Steven Erikson - Memories of Ice

'These are pointless words, Korlat. The army standing over there has witnessed its commander committing murder-'

Korlat's hissing retort shocked him. 'Do not dare underestimate them!'

'Underest-'

'I have come to know many of your soldiers, Whiskeyjack. They are not fools. Perhaps many of them — if not most — are unable to articulate their fullest understanding, but they understand none the less. Do you not think that they — each in his or her own way — have faced the choice you faced this morning? The knife-point turn of their lives? And every one of them still feels the scar within them.'

'I see little-'

'Whiskeyjack, listen to me. They witnessed. They saw, in fullest knowing. Damn you, I know this for I felt the same. They hurt for you. With every brutal blow, they felt the old wounds within them resonate in sympathy. Commander, your shame is an insult. Discard it, or you will deliver unto your soldiers the deepest wound of all.'

He stared down at her. 'We're a short-lived people,' he said after a long moment. 'We lack such complexity in our lives.'

'Bastard. Remind me to never again apologize to you.'

He looked back once more at the Malazan legions. 'I still fear to face them at close range,' he muttered.

'The distance between you and them has already closed, Whiskeyjack. Your army will follow you into the Abyss, should you so command.'

'The most frightening thought uttered thus far today.'

She made no reply to that.

Aye, war's imposition — of extremities. Harsh, yet simple. It is no place for humanity, no place at all. 'Dujek was displeased,' he said.

'Dujek wants to keep his army alive.'

His head snapped round.

Her eyes regarded him, cool and gauging.

'I have no interest in usurping his authority-'

'You just did, Whiskeyjack. Laseen's fear of you be damned, the natural order has reasserted itself. She could handle Dujek. That's why she demoted you and put him in charge. Gods, you can be dense at times!'

He scowled. 'If I am such a threat to her, why didn't she-' He stopped, closed his mouth. Oh, Hood. Pale. Darujhistan. It wasn't the Bridgeburners she wanted destroyed. It was me.

'Guard your trust, my love,' Korlat said. 'It may be that your belief in honour is being used against you.'

He felt himself go cold inside.

Oh, Hood.

Hood's marble balls on an anvil.

Coll made his way down the gentle slope towards the Mhybe's wagon. Thirty paces to the right were the last of the Trygalle Trade Guild's carriages, a group of shareholders throwing bones on a tarp nearby. Messengers rode in the distance, coming from or returning to the main army's position a league to the southwest.

Murillio sat with his back to one of the Rhivi wagon's solid wood wheels, eyes closed.

They opened upon the councillor's arrival.

'How does she fare?' Coll asked, crouching down beside him.

'It is exhausting,' Murillio replied. 'To see her suffer those nightmares — they are endless. Tell me the news.'

'Well, Kruppe and Silverfox haven't been seen since yesterday; nor have those two marines Whiskeyjack had guarding the Mhybe's daughter. As for the battle …' Coll looked away, squinting southwestward. 'It was short-lived. Anomander Rake assumed his Soletaken form. A single pass dispersed the Tenescowri. Anaster was captured, and, uh, the mages in his service were … executed.'

'Sounds unpleasant,' Murillio commented.

'By all reports it was. In any case, the peasants are fleeing back to Capustan, where I doubt they will be much welcome. It's a sad fate indeed for those poor bastards.'

'She's been forgotten, hasn't she?'

Coll did not need to ask for elaboration. 'A hard thing to swallow, but aye, it does seem that way.'

'Outlived her usefulness, and so discarded.'

'I cling to a faith that this is a tale not yet done, Murillio.'

'We are the witnesses. Here to oversee the descent. Naught else, Coll. Kruppe's assurances are nothing but wind. And you and I, we are prisoners of this unwelcome circumstance — as much as she is, as much as that addled Rhivi woman who comes by to comb her hair.'

Coll slowly swung to study his old friend. 'What do you suggest we do?' he asked.

Shrugging, Murillio growled, 'What do most prisoners do sooner or later?'

'They try to escape.'

'Aye.'

Coll said nothing for a long moment, then he sighed. 'And how do you propose we do that? Would you just leave her? Alone, untended-'

'Of course not. No, we take her with us.'

'Where?'

'I don't know! Anywhere! So long as it's away.'

'And how far will she need to go to escape those nightmares?'

'We need only find someone willing to help her, Coll. Someone who does not judge a life by expedience and potential usefulness.'

'This is an empty plain, Murillio.'

'I know.'

'Whereas, in Capustan …'

The younger man's eyes narrowed. 'By all accounts, it's little more than rubble.'

'There are survivors. Including priests.'

'Priests!' he snorted. 'Self-serving confidence artists, swindlers of the gullible, deceivers of-'

'Murillio, there are exceptions to that-'

'I've yet to see one.'

'Perhaps this time. My point is, if we're to escape this — with her — we've a better chance of finding help in Capustan than out here in this wasteland.'

'Saltoan-'

'Is a week or more away, longer with this wagon. Besides, the city is Hood's crusted navel incarnate. I wouldn't take Rallick Nom's axe-wielding mother to Saltoan.'

Murillio sighed. 'Rallick Nom.'

'What of him?'

'I wish he were here.'

'Why?'

'So he could kill someone. Anyone. The man's a wonder at simplifying matters.'

Coll grunted a laugh. ' "Simplifying matters." Wait until I tell him that one. Hey, Rallick, you're not an assassin, you know, you're just a man who simplifies.'

'Well, it's a moot point in any case, since he disappeared.'

'He's not dead.'

'How do you know?'

'I just know. So, Murillio, do we wait until Capustan?'

'Agreed. And once there, we follow the example of Kruppe and Silverfox. We slip away. Vanish. Hood knows, I doubt anyone will notice, much less care.'

Coll hesitated, then said, 'Murillio, if we find someone — someone who can do something for the Mhybe — well, it's likely to be expensive.'

The man shrugged. 'I've been in debt before.'

'As have I. So long as it's understood that this will likely mean our financial ruin, and all that might be achieved is a kinder end to her life.'

'A worthwhile exchange, then.'

Coll did not ask for another affirmation of his friend's resolve. He knew Murillio too well for that. Aye, it's naught but coin, isn't it? No matter the amount, a fair exchange to ease an old woman's suffering. One way or the other. For at least we will have cared — even if she never again awakens and thus knows nothing of what we do. Indeed, it is perhaps better that way. Cleaner. Simpler.

The howl echoed as if from a vast cavern. Echoed, folded in on itself until the mourning call became a chorus. Bestial voices in countless numbers, voices that stripped away the sense of time itself, that made eternity into a single now.

The voices of winter.

Yet they came from the south, from the place where the tundra could go no further; where the trees were no longer ankle-high, hut rose, still ragged, wind-tom and spindly, over her head, so that she could pass unseen — no longer towering above the landscape.

Kin answered that howl. The pursuing beasts, still on her trail, yet losing her now, as she slipped among the black spruce, the boggy ground sucking hungrily at her bare feet, the black' stained water swirling thick and turgid as she waded chill pools. Huge mosquitoes swarmed her, each easily twice the size of those she knew on the Rhivi Plain. Blackflies crawled in her hair, bit her scalp. Round leeches like black spots covered her limbs.