Within the city, facing the north gates, was a broad concourse, generally used as a caravan staging area. This open space was now packed with refugees. The task of billeting would have to await the more pressing needs of food, water and medical attention.
Commander Blistig had set his garrison to those efforts, and his soldiers worked tirelessly, displaying extraordinary compassion, as if answering their own need to respond to the enemy's triumph beyond the walls. Coltaine, his Wickans and the Seventh had given their lives for those the guard now tended. Solicitude was fast becoming an overwhelming gesture.
Yet other tensions rode the air.
The final sacrifice was unnecessary. We could have saved them, if not for the coward commanding us. Two powerful honours had clashed – the raw duty to save the lives of fellow soldiers, and the discipline of the Malazan command structure – and from that collision ten thousand living, breathing, highly trained soldiers now stood broken.
Down in the concourse, Duiker wandered aimlessly through the crowds. Figures loomed before him every now and then, blurred faces murmuring meaningless words, offering information that they each believed – hoped – would soothe him. The Wickan youths had claimed Nil and Nether and now protected them with a fierceness that none dared challenge. Countless refugees had been retrieved from the very edge of Hood's Gates, each one a source of savage defiance – a pleasure revealed in glittering eyes and bared teeth. Those few for whom the final flight – and perhaps the release of salvation itself – had proved too much for their broken, riven flesh, were fought for in unyielding desperation. Hood had to reach for those failing souls, reach for, grasp and drag them into oblivion, with the healers employing every skill they possessed to defeat the effort.
Duiker had found his own oblivion deep inside himself, and he had no desire to leave its numbing comfort. Within that place, pain could do naught but gnaw at the very edges, and those edges seemed to be growing ever more distant.
Words occasionally seeped through, as various officers and soldiers delivered details of things they clearly felt the historian should know. The caution in their voices was not necessary, for the information was absorbed stripped of feeling. Duiker was beyond hurting.
The Silanda, with its load of wounded soldiers, had not arrived, he learned from a Wickan youth named Temul. Adjunct Tavore's fleet was less than a week away. Korbolo Dom was likely to begin a siege, for Sha'ik was on her way from Raraku, leading an army twice the size of the renegade Fist's own force. Mallick Rel had led High Fist Pormqual back to the palace. A plan was now in the air, a plan to reap vengeance, and it was but hours away—
Blinking, Duiker tried to focus on the face before him, the face telling him this news in an urgent tone. But the first brush of recognition sent the historian reeling back in his mind. Too much pain was embedded in the memories that were so closely chained to that recognition. He stepped back.
The figure reached out a strong hand that closed on Duiker's ragged shirt and pulled the historian closer once again. The bearded mouth was moving, shaping words, demanding, angry words.
'—through to you, Historian! It's the assumptions, don't you see? Our only reports have come from that nobleman, Nethpara. But we need a soldier's assessment – do you understand? Damn you, it's almost dawn!'
'What? What are you talking about?'
Blistig's face twisted. 'Mallick Rel has got through to Pormqual. Hood knows how, but he has! We're going to strike Korbolo's army – in less than an hour's time, when they're still drunk, still exhausted. We're marching out, Duiker! Do you understand me?'
Cruel. . . so cruel—
'How many are out there? We need reliable estimates—'
'Thousands. Tens of thousands. Hundreds—'
'Think, damn you! If we can knock these bastards out ... before Sha'ik arrives—'
'I don't know, Blistig! That army grew with every Hood-cursed league!'
'Nethpara judges just under ten thousand—'
'The man's a fool.'
'He's also laying the deaths of thousands of innocent refugees at Coltaine's feet—'
'W— What?' The historian staggered, and if not for Blistig's grip would have fallen.
'Don't you see? Without you, Duiker, that version of what happened out there will win the day. It's already spread through the ranks and it's damned troubling. Certainty's crumbling – the desire for vengeance is weakening—'
It was enough. The historian felt a jolt. Eyes widening, he straightened. 'Where is he? Nethpara! Where—'