‘Fighting again.’
‘Where?’
‘Us, Vastly. Remember Y’Ghatan?’
‘No.’
‘Well, won’t be like Y’Ghatan. More like yesterday only harder. Remember yesterday?’
Vastly Blank stared a moment longer, then he laughed his slow ha ha ha laugh and said, ‘Yesterday! I remember yesterday!’
‘Then pick up your sword and wipe the mud off it, Vastly. And take your shield-no, not mine, yours, the one on your back. Yes, bring it round. That’s it-no, sword in the other hand. There, perfect. You ready?’
‘Who do I kill?’
‘I’ll show you soon enough.’
‘Good.’
‘Seti should never breed with bhederin, I think.’
‘What?’
‘A joke, Vastly.’
‘Oh. Ha ha ha! Ha.’
‘Let’s go join up with Lookback-we’ll be on point.’
‘Lookback’s on point?’
‘He’s always on point for this kind of thing, Vastly.’
‘Oh. Good.’
‘Drawfirst and Shoaly at our backs, right? Like yesterday.’
‘Right. Reliko, what happened yesterday?’
Strap Mull stepped close to Neiler and they both eyed their corporal, Pravalak Rim, who was just sending Drawfirst and Shoaly up to the other heavies.
The two soldiers spoke in their native Dal Honese. ‘Broke-hearted,’ Strap said.
‘Broker than broke,’ Neiler agreed.
‘Kisswhere, she was lovely’
‘Lovelier than lovely’
‘Like Badan says, though.’
‘Like he says, yes.’
‘And that’s that, is what he says.’
‘I know that, Strap, you don’t need to tell me anything. You think Letheras will be like Y’Ghatan? We didn’t do nothing in Y’Ghatan. And,’ Neiler suddenly added, as if struck by something, ‘we haven’t done nothing here either, have we? Nothing not yet, anyway. If it’s going to be like Y’Ghatan, though-’
‘We’re not even there yet,’ Strap Mull said. ‘Which sword you going to use?’
‘This one.’
‘The one with the broken handle?’
Neller looked down, frowned, then threw the weapon into the bushes and drew out another one. ‘This one. It’s Letherii, was on the cabin wall-’
‘I know. I gave it to you.’
‘You gave it to me because it howls like a wild woman every time I hit something with it.’
‘That’s right, Neller, and that’s why I asked what sword you were going to use.’
‘Now you know.’
‘Now I know so I’m stuffing my ears with moss.’
‘Thought they already were.’
‘I’m adding more. See?’
Corporal Pravalak Rim was a haunted man. Born in a northern province of Gris to poor farmers, he had seen nothing of the world for most of his life, until the day a marine recruiter had come through the nearby village on the very day Pravalak was there with his older brothers, all of whom sneered at the marine on their way to the tavern. But Pravalak himself, well, he had stared in disbelief. His first sight of someone from Dal Hon. She had been big and round and though she was decades older than him and her hair had gone grey he could see how she had been beautiful and indeed, to his eyes, she still was.
Such dark skin. Such dark eyes, and oh, she spied him out and gave him that gleaming smile, before leading him by the hand into a back room of the local gaol and delivering her recruiting pitch sitting on him and rocking with exalted glee until he exploded right into the Mala2an military.
His brothers had expressed their disbelief and were in a panic about how to explain to their ma and da how their youngest son had gone and got himself signed up and lost his virginity to a fifty-year-old demoness in the process-and was, in fact, not coming home at all. But that was their problem, and Pravalak had trundled off in the recruiter’s wagon, one hand firmly snuggled between her ample legs, without a backward look.
That first great love affair had lasted the distance to the next town, where he’d found himself transferred onto a train of about fifty other Grisian farm boys and girls and marching an imperial road down to Unta, and from there out to Malaz Island for training as a marine. But he had not been as heartbroken as he would have thought, for the Malazan forces were crowded for a time with Dal Honese recruits-some mysterious population explosion or political upheaval had triggered an exodus from the savanna and jungles of Dal Hon. And he had soon realized that his worship of midnight skin and midnight eyes did not doom him to abject longing and eternal solitude.
