A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 3

all, to this realm. Paths that were not
wounds.
    Arriving within Kurald Emurlahn, they looked upon a
ravaged world.
    Then set about cleansing what was left of it.
    ***
     
    The Awl'dan
Two years before the Tiste Edur conquest of Lether
     
    Preda Bivatt, a captain in the Drene garrison, was far from
home. Twenty-one days by wagon, commanding an
expedition of two hundred soldieers of the Tattered Banner
Army, a troop of thirty Bluerose light cavalry, and four
hundred support staff, including civilians, she had, after
delivering orders for the setting of camp, slid down from
the back of her horse to walk the fifty-odd paces to the edge
of the bluff.
    Upon reaching the rise the wind struck her a hammer
blow to her chest, as if eager to fling her back, to scrape her
from this battered lip of land. The ocean beyond the ridge
was a vision from an artist's nightmare, a seascape torn,
churning, with heavy twisting clouds shredding apart overhead.
The water was more white than blue-green, foam
boiling, spume flying out from between rocks as the waves
pounded the shore.
    Yet, she saw with a chill rushing in to bludgeon her
bones, this was the place.
    A fisher boat, blown well off course, into the deadly
maelstrom that was this stretch of ocean, a stretch that no
trader ship, no matter how large, would willingly venture
into. A stretch that had, eighty years ago, caught a Meckros
City and had torn it to pieces, pulling into the depths
twenty or more thousand dwellers of that floating
settlement.
    The fisher crew had survived, long enough to draw their
beleagured craft safely aground in hip-deep water thirty or
so paces from the bedrock strand. Their catch lost, their
boat punched into kindling by relentless waves, the four
Letherii managed to reach dry land.
    To find ... this.
    Tightening the strap of her helm, lest the wind tear it and
her head from her shoulders, Preda Bivatt continued
scanning the wreckage lining this shoreline. The
promontory upon which she stood was undercut, dropping
away three man-heights to a bank of white sand heaped
with elongated rows of dead kelp, uprooted trees, and
remnants of eighty-year-old Meckros City. And something
else. Something more unexpected.
    War canoes. The seagoing kind, each as long as a coralface
whale, high-powered, longer and broader than Tiste
Edur craft. Not flung ashore as wreckage – no, not one she
could see displayed anything like damage. They were
drawn up in rows high along the beach, although it was
clear that that had happened some time past – months at
least, perhaps years.
    A presence at her side. The merchant from Drene who
had been contracted to supply this expedition. Paleskinned,
his hair pallid blond, so fair as to be nearly white.
The wind was blasting red the man's round face, but she
could see his light blue eyes fixed on the array of war
canoes, tracking, first westward along the beach, then eastward.
'I have some talent,' he said to her, loudly so as to be
heard over the gale.
    Bivatt said nothing. The merchant no doubt had skill
with numbers – his claim to talent. And she was an officer
in the Letherii Army, and could well gauge the likely
complement of each enormous craft without his help. A
hundred, give or take twenty.
    'Preda?'
    'What?'
    The merchant gestured helplessly. 'These canoes.' He
waved up the beach, then down. 'There must be—' And
then he was at a loss for words.
    She well understood him.
    Yes. Rows upon rows, all drawn up to this forbidding
shore. Drene, the nearest city of the kingdom, was three
weeks away, to the southwest. Directly south of here was
the land of the Awl'dan, and of the tribes' seasonal rounds
with their huge herds, virtually all was known. The Letherii
were in the process of conquering them, after all. There had
been no report of anything like this.
    Thus. Two, three years ago, a fleet arrived upon this
shore. Whereupon everyone had disembarked, taking all
they had with them, and then, presumably, set off inland.
    There should have been signs, rumours, a reverberation
among the Awl at the very least. We should have heard about it.
    But they hadn't. The foreign invaders had simply ...
disappeared.
    Not possible. How can it be? She scanned the rows once
again, as if hoping that some fundamental detail would
reveal itself, would ease the hammering of her heart and the
leaden chill of her limbs.
    'Preda ...'
    Yes. One hundred per craft. And here before us . .. stacked four,
five deep – what? Four, maybe five