Gradithan lifted Salind’s head with one hand and tugged open her mouth with the other. He reached for the jug of saemankelyk. ‘Time,’ he muttered, ‘and time, time, time, the time. Is now.’ He tipped the jug and the black juice poured into Salind’s gaping, stained mouth.
She swallowed, and swallowed, and it seemed she would never stop, that her body was depthless, a vessel with no bottom. She drank down her need, and that need could never find satiation.
Monkrat grunted. He’d known plenty of people like that. It was a secret poorly kept once you knew what to look for, there in their eyes. Hope and expectation and hunger and the hint of spiteful rage should a single demand be denied. They had a way of appearing, and then never leaving. Yes, he’d known people like that.
And, well, here was their god, shining from Salind’s eyes. Everyone needed a god. Slapped together and shaped with frantic hands, a thing of clay and sticks. Built up of wants and all those unanswerable questions that plagued the mortal soul. Neu shy;roses carved in stone. Malign obsessions given a hard, judgemental face — he had seen them, all the variations, in city after city, on the long campaigns of the Malazan Empire. They lined the friezes in temples; they leered down from balustrades. Ten thousand gods, one for every damned mood, it seemed. A pantheon of exaggerated flaws.
Salind was convulsing now, the black poison gushing from her mouth, thick as honey down her chin, and hanging in drop-heavy threads like some ghastly beard.
When she smiled, Monkrat flinched.
The convulsions found a rhythm, and Gradithan was pushed away as she un shy;dulated upright, a serpent rising, a thing of sweet venom.
Monkrat edged back, and before Gradithan could turn to him the ex-Bridgeburner slipped outside. Rain slanted down into his face. He paused, ankle-deep in streaming mud, and drew up his hood. That water had felt clean. If only it could wash all of this away. Oh, not the camp — it was already doing that — but everything else. Choices made, bad decisions stumbled into, years of useless living. Would he ever do anything right? His list of errors had grown so long he felt trapped by some inter shy;nal pell-mell momentum. Dozens more awaited him-
A bedraggled shape emerged from the rain. Grizzled face, a sopping hairshirt. Like some damned haunt from his past, a ghoul grinning with dread reminders of everything he had thrown away.
Spindle stepped up to Monkrat. ‘It’s time.’
‘For what? Aye, we got drunk, we laughed and cried and all that shit. And maybe I told you too much, but not enough, I’m now thinking, if you believe you can do a damned thing about all this. It’s a god we’re talking about here, Spin. A god.’
‘Never mind that. I been walking through this shit-hole. Monkrat, there’s chil shy;dren here. Just. . abandoned.’
‘Not for long. They’re going to be taken. Used to feed the Dying God.’
‘Not if we take ’em first.’
‘Take them? Where?’
Spindle bared his teeth, and only now did Monkrat comprehend the barely re shy;strained fury in the man facing him. ‘Where? How about away? Does that sound too complicated for you? Maybe those hills west of here, in the woods. You said it was all coming down. If we leave ’em they’ll all die, and I won’t have it.’
Monkrat scratched at his beard. ‘Now ain’t that admirable of you, but-’
The hard angled point of a shortsword pressed the soft flesh below Monkrat’s chin. He scowled. The bastard was fast, all right and old Monkrat was losing his edge.
‘Now,’ hissed Spindle, ‘you either follow Gredithick around-’
‘Gradithan.’
‘Whatever. You either follow him like a pup, or you start helping me round up the runts still alive.’
‘You’re giving me a choice?’
‘Kind of. If you say you want to be a pup, then I’ll saw off your head, as clum shy;sily as I can.’
Monkrat hesitated.
Spindle’s eyes widened. ‘You’re in a bad way, soldier-’
‘I ain’t a soldier no more.’
‘Maybe that’s your problem. You’ve forgotten things. Important things.’
‘Such as?’
Spindle grimaced, as if searching for the right words, and Monkrat saw in his mind a quick image of a three-legged dog chasing rabbits in a field. ‘Fine,’ Spindle finally said in a grating tone. ‘It had to have happened to you at least once. You and your squad, you come into some rotten foul village or hamlet. You come to buy food or maybe get your tack fixed, clothes mended, whatever. But you ain’t there to kill nobody. And so you get into a few conversations. In the tavern. The smithy. With the whores. And they start talking. About injustices. Bastard landholders, local bullies, shit-grinning small-time tyrants. The usual crap. The corruption and all that. You know what I’m talking about, Monkrat?’
‘Sure.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘We hunted the scum down and flayed their arses. Sometimes we even strung ’em up.’
Spindle nodded. ‘You did justice, is what you did. It’s what a soldier can do, when there’s nobody else. We got swords, we got armour, we got all we need to terrorize anybody we damned well please. But Dassem taught us — he taught every soldier in the Malazan armies back then. Sure, we had swords, but who we used ’em on was up to us.’ The point of the shortsword fell away. ‘We was soldiers, Monkrat. We had the chance — the privilege — of doing the right thing.’
‘I deserted-’
‘And I was forced into retirement. Neither one changes what we were.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong.’
‘Then listen to this.’ The shortsword pressed against his throat again. ‘I can still deliver justice, and if need be I’ll do it right now and right here. By cutting a coward’s head off.’
‘Don’t talk to me about cowardice!’ Monkrat snapped. ‘Soldiers don’t talk that ever! You just broke the first rule!’
‘Someone turns his back on being a soldier — on what it means in the soul — that’s cowardice. You don’t like the word, don’t live it.’
Monkrat stared into the man’s eyes, and hated what he saw there. He sagged. ‘Best get on with it then, Spin. I got nothing left. I’m used up. What do you do when the soldier inside you dies before you do? Tell me.’
‘You go through the motions, Monkrat. You just follow me. Do as I do. We start there and worry about the rest later.’
Monkrat realized that Spindle was still waiting. ‘Do what’s right,’ Dassem told us. Gods, even after all this time he still remembered the First Sword’s words. ‘That’s a higher law than the command of any officer. Higher even than the Em shy;peror’s own words. You are in a damned uniform but that’s not a licence to deliver terror to everyone — just the enemy soldier you happen to be facing. Do what is right, for that armour you wear doesn’t just protect your flesh and bone. It defends honour. It defends integrity. It defends justice. Soldiers, heed me well. That armour defends humanity. And when I look upon my soldiers, when I see these uniforms, I see compassion and truth. The moment those virtues fail, then the gods help you, for no armour is strong enough to save you.’
‘All right, Spin. I’ll follow you.’
A sharp nod. ‘Dassem, he’d be proud. And not surprised, no, not surprised at all.’
‘We have to watch out for Gradithan — he wants those virgins. He wants their blood, for when the Dying God arrives.’
‘Yeah? Well, Gredishit can chew on Hood’s arsehole. He ain’t getting ’em.’
‘A moment ago I was thinking, Spin. .’
‘Thinking what?’
‘That you was a three-legged dog. But I was wrong. You’re a damned Hound of Shadow is what you are. Come on. I know where they all huddle to stay outa the rain.’
Seerdomin adjusted the grip on his sword and then glanced back at the Redeemer. The god’s position was unchanged. Kneeling, half bent over, face hidden behind his hands. A position of abject submission. Defeat and despair. Hardly an inspiring standard to stand in front of, hardly a thing to fight for, and Seerdomin could feel the will draining from him as he faced once more the woman dancing in the basin.