A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

well have torn their
limbs off to answer years of scorn and abuse.
    Old Hunch Arbat no longer pulled his cart from farm to
farm, from shack to shack, collecting the excrement with
which he buried the idols of the Tarthenal gods that had
commanded a mostly forgotten glade deep in the woods.
The need had passed, after all. The damned hoary nightmares
were dead.
    His neighbours had not appreciated Arbat's sudden
retirement, since now the stink of their wastes had begun
to foul their own homes. Lazy wastrels that they were, they
weren't of a mind to deepen their cesspits – didn't Old
Hunch empty them out on a regular basis? Well, not any
more.
    That alone might have been reason enough to light out.
And Arbat would have liked nothing better than to just
vanish into the forest gloom, never to be seen again.
Walk far, yes, until he came to a hamlet or village where
none knew him, where none even knew of him.
Rainwashed of all odour, just some kindly, harmless
old mixed-blood Tarthenal who could, for a coin or
two, mend broken things, including flesh and bone.
    Walk, then. Leaving behind the old Tarthenal
territories, away from the weed-snagged statues in the overgrown
glades. And maybe, even, away from the ancient
blood of his heritage. Not all healers were shamans, were
they? They'd not ask any awkward questions, so long as he
treated them right, and he could do that, easy.
    Old bastards like him deserved their rest. A lifetime of
service. Propitiations, the Masks of Dreaming, the leering
faces of stone, the solitary rituals – all done, now. He could
walk his last walk, into the unknown. A hamlet, a village,
a sun-warmed boulder beside a trickling stream, where he
could settle back and ease his tortured frame and not move,
until the final mask was pulled away . . .
    Instead, he had woken in darkness, in the moments
before false dawn, shaking as if afflicted with ague,
and before his eyes had hovered the slowly shredding fragments
of a most unexpected Dream Mask. One he had
never seen before, yet a visage of terrifying power. A mask
crazed with cracks, a mask moments from shattering
explosively—
    Lying on his cot, the wood frame creaking beneath him
as he trembled from head to foot, he waited for revelation.
    The sun was high overhead when he finally emerged
from his shack. Banks of clouds climbed the sky to the west
– an almost-spent storm coming in from the sea – and he
set about his preparations, ignoring the rain when it
arrived.
    Now, with dusk fast approaching, Arbat collected a
bundled cane of rushes and set one end aflame from the
hearth. He fired his shack, then the woodshed, and finally
the old barn wherein resided his two-wheeled cart. Then,
satisfied that each building was truly alight, he shouldered
the sack containing those possessions and supplies he
would need, and set out onto the trail leading down to the
road.
    A grunt of surprise a short time later, on the road, as he
ran into a score of villagers hurrying in a mob towards him.
In their lead, the Factor, who cried out in relief upon seeing
Arbat.
    'Thank the Errant you're alive, Hunch!'
    Scowling, Arbat studied the man's horsey face for a
moment, then scanned the pale smudges of the other faces,
hovering behind the Factor. 'What is all this?' he
demanded.
    'A troop of Edur are staying at the inn tonight, Arbat.
When word of the fires reached them they insisted we head
up to help – in case the wood goes up, you see—'
    'The wood, right. So where are the meddlers now,
then?'
    'They remained behind, of course. But I was ordered—'
the Factor paused, then leaned closer to peer up at Arbat.
'Was it Vrager, then? The fool likes his fires, and is no
friend of yours.'
    'Vrager? Could be. He's been in the habit of sneaking in
at night and pissing on my door. Doesn't accept me being
retired and all. Says I got a duty to cart away his shit.'
    'And so you do!' someone growled from the mob behind
the Factor. 'Why else do we let you live here anyway?'
    'Well that's a problem solved now, ain't it?' Arbat said,
grinning. 'Vrager burned me out, so I'm leaving.' He
hesitated, then asked, 'What business was this of the Edur?
It's just done rained – the chances of the blaze moving
much ain't worth the worry. Didn't you tell them my place
is cleared back eighty, a hundred paces on all sides? And
there's the old settling pools – good as a moat.'
    The Factor shrugged, then said, 'They asked about you,
then decided maybe someone had torched you out of