A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 3

specific, Sergeant. Just the
where, not the why. Anyway, there's something going on.'
    'Where'd you catch all this?' Gesler asked.
    'That new sergeant, Hellian, from Kartool.'
    'The drunk one?'
    'That's her.'
    'Surprised she noticed anything,' Strings observed.
'What got her shipped out here?'
    'That she won't talk about. In the wrong place at the
wrong time, I figure, from the way her face twists all sour on
the subject. Anyway, she went to Malaz City first, then
joined up with the transports at Nap, then on to Unta. She
never seems so drunk she can't keep her eyes open.'
    'You trying to get your hand on her thigh, Cuttle?'
    'A bit too young for me, Fid, but a man could do worse.'
    'A bleary-eyed wife,' Smiles said with a snort. 'That's
probably the best you could manage, Cuttle.'
    'When I was a lad,' the sapper said, reaching out to
collect a grenado – a sharper, Bottle noted with alarm as
Cuttle began tossing it up in the air and catching it onehanded
– 'every time I said something disrespectful of my
betters, my father'd take me out back and slap me halfunconscious.
Something tells me, Smiles, your da was way
too indulgent when it came to his little girl.'
    'You just try it, Cuttle, and I'll stick a knife in your eye.'
    'If I was your da, Smiles, I'd have long ago killed myself.'
    She went pale at that, although no-one else seemed to
notice, since their eyes were following the grenado up and
down.
    'Put it away,' Strings said.
    An ironic lifting of the brows, then, smiling, Cuttle
returned the sharper to the crate. 'Anyway, it looks like
Hellian's got a capable corporal, which tells me she'd held
onto good judgement, despite drinking brandy like water.'
    Bottle rose. 'Actually, I forgot about her. Where are they
camped, Cuttle?'
    'Near the rum wagon. But she already knows about the
meeting.'
    Bottle glanced over at the crate of munitions. 'Oh. Well,
I'm going for a walk in the desert.'
    'Don't stray too far,' the sergeant said, 'could be some of
Leoman's warriors out there.'
    'Right.'
    A short while later he came within sight of the intended
meeting place. Just beyond the collapsed building was an
overgrown rubbish heap, misshapen with tufts of yellow grass
sprouting from the barrow-sized mound. There was no-one in
sight. Bottle made his way towards the midden, the sounds of
the encampment dwindling behind him. It was late afternoon
but the wind remained hot as the breath of a furnace.
    Chiselled wall and foundation stones, shattered idols,
lengths of splintered wood, animal bones and broken
pottery. Bottle clambered up the side, noting the most
recent leavings – Malazan-style pottery, black-glazed, squat,
fragmented images of the most common motifs: Dassem
Ultor's death outside Y'Ghatan, the Empress on her throne,
the First Heroes and the Quon pantheon. The local style,
Bottle had seen from the villages they had passed through,
was much more elegant, elongated with cream or white
glazing on the necks and rims and faded red on the body,
adorned with full-toned and realistic images. Bottle paused
at seeing one such shard, a body-piece, on which had been
painted the Chain of Dogs. He picked it up, wiped dust
from the illustrated scene. Part of Coltaine was visible,
affixed to the cross of wood, overhead a wild flurry of black
crows. Beneath him, dead Wickans and Malazans, and a
cattle-dog impaled on a spear. A chill whispered along his
spine and he let the shard drop.
    Atop the mound, he stood for a time, studying the sprawl
of the Malazan army along the road and spilling out to the
sides. The occasional rider wending through carrying
messages and reports; carrion birds, capemoths and rhizan
wheeling overhead like swarming flies.
    He so disliked omens.
    Drawing off his helm, Bottle wiped sweat from his brow
and turned to face the odhan to the south. Once fertile,
perhaps, but now a wasteland. Worth fighting for? No, but
then, there wasn't much that was. The soldier at your side,
maybe – he'd been told that enough times, by old veterans
with nothing left but that dubious companionship. Such
bonds could only be born of desperation, a closing in of the
spirit, down to a manageable but pitiful area containing
things and people one could care about. For the rest, pure
indifference, twisting on occasion into viciousness.
    Gods, what am I doing here?
    Stumbling into ways of living didn't seem a worthy path
to take. Barring Cuttle and the sergeant, the squad was
made up of people no different from Bottle. Young,