‘All right then,’ said Reliko, ‘s’long as it’s not lizards.’
‘Hold on,’ said Corporal Rib. ‘Captain, y’had us sitting here all afternoon? Just to tell us that?’
‘Not my fault we had stragglers, Corporal. I need some lessons from Sort, or maybe Kindly. A captain orders, soldiers obey. At least it’s supposed to work that way. But then, you’re all different now … special cases, right? You’ll follow an order only if you feel like it. You earned that, or something. How? By living when your buddies died. Why’d they die? Right. They were following orders – whether they liked ’em or not. Fancy that. Deciding whether or not to show up here, what was that? Must’ve been honouring your fallen comrades, I suppose, the ones who died in your place.’
‘Maybe we’re broken.’
Again, that voice he couldn’t quite place. Fiddler scratched his beard and shook his head. ‘You’re not broken. The walking dead don’t break. Still waiting for that to clunk home, are ya? We’re going to be the Adjunct’s little army. But
too
little – anyone can see that. Now, it’s
not that she wants us dead. She doesn’t. In fact, it might even be that she’s trying to save our lives – after all, where’s she taking the regulars? Chances are, wherever that is, you don’t want to be there.
‘So maybe she thinks we’ve earned a break. Or maybe not. Who knows what the Adjunct thinks, about anything. She wants what’s left of the heavies and the marines in one company. Simple enough.’
‘You know more than you’re saying, Fiddler.’
‘Do I, Koryk?’
‘Aye. You’ve got the Deck of Dragons.’
‘What I know is this. Next time I give you all an order, I don’t expect to have to wait all day to see you follow it. Next soldier tries that with me gets tossed to the regulars. Outa the special club, for good.’
‘We dismissed, Captain?’
‘I ain’t decided yet. In fact, I’m tempted to make you sit here all night. Just to make a point, right? The one about discipline, the one your friends died for.’
‘We took that point the first time, Captain.’
‘Maybe
you
did, Cuttle. Ready to say the same for the rest of ’em?’
‘No.’
Fiddler sat down on a boulder at the edge of the basin and settled until he was comfortable. He looked into the night sky. ‘Ain’t that jade light pretty?’
Things were simple, really. There’s only so much a soldier can do, only so much a soldier needs to think about at any one time. Pile on too much and their knees start shaking, their eyes glaze over, and they start looking around for something to kill.
Because killing simplifies. It’s called an elimination of distractions
.
Her horse was content, watered and fed enough to send the occasional stream down and plant an island or two in their wake. Happy horse, happy Masan Gilani.
Simple
. Her companions were once more nowhere to be seen. Sour company besides; she hardly missed them.
And she herself wasn’t feeling as saggy and slack as she’d been only a day earlier. Who knew where the T’lan Imass had found the smoked antelope meat, the tanned bladders filled to bursting with clean, cold water, the loaves of hard bread and the rancid jar of buttery cheese. Probably the same place as the forage for her horse.
And wherever that was, it was a hundred leagues away from here – oh, speak it plain, Masan. It was through some infernal warren. Aye, I seen them fall into dust, but maybe that’s not what it seems. Maybe they just step into another place
.
Somewhere nice. Where at the point of a stone sword farmers hand over victuals with a beaming smile and good hale to you all
.
Dusk was darkening the sky. She’d have to stop soon.
They must have heard her coming, for the two men stood waiting at the far end of the slope, staring up at her the instant she’d cleared the rise. Masan reined in, squinted for a moment, and then nudged her mount forward.
‘You’re not all that’s left,’ she said as she drew nearer. ‘You can’t be.’
Captain Ruthan Gudd shook his head. ‘We’re not far from them. A league or two, I’d wager.’
‘We’d thought to just push on,’ added Bottle.
‘Do you know how bad it was?’
‘Not yet,’ said the captain, eyeing her horse. ‘That beast looks too fit, Masan Gilani.’
‘No such thing,’ she replied, dismounting, ‘as a too-fit horse, sir.’
He made a face. ‘Meaning you’re not going to explain yourself.’
‘Didn’t you desert?’ Bottle asked. ‘If you did, Masan, you’re riding the wrong way, unless you’re happy with being strung up.’
‘She didn’t desert,’ Ruthan Gudd said, turning to resume walking. ‘Special mission for the Adjunct.’
‘How do you know anything about it, sir?’ Masan asked, falling in step with the two men.
‘I don’t. I’m just guessing.’ He combed at his beard. ‘I have a talent for that.’
‘Has plenty of talents does our captain here,’ Bottle muttered.
Whatever was going on between these two, she had to admit to herself that she was happy to see them. ‘So how did you two get separated from the army?’ she asked. ‘By the way, you both look a mess. Bottle, you bathe in blood or something? I barely recognized you.’
‘You’d look the same,’ he retorted, ‘buried under fifty corpses for half a day.’
‘Not quite that long,’ the captain corrected.
Her breath caught. ‘So you
were
at the battle,’ she said. ‘What battle? What in Hood’s name happened?’
‘Bits are missing,’ Bottle replied, shrugging.
‘Bits?’
He seemed ready to say something, changed his mind and instead said, ‘I didn’t quite catch it all. Especially the, er, second half. But you know, Masan, all the stories about high attrition among officers in the Malazan military?’ He jerked a thumb at Ruthan Gudd. ‘It ain’t so with him.’
The captain said, ‘If you hear a certain resentment in his tone, it’s because I saved his life.’
‘And as for the smugness in the captain’s tone—’
‘Fine,’ she snapped. ‘Aye, the Adjunct sent me to find some people.’
‘Which you evidently failed to do,’ observed Bottle.
‘No she didn’t,’ said Ruthan Gudd.
‘So all this crawling skin I’m feeling isn’t fleas?’
Ruthan Gudd bared his teeth in a hard grin. ‘Well no, it probably is, soldier. Frankly, I’d be surprised if you did feel something – oh, I know, you’re a mage. Fid’s shaved knuckle, right? Even so, these bastards know how to hide.’
‘Let me guess: they’re inside the horse. Isn’t there some legend about—’
‘The moral of which,’ Rudd interjected, ‘is consistently misapprehended. It’s nothing to do with what you think it’s to do with. The fact is, that tale’s moral is “don’t trust horses”. Sometimes people look way too hard into such things. Other times, of course, they don’t look hard enough. But most of the time by far, they don’t look at all.’
‘If you want,’ said Masan Gilani, ‘I can ask them to show themselves.’
‘I’ve absolutely no interest in—’
‘I do,’ Bottle cut him off. ‘Your pardon, sir, for interrupting.’
‘An apology I’m not prepared to accept, soldier. As for these guests, Masan Gilani, your offer is categorically—’
Swirls of dust on all sides.
Moments later five T’lan Imass encircled them.
‘Gods below,’ Ruthan Gudd muttered.
As one, the undead warriors bowed to the captain. One spoke. ‘We greet you, Elder.’
Gudd’s second curse was in a language Masan Gilani had never heard before.
‘
It’s not what you think
,’ he’d said with those hoary things bowing before him. And he’d not said much else. The T’lan Imass vanished again a short time later and the three soldiers continued on as the night deepened around them.
Bottle wanted to scream. The captain’s company over the past few days had been an exercise in patience and frustration. He wasn’t a man for words.
Ruthan Gudd. Or whatever your name really is. It’s not what I think? How do you know what I think? Besides, it’s exactly what I think. Fid has his shaved knuckle, and it seems the Adjunct has one, too
.
A Hood-damned Elder God – after all, what other kind of ‘Elder’ would T’lan Imass bow before? And since when did they bow before anything?
Masan Gilani’s barrage of questions had withered the T’lan Imass to dust with, Bottle thought, a harried haste. But things from the past had a way of refusing illumination. As bad as standing stones, they held all their secrets buried deep inside. It wasn’t even a question of
irritating coyness.
They just don’t give a shit. Explanations? What’s the point? Who cares what you think you need to know, anyway? If I’m a stone, lean against me. If I’m a ruin, rest your weary arse on the rubble. And if I’m an Elder God, well, Abyss take you, don’t look to me for anything
.
But he’d ridden out against the Nah’ruk, when he could have ridden the other way. He went and made a stand. Which made him what? Another one in mysterious service to Adjunct Tavore Paran of Unta?
But why? Even the Empress didn’t want her in the end. T’amber, Quick Ben, even Fiddler – they stood with her, even when it cost them their lives
.
Soldiers muttered she didn’t inspire a damned thing in them. Soldiers grumbled that she was no Dujek Onearm, no Coltaine, no Crust, no Dassem Ultor. They didn’t know what she was.
None of us do, come to that. But look at us, right here, right now, walking back to her. A Dal Honese horsewoman who can ride like the wind – well, a heavy wind, then. An Elder God … and me. Gods below, I’ve lost my mind
.
Not quite. I tore it apart. Only to have Quick Ben make sure most of it came back. Do I feel different? Am I changed? How would I even know?
But I miss the Bonehunters. I miss my miserable squad. I miss the damned Adjunct
.
We’re nothing but the sword in her hand, but we’re a comfortable grip. Use us, then. Just do it in style
.
‘Camp glow ahead,’ said Masan Gilani, who once more rode her horse. ‘Looks damned big.’
‘Her allies have arrived,’ said Ruthan Gudd, then added, ‘I expect.’
Bottle snorted. ‘Does she know you’re alive, Captain?’
‘Why should she?’
‘Well, because …’
‘I’m a captain, soldier.’
‘Who rode alone into the face of a Nah’ruk legion! Armoured in ice! With a sword of ice! A horse—’
‘Oh, enough, Bottle. You have no idea how much I regret doing what I did. It’s nice not being noticed. Maybe one day you humans will finally understand that, and do away with all your mad ambitions, your insipid self-delusional megalomania. You weren’t shat out by some god on high. You weren’t painted in the flesh of the divine – at least, not any more than anyone or anything else. What’s with you all, anyway? You jam a stick up your own arse then preen at how tall and straight you’re standing. Soldier, you think you put your crawling days behind the day you left your mother’s tit? Take it from me – you’re still crawling, lad. Probably always will.’
Bludgeoned by the tirade, Bottle was silent.
‘You two go on,’ said Masan Gilani. ‘I need to piss.’
‘That last time was the horse then?’ Rudd asked.
‘Oh, funny man – or whatever.’ She reined in.
‘So they bowed to you,’ Bottle said as he and the captain continued on. ‘Why take it out on me?’
‘I didn’t – ah, never mind. To answer you, no, the Adjunct knows nothing about me. But as you say, my precious anonymity is over – or it is assuming the moment we’re in camp you go running off to your sergeant.’
‘I’m sure I will,’ Bottle replied. ‘But not, if you like, to babble about you being an Elder God.’
‘God? Not a god, Bottle. I told you: it’s not what you think.’
‘I’ll keep your ugly little secret, sir, if that’s how you want it. But that won’t change what we all saw that day, will it?’
‘Stormrider magic, yes. That.’
‘That.’
‘I borrowed it.’
‘Borrowed?’
‘Yes,’ he snapped in reply. ‘I don’t steal, Bottle.’
‘Of course not, sir. Why would you need to?’
‘Exactly.’
Bottle nodded in the gloom, listening as Masan rode back up to them. ‘Borrowed.’
‘A misunderstood people, the Stormriders.’
‘No doubt. Abject terror leaves little room for much else.’
‘Interestingly,’ Ruthan Gudd said in a murmur, ‘needs have converged somewhat. And I’m too old to believe in coincidence. No matter. We do what we do and that’s that.’
‘Sounds like something Fiddler would say.’
‘Fiddler’s a wise man, Bottle. He’s also the best of you, though I doubt many would see that, at least not as clearly as I do.’
‘Fiddler, is it? Not the Adjunct, Captain?’
He heard Ruthan Gudd’s sigh, and it was a sound filled with sorrow. ‘I see pickets.’
‘So do I,’ said Masan Gilani. ‘Not Malazan. Perish.’
‘Our allies,’ said Bottle, glaring at Ruthan Gudd, but of course it was too dark for him to see that.
Then again, what’s darkness to a Hood-cursed ice-wielding Imass-kneeling Elder God?