A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 2

unending
in languages not my own
and walk with companions
I have never met, in places
my steps have never gone.
    In my dreams I walk worlds
where forests crowd my knees
and half the sky is walled ice.
Dun herds flow like mud,
vast floods tusked and horned
surging over the plain,
and lo, they are my memories,
the migrations of my soul.
    In the Time before Night
D'arayans of the Rhivi
     
    Whiskeyjack rose in the saddle as his horse leapt over the spiny ridge of outcroppings cresting the hill. Hooves thumped as the creature resumed its gallop, crossing the mesa's flat top, then slowing as the Malazan tautened the reins and settled back in the saddle. At a diminishing canter, he approached the summit's far side, then drew up at its edge.
    A rumpled, boulder-strewn slope led down into a broad, dry riverbed. At its base two 2nd Army scouts sat on their horses, backs to Whiskeyjack. Before them, a dozen Rhivi were moving on foot through what seemed to be a field of bones.
    Huge bones.
    Clicking his mount into motion, Whiskeyjack slowly worked it down onto the ancient slide. His eyes held on the scatter of bones. Massive iron blades glinted there, as well as crumpled, oddly shaped armour and helmets. He saw long, reptilian jaws, rows of jagged teeth. Clinging to some of the shattered skeletons, the remnants of grey skin.
    Clearing the scree, Whiskeyjack rode up to the nearest scout.
    The man saluted. 'Sir. The Rhivi are jabbering away – can't quite follow what they're talking about. Looks to have been about ten of the demons. Whatever tore into them was nasty. Might be the Rhivi have gleaned more, since they're crawling around among the corpses.'
    Nodding, Whiskeyjack dismounted. 'Keep an eye out,' he said, though he knew the scouts were doing just that, but feeling the need to say something. The killing field exuded an air of dread, old yet new, and – even more alarming – it held the peculiar tension that immediately followed a battle. Thick silence, swirling as if not yet settled by the sounds of violence, as if somehow still trembling, still shivering. . .
    He approached the Rhivi and the sprawl of bones.
    The tribal scouts were indeed jabbering.
    'Dead wolves ...'
    'Twice tracks, the touches heavy yet light, wider than my hand. Big.'
    'Big dead wolves.'
    'No blood, agreed? Barrow stench.'
    'Black stone dust. Sharp.'
    'Glittering beneath forearms – the skin ...'
    'Black glass fragments.'
    'Obsidian. Far south ...'
    'Southwest. Or far north, beyond Laederon Plateau.'
    'No, I see no red or brown. Laederon obsidian has wood-coloured veins. This is Morn.'
    'If of this world ,. .'
    'The demons are here, are they not? Of this world. In this world.'
    'Barrow stench.'
    'Yet in the air, ice stench, tundra wind, the smell of frozen peat.'
    'The wake of the wolves, the killers—'
    Whiskeyjack growled, 'Rhivi scouts, attend to me, please.'
    Heads lifted, faces turned. Silence.
    'I will hear your report, now. Which of you commands this troop?'
    Looks were exchanged, then one shrugged. 'I can speak this Daru you use. Better than the others. So, for this that you ask, me.'
    'Very well. Proceed.'
    The young Rhivi swept back the braided strands of his grease-laden hair, then waved expansively at the bones around them. 'Undead demons. Armoured, with swords instead of hands. Coming from the southeast, more east than south.' He made an exaggerated frown. 'Damaged. Pursued. Hunted. Fleeing. Driven like bhederin, this way and that, loping, silent followers four-legged and patient—'
    'Big undead wolves,' Whiskeyjack cut in.
    'Twice as big as the native wolves of this plain. Yes.' Then his expression cleared as if with revelation. 'They are like the ghost-runners of our legends. When the eldest shouldermen or women dream their farthest dreams, the wolves are seen. Never close, always running, all ghostly except the one who leads, who seems as flesh and has eyes of life. To see them is great fortune, glad tiding, for there is joy in their running.'
    'Only they're no longer running just in the dreams of your witches and warlocks,' Whiskeyjack said. 'And this run was far deadlier.'
    'Hunting. I said these wolves are like those in the dreams. I did not say they were those in the dreams.' His expression went blank, his eyes the eyes of a cold killer. 'Hunting. Driving their quarry, down to this, their trap. Then they destroyed them. A battle of undead. The demons are from barrows far to the south. The wolves are from the dust in the