A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 3

to take on replacements. To spit out the last grains
of sand from this Hood-taken land. He could return to his
wife and children, with all the confusion and trepidation
such a reunion would entail. There'd been too many mistakes
in their lives together, and even those few moments
of redemption had been tainted and bitter. Minala. His
sister-in-law, who had done what so many victims did,
hidden away her hurts, finding normality in brutal abuse,
and had come to believe the fault lay with her, rather than
the madman she had married.
    Killing the bastard hadn't been enough, as far as Keneb
was concerned. What still needed to be expunged was a
deeper, more pervasive rot, the knots and threads all bound
in a chaotic web that defined the time at that fell garrison.
One life tied to every other by invisible, thrumming
threads, unspoken hurts and unanswered expectations, the
constant deceits and conceits – it had taken a continentwide
uprising to shatter all of that. And we are not mended.
    Not so long a reach, to see how the Adjunct and this
damned army was bound in the same tangled net, the
legacies of betrayal, the hard, almost unbearable truth that
some things could not be answered.
    Broad-bellied pots crowding market stalls, their flanks a
mass of intricately painted yellow butterflies, swarming
barely seen figures and all sweeping down the currents of a
silt-laden river. Scabbards bearing black feathers. A
painted line of dogs along a city wall, each beast linked to
the next by a chain of bones. Bazaars selling reliquaries
purportedly containing remnants of great heroes of the
Seventh Army. Bult, Lull, Chenned and Duiker. And, of
course, Coltaine himself.
    When one's enemy embraces the heroes of one's own
side, one feels strangely ... cheated, as if the theft of life
was but the beginning, and now the legends themselves
have been stolen away, transformed in ways beyond
control. But Coltaine belongs to us. How dare you do this? Such sentiments, sprung free from the dark knot in his soul,
made no real sense. Even voicing them felt awkward,
absurd. The dead are ever refashioned, for they have no
defence against those who would use or abuse them – who
they were, what their deeds meant. And this was the
anguish ... this ... injustice.
    These new cults with their grisly icons, they did nothing
to honour the Chain of Dogs. They were never intended to.
Instead, they seemed to Keneb pathetic efforts to force a
link with past greatness, with a time and a place of
momentous significance. He had no doubt that the Last
Siege of Y'Ghatan would soon acquire similar mythical
status, and he hated the thought, wanted to be as far away
from the land birthing and nurturing such blasphemies as
was possible.
    Blistig was speaking now: 'These are ugly waters to
anchor a fleet, Adjunct, perhaps we could move on a few
leagues—'
    'No,' she said.
    Blistig glanced at Keneb.
    'The weather shall turn,' Nil said.
    A child with lines on his face. This is the true legacy of the
Chain of Dogs. lines on his face, and hands stained red.
    And Temul, the young Wickan commanding resentful,
embittered elders who still dreamed of vengeance against
the slayers of Coltaine. He rode Duiker's horse, a lean mare
with eyes that Keneb could have sworn were filled with
sorrow. Temul carried scrolls, presumably containing the
historian's own writings, although he would not show them
to anyone. This warrior of so few years, carrying the burden
of memory, carrying the last months of life in an old man
once soldier among the Old Guard who had, inexplicably,
somehow touched this Wickan youth. That alone, Keneb
suspected, was a worthy story, but it would remain forever
untold, for Temul alone understood it, holding within himself
each and every detail, and Temul was not one to
explain, not a teller of stories. No, he just lives them. And this
is what those cultists yearn for, for themselves, and what they
will never truly possess.
    Keneb could hear nothing of the huge encampment
behind him. Yet one tent in particular within that makeshift
city dominated his mind. The man within it had not spoken
in days. His lone eye seemingly stared at nothing. What
remained of Tene Baralta had been healed, at least insofar as
flesh and bone was concerned. The man's spirit was, alas,
another matter. The Red Blade's homeland had not been
kind to him. Keneb wondered if the man was as eager to leave
Seven Cities as he was.
    Nether said, 'The plague is growing more virulent. The
Grey