Reaper's Gale (The Malazan Book of the Fallen #7)

Reaper's Gale (The Malazan Book of the Fallen #7) Page 421

One task remained. A minor one, intended to serve little more than his own sense of redressing an egregious imbalance. He knew little of this Crippled God. But what little he knew, Silchas Ruin did not like.

Accordingly, he now spread his arms. And veered into his dragon form.

Surged skyward, branches torn away from the trees he shouldered aside. Into the crisp mountain air-far to the west, a pair of condors banked away in sudden terror. But the direction Silchas Ruin chose was not to the west.

South.

To a city called Letheras.

And this time, in truth, there was blood on his mind.

Chapter Twenty-Four

If these were our last days

If all whose eyes can look inward

Now passed from ken

Who would remain to grieve?

As we hang our heads

Beset by the failure of ambition

Eyes see and are indifferent

Eyes witness and they are uncaring.

The stone regard of the statues

Guarding the perfected square

Is carved as warm

As history’s soft surrender,

And the dancing creatures

In and out of our gaping mouths

Alone hear the wind moaning

Its hollow, hallowed voice.

So in these our last days

The end of what we see is inside

Where it all began and begins never again

A moment’s reprieve, then darkness falls.

– The Unwitnessed Dance , Fisher kel Tath

Beak’s barrow began with a few bones tossed into the ash and charred, splintered skeleton that was all that remained of the young mage. Before long, other objects joined the heap. Buckles, clasps, fetishes, coins, broken weapons. By the time Fist Keneb was ready to give the command to march, the mound was nearly the height of a man. When Captain Faradan Sort asked Bottle for a blessing, the squad mage had shaken his head, explaining that the entire killing field that had been enclosed by Bottle’s sorcery was now magically dead. Probably permanently. At this news the captain had turned away, although Keneb thought he heard her say: ‘Not a candle left to light, then.’

As the marines set out for the city of Letheras, they could hear the rumble of detonations from the south, where the Adjunct had landed with the rest of the Bonehunters and was now engaging the Letherii armies. That thunder, Keneb knew, did not belong to sorcery.

He should be leading his troops to that battle, to hammer the Letherii rearguard, and then link up with Tavore and the main force. But Keneb agreed with the captain and with Fiddler and Gesler. He and his damned marines had earned this, had earned the right to be the first to assail this empire’s capital city.

‘Might be another army waiting on the walls,’ Sergeant Thorn Tissy had said, making his face twist in his singular expression of disapproval, like a man who’d just swallowed a nacht turd.

‘It’s possible there is,’ the Fist had conceded. And that particular conversation went no further.

Up onto the imperial road with its well-set cobbles and breadth sufficient to accommodate a column ten soldiers wide. Marching amidst discarded accoutrements and the rubbish left by the Letherii legions as the day drew to a close and the shadows lengthened.

Dusk was not far off and the last sleep had been some time past, yet his soldiers, Keneb saw, carried themselves-and their gear-as if fresh from a week’s rest.

A few hundred paces along, the column ran into the first refugees.

Smudged, frightened faces. Sacks and baskets of meagre provisions, wide-eyed babies peering from bundles. Burdened mules and two-wheeled carts creaking and groaning beneath possessions. No command was given, yet the Letherii shuffled to the roadsides, pulling whatever gear they had with them, as the column continued on. Eyes downcast, children held tight. Saying nothing at all.

Faradan Sort moved alongside Keneb. ‘This is odd,’ she said.

The Fist nodded. ‘They have the look of people fleeing something that’s already happened. Find one, Captain, and get some answers.’

‘Aye, sir.’

Studying the refugees he passed, Keneb wondered what was behind the glances a few of them furtively cast on these marching soldiers, these white-haired foreigners in their gleaming armour. Do they see saviours? Not a chance. Yet, where is the hostility? They are more frightened of what they’ve just left behind in Letheras than they are of us. What in Hood’s name is happening there?

And where are the Tiste Edur?

The crowds got thicker, more reluctant to move aside. Fiddler adjusted the pack on his shoulder and settled a hand on the grip of his shortsword. The column’s pace had slowed, and the sergeant could feel the growing impatience among his troops.