A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

profusion along the shoreline. Fragments of
wood formed a snagged barrier higher up, and beyond that,
cut into the cliff-face, weathered steps led up to a hacked-out
cave mouth.
    This cave was in fact a tunnel, rising at a steep angle up
through the bowels of the promontory, to open out in the
floor of the village's largest structure, a stone and timbered
warehouse where the wreckers off-loaded their loot after
the long haul of the carts from the cliff base. A tidy enterprise,
all things considered, one that gave employment
to all the folk of the village – from tending the false fires
to rowing the deep-hulled boats out to the reef, where
the stripping down of the wrecks took place, along with
clubbing survivors and making sure they drowned. The
local legend, concocted to provide meagre justification
for such cruel endeavours, revolved around some long-ago
pirate raids on the village, and how someone (possibly the
Provost, who had always lived here, or the locally famous
Gacharge Hadlorn Who Waits – but he had left so there
was no way to ask him) had suggested that, since the sea
was so eager to deliver murderers to this shore, why could
it not also deliver death to the would-be murderers? And
so, once the notion was planted, the earth was tilled, with
mallet and pick and flint and fire, and the days of fishing
for a living off the treacherous shoals soon gave way to a far
more lucrative venture.
    Oh, the nets were cast out every now and then, especially
in the calm season when the pickings got slim, and who
could deny the blessing of so many fish these days, and fat,
big ones at that? Why, it wasn't so long ago that they'd
damned near fished out the area.
    The beach was comfortable with half-eaten corpses
rolling up on to the sands, where crabs and gulls swarmed.
The beach helped pick the bones clean and then left them
to the waves to bury or sweep away. On this fast-closing
night, however, something unusual clawed its way to the
shore. Unusual in that it still lived. Crabs scuttled from its
path as fast as their tiny legs could manage.
    Water sluiced from the figure as it heaved itself upright.
Red-rimmed eyes scanned the scene, fixing at last on the
steps and the gaping mouth of the cave. After a moment,
it set out in that direction, leaving deep footprints that the
beach hastened to smooth away.
    'Do you really think I can't see what's going on in your skull,
Quell? You're right there, first in line, with the three of us
lying in a row, legs spread wide. And in you dive, worse than
a damned dog on a tilted fence post. Reccanto waiting for
his turn, and Glanno, and Jula and Amby and Mappo here
and Gruntle and probably that damned undead—'
    'Hold on a moment,' growled the Trell.
    'Don't even try,' Precious Thimble snapped.
    They were marching back to the tavern, Precious
Thimble in the lead, the other two hastening to keep up.
That she was tiny and needed two steps for every one of
theirs seemed irrelevant.
    'Then again,' she went on, 'maybe that Jaghut will go
and jump the queue, and by the dawn we'll all be planted
with some ghastly monster, half Trell, half Jaghut, half
pissy wizard, half—'
    'Twins?' asked Quell.
    She swung a vicious glare back at him. 'Oh, funny.'
    'Anyway,' added Quell, 'I'm pretty sure that's not how
things like that work—'
    'How would you know? No, me and Sweetest and Faint,
we're out of here as soon as we can get our gear together –
you can collect us somewhere down the road. This damned
village can go to Hood, with Bedusk Pall Kovuss Agape in
the lead. They're damned wreckers anyway, and if anybody
deserves cursing to damnation, it's them.'
    'I wouldn't disagree there,' said Mappo.
    'Stop trying to get under my skirt, Trell.'
    'What? I wasn't—'
    Quell cut in with a snort. 'You don't wear skirts, Witch.
Though if you did, it'd be so much easier—'
    Now she spun round. 'What would be, Quell?'
    He'd halted and now backed up. 'Sorry, did I think that
out loud?'
    'You think the curse on this village is bad, you just wait
and see what I can come up with!'
    'All right, we take your point, Precious. Relax. You three
just go, right? We'll get the carriage fixed up and find you,
just like you said.'
    She whirled about once more and resumed her march.
    Gruntle saw the three in the street, closing fast on the entrance
to the tavern. He shouted to catch their attention
and hurried over.
    'Master Quell, your driver is a heap of broken bones back
there, but he's still breathing.'
    'Well,