The Bonehunters

  These new cults with their grisly icons, they did nothing to honour the Chain of Dogs. They were never intended to. Instead, they seemed to Keneb pathetic efforts to force a link with past greatness, with a time and a place of momentous significance. He had no doubt that the Last Siege of Y'Ghatan would soon acquire similar mythical status, and he hated the thought, wanted to be as far away from the land birthing and nurturing such blasphemies as was possible.

  Blistig was speaking now: 'These are ugly waters to anchor a fleet, Adjunct, perhaps we could move on a few leagues—'

  'No,' she said.

  Blistig glanced at Keneb.

  'The weather shall turn,' Nil said.

  A child with lines on his face. This is the true legacy of the Chain of Dogs. Lines on his face, and hands stained red.

  And Temul, the young Wickan commanding resentful, embittered elders who still dreamed of vengeance against the slayers of Coltaine. He rode Duiker's horse, a lean mare with eyes that Keneb could have sworn were filled with sorrow. Temul carried scrolls, presumably containing the historian's own writings, although he would not show them to anyone. This warrior of so few years, carrying the burden of memory, carrying the last months of life in an old man once soldier among the Old Guard who had, inexplicably, somehow touched this Wickan youth. That alone, Keneb suspected, was a worthy story, but it would remain forever untold, for Temul alone understood it, holding within himself each and every detail, and Temul was not one to explain, not a teller of stories. No, he just lives them. And this is what those cultists yearn for, for themselves, and what they will never truly possess.

  Keneb could hear nothing of the huge encampment behind him. Yet one tent in particular within that makeshift city dominated his mind. The man within it had not spoken in days. His lone eye seemingly stared at nothing. What remained of Tene Baralta had been healed, at least insofar as flesh and bone was concerned. The man's spirit was, alas, another matter. The Red Blade's homeland had not been kind to him. Keneb wondered if the man was as eager to leave Seven Cities as he was.

  Nether said, 'The plague is growing more virulent. The Grey Goddess hunts us.'

  The Adjunct's head turned at that.

  Blistig cursed, then said, 'Since when is Poliel eager to side with some damned rebels — she's already killed most of them, hasn't she?'

  'I do not understand this need,' Nether replied, shaking her head. 'But it seems she has set her deathly eyes upon Malazans. She hunts us, and comes ever closer.'

  Keneb closed his eyes. Haven't we been hurt enough?

  ****

  They came upon the dead horse shortly after dawn. Amidst the swarm of capemoths feeding on the carcass were two skeletal lizards, standing on their hind legs, heads ducking and darting as they crunched and flayed the bird-sized insects.

  'Hood's breath,' Lostara muttered, 'what are those?'

  'Telorast and Curdle,' Apsalar replied. 'Ghosts bound to those small frames. They have been my companions for some time now.'

  Kalam moved closer and crouched beside the horse. 'Those lizard cats,' he said. 'Came in from all sides.' He straightened, scanning the rocks. 'I can't imagine Masan Gilani surviving the ambush.'

  'You'd be wrong,' said a voice from the slope to their right.

  The soldier sat on the crest, legs sprawled down the slope. One of those legs was crimson from upper thigh to the cracked leather boot. Masan Gilani's dark skin was фshen, her eyes dull. 'Can't stop the bleeding, but I got one щf the bastards and wounded another. Then the Hounds came...'

  Captain Faradan Sort turned to the column. 'Deadsmell! Up front, quick!'

  'Thank you for the knife,' Masan Gilani said to Apsalar.

  'Keep it,' the Kanese woman said.

  'Sorry about your horse.'

  'So am I, but you are not to blame.'

  Kalam said, 'Well, it seems we're in for a long walk after all.'

  Bottle made his way to the front of the column in Deadsmell's wake, close enough to look long and hard at the two bird-like reptile skeletons perched on the horse carcass and intent on killing capemoths. He watched their darting movements, the flicking of their bony tails, the way the darkness of their souls bled out like smoke from a cracked water-pipe.

  Someone came to his side and he glanced over. Fiddler, the man's blue eyes fixed on the undead creatures. 'What do you see, Bottle?'

  'Sergeant?'

  Fiddler took him by the arm and pulled him off to one side. 'Out with it.'

  'Ghosts, possessing those bound-up bones.'

  The sergeant nodded. 'Apsalar said as much. Now, what kind of ghosts?'

  Frowning, Bottle hesitated.

  Fiddler hissed a curse. 'Bottle.'

  'Well, I was assuming she knows, only has her reasons for not mentioning it, so I was thinking, it wouldn't be polite—'

  'Soldier—'

  'I mean, she was a squad-mate of yours, and—'

  'A squad-mate who just happened to have been possessed herself, by the Rope, almost all the time that I knew her. So if she's not talking, it's no surprise. Tell me Bottle, what manner of flesh did those souls call home?'

  'Are you saying you don't trust her?'

  'I don't even trust you.'

  Frowning, Bottle looked away, watched Deadsmell work­ing on Masan Gilani on the slope, sensed the whisper of Denul sorcery... and something like Hood's own breath. The bastard is a necromancer, damn him!

  'Bottle.'

  'Sergeant? Oh, sorry. I was just wondering.'

  'Wondering what?'

  'Well, why Apsalar has two dragons in tow.'

  'They're not dragons. They're tiny lizards—'

  'No, Sergeant, they're dragons.'

  Slowly, Fiddler's eyes widened.

  Bottle'd known he wouldn't like it.

  Chapter Fourteen

  There is something profoundly cynical, my friends, in the notion of paradise after death. The lure is evasion. The promise is excusative. One need not accept responsibility for the world as it is, and by extension, one need do nothing about it. To strive for change, for true goodness in this mortal world, one must acknow­ledge and accept, within one's own soul, that this mortal reality has purpose in itself, that its greatest value is not for us, but for our children and their children. To view life as but a quick passage along a foul, tortured path — made foul and tortured by our own indifference — is to excuse all manner of misery and depravity, and to exact cruel punishment upon the innocent lives to come.

  I defy this notion of paradise beyond the gates of bone. If the soul truly survives the passage, then it behooves us — each of us, my friends — to nurture a faith in similitude: what awaits us is a reflection of what we leave behind, and in the squandering of our mortal existence, we surrender the opportunity to learn the ways of goodness, the practice of sympathy, empathy, compassion and healing — all passed by in our rush to arrive at a place of glory and beauty, a place we did not earn, and most certainly do not deserve.

  The Apocryphal Teachings of Tanno Spiritwalker Kimloc, The Decade in Ehrlitan

  Chaur held out the baby as if to begin bouncing it on one knee, but Barathol reached out to rest a hand on the huge man's wrist. The blacksmith shook his head. 'Not old enough for that yet. Hold her close, Chaur, so as not to break anything.'

  The man answered with a broad smile and resumed cuddling and rocking the swaddled infant.

  Barathol Mekhar leaned back in his chair, stretching out his legs, and briefly closed his eyes, making a point of not listening to the argument in the side room where the woman, Scillara, resisted the combined efforts of L'oric, Nulliss, Filiad and Urdan, all of whom insisted she accept the baby, as was a mother's responsibility, a mother's duty and a host of other guilt-laden terms they flung at her like stones. Barathol could not recall the last time the villagers in question had displayed such vehement zeal over any­thing. Of course, in this instance, their virtue came easy, for it cost them nothing.

  The blacksmith admitted to a certain
admiration for the woman. Children were indeed burdensome, and as this one was clearly not the creation of love, Scillara's lack of attachment seemed wholly reasonable. On the opposite side, the ferocity of his fellow townsfolk was leaving him disgusted and vaguely nauseous.

  Hayrith appeared in the main room, moments earlier a silent witness to the tirade in the side chamber where they'd set Scillara's cot. The old woman shook her head. 'Idiots. Pompous, prattling twits! Just listen to all that piety, Barathol! You'd think this babe was the Emperor reborn!'

  'Gods forbid,' the blacksmith muttered.

  'Jessa last house on the east road, she's got that year-old runt with the withered legs that ain't gonna make it. She'd not refuse the gift, and everyone here knows it.'

  Barathol nodded, somewhat haphazardly, his mind on other matters.

  'There's even Jessa second floor of the old factor house, though she ain't had any milk t'give in fifteen years. Still, she'd be a good mother and this village could use a wailing child to help drown out all the wailing grown-ups. Get the Jessas together on this and it'll be fine.'

  'It's L'oric,' Barathol said.

  'What's that?'

  'L'oric. He's so proper he burns to the touch. Or, rather, he burns everything he touches.'

  'Well, it ain't his business, is it?'

  'People like him make everything their business, Hayrith.'

  The woman dragged a chair close and sat down across from the blacksmith. She studied him with narrowed eyes. 'How long you going to wait?' she asked.

  'As soon as the lad, Cutter, is able to travel,' Barathol said. He rubbed at his face. 'Thank the gods all that rum's drunk. I'd forgotten what it does to a man's gut.'

  'It was L'oric, wasn't it?'

  He raised his brows.

  'Him showing up here didn't just burn you — it left you scorched, Barathol. Seems you did some bad things in th past' — she snorted — 'as if that makes you different from all the rest of us. But you figured you could hide out here for ever, and now you know that ain't going to be. Unless, ol course,' her eyes narrowed to slits, 'you kill L'oric.'

  The blacksmith glanced over at Chaur, who was making faces and cooing sounds down at the baby, while it in turn seemed to be blowing bubbles, as yet blissfully unaware oi the sheer ugliness of the monstrous face hovering over it. Barathol sighed. 'I'm not interested in killing anyone, Hayrith.'

  'So you're going with these people here?'

  'As far as the coast, yes.'

  'Once L'oric gets word out, they'll start hunting you again. You reach the coast, Barathol, you find the first ship off this damned continent, is what you do. 'Course, I'll miss you — the only man with more than half a brain in this whole town. But Hood knows, nothing ever lasts.'

  They both looked over as L'oric appeared. The High Mage's colour was up, his expression one of baffled dis­belief. 'I just don't understand it,' he said.

  Barathol grunted. 'It's not for you to understand.'

  'This is what civilization has come to,' the man said, crossing his arms and glaring at the blacksmith.

  'You got that right.' Barathol drew his legs in and stood. 'I don't recall Scillara inviting you into her life.'

  'My concern is with the child.'

  The blacksmith began walking towards the side chamber. 'No it isn't. Your obsession is with propriety. Your version of it, to which everyone else must bend a knee. Only, Scillara's not impressed. She's too smart to be impressed.'

  Entering the room, Barathol grasped Nulliss by the scruff of her tunic. 'You,' he said in a growl, 'and the rest of you, get out.' He guided the spitting, cursing Semk woman out through the doorway, then stood to one side watching the others crowd up in their eagerness to escape.

  A moment later, Barathol and Scillara were alone. The blacksmith faced her. 'How is the wound?'

  She scowled. 'The one that's turned my arm into a withered stick or the one that'll make me walk like a crab for the rest of my life?'

  'The shoulder. I doubt the crab-walk is permanent.'

  'And how would you know?'

  He shrugged. 'Every woman in this hamlet has dropped a babe or three, and they walk just fine.'

  She eyed him with suspicion. 'You're the one called Barathol. The blacksmith.'

  'Yes.'

  'The mayor of this pit you call a hamlet.'

  'Mayor? I don't think we warrant a mayor. No, I'm just the biggest and meanest man living here, which to most minds counts for far too much.'

  'Loric says you betrayed Aren. That you're responsible for the death of thousands, when the T'lan Imass came to crush the rebellion.'

  'We all have our bad days, Scillara.'

  She laughed. A rather nasty laugh. 'Well, thank you for driving those fools away. Unless you plan on picking up where they left off.'

  He shook his head. 'I have some questions about your friends, the ones you were travelling with. The T'lan Imass ambushed you with the aim, it seems, of stealing the young woman named Felisin Younger.'

  'L'oric said as much,' Scillara replied, sitting up straighter in the bed and wincing with the effort. 'She wasn't important to anybody. It doesn't make sense. I think they came to kill Heboric more than steal her.'

  'She was the adopted daughter of Sha'ik.'

  The woman shrugged, winced again. 'A lot of foundlings in Raraku were.'

  'The one named Cutter, where is he from again?'

  'Darujhistan.'

  'Is that where all of you were headed?'

  Scillara closed her eyes. 'It doesn't matter now, does it? Tell me, have you buried Heboric?'

  'Yes, he was Malazan, wasn't he? Besides, out here we've a problem with wild dogs, wolves and the like.'

  'Might as well dig him up, Barathol. I don't think Cutter will settle for leaving him here.'

  'Why not?'

  Her only answer was a shake of her head.

  Barathol turned back to the doorway. 'Sleep well, Scillara. Like it or not, you're the only one here who can feed your little girl. Unless we can convince Jessa last house on the east road. At all events, she'll be hungry soon enough.'

  'Hungry,' the woman muttered behind him. 'Like a cat with worms.'

  In the main room the High Mage had taken the babe from Chaur's arms. The huge simpleton sat with tears streaming down his pocked face, this detail unnoticed by L'oric as he paced with the fidgeting infant in his arms.

  'A question,' Barathol said to L'oric, 'how old do they have to get before you lose all sympathy for them?'

  The High Mage frowned. 'What do you mean?'

  Ignoring him, the blacksmith walked over to Chaur. 'You and me,' he said, 'we have a corpse to dig up. More shovelling, Chaur, you like that.'

  Chaur nodded and managed a half-smile through his tears and runny nose.

  Outside, Barathol led the man to the smithy where they collected a pick and a shovel, then they set off for the stony plain west of the hamlet. There'd been an unseasonal spatter of rain the night before, but little evidence of that remained after a morning of fiercely hot sunlight. The grave was beside a half-filled pit containing the remnants of the horses after Urdan had finished butchering them. He had been told to burn those remains but had clearly for­gotten. Wolves, coyotes and vultures had all found the bones and viscera, and the pit now swarmed with flies and maggots. Twenty paces further west, the now bloated, shapeless carcass of the toad demon lay untouched by any scavenger.

  As Chaur bent to the task of disinterring Heboric's wrapped corpse, Barathol stared across at that demon's mis­shapen body. The now-stretched hide was creased with white lines, as if it had begun cracking. From this distance Barathol could not be certain, but it seemed there was a black stain ringing the ground beneath the carcass, as if something had leaked out.

  'I'll be right back, Chaur.'

  The man smiled.

  As the blacksmith drew closer, his frown deepened. The black stain was dead flies, in their thousands. As un­palatable, then, this demon as the handless man had been. H
is steps slowed, then halted, still five paces from the grisly form. He'd seen it move — there, again, something pushing up against the blistered hide from within.

  And then a voice spoke in Barathol's head.

  'Impatience. Please, be so kind, a blade slicing with utmost caution, this infernal hide.'

  The blacksmith unsheathed his knife and stepped for­ward. Reaching the demon's side, he crouched down and ran the finely honed edge along one of the cracks in the thick, leathery skin. It parted suddenly and Barathol leapt back, cursing, as a gush of yellow liquid spurted from the cut.

  Something like a hand, then forearm and elbow pushed through, widening the slice, and moments later the entire beast slithered into view, four eyes blinking in the bright light. Where the carcass had had two limbs missing, there were now new ones, smaller and paler, but clearly functional. 'Hunger. Have you food, stranger? Are you food?'

  Sheathing his knife, Barathol turned about and walked back to where Chaur was dragging free Heboric's body. He heard the demon following.

  The blacksmith reached the pick he had left beside the grave pit and collected the tool, turning and hefting it in his hands. 'Something tells me,' he said to the demon, 'you're not likely to grow a new brain once I drive this pick through your skull.'

  'Exaggeration. I quake with terror, stranger. Amused. Greyfrog was but joking, encouraged by your expression of terror.'

  'Not terror. Disgust.'

  The demon's bizarre eyes swivelled in their sockets and the head twitched to look past Barathol. 'My brother has come. He is there, I sense him.'

  'You'd better hurry,' Barathol said. 'He's about to adopt a new familiar.' The blacksmith lowered the pick and glanced over at Chaur.