A horseman rode to the wagon's rear, his armour clanking, his dusty cloak flapping as he slowed his charger. The visor on his burnished helm was raised, revealing a grey-shot beard, trimmed close, beneath hard eyes.
'Will you send me away as well, Mhybe?' he growled, his horse slowing to a walk to keep pace.
'Mhybe? That woman is dead,' she replied. 'You may leave here, Whiskeyjack.'
She watched him pull the tanned leather gloves from his wide, scarred hands, studied those hands as they finally came to a rest on the saddlehorn. There is a mason's brutality about them, yet they are endearing none the less. Any woman still alive would desire their touch.
'An end to the foolishness, Mhybe. We've need of your counsel. Korlat tells me you are racked with dreams. You cry out against a threat that approaches us, something vast and deadly. Woman, your terror is palpable — even now, I see that my words have rekindled it in your eyes. Describe your visions, Mhybe.'
Struggling against a painfully hammering heart, she barked a rough, broken laugh. 'You are all fools. Would you seek to challenge my enemy? My deadly, unopposable foe? Will you draw that sword of yours and stand in my stead?'
Whiskeyjack scowled. 'If that would help.'
'There is no need. What comes for me in my dreams comes for us all. Oh, perhaps we soften its terrible visage, the darkness of a cowl, a vague human shape, even a skull's grin which only momentarily shocks yet remains, none the less, deeply familiar — almost comforting. And we build temples to blunt the passage into its eternal domain. We fashion gates, raise barrows-'
'Your enemy is death?' Whiskeyjack glanced away, then met her eyes again. 'This is nonsense, Mhybe. You and I are both too old to fear death.'
'Face to face with Hood!' she snapped. 'That is how you see it — you fool! He is the mask behind which hides something beyond your ability to comprehend. I have seen it! I know what awaits me!'
'Then you no longer yearn for it-'
'I was mistaken, back then. I believed in my tribe's spirit-world. I have sensed the ghosts of my ancestors. But they are but memories made manifest, a sense of self desperately holding itself together by strength of its own will and naught else. Fail in that will, and all is lost. For ever.'
'Is oblivion so terrible, Mhybe?'
She leaned forward, gripping the wagon's sides with fingers that clawed, nails that dug into the weathered wood. 'What lies beyond is not oblivion, you ignorant man! No, imagine a place crowded with fragmented memories — memories of pain, of despair — all those emotions that carve deepest upon our souls.' She fell back, weakened, and slowly sighed, her eyes closing. 'Love drifts like ashes, Whiskeyjack. Even identity is gone. Instead, all that is left of you is doomed to an eternity of pain and terror — a succession of fragments from everyone — every thing — that has ever lived. In my dreams … I stand upon the brink. There is no strength in me — my will has already shown itself weak, wanting. When I die … I see what awaits me, I see what hungers for me, for my memories, for my pain.' She opened her eyes, met his gaze. 'It is the true Abyss, Whiskeyjack. Beyond all the legends and stories, it is the true Abyss. And it lives unto itself, consumed by rapacious hunger.'
'Dreams can be naught but an imagination's fashioning of its own fears, Mhybe,' the Malazan said. 'You are projecting a just punishment for what you perceive as your life's failure.'
Her eyes narrowed on him. 'Get out of my sight,' she growled, turning away, drawing her hood tighter about her head, cutting off the outside world — all that lay beyond the warped, stained planks of the wagon's bed. Begone, Whiskeyjack, with your sword-thrust words, the cold, impervious armour of your ignorance. You cannot answer all that I have seen with a simple, brutal statement. I am not a stone for your rough hands. The knots within me defy your chisel.
Your sword-thrust words shall not cut to my heart.
I dare not accept your wisdom. I dare-
Whiskeyjack. You bastard.
The commander rode at a gentle canter through the dust until he reached the vanguard of the Malazan army. Here, he found Dujek, flanked by Korlat on one side and the Daru, Kruppe, on the other, the latter tottering uneasily on a mule, hands waving about at the swarming midges.
'A plague on these pernicious gnats! Kruppe despairs!'
'The wind will pick up soon enough,' Dujek growled. 'We're approaching hills.'
Korlat drew closer alongside Whiskeyjack. 'How does she fare, Commander?'
He grimaced. 'No better. Her spirit is as twisted and shrunken as her body. She has fashioned a vision of death that has her fleeing it in terror.'
'Tat- Silverfox feels abandoned by her mother. This leads to bitterness. She no longer welcomes our company.'
'Her too? This is turning into a contest of wills, I think. Isolation is the last thing she needs, Korlat.'
'In that she is like her mother, as you have just intimated.'
He let out a long sigh, shifted in his saddle. His thoughts began to drift; he was weary, his leg aching and stiff. Sleep had been eluding him. They had heard virtually nothing of the fate of Paran and the Bridgeburners. The warrens had become impassable. Nor were they certain if the siege of Capustan was under way, or of the city's fate. Whiskeyjack had begun to regret sending the Black Moranth away. Dujek and Brood's armies were marching into the unknown; even the Great Raven Crone and her kin had not been seen for over a week.
It's these damned warrens and the sickness now filling them.
'They're late,' Dujek muttered.
'And no more than that, Kruppe assures one and all. Recall the last delivery. Almost dusk, it was. Three horses left on the lead wagon, the others killed and cut from the traces. Four shareholders gone, their souls and earnings scattered to the infernal winds. And the merchant herself! Near death, she was. The warning was clear, my friends — the warrens have been compromised. And as we march ever closer to the Domin, the foulment grows ever more … uh, foul.'
'Yet you insist they'll make it through again.'
'Kruppe does, High Fist! The Trygalle Trade Guild honours its contracts. They are not to be underestimated. 'Tis the day of their delivery of supplies. Said supplies shall therefore be delivered. And, assuming Kruppe's request has been honoured, among those supplies will be crates of the finest insect repellent ever created by the formidable alchemists of Darujhistan!'
Whiskeyjack leaned towards Korlat. 'Where in the line does she walk?' he asked quietly.
'At the very rear, Commander-'
'And is anyone watching her?'
The Tiste Andii woman glanced over and frowned. 'Is there need?'
'How in Hood's name should I know?' he snapped. A moment later he scowled. 'Your pardon, Korlat. I shall seek her out myself.' He swung his mount around, nudged it into a canter.
'Tempers grow short,' Kruppe murmured as the commander rode away. 'But not as short as Kruppe, for whom all nasty words whiz impactless over his head, and are thus lost in the ether. And those darts aimed lower, ah, they but bounce from Kruppe's ample equanimity-'
'Fat, you mean,' Dujek said, wiping dust from his brow then leaning over to spit onto the ground.
'Ahem, Kruppe, equably cushioned, blithely smiles at the High Fist's jibe. It is the forthright bluntness of soldiers that one must bathe in whilst on the march leagues from civilization. Antidote to the snipes of gutter rats, a refreshing balm to droll, sardonic nobles — why prick with a needle when one can use a hammer, eh? Kruppe breathes deep — but not so deep as to cough from the dust-laden stench of nature — such simple converse. The intellect must needs shift with alacrity from the intricate and delicate steps of the court dance to the tribal thumping of boots in grunting cadence-'