The Jhag took another step towards the heaving mass of rats that now covered what was left of the bear-killed horse and rider, and laid a hand on the shoulder of the mare. The trembling stilled. Apsalar stepped back, warily studying the stranger.
Gryllen was hesitating—Fiddler could not believe his eyes. He glanced again at the Jhag. Another figure had appeared beside the tall bowman. Short and wide as a siege engine, his skin a deep, warm brown, his black hair braided and studded with fetishes. If anything, his canines were bigger than his companion's, and looking much sharper. A Trell. A Jhag and a Trell. That rings a towerful of bells, if only I could get through the pain to spare it another thought.
'Your quarry has fled,' the Jhag said to Gryllen. 'These people here do not pursue the Trail of Hands. Moreover, I now protect them.'
The rats hissed and twittered in a deafening roar, and surged higher on the road. Dust-grey eyes glittered in a seething storm.
'Do not,' the Jhag said slowly, 'try my patience.'
A thousand bodies flinched. The tide withdrew, a wave of greasy fur. A moment later they were gone.
The Trell squatted beside Fiddler. 'You will live, soldier?'
'Seems I'll have to,' the sapper replied, 'if only to make some sense of what just happened. I should know you two, shouldn't I?'
The Trell shrugged. 'Can you stand?'
'Let's see.' He pulled an arm under him, pushed himself up an inch, then remembered nothing more.
Chapter Eight
It is said that on the night of Kellanved and Dancer's Return, Malaz City was a maelstrom of sorcery and dire visitations. It is not a far reach to find one sustained in the belief that the assassinations were a messy, confused affair, and that success and failure are judgements dependent on one's perspective…
Conspiracies In The Imperium
Heboric
Coltaine had surprised them all. Leaving the footsoldiers of the Seventh to guard the taking-on of water at Dryj Spring, he had led his Wickans out onto the Odhan. Two hours after sunset, the Tithansi tribesmen, resting their horses by walking with lead reins over a league from the oasis, suddenly found themselves the centre of a closing-horseshoe charge. Few had time to so much as remount, much less wheel in formation to meet the attack. Though they outnumbered the Wickans seven to one, they broke, and died a hundred for every one of Coltaine's clan warriors who fell. Within two hours the slaughter was complete.
Riding the south road towards the oasis, Duiker had seen the glow from the Tithansi's burning wagons way off on his right. It was a long moment before he grasped what he was seeing. There was no question of riding into that conflagration. The Wickans rode the blood of butchery—they would not pause to think before taking him down. Instead he swung his mount northwest and rode at a canter until he ran into the first of the fleeing Tithansi, from whom he gleaned the story.
The Wickans were demons. They breathed fire. Their arrows magically multiplied in mid-air. Their horses fought with uncanny intelligence. A Mezla Ascendant had been conjured and sent to Seven Cities, and now faced the Whirlwind goddess. The Wickans could not be killed. There would never come another dawn.
Duiker left the man to whatever fate awaited him and rode back to the road, resuming his journey to the oasis. He had lost two hours, but had gleaned invaluable information amidst the Tithansi deserter's terror-spawned ravings.
This, the historian realized as he rode on, was more than the simple lashing-out of a wounded, tormented beast. Coltaine clearly did not view the situation in that way. Perhaps he never did. The Fist was conducting a campaign. Engaged in a war, not a panicked flight. The leaders of the Apocalypse had better reorder their thoughts, if they're to hold any hope of wresting the fangs from this serpent. More, they'd better kill the notion evidently already rampant that the Wickans were more than just human, and that's easier said than done.
Kamist Reloe still retained superior numbers, but the quality of the troops was beginning to tell—Coltaine's Wickans were disciplined in their mayhem, and the Seventh was a veteran force that the new Fist had taken pains in preparing for this kind of war. There was still the likelihood that the Malazan forces would be destroyed eventually—if things were as bad elsewhere, there'd be little hope for the stranded army and the thousands of refugees that clung to it. All these minor victories cannot win the war—Reloe's potential recruits number in the hundreds of thousands—assuming Sha'ik recognizes the threat Coltaine poses and sends them in pursuit of the High Fist.
When he came within sight of the small oasis surrounding Dryj Spring, he was shocked to see that almost every palm tree had been cut down. The stands were gone, leaving only stumps and low plants. Smoke drifted over the area, ghostly under the paling sky. Duiker rose in his stirrups, scanning for campfires, pickets, the tents of the encampment. Nothing… perhaps on the other side of the spring…
The smoke thickened as he rode into the oasis, his mount picking its way around the hacked stumps. There were signs everywhere—first the pits dug into the sand by the outlying picket stations, then the deep ruts where wagons had been positioned in a defensive line. In the hearth-places only smouldering ashes remained.
Dumbfounded and suddenly exhausted, Duiker let his horse wander through the abandoned camp. The deep sinkhole beyond was the spring—it had been virtually emptied and was only now beginning to refill: a small brownish pool surrounded by the mud-coated husks of palm bark and rotting fronds. Even the fish had been taken.
While the Wickan horsewarriors had set off to ambush the Tithansi, the Seventh and the refugees had already left the oasis. The historian struggled to comprehend that fact. He envisioned the scene of departure, the stumbling, red-eyed refugees, children piled onto wagons, the stricken gazes of the veteran soldiers guarding the exodus. Coltaine gave them no rest, no pause to assimilate the shock, to come to terms with all that had happened, was happening. They'd arrived, stripped the oasis of water and everything else that might prove useful, then they'd left.
Where?
Duiker nudged his mount forward. He came to the oasis's southwestern edge, his eyes tracking the wide swath left behind by the wagons, cattle and horses. Off to the southeast rose the weathered range of the Lador Hills. Westward stretched the Tithansi Steppes. Nothing in that direction until the Sekala River—too far for Coltaine to contemplate. If northwest, then the village of Manot, and beyond that, Caron Tepasi, on the coast of the Karas Sea. Almost as far as Sekala River. The trail led due west, into the steppes. Hood's breath, there's nothing there!
There seemed little point in trying to anticipate the Wickan Fist. The historian wheeled back to the spring and stiffly dismounted, wincing at the ache in his hips and thighs, the dull throb in his lower back. He could go no farther, nor could his horse. They needed to rest—and they needed the soupy water at the bottom of the lakebed.
He removed his bedroll from the saddle, tossing it onto the leaf-strewn sand. Unhitching the mare's girth strap, he slid the ornate saddle from its sweat-covered back. Taking the reins, he led the animal down to the water.
The spring had been plugged with rocks, which explained its slowed trickle. Duiker removed his scarf and strained the water through the fabric into his helmet. He let the horse drink first, then repeated the filtering process before quenching his own thirst and refilling his canteen.
He fed the mare from the bag of grain strapped to the saddle, then rubbed the beast down before turning his attention to setting up his own makeshift camp. He wondered whether he would ever rejoin Coltaine and the army; whether, perhaps, he was trapped in some nightmarish pursuit of ghosts. Maybe they are demons, after all. His weariness was getting the better of him.
Duiker laid out the bedroll, then rigged over it a sunshade using his telaba. Without the trees the sun would scorch this oasis—it would be years in recovering, if it ever did. Before sleep took him, he thought long on the war to come. Cities meant less than did sources of water. Armies would have to occupy oases, which would become
as important as islands in a vast sea. Coltaine would ever be at a disadvantage—his every destination known, his every approach prepared for… provided Kamist Reloe can get to them first, and how can he fail in that? He doesn't have thousands of refugees to escort. For all the Fist's surprises, Coltaine was tactically constrained.
The question the historian asked himself before falling asleep held a blunt finality: how long could Coltaine delay the inevitable?
He awoke at dusk, and twenty minutes later was on the trail, a solitary rider beneath a vast cloak of capemoths so thick as to blot out the stars.
Breakers rolled over a reef a quarter of a mile out, a phosphorescent ribbon beneath a cloud-filled sky. The sun's rise was an hour away. Felisin stood on a grassy shelf overlooking a vast beach of white sand, light-headed and weaving slightly as the minutes passed.
There was no boat in sight, no sign that anyone had ever set foot on this stretch of coast. Driftwood and heaps of dead seaweed marked the tide line. Sand crabs crawled everywhere she looked.
'Well,' Heboric said beside her, 'at least we can eat. Assuming those are edible, that is, and there's only one way to find out.'
She watched as he removed a sackcloth from the pack, then made his way down onto the sand. 'Watch those claws,' she said to him. 'Wouldn't want to lose a finger, would we?'
The ex-priest laughed, continuing on. She could see him only because of his clothes. His skin was now completely black, the traceries barely detectable even up close and in daylight. The visible changes were matched by other, more subtle ones.
'You can't hurt him any more,' Baudin said from where he crouched over the other backpack. 'No matter what you say.'
'Then I've no reason to stay quiet,' she replied.
They had water to last another day, maybe two. The clouds over the straits promised rain, but Felisin knew every promise was a lie—salvation was for others. She looked around again. This is where our bones will rest, humps and ripples in the sand. Then, one day, even those signs will be gone. We've reached the shore, where Hood awaits and no-one else. A journey of the spirit as much as of the flesh. I welcome the end to both.
Baudin had pitched the tents and was now collecting wood for a fire. Heboric returned with the sackcloth gripped between his stumps. The tips of claws showed through the bag's loose weave. 'These will either kill us or make us very thirsty—I'm not sure which will be worse.'
The last fresh water was eleven hours behind them, a damp patch in a shallow basin. They'd had to dig down an arm-span to find it, and it had proved brackish, tasting of iron and difficult to keep down. 'Do you truly believe Duiker's still out there, sailing back and forth for—what, five days now?'
Heboric squatted, setting the sack down. 'He's not published anything in years—what else would he have to do with all his time?'
'Do you think frivolity is the proper way to meet Hood?'
'I didn't know there was a proper way, lass. Even if I was certain death was coming—which I'm not, at least in the immediate future—well, each of us has to answer it in our own way. After all, even the priests of Hood argue over the preferred manner in which to finally face their god.'
'If I'd known a lecture was coming, I'd have kept my mouth shut.'
'Coming to terms with life as an adolescent, are you?'
Her scowl made him laugh in delight.
Heboric's favourite jokes are the unintended ones. Mockery is just hate's patina, and every laugh is vicious. She didn't have the strength to continue riposting. The last laugh won't be yours, Heboric. You'll discover that soon enough. You and Baudin both.
They cooked the crabs in a bed of coals, needing sticks to push the creatures back into the searing heat until their struggles ceased. The white flesh was delicious, but salty. A bounteous feast and an endless supply that could prove fatal.
Baudin then collected more driftwood, intending to build a beacon fire for the night to come. In the meantime, as the sun broke the eastern skyline, he piled damp seaweed on the fire and studied with a satisfied expression the column of smoke that rose into the air.
'You planning to do that all day?' Felisin asked. What about sleep? I need you sleeping, Baudin.
'Every now and then,' he replied.
'Don't see the point if those clouds roll in.'
'They ain't rolled in yet, have they? If anything, they're rolling out—back to the mainland.'
She watched him working the fire. He'd lost the economy of his movements, she realized; there was now a sloppiness there that betrayed the extremity of his exhaustion, a weakness that probably came with finally reaching the coast. They'd lost any control over their fates. Baudin believed in Baudin and no-one else. Now just like us he's depending on someone else. And maybe it was all for nothing. Maybe we should've taken our chances going to Dosin Pali.
The crab meat began taking its toll. Waves of desperate thirst assailed Felisin, followed by sharp cramps as her stomach rebelled at being full.
Heboric disappeared inside his tent, clearly suffering the same symptoms.
Felisin did little over the next twenty minutes, simply clawing through the pain and watching Baudin, willing on him the same affliction. If he was similarly assailed he showed no sign. Her fear of him deepened.
The cramps faded, although the thirst remained. The clouds over the straits retreated, the sun's heat rose.
Baudin dumped a last pile of seaweed on the fire, then made ready to retire to the tent.
'Take mine,' Felisin said.
His head jerked around, his eyes narrowing.
'I'll join you in a moment.'
He still stared.
'Why not?' she snapped. 'What other escape is there? Unless you've taken vows—'
He flinched almost imperceptibly.
Felisin went on, '—sworn to some sex-hating Ascendant. Who would that be? Hood? Wouldn't that be a surprise! But there's always a little death in lovemaking—'
'That what you call it?' Baudin muttered. 'Lovemaking?'
She shrugged.
'I'm sworn to no god.'
'So you've said before. Yet you've never made use of me, Baudin. Do you prefer men? Boys? Throw me on my stomach and you won't know the difference.'
He straightened, still staring, his expression unreadable. Then he walked to the tent. Felisin's tent.
She smiled to herself, waited a hundred heartbeats, then joined him.
His hands moved over her clumsily, as if he was trying to be gentle but did not know how. The rags of their clothing had taken but moments to remove. Baudin guided her down until she lay on her back, looking up at his blunt, bearded face, his eyes still cold and unfathomable as his large hands gathered her breasts and pushed them together.
As soon as he was inside her, his restraint fell away. He became something other than human, reduced to an animal. He was rough, but not as rough as Beneth had been, nor a good number of Beneth's followers.
He was quickly done, settling his considerable weight on her, his breath harsh and heavy in her ear. She did not move him; her every sense was attuned to his breathing, to the twitching of muscles as sleep stole up on him. She had not expected him to surrender so easily, she had not anticipated his helplessness.
Felisin's hand stole into the sands beside the pallet and probed until it found the grip of the dagger. She willed calm into her own breathing, though she could do nothing to slow her hammering heart. He was asleep. He did not stir.
She slipped the blade free, shifting her grasp to angle the point inward. She drew a deep breath, held it.
His hand caught her wrist the instant she began her thrust. He rose fluidly, wrenching her arm around and twisting her until she rolled onto her stomach beneath him. His weight pinned her down.
Baudin squeezed her wrist until the dagger fell free. 'You think I don't check my gear, lass?' he whispered. 'You think you're a mystery to me? Who else would steal one of my throat-stickers?'
'You left Beneth to die.' She couldn't see his face,
and was almost glad for that when he replied.
'No, lass. I killed the bastard myself. Snapped his neck like a reed. He deserved more pain, something slower, but there wasn't any time for that. He didn't deserve the mercy, but he got it.'
'Who are you?'
'Never done a man or a boy. But I'll pretend. I'm good at pretending.'
'I'll scream—'
'Heboric's sleep isn't the kind you can shake him out of. He dreams. He thrashes about. I've slapped him and he didn't stir. So scream away. What are screams anyway? Voicing your outrage—didn't think you were capable of outrage any more, Felisin.'
She felt the hopelessness flood through her body. It's just more of the same. I can survive it, I can even enjoy it. If I try.
Baudin rose from her. She writhed onto her back, stared at him. He'd collected the dagger and had backed to the entrance. He smiled. 'Sorry if I disappointed you, but I wasn't in the mood.'
'Then why—'
'To see if you're still what you were.' He did not need to voice his conclusion. 'Get some sleep, lass.'
Alone, Felisin curled up on the pallet, numbness filling her. To see if you're still … yes, you still are. Baudin knew that already. He just wanted to show you to yourself, girl. You thought you were using him but he was using you. He knew what you planned. Think on that. Think on it long and hard.
Hood came striding out of the waves, the reaper of carved-out souls. He'd waited long enough, his amusement at their suffering losing its flavour. Time had come for the Gates.
Feeling bleached and withered as the dead driftwood around her, Felisin sat facing the straits. Clouds flickered over the water, lightning danced to the rumbling beat of thunder. Spume rose fierce along the line of the reef, launching blue-white explosions into the darkness.
An hour earlier Heboric and Baudin had come back from their walk up the beach, dragging between them the prow of a shattered boat. It was old, but they'd talked about building a raft. The discussion had the sound of pointless musing—no-one had the strength for such a task. They would start dying by dawn, and they all knew it.
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