‘And they saw you?’
‘No, Warleader, I don’t think so. Their mounted scouts clung close, on the flat farmland to either side of the track. They know there’s raids out in the countryside and don’t want to get stung.’
‘Very good. Change mounts and get yourself ready to lead Vedith and his wing to them.’
Her dark eyes flicked to Vedith in open appraisal.
‘Something wrong?’ Gall asked.
‘No, Warleader.’
‘But he’s young, isn’t he?’
She shrugged.
‘Dismissed,’ Gall said.
The scout tossed the waterskin back and then rode off.
Gall and Vedith now awaited the riders from the south.
Vedith twisted to ease his back, and then said, ‘Warleader, who will lead the force against the southern jaw of this trap?’
‘Shelemasa.’
Seeing the young warrior’s brows lift, Gall said, ‘She needs her chance to mend her reputation-or do you question my generosity?’
‘I would not think to do that-’
‘You should, Vedith. That’s what the Malazans have taught us, if they’ve taught us anything. A smith’s hammer in the hand, or a sword-it’s all business, and each and every one of us is in it. The side with the most people using their brains is the side that wins.’
‘Unless they are betrayed.’
Gall grimaced. ‘Even then, Vedith, the crows-’
‘-give answer,’ Vedith finished. And both men made the gesture of the black wing, silently honouring Coltaine’s name, his deeds and his resolute stand against the worst that humans could do.
A moment later, Gall swung his horse round to face the scout riding in from the south, and the two warriors pelting to catch up behind him. ‘Shit of the Foolish Dog, look at those two.’
‘Are you done with me, Warleader?’
‘Yes. Go collect your raids.’ And he leaned out one more time to make wind. ‘Gods below.’
Still stinging from the Warleader’s tirade, Shelemasa rode hard at the head of her wing. Shouts from behind her measured out the raid sergeants struggling to collect their warriors as the ground grew ever more uneven. Deep furrows scarred the stony hills, and many of those hills had been gouged out-the Bolkando had been mining here, for what Shelemasa had no idea. They skirted steep-sided pits half-filled with tepid water mottled with algae blooms, narrow edges thick with reeds and rushes. Bucket winches slumped above overgrown trenches, their wooden frames grey and bowing and strangled in vines. Hummingbirds darted above the lush crimson flowers dangling from those vines, and everywhere iridescent six-winged insects spun and whirled.
She hated this place. The cruel colours made her think of poisons-after all, on the Khundryl Odhan it was the brightest snakes and lizards that were the deadliest. She had seen a jet-black, purple-eyed spider as big as her damned foot only the day before. It had been eating a hare. Nekeh had woken to find the skin of one leg, hip to ankle, completely peeled away by huge amber ants-she hadn’t felt a thing, and now she was raving with fever in the loot train. She’d heard that someone had smelled a flower only to have his nose rot off. No, they needed to be done with this, all of it. Marching with the Bonehunters was all very well, but the Adjunct wasn’t Coltaine, was she? She wasn’t Bult either, not even Duiker.
Shelemasa had heard about the goring the marines had suffered during the invasion. Like a desert cat thrown into a pit of starving wolves, if the tales were accurate. It was no wonder they’d been squatting in the capital for so long. The Adjunct had Mincer’s luck, that she did, and Shelemasa wanted no part of it.
They were coming up out of the mining works, and to the south the land levelled out in a floodplain, broken up by blockish stands of bamboo bordered by water-filled ditches and raised tracks. Beyond this ran another row of serried hills, these ones flat-topped and fortified by stone-walled redoubts. Between the fortifications a Bolkando army was forming up, but in obvious disorganization. They’d expected to be one of the trap’s jaws, arriving upon a battle already engaged, the Khundryl muzzle to muzzle with the main force. They’d been planning on driving into an exposed flank.
For all that, she could see they’d be hard to dislodge from those hills, especially with the enfilading forts. Even worse, she was outnumbered by at least two to one.
Shelemasa slowed her horse, and then reined in on the edge of the bamboo plantation. She waited for her officers to close on her.
Jarabb-who had been verbally flayed almost as fiercely as Shelemasa-was the first to arrive. ‘Commander, we won’t knock them off that, will we?’
