company for far too long now. ‘Not that I’ll kiss any of you,’ she said.

Heads turned to regard her. None spoke.

Thank Hood for that. ‘My horse is dying,’ she announced. ‘And whatever happened here happened to my Bonehunters and it doesn’t look good. So,’ she added, now glaring at the five undead warriors, ‘if you have any good news to tell me, or, gods below, any explanation at all, I really might kiss you.’

The one named Beroke said, ‘We can answer your horse’s plight, human.’

‘Good,’ she snapped, dismounting. ‘Get to it. And a little water and grub for yours truly wouldn’t go amiss either. I won’t be eating orthen any more, just so you know. Who ever thought crossing a lizard with a rat was a good idea?’

One of the other T’lan Imass stepped out from the line. She couldn’t recall this one’s name, but it was bigger than the others and looked to be composed of body parts from three, maybe four individuals. ‘K’Chain Nah’ruk,’ it said in a low voice. ‘A battle and a harvest.’

‘Harvest?’

The creature pointed at the distant mounds. ‘They butchered. They fed upon their fallen enemy.’

Masan Gilani shivered. ‘Cannibals?’

‘The Nah’ruk are not human.’

‘That makes a difference? To me it’s cannibalism. Only white-skinned barbarians from the Fenn Mountains sink so low as to eat other people. Or so I hear.’

‘They did not complete their feeding,’ said the oversized T’lan Imass.

‘What do you mean?’

‘See the newborn mountain to the north?’

‘No,’ she drawled, ‘never noticed it.’

They all studied her again.

Sighing, Masan said, ‘Aye, the mountain. The storm.’

‘Another battle,’ said Beroke. ‘An Azath was born. From this, we conclude that the Nah’ruk were defeated.’

‘Oh? We hit them a second time? Good.’

‘K’Chain Che’Malle,’ said Beroke. ‘Civil war, Masan Gilani.’ The warrior gestured with a twisted arm. ‘Your army … I do not think they all died. Your commander—’

‘Tavore’s alive then?’

‘Her sword is.’

Her sword. Oh. That Otataral blade. ‘Can I send you ahead? Can you find a trail, if there is one?’

‘Thenik will scout the path before us,’ Beroke said. ‘It is a risk. Strangers would not welcome us.’

‘I can’t imagine why.’

Another protracted look. Then Beroke said, ‘If our enemies should find us, Masan Gilani, before the moment of our final resurrection, then all we aspire to win will be lost.’

‘Win? Win what?’

‘Why, our Master’s release.’

She thought about asking a few more questions, decided against it. Gods below, you’re not who I was sent to find, are you? Still, you wanted to find us, didn’t you? Sinter, I wish you were here, to explain what’s going on. But my gut’s telling me bad things. Your Master? No, don’t tell me. ‘All right. Let’s ride clear of this, and then you feed us like you promised. But decent food, right? I’m civilized. Dal Honese, Malazan Empire. The Emperor himself came from Dal Hon.’

‘Masan Gilani,’ said Beroke, ‘we know nothing of this empire of which you speak.’ The T’lan Imass warrior paused, and then added, ‘But the one who was once emperor … him we do know.’

‘Really? Before or after he died?’

The five Imass regarded her once more. Then Beroke asked, ‘Masan Gilani, what is the relevance of that question?’

She blinked, and then slowly shook her head. ‘None, none at all, I guess.’

Another T’lan Imass spoke now. ‘Masan Gilani?’

‘What?’

‘Your old emperor.’

‘What of him?’

‘Was he a liar?’

Masan Gilani scratched her head, and then she gathered up her reins, swung back on to her horse. ‘That depends.’

‘On what?’

‘On whether you believe all the lies people say about him. Now, let’s get out of this, eat and get watered, and then find Tavore’s sword, and if Oponn’s smiling down on us, she’ll still be attached to it.’

She was startled when the five Imass bowed. Then they collapsed into dust and swirled away. ‘Where’s the dignity in that?’ she wondered, and then looked out one more time over the battlefield and its seething orthen. Where’s the dignity in anything, woman?

For now, keep it all inside. You don’t know what has happened here. You don’t know anything for certain. Not yet. Just hold on.

There’s plenty of dignity in just holding on. The way Ma did.

The smell of burning grass. Wetness pressed against one cheek, cold air upon the other, the close sound of a click beetle. Sunlight, filtered through shut lids. Dusty air, seeping into his lungs and then back out again. There were parts of him lying about. In pieces. Or so it felt, but even the idea of it seemed impossible, so he discarded the notion despite what his senses were telling him.

Thoughts, nice to find he was having them. A notable triumph. Now, if he could just pull his varied bits together, the ones that weren’t there. But that could wait. First, he needed to find some memories.

His grandmother. Well, an old woman, at least. Assumptions could be dangerous. One of her sayings, maybe. What about parents? What about them? Try to remember, how hard can that be? His parents. Not very bright, those two. Strange in their dullness – he’d always wondered if there wasn’t more to them. There had to be, didn’t there? Hidden interests, secret curiosities. Was Mother really that fascinated by what Widow Thirdly was wearing today? Was that the extent of her engagement with the world? The poor neighbour only owned two tunics and one ankle-length robe, after all, and pretty threadbare at that, as befitted a woman whose husband was a withered corpse in the sands of Seven Cities and the death coin wasn’t much to live by, was it? And that old man from down the street, the one trying to court her, well, he was just out of practice, that’s all. Not worth your sneers, Mother. He’s just doing his best. Dreaming of a happier life, dreaming of waking something up in the widow’s sad eyes.

It’s an empty world without hope.

And if Father had a way of puttering about whistling some endless song and pausing every now and then to look distracted by a thought, if not thoroughly confused by its very existence, well, a man of decent years had plenty to think about, didn’t he? It certainly looked like that. And if he had a way of ducking in crowds, of meeting no one’s eyes, well, there was a world of men who’d forgotten how to be men. Or maybe they never learned in the first place. Were these his parents? Or someone else’s?

Revelations landing with a thud. One, three, scores of them, a veritable landslide, how old had he been? Fifteen? The streets of Jakata suddenly narrowing before his eyes, the houses shrinking, the big men of the block dwindling to boastful midgets with puny eyes.

There was a whole other world out there, somewhere.

Grandma, caught a glint in your eyes. You’d beaten the dust out of the gold carpet, rolled it out into my path. For these tender feet of mine. A whole other world out there. Called ‘learning’. Called ‘knowledge’. Called ‘magic’.

Roots and grubs and tied-off twists of someone’s hair, small puppets and dolls with smeared faces of thread. Webs of gut, bundles of shedding, the plucked backs of crows. Etching on the clay floor, the drip drip of sweat from the brow. Mud was effort, the taste on the tongue that of grit from a licked stylus, and how the candles flickered and the shadows leapt!

Grandma? Your gem of a boy tore himself apart. He had fangs in his flesh and those fangs were his own, and round and round it went. Biting, tearing, hissing in agony and fury. Plummeting from the smoke-filled sky. Lifting upward again, new wings, joints creaking, a sliding nightmare.

You can’t come back from that. You can’t.

I touched my own dull flesh, and it was buried under bodies, all that gore draining down. I was pickled in blood. That body, I mean. What used to be mine. You don’t go back, not to that.

Dead limbs shifting, slack faces turning, pretending to look at me – but I wasn’t the one so rude as to drag them about. No need to accuse me with those blank eyes. Some fool’s coming down, down here, and maybe my soaked skin feels warm, but that’s all the lost heat from all these other corpses.

I don’t come back. Not from that.

Father, if you only knew the things I have seen. Mother, if only you’d opened your own heart, enough to bless that broken widow next door.

Explain it to this fool, will you? It was a mound of bodies. They’d gathered us. Friend, you weren’t supposed to interfere. Maybe they ignored you, though I can’t figure why. And your touch was cold, gods it was cold!

Rats, nuzzling close, they’d snatched fragments of me out of the air. In a world where everyone is a soldier, the ones underfoot don’t get noticed, but even ants fight like fiends. My rats. They worked hard, warm bodies like nests.

They couldn’t get all of me. That wasn’t possible. Maybe you pulled me out, but I was incomplete.

Or not. Grandma, someone tied strings to me. With everything coming down all around us, he’d knotted strings. To my Hood-damned rats. Oh, clever bastard, Quick. Clever, clever bastard. All there, all here, I’m all here. And then someone dug me out, carried me away. And the Short-Tails looked over every now and then, milled as if contemplating taking objection, but never did.

He carried me away, melting as he went.

All the butchering going on. They had a way of puttering about whistling some endless song and pausing every now and then to look distracted by a thought, if not thoroughly confused by its very existence. Like that.

So he carried me away, and where was everybody?

The pieces were back together, and Bottle opened his eyes. He was lying on the ground, the sun low to the horizon, dew in the yellow grasses close to his face, smelling of the night just past. Morning. He sighed, slowly sat up, his body feeling crazed with cracks. He looked across at the man crouched near a dung fire. His touch was cold. And then he melted. ‘Captain Ruthan Gudd, sir.’

The man glanced over, nodded, resumed combing his beard with his fingers. ‘It’s a bird, I think.’

‘Sir?’

He gestured at the rounded lump of scorched meat skewered above the embers. ‘Just sort of fell out of the sky. Had feathers but they’ve burned off.’ He shook his head. ‘Had teeth too, however. Bird. Lizard. It’s an even handful of straws in each hand, as the Strike used to say.’

‘We’re alone.’

‘For now. We’ve not been gaining on them much – you start getting heavy after a while.’

‘Sir, you have been carrying me?’ Melting. Drip drip. ‘How far? How many days?’

‘Carrying you? What am I, a Toblakai? No, there’s a travois … behind you. Dragging’s easier than carrying. Somewhat. Wish I had a dog. When I was a child … well, let’s just say that wishing I had a dog has been an unfamiliar experience. But yesterday I’d have cut a god’s throat for one single dog.’

‘I can walk now, sir.’

‘But can you pull that travois?’

Frowning, Bottle twisted and looked at the conveyance. Two full length spear shafts, the pieces of two or three others. Webbing from the harnesses of leather armour, the strips stained black. ‘Nothing to pull in it, sir, that I can see.’

‘I was thinking me, marine.’

‘Well, I can—’

Ruthan picked up the spit and waved it about. ‘A joke, soldier. Ha ha. Here, this thing looks ready. Cooking is the process of making the familiar unrecognizable, and thus palatable. When intelligence was first born, the first question asked was, “Can this thing be cooked?” After all, try eating a cow’s face – well, true enough, people do – oh, never mind. You must be hungry.’

Bottle made his way over. Ruthan plucked the bird from the skewer and then tore it in half, handing one section to the marine.

They ate without conversation.

At last, sucking and spitting out the last bone, licking grease from his fingers, Bottle sighed and eyed the man opposite him. ‘I saw you go down, sir, under about a hundred Short-Tails.’

Ruthan raked his beard. ‘Aye.’

Bottle glanced away, tried again. ‘Figured you were dead.’

‘Couldn’t get through the armour, but I’m still a mass of bruises. Anyway, they pounded me into the ground for a while and then just, well, gave up.’ He grimaced. ‘Took me some time to dig free. By then, apart from the dead they were collecting, there was no sign of the Bonehunters, or our allies. The Khundryl looked finished – never saw so many dead horses. And the trenches had been overrun. The Letherii had delivered and taken some damage, but hard to guess the extent of either.’

‘I think I saw some of that,’ Bottle said.

‘I sniffed you out, though,’ the captain said, not meeting Bottle’s eyes.

‘How?’

‘I just did. You were barely there, but enough. So I pulled you free.’

‘And they just watched.’

‘Did they? Never noticed that.’ He wiped his hands on his thighs and rose. ‘Ready to walk then, soldier?’

‘I think so. Where are we going, sir?’

‘To find the ones still left.’

‘When was the battle?’

‘Four, five days ago, something like that.’

‘Sir, are you a Stormrider?’

‘A rogue wave?’

Bottle’s frown deepened.

‘Another joke,’ said Ruthan Gudd. ‘Let’s strip what’s on the travois – found you a sword, a few other things you might find useful.’

‘It was all a mistake, wasn’t it?’

The man shot him a look. ‘Everything is, soldier, sooner or later.’

Chaos foamed in a thrashing maelstrom far below. He stood close to the ledge, looking down. Off to his right the rock tilted, marking the end of the vaguely level base of the pinnacle, and at the far end the Spar, a gnarled thing of black stabbing upward like a giant finger, seemed to cast a penumbra of white mist from its ragged tip.

Eventually, he turned away, crossed the flat stretch, twelve paces to a sheer wall of rock, and to the mouth of a tunnel where shattered boulders had spilled out to the sides. He clambered over the nearest heap until he found a dusty oilskin cape jammed inside a crevasse. Tugging it aside, he reached down and withdrew a tattered satchel. It was so rotted the base began splitting at the seams and he scrambled quickly to flat ground before the contents spilled out.

Coins pattered, baubles struck and clattered. Two larger items, both wrapped in skins and each the length of a man’s forearm, struck the bedrock but made no sound. These objects were the only ones he collected, tucking one into his belt and unwrapping the other.

A sceptre of plain black wood, its ends capped in tarnished silver. He examined it for a moment, and then strode to the base of the Spar of Andii. Rummaging in the pouch at his hip, he withdrew a knotted clutch of horse hair, dropped it at his feet, and then with a broad sweeping motion used the sceptre to inscribe a circle above the black stone. Then he stepped back.

After a moment his breath caught and he half turned. When he spoke his tone was apologetic. ‘Ah, Mother, it’s old blood, I don’t deny it. Old and thin.’ He hesitated, and then said, ‘Tell Father I make no apologies for my choice – why should I? No matter. The two of us did the best I could.’ He grunted in humour. ‘And you might say the same thing.’

He turned back.

Darkness was knotting into something solid before him. He watched it for a time, saying nothing, although her presence was palpable, vast in the gloom behind him. ‘If he’d wanted blind obedience, he should have kept me chained. And you, Mother, you should have kept me a child for ever, there under your wing.’ He sighed, somewhat shakily. ‘We’re still here, but then, we did what you both wanted. We almost got them all. The one thing none of us expected was how it would change us.’ He glanced back again, momentarily. ‘And it has.’

Within the circle before him, the dark form opened crimson eyes. Hoofs cracked like iron axe-blades on the stone.

He grasped the apparition’s midnight mane and swung on to the beast’s back. ‘’Ware your child, Mother.’ He drew the horse round, walked it along the ledge a few strides and then back to the mouth of the tunnel. ‘I’ve been among them for so long now, what you gave me is the barest whisper in the back of my soul. You offered scant regard for humans, and now it’s all coming down. But I give you this.’ He swung the horse round. ‘Now it’s our turn. Your son opened the way. And as for his son, well, if he wants the Sceptre, he’ll have to come and take it.’

Ben Adaephon Delat tightened his grip on the horse’s mane. ‘You do your part, Mother. Let Father do his, if he’s of a mind to. But it comes down to us. So stand back. Shield your eyes, because I swear to you, we will blaze! When our backs are against the wall, Mother, you have no idea what we can do.’

He drove his heels into the horse’s flanks. The creature surged forward.

Now, sweet haunt, this could get a little hairy.

The horse reached the ledge. Then out, into the air. And down, plunging into the seething maelstrom.

The presence, breathing darkness, remained in the vast chamber for a time longer. The strewn scatter of coins and baubles glittered on the black stone.

Then came a tapping of a cane upon rock.

CHAPTER THREE

SMOKE HUNG IN THICK WREATHS IN THE CABIN. THE PORTHOLES WERE all open, shutters locked back, but the air did not stir and the sweltering heat lapped exposed flesh like a fevered tongue. Clearing her throat against a pervasive itchiness in her upper chest, Felash, Fourteenth Daughter of Queen Abrastal, tilted her head back on the soft, if soiled and damp, pillow.

Her handmaid set about refilling the pipe bowl.

‘Are you certain of the date?’ Felash asked.

‘Yes, Highness.’

‘Well, I suppose I should be excited. I made it to my fifteenth year, let the banners wave. Not that anything waves hereabouts.’ She closed her eyes for a moment, and then blinked them open again. ‘Was that a swell?’

‘I felt nothing, Highness.’

‘It’s the heat I don’t appreciate. It distracts. It whispers of mortality, yielding both despondency and a strange impatience. If I’m to die soon, I say, let’s just get on with it.’

‘Mild congestion, Highness.’

‘And the sore lower back?’

‘Lack of exercise.’

‘Dry throat?’

‘Allergies.’

‘All these aches everywhere?’

‘Highness,’ said the handmaid, ‘are there moments when all these symptoms simply vanish?’

‘Hmm. Orgasm. Or if I find myself, er, suddenly busy.’

The handmaid drew the water pipe to life and handed the princess the mouthpiece.

Felash eyed the silver spigot. ‘When did I start this?’

‘The rustleaf, Highness? You were six.’

‘And why, again?’

‘It was that or chewing your fingernails down to nothing, as I recall, Highness.’

‘Ah yes, childish habits, thank the gods I’m cured. Now, do you think I dare the deck? I swear I felt a swell back then, which must yield optimism.’

‘The situation is dire, Highness,’ the handmaid said. ‘The crew is weary from working the pumps, and still we list badly. No land in sight, not a breath of wind. There is a very serious risk of sinking.’

‘We had no choice, did we?’

‘The captain and first mate do not agree with that assessment, Highness. Lives were lost, we are barely afloat—’

‘Mael’s fault,’ Felash snapped. ‘Never known the bastard to be so hungry.’

‘Highness, we have never before struck such a bargain with an Elder God—’

‘And never again! But Mother heard, didn’t she? She did. How can that not be worth the sacrifices?’

The handmaid said nothing, sitting back and assuming a meditative pose.

Felash studied the older woman with narrowed eyes. ‘Fine. Opinions differ. Have cooler heads finally prevailed?’

‘I cannot say, Highness. Shall I—’

‘No. As you said, exercise will do me good. Select for me a worthy outfit, something both lithe and flaunting, as befits my sudden maturity. Fifteen! Gods, the slide has begun!’

Her first mate, Shurq Elalle saw, was having trouble managing the canted deck. Not enough sound body parts, she assumed, to warrant much confidence, but for all his awkwardness he moved quickly enough, despite the winces and flinches with every step he took. Pain was not a pleasant thing to live with, not day after day, night upon night, not with every damned breath.

‘I do admire you, Skorgen.’

He squinted up at her as he arrived on the poop deck. ‘Captain?’

‘You take it with a grimace and not much else. There are many forms of courage, I believe, most of which pass unseen by the majority of us. It’s not always about facing death, is it? Sometimes it’s about facing life.’

‘If you say so, Captain.’

‘What do you have to report?’ she asked.

‘We’re sinking.’

Well. She imagined she’d float for a while, and then eventually wander down, like a bloated sack of sodden herbs, until she found the sea bottom. Then it would be walking, but where? ‘North, I think.’

‘Captain?’

‘The Undying Gratitude surely deserves a better fate. Provision the launches. How long do we have?’

‘Hard to say.’

‘Why?’

Skorgen’s good eye squinted. ‘What I meant was, I don’t like saying it. Bad luck, right?’

‘Skorgen, do I need to pack my trunk?’

‘You’re taking your trunk? Will it float? I mean, if we tie it behind the lifeboat? We only got two that’ll float and both are a bit battered. Twenty-nine left in the crew, plus you and me and our guests. Ten in a launch and we’ll be awash at the first whitecap. I ain’t good at numbers but I think we’re off some. Could be people holding on in the water. But not for long, with all those sharks hanging around. Ideal is eight to a boat. We should get down to that quick enough. But your trunk, well, that messes up my figuring.’

‘Skorgen, do you recall loading my trunk?’

‘No.’

‘That’s because I don’t have one. It was a figure of speech.’

‘That’s a relief, then. Besides,’ he added, ‘you probably wouldn’t have the time to pack it anyway. We could roll in the next breath, or so I’m told.’

‘Errant take me, get our guests up here!’

He pointed behind her. ‘There’s the well-born one just coming up, Captain. She’ll float high in the water, that she will, until the—’

‘Lower the launches and round up the crew, Skorgen,’ Shurq said, stepping past him and making her way to the princess.

‘Ah, Captain, I really must—’

‘No time, Highness. Get your handmaiden and whatever clothes you’ll need to stay warm. The ship is going down and we need to get to the launches.’

Blinking owlishly, Felash looked round. ‘That seems rather extreme.’

‘Does it?’

‘Yes. I would imagine that abandoning ship is one of the very last things one would wish to do, when at sea.’

Shurq Elalle nodded. ‘Indeed, Highness. Especially while at sea.’

‘Well, are there no alternatives? It is unlike you to panic.’

‘Do I appear to be panicking?’

‘Your crew is—’

‘Modestly so, Highness, since we don’t quite have the room needed to take everyone, meaning that some of them are about to die in the jaws of sharks. My understanding is, such a death is rather unpleasant, at least to begin with.’

‘Oh dear. Well, what can be done?’

‘I am open to suggestions, Highness.’

‘Perhaps a ritual of salvation …’

‘A what?’

Plump fingers fluttered. ‘Let us assess the situation, shall we? The storm has split the hull, correct?’

‘We hit something, Highness. I am hoping it was Mael’s head. We cannot effect repairs, and our pumps have failed in stemming the tide. As you may note, to starboard, we are very nearly awash amidships. If we were not becalmed, we would have rolled by now.’

‘Presumably, the hold is full of water.’

‘A fair presumption, Highness.’

‘It needs to be—’

A terrible groaning sound reverberated through the deck at their feet.

Felash’s eyes went wide. ‘Oh, what is that?’

‘That is us, Highness. Sinking. Now, you mentioned a ritual. If it involves a certain Elder God of the seas, I should warn you, I cannot vouch for your well-being should my crew learn of it.’

‘Really? How distressing. Well, a ritual such as the one I am suggesting may not necessarily involve that decidedly unpleasant individual. In fact—’

‘Forgive me for interrupting, Highness, but it has just occurred to me that this particular contest of understatement is about to be fatally terminated. While I have thoroughly enjoyed it, I now believe you have been a truly unwitting participant. How well can you swim, since I believe we shall not have time to reach the launches …’

‘For goodness’ sake.’ Felash turned about, gauging the scene on all sides. Then she gestured.

The Undying Gratitude shuddered. Water foamed up from the hatch. Rigging whipped as if in a gale, the stumps of the shattered masts quivering. The ship grunted as it rolled level again. To either side the water swirled. Shouts of fright came from the two launches, and Shurq Elalle heard the screams commanding axes to the lines. A moment later she saw both lifeboats pulling away, neither one fully manned, whilst the rest of her crew, along with Skorgen Kaban, bellowed and cursed from where they clung to the port gunwale. Water washed across the mid-deck.

Princess Felash was studying the lay of the ship, one finger to her plump, painted lips. ‘We must drain the hold,’ she said, ‘before we dare lift her higher. Agreed, Captain? Lest the weight of the water break the hull apart?’

‘What are you doing?’ Shurq demanded.

‘Why, saving us, of course. And your ship, which we still need despite its deplorable condition.’

‘Deplorable? She’s just fine, damn you! Or she would be, if you hadn’t—’

‘Now now, Captain, manners, please. I am nobility, after all.’

‘Of course, Highness. Now, please save my sorry ship, and once that is done, we can discuss other matters at our leisure.’

‘Excellent suggestion, Captain.’

‘If you could have done this at any time, Highness—’

‘Could, yes. Should, most certainly not. Once more we bargain with terrible forces. And once more, a price must be paid. So much for “never again”!’

Shurq Elalle glanced over at her first mate and crew. The deck they stood upon was no longer under water, and the sound of a hundred pumps thundered the length of the hull. But we don’t have a hundred pumps and besides, no one is down there. ‘It’s Mael again, isn’t it?’

Felash glanced over, lashes fluttering. ‘Alas, no. The difficulty we’re having at the moment, you see, stems precisely from our deliberate avoidance of that personage. After all, this is his realm, and he is not one to welcome rivals. Therefore, we must impose a physicality that resists Mael’s power.’

‘Highness, is this the royal “we”?’

‘Ah, do you feel it, Captain?’

Thick, billowing fog now rose around the ship – the two lifeboats disappeared from sight, and their crews’ cries were suddenly silenced, as if those men and women ceased to exist. In the dread hush that followed, Shurq Elalle saw Skorgen and her remaining dozen sailors huddling down on the deck, their breaths pluming, frost sparkling to life on all sides.

‘Highness—’

‘What a relief from that heat, don’t you agree? But we must now be stern in our position. To give up too much at this moment could well prove fatal.’

‘Highness,’ Shurq tried again, ‘who do we bargain with now?’

‘The Holds are half forgotten by most, especially the long dormant ones. Imagine our surprise, then, when a frozen corpse should awaken and rise into the realm of life once more, after countless centuries. Oh, they’re a hoary bunch, the Jaghut, but, you know, I still hold to a soft regard for them, despite all their extravagances. Why, in the mountains of North Bolkando there are tombs, and as for the Guardians, well—’

‘Jaghut, Highness? Is that what you said? Jaghut?’

‘Surely this must be panic, Captain, your constant and increasingly rude interruptions—’

‘You’re locking us all in ice?’

‘Omtose Phellack, Captain. The Throne of Ice, do you see? It is awake once more—’

Shurq advanced on Felash. ‘What is the bargain, Princess?’

‘We can worry about that later—’

‘No! We will worry about it right now!’

‘I cannot say I appreciate such an imperious tone, Captain Elalle. Observe how steady settles the ship. Ice is frozen in the cracks in the hull and the hold is dry, if rather cold. The fog, unfortunately, we won’t be able to escape, as we are chilling the water around us nigh unto freezing. Now, this current, I understand, will carry us northward, to landfall, in about three days. An unoccupied shoreline, with a sound, protected natural harbour, where we can make repairs—’

‘Repairs? I’ve just lost half my crew!’

‘We don’t need them.’

Skorgen Kaban clumped over. ‘Captain! Are we dead? Is this Mael’s Curse? Do we travel the Seas of Death? Is this the Lifeless River? Skull Ocean? Are we betwixt the Horns of Dire and Lost? In the Throes of—’

‘Gods below! Is there no end to these euphemisms for being dead?’

‘Aye, and the Euphemeral Deeps, too! The crew’s got questions, y’see—’

‘Tell them our luck holds, Skorgen, and those hasty ones in the boats, well, that’s what comes of not believing in your captain and first mate. Got that?’

‘Oh, they’ll like that one, Captain, since a moment ago they was cursing themselves for being too slow off the mark.’

‘The very opposite to be sure, First Mate. Off you go, then.’

‘Aye, Captain.’

Shurq Elalle faced the princess again. ‘To my cabin if you please, Highness. The bargain.’

‘The bargain? Oh, indeed. That. As you wish, but first, well, I need to change, lest I catch a chill.’

‘May the Errant look away, Highness.’

‘He is, dear, he is.’

Shurq watched the young woman walk to the hatch. ‘Dear’? Well, maybe she’s older than she looks.

No, what she is is a condescending, pampered princess. Oh, if only Ublala was on board, he’d set her right in no time. The thought forced out a snort of amusement. ‘Careful!’ she admonished herself, and then frowned. Oh, I see. I’m freezing solid. No leakage for the next little while, I guess. Best get moving. And keep moving. She looked round, if somewhat stiffly.

Yes, the ship was on the move, riding a current already lumpy with ice. The fog embraced them, their very own private cloud. We travel blind.

‘Captain! Crew wants t’know, is this the White Road?’

‘Provisions.’

Destriant Kalyth looked across at the Shield Anvil. ‘There are drones. And wagon beds where food grows. Matron Gunth Mach prepares us. We shall wander as the great herds once wandered.’

The red-bearded man rose on the Ve’Gath’s stirrups of hide and bone. ‘Great herds? Where?’

‘Well, they all died.’

Stormy scowled. ‘Died how?’

‘Mostly, we killed them, Shield Anvil. The Elan were more than just keepers of myrid and rodara. We also hunted. We fought over possession of wild herds and crossings, and when we lost, why, we’d poison the beasts to spite our enemies. Or destroy the crossings, so that animals drowned on their migrations. We were one with the land.’

From her other side, Gesler snorted. ‘Who’s been opening your eyes, Kalyth?’

She shrugged. ‘Our spirit gods starved. What did we do wrong? Nothing, we didn’t change a thing. We lived as we’d always lived. And it was murderous. The wild beasts vanished. The land dried up. We fought each other, and then came the Adjudicators. Out from the east.’

‘Who were they?’

Bitterness stung her words. ‘Our judgement, Shield Anvil. They looked upon our deeds. They followed the course of our lives, our endless stupidities. And they decided that our reign of abuse must end.’ She shot the man a look. ‘I should have died with my kin. Instead, I ran away. I left them all to die. Even my own children.’

‘A terrible thing,’ muttered Stormy, ‘but the crime was with those Adjudicators. Your people would have had to change their ways sooner or later. No, the blood is on their hands.’

‘Tell us more about them,’ Gesler said.

She was riding a Ve’Gath, as were her companions. The thump of the huge Che’Malle’s clawed feet seemed far below her. She could barely feel their impacts on the hard ground. The sky was dull, cloudy over a grey landscape. Behind them the two children, Sinn and Grub, shared another Ve’Gath. They hardly ever spoke; in fact, Kalyth could not recall ever hearing Sinn’s voice, though Grub had let on that her apparent muteness was habit rather than an affliction.

Creatures of fire. Demonspawn. Gesler and Stormy know them, but even they are not easy in their company. No, I do not like our two children.

Kalyth took a moment to gather her thoughts. ‘The Adjudicators had risen to power first in Kolanse,’ she said after a time. She didn’t want to remember them, didn’t want to think about any of that, but she forced herself to continue. ‘When we first heard of them, in our camps, the stories came from caravan guards and traders. They spoke nervously, with fear in their eyes. “Not human,” they said. They were priests. Their cult was founded on the Spire, which is a promontory in the bay of Kolanse, and it was there that they first settled, building a temple and then a fortress.’

‘So they were foreigners?’ Gesler asked.

‘Yes. From somewhere called the Wretched Coast. All I have heard of this is second-hand. They arrived in ships of bone. The Spire was unoccupied – who would choose to live on cursed land? And to begin with there was but one ship, crewed by slaves, and twelve or thirteen priests and priestesses. Hardly an invasion, as far as the king of Kolanse was concerned. And when they sent an emissary to his court, he welcomed her. The native priesthoods were not as pleased and they warned their king, but he overruled them. The audience was granted. The Adjudicator was arrogant. She spoke of justice as if her people alone were its iron hand. Indeed, that emissary pointed a finger upon the king himself and pronounced his fall.’

‘I bet he wasn’t so pleased any more,’ Stormy said with a grunt. ‘He lopped the fool’s head off, I hope.’

‘He tried,’ Kalyth replied. ‘Soldiers and then sorcery – the throne room became a slaughterhouse, and when the battle was over she alone strode out from the palace. And in the harbour were a hundred more ships of bone. This is how the horror began.’

Gesler twisted in his saddle and seemed to study the two children for a moment, before facing forward again. ‘Destriant, how long ago was this?’

She shrugged. ‘Fifty, sixty years ago. The Adjudicators scoured out all the other priesthoods. More and more of their own followers arrived, season after season. The Watered, they were called. Those with human blood in them. Those first twelve or so, they were the Pures. From Estobanse Province – the richest land of Kolanse – they spread their power outward, enforcing their will. They were not interested in waging war upon the common people, and by voice alone they could make entire armies kneel. From Kolanse they began toppling one dynasty after another – in all the south kingdoms, those girdling the Pelasiar Sea, until all the lands were under their control.’ She shuddered. ‘They were cruel masters. There was drought. Starvation. They called it the Age of Justice, and left the people to die. Those who objected they executed, those who sought to rise against them, they annihilated. Before long, they reached the lands of my people. They crushed us like fleas.’

‘Ges,’ said Stormy after a time, ‘if not human, then what?’

‘Kalyth, are these Adjudicators tusked?’

‘Tusked? No.’

‘Describe them.’

‘They are tall, gaunt. Their skin is white as alabaster, and their limbs do not move as do those of humans. From their elbows, they can bend their lower arms in all directions. It is said their bodies are hinged, as if they had two sets of hips, one stacked atop the other. And they can stand like us, or with legs like those of a horse. No weapon can reach them, and a single touch from their long fingers can shatter all the bones in a warrior’s body. Sorcerous attacks drain down from them like water.’

‘Is it the same for the Watered,’ Gesler wanted to know, ‘or just the Pures?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Have you seen one of these Adjudicators with your own eyes?’

She hesitated, and then shook her head.

‘But your tribe—’

‘We heard they were coming. We knew they would kill us all. I ran.’

‘Hood’s breath!’ barked Stormy. ‘So you don’t know if they ever—’

‘I snuck back, days later, Shield Anvil.’ She had to force the words out, her mouth dry as dust, her thoughts cold as a corpse. ‘They were thorough.’ I snuck back. But is that even true? Or did I just dream that? The broken faces of my children, so still. My husband, his spine twisted impossibly, his eyes staring. The dead dogs, the shamans’ heads on poles. And the blood, everywhere – even my tears … ‘I ran. I am the last of my people.’

‘This drought you mentioned,’ Gesler said, ‘had it struck before these Adjudicators arrived, or after?’

‘Estobanse thrives on springs. A valley province, with vast mountains to the north and another range to the south. The sea to the east and plains to the west. The droughts were in the south kingdoms, and in the other Kolanse territories. I do not know when they started, Mortal Sword, but even in the tales from my childhood I seem to recall grief lying heavy upon the settled lands.’

‘And the Elan Plains?’

She shook her head. ‘Always dry, always trouble – it is why the clans fought so much. We were running out of everything. I was a child. A child gets used to things, it all feels … normal – for all the years I was with my people, it was like that.’

‘So what brought the Adjudicators to the place,’ Gesler wondered, ‘if it was already suffering?’

‘Weakness,’ said Stormy. ‘Take any starving land, and you’ll find a fat king. Nobody’d weep at that slaughter in the throne room. Priests blathering on about justice. Must have sounded sweet, at least to start with.’

‘Aye,’ Gesler agreed. ‘Still, that Spire, where they built their temple – Kalyth, you called it cursed. Why?’

‘It is where a star fell from the sky,’ she explained.

‘Recently?’

‘No, long ago, but round the promontory the seawater is red as blood – and nothing can live in that water.’

‘Did any of that change once the Adjudicators installed their temple?’

‘I don’t know. I have never seen the place – please, I just don’t know. I don’t even know why we’re marching in this direction. There is nothing to the east – nothing but bones.’ She glared at Gesler. ‘Where’s your army of allies? Dead! We need to find somewhere else to go. We need—’ somewhere to hide. Ancestors forgive me. No, her fears were all too close to the surface. A score of questions could rip through her thin skin – it hadn’t taken much, had it?

‘We don’t know that,’ Stormy said, chewing at his moustache and not meeting her eyes.

I’m sorry. I know.

‘When Gu’Rull gets back,’ Gesler said in a low tone, ‘we’ll know more. In the meantime, on we go, Destriant. No point in doing anything else.’

She nodded. I know. Forgive me. Forgive us all.

Their power was a dark, swirling stain, spinning out like a river at the head of the vast, snaking column. Gu’Rull studied the manifestation from above, where he was gliding just beneath the thick overcast which had spread down from the northwest. His wounds were healing, and he had travelled far, ranging out over the Wastelands.

He had observed the tattered remnants of human armies, swollen with massive trains. And south of them but drawing closer by the day another force, the ranks disciplined in their march, unblooded and, as far as such things went, formidable. Despite the commands of the Mortal Sword, neither force was of much interest to the Shi’gal Assassin. No, the knots of power he had sensed elsewhere were far more fascinating, but of them all, not one compared to that which emanated from the two human children, Sinn and Grub. Travelling there, at the very head of the Gunthan Nest.

Of course, it could be called ‘Nest’ no longer, could it? There was no room, no solid, protected roost for the last clan of the K’Chain Che’Malle.

Even leadership had been surrendered. To three humans. There was no doubt that without them the Che’Malle would have been destroyed by the Nah’ruk. Three humans, clad in strange titles, and two children, wearing little more than rags.

So many lusted after power. It was the crushing step of history, in every civilization that had ever existed. Gu’Rull had no taste for it. Better that more of his kind existed, behind every throne, to cut the throat at the first hint of mad ambition. Enough heads rolling down the ages and perhaps the lesson would finally be learned, though he doubted it.

The assassin must never die. The shadows must ever remain. We hold the world in check. We are the arbiters of reason. It is our duty, our purpose.

I have seen them. I have seen what they can do, and the joy in their eyes at the devastation they can unleash. But their throats are soft. If I must, I will rid the world of them. The power was sickly, a swathe of something vile. It leaked from their indifferent minds and fouled the sweet scents of his kin – their joy at victory, their gratitude to the Mortal Sword and the Shield Anvil, their love for Kalyth, the Destriant of the K’Chain Che’Malle. Their faith in a new future.

But these children. They need to die. Soon.

‘Forkrul Assail,’ whispered Grub into Sinn’s ear. ‘The Crystal City knew them, even the Watered ones. It holds the memory of them. Sinn, they are at the centre of the war – they’re the ones the Adjunct is hunting.’

‘No more,’ she hissed back at him. ‘Don’t talk. What if they hear you?’

He sniffed. ‘You think they don’t know? Gesler and Stormy? Forkrul Assail, Sinn, but now she’s wounded. Badly wounded. We need to stop her, or the Bonehunters will get slaughtered—’

‘If there’re any of them left.’

‘There are. Reach with your mind—’

‘That’s her sword – that barrier that won’t let us in. Her Otataral sword.’

‘Meaning she’s still alive—’

‘No, just that somebody’s carrying it. Could be Brys Beddict, could be Warleader Gall. We don’t know, we can’t get close enough to find out.’

‘Gu’Rull—’

‘Wants us dead.’

Grub flinched. ‘What did we ever do to him? Except save his hide.’

‘Him and all the other lizards. Doesn’t matter. We might turn on them all, and who could stop us?’

‘You could turn on ’em. I won’t. So I’ll be the one stopping you. Don’t try it, Sinn.’

‘We’re in this together,’ she said. ‘Partners. I was just saying. It’s why that assassin hates us. Nobody controls us but us. Grownups always hate that.’

‘Forkrul Assail. Gesler wants to join this army to the Adjunct’s – that has to be what he’s planning, isn’t it?’

‘How should I know? Probably.’

‘So we will fight Forkrul Assail.’

She flashed him a wicked smile. ‘Like flies, I will pluck their legs off.’

‘Who’s the girl?’

Sinn rolled her eyes. ‘Not again. I’m sick of talking about her.’

‘She’s in the Crystal City. She’s waiting for us.’

‘She’s insane, that’s what she is. You felt that, you had to. We both felt it. No, let’s not talk about her any more.’

‘You’re afraid of her,’ Grub said. ‘Because maybe she’s stronger than both of us.’

‘Aren’t you? You should be.’

‘At night,’ said Grub, ‘I dream of red eyes. Opening. Just opening. That’s all.’

‘Never mind that dream,’ she said, looking away.

He could feel all her muscles, tight and wiry, and he knew that this was an embrace he could not hold on to for very much longer. She’s scarier than the assassin. You in the Crystal City, are you as frightened as me?

‘Stupid dream,’ said Sinn.

It was midday. Gesler called a halt. The vast column stopped en masse, and then drones stepped out to begin preparations for feeding. Wincing as he extricated himself from the scaled saddle of the Ve’Gath, noting with relief that the welts on the beast’s flanks were healing, the Mortal Sword dropped down to the ground. ‘Stormy, let’s stretch our legs—’

‘I don’t need help taking a piss.’

‘After that, idiot.’

Stretching out the aches in his lower back, he walked out from the column, making a point of ignoring Sinn and Grub as they clambered down. Every damned morning since the battle, he’d half expected to find them gone. He wasn’t fool enough to think he had any control over them. Torching sky-keeps like pine cones, Hood save us all.

Stormy appeared, spitting on his hands to wash them. ‘That fucking assassin doesn’t want to come down. Bad news?’

‘I doubt he’d quake over delivering that, Stormy. No, he’s just making a point.’

‘Soon as he comes down,’ Stormy growled, ‘my fist will make one of its own.’

Gesler laughed. ‘You couldn’t reach its snarly snout, not even with a ladder. What are you going to do, punch its kneecap?’

‘Maybe, why not? Bet it’d hurt something awful.’

Gesler drew off his helmet. ‘Forkrul Assail, Stormy. Hood’s hairy bag.’

‘If she’s still alive, she must be having second thoughts. Who knows how many the Nah’ruk ate? For all we know, there’s only a handful of Bonehunters left.’

‘I doubt it,’ Gesler said. ‘There’s standing and taking it when that’s what you have to do. And then there’s cutting out and setting fire to your own ass. She didn’t want that fight. So they ran into her. She would’ve done what she needed to do to pull her soldiers out of it. It was probably messy, but it wasn’t a complete annihilation.’

‘If you say so.’

‘Look, it’s a fighting withdrawal until you can reasonably break. You narrow your front. You throw your heavies into that wall, and then you let yourself get pushed backward, step after step, until it’s time to turn and run. And if the Letherii were worth anything, they’d have bled off some pressure. Best case scenario, we lost about a thousand—’

‘Mostly heavies and marines – the heart of the army, Ges—’

‘So you find a new one. A thousand.’

‘Worst case? Not a heavy left, not a marine left, with the regulars broken and scattering like hares.’

Gesler glared at Stormy. ‘I’m supposed to be the pessimist here, not you.’

‘Get the Matron to order that assassin down here.’

‘I will.’

‘When?’

‘When I feel like it.’

Stormy’s face reddened. ‘You’re still a Hood-shitting sergeant, you know that? Mortal Sword? Mortal Bunghole is more like it! Gods, to think I been taking orders from you for how long?’

‘Well, who’s a better Shield Anvil than a man with an anvil for a head?’

Stormy grunted, and then said, ‘I’m hungry.’

‘Aye,’ said Gesler. ‘Let’s go and eat.’

They set out for the feeding area.

‘Do you remember, when we were young – too young? That cliff—’

‘Don’t go on about that damned cliff, Stormy. I still get nightmares about it.’

‘It’s guilt you’re feeling.’

Gesler halted. ‘Guilt? You damned fool. I saved your life up there!’

‘After nearly killing me! If that rock coming down had hit me in the head—’

‘But it didn’t, did it? No, just your shoulder. A tap, a bit of dust, and then I—’

‘The point is,’ Stormy interrupted, ‘we did stupid things back then. We should’ve learned, only it’s turning out we never learned a damned thing.’

‘That’s not the problem,’ Gesler retorted. ‘We got busted down all those times for good reason. We can’t handle responsibilities, that’s our problem. We start bickering – you start thinking and that’s as bad as bad can get. Stop thinking, Stormy, and that’s an order.’

‘You can’t order me, I’m the Shield Anvil, and if I want to think, that’s damn well what I’ll do.’

Gesler set out again. ‘Be sure to let me know when you start. In the meantime, stop moaning about everything. It’s tiresome.’

‘You strutting around like High King of the Universe is pretty tiresome, too.’

‘Look there – more porridge. Hood’s breath, Stormy, I’m already so bunged up I could pick my nose and—’

‘It ain’t porridge. It’s mould.’

‘Fungus, idiot.’

‘What’s the difference? All I know is, those drones are growing it in their own armpits.’

‘Now you done it, Stormy. I told you to stop complaining.’

‘Well, once I think up a reason to stop complaining, I will. But then, I’m not supposed to think, am I? Hah!’

Gesler scowled. ‘Gods below, Stormy, but I’m feeling old.’

The red-bearded man paused, and then nodded. ‘Aye. It’s bloody miserable. I might be dead in a month, that’s how I feel. Aches and twinges, all the rest. I need a woman. I need ten women. Rumjugs and Sweetlard, that’s who I need – why didn’t that assassin steal them, too? Then I’d be happy.’

‘There’s always Kalyth,’ Gesler said under his breath.

‘I can’t roger the Destriant. It’s not allowed.’

‘She’s comely enough. Been a mother, too—’

‘What’s so special about that?’

‘Their tits been used, right? And their hips are all looser. That’s a real woman, Stormy. She’ll know what to do under the furs. And then there’s that look in the eye – stop gawking, you know what I mean. A woman who’s dropped a baby has got this look – they been through the worst and come out the other side. So they do that up and down thing and you know that they know they can reduce you to quivering meat if they wanted to. Mothers, Stormy. Give me a mother over any other woman every time, that’s what I’m saying.’

‘You’re sick.’

‘If it wasn’t for me you’d still be clinging halfway up that cliff, a clutch of bones with birds nesting in your hair and spiders in your eye sockets.’

‘If it wasn’t for you I’d never have tried climbing it.’

‘Yes you would.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because, Stormy, you never think.’

He’d gathered things. Small things. Shiny stones, shards of crystal, twigs from the fruit trees, and he carried them about, and when he could he’d sit down on the floor and set them out, making mysterious patterns or perhaps no patterns, just random settings. And then he’d look at them, and that was all.

The whole ritual, now that she’d witnessed it dozens of times, deeply disturbed Badalle, but she didn’t know why.

Saddic has things in a bag

He’s a boy trying to remember

Though I tell him not to

Remembering’s dead

Remembering’s stones and twigs

In a bag and each time they come out

I see dust on his hands

We choose not remembering

To keep the peace inside our heads

We were young once

But now we are ghosts in the dreams

Of the living.

Rutt holds a baby in a bag

And Held remembers everything

But will not speak, not to us.

Held dreams of twigs and stones

And knows what they are.

She thought to give Saddic these words, knowing he would hide them in the story he was telling behind his eyes, and then it occurred to her that he didn’t need to hear to know, and the story he was telling was beyond the reach of anyone. I am trapped in his story. I have flown in the sky, but the sky is the dome of Saddic’s skull, and there is no way out. Look at him studying his things, see the confusion on his face. A thin face. Hollowed face. Face waiting to be filled, but it will never be filled. ‘Icarias fills our bellies,’ she said, ‘and starves everything else.’

Saddic looked up, met her eyes, and then looked away. Sounds from the window, voices in the square below. Families were taking root, sliding into the crystal walls and ceilings, the floors and chambers. Older boys became pretend-fathers, older girls became pretend-mothers, the young ones scampered but never for long – they’d run, as if struck with excitement, only to falter after a few steps, faces darkening with confusion and fear as they ran back to find shelter in their parents’ arms.

This is the evil of remembering.

‘We can’t stay here,’ she said. ‘Someone is seeking us. We need to go and find them. Rutt knows. That’s why he walks to the end of the city and stares into the west. He knows.’

Saddic began collecting his things. Into his little bag. Like a boy who’d caught something out of the corner of his eye, only to find nothing when he turned.

If you can’t remember it’s because you never had what it is you’re trying to remember. Saddic, we’ve run out of gifts. Don’t lie to fill up your past. ‘I don’t like your things, Saddic.’

He seemed to shrink inside himself and would not meet her eyes as he tied up the bag and tucked it inside his tattered shirt.

I don’t like them. They hurt.

‘I’m going to find Rutt. We need to get ready. Icarias is killing us.’

‘I knew a woman once, in my village. Married. Her husband was a man you wanted, like a hot stone in your gut. She’d walk with him, a step behind, down the main track between the huts. She’d walk and she’d stare right at me all the way. You know why? She was staring at me to keep me from staring at him. We are really nothing but apes, hairless apes. When she’s not looking, I’ll piss in her grass nest – that’s what I decided. And I’d do more than that. I’d seduce her man. I’d break him. His honour, his integrity, his honesty. I’d break him between my legs. So when she walked with him through the village, she’d do anything but meet my eyes. Anything.’

With that, Kisswhere reached for the jug.

The Gilk Warchief, Spax, studied her from beneath a lowered brow. And then he belched. ‘How dangerous is love, hey?’

‘Who said anything about love?’ she retorted with a loose gesture from the hand holding the jug. ‘It’s all about possession. And stealing. That’s what makes a woman wet, what makes her eyes shine. ’Ware the dark streak in a woman’s soul.’

‘Men have their own,’ he muttered.

She drank, and then swung the jug back to his waiting hand. ‘Different.’

‘Mostly, aye. But then, maybe not.’ He swallowed down a mouthful, wiped his beard. ‘Possession only counts for too much in a man afraid of losing whatever he has. If he’s settled he doesn’t need to own, but then how many of us are settled? Few, I’d wager. We’re restless enough, and the older we get, the more restless we are. The misery is, the one thing an old man wants to possess the most is the one thing he can’t have.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Add a couple of decades to that man in the village and his wife won’t have to stare into any rival’s eyes.’

She grunted, collected up her stick and pushed it beneath the splints binding her leg. Scratched vigorously. ‘Whatever happened to decent healing?’

‘They’re saying magic’s damn near dead in these lands. How nimble are you?’

‘Nimble enough.’

‘How drunk are you?’

‘Drunk enough.’

‘Just what a man twice her age wants to hear from a woman.’

A figure stepped into the firelight. ‘Warchief, the queen summons you.’

Sighing, Spax rose. To Kisswhere he said, ‘Hold that thought.’

‘Doesn’t work that way,’ she replied. ‘We flowers blossom but it’s a brief blooming. If you miss your chance, well, too bad for you. This night, at least.’

‘You’re a damned tease, Malazan.’

‘Keeps you coming back.’

He thought about that, and then snorted. ‘Maybe, but don’t count on it.’

‘What you never find out will haunt you to the end of your days, Barghast.’

‘I doubt I’ll miss my chance, Kisswhere. After all, how fast can you run?’

‘And how sharp is my knife?’

Spax laughed. ‘I’d best not keep her highness waiting. Save me some rum, will you?’

She shrugged. ‘I’m not one for promises.’

Once he’d left, Kisswhere sat alone. Her own private fire out beyond the useless pickets, her own promise of blisters and searing guilt, if that was how she wanted it. Do I? Might be I do. So they’re not all dead. That’s good. So we arrived too late. That’s bad, or not. And this leg, well, it’s hardly a coward’s ploy, is it? I tried riding with the Khundryl, didn’t I? At least, I think I did. At least, that’s how it looked. Good enough.

She drank down some more of the Bolkando rum.

Spax was a man who liked women. She’d always preferred the company of such men over that of wilting, timid excuses who thought a shy batting of the eyes was – gods below – attractive. No, bold was better. Coy was a stupid game played by pathetic cowards, as far as she was concerned. All those stumbling words, the shifting about, what’s the point? If you want me, come and get me. I might even say yes.

More likely, of course, I’ll just laugh. To see the sting.

They were marching towards whatever was left of the Bonehunters. No one seemed to know how grim it was, or at any rate they weren’t telling her. She’d witnessed the sorcery, tearing up the horizon, even as the hobnailed boots of the Evertine Legion thundered closer behind her. She’d seen the moonspawn – a cloud- and fire-wreathed mountain in the sky.

Was there betrayal in this? Was this what Sinter feared? Sister, are you even alive?

Of course I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to know. I should just say what I’m feeling. ‘Go to Hood, Queen. And you too, Spax. I’m riding south.’ I don’t want to see their faces, those pathetic survivors. Not the shock, not the horror, not all those things you see in the faces of people who don’t know why they’re still alive, when so many of their comrades are dead.

Every army is a cauldron, with the flames getting higher and higher on all sides. We stew, we boil, we turn into grey lumps of meat. ‘Queen Abrastal, it’s you and people like you whose appetites are never sated. Your maws gape, and in we go, and it sickens me.’

When the two Khundryl riders appeared, three days past, Kisswhere had turned away. In her mind she drew a knife and murdered her curiosity, a quick slash, a sudden spray and then silence. What was the point of knowing, when knowing was nothing more than the taste of salt and iron on the tongue?

She drank more rum, pleased at the numbness of her throat. Eating fire was easy and getting easier.

A sudden memory. Their first time standing in a ragged line, the first day of their service in the marines. Some gnarled master sergeant had walked up to them, wearing the smile of a hyena approaching a crippled gazelle. Sinter had straightened beside Kisswhere, trying to affect the appropriate attention. Badan Gruk, she’d seen with a quick sidelong glance, was looking miserable – with the face of a man who’d just realized where love had taken him.

You damned fool. I can play their game. You two can’t, because for you there are no games. They don’t exist in your Hood-shitting world of honour and duty.

‘Twelve, is it?’ the master sergeant had said, his grin broadening. ‘I’d wager three of you are going to make it. The rest, well, we’ll bury half of ’em and the other half we’ll send on to the regular infantry, where all the losers live.’

‘Which half?’ Kisswhere had asked.

Lizard eyes fixed on her. ‘What’s that, sweet roundworm?’

‘Which half of the one you cut in two goes in the ground, and which half goes to the regulars? The legs half, well, that solves the marching bit. But—’

‘You’re one of those, are ya?’

‘What? One who can count? Three make it, nine don’t. Nine can’t get split in half. Of course,’ she added with her own broad smile, ‘maybe marines don’t need to know how to count, and maybe master sergeants are the thickest of the lot. Which is what I’m starting to think, anyway.’

She’d never got close to completing the thousand push-ups. Arsehole. Men who smile like that need a sense of humour, but I’m not one to believe in miracles.

She scratched some more with her stick. Should’ve broken him, right here between my legs. Aye, save the last laugh for Kisswhere. She wins every game. ‘Every one of them, aye, isn’t it obvious?’

Spax made a point of keeping his shell-armour loose, the plates clacking freely, and with all the fetishes tied everywhere he was well pleased with the concatenation of sounds when he walked. Had he been a thin runt, the effect would not have worked, but he was big enough and loud enough to be his own squad, a martial apparition that could not help but make a dramatic entrance no matter how sumptuous the destination.

In this case, the queen’s command tent was as close to a palace as he was likely to find in these Wastelands, and shouldering in between the curtains of silk and the slap of his heavy gauntlets on the map table gave him no small amount of satisfaction. ‘Highness, I am here.’

Queen Abrastal lounged in her ornate chair, legs stretched out, watching him from under lowered lids. Her red hair was unbound and hanging loose, freshly washed and combed out, and the Barghast’s loins stirred as he observed her in turn.

‘Wipe off that damned grin,’ Abrastal said in a growl.

His brows lifted. ‘Something wrong, Firehair?’

‘Only everything I know you’re thinking right now, Spax.’

‘Highness, if you’d been born in an alley behind a bar, you’d still be a queen in my eyes. Deride me for my admiration all you like, it changes nothing in my heart.’

She snorted. ‘You stink of rum.’

‘I was pursuing a mystery, Highness.’

‘Oh?’

‘The onyx-skinned woman. The Malazan.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Gods below, you’re worse than a crocodile in the mating season.’

‘Not that mystery, Firehair, though I’ll chase that one down given the chance. No, what makes me curious is her, well, her lack of zeal. This is not the soldier I would have expected.’

Abrastal waved one hand. ‘There is no mystery there, Spax. The woman’s a coward. Every army has them, why should the Malazan one be any different?’

‘Because she’s a marine,’ he replied.

‘So?’

‘The marines damn near singlehandedly conquered Lether, Highness, and she was one of them. On Genabackis whole armies would desert if they heard they’d be facing an assault by Malazan marines. They stank with magic and Moranth munitions, and they never broke – you needed to cut them down to the last man and woman.’

‘Even the hardest soldier reaches an end to their endurance, Spax.’

‘Well, she’s been a prisoner to the Letherii, so perhaps you are right. Now then, Highness, what did you wish of your loyal warchief?’

‘I want you with me at the parley.’

‘Of course.’

‘Sober.’

‘If you insist, but I warn you, what plagues me also plagues my warriors. We yearn for a fight – we only hired on with you Bolkando because we expected an invasion or two. Instead, we’re marching like damned soldiers. Could we have reached the Bonehunters in time—’

‘You’d likely be regretting it,’ Abrastal said, her expression darkening.

Spax tried on a scowl. ‘You believe those Khundryl?’

‘I do. Especially after Felash’s warning – though I am coming to suspect that my Fourteenth Daughter’s foresight was focused on something still awaiting us.’

‘More of these two-legged giant lizards?’

She shrugged, and then shook her head. ‘No, I don’t think so, but unfortunately it’s only a gut feeling. We’ll see what we see at the parley.’

‘The Malazans never conquered the Gilk Barghast,’ Spax said.

‘Gods below, if you show up with your hackles raised—’

‘Spirits forbid the thought, Highness. Facing them, I will be like the one hare the eagle missed. I’m as likely to freeze as fill my breeches.’

Slowly, Abrastal’s eyes widened. ‘Warchief,’ she said in wonder, ‘you are frightened of them.’

He grimaced, and then nodded.

The queen of the Bolkando abruptly rose, taking a deep breath, and Spax’s eyes could not help but fall to her swelling chest. ‘I will meet this Adjunct,’ Abrastal said with sudden vigour. Her eyes found the Barghast and pinned him in place. ‘If indeed we are to face more of the giant two-legged lizards with their terrible magic … Spax, what will you now claim of the courage of your people?’

‘Courage, Highness? You will have that. But can we hope to do what those Khundryl said the Malazans did?’ He hesitated, and then shook his head. ‘Firehair, I too will look hard upon those soldiers, and I fear I already know what I will see. They have known the crucible.’

‘And you do not wish to see that truth, do you?’

He grunted. ‘Let’s just say it’s both a good and a bad thing your stores of rum are nearly done.’

‘Was this our betrayal?’

Tanakalian faced the question, and the eyes of the hard, iron woman who had just voiced it, for as long as he could before shying away. ‘Mortal Sword, you well know we simply could not reach them in time. As such, our failure was one of circumstance, not loyalty.’

‘For once,’ she replied, ‘you speak wisely, sir. Tomorrow we ride out to the Bonehunter camp. Prepare an escort of fifty of our brothers and sisters – I want healers and our most senior veterans.’

‘I understand, Mortal Sword.’

She glanced at him, studied his face for a moment, and then returned her gaze to the jade-lit southeastern sky. ‘If you do not, sir, they will.’

You hound me into a corner, Mortal Sword. You seem bent on forcing my hand. Is there only room for one on that pedestal of yours? What will you do when you stand face to face with the Adjunct? With Brys Beddict?

But, more to the point, what do you know of this betrayal? I see a sword in our future. I see blood on its blade. I see the Perish standing alone, against impossible odds.

‘At the parley,’ Krughava said, ‘you will keep our own counsel, sir.’

He bowed. ‘As you wish.’

‘She has been wounded,’ Krughava went on. ‘We will close about her with our utmost diligence to her protection.’

‘Protection, sir?’

‘In the manner of hunter whales, Shield Anvil, when one of their clan is unwell.’

‘Mortal Sword, this shall be a parley of comrades, more or less. Our clan, as you might call it, is unassailed. No sharks. No dhenrabi or gahrelit. Against whom do we protect her?’

‘The darkness of her own doubts if nothing else. Though I cannot be certain, I fear she is one who would gnaw upon her own scars, eager to watch them bleed, thirsty for the taste of blood in her mouth.’

‘Mortal Sword, how can we defend her against herself?’

Krughava was silent for a time, and then she sighed. ‘Make stern your regard, banish all shadows from your mind, anneal in brightest silver your certainty. We return to the path, with all resolve. Can I make it any clearer, Shield Anvil?’

He bowed again.

‘Leave me now,’ she said.

Tanakalian swung round and walked down from the rise. The even rows of cookfires flickered in the basin before him, painting the canvas tents with light and shadow. Five thousand paces to the west rose another glow – the Bolkando encampment. A parley of comrades, a clan. Or perhaps not. The Bolkando have no place in this scheme.

They said she was concussed, but now recovers. They said something impossible happened above her unconscious form, there on the field of battle. They said – with something burning fierce in their eyes – that the Bonehunters awakened that day, and its heart was there, before the Adjunct’s senseless body.

Already a legend is taking birth, and yet we saw none of its making. We played no role. The name of the Perish Grey Helms is a gaping absence in this roll call of heroes.

The injustice of that haunted him. He was Shield Anvil, but his embrace remained empty, a gaping abyss between his arms. This will change. I will make it change. And all will see. Our time is coming.

Blood, blood on the sword. Gods, I can almost taste it.

She pulled hard on the leaf-wrapped stick, feeling every muscle in her jaw and neck bunch taut. Smoke streaming from her mouth and nose, she faced the darkness of the north plain. Others, when they walked out to the edge of the legion’s camp, would find themselves on the side that gave them a clear view of the Malazan encampment. They walked out and they stared, no different from pilgrims facing a holy shrine, an unexpected edifice on their path. She imagined that in their silence they struggled to fit into their world that dismal sprawl of dung-fires, the vague shapes moving about, the glint of banners like a small forest of storm-battered saplings. Finding a place for all that should have been easy. But it wasn’t.

They would wince at their own wounds, reminded of the gaps in their own lines, and they would feel like shadows cast by something greater than anything they had known before. There was a name for this, she knew. Atri-Ceda Aranict pulled again on the stick, mindful of the bright swimming glow hovering before her face.

Some scholar once likened this to the mastery fire and all it symbolized. Huh. Some scholar was working hard to justify her habit. Stupid woman. It’s yours, so just revel in it and when it comes to justifying what you do, keep your mouth shut. Philosophy, really.

Ask a soldier. A soldier knows all about smoke. And what’s in and what’s out, and what’s the fucking difference in the end.

The Letherii had comported themselves with honour on that horrid field of battle. They had distracted the enemy. They had with blood and pain successfully effected the Malazan withdrawal – no, let’s call it what it was, a rout. Once the signals sounded, the impossible iron wall became a thing of reeds, torn loose and whipped back on the savage wind.

Even so. Letherii soldiers walked out at dusk, or in the moments before dawn, right out to the camp’s edge, and they looked across the empty expanse of scrub to the Malazans. They weren’t thinking of routs, or withdrawals. They were thinking of all that had gone before that.

And there was a word for what they felt.

Humility.

‘My dear.’ He had come up behind her, soft-footed, as uncertain as a child.

Aranict sighed. ‘I am forgetting how to sleep.’

Brys Beddict came up to stand at her side. ‘Yes. I awoke and felt your absence, and it made me think.’

Once, she had been nervous before this man. Once, she had imagined illicit scenes, the way a person might conjure up wishes they knew could never be filled. Now, her vanishing from his bed wakened him to unease. A few days, and the world changes. ‘Think of what?’

‘I don’t know if I should say.’

The tone was rueful. She filled her lungs with smoke, eased it back out slowly. ‘I’d wager it’s too late for that, Brys.’

‘I have never been in love before. Not like this. I have never before felt so … helpless. As if, without my even noticing, I gave you all my power.’

‘All the children’s stories never talked about that,’ Aranict said after a moment. ‘The prince and the princess, each heroic and strong, equals in the grand love they win. The tale ends in mutual admiration.’

‘That tastes a tad sour.’

‘That taste is of self-congratulation,’ she said. ‘Those tales are all about narcissism. The sleight of hand lies in the hero’s mirror image – a princess for a prince, a prince for a princess – but in truth it’s all one. It’s nobility’s love for itself. Heroes win the most beautiful lovers, it’s the reward for their bravery and virtue.’

‘And those lovers are naught but mirrors?’

‘Shiny silver ones.’

She felt him watching her.

‘But,’ he said after a few moments, ‘it’s not that even a thing, is it? You are not my mirror, Aranict. You are something other. I am not reflected in you, just as you are not reflected in me. So what is this that we have found here, and why do I find myself on my knees before it?’

The stick’s end glowed like a newborn sun, only to ebb in its instant of life. ‘How should I know, Brys? It is as if I stand facing you from an angle no one else can find, and when I’m there nothing rises between us – a trick of the light and your fortifications vanish. So you feel vulnerable.’

He grunted. ‘But it is not that way with Tehol and Janath.’

‘Yes, I have heard about them, and it seems to me that no matter which way each faces, he or she faces the other. He is her king and she is his queen, and everything else just follows on from there. It is the rarest of loves, I should think.’

‘But it is not ours, is it, Aranict?’

She said nothing. How can I? I feel swollen, as if I have swallowed you alive, Brys. I walk with the weight of you inside me, and I have never before felt anything like this. She flicked the stick-end away. ‘You worry too much, Brys. I am your lover. Leave it at that.’

‘You are also my Atri-Ceda.’

She smiled in the darkness. ‘And that, Brys, is what brought me out here.’

‘Why?’

‘Something hides. It’s all around us, subtle as smoke. It has manifested only once thus far, and that was at the battle, among the Malazans – at the place where the Adjunct fell unconscious. There is a hidden hand in all of this, Brys, and I don’t trust it.’

‘Where the Adjunct fell? But Aranict, what happened there saved Tavore’s life, and quite possibly the lives of the rest of the Bonehunters. The Nah’ruk reeled from that place.’

‘Yet still I fear it,’ she insisted, plucking out another rustleaf stick. ‘Allies should show themselves.’ She drew out the small silver box containing the resin sparker. The night wind defeated her efforts to scrape a flame to life, so she stepped close against Brys and tried again.

‘Allies,’ he said, ‘have their own enemies. Showing themselves imposes a risk, I imagine.’

A flicker of flame and then the stick was alight. She took a half-step back. ‘I think that’s a valid observation. Well, I suppose we always suspected that the Adjunct’s war wasn’t a private one.’

‘No matter how she might wish it so,’ he said, with something like grudging respect.

‘Tomorrow’s parley could prove most frustrating,’ Aranict observed, ‘if she refuses to relent. We need to know what she knows. We need to understand what she seeks. More than all that, we need to make sense of what happened the day of the Nah’ruk.’

He reached up, surprised her by brushing her cheek, and then leaning closer and kissing her. She laughed deep in her throat. ‘Danger is a most alluring drug, isn’t it, Brys?’

‘Yes,’ he whispered, but then stepped back. ‘I will walk the perimeter now, Atri-Ceda, to witness the dawn with my soldiers. Will you be rested enough for the parley?’

‘More or less.’

‘Good. Until later, then.’

She watched him walk away. Errant take me, he just climbed back out.

‘When it’s stretched it stays stretched,’ Hanavat said in a grumble. ‘What’s the point?’

Shelemasa continued rubbing the oil into the woman’s distended belly. ‘The point is, it feels good.’

‘Well, I’ll grant you that, though I imagine it’s as much the attention as anything else.’

‘Exactly what men never understand,’ the younger woman said, finally settling back and rubbing her hands together. ‘We have iron in our souls. How could we not?’

Hanavat glanced away, eyes tightening. ‘My last child,’ she said. ‘My only child.’

To that Shelemasa was silent. The charge against the Nah’ruk had taken all of Hanavat’s children. All of them. But if that was cruel, it is nothing compared to sparing Gall. Where the mother bows, the father breaks. They are gone. He led them all to their deaths, yet he survived. Spirits, yours is the gift of madness.

The charge haunted Shelemasa as well. She had ridden through the lancing barrage of lightning, figures on either side erupting, bodies exploding, spraying her with sizzling gore. The screams of horses, the thunder of tumbling beasts, bones snapping – even now, that dread cauldron awakened again in her mind, a torrent of sounds pounding her ears from the inside out. She knelt in Hanavat’s tent, trembling with the memories.

The older woman must have sensed something, for she reached out and settled a weathered hand on her thigh. ‘It goes,’ she murmured. ‘I see it among all you survivors. The wave of remembrance, the horror in your eyes. But I tell you, it goes.’

‘For Gall, too?’

The hand seemed to flinch. ‘No. He is Warleader. It does not leave him. That charge is not in the past. He lives it again and again, every moment, day and night. I have lost him, Shelemasa. We have all lost him.’

Eight hundred and eighty warriors remained. She had stood among them, had wandered with them the wreckage of the retreat, and she had seen what she had seen. Never again will we fight, not with the glory and joy of old. Our military effectiveness, as the Malazan scribes would say, has come to an end. The Khundryl Burned Tears had been destroyed. Not a failure of courage. Something far worse. We were made, in an instant, obsolete. Nothing could break the spirit as utterly as that realization had done.

A new Warleader was needed, but she suspected no acclamation was forthcoming. The will was dead. There were no pieces left to pick up.

‘I will attend the parley,’ said Hanavat, ‘and I want you with me, Shelemasa.’

‘Your husband—’

‘Is lying in his eldest son’s tent. He takes no food, no water. He intends to waste away. Before long, we will burn his body on a pyre, but that will be nothing but a formality. My mourning has already begun.’

‘I know …’ Shelemasa hesitated, ‘it was difficult between you. The rumours of his leanings—’

‘And that is the bitterest thing of all,’ Hanavat cut in. ‘Gall, well, he leaned every which way. I long ago learned to accept that. What bites deepest now is we had found each other again. Before the charge. We were awakened to our love for one another. There was … there was happiness again. For a few moments.’ She stopped then, for she was crying.

Shelemasa drew closer. ‘Tell me of the child within you, Hanavat. I have never been pregnant. Tell me how it feels. Are you filled up, is that how it is? Does it stir – I am told it will stir on occasion.’

Smiling through her grief, Hanavat said, ‘Ah, very well. How does it feel? Like I’ve just eaten a whole pig. Shall I go on?’

Shelemasa laughed, a short, unexpected laugh, and then nodded. Tell me something good. To drown out the screams.

‘The children are asleep,’ Jastara said, moving to settle down on her knees beside him. She studied his face. ‘I see how much of him came from you. Your eyes, your mouth—’

‘Be quiet, woman,’ said Gall. ‘I will not lie with my son’s widow.’

She pulled away. ‘Then lie with someone, for Hood’s sake.’

He turned his head, stared at the tent wall.

‘Why are you here?’ she demanded. ‘You come to my tent like the ghost of everything I have lost. Am I not haunted enough? What do you want with me? Look at me. I offer you my body – let us share our grief—’

‘Stop.’

She hissed under her breath.

‘I would you take a knife to me,’ Gall said. ‘Do that, woman, and I will bless you with my last breath. A knife. Give me pain, be pleased to see how you hurt me. Do that, Jastara, in the name of my son.’

‘You selfish piece of dung, why should I indulge you? Get out. Find some other hole to hide in. Do you think your grandchildren are comforted seeing you this way?’

‘You are not Khundryl born,’ he said. ‘You are Gilk. You understand nothing of our ways—’

‘The Khundryl were feared warriors. They still are. You need to stand again, Gall. You need to gather your ghosts – all of them – and save your people.’

‘We are not Wickans,’ he whispered, reaching up to claw once more at his face.

She spat out a curse. ‘Gods below, do you really think Coltaine and his damned Wickans could have done better?’

‘He would have found a way.’

‘Fool. No wonder your wife sneers at you. No wonder all your lovers have turned away from you—’

‘Turned away? They’re all dead.’

‘So find some more.’

‘Who would love a corpse?’

‘Now finally you have a point worth making, Warleader. Who would? The answer lies before me, a stupid old man. It’s been five days. You are Warleader. Shake yourself awake, damn you—’

‘No. Tomorrow I will give my people into the Adjunct’s care. The Khundryl Burned Tears are no more. It is done. I am done.’

The blade of a knife hovered before his eyes. ‘Is this what you want?’

‘Yes,’ he whispered.

‘What should I cut first?’

‘You decide.’

The knife vanished. ‘I am Gilk, as you say. What do I know of mercy? Find your own way to Hood, Gall. The Wickans would have died, just as your warriors died. No different. Battles are lost. It is the world’s way. But you still breathe. Gather up your people – they look to you.’

‘No longer. Never again will I lead warriors into battle.’

She snarled something incomprehensible, and moved off, leaving him alone.

He stared at the tent wall, listened to his own pointless breaths. I know what this is. It is fear. For all my life it has waited for me, out in the cold night. I have done terrible things, and my punishment draws near. Please, hurry.

For this night, it is very cold, and it draws ever nearer.

CHAPTER FOUR

SWEAT ENOUGH A MAN COULD DROWN IN. HE SHIVERED BENEATH HIS furs, something he did every night since the battle. Jolting awake, drenched, heart pounding. After-images behind his eyes. Keneb, in the instant before he was torn apart, twisting round in his saddle, fixing Blistig with a cold, knowing stare. Not ten paces away, their eyes locking. But that was impossible. I know it’s impossible. I was never even close. He didn’t turn, didn’t look back. Didn’t see me. Couldn’t.

Don’t you howl at me from the dark, Keneb. Don’t you stare. It was nothing to do with me. Leave me alone.

But this damned army didn’t know how to break, understood nothing about routing before a superior enemy. Every soldier alone, that was what routing was all about. Instead, they maintained order. ‘We’re with you, Fist Blistig. See our boots pound. It’s north we’re going, is it? They ain’t pursuing, sir, and that’s a good thing – can’t feel it no more, sir, you know: Hood’s own breath, there on the back of my neck. Can’t feel it. We’re in good order, sir. Good order …’

‘Good order,’ he whispered to the gloom in his tent. ‘We should be scattered to the winds. Finding our own ways back. To civilization. To sanity.’

The sweat was drying, or the scraped underside of the fur skin was soaking it all up. He was still chilled, sick to his stomach with fear. What’s happened to me? They stare. Out there in the darkness. They stare. Coltaine. Duiker. The thousands beyond Aren’s wall. They stare, looking down on me from their crosses. And now Keneb, there on his horse. Ruthan Gudd. Quick Ben. The dead await me. They wonder why I am not with them. I should be with them.

They know I don’t belong here.

Once, he’d been a fine soldier. A decent commander. Clever enough to preserve the lives of his garrison, the hero who saved Aren from the Whirlwind. But then the Adjunct arrived, and it all started to go wrong. She conscripted him, tore him away from Aren – they would have made him High Fist, the City’s Protector. They would have given him a palace.

She stole my future. My life.

Malaz City was even worse. There, he’d been shown the empire’s rotted core. Mallick Rel, the betrayer of Aren’s legion, the murderer of Coltaine and Duiker and all the rest – no, there was no doubt about any of that. Yet there the Jhistal was, whispering in the Empress’s ear, and his vengeance against the Wickans was not yet done. And against us. You took us into that nest, Tavore, and more of us died. For all that you have done, I will never forgive you.

Standing before her filled him with bile. Every time, he almost trembled in his desire to take her by the throat, to crush that throat, to tell her what she’d done to him even as the light left those dead, flat eyes.

I was a good officer once. An honourable soldier.

Now I live in terror. What will she do to us next? Y’Ghatan wasn’t enough. Malaz City wasn’t enough. Nor Lether either, never enough. Nah’ruk? Not enough. Damn you, Tavore. I will die for a proper cause. But this?

He’d never before known such hate. Its poison filled him, and still the dead looked on, from their places in the wastes of Hood’s realm. Shall I kill her? Is that what you all want? Tell me!

The tent walls were lightening. This day, the parley. The Adjunct, Fists arrayed around her, the new ones, the lone surviving old one. But who looks to me? Who walks a step behind me? Not Sort. Not Kindly. Not even Raband or Skanarow. No, the new Fists and their senior officers look right through me. I am already a ghost, already one of the forgotten. What have I done to deserve that?

Keneb was gone. Since Letheras, Keneb had to all intents and purposes been commanding the Bonehunters. Managing the march, keeping it supplied, maintaining discipline and organization. In short, doing everything. Some people possessed such skills. Running a garrison was easy enough. We had a fat quartermaster who had a hand in every pocket, a smiling oaf with a sharp eye, and our suppliers surrounded us and whatever needed doing, why, it was just a written request away. Sometimes not even that, more a wink, a nod.

The patrols went out. They came back. Watches turned, gatekeepers maintained vigilance. We kept the peace and peace kept us happy.

But an army on the march was another matter. The logistics besieged him, staggered his brain. Too much to think about, too much to worry over. Fine, we’re now leaner – hah, what a sweet way of putting it. We’re an army of regulars with a handful of heavies and marines. So, we’re oversupplied, if such a thing even exists.

But it won’t last. She wants us to cross the Wastelands – and what waits beyond them? Desert. Emptiness. No, hunger waits for us, no matter how heaped our wagons. Hunger and thirst.

I won’t take that on. I won’t. Don’t ask.

But they wouldn’t, would they? Because he wasn’t Keneb. I really have no reason to show up. I’m worse than Banaschar in that company. At least he’s got the nerve to turn up drunk, to smile in the face of the Adjunct’s displeasure. That’s its own kind of courage.

Activity in the camp now, as dawn approached. Muted, few conversations, a torpid thing awakening to brutal truths, eyes blinking open, souls flinching. We’re the walking dead. What more do you want of us, Tavore?

Plenty. He knew it like teeth sinking into his chest.

Growling under his breath, he pulled aside the furs and sat up. A Fist’s tent. All that room for nothing, for the damp air to wait around for his heroic rise, his gods-given brilliance. He dragged on his clothes, collected his chill leather boots and shook them to check for nesting scorpions and spiders and then forced his feet into them. He needed to take a piss.

I was a good officer once.

Fist Blistig slipped the tethers of the tent flap, and stepped outside.

Kindly looked round. ‘Captain Raband.’

‘Fist?’

‘Find me Pores.’

‘Master Sergeant Pores, sir?’

‘Or whatever rank he’s decided on this morning, yes. You’ll know him by his black eyes.’ Kindly paused, ruminating, and then said, ‘Wish I knew who broke his nose. Deserves a medal.’

‘Yes sir. On my way, sir.’

He glanced over at the sound of boots drawing nearer. Fist Faradan Sort and, trailing a step behind her, Captain Skanarow. Neither woman looked happy. Kindly scowled. ‘Are those the faces you want to show your soldiers?’

Skanarow looked away guiltily, but Sort’s eyes hardened to flint. ‘Your own soldiers are close to mutiny, Kindly – I can’t believe you ordered—’

‘A kit inspection? Why not? Forced them all to scrape the shit out of their breeches, a bit of tidying that was long overdue.’

Faradan Sort was studying him. ‘It’s not an act, is it?’

‘Some advice,’ Kindly said. ‘The keep is on fire, the black stomach plague is killing the kitchen staff, the rats won’t eat your supper and hearing the circus is in the yard your wife has oiled the hinges on the bedroom door. So I walk in and blister your ear about your scuffy boots. When I leave, what are you thinking about?’

Skanarow answered. ‘I’m thinking up inventive ways to kill you, sir.’

Kindly adjusted his weapon belt. ‘The sun has cracked the sky, my dears. Time for my constitutional morning walk.’

‘Want a few bodyguards, sir?’

‘Generous offer, Captain, but I will be fine. Oh, if Raband shows up with Pores any time soon, promote the good captain. Omnipotent Overseer of the Universe should suit. Ladies.’

Watching him walk off, Faradan Sort sighed and rubbed at her face. ‘All right,’ she muttered, ‘the bastard has a point.’

‘That’s why he’s a bastard, sir.’

Sort glanced over. ‘Are you impugning a Fist’s reputation, Captain?’

Skanarow straightened. ‘Absolutely not, Fist. I was stating a fact. Fist Kindly is a bastard, sir. He was one when he was captain, lieutenant, corporal, and seven-year-old bully. Sir.’

Faradan Sort studied Skanarow for a moment. She’d taken the death of Ruthan Gudd hard, hard enough to suggest to Sort that their relationship wasn’t simply one of comrades, fellow officers. And now she was saying ‘sir’ to someone who only days before had been a fellow captain. Should I talk about it? Should I tell her it’s as uncomfortable to me as it must be to her? Is there any point? She was holding up, wasn’t she? Behaving like a damned soldier.

And then there’s Kindly. Fist Kindly, Hood help us all.

‘Constitutional,’ she said. ‘Gods below. Now, I suppose it’s time to meet my new soldiers.’

‘Regular infantry are simple folk, sir. They ain’t got that wayward streak like the marines got. Should be no trouble at all.’

‘They broke in battle, Captain.’

‘They were ordered to, sir. And that’s why they’re still alive, mostly.’

‘I’m beginning to see another reason for Kindly’s kit inspection. How many dropped their weapons, abandoned their shields?’

‘Parties have been out recovering items on the backtrail, sir.’

‘That’s not the point,’ said Sort. ‘They dropped weapons. Doing that is habit-forming. You’re saying they’ll be no trouble, Captain? Maybe not the kind you’re thinking. It’s the other kind of trouble that worries me.’

‘Understood, sir. Then we’d better shake them up.’

‘I think I’m about to become very unpleasant.’

‘A bastard?’

‘Wrong gender.’

‘Maybe so, sir, but it’s still the right word.’

If he was still. If he struggled past the fumes and dregs of the past night’s wine, and pushed away the ache in his head and sour taste on his tongue. If he held his breath, lying as one dead, in that perfect expression of surrender. Then, he could feel her. A stirring far beneath the earth’s cracked, calloused skin. The worm stirs, and you do indeed feel her, O priest. She is your gnawing guilt. She is your fevered shame, so flushing your face.

His goddess was drawing closer. A drawn out endeavour, to be sure. She had the meat of an entire world to chew through. Bones to crunch in her jaws, secrets to devour. But mountains groaned, tilting and shifting to her deep passage. Seas churned. Forests shook. The Worm of Autumn was coming. ‘Bless the falling leaves, bless the grey skies, bless this bitter wind and the beasts that sleep.’ Yes, Holy Mother, I remember the prayers, the Restiturge of Pall. ‘And the weary blood shall feed the soil, their fleshly bodies cast down into your belly. And the Dark Winds of Autumn shall rush in hunger, snatching up their loosed souls. Caverns shall moan with their voices. The dead have turned their backs on the solid earth, the stone and the touch of the sky. Bless their onward journey, from which none return. The souls are nothing of value. Only the flesh feeds the living. Only the flesh. Bless our eyes, D’rek, for they are open. Bless our eyes, D’rek, for they see.’

He rolled on to his side. Poison comes to the flesh long before the soul ever leaves it. She was the cruel measurer of time. She was the face of inevitable decay. Was he not blessing her with every day of this life he’d made?

Banaschar coughed, slowly sat up. Invisible knuckles kneaded the inside of his skull. He knew they were in there, someone’s fist trapped inside, someone wanting out. Out of my head, aye. Who can blame them?

He looked round blearily. The scene was too civilized, he concluded. Somewhat sloppy, true, sly mutters of dissolution, a certain carelessness. But not a hint of madness. Not a single whisper of horror. Normal orderliness mocked him. The tasteless air, the pallid misery of dawn soaking through the tent walls, etching the silhouettes of insects: every detail howled its mundane truth.

But so many died. Only five days ago. Six. Six, now. I can still hear them. Pain, fury, all those fierce utterances of despair. If I step outside this morning, I should see them still. Those marines. Those heavies. Swarming against the face of the enemy’s advance, but these hornets were fighting a losing battle – they’d met something nastier than them, and one by one they were crushed down, smeared into the earth.

And the Khundryl. Gods below, the poor Burned Tears.

Too civilized, this scene – the heaps of clothing, the dusty jugs lying abandoned and empty on the ground, the tramped-down grasses struggling in the absence of the sun’s clear streams. Would light’s life ever return, or were these grasses doomed now to wither and die? Each blade knew not. For now, there was nothing to do but suffer.

‘Be easy,’ he muttered, ‘we move on. You will recover your free ways. You will feel the wind’s breath again. I promise.’ Ah, Holy Mother, are these your words of comfort? Light returns. Be patient, its sweet kiss draws ever nearer. A new day. Be still, frail one.

Banaschar snorted, and set about seeking out a jug with something left in it.

Five Khundryl warriors stood before Dead Hedge. They looked lost, and yet determined, if such a thing was possible, and the Bridgeburner wasn’t sure it was. They had difficulty meeting his eyes, yet held their ground. ‘What in Hood’s name am I supposed to do with you?’

He glanced back over a shoulder. His two new sergeants were coming up behind him, other soldiers gathering behind them. Both women looked like bags overstuffed with bad memories. Their faces were sickly grey, as if they’d forgotten all of life’s pleasures, as if they’d seen the other side. But lasses, it’s not so bad, it’s just the getting there that stinks.

‘Commander?’ Sweetlard enquired, nodding to the Khundryl.

‘They’re volunteering to join up,’ said Hedge, scowling. ‘Cashiered outa the Burned Tears, or something like that.’ He faced the five men again. ‘I’d wager Gall will call this treason and come for your heads.’

The eldest of the warriors, his face almost black with tear tattoos, seemed to hunch lower beneath his broad, sloping shoulders. ‘Gall Inshikalan’s soul is dead. All his children died in the charge. He sees only the past. The Khundryl Burned Tears are no more.’ He gestured at his companions. ‘Yet we would fight on.’

‘Why not the Bonehunters?’ Hedge asked.

‘Fist Kindly refused us.’

Another warrior growled and said, ‘He called us savages. And cowards.’

‘Cowards?’ Hedge’s scowl deepened. ‘You were in that charge?’

‘We were.’

‘And you would fight on? What’s cowardly about that?’

The eldest one said, ‘He sought to shame us back to our people – but we are destroyed. We kneel in Coltaine’s shadow, broken by failure.’

‘You’re saying all the others will just … fade away?’

The man shrugged.

Alchemist Bavedict spoke behind Hedge. ‘Commander, we took us a few losses. These warriors are veterans. And survivors.’

Hedge looked round again, studied the Letherii. ‘Aren’t we all,’ he said.

Bavedict nodded.

Sighing, Hedge faced the warriors once more. He nodded at the spokesman. ‘Your name?’

‘Berrach. These are my sons. Sleg, Gent, Pahvral and Rayez.’

Your sons. No wonder you didn’t feel welcome in Gall’s camp. ‘You’re now our outriders, scouts and, when needed, cavalry.’

‘Bridgeburners?’

Hedge nodded. ‘Bridgeburners.’

‘We’re not cowards,’ hissed the youngest, presumably Rayez, his expression suddenly fierce.

‘If you were,’ said Hedge, ‘I’d have sent you packing. Berrach, you’re now a Captain of our Mounted – have you spare horses?’

‘Not any more, Commander.’

‘Never mind, then. My sergeants here will see you billeted. Dismissed.’

In response the five warriors drew their sabres and fashioned a kind of salute Hedge had never seen before, blade edges set diagonally across each man’s exposed throat.

Bavedict grunted behind him.

And if I now said ‘Cut’ they’d do just that, wouldn’t they? Gods below. ‘Enough of that, soldiers,’ he said. ‘We don’t worship Coltaine in the Bridgeburners. He was just another Malazan commander. A good one, to be sure, and right now he’s standing in Dassem Ultor’s shadow. And they got plenty of company. And maybe one day soon Gall will be there, too.’

Berrach was frowning. ‘Do we not honour their memories, sir?’

Hedge bared his teeth in anything but a smile. ‘Honour whoever you want in your spare time, Captain, only you ain’t got any spare time any more, because you’re now a Bridgeburner, and us Bridgeburners honour only one thing.’

‘And that is, sir?’

‘Killing the enemy, Captain.’

Something awoke in the faces of the warriors. As one they sheathed their weapons. Berrach seemed to be struggling to speak, and finally managed to ask, ‘Commander Hedge, how do the Bridgeburners salute?’

‘We don’t. And as for anyone outside our company, it’s this.’

Eyes widened at Hedge’s obscene gesture, and then Berrach grinned.

When Hedge turned to wave his sergeants forward, he saw that they weren’t quite the bloated grey bags he’d seen only moments earlier. Dread had been stripped from their faces, and now their exhaustion was plain to see – but it had softened somehow. Sweetlard and Rumjugs looked almost beautiful again.

Bridgeburners get pounded all the time. We just get back up. No bluster, just back up, aye. ‘Alchemist,’ he said to Bavedict, ‘show me that new invention of yours.’

‘Finally,’ the Letherii replied. ‘Funny, isn’t it?’

‘What is?’

‘Oh, how a handful of Khundryl warriors started you all up.’

‘The sergeants were in shock—’

‘Commander, you looked even worse than they did.’

Oh, Hood take me, I doubt I can argue that. ‘So tell me, what’s the new cusser do?’

‘Well now, sir, you were telling me about the Drum—’

‘I what? When?’

‘You were drunk. Anyway, it got me to thinking …’

The two newcomers walked into the squads’ encampment, and faces lifted, eyes went flat. No one wanted any damned interruptions to all this private misery. Not now. Badan Gruk hesitated, and then pushed himself to his feet. ‘Eighteenth, isn’t it?’

The sergeant, a Genabackan, was eyeing the other soldiers. ‘Which one is what’s left of the Tenth?’

Badan Gruk felt himself go cold. He could feel the sudden, sharp attention of the others in the camp. He understood that regard. He wasn’t a hard man and they all knew it – so, would he back down now? If I had anything left, I would. ‘I don’t know where in the trenches you were, but we met that first charge. It’s a damned miracle any one of us is still alive. There’s two marines left from the Tenth, and I guess that’s why you’re here, since you, Sergeant, and your corporal, are obviously the only survivors from your squad. You lost all your soldiers.’

At that comment Badan paused, gauging the effect of his words. He saw none. What does that tell us? Nothing good. He half turned and gestured. ‘There, those ones, they’re from Primly’s squad. But Sergeant Primly is dead. So is Hunt and so are Neller and Mulvan Dreader, and Corporal Kisswhere’s gone … missing. You’re left with Skulldeath and Drawfirst.’

Trailed by his corporal, the sergeant walked over. ‘On your feet, marines,’ he said. ‘I’m Sergeant Gaunt-Eye, and this is Corporal Rib. The Tenth is no more. You’re now in the Eighteenth.’

‘What?’ demanded Drawfirst. ‘A squad of four?’

The corporal replied. ‘We’re picking up two more from the Seventh, and another two from Ninth Company’s Fifth.’

Ruffle limped up beside Badan Gruk. ‘Sergeant, Sinter’s back.’

Badan sighed and turned away. ‘Fine. She can handle this, then.’ He’d had his moment of spine. Nobody would have to look his way any more, expecting … expecting what? Hood knows. They’re just collecting up scraps now. Enough to make a rag. He returned to the remnants of the fire, sat with his back to the others.

I’ve seen enough. Not even marines do this for a living. You can’t die for a living. So, sew together new squads all you like. But really, just how many marines are left? Fifty? Sixty? No, better to let us soak into the regulars, sour as old blood. Hood knows, I’m sick of these faces here, sick of not seeing the ones missing, the ones I’ll never see again. Shoaly. Strap Mull. Skim, Hunt, all of them.

Sinter was speaking to Gaunt-Eye, but the tones were low, level, and a few moments later she came over and squatted down at his side. ‘Rider in from the Burned Tears. Kisswhere’s still mending. That broken leg was a bad one.’

‘They took them away?’

‘Who?’

‘That sergeant.’

‘Aye, though it’s not so much “away” as “just over there”, Badan. Not enough of us to sprawl.’

Badan found a stick and stirred at the ashes. ‘What is she going to do, Sinter?’

‘Kisswhere?’

‘The Adjunct.’

‘How should I know? I’ve not talked to her. No one has, as far as I can tell – at least, the Fists look to be in charge at the moment.’

Badan dropped the stick and then rubbed at his face. ‘We got to go back,’ he said.

‘That won’t happen,’ Sinter replied.

He shot her a glare. ‘We can’t just pick up and go on.’

‘Keep it down, Badan. We pulled out more soldiers than we should have. We’re not as mauled as we could have been. Ruthan Gudd, Quick Ben, and then what happened at the vanguard. Those things checked them. Not to mention Fid getting us dug in – without those trenches, the heavies would never have—’

‘Died?’

‘Held. Long enough for the Letherii to bleed off pressure. Long enough for the rest of us to disengage—’

‘Disengage, aye, that’s a good one.’

She leaned closer. ‘Listen to me,’ she hissed. ‘We didn’t die. Not one of us still here—’

‘Can’t be more obvious, what you just said.’

‘No, you’re not getting it. We got overrun, Badan, but we clawed through even that. Aye, maybe it was the Lady pulling in a frenzy, maybe it was all the others stepping into the paths of the blades coming down on us. Maybe it was how rattled they were by then – from what I heard Lostara Yil was almost invisible inside a cloud of blood, and none of it her own. They had to check at that. A pause. Hesitation. Whatever, the plain truth is, when we started pulling back—’

‘They left us to it.’

‘Point is, could have been a lot worse, Badan. Look at the Khundryl. Six thousand went in, less than a thousand rode back out. I heard some survivors have been wandering into camp. Joining up with Dead Hedge’s Bridgeburners. They say Warleader Gall is broken. So, you see what happens when the commander breaks? The rest just crumble.’

‘Maybe now it’s our turn.’

‘I doubt it. She was injured, remember, and Denul don’t work on her. She needs to find her own way of healing. But you’re still missing my point. Don’t break to pieces, Badan. Don’t crawl inside yourself. Your squad lost Skim, but nobody else.’

‘Nep Furrow’s sick.’

‘He’s always sick, Badan. At least, ever since we set foot on the Wastelands.’

‘Reliko wakes up screaming.’

‘He ain’t alone in that. He and Vastly stood with the other heavies, right? So.’

Badan Gruk studied the dead fire, and then he sighed. ‘All right, Sinter. What do you want me to do? How do I fix all this?’

‘Fix this? You idiot, stop even trying. It ain’t up to us. We keep our eye on our officers, we wait for their lead.’

‘I ain’t seen Captain Sort.’

‘That’s because she’s just been made a Fist – where you been? Never mind. We’re waiting for Fid, that’s the truth of it. Same time as the parley, he’s calling all of us together, the last of the marines and heavies.’

‘He’s still just a sergeant.’

‘Wrong. Captain now.’

Despite himself, Badan Gruk smiled. ‘Bet he’s thrilled.’

‘Been dancing all morning, aye.’

‘So we all gather.’ He looked over, met her eyes. ‘And we listen to what he has to say. And then …’

‘Then … well, we’ll see.’

Badan squinted at her, his anxiety returning in a chill rush. Not the answer I expected. ‘Sinter, should we go and get Kisswhere?’

‘Oh, she’d like that. No, let the cow stew a while.’

‘It was us being so short,’ Ruffle said.

‘Ey whev?’

‘You heard me, Nep. Those Short-Tails were too tall. Swinging down as low as they had to was hard – their armour wouldn’t give enough at the waist. And did you see us? We learned fast. We waged war on their shins. Stabbed up into their crotches. Hamstrung ’em. Skewered their damned feet. We were an army of roach dogs, Nep.’

‘I een no eruch dhug, Errufel. E’en a vulf, izme. Nep Vulf!’

Reliko spoke up. ‘Think you got a point there, Ruffle. We started fighting damned low, didn’t we? Right at their feet, in close, doing our work.’ His ebon-skinned face worked into something like a grin.

‘Just what I said,’ Ruffle nodded, lighting another rustleaf stick to conclude a breakfast of five others. Her hands trembled. She’d taken a slash to her right leg. The roughly sewn wound ached. And so did everything else.

Sinter settled down beside Honey. In a low voice she said, ‘They had to take the arm.’

Honey’s face tightened. ‘Weapon arm.’

Others were leaning in to listen. Sinter frowned. ‘Aye. Corporal Rim’s going to be clumsy for a while.’

‘So, Sergeant,’ said Lookback, ‘are we gonna be folded into another squad, too? Or maybe swallow up some other one with only a couple of marines left?’

Sinter shrugged. ‘Still being worked out.’

Honey said, ‘Didn’t like what happened to the Tenth, Sergeant. One moment there, the next just gone. Like a puff of smoke. That’s not right.’

‘Gaunt-Eye’s a bit of a bastard,’ Sinter said. ‘No tact.’

‘Let all his soldiers die, too,’ pointed out Lookback.

‘Enough of that. You can’t think of it that way, not this time. Heads went up, heads got blown off, and then they were on top of us. It was every soldier for herself and himself.’

‘Not for Fid,’ said Honey. ‘Or Corporal Tarr. Or Corabb or Urb or even Hellian. They rallied marines, Sergeant. They kept their heads and so people lived.’

Sinter looked away. ‘Too much talking going on around here, I think. You’re all picking scabs and it’s getting ugly.’ She stood. ‘Need another word with Fid.’

Sergeant Urb walked over to Saltlick. ‘On your feet, squad.’

The man looked up, grunted his way upright.

‘Collect your kit.’

‘Aye, Sergeant. Where we headed to?’

Without replying, Urb set off, the heavy dropping in two steps behind him. Urb wasn’t looking forward to this. He knew the faces of most of this army’s marines. In such matters, his memory was good. Faces. Easy. The people hiding behind them, not easy. Names, not a chance. Now, of course, there weren’t many faces left.

The marine and heavy infantry encampment was a mess. Disorganized, careless. Squads set up leaving gaps where other squads used to be. Tents hung slack from slipshod pegging. Weapon belts, battered shields and scarred armour were left lying around on the ground, amidst rodara bones and the boiled vertebrae of myrid. Shallow holes reeked where soldiers had thrown up – people complained of some stomach bug, but more likely it was just nerves, the terrible aftermath of battle. The acid of surviving that just kept on burning its way up the throat.

And around them all, the morning stretched out in its measured madness, senseless as ever. Lightening sky, the spin and whirl of insects, the muted baying of animals being driven to slaughter. One thing was missing, however. No one was saying much of anything. Soldiers sat, heads down, or glancing up every now and then, eyes empty and far away.

All under siege. By the gaps round the circle, by the heaps of tents left folded and bound with their clutter of poles and bag of stakes. The dead didn’t have anything to say, either, but everyone still sat, listening for them.

Urb drew up at the foot of one such broken circle of seated soldiers. They’d set a pot on embers and the smell wafting from the brew was heady, alcoholic. Urb studied them. Two women, two men. ‘Twenty-second squad?’

The elder of the two women nodded without looking up. Urb remembered seeing her. A lively face, he recalled. Sharp tongue. Malaz City, maybe, or Jakatan. Islander for sure. ‘Stand up, all of you.’

He saw resentment in the faces lifting to him. The other woman, young, dark-skinned and black-haired, had eyes of startling blue, which now flashed in outrage. ‘Fine, Sergeant,’ she said in an accent he’d never heard before, ‘you’ve just filled out your squad.’ Seeing Saltlick standing behind Urb, her expression changed. ‘Heavy.’ She nodded respectfully.

The other woman shot her companions a hard look. ‘This is the Thirteenth you’re looking at, boys and girls. This squad, and Hellian’s, they drank lizard blood that day. So, all of you, stand the fuck up and do it now.’ She led the way. ‘Sergeant Urb, I’m Clasp. You come to collect us, good. We need collecting.’

The others had clambered to their feet, but the younger woman was still scowling. ‘We lost us a good sergeant—’

‘Who didn’t listen when they said duck,’ Clasp retorted.

‘Always had his nose in something,’ said one of the men, a Kartoolian sporting an oiled beard.

‘Curiosity,’ observed the other man, a short, broad Falari with long hair the colour of blood-streaked gold. The tip of his nose had been sliced off, stubbing his face.

‘You all done with the elegy?’ Urb asked. ‘Good. This is Saltlick. Now, faces I know, so I know all of yours. Give me some names.’

The Kartoolian said, ‘Burnt Rope, Sergeant. Sapper.’

‘Lap Twirl,’ said the Falari. ‘Cutter.’

‘Healing?’

‘Don’t count on it, not on this ground.’

‘Sad,’ said the younger woman. ‘Squad mage. About as useless as Lap right now.’

‘Still have your crossbows?’ Urb asked.

No one spoke.

‘First task, then, off to the armoury. Then back here, and clean up this sty. The Twenty-second is retired. Welcome to the Thirteenth. Saltlick, keep them company. Clasp, you’re now corporal. Congratulations.’

When they’d all trooped off, Urb stood alone, motionless, and for a long time, unnoticed by anyone, he stared at nothing.

Someone nudged her shoulder. She moaned and rolled on to her side. A second nudge, harder this time. ‘G’way. Still dark.’

‘Still dark, Sergeant, because you blindfolded yourself.’

‘I did? Well, why didn’t you do the same, then we’d all be sleeping still. Go away.’

‘It’s morning, Sergeant. Captain Fiddler wants—’

‘He always wants. Soon as they turn inta officers, it’s do this do that alla time. Someone gimme a jug.’

‘All gone, Sergeant.’

She reached up, felt at the rough cloth covering her eyes, pulled one edge down, just enough to uncover one eye. ‘That can’t be right. Go find some more.’

‘We will,’ Brethless promised. ‘Soon as you get up. Someone’s been through the squads, doing counts. We don’t like it. Makes us nervous.’

‘Why?’ The lone eye blinked. ‘I got me eight marines—’

‘Four, Sergeant.’

‘Fifty per cent losses ain’t too bad, for a party.’

‘A party, Sergeant?’

She sat up. ‘I had eight last night.’

‘Four.’

‘Right, four twice over.’

‘There wasn’t no party, Sergeant.’

Hellian tugged to expose her other eye. ‘There wasn’t, huh? Thas what you get for wand’ring off, then, Corporal. Missed the good times.’

‘Aye, I suppose I did. We’re melting a lump of chocolate in a pot – thought you might like some.’

‘That stuff? I remember now. Balklo chocolate. All right, get outa my tent so I can get decent.’

‘You’re not in your tent, Sergeant, you’re in our latrine ditch.’

She looked round. ‘That explains the smell.’

‘None of us used it yet, Sergeant, seeing as how you were here.’

‘Oh.’

His stomach convulsed again, but there was nothing left to spit up, so he rode it out, waited, gasping, and then slowly settled back on his haunches. ‘Poliel’s prissy nipples! If I can’t keep nothing down I’ll waste away!’

‘You already have, Widder,’ observed Throatslitter from a few paces upwind, his voice a cracking rasp. The old scars on his neck were inflamed; he’d taken a shot to his chest, hard enough to dent his sternum with matted rows from the mail’s iron links, and something from that trauma had messed up his throat.

They were away from the camp, twenty paces beyond the eastern picket. Widdershins, Throatslitter, Deadsmell and Sergeant Balm. The survivors of the 9th Squad. The regulars crouched in their holes had watched them pass with red-shot eyes, saying nothing. Was that belligerence? Pity? The squad mage didn’t know and at the moment was past caring. Wiping his mouth with the back of one forearm, he looked past Throatslitter to Balm. ‘You called us up here, Sergeant. What now?’

Balm drew off his helm, scratched vigorously at his scalp. ‘Just thought I’d tell you, we ain’t breaking the squad up and we ain’t picking up any new bodies. It’s just us, now.’

Widdershins grunted. ‘We took a walk for that?’

‘Don’t be an idiot,’ said Deadsmell in a growl.

Balm faced his soldiers. ‘Talk, all of you. You first, Throatslitter.’

The tall man seemed to flinch. ‘What’s to say? We’re chewed to pieces. But Kindly hogtying Fid like that, well, bloody genius. We got ourselves a captain, now—’

‘There wasn’t anything wrong with Sort,’ Deadsmell interjected.

‘Not saying there was. Definite officer, that woman. But maybe that’s the point. Fid’s from the ground up a marine, through and through. He was a sapper. A sergeant. Now he’s captain of what’s left of us. I’m settled with that.’ He shrugged, facing Balm. ‘Nothing more to say, Sergeant.’

‘And when he says it’s time to go, you gonna bleat and whine about it?’

Throatslitter’s brows lifted. ‘Go? Go where?’

Balm squinted and then said, ‘Your turn, Deadsmell.’

‘Hood’s dead. Grey riders patrol the Gate. In my dreams I see faces, blurred, but still. Malazans. Bridgeburners. You can’t imagine how comforting that feels, you just can’t. They’re all there, and I think we got Dead Hedge to thank for that.’

‘How do you mean?’ Widdershins asked.

‘Just a feeling. As if, in coming back, he blazed a trail. Six days ago, well, I swear they were close enough to kiss.’

‘Because we all almost died,’ Throatslitter snapped.

‘No, they were like wasps, and what was sweet wasn’t us dying, wasn’t the lizards neither. It was what happened at the vanguard. It was Lostara Yil.’ His eyes were bright as he looked to each soldier in turn. ‘I caught a glimpse, you know. I saw her dance. She did what Ruthan Gudd did, only she didn’t go down under blades. The lizards recoiled – they didn’t know what to do, they couldn’t get close, and those that did, gods, they were cut to pieces. I saw her, and my heart near burst.’

‘She saved the Adjunct’s life,’ said Throatslitter. ‘Was that such a good thing?’

‘Not for you to even ask,’ said Balm. ‘Fid’s calling us together. He’s got things to say. About that, I expect. The Adjunct. And what’s to come. We’re still marines. We’re the marines, and we got heavies in our ranks, the stubbornest bulls I ever seen.’

He turned then, since two regulars from the pickets were approaching. In their arms, two loaves of bread, a wrapped brick of cheese, and a Seven Cities clay bottle.

‘What’s this?’ Deadsmell wondered.

The two soldiers halted a few paces away, and the one on the right spoke. ‘Guard’s changed, Sergeant. Came out with some breakfast for us. We weren’t much hungry.’ They then set the items down on a bare patch of ground. Nodded, set off back for camp.

‘Hood’s pink belly,’ Deadsmell muttered.

‘Save all that,’ Balm said. ‘We’re not yet done here. Widdershins.’

‘Warrens are sick, Sergeant. Well, you seen what they’re doing to us mages. And there’s new ones, new warrens, I mean, but they ain’t nice at all. Still, I might have to delve into them, once I get tired of being completely useless.’

‘You’re the best among us with a crossbow, Widder, so you ain’t useless even without any magic.’

‘Maybe so, Throatslitter, but it doesn’t feel that way.’

‘Deadsmell,’ said Balm, ‘you’ve been doing some healing.’

‘I have, but Widder’s right. It’s not fun. The problem – for me, that is – is that I’m still somehow bound to Hood. Even though he’s, uh, dead. Don’t know why that should be, but the magic when it comes to me, well, it’s cold as ice.’

Widdershins frowned at Deadsmell. ‘Ice? That makes no sense.’

‘Hood was a damned Jaghut, so yes, it does. And no, it doesn’t, because he’s … well, gone.’

Throatslitter spat and said, ‘If he really died, like you say, did he walk into his realm? And didn’t he have to be dead in the first place, being the God of Death and all? What you’re saying makes no sense, Deadsmell.’

The necromancer looked unhappy. ‘I know.’

‘Next time you do some healing,’ said Widdershins, ‘let me do some sniffing.’

‘You’ll heave again.’

‘So what?’

‘What are you thinking, Widder?’ Balm asked.

‘I’m thinking Deadsmell’s not using Hood’s warren any more. I’m thinking it must be Omtose Phellack.’

‘It’s occurred to me,’ Deadsmell said in a mumble.

‘One way to test it for sure,’ Balm said.

Widdershins swore. ‘Aye. We don’t know the details, but the rumour is that she’s got some broken ribs, maybe even spitting up blood, and is still concussed. But with that Otataral in her, no one can do much about it.’

‘But Omtose Phellack is Elder.’ Deadsmell was nodding. ‘We should go, then. It’s worth a try.’

‘We will,’ said Balm, ‘but first we eat.’

‘And leave the Adjunct in pain?’

‘We eat and drink here,’ said Balm, eyes flat, ‘because we’re marines and we don’t kick dirt in the faces of fellow soldiers.’

‘Exactly,’ said Widdershins. ‘Besides,’ he added, ‘I’m starving.’

Shortnose had lost the four fingers of his shield hand. To stop the bleeding that had gone on even after the nubs had been sewn up, he had held them against a pot left squatting in a fire. Now the ends looked melted and there were blisters up to his knuckles. But the bleeding had stopped.

He had been about to profess his undying love for Flashwit, but then that sergeant from the 18th had come by and collected up both Flashwit and Mayfly, so Shortnose was alone, the last left in Gesler’s old squad.

He’d sat for a time, alone, using a thorn to pop blisters and then sucking them dry. When that was done he sat some more, watching the fire burn down. At the battle the severed finger of one of the lizards had fallen down the back of his neck, between armour and shirt. When he’d finally retrieved it, he and Mayfly and Flashwit had cooked and shared its scant ribbons of meat. Then they’d separated out and distributed the bones, tying them into their hair. It was what Bonehunters did.

They’d insisted he get the longest one, on account of getting his hand chopped up, and it now hung beneath his beard, overwhelming the other finger bones, which had all come from Letherii soldiers. It was heavy and long enough to thump against his chest when he walked, which is what he decided to do once he realized that he was lonely.

Kit packed, slung over one shoulder, he set out. Thirty-two paces took him into Fiddler’s old squad’s camp, where he found a place to set up his tent, left his satchel in that spot, and then walked over to sit down with the other soldiers.

The pretty little woman seated on his right handed him a tin cup filled with steaming something. When he smiled his thanks she didn’t smile back, which was when he recalled that her name was Smiles.

This, he decided, was better than being lonely.

‘Got competition, Corabb.’

‘Don’t see that,’ the Seven Cities warrior replied.

‘Shortnose wants to be our new fist,’ Cuttle explained.

‘Making what, four fists in this squad? Me, Corporal Tarr, Koryk and now Shortnose.’

‘I was a corporal not a fist,’ said Tarr. ‘Besides, I don’t punch, I just take ’em.’

Cuttle snorted. ‘Hardly. You went forward, no different from any fist I ever seen.’

‘I went forward to stand still, sapper.’

‘Well, that’s a good point,’ Cuttle conceded. ‘I stand corrected, then.’

‘I just realized something,’ said Smiles. ‘We got no sergeant any more. Unless it’s you, Tarr. And if that’s the case, then we need a new corporal, and since I’m the only one left with any brains, it’s got to be me.’

Tarr scratched at his greying beard. ‘Was thinking Corabb, actually.’

‘He needs his own private weapons wagon!’

‘I kept my Letherii sword,’ Corabb retorted. ‘I didn’t lose anything this time.’

‘Let’s vote on it.’

‘Let’s not, Smiles,’ said Tarr. ‘Corabb Bhilan Thenu’alas, you’re now the Fourth Squad’s corporal. Congratulations.’

‘He’s barely stopped being a recruit!’ Smiles scowled at everyone.

‘Cream will rise,’ said Cuttle.

Koryk bared his teeth at Smiles. ‘Live with it, soldier.’

‘I’m corporal now,’ said Corabb. ‘Did you hear that, Shortnose? I’m corporal now.’

The heavy looked up from his cup. ‘Hear what?’

Losing Bottle had hurt them. Cuttle could see that in their faces. The squad’s first loss, at least as far as he could recall. First from the originals, anyway. But the loss of only one soldier was pretty damned good. Most squads had fared a lot worse. Some squads had ceased to exist. Some? More like most of ’em.

He settled back against a spare tent’s bulky folds, watched the others covertly. Listened to their complaints. Koryk was a shaken man. Whatever spine of freedom there’d once been inside him, holding him up straight, had broken. Now he wore chains inside, and they messed with his brain, and maybe that was now permanent. He drank from a well of fear, and he kept on going back to it.

That scrap back there had been horrible, but Koryk had been stumbling even before then. Cuttle wondered what was left of the warrior he’d once known. Tribals had a way of kneeling to the worst vicissitudes of civilization, and no matter how clever the cleverest ones might be, they often proved blind to what was killing them.

Maybe no different from regular people, but, to Cuttle’s mind, somehow more tragic.

Even Smiles was slowly prising herself loose from Koryk.

She hadn’t changed, Cuttle decided. Not one whit. As psychotic and murderous as ever, was Smiles. Her knife work had been vicious, down there beneath the swing of the lizards’ weapons. She’d toppled giants that day. For all that, she’d make a terrible corporal.

Tarr had been Tarr. The same as he always was and always would be. He’d be a solid sergeant. Perhaps a tad unimaginative, but this squad was past the need for anything that might shake it up. And we’ll follow him sharp enough. The man’s a bristling wall, and when that helm of his settles low over his brow, not a herd of charging bhederin could budge him. Aye, Tarr, you’ll do just fine.

Corabb. Corporal Corabb. Perfect.

And now Shortnose. Sitting like a tree stump, flattened blisters weeping down his hand. Drinking that rotgut Smiles had brewed up, a half-smile on his battered face. You ain’t fooling me, Shortnose. Been in the army way too long. You love the thick-skull stuff, you heavies all do. But I see the flick of those tiny eyes under those lids.

‘Hear what?’ Nice one, but I saw the spark you tried to hide. Happy to be here, are you? Good. Happy to have you.

As for me, what have I learned? Nothing new. We got through it but we got plenty more to get through. Ask me then. Ask me then.

He glanced over to see Fiddler arriving. Only the neck of his fiddle left, hanging down his back, kinked strings sprung like errant hairs. Most of the red gone from his beard. His short sword’s scabbard was empty – he’d left the weapon jutting from a lizard’s eye socket. The look in his blue eyes was cool, almost cold.

‘Sergeant Tarr, half a bell, and then lead them to the place.’

‘Aye, Captain.’

‘We got riders coming up from the south. Perish, a few Khundryl, and someone else. A whole lot of someone else.’

Cuttle frowned. ‘Who?’

Fiddler shrugged. ‘Parley. We’ll find out soon enough.’

‘Told you you’d live.’

Henar Vygulf smiled up at her from where he lay on the cot. But it was an uncertain smile. ‘I did what you asked, Lostara. I watched.’

Her gaze faltered.

‘Who are you?’ he asked.

‘Don’t ask me that. I see that question in every face. They all look at me. They say nothing.’ She hesitated, staring down at her hands. ‘It was the Shadow Dance. It was every Shadow Dance.’ She met his eyes suddenly. ‘It wasn’t me. I just slipped back, inside, and just like you, I watched.’

‘If not you, then who?’

‘The Rope. Cotillion, the Patron God of Assassins.’ She grimaced. ‘He took over. He’s done things like that before, I think.’

Henar’s eyes widened. ‘A god.’

‘A furious god. I – I have never felt such rage. It burned right through me. It scoured me clean.’ She unhooked her belt, tugged loose her scabbarded knife. She set it down on the blankets covering his wounded chest. ‘For you, my love. But be careful, it’s very, very sharp.’

‘The haunt is gone from your face, Lostara,’ said Henar. ‘You were beautiful before, but now …’

‘An unintended gift, to be sure,’ she said with some diffidence. ‘Gods are not known for mercy. Or compassion. But no mortal could stand in that blaze, and not come through either burned to ashes, or reborn.’

‘Reborn, yes. A good description indeed. My boldness,’ he added with a rueful grimace, ‘retreats before you now.’

‘Don’t let it,’ she snapped. ‘I don’t take mice to my bed, Henar Vygulf.’

‘I shall try, then, to find the man I was.’

‘I will help, but not yet – the healers are far from finished with you.’ She rose. ‘I must leave you now. The Adjunct.’

‘I think Brys has forgotten me. Or assumed me dead.’

‘Don’t think I’ll be reminding him,’ she said. ‘You ride at my side from now on.’

‘Brys—’

‘Hardly. A word in private with Aranict will do the trick, I think.’

‘The king’s brother is collared?’

‘Next time you two meet, you can compare shackles.’

‘Thought you disliked mice, Lostara Yil.’

‘Oh, I expect you to struggle and strain at your chains, Henar. It’s the ones we can’t tame that we keep under lock and key.’

‘I see.’

She turned to leave the hospital tent, saw the rows of faces turned to her, even among the cutters. ‘Hood’s breath,’ she muttered.

Pleasantly drunk, Banaschar made his way towards the command tent. He saw Fist Blistig standing outside the entrance, like a condemned man at the torturer’s door. Oh, you poor man. The wrong dead hero back there. You had your chance, I suppose. You could have been as brainless as Keneb. You could have stayed in his shadow right to the end, in fact, since you’d clearly been finding it such safe shelter for the past few months.

But the sun finds no obstruction in painting you bright now, and how does it feel? The man looked ill. But you don’t drink, do you? That’s not last night’s poison in your face, more’s the pity. Sick with fear, then, and Banaschar dredged up some real sympathy for the man. A stir or two, clouding the waters, dulling the sharp edges of righteous satisfaction.

‘Such a fine morning, Fist,’ he said upon arriving.

‘You’ll be in trouble soon, High Priest.’

‘How so?’

‘When the wine runs out.’

Banaschar smiled. ‘The temple’s cellars remain well stocked, I assure you.’

Blistig’s eyes lit with something avid. ‘You can just go there? Any time you want?’

‘In a manner of speaking.’

‘So why do you remain? Why don’t you flee this madness?’

Because Holy Mother wants me here. I am her last priest. She has something in mind for me, yes she does. ‘I am dreadfully sorry to tell you this, Fist, but that door is a private one, an exclusive one.’

Blistig’s face darkened. There were two guards outside the command tent, only a few paces away, well within earshot. ‘I was suggesting you leave us, High Priest. You’re a useless drunk, a bad influence on this army. Why the Adjunct insists on your infernal presence at these gatherings baffles me.’

‘I am sure it does, Fist. But I can’t imagine being such a dark temptation to your soldiers. I don’t share my private stock, after all. Indeed, I suspect seeing me turns a soul away from the miseries of alcohol.’

‘You mean you disgust them?’

‘Precisely so, Fist.’ But we really shouldn’t be having this conversation, should we? Because we could swap positions and apart from the drink, not a word need be changed. The real difference is, I lose nothing by their disgust, whereas you … ‘Do we await the Letherii contingent, Fist?’

‘Simple courtesy, High Priest.’

You liked that idea, did you? Enough to latch on to it. Fine. ‘Then I will keep you company for a time, at least until their approach.’

‘Don’t leave it too long,’ Blistig said. ‘You’d give a bad impression.’

‘No doubt, and I shall not overstay the moment.’

‘In fact,’ resumed Blistig, ‘I see the other Fists on their way. If you want your choice of seat in the tent, High Priest, best go in now.’

Well now, I can happily latch on to that. ‘Tactical, Fist. I shall heed your advice.’ Bowing, he turned and strode between the two guards. Catching the eye of one, he winked.

And received nothing in return.

Lostara Yil turned at the shout to see four marines approaching her. A Dal Honese sergeant, what was his name? Balm. Three soldiers trailed him, presumably what was left of his squad. ‘You want something, Sergeant? Be quick, I’m on my way to the command tent.’

‘So are we,’ Balm said. ‘Got a healer here who maybe could do something for her.’

‘Sergeant, it doesn’t work that way—’

‘It might,’ said the tall soldier with the scarred neck, his voice thin, the sound of stone whetting iron.

‘Explain.’

Another soldier said, ‘We’re thinking he’s using an Elder Warren, Captain.’

‘A what? How in Hood’s name can that be?’

The healer seemed to choke on something, and then he stepped forward. ‘It’s worth my trying, sir. I think Widdershins is right this time, for a change.’

Lostara considered for a moment, before nodding. ‘Follow me.’

Marines weren’t in the habit of wasting people’s time, and asking to step into the presence of the Adjunct was, for most of them, far from a feverish ambition. So they think they’ve worked something out. It’d be worth seeing if they’re right. Her headaches are getting worse – you can see it.

The command tent came into view, and she saw the Fists gathered at the entrance. They noted her approach and whatever desultory conversation had been going on a moment earlier fell away. Fine then, even you. Go ahead. ‘Fists,’ she said, ‘if you would be so good as to clear a path. These marines have an appointment with the Adjunct.’

‘First I’ve heard of it,’ said Kindly.

‘Well, as I recall,’ said Lostara, ‘the remaining heavies and marines are now under the command of Captain Fiddler, and he answers only to the Adjunct.’

‘I mean to address that with the Adjunct,’ said Kindly.

There’s no point. ‘That will have to wait until after the parley, Fist.’ Gesturing, she led the marines between the company commanders. And will you all stop staring? Their attention tightened the muscles of her neck as she walked past, and it was a relief to duck into the tent’s shadowed entranceway.

Most of the interior canvas walls had been removed, making the space seem vast. Only at the far end was some privacy maintained for the Adjunct’s sleeping area, with a series of weighted curtains stretching from one side to the other. The only occupant Lostara could see was Banaschar, sitting on a long bench with his back to the outer wall, arms crossed and seemingly dozing. There was a long table and two more benches, and nothing else, not even a lantern. No, no lantern. The light stabs her like a knife.

As the squad drew up behind Lostara, one of the curtains was drawn back.

Adjunct Tavore stepped into view.

Even from a distance of close to ten paces Lostara could see the sheen of sweat on that pallid brow. Gods, if the army saw this, they’d melt like snow in the fire. Vanish on the wind.

‘What are these marines doing here, Captain?’ The words were weak, the tone wandering. ‘We await formal guests.’

‘This squad’s healer thinks he can do something for you, Adjunct.’

‘Then he is a fool.’

The soldier in question stepped forward. ‘Adjunct. I am Corporal Deadsmell, Ninth Squad. My warren was Hood’s.’

Her bleached eyes fluttered. ‘If I understand the situation, Corporal, then you have my sympathy.’

He seemed taken aback. ‘Well, thank you, Adjunct. The thing is …’ He held up his hands and Lostara gasped as a flood of icy air billowed out around the healer. Frost limned the peaked ceiling. Deadsmell’s breaths flowed in white streams.

The mage, Widdershins, said, ‘Omtose Phellack, Adjunct. Elder.’

Tavore was perfectly still, as if frozen in place. Her eyes narrowed on the healer. ‘You have found a Jaghut for a patron, Deadsmell?’

To that question the man seemed at a loss for an answer.

‘The God of Death is no more,’ Widdershins said, his teeth chattering as the temperature in the chamber plummeted. ‘But it may be that Hood himself ain’t quite as dead as we all thought he was.’

‘We thought that, did we?’ Tavore’s lips thinned as she regarded Deadsmell. ‘Healer, approach.’

One hand twisting tight to keep the man upright, Balm guided Deadsmell back outside. Throatslitter and Widdershins closed in from either side, the looks on their faces fierce, as if they were moments from drawing weapons should anyone come close.

The Fists backed away as one, and the sergeant scowled at them all. ‘Make room if you please, sirs. Oh, and she’ll see you now.’ Without waiting a reply, Balm tugged Deadsmell forward, the healer staggering – his clothes sodden as frost and ice melted in the morning heat. Twenty paces away, behind a sagging supply tent, the sergeant finally halted. ‘Sit down, Deadsmell. Gods below, tell me this’ll pass.’

The healer slumped to the ground. His head sank and the others waited for the man to be sick. Instead, they heard something like a sob. Balm stared at Throatslitter, and then at Widdershins, but by their expressions they were as baffled as he was. He crouched down, one hand resting lightly on Deadsmell’s back – he could feel the shudders pushing through.

The healer wept for some time.

No one spoke.

When the sobs began to subside, Balm leaned closer. ‘Corporal, what in Togg’s name is going on with you?’

‘I – I can’t explain, Sergeant.’

‘The healing worked,’ said Balm. ‘We all saw it.’

He nodded, still not lifting his head.

‘So … what?’

‘She let down her defences, just for a moment. Let me in, Sergeant. She had to, so I could heal the damage – and gods, was there damage! Stepping into view – that must have taken everything she had. Standing, talking …’ he shook his head. ‘I saw inside. I saw—’

He broke down all over again, shaking with vast, overwhelming sobs.

Balm remained crouched at his side. Widdershins and Throatslitter stood forming a kind of barrier facing outward. There was nothing to do but wait.

In the moments before the Fists trooped inside, Lostara Yil stood facing Tavore. She struggled to keep her voice steady, calm. ‘Welcome back, Adjunct.’

Tavore slowly drew a deep breath. ‘Your thoughts, High Priest?’

To one side, Banaschar lifted his head. ‘I’m too cold to think, Adjunct.’

‘Omtose Phellack. Have you felt the footfalls of the Jaghut, Banaschar?’

The ex-priest shrugged. ‘So Hood had a back door. Should we really be surprised? That devious shit of a god was never one for playing straight.’

‘Disingenuous, High Priest.’

His face twisted. ‘Think hard on where your gifts come from, Adjunct.’

‘At last,’ she retorted, ‘some sound advice from you, High Priest. Almost … sober.’

If he planned on a reply, he bit it off when Kindly, Sort and Blistig entered the chamber.

There was a stretch of silence, and then Faradan Sort snorted and said, ‘And here I always believed a chilly reception was just a—’

‘I am informed,’ cut in the Adjunct, ‘that our guests are on their way. Before they arrive, I wish each of you to report on the disposition of your soldiers. Succinctly, please.’

The Fists stared.

Lostara Yil glanced over at Banaschar, and saw something flickering in his eyes as he studied the Adjunct.

Their approach took them down the north avenue of the Malazan encampment, winding down the crooked track between abattoir tents, where the stench of butchered animals was rank in the fly-swarmed air. Atri-Ceda Aranict rode in silence beside Commander Brys, hunched against the bleating of myrid and lowing of rodara, the squeal of terrified pigs and the moaning of cattle. Creatures facing slaughter well understood their fate, and the sound of their voices crowding the air was a torment.

‘Ill chosen,’ muttered Brys, ‘this route. My apologies, Atri-Ceda.’

Two soldiers crossed their path, wearing heavy blood-drenched aprons. Their faces were flat, expressionless. Their hands dripped gore.

‘Armies bathe in blood,’ said Aranict. ‘That is the truth of it, isn’t it, Commander?’

‘I fear we all bathe in it,’ he replied. ‘Cities permit us to hide from that bleak truth, I think.’

‘What would it be like, I wonder, if we all ate only vegetables?’

‘We’d break all the land and the wild animals would have nowhere to live,’ Brys replied.

‘So we should see these domesticated beasts as sacrifices in the name of wildness.’

‘You could,’ he said, ‘if it helps.’

‘I’m not sure it does.’

‘Nor am I.’

‘I think I am too soft for all this,’ she concluded. ‘I have a sentimental streak. Maybe you can hide from the slaughter itself, but if you possess any imagination at all, well, there’s no real hiding, is there?’

They drew closer to a broad intersection, and opposite them a sizeable troop of riders was converging on the same place, coming up from the south track. ‘Well now,’ said Brys, ‘are those Bolkando royal standards?’

‘Seems the queen has taken her escort duties well beyond her kingdom’s borders.’

‘Yes, most curious. Shall we await them?’

‘Why not?’

They reined in at the intersection.

The queen’s entourage was oversized, yet as it drew closer Brys frowned. ‘Those are Evertine regulars, I think,’ he said. ‘Not an officer among them.’

In addition to these hardened soldiers, three Barghast warriors rode close to Abrastal, while off to the right rode two Khundryl women, one of them seven or eight months pregnant. On the left was a pair of armoured foreigners – the Perish? Aranict drew a sharp breath. ‘That must be Mortal Sword Krughava. She alone could command a palace tapestry.’

Brys grunted. ‘I know what you mean. I have seen a few hard women in my time, but that one … formidable indeed.’

‘I doubt I could even lift that sword at her belt.’

With a gesture Queen Abrastal halted the entire troop. She said something to one of her soldiers, and suddenly the veterans were all dismounting, lifting satchels from their saddle horns and setting out into the Malazan camp. Aranict watched the soldiers fanning out, apparently seeking squad camps. ‘What are they doing?’

Brys shook his head. ‘I’m not sure.’

‘They’ve brought … bottles.’

Brys Beddict grunted, and then tapped his horse’s flanks. Aranict followed suit.

‘Commander Brys Beddict,’ said Queen Abrastal, settling back in her saddle. ‘We finally meet. Tell me, does your brother know where you are?’

‘Highness, does your husband?’

Her teeth flashed. ‘I doubt it. But isn’t this better than our meeting in anger?’

‘Agreed, Highness.’

‘Now, barring this Gilk oaf at my side and of course you, it seems this will be a gathering of women. Do you quake in your boots, Prince?’

‘If I am, I am man enough to not admit it, Highness. Will you be so kind as to perform introductions?’

Abrastal removed her heavy gauntlets and gestured to her right. ‘From the Khundryl, Hanavat, wife to Warleader Gall, and with her Shelemasa, bodyguard and One of the Charge.’

Brys tilted his head to both women. ‘Hanavat. We were witness to the Charge.’ His gaze momentarily flicked to Shelemasa, then back to Hanavat. ‘Please, if you will, inform your husband that I was shamed by his courage and that of the Burned Tears. Seeing the Khundryl stung me to action. I would he understand that all that the Letherii were subsequently able to achieve in relieving the Bonehunters is set in humble gratitude at the Warleader’s feet.’

Hanavat’s broad, fleshy face remained expressionless. ‘Most generous words, Prince. My husband shall be told.’

The awkwardness of that reply hung in the dusty air for a moment, and then Queen Abrastal gestured to the Perish. ‘Mortal Sword Krughava and Shield Anvil Tanakalian, of the Grey Helms.’

Once again Brys tilted his head. ‘Mortal Sword. Shield Anvil.’

‘You stood in our place six days ago,’ said Krughava, her tone almost harsh. ‘This is now an open wound upon the souls of my brothers and sisters. We grieve at the sacrifice you suffered in our stead. This is not your war, after all, yet you stood firm. You fought with valour. Should the opportunity ever arise, sir, we shall in turn stand in your place. This the Perish Grey Helms avow.’

Brys Beddict seemed at a loss.

Aranict cleared her throat and said, ‘You have humbled the prince, Mortal Sword. Shall we now present ourselves to the Adjunct?’

Queen Abrastal collected up her reins and swung her mount on to the track leading to the camp’s centre. ‘Will you ride at my side, Prince?’

‘Thank you,’ Brys managed.

Aranict dropped her mount just behind the two, and found herself riding alongside the ‘Gilk oaf’.

He glanced across at her and his broad, scarified face was solemn. ‘That Mortal Sword,’ he muttered low, ‘she comes across with all the soft sweetness of a mouthful of quartz. Well done to your commander for recovering.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Don’t turn round, but if you did you would see tears on the face of Hanavat. I think I like your commander. I am Spax, Warchief of the Gilk Barghast.’

‘Atri-Ceda Aranict.’

‘That means High Mage Aranict, yes?’

‘I suppose it does. Warchief, those Evertine soldiers who have gone out among the Malazans – what are they doing?’

Spax reached up and made a clawing gesture beneath his eyes. ‘What are they doing, Atri-Ceda? Spirits below, they are being human.’