A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 1

second cull, but it came far too late.
    Captain Lull interrupted Duiker's thoughts. 'Ride back with me, old man. There's something you should see.'
    'Now what?'
    Lull's grin was ghastly in his raw, ravaged face. 'Patience, please.'
    'Ah, well, I've acquired that with plenty to spare, Captain.' Waiting to die, and such a long wait it's been.
    Lull clearly understood Duiker's comment. He squinted his lone eye out across the plain, northwest, to where Korbolo Dom's army was, less than three days away and closing fast. 'It's an official request, Historian.'
    'Very well. Ride on, then.'
    Coltaine, Bult and Sormo had ridden down to the trader track. Voices shouted from the Seventh's advance elements as preparations began to leave the Imperial Road. Duiker saw the cattle-dog Bent loping ahead of the three Wickans. And so we follow. We are indeed well named.
    'How fares the corporal?' Lull asked as they rode down the corridor towards Lull's company.
    Duiker frowned. List had taken a vicious wound at Gelor Ridge. 'Mending. We face difficulties with the healers – they're wearing down, Captain.'
    'Aye.'
    'They've drawn so much on their warrens that it's begun to damage their own bodies – I saw one healer's arm snap like a twig when he lifted a pot from a hearth. That frightened me more than anything else I've yet to witness, Captain.'
    The man tugged at the patch covering his ruined eye. 'You're not alone in that, old man.'
    Duiker fell silent. Lull had nearly succumbed to a septic infection. He had become gaunt beneath his armour, and the scars on his face had set his features into a tortured expression that made strangers flinch. Hood's breath, not just strangers. If the Chain of Dogs has a face, it is Lull's.
    They rode between columns of soldiers, smiled at the shouts and grim jests thrown their way, though for Duiker the smile was strained. It was well that spirits were high, the strange melancholy that came with victory drifting away, but the spectre of what lay ahead nevertheless loomed with monstrous certainty. The historian had felt his own spirits deepening to sorrow, for he'd long since lost the ability to will himself into blind faith.
    The captain spoke again. 'This forest beyond the river, what do you know of it?'
    'Cedar,' Duiker replied. 'Source of Ubaryd's fame in shipbuilding. It once covered both sides of the River Vathar, but now only the south side remains, and even that has dwindled close to the bay.'
    'The fools never bothered replanting?'
    'A few efforts, when the threat was finally recognized, but herders had already claimed the land. Goats, Captain. Goats can turn a paradise into a desert in no time at all. They eat shoots, they strip bark entirely around the boles of trees, killing them as surely as a wildfire. However, there's plenty of forest left upriver – we'll be a week or more travelling through it.'
    'So I'd heard. Well, I'll welcome the shade ...'
    A week or more, indeed. More like eternity – how does Coltaine defend his vast winding train amidst a forest, where ambushes will come from every direction, where troops cannot wheel and respond with anything like swiftness and order? Sulmar's concerns about the dry lands beyond the forest are moot, as far as I'm concerned. And I wonder if I'm alone in thinking that?
    They rode between wagons loaded with wounded soldiers. The air was foul here with flesh rotting where forced healing had failed to stem the advance of infection. Soldiers in fever raved and rambled, delirium prying open the doors of their minds to countless other realms – from this nightmare world into countless others. Only Hood's gift offers surcease . . .
    Off to their left on the flat grassland, the train's dwindling herds of cattle and goats moved amidst turgid clouds of dust. Wickan cattle-dogs patrolled the edges, accompanied by Weasel Clan riders. The entire herd would be slaughtered at the River Vathar, for the lands beyond the forest would not sustain them. For there are no spirits of the land there.
    The historian found himself musing as he eyed the herd. The animals had matched them step for step on this soul-destroying journey. Month after month of suffering. That is one curse we all share – the will to live. Their fates had been decided, though thankfully they knew nothing of that. Yet even that will change in the last moments. The dumbest of beasts seems capable of sensing its own impending death. Hood grants every living thing awareness at the very end. What