Dead horses were dragged away entire, leaving swathes of blood-matted grass in their wake.
Duiker was well past astonishment at anything he saw. Like the Tithansi tribesmen he'd occasionally exchanged words with, he'd begun to believe that Coltaine was something other than human, that he had carved his soldiers and every refugee into unyielding avatars of the impossible. Yet for all that, there was no hope for victory. Kamist Reloe's Apocalypse consisted of the armies of four cities and a dozen towns, countless tribes and a peasant horde as vast as an inland sea. And it was closing in, content for the moment simply to escort Coltaine to the Sekala River. Every current was drawing to that place. A battle was taking shape, an annihilation.
Duiker rode through the day, parched, hungry, wind-burned, his clothes reduced to rags. A straggler from the peasant army, an old man determined to join the last struggle. Tithansi riders knew him on sight and paid him little heed apart from a distant wave. Every two or three days a troop would join him, pass him bundles of food, water and feed for the horse. In some ways, he had become their icon, his journey symbolic, burdened with unasked-for significance. The historian felt pangs of guilt at that, yet accepted the gifts with genuine gratitude — they kept him and his horse alive.
Nonetheless, his faithful mount was wearing down. More and more each day Duiker led the animal by the reins.
Dusk approached. The distant dust cloud continued to march on, until the historian was certain that Coltaine's vanguard had reached the river. The Fist would insist that the entire train drive on through the night to the encampment that the vanguard was even now preparing. If Duiker was to have any chance of rejoining them, it would have to be this night.
He knew of the ford only from maps, and his recollection was frustratingly vague. The Sekala River averaged five hundred paces in width, flowing north to the Karas Sea. A small village squatted in the crook of two hills a few hundred paces south of the ford itself. He seemed to remember something about an old oxbow, as well.
The dying day spread shadows across the land. The brightest of the night's stars glittered in the sky's deepening blue. Wings of capemoths rose with the heat that fled the parched ground, like black flakes of ash.
Duiker climbed back into the saddle. A small band of Tithansi outriders rode a ridge half a mile to the north. Duiker judged that he was at least a league from the river. The patrols of horsewarriors would increase the closer he approached. He had no plan for dealing with them.
The historian had walked his mount for most of the day, preparing for a hard ride into the night. He would need all that the beast could give him, and was afraid that it would not be enough. He nudged the mare into a trot.
The distant Tithansi paid him no attention, and soon rode out of sight. Heart thumping, Duiker urged his horse into a canter.
A wind brushed his face. The historian hissed a blessing to whatever god was responsible. The hanging dust cloud ahead began to edge his way.
The sky darkened.
A voice shouted a few hundred paces to his left. A dozen horsemen, strips of fur trailing from their lances. Tithansi. Duiker saluted them with a raised fist.
'With the dawn, old man!' one of them bellowed. 'It is suicide to attack now!'
'Ride to Reloe's camp!' another yelled. 'Northwest, old man — you are heading for the enemy lines!'
Duiker waved their words away, gesturing like a madman. He rose slightly in the saddle, whispered into the mare's ear, squeezed gently with his knees. The animal's head ducked forward, the strides lengthened.
Reaching the crest of a low hill, the historian finally saw what was arrayed before him. The encampment of the Tithansi lancers lay ahead and to his right, a thousand or more hide tents, the gleam of cooking fires. Mounted patrols moved in a restless line beyond the tents, protecting the camp from the enemy forces dug in at the ford. To the left of the Tithansi camp spread a score thousand makeshift tents — the peasant army. Smoke hung like an ash-stained cloak over the sprawling tattered shanty town. Meals were being cooked. Outlying pickets consisted of entrenchments, again facing the river. Between the two encampments there was a corridor, no more than two wagons wide, running down the sloping floodplain to meet Coltaine's earthen defences.
Duiker angled his horse down the corridor, riding at full gallop. The Tithansi outriders behind him had not pursued, though the warriors patrolling the encampment now watched him, converging but without obvious concern … yet.
As he cleared the inside edge of the tribe's camp on his right, then the peasants' sea of tents on his left, he saw raised earthworks, orderly rows of tents, solidly manned pickets — the horde had additional protection. The historian saw two banners, Sialk and Hissar — regular infantry. Helmed heads had turned, eyes drawn to the sound of his horse's hooves and now the alarmed shouts of the Tithansi riders.
The mare was straining. Coltaine's pickets were five hundred paces ahead, seeming to get no nearer. He heard horses in pursuit, gaining. Figures appeared on the Malazan bulwarks, readying bows. The historian prayed for quick-witted minds among the soldiers he rode towards. He cursed as he saw the bows raised, then drawn back.
'Not me, you bastards!' he bellowed in Malazan.
The bows loosed. Arrows sped unseen in the night.
Horses screamed behind him. His pursuers were drawing rein. More arrows flew. Duiker risked one backward glance and saw the Tithansi scrambling to withdraw out of arrow range. Thrashing horses and bodies lay on the ground.
He slowed the mare to a canter, then a trot as he approached the earthworks. She was lathered, her limbs far too loose, her head sagging.
Duiker rode into the midst of blue-skinned Wickans — Weasel Clan — who stared at him in silence. As he glanced around, the historian felt himself in well-suited company — the plains warriors from northeast Quon Tali had the look of spectres, their faces drawn with an exhaustion to match his own.
Beyond the Weasel Clan's encampment were military-issue tents and two banners — the Hissari Guard who had remained loyal, and a company whose standard Duiker did not recognize, apart from a central stylized crossbow signifying Malazan Marines.
Hands reached up to help him from the saddle. Wickan youths and elders gathered around, a soothing murmur of voices rising. Their concern was for the mare. An old man gripped the historian's arm. 'We will tend to this brave horse, stranger.'
'I think she's finished,' Duiker said, a wave of sorrow flooding him.
The old man shook his head. 'Our horsewives are skilled in such things. She shall run again. Now, an officer comes — go.'
A captain from the unknown company of Marines approached. He was Falari, his beard and long, wavy hair a fiery red. 'You rode in your saddle like a Malazan,' he said, 'yet dress like a damned Dosii. Explain yourself and be quick about it.'
'Duiker, Imperial Historian. I've been trying to rejoin this train since it left Hissar.'
The captain's eyes widened. 'A hundred and sixty leagues — you expect me to believe that? Coltaine left Hissar almost three months ago.'
'I know. Where's Bult? Has Kulp rejoined the Seventh? And who in Hood's name are you?'
'Lull, Captain of the Sialk Marines, Cartheron Wing, Sahul Fleet. Coltaine's called a briefing — you'd better come along, Historian.'
They began making their way through the encampment. Duiker was appalled at what he saw. Beyond the ragged entrenchments of the Marines was a broad, sloping field, a single roped road running through it. On the right were wagons in their hundreds, their beds crowded with wounded. The wagon wheels were sunk deep in blood- soaked mud. Birds filled the torchlit air, voicing a frenzied chorus — it seemed they had acquired a taste for blood. On the left the churned field was a solid mass of cattle, shoulder to shoulder, shifting in a seething tide beneath a hovering haze of rhizan — the winged lizards feasting on the swarms of flies.
Ahead, the field dropped away to a strip of marsh bridged by wooden slats. The swampy pools of water gleamed red. Beyond it was a broad humped-back oxbow island on which, in crowded mayhem, were encamped the refugees — in their tens of thousands.
'Hood's breath,' the historian muttered, 'are we going to have to walk through that?'
The captain shook his head and gestured towards a large farmhouse on the cattle side of the ford road.
