'Good.'
'Mortal Sword.'
'What is it, Itkovian?'
'What lies ahead, sir, that troubles you so?'
'I'm not sure, friend, but I'm feeling sick to my stomach. I believe we are about to be betrayed.'
Itkovian had said nothing to that for a long moment, then, 'Sir, if one regards recent events with an unclouded eye, then one might observe that the betrayal has already occurred.'
Gruntle had simply shrugged, turning to his followers. 'Stay tight, you damned misfits. Anyone straggles at the start and you'll be left behind.'
Stonny moved over to Itkovian's side, leading her horse.
'Do you know,' Itkovian asked her, 'what is about to occur?'
'Probably nothing,' she snapped, swinging up into her saddle. 'Gruntle must've bumped his head-'
She got no further, as before them Gruntle and his legion seemed to blur, to meld together in an indistinct flicker of barbed stripes, a single form, massive, low to the ground — that suddenly flowed forward, cat-like, and was gone in the night.
'Bern fend!' Stonny hissed. 'After it!' she cried, driving heels to her horse's flanks.
And so they had ridden, hard.
They passed by Brood's encampment, had noted that it was rousing, even though dawn was still a bell away, with considerable haste.
They witnessed, without a word exchanged between them, the flash and flare of sorcery in the sky to the southwest.
Occasionally, through the darkness, they caught a glimpse of the huge creature they pursued, the dull flicker of yellow, black-slashed, moving as if through impossibly high grasses, as if beneath jungle fronds, webbed in shadows, a fluid hint of motion, deadly in its speed and in its silence.
Then the sky began to lighten, and the horizon to the south was revealed, stands of trees, the trader road wending between them.
Still the striped beast defied the eye, evaded sharp detection as it reached the parkland's hills.
Lathered, mouths coughing foam, the horses thundered on, hooves pounding heavy and ragged. Neither animal would ever recover from this ordeal, Itkovian knew. Indeed, their deaths waited only for the journey's end.
Brave and magnificent, and he wondered if the sacrifice was worth it.
They rode the track between coppiced stands, the path gently rising towards what Itkovian judged to be an escarpment of some kind.
Then, directly ahead, wagons. A few figures, turning to watch them approach.
If they had seen the creature, they showed no sign — no alarms had been raised, all seemed calm.
Itkovian and Stonny rode past the Malazan rearguard.
The crackle of sorcery — close.
Soldiers lined the ridge before them, an army assembled, facing south — now breaking into disorganized motion. Dismay struck Itkovian with palpable force, a flood of raw pain, of immeasurable loss.
He reeled in his saddle, forced himself upright once more. Urgency thundered through him, now, sudden, overwhelming.
Stonny was shouting, angling her stumbling horse to the right, leaving the road, approaching a hilltop where stood the Malazan standard, drooped in the windless air. Itkovian followed, but slower, drawing back. His soul was drowning in cold horror.
His horse surrendered its gallop, staggered, head thrusting out. Canter to a weaving, loose walk, then halting, slowly drawing square-footed twenty paces from the hill's base.
Then dying.
Numbed, Itkovian slipped his boots from the stirrups, drew an aching leg over the beast's rump, then dropped down to the ground.
On the hill to his right, he saw Stonny, stumbling free from her horse — the slope had defeated it — and clambering upward. Gruntle and his troop had arrived, human once again, crowding the hill, yet seemingly doing nothing.
Itkovian turned his gaze away, began walking along one side of the road, which had straightened for the final, downhill approach to the killing field, and the city beyond.
Cold horror.
His god was gone. His god could not deflect it as it had once done, months ago, on a plain west of Capustan.
Loss and sorrow, such as he had never felt before.
The truth. Which I have known. Within me. Hidden, now revealed. I am not yet done.
Not yet done.
He walked, seeing nothing of the soldiers to his left and right, stepping clear of the uneven line, leaving behind the army that now stood, weapons lowered, broken before the battle had even begun — broken by a man's death.
Itkovian was oblivious. He reached the slope, continued on.
Down.
Down to where the T'lan Imass waited in ranks before eight hundred K'Chain Che'Malle.
