A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 2

into a splashing canter towards the giant wagon.
    Massive gouges had been ripped from its ornate sides. Blackened smears showed where guards had once clung. Smoke drifted above the entire train. Figures had begun emerging, staggering as if blind, moaning as if their souls had been torn from their bodies. He saw guards fall to their knees in the sludgy blood, weeping or simply bowing in shuddering silence.
    The side door nearest Whiskeyjack opened as he rode up.
    A woman climbed weakly into view, was helped down the steps. She pushed her companions away once her boots sank into the crimson, grass-matted mud and found purchase.
    The commander dismounted.
    The merchant bowed her head, her red-rimmed eyes holding steady as she drew herself straight. 'Please forgive the delay, sir,' she said in a voice that rasped with exhaustion.
    'I take it you will find an alternate route back to Darujhistan,' Whiskeyjack said, eyeing the wagon behind her.
    'We shall decide once we assess the damage.' She faced the dustcloud to the east. 'Has your army encamped for the night?'
    'No doubt the order's been given.'
    'Good. We're in no condition to chase you.'
    'I've noticed.'
    Three guards – shareholders – approached from one of the lead wagons, struggling beneath the weight of a huge, bestial arm, torn at the shoulder and still dripping blood. Three taloned fingers and two opposable thumbs twitched and waved a hand's breath away from the face of one of the guards. All three men were grinning.
    'We figured it was still there, Haradas! Lost the other three, though. Still, ain't it a beauty?'
    The merchant, Haradas, briefly closed her eyes and sighed. 'The attack came early on,' she explained to Whiskeyjack. 'A score of demons, probably as lost and frightened as we were.'
    'And why should they attack you?'
    'Wasn't an attack, sir,' one of the guards said. 'They just wanted a ride outa that nightmare. We would've obliged, too, only they was too heavy—'
    'And they didn't sign a waiver neither,' another guard pointed out. 'We even offered a stake—'
    'Enough, gentlemen,' Haradas said. 'Take that thing away.'
    But the three men had come too close to the lead wheel of the huge wagon. As soon as the demonic hand made contact with the rim it closed with a snap around it. The three guards leapt back, leaving the arm hanging from the wheel.
    'Oh, that's just terrific!' Haradas snapped. 'And when-ever will we get that off?'
    'When the fingers wear through, I guess,' a guard replied, frowning at the arm. 'Gonna be a lumpy ride for a while, dear. Sorry about that.'
    A troop of riders approached from the army's train.
    'Your escort's arrived,' Whiskeyjack noted. 'We will ask for a detailed report of the journey, mistress – I suggest you stand down until this evening, and leave the details of distribution to your second.'
    She nodded. 'Good idea.'
    The commander searched for Silverfox. She had resumed her march, the two marines trailing. The blood of the god had stained the marines' boots and the Rhivi's legs.
    Across the plain, for two hundred or more paces, the earth looked like a red matted, tattered blanket, plucked and torn into dissolving disarray.
     
    As ever, Kallor's thoughts were dark.
    Ashes and dust. The fools prattle on and on in the command tent, a vast waste of time. Death flows through the warrens – what matter? Order ever succumbs to chaos, broken unto itself by the very strictures it imposes. The world will do better with' out mages. I for one will not rue the demise of sorcery.
    The lone candle, streaked with the crushed fragments of a rare sea-worm, gusted thick, heavy smoke, filling the tent. Shadows crawled beneath the drifting plumes. Flickering yellow light glinted off ancient, oft-mended armour.
    Seated on the ornate, ironwood throne, Kallor breathed deep of the invigorating fumes. Alchemy is not magic. The arcana of the natural world holds far more wonders than any wizard could conjure in a thousand lifetimes. These Century Candles, for one, are well named. Upon my life, yet another layer seeps into my flesh and bone – I can feel it with each breath. A good thing, too. Who would want to live for ever in a body too frail to move? Another hundred years, gained in the passage of a single night, in the depth of this one reach of columned wax. And I have scores more . . .
    No matter the stretch of decades and centuries, no matter the interminable boredom of inactivity that was so much a part of living, there were