The Day of Pure Blood
was a gift of the Seven
from their tombs of sand.
Fortune was a river
the glory a gift of the Seven
that flowed yellow and crimson
across the day.

Dog Chain
Thes'soran

 

In the local Can'eld dialect, it would come to be called Mesh'arn tho'ledann: the Day of Pure Blood. The River Vathar's mouth gushed blood and corpses into Dojal Hading Sea for close to a week after the slaughter, a tide that deepened from red to black amidst pallid, bloated bodies. To the fisher-folk plying those waters, that time was called the Season of Sharks, and more than one net was cut away before a ghastly harvest was pulled aboard.

Horror knew no sides, played no favourites. It spread like a stain outward, from tribe to tribe, from one city to the next. And from that revulsion was born fear among the natives of Seven Cities. A Malazan fleet was on its way, commanded by a woman hard as iron. What happened at Vathar Crossing was a whetstone to hone her deadly edge.

Yet, Korbolo Dom was anything but finished.

The cedar forest south of the river rose on tiered steps of limestone, the trader track crazed with switchbacks and steep, difficult slopes. And the deeper into the wood the depleted train went, the more ancient, the more uncanny it became.

Duiker led his mare by the reins, stumbling as rocks turned underfoot. Alongside him clattered a wagon, sagging with wounded soldiers. Corporal List sat on the buckboard, his switch snapping the dusty, sweat-runnelled backs of the pair of oxen labouring at their yokes.

The losses at Vathar Crossing were a numb litany in the historian's mind. Over twenty thousand refugees, a disproportionate number of children among them. Less than five hundred able fighters remained in the Foolish Dog Clan, and the other two clans were almost as badly mauled. Seven hundred soldiers of the Seventh were dead, wounded or lost. A scant dozen engineers remained on their feet, and but a score of marines. Three noble families had been lost – an unacceptable attrition, this latter count, as far as the Council was concerned.

And Sormo E'nath. Within the one man, eight elder warlocks, a loss of not just power, but knowledge, experience and wisdom. A blow that had driven the Wickans to their knees.

Earlier that day, at a time when the train had ground to a temporary halt, Captain Lull had joined the historian to share some rations. Few words passed between them to start, as if the events at Vathar Crossing were something not to be talked about, even as they spread like a plague through every thought and echoed ghostlike behind every scene around them, every sound that rose from the camp.

Lull slowly put away the remnants of their meal. Then he paused, and Duiker saw the man studying his own hands, which had begun trembling. The historian looked away, surprised at the sudden shame that swept through him. He saw List, wrapped in sleep on the buckboard, trapped within his prison of dreams. I could in mercy awaken the lad, yet the power for knowledge has mastered me. Cruelty comes easy these days.

The captain sighed after a moment, hastily completing the task. 'Do you find the need to answer all this, Historian?' he asked. 'All those tomes you've read, those other thoughts from other men, other women. Other times. How does a mortal make answer to what his or her kind are capable of? Does each of us, soldier or no, reach a point when all that we've seen, survived, changes us inside? Irrevocably changes us. What do we become, then? Less human, or more human? Human enough, or too human?'

Duiker was silent for a long minute, his eyes on the rock-studded dirt that surrounded the boulder upon which he sat. Then he cleared his throat. 'Each of us has his own threshold, friend. Soldier or no, we can only take so much before we cross over... into something else. As if the world has shifted around us, though it's only our way of looking at it. A change of perspective, but there's no intelligence to it – you see but do not feel, or you weep yet look upon your own anguish as if from somewhere else, somewhere outside. It's not a place for answers, Lull, for every question has burned away. More human or less human – that's for you to decide.'

'Surely it has been written of, by scholars, priests . . . philosophers?'

Duiker smiled down at the dirt. 'Efforts have been made. But those who themselves have crossed that threshold ... well, they have few words to describe the place they've found, and little inclination to attempt to explain it. As I said, it's a place without intelligence, a place where thoughts wander, formless, unlinked. Lost.'

'Lost,' the captain repeated. 'I am surely that.'

'Yet you and I, Lull, we are lost late in our lives. Look upon the children, and despair.'

'How to answer this? I must know, Duiker, else I go mad.'

'Sleight of hand,' the historian said.

'What?'

'Think of the sorcery we've seen in our lives, the vast, unbridled, deadly power we've witnessed unleashed. Driven to awe and horror. Then think of a trickster – those you saw as a child – the games of illusion and artifice they could play out with their hands, and so bring wonder to your eyes.'

The captain was silent, motionless. Then he rose. 'And there's my answer?'

'It's the only one I can think of, friend. Sorry if it's not enough.'

'No, old man, it's enough. It has to be, doesn't it?'

'Aye, that it does.'

'Sleight of hand.'

The historian nodded. 'Ask for nothing more, for the world – this world – won't give it.'

'But where will we find such a thing?'

'Unexpected places,' Duiker replied, also rising. Somewhere ahead, shouts rose and the convoy resumed its climb once more. 'If you fight both tears and a smile, you'll have found one.'

'Later, Historian.'

'Aye.'

He watched the captain set off back towards his company of soldiers, and wondered if all he'd said, all he'd offered to the man, was nothing but lies.

The possibility returned to him now, hours later as he trudged along on the trail. One of those random, unattached thoughts that were coming to characterize the blasted scape of his mind. Returned, lingered a moment, then drifted away and was gone.

The journey continued, beneath clouds of dust and a few remaining butterflies.

Korbolo Dom pursued, sniping at the train's mangled tail, content to await better ground before another major engagement. Perhaps even he quailed at what Vathar Forest had begun to reveal.

Among the tall cedars there were trees of some other species that had turned to stone. Gnarled and twisted, the petrified wood embraced objects that were themselves fossilized – the trees held offerings and had, long ago, grown around them. Duiker well recalled the last time he had seen such things, in what had been a holy place in the heart of an oasis, just north of Hissar. That site had revealed ram's horns locked in the wrapped crooks of branches, and there were plenty of those here as well, although they were the least disquieting of Vathar's offerings.

T'lan Imass. No room for doubt – their undead faces stare out at us, from all sides, skulls and withered faces peering out from wreaths of crystallized bark, the dark pits of their eyes tracking our passage. This is a burial ground, not of the flesh-and-blood forebears of the T'lan Imass, but of the deathless creatures themselves.

List's visions of ancient war – we see here its aftermath. Crumpled platforms were visible as well, stone latticework perched amidst branches that had once grown around them, closing up the assembled bones like the fingers of stone hands.

At the war's end, the survivors came here, carrying those comrades too shattered to continue, and made of this forest their eternal home. The souls of the T'lan Imass cannot join Hood, cannot even flee their prisons of bone and withered flesh. One does not bury such things – that sentence of earthen darkness offers no peace. Instead, let those remnants look out from their perches upon one another, upon the rare mortal passages on this trail. . .

Corporal List saw far too clearly, his visions delivering him deep into a history better left lost. Knowledge had beaten him down –as it does us all, when delivered in too great a measure. Yet I hunger still.

Cairns had begun appearing, heaps of boulders surmounted with totemic skulls. Not barrows, List had said. Sites of engagement, the various clans, wherever the Jaghut turned from flight and lashed out.

The day was drawing to a close when they reached the final height, a broad, jumbled basolith that seemed to have shed its limestone coat, the exposed bedrock deeply hued the colour of wine. Flat, treeless stretches were crowded with boulders set out in spirals, ellipses and corridors. Cedars were replaced by pines, and the number of petrified trees diminished.

Duiker and List had been travelling in the last third of the column, the wounded shielded by a battered rearguard of infantry. Once the last of the wagons and the few livestock that remained cleared the slope and made level ground, the footmen quickly gained the ridge, squads scattering to various vantage points and potential strongholds commanding the approach.

List halted his wagon and set the brake, then rose from the buckboard, stretched and looked down at Duiker with haunted eyes.

'Better lines of sight up here, anyway,' the historian offered.

'Always has been,' the corporal said. 'If we make for the head of the column, we'll come to the first of them.'

'The first of what?'

The blood leaving the lad's face bespoke another vision flooding his mind, a world and a time seen through unhuman eyes. After a moment he shuddered, wiping sweat from his face. 'I'll show you.'

They moved through the quiet press in silence. The efforts at making camp they saw on all sides looked wooden, refugees and soldiers alike moving as automatons. No-one bothered attempting to erect tents; they simply laid out their bedrolls on the flat rock. Children sat unmoving, watching with the eyes of old men and women.

The Wickan camps were no better. There was no escape from what had been, from the images and remembered scenes that rose again and again, remorselessly, before the mind's eye. Every frail, mundane gesture of normal life had shattered beneath the weight of knowledge.

Yet there was anger, white hot and buried deep, out of sight, as if mantled in peat. It had become the last fuel with any potency. And so we move on, day after day, fighting every battle – those inside and those without – with an unyielding ferocity and determination. We are all in that place where Lull now lives, a place stripped of rational thought, trapped in a world without cohesion.

Arriving at the vanguard, they came upon a scene. Coltaine, Bult and Captain Lull were present, and facing them in a ragged line ten paces away were the last of the Engineers.

The Fist turned as Duiker and List approached. 'Ah, this is well. I would have you witness this, Historian.'

'What have I missed?'

Bult grinned. 'Nothing; we've just managed the prodigious task of assembling the sappers – you'd think battles with Kamist Reloe were tactical nightmares. Anyway, here they are, looking like they're waiting to be ambushed, or worse.'

'And are they, Uncle?'

The commander's grin broadened. 'Maybe.'

Coltaine now stepped towards the assembled soldiers. 'Symbols of bravery and gestures of recognition can only ring hollow – this I know, yet what else is left to me? Three clan leaders have come to me, each begging to approach you men and women with an offer of formal adoption to their clan. Perhaps you are unaware of what such unprecedented requests reveal ... or perhaps, judging by your expressions, you know. I felt need to answer on your behalf, for I know more of you soldiers than do most Wickans, including those clan leaders, and they have each humbly withdrawn their requests.'

He was silent for a long moment.

'Nonetheless,' Coltaine finally continued, 'I would have you know, they meant to honour you.'

Ah, Coltaine, even you do not understand these soldiers well enough. Those scowls you see arrayed before you certainly look like disapproval, disgust even, but then, when have you ever seen them smile?

'So, I am left with the traditions of the Malazan Empire. There were enough witnesses at the Crossing to weave in detail the tapestry of your deeds, and among all of you, including your fallen comrades, the natural leadership of one was noted again and again. Without it, the day would have been truly lost.'

The sappers did not move, their scowls if anything deeper, more fierce.

Coltaine moved to stand before one man. Duiker recalled him well – a squat, hairless, immeasurably ugly sapper, his eyes thin slashes, his nose a flattened spread of angles and crooks. Audaciously, he wore fragments of armour that Duiker recognized as taken from a commander of the Apocalypse, though the helm tied to his belt was something that could have adorned an antique shop in Darujhistan. Another object that hung from his belt was difficult to identify, and it was a moment before the historian realized he was looking at the battered remnant of a shield: two reinforced grips behind a mangled plate-sized flap of bronze. A large, blackened crossbow hung from one shoulder, so covered and entwined with twigs, branches and other camouflage as to make it seem the man carried a bush.

'I believe the time has come,' Coltaine said, 'for a promotion. You are now a sergeant, soldier.'

The man said nothing, his eyes narrowing to the thinnest of slits.

'I think a salute would be appropriate,' Bult growled.

One of the other sappers cleared his throat and nervously yanked at his moustache.

Captain Lull rounded on the man. 'Got something to say about this, soldier?'

'Not much,' the man muttered.

'Out with it.'

The soldier shrugged. 'Well, only ... he was a captain not two minutes ago, sir. The Fist's just demoted him. That's Captain Mincer, sir. Commands the Engineers. Or did.'

Mincer finally spoke. 'And since I'm now a sergeant, I suggest the captaincy go to this soldier.' He reached out and grabbed the woman beside him by the ear to drag her close. 'What used to be my sergeant. Name's Bungle.'

Coltaine stared a moment longer, then swung around and met Duiker's eyes with such comic pleasure that the historian's exhaustion was simply swept away, flashburned into oblivion. The Fist struggled to keep a straight face, and Duiker bit his lip in his own effort. His gaze caught on Lull, whose face showed the same struggle, even as the captain winked and mouthed three silent words.

Sleight of hand.

The question remained how Coltaine would now play it. Composing his face into stern regard, the Fist turned about again. He eyed Mincer, then the woman named Bungle. 'That will be fine, Sergeant,' he said. 'Captain Bungle, I would advise you to listen to your sergeant in all matters. Understood?'

The woman shook her head.

Mincer grimaced and said, 'She's no experience with that, Fist. I never asked her advice, I'm afraid.'

'From what I have gathered, you never asked anyone's advice when you were captain.'

'Aye, that's a fact.'

'Nor did you attend any staff briefings.'

'No, sir.'

'And why was that?'

Mincer shrugged.

Captain Bungle spoke. 'Beauty sleep, sir. That's what he always said.'

'Hood knows the man needs it,' Bult muttered.

Coltaine raised an eyebrow. 'And did he sleep, Captain? During those times?'

'Oh yes, sir. He sleeps when we march, too, sir. Sleeps while walking – I've never seen the like. Snoring away, sir, one foot in front of the other, a bag full of rocks on his back—'

'Rocks?'

'For when he breaks his sword, sir. He throws them, and there ain't a damned thing he can't hit.'

'Wrong,' Mincer growled. 'That lapdog ...'

Bult seemed to choke, then spat in sympathy.

Coltaine had drawn his hands behind him, and Duiker saw them clench in a white-knuckled grip. As if sensing that attention, the Fist called out without turning, 'Historian!'

'I am here, Fist.'

'You will record this?'

'Oh, aye, sir. Every blessed word.'

'Excellent. Engineers, you are dismissed.'

The group wandered off, muttering. One man clapped Mincer on the shoulder and received a blistering glare in return.

Coltaine watched them leave, then strode to Duiker, Bult and Lull following.

'Spirits below!' Bult hissed.

Duiker smiled. 'Your soldiers, Commander.'

'Aye,' he said, suddenly beaming with pride. 'Aye.'

'I did not know what to do,' Coltaine confessed.

Lull grunted. 'You played it perfectly, Fist. That was exquisite, no doubt already making the rounds as a Hood-damned full-blown legend. If they liked you before, they love you now, sir.'

The Wickan remained baffled. 'But why? I just demoted a man for unsurpassed bravery!'

'Returned him to the ranks, you mean. And that lifted every one of 'em up, don't you see that?'

'But Mincer—'

'Never had so much fun in his life, I'd bet. You can tell, when they get even uglier. Hood knows, I can't explain it – only sappers know a sapper's way of thinking and behaving, and sometimes not even them.'

'You've a captain named Bungle, now, nephew,' Bult said. 'Think she'll be there in polish and shine next briefing?'

'Not a chance,' Lull opined. 'She's probably packing her gear right now.'

Coltaine shook his head. 'They win,' he said, in evident wonder. 'I am defeated.'

Duiker watched the three men walk away, still discussing what had just happened. Not lies after all. Tears and smiles, something so small, so absurd . . . the only possible answer. . . The historian shook himself, and looked around until he found List. 'Corporal, I recall you had something to show me...'

'Yes, sir. Up ahead, not far, I think.'

 

They came to the ruined tower before reaching the forward outlying pickets. A squad of Wickans had commandeered the position, filling the ringed bedrock floor with supplies and leaving in attendance a lone, one-armed youth.

List laid a hand on one of the massive foundation stones. 'Jaghut,' he said. 'They lived apart, you know. No villages, no cities, just single, remote dwellings. Like this one.'

'Enjoyed their privacy, I take it.'

'They feared each other almost as much as they feared the T'lan Imass, sir.'

Duiker glanced over at the Wickan youth. The lad was fast asleep. We're doing a lot of that these days. Just dropping off. 'How old?' he asked the corporal.

'Not sure. A hundred, two, maybe even three.'

'Not years.'

'No. Millennia.'

'So, this is where the Jaghut lived.'

'The first tower. From here, pushed back, then again, then again. The final stand – the last tower – is in the heart of the plain beyond the forest.'

'Pushed back,' the historian repeated.

List nodded. 'Each siege lasted centuries, the losses among the T'lan Imass staggering. Jaghut were anything but wanderers. When they chose a place ...' His voice fell off. He shrugged.

'Was this a typical war, Corporal?'

The young man hesitated, then shook his head. 'A strange bond, unique among the Jaghut. When the mother was in peril, the children returned, joined the battle. Then the father. Things ... escalated.'

Duiker nodded, looked around. 'She must have been ... special.'

Tight-lipped and pale, List pulled off his helm, ran a hand through his sweaty hair. 'Aye,' he finally whispered.

'Is she your guide?'

'No. Her mate.'

Something made the historian turn, as if in answer to a barely felt shiver of air. North, through the trees, then above them. His mind struggled to encompass what he saw: a column, a spear lit gold, rising ... rising.

'Hood's breath!' List muttered. 'What is that?'

A lone word thundered through Duiker, flooding his mind, driving out every thought, and he knew with utter certainty the truth of it, the single word that was answer to List's question.

'Sha'ik.'

 

Kalam sat in his gloomy cabin, inundated with the sound of hammering waves and shrieking wind. Ragstopper shuddered with every remorseless crash of the raging seas, the room around the assassin pitching in, it seemed, a dozen directions at once.

Somewhere in their wake, a fast trader battled the same storm, and her presence – announced by the lookout only minutes before the green and strangely luminescent cloud rolled over them – gnawed at Kalam, refusing to go away. The same fast trader we'd seen before. Was the answer a simple one? While we squatted in that shithole of a home port, she'd been calmly shouldering the Imperial pier at Falar, no special rush in resupplying when you have a shore leave worth the name.

But that did not explain the host of other details that plagued the assassin – details that, each on their own, rang a minor note of discord, yet together they created a cacophony of alarm in Kalam. Blurred passages of time, perhaps born of the man's driving aspiration to complete this voyage, at war with the interminable reality of day upon day, night upon night, the very sameness of such a journey.

But no, there's more than just a conflict of perspective. The hour-glasses, the dwindled stores of food and fresh water, the captain's tortured hints of a world amiss aboard this damned ship.

And that fast trader, it should have sailed past us long ago . . .

Salk Elan. A mage – he stinks of it. Yet a sorcerer who could twist an entire crew's mind so thoroughly . . . that sorcerer would have to be a High Mage. Not impossible. Just highly unlikely among Mebra's covert circle of spies and agents.

There was no doubt in Kalam's mind that Elan had woven about himself a web of deceit, inasmuch as it was in such a man's nature to do so, whether necessary or not. Yet which strand should the assassin follow in his quest for the truth?

Time. How long has this journey been? Tradewinds where none should be, now a storm, driving us ever southeastward, a storm that had therefore not come from the ocean wastes – as the immutable laws of the sea would demand – but from the Falari Isles. In its dry season – a season of unbroken calm.

So, who plays with us here? And what role does Salk Elan have in this game, if any?

Growling, the assassin rose from his bunk, grabbing in mid-swing his satchel from its hook, then made his rocking way to the door.

The hold was like a siege tower under a ceaseless barrage of rocks. Mist filled the salty, close air and the keel was awash in shin-deep water. There was no-one about, every hand committed to the daunting task of holding Ragstopper together. Kalam cleared a space and dragged a chest free. He rummaged in his satchel until his hand found and closed on a small, misshapen lump of stone. He drew it out and set it on the chest-top.

It did not roll off; indeed, it did not move at all.

The assassin unsheathed a dagger, reversed his grip, then drove the iron pommel down on the stone. It shattered. A gust of hot, dry air washed over Kalam. He crouched lower.

'Quick! Quick Ben, you bastard, now's the time!'

No voice reached him through the storm's incessant roar.

I'm beginning to hate mages. 'Quick Ben, damn you!'

The air seemed to waver, like streams of heat rising from a desert floor. A familiar voice tickled the assassin's ears. 'Any idea the last time I've had a chance to sleep? It's all gone to Hood's shithole over here, Kalam – where are you and what do you want? And hurry up with it – this is killing me!'

'I thought you were my shaved knuckle in the hole, damn you!'

'You in Unta? The palace? I never figured—'

'Thanks for the vote of confidence,' the assassin cut in. 'No, I'm not in the Hood-cursed palace, you idiot. I'm at sea—'

'Aren't we all. You've just messed up, Kalam – I can't do this more than once.'

'I know. So I'm on my own when I get there. Fine, nothing new in that. Listen, what can you sense of where I am at this moment? Something's gone seriously awry on this ship, and I want to know what, and who's responsible.'

'Is that all? OK, OK, give me a minute ...'

Kalam waited. The hair rose on his neck as he felt his friend's presence fill the air on all sides, a probing emanation that the assassin knew well. Then it was gone.

'Uh.'

'What does that mean, Quick?'

'You're in trouble, friend.'

'Laseen?'

'Not sure. Not directly – that ship stinks of a warren, Kalam, one of the rarest among mortals. Been confused lately, friend?'

'I was right, then! Who?'

'Someone, maybe on board, maybe not. Maybe sailing a craft within that warren, right alongside you, only you'll never see it. Anything valuable aboard?'

'You mean apart from my hide?'

'Yes, apart from your hide, of course.'

'Only a despot's ransom.'

'Ah, and someone wants it getting somewhere fast, and when it gets there that someone wants every damned person on board to forget where that place is. That's my guess, Kalam. I could be very wrong, though.'

'That's a comfort. You said you're in trouble over there? Whiskeyjack? Dujek, the squad?'

'Scraping through so far. How's Fiddler?'

'No idea. We decided on separate ways ...'

'Oh no, Kalam!'

'Aye, Tremorlor. Hood's breath, it was your idea, Quick!'

'Assuming the House was ... at peace. Sure, it should've worked. Absolutely. I think. But something's gone bad there – every warren's lit up, Kalam. Chanced on a Deck of Dragons lately?'

'No.'

'Lucky you.'

Realization struck the assassin with a sharply drawn breath. 'The Path of Hands...'

'The Path . .. oh.' The mage's voice rose, 'Kalam! If you knew—'

'We didn't know a damned thing, Quick!'

'They might have a chance,' Quick Ben muttered a moment later. 'With Sorry—'

'Apsalar, you mean.'

'Whatever. Let me think, damn you.'

'Oh, terrific,' Kalam growled. 'More schemes ...'

'I'm losing hold here, friend. Too tired . .. lost too much blood yesterday, I think. Mallet says ...'

The voice trailed away. Cool mist seeped back in around the assassin. Quick Ben was gone. And that's that. On my own in truth, now. Fiddler . . .oh, you bastard, we should have guessed, figured it out. Ancient gates . . . Tremorlor.

He did not move for a long time. Finally he sighed, wiped the top of the chest, removing the last of the crushed rock from its damp surface, and rose.

 

The captain was awake, and he had company. Salk Elan grinned as Kalam entered the cramped room. 'We were just talking about you, partner,' Elan said. 'Knowing how set you get in your mind, and wondering how you'd take the news ...'

'All right, I'll bite. What news?'

'This storm – we're being blown off course. A long way.'

'Meaning?'

'Seems we'll be making for a different port once it's spent.'

'Not Unta.'

'Oh, eventually, of course.'

The assassin's gaze fell to the captain. He looked unhappy, but resigned. Kalam conjured a map of Quon Tali in his mind, studied it a moment, then sighed. 'Malaz City. The island.'

'Never seen that legendary cesspool before,' Elan said. 'I can't wait. I trust you'll be generous enough to show me all the sights, friend.'

Kalam stared at the man, then smiled. 'Count on it, Salk Elan.'

 

They had paused for a rest, almost inured to the curdling cries and screams rising from other paths of the maze. Mappo lowered Icarium to the ground and knelt beside his unconscious friend. Tremorlor's desire for the Jhag was palpable. The Trell closed his eyes. The Nameless Ones have guided us here, delivering Icarium to the Azath as they would a goat to a hill god. Yet it is not their hands that will be bloodied by the deed. I am the one who will be stained by this.

He struggled to conjure the image of the destroyed town – his birthplace – but it was now haunted by shadows. Doubt had replaced conviction. He no longer believed his own memories. Foolish! Icarium has taken countless lives. Whatever the truth behind my town's death . . .

His hands clenched.

My tribe – the shoulder-women – would not betray me. What weight can be placed on Icarium's dreams? The Jhag remembers nothing. Nothing real. His equanimity softens truth, blurs the edges . . . smears every colour, until the memory is daubed anew. Thus. It is lcarium's kindness that has snared me . . .

Mappo's fists ached. He looked down at his companion, studied the expression of peaceful repose on the Jhag's blood-smeared face.

Tremorlor shall not have you. I am not to be so used. If the Nameless Ones would deliver you, then they shall have to come for you themselves, and through me first.

He looked up, glared into the heart of the maze. Tremorlor. Reach for him with your roots, and they shall feel the rage of a Trell warrior, his battle dream unleashed, ancient spirits riding his flesh in a dance of murder. This I promise, and so you are warned.

'It's said,' Fiddler murmured beside him, 'that the Azath have taken gods.'

Mappo fixed the soldier with hooded eyes.

Fiddler squinted as he studied the riotous walls on all sides. 'What Elder gods – their names forgotten for millennia – are caged here? When did they last see light? When were they last able to move their limbs? Can you imagine an eternity thus endured?' He shifted the weight of the crossbow in his hands. 'If Tremorlor dies. .. imagine the madness unleashed upon the world.'

The Trell was silent for a moment, then he whispered, 'What are these darts that you fling at me?'

Fiddler's brows rose. 'Darts? None intended. This place sits on me like a cloak of vipers, that is all.'

'Tremorlor has no hunger for you, soldier.'

Fiddler's grin was crooked. 'Sometimes it pays being a nobody.'

'Now you mock in truth.'

The sapper's grin fell away. 'Widen your senses, Trell. Tremorlor's is not the only hunger here. Every prisoner in these walls of wood feels our passage. They might well flinch from you and Icarium, but no such fear constrains their regard for the rest of us.'

Mappo looked away. 'Forgive me. I've spared little thought for anyone else, as you have noted. Still, do not think I would hesitate in defending you if the need arose. I am not one to diminish the honour that is your companionship.'

Fiddler gave a sharp nod, straightened. 'A soldier's pragmatism. I had to know one way or the other.'

'I understand.'

'Sorry if I offended you.'

'Naught but a knife-tip's prod – you've stirred me to wakefulness.'

Iskaral Pust, squatting a few paces away, sputtered. 'Muddy the puddle, oh yes! Yank his loyalties this way and that – excellent! Witness the strategy of silence – while the intended victims unravel each other in pointless, divisive discourse. Oh yes, I have learned much from Tremorlor, and so assume a like strategy. Silence, a faint mocking smile suggesting I know more than I do, an air of mystery, yes, and fell knowledge. None could guess my confusion, my host of deluded illusions and elusive delusions! A mantle of marble hiding a crumbling core of sandstone. See how they stare at me, wondering – all wondering – at my secret wellspring of wisdom ...'

'Let's kill him,' Crokus muttered, 'if only to put him out of our misery.'

'And sacrifice such entertainment?' Fiddler growled. He resumed his place at point. 'Time to go.'

'The blathering of secrets,' the High Priest of Shadow uttered in a wholly different voice, 'so they judge me ineffectual.'

The others spun to face him.

Iskaral Pust offered a beatific smile.

 

A swarm of wasps rose above the tangled root wall, sped over their heads and past – paying them no heed. Fiddler felt his heart thud back into place. He drew a shuddering breath. There were some D'ivers that he feared more than others. Beasts are one thing, but insects. . .

He glanced back at the others. Icarium hung limp in Mappo's arms. The Jhag's head was stained with blood. The Trell's gaze reached beyond the sapper to the edifice that awaited them. Mappo's expression was twisted with anguish, so thoroughly unmasked and vulnerable that the Trell's face was a child's face, with an attendant need that was all the more demanding for being wholly unconscious. A mute appeal that was difficult to resist.

Fiddler shook himself, pushing his attention past Mappo and his burden. Apsalar, her father and Crokus stood ranged behind the Trell in a protective cordon while beyond them were the Hounds and Iskaral Pust. Five pairs of bestial eyes and one human burned with intent – dubious allies, our rearguard. Talk about a badly timed schism – and that intent was fixed on the unconscious body in Mappo's arms.

Icarium himself wished it, and in so saying rendered the Trell's heart. The price of acquiescence is as nothing to the pain of refusal. Yet Mappo will surrender his life to this, and we're likely to do the same. None of us – not even Apsalar – is cold-hearted enough to stand back, to see the Jhag taken. Hood's breath, we are fools, and Mappo the greatest fool of us all. . .

'What's on your mind, Fid?' Crokus asked, his tone suggesting he had a pretty good idea.

'Sappers got a saying,' he muttered. 'Wide-eyed stupid.'

The Daru slowly nodded.

In other paths of the maze, the taking had begun. Shapeshifters – the most powerful of them, the survivors who'd made it this far – had begun their assault on the House of the Azath. A cacophony of screams echoed in the air, battering their senses. Tremorlor defended itself the only way it could, by devouring, by imprisoning – but there are too many, coming too quickly – wood snapped, woven cages shattered, the sound was of a forest being destroyed, branch by branch, tree by tree, an inexorable progression, closer, ever closer to the House itself.

'We're running out of time!' hissed Iskaral Pust, the Hounds moving in agitation around him. 'Things are coming up behind us. Things! How much clearer can I be?'

'We may still need him,' Fiddler said.

'Oh, aye!' the High Priest responded. 'The Trell can throw him like a sack of grain!'

'I can bring him around quickly enough,' Mappo growled. 'I still carry some of those Denul elixirs from your temple, Iskaral Pust.'

'Let's get moving,' the sapper said. Something was indeed coming up behind them, making the air redolent with sickly spice. The Hounds had pulled their attention from Mappo and Icarium and now faced the other way, revealing restless nerves as they shifted position. The trail made a sharp bend twenty paces from where the huge beasts stood.

A piercing scream ripped the air, coming from just beyond that bend, followed by the explosive sounds of battle. It ended abruptly.

'We've waited too long!' Pust hissed, cowering behind his god's Hounds. 'Now it comes!'

Fiddler swung his crossbow around, eyes fixed on the place where their pursuer would appear.

Instead, a small, nut-brown creature half flapped, half scampered into view. Tendrils of smoke drifted from it.

'Ai!' Pust shrieked. 'They plague me!'

Crokus bolted forward, pushing his way between Shan and Gear as if they were no more than a pair of mules. 'Moby?'

The familiar raced towards the Daru and leapt at the last moment to land in the lad's arms. Where it clung tenaciously, wings twitching. Crokus's head snapped back. 'Ugh, you stink like the Abyss!'

Moby, that damned familiar. . . Fiddler's gaze flicked to Mappo. The Trell was frowning.

'Bhok'aral!' The word came from Iskaral Pust as a curse. 'A pet? A pet? Madness!'

'My uncle's familiar,' Crokus said, approaching.

The Hounds shrank from his path.

Oh, lad, much more than that, it seems.

'An ally, then,' Mappo said.

Crokus nodded, though with obvious uncertainty. 'Hood knows how he found us. How he survived ...'

'Dissembler!' Pust accused, creeping towards the Daru. 'A familiar? Shall we ask the opinion of that dead shapeshifter back there? Oh no, we can't, can we? It's been torn to pieces!'

Crokus said nothing.

'Never mind,' Apsalar said. 'We're wasting time. To the House—'

The High Priest wheeled on her. 'Never mind? What conniving deceit has arrived among us? What foul betrayal hangs over us? There, hanging from the lad's shirt—'

'Enough!' Fiddler snapped. 'Stay here then, Pust. You and your Hounds.' The sapper faced the House again. 'What do you think, Mappo? Nothing's got close to it yet – if we make a run for it...'

'We can but try.'

'Do you think the door will open for us?'

'I do not know.'

'Let's find out, then.'

The Trell nodded.

They had a clear view of Tremorlor. A low wall surrounded it, made of what appeared to be volcanic rock, jagged and sharp. The only visible break in that wall was a narrow gate, over which arched a weave of vines. The House itself was tawny in colour, probably built of limestone, its entrance recessed between a pair of squat, asymmetrical two-storey towers, neither of which possessed windows. A winding path of flagstones connected the gate with the shadow-swallowed door. Low, gnarled trees occupied the yard, each surmounting a hump.

A sister to Deadhouse in Malaz City. Little different from the one in Darujhistan. All of a kind. All Azath – though where that name came from and how long ago no-one knows or will ever know.

Mappo spoke in a low voice beside the sapper. 'It's said the Azath bridge the realms – every realm. It's said that even time itself ceases within their walls.'

'And those doors open to but a few, for reasons unknown.' Fiddler scowled at his own words.

Apsalar moved to the front, stepping past the sapper.

Startled, Fiddler grunted. 'In a hurry, lass?'

She looked back at him. 'The one who possessed me, Fiddler ... an Azath welcomed him, once.'

True enough. And why does that make me so nervous now, and here? 'So, how's it done? Special knock? Key under the loose flagstone?'

Her answering smile was a balm to his agitation. 'No, something much simpler. Audacity.'

'Well, we've plenty of that. We're here, aren't we?'

'Aye, we are.'

She led the way, and all followed.

'That conch shell,' Mappo rumbled. 'Immense damage was delivered to the Soletaken and D'ivers, is still being delivered, it seems – for the Azath, it may be proving enough.'

'And you pray that is so.'

'Aye, I do.'

'So why didn't that deathly song destroy us as well?'

'You are asking me, Fiddler? The gift was given to you, was it not?'

'Yes. I saved a little girl – kin to the Spiritwalker.'

'Which Spiritwalker, Fiddler?'

'Kimloc'

The Trell was silent for half a dozen paces, then a frustrated growl rose from him. 'A girl, you said. No matter how close a kin, Kimloc's reward far outweighed your gesture. More, it seemed precisely intended for its use – the sorcery in that song was aspected, Fiddler. Tell me, did Kimloc know you sought Tremorlor?'

'I certainly didn't tell him as much.'

'Did he touch you at any time – the brush of a finger against your arm, anything?'

'He asked to, as I recall. He wanted my story. I declined. But Hood's breath, Mappo, I truly cannot recall if there was some chance contact.'

'I think there must have been.'

'If so, I forgive him the indiscretion.'

'I imagine he anticipated that as well.'

Even as Tremorlor withstood the assault that raged from all sides, the battles were far from over, and in some places the sound of shattering wood was a seemingly unstoppable progression, coming ever closer.

Apsalar increased pace as one of those unseen, sundering avalanches drew near the group, driving for the arched gate. A moment later, amidst a rising roar, they all broke into a run.

'Where?' Fiddler demanded as he scrambled forward, head darting as he searched frantically in all directions. 'Where in Hood's name is it?'

The answer came in a sudden sleet of ice-cold water from above, the savage opening of a warren. Emerging from within that hovering, strangely suspended spray – not fifty paces behind them – the enormous head and maw of a dhenrabi lunged into view, wreathed in uprooted sea grasses, kelp and strange, skeletal branches.

A swarm of wasps rose before it and was devoured entire without pause.

Three more dhenrabi appeared from that torrential portal. The roiling spume of water that held them seemed to burn off wherever it descended upon the roots of the maze, yet the creatures remained suspended, riding the hissing maelstrom.

Images flashed through Fiddler within the span of a single heartbeat. Kansu Sea. Not a Soletaken after all – not a single beast, but a pack. A D'ivers. And I'm out of cussers—

A moment later, it became clear just how untested the Hounds of Shadow had been thus far. He felt the power emanate from the five beasts – so similar was it to that of dragons, it rolled like a breath, a surge of raw sorcery that preceded the Hounds as they sprang forward with blurring speed.

Shan was the first to reach the lead dhenrabi, the first to plunge into its gaping, serrated mouth – and vanish within that yawning darkness. The creature reared back lightning-quick, and if that massive, blunt visage could show surprise, it did so now.

Gear reached the next one, and the dhenrabi lunged, not to swallow, but to bite down, to flense with the thousand jagged plates of its teeth. The Hound's power buckled under those snapping jaws, but did not shatter. An instant later, Gear was through, past those teeth, burying itself within the creature – where it delivered mayhem.

The other Hounds made for the remaining two dhenrabi. Only Blind remained with the group.

The lead dhenrabi began thrashing now, whipping its enormous bulk as the torrent of its warren collapsed around it – crushing flat walls of the maze, where long-imprisoned victims stirred amidst the wreckage, withered limbs reaching skyward through mud-churned water, clutching air. The second dhenrabi fell into the same writhing tumult.

A hand clutched Fiddler's arm, pulling him hard around.

'Come on,' Crokus hissed. Moby was still clinging to his shirt. 'We've got more company, Fid.'

And now the sapper saw the object of the Dam's attention – off to his right, almost behind Tremorlor, still a thousand paces distant, yet fast approaching. A swarm like no other. Bloodflies, in a solid black cloud the size of a thunderhead, billowing, surging towards them.

Leaving the dhenrabi in the throes of violent death behind them, the group sprinted for the House.

As he passed beneath the leafless arch of vines, the sapper saw Apsalar reach the door, close her hands on the broad, heavy ring-latch and twist it. He saw the muscles rise on her forearms, straining. Straining.

Then she staggered back a step, as if dismissively, contemptuously shoved. As Fiddler, trailed by Crokus, Mappo with his charge, Apsalar's father, then Pust and Blind, reached the flat, paved landing, he saw her spin round, her expression one of shock and disbelief.

It won't open. Tremorlor has refused us.

The sapper skidded to a halt, whirled.

The sky was black, alive, and coming straight for them.

 

At Vathar's sparse, blistered edge, where the basolith of bedrock sank once more beneath its skin of limestone, and the land that stretched southward before and below their vantage point was nothing but studded stones in windswept, parched clay, they came upon the first of the Jaghut tombs.

Few among the outriders and the column's head paid it much attention. It looked like nothing more than a cairn marker, a huge, elongated slab of stone tilted upward at the southernmost end, as if pointing the way across the Nenoth Odhan to Aren or some other, more recent destination.

Corporal List had led the historian to it in silence while the others prepared rigging to assist in the task of guiding the wagons down the steep, winding descent to the plain's barren floor.

'The youngest son,' List said, staring down at the primitive tomb. His face was frightening to look at, for it wore a father's grief, as raw as if the child's death was but yesterday – a grief that had, if anything, grown with the tortured, unfathomable passage of two hundred thousand years.

He stands guard still, that Jaghut ghost. The statement, a silent utterance that was both simple and obvious, nevertheless took the historian's breath away. How to comprehend this . . .

'How old?' Duiker's voice was as parched as the Odhan that awaited them.

'Five. The T'lan Imass chose this place for him. The effort of killing him would have proved too costly, given that the rest of the family still awaited them. So they dragged the child here – shattered his bones, every one, as many times as they could on so small a frame – then pinned him beneath this rock.'

Duiker had thought himself beyond shock, beyond even despair, yet his throat closed up at List's toneless words. The historian's imagination was too sharp for this, raising images in his mind that seared him with overwhelming sorrow. He forced himself to look away, watched the activities among the soldiers and Wickans thirty paces distant. He realized that they worked mostly in silence, speaking only as their tasks required, and then in low, strangely subdued tones.

'Yes,' List said. 'The father's emotions are a pall unrelieved by time – so powerful, so rending, those emotions, that even the earth spirits had to flee. It was that or madness. Coltaine should be informed – we must move quickly across this land.'

'And ahead? On the Nenoth plain?'

'It gets worse. It was not just the children that the T'lan Imass pinned – still breathing, still aware – beneath rocks.'

'But why?' The question ripped from Duiker's throat.

'Pogroms need no reason, sir, none that can weather challenge, in any case. Difference in kind is the first recognition, the only one needed, in fact. Land, domination, pre-emptive attacks – all just excuses, mundane justifications that do nothing but disguise the simple distinction. They are not us. We are not them.'

'Did the Jaghut seek to reason with them, Corporal?'

'Many times, among those not thoroughly corrupted by power – the Tyrants – but you see, there was always an arrogance in the Jaghut, and it was a kind that could claw its way up your back when face to face. Each Jaghut's interest was with him or herself. Almost exclusively. They viewed the T'lan Imass no differently from the way they viewed ants underfoot, herds on the grasslands, or indeed the grass itself. Ubiquitous, a feature of the landscape. A powerful, emergent people, such as the T'lan Imass were, could not but be stung—'

'To the point of swearing a deathless vow?'

'I don't believe that, at first, the T'lan Imass realized how difficult the task of eradication would be. Jaghut were very different in another way – they did not flaunt their power. And many of their efforts in self-defence were ... passive. Barriers of ice – glaciers – they swallowed the lands around them, even the seas, swallowed whole continents, making them impassable, unable to support the food the mortal Imass required.'

'So they created a ritual that would make them immortal—'

'Free to blow like the dust – and in the age of ice, there was plenty of dust.'

Duiker's gaze caught Coltaine standing near the edge of the trail. 'How far,' he asked the man beside him, 'until we leave this area of... of sorrow?'

'Two leagues, no more than that. Beyond are Nenoth's true grasslands, hills . . . tribes, each one very protective of what little water they possess.'

'I think I had better speak with Coltaine.'

'Aye, sir.'

 

The Dry March, as it came to be called, was its own testament to sorrow. Three vast, powerful tribes awaited them, two of them, the Tregyn and the Bhilard, striking at the beleaguered column like vipers. With the third, situated at the very western edge of the plains – the Khundryl – there was no immediate contact, though it was felt that that would not last.

The pathetic herd accompanying the Chain of Dogs died on that march, animals simply collapsing, even as the Wickan cattle-dogs converged with fierce insistence that they rise – dead or no – and resume the journey. When butchered, these carcasses were little more than ropes of leathery flesh.

Starvation joined the terrible ravaging thirst, for the Wickans refused to slaughter their horses and attended them with eloquent fanaticism that no-one dared challenge. The warriors sacrificed of themselves to keep their mounts alive. One petition from Nethpara's Council, offering to purchase a hundred horses, was returned to the noble-born leader smeared in human excrement.

The twin vipers struck again and again, contesting every league, the attacks increasing in ferocity and frequency, until it was clear that a major clash approached, only days away.

In the column's wake followed Korbolo Dom's army, a force that had grown with the addition of forces from Tarxian and other coastal settlements, and was now at least five times the size of Coltaine's Seventh and his Wickan clans. The renegade commander's measured pursuit – leaving engagement to the wild plains tribes – was ominous in itself.

He would be there for the imminent battle, without doubt, and was content to wait until then.

The Chain of Dogs – its numbers swollen by new refugees fleeing Bylan – crawled on, coming within sight of what the maps indicated was the Nenoth Odhan's end, where hills rose in a wall aross the southern horizon. The trader track cut through the only substantial passage, a wide river valley between the Bylan'sh Hills to the east and the Saniphir Hills to the west, the track running for seven leagues, opening out on a plain that faced the ancient tel of Sanimon, then wrapped around it to encompass the Sanith Odhan and, beyond that, the Geleen Plain, the Dojal Odhan – and the city of Aren itself.

No relief army emerged from Sanimon Valley. A profound sense of isolation descended like a shroud on the train, even as the valley's flanking hills began to reveal, in the day's dying light, twin encampments, both vast, of tribesmen – the main forces of the Tregyn and the Bhilard.

Here, then, at the mouth of the ancient valley ... here it would be.

 

'We're dying,' Lull muttered as he came up alongside the historian on his way to the briefing. 'And I don't mean just figuratively, old man. I lost eleven soldiers today. Throats swollen so bad with thirst they couldn't draw breath.' He waved at a fly buzzing his face. 'Hood's breath, I'm swimming in this armour – by the time we're done, we'll all look like T'lan Imass.'

'I can't say I appreciate the analogy, Captain.'

'Wasn't expecting you to.'

'Horse piss. That's what the Wickans are drinking these days.'

'Aye, same for my crew. They're neighing in their sleep, and more than one's died from it.'

Three dogs loped past them, the huge one named Bent, a female, and the lapdog scrambling in their wake.

'They'll outlive us all,' Lull grumbled. 'Those damned beasts!'

The sky deepened overhead, the first stars pushing through the cerulean gauze.

'Gods, I'm tired.'

Duiker nodded. Oh, indeed, we've travelled far, friend, and now stand face to face with Hood. He takes the weary as readily as the defiant. Offers the same welcoming grin.

'Something in the air tonight, Historian. Can you feel it?'

'Yes.'

'Maybe Hood's Warren has drawn closer.'

'It has that feel, doesn't it?'

They arrived at the Fist's command tent, entered.

The usual faces were arrayed before them. Nil and Nether, the last remaining warlocks; Sulmar and Chenned, Bult and Coltaine himself. Each had become a desiccated mockery of the will and strength once present in their varied miens.

'Where's Bungle?' Lull asked, finding his usual camp-chair.

'Listening to her sergeant, I'd guess,' Bult said, with a ghost of a grin.

Coltaine had no time for idle talk. 'Something approaches, this night. The warlocks have sensed it, though that is all they can say. We are faced with preparing for it.'

Duiker looked to Nether. 'What kind of sense?'

She shrugged, then sighed. 'Vague. Troubled, even outrage – I don't know, Historian.'

'Sensed anything like it before? Even remotely?'

'No.'

Outrage.

'Draw the refugees close,' Coltaine commanded the captains. 'Double the pickets—'

'Fist,' Sulmar said, 'we face a battle tomorrow—'

'Aye, and rest is needed. I know.' The Wickan began pacing, but it was a slower pace than usual. It had lost its smoothness as well, its ease and elegance. 'And more, we are greatly weakened – the water casks are bone dry.'

Duiker winced. Battle? No, tomorrow will see a slaughter. Soldiers unable to fight, unable to defend themselves. The historian cleared his throat, made to speak, then stopped. One word, yet even to voice it would be to offer the cruellest illusion. One word.

Coltaine was staring at him. 'We cannot,' he said softly.

I know. For the rebellion's warriors as much as for us, the end to this must be with blood.

'The soldiers are beyond digging trenches,' Lull said into the heavy, all-too-aware silence.

'Holes, then.'

'Aye, sir.'

Holes. To break mounted charges, snap legs, send screaming beasts into the dust.

The briefing ended then, abruptly, as the air was suddenly charged, and whatever threatened to arrive now announced itself with a brittle crackle, a mist of something oily, like sweat clogging the air.

Coltaine led the group outside, to find the bristling atmosphere manifested tenfold beneath the night's sparkling canopy. Horses bucked. Cattle-dogs howled.

Soldiers were rising like spectres. Weapons rustled.

In the open space just beyond the foremost pickets, the air split asunder with a savage, ripping sound.

Three pale horses thundered from that rent, followed by three more, then another three, all harnessed, all screaming with terror. Behind them came a massive carriage, a fire-scorched, gaudily painted leviathan riding atop six spoked wheels that were taller than a man. Smoke trailed like thick strands of raw wool from the carriage, from the horses themselves, and from the three figures visible behind the last three chargers.

The white, screaming train was at full gallop – as if in headlong flight from whatever warren it had come from – and the carriage pitched wildly, alarmingly, as the beasts plunged straight for the pickets.

Wickans scattered to either side.

Staring with disbelief, Duiker saw all three figures sawing the reins, bellowing, flinging themselves against the backrest of their tottering perch.

The horses drove hooves into the earth, biting down on their momentum, the towering carriage slewing behind them, raising a cloud of smoke, dust and an emanation that the historian recognized with a jolt of alarm as outrage. The outrage, he now understood, of a warren – and its god.

Behind the lead carriage came another, then another, each pitching to one side or the other to avoid collision as they skidded to a halt.

As soon as the lead carriage ceased its headlong plunge, figures poured from it, armoured men and women, shouting, roaring commands that no-one seemed to pay any attention to, and waving blackened, smeared and dripping weapons.

A moment later, even as the other two carriages stopped, a loud bell clanged.

The frenzied, seemingly aimless activities of the figures promptly ceased. Weapons were lowered, and sudden silence filled the air behind the fading echo of the bell. Snorting and stamping, the lathered horses tossed their heads, ears twitching, nostrils wide.

The lead carriage was no more than fifteen paces from where Duiker and the others stood.

The historian saw a severed hand clinging to an ornate projection on one side of the carriage. After a moment it fell to the ground.

A tiny barred door opened and a man emerged, with difficulty squeezing his considerable bulk through the aperture. He was dressed in silks that were drenched in sweat. His round, glistening face revealed the passing echoes of some immense, all-consuming effort. In one hand he carried a stoppered bottle.

Stepping clear, he faced Coltaine and raised the bottle. 'You, sir,' he said in strangely accented Malazan, 'have much to answer for.' Then he grinned, displaying a row of gold-capped, diamond-studded teeth. 'Your exploits tremble the warrens! Your journey is wildfire in every street in Darujhistan, no doubt in every city, no matter how distant! Have you no notion how many beseech their gods on your behalf? Coffers overflow! Grandiose plans of salvation abound! Vast organizations have formed, their leaders coming to us, to the Trygalle Trade Guild, to pay for our fraught passage – though,' he added in a lower tone, 'all the Guild's passages are fraught, which is what makes us so expensive.' He unstoppered the bottle. 'The great city of Darujhistan and its remarkable citizens – dismissing in an instant your Empire's voracious desires on it and on themselves – bring you this gift! By way of the shareholders –' he waved back at the various men and women behind him, now gathering into a group – 'of Trygalle – the foulest-tempered, greediest creatures imaginable, but that is neither here nor there, for here we are, are we not? Let it not be said of the citizens of Darujhistan that they are insensitive to the wondrous, and, dear sir, you are truly wondrous.'

The preposterous man stepped forward, suddenly solemn. He spoke softly. 'Alchemists, mages, sorcerers have all contributed, offering vessels with capacities belying their modest containers. Coltaine of Crow Clan, Chain of Dogs, I bring you food. I bring you water.'

 

Karpolan Demesand was one of the original founders of the Trygalle Trade Guild, a citizen of the small fortress city of the same name, situated south of the Lamatath Plain on the continent of Genabackis. Born of a dubious alliance between a handful of mages, Karpolan among them, and the city's benefactors – a motley collection of retired pirates and wreckers – the Guild came to specialize in expeditions so risk-laden as to make the average merchant pale. Each caravan was protected by a heavily armed company of shareholders – guards who possessed a direct stake in the venture, ensuring the fullest exploitation of their abilities. And such abilities were direly needed, for the caravans of the Trygalle Trade Guild – as was clear from the very outset – travelled the warrens.

'We knew we had a challenge on our hands,' Karpolan Demesand said with a beatific, glittering smile as they sat in Coltaine's command tent, with only the Fist and Duiker for company because everyone else was working outside, dispensing the caravan's life-giving supplies with all speed. 'That foul Wan-en of Hood is wrapped about you tighter than a funeral shroud on a corpse ... if you'll forgive the image. The key is to ride fast, to stop for nothing, then get out as soon as humanly possible. In the lead wagon, I maintain the road, with every sorcerous talent at my command – a gruelling journey, granted, but then again, we don't come cheap.'

'I still find it hard to fathom,' Duiker said, 'that the citizens of Darujhistan, fifteen hundred leagues distant, should even know of what's happening here, much less care.'

Karpolan's eyes thinned. 'Ah, well, perhaps I exaggerated somewhat – the heat of the moment, I confess. You must understand – soldiers who not long ago were bent on conquering Darujhistan are now locked in a war with the Pannion 'Domin, a tyranny that would dearly love to swallow the Blue City if it could. Dujek Onearm, once Fist of the Empire and now outlaw to the same, has become an ally. And this, certain personages in Darujhistan know well, and appreciate...'

'But there is more to it,' Coltaine said quietly.

Karpolan smiled a second time. 'Is this water not sweet? Here, let me pour you another cup.'

They waited, watching the trader refill the three tin cups arrayed on the small table between them. When he was done, Karpolan sighed and sat back in the plush chair he had had removed from the carriage. 'Dujek Onearm.' The name was spoken half in benediction, half in wry dismay. 'He sends his greetings, Fist Coltaine. Our office in Darujhistan is small, newly opened, you understand. We do not advertise our services. Not openly, in any case. Frankly, those services include activities that are, on occasion, clandestine in nature. We trade not only in material goods but in information, the delivery of gifts, of people themselves ... and other creatures.'

'Dujek Onearm was the force behind this mission,' Duiker said.

Karpolan nodded. 'With financial assistance from a certain cabal in Darujhistan, yes. His words were thus: "The Empress cannot lose such leaders as Coltaine of the Crow Clan.'" The trader grinned. 'Extraordinary for an outlaw under a death sentence, wouldn't you say?' He leaned forward and held out a hand, palm up. Something shimmered into existence on it, a small oblong bottle of smoky grey glass on a silver chain. 'And, from an alarmingly mysterious mage among the Bridgeburners, this gift was fashioned.' He held it out to Coltaine. 'For you. Wear it. At all times, Fist.'

The Wickan scowled and made no move to accept it.

Karpolan's smile was wistful. 'Dujek is prepared to pull rank on this, friend—'

'An outlaw pulling rank?'

Ah, well, I admit I voiced the same query. His reply was this: "Never underestimate the Empress."'

Silence descended, the meaning behind that statement slowly taking shape. Locked in a war against an entire continent . . . stumbling onto a recognition of an even greater threat – the Pannion Domin . . . shall the Empire alone fight on behalf of a hostile land? Yet . . . how to fashion allies among enemies, how to unify against a greater threat with the minimum of fuss and mistrust? Outlaw your occupying army, so they've 'no choice' but to step free of Laseen's shadow. Dujek, ever loyal Dujek – even the ill-conceived plan of killing the last of the Old Guard – Tayschrenn's foolishness and misguided idea – insufficient to turn him. So now he has allies – those who were once his enemies – perhaps even Caladan Brood and Anomander Rake themselves . . . Duiker turned to Coltaine and saw the same knowledge there in his drawn, stern visage.

The Wickan reached out and received the gift.

'The Empress must not lose you, Fist. Wear it, sir. Always. And when the time comes, break it – against your own chest. Even if it's your last act, though I suggest you do not leave it until then. Such were its creator's frantic instructions.' Karpolan grinned again. 'And such a man, that creator! A dozen Ascendants would dearly love his head served up on a plate, his eyes pickled, his tongue skewered and roasted with peppers, his ears grilled—'

'Your point is made,' Duiker cut in.

Coltaine placed the chain around his neck and slipped the bottle beneath his buckskin shirt.

'A dire battle awaits you come dawn,' Karpolan said after a time. 'I cannot stay, will not stay. Though mage of the highest order, though merchant of ruthless cunning, I admit to a streak of sentimentality, gentlemen. I will not stand witness to this tragedy. More, we have one more delivery to make before we begin our return journey, and its achievement shall demand all of my skills, indeed, may exhaust them.'

'I had never before heard of your Guild, Karpolan,' Duiker said, 'but I would hear more of your adventures, some day.'

'Perhaps the opportunity will arise, Historian. For now, I hear my shareholders gathering, and I must see to reviving and quelling the horses – although, it must be said, they seem to have acquired a thirst for wild terror. No different from us, eh?' He rose.

'My thanks to you,' Coltaine growled, 'and your shareholders.'

'Have you a word for Dujek Onearm, Fist?'

The Wickan's response startled Duiker, slipping a rough blade of suspicion into him that would remain, nagging and fearful.

'No.'

Karpolan's eyes widened momentarily, then he nodded. 'We must be gone, alas. May your enemy pay dearly come the morrow, Fist.'

'They shall.'

 

Sudden bounty could not affect complete rejuvenation, but the army that rose with the dawn revealed a calm readiness that Duiker had not seen since Gelor Ridge.

The refugees remained tightly packed in a basin just north of the valley mouth. The Weasel and Foolish Dog clans guarded the position, situating themselves along a rise that faced the assembled forces of Korbolo Dom. More than thirty rebel soldiers stood ready to challenge each and every Wickan horsewarrior, and the inevitable outcome of that clash was so obvious, so brutally clear, that panic ripped through the massed refugees in waves, hopeless rippling surges this way and that, and wails of despair filled the dust-laden air above them.

Coltaine sought to drive through the tribesmen blocking the valley mouth, and do so quickly, and he thus concentrated his Crow Clan and most of the Seventh at the front. A fast, shattering breakthrough offered the only hope for the rearguard clans, and indeed for the refugees themselves.

Duiker sat on his emaciated mare, positioned on a low rise sightly to the east of the main track where he could just make out the two Wickan clans to the north – Korbolo Dom's army somewhere unseen beyond them.

The carriages of the Trygalle Trade Guild had departed, vanishing with the last minutes of darkness before the eastern horizon began its pale awakening.

Corporal List rode up, reining in beside the historian. 'A fine morning, sir!' he said. 'The season is turning – change rides the air – can you feel it?'

Duiker eyed the man. 'One as young as you should not be so cheerful this day, Corporal.'

'Nor one as old as you so dour, sir.'

'Hood-damned upstart, is this what familiarity breeds?'

List grinned, which was answer enough.

Duiker's eyes narrowed. 'And what has your Jaghut ghost whispered to you, List?'

'Something he himself never possessed, Historian. Hope.'

'Hope? How, from where? Does Pormqual finally approach?'

'I don't know about that, sir. You think it's possible?'

'No, I do not.'

'Nor I, sir.'

'Then what in Fener's hairy balls are you going on about, List?'

'Not sure, sir. I simply awoke feeling ...' he shrugged, 'feeling as if we'd just been blessed, god-touched, or something . ..'

'A fine enough way to meet our last dawn,' Duiker muttered, sighing.

The Tregyn and Bhilard tribes were readying themselves, but the sudden blaring of horns from the Seventh made it clear that Coltaine was not interested in the courtesy of awaiting them. The Crow lancers and mounted archers surged forward, up the gentle slope towards the eastern hill of the Bhilard.

'Historian!'

Something in the corporal's tone brought Duiker around. List was paying no attention to the Crow's advance – he faced the northwest, where another tribe's riders had just appeared, spreading out as they rode closer in numbers of appalling vastness.

'The Khundryl,' Duiker said. 'Said to be the most powerful tribe south of Vathar – as we can now acknowledge.'

Horse hooves thundered towards the rise and they turned to see Coltaine himself approach. The Fist's expression was impassive, almost calm as he stared northwestward.

Clashes had begun at the rearguard position – the day's first drawing of blood, most of it likely to be Wickan. Already the refugees had begun pushing southward, in the hope that will alone could see the valley prised open.

The Khundryl, in the tens of thousands, formed two distinct masses, one directly west of Sanimon's mouth, the other farther to the north, on a flank of Korbolo Dom's army. Between these two was a small knot of war chiefs, who now rode directly towards the rise where sat Duiker, List and Coltaine.

'Looks like personal combat is desired, Fist,' Duiker said. 'We'd best ride back.'

'No.'

The historian's head turned. Coltaine had uncouched his lance and was readying his black-feathered round shield on his left forearm.

'Damn you, Fist – this is madness!'

'Watch your tongue, Historian,' the Wickan said distractedly.

Duiker's gaze fixed on the short stretch of silver chain visible around the man's neck. 'Whatever that gift is that you're wearing, it'll only work once. What you do now is what a war chief of the Wickans would, but not a Fist of the Empire.'

The man snapped around at that and the historian found the barbed point of the lance pricking his throat.

'And just when,' Coltaine rasped, 'can I choose to die in the manner I desire? You think I will use this cursed bauble?' Freeing his shield hand, he reached up and tore the chain from his neck. 'You wear it, Historian. All that we have done avails the world naught, unless the tale is told. Hood take Dujek Onearm! Hood take the Empress!' He flung the bottle at Duiker and it struck unerringly the palm of his right hand. Fingers closing around the object, he felt the serpentine slither of chain against calluses. The lance-point kissing his neck had not moved.

Their eyes locked.

'Excuse me, sirs,' List said. 'It appears this is not an instance of desired combat. If you would both observe ...'

Coltaine pulled the weapon away, swung around.

The Khundryl war chiefs waited in a row before them, not thirty paces away. They wore, beneath skins and furs and fetishes, a strange greyish armour that looked almost reptilian. Long moustaches, knotted beards and spiked braids – all black – disguised most of their features, though what remained visible was sun-darkened and angular.

One nudged his pony a step closer and spoke in broken Malazan. 'Blackwing! How think you the odds this day?'

Coltaine twisted in his saddle, studied the dust clouds now both north and south, then settled back. 'I would make no wager.'

'We have long awaited this day,' the war chief said. He stood in his stirrups and gestured to the south hills. 'Tregyn and Bhilard both, this day.' He waved northward. 'And Can'eld, and Semk, aye, even Tithansi – what's left, that is. The great tribes of the south odhans, yet who among them all is the most powerful? The answer is with this day.'

'You'd better hurry,' Duiker said. We're running out of soldiers for you to show your prowess on, you pompous bastard.

Coltaine seemed to have similar thoughts, though his temper was cooler. 'The question belongs to you, nor do I care either way its answer.'

'Are such concerns beyond the Wickan clans, then? Are you not yourselves a tribe?'

Coltaine slowly settled the lance's butt in its socket. 'No, we are soldiers of the Malazan Empire.'

Hood's breath, I got through to him.

The war chief nodded, unperturbed by that answer. 'Then be watchful, Fist Coltaine, while you attend to this day.'

The riders wheeled about, parting to rejoin their clans.

'I believe,' Coltaine said, looking around, 'you have selected a good vantage, Historian, so here shall I remain.'

'Fist?'

A faint smile touched his lean features. 'For a short time.'

 

The Crow Clan and the Seventh gave it their all, but the forces holding the mouth of the valley – from their high ground to either side and farther down the valley's throat – did not yield. The Chain of Dogs contracted between the hammer of Korbolo Dom and the anvil of the Tregyn and Bhilard. It was only a matter of time.

The actions of the Khundryl clans changed all that. For they had come, not to join in the slaughter of Malazans, but to give answer to the one question demanded of their pride and honour. The south mass struck the Tregyn position like a vengeful god's scythe. The north was a spear thrusting deep into Korbolo Dom's flank. A third, hitherto unseen force swept up from the valley itself, behind the Bhilard. Within minutes of the perfectly timed contacts, the Malazan forces found themselves unopposed, while the chaos of battle reigned on all sides.

Korbolo Dom's army quickly recovered, reforming with as much precision as they could muster, and drove back the Khundryl after more than four hours of pitched battle. One aim had been achieved, however, and that was the shattering of the Semk, the Can'eld and whatever was left of the Tithansi. Half an answer, Coltaine had muttered at that point, in a tone of utter bewilderment.

The southern forces broke the Tregyn and Bhilard an hour later, and set off in pursuit of the fleeing remnants.

With dusk an hour away, a lone Khundryl war chief rode up to them at a slow canter, and as he neared they saw that it was the spokesman. He'd been in a scrap and was smeared in blood, at least half of it his own, yet he rode straight in his saddle.

He reined in ten paces from Coltaine.

The Fist spoke. 'You have your answer, it seems.'

'We have it, Blackwing.'

'The Khundryl.'

Surprise flitted on the warrior's battered face. 'You honour us, but no. We strove to break the one named Korbolo Dom, but failed. The answer is not the Khundryl.'

'Then you do honour to Korbolo Dom?'

The war chief spat at that, growled his disbelief. 'Spirits below! You cannot be such a fool! The answer this day ...' The war chief yanked free his tulwar from its leather sheath, revealing a blade snapped ten inches above the hilt. He raised it over his head and bellowed, 'The Wickans! The Wickans! The Wickans!'