Dust of Dreams

he was quickly past and into the next bizarre, disjointed conversation, quick as breaths, quick as the blur of his boots drumming the deck. Vigilant patrol, aye, no time for lingering, no time for all that unimportant stuff. Walk the rail and walk the rail, round and round, and this was decent exercise but he should have worn his chain and kit bag and maybe his folding shovel, and double time might be required, just so he could getto know all these sudden faces jumping up in front of him, know them inside and out and their names, too, and whether they liked smoked fish and chilled beer or proper piss-warm ale and so many bare feet what if someone attacked right here and now? they’d all have nails stuck in their tender soles and he’d be all alone leading the charge but that’d be fine since he could kill anything right now, even bats because they weren’t so fast were they? not as fast as those little burning sparks racing everywhere into his brain and back out again and in one ear out the other two and look at this! Marching on his knees, it was easy! Good thing since he’d worn his legs down to stumps and now the deck was coming up fast to knock on his nose and see if anyone was home but was anyone home? only the bats—
     
    ‘He going to live?’ Badan Gruk asked.
    ‘Eh? Egit primbly so, lurky bhagger.’
    ‘Good. Keep him under those blankets—I never seen a man sweat like that, he’s bound to chill himself to the bone, and keep forcing water down him.’
    ‘Dentellit meen bazness, Sornt! Eenit known eeler, eh?’
    ‘Fine then, just make sure you heal him. Sergeant Fiddler will not be pleased to hear his corporal went and died in your care.’
    ‘Fabbler kint shit ding! Ee nair feered im!’
    ‘Really? Then you’re an idiot, Nep.’
    Badan Gruk frowned down at Tarr. Some new fever to chase them down? He hoped not. It looked particularly unpleasant, reminding him of the shaking fever, only worse. This place had almost as many miserable diseases and parasites as in the jungles of Dal Hon.
    Feeling nostalgic, the sergeant left Tarr to Nep Furrow’s ministrations. He would have been happier if he’d been on the same barge as Sinter, even Kisswhere. Corporal Ruffle was around, but she’d discovered a bones and trough game with a few heavies and was either heading for a sharp rise in her income or a serious beating. No matter what, she’d make enemies. Ruffle was like that.
    He still didn’t know what to make of this army, these Bonehunters. He could find nothing—no detail—that made them what they were.
What we are. I’m one of them now.
There were no great glories in the history of these legions—he’d been in the midst of the conquest of Lether and it had been a sordid thing. When the tooth’s rotten right down to its root, it’s no feat to tug it out. Maybe it was a just war. Maybe it wasn’t. Did it make any difference? A soldier takes orders and a soldier fights. The enemy wore a thousand masks but they all turned out the same. Just people determined to stand in their way. This was supposed to be enough. Was it? He didn’t know.
    Surrounded by foreigners, friendly or otherwise, settled a kind of pressure on every Malazan soldier here. Demanding a shape to this army, and yet something was resisting it, something within the Bonehunters, as if hidden forces pushed back against that pressure.
We are and we aren’t, we will and we won’t. Are we just hollow at the core? Does it start and end with the Adjunct?
That notion felt uncharitable. People were just restless, uneasy with all this not knowing.
    Who was the enemy awaiting them? What sort of mask would they see this time?
    Badan Gruk could not remember ever knowing a person who deliberately chose to do the wrong thing, the evil thing—no doubt such people existed, the ones who simply didn’t care, and ones who, for all he knew, enjoyed wearing the dark trappings of malice. Armies served and sometimes they served tyrants—bloodthirsty bastards—and they fought against decent, right-minded folk out of fear and in the interests of self-preservation, and out of greed, too, come to that. Did they see themselves as evil? How could they not?
But then, how many campaigns could you fight, if you were in that army? How many before you started feeling sick inside? In your gut. In your head. When the momentum of all those conquests starts to falter, aye, what then?
    Or when your tyrant Empress betrays you?
    No one talked much about that,