An exquisite match of dog to master, the Wickan cattle-dog is a vicious, unpredictable breed, compact yet powerful, though by far its most notable characteristic is its stubborn will.

Lives of the Conquered
Ilem Trauth

 

As Duiker strode between the large, spacious tents, a chorus of shouts erupted ahead. A moment later one of the Wickan dogs appeared, head low, a surging rush of muscle, heading straight for the historian.

Duiker fumbled for his sword, already knowing it was far too late. At the last instant the huge animal dodged lithely around him, and the historian saw that it held in its mouth a lapdog, its eyes dark pools of terror.

The cattle-dog ran on, slipping between two tents and disappearing from sight.

Ahead of the historian, a number of figures appeared, armed with large rocks and – bizarrely – Kanese parasols. One and all, they were dressed as if about to attend a royal function, although in their expressions Duiker saw raw fury.

'You there!' one yelled imperiously. 'Old man! Did you see a mad hound just now?'

'I saw a running cattle-dog, aye,' the historian quietly replied.

'With a rare Hengese roach dog in its mouth?'

A dog that eats cockroaches? 'Rare? I assumed it was raw.'

The nobles grew quiet as gazes focused on Duiker.

'A foolish time for humour, old man,' the spokesman growled. He was younger than the others, his honey-coloured skin and large eyes denoting his Quon Talian lineage. He was lean, with the physical assurance of a duellist – the identification confirmed by the basket-hiked rapier at his belt. Moreover, there was something in the man's eyes that suggested to Duiker that here was someone who enjoyed killing.

The man approached, his walk becoming a swagger. 'An apology, peasant – though I'll grant it won't save you from a beating, at least you'll stay breathing ...'

A horseman approached from behind at a canter.

Duiker saw the duellist's eyes dart over the historian's shoulder.

Corporal List reined in, ignoring the nobleman. 'My apologies, sir,' he said. 'I was delayed at the smithy. Where is your horse?'

'With the main herd,' Duiker replied. 'A day off for the poor beast – long overdue.'

For a young man of low rank, List managed an impressive expression of cold regard as he finally looked down at the nobleman. 'If we arrive late, sir,' he said to Duiker, 'Coltaine will demand an explanation.'

The historian addressed the nobleman. 'Are we done here?'

The man gave a curt nod. 'For now,' he said.

Escorted by the corporal, Duiker resumed his journey through the nobles' camp. When they had gone a dozen paces, List leaned over his saddle. 'Alar looked ready to call you out, Historian.'

'He's known, then? Alar.'

'Pullyk Alar—'

'How unfortunate for him.'

List grinned.

They came to a central clearing in the encampment and discovered a whipping underway. The short, wide man with the leather cat-tail in one heat-bloated hand was familiar. The victim was a servant. Three other servants stood off to one side, their eyes averted. A few other noble-born stood nearby, gathered around a weeping woman and voicing murmurs of consolation.

Lenestro's gold-brocaded cloak had lost some of its brilliant sheen, and in his red-faced frenzy as he swung the cat-tail he looked like a frothing ape performing the traditional King's Mirror farce at a village fair.

'I see the nobles are pleased by the return of their servant-folk,' List said dryly.

'I suspect this has more to do with a snatched lapdog,' the historian muttered. 'In any case, this stops now.'

The corporal glanced over. 'He'll simply resume it later, sir.'

Duiker said nothing.

'Who would steal a lapdog?' List wondered, staying alongside the historian as he approached Lenestro.

'Who wouldn't? We've water but we're still hungry. In any case, one of the Wickan cattle-dogs thought it up before the rest of us – to our collective embarrassment.'

'I blame preoccupation, sir.'

Lenestro noted their approach and paused his whipping, his breath loud as a bellows.

Ignoring the nobleman, Duiker went to the servant. The man was old, down on his elbows and knees, hands held protectively behind his head. Red welts rode his knuckles, his neck and down the length of his bony back. Beneath the ruin were the tracks of older scars. A jewel-studded leash with a broken collar lay in the dust beside him.

'Not your business, Historian,' Lenestro snapped.

'These servants stood a Tithansi charge at Sekala,' Duiker said. 'That defence helped to keep your head on your shoulders, Lenestro.'

'Coltaine stole property!' the nobleman squealed. 'The Council so judged him, the fine has been issued!'

'Issued,' List said, 'and duly pissed on.'

Lenestro wheeled on the corporal, raised his whip.

'A warning,' Duiker said, straightening. 'Striking a soldier of the Seventh – or, for that matter, his horse – will see you hung.'

Lenestro visibly struggled with his temper, his arm still raised, the whip quivering.

Others were gathering, their sympathy clearly united with Lenestro. Even so, the historian did not anticipate violence. The nobles might well possess unrealistic notions, but they were anything but suicidal.

Duiker spoke, 'Corporal, we'll take this man to the Seventh's healers.'

'Yes, sir,' List replied, briskly dismounting.

The servant had passed out. Together they carried him to the horse and laid him belly-down across the saddle.

'He shall be returned to me once healed,' Lenestro said.

'So you can do it all over again? Wrong, he'll not be returned to you.' And if you and your comrades are outraged, wait till an hour from now.

'All such acts contrary to Malazan law are being noted,' the nobleman said shrilly. 'There shall be recompense, with interest.'

Duiker had heard enough. He suddenly closed the distance to grasp Lenestro's cloak collar with both hands, and gave the man a teeth-rattling shake. The whip fell to the ground. The nobleman's eyes were wide with terror – reminding the historian of the lapdog's as it rode the hound's mouth.

'You probably think,' Duiker whispered, 'that I'm about to tell you about the situation we're all in. But it's already quite evident that there'd be little point. You are a small-brained thug, Lenestro. Push me again, and I'll have you eating pigshit and liking it.' He shook the pathetic creature again, then dropped him.

Lenestro collapsed.

Duiker frowned down at the man.

'He's fainted, sir,' List said.

'So he has.' Old man scared you, did he?

'Was that really necessary?' a voice asked plaintively. Nethpara emerged from the crowd. 'As if our ongoing petition is not crowded enough, now we have personal bullying to add to our grievances. Shame on you, Historian—'

'Excuse me, sir,' List said, 'but you might wish to know – before you resume berating the historian – that scholarship came late to this man. You will find his name among the Noted on the First Army's Column at Unta, and had you not just come late to this scene, you would have witnessed an old soldier's temper. Indeed, it was admirable restraint that the historian elected to use both hands to grip Lenestro's cloak, lest he use one to unsheathe that well-worn sword at his hip and drive it through the toad's heart.'

Nethpara blinked sweat from his eyes.

Duiker slowly swung to face List.

The corporal noted the dismay in the historian's face and answered it with a wink. 'We'd best move on, sir,' he said.

They left behind a gathering in the clearing that broke its silence only after they'd entered the opposite aisle.

List walked alongside the historian, leading his horse by the reins. 'It still astonishes me that they persist in the notion that we will survive this journey.'

Duiker glanced over in surprise. 'Are you lacking such faith, then, Corporal?'

'We'll never reach Aren, Historian. Yet the fools compile their petitions, their grievances – against the very people keeping them alive.'

'There's great need to maintain the illusion of order, List. In us all.'

The young man's expression turned wry. 'I missed your moment of sympathy back there, sir.'

'Obviously.'

They left the nobles' encampment and entered the mayhem of the wagons bearing wounded. Voices moaned a constant chorus of pain. A chill crept over Duiker. Even wheeled hospitals carried with them that pervasive atmosphere of fear, the sounds of defiance and the silence of surrender. Mortality's many comforting layers had been stripped away, revealing wracked bones, a sudden comprehension of death that throbbed like an exposed nerve.

Awareness and revelations thickened the prairie air in a manner priests could only dream of for their temples. To fear the gods is to fear death. In places where men and women are dying, the gods no longer stand in the spaces in between. The soothing intercession is gone. They've stepped back, back through the gates, and watch from the other side. Watch and wait.

'We should've gone around,' List muttered.

'Even without that man in need on your horse,' Duiker said, 'I would have insisted we pass through this place, Corporal.'

'I've learned this lesson already,' List replied, a tautness in his tone.

'From your earlier words, I would suggest that the lesson you have learned is different from mine, lad.'

'This place encourages you, Historian?'

'Strengthens, Corporal, though in a cold way, I admit. Never mind the games of Ascendants. This is what we are. The endless struggle laid bare. Gone is the idyllic, the deceit of self-import as well as the false humility of insignificance. Even as we battle wholly personal battles, we are unified. This is the place of level earth, Corporal. That is its lesson, and I wonder if it is an accident that that deluded mob in gold threads must walk in the wake of these wagons.'

'Either way, few revelations have bled back to stain noble sentiments.'

'No? I smelled desperation back there, Corporal.'

List spied a healer and they delivered the servant into the woman's blood-smeared hands.

The sun was low on the horizon directly ahead by the time they reached the Seventh's main camp. The faint smoke from the dung fires hung like gilded gauze over the ordered rows of tents. Off to one side two squads of infantry had set to in a contest of belt-grip, using a leather-strapped skullcap for a ball. A ring of cheering, jeering onlookers had gathered. Laughter rang in the air.

Duiker remembered the words of an old marine from his soldiering days. Some times you just have to grin and spit in Hood's face. The contesting squads were doing just that, running themselves ragged to sneer at their own exhaustion besides, and well aware that Tithansi eyes watched from a distance.

They were a day away from the River P'atha, and the impending battle was a promise that thickened the dusk.

Two of the Seventh's marines flanked Coltaine's command tent, and the historian recognized one of them.

She nodded. 'Historian.'

There was a look in her pale eyes that seemed to lay an invisible hand against his chest, and Duiker was stilled to silence, though he managed a smile.

As they passed between the drawn flaps, List murmured, 'Well now, Historian.'

'Enough of that, Corporal.' But he did not glance over to nail the young man's grin, as he was tempted to do. A man gets to an age where he's wise not to banter on desire with a comrade half his age. Too pathetic by far, that illusion of competition. Besides, that look of hers was likely more pitying than anything else, no matter what my heart whispered. Put an end to your foolish thoughts, old man.

Coltaine stood near the centre pole, his expression dark. Duiker and List's arrival had interrupted a conversation. Bult and Captain Lull sat on saddle-chairs, looking glum. Sormo stood wrapped in an antelope hide, his back to the tent's far wall, his eyes hooded in shadow. The air was sweltering and tense.

Bult cleared his throat. 'Sormo was explaining about the Semk godling,' he said. 'The spirits say something damaged it. Badly. The night of the raid – a demon walked the land. Lightly, I gather, leaving a spoor not easily sniffed out. In any case, it appeared, mauled the Semk, then left. It seems, Historian, that the Claw had company.'

'An Imperial demon?'

Bult shrugged and swung his flat gaze to Sormo.

The warlock, looking like a black vulture perched on a fence pole, stirred slightly. 'There is precedent,' he admitted. 'Yet Nil believes otherwise.'

'Why?' Duiker asked.

There was a long pause before Sormo answered. 'When Nil fled into himself that night . . . no, that is, he believed that it was his own mind that sheltered him from the Semk's sorcerous attack . ..' It was clear that the warlock was in difficulty with his words. 'The Tano Spiritwalkers of this land are said to be able to quest through a hidden world – not a true warren, but a realm where souls are freed of flesh and bone. It seems that Nil stumbled into such a place, and there he came face to face with... someone else. At first he thought it but an aspect of himself, a monstrous reflection—'

'Monstrous?' Duiker asked.

'A boy of Nil's own age, yet with a demonic face. Nil believes it was bonded with the apparition that attacked the Semk. Imperial demons rarely possess human familiars.'

'Then who sent it?'

'Perhaps no-one.'

No wonder Coltaine's had his black feathers ruffled.

After a few minutes Bult sighed loudly, stretching out his gnarled, bandy legs. 'Kamist Reloe has prepared a welcome for us the other side of the River P'atha. We cannot afford to go around him. Therefore we shall go through him.'

'You ride with the marines,' Coltaine told Duiker.

The historian glanced at Captain Lull.

The red-bearded man grinned. 'Seems you've earned a place with the best, old man.'

'Hood's breath! I'll not last five minutes in a line of battle. My heart nearly gave out after a skirmish lasting all of three breaths the other night—'

'We won't be front line,' Lull said. 'There ain't enough of us left for that. If all goes as planned we won't even get our swords nicked.'

'Oh, very well.' Duiker turned to Coltaine. 'Returning the servants to the nobles was a mistake,' he said. 'It seems the noble-born have concluded that you'll not take them away again if they're not fit to stand.'

Bult said, 'They showed spine, those servants, at Sekala Crossing. Just holding shields, mind, but hold is what they did.'

'Uncle, do you still have that scroll demanding compensation?' Coltaine asked.

'Aye.'

'And that compensation was calculated based on the worth of each servant, in coin?'

Bult nodded.

'Collect the servants and pay for them in full, in gold jakatas.'

'Aye, though all that gold will burden the nobles sorely.'

'Better them than us.'

Lull cleared his throat. 'That coin's the soldiers' pay, ain't it?'

'The Empire honours its debts,' Coltaine growled.

It was a statement that promised to grow in resonance in the time to come, and the momentary silence in the tent told Duiker that he was not alone in that recognition.

 

Capemoths swarmed across the face of the moon. Duiker sat beside the flaked embers of a cooking fire. A nervous energy had driven the historian from his bedroll. On all sides the camp slept, a city exhausted. Even the animals had fallen silent.

Rhizan swept through the warm air above the hearth, plucking hovering insects on the wing. The soft crunch of exoskeletons was a constant crackle.

A dark shape appeared at Duiker's side, lowered itself into a squat, held silent.

After a while, Duiker said, 'A Fist needs his rest.'

Coltaine grunted. 'And a historian?'

'Never rests.'

'We are denied in our needs,' the Wickan said.

'It was ever thus.'

'Historian, you joke like a Wickan.'

'I've made a study of Bult's lack of humour.'

'That much is patently clear.'

There was silence between them for a time. Duiker could make no claim to know the man at his side. If the Fist was plagued by doubts he did not show it, nor, of course, would he. A commander could not reveal his flaws. With Coltaine, however, it was more than his rank dictating his recalcitrance. Even Bult had occasion to mutter that his nephew was a man who isolated himself to levels far beyond the natural Wickan stoicism.

Coltaine never made speeches to his troops, and while he was often seen by his soldiers, he did not make a point of it as many commanders did. Yet those soldiers belonged to him now, as if the Fist could fill every silent space with a physical assurance as solid as a gripping of forearms.

What happens the day that faith is shattered? What if we are but hours from that day?

'The enemy hunts our scouts,' Coltaine said. 'We cannot see what has been prepared for us in the valley ahead.'

'Sormo's allies?'

'The spirits are preoccupied.'

Ah, the Semk godling.

'Can'eld, Debrahl, Tithan, Semk, Tepasi, Halafan, Ubari, Hissari, Sialk and Guran.'

Four tribes now. Six city legions. Am I hearing doubt?

The Fist spat into the embers. 'The army that awaits us is one of two holding the south.'

How in Hood's name does he know this? 'Has Sha'ik marched out of Raraku, then?'

'She has not. A mistake.'

'What holds her back? Has the rebellion been crushed in the north?'

'Crushed? No, it commands all. As for Sha'ik ...' Coltaine paused to adjust his crow-feather cape. 'Perhaps her visions have taken her into the future. Perhaps she knows the Whirlwind shall fail, that even now the Adjunct to the Empress assembles her legions – Unta's harbour is solid with transports. The Whirlwind's successes will prove but momentary, a first blood-rush that succeeded only because of Imperial weakness. Sha'ik knows... the dragon has been stirred awake, and moves ponderously still, yet when the full fury comes, it shall scour this land from shore to shore.'

'This other army, here in the south ... how far away?'

Coltaine straightened. 'I intend to arrive at Vathar two days before it.'

Word must have reached him that Ubaryd has fallen, along with Devral and Asmar. Vathar – the third and last river. If we make Vathar, it's a straight run south to Aren – through the most forbidding wasteland on this Hood-Cursed continent. 'Fist, the River Vathar is still months away. What of tomorrow?'

Coltaine pulled his gaze from the embers and blinked at the historian. 'Tomorrow we crush Kamist Reloe's army, of course. One must think far ahead to succeed, Historian. You should understand that.'

The Fist strolled away.

Duiker stared at the dying fire, a sour taste in his mouth. That taste is fear, old man. You've not got Coltaine's impenetrable armour. You cannot see past a few hours from now, and you await the dawn in the belief that it shall be your last, and therefore you must witness it. Coltaine expects the impossible, he expects us to share in his implacable confidence. To share in his madness.

A rhizan landed on his boot, delicate wings folding as it settled. A young capemoth was in the winged lizard's mouth, its struggles continuing even as the rhizan methodically devoured it.

Duiker waited until the creature had finished its meal before a twitch of his foot sent it winging away. The historian straightened. The sounds of activity had risen in the Wickan encampments. He made his way towards the nearest one.

The horsewarriors of the Foolish Dog Clan had gathered to ready their equipment beneath the glare of torch poles. Duiker strode closer. Ornate boiled leather armour had appeared, dyed in deep and muddy shades of red and green. The thick, padded gear was in a style the historian had never seen before. Wickan runes had been burned into it. The armour looked ancient, yet never used.

Duiker approached the nearest warrior, a peach-faced youth busy rubbing grease into a horse's brow-guard. 'Heavy armour for a Wickan,' the historian said. 'And for a Wickan horse as well.'

The young man nodded soberly, said nothing.

'You're turning yourselves into heavy cavalry.'

The lad shrugged.

An older warrior nearby spoke up. 'The warleader devised these during the rebellion . . . then agreed peace with the Emperor before they could be used.'

'And you have been carrying them around with you all this time?'

'Aye.'

'Why didn't you use this armour at Sekala Crossing?'

'Didn't need to.'

'And now?'

Grinning, the veteran raised an iron helm with new bridge and cheek-guards attached. 'Reloe's horde hasn't faced heavy cavalry yet, has it?'

Thick armour doesn't make heavy cavalry. Have you fools ever trained for this? Can you gallop in an even line? Can you wheel? How soon before your horses are winded beneath all that extra weight? 'You'll look intimidating enough,' the historian said.

The Wickan caught the scepticism and his grin broadened.

The youth set down the brow-guard and began strapping on a sword belt. He slid the blade from the scabbard, revealing four feet of blackened iron, its tip rounded and blunt. The weapon looked heavy, oversized in the lad's hands.

Hood's breath, one swing'll yank him from his saddle.

The veteran grunted. 'Limber up there, Temul,' he said in Malazan.

Temul immediately launched into a complex choreography, the blade blurring in his hand.

'Do you intend to dismount once you reach the enemy?'

'Sleep would have done much for your mind's cast, old man.'

Point taken, bastard.

Duiker wandered away. He'd always hated the hours before a battle. None of the rituals of preparation had ever worked for him. A check of weapons and gear rarely took an experienced soldier more than twenty heartbeats. The historian had never been able to repeat that check mindlessly, again and again, as did so many soldiers. Keeping the hands busy while the mind slowly slid into a sharp-edged world of saturated colours, painful clarity and a kind of lustful hunger that seized body and soul.

Some warriors ready themselves to live, some ready themselves to die, and in these hours before the fate unfolds, it's damned hard to tell one from the other. The lad Temul's dance a moment ago might be his last. That damned sword may never again leap from its sheath and sing on the end of his hand.

The sky was lightening in the east, the cool wind beginning to warm. The vast dome overhead was cloudless. A formation of birds flew high to the north, the pattern of specks almost motionless.

The Wickan camp behind him, Duiker entered the regimental rows of tents that marked the Seventh. The various elements maintained their cohesion in the encampment's layout, and each was clearly identifiable to the historian. The medium infantry, who formed the bulk of the army, were arranged by company, each company consisting of cohorts that were in turn made up of squads. They would go into battle with full-body shields of bronze, pikes and short swords. They wore bronze scale hauberks, greaves and gauntlets, and bronze helmets reinforced with iron bars wrapped in a cage around the skullcap. Chain camails protected their necks and shoulders. The other footmen consisted of marines and sappers, the former a combination of heavy infantry and shock troops – the old Emperor's invention and still unique to the Empire. They were armed with crossbows and short swords as well as long swords. They wore blackened chain beneath grey leathers. Every third soldier carried a large, round shield of thick, soft wood that would be soaked for an hour before battle. These shields were used to catch and hold enemy weapons ranging from swords to flails. They would be discarded after the first few minutes of a fight, usually studded with an appalling array of edged and spiked iron. This peculiar tactic of the Seventh had proved effective against the Semk and their undisciplined, two-handed fighting methods. The marines called it puffing teeth.

The sappers' encampment was set somewhat apart from the others – as far away as possible when they carried Moranth munitions. Though he looked, Duiker could not see its location, but he knew well what he'd find. Look for the most disordered collection of tents and foul-smelling vapours aswarm with mosquitoes and gnats and you'll have found Malazan Engineers. And in that quarter you'll find soldiers shaking like leaves, with splash-bum pockmarks, singed hair and a dark, manic gleam in their eyes.

Corporal List stood with Captain Lull at one end of the Marine encampment, close to the attachment of loyal Hissari Guards – whose soldiers were readying their tulwars and round shields in grim silence. Coltaine held them in absolute trust, and the Seven Cities natives had proved themselves again and again with fanatic ferocity – as if they had assumed a burden of shame and guilt and could only relieve it by slaughtering every one of their traitorous kin.

Captain Lull smiled as the historian joined them. 'Got a cloth for your face? We'll be eating dust today, old man, in plenty.'

'We will be the back end of the wedge, sir,' List said, looking none too pleased.

'I'd rather swallow dust than a yard of cold iron,' Duiker said. 'Do we know what we're facing yet, Lull?'

'That's "Captain" to you.'

'As soon as you stop calling me "old man", I'll start calling you by your rank.'

'I was jesting, Duiker,' Lull said. 'Call me what you like, and that includes pig-headed bastard if it pleases you.'

'It just might.'

Lull's face twisted sourly. 'Didn't get any sleep, did you?' He swung to List. 'If the old codger starts nodding off, you've my permission to give him a clout on that bashed-up helmet of his, Corporal.'

'If I can stay awake myself, sir. This good cheer is wearing me out.'

Lull grimaced at Duiker. 'The lad's showing spark these days.'

'Isn't he just.'

The sun was burning clear of the horizon. Pale-winged birds flitted over the humped hills to the north. Duiker glanced down at his boots. The morning dew had seeped through the worn leather. Strands of snagged spiderwebs made a stretched, glittering pattern over the toes. He found it unaccountably beautiful. Gossamer webs . . . intricate traps. Yet it was my thoughtless passage that left the night's work undone. Will the spiders go hungry this day because of it?

'Shouldn't dwell on what's to come,' Lull said.

Duiker smiled, looked up at the sky. 'What's the order?'

'The Seventh's marines are the spear's point. Crow riders to either side are the flanking barbs. Foolish Dog – now a Toggthundering heavy cavalry – are the weight behind the marines. Then come the wounded, protected on all sides by the Seventh's infantry. Taking up the tail are the Hissari Loyals and the Seventh's cavalry.'

Duiker was slow to react, then he blinked and faced the captain.

Lull nodded. 'The refugees and herds are being held back, this side of the valley but slightly south, on a low shelf of land the maps call the Shallows, with a ridge of hills south of that. The Weasel Clan guards them. It's the safest thing to do – that clan's turned dark and nasty since Sekala. Their horse-warriors have all filed their teeth, if you can believe that.'

'We go to this battle unencumbered,' the historian said.

'Excepting the wounded, aye.'

Captains Sulmar and Chenned emerged from the infantry encampment. Sulmar's posture and expression radiated outrage, Chenned's was mocking if slightly bemused.

'Blood and guts!' Sulmar hissed, his greased moustache bristling. 'Those damned sappers and their Hood-spawned captain have done it this time!'

Chenned met Duiker's gaze and shook his head. 'Coltaine went white at the news.'

'What news?'

'The sappers lit out last night!' Sulmar snarled. 'Hood rot the cowards one and all! Poliel bless them with pestilence, pox their illegitimate brood with her pus-soaked kiss! Togg trample that captain's ba—'

Chenned was laughing in disbelief. 'Captain Sulmar! What would your friends in the Council say to such foul-mouthed cursing?'

'Burn take you, too, Chenned! I'm a soldier first, damn you. A trickle to a flood, that's what we're facing—'

'There won't be any desertions,' Lull said, his battered fingers slowly raking through his beard. 'The sappers ain't run away. They're up to something, I'd hazard. It's not easy reining in that unwashed, motley company when you can't even track down its captain – but I don't imagine Coltaine will make the same mistake again.'

'He'll not have the chance,' Sulmar muttered. 'The first worms will crawl into our ears before the day's done. It's the oblivious feast for us all, mark my words.'

Lull raised his brows. 'If that's as encouraging as you can manage, Sulmar, I pity your soldiers.'

'Pity's for the victors, Lull.'

A lone horn wailed its mournful note.

'Waiting's over,' Chenned said with obvious relief. 'Save me a patch of grass when you go down, gentlemen.'

Duiker watched the two Seventh captains depart. He'd not heard that particular send-off in a long time.

'Chenned's father was in Dassem's First Sword,' Lull said.

'Or so goes the rumour – even when names are swept from official histories, the past shows its face, eh, old man?'

Duiker was in no mood to rise to either jibe. 'Think I'll check my gear,' he said, turning away.

 

It was noon before the final positioning was completed. There had been a near riot when the refugees finally understood that the main army was to make the crossing without them. Coltaine's selection of the Weasel Clan as their escort – the horsewarriors presented a truly terrifying visage with their threaded skin, black tattooing and filed teeth – proved his cunning yet again, although the Weasel riders almost took it too far with their bloodthirsty taunts flung at the very people they were sworn to protect. Desultory calm was established, despite the frenzied, fear-stricken efforts of the noble-born's Council and their seemingly inexhaustible capacity to deliver protests and writs.

With the main force finally assembled, Coltaine issued the command to move forward.

The day was blisteringly hot, the parched ground rising in clouds of dust as soon as the brittle grass was worn away by hooves and tramping boots. Lull's prediction of eating dust proved depressingly accurate, as Duiker once more raised his tin belt-flask to his lips, letting water seep into his mouth and down the dry gully of his throat.

Marching on his left was Corporal List, his face caked white, helmet sliding down over his sweat-sheened forehead. On the historian's right strode the veteran marine – he did not know her name, nor would he ask. Duiker's fear of what was to come had spread through him like an infection. His thoughts felt fevered, spinning around an irrational terror of ... of knowledge. Of the details that remind one of humanity. Names to faces are like twinned serpents threatening the most painful bite of all. I'll never return to the List of the Fallen, because I see now that the unnamed soldier is a gift. The named soldier – dead, melted wax – demands a response among the living ... a response no-one can make. Names are no comfort, they're a call to answer the unanswerable. Why did she die, not him? Why do the survivors remain anonymous –as if cursed – while the dead are revered? Why do we cling to what we lose while we ignore what we still hold?

Name none of the fallen, for they stood in our place, and stand there still in each moment of our lives. Let my death hold no glory, and let me die forgotten and unknown. Let it not be said that I was one among the dead to accuse the living.

The River P'atha bisected a dry lake bed two thousand paces east to west and over four thousand north to south. As the vanguard reached the eastern ridge and proceeded down into the basin, Duiker was presented with a panoramic view of what would become the field of battle.

Kamist Reloe and his army awaited them, the glitter of iron vast and bright in the morning glare, city standards and tribal pennons hanging dull and listless above the sea of peaked helms. The arrayed soldiers rustled and rippled as if tugged by unseen currents. Their numbers were staggering.

The river was a thin, narrow strip six hundred paces ahead, studded with boulders and lined in thorny brush on both sides. A trader track marked the traditional place of crossing, then wound westward to what had once been a gentle slope to the opposite ridge – but Reloe's sappers had been busy: a ramp of sandy earth had been constructed, the natural slope to either side carved away to create a steep, high cliff. To the south of the lake bed was a knotted jumble of arroyos, basoliths, screes and jagged outcroppings; to the north rose a serrated ridge of hills bone white under the sun. Kamist Reloe had made sure there was only one point of exit westward, and at the summit waited his elite forces.

'Hood's breath!' muttered Corporal List. 'The bastard's rebuilt Gelor Ridge, and look to the south, sir, that column of smoke – that was the garrison at Melm.'

Squinting that way, Duiker saw another feature closer at hand. Set atop a pinnacle looming over the southeast end of the lake bed was a fortress. 'Who did that belong to?' he wondered aloud.

'A monastery,' List said. 'According to the only map that showed it.'

'Which Ascendant?'

List shrugged. 'Probably one of the Seven Holies.'

'If there's anyone still in there, they'll get quite a view of what's to come.'

Kamist Reloe had positioned forces down and to either side of his elite companies, blocking the north and south ends of the basin. Standards of the Sialk, Halafan, Debrahl and Tithansi contingents rose from the southern element; Ubari the northern. Each of the three forces outnumbered Coltaine's by a large margin. A roar began building from the army of the Apocalypse, along with a rhythmic clash of weapons on shields.

The marines marched towards the crossing in silence. Voices and clangour rolled over them like a wave. The Seventh did not falter.

Gods below, what will come of this?

The River P'atha was an ankle-deep trickle of warm water, less than a dozen paces across. Algae covered the pebbles and stones of the bottom. The larger boulders were splashed white with guano. Insects buzzed and danced in the air. The river's cool breath vanished as soon as Duiker stepped onto the opposite bank, the basin's baked heat sweeping over him like a cloak.

Sweat soaked the quilted undergarment beneath his chain hauberk; it ran down in dirty runnels beneath gauntlets and into the historian's palms. He tightened his grip on the shield strap, his other hand resting on the pommel of his short sword. His mouth was suddenly bone dry, though he resisted the urge to drink from his flask. The air stank of the soldiers he followed, a miasma of sweat and fear. There was a sense of something else, as well, a strange melancholy that seemed to accompany the relentless forward motion of the company.

Duiker had known that sense before, decades ago. It was not defeat, nor desperation. The sadness arose from whatever lay beyond such visceral reactions, and it felt measured and all too aware.

We go to partake of death. And it is in these moments, before the blades are unsheathed, before blood wets the ground and screams fill the air, that the futility descends upon us all. Without our armour, we would all weep, I think. How else to answer the impending promise of incalculable loss?

'Our swords will be well notched this day,' List said beside him, his voice dry and breaking. 'In your experience, sir, what's worse – dust or mud?'

Duiker grunted. 'Dust chokes. Dust blinds. But mud slips the world from under your feet.' And we'll have mud soon enough, when enough blood and bile and piss have soaked the ground. An equal measure of both curses, lad. 'Your first battle, then?'

List grimaced. 'Attached to you, sir, I've not been in the thick of things yet.'

'You sound resentful.'

The corporal said nothing, but Duiker understood well enough. The soldier's companions had all gone through their first blooding, and that was a threshold both feared and anticipated. Imagination whispered untruths that only experience could shatter.

Nevertheless, the historian would have preferred a more remote vantage point. Marching with the ranks, he could see nothing beyond the press of humanity around him. Why did Coltaine put me here? He's taken from me my eyes, damn him.

They were a hundred paces from the ramp. Horsewarriors galloped across the front of the flanking enemy forces, ensuring that all held position. The drumming shields and screams of rage promised blood and would not be held in check for much longer. Then we will be assailed from three sides, and an effort will be made to cut us away from the Seventh's infantry while they struggle to defend the wounded. They'll behead the serpent, if they can.

The Crow horsewarriors were readying bows and lances to either side, heads turned and fixed on the enemy positions. A horn announced the command to ready shields, the front line locking while the centre and rear lofted theirs overhead. Archers were visible, scrambling into position at the top of the ramp.

There was no wind, the motionless air heavy.

It may have been disbelief that held the flanking forces back. Coltaine had displayed no reaction to the enemy's positions and strength; indeed the Seventh simply marched on and, reaching the ramp, began the ascent without pause.

The slope was soft, boulders and sand, deliberately treacherous underfoot. Soldiers stumbled.

Suddenly arrows filled the sky, sweeping down like rain. Horrendous clattering racketed over Duiker's head as shafts snapped, skidded across the upraised shields, some slipping through to strike armour and helms, some piercing flesh. Voices grunted beneath the turtle's back. Cobbles pitched underfoot. Yet the carapaced wedge climbed on without pause.

The historian's elbows buckled as an arrow struck his shield a solid blow. Three more rapped down in quick succession, all glancing impacts that then skittered away across other shields.

The air beneath the shields grew sour and turgid – sweat, urine and a growing anger. An attack that could not be answered was a soldier's nightmare. The determination to reach the crest, where waited howling Semk and Guran heavy infantry, burned like a fever. Duiker knew that the marines were being driven towards a threshold. The first contact would be explosive.

The ramp was banked on either side closer to the ridge, steep and high, its top flattened and broad across. Warriors from a tribe Duiker could not identify – Can'eld? – began assembling on the banks and readying short horn bows. They'll fire down on us from both sides once we lock with the Semk and Guran. An enfilade.

Bult rode with the flanking Crow horsewarriors, and the historian clearly heard the veteran's bellowing command. In a flash of dust and iron, riders wheeled and swept towards the banks. Arrows flew. The Can'eld – caught by the swiftness of the Wickan response – scattered. Bodies fell, tumbling down to the ramp. The Crow warriors rode along the ditch, raking the high bank with murderous missile fire. Within moments the flat top was clear of standing tribesmen.

A second shout reined in the horsewarriors, their lead riders less than a dozen paces from the bristling line of Semk and Guran. The sudden halt drew the wild Semk forward. Throwing axes flew end over end through the intervening space. Arrows darted in return fire.

The forward tip of the wedge surged as the marines saw the disorder in the enemy front line. Crow riders spun their horses, rising high in their saddles as they careered to avoid being pinned between the closing footsoldiers and inadvertently breaking up the marines' momentum. They pulled clear with moments to spare.

The wedge struck.

Through the shield Duiker felt the impact's thunder, a resounding roll that jarred his bones. He could see little from his position apart from a small patch of blue sky directly above the heads of the soldiers, and into that air spun a snapped pike-shaft and a helm that might have still held in its strap a bearded jaw, before dust rose up in an impenetrable shroud.

'Sir!' A hand tugged at his shield arm. 'You're to turn now!'

Turn? Duiker glared at List.

The corporal pulled him round. 'So you can see, sir—'

They were standing in the next to last line of the wedge. A space of ten paces yawned between the marines and the mounted, arcanely armoured Foolish Dog horsewarriors, who stood motionless, heavy swords bared and resting crossways across their saddles. Beyond them, the basin stretched – the historian's position high on the earthen ramp afforded him a view of the rest of the battle.

To the south were closed ranks of Tithansi archers supported by Debrahl cavalry. Legions of Halafan infantry marched east of them – to their right – and in their midst a company of Sialk heavy infantry. Further east were more cavalry and archers. One jaw, and to the north, the other. Now inexorably snapping shut.

He looked to the north. The Ubari legions – at least three – along with Sialk and Tepasi cavalry, were less than fifty paces from contacting the Seventh's infantry. Among the standards jutting from the Ubari, Duiker saw a flash of grey and black colours. Marine-trained locals, now there's irony for you.

East of the river a huge battle was underway, if the vast pall of drifting dust was any indication. The Weasel Clan had found their fight after all. The historian wondered which of Kamist Reloe's forces had managed to circle round. A strike for the herds, and the gift of slaughter among the refugees. Hold fast, Weasels, you'll get no relief from the rest of us.

Jostling from the soldiers around him brought Duiker's attention back to his immediate surroundings. The clash of weapons and screams from the ridge was growing as the wedge slowly flattened out against an anvil of stiff, disciplined resistance. The first reeling knock-back rippled through the press.

Togg's three masks of war. Before the day's done we'll each of us wear them all. Terror, rage and pain. We won't take the ridge—

A deeper roar sounded in the basin behind them. The historian twisted around. The jaws had closed. The Seventh's hollow box around the wagons of the wounded was crumpling, writhing, like a worm beset by ants. Duiker stared, a wave of dread rising within him, expecting to see that box disintegrate, torn apart by the ferocity assailing it.

The Seventh resisted, impossible though it seemed to the historian's mind. On all sides the enemy reared back as if those jaws had closed on poisonous thorns and the instinct was to flinch away. There was a pause, a visceral chill that kept the two sides apart – the space between them carpeted with the dead and dying – then the Seventh did the unexpected. In a silence that raised the hair on the historian's nape, they rushed forward, the box bulging, distorting into an oval, pikes levelled.

Enemy ranks crumbled, melted, suddenly broke.

Stop! Too far! Too thin! Stop!

The oval stretched, paused, then drew back with a measured precision that was almost sinister – as if the Seventh had become some kind of mechanism. And they'll do it again. Little surprise the next time, but likely just as deadly. Like a lung drawing breath, a rhythm of calm sleep, again and again.

His attention was snared by movement among the Foolish Dog. Nil and Nether had emerged from the front line, on foot, the latter leading a Wickan mare. The animal's head was high, ears pricked forward. Sweat glistened on its ruddy flanks.

The two warlocks halted to either side of the mare, Nether leaving the reins to dangle, and laid hands on the beast.

A moment later Duiker was stumbling, as the rear lines of the wedge were pulled forward, up the ramp, as if carried on an indrawn breath.

'Ready close weapons!' a sergeant shouted nearby.

Oh, Hood's wet dream—

'This is it,' List said beside him, his voice as taut as a bowstring.

There was no time for a reply, no time for thought itself, for suddenly they were among the enemy. Duiker caught a flash of the scene before him. A soldier stumbling and cursing, his helm slipped down over his eyes. A sword flying through the air. A shrieking Semk warrior being pulled backward by his braid, his scream cut to a wet gurgle as the point of a short sword burst from under his chest amidst a coiled mass of intestines. A woman marine wheeling from an attack, her own urine splattering the tops of her boots. And everywhere ... Togg's three masks and a cacophony of noise, throats making sounds they were never meant to make, blood gushing, people dying – everywhere, people dying.

'Ware your right!'

Duiker recognized the voice – his nameless marine companion – and pivoted in time to parry a spear blade, his short sword skittering along the tin-sheathed shaft. He stepped in past the thrust and drove his sword point into a Semk woman's face. She sank down in red ruin, but it was the historian's cry of pain that ripped the air, a savage piercing of his soul. He stumbled back and would have fallen if not for a solid shield thudding against his back. The unnamed woman's voice was close by his ear. 'Tonight I'll ride you till you beg, old man!'

In that baffling twist that was the human mind, Duiker mentally wrapped himself around those words, not in lust, but as a drowning man clings to a mooring pole. He drew a sobbing breath, straightened away from the shield's support, stepped forward.

Ahead battled the front line of marines, horribly thinned, yielding step after step as the Guran heavy infantry pushed down the slope. The wedge was about to shatter.

Semk warriors ranged in the midst of the marines in wild, frenzied mayhem, and it was these ash-stained warriors that the rear ranks had been driven forward to deal with.

The task was quickly done, brutal discipline more than a match for individual warriors who held no line, offered no support weapon-side, and heard no voice except their own manic battle cries.

For all that sudden deliverance, the marines began to buckle.

Three horns sounded in quick, braying succession: the Imperial call to split. Duiker gaped, spun round to look for List – but the corporal was nowhere in sight. He saw his marine companion and staggered over to her. 'Four's the withdraw, were there four blasts? I heard—'

She bared her teeth. 'Three, old man. Split! Now!'

She pulled away. Baffled, Duiker followed. The slope was treacherous, blood- and bile-soaked mud over shifting cobbles. They stumbled with the others this side of the divide – the south – towards the high bank, and descended into the narrow ditch, finding themselves ankle-deep in a stream of blood.

The Guran heavy infantry had paused, sensing a trap – no matter how improbable events had made that possibility – as they shuffled to close ranks four strides down from the crest. A ram's horn bleated, pulling the formation back to the summit in ragged back-step.

Duiker turned in time to see, seventy paces farther down the ramp, the Foolish Dog heavy cavalry edging forward, parting around Nil and Nether, who still stood on either side of the stationary mare, their hands pressed against the animal.

'Lord's push,' cursed the woman at his side.

They mean to charge up this ramp, with its bodies and wreckage and mud and stones. A slope steep enough to force the riders onto their mounts' necks – and all that weight onto their forelegs. Coltaine means them to charge. Into the face of heavy infantry— 'No!' the historian whispered.

Rocks and sand pattered down the bank. Around Duiker helmed heads turned in sudden alarm – someone was on the bank's top. More dirt slewed down on them.

A stream of Malazan curses sounded from above, then a helmed head peered over the edge.

'It's a Hood-damned sapper!' one of the marines grunted.

The dirt-smeared face above them grinned. 'Guess what turtles do in the winter?' he shouted down, then pulled back and out of sight.

Duiker glanced back at the Foolish Dog horsewarriors. Their forward motion had ceased, as if suddenly uncertain. The Wickans had their heads raised, gazes fixed on the tops of the banks to either side.

The Guran heavy infantry and surviving Semk stared as well.

Through the dust rolling down the ramp from the crest, Duiker squinted towards the north bank. Activity swarmed along it – sappers, wearing shields on their backs, had begun moving forward, dropping down onto the ramp in the body-piled space below the crest.

Another horn sounded, and the Foolish Dog horsewarriors rolled forward again, pushing their mounts into a trot, then a clambering canter. But now a company of sappers blocked their path to the ridge.

A turtle burrows come winter. The bastards snuck onto the banks last night – under the very noses of Reloe – and buried them.' selves. What in Hood's name for?

The sappers, still wearing their shields on their backs, milled about, preparing weapons and other gear. One stepped free to wave the Foolish Dog riders forward.

The ramp trembled.

The armour-clad horses surged up the steep slope in an explosion of muscle, swifter than the historian thought possible. Broadswords lifted skyward. In their arcane, bizarre armour, the Wickans sat their saddles like demonic conjurations above equally nightmarish mounts.

The sappers rushed the Guran line. Grenados flew, followed by the rap of explosions and dreadful screams.

Every munition left to the sappers arced a path into the press of heavy infantry. Sharpers, burners, flamers. The solid line of Reloe's elite soldiers disintegrated.

The Foolish Dog's galloping charge reached the sappers, who went down beneath the hooves in resounding clangs that beat a dreadful rhythm as horse after horse surged over them.

Into the gutted, chaotic maelstrom that had moments before been a solid line of heavy infantry, the Wickan horse-warriors cleared the crest and plunged, broadswords swinging down in fearful slaughter.

Another signal wailed above the din.

The woman at Duiker's side rapped a gauntleted hand against his chest. 'Forward, old man!'

He took a step, then hesitated. Aye, time for the soldier to go forward. But I'm a historian – I have to see, I have to witness, and to Hood with arrow-fire! 'Not this time,' Duiker said, turning to scramble his way up the embankment.

'See you tonight!' she shouted after him, before joining the rest of the marines as they marched forward.

Duiker pulled himself to the top, gaining a mouthful of sandy earth in the bargain. Coughing and gagging, he pushed himself to his feet, then looked around.

The bank's flat surface was honeycombed with angled shafts. Cocoons of tent cloth lay half in, half out of some of the man-sized holes. The historian stared at them a moment longer in disbelief, then swung his attention to the ramp.

The marines' forward momentum had been stalled by the retrieval of the trampled sappers. There were broken bones aplenty, Duiker could see, but the shields – now battered into so much scrap – and their dented helms had for the most part protected the crazed soldiers.

Beyond the crest, on the flatland to the west, the Foolish Dog horsewarriors pursued the routed remnants of Kamist Reloe's vaunted elites. The commander's own tent, situated on a low hill a hundred paces from the crest, was sinking beneath flames and smoke. Duiker suspected that the rebel High Mage had set that fire himself, destroying anything of potential use to Coltaine before fleeing through whatever paths his warren offered him.

Duiker turned to survey the basin.

The battle down there still raged. The Seventh's ring of defence around the wagons of the wounded remained, though distorted by a concerted, relentless push from the Ubari heavy infantry on the northern side. The wagons themselves were rolling southward. Tepasi and Sialk cavalry harried the rear guard, where the Hissari Loyals stood fast... and died by the score.

We could lose this one yet.

A double blast of horns from the crest commanded the Foolish Dog's recall. Duiker could see Coltaine, his black feather cape grey with dust, sitting astride his charger on the crest. The historian saw him gesture to his staff and the recall horns sounded again, in quicker succession. We need you now!

But those mounts will be spent. They did the impossible. They charged uphill, with a speed that grew and grew, with a speed like nothing I have ever seen before. The historian frowned, then spun around.

Nil and Nether still stood to either side of the lone mare. A light wind was ruffling the beast's mane and tail, but it did not otherwise move. A ripple of unease chilled Duiker. What have they done?

Distant howling caught the historian's attention. A large mounted force was crossing the river, their standards too distant to discern their identity. Then Duiker spied small tawny shapes streaming out ahead of the riders. Wickan cattle' dogs. That's the Weasel Clan.

The horsewarriors broke into a canter as they cleared the river bed.

The Tepasi and Sialk cavalry were caught completely unawares, first by a wave of ill-tempered dogs that ignored horses to fling themselves at riders, sixty snarling pounds of teeth and muscle dragging soldiers from their saddles, then by the Wickans themselves, who announced their arrival by launching severed heads through the air before them and raising an eerie, blood-freezing cry a moment before striking the cavalry's flank.

Within a score of heartbeats the Tepasi and Sialk riders were gone – dead or dying or in full flight. The Weasel horsewarriors barely paused in re-forming before wheeling at a canter to close with the Ubari, the mottle-coated cattle-dogs loping alongside them.

The enemy broke on both sides, flinching away with a timing that, although instinctive, was precise.

Foolish Dog riders poured back down the ramp, parting around the warlocks and their motionless horse, then wheeling to the south in pursuit of the fleeing Halafan and Sialk infantry and the Tithansi archers.

Duiker sank to his knees, suddenly overwhelmed, his emotions a cauldron of grief, anger and horror. Speak not of victory this day. No, do not speak at all.

Somone stumbled onto the bank, breath ragged. Footsteps dragged closer, then a gauntleted hand fell heavily on the historian's shoulder. A voice that Duiker struggled to identify spoke. 'They mock our noble-born, did you know that, old man? They've a name for us in Dhebral. You know what it translates into? The Chain of Dogs. Coltaine's Chain of Dogs. He leads, yet is led, he strains forward, yet is held back, he bares his fangs, yet what nips at his heels if not those he is sworn to protect? Ah, there's profundity in such names, don't you think?'

The voice was Lull's, yet altered. Duiker raised his head and stared into the face of the man crouched beside him. A single blue eye glittered from a ravaged mass of torn flesh. A mace had caught him a solid blow, driving the cheek guard into his face, shattering cheek, bursting one eye and tearing away the captain's nose. The horrifying ruin that was Lull's face twisted into something like a grin. 'I'm a lucky man, Historian. Look, not a single tooth knocked out – not even a wobble.'

 

The count of losses was a numbing litany to war's futility. To the historian's mind, only Hood himself could smile in triumph.

The Weasel Clan had awaited the Tithansi lancers and the godling commander who led them. An ambush by earth spirits had taken the Semk warleader down, tearing his flesh to pieces in their hunger to rip apart and devour the Semk god's remnant. Then the Weasel Clan had sprung their own trap, and it had held its own horror, for the refugees had been the bait, and hundreds had been killed or wounded in the trap's clinical, cold-blooded execution.

The Weasel Clan's warleaders could claim that they had been outnumbered four to one, that some among those they were sworn to protect had been sacrificed to save the rest. All true, and providing a defensible justification for what they did. Yet the warleaders said nothing, and though that silence was met with outrage by the refugees and especially by the Council of Nobles, Duiker saw it in a different light. The Wickan tribe held voiced reasons and excuses in contempt – they accepted none from others and were derisive of those who tried. And in turn, they offered none, because, Duiker suspected, they held those who were sacrificed – and their kin – in a respect that could not survive something so base and self-serving as its utterance.

It was unfortunate for them that the refugees understood none of this, that for them the Wickans' silence was in itself an expression of contempt, a disdain for the lives lost.

The Weasel Clan had, however, offered yet another salute to those refugees who had died. With the slaughter of the Tithansi archers in the basin added to the Weasel Clan's actions, an entire plains tribe had effectively ceased to exist. The Wickans' retribution had been absolute. Nor had they stopped there, for they had found Kamist's peasant army, arriving late to the battle from the east. The slaughter exacted there was a graphic revelation of the fate the Tithansi sought to inflict on the Malazans. This lesson, too, was lost on the refugees.

For all that scholars tried, Duiker knew there was no explanation possible for the dark currents of human thought that roiled in the wake of bloodshed. He need only look upon his own reaction, when stumbling down to where Nil and Nether stood, their hands gummed with congealing sweat and blood on the flanks of a mare standing dead. Life forces were powerful, almost beyond comprehension, and the sacrifice of one animal to gift close to five thousand others with appalling strength and force of will was on the face of it worthy and noble.

If not for a dumb beast's incomprehension at its own destruction beneath the loving hands of two heartbroken children.

 

The Imperial Warren's horizon was a grey shroud on all sides. Details were blurred behind the gauze of the still, thick air. No wind stirred, yet echoes of death and destruction remained, suspended as if trapped outside time itself.

Kalam settled back in his saddle, eyes on the scene before him.

Ashes and dust shrouded the tiled dome. It had collapsed in one place, revealing the raw edges of the bronze plates that covered it. A grey haze lay over the gaping hole. From the dome's curvature, it was clear that less than a third of it was above the surface.

The assassin dismounted. He paused to pluck at the cloth wrapped over his nose and mouth to loosen the caked grit, glanced back at the others, then approached the structure.

Somewhere beneath their feet stood a palace or a temple. Reaching the dome, the assassin leaned forward and brushed the ash from one of the bronze tiles. A deeply carved symbol revealed itself.

A breath of cold recognition swept through him. He had last seen that stylized crown on another continent, in an unexpected war against resistance that had been purchased by desperate enemies. Caladan Brood and Anomander Rake, and the Rhivi and the Crimson Guard. A gathering of disparate foes to challenge the Mahzan Empire's plans for conquest. The Free Cities of Genabackis were a squabbling, back-stabbing lot. Gold-hungry rulers and thieving factors squealed loudest at the threat to their freedom . . .

His mind over a thousand leagues away, Kalam lightly touched the engraved sigil. Blackdog . . . we were warring against mosquitoes and leeches, poisonous snakes and blood-sucking lizards. Supply lines cut, the Moranth putting back when we needed them the most . . . and this sigil I remember, there on a ragged standard, rising above a select company of Brood's forces.

What did that bastard call himself? The High King? Kallor . . . the High King without a kingdom. Thousands of years old, if legends speak true, perhaps tens of thousands. He claimed to have once commanded empires, each one making the Malazan Empire no larger than a province. He then claimed to have destroyed them by his own hand, destroyed them utterly. Kallor boasted he had made worlds lifeless ...

And this man now stands as Caladan Brood's second in command. And when I left, Dujek, the Bridgeburners and the reformed Fifth Army were about to seek an alliance with Brood.

Whiskeyjack . . . Quick Ben . . . keep your heads low, friends. There's a madman in your midst. . .

'If you're done daydreaming ...'

'The thing I hate most about this place,' Kalam said, 'is how the ground swallows footfalls.'

Minala's startling grey eyes were narrow above the scarf covering the lower half of her face as she studied the assassin. 'You look frightened.'

Kalam scowled, turning back to the others. He raised his voice. 'We're leaving this warren now.'

'What?' Minala scoffed. 'I see no gate!'

No, but it feels right. We've covered enough distance, and I've suddenly realized that the power of deliberation is not as much in the travelling as in the arriving. He closed his eyes, shutting Minala and everyone else out as he forced his mind into stillness. One final thought escaped: I hope I'm right.

A moment later a portal formed, making a tearing sound as it spread wider.

'You thick-headed bastard,' Minala snapped with sharp comprehension. 'A little discussion might have led us to this a little sooner – unless you were deliberately delaying our progress. Hood knows what you're about, Corporal.'

Interesting choice of words, woman. I imagine he does.

Kalam opened his eyes. The gate was an impenetrable black stain a dozen paces away. He grimaced. As simple as that. Kalam, you are a thick-headed bastard. Mind you, fear can focus even the most insipid of creatures.

'Follow closely,' the assassin said, loosening the long-knife in its sheath before striding towards the portal and plunging through.

His moccasins slid on sandy cobbles. It was night, stars bright overhead through the narrow slit between two high brick buildings. The alley wound on ahead in a tortuous path that Kalam knew well. There was no-one in sight.

The assassin moved to the wall on his left. Minala appeared, leading her own horse and Kalam's. She blinked, head turning. 'Kalam? Where—'

'Right here,' the assassin replied.

She started, then hissed in frustration. 'Three breaths in a city and you're already skulking.'

'Habit.'

'No doubt.' She led the horses farther on. A moment later Keneb and Selv appeared, followed by the two children.

The captain glared around until he spotted Kalam. 'Aren?'

'Aye.'

'Damned quiet.'

'We're in an alley that winds through a necropolis.'

'How pleasant,' Minala remarked. She gestured at the buildings flanking them. 'But these look like tenements.'

'They are ... for the dead. The poor stay poor in Aren.'

Keneb asked, 'How close are we to the garrison?'

'Three thousand paces,' Kalam replied, unwinding the scarf from his face.

'We need to wash,' Minala said.

'I'm thirsty,' Vaneb said, still astride his horse.

'Hungry,' added Kesen.

Kalam sighed, then nodded.

'I hope,' added Minala, 'a walk through dead streets isn't an omen.'

'The necropolis is ringed by mourners' taverns,' the assassin muttered. 'We won't have much of a walk.'

 

Squall Inn claimed to have seen better days, but Kalam suspected it never had. The floor of the main room sagged like an enormous bowl, tilting every wall inward until angled wooden posts were needed to keep them upright. Rotting food and dead rats had with inert patience migrated to the floor's centre, creating a mouldering, redolent heap like an offering to some dissolute god.

Chairs and tables stood on creatively sawed legs in a ring around the pit, only one still occupied by a denizen not yet drunk into senselessness. A back room no less disreputable provided the more privileged customers with some privacy, and it was there that Kalam had deposited his group to eat while a washtub was being prepared in the tangled garden. The assassin had then made his way to the main room and sat himself down opposite the solitary conscious customer.

'It's the food, isn't it?' the grizzled Napan said as soon as the assassin took his seat.

'Best in the city.'

'Or so voted the council of cockroaches.'

Kalam watched the blue-skinned man raise the mug to his lips, watched his large Adam's apple bob. 'Looks like you'll have another one.'

'Easily.'

The assassin twisted slightly in his chair, caught the drooped gaze of the old woman leaning against a support post beside the ale keg, raised two fingers. She sighed, pushed herself upright, paused to adjust the rat-cleaver tucked through her apron belt, then went off in search of two tankards.

'She'll break your arm if you paw,' the stranger said.

Kalam leaned back and regarded the man. He could have been anywhere between thirty and sixty, depending on his life's toll. Deeply weathered skin was visible beneath the iron-streaked snarl of beard. The dark eyes roved restlessly and had yet to fix on the assassin. The man was dressed in baggy, threadbare rags. 'You force the question,' the assassin said. 'Who are you and what's your story?'

The man straightened up. 'You think I tell that to just anyone?'

Kalam waited.

'Well,' the man continued. 'Not everyone. Some people get rude and stop listening.'

An unconscious patron at a nearby table toppled from his chair, his head crunching as it struck the flagstones. Kalam, the stranger and the serving woman – who had just reappeared with two tin mugs – all watched as the drunk slid down on grease and vomit to join the central heap.

It turned out one of the rats had been just playing at being dead, and it popped free and clambered onto the patron's body, nose twitching.

The stranger opposite the assassin grunted. 'Everyone's a philosopher.'

The serving woman delivered the drinks, her peculiar shuffle to their table displaying long familiarity with the pitched floor. Eyeing Kalam, she spoke in Dhebral. 'Your friends in the back have asked for soap.'

'Aye, I imagine they have.'

'We got no soap.'

'I have just realized that.'

She wandered away.

'Newly arrived, I take it,' the stranger said. 'North gate?'

'Aye.'

'That's quite a climb, with horses yet.'

'Meaning the north gate's locked.'

'Sealed, along with all the others. Maybe you arrived by the harbourside.'

'Maybe.'

'Harbour's closed.'

'How do you close Aren Harbour?'

'All right, it's not closed.'

Kalam took a mouthful of ale, swallowed it down and went perfectly still.

'Gets even worse after a few,' the stranger said.

The assassin set the tankard back down on the table. He struggled a moment to find his voice. 'Tell me some news.'

'Why should I?'

'I've bought you a drink.'

'And I should be grateful? Hood's breath, man, you've tasted it!'

'I'm not usually this patient.'

'Oh, very well, why didn't you say so?' He finished the first tankard, picked up the new one. 'Some ales grow on you. Some grow in you. To your health, sir.' He quaffed the ale down.

'I have slit uglier throats than yours,' the assassin said.

The man paused, his eyes flicking for the briefest of moments to skitter over Kalam, then he set his tankard down. 'Kornobol's wives locked him out last night – the poor bastard was left wandering the streets till one of the High Fist's patrols picked him up for breaking curfew. It's becoming common practice. Wives all over the city are having revelations. What else? Can't get a decent fillet without paying an arm and a leg for it – there's more maimed beggars than ever crowding the streets where the markets used to be. Can't buy a reading without Hood's Herald poking up on the field – tell me, do you think it's even possible that the High Fist is casting someone else's shadow like they say? Of course, who can cast a shadow hiding in the palace wardrobe? Fish ain't the only slippery things in this city, let me tell you. Why, I've been arrested four times in the last two days, had to identify myself and show my Imperial charter, if you can believe it. Turned out lucky, though, since I found my crew in one of those gaols. With Oponn's smile I'll have them out come tomorrow – got a deck to scrub and believe you me, those drunken louts will be scrubbing till the Abyss swallows the world. What's worse is the way some people step right around that charter, make demands of a person so he's left with an aching head delivering messages beneath common words, as if life's not complicated enough – any idea how a hold groans when it's full of gold? And now you're going to say, "Well, Captain, it just so happens that I'm looking to buy passage back to Unta," and I'll say, "The gods are smiling upon you, sir! It just so happens that I'm sailing in two days' time, with twenty marines, the High Fist's treasurer and half of Aren's riches on board – but we've room, sir, oh, yes indeed. Welcome aboard!"'

Kalam was silent for a dozen heartbeats, then he said, 'The gods are smiling indeed.'

The captain's head bobbed. 'Smooth and beguiling, them smiles.'

'Who do I thank for this arrangement?'

'Says he's a friend of yours, though you've never met – though you will aboard my ship, Ragstopper, in two days.'

'His name?'

'Salk Elan, he called himself. Says he's been waiting for you.'

'And how did he know I would come to this inn? I did not know of its existence an hour ago.'

'A guess, but an informed one. Something about this being the first one you come to down from the gate in the necropolis. Too bad you weren't here last night, friend, it was even quieter, at least until the wench fished a drowned rat out of that keg over yonder. Too bad you and your friends missed this morning's breakfast.'

 

Kalam slammed the rickety door behind him, pausing to regain control. Quick Ben's arrangements? Not likely. Impossible, in fact—

'What's wrong?' Minala was sitting at the table, a wedge of melon in one hand. Voices from the garden indicated parents bathing reluctant children.

The assassin closed his eyes for a long moment, then opened them with a sigh. 'You've been delivered to Aren – and now we must go our separate ways. Tell Keneb to go out until he finds a patrol or one finds him, and then make his report to the City Guard's commander – leaving me entirely out of that report—'

'And how does he explain us getting into the city?'

'A fisherman brought you in. Keep it simple.'

'And that's it? You won't even say goodbye to Keneb, or Selv, or the children? You won't even let them show their gratitude for saving their lives?'

'If you can, Minala, get yourself and your kin out of Aren – go back to Quon Tali.'

'Don't do it like this, Kalam.'

'It's the safest way.' The assassin hesitated, then said, 'I wish it could have been .. . different.'

The wedge of melon caught him flush on one cheek. He spent a moment wiping his face, then picked up his saddlebags and threw them over one shoulder. 'The stallion's yours, Minala.'

In the main room, Kalam made his way to the captain's table. 'All right, I'm ready.'

Something like disappointment flickered in the man's eyes, then he sighed and tottered upright. 'So you say. It's a middling long walk to where Ragstopper's moored – with luck I'll only have to show my charter a dozen or so times. Hood knows, what else do you do with an army camped in a city, eh?'

'That rag of a shirt you're wearing won't help matters, Captain. I imagine you're looking forward to ditching the disguise.'

'What disguise? This is my lucky shirt.'

 

Lostara Yil leaned back against the wall of the small room, her arms crossed as she watched Pearl pacing back and forth near the window.

'Details,' he muttered, 'it's all in the details. Don't blink or you might miss something.'

'I must report to the Red Blade commander,' Lostara said. 'Then I shall return here.'

'Will Orto Setral give you leave, lass?'

'I am not relinquishing this pursuit ... unless you forbid me.'

'Gods forbid! I enjoy your company.'

'You are being facetious.'

'Only slightly. Granted, you've displayed little ease of humour. However, we have shared quite an adventure thus far, have we not? Why end it now?'

Lostara examined her uniform. Its weight was a comfort – the armour she had worn when disguised was a shattered mess and she had happily discarded it after the Claw's healing of her wounds.

Pearl had offered nothing to relieve the mystery of the demon that had appeared during the night engagement out on the plain, but it was clear to the Red Blade that the incident still troubled the man. As it does me, but that is past now. We have made it to Aren, still on the assassin's trail. All is as it should be.

'Will you wait here for me?' she asked.

Pearl's smile broadened. 'Until the end of time, my dear.'

'Dawn will suffice.'

He bowed. 'I shall count the heartbeats until then.'

She left the room, shutting the door behind her. The inn's hallway led to a wooden staircase that took her into the crowded main room. The curfew made for a captive clientele, although the mood was anything but festive.

Lostara ducked under the staircase and passed through the kitchen. The eyes of the cook and her helpers followed her as she walked to the back door, which had been left ajar to provide a draught. It was a reaction she was used to. The Red Blades were much feared.

She pushed open the door and stepped out into the alley. The river's breath, mingled with the salt of the bay, was cool against her face. I pray I never travel the Imperial Warren again.

She walked to the main street, her boots loud on the cobbles.

A dozen soldiers of the High Fist's army accosted her as she reached the first intersection on her way to the garrison compound. The sergeant commanding them stared at her with disbelief.

'Good evening, Red Blade,' he said.

She nodded. 'I understand that the High Fist has imposed a curfew. Tell me, do the Red Blades patrol the streets as well?'

'Not at all,' the sergeant replied.

There was an expectancy among the soldiers that Lostara found vaguely disturbing.

'They are tasked with other responsibilities, then?'

The sergeant slowly nodded. 'I imagine they are. From your words and from ... other things, I gather you are newly arrived.'

She nodded.

'How?'

'By warren. I had an ... an escort.'

'The makings of an interesting story, no doubt,' the sergeant said. 'I will have your weapons now.'

'Excuse me?'

'You wish to join your fellow Red Blades, yes? Speak with Commander Orto Setral?'

'Yes.'

'By the High Fist's order, issued four days ago, the Red Blades are under detention.'

'What?'

'And await trial for treason against the Malazan Empire. Your weapons, please.'

Stunned, Lostara Yil made no resistance as the soldiers disarmed her. She stared at the sergeant. 'Our loyalty has been ... challenged?'

There was no malice in his eyes as he nodded. 'I am sure your commander will have more to say on the situation.'

'He's gone.'

Keneb's jaw dropped. 'Oh,' he managed after a moment. Frowning, he watched Minala packing her gear. 'What are you doing?'

She whirled on him. 'Do you think he gets away leaving it like that?'

'Minala—'

'Be quiet, Keneb! You'll wake the children.'

'I wasn't shouting.'

'Tell your commander everything, you understand me? Everything – except about Kalam.'

'I am not stupid, no matter what you may think.'

Her glare softened. 'I know. Forgive me.'

'You'd better ask that of your sister, I think. And Kesen and Vaneb.'

'I will.'

'Tell me, how will you pursue a man who does not want to be pursued?'

A hard grin flashed on her dark features. 'You ask that of a woman?'

'Oh, Minala .. .'

She reached up to brush his cheek with one hand. 'No need for tears, Keneb.'

'I blame my sentimental streak,' he said with a weary smile. 'But know this, I shall remain hopeful. Now, go and say goodbye to your sister and the children.'