A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

pasture. A
short distance on he spied sheep and goats wandering the
slope of a hillside to his right. A lone shepherd hobbled
along the ridge, waving a switch to keep the flies off.
Murillio pulled his mount off the road and rode towards
him.
    The old man noticed his approach and halted.
    He was dressed in rags, but the crook he carried looked
new, freshly oiled and polished. His eyes were smeared with
cataracts from too many years in the bright sunlight, and
he squinted, wary and nervous, as Murillio drew up and
settled back in the saddle.
    'Hello, good shepherd.'
    A terse nod answered him.
    'I am looking for someone—'
    'Nobody but me here,' the old man replied, flicking the
switch before his face.
    'This was a few weeks back. A young boy, up here
collecting dung, perhaps.'
    'We get 'em, out from the city.'
    The furtiveness was ill-disguised. The old man licked
his lips, switched at flies that weren't there. There were
secrets here, Murillio realized. He dismounted. 'You know
of this one,' he said. 'Five years old. He was hurt, possibly
unconscious.'
    The shepherd stepped back as he approached, half raised
the crook. 'What was I supposed to do?' he demanded.
'The ones that come out here, they got nothing. They live
in the streets. They sell the dung for a few coppers. I got no
help here, we just working for somebody else. We go hungry
every winter – what was I supposed to do?'
    'Just tell me what happened,' said Murillio. 'You do that
and maybe I'll just walk away, leave you be. But you're a bad
liar, old man, and if you try again I might get angry.'
    'We wasn't sure he was gonna live – he was beat up near
dead, sir. Woulda died if we hadn't found him, took care
of him.'
    'And then?'
    'Sold him off. It's hard enough, feedin' ourselves—'
    'To who? Where is he?'
    'Iron mines. The Eldra Holdings, west of here.'
    Murillio felt a chill grip his heart. 'A five-year-old
boy—'
    'Moles, they call 'em. Or – so I heard.'
    He returned to the horse. Lifted himself into the saddle
and roughly pulled the beast round. Rode hard back to the
road.
    A thousand paces along, the horse threw a shoe.
    The ox lumbered along at the pace of a beast for which
time was meaningless, and perhaps in this it was wise indeed.
Walking beside it, the man with the crop twitched its
flank every now and then, but this was habit, not urgency.
The load of braided leather was not a particularly onerous
burden, and if the carter timed things right, why, he might
wangle himself a meal at the camp before the long return
journey back to the city. At least by then the day would
be mostly done and the air would've cooled. In this heat,
neither man nor beast was in any hurry.
    Hardly surprising, then, that the lone traveller on foot
caught up with them before too long, and after a brief conversation
– a few words to either side of the jangle of coins
– the load on the cart grew heavier, yet still not enough
to force a groan from the ox. This was, after all, the task
of its life, the very definition of its existence. In truth, it
had little memory of ever being free, of ever trundling
along without something to drag behind it, or the endless
reverberation in its bones as wheels clunked across cobbles,
slipping into and out of worn ruts in the stone.
    Languid blinks, the storm of flies that danced in the
heat, twitching tail and spots of blood on the fetlocks,
and pulling something from one place to another. And at
its side, squinting red-shot eyes, a storm of flies dancing,
spots of blood here and there from midges and whatnot,
and taking something from one place to another. Ox and
driver, parallel lives through meaningless years. A singular
variation, now, the man sitting with legs dangling off the
cart, his boots worn and blisters oozing, and the dark
maelstrom in his eyes that was for neither of them, and no
business of theirs besides.
    The ornate, lacquered, leaf-sprung carriage that rumbled
past them a league from the camp had its windows shuttered
against the heat and dust.
    The man in the back had watched its approach. The
carter watched it pass. The ox saw it moving away in front
of it at a steady pace that it could never match, even had it
wanted to, which it didn't.
    Snell was nobody's fool, and when the ball of bound
multicoloured twine rolled close to the door and Hinty
stared at it, expecting its miraculous return to her pudgy,
grimy hands, why, Snell obliged – and as soon as he was at
the door, he darted outside and was gone.
    He