Aragan scowled down at the writing tablet and waited until the corporal cleared his throat. Then he looked up.
The recruit standing before him took the staff sergeant aback. He opened his mouth, on his tongue a lashing tirade designed to send the young ones scampering. A second later he shut it again, the words unspoken. Kan's Fist had made her instructions abundantly clear: if they had two arms, two legs and a head, take them. The Genabackis campaign was a mess. Fresh bodies were needed.
He grinned at the girl. She matched the Fist's description perfectly.
Still. “All right, lass, you understand you're in line to join the Malazan Marines, right?”
The girl nodded, her gaze steady and cool and fixed on Aragan.
The recruiter's expression tightened. Damn, she can't be more than twelve or thirteen. If this was my daughter:
What's got her eyes looking so bloody old? The last time he'd seen anything like them had been outside Mott Forest, on Genabackis-he'd been marching through farmland hit by five years” drought and a war twice as long. Those old eyes were brought by hunger, or death. He scowled. “What's your name, girl?”
“Am I in, then?” she asked quietly.
Aragan nodded, a sudden headache pounding against the inside of his skull. “You'll get your assignment in a week's time, unless you got a preference.”
“Genabackan campaign,” the girl answered immediately. “Under the command of High Fist Dujek Onearm. Onearm's Host.”
Aragan blinked. “I'll make a note,” he said softly. “Your name, soldier?”
“Sorry. My name is Sorry.”
Aragan jotted the name down on his tablet. “Dismissed, soldier. The corporal will tell you where to go.” He looked up as she was near the door. “And wash all that mud off your feet.” Aragan continued writing for a moment, then stopped. It hadn't rained in weeks. And the mud around here was half-way between green and grey, not dark red. He tossed down the stylus and massaged his temples. Well, at least the headache's fading.
Gerrom was a league and a half inland along the Old Kan Road, a preEmpire thoroughfare rarely used since the Imperial raised coast road had been constructed. The traffic on it these days was mostly on foot, local farmers and fishers with their goods. Of them only unravelled and torn bundles of clothing, broken baskets and trampled vegetables littering the track remained to give evidence of their passage. A lame mule, the last sentinel overseeing the refuse of an exodus, stood dumbly nearby, ankledeep in a rice paddy. It spared Paran a single forlorn glance as he rode past.
The detritus looked to be no more than a day old, the fruits and greenleaved vegetables only now beginning to rot in the afternoon heat.
His horse carrying him at a slow walk, Paran watched as the first outbuildings of the small trader town came into view through the dusty haze. No one moved between the shabby mudbrick houses; no dogs came out to challenge him, and the only cart in sight leaned on a single wheel. To add to the uncanny scene, the air was still, empty of birdsong.
Paran loosened the sword in its scabbard.
As he neared the outbuildings he halted his mount. The exodus had been swift, a panicked flight. Yet he saw no bodies, no signs of violence beyond the haste evident in those leaving. He drew a deep breath, slowly released it, then clicked his horse forward. The main street was in effect the town's only street, leading at its far end to an intersection marked by a single two-storey stone building: the Imperial Constabulary. Its tin backed shutters were closed, its heavy banded door shut. As he approached Paran held his eyes on the building.
He dismounted before it, tying his mare to the hitching rail then looking back up the street. No movement. Unsheathing his blade, Paran swung back to the Constabulary door.
A soft, steady sound from within stopped him, too low to be heard from any distance but now, as he stood before the huge door, he could hear a liquid murmuring that raised the hairs on his neck. Paran reach out with his sword and set its point under the latch. He lifted the handle upward until it disengaged, then pushed open the door.
Movement rippled in the gloom within, a flap and soft thumping air carrying to Paran the redolent stench of putrifying flesh. Breathing hard and with a mouth dry as old cotton, he waited for his eyes to adjust.
He stared into the Constabulary's outer room, and it was a mass movement, a chilling soft sussuration of throats giving voice. The chamber was filled with black pigeons cooing in icy calm. Uniform human shapes lay in their midst, stretched haphazardly across the floor amid droppings and drifting black down. Sweat and death clung to the air thick as gauze.