Without warning barred gates thrust across the narrow corridor they walked, separating Lazar at the front and Fingers at the rear. Lazar tensed to fight but a sharp sign from Blues stood him down, and he relaxed, reluctantly. The guards unlatched the big fighter from the chain gang and led him off down another corridor; the same was done to Fingers, who called after them: ‘See you around!’ Shell and Blues were left together for the moment until a Chosen soldier in his silvered blue-black armour and dark blue cloak unhitched Blues and led him off.
She was alone. After the Chosen escorting Blues up another corridor had disappeared, a regular local guard pulled at her blonde hair. ‘You’re for the wall, then,’ he said, so close she could smell his foul breath. ‘What a waste. How ’bout a last screw before you die? Hmm?’
She kneed him in the groin and he fell gasping. Before the rest of the escort could react she stomped on his upturned face, spraying blood all down his chest. Only then did they grab her arms and she allowed them to pull her away — that had been enough of a demonstration. Two of her escort remained behind to walk the injured guard to an infirmary, leaving only three to restrain her. She realized she could easily overpower these, but that was not her intent. She could hardly find Bars as a fugitive on the run. And so she meekly submitted to their amateurish cuffs and prodding.
Now she sat in a holding pen, fettered at the ankles, legs drawn up tight to her chest to help conserve her warmth. Lining both walls of the long narrow chamber were her putative co-combatants: a more surly and unimpressive lot she couldn’t have imagined. Prisoners all, unwilling, uncooperative, more like those condemned to die by execution than fighting men and women who believed they possessed any chance for survival. Shell was mystified. With these tools the Chosen expected to defend the wall? They might as well throw these people off the top for all the difference it would make.
‘Who here is a veteran?’ she called out to the entire chamber. ‘Anyone stood before?’
In the torchlit gloom eyes glittered as they shifted to her. A brazier in the centre of the room crackled and hissed in the silence. ‘Who in the Lady’s name are you?’ someone shouted.
‘Foreign bitch!’
‘Malazan whore!’
A man who had been ladling out stew up and down the line knelt before her. ‘There’s no point,’ he murmured as he dropped a portion of stew into a bowl at her feet.
‘We’d have a better chance if we-’
‘Chance? What chance is it you think most here have?’ On his haunches he studied her, his gaze sympathetic. ‘You are Malazan, yes?’ She nodded. ‘Already then they hate you. What’s worse, you are a veteran, yes?’ She nodded again, but puzzled now. ‘So most here hate you even more. And why? Because already you stand a much greater chance of surviving than they — you see?’
‘If we worked together we’d all stand a much greater chance.’
He shook his head. ‘No. It does not work that way.’
His accent was strange to her. ‘You’re not from round here either.’
‘No. I’m from south Genabackis.’ He stood, motioned to a man apparently asleep two places down, older, with a touch of grey in his hair. ‘Ask him how it works.’
‘Thank you — what’s your name?’
He paused, looking back. ‘Jemain.’
‘Shell.’
‘Good luck, Shell.’
She squinted over at the older fellow, ignored the continuing insults regarding her person and what she might do with a spear. ‘Hey, you — old man!’
The fellow did not stir. He must be awake; no one could sleep amid all this uproar. She found a piece of stone and threw it at him. He cracked open an eye, rubbed his unshaven jaw.
‘What’s the routine?’ she demanded.
He sighed as if already exhausted by her, said, ‘It’s in pairs. One shieldman. One spearman — or woman,’ he added, nodding to her.
‘That’s stupid. We should mass together, fend them off.’
He was shaking his head. ‘That’s not the Stormguard’s priority. Their priority is to cover the wall. There’s a good stone’s throw between you and the next pair.’
‘That’s stupid,’ she repeated. This entire exercise struck her as stupid. An utter waste.
The older fellow shrugged. He was eyeing her now, narrowly. ‘You’re not Sixth Army.’
‘No. I’m not.’
‘What’re you doing here then?’
‘Shipwrecked on the west coast.’
‘What in Hood’s name you doin’ there?’
It was her turn to shrug. He bared his yellowed teeth in answer to his own question. ‘Reconnaissance, hey?’
She didn’t reply and he leaned his head back against the stone wall. ‘Don’t matter. We’re not goin’ anywhere.’
Two days later the Chosen came for them.
The bronze-bound door slammed open and a detail entered to unlatch the chain securing their ankle fetters. Covered by crossbowmen, the lines along both walls stood. At an order one file, Shell’s, began shuffling along out of the door. The line walked corridors, ever upwards, the air getting colder and steadily more damp. They came out into a night-time snowstorm. Guards pushed them up steep ice-slick stairs cut from naked stone. The cold snatched Shell’s breath away and bit at her hands and feet. To left and right lay slopes of heaped boulders rising up to disappear into the driven snow that came blasting from the darkness. The guards urged them on with blows from the flat of their blades. As she walked she tore a strip of cloth from her inner shirt and wrapped it round her hands.
From down beneath the rock came a great shudder that struck Shell like a blow. Stones tumbled and grated amid the boulders. A roar sounded above, a waterfall thundering, which slowly passed. The file of prisoners exchanged wide-eyed, terrified glances.
The Stormwall. She was to stand it. Only now did the certitude of such an unreal and outrageous fate strike home. Who would’ve imagined it? The stairs led up into a tower and a circular staircase. In a chamber within the tower two Chosen Stormguard awaited them at the only other exit, a portal leading to narrow ascending stairs. A single brazier cast a weak circle of warmth in the centre of the room. ‘Sit,’ one of the Stormguard told them.
While they waited, regular guards distributed sets of battered armour, mostly studded leathers, some boiled cuirasses, a few leather caps. All the equipment bore the gouges and scars of terrible blows — many obviously mortal. Just for the warmth, Shell grabbed a cap and strapped it on tight. No one spoke. Two men vomited where they sat. One shuffled to the piss-hole in a corner at least five times. The vomit froze solid on the stone-flagged floor.
Shell saw piled rags and took a bunch to wrap round her head, neck and hands. The old veteran, she noticed, had unwound a scarf from his waist and wrapped it round his head and neck.
A shout echoed from the stairway and the Stormguard closed on the front of the line. While one watched, the other struck the chain from the fetters. The first two, the first ‘pair’, were pushed up the stairs.
Counting off, Shell looked at the man next to her, her partner to be. He was skinny and shuddering uncontrollably — either from the cold or from terror. ‘What’s your name?’
The man flinched as if she’d struck him. ‘What?’
‘Your name… what is it?’
‘What does that matter? We’re dead, aren’t we?’
‘Quiet,’ one of the Stormguard warned.
‘We’re planning!’ she answered, glaring. The man scowled but didn’t answer. ‘Have you used a spear?’
The fellow looked on the verge of tears. ‘What? A spear? You think it matters? You think we have a chance?’
‘This is your last warning,’ the Stormguard said quietly.
Shell muttered a response. Shit! I’m going to be chained to this fool? I’d be better off on my own. She leaned forward, trying to pull more warmth from the brazier. Well… it may just come to that…