Dust of Dreams: Book Nine of The Malazan Book of the Fallen - By Steven Erikson Page 0,253

Firehair.’

‘Studded with arrows.’

‘Oh, we’d leave a trail of our own, yes, but we would have arrived when we were supposed to, ready to deliver vengeance.’

She considered that, and concluded he was not simply full of himself. We should have heeded what befell the Lether Empire. Dear Bolkando, the world beyond is very large indeed. And the sooner we send it on its way again the sooner we can get back to our orgy of sniping and backstabbing.

‘You’ve a nostalgic look in your eye, Firehair.’

‘Stop seeing so much, Spax.’

His third laugh made her want to punch her fist through the man’s ugly face.

Impatient, Gall left his two Tear Runners to deal with the gift of skins and rode back to the camp alone. A formidable woman, this Queen. Thick, long hair the hue of flames. Clever eyes, brown so deep as to be almost black. Stolid enough to give Krughava a tangle in the spit-circle with some lucky man the prize. And I’d like to see that match—why, they’re both enough to make me uncertain whether I was in bed with a woman or a man. The thought enlivened him and he shifted in the saddle. Bult’s balls, never mind that, you old fool.

They would not be quit of Abrastal and her Evertine Legion any time soon, he suspected. All the way to the border and perhaps even beyond. But he did not anticipate betrayal—the Khundryl had done enough to keep the fools honest—honest in that frightened, over-eager way that Gall so appreciated. Sometimes war did what was needed. Always easier—and lucrative—dealing with a reeling foe, after all.

He was well enough pleased with how the parley had played out, although some unease remained, like a yurt rat chewing on his toes. Kolanse. What do you know, Adjunct? What is it you are not telling us?

You’re moaning like an old man shivering under furs, Gall. The Khundryl, the Perish Grey Helms and the Bonehunters. No army can hope to stand against the three of us combined. Bolkando is small. Queen Abrastal rules a tiny, insignificant realm. And the only empire she knows is the one the marines shattered.

No, we have nothing to fear. Still, it will be good to learn what the Queen knows.

A cadre of wing and sub-wing officers awaited him at the edge of the encampment. He scowled at them as he rode up. ‘Seems they want to keep their kingdom after all. Send out word—hostilities are at an end. Recall all the raids.’

‘What of the wings attacking the flanking armies?’ one of the warriors asked.

‘Too late to do anything about that, but send Runners in case they’re still fighting. Order them to withdraw to the main camp—and no looting on the way!’

‘Warleader,’ said another warrior, ‘your wife has arrived and awaits you in your tent.’

Gall grunted, kicking his horse onward.

He found her sprawled on his cot, naked and heavy as only a pregnant woman could be. Eyeing her as he drew off his cape, he said, ‘Wife.’

She glanced up with lidded eyes. ‘Husband. How goes the killing?’

‘Over with, for now.’

‘Oh. How sad for you.’

‘I should have drowned you in a river long ago.’

‘You’d rather have my ghost haunting you than this all too solid flesh?’

‘Would you have? Haunted me?’

‘Not for long. I’d get bored.’

Gall began unstrapping his armour. ‘You still won’t tell whose it is?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘So it could still be mine.’

She blinked, and a sharper focus came to her regard. ‘Gall Inshikalan, you are fifty-six years old. You’ve been crushing your balls on a horse’s back for four and a half decades—no Khundryl man your age can seed a woman.’

He sighed. ‘That’s the problem. Everyone knows that.’

‘Are you humiliated, husband? I did not think that was possible.’

Humiliation. Well, though he’d never wanted it, he’d done his share of humiliating this woman, who had been his wife for most of his life. He had been fifteen. She had been ten. In the old days they would not lie together even when married, until she’d had her first bleed. He remembered the women’s celebration when that time finally arrived for his wife—they bundled the pale girl away for a night of secret truths, and what had been a frightened child at the beginning of that night came back to him the following dawn with a look of such knowing in her eyes that he was left . . . uncertain, feeling foolish for no reason, and from that day onward, that he was five years older than her had ceased