from the shoulders.
Damned corpses-they were riding through a sea of animated corpses, and it seemed that virtually every one of them wanted to book passage.
A large brutish shape reared up beside Gruntle. Barghast, hairy as an ape, filed blackened teeth revealed in a delighted grin.
Releasing one hand from the brass rung, Gruntle tugged loose one of his cut-lasses, slashed the heavy blade into the corpse’s face. It reeled away, the bottom half of the grin suddenly gone. Twisting further round, Gruntle kicked the Barghast in the chest. The apparition fell back. A moment later someone else appeared, narrow- shouldered, the top of its head an elongated pate with a nest of mousy hair perched on the crown, a wizened face beneath it.
Gruntle kicked again.
The carriage pitched wildly as the huge wheels rolled over something big. Gruntle felt himself swinging out over the roof edge and he shouted in pain as his hand was wrenched where it gripped a rung. Clawed fingers scrabbled against his thighs and he kicked in growing panic. His heel struck something that didn’t yield and he used that purchase to launch himself back on to the roof.
On the opposite side, three dead men were now mauling Sweetest Sufferance, each one seemingly intent on some kind of rape. She twisted and writhed beneath them, chopping with her hatchets, biting at their withered hands and head-butting the ones that tried for a kiss. Reccanto Ilk then joined the fray, using a strange saw- toothed knife as he attacked various joints-shoulders, knees, elbows-and tossing the severed limbs over the side as he went.
Gruntle lifted himself on to his knees and glared out across the landscape. The masses of dead, he realized, were all moving in one direction, whilst the carriage cut obliquely into their path-and as the resistance before them built, figures converging like blood to a wound, forward momentum began inexorably to slow, the horses stamping high as they clambered over ever more undead.
Someone was shouting near the rear of the carriage, and Gruntle turned to see the woman named Faint leaning down over the side, yelling through the shut-tered window.
Another heavy blow buffeted the carriage, and something demonic roared. Claws tore free a chunk of wood.
‘Get us out of here!’
Gruntle could not agree more, as the demon suddenly loomed into view, rep-tilian arms reaching for him.
Snarling, he leapt to his feet, both weapons now in hand.
An elongated, fanged face lunged at him, hissing.
Gruntle roared back-a deafening sound-cutlasses lashing out. Edges slammed into thick hide, sliced deep into lifeless flesh, down to the bones of the demon’s long neck.
He saw something like surprise flicker in the creature’s pitted eyes, and then the head and half of the neck fell away.
Two more savage chops sent its forearms spinning.
The body plunged back, and even as it did so smaller corpses were scrambling on to it, as if climbing a ladder.
He now heard a strange sound ahead, rhythmic, like the clashing of weapons against shield rims. But the sound was too loud for that, too overwhelming, unless-Gruntle straightened and faced forward.
An army indeed. Dead soldiers, moving in ranks, in squares and wedges, marching along with all the rest-and in numbers unimaginable. He stared, struggling to comprehend the vastness of the force. As far as he could see before them… Gods below, all of the dead, on the march-but where? To what war?
The scene suddenly blurred, dispersed in fragments. The carriage seemed to slump under him. Darkness swept in, a smell of the sea, the thrash of waves, sand sliding beneath the wheels. The carriage side nearest him lurched into the bole of a palm tree, sending down a rain of cusser-sized nuts that pounded along the roof before bounding away. The horses stumbled, slowing their wild plunge, and a moment later everything came to a sinking halt.
Looking up Gruntle saw stars in a gentle night sky.
Beneath him the carriage door creaked open, and someone clambered out to vomit on to the sands, coughing and spitting and cursing.
Muster Quell.
Gruntle climbed down, using the spokes of the newest wheel, and, his legs feeling shaky under him, made his way to the sorceror.
The man was still on his hands and knees, hacking out the last dregs of what-ever had been in his stomach. ‘Oh,’ he gasped. ‘My aching head.’
Faint came up alongside Gruntle. She’d been wearing an iron skullcap but she’d lost it, and now her hair hung in matted strands, framing her round face. ‘I thought a damned tiger had landed on us,’ she said, ‘but it was you, putting the terror into a demon. So it’s true, those tattoos aren’t tattoos at all.’
Glanno Tarp had dropped down, dodging to avoid the snapping teeth of the nearest horses. ‘Did you see Amby Bole go flying? Gods, that was stupacular!’
Gruntle frowned. ‘Stu-what?’
‘Stupidly spectacular,’ explained Faint. ‘Or spectacularly stupid. Are you Sole-taken?’
He glanced at her, then set off to explore.
A task quickly accomplished. They were on an island. A very small island, less than fifty paces across. The sand was crushed coral, gleaming silver in the starlight. Two palm, trees rose from the centre. In the surrounding shallows, a thousand paces out, ribbons of reef ran entirely round the atoll, breaking the surface like the spine of a sea serpent. More islands were visible, few bigger than the one they were on, stretching out like the beads of a broken necklace, the nearest one per-haps three thousand paces distant.
As he returned he saw a corpse plummeting down from the carriage roof to thump in the sand. After a moment it sat up. ‘Oh,’ it said.
The Trell emerged from the carriage, followed by the swamp witch, Precious Thimble, who looked ghostly pale as she stumbled a few steps, then promptly sat down on the sand. Seeing Gruntle, Mappo walked over.
‘I gather/ he said, ‘we encountered something unexpected in Hood’s realm.’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ Gruntle replied. ‘It was my first visit.’
‘Unexpected?’ Faint snorted. ‘That was insane-all the dead in existence, on the march.’
‘Where to?’ Gruntle asked.
‘Maybe not to, maybe
From? In retreat? Now that was an alarming notion.
‘Used to be,’ Faint mused, ‘the realm of the dead was an easy ride. Peaceful. But in the last few years… something’s going on.’ She walked over to Master Quell. ‘So, if that’s not going to work, Quell, what now?’
The man, still on his hands and knees, looked up. ‘You just don’t get it, do you?’
‘What?’
‘We didn’t even reach the damned
‘But, then, what-’
A long silence followed.
Nearby, the undead man was collecting seashells.
Jula Bole’s watery eyes fixed on Precious Thimble, dreamy with adoration. Seeing this, Amby did the same, trying to make his expression even more desirous, so that when she finally looked over she would see that he was the right one for her, the only one for her. As the moments stretched, the competition grew fierce.
His left leg still ached, from the hip right down to his toes, and he had only one moccasin, but at least the sand was warm so that wasn’t too bad.
Precious Thimble was in a meeting with Master Quell and that scary barbed man, and the hairy giant ogre named Mappo. These were the important people, he decided, and excepting Precious Thimble he wanted nothing to do with them. Standing too close to those folk was never healthy. Heads explode, hearts burst-he’d seen it with his own eyes, back when he was a runt (but not nearly as much of a runt as Jula) and the family had decided at last to fight the Malazans who were showing up in their swamp like poison mushrooms. Buna Bole had been running things
