Deadhouse Gates

Lenestro visibly struggled with his temper, his arm still raised, the whip quivering.

Others were gathering, their sympathy clearly united with Lenestro. Even so, the historian did not anticipate violence. The nobles might well possess unrealistic notions, but they were anything but suicidal.

Duiker spoke, 'Corporal, we'll take this man to the Seventh's healers.'

'Yes, sir,' List replied, briskly dismounting.

The servant had passed out. Together they carried him to the horse and laid him belly-down across the saddle.

'He shall be returned to me once healed,' Lenestro said.

'So you can do it all over again? Wrong, he'll not be returned to you.' And if you and your comrades are outraged, wait till an hour from now.

'All such acts contrary to Malazan law are being noted,' the nobleman said shrilly. 'There shall be recompense, with interest.'

Duiker had heard enough. He suddenly closed the distance to grasp Lenestro's cloak collar with both hands, and gave the man a teeth-rattling shake. The whip fell to the ground. The nobleman's eyes were wide with terror — reminding the historian of the lapdog's as it rode the hound's mouth.

'You probably think,' Duiker whispered, 'that I'm about to tell you about the situation we're all in. But it's already quite evident that there'd be little point. You are a small-brained thug, Lenestro. Push me again, and I'll have you eating pigshit and liking it.' He shook the pathetic creature again, then dropped him.

Lenestro collapsed.

Duiker frowned down at the man.

'He's fainted, sir,' List said.

'So he has.' Old man scared you, did he?

'Was that really necessary?' a voice asked plaintively. Nethpara emerged from the crowd. 'As if our ongoing petition is not crowded enough, now we have personal bullying to add to our grievances. Shame on you, Historian-'

'Excuse me, sir,' List said, 'but you might wish to know — before you resume berating the historian — that scholarship came late to this man. You will find his name among the Noted on the First Army's Column at Unta, and had you not just come late to this scene, you would have witnessed an old soldier's temper. Indeed, it was admirable restraint that the historian elected to use both hands to grip Lenestro's cloak, lest he use one to unsheathe that well-worn sword at his hip and drive it through the toad's heart.'

Nethpara blinked sweat from his eyes.

Duiker slowly swung to face List.

The corporal noted the dismay in the historian's face and answered it with a wink. 'We'd best move on, sir,' he said.

They left behind a gathering in the clearing that broke its silence only after they'd entered the opposite aisle.

List walked alongside the historian, leading his horse by the reins. 'It still astonishes me that they persist in the notion that we will survive this journey.'

Duiker glanced over in surprise. 'Are you lacking such faith, then, Corporal?'

'We'll never reach Aren, Historian. Yet the fools compile their petitions, their grievances — against the very people keeping them alive.'

'There's great need to maintain the illusion of order, List. In us all.'

The young man's expression turned wry. 'I missed your moment of sympathy back there, sir.'

'Obviously.'

They left the nobles' encampment and entered the mayhem of the wagons bearing wounded. Voices moaned a constant chorus of pain. A chill crept over Duiker. Even wheeled hospitals carried with them that pervasive atmosphere of fear, the sounds of defiance and the silence of surrender. Mortality's many comforting layers had been stripped away, revealing wracked bones, a sudden comprehension of death that throbbed like an exposed nerve.

Awareness and revelations thickened the prairie air in a manner priests could only dream of for their temples. To fear the gods is to fear death. In places where men and women are dying, the gods no longer stand in the spaces in between. The soothing intercession is gone. They've stepped back, back through the gates, and watch from the other side. Watch and wait.

'We should've gone around,' List muttered.

'Even without that man in need on your horse,' Duiker said, 'I would have insisted we pass through this place, Corporal.'

'I've learned this lesson already,' List replied, a tautness in his tone.

'From your earlier words, I would suggest that the lesson you have learned is different from mine, lad.'

'This place encourages you, Historian?'

'Strengthens, Corporal, though in a cold way, I admit. Never mind the games of Ascendants. This is what we are. The endless struggle laid bare. Gone is the idyllic, the deceit of self-import as well as the false humility of insignificance. Even as we battle wholly personal battles, we are unified. This is the place of level earth, Corporal. That is its lesson, and I wonder if it is an accident that that deluded mob in gold threads must walk in the wake of these wagons.'

'Either way, few revelations have bled back to stain noble sentiments.'

'No? I smelled desperation back there, Corporal.'

List spied a healer and they delivered the servant into the woman's blood-smeared hands.

The sun was low on the horizon directly ahead by the time they reached the Seventh's main camp. The faint smoke from the dung fires hung like gilded gauze over the ordered rows of tents. Off to one side two squads of infantry had set to in a contest of belt-grip, using a leather-strapped skullcap for a ball. A ring of cheering, jeering onlookers had gathered. Laughter rang in the air.

Duiker remembered the words of an old marine from his soldiering days. Some times you just have to grin and spit in Hood's face. The contesting squads were doing just that, running themselves ragged to sneer at their own exhaustion besides, and well aware that Tithansi eyes watched from a distance.

They were a day away from the River P'atha, and the impending battle was a promise that thickened the dusk.

Two of the Seventh's marines flanked Coltaine's command tent, and the historian recognized one of them.

She nodded. 'Historian.'

There was a look in her pale eyes that seemed to lay an invisible hand against his chest, and Duiker was stilled to silence, though he managed a smile.

As they passed between the drawn flaps, List murmured, 'Well now, Historian.'

'Enough of that, Corporal.' But he did not glance over to nail the young man's grin, as he was tempted to do. A man gets to an age where he's wise not to banter on desire with a comrade half his age. Too pathetic by far, that illusion of competition. Besides, that look of hers was likely more pitying than anything else, no matter what my heart whispered. Put an end to your foolish thoughts, old man.

Coltaine stood near the centre pole, his expression dark. Duiker and List's arrival had interrupted a conversation. Bult and Captain Lull sat on saddle-chairs, looking glum. Sormo stood wrapped in an antelope hide, his back to the tent's far wall, his eyes hooded in shadow. The air was sweltering and tense.

Bult cleared his throat. 'Sormo was explaining about the Semk godling,' he said. 'The spirits say something damaged it. Badly. The night of the raid — a demon walked the land. Lightly, I gather, leaving a spoor not easily sniffed out. In any case, it appeared, mauled the Semk, then left. It seems, Historian, that the Claw had company.'

'An Imperial demon?'

Bult shrugged and swung his flat gaze to Sormo.

The warlock, looking like a black vulture perched on a fence pole, stirred slightly. 'There is precedent,' he admitted. 'Yet Nil believes otherwise.'

'Why?' Duiker asked.

There was a long pause before Sormo answered. 'When Nil fled into himself that night. . no, that is, he