A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

hills – where the cursed Bridgeburners
had made a stand, killing thousands with foul
sorcery and Moranth munitions – why, the entire slope was
still nothing more than shattered, charred trees, fragments
of mangled armour, the occasional leather boot and, here
and there in the dead soil, jutting bones. Could he reach
that, he could find a path leading into Daylight and then,
finally, he would be safe.
    This latter option became ever more inviting – he was
not too far from the gate, and these infernal shadows
and the endless gloom here were of no help to him – the
Tiste Andii could see in this darkness, after all, whilst he
stumbled about half blind.
    He heard a rock shift in the rubble behind him, not
thirty paces away. Heart pounding, Harak set his eyes upon
the gate. Smashed down in the siege, but a path of sorts
had been cleared through it, leading out to the raised road
that encircled the inland side of the city. Squinting, he
could make out no figures lingering near that gate.
    Twenty paces away now. He picked up his pace and, once
on to the cleared avenue, sprinted for the opening in the
wall.
    Were those footfalls behind him? He dared not turn.
    Run! Damn my legs – run!
    On to the path, threading between heaps of broken
masonry, and outside the city!
    Onward, up the slope to the raised road, a quick, frantic
scamper across it, and down into the tumbled rocks at the
base of the ruined slope. Battered earth, makeshift gravemounds,
tangled roots and dead branches. Whimpering, he
clambered on, torn and scratched, coughing in the dust of
dead pine bark.
    And there, near the summit, was that sunlight? Yes. It
was near dawn, after all. Sun – blessed light!
    A quick glance back revealed nothing – he couldn't
make out what might be whispering through the wreckage
below.
    He was going to make it.
    Harak scrambled the last few strides, plunged into cool
morning air, shafts of golden rays – and a figure rose into
his path. A tulwar lashed out. Harak's face bore an expression
of astonishment, frozen there as his head rolled from
his shoulders, bounced and pitched back down the slope,
where it lodged near a heap of bleached, fractured bones.
The body sank down on to its knees, at the very edge of
the old trench excavated by the Bridgeburners, and there
it stayed.
    Seerdomin wiped clean his blade and sheathed the
weapon. Was this the last of them? He believed that it was.
The city . . . cleansed. Leaving only those out at the barrow.
Those ones would persist for a time, in ignorance that
everything in Black Coral had changed.
    He was weary – the hunt had taken longer than he had
expected. Yes, he would rest now. Seerdomin looked about,
studied the rumpled trenchwork the sappers had managed
with little more than folding shovels. And he was impressed.
A different kind of soldier, these Malazans.
    But even this the forest was slowly reclaiming.
    He sat down a few paces from the kneeling corpse
and settled his head into his gloved hands. He could
smell leather, and sweat, and old blood. The smells of
his past, and now they had returned. In his mind he
could hear echoes, the rustle of armour and scabbards
brushing thighs. Urdomen marching in ranks, the visors
on their great helms dropped down to hide their fevered
eyes. Squares of Betaklites forming up outside the city,
preparing to strike northward. Scalandi skirmishers and
Tenescowri – the starving multitudes, desperate as bared
teeth. He recalled their mass, shifting in vast heaves,
ripples and rushes on the plain, the way each wave left
bodies behind – the weakest ones, the dying ones – and
how eddies would form round them, as those closest swung
back to then descend on their hapless comrades.
    When there was no one else, the army ate itself. And
he had simply looked on, expressionless, wrapped in his
armour, smelling iron, leather, sweat and blood.
    Soldiers who had fought in a just war – a war they could
see as just, anyway – could hold on to a sense of pride, every
sacrifice a worthy one. And so fortified, they could leave it
behind, finding a new life, a different life. And no matter
how grotesque the injustices of the world around them,
the world of the present, that veteran could hold on to the
sanctity of what he or she had lived through.
    But fighting an unjust war . . . that was different. If one
had any conscience at all, there was no escaping the crimes
committed, the blood on the hands, the sheer insanity of
that time – when honour was