Memories of Ice

'Do you imagine that Brood knows?'

'I think so, at least in some part. We've got Mott Irregulars among the stablers and handlers…'

'Mott Irregulars — who or what is that, Commander?'

'Something vaguely resembling a mercenary company, Warchief. Woodcutters and farmers, for the most part. Created by accident — by us Malazans, in fact. We'd just taken the city of Oraz and were marching west to Mott — which promptly surrendered with the exception of the outlanders in Mott Wood. Dujek didn't want a company of renegades preying on our supply lines with us pushing ever inland, so he sent the Bridgeburners into Mott Wood with the aim of hunting them down. A year and a half later and we were still there. The Irregulars were running circles around us. And the times they'd decided to stand and fight, it was as if some dark swamp god possessed them — they bloodied our noses more than once. Did the same to the Gold Moranth. Eventually, Dujek pulled us out, but by then the Mott Irregulars had been contacted by Brood. He drew them into his army. In any case,' he shrugged, 'they're a deceptive bunch, keep coming back like a bad infestation of gut-worms — which we've learned to live with.'

'So you know what your enemy knows of you,' Humbrall nodded.

'More or less.'

'You Malazans,' the Barghast said, shaking his head, 'play a complicated game.'

'Sometimes,' Whiskeyjack conceded. 'At other times, we're plain simple.'

'One day, your armies will march to the White Face Range.'

'I doubt it.'

'Why not?' Humbrall Taur demanded. 'Are we not worthy enough foes, Commander?'

'Too worthy, Warchief. No, the truth is this. We have treated with you, and the Malazan Empire takes such precedents seriously. You will be met with respect and offers to establish trade, borders and the like — if you so desire. If not, the envoys will depart and that will be the last you ever see of the Malazans, until such time as you decide otherwise.'

'Strange conquerors, you foreigners.'

'Aye, we are at that.'

'Why are you on Genabackis, Commander?'

'The Malazan Empire? We're here to unify, and through unification, grow rich. We're not selfish about getting rich, either.'

Humbrall Taur thumped his coin-threaded hauberk. 'And silver is all that interests you?'

'Well, there's more than one kind of wealth, Warchief.'

'Indeed?' The huge warrior's eyes had narrowed.

Whiskeyjack smiled. 'Meeting the White Face clans of the Barghast is one such reward. Diversity is worth celebrating, Humbrall Taur, for it is the birthplace of wisdom.'

'Your words?'

'No, the Imperial Historian, Duiker.'

'And he speaks for the Malazan Empire?'

'In the best of times.'

'And are these the best of times?'

Whiskeyjack met the warrior's dark eyes. 'Perhaps they are.'

'Will you two be quiet!' Hetan growled behind them. 'I am about to die.'

Humbrall Taur swung about to study his daughter where she crouched against the barrels of grain. 'A thought,' he rumbled.

'What?'

'Only that you might not be seasick, daughter.'

'Really! Then what-' Hetan's eyes went wide. 'Spirits below!'

Moments later, Whiskeyjack was forced to lean unceremoniously, feet first, over the barge's gunnel, the current tugging at his boots, the flowing water giving them a thorough cleansing.

A seastorm had struck Maurik some time since its desertion, toppling ornamental trees and heaping seaweed-tangled dunes of sand against building walls. The streets were buried beneath an unmarred, evenly rippled white carpet of sand, leaving no bodies or other detritus visible.

Korlat rode alone down the port city's main thoroughfare. Squat, sprawling warehouses were on her left, civic buildings, taverns, inns and trader shops on her right. Overhead, hauling ropes linked the upper floors of the warehouses to the flat rooftops of the trader shops, festooned now with seagrasses as if decorated for a maritime festival.

Apart from what came with the warm wind's steady sigh, there was no movement down the length of the street, nor in the alleys intersecting it. Windows and doorways gaped black and forlorn. The warehouses had been stripped bare, their wide sliding doors facing onto the street left open.

She approached the westernmost reaches of the city, the smell of the sea behind her giving way to a sweeter taint of freshwater decay from the river beyond the warehouses on her left.

Caladan Brood, Kallor and the others had elected to ride round Maurik, inland, on their way to the flats, Crone flying overhead for a time, before once more winging away. Korlat had never known the Matron Great Raven to be so rattled. If indeed the loss of contact meant that Anomander Rake and Moon's Spawn had been destroyed, then Crone had lost both her master and her murder's roost. Unpleasant notions, both. More than enough to crook the Great Raven's wings with despair as she continued on, south once more.

Korlat had decided to ride alone, taking a route longer than the others — through the city. There was no need for haste, after all, and anticipation had a way of drawing out any stationary wait — better, then, to lengthen the approach at a controlled pace. There was much to think about, after all. If her Lord was well, then she would have to stand before him and formally sever her service — ending a relationship that had existed for fourteen thousand years, or, rather, suspending it for a time. For the remaining years of a mortal man's life. And if some calamity had befallen Anomander Rake, then Korlat would find herself the ranking commander to the dozen Tiste Andii who, like her, had remained with Brood's army. She would make that responsibility shortlived, for she had no wish to rule her kin. She would free them to decide their own fates.

Anomander Rake had unified these Tiste Andii by strength of personality — a quality Korlat well knew she did not share. The disparate causes in which he chose to engage himself and his people were, she had always assumed, each a reflection upon a single theme — but that theme and its nature had ever eluded Korlat. There were wars, there were struggles, enemies, allies, victories and losses. A procession through centuries that seemed random not just to her, but to her kin as well.

A sudden thought came to her, twisting like a dull knife in her chest. Perhaps Anomander Rake was equally lost. Perhaps this endless succession of causes reflects his own search. I had all along assumed a simple goal — to give us a reason to exist, to take upon ourselves the nobility of others. others for whom the struggle meant something. Was that not the theme underlying all we have done? Why do I now doubt? Why do I now believe that, if a theme does indeed exist, it is something other?

Something far less noble.

She attempted to shake off such thoughts, before they dragged her towards despair. For despair is the nemesis of the Tiste Andii. How often have I seen my kin fall on the field of battle, and have known — deep in my soul — that my brothers and sisters did not die through an inability to defend themselves? They died, because they had chosen to die. Shin by their own despair.

Our gravest threat.

Does Anomander Rake lead us away from despair — is that his only purpose, his only goal? Is his a theme of denial? If so, then, dear Mother Dark, he was right in seeking to confound our understanding, in seeking to keep us from ever realizing his singular, pathetic goal. And I–I should never have pursued these thoughts, should never have clawed my way to this conclusion.

Discovering my Lord's secret holds no reward. Curse of the Light, he has spent centuries evading my questions, discouraging my desire to come to know him, to pierce through his veil of mystery. And I have been hurt by it, I have lashed out at him more than once, and he has stood before my anger and frustration. Silent.

To choose not to share. what I had seen as arrogance, as patronizing behaviour of the worst sort — enough to leave me incensed. ah, Lord, you held to the hardest mercy.