A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

indifferent – until the
very last moment, as Abasard raised his staff to swing overhand,
hoping to strike the beast on its hind leg, imagining
bones breaking—
    The nearer sword lashed out, so fast, so—
    Abasard found himself lying on sodden grasses, feeling
heat pour from one side of his body, and as the heat poured
out, he grew ever colder. He stared, seeing nothing yet,
sensing how something was wrong – he was on his side, but
his head was flattened down, his ear pressed to the ground.
There should have been a shoulder below and beneath his
head, and an arm, and it was where all the heat was pouring
out.
    And further down, the side of his chest, this too seemed
to be gone.
    He could feel his right leg, kicking at the ground. But no
left leg. He did not understand.
    Slowly, he settled onto his back, stared up at the night
sky.
    So much room up there, a ceiling beyond the reach of everyone,
covering a place in which they could live. Uncrowded,
room enough for all.
    He was glad, he realized, that he had come here, to see,
to witness, to understand. Glad, even as he died.
    Redmask walked out of the dark to where Masarch waited
with the Letherii horse. Behind him, the rodara herd was a
mass of movement, the dominant males in the lead, their
attention fixed on Redmask. Dogs barked and nipped from
the far flanks. Distant shouts from the other two young
warriors indicated they were where they should be.
    Climbing into the saddle, Redmask nodded to Masarch
then swung his mount round.
    Pausing for a long moment, Masarch stared at the distant
Letherii camp, where it seemed the unholy slaughter
continued unabated. His guardians, he'd said.
    He does not fear challenges to come. He will take the fur of the Ganetok war leader. He will lead us to war against the Letherii. He is Redmask, who forswore the Awl, only to now return.
    I thought it was too late.
    I now think I am wrong.
    He thought again of his death night, and memories
returned like winged demons. He had gone mad, in that
hollowed-out log, gone so far mad that hardly any of him
had survived to return, when the morning light blinded
him. Now, the insanity was loose, tingling at the very ends
of his limbs, loose and wild but as yet undecided, not yet
ready to act, to show its face. There was nothing to hold it
back. No-one.
    No-one but Redmask. My war leader.
    Who unleashed his own madness years ago.

CHAPTER FIVE
    Denigration afflicted our vaunted ideals long
ago, but such inflictions are difficult to measure,
to rise up and point a finger to this place, this
moment, and say: here, my friends, this was
where our honour, our integrity died.
    The affliction was too insipid, too much a
product of our surrendering mindful regard
and diligence. The meanings of words lost their
precision – and no-one bothered taking to task
those who cynically abused those words to
serve their own ambitions, their own evasion
of personal responsibility. Lies went unchallenged,
lawful pursuit became a sham, vulnerable to graft,
and justice itself became a commodity, mutable
in imbalance. Truth was lost, a chimera reshaped
to match agenda, prejudices, thus consigning
the entire political process to a mummer's
charade of false indignation, hypocritical
posturing and a pervasive contempt for the
commonry.
    Once subsumed, ideals and the honour created
by their avowal can never be regained, except,
alas, by outright, unconstrained rejection,
invariably instigated by the commonry, at the
juncture of one particular moment, one single
event, of such brazen injustice that revolution
becomes the only reasonable response.
    Consider this then a warning. Liars will lie,
and continue to do so, even beyond being
caught out. They will lie, and in time, such
liars will convince themselves, will in all self-righteousness
divest the liars of culpability.
Until comes a time when one final lie is voiced,
the one that can only be answered by rage,
by cold murder, and on that day, blood shall
rain down every wall of this vaunted, weaning
society.
    Impeached Guild Master's Speech
Semel Fural of the Guild of Sandal-Clasp Makers
    Of the turtles known as vinik the females dwelt for
the most part in the uppermost reaches of the
innumerable sources of the Lether River, in
the pooled basins and high-ground bogs found in the
coniferous forests crowding the base of the Bluerose
Mountains. The mountain runoff, stemmed and backed by
the dams built by flat-tailed river-rats, descended in modest
steps towards the