‘And how will the sappers survive camping out at the base of a wall?’
‘We attack at night.’
‘That is a risky thing to do.’
Temul scowled, and said nothing.
Gall turned to regard Keneb, his tear-etched face mildly incredulous. ‘We begin a siege, man, not a Hood-damned fly dance.’
‘I know. But Leoman must have mages, and night will not hide sappers from them.’
‘They can be countered,’ Gall retorted. ‘It’s what our mages are for. But we waste our breaths with such things. The Adjunct will do as she chooses.’
Keneb faced right and studied the vast encampment of the Fourteenth Army, arrayed to fend off a sortie, should Leoman prove so foolish. The investiture would be a careful, measured exercise, conducted over two or three days. The range of the Malazan ballistae on the walls was well known, so there would be no surprises there. Even so, encirclement would stretch their lines appallingly thin. They would need advance emplacements to keep an eye on the gates, and Temul’s Wickans and Seti, as well as Gall’s Khundryl horse-warriors, divided into companies and positioned to respond should Leoman surprise them.
The Fist shook his head. ‘This is what I do not understand. Admiral Nok’s fleet is even now sailing for Lothal with five thousand marines on board, and once Dujek forces the last city to capitulate he will begin a fast march to join us. Leoman must know his position is hopeless. He cannot win, even should he maul us. We will still be able to keep this noose knotted tight round Y’Ghatan, whilst we wait for reinforcements. He is finished. So why does he continue to resist?’
‘Aye,’ said Gall. ‘He should have carried on riding west, out into the odhan. We would never have caught him out there, and he could begin rebuilding, drawing warriors to his cause.’
Keneb glanced over. ‘So, Warleader, you are as nervous about this as I am.’
‘He means to bleed us, Keneb. Before he falls, he means to bleed us.’ A rough gesture. ‘More barrows to ring this cursed city. And he will die fighting, and so will become yet another martyr.’
‘So, the killing of Malazans is sufficient cause to fight. What have we done to deserve this?’
‘Wounded pride,’ Temul said. ‘It is one thing to suffer defeat on a field of battle, it is another to be crushed when your foe has no need even to draw a sword.’
‘Humiliated in Raraku,’ Gall said, nodding. ‘The growing cancer in their souls. This cannot be carved out. The Malazans must be made to know pain.’
‘That is ridiculous,’ Keneb said. ‘Was not the Chain of Dogs glory enough for the bastards?’
‘The first casualty among the defeated is recalling their own list of crimes, Fist,’ Temul said.
Keneb studied the young man. The foundling Grub was often in Temul’s company, and among the strange lad’s disordered host of peculiar observations, Grub had hinted of glory, or perhaps infamy, bound to Temul’s future. Of course, that future could be tomorrow. Besides, Grub might be no more than a brain-addled waif… all right, I don’t believe that – he seems to know too much. If only half the things he said made any sense… Well, in any case, Temul still managed to startle Keneb with statements more suited to some veteran campaigner. ‘Very well, Fist Temul. What would you do, were you in Leoman’s place?’
Silence, then a quick look at Keneb, something like surprise in Temul’s angular features. A moment later the expressionless mask returned, and he shrugged.
‘Coltaine walks in your shadow, Temul,’ Gall said, running his fingers down his own face as if to mimic the tears tattooed there. ‘I see him, again and again—’
‘No, Gall. I have told you before. You see naught but the ways of the Wickans; all else is but your imagination. Coltaine sent me away; it is not to me that he will return.’
He haunts you still, Temul. Coltaine sent you with Duiker to keep you alive, not to punish or shame you. Why won’t you accept that?
‘I have seen plenty of Wickans,’ Gall said in a growl.
This had the sound of an old argument. Sighing, Keneb walked over to his horse. ‘Any last words for the Adjunct? Either of you? No? Very well.’ He swung up into the saddle and gathered the reins.
The cattle-dog Bent watched him with its sand-coloured, dead eyes. Nearby, Roach had found a bone and was lying sprawled on its belly, legs spread out as it gnawed with the mindless concentration unique to dogs.
Halfway down the slope, Keneb realized where that bone had likely come from. A kick, all right, hard enough to send that rat straight through Hood’s Gate.
Corporal Deadsmell, Throatslitter and Widdershins were sitting round a game of Troughs, black stones bouncing off the rudder and rolling in the cups, as Bottle walked up.
‘Where’s your sergeant?’ he asked.
Deadsmell glanced up, then back down. ‘Mixing paint.’
‘Paint? What kind of paint?’
‘It’s what Dal Honese do,’ said Widdershins, ‘death-mask paint.’
‘Before a siege?’
Throatslitter hissed – what passed for laughter, Bottle supposed – and said, ‘Hear that? Before a siege. That’s very cute, very cute, Bottle.’
‘It’s a death mask, idiot,’ Widdershins said to Bottle. ‘He paints it on when he thinks he’s about to die.’
‘Great attitude for a sergeant,’ Bottle said, looking around. The other two soldiers of the Ninth Squad, Galt and Lobe, were feuding over what to put in a pot of boiling water. Both held handfuls of herbs, and as each reached to toss the herbs in the other soldier pushed that hand away and sought to throw in his own. Again and again, over the boiling water. Neither spoke. ‘All right, where is Balm finding his paint?’
‘There’s a local cemetery north of the road,’ Deadsmell said. ‘I’d guess maybe there.’
‘If I don’t find him,’ Bottle said, ‘the captain wants a meeting with all the sergeants in her company. Dusk.’
‘Where?’
‘The sheep pen back of the farm south of the road, the one with the caved-in roof.’
Over by the hearth the pot had boiled dry and Galt and Lobe were fighting over water jugs.
Bottle moved on to the next encampment. He found Sergeant Moak sprawled with his back resting on a heap of bedrolls. The Falari, copper-haired and bearded, was picking at his overlarge teeth with a fish spine. His soldiers were nowhere in sight.
‘Sergeant. Captain Faradan Sort’s called a meeting—’
‘I heard. I ain’t deaf.’
‘Where’s your squad?’
‘Got the squats.’
‘All of them?’
‘I cooked last night. They got weak stomachs, that’s all.’ He belched, and a moment later Bottle caught a whiff of something like rotting fish guts.
‘Hood take me! Where’d you find anywhere to catch fish on this trail?’
‘Didn’t. Brought it with me. Was a bit high, it’s true, but nothing a real soldier couldn’t handle. There’s some scrapings in the pot – want some?’
‘No.’
‘No wonder the Adjunct’s in trouble, what with a whole damn army of cowardly whiners.’
Bottle stepped past to move on.
‘Hey,’ Moak called out, ‘tell Fid the wager’s still on as far as I’m concerned.’
‘What wager?’
‘Between him and me and that’s all you got to know.’
‘Fine.’
He found Sergeant Mosel and his squad dismantling a broken wagon in the ditch. They had piled up the wood and Flashwit and Mayfly were prying nails, studs and fittings from the weathered planks, whilst Taffo and Uru Hela struggled with an axle under the sergeant’s watchful eye.
Mosel glanced over. ‘Bottle, isn’t it? Fourth Squad, Fid’s, right? If you’re looking for Neffarias Bredd you just missed him. A giant of a man, must have Fenn blood in him.’
‘No, I wasn’t, Sergeant. You saw Bredd?’
‘Well, not me, I’ve just come back, but Flashwit…’
At mention of her name the burly woman looked up. ‘Yah. I heard he was just by here. Hey, Mayfly, who was it said he was just by?’
‘Who?’
‘Neffarias Bredd, you fat cow, who else would we be talking ’bout?’
‘I don’t know who said what. I was only half listening, anyway. I think it was Smiles, was it Smiles? Might have been. Anyway, I’d like to roll in the blankets with that man—’
‘Smiles isn’t a man—’
‘Not her. Bredd, I mean.’
Bottle asked, ‘You want to bed Bredd?’
Mosel stepped closer, eyes narrowing. ‘You making fun of my soldiers, Bottle?’
‘I’d never do that, Sergeant. Just came to tell there’s a meeting—’
‘Oh, yes, I heard.’
‘From who?’
The lean man shrugged. ‘Can’t remember. Does it matter?’
‘It does if it means I’m wasting my time.’
‘You ain’t got time to waste? Why, what makes you unique?’
‘That axle doesn’t look broken,’ Bottle observed.
‘Who said it was?’
‘Then why are you taking the wagon apart?’
‘We been eating its dust so long we just took revenge.’
‘Where’s the wagoner, then? The load crew?’
Flashwit laughed an ugly laugh.
Mosel shrugged again, then gestured further down the ditch. Four figures, bound and gagged, were lying motionless in the yellow grass.
The two squads of sergeants Sobelone and Tugg were gathered round a wrestling match between, Bottle saw as he pushed his way in for a better look, Saltlick and Shortnose. Coins were being flung down, puffing the dust of the road, as the two heavy infantrymen strained and heaved in a knot of arm and leg holds. Saltlick’s massive, round face was visible, red, sweaty and streaked with dust, the expression fixed in its usual cow-like, uninterested incomprehensibility. He blinked slowly, and seemed to be concentrating on chewing something.
Bottle nudged Toles, the soldier on his right. ‘What are they fighting over?’
Toles looked down on Bottle, his thin, pallid face twitching. ‘It’s very simple. Two squads, marching in step, one behind the other, then the other in front of the one that had been in front beforehand, proving the mythical camaraderie to be no more than some epic instigator of bad poetry and bawdy songs designed to appease lowbrows, in short, a lie. Culminating at the last in this disreputable display of animal instincts—’
‘Saltlick bit Shortnose’s ear off,’ cut in Corporal Reem, standing on Bottle’s left.
‘Oh. Is that what he’s chewing?’
‘Yeah. Taking his time with it, too.’
‘Do Tugg and Sobelone know about the captain’s meeting?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So, Shortnose who got his nose tip cut off now has only one ear, too.’
‘Yeah. He’ll do anything to spite his face.’
‘Is he the one who got married last week?’
‘Yeah, to Hanno there. She’s the one betting against him. Anyway, from what I hear, it ain’t his face that she adores, if you know what I mean.’
Bottle caught sight of a low hill on the north side of the road on which stood a score of twisted, hunched guldindha trees. ‘Is that the old cemetery?’
‘Looks like it, why?’
Without answering, Bottle pushed his way back through the crowd and set off for the burial ground. He found Sergeant Balm in a looter’s pit, face streaked with ash, making a strange monotonous nasal groaning sound as he danced in tight circles.
‘Sergeant, captain wants a meeting—’
‘Shut up, I’m busy.’
‘Dusk, in the sheep pen—’
‘Interrupt a Dal Honese death dirge and you’ll know a thousand thousand lifetimes of curses, your bloodlines for ever. Hairy old women will steal your children and your children’s children and chop them up and cook them with vegetables and tubers and a few precious threads of saffron—’
‘I’m done, Sergeant. Orders delivered. Goodbye.’
‘—and Dal Honese warlocks wearing snake girdles will lie with your woman and she’ll birth venomous worms all covered in curly black hair—’
‘Keep it up, Sergeant, and I’ll make a doll of you—’
Balm leapt from the pit, eyes suddenly wide. ‘You evil man! Get away from me! I never done nothing to you!’ He spun about and ran away, gazelle-skins flapping.
Bottle turned and began the long walk back to the camp.
He found Strings assembling his crossbow, Cuttle watching with avid interest. A crate of Moranth munitions was to one side, the lid pried loose and the grenados lying like turtle eggs in nests of padding. The others of the squad were sitting some distance away, looking nervous.
The sergeant glanced up. ‘Bottle, you found them all?’
‘Aye.’
‘Good. So, how are the other squads holding up?’
‘Just fine,’ Bottle replied. He regarded the others on the far side of the hearth. ‘What’s the point?’ he asked. ‘If that box goes up, it’ll knock down Y’Ghatan’s wall from here, and you and most of this army will be red hail.’
Sudden sheepish expressions. Grunting, Koryk rose, deliberately casual. ‘I was already sitting here,’ he said. ‘Then Tarr and Smiles crawled over to huddle in my shadow.’
‘The man lies,’ Smiles said. ‘Besides, Bottle, why did you volunteer to go wandering with the captain’s orders?’
‘Because I’m not stupid.’
‘Yeah?’ Tarr said. ‘Well, you’re back now, aren’t you?’
‘I thought they’d be finished by now.’ He waved a fly away that had been buzzing in front of his face, then walked over to sit downwind of the hearth. ‘So, Sergeant, what do you figure the captain’s got to say?’
‘Sappers and shields,’ Cuttle said in a growl.
‘Shields?’
‘Aye. We scurry in hunched low and the rest of you shield us from all the arrows and rocks until we’re done planting the mines, then whoever’s left runs back out, as fast as they can and it won’t be fast enough.’
‘A one-way trip, then.’
Cuttle grinned.
‘It’ll be more elaborate than that,’ Strings said. ‘I hope.’
‘She goes straight in, that’s what she does.’
‘Maybe, Cuttle. Maybe not. She wants most of her army still breathing when the dust’s settled.’
‘Minus a few hundred sappers.’
‘We’re getting rare enough as it is,’ Strings said. ‘She won’t want to waste us.’
‘That’d be a first for the Malazan Empire;’
The sergeant looked over at Cuttle. ‘Tell you what, why don’t I just kill you now and be done with it?’
‘Forget it. I want to take the rest of you sorry humpers with me.’
Nearby, Sergeant Gesler and his squad had appeared and were making their camp. Corporal Stormy, Bottle noted, wasn’t with them. Gesler strode over. ‘Fid.’
‘Kalam and Quick back, too?’
‘No, they went on, with Stormy.’
‘On? Where?’
Gesler crouched opposite Strings. ‘Let’s just say I’m actually glad to see your ugly face, Fid. Maybe they’ll make it back, maybe they won’t. I’ll tell you about it later. Spent the morning with the Adjunct. She had lots of questions.’
‘About what?’
About the stuff I’ll tell you about later. So we’ve got a new captain.’
‘Faradan Sort.’
‘Korelri?’
Strings nodded. ‘Stood the Wall, we think.’
‘So she can probably take a punch.’
‘Then punch back, aye.’
‘Well that’s just great.’
‘She wants all the sergeants for a meeting tonight.’
‘I think I’ll go back and answer a few more of the Adjunct’s questions.’
‘You can’t avoid meeting her for ever, Gesler.’
�
��Oh yeah? Watch me. So, where did they move Captain Kindly to?’
Strings shrugged. ‘To some company that needs pulling into shape, I’d imagine.’
‘And we don’t?’
‘Harder terrifying us than most in this army, Gesler. I think he’d already given up on us, in any case. I’m not sorry to see the miserable bastard on his way. This meeting tonight will likely be about what we’ll be doing in the siege. Either that or she just wants to waste our time with some inspiring tirade.’
‘For the glory of the empire,’ Gesler said, grimacing.
‘For vengeance,’ Koryk said from where he sat tying fetishes onto his baldric.
‘Vengeance is glorious, so long as it’s us delivering it, soldier.’
‘No it’s not,’ said Strings. ‘It’s sordid, no matter how you look at it.’
‘Ease up, Fid. I was only half serious. You’re so tense you’d think we was heading into a siege or something. Anyway, why ain’t there a few hands of Claw to do the dirty work? You know, infiltrate the city and the palace and stick a knife in Leoman and be done with it. Why do we have to get messed up with a real fight? What kind of empire are we, these days?’
No-one spoke for a time. Bottle watched his sergeant. Strings was testing the pull on the crossbow, but Bottle could see that he was thinking.
Cuttle said, ‘Laseen’s pulled ’em in. Close and tight.’
The regard Gesler fixed on the sapper was level, gauging. ‘That the rumour, Cuttle?’
‘One of ’em. What do I know? Maybe she caught something on the wind.’
‘You certainly have,’ Strings muttered as he examined the case of quarrels.
‘Only that the few veteran companies still on Quon Tali were ordered to Unta and Malaz City.’
Strings finally looked up. ‘Malaz City? Why there?’
‘The rumour weren’t that specific, Sergeant. Just the where, not the why. Anyway, there’s something going on.’
‘Where’d you catch all this?’ Gesler asked.
‘That new sergeant, Hellian, from Kartool.’
‘The drunk one?’
‘That’s her.’
‘Surprised she noticed anything,’ Strings observed. ‘What got her shipped out here?’
‘That she won’t talk about. In the wrong place at the wrong time, I figure, from the way her face twists all sour on the subject. Anyway, she went to Malaz City first, then joined up with the transports at Nap, then on to Unta. She never seems so drunk she can’t keep her eyes open.’
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