The wave buried them, drove them all down with its immense weight, its relentless force.

Then was gone, leaving them dry as dust.

Silence filled the air, slowly broken by harsh gasps, bestial whimpers, the muted rustling of clothing and weapons.

Fiddler lifted his head, pushing himself to his hands and knees. Ghostly remnants of that flood seemed to stain him through and through, permeating him with ineffable sorrow.

Protective sorcery?

The Spiritwalker had smiled. Of a sort.

And I'd planned on selling the damned thing in G'danisban. My last cusser was a damned conch shell – I never checked, not once. Hood's breath!

He was slow to sense a new tension rising in the air. The sapper looked up. Mappo had retrieved his club and now stood over Icarium's unconscious form. Around him ranged the Hounds. Raised hackles on all sides.

Fiddler scrabbled for his crossbow. 'Iskaral Pust! Call off those Hounds, damn you!'

'The bargain! The Azath will take him!' the High Priest gasped, still staggering about in the stunned aftermath of the Tano's sorcery. 'Now's the time!'

'No,' growled the Trell.

Fiddler hesitated. The deal, Mappo. Icarium made his wishes plain . . . 'Call them off, Pust,' he said, moving towards the nervous stand-off. He plunged one hand into his munition bag and swung the leather sack around until he clutched it against his stomach. 'Got one last cusser, and those Hounds could be made of solid marble, it won't save 'em when I fall down on what I'm holding here.'

'Damned sappers! Who invented them? Madness!'

Fiddler grinned. 'Who invented them? Why, Kellanved, who else – who Ascended to become your god, Pust. I'd have thought you'd appreciate the irony, High Priest.'

'The bargain—'

'Will wait a while longer. Mappo, how hard did you hit him? How long will he be out?'

'As long as I wish, friend.'

Friend, and in that word: 'thank you.'

'All right then. Call the mutts off, Pust. Let's get to the House.'

The High Priest ceased his circling stagger; he paused, slowly weaving back and forth. Glancing over at Apsalar, he offered her a wide grin.

'As the soldier says,' she said.

The grin vanished. 'The youth of today knows no loyalty. A shame, not at all how things used to be. Wouldn't you agree, Servant?'

Apsalar's father grimaced. 'You heard her.'

'Far too permissive, letting her get her way so. You've spoiled her, man! Betrayed by my own generation, alas! What next?'

'What's next is, we get going,' Fiddler said.

'And it won't be much farther,' Crokus said. He pointed down the path. 'There. I see the House. I see Tremorlor.'

The sapper watched Mappo sling his weapon over a shoulder, then gently lift Icarium. The Jhag hung limply within those massive arms. The scene was touched with such gentle caring that Fiddler had to look away.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The Day of Pure Blood

was a gift of the Seven

from their tombs of sand.

Fortune was a river

the glory a gift of the Seven

that flowed yellow and crimson

across the day.

Dog Chain

Thes'soran

In the local Can'eld dialect, it would come to be called Mesh'arn tho'ledann: the Day of Pure Blood. The River Vathar's mouth gushed blood and corpses into Dojal Hading Sea for close to a week after the slaughter, a tide that deepened from red to black amidst pallid, bloated bodies. To the fisher-folk plying those waters, that time was called the Season of Sharks, and more than one net was cut away before a ghastly harvest was pulled aboard.

Horror knew no sides, played no favourites. It spread like a stain outward, from tribe to tribe, from one city to the next. And from that revulsion was born fear among the natives of Seven Cities. A Malazan fleet was on its way, commanded by a woman hard as iron. What happened at Vathar Crossing was a whetstone to hone her deadly edge.

Yet, Korbolo Dom was anything but finished.

The cedar forest south of the river rose on tiered steps of limestone, the trader track crazed with switchbacks and steep, difficult slopes. And the deeper into the wood the depleted train went, the more ancient, the more uncanny it became.

Duiker led his mare by the reins, stumbling as rocks turned underfoot. Alongside him clattered a wagon, sagging with wounded soldiers. Corporal List sat on the buckboard, his switch snapping the dusty, sweat-runnelled backs of the pair of oxen labouring at their yokes.

The losses at Vathar Crossing were a numb litany in the historian's mind. Over twenty thousand refugees, a disproportionate number of children among them. Less than five hundred able fighters remained in the Foolish Dog Clan, and the other two clans were almost as badly mauled. Seven hundred soldiers of the Seventh were dead, wounded or lost. A scant dozen engineers remained on their feet, and but a score of marines. Three noble families had been lost – an unacceptable attrition, this latter count, as far as the Council was concerned.