A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

that look in his eyes, as if he
knew he was better, so much better it was easy to be nice to
all the stupider people. Easy to smile and say nice things.
Easy to be helpful and generous.
    Venaz wandered out from Bainisk's body. Something
was missing – and not just Harllo's body. And then, after
a moment, he realized what it was. The rest of the damned
rope, which should have fallen close to the cliff base, close
to Bainisk. The damned rope was gone – and so was Harllo .
    He worked his way along the crevasse and after twenty
or so steps he reached the edge of the floor, which he discovered
wasn't a floor at all, but a plug, a bridge of fallen
rock. The crevasse dropped away an unknown depth, and
the air rising from below was hot and dry. Frightened by
the realization that he was standing on something that
could collapse and fall away at any moment, Venaz hurried
back in the other direction.
    Harllo was probably badly hurt. He must have been.
Unless . . . maybe he had been already down, standing,
holding the damned rope, just waiting for Bainisk to join
him. Venaz found his mouth suddenly dry. He'd been
careless. That wouldn't go down well, would it? This
could only work out right if he tracked the runt down and
finished him off. The thought sent a cold tremor through
him – he'd never actually killed somebody before. Could he
even do it? He'd have to, to make everything right.
    The plug sloped slightly upward on the other side of
Bainisk's body, and each chunk of stone was bigger, the
spaces between them whistling with winds from below.
Terrifying grating sounds accompanied his every tender
step.
    Fifteen paces on, another sudden drop-off. Baffled,
Venaz worked his way along the edge. He reached the
facing wall – the other side of the crevasse – and held
high the lantern. In the light he saw an angular fissure,
two shelves of bedrock where one side had shifted faster
and farther than the other – he could even see where the
broken seams continued between the shelves. The drop
had been about a body's height, and the fissure – barely a
forearm wide – angled sharply into a kind of chute.
    Bainisk would never have squeezed into that crack.
But Harllo could, and did – it was the only way off the
plug.
    Venaz retied the lantern, and then forced himself into
the fissure. A tight fit. He could only draw half-breaths
before the cage of his ribs met solid, unyielding stone.
Whimpering, he pushed himself deeper, but not so deep as
to get stuck – no, to climb he'd need at least one arm free.
By crabbing one leg sideways and squirming with his torso,
he moved himself into a position whereby he could hitch
himself up in increments. The dry, baked feel of the stone
began as a salvation. Had it been wet he would simply have
slid back down again and again. Before he'd managed two
man-heights, however, he was slick with sweat, and finding
streaks of the same above him, attesting to Harllo's own
struggles. And he found that the only way he could hold
himself in place between forward hitches was to take the
deepest breath he could manage, turning his own chest
into a wedge, a plug. The rough, worn fabric of his tunic
was rubbing his skin raw.
    How much time passed? How long this near vertical
passage? Venaz lost all sense of such details. He was in
darkness, a world of stone walls, dry gusts of air along one
flank, a right arm that screamed with fatigue. He bled. He
oozed sweat. He was a mass of scrapes and gouges. But then
the fissure widened in step fractures, each one providing
a blessed ledge on which to finally rest his quivering
muscles. Widening, becoming a manageable chute. He
was able to draw in deep breaths, and the creaking ache of
his ribs slowly faded. He continued on, and before long he
reached a new stress fracture, this one cutting straight into
the bedrock, perpendicular to the chute.
    Venaz hesitated, and then worked his way into it, to see
how far it went – and almost instantly he smelled humus,
faint and stale, and a little farther in he arrived at an almost
horizontal dip where forest detritus had settled. Behind
that heady smell there was something else – acrid, fresh.
He brightened the lantern and held it out before him. A
steep slope of scree rose along the passage, and even as he
scanned it there was the clatter of stones bouncing down to
patter amidst the dried leaves and dead moss.
    He hurried to the base of the slide and peered upward.
    And saw Harllo – no more than twenty