House of Chains

looking nervous and shaken. ‘Magic’s creepy. I’m going to bed.’

The divination ended abruptly. Bottle opened his eyes and looked around at the others, his face glistening with sweat. ‘Why didn’t he move? Why only his shadow?’

Strings stood. ‘Because, lad, he isn’t ready yet.’

Smiles glared up at the sergeant. ‘So, who is he? The Rope himself?’

‘No,’ Bottle answered. ‘No, I’m sure of that.’

Saying nothing, Strings strode from the circle. No, not the Rope. Someone even better, as far as I am concerned. As far as every Malazan is concerned, for that matter. He’s here. And he’s on the other side of the Whirlwind Wall. And I know precisely who he’s sharpened his knives for.

Now, if only that damned singing would stop…

He stood in the darkness, under siege. Voices assaulted him from all sides, pounding at his skull. It wasn’t enough that he had been responsible for the death of soldiers; now they would not leave him alone. Now their spirits screamed at him, ghostly hands reaching out through Hood’s Gate, fingers clawing through his brain.

Gamet wanted to die. He had been worse than useless. He had been a liability, joined now to the multitude of incompetent commanders who had left a river of blood in their wake, another name in that sullied, degrading history that fuelled the worst fears of the common soldier.

And it had driven him mad. He understood that now. The voices, the paralysing uncertainty, the way he was always cold, shivering, no matter how hot the daytime sun or how highly banked the nightly hearths. And the weakness, stealing through his limbs, thinning the blood in his veins, until it felt as if his heart was pumping muddy water. I have been broken. I failed the Adjunct with my very first test of mettle.

Keneb would be all right. Keneb was a good choice as the legion’s new Fist. He was not too old, and he had a family-people to fight for, to return to, people that mattered in his life. Those were important things. A necessary pressure, fire for the blood. None of which existed in Gamet’s life.

She has certainly never needed me, has she? The family tore itself apart, and there was nothing I could do about it. I was only a castellan, a glorified house guard. Taking orders. Even when a word from me could have changed Felisin’s fate, I just saluted and said, ‘Yes, mistress.’

But he had always known his own weakness of spirit. And there had been no shortage of opportunities in which he could demonstrate his flaws, his failures. No shortage at all, even if she saw those moments as ones displaying loyalty, as disciplined acceptance of orders no matter how horrendous their outcome.

‘Loud.’

A new voice. Blinking, he looked around, then down, to see Keneb’s adopted whelp, Grub. Half naked, sun- darkened skin smeared with dirt, his hair a wild tangle, his eyes glittering in the starlight.

‘Loud.’

‘Yes, they are.’ The child was feral. It was late, maybe even nearing dawn. What was he doing up? What was he doing out here, beyond the camp’s pickets, inviting butchery by a desert raider?

‘Not they. It.’

Gamet frowned down at him. ‘What are you talking about? What’s loud?’ All I hear is voices-you can’t hear them. Of course you can’t.

‘The sandstorm. Roars. Very… very… very very very LOUD!’

The storm? Gamet wiped grit from his eyes and looked around-to find himself not fifty paces from the Whirlwind Wall. And the sound of sand, racing between rocks on the ground, hissing skyward in wild, cavorting loops, the pebbles clattering here and there, the wind itself whirling through sculpted folds in the limestone-the sound was like… like voices. Screaming, angry voices. ‘I am not mad.’

‘Me neither. I’m happy. Father has a new shiny ring. Around his arm. It’s all carved. He’s supposed to give more orders, but he gives less. But I’m still happy. It’s very shiny. Do you like shiny things? I do, even though they hurt my eyes. Maybe it’s because they hurt my eyes. What do you think?’

‘I don’t think much of anything any more, lad.’

‘I think you do too much.’

‘Oh, really?’

‘Father thinks the same. You think about things there’s no point in thinking about. It makes no difference. But I know why you do.’

‘You do?’

The lad nodded. ‘The same reason I like shiny things. Father’s looking for you. I’m going to go tell him I found you.’

Grub ambled away, quickly vanishing in the darkness.

Gamet turned and stared up at the Whirlwind Wall. Its rage buffeted him. The whirling sand tore at his eyes, snatched at his breath. It was hungry, had always been hungry, but something new had arrived, altering its shrill timbre. What is it? An urgency, a tone fraught with… something.

What am I doing here?

Now he remembered. He had come looking for death. A raider’s blade across his throat. Quick and sudden, if not entirely random.

An end to thinking all those thoughts… that so hurt my eyes.

The growing thunder of horse hoofs roused him once more, and he turned to see two riders emerge from the gloom, leading a third horse.

‘We’ve been searching half the night,’ Fist Keneb said as they reined in. ‘Temul has a third of his Wickans out-all looking for you, sir.’

Sir? That’s inappropriate. ‘Your child had no difficulty in finding me.’

Keneb frowned beneath the rim of his helm. ‘Grub? He came here?’

‘He said he was off to tell you he’d found me.’

The man snorted. ‘Unlikely. He’s yet to say a word to me. Not even in Aren. I’ve heard he talks to others, when the mood takes him, and that’s rare enough. But not me. And no, I don’t know why. In any case, we’ve brought your horse. The Adjunct is ready.’

‘Ready for what?’

To unsheathe her sword, sir. To breach the Whirlwind Wall.’

‘She need not wait for me, Fist.’

‘True, but she chooses to none the less.’

I don’t want to.

‘She has commanded it, sir.’

Gamet sighed, walked over to the horse. He was so weak, he had trouble pulling himself onto the saddle. The others waited with maddening patience. Face burning with both effort and shame, Gamet finally clambered onto the horse, spent a moment searching for the stirrups, then took the reins from Temul. ‘Lead on,’ he growled to Keneb.

They rode parallel to the wall of roaring sand, eastward, maintaining a respectable distance. Two hundred paces along they rode up to a party of five sitting motionless on their horses. The Adjunct, Tene Baralta, Blistig, Nil and Nether.

Sudden fear gripped Gamet. ‘Adjunct! A thousand warriors could be waiting on the other side! We need the army drawn up. We need heavy infantry on the flanks. Outriders-archers-marines-’

‘That will be enough, Gamet. We ride forward now-the sun already lights the wall. Besides, can you not hear it? Its shriek is filled with fear. A new sound. A pleasing sound.’

He stared up at the swirling barrier of sand. Yes, that is what I could sense earlier. ‘Then it knows its barrier shall fail.’

‘The goddess knows,’ Nether agreed.

Gamet glanced at the two Wickans. They looked miserable, a state that seemed more or less permanent with them these days. ‘What will happen when the Whirlwind falls?’

The young woman shook her head, but it was her brother who answered, ‘The Whirlwind Wall encloses a warren. Destroy the wall, and the warren is breached. Making the goddess vulnerable-had we a battalion of Claw and a half-dozen High Mages, we could hunt her down and kill her. But we can achieve no such thing.’ He threw up his hands in an odd gesture. ‘The Army of the Apocalypse will remain strengthened by her power. Those soldiers