Stormy stepped forward to squint at Duiker. 'Kulp had a lot to say about you, Historian, though I can't quite recall if any of it was good.' He hesitated, then cradled his crossbow in one arm and held out a thick, hairless hand. 'Even so, I've dreamed of meeting the bastard to blame for all we've been through, though I wish we still had a certain grumpy old man with us so I could wrap him in ribbons and stuff him down your throat.'
'That was said in great affection,' Gesler drawled.
Duiker ignored the proffered hand, and after a moment the soldier withdrew it with a shrug. 'I need to know,' the historian said in a low voice, 'what happened to Kulp.'
'We wouldn't mind knowing that, too,' Stormy said.
Two of the Clan's warleaders came down to speak with Nether. She frowned at their words.
Duiker pulled his attention away from the marines. 'What is happening, Nether?'
She gestured and the warleaders withdrew. 'The cavalry are establishing a camp upriver, less than three hundred paces away. They are making no preparations to attack. They've begun felling trees.'
'Trees? Both banks are high cliffs up there.'
She nodded.
Unless they're simply building a palisade, not a floating bridge, which would be pointless in any case – they can't hope to span the gorge, can they?
Gesler spoke behind them. 'We could take the dory upstream for a closer look.'
Nether turned, her eyes hard as they fixed on the corporal. 'What is wrong with your ship?' she demanded in a febrile tone.
Gesler shrugged. 'Got a little singed, but she's still seaworthy.'
She said nothing, her gaze unwavering.
The corporal grimaced, reached under his burnt jerkin and withdrew a bone whistle that hung by a cord around his neck. 'The crew's dead but that don't slow 'em any.'
'Had their heads chopped off, too,' Stormy said, startling the historian with a bright grin. 'Just can't hold good sailors down, I always say.'
'Mostly Tiste Andii,' Gesler added, 'only a handful of humans. And some others, in the cabin ... Stormy, what did Heboric call 'em?'
'Tiste Edur, sir.'
Gesler nodded, his attention now on the historian. 'Aye, us and Kulp plucked Heboric from the island, just like you wanted. Him and two others. The bad news is we lost them in a squall—'
'Overboard?' Duiker asked in a croak, his thoughts a maelstrom. 'Dead?'
'Well,' said Stormy, 'we can't be sure of that. Don't know if they hit water when they jumped over the side – we was on fire, you see and it might have been wet waves we was riding, then again it might not.'
A part of the historian wanted to throttle both men, cursing the soldiers' glorious and excruciating love of understatement. The other part, the rocking shock of what he was hearing, dropped him with a jarring thud to the muddy, butterfly-carpeted ground.
'Historian, accompany these marines in the dory,' Nether said, 'but be sure to keep well out from shore. Their mage is exhausted, so you need not worry about him. I must understand what is happening.'
Oh, we are agreed in that, lass.
Gesler reached down and gently lifted Duiker upright. 'Come along now, sir, and Stormy will spin the tale while we're about it. It's not that we're coy, you see, we're just stupid.'
Stormy grunted. 'Then when I'm done, you could tell us how Coltaine and all the rest managed to live this long. Now that'll surely be a story worth hearing.'
'It's the butterflies, you see,' Stormy grunted as he pulled on the oars. 'A solid foot of 'em, moving slower than the current underneath. Without that, we'd be making no gain at all.'
'We've paddled worse,' Gesler added.
'So I gather,' Duiker said. They'd been sitting in the small rowboat for over an hour, during which time Stormy and Truth had managed to pull them a little over a hundred and fifty paces upriver through the thick sludge of drowned butterflies. The north bank had quickly risen to a steep cliff, festooned with creepers, vines covering its pitted face. They were approaching a sharp bend in the gorge created by a recent collapse on that side.
Stormy had spun his tale, allowing for his poor narrative skills, and it was his painfully obvious lack of imagination that lent it the greatest credence. Duiker was left with the bleak task of attempting to comprehend the significance of the events these soldiers had witnessed. That the warren of fire they had survived had changed the three men was obvious, and went beyond the strange hue of their skin. Stormy and Truth were tireless at the oars, and pulled with a strength to match twice their number. Duiker both longed to board the Silanda and dreaded it. Even without Nether's mage-heightened sensitivity, the aura of horror emanating from that craft preyed on the historian's senses.