Dust of Dreams

She carried the Destriant on her back, a woman who weighed virtually nothing, and Gunth Mach could feel the tension in her small muscles, her frail frame of bones. Even an orthen bares its fangs in its last moments of life.

Failure in this quest was unacceptable, but in Gunth Mach’s mind, it was also inevitable.

She would be the last Matron, and with her death so too would die the goddess of the K’Chain Che’Malle. The oil would drain into the dust, and all memory would be lost.

It was just as well.

Spirits of stone, what happened here?

Sceptre Irkullas slowly dismounted, staring aghast at the half-buried battlefield. As if the ground had lifted up to swallow them all, Barghast and Akrynnai both. Crushed bodies, broken limbs, faces scoured away as if blasted by a sandstorm. Others looked bloated, skin split and cracked open, as if the poor soldiers had been cooked from within.

Crows and vultures scampered about in frustrated cacophony, picking clean what wasn’t buried, whilst Akrynnai warriors wandered the buried valley, tugging free the corpses of dead kin.

Irkullas knew his daughter’s body was here, somewhere. The thought clenched in his stomach like a sickly knot leaching poison, weakening his limbs, tightening the breath in his throat. He dreaded the notion of sleep at this day’s end, the stalking return of anguish and despair. He would lie chilled beneath furs, chest aching, rushes of nausea squirming through him, his every breath harsh and strained-close to the clutch of panic.

Something unexpected, something unknown, had come to this petty war. As if the spirits of the earth and rock were convulsing in rage and, perhaps, disgust. Demanding peace. Yes, this is what the spirits have told me, with this here-this… horror. They have had enough of our stupid bloodletting.

We must make peace with the Barghast.

He felt old, exhausted.

A day ago vengeance seemed bright and pure. Retribution was sharp as a freshly honed knife. Four major battles, four successive victories. The Barghast clans were scattered, fleeing. Indeed, only one remained, the southernmost, largest clan, the Senan. Ruled by the one named Onos Toolan. The Akrynnai had three armies converging upon the Warleader and his encampment.

We have wagons creaking beneath Barghast weapons and armour. Chests filled with foreign coins. Heaps of strange furs. Trinkets, jewellery, woven rugs, gourd bowls and clumsy pots of barely tempered clay. We have everything the Barghast possessed. Just the bodies that owned them have been removed. Barring a score of broken prisoners.

We are a travelling museum of a people about to become extinct.

And yet I will plead for peace.

Upon hearing this, his officers would frown behind his back, thinking him an old man with a broken heart, and they would be right to think that. They would accept his commands, but this would be the last time. Once they rode home Sceptre Irkullas would be seen-would be known to all-as a ‘ruler in his grey dusk’. A man with no light of the future in his eyes, a man awaiting death. But it comes to us all. Everything we fear comes to us all.

Gafalk, who had been among the advance party, rode up and reined in near the Sceptre’s own horse. The warrior dismounted and walked to stand in front of Irkullas. ‘Sceptre, we have examined the western ridge of the valley-or what’s left of it. Old Yara,’ he continued, speaking of the Barghast spokesperson among the prisoners, ‘says he once fought outside some place called One-Eye Cat. He says the craters remind him of something called Moranth munitions, but not when those munitions are dropped from the sky as was done by the Moranth. Instead, the craters look like those made when the munitions are used by the Malazans. Buried in the ground, arranged to ignite all at once. Thus lifting the ground itself. Some kind of grenado. He called them cussers-’

‘We know there is a Malazan army in Lether,’ Irkullas said, musing. Then he shook his head. ‘Give me a reason for their being here-joining in a battle not of their making? Killing both Akrynnai and Barghast-’

‘The Barghast were once enemies of these Malazans, Sceptre. So claims Yara.’

‘Yet, have our scouts seen signs of their forces? Do any trails lead from this place? No. Are the Malazans ghosts, Gafalk?’

The warrior spread his hands in helpless dismay. ‘Then what struck here, Sceptre?’

The rage of gods. ‘Sorcery.’

A sudden flicker in Gafalk’s eyes. ‘Letherii-’

‘Who might well be pleased to see the Akrynnai and Barghast destroy each other.’

‘It is said the Malazans left them few mages, Sceptre. And their new Ceda is an old man who is also the Chancellor-not one to lead an army-’

But Irkullas was already shaking his head at his own suggestions. ‘Even a Letherii Ceda cannot hide an entire army. You are right to be sceptical, Gafalk.’

A conversation doomed to circle round and devour its own tail. Irkullas stepped past the warrior and looked upon the obliterated valley once more. ‘Dig out as many of our warriors as you can. At dusk we cease all such efforts-leaving the rest to the earth. We shall drive back the night with the pyre of our dead. And I shall stand vigil.’

‘Yes, Sceptre.’

The warrior returned to his horse.

Vigil, yes, that will do. A night without sleep-he would let the bright flames drive back the sickness in his soul.

It would be best, he decided, if he did not survive to return home. An uncle or cousin could play the bear to his grandchildren-someone else, in any case. Better, indeed, if he was denied the chance of sleep until the very instant of his death.

One final battle-against the Senan camp? Kill them all, and then fall myself. Bleed out in the red mud. And once dead, I can make my peace… with their ghosts. Hardly worth continuing this damned war on the ash plains of death, this stupid thing.

Dear daughter, you will not wander alone for long. I swear it. I will find your ghost, and I will protect you for ever more. As penance for my failure, and as proof of my love.

He glared about, as if in the day’s fading light he might see her floating spirit, a wraith with a dirt-smeared face and disbelieving eyes. No, eyes with the patience of the eternally freed. Freed from all this. Freed… from everything. In a new place. Where no sickness grows inside, where the body does not clench and writhe, flinching at the siren calls of every twinge, every ache.

Spirits of stone, give me peace!

Maral Eb’s army had doubled in size, as survivors from shattered encampments staggered in from all directions-shame-faced at living when wives, husbands and children had died beneath the iron of the treacherous Akrynnai. Many arrived bearing no weapons, shorn of armour, proof that they had been routed, had fled in waves of wide-eyed cowardice. Cold waters were known to wash upon warriors in the midst of battle, even Barghast warriors, and the tug of currents could lift into a raging flood where all reason drowned, where escape was a need that overwhelmed duty and honour. Cold waters left the faces of the survivors grey and bloated, stinking of guilt.

But Maral Eb had been sobered enough by the news of the defeats to cast no righteous judgement upon these refugees with their skittish eyes. Clearly, he understood he would need every warrior he could muster, although Bakal knew as well as anyone how such warriors, once drowned beneath panic, were now broken inside-worse, in the instant when a battle tottered on the fulcrum’s point, their terror could return. They could doom the battle, as their panic flooded out and infected everyone else.

No word had come from the Senan. It seemed that, thus far at least, the Akrynnai had yet to descend upon Bakal’s own clan. Soon, Maral Eb would grasp hold of the Senan army and claim it for himself. And then he would lead them all against the deceitful Sceptre Irkullas.

A thousand curses rode the breaths of the mass of warriors. It was obvious now that the Akryn had been planning this war for some time, trickling in and out their so-called merchants as spies, working towards the perfect moment for betrayal. How else could the Sceptre assemble such forces so quickly? For every refugee insisted that the enemy numbered in the tens of thousands.

Bakal believed none of it. This was the war Onos Toolan did not want. The wrong war. Maral Eb walked flanked by his two brothers, and surrounding these three was a mob of strutting idiots, each one vying to find the perfect words to please their new Warleader and his two hood-eyed, murderous siblings. Arguments sending the arrow of blame winging away. Onos Toolan was no longer alive and so less useful as a target, although some murky residue remained, like handfuls of shit awaiting any rivals among the Senan. Now it was the Akrynnai-Irkullas and his lying, cheating, spying horsemongers.

By the time this army arrived at the Senan camp, they would be blazing with the righteous fury of innocent victims.

‘whatever he needs,’ Strahl had said at the noon break. ‘Falsehoods cease being false when enough people believe them, Bakal. Instead, they blaze like eternal truths, and woe to the fool who tries pissing a stream on that. They’ll tear you to pieces.’

Strahl’s words were sound, ringing clear and true upon the anvil, leaving Bakal’s disgust to chew him on the inside with no way out. That ache warred with the one in his barely mended elbow, making his stride stiff and awkward. But neither one could assail the shame and self-hatred that closed a fist round his soul. Murderer of Onos Toolan. So fierce the thrust that he broke his arm. Look upon him, friends, and see a true White Face Barghast! He had heard as much from Maral Eb’s cronies. While behind him trudged his fellow Senan warriors, nothing like the triumphant slayers of Onos Toolan they pretended to be. Silent, grim as shoulderwomen at a funeral. Because we share this crime. He made us kill him to save our own lives. He made us cowards. He made me a coward.

Bakal felt like an old man, and each time his gaze caught upon those three broad backs arrayed like bonepicker birds at the head of the trail, it was another white- hot stone tossed into the cauldron. Soon to boil, yes, raging until the blackened pot boiled dry. All that useless steam.

What will you do with my people, Maral Eb? When Irkullas shatters us again, where will we run to? He needed to think. He needed to find a way out of this. Could he and his warriors convince the rest of the clan to refuse Maral Eb? Refuse this suicidal war? Teeth grating, Bakal began to understand the burdens under which Onos Toolan had laboured. The impossibility of things.

The real war is against stupidity. How could I not have understood that? Oh, an easy answer to that question. I was among the stupidest of the lot. And yet, Onos Toolan, you stood before me and met my eyes-you gave me what I did not deserve.

And look at me now. When Maral Eb stands before me, I choke at the very sight of him. His flush of triumph, his smirk, the drunken eyes. I am ready to