A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

ground near his left hind
leg made him start and shy away.
    From the darkness overhead he heard chittering
laughter.
    The storm of chaos cavorted into his vision, consuming
half the sky with a swirling madness of lead, grainy black
and blazing tendrils of argent. He could see the gust front
tearing the ground up in a frenzied wall of dust, rocks and
dirt, growing ever closer.
    Imminent oblivion did not seem so bad, as far as Ditch
was concerned. He was being dragged by the chain shackled
to his right ankle. Most of his skin had been scraped away
– the white bone and cartilage of his remaining elbow,
studded with grit, was visible within haloes of red. His
knees were larger versions, and the shackle was slowly
carving through his ankle and foot bones. He wondered
what would happen when that foot was finally torn off –
how it would feel. He'd lie there, motionless at last, perhaps
watching that shackle tumble and twist and stutter away.
He'd be . . . free.
    The torment of this existence should not include pain.
That was unfair. Of course, most of that pain was fading
now – he was too far gone to curl and flinch, to gasp and
sob – but the memories remained, like fire in his skull.
    Pulled onward over loose stones, their sharp edges rolling
up his back, gouging new furrows through the pulped
meat, knuckling against the base of his skull to tear away
the last few snarls of hair and scalp. And as the chain
snagged, only to give and twist him round, he stared again
and again upon that storm in their wake.
    Songs of suffering from the groaning wagon somewhere
ahead, an unending chorus of misery ever drifting back.
    Too bad, he reflected, that the huge demon had not
found him in the moments following his collapse, had not
lifted him to its shoulder – not that it could carry any more
than it already had been carrying. But even if it had done
little more than drag him to one side, then the edge of the
wagon's massive wheel would not have crushed his right
arm and shoulder, grinding both into pulp until threads
of gristle were all that held it to his body. After that, all
hopes – faint as they had been – of rising again to add his
strength to the procession had vanished. He had become
yet one more dead weight, dragged in the wake, adding to
the suffering of those who trudged on.
    Nearby, almost parallel to him, a huge chain sheathed
in moss ended in the remnants of a dragon. Wings like tattered
sails, spars snapped and dangling, the mostly skinless
head dragged behind a shredded neck. When he had first
seen it he had been shocked, horrified. Now, each time it
came into view, he felt a wave of dread. That such a creature
should have failed was proof of the desperate extremity
now plaguing them.
    Anomander Rake had stopped killing. The legion was
failing. Annihilation edged ever closer.
    Life fears chaos. It was ever thus. We fear it more than
anything else, because it is anathema. Order battles against
dissolution. Order negotiates cooperation as a mechanism
of survival, on every scale, from a patch of skin to an entire
menagerie of interdependent creatures. That cooperation, of
course, may not of essence be necessarily peaceful – a minute
exchange of failures to ensure greater successes.
    Yes, as I am dragged along here, at the very end of my existence,
I begin to understand . . .
    See me, see this gift of contemplation.
    Rake, what have you done?
    A calloused hand closed about his remaining arm, lifted
him clear of the ground, and he was being carried forward,
closer to that crawling wagon.
    'There is no point.'
    'That,' replied a deep, measured voice, 'is without
relevance.'
    'I am not worth—'
    'Probably not, but I intend to find you room on that
wagon.'
    Ditch hacked a ragged laugh. 'Just tear my foot off, good
sir, and leave me.'
    'No. There may be need for you, mage.'
    Need? Now that was an absurd thing to say. 'Who are
you?'
    'Draconus.'
    Ditch laughed a second time. 'I looked for you . . . seems
centuries ago, now.'
    'Now you have found me.'
    'I thought you might know a way of escaping. Now, isn't
that funny? After all, if you had, you would not still be
here, would you?'
    'That seems logical.'
    An odd reply. 'Draconus.'
    'What?'
    'Are you a logical man?'
    'Not in the least. Now, here we are.'
    The sight that greeted Ditch as he was heaved round
to face forward was, if anything, even more terrifying
than anything else he had witnessed since arriving in the
accursed realm of Dragnipur. A wall of bodies,