'I'm freeing my horse,' the historian said reasonably. 'The enemy won't bother with her — too worn out to be of any use. She'll head back to Aren — it's the least I can do for her.' He removed the saddle, dropped it to the ground to one side, then pulled the bit from the mare's mouth.
The priest stared for a moment longer, a slight frown on his face, then he turned back to the High Fist. 'They await our reply.'
Duiker stepped close to his horse's head and laid a hand on the soft muzzle. 'Take care,' he whispered. Then he stepped back, gave the animal a slap on the rump. The mare sprang away, wheeled, then trotted southward — as Duiker knew she would.
'What choice?' Pormqual whispered. 'Unlike Coltaine, I must consider my soldiers.. their lives are worth everything.. peace will return to this land, sooner or later …'
'Thousands of husbands, wives, and fathers and mothers will bless your name, High Fist. To fight now, to seek out that bitter, pointless end, ah, they will curse your name for all eternity.'
'I cannot have that,' Pormqual agreed. He faced his officers. 'Lay down arms. Deliver the orders — all weapons to go to the edges and left there, the ranks to withdraw to the centre of the basin.'
Duiker stared at the four captains who listened in silence to the High Fist's commands. A long moment passed, then the officers saluted and rode off.
Duiker turned away.
The disarmament took close to an hour, the Malazan soldiers yielding their weapons in silence. Those weapons were piled on the ground just beyond the phalanxes, then the soldiers made their way inward, forming up in tight, restless ranks in the basin's centre.
Tribal horsewarriors then rode down and collected the arms. Twenty minutes later an army of ten thousand Malazans crowded the basin, weaponless, helpless.
Korbolo Dom's vanguard detached from the forces on the north ridge and rode down towards the High Fist's position.
Duiker stared at the approaching group. He saw Kamist Reloe, a handful of war chiefs, two unarmed women who were in all likelihood mages, and Korbolo Dom himself, a squat half-Napan, all hair shaved from his body, revealing scars in tangled webs. He was smiling as he reined in with his companions before the High Fist, Mallick Rel and the other officers.
'Well done,' he growled, his eyes on the priest.
The Jhistal dismounted, stepped forward and bowed. 'I deliver to you High Fist Pormqual and his ten thousand. More, I deliver to you the city Aren, in Sha'ik's name-'
'Wrong,' Duiker chuckled.
Mallick Rel faced him.
'You've not delivered Aren, Jhistal.'
'What claims do you make now, old man?'
'I'm surprised you didn't notice,' the historian said. 'Too busy gloating, I guess. Take a close look at the companies around you, especially those to the south …'
Mallick's eyes narrowed as he scanned the gathered legions. Then he paled. 'Blistig!'
'Seems the commander and his garrison decided to stay behind after all. Granted, they're only two or three hundred, but we both know that that will be enough — for the week or so until Tavore arrives. Aren's walls are high, well impregnated these days with Otataral, I believe — proof against any sorcery. Thinking on it, I would predict that there are Red Blades lining those walls now, as well as the garrison. You have failed in your betrayal, Jhistal. Failed.'
The priest jerked forward, the back of his hand cracking against Duiker's face. The historian was spun around by the savage blow, and the rings on the man's hand raking through the flesh of one cheek burst the barely healed splits in his lips and chin. He fell hard to the ground and felt something shatter against his sternum.
He pushed himself up, the blood streaming down his lacerated face. Looking down at the ground beneath him, he expected to see tiny fragments of broken glass, but there were none. The leather thong around his neck now had nothing on it at all.
Hands pulled him roughly to his feet and dragged him around to face Mallick Rel once more.
The priest was trembling still. 'Your death shall be-'
'Silence!' Korbolo snapped. He eyed Duiker. 'You are the historian who rode with Coltaine.'
The historian faced him. 'I am.'
'You are a soldier.'
'As you say.'
'I do, and so you shall die with these soldiers, in a manner no different-'
'You mean to slaughter ten thousand unarmed men and women, Korbolo Dom?'
'I mean to cripple Tavore before she even sets foot on this continent. I mean to make her too furious to think. I mean to crack that facade so she dreams of vengeance day and night, poisoning her every decision.'
'You always fashioned yourself as the Empire's harshest Fist, didn't you, Korbolo Dom? As if cruelty's a virtue …'
The pale-blue-skinned commander simply shrugged. 'Best join the others now, Duiker — a soldier of Coltaine's army deserves that much.' Korbolo then turned to Mallick. 'My mercy, however, does not extend to that one soldier whose arrow stole Coltaine from our pleasure. Where is he, Priest?'
'He went missing, alas. Last seen an hour after the deed — Blistig had his soldiers search everywhere, without success. Even if he has now found him, he is with the garrison, afraid to say.'
The renegade Fist scowled. 'There have been disappointments this day, Mallick Rel.'
'Korbolo Dom, sir!' Pormqual said, still bearing an expression of disbelief. 'I do not understand-'
'Clearly you do not,' the commander agreed, his face twisting in disgust. 'Jhistal, have you any particular fate in mind for this fool?'
'None. He is yours.'
'I cannot grant him the dignified sacrifice I have in mind for his soldiers. That would leave too bitter a taste in my mouth, I'm afraid.' Korbolo Dom hesitated, then sighed and made a slight gesture with one hand.
A war chief's tulwar flashed behind the High Fist, lifted the man's head clean from his shoulders and sent it spinning. The warhorse bolted in alarm and broke through the ring of soldiers. The beautiful beast galloped down among the unarmed soldiers, carrying its headless burden into their midst. The High Fist's corpse, Duiker saw, rode in the saddle with a grace not matched in life, weaving this way and that before hands reached up to slow the frightened horse, and Pormqual's body slid to one side, falling into waiting arms.
It may have been his imagination, but Duiker thought he could hear the harsh laughter of a god.
There was no shortage of spikes, yet it took a day and a half before the last screaming prisoner was nailed to the last crowded cedar lining Aren Way.
Ten thousand dead and dying Malazans stared down on that wide, exquisitely engineered Imperial road — eyes unseeing or eyes uncomprehending — it made little difference.
Duiker was the last, the rusty iron spikes driven through his wrists and upper arms to hold him in place high on the tree's blood-streaked bole. More spikes were hammered through his ankles and the muscles of his outer thighs.
The pain was unlike anything the historian had ever known before. Yet even worse was the knowledge that that pain would accompany his entire final journey down into eventual unconsciousness, and with it — an added trauma — were the images burned into him: almost forty hours of being driven on foot up Aren Way, watching each and every one of those ten thousand soldiers joined to the mass crucifixion in a chain of suffering stretching over three leagues, each link scores of men and women nailed to every tree, to every available space on those tall, broad trunks.
The historian was well beyond shock when his turn finally came, as the last soldier to close the human chain, and he was dragged to the tree, up the scaffolding, pushed against the ridged bark, arms forced outward, feeling the cold bite of the iron spikes pressed against his skin, and then, when the mallets swung, the explosion of pain that loosed his bowels, leaving him stained and writhing. The greatest pain arrived when the scaffolding dropped from under him, and his full weight fell onto the pinning spikes. Until that moment, he had truly believed he had gone as far into agony as was humanly possible.
He was wrong.
