But like the monsters conjured from the imaginations of frightened babes, they never came closer, never quite revealed themselves. Both Mayfly and Galt swore that they had seen… something. Moving parallel with the column, but quicker, and soon past. Fevered minds, Fiddler told himself again, that and nothing more.
Yet, he felt in himself a growing unease. As if they did indeed have company along this broken track, out there in the darkness, among the trenches and gullies and jumbled rockfalls. A short time earlier he'd thought he had heard voices, distant and seeming to descend from the night sky, but that had since faded. Nonetheless, his nerves were growing frayed – likely weariness, likely an awakening fever within his own mind.
Ahead, Quick Ben's head suddenly turned, stared out to the right, scanned the darkness.
'Something?' Fiddler asked in a low voice.
The wizard glanced back at him, then away again, and said nothing.
Ten paces later, Fiddler saw Kalam loosen the long-knives in their scabbards.
Shit.
He dropped back until he was alongside Apsalar, and was about to speak when she cut him off.
'Be on your guard, sapper,' she said quietly. 'I believe we have nothing to fear… but I cannot be certain.'
'What's out there?' he demanded.
'Part of a bargain.'
'What is that supposed to mean?'
She suddenly lifted her head, as if testing the wind, and her voice hardened as she said in a loud voice, 'Everyone off the road – south side only – now.'
At the command, thin fear whispered along the ancient road. Unarmed, unarmoured – this was a soldier's worst nightmare. Crouching down, huddling in the shadows, eyes wide and unblinking, breaths drawing still, the Malazans strained for any telltale sound in the darkness beyond.
Staying low to the ground, Fiddler made his way along to rejoin his squad. If something was coming for them, better he died with his soldiers. As he scrabbled he sensed a presence catching up from behind, and turned to see Corabb Bhilan Thenu'alas. The warrior held a solid, clublike piece of wood, too thick to be a branch, more like a tap-root from some ancient guldindha. 'Where did you find that?'
Fiddler demanded in a hiss.
A shrug was the only answer.
Reaching his squad, the sergeant halted and Bottle crawled over to him. 'Demons,' the soldier whispered, 'out there-' a jerk of the head indicated the north side of the road. 'At first I thought it was the pall of evil offshore, the one that flushed the birds from the saltmarshes beyond the bay-'
'The pall of what?' Fiddler asked.
'But it wasn't that. Something a lot closer. Had a rhizan wheeling round out there – it came close to a beast. A damned big beast, Sergeant. Halfway between wolf and bear, only the size of a bull bhederin. It was headed west-'
'You still linked to that rhizan, Bottle?'
'No, it was hungry enough to break loose – I'm not quite recovered, Sergeant-'
'Never mind. It was a good try. So, the bear-wolf or wolf-bhederin was heading west…'
'Aye, not fifty paces across from us – no way it didn't know we were here,' Bottle said. 'It's not like we was sneaking along, was it?'
'So it ain't interested in us.'
'Maybe not yet, Sergeant.'
'What do you mean by that?'
'Well, I'd sent a capemoth ahead of us up the road, used it to test the air – they can sense things when those things are moving, stirring the air, giving off heat into the night – that heat is sometimes visible from a long way away, especially the colder the night gets.
Capemoths need all that to avoid rhizan, although it doesn't always-'
'Bottle, I ain't no naturalist – what did you see or sense or hear or whatever through that damned capemoth?'
'Well, creatures up ahead, closing fast-'
'Oh, thanks for that minor detail, Bottle! Glad you finally got round to it!'
'Shh, uh, Sergeant. Please. I think we should just lie low – whatever' s about to happen's got nothing to do with us.'
Corabb Bhilan Thenu'alas spoke: 'Are you certain of that?'
'Well, no, but it stands to reason-'
'Unless they're all working together, closing a trap-'
'Sergeant,' Bottle said, 'we ain't that important.'
'Maybe you ain't, but we got Kalam and Quick Ben, and Sinn and Apsalar-'
'I don't know much about them, Sergeant,' Bottle said, 'but you might want to warn them what's coming, if they don't know already.'