The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (792 page)

His brother saw him and staggered over. ‘I'm never going to believe you again,' he said.

‘Whatever do you mean?' The words were harsh, painful to utter. He'd inhaled some flames with that second grenade.

‘You said farming was peaceful. You said we could just retire.'

‘It was peaceful,' he retorted. ‘All our neighbours ran away, didn't they?'

‘These ones didn't.'

‘Weren't farmers, though. I believe I can say that with some assurance.'

‘My head hurts.'

‘Mine too.'

‘Where did they run to?'

‘Not south.'

‘Should we go after them, brother? As it stands, I'd have to venture the opinion that they had the better of us in this little skirmish, and that displeases me.'

‘It's worth considering. My ire is awakened, after all. Although I suggest you find your matlock, brother, instead of that silly wood-axe.'

‘Nearest thing within reach. And now I'll have to dig into our crumpled, smouldering abode – all that digging we did, all for nothing!'

At that moment they heard, distinctly, the sound of horses. Coming fast up the track.

‘Listen, there's more of them. No time to find your matlock, brother. Let us set forth and commence our sweet vengeance, shall we?'

‘Superior notion indeed. One of my eyes still works, which should suffice.'

The two Kenryll'ah demon princes set out for the cart path.

It was really not their day.

 

A quarter of a league now from the farmhouse, and Fiddler swung round, confirming for Bottle yet again that the old sergeant had hidden talents. ‘Horses,' he said.

Bottle had sensed the same.

The squads halted, under bright sunlight, alongside a cobbled road left in bad repair. Another cluster of farm buildings awaited them a thousand paces to the east. No smoke rising from the chimney.
No surprise with demons for neighbours, I suppose.

The detonations were a drumbeat of thunderous concussions that shook the earth beneath them.

‘Four!' Fiddler said with a savage grin.

Bottle saw Cuttle staring at the sergeant with undisguised awe and more than a little worship.

Smoke now, billowing in the distance, an earthen blot rising above the treeline.

‘Let's make for that farm ahead,' Fiddler said. ‘We'll rest up there for the day – I don't think our pursuers are in any condition to do much.'

‘The drum,' Cuttle whispered. ‘I seen it. The drum. Now I can die happy.'

Damned sappers. Bottle shook his head. There was pain there, now, in that mangled stretch of track a quarter-league away. Human, beast, and…oh, and
demon. You'd have done better chasing us. Even so, what a mess we've made.

Yes, plenty of pain, but more death. Flat, dwindling death, spreading dark as that dust in the air. Fiddler's drum. No better announcement imaginable, that the Malazans were here.

 

Thom Tissy's descent from the tree was a little loud, a little fast. In a skein of snapped branches, twigs, leaves and one abandoned wasp nest, the sergeant landed heavy and hard on his backside. ‘Ow, gods below, gods below!'

‘Ain't no god at that end, just a tailbone,' a soldier called out from the nearby squads.

Keneb waited for a few more heartbeats, then asked, ‘Sergeant, tell me what you saw.'

Thom Tissy slowly, carefully, regained his feet. He walked about on his short bandy legs, squat as an ogre, replete with pocked face and warty hands. ‘Smoke, Fist, and plenty of it. Counted ten spots in all, one of 'em big – probably the thunder we heard a little while back – more than one cusser for sure. Maybe three, maybe more.'

Meaning someone was in desperate trouble. Keneb glanced away, scanned the motley soldiers hunkered down in the forest glade. ‘Ten?'

‘Aye, Fist. I guess we stirred 'em up some, enough so that the fighting's getting fierce. When the captain gets back, we'll find out some details, I suppose.'

Yes. Faradan Sort. But she and Beak had been away for days, almost a week now.

‘Ten.'

‘Expecting more, Fist?' Thom Tissy asked. ‘My line of sight wasn't bad, but not perfect. I saw six on the north side, four on the south, putting us near dead centre and a half a night's travel behind. Anyway, the outermost smokes were right on the horizons, so we're still spread well out, the way we should be. And the smoke just tells us where bigger fights happened, not all the other little ambushes and the like. Something wrong, Fist?'

‘Settle the squads in,' Keneb replied, turning away. Oh, aye, there was fighting going on. But nothing evenly matched. His marines were outnumbered; no chance of acquiring the allies they'd thought they'd get. True, they were loaded down with munitions, but the more mages arriving with the Edur and Letherii troops the more the sheer overwhelming imbalance would start to tell. His squads, even paired up, couldn't afford losses. Four or five dead and that threshold of effectiveness would have been crossed. There would have to be convergence, merging of survivors – and this leagues-long line of advance would start thinning out. Instead of gaining in strength and momentum as the advance began to close in on this empire's capital, the Malazan marines would in fact be weaker.

Of course, this invasion was not simply Keneb's covert marine advance. There were other elements – the Adjunct and Blistig's regular infantry, who would be led in the field, when that time came, by the terrifying but competent Captain Kindly. There were the Khundryl Burned Tears and the Perish – although they were, for the moment, far away. A complicated invasion indeed.

For us, here, all we need to do is sow confusion, cut supplies to the capital whenever we can, and just keep the enemy off balance, guessing, reacting rather than initiating. The fatal blows will come from elsewhere, and I need to remind myself of that. So that I don't try to do too much. What counts is keeping as many of my marines alive as possible – not that the Adjunct's tactics with us give me much chance of that. I think I'm starting to understand how the Bridgeburners felt, when they were being thrown into every nightmare, again and again.

Especially at the end. Pale, Darujhistan, that city called Black Coral.

But no, this is different. The Adjunct doesn't want us wiped out. That would be insanity, and she may be a cold, cold bitch, but she's not mad. At least not so it's showed, anyway.

Keneb cursed himself. The strategy had been audacious, yes, yet founded on sound principles. On traditional principles, in fact. Kellanved's own, in the purpose behind the creation of the marines; in the way the sappers rose to pre-eminence, once the Moranth munitions arrived to revolutionize Malazan-style warfare. This was, in fact, the old, original way of employing the marines – although the absence of supply lines, no matter how tenuous or stretched, enforced a level of commitment that allowed no deviation, no possibility of retreat –
she burned the transports and not a Quorl in sight
– creating a situation that would have made the Emperor squirm.

Or not. Kellanved had known the value of gambles, had known how an entire war could shift, could turn on that single unexpected, outrageous act, the breaking of protocol that left the enemy reeling, then, all at once, entirely routed.

Such acts were what made military geniuses. Kellanved, Dassem Ultor, Sher'arah of Korel, Prince K'azz D'avore of the Crimson Guard. Caladan Brood. Coltaine. Dujek.

Did Adjunct Tavore belong in this esteemed company?
She's not shown it yet, has she? Gods above, Keneb, you've got to stop thinking like this. You'll become another Blistig and one Blistig is more than enough.

He needed to focus on the matters at hand. He and the marines were committed to this campaign, this bold gamble. Leave the others to do their part, believing at all times that they would succeed, that they would appear in their allotted positions when the moment arrived. They would appear, yes, with the expectation that he, Keneb, would do the same. With the bulk of his marines.

Game pieces, aye. Leave the deciding hand to someone else. To fate, to the gods, to Tavore of House Paran, Adjunct to No-one. So bringing me round, damn this, to faith. Again. Faith. That she's not insane. That she's a military genius to rival a mere handful of others across the span of Malazan history.

Faith. Not in a god, not in fate, but in a fellow mortal. Whose face he knew well, remembering with grim clarity its limited range of expression, through grief to anger, to her ferocious will to achieve…
whatever it is she seeks to achieve. Now, if only I knew what that was
.

Perhaps this kind of fighting was suited to the marines. But it was not suited to Keneb himself. Not as commander, not as Fist. It was hard not to feel helpless. He wasn't even in contact with his army, beyond sporadic murmurings among the squad mages.
I'll feel better when Faradan Sort returns.

If she returns.

‘Fist.'

Keneb turned. ‘You following me round, Sergeant?'

‘No sir,' Thom Tissy replied. ‘Just thought I'd say, before I sack out, that, well, we understand.'

‘Understand what? Who is “we”?'

‘All of us, sir. It's impossible. I mean, for you. We know that.'

‘Do you now?'

‘Aye. You can't lead. You're stuck with following, and not knowing what in Hood's name is happening to your soldiers, because they're all over the place—'

‘Go get some sleep, Sergeant. And tell the rest, I am not aware that any of this is impossible. We maintain the advance, and that is that.'

‘Well, uh—'

‘You presume too much, Sergeant. Now return to your squad, tell your soldiers to stow all the theorizing, and go get some sleep.'

‘Aye, sir.'

Keneb watched the squat man walk away. Decent of him, all that rubbish. Decent, but pointless and dangerous.
We're not friends, Thom Tissy. Neither of us can afford that.

After a moment, he allowed himself a wry smile. All of his complaints regarding Tavore, and here he was, doing the same damned thing that she did – pushing them all away.

Because it was necessary. Because there was no choice.

So, if she's mad, then so am I.

Hood take me, maybe we all are.

 

The long descent of the ice field stretched out before them, studded with the rubble and detritus that was all that remained of the Age of the Jaghut. They stood side by side, a body without a soul and a soul without a body, and Hedge wished he could be more mindful of that delicious irony, but as long as he could not decide which of them was more lost, the cool pleasure of that recognition evaded his grasp.

Beyond the ice field's ragged demise two thousand paces distant, copses of deciduous trees rose in defiant exuberance, broken here and there by glades green with chest-high grasses. This patchwork landscape extended onward, climbing modest hills until those hills lifted higher, steeper, and the forest canopy, unbroken now, was the darker green of conifers.

‘I admit,' Hedge said, finally breaking the silence between them, ‘I didn't expect anything like this. Broken tundra, maybe. Heaps of gravel, those dry dusty dunes stirred round by the winds. Mostly lifeless. Struggling, in other words.'

‘Yes,' Emroth said in her rasping voice. ‘Unexpected, this close to the Throne of Ice.'

They set out down the slope.

‘I think,' Hedge ventured after a time, ‘we should probably get around to discussing our respective, uh, destinations.'

The T'lan Imass regarded him with her empty, carved-out eyes. ‘We have travelled together, Ghost. Beyond that, nothing exists to bind you to me. I am a Broken, an Unbound, and I have knelt before a god. My path is so ordained, and all that would oppose me will be destroyed by my hand.'

‘And how, precisely, do you plan on destroying me, Emroth?' Hedge asked. ‘I'm a Hood-forsaken ghost, after all.'

‘My inability to solve that dilemma, Ghost, is the only reason you are still with me. That, and my curiosity. I now believe you intend something inimical to my master – perhaps, indeed, your task is to thwart me. And yet, as a ghost, you can do nothing—'

‘Are you so sure?'

She did not reply. They reached to within thirty or so paces from the edge of the ice, where they halted again and the T'lan Imass shifted round to study him.

‘Manifestation of the will,' Hedge said, smiling as he crossed his arms. ‘Took me a long time to come up with that phrase, and the idea behind it. Aye, I am a ghost, but obviously not your usual kind of ghost. I persist, even unto fashioning this seemingly solid flesh and bone – where does such power come from? That's the question. I've chewed on this for a long time. In fact, ever since I opened my non-existent eyes and realized I wasn't in Coral any longer. I was someplace else. And then, when I found myself in, uh, familiar company, well, things got even more mysterious.' He paused, then winked. ‘Don't mind me talking now, Emroth?'

‘Go on,' she said.

Hedge's smile broadened, then he nodded and said, ‘The Bridgeburners, Emroth. That's what we were called. An elite division in the Malazan Army. Pretty much annihilated at Coral – our last official engagement, I suppose. And that should have been that.

‘But it wasn't. No. Some Tanno Spiritwalker gave us a song, and it was a very powerful song. The Bridgeburners, Emroth – the dead ones, that is; couldn't say either way for the few still alive – us dead ones, we
ascended
.

‘Manifestation of the will, T'lan Imass. I'd hazard you understand that notion, probably better than I do. But such power didn't end with your cursed Ritual. No, maybe you just set the precedent.'

‘You are not flesh without soul.'