A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 3

raining
down every now and then. His arm tiring – he was
running out of reserves, he didn't have the strength, the
endurance for this. Yet he kept swinging.
    Each impact weaker than the one before.
    No, damn you! No!
    He swung again.
    Blood spattered his eyes.
     
    Captain Faradan Sort reined in on the ridge, just north of
the dead city. Normally, a city that had fallen to siege soon
acquired its scavengers, old women and children scrambling
about, picking through the ruins. But not here, not
yet, anyway. Maybe not for a long time.
    Like a cracked pot, the steep sides of Y'Ghatan's tel had
bled out – melted lead, copper, silver and gold, veins and
pools filled with accreted stone chips, dust and potsherds.
    Offering an arm, Sort helped Sinn slip down from the
saddle behind her – she'd been squirming, whimpering and
clutching at her, growing more agitated the closer the day's
end came, the light failing. The Fourteenth Army had left
the night before. The captain and her charge had walked
their lone horse round the tel, not once, but twice, since
the sun's rise.
    And the captain had begun to doubt her own reading of
the child Sinn, her own sense that this half-mad, now
seemingly mute creature had known something, sensed
something – Sinn had tried and tried to get back into
the ruins before her arrest. There had to be a reason for
that.
    Or, perhaps not. Perhaps nothing more than an insane
grief – for her lost brother.
    Scanning the rubble-strewn base below the tel's north
wall one more time, she noted that one scavenger at least
had arrived. A child, smeared in white dust, her hair a
matted snarl, was wandering perhaps thirty paces from the
rough wall.
    Sinn saw her as well, then began picking her way down
the slope, making strange mewling sounds.
    The captain unstrapped her helm and lifted it clear to
settle it on the saddle horn. She wiped grimy sweat from
her brow. Desertion. Well, it wasn't the first time, now, was
it? If not for Sinn's magic, the Wickans would have found
them. And likely executed them. She'd take a few with her,
of course, no matter what Sinn did. People learned that you
had to pay to deal with her. Pay in every way. A lesson she
never tired of teaching.
    She watched as Sinn ran to the city's cliff-side, ignoring
the scavenger, and began climbing it.
    Now what?
    Replacing the helm, the sodden leather inside-rim
momentarily cool against her brow, the strap feeling
stretched as she fixed the clasp beneath her jaw, Faradan
Sort collected the reins and guided her horse into a slow
descent down the scree.
    The scavenger was crying, grubby hands pressed against
her eyes. All that dust on her, the webs in her hair – this
was the true face of war, the captain knew. That child's face
would haunt her memories, joining the many other faces,
for as long as she lived.
    Sinn was clinging to the rough wall, perhaps two manheights
up, motionless.
    Too much, Sort decided. The child was mad. She
glanced again at the scavenger, who did not seem aware
that they had arrived. Hands still pressed against eyes. Red
scrapes through the dust, a trickle of blood down one shin.
Had she fallen? From where?
    The captain rode up to halt her horse beneath Sinn.
'Come down now,' she said. 'We need to make camp,
Sinn. Come down, it's no use – the sun's almost gone. We
can try again tomorrow.'
    Sinn tightened her grip on the broken outcrops of stone
and brick.
    Grimacing, the captain side-stepped the mount closer to
the wall, then reached up to pull Sinn from her perch.
    Squealing, the girl lunged upward, one hand shooting
into a hole—
     
    His strength, his will, was gone. A short rest, then he could
begin again. A short rest, the voices below drifting away, it
didn't matter. Sleep, now, the dark, warm embrace – drawing
him down, ever deeper, then a blush of sweet golden
light, wind rippling yellow grasses—
    —and he was free, all pain gone. This, he realized, was
not sleep. It was death, the return to the most ancient
memory buried in each human soul. Grasslands, the sun and
wind, the warmth and click of insects, dark herds in the
distance, the lone trees with their vast canopies and the cool
shade beneath, where lions dozed, tongues lolling, flies dancing
round indifferent, languid eyes ...
    Death, and this long buried seed. We return. We return to
the world ...
    And she reached for him, then, her hand damp with
sweat, small and soft, prying his fingers loose from the rock
they gripped, blood sticking –