'She'd be the least of your problems, Lutes. The males will pick up her distress scent. You'll have hundreds following you. Then thousands, and they'll be damned aggressive, if you get my meaning.'
Maybe smiled. 'Interesting. You sure of that, Bottle?'
'Don't get any stupid ideas.'
'Why not? We're good at stupid ideas. I mean, uh, well-'
'What Maybe means,' Lutes said, 'is we can think things through. Right through, Bottle. Don't you worry about us.'
'She killed Joyful Union. There won't be any more fights – spread the word, all those squads with new scorpions – let the little ones go.'
'All right,' Lutes said, nodding.
Bottle studied the two men. 'That includes the one you got there.'
'Sure. We'll just look at her a while longer, that's all.' Maybe smiled again.
Climbing to his feet, Bottle hesitated, then shook his head and walked off, back towards the squad's camp. The army was almost ready to resume the march. With all the desultory lack of enthusiasm one might expect of an army about to lay siege to a city.
A sky without clouds. Again. More dust, more heat, more sweat.
Bloodflies and chigger fleas, and the damned vultures wheeling overhead – as they had been doing since Raraku – but this, he knew, would be the last day of that march. The old road ahead, a few more abandoned hamlets, feral goats in the denuded hills, distant riders tracking them from the ridge.
The others in the squad were on their feet and waiting when he arrived. Bottle saw that Smiles was labouring under two packs. 'What happened to you?' he asked her.
The look she turned on him was filled with abject misery. 'I don't know. The new captain ordered it. I hate her.'
'I'm not surprised,' Bottle said, collecting his own gear and shrugging into the pack's straps. 'Is that Strings's kit you got there?'
'Not all of it,' she said. 'He won't trust me with the Moranth munitions.'
Thank Oponn for that. 'The captain been by since?'
'No. The bitch. We're going to kill her, you know.'
'Really. Well, I won't shed any tears. Who is this "we" anyway?'
'Me and Cuttle. He'll distract her, I'll stick a knife in her back.
Tonight.'
'Fist Keneb will have you strung up, you know.'
'We'll make it look like an accident.'
Distant horns sounded. 'All right, everyone,' Strings said from the road. 'Let's move.'
Groaning wagon wheels, clacking and thumping on the uneven cobbles, rocking in the ruts, the lowing of oxen, thousands of soldiers lurching into motion, the sounds a rising clatter and roar, the first dust swirling into the air.
Koryk fell in alongside Bottle. 'They won't do it,' he said.
'Do what? Kill the captain?'
'I got a long look at her,' he said. 'She's not just from Korelri.
She's from the Stormwall.'
Bottle squinted at the burly warrior. 'How do you know that?'
'There's a silver tracing on her scabbard. She was a section commander.'
'That's ridiculous, Koryk. First, standing the Wall isn't something you can just resign from, if what I've heard is true. Besides, this woman's a captain, in the least-prepared Malazan army in the entire empire. If she'd commanded a section against the Stormriders, she'd rank as Fist at the very least.'
'Only if she told people, Bottle, but that tracing tells another story.'
Two strides ahead of them, Strings turned his head to regard them. '
So, you saw it too, Koryk.'
Bottle swung round to Smiles and Cuttle. 'You two hearing this?'
'So?' Smiles demanded.
'We heard,' Cuttle said, his expression sour. 'Maybe she just looted that scabbard from somewhere… but I don't think that's likely.
Smiles, lass, we'd best put our plans on a pyre and strike a spark.'
'Why?' she demanded. 'What's this Stormwall mean, anyway? And how come Koryk thinks he knows so much? He doesn't know anything, except maybe the back end of a horse and that only in the dark. Look at all your faces – I'm saddled with a bunch of cowards!'
'Who plan on staying alive,' Cuttle said.
'Smiles grew up playing in the sand with farm boys,' Koryk said, shaking his head. 'Woman, listen to me. The Stormwall is leagues long, on the north coast of Korelri. It stands as the only barricade between the island continent and the Stormriders, those demonic warriors of the seas between Malaz Island and Korelri – you must have heard of them?'