The Crippled God

much trouble.
    The hauler on his right stumbled. Shortnose reached down one-handed and lifted the woman back on to her feet. She gasped her thanks.
    Now women. He could think about women all—
    ‘You’re Shortnose, aren’t ya?’
    He glanced down at her. She was short, with big, strong-looking legs – now that was bad luck for her, wasn’t it? The one thing that made proper men drool turned out getting her yoked like a – like a – ‘Yah, that’s me.’
    ‘Been tryin to look, y’see?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘I heard you got the same ear bitten off twice.’
    ‘So?’
    ‘Well, er, how’s that possible?’
    ‘Don’t ask me. It was all Bredd’s fault.’
    ‘Bredd? Nefarias Bredd? You were fighting him?’
    ‘Might have been. Save your breath, soldier. See this runt here? He ain’t saying a thing, cause he’s smart.’
    ‘It’s because he doesn’t understand Malazan.’
    ‘As good an excuse as any, I always say. Anyway, just keep pulling, and think about things you like to think about. To distract ya from all the bad stuff.’
    ‘What are you thinking about?’
    ‘Me? Women.’
    ‘Right,’ she said in a strangely cold tone. ‘So I guess I’ll think about handsome, clever men.’
    He smiled down at her. ‘You don’t have to do that, lass – you got one walking right beside you.’
    The boy went away and came back a short time later with some more cloth, which he gave to Shortnose so that he could stop his bleeding nose.
    Like his da used to say, ‘ There ain’t no figurin’ the ways of women .’ Too bad too. She was kinda pretty and, even better, she could swear the hide off a bhederin. Could there be a sexier combination? He didn’t think so.
    ‘You’d think I was some kind of leper. It ain’t my fault I been dead once, and maybe being dead once means things like getting thirsty don’t hurt as much – I don’t know.’
    ‘I have been condensing everything in sight,’ Bavedict said. ‘That’s what’s been keeping me going.’
    Hedge eyed the alchemist quizzically, and then he shrugged. ‘Beats talking all day, I suppose.’
    Bavedict opened his mouth and then shut it again.
    ‘How are the kittens?’
    ‘The kittens are just fine, Commander.’
    ‘We got enough of ’em?’
    ‘For more than one engagement? Hard to say, sir. I’m comfortable with one battle, using what we need and not holding back.’ He glanced back at the carriage, and then said, ‘I have given some thought to strategies, sir, with respect to alchemical … er … kittens. I don’t think being misers with them works. You want to go the opposite way, in fact. Flood the field of battle, hit them so hard the shock overwhelms them—’
    ‘I thought you wasn’t going to talk all night? Listen, we worked that out years ago. Walls and waves, we called it. Walls when you was holding a line or position. Waves when you was on the advance. And there ain’t no point in holding back – except the one with your own name on it, of course. Because every sapper will tell you, if you’re gonna kill ’em they’re gonna kill you at the same time, guaranteed. We call it disincentive.’
    Bavedict glanced back a second time, frowned at the troop stumping along beside the carriage. The captains weren’t doing well. Thinning out, but not in a good way. They’d not said much in days. Behind them walked the Khundryl, still leading their horses – so I wasn’t quite telling Hedge the truth. I didn’t just dose the oxen but you’d think they’d see —
    ‘Still nervous?’ Hedge asked him. ‘I’d be, if I was you. Khundryl like their horses. A lot. Between a warrior’s horse and his mother, it’s even odds which one he’d save, if it came down to choosing. Then you just went and killed ’em.’
    ‘They were dying anyway, sir. In a single day, a horse needs more water than four soldiers, and those Khundryl were running out. Try bleeding a dehydrated animal, sir – it isn’t easy.’
    ‘Right, so now they got undead horses and still no water, meaning if you’d done that a week ago, why, all that sacrifice wouldn’t have been necessary. They want to kill you, alchemist – it took me half a day to talk ’em out of it.’
    Bavedict glared at Hedge. ‘You just said, between horses and their mothers—’
    ‘They’d save their mothers, of course. What are you, an idiot?’
    The alchemist sighed.
    ‘Anyway,’ Hedge continued after a moment, ‘we’re all Bridgeburners now. Now it’s true, we killed a