Since the debacle at Darujhistan, the captain had been feeling adrift, tossed this way and that by the chaotic transformation of Dujek and his renegade army. The Malazans' anchor had been cut away. Support structures had collapsed. The burden upon the officer corps had grown overwhelming. Almost ten thousand soldiers had suddenly acquired an almost childlike need for reassurance.
And reassurance was something Paran was unable to give. If anything, the turmoil within him had deepened. Threads of bestial blood coursed his veins. Fragmented memories — few of them his own — and strange, unearthly visions plagued his nights. Daylight hours passed in a confused haze. Endless problems of materiel and logistics to deal with, the turgid needs of management pushed again and again through the rising flood of physical maladies now besetting him.
He'd been feeling ill for weeks, and Paran had his suspicions as to the source. The blood of the Hound of Shadow. A creature that plunged into Dark's own realm. yet can I be sure of this? The emotions frothing this crest. more like a child's. A child's…
He pushed the thought away once more, knowing full well it would soon return — even as the pain in his stomach flared once again — and, with another glance up to where Trotts held sentinel position, continued making his way up the hillside.
The pain of illness had changed him — he could see that within himself, conjured as an image, a scene both peculiar and poignant. He felt as if his own soul had been reduced into something piteous — a bedraggled, sweat-smeared rat, trapped within a rock-fall, twisting and squirming through cracks in a desperate search for a place where the pressure — the vast, shifting weight — relented. A space in which to breathe. And the pain all around me, those sharp stones, are settling, still settling, the spaces between them vanishing. darkness rising like water …
Whatever triumphs had been achieved in Darujhistan now seemed trivial to Paran. Saving a city, saving the lives of Whiskeyjack and his squad, the shattering of Laseen's plans, they had one and all crumbled into ash in the captain's mind.
He was not as he had been, and this new shaping was not to his liking.
Pain darkened the world. Pain dislocated. Turned one's own flesh and bones into a stranger's house, from which no escape seemed possible.
Bestial blood. it whispers of freedom. Whispers of a way out — but not from the darkness. No. Into that darkness, where the Hounds went, deep into the heart of Anomander Rake's cursed sword — the secret heart of Dragnipur.
He almost cursed aloud at that thought, as he worked his way along the hillside trail overlooking the Divide. Day's light was fading. The wind combing the grasses had begun to fall away, the rasping voice retreating to a murmur.
The blood's whisper was but one of many, each demanding his attention, each offering contradictory invitations — disparate paths of escape. But always escape. Flight. This cowering creature can think of nothing else. even as the burdens settle. and settle.
Dislocation. All I see around me. feels like someone else's memories. Grass woven on low hills, outcrops of bedrock studding the summits, and when the sun sets and the wind cools, the sweat on my face dries, and darkness comes — and I drink its air as if it was the sweetest water. Gods, what does that mean?
The confusion within him would not settle. I escaped the world of that sword, yet I feel its chains about me none the less, drawing ever tighter. And within that tension, there was an expectation. Of surrender, of yielding. an expectation to become … what? Become what?
The Barghast sat amidst high, tawny grasses on a summit overlooking the Divide. The day's flow of traders had begun to ebb on both sides of the barricade, the clouds of dust fading over the rutted road. Others were setting up camps — the throat of the pass was turning into an unofficial wayside. If the situation remained as it was, the wayside would take root, become a hamlet, then a village.
But it won't happen. We're too restless for that. Dujek's mapped out our immediate future, shrouded in the dust of an army on the march. Even worse, there're creases in that map, and it's starting to look like the Bridgeburners are about to fall into one. A deep one.
Breathless and fighting yet more twinges, Captain Paran moved to crouch down beside the half-naked, tattooed warrior. 'You've been strutting like a bull bhederin since this morning, Trotts,' he said. 'What have you and Whiskeyjack brewed up, soldier?'
The Barghast's thin, wide mouth twisted into something like a smile, his dark eyes remaining fixed on the scene down in the valley. 'The cold darkness ends,' he growled.