Deadhouse Gates (The Malazan Book of the Fallen #2) 34

'What, again?' Crokus slid back down from his horse. 'What would be the point?'

Apsalar followed suit. She stepped close to Fiddler, her eyes meeting his. 'With you dead, what are our chances of surviving this desert?'

About as bad as with me leading you. He fought the temptation to give voice to his thought, simply shrugging in reply as he unlimbered his crossbow. 'I mean to make this a short engagement,' he said, loading a cusser quarrel into the weapon's slot.

The Gral had pulled their mounts into position on the road. Lances lowered, they kicked the horses into motion.

Despite himself, Fiddler's heart broke for those Gral horses, even as he aimed and fired. The quarrel struck the road three paces in front of the charging tribesmen. The detonation was deafening, the blast a bruised gout of flame that drove back the airborne sand and the wind carrying it, and flung the attackers and their mounts like a god's hand, backward onto the road and off the sides. Blood shot upward to pull sand down like hail. In a moment the wind swept the flames and smoke away, leaving nothing but twitching bodies.

A pointless pursuit, and now pointless deaths. I am not Gral. Would the crime of impersonation trigger such a relentless hunt? I wish I could have asked you, warriors.

'For all that they have twice saved us,' Crokus said, 'those Moranth munitions are horrible, Fiddler.'

Silent, the sapper loaded another quarrel, slipped a leather thong over the bone trigger to lock it, then slung the heavy weapon over a shoulder. Climbing back into the saddle, he gathered the reins in one hand and regarded his comrades. 'Stay sharp,' he said. 'We may ride into another party without warning. If we do, try to break through them.'

He lightly kicked the mare forward.

The wind came as laughter to his ears, the sound seemingly stained with pleasure at witnessing senseless violence. It was eager for more. The Whirlwind awakened – this goddess is mad, riven with insanity – who is there that can stop her? Fiddler's slitted eyes stared down the road, the featureless march of stones leading, ever leading, into an ochre, swirling maw. Into nothingness.

Fiddler growled an oath, pushing away the futility clawing at his thoughts. They would have to find Tremorlor, before the Whirlwind swallowed them whole.

The aptorian was a darker shade thirty paces on Kalam's left, striding with relentless ease through the sand-filled wind. The assassin found himself thankful for the storm – his every clear sighting of his unwanted companion scraped his nerves raw. He'd encountered demons before, on battlefields and in war-ravaged streets. Often they had been thrown into the fray by Malazan mages, and so were allies of a sort, even as they went about exacting the wills of their masters with apparent indifference to all else. On thankfully rarer occasions, he'd come face to face with a demon unleashed by an enemy. At such times survival was his only concern, and survival meant flight. Demons were flesh and blood, to be sure – he'd seen enough of one's insides once, after it had been blown apart by one of Hedge's cusser quarrels, to retain the unwelcome intimacy of the memory – but only fools would try to face down a demon's cold rage and singularity of purpose.

Only two kinds of people die in battle, Fiddler had once said, fools and the unlucky. Trading blows with a demon was both unlucky and foolish.

For all that, the aptorian grated strangely on Kalam's eyes, like an iron blade trying to cut granite. Even to focus too long on the beast was to invite a wave of nausea.

There was nothing welcome in Sha'ik's gift. Gift . . . or spy. She's unleashed the Whirlwind and now the goddess rides her, as certain as possession. That's likely to trim short the wick of gratitude. Besides, even Dryjhna would not so readily waste an aptorian demon on something so mundane as escort. So, friend Apt, I cannot trust you.

Over the past few days he'd tried losing the beast, departing camp silently an hour before dawn, plunging into the thickest twists of spinning wind. Outracing the creature was a hopeless task – it could outpace any earthly animal in both speed and endurance, and for all his efforts Apt held on to him like a well-heeled hound – although mercifully at a distance.

The wind scoured the rock-scabbed hills with a voracious fury, carving into cracks and fissures as if hungering to spring loose every last speck of sand. The smooth, humped domes of bleached limestone lining the ridges on either side of the shallow valley he rode along seemed to age before his eyes, revealing countless wrinkles and scars.

He'd left the Pan'potsun Hills behind six days earlier, crossing the seamless border into another sawbacked ridge of hills called the Anibaj. The territory this far south of Raraku was less familiar to him. He'd come close on occasion, following the well-travelled trader tracks skirting the eastern edge of the range. The Anibaj were home to no tribes, although hidden monasteries were rumoured to exist.