A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 3

unfortunate – I hope
there weren't too many injuries.'
    Noto Boil glanced over at him, then sneered. 'Captain
Kindly? You have deceived us. Ganoes Paran, a name to be
found on the List of the Fallen in Dujek's own logs.'
    'A name with too many questions hanging off it, cutter.'
    'Do you realize, Captain, that the two remaining
Malazan armies in Seven Cities are commanded by brother
and sister? For the moment at least. Once Dujek's back on
his feet—'
    'A moment,' Paran said.
    Hurlochel and Sweetcreek were standing outside the
command tent. Both had seen Paran and his companions.
    Something in the outrider's face ...
    They reached them. 'Hurlochel?' Paran asked.
    The man looked down.
    Sweetcreek cleared her throat. 'High Fist Dujek Onearm
died two bells ago, Captain Paran.'
    'As for suffering, I leave that to you, and through no choice
of mine.'
    She had known. Soliel had already known.
    Sweetcreek was still talking, '... fever broke a short
while ago. They're conscious, they've been told who you
are – Ganoes Paran, are you listening to me? They've read
Dujek's logs – every officer among us has read them. It was
required. Do you understand? The vote was unanimous. We
have proclaimed you High Fist. This is now your army.'
    She had known.
    All he had done here ... too late.
    Dujek Onearm is dead.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
    The privileged waifs are here now,
preening behind hired armies,
and the legless once-soldier
who leans crooked against a wall
like a toppled, broken statue—
writ on his empty palm the warning
that even armies cannot eat gold—
but these civil younglings cannot see
so far and for their own children,
the future's road is already picked clean,
cobbles pried free to build rough walls
and decrepit wastrel shelters,
yet this is a wealthy world still
heaving its blood-streaked treasures
at their silken feet – they are here now,
the faces of civilization and oh how
we fallen fools yearn to be among them,
fellow feasters at the bottomless trough.
What is to come of this? I rest crooked,
hard stone at my back, and this lone
coin settling in my hand has a face—
some ancient waif privileged in his time,
who once hid behind armies, yes, until –
until those armies awoke one day
with empty bellies – such pride,
such hauteur! Look on the road!
From this civil strait I would run, and run –
if only I had not fought,
defending that mindless devourer
of tomorrow, if only I had legs—
so watch them pass, beneath their parasols
and the starving multitudes are growing
sullen, now eyeing me in their avid hunger—
I would run, yes, if only I had legs.
    In the Last Days of the First Empire
Sogruntes
     
    A single strand of black sand, four hundred paces
long, broke the unrelieved basalt ruin of the coastline.
That strip was now obscured beneath ramps,
equipment, horses and soldiers; and the broad loader skiffs
rocked through the shallows on their heavy draw-lines out
to the anchored transports crowding the bay. For three days
the Fourteenth Army had been embarking, making their
escape from this diseased land.
    Fist Keneb watched the seeming chaos down below for a
moment longer, then, drawing his cloak tighter about himself
against the fierce north sea's wind, he turned about and
made his way back to the skeletal remnants of the
encampment.
    There were problems – almost too many to consider. The
mood among the soldiers was a complex mixture of relief,
bitterness, anger and despondency. Keneb had seriously
begun to fear mutiny during the wait for the fleet – the
embers of frustration fanned by dwindling supplies of food
and water. It was likely the lack of options that had kept
the army tractable, if sullen – word from every city and
settlement west, east and south had been of plague.
Bluetongue, ferocious in its virulence, sparing no-one. The
only escape was with the fleet.
    Keneb could understand something of the soldiers' sentiments.
The Fourteenth's heart had been cut out at
Y'Ghatan. It was extraordinary how a mere handful of
veterans could prove the lifeblood of thousands, especially
when, to the Fist's eyes, they had done nothing to earn such
regard.
    Perhaps survival alone had been sufficiently heroic.
Survival, until Y'Ghatan. In any case, there was a palpable
absence in the army, a hole at the core, gnawing its way
outward.
    Compounding all this, the command was growing
increasingly divided – for we have our own core of rot. Tene
Baralta. The Red Blade ... who lusts for his own death. There
were