Once beyond Aren Way’s battered gate and the abandoned ruins of a small village, they could now see the Seti and Wickan outriders on their flanks-a comforting sight to Strings. The raiding and sniping could begin at any time, now that the army had left the walls of Aren behind. Most of the tribes had, if the rumours were true, conveniently forgotten the truces they had won from the Malazan Empire. The old ways did naught but sleep restless beneath the surface of such peoples.
The landscape ahead and to either side was sun-blasted and broken, a place where even wild goats grew lean and listless. The mounded, flat-topped heaps of rubble that marked long-dead cities were visible on every horizon. Ancient raised roads, now mostly dismantled, stitched the rugged hillsides and ridges.
Strings wiped sweat from his brow. ‘Green as we are, it’s about time she called-’
Horns sounded along the massive train’s length. Motion ceased, and the shouts of the water crews rose into the dusty air as they scrambled for the barrels. Strings swung about and studied his squad-they were already on the ground, sitting or sprawled, their long-sleeved undershirts darkened with sweat.
Among Gesler’s and Borduke’s squads, the reaction to the rest-halt had been identical, and Borduke’s mage, Balgrid-slightly overweight and clearly unused to the armour he was wearing-looked pale and shivering. That squad’s healer, a quiet, small man named Lutes, was already moving towards him.
‘A Seti summer,’ Koryk said, offering Strings a carnivorous smile. ‘When the grasslands are driven to dust by the herds, when the earth underfoot clicks like breaking metal.’
‘Hood take you,’ Smiles snapped. ‘This land’s full of dead things for a reason.’
‘Aye,’ the Seti half-blood replied, ‘only the tough survive. There are tribes aplenty out there-they’ve left enough sign in passing.’
‘You have seen that, have you?’ Strings said. ‘Good. You’re now the squad’s scout.’
Koryk’s white grin broadened. ‘If you insist, Sergeant.’
‘Unless it’s night,’ Strings added. ‘Then it’ll be Smiles. And Bottle, assuming his warren is suitable.’
Bottle scowled, then nodded. ‘Well enough, Sergeant.’
‘So what’s Cuttle’s role, then?’ Smiles demanded. ‘Lying around like a beached porpoise?’