Deadhouse Gates

Apt approached the portalway.

Shadowthrone gestured. 'Go on then, trail the ones trailing the Bridgeburner. Whiskeyjack's soldiers were ever loyal, I seem to recall. Kalam does not intend to kiss Laseen's cheeks when he finds her, of that I'm certain.'

Apt hesitated, then spoke one last time.

A grimace entered the god's tone as he replied. 'That High Priest of mine alarms even me. If he cannot deceive the hunters on the Path of Hands, my precious realm – which has seen more than its share of intruders of late – will become very crowded indeed ...' Shadowthrone wagged his head. 'It was a simple task, after all.' He began to drift away, his Hounds following suit. 'Can anyone find reliable, competent help these days, I wonder ...'

A moment later Apt was alone, the shadows slipping away.

The portalway had begun to weaken, slowly closing the wound between the realms. The demon rasped words of comfort. The boy nodded.

They slid into the Imperial Warren.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Ages unveiled the Holy Desert.

Raraku was once an ochre sea.

She stood in the wind

on the pride of a spire

and saw ancient fleets –

ships of bone, sails of bleached

hair, charging the crest

to where the waters slipped

beneath the sands

of the desert to come.

The Holy Desert

Anonymous

Aline of feral white goats stood on the crest of the tel known as Samon, silhouetted against a startlingly blue sky. Like bestial gods carved from marble, they watched as the vast train wound through the valley swathed in a massive cloud of dust. That they numbered seven was an omen not lost on Duiker as he rode with the south flanking patrol of Foolish Dog Wickans.

Nine hundred paces behind the historian marched five companies of the Seventh, slightly under a thousand soldiers, while the same distance behind them rode another patrol of two hundred and fifty Wickans. The three units comprised the south-facing guard for the now close to fifty thousand refugees, as well as livestock, that made up the main column, and were mirrored with similar forces on the north side. An inner ring of loyal Hissari Infantry and Marines were spread out along the column's edges – walking alongside the hapless civilians.

A rearguard of a thousand Wickans from each of the clans rode in the train's dust over two-thirds of a league east of Duiker's position. Though split and riding in troops of a dozen or less, their task was impossible. Tithansi raiders nipped at the battered tail of the refugee column, snaring the Wickans in an eternal running skirmish. The back end of Coltaine's train was a bleeding wound never allowed to heal.

The vanguard to the refugees consisted of the surviving elements of the Seventh's attachment of medium-equipped cavalry – slightly more than two hundred riders in all. Before them rode the Malazan nobles in their carriages and wagons, flanked on either side by ten companies of the 7th Infantry. Close to a thousand additional soldiers of the Seventh – the walking wounded – provided the nobles with their own vanguard, while ahead of them rolled the wagons bearing the cutters and their more seriously injured charges. Coltaine and a thousand riders of his Crow Clan spearheaded the entire column.

But there were too many refugees and too few able combatants, and for all the Malazan efforts, Kamist Reloe's raiding parties struck like vipers in brilliantly co-ordinated mayhem. A new commander had come to Reloe's army of the Apocalypse, a nameless Tithansi warleader charged with harrying the train day and night as it crawled painfully westward – a bloodied and battered serpent that refused to die – and this warrior now posed the most serious threat to Coltaine.

A slow, calculated slaughter. We're being toyed with. The endless dust had scratched the historian's throat raw, making every swallow agony. They were running perilously low on water, the memories of Sekala River now a parched yearning. The nightly slaughter of cattle, sheep, pigs and goats had intensified, as animals were released from suffering, then butchered to flavour the vast cauldrons of blood-stew, marrow and oats that had become everyone's main sustenance. Each night the encampment became an abattoir of screaming beasts, the air alive with rhizan and capemoths drawn to the killing stations. The cacophonous uproar and chaos each dusk had scraped Duiker's nerves raw – and he was not alone in that. Madness haunted their days, stalking them as relentlessly as Kamist Reloe and his vast army.

Corporal List rode alongside the historian in numbed silence, his head dropped low on his chest, his shoulders slumped. He seemed to be ageing before Duiker's eyes.

Their world had dwindled. We totter on edges seen and unseen. We are reduced, yet defiant. We've lost the meaning of time. Endless motion broken only by its dulled absence – the shock of rest, of those horns sounding an end to the day's plodding. For that moment, as the dust swirls on, no-one moves. Standing in disbelief that another day has passed, and yet still we live.