A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 1

The Moranth circled once overhead, then turned north, slipping between the bearded boles and heading upslope.
    The sergeant sat down on the bedrock again, his eyes on the ground as the members of his squad arrived, hunkering down around him. He remained silent, seeming unaware that he had company, his brow furrowed and jaw bunching as he ground his molars with a slow, steady precision.
    'Sarge?' Fiddler said quietly.
    Startled, Whiskeyjack looked up. He drew a deep breath. Everyone had gathered with the exception of Quick Ben. He'd leave Kalam to fill in the wizard later. 'All right. The original plan's been scrapped, since it was intended to get us all killed. I didn't like that part, so we'll do it my way and hopefully get out alive.'
    'We ain't going to mine the city gates?' Fiddler asked, glancing at Hedge.
    'No,' the sergeant answered. 'We'll put those Moranth munitions to better use. Two objectives, two teams. Kalam will lead one, and with him will be Quick Ben and ...' he hesitated '... and Sorry. I'll lead the other team. The first task is to get into the city unnoticed. Out of uniform.' He looked to Mallet. 'I take it the Green delivered?'
    The healer nodded. 'It's a local make, all right. Eighteen-foot fisher, four oars, should get us across the lake easy enough. Even a couple of nets included.'
    'So we'll do some fishing,' Whiskeyjack said. 'Coming into the harbour without a catch would look suspect. Anybody here ever fished?'
    There was silence, then Sorry spoke up. 'I have, a long time ago.'
    Whiskeyjack stared at her, then said, 'Right. Pick whoever you need for that.'
    Sorry smiled mockingly.
    Whiskeyjack pulled his gaze from hers with an oath under his breath. He eyed his two saboteurs. 'How much munitions?'
    'Two crates,' Hedge replied, adjusting his leather cap. 'Cussers all the way down to Smokers.'
    'We could cook a palace,' Fiddler added, shifting about excitedly.
    'Good enough,' Whiskeyjack said. 'All right, everyone listen and pay attention, or we won't come out of this alive ...'
     
    In a secluded glade in the forest, Quick Ben poured white sand in a circle and sat down in its centre. He took five sharpened sticks and set them in a row before him, pushing them to various depths in the loam. The centre stick, the highest, rose about three feet; the ones on either side stood at two feet and the outer ones at a foot.
    The wizard uncoiled a yard's length of thin gut string. He took one end and fashioned a scaled-down noose, which he tightened over the centre stick near the top. He ran the line to the left, looping it once over the next shaft, then crossed over to the right side and looped it again. He brought the string across to the far left stick, muttering a few words as he did so. He wrapped it twice and brought it over to the far right stick, where he tied a knot and cut the trailing string.
    Quick Ben leaned back and folded his hands on his lap. A frown creased his brow. 'Hairlock!' An outer stick twitched, turned slightly, then fell still. 'Hairlock!' he barked again. All five shafts jerked. The centre one bent towards the wizard. The string tautened and a low-pitched hum emanated from it.
    A cold wind swept across Quick Ben's face, stripping away the beads of sweat that had gathered in the last minute. A rushing sound filled his head, and he felt himself falling through dark caverns, their unseen walls ringing in his ears as if iron hammers clanged against the rock. Flashes of blinding silver light stung his eyes and the wind pulled at the skin and flesh of his face.
    In some shielded part of his mind he retained a sense of distance, of control. Within this calm he could think, observe, analyse. 'Hairlock,' he whispered, 'you've gone too far. Too deep. This Warren has swallowed you and will never spit you out. You're losing control, Hairlock.' But these thoughts were for him alone; he knew the puppet was still distant.
    He watched himself continue, spinning, whirling through the Caverns of Chaos. Hairlock was compelled to match him, only upward. Abruptly he found himself standing. Beneath his feet the black rock seemed to swirl, cracked here and there in its slow convolutions by bright, glowing red.
    Looking around, he saw that he stood on a spar of rock, rising at an angle, its jagged apex a dozen feet in front of him. Turning, his gaze followed the spar as it sank down and out of sight, lost to billowing yellow clouds. A moment of vertigo gripped Quick Ben. He tottered, then, as he