A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

be.
    So easily, it could be.
    Remonstrance of mortality is a slap in the face, a
stinging shock. It is a struggle for one to overcome this
moment, to tighten the armour about one's soul, to see
bodies as nothing but objects, unpleasant, to be disposed of
quickly. Soldiers and undertakers fashion macabre humour
to deflect the simple, raw horror of what they must see,
of that to which they are witness. It rarely works. Instead,
the soul crawls away, scabbed, wounded, at peace with
nothing.
    A soldier goes to war. A soldier carries it back home.
Could leaders truly comprehend the damage they do to
their citizens, they would never send them to war. And if, in
knowing, they did so anyway – to appease their hunger for
power – then may they choke on the spoils for ever more.
    Ah, but the round man digresses. Forgive this raw spasm
of rage. A friend lies wrapped in canvas on the bed of a
cart. Death is on its way home. Forgive.
    Wending through Gadrobi District, life parted its
stream, voices dimmed, and it was some time after the
passing through of death that those voices arose once more
in its wake. Curtains of flies repeatedly billowed open and
closed again, until it seemed the ox pulled a stage of a
thousand acts, each one the same, and the chorus was a
bow wave of silence.
    Journey on, comes the prayer of all, journey on.
    *
    At last, the old man finds his destination and draws the ox
up opposite the doors, halting the beast with a tug on its
yoke. He spends a moment brushing dust from his clothes,
and then heads inside the Phoenix Inn.
    It has been a long night. He hobbles to a table and
catches the eye of one of the servers. He orders a tankard
of strong ale and a breakfast. Stomach before business. The
body's not going anywhere, is it?
    He did not know if it was love; he suspected he did not
understand that word. But there was something inside
Cutter that felt . . . sated. Was it just physical, these tangled
pitches and rolls and the oil of sweat, breaths hot in his
face with the scent of wine and rustleaf? Was it just the
taste of the forbidden, upon which he fed as might a bat
on nectar? If so, then he should have felt the same when
with Scillara, perhaps even more so, since without question
Scillara's skills in that area far eclipsed those of Challice,
whose hunger whispered of insatiable needs, transforming
her lovemaking into a frantic search that found no
appeasement, no matter how many times she convulsed
in orgasm.
    No, something was indeed different. Still, he was
troubled, wondering if this strange flavour came from
the betrayal they committed time and again. A married
woman, the sordid man's conquest. Had he become such a
man? Well, he supposed that he had, but not in the manner
of those men who made a career of seducing and stealing
the wives of other men. And yet, there was a sense, an
extraordinary sense, he admitted, of dark pleasure, savage
delight, and he could see just how addictive such living
could become.
    Even so, he was not about to pursue the headlong pitch
of promiscuity. There remained a part of him that thirsted
for an end – or, rather, a continuation: love and life made
stable, forces of reassurance and comfort. He was not about
to toss Challice aside and seek out a new lover. He was, he
told himself, not Murillio, who could travel with practised
ease from bedroom to bedroom – and see where it had got him , damn near murdered by some drunken suitor.
    Oh, there was a lesson there, yes. At least it seemed that
Murillio had heeded it, if the rumours of his 'retirement'
were accurate. And what about me? Have I taken note? It
seems not. I still go to her, I still plunge into this betrayal. I
go to her, so hungry, so desperate, it is as if we have remade
ourselves into perfect reflections. Me and Challice. Hand in
hand in our descent.
    Because it makes the fall easier, doesn't it?
    There was nothing to stop Gorlas Vidikas from exacting
vengeance. He would be entirely within his rights to hunt
them both down and murder them, and a part of Cutter
would not blame him if he did just that.
    He was thinking such thoughts as he walked to
the annexe warehouse, but they did little to assail his
anticipation. Into each other's arms again, desire hot as a
fever in their mouths, their hands, their groins. Proof, to
Cutter's mind, of the claims of some scholars that humans
were but animals – clever ones, but animals none the less.
There was no room for thinking, no space for