Brohl Handar grimaced. ‘Rearguard again.’
‘You will see a fight this day, Overseer. I am sure of that.’
He was not convinced, but he turned away then. Two strides along and he paused and said, ‘May this day announce the end of this war.’
The Atri-Preda did not reply. It was not even certain she had heard him, as she was speaking quietly to the soldier who had been his escort. He saw surprise flit across her features beneath the helm, then she nodded.
Brohl Handar glared up at the sun, and longed for the shadowed forests of home. Then he set out for his Arapay.
Sitting on a boulder, Toc Anaster watched the children play for a moment longer, then he rolled the thinned flat of hide into a scroll and slipped it into his satchel, and added the brush of softened wood and the now-resealed bowl of charcoal, marrow and gaenth-berry ink. He rose, squinted skyward for a moment, then walked over to his horse. Seven paces, and by the time he arrived his moccasins were oversized clumps of mud. He tied the satchel to the saddle, drew a knife and bent down to scrape away as much of the mud as he could.
The Awl were gathered in their ranks off to his left, standing, waiting as the Letherii forces five hundred paces away jostled into the formations they would seek to main-lain in the advance. Redmask’s warriors seemed strangely silent-of course, this was not their kind of battle. ‘No,’ Toc muttered. ‘This is the Letherii kind.’ He looked across at the enemy.
Classic wedges in sawtooth, Toc observed. Three arrow
heads of heavy infantry. Those formations would be rather messy by the time they reached the Awl. Moving slow, with soldiers falling, stumbling and slipping with every stride they attempted. All to the good. There would be no heaving push at the moment of contact, not without entire front ranks of heavily armoured soldiers falling flat on their
faces.
‘You will ride away,’ Torrent said behind him. ‘Or so you think. But I will be watching you, Mezla-’
‘Oh, put it to rest,’ Toe said. ‘It’s hardly my fault Redmask doesn’t think you’re worth much, Torrent. Besides,’ he added, ‘it’s not as if a horse could do much more than walk in this. And finally, Redmask has said he might want me close to hand-with my arrows-in case the K’Chain Che’Malle fail.’
‘They will not fail.’
‘Oh, and what do you know of K’Chain Che’Malle, Torrent?’
‘I know what Redmask tells us.’
‘And what does he know? More to the point, how does he know? Have you not wondered that? Not even once? The K’Chain Che’Malle are this world’s demons. Creatures of the far past. Virtually everywhere else they are extinct. So what in Hood’s name are they doing here? And why are they at Redmask’s side, seemingly eager to do as he bids?’
‘Because he is Redmask, Mezla. He is not as we are and yes, I see how the envy burns in your eye. You will ever despise those who are better than you.’
Toc leaned his forearms across the back of his horse. ‘Come closer, Torrent. Look into the eyes of this mare here. Tell me, do you see envy?’
‘A mindless beast.’
‘That will probably die today.’
‘I do not understand you, Mezla.’
‘I know. Anyway, I see that same look in your eyes, Torrent. That same blind willingness. To believe everything you need to believe. Redmask is to you as I am to this poor horse.’
‘I will listen to you no longer.’
The young warrior headed off, the stiffness of his strides soon deteriorating in the conglomeration of mud on his feet.
Nearby the children were flinging clumps of the stuff at each other and laughing. The younger ones, that is. Those carrying a few more years were silent, staring over at the enemy forces, where horns had begun sounding, and now, two well-guarded groups edging out to the very edge of the ancient shore. The mages.
We begin, then.
Far to the west the sun had yet to rise. In a nondescript village a day’s fast march from Letheras, where too many had died in the past two days, three Falari heavy infantry from 3rd Company sat on one edge of a horse trough out’ side the only tavern. Lookback, Drawfirst and Shoaly were cousins, or so the others thought of them, given their shared Falar traits of fiery red hair and blue eyes, and the olive-hued skin of the main island’s indigenous people, who called themselves the Walk. The idea seemed convenient enough, although none had known the others before enlisting in the Malazan Army.
The Walk civilization had thrived long ago, before the coming of iron, in fact, and as miners of tin, copper and lead it had once dominated all the isles of the archipelago in the trade of bronze weapons and ornamentation. Had they been of pure Walk blood, the soldiers would have been squatter, black-haired and reputedly laconic to the point of somnolent; as it was, they all possessed the harder, fiercer blood of the Falari invaders who had conquered most of the islands generations past. The combination, oddly enough, made for superb marines.