A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 1

them. The Fist knows how to gauge value ...' The captain paused, a slow frown descending on his scarred features. 'There comes a time when a life can't be bought by coin, and once that line's crossed, there's no going back. You are soldiers now. Soldiers of the Seventh. Each of you will join regular squads in my infantry, to stand alongside your fellow soldiers – and not one of them gives a damn what you were before.' He swung to the sergeant. 'Assign these soldiers, Sergeant.'
    Duiker watched the ritual in silence, each issuing of uniform as a man or woman's name was called out, the squads coming forward to collect their new member. Nothing was overplayed, nothing was forced. The perfunctory professionalism of the act carried its own weight, and a deep silence enveloped the scene. The historian saw inductees in their forties, but none was unfit. Decades of hard labour and the culling of two battles had ensured a collection of stubborn survivors.
    They will stand, and stand well.
    The captain appeared at his side. 'As servants,' Lull softly rumbled, 'they might have survived, been sold on to other noble families. Now, with swords in their hands, they will die. Can you hear this silence, Duiker? Do you know what it signifies? I imagine you do, all too well.'
    With all that we do, Hood smiles.
    'Write of this, old man.'
    Duiker glanced at the captain and saw a broken man.
     
    At Gelor Ridge, Corporal List had leapt down into the ditch beside the earthen ramp to avoid a swarm of arrows. His right foot had landed on a javelin head thrust up through the dirt. The iron point had driven through the sole of his boot, then the flesh between his big toe and the next one along.
    A small wound, naught but mischance, yet punctures were the most feared of all battle wounds. They carried a fever that seized joints, including those of the jaw, that could make the mouth impossible to open, closing the throat to all sustenance and bringing agonizing death.
    The Wickan horsewives had experience of treating such injuries, yet their supply of powders and herbs had long since dwindled, leaving them with but one treatment – burning the wound, and the burning had to be thorough. The hours after the battle of Gelor Ridge, the air was foul with the stench of burned hair and the macabre, sweetly enticing smell of cooked meat.
    Duiker found List hobbling in a circle with a determined expression on his thin, sweat-beaded face. The corporal glanced up as the historian approached. 'I can ride as well, sir, though for only an hour at a time. The foot goes numb and it's then that infection could return – or so I'm told.'
    Four days ago the historian had walked alongside the travois that carried List, looking down on a young man that he was certain was dying. A harried Wickan horsewife had quickly checked on the corporal during the march. Duiker had seen a grim expression settle into her lined features as she probed with her fingers the swollen glands beneath List's sparsely bearded chin. Then she had glanced up at the historian.
    Duiker recognized her then, and she him. The woman who once offered me food.
    'It's not good,' he'd said.
    She hesitated, then reached under the folds of her hide cloak to withdraw a knuckle-sized, misshapen object that looked to Duiker like nothing more than a knob of mouldy bread. 'A jest of the spirits, no doubt,' she said in Malazan. Then she bent down, grasped List's injured foot – which had been left unbandaged and open to the hot, dry air – and pressed the knob against the puncture wound, binding it in place with a strip of hide.
    A jest to make Hood frown.
    'You should be ready to rejoin the ranks soon, then,' Duiker now said.
    List nodded, approached. 'I must tell you something, sir,' he said quietly. 'My fever showed me visions of what's ahead—'
    'That happens sometimes.'
    'A god's hand reached out from the darkness, grasped my soul and dragged it forward, through days, weeks. Historian—' List paused to wipe the sweat from his brow – 'the land south of Vathar ... we're going to a place of old truths.'
    Duiker's gaze narrowed. 'Old truths? What does that mean, List?'
    'Something terrible happened there, sir. Long ago. The earth – it's lifeless—'
    That is something only Sormo and the High Command know. 'This god's hand, Corporal, did you see it?'
    'No, but I felt it. The fingers were long, too long, with more joints than there should be. Sometimes that grip comes back, like a ghost's, and I