A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

die,' Redmask said. 'And none shall
challenge any of you.'
    'Then you mean to carve through a thousand warriors to
face Hadralt?'
    'What would be the point of that, Masarch? I need those
warriors. Killing them would be a waste. No.' He paused, then
said, 'I am not without guardians, Masarch. And I doubt that
a single Ganetok warrior will dare challenge them. Hadralt
shall have to face me, he and I, alone in the circle. Besides,'
he added, 'we haven't the time for all the rest.'
    'The Ganetok hold to the old ways, War Leader. There
will be rituals. Days and days before the circle is made—'
    'Masarch, we must go to war against the Letherii. Every
warrior of the Awl—'
    'War Leader! They will not follow you! Even Hadralt
could only manage a third of them, and that with payment
of rodara and myrid that halved his holdings!' Masarch
waved at the depleted herds on the hillsides. 'We – we have
nothing left! You could not purchase the spears of a
hundred warriors!'
    'Who holds the largest herds, Masarch?'
    'The Ganetok themselves—'
    'No. I ask again, who holds the largest herds?'
    The youth's scowl deepened. 'The Letherii.'
    'I will send three warriors to accompany the last of the
Renfayar to the Ganetok. Choose two of your companions
to accompany us.' The dray dog rose and moved to one
side. Redmask collected the reins of his horse and set out
down towards the camp. The dray fell in to heel on his left.
'We shall ride west, Masarch, and find us some herds.'
    'We ride against the Letherii? War Leader, did you not
moments ago mock the notion of seven warriors waging
war against them? Yet now you say—'
    'War is for later,' Redmask said. 'As you say, we need
herds. To buy the services of the warriors.' He paused and
looked back at the trailing youth. 'Where did the Letherii
get their beasts?'
    'From the Awl! From us!'
    'Yes. They stole them. So we must steal them back.'
    'Four of us, War Leader?'
    'And one dray, and my guardians.'
    ' What guardians?'
    Redmask resumed his journey. 'You lack respect,
Masarch. Tonight, I think, you will have your death night.'
    'The old ways are useless! I will not!'
    Redmask's fist was a blur – it was questionable whether,
in the gloom, Masarch even saw it – even as it connected
solidly with the youth's jaw, dropping him in his tracks.
Redmask reached down and grabbed a handful of hide
jerkin, then began dragging the unconscious Masarch back
down to the camp.
    When the young man awoke, he would find himself in a
coffin, beneath an arm's reach of earth and stones. None of
the usual traditional, measured rituals prior to a death
night, alas, the kind that served to prepare the chosen for
internment. Of course, Masarch's loose reins displayed an
appalling absence of respect, sufficient to obviate the gift of
mercy, which in truth was what all those rituals were about.
    Hard lessons, then. But becoming an adult depended on
such lessons.
    He expected he would have to pound the others into
submission as well, which made for a long night ahead.
    For us all.
    The camp's old women would be pleased by the ruckus,
he suspected. Preferable to wailing through the night, in
any case.
    The last tier of the buried city proved the most interesting,
as far as Udinaas was concerned. He'd had his fill of the
damned sniping that seemed to plague this fell party of
fugitives, a testiness that seemed to be getting worse,
especially from Fear Sengar. The ex-slave knew that the
Tiste Edur wanted to murder him, and as for the details
surrounding the abandonment of Rhulad – which made it
clear that Udinaas himself had had no choice in the matter,
that he had been as much a victim as Fear's own brother –
well, Fear wasn't interested. Mitigating circumstances did
not alter his intransigence, his harsh sense of right and
wrong which did not, it appeared, extend to his own
actions – after all, Fear had been the one to deliberately
walk away from Rhulad.
    Udinaas, upon regaining consciousness, should have
returned to the Emperor.
    To do what? Suffer a grisly death at Rhulad's hands? Yes, we were almost friends, he and I – as much as might be possible between slave and master, and of that the master ever feels more generous and virtuous than the slave – but I did not ask to be there, at the madman's side, struggling to guide him across that narrow bridge of sanity, when all Rhulad wanted to do was leap head-first over the side at every step. No, he had made do with
what he had, and in showing that mere