Reaper's Gale (The Malazan Book of the Fallen #7)

‘I’ve lost count. I was thirty but that was six years ago so I don’t know any more.’

‘The warrens, Beak-how many candles do you know about?’

‘Oh, lots. All of them.’

‘All of them.’

‘We had a half-Fenn blacksmith for my last two years and he once asked me to list them, so I did, then he said that was all of them. He said: “That’s all of them, Beak.”‘

‘What else did he say?’

‘Nothing much, only he made me this knife.’ Beak tapped the large weapon at his hip. ‘Then he told me to run away from home. Join the Malazan Army, so I wouldn’t get beaten any more for being stupid. I was one year less than thirty when I did that, just like he told me to, and I haven’t been beaten since. Nobody likes me but they don’t hurt me. I didn’t know the army would be so lonely.’

She was studying him the way most people did, then she asked, ‘Beak, did you never use your sorcery to defend yourself, or fight back?’

‘No.’

‘Have you ever seen your parents or brother since?’

‘My brother killed himself and my parents are dead-they died the night I left. So did the tutors.’

‘What happened to them?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Beak admitted. ‘Only, I showed them my candle.’

‘Have you done that since, Beak? Showed your candle?’

‘Not all of it, not all the light, no. The blacksmith told me not to, unless I had no choice.’

‘Like that last night with your family and tutors.’

‘Like that night, yes. They’d had the blacksmith whipped and driven off, you see, for giving me this knife. And then they tried to take it away from me. And all at once, I had no choice.’

So she said they were going away from the others, but here they were, trudging along with the rest, and the insects kept biting him, especially on the back of his neck, and getting stuck in his ears and up his nose, and he realized that he didn’t understand anything.

But she was right there, right at his side.

The platoon reached a kind of island in the swamp, moated in black water. It was circular, and as they scrambled onto it Beak saw moss-covered rubble.

‘Was a building here,’ one of the soldiers said.

‘Jaghut,’ Beak called out, suddenly excited. ‘Omtose Phellack. No flame, though, just the smell of tallow. The magic’s all drained away and that’s what made this swamp, but we can’t stay here, because there’s broken bodies under the rocks and those ghosts are hungry.’

They were all staring at him. He ducked his head. ‘Sorry.’

But Captain Faradan Sort laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘No need, Beak. These bodies-Jaghut?’

‘No. Forkrul Assail and Tiste Liosan. They fought on the ruins. During what they called the Just Wars. Here, it was only a skirmish, but nobody survived. They killed each other, and the last warrior standing had a hole in her throat and she bled out right where the Fist is standing. She was Forkrul Assail, and her last thought was about how victory proved they were right and the enemy was wrong. Then she died.’

‘It’s the only dry land anywhere in sight,’ Fist Keneb said. ‘Can any mage here banish the ghosts? No? Hood’s breath. Beak, what are they capable of doing to us anyway?’

‘They’ll eat into our brains and make us think terrible things, so that we all end up killing each other. That’s the thing with the Just Wars-they never end and never will because Justice is a weak god with too many names. The Liosan called it Serkanos and the Assail called it Rynthan. Anyway, no matter what language it spoke, its followers could not understand it. A mystery language, which is why it has no power because all its followers believe the wrong things-things they just make up and nobody can agree and that’s why the wars never end.’ Beak paused, looking around at the blank faces, then he shrugged. ‘I don’t know, maybe if I talk to them. Summon one and we can talk to it.’

‘I think not, Beak,’ the Fist said. ‘On your feet, soldiers, we’re moving on.’

No-one complained.

Faradan Sort drew Beak to one side. ‘We’re leaving them now,’ she said. ‘Which direction do you think will get us out of this the quickest?’

Beak pointed north.

‘How far?’

‘A thousand paces. That’s where the edge of the old Omtose Phellack is.’

She watched Keneb and his squads move down from the island, splashing their way further inland, due west. ‘How long before they’re out of this heading in that direction-heading west, I mean?’