A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 3

thousand?
    The north shoreline was a mass of grey-wooded war
canoes, for almost as far as she could see to the west and to
the east. Drawn up. Abandoned. Filling the shore like a
toppled forest.
    'Upwards of a half million,' the merchant said. 'That is
my estimate. Preda, where in the Errant's name did they all
go?'
    She scowled. 'Kick that mage nest of yours, Letur Anict.
Make them earn their exorbitant fees. The king needs to
know. Every detail. Everything.'
    'At once,' the man said.
    While she would do the same with the Ceda's squad of
acolytes. The redundancy was necessary. Without the
presence of Kuru Qan's chosen students, she would never
learn all that Letur Anict held back on his final report,
would never be able to distill the truths from the half-truths,
the outright lies. A perennial problem with hiring private
contractors – they had their own interests, after all, and
loyalty to the crown was, for creatures like Letur Anict, the
new Factor of Drene, always secondary.
    She began looking for a way down onto the beach.
Bivatt wanted a closer look at these canoes, especially since
it seemed that sections of their prows had been dismanded. Which is an odd thing to do. Yet, a manageable mystery, one I
can deal with and so not think about all the rest.
    'Upwards of a half million.'
    Errant's blessing, who is now among us?
    * * *
     
    The Awl'dan
Two years following the Tiste Edur conquest of Lethur
     
    The wolves had come, then gone, and where corpses had
been dragged out from the solid press atop the hill-top –
where the unknown soldiers had made their last stand – the
signs of their feeding were evident, and this detail remained
with the lone rider as he walked his horse amidst the
motionless, sprawled bodies. Such pillaging of the dead was
... unusual. The dun-furred wolves of this plain were as
opportunistic as any other predator on the Awl-dan, of
course. Even so, long experience with humans should have
sent the beasts fleeing at the first sour scent, even if it was
commingled with that of spilled blood. What, then, had
drawn them to this silent battlefield?
    The lone rider, face hidden behind a crimson, scaled
mask, drew rein near the base of the low hill. His horse was
dying, wracked with shivers; before the day's end the man
would be walking. As he was breaking camp this dawn, a
horn-nosed snake had nipped the horse as it fed on a tuft of
silver-stem grasses at the edge of a gully. The poison was
slow but inevitable, and could not be neutralized by any of
the herbs and medicines the man carried. The loss was
regrettable but not disastrous, since he had not been
travelling in haste.
    Ravens circled overhead, yet none descended – nor had
his arrival stirred them from this feast; indeed, it had been
the sight of them, wheeling above this hill, that had guided
him to this place. Their cries were infrequent, strangely
muted, almost plaintive.
    The Drene legions had taken away their dead, leaving
naught but their victims to feed the grasses of the plain. The
morning's frost still mapped glistening patterns on death-dark
skin, but the melt had already begun, and it seemed to
him that these dead soldiers now wept, from stilled faces,
from open eyes, from mortal wounds.
    Rising on his stirrups, he scanned the horizon – as much
of it as he could see, seeking sight of his two companions,
but the dread creatures had yet to return from their hunt,
and he wondered if they had found a new, more inviting
trail somewhere to the west – the Letherii soldiers of Drene,
marching triumphant and glutted back to their city. If so,
then there would be slaughter on this day. The notion of
vengeance, however, was incidental. His companions were
indifferent to such sentiments. They killed for pleasure, as
far as he could tell. Thus, the annihilation of the Drene and
any vengeance that could be ascribed to the deed existed
only in his own mind. The distinction was important.
    Even so, a satisfying conceit.
    Yet, these victims here were strangers, these soldiers in
their grey and black uniforms. Stripped now of weapons
and armour, standards taken as trophies, their presence here
in the Awl'dan – in the heart of the rider's homeland – was
perturbing.
    He knew the invading Letherii, after all. The numerous
legions with their peculiar names and fierce rivalries; he
knew as well the fearless cavalry of the Bluenose. And the
still-free kingdoms and territories bordering the Awl'dan,
the rival D'rhasilhani, the Keryn, the