And what about Beak? Hadn’t he sensed them? Well, maybe. That mage, Bottle, the one with all the pets. Maybe Beak had smelled him, still alive under all those ashes. But then he was a coward, wasn’t he? To go up to, say, the Adjunct, or Captain Kindly, and tell them – no, that was too much. Kindly was like his own father, who didn’t like to listen whenever it was something he wasn’t interested in hearing. And the Adjunct, well, even her own soldiers weren’t sure of her.
He’d listened with all the rest to her speech after they’d left Malaz City (a most terrifying night, that, and he was so glad he’d been far away from it, out on a transport), and he remembered how she talked about going it alone from now on. And doing things nobody else would ever know about. Unwitnessed, she said. As if that was important. Such talk usually confused Beak, but not this time. His entire life was, he knew, unwitnessed. So, she had made all the other soldiers just like him, just like Beak, and that had been an unexpected gift from that cold, cold woman. Coward or no and stupid as he was, she’d won him that night. Something she wouldn’t think much of, obviously, but it meant a lot to him.
Anyway, his heart had slowed its wild run, and he lifted his head and glanced over at the captain. She sat her horse in the deep shadow, unmoving just as he had been, and yet, in an instant, he thought he caught from her a sound – the hammering of waves against stone, the screams of soldiers in battle, swords and slaughter, lances like ice piercing hot flesh, and the waves – and then all of that was gone.
She must have sensed his attention, for she asked in a low voice: ‘Are they well past, Beak?’
‘Aye.’
‘Caught no scent of us?’
‘None, Captain. I hid us with grey and blue. It was easy. That mage she kneels in front of the Holds. She knows nothing about the grey and blue warrens.’
‘The Letherii were supposed to join us,’ Faradan Sort muttered. ‘Instead, we find them riding with Tiste Edur, doing their work for them.’
‘All stirred up, aye. Especially round here.’
‘And that’s the problem,’ she replied, gathering her reins and nudging her mount out from beneath the heavy branches where they had hidden – fifteen paces off the trail – while the war-party rode past. ‘We’re well ahead of the other squads. Either Hellian or Urb has lost their mind, or maybe both of them.’
Beak followed on his own horse, a gentle bay he’d named Lily. ‘Like a hot poker, Captain, pushing right to the back of the forge. Do that and you burn your hand, right?’
‘The hand, yes. Keneb. You and me. All the other squads.’
‘Um, your hand, I meant.’
‘I am learning to tell those moments,’ she said, now eyeing him.
‘What moments?’ Beak asked.
‘When you’ve convinced yourself how stupid you are.’
‘Oh.’ Those moments. ‘I ain’t never been so loyal, Captain. Never.’
She gave him a strange look then, but said nothing.
They rode up onto the trail and faced their mounts east. ‘They’re up there somewhere ahead,’ the captain said. ‘Causing all sorts of trouble.’
Beak nodded. They’d been tracking those two squads for two nights now. And it was truly a trail of corpses. Sprung ambushes, dead Letherii and Tiste Edur, the bodies dragged off into cover, stripped down and so naked Beak had to avert his eyes, lest evil thoughts sneak into his mind. All the places his mother liked him to touch that one night – no, all that was evil thinking, evil memories, the kind of evil that could make him hang himself as his brother had done.
‘We have to find them, Beak.’
He nodded again.
‘We have to rein them in. Tonight, do you think?’
‘It’s the one named Balgrid, Captain. And the other named Bowl – who’s learned magic real fast. Balgrid’s got the white candle, you see, and this land ain’t had no white candle for a long time. So he’s dragging the smell off all the bodies they’re leaving and that’s muddying things up – those ears they’re cutting off, and the fingers and stuff that they’re tying to their belts. That’s why we’re going from ambush to ambush, right? Instead of straight to them.’
‘Well,’ she said after a moment and another long, curious look, ‘we’re on damned horses, aren’t we?’
‘So are they now, Captain.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I think so. Just tonight. It’s the Holds. There’s one for beasts. And if the Letherii mages figure things out, they could turn with that and find them real fast.’
‘Hood’s breath, Beak. And what about us?’
‘Us too. Of course, there’s plenty of people riding horses round here, bad stirrups or no. But if they get close, then maybe even grey and blue candles won’t work.’
‘You might end up having to show a few more, then.’
Oh, he didn’t like that idea. ‘I hope not. I really hope not.’
‘Let’s get going then, Beak.’
Don’t burn me down to the core, Captain. Please. It won’t be nice, not for anyone. I can still hear their screams and there’s always screams and I start first. My screams scare me the most, Captain. Scare me stupid, aye.
‘Wish Masan Gilani was with us,’ Scant said, pulling up clumps of moss to wash the blood from his hands.
Hellian blinked at the fool. Masan who?
‘Listen, Sergeant,’ Balgrid said again.
He was always saying that and so she’d stopped listening to him. It was like pissing in the fire, the way men could do when women couldn’t. Just a hiss into sudden darkness and then that awful smell. Listen, Sergeant and hiss, she stopped listening.
‘You’ve got to,’ Balgrid insisted, reaching out to prod her with a finger. ‘Sergeant?’
She glared down at that finger. ‘Want me t’cut off my left cheek, soldier? Touch me again and you’ll be sorry ‘s what I’m sayin’.’
‘Someone’s tracking us.’
She scowled. ‘For how long?’
‘Two, maybe three nights going,’ Balgrid replied.
‘So you decide to tell me now? All my soljers are idiots. How they trackin’ us? You and Bowl said you had it covered, had something covered, anyway. What was it you had covered? Right, you been pissing all over our trail or something.’ She glared at him. ‘Hiss.’
‘What? No. Listen, Sergeant—’
And there it went again. She rose to her feet, wobbling on the soft, loamy ground. Where one could fall at every damned step if one wasn’t careful. ‘Someone – you, Corporal, drag them bodies away.’
‘Aye Sergeant.
‘Right away, Sergeant.’
‘And you two. Maybe. Louts—’
‘Lutes.’
‘Help the corporal. You all made a mess killing these ones.’ And that was right enough, wasn’t it? This one had been nasty. Sixteen Letherii and four Edur. Quarrels to the heads did for them Edur what it does for normal people. Like sacks of stones on a big drop, whoo, toppling right off them horses. Then a pair of sharpers, one front of the Letherii column, the other at the tail end. Boom boom and the dusk was nothing but screaming and thrashing limbs human and horse and some couldn’t tell which.
Damned Letherii had recovered a little too fast for her liking. Dead sure too fast for Hanno’s liking, since Hanno went down with only half a skull left after one of the meanest sword swings she’d ever seen. Threw the soldier right off balance, though, with those stupid stirrups, and so it’d been easy for Urb to reach up one of those giant hands of his, grasp a belt or something and drag the fool right off. Throwing him down with such force that all wind rushed out of him both ends. At which point Urb pushed a mailed fist so hard into the face under the helmet that Urb hurt his knuckles on the back of the man’s skull – low, just above the vertables or whatever they were called. Teeth and bone splinters and meat spurting out everywhere.
The first loss in the squads, that’d been. All because Hanno jumped in close thinking the Letherii were still confused and useless. But no, t
hese soldiers, they’d been veterans. They’d come round damned quick.
Saltlick was bad cut up, though Balgrid had worked on him and he wasn’t bleeding out and unconscious any more. And Corporal Reem went and got two fingers of his left hand cut off – a bad fend with his shield. Poor Urb wasn’t doing too well as sergeant.
Hellian worked round carefully until she faced another direction, and could see Urb sitting on a rotting log, looking miserable. She drank down a mouthful of rum then ambled over. ‘We’re both sergeants now, right? Let’s go find some bushes t’crawl under. I’m in the mood for sweat and grunts with somebody, and since we’re the same rank an’ all it’s only obvious and ain’t nobody here gonna c’mplain.’
He blinked up at her, wide-eyed as an owl.
‘Wha’s your probbem, Urb? I ain’t as ugly as you, am I?’
‘Urb ain’t ugly,’ Reem said with an incredulous laugh. ‘Masan couldn’t think straight around him! Probably why she let herself get shifted over to Balm’s squad.’
Hellian grunted, then said, ‘Be quiet, Reem. You’re a corporal. This is sergeant business.’
‘You want a roll with Urb, Sergeant,’ Reem said. ‘Got nothing to do with you two being sergeants and everything t’do with Urb looking like some goddamned god and you drunk enough to get hungry for the sweats and grunts.’
‘Still ain’t your business.’
‘Maybe not, but we gotta listen to those grunts. Like Scant said, if Masan was around we could all of us dream those dreams and maybe even try, hoping she’d be so frustrated trying to get anywhere with Urb she just might—’
‘Since when you find that runaway mouth of yours, Reem?’ Balgrid demanded. ‘You was better being silent and mysterious. So now you lose a couple fingers and what happens?’
‘Quiet allaya,’ Hellian said. ‘You want another patrol coming down on us and us not ready for ‘em this time? Now, the rest of you, not countin’ Urb here, check your gear and get your trophies and all that and if you wanna listen then just don’t make too many groanin’ noises. Of envy and the like.’
‘We won’t be groaning outa envy, Hellian. More like—’
‘Silent and mysterious, damn you, Reem!’
‘I feel like talking, Balgrid, and you can’t stop me—’
‘But I can, and you won’t like it at all.’
‘Damned necromancer.’
‘Just the other side of Denul, Reem, like I keep telling you. Denul’s giving, Hood’s taking away.’
Hellian closed in on Urb, who suddenly looked terrified. ‘Relax,’ she said. ‘I ain’t gonna cut anything off. Not anything of yours, anyway. But if I get clobbered with terrible rejection here . . .’
‘Nice bed of moss over here,’ Scant said, straightening and moving away with a gesture in his wake.
Hellian reached down and tugged Urb to his feet.
Balgrid was suddenly beside him. ‘Listen, Sergeant—’
She dragged Urb past the mage.
‘No, Sergeant! Those ones tracking us – I think they’ve found us!’
All at once weapons were drawn, figures scattering to defensive positions – a rough circle facing outward with Hellian and Urb in the centre.
‘Balgrid,’ she hissed. ‘You coulda said—’
Horse hoofs, the heavy breath of an animal, then a voice called out, low, in Malazan: ‘Captain Faradan Sort and Beak. We’re coming in so put your damned sharpers away.’
‘Oh, that’s just great,’ Hellian sighed. ‘Ease down, everyone, it’s that scary captain.’
* * *
Marines all right. Beak didn’t like the look of them. Mean, hungry, scowling now that the captain had found them. And there was a dead one, too.
Faradan Sort guided her horse into their midst, then dismounted.
Beak remained where he was for the moment, not far from where two soldiers stood, only now sheathing their swords. He could see the necromancer, the man’s aura white and ghostly. Death was everywhere here, the still air heavy with last breaths, and he could feel this assault of loss like a tight fist in his chest.
It was always this way where people died. He should never have become a soldier.
‘Hellian, Urb, we need to talk. In private.’ Cool and hard, the captain’s voice. ‘Beak?’
‘Captain?’
‘Join us.’
Oh no. But he rode forward and then slipped down from the saddle. Too much attention on him all at once, and he ducked as he made his way to the captain’s side.
Faradan Sort in the lead, the group set off into the wood.
‘We ain’t done nothin’ wrong,’ Sergeant Hellian said as soon as they halted twenty or so paces from the others. She seemed to be weaving back and forth like a flat-headed snake moments from spitting venom.
‘You were supposed to pace yourselves, not get too far ahead of the other squads. At any moment now, Sergeant, we won’t be running onto patrols of twenty, but two hundred. Then two thousand.’
‘Tha’s not the probbem,’ Hellian said – an accent Beak had never heard before. ‘The probbem is, Cap’in, the Letherii are fightin’ alongside them Edur—’
‘Have you attempted to make contact with those Letherii?’
‘We have,’ Urb said. ‘It got messy.’ He shook his head. ‘There’s no sign, Captain, that these people want to be liberated.’
‘Like Urb said,’ Hellian added, nodding vigorously.
The captain looked away. ‘The other squads have said much the same.’
‘Maybe we can convince them or something,’ Urb said.
Hellian leaned against a tree. ‘Seems t’me, Cap’in, we got two things we can do and ony two. We can retreat back t’the coast. Build ten thousand rafts and paddle away ‘s fast as we can. Or we go on. Fast, vicious mean. And iffin they come at us two thousand at once, then we run an’ hide like we was trained t’do. Fast and vicious mean, Cap’in, or a long paddle.’
‘There is only one thing worse than arguing with a drunk,’ Faradan Sort said, ‘and that’s arguing with a drunk who’s right.’
Hellian beamed a big smile.
She was drunk? She was drunk. A drunk sergeant, only, as the captain had just said, no fool either.
Faradan Sort continued, ‘Do you have enough horses for your squads?’
‘Aye, sir,’ Urb replied. ‘More than enough.’
‘I still want you to slow down, for a few days at least. I intend to contact the other squads and get them to start doing what you’re doing, but that will take some time—’
‘Captain,’ Urb said. ‘I got a feeling they’re learning already. There’s lots more patrols now and they’re getting bigger and a lot more wary. We’ve been expecting to walk into an ambush at any time, and that’s what’s got us worried. Next time you ride to find us you might find a pile of corpses. Malazan corpses. We ain’t got the munitions to carry us all the way – no-one has – so it’s going to start getting a lot harder, sir.’
‘I know, Sergeant. You lost one in that fight, didn’t you?’
‘Hanno.’
‘Got careless,’ Hellian said.
Urb frowned, then nodded. ‘Aye, that’s true.’
‘Then let us hope that one hard lesson is enough,’ the captain said.
‘Expect it is,’ Urb confirmed.
Faradan Sort faced Beak. ‘Tell them about the Holds, Beak.’
He flinched, then sighed and said, ‘Letherii mages – they might be able to find us by the horses, by smelling them out, I mean.’
‘Balgrid’s covering our trail,’ Urb said. ‘Are you saying it won’t work?’
‘Might be,’ Beak said. ‘Necromancy’s one thing they can’t figure. Not Letherii. Not Tiste Edur. But there’s a Beast Hold, you see.’
Hellian withdrew a flask and drank down a mouthful, then said, ‘We need to know for certain. Next time, Urb, we get us one of them Letherii mages alive. We ask some questions, and in between the screams we get answers.’
Beak shi
vered. Not just drunk but bloodthirsty, too.
‘Be careful,’ the captain said. ‘That could go sour very quickly.’
‘We know all about careful, sir,’ Hellian said with a bleary smile.
Faradan Sort studied the sergeant the way she sometimes studied Beak himself, then she said, ‘We’re done. Slow down some, and watch out for small patrols – they might be bait.’ She hesitated, then added, ‘We’re in this, now. Understand?’
‘No rafts?’
‘No rafts, Hellian.’
‘Good. If’n I never see another sea I’m going to die happy.’
She would, too, Beak knew. Die happy. She had that going for her.
‘Back to your squads,’ the captain said. ‘Set your nervous soldiers at ease.’
‘It’s not the smell,’ Beak said.
The others turned inquiringly.
‘That’s not what’s making them nervous, I mean,’ Beak explained. ‘The death smell – they’re carrying all that with them, right? So they’re used to it now. They’re only nervous because they’ve been sitting around too long. In one place. That’s all.’
‘Then let us not waste any more time,’ Faradan Sort said.
Good idea. That was why she was a captain, of course. Smart enough to make her ways of thinking a mystery to him – but that was one mystery he was happy enough with. Maybe the only one.
They flung themselves down at the forest’s edge. Edge, aye – too many damned edges. Beyond was a patchwork of farmland and hedgerows. Two small farms were visible, although no lantern- or candle-light showed through the tiny, shuttered windows. Heart pounding painfully in his chest, Fiddler rolled onto his side to see how many had made it. A chorus of harsh breaths from the scatter of bodies in the gloom to either side of the sergeant. All there. Thanks to Corabb and the desert warrior’s impossible luck.