Deadhouse Gates

'What in Hood's name for, Mage?'

'Sorry, this time I'm pulling rank. Do as I command.'

'And what if we just push you over the side?' Gesler enquired calmly. 'There's dhenrabi out here, feeding along the edge of Sahul Shelf. You'd be a tasty morsel…'

Kulp sighed. 'We go to pick up a High Priest of Fener, Corporal. Feed me to a dhenrabi and no-one mourns the loss. Anger a High Priest and his foul-tempered god might well cock one red eye in your direction. Are you prepared for that risk?'

The corporal leaned back and barked a laugh. Stormy and Truth were grinning as well.

Kulp scowled. 'You find this amusing?'

Stormy leaned over the gunnel and spat into the sea. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then said, 'It seems Fener's already cocked an eye in our direction, Mage. We're Boar Company, of the disbanded First Army. Before Laseen crushed the cult, that is. Now we're just marines attached to a miserable Coastal Guard.'

'Ain't stopped us from following Fener, Mage,' Gesler said. 'Or even recruiting new followers to the warrior cult,' he added, nodding towards Truth. 'So just point the way — Otataral Coast, you said. Angle her due east, lad, and let's get this sail up and ready the spinnaker for the morning winds.'

Slowly, Kulp sat back. 'Anyone else need to wash out their leggings?' he asked.

Wrapped in his telaba, Duiker rode from the village. There were figures to either side of the coastal road, featureless in the faint moon's light. The cool desert air seemed to carry in it the residue of a sandstorm, a desiccating haze that parched the throat. Reaching the crossroads, the historian reined in. Southward the coastal road continued on, down to Hissar. A trader track led west, inland. A quarter-mile down this track was encamped an army.

There was no order evident. Thousands of tents were haphazardly pitched around a huge central corral shrouded in fire-lit clouds of dust. Tribal chants drifted across the sands. Along the track, no more than fifty long paces from Duiker's position, a hapless squad of Malazan soldiers writhed on what were locally called Sliding Beds — four tall spears each set upright, the victim set atop the jagged points, at the shoulders and upper thighs. Depending on their weight and their strength of will in staying motionless, the impaling and the slow slide down to the ground could take hours. With Hood's blessing, the morrow's sun would hasten the tortured death. The historian felt his heart grow cold with rage.

He could not help them, Duiker knew. It was challenge enough to simply stay alive in a countryside aflame with murderous lust. But there would come a time for retribution. If the gods will it.

Mage fires blossomed vast and — at this distance — silent over Hissar. Was Coltaine still alive? Bult? The Seventh? Had Sormo divined what was coming in time?

He tapped his heels against his mount's flanks, continued down the coastal road. The renegade army's appearance was a shock. It had emerged as if from nowhere, and for all the chaos of the encampment there were commanders there, filled with bloodthirsty intent and capable of achieving what they planned. This was no haphazard revolt. Kulp said a High Mage. Who else is out there? Sha'ik has had years in which to build her army of the Apocalypse, despatch her agents, plan this night — and all that will follow. We knew it was happening. Laseen should have stuck Pormqual's head on a spike long ago. A capable High Fist could have crushed this.

'Dosii kim'aral!'

Three cloaked shapes rose from the flood track on the inland side of the road. 'A night of glory!' Duiker responded, not slowing as he rode past.

'Wait, Dosii! The Apocalypse waits to embrace you!' The figure gestured towards the encampment.

'I have kin in Hissari Harbour,' the historian replied. 'I go to share in the riches of liberation!' Duiker reined in suddenly and pulled his horse around. 'Unless the Seventh has won back the city — is this the news you have for me?'

The spokesman laughed. 'They are crushed. Destroyed in their beds, Dosii! Hissar has been freed of the Mezla curse!'

'Then I ride!' Duiker kicked the horse forward again. He held his breath as he continued on, but the tribesmen did not call after him. The Seventh gone? Does Coltaine ride a sliding bed right now? It was hard to believe, yet it might well be true. Clearly the attack had been sudden, backed by high sorcery — with me dragging Kulp away, on this night of all nights, Hood curse my bones. For all the lives within him, Sormo E'nath was still a boy, his flesh hardly steeled to such a challenge. He might well have bloodied a few noses among the enemy's mages. To expect or hope for more than that was being unfair. They would have fought hard, every one of them. Hissar's price would have been high.

Nonetheless, Duiker would have to see for himself. The Imperial Historian could do no less. More, he could ride among the enemy and that was an extraordinary opportunity. Never mind the risks. He would gather all the information he could, anticipating an eventual return to the ranks of a Malazan punitive force, where his knowledge could be put to lethal use. In otter words, a spy. So much for objectivity, Duiker. The image of the Malazan soldiers lining the trader track, dying slowly on the sliding beds, was enough to sear away his detachment.

Magic flared in the fishing village half a mile behind him. Duiker hesitated, then rode on. Kulp was a survivor, and by the look of that Coastal Guard, he had veterans at his side. The mage had faced powerful sorcery before — what he could not defeat, he could escape. Duiker's soldiering days were long past, his presence more of an impediment than an asset — they were better off without him.

But what would Kulp do now? If there were any survivors among the Seventh, then the cadre mage's place was with them. What, then, of Heboric's fate? Well, I've done what I could for the old handless bastard. Fener guard you, old man.

There were no refugees on the road. It seemed the fanatic call to arms was complete — all had proclaimed themselves soldiers of Dryjhna. Old women, fisherwives, children and pious grandfathers. Nonetheless, Duiker had been expecting to find Malazans, or at the very least signs of their passage, scenes where their efforts to escape came to a grisly end. Instead, the raised military road stretched bare, ghostly in the moon's silver light.

Against the glare of distant Hissar appeared desert capemoths, wheeling and fluttering like flakes of ash as broad across as a splayed hand as they crossed back and forth in front of the historian. They were carrion-eaters, and they were heading in the same direction as Duiker, in growing numbers.

Within minutes the night was alive with the silent, spectral insects, whirling past the historian on all sides. Duiker struggled against the chill dread rising within him. 'The world's harbingers of death are many and varied.' He frowned, trying to recall where he'd heard those words. Probably from one of the countless dirges to Hood, sung by the priests during the Season of Rot in Unta.

The first of the city's outlying slums appeared in the fading gloom ahead, a narrow cluster of shacks and huts clinging to the shelf above the beach. Smoke now rode the air, smelling of burning painted wood and scorched cloth. The smell of a city destroyed, the smell of anger and blind hatred. It was all too familiar to Duiker, and it made him feel old.

Two children raced across the road, ducking between shacks. One voiced a laugh that pealed with madness, too knowing by far to come from one so young. The historian rode past the spot, his skin crawling. He was astonished to feel the fear within him — afraid of children? Old man, you don't belong here.

The sky was lightening over the strait on his left. The capemoths were plunging into the city ahead, vanishing inside the roiling clouds of smoke. Duiker reined in. The coastal road split here, the main track leading straight to become a main thoroughfare of the city. A second road, on the right, skirted the city and led to the Malazan barracks compound. The historian gazed down that road, squinting. Black columns of smoke rose half a mile away above the barracks, the columns bending high up where a desert wind caught hold and pushed them seaward.

Butchered in their beds? The possibility suddenly seemed all too real. He rode towards the barracks. On his right, as shadows appeared with the rising sun, the city of Hissar burned. Support beams were giving way, mudbrick walls tumbling, cut stone shattering explosively in the blistering heat. Smoke covered the scene with its deathly, bitter shawl. Every now and then a distant scream sounded from the city's heart. It was clear that the mutiny's destructive ferocity had turned on itself. Freedom had been won, at the cost of everything.

He reached the trampled earth where the trader encampment had once been — where he and the warlock