Somewhere far behind her, Kalyth’s body was lying on half-dead grasses, cast down on to the heart-stone of the Wastelands. ‘It is here. It is all here.’
‘We are broken indeed. We are . . . fallen.’
What do to, then, when the battle cannot be won? No answers burgeoned before her. The only truth rearing to confront her was this blood-soaked sacrifice, destined to be un-done. ‘Is it true, then, that a world without magic is a dead world? Is this what you promise? Is this to be your future? But no, for when you are at last freed, then your enemy will awaken once more, and the war will resume.’
There was no place in that scheme for mortals. A new course for the future was needed. For the K’Chain Che’Malle. For all humans in every empire, every tribe. If nothing changed in the mortal world, then there would be no end to the conflicts, to the interminable forces in opposition, be they cultures, religions, whatever.
She had no idea that intelligent life could be so stupid.
‘They want a faith from me. A religion. They want to return to the vanity of the righteous. I can’t do it. I can’t. Rythok had better kill me, for I will offer them nothing they want to hear.’
Abruptly, she was staring up at a cloudless blue sky, heat rustling across her bare limbs, her face, the tracks of dried tears tight on her cheeks. She sat up. Her muscles ached. A sour taste thickened her tongue.
Still the K’Chain Che’Malle faced her.
‘Very well,’ she said, rising to her feet. ‘I give you this. Find your faith in each other. Look no further. The gods will war, and all that we do will remain beneath their notice. Stay low. Move quietly. Out of sight. We are ants in the grass, lizards among the rocks.’ She paused. ‘Somewhere, out there, you will find the purest essence of that philosophy. Perhaps in one person, perhaps in ten thousand. Looking to no other entity, no other force, no other will. Bound solely in comradeship, in loyalty honed absolute. Yet devoid of all arrogance. Wise in humility. And that one, or ten thousand, is on a path. Unerring, it readies itself, not to shake a fist at the heavens. But to lift a lone hand, a hand filled with tears.’ She found she was glaring at the giant reptiles. ‘You want a faith? You want someone or something to believe in? No, do not worship the one or the ten thousand. Worship the sacrifice they will make, for they make it in the name of compassion—the only cause worth fighting and dying for.’
Suddenly exhausted, she turned away, kicked aside the bleached fang at her feet. ‘Now, let us go find our champions.’
She led the way, and the K’Chain Che’Malle were content with that. Sag’Churok watched the frail, puny human taking her meagre strides, leaving behind the rise where two dragons had done battle.
And the K’ell Hunter was well pleased.
He sensed, in a sweet wave, Gunth Mach’s pride.
Pride in their Destriant.
Drawn by four oxen the large wagon rolled into the camp, mobbed by mothers, husbands, wives and children who raised their voices in ululating grief. Arms reached out as if to grab hold of their dead loved ones who lay stacked like felled boles on the flat bed, as the burden of the slain rocked to a halt. The mob churned. Dogs howled.
On a nearby hill, Setoc stood watching the bedlam in the camp, the only motion from her the stirring of her weathered hair. Warriors were running back to their yurts to ready themselves for war, although none knew the enemy’s face, and there was no trail to track. Would-be war leaders shouted and bellowed, beating on their own chests or waving weapons in the air. For all the grief and anger, there was something pathetic to the whole scene, something that made her turn away, suddenly weary.
No one liked being a victim of the unknown. They were driven to lash out, driven to deliver indiscriminate violence upon whoever happened to be close. She could hear some of those warriors vowing vengeance upon the Akrynnai, the D’rhasilhani, even the Letherii.
The Gadra Clan was going to war. Warchief Stolmen was under siege in his own tent, and to deny the murderous hunger of his warriors would see him deposed, bloodily. No, he would need to stand tall, drawing his bhederin cloak about his broad shoulders, and take up his twin-bladed axe. His wife, if anything fiercer than Stolmen himself, would begin painting the white mask of death, the slayer’s bone-grin, upon her husband’s scarred features. Her own mother, a wrinkled hatchet-faced hag, would do the same to her. Edges singing on whetstones, the Barghast were going to war.
She saw Cafal emerging from Stolmen’s tent. Even at this distance, she could read his frustration as he marched towards the largest crowd of warriors. And when his steps slowed and he finally halted, Setoc understood him well enough. He had lost the Gadra. She watched as he looked round until he caught sight of yet another solitary figure.
Torrent was already saddling his horse. Not to join in this madness. But to leave.
As Cafal set out towards the Awl warrior, Setoc went down to meet them.
Whatever words they exchanged before she arrived were terse, unsatisfying to the Great Warlock. He noted her approach and faced her. ‘You too?’ he asked.
‘I will go with you,’ she said. ‘The wolves will join none of this. It is empty.’
‘The Gadra mean to wage war against the Akrynnai,’ said Cafal. ‘But the Akrynnai have done nothing.’
She nodded, reaching up to pull her long fair hair from her face as the hot wind gusted.
Torrent was lifting himself on to his horse. His face was bleak, haunted. He had the look of a man who did not sleep well at night. He gathered his reins.
Cafal turned to him. ‘Wait! Please, Torrent, wait.’
The man grimaced. ‘Is this to be my life? Dragged from one woman’s tent to the next? Am I to rut my days away? Or do I choose instead to fight at your side? Why would I do that? You Barghast—you are no different from my own people, and you will share their fate.’ He nodded towards Setoc. ‘The wolf-child is right. The scavengers of this land will grow fat.’
Setoc caught a flash of something crouched behind a tuft of grass—a hare, no, Talamandas, that thing of twine and sticks. Child of the mad Barghast gods, child of children. Spying on them. She sneered.
‘But,’ asked Cafal, ‘where will you go, Torrent?’
‘I shall ride to Tool, and beg my leave of him. I shall ask for his forgiveness, for I should have been the warrior to fall against the Letherii, in defence of the Awl children. Not his friend. Not the Mezla.’
Cafal’s eyes had widened at Torrent’s words, and after a moment he seemed to sag. ‘Ah, Torrent. Malazans have a way . . .’ He lifted a sad smile to the Awl. ‘They do humble us all. Tool will reject your words—there is nothing to forgive. There is no crime set against you. It was the Mezla’s way, his choice.’
‘He rode out in my place—’
The Great Warlock straightened. ‘And could you have fared as well as he did, Torrent?’
That was a cruel question and Setoc saw how it stung the young warrior. ‘That is not the—’
‘But it is,’ Cafal snapped. ‘If Toc had judged you his superior in battle he would have exhorted you to ride against the Letherii. He would have taken the children away. And if it was that Malazan sitting here on his horse before me right now, he would not be moaning about forgiveness. Do you understand me, Torrent?’
The man looked cruelly bludgeoned by Cafal’s words. ‘Even if it is so, I ride to Tool, and then I shall set off, on my own. I have chosen. Tie no strands to my fate, Great Warlock.’
Setoc barked a laugh. ‘He is not the one to do that, Torrent.’
His eyes narrowed on her. She thought he might retort—accusations, anger, bridling indignation. Instead, he said nothing, simply drawing up his reins. A last glance back to Cafal. ‘You walk, but I ride. I am not interested in slowing my pace to suit you—’
‘And what if I told you I could travel in such a way as to reach Tool long before you will?’
‘You cannot.’
Setoc saw the Great Warlock lick dry lips; saw the sweat that had appeared upon
his broad, flat brow, and her heart began thudding hard in her chest. ‘Cafal,’ she said, her voice flat, ‘this is not your land. The warrens you people speak of are weak here—I doubt you can even reach them. Your gods are not ready—’
‘Speak not of the Barghast gods!’ squealed a voice. Talamandas, the sticksnare, scrambled out from cover and came closer in fits and starts. ‘You know nothing, witch—’
‘I know enough,’ she replied. ‘Yes, your kind once walked these plains, but how long ago was that? You warred with the Tiste Edur. You were driven from this place. A thousand years ago? Ten thousand? So now you return, to avenge your ancestors—but you found the Edur nothing like your legends. Unlike you Barghast, they had moved on—’
‘As the victorious ever do,’ the sticksnare hissed. ‘Their wounds heal quickly, yes. Nothing festers, nothing rots, there is no bitterness on their tongues.’
She spat in disbelief. ‘How can you say that? Their Emperor is dead. They are driven from all the lands they conquered!’
‘But not by our hands!’
The shriek snatched heads round. Warriors drew closer. Cafal remained silent, his expression suddenly closed, while Torrent leaned forward on the saddle, squinting down at the sticksnare as if doubting his own sanity.
Setoc smiled at Talamandas. ‘Yes, that is what galls, isn’t it? So. Now,’ and she turned to face the score or so warriors half-encircling them, ‘now, yes, you would deliver such defeat upon the Akrynnai. Wounds that will fester, rot that sinks deep into the soul, that cruel taste riding every breath.’
Her tirade seemed to buffet them. She spat again. ‘They did not kill your scouts. You all know this. And you do not even care.’ She pointed at Cafal. ‘And so the Great Warlock now goes to Tool, and he will say to him: War Master, yet another clan has broken away. They wage senseless war upon the wrong enemy, and so it will come to pass that, by the actions of the Gadra Clan, every people in this land will rise up against the Barghast. Akrynnai, D’rhasilhani, Keryn, Saphinand, Bolkando. You will be assailed from all sides. And those of you not killed in battle will be driven into the Wastelands, that vast ocean of nothing, and there you will vanish, your bones turning to dust.’
There was movement in the crowd, and warriors stepped aside as a scowling Warchief Stolmen lumbered forward, his wife a step behind him. That woman’s eyes were dark, savage with hatred as she fixed her glare upon Setoc.
‘This is what you do, witch,’ she said in a rasp. ‘You weaken us. Again and again, you seek to weaken us!’
‘Are you so eager to see your children die?’ Setoc asked her.
‘Eager to see them win glory!’
‘For themselves or for you, Sekara?’
Sekara would have flung herself at Setoc then, but Stolmen held out a staying arm, knocking her back. Though he could not see it, his wife then shot him a look of venomous malice.
Torrent spoke quietly to Setoc. ‘Come with me, wolf-child. We will ride out of this madness.’ He reached down with one hand.
She grasped hold of his forearm and he swung her easily on to the horse’s back. As she closed her arms round his waist he said, ‘Do you need to collect anything, Setoc? From your tent?’
‘No.’
‘Send them off!’ snarled Sekara. ‘Go, you foreign liars! Akrynnai spies! Go and poison your own kind! With terror—tell them, we are coming! The White Face Barghast! And we shall make of this land our home once again! Tell them, witch! They are the invaders, not us!’
Setoc had long sensed the animosity building among the women in this clan. She drew too many eyes among the men. Her wildness made them hungry, curious—she was not blind to any of this. Even so, this burst of spite startled her, frightened her. She forced herself to meet Sekara’s blazing eyes. ‘I am the holder of a thousand hearts.’ Saying this, she looked to Sekara’s husband and smiled a knowing smile.
Stolmen was forced to restrain his wife as she sought to lunge forward, a knife in one hand.
Torrent backed his horse, and she could feel how he tensed. ‘Enough of that!’ he snapped over his shoulder. ‘Do you want us skinned alive?’
The mob had grown and now surrounded them. And, she saw at last, there were far more women than men in it. She felt herself withering beneath the hateful stares fixed upon her. Not just wives, either. That she was sitting snug against Torrent was setting fires in the eyes of the younger women, the maidens.
Cafal stepped closer, his face pale in dread mockery of the white paint of the warriors. ‘I am going to open a warren,’ he said in a low voice. ‘With the help of Talamandas. We leave together, or you will be killed here, do you understand? It’s too late for the Gadra—your words, Setoc, held too many truths. They are shamed.’
‘Be quick, then,’ Torrent said in a growl.
He swung round. ‘Talamandas.’
‘Leave them to their fate,’ muttered the sticksnare, crouched like a miniature ghoul. It seemed to be twitching as if plucked and prodded by unseen hands.
‘No. All of us.’
‘You will regret your generosity, Cafal.’
‘The warren, Talamandas.’
The sticksnare snarled wordlessly and then straightened, spreading wide its scrawny twig arms.
‘Cafal!’ hissed Setoc. ‘Wait! There is a sickness—’
White fire erupted around them in a sudden deafening roar. The horse screamed, reared. Setoc’s grip broke and she tumbled back. Searing heat, stunning cold. As quickly as the flames arrived, they vanished with a thunderous clap that reverberated in her skull. A kick from a hoof sent her skidding, pain throbbing from a bruised thigh. There was darkness now—or, she thought with a shock—she was blind. Her eyes curdled in their sockets, cooked like eggs—
Then she caught a glimmer, something smeared, a reflected blade. Torrent’s horse was backing, twisting from side to side—the Awl warrior still rode the beast and she could hear him cursing as he fought to steady the animal. He had drawn his scimitar.
‘Gods below!’
That cry had come from Cafal. Setoc sat up. Stony, damp earth, clumps of mould or guano squishing beneath her. She smelled burning grasses. Crawling to the vague blot in the gloom whence came the Warlock’s voice, she struggled against waves of nausea. ‘You fool,’ she croaked. ‘You should have listened. Cafal—’
‘Talamandas. He’s . . . he’s destroyed.’
The stench of something smouldering was stronger now, and she caught the gleam of scattered embers. ‘He burned? He burned, didn’t he? The wrong warren—it ate him, devoured him—I warned you, Cafal. Something has infected your warrens—’
‘No, Setoc,’ Cafal cut in. ‘It is not like that, not like what you say—we knew of that poison. We were warded against it. This was . . . different. Spirits fend, we have lost our greatest shaman—’
‘You did not know it, did you? That gate? It was unlike anything you’ve ever known, wasn’t it? Listen to me! It is what I have been trying to tell you!’
They heard Torrent dismount, his moccasins thudding on the yielding, strangely soft ground. ‘Be quiet, both of you. Argue what happened later. Listen to the echoes—I think we are trapped inside a cavern.’
‘Well,’ said Setoc, carefully climbing to her feet. ‘There must be a way out.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Because, there’s bats.’
‘But I have my damned horse! Cafal—take us somewhere else!’
‘I cannot.’
‘What?’
‘The power belonged to Talamandas. A binding of agreements, promises, with countless human gods. With Hood, Lord of Death. The Barghast gods are young, too young. I—I cannot even sense them. I am sorry, I do not know where we are.’
‘I am cursed to follow fools!’
Setoc flinched at the anguish in that shout. Poor Torrent. You just wanted to leave there, to ride out. Away. Your stupid sense of honour demanded you visit Tool. And now look . . .
No one spoke for a time, the only s
ounds their breathing and anxious snorts from the horse. Setoc sought to sense some flow of air, but there was nothing. Her thigh aching, she sank back down. She then chose a direction at random and crawled. The guano thickened so that her hands plunged through up to her wrists, and then she found a stone barrier. Wiping the mess from her hands, she tracked with her fingers. ‘Wait! These stones are set—I’ve found a wall.’
Scrabbling sounds behind her, and then the scratch of flint and iron. Sparks, actinic flashes, and then a burgeoning glow. Moments later Torrent had a taper lit and was setting the flame to the wick of a small camp lantern. The chamber took shape around them.
The entire cavern was constructed of set stones, the ones overhead massive, wedged in place in seemingly precipitous disorder. In seething patches here and there clung bats, chittering and squeaking now in agitation.
‘Look, there!’ Cafal pointed.
The bats were converging on a conjoining of ill-set stones, wriggling into cracks.
‘There’s the way out.’
Torrent’s laugh was bitter. ‘We are entombed. One day, looters will break in, find the bones of two men, a child, and a damned horse. For us to ride into the deathworld, or so they might think. Then again, they might wonder at the gnaw marks on all but one set of bones, and at the scratchings and gougings on the stone. Tiny bat bones and heaps of dried-out scat . . .’
‘Crush that imagination of yours, Torrent,’ advised Cafal. ‘Though the way out is nothing but cracks, we know the world outside is close. We need only dig our way out.’
‘This is a stone barrow or something much like it, Cafal. If we start dragging stones loose the whole thing is likely to come down on us.’