A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 2

threading the last of his trophies onto the leather cord. 'He could only have eluded the dogs by climbing, so there will be no swiftness to his flight. We shall seek sign of him. If he has continued on through the night, he will be tired. If not, he will be close.' Straightening, Karsa held the string of severed ears and tongues out before him, studied the small, mangled objects for a moment longer, then looped his collection of trophies round his neck.
    He swung himself onto Havok's back, collected the lone rein.
    Gnaw's pack moved ahead to scout the trail, Delum among them, the three-legged dog cradled in his arms.
    They set off.
    Shortly before midday, they came upon signs of the last lowlander, thirty paces beyond the corpses of the two missing dogs – a crossbow quarrel buried in each one. A scattering of iron armour, straps and fittings. The guard had shed weight.
    'This child is a clever one,' Bairoth Gild observed. 'He will hear us before we see him, and will prepare an ambush.' The warrior's hooded gaze flicked to Delum. 'More dogs will be slain.'
    Karsa shook his head at Bairoth's words. 'He will not
ambush us, for that will see him killed, and he knows it. Should we catch up with him, he will seek to hide. Evasion is his only hope, up the cliffside, and then we will have passed him, and so he will not succeed in reaching Silver Lake before us.'
    'We do not hunt him down?' Bairoth asked in surprise.
    'No. We ride for Bone Pass.'
    'Then he shall trail us. Warleader, an enemy loose at our backs—'
    'A child. Those quarrels might well kill a dog, but they are as twigs to us Teblor. Our armour alone will take much of those small barbs—'
    'He has a sharp eye, Karsa Orlong, to slay two dogs in the dark. He will aim for where our armour does not cover us.'
    Karsa shrugged. 'Then we must outpace him beyond the pass.'
    They continued on. The trail widened as it climbed, the entire escarpment pushing upward in its northward reach. Riding at a fast trot, they covered league after league until, by late afternoon, they found themselves entering clouds of mist, a deep roaring sound directly ahead.
    The path dropped away suddenly.
    Reining in amidst the milling dogs, Karsa dismounted.
    The edge was sheer. Beyond it and on his left, a river had cut a notch a thousand paces or more deep into the cliff-side, down to what must have been a ledge of some sort, over which it then plunged another thousand paces to a mist-shrouded valley floor. A dozen or more thread-thin waterfalls drifted out from both sides of the notch, issuing from fissures in the bedrock. The scene, Karsa realized after a moment, was all wrong. They had reached the highest part of the escarpment's ridge. A river, cutting a natural route through to the lowlands, did not belong in this place. Stranger still, the flanking waterfalls poured out from riven cracks, not one level with another, as if the mountains on both sides were filled with water.
    'Karsa Orlong,' Bairoth had to shout to be heard over the
roar rising from far below, 'someone – an ancient god, perhaps – has broken a mountain in half. That notch, it was not carved by water. No, it has the look of having been cut by a giant axe. And the wound ... bleeds.'
    Not replying to Bairoth's words, Karsa turned about. Directly on his right, a winding, rocky path descended on their side of the cliff, a steep path of shale and scree, gleaming wet.
    'This is our way down?' Bairoth stepped past Karsa, then swung an incredulous look upon the warleader. 'We cannot! It will vanish beneath our feet! Beneath the hoofs of the horses! We shall descend indeed, like stones down a cliffside!'
    Karsa crouched and pried a rock loose from the ground. He tossed it down the trail. Where it first struck, the shale shifted, trembled, then slid in a growing wave that quickly followed the bouncing rock, vanishing into the mists.
    Revealing rough, broad steps.
    Made entirely of bones.
    'It is as Pahlk said,' Karsa murmured, before turning to Bairoth. 'Come, our path awaits.'
    Bairoth's eyes were hooded. 'It does indeed, Karsa Orlong. Beneath our feet there shall be a truth.'
    Karsa scowled. 'This is our trail down from the mountains. Nothing more, Bairoth Gild.'
    The warrior shrugged. 'As you say, Warleader.'
    Karsa in the lead, they began the descent.
    The bones were lowlander in scale, yet heavier and thicker, hardened into stone. Here and there, antlers and tusks were visible, as well as artfully carved bone helms from