Midnight Tides & The Bonehunters - By Steven Erikson Page 0,584

man grinned, but it was not a pleasant grin. 'Captain, you knocked out cold a Falari princess – that's perfect. It fits with what people have heard about Kindly. That's brilliant.'

Paran winced, then rubbed at his face. Gods below, what is it with me and royalty?

She had slowly emerged from the hidden temple to see a straggling line of battered figures walking the road below. Making her way down the dusty, stony slope, she was within fifteen paces before anyone noticed her. There was a strangeness in that moment of meeting, survivors eye to eye, both recognition and disbelief. Acceptance, a sense of something shared, and beneath it the ineffable flow of sorrow. Few words were exchanged.

Joining the soldiers in their march, Lostara Yil found herself alongside Captain Faradan Sort, who told her something of Y'Ghatan's aftermath. 'Your Fist, Tene Baralta, was hovering on the edge of death, if not of the flesh, then of the spirit. He has lost an arm – it was burned beyond repair – and there was other damage ... to his face. I believe he was a vain man.'

Lostara grunted. 'That damned beard of his, slick with oil.' She thought about Tene Baralta for a time. She'd never liked him much. More than just vain. Perhaps, truth be told, something of a coward, despite all his belligerence and posturing. She remembered the way he had led the retreat following her assassination of the elder Sha'ik, and his eagerness to take credit for every success whilst dancing from the path of disaster. There had been a sadistic streak in the man, and Lostara now feared that it would burgeon, as Tene Baralta sought means to feed all that was wounded within him. 'Why did the army leave all of you behind?'

Faradan Sort shrugged. 'They assumed no-one who had been trapped within the city could have survived the firestorm.' She paused, then added, 'It was a reasonable assumption. Only Sinn knew otherwise, and something told me to trust the girl. So we kept looking.'

'They're all wearing rags ... and they're unarmed.'

'Aye, which is why we need to rejoin the army as soon as possible.'

'Can Sinn magically contact the Fourteenth? Or Quick Ben?'

'I have not asked her. I do not know how much of her ability is unformed talent – such creatures occur occasionally, and without the discipline of schooling as an apprentice, they tend to become avatars of chaos. Power, yes, but undirected, wild. Even so, she was able to defeat the wall of fire and so save Fist Keneb's companies ... well, some of them.'

Lostara glanced over at the captain, then back at the soldiers in their wake for a moment before saying, 'You are Korelri?'

'I am.'

'And you stood the Wall?'

A tight smile, there for an instant then gone. 'None are permitted to leave that service.'

'It's said the Stormriders wield terrible sorcery in their eternal assault upon the Wall.'

'All sorcery is terrible – to kill indiscriminately, often from a great distance, there is nothing more damaging to the mortal who wields such power, whether it is human or something else.'

'Is it better to look your foe in the eye as you take his life?'

'At the very least,' Faradan replied, 'you gave them the chance to defend themselves. And Oponn decides in the end, decides in which set of eyes the light shall fade.'

'Oponn – I thought it was skill.'

'You're still young, Captain Lostara Yil.'

'I am?'

Faradan Sort smiled. 'With each battle I find myself in, my faith in skill diminishes. No, it is the Lord's push or the Lady's pull, each time, every time.'

Lostara said nothing. She could not agree with that assessment, even disregarding the irritation of the other woman's condescension. A clever, skilled soldier lived where dim-witted, clumsy soldiers died. Skill was a currency that purchased Oponn's favour – how could it be otherwise?

'You survived Y'Ghatan,' Faradan Sort said. 'How much of that was the Lady's pull?'

Lostara considered for a moment, then replied, 'None.'

Once, years ago, a few score soldiers had stumbled clear of a vast swamp. Bloodied, half-mad, their very skin hanging in discoloured strips from weeks slogging through mud and black water. Kalam Mekhar had been among them, along with the three he now walked beside, and it seemed that, in the end, only the details had changed.

Black Dog had brutally culled the Bridgeburners, a protracted nightmare war conducted in black spruce stands, in lagoons and bogs, clashing with the Mott Irregulars, the Nathii First Army and the Crimson Guard. The survivors