‘For supplies, I understand,’ Carr said, sounding as convinced as Ivanr. ‘As to their speed… they are no slower than the refugee train.’
‘I’d drop that lot as well.’
‘Oh no, sir! They’re why we’re here.’
Ivanr now examined the officer directly. Just a lad — barely into his shaving. ‘Sounds backwards to me.’
Carr clasped his hands behind his back. ‘Traditionally speaking, I suppose so. But this is no traditional situation. At least, as far as these lands are concerned.’
Ivanr grunted and continued walking. Something in the lad’s mannerisms made him ask: ‘What were you doing before you joined?’
‘I was a scholar. An acolyte priest.’
Ivanr grunted again; he’d thought so. ‘And because you could write you were given a commission…’
‘A commission in a nonexistent military organization — just so, sir. And, I must admit, my family name is known. But all of us here are fleeing, or seeking, something, yes? Myself, I was fleeing… dogmatic rigidity, let us say.’ A self-deprecating shrug. ‘The army formed itself out of the disaffected, the apostate, or plain refugees of the fighting. It exists to protect and escort them.’
‘Escort them? Escort them where?’
‘Why, to Blight, of course.’
‘Blight? And what will happen when you get there, may I ask?’
‘The gates will be thrown open and we shall be welcomed as liberators.’
Ivanr halted; Carr peered up at him in mild surprise, blinking. ‘You are joking, I hope.’
The youth almost blushed and coughed into a fist to cover his reaction. ‘Only partially. We have reason to believe that a great proportion of the population is sympathetic to our aims. And that our arrival will be all that is needed to ignite them.’
Ivanr continued on. Fanatics. All of them. On both sides. ‘That may be so, Lieutenant. But when last I saw them the walls of Blight were tall. And I have the feeling that this army is not the only one on the move.’
He pushed through to the marching grounds where a knot of trainees — gods, could they even be called that? — milled into each other, their tall spears clattering. They squinted like befuddled children at a fellow red-faced from cursing them. Ivanr pulled a hand down his sweat-grimed face as if to wipe the vision from his sight. Gods protect us all. This will not do. They ought to be given some chance.
He cupped his hands to his mouth. ‘Halt!’
A great banging of hafts as half the trainees stopped.
The red-faced fellow gaped, then gathered himself. ‘Who in the name of the Lady of Lies are you?’
‘Temporary replacement.’ He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘Talk to the lieutenant here.’
From then on Ivanr kept his back to the man and addressed the gathered infantry. Some hundred young lads and lasses, gap-toothed oldsters. The lad could be among them. Still, most are here because they want to be; not the impressed near-prisoners of the Imperial infantry. Well, first things first. ‘Who here knows his or her right hand?’ he bellowed, taking full advantage of his great Thel lung capacity and presence.
A few right arms rose timorously.
‘Very good! Some of you actually got that correct! Now, take that arm and extend it out straight from your shoulder — that’s right, move over! I want an arm’s length between everyone. Let’s go.’
The majority of the crowd just stared back, uncomprehending.
He took a great breath and roared: ‘Now!’
A forest of rattling as everyone ran into everyone else.
Ivanr turned to the lieutenant, who quickly swapped his stifled laughter for a look of sombre attention. The red-faced would-be drillmaster was nowhere in evidence. ‘Lieutenant Carr.’
‘Sir?’
‘I will have need of a drum, or some sort of drummer lad.’
‘Aye, sir.’
The identity of the man strapped and immobilized on the table was irrelevant to Ussu. A serum distilled from oil of durhang rendered the subject insensate while, most important, in no way inhibiting the fleshly systems. The body may as well be that of a dog or a sheep. Indeed, he had begun his experimentation with such animals. But — as he had discovered — for his purposes the human essence provided by far the greatest efficacy. He rested a hand upon the naked chest, felt the pounding of the heart. Strong. Excellent. Not the usual sickened or starved prisoner. Perhaps this one will last long enough…
He nodded to his apprentices. One, Yurgen, made a last circuit of the tower chamber, checking the iron shutters, the barred iron door, then drew his sword and readied his shield. Such experimentation can summon the most alarming manifestations. Ussu once almost lost an arm to an entity that took possession of the corpse of a great boarhound. His two other apprentices, Temeth and Seel, stood at his elbows.
He extended a hand and Seel gave over a knife of keen knapped obsidian, the handle leather-wrapped. Ussu felt down along the ribs of the subject — yes, just between these — and made an incision up over the barrel of the torso, beginning at the side and ending at the sternum.
Before he came to Korel none of these elaborate preparations would have been necessary. Indeed, he would have been repulsed by the idea. One merely had to reach out and there would be the Warren at one’s fingertips. Yet here he and all the other lesser Malazan practitioners had been rendered impotent. Some had been driven mad; others had killed themselves, directly or indirectly, through concoctions or drugs meant to facilitate access.
He held out the knife and Temeth took it away and another instrument was placed in his hand: a tool of wooden wedges and metal screws. Ussu eased the slim leading tips of the wooden wedges into the incision between the ribs. Seel daubed at the blood welling up.
‘Gently here,’ he warned the two, who nodded and leaned forward to peer more closely. He began working the screws, one by one. The wedges parted. Turn by turn, a hair’s-breadth at a time, Ussu created a cavity at the body’s side where the ribs curved.
He, however, had chosen a different path…
Power existed here in the Korelri subcontinent. The followers of the Lady had access. And the source of that potential, he had discovered, lay in… sacrifice.
When he judged the opening large enough he nodded and Seel took hold of the spacer. Leaning forward over the subject, almost hugging him, Ussu slipped his hand into the gap at the side. Gently, reverently almost, he eased inward, fingers straight. He felt his way around organs, slipped past ligaments, parted layers of fat, until the tips of his fingers brushed the vibrating, quivering, seat of life. With one last push he cradled the heart and with his other hand he reached out for his Warren.
Steady pressure on the heart brought to his summoning a tenuous ghost-image of Mockra. He eased his grip tighter; the heart laboured, pulsed in his fist like a terrified animal. He sought out a vision at the limits of the Warren’s divinatory potential — of prescience.
Grant me a vision of what is to come!
And he saw — he saw… desolation. Shores scoured clean by a tidal wave invasion of the sea-borne demon Riders. The land poisoned, lifeless. Cities inundated, corpses lolling in the surf in numbers beyond comprehension.
Annihilation.
No! How could this be?
A mere hand’s breadth from his face the eyes of the subject snapped open. The apprentices flinched away, yelping their terror. Yurgen charged forward.
‘Halt!’ Ussu returned the corpse’s dead stare, for dead it was, the organ immobile in his hand. ‘Greetings, Lady.’
A smile, the eyes rolling all white. ‘I have tolerated your heresies, Ussu,’ the corpse barely mouthed, ‘because I sense in you a great potential. Set aside your disbelief. Cleave to the True Path.’
‘They are coming, Blessed Lady. New Imperial forces are on their way. We must…’ he wet his lips, ‘join forces.’
‘You have seen this? How strong you are, Ussu. Stand at my side.’