smeared end of the bar, which he then drove crossways into the lowlander’s throat. The man was thrown back over his chair, striking the warehouse doors and falling in a heap.
Karsa set the bar down on the tabletop, then crouched down beside one of the victims and began removing his sword-belt.
Torvald approached. ‘Hood’s own nightmare,’ he muttered, ‘that’s what you are, Uryd.’
‘Take yourself a weapon,’ Karsa directed, moving on to the next corpse.
‘I will. Now, which way shall we run, Karsa? They’ll be expecting northwest, back the way you came. They’ll ride hard for the foot of the pass. I have friends-’
‘I have no intention of running,’ the warleader growled, looping both sword-belts over a shoulder, the scabbarded longswords looking minuscule where they rested against his back. He collected the flanged bar once more. He turned to find Torvald staring at him. ‘Run to your friends, lowlander. I will, this night, deliver sufficient diversion to make good your escape. Tonight, Bairoth Gild and Delum Thord shall be avenged.’
‘Don’t expect me to avenge
‘Be on your way, child.’
Torvald hesitated, then he threw up his hands. ‘So be it. For my life, Karsa Orlong, I thank you. The family of Nom will speak your name in its prayers.’
‘I will wait fifty heartbeats.’
Without another word Torvald headed to the warehouse’s sliding doors. The main bar had not been lowered into its slots; a smaller latch loosely held the door to the frame. He flipped it back, pushed the door to one side, sufficient only to pop his head out for a quick look. Then he shoved it open slightly more, and slipped outside.
Karsa listened to his footfalls, the splash of bare feet in mud, hurrying away to the left. He decided he would not wait fifty heartbeats. Even with the storm holding fast the darkness, dawn was not far away.
The Teblor slid the door back further and stepped outside. A track narrower than the main street, the wooden buildings opposite indistinct behind a slanting curtain of hard rain. To the right and twenty paces distant, light showed from a single murky window on the upper floor of a house standing next to a side street.
He wanted his bloodsword, but had no idea where it might be. Failing that, any Teblor weapon would suffice. And he knew where he might find some.
Karsa slid the door shut behind him. He swung right and, skirting the edge of the street, made his way towards the lakefront.
The wind whipped rain against his face, loosening the crusted blood and dirt. The shredded leathers of his shirt flapped heavily as he jogged towards the clearing, where waited the camp of the bounty hunters.
There had been survivors. A careless oversight on Karsa’s part; one he would now correct. And, in the huts of those cold-eyed children, there would be Teblor trophies. Weapons. Armour.
The huts and shacks of the fallen had already been stripped, the doors hanging open, rubbish strewn about. Karsa’s gaze settled on a nearby reed-walled shack clearly still occupied. He padded towards it.
Ignoring the small door, the warrior threw his shoulder against a wall. The reed panel fell inward, Karsa plunging through. There was a grunt from a cot to his left, a vague shape bolting into a sitting position. Iron bar swung down. Blood and bits of bone sprayed the walls. The figure sank back down.
The small, lone room of the shack was cluttered with Sunyd objects, most of them useless: charms, belts and trinkets. He did find, however, a pair of Sunyd hunting knives, sheathed in beaded buckskin over wood. A low altar caught Karsa’s attention. Some lowlander god, signified by a small clay statue-a boar, standing on its hind legs.
The Teblor knocked it to the earthen floor, then shattered it with a single stomp of his heel.
Returning outside, he approached the next inhabited shack.
The wind howled off the lake, white-maned waves crashing up the pebbled beach. The sky overhead was still black with clouds, the rain unceasing.
There were seven shacks in all, and in the sixth one-after killing the two men entwined together in the cot beneath the skin of a grey bear-he found an old Sunyd bloodsword, and an almost complete set of armour that, although of a style Karsa had never seen before, was clearly Teblor in origin, given its size and the sigils burned into the wooden plates. It was only when he began strapping it on that he realized that the grey, weathered wood was bloodwood-bleached by centuries of neglect.
In the seventh hut he found a small jar of blood-oil, and took the time to remove the armour and rub the pungent salve into its starved wood. He used the last of it to ease the sword’s own thirst.
He then kissed the gleaming blade, tasting the bitter oil.
The effect was instantaneous. His heart began pounding, fire ripping through his muscles, lust and rage filling his mind.
He found himself back outside, staring at the town before him through a red haze. The air was foul with the stench of lowlanders. He moved forward, though he could no longer feel his legs, his gaze fixing on the bronze- banded door of a large, timbered house.
Then it was flying inward, and Karsa was entering the low-ceilinged hallway beyond the threshold. Someone was shouting upstairs.
He found himself on the landing, face to face with a broad-shouldered, bald child. Behind him cowered a woman with grey-streaked hair, and behind her-now fleeing-a half-dozen servants.
The bald child had just taken down from the wall a longsword still in its jewel-studded scabbard. His eyes glittered with terror, his expression of disbelief remaining frozen on his features even as his head leapt from his shoulders.
And then Karsa found himself in the last room upstairs, ducking to keep his head beneath the ceiling as he stepped over the last of the servants, the house silent behind him. Before him, hiding behind a poster bed, a young female lowlander.
The Teblor dropped his sword. A moment later he held her before him, her feet kicking at his knees. He cupped the back of her head in his right hand, pushed her face against his armour’s oil-smeared breastplate.
She struggled, then her head snapped back, eyes suddenly wild.
Karsa laughed, throwing her down on the bed.
Animal sounds came from her mouth, her long-fingered hands snatching up at him as he moved over her.
The female clawed at him, her back arching in desperate need.
She was unconscious before he was done, and when he drew away there was blood between them. She would live, he knew. Blood-oil was impatient with broken flesh.
He was outside in the rain once more, sword in his hands. The clouds were lightening to the east.
Karsa moved on to the next house.
Awareness drifted away then, for a time, and when it returned he found himself in an attic with a window at the far end through which streamed bright sunlight. He was on his hands and knees, sheathed in blood, and to one side lay a child’s body, fat and in slashed robes, eyes staring sightlessly.
Waves of shivering racked him, his breath harsh gasps that echoed dully in the close, dusty attic. He heard shouts from somewhere outside and crawled over to the round, thick-glassed window at the far end.
Below was the main street, and he realized that he was near the west gate. Glass-distorted figures on restless horses were gathering-Malazan soldiers. As he watched, and to his astonishment, they suddenly set forth for the gate. The thundering of horse hoofs quickly diminished as the party rode westward.
The warrior slowly sat back. There was no sound from directly beneath him, and he knew that no-one remained alive in the house. He knew, also, that he had passed through at least a dozen such houses, sometimes through the front door, but more often through recessed side and rear doors. And that those places were now as silent as the one in which he now found himself.
Soft footfalls below, five, six sets, spreading out through the room under him. Karsa, his senses still heightened beyond normal by the blood-oil, sniffed the air, but their scent had yet to reach him. Yet he knew-these
