Reaper's Gale - Page 195/470

Armies get unruly when that happens. Almost as bad as no loot and no pay.

We were soldiers of the empire. Our families depended on the wages, the tax relief, the buy-outs and the pensions. And a lot of us were young enough to think about signing out, making a new life, one that didn’t involve swinging a sword and looking in the eye of some snarling thug wanting to cut you in two. Some of us were damned tired.

So, what kept us together?

Well, no ship likes to sail alone, does it?

But Fist Blistig knew that there was more to it. Dried blood holding everyone in place like glue. The seared burn of betrayal, the sting of fury. And a commander who sacrificed her own love to see them all survive.

He had spent too many days and nights on the Froth Wolf standing no less than five paces from the Adjunct, studying her stiff back as she faced the surly seas. A woman who showed nothing, but some things no mortal could hide, and one of those things was grief. He had stared and he had wondered. Was she going to come through this?

Someone-might have been Keneb, who at times seemed to understand Tavore better than anyone else, maybe even Tavore herself-had then made a fateful decision. The Adjunct had lost her aide. In Malaz City. Aide, and lover. Now, maybe nothing could be done about the lover, but the role of aide was an official position, a necessary one for any commander. Not a man, of course-would have to be a woman for certain.

Blistig recalled that night, even as the eleventh bell was sounded on deck-the ragged fleet, flanked by the Perish Thrones of War, was three days east of Kartool, beginning a northward-wending arc to take them round the tumultuous, deadly straits between Malaz Island and the coast of Korel-and the Adjunct was standing alone just beyond the forecastle mast, the wind tugging fitfully at her rain cape, making Blistig think of a broken-winged crow. A second figure appeared, halting close to Tavore on her left. Where T’amber would stand, where any aide to a commander would stand.

Tavore’s head had turned in startlement, and words were exchanged-too low for Blistig’s ears-followed by a salute from the newcomer.

The Adjunct is alone. So too is another woman, seemingly as bound up in grief as Tavore herself, yet this one possesses an edge, an anger tempered like Aren steel. Short on patience, which might be precisely what’s needed here.

Was it you, Keneb?

Of course, Lostara Yil, once a captain in the Red Blades, now just one more outlawed soldier, had revealed no inclinations to take a woman to her bed. Not anyone, in fact. Yet she was no torture to look at, if one had a taste for broken glass made pretty. That and Pardu tattoos. But it was just as likely that the Adjunct wasn’t thinking in those terms. Too soon. Wrong woman.

Throughout the fleet, officers had been reporting talk of mutiny among the soldiers-excepting, oddly enough, the marines, who never seemed capable of thinking past the next meal or game of Troughs. A succession of reports, delivered in increasingly nervous tones, and it had seemed the Adjunct was unwilling or unable to even so much as care.

You can heal wounds of the flesh well enough, but it’s the other ones that can bleed out a soul.

After that night, Lostara Yil clung to a resentful Tavore like a damned tick. Commander’s aide. She understood the role. In the absence of actual direction from her commander, Lostara Yil assumed the task of managing nearly eight thousand miserable soldiers. The first necessity was clearing up the matter of pay. The fleet was making sail for Theft, a paltry kingdom torn to tatters by Malazan incursions and civil war. Supplies needed to be purchased, but more than that, the soldiers needed leave and for that there must be not only coin but the promise of more to come, lest the entire army disappear into the back streets of the first port of call.

The army’s chests could not feed what was owed.

So Lostara hunted down Banaschar, the once-priest of D’rek. Hunted him down and cornered him. And all at once, those treasury chests were overflowing.

Now, why Banaschar? How did Lostara know?

Grub, of course. That scrawny runt climbing the rigging with those not-quite-right bhok’aral-I ain’t once seen him come down, no matter how brutal the weather. Yet Grub somehow knew about Banaschar’s hidden purse, and somehow got the word to Lostara Yil.

The Fourteenth Army was suddenly rich. Too much handed out all at once would have been disastrous, but Lostara knew that. Enough that it be seen, that the rumours were let loose to scamper like stoats through every ship in the fleet.

Soldiers being what they were, it wasn’t long before they were griping about something else, and this time the Adjunct’s aide could do nothing to give answer.

Where in Hood’s name are we going?