L’oric sighed. ‘We are fools, you and I.’
‘Probably.’
‘I had once hoped, Ghost Hands, for an alliance between us.’
‘It exists, more or less, L’oric. Sufficient to ensure Felisin’s safety. Not that we have managed well in that responsibility thus far. I could have helped,’ Heboric growled.
‘I am surprised, if you know what Bidithal did to her, that you have not sought vengeance.’
‘Vengeance? What is the point in that? No, L’oric, I have a better answer to Bidithal’s butchery. Leave Bidithal to his fate…’
The High Mage started, then smiled. ‘Odd, only a short time ago I voiced similar words to Felisin.’
Heboric watched the man walk away. After a moment, the Destriant turned and re-entered his temple.
‘There is something… inexorable about them…’
They were in the path of the distant legions, seeing the glimmer of iron wavering like molten metal beneath a pillar of dust that, from this angle, seemed to rise straight up, spreading out in a hazy stain in the high desert winds. At Leoman’s words, Corabb Bhilan Thenu’alas shivered. Dust was sifting down the folds of his ragged telaba; the air this close to the Whirlwind Wall was thick with suspended sand, filling his mouth with grit.
Leoman twisted in his saddle to study his warriors.
Anchoring his splintered lance into the stirrup cup, Corabb settled back in the saddle. He was exhausted. Virtually every night, they had attempted raids, and even when his own company had not been directly involved in the fighting there had been retreats to cover, counter-attacks to blunt, then flight. Always flight. Had Sha’ik given Leoman five thousand warriors, the Adjunct and her army would be the ones retreating. All the way back to Aren, mauled and limping.
Leoman had done what he could with what he had, however, and they had purchased-with blood-a handful of precious days. Moreover, they had gauged the Adjunct’s tactics, and the mettle of the soldiers. More than once, concerted pressure on the regular infantry had buckled them, and had Leoman the numbers, he could have pressed home and routed them. Instead, Gall’s Burned Tears would arrive, or Wickans, or those damned marines, and the desert warriors would be the ones fleeing. Out into the night, pursued by horse warriors as skilled and tenacious as Leoman’s own.
Seven hundred or so remained-they’d had to leave so many wounded behind, found and butchered by the Khundryl Burned Tears, with various body parts collected as trophies.
Leoman faced forward on his saddle once more. ‘We are done.’
Corabb nodded. The Malazan army would reach the Whirlwind Wall by dusk. ‘Perhaps her otataral will fail,’ he offered. ‘Perhaps the goddess will destroy them all this very night.’
The lines bracketing Leoman’s blue eyes deepened as he narrowed his gaze on the advancing legions. ‘I think not. There is nothing pure in the Whirlwind’s sorcery, Corabb. No, there will be a battle, at the very edge of the oasis. Korbolo Dom will command the Army of the Apocalypse. And you and I, and likely Mathok, shall find ourselves a suitable vantage point… to watch.’
Corabb leaned to one side and spat.
‘Our war is done,’ Leoman finished, collecting his reins.
‘Korbolo Dom will need us,’ Corabb asserted.
‘If he does, then we have lost.’
They urged their weary horses into motion, and rode through the Whirlwind Wall.
He could ride at a canter for half a day, dropping the Jhag horse into a head-dipping, loping gait for the span of a bell, then resume the canter until dusk. Havok was a beast unlike any other he had known, including his namesake. He had ridden close enough to the north side of Ugarat to see watchers on the wall, and indeed they had sent out a score of horse warriors to contest his crossing the broad stone bridge spanning the river-riders who should have reached it long before he did.
But Havok had understood what was needed, and canter stretched out into gallop, neck reaching forward, and they arrived fifty strides ahead of the pursuing warriors. Foot traffic on the bridge scattered from their path, and its span was wide enough to permit easy passage around the carts and wagons. Broad as the Ugarat River was, they reached the other side within a dozen heartbeats, the thunder of Havok’s hoofs changing in timbre from stone to hard-packed earth as they rode out into the Ugarat Odhan.
Distance seemed to lose relevance to Karsa Orlong. Havok carried him effortlessly. There was no need for a saddle, and the single rein looped around the stallion’s neck was all he needed to guide the beast.
Nor did the Teblor hobble the horse for the night, instead leaving him free to graze on the vast sweeps of grass stretching out on all sides.
The northern part of the Ugarat Odhan had narrowed between the inward curl of the two major rivers-the Ugarat and the other Karsa recalled as being named either Mersin or Thalas. A spine of hills had run north-south, dividing the two rivers, their summits and slopes hard-packed by the seasonal migration of bhederin over thousands of years. Those herds were gone, though their bones remained where predators and hunters had felled them, and the land was used now as occasional pasture, sparsely populated and that only in the wet season.
In the week it took to cross those hills, Karsa saw naught but signs of shepherd camps and boundary cairns, and the only grazing creatures were antelope and a species of large deer that fed only at night, spending days bedded down in low areas thick with tall, yellow grasses. Easily flushed then run down to provide Karsa with an occasional feast.
The Mersin River was shallow, almost dried up this late in the dry season. Fording it, he had then ridden northeast, coming along the trails skirting the south flanks of the Thalas Mountains, then eastward, to the city of Lato Revae, on the very edge of the Holy Desert.
He traversed the road south of the city’s wall at night, avoiding all contact, and reached the pass that led into Raraku at dawn the following day.
A pervasive urgency was driving him on. He was unable to explain the desire in his own mind, yet did not question it. He had been gone a long time, and though he did not believe the battle in Raraku had occurred, he sensed it was imminent.
And Karsa wanted to be there. Not to kill Malazans, but to guard Leoman’s back. But there was a darker truth, he well knew. The battle would be a day of chaos, and Karsa Orlong meant to add to it.
The Toblakai warrior was even less interested in creating a list of names, since names invited vows, and he had had enough of vows. No, he would kill as the mood took him.
He looked forward to his homecoming.
Provided he arrived in time.
Descending the slopes leading down into the Holy Desert, he was relieved to see, far to the north and east, the red crest of fury that was the Whirlwind Wall. Only days away, now.
He smiled at that distant anger, for he understood it. Constrained-chained-for so long, the goddess would soon unleash her wrath. He sensed her hunger, as palpable as that of the twin souls within his sword. The blood of deer was too thin.
He reined in Havok at an old camp near the edge of a salt flat. The slopes behind him would provide the last forage and water for the horse until just this side of the Whirlwind Wall, so he would spend time here bundling grasses for the journey, as well as refilling the waterskins from the spring ten paces from the camp.
He built a fire using the last of the bhederin dung from the Jhag Odhan-something he did only rarely-and, following a meal, opened the pack containing the ruined T’lan Imass and dragged the remnants out for the first time.
‘You are impatient to get rid of me?’ Siballe asked in a dry, rasping voice.
He grunted, staring down at the creature. ‘We’ve travelled far, Unfound. It has been a long time since I last
