And so Shield Anvil Tanakalian smiled, and all the cynicism behind that smile stayed hidden from his brothers and sisters. It was not yet time for him. Not yet, but soon.
Warleader Gall drew his black feather cloak about his shoulders, and then strapped on his crow-beaked helm. He adjusted his over-weighted tulwar on to the point of his left hip as he strode to his horse. Insects whirred in the crepuscular air like flecks of winged dust. Gall hacked and spat out a lump of phlegm before swinging into the saddle.
‘Why does war always bring smoke?’
The two young Tear Runners facing him exchanged looks of incomprehension.
‘And not just regular smoke either,’ the Warleader continued, kicking his mount forward to ride between the two warriors. ‘No, it’s the foul kind. Cloth. Hair. Sits like tar on the tongue, eats into the back of your throat. It’s a Fall-damned mess, is what it is.’
Flanked now by the Tear Runners, Gall rode up the track. ‘Yelk, you say there are Barghast among them?’
The scout on his left nodded. ‘Two, maybe three legions, Warleader. They hold the left flank.’
Gall grunted. ‘I’ve never fought Barghast before-there weren’t many left in Seven Cities, and those ones were far to the north and east of our homelands, or so I recall. Do they seem formidable?’
‘Undisciplined is what they seemed,’ said Yelk. ‘Squatter than I’d expected, and wearing armour that looks as if it’s made of turtle shells. Their hair stands straight up, wedge-shaped, and with all the face paint they look half mad.’
Gall glanced over at the Tear Runner. ‘Do you know why you two are accompanying me to this parley, and not any of my officers?’
Yelk nodded. ‘We’re expendable, Warleader.’
‘As am I.’
‘There we do not agree with you.’
‘Glad to hear it. So, should they shit on the flag of peace, what will you and Ganap here do?’
‘We shall offer our bodies between you and their weapons, Warleader, and fight until you can win clear.’
‘Failing to save my life, what then?’
‘We kill their commander.’
‘Arrows?’
‘Knives.’
‘Good,’ said Gall, well pleased. ‘The young are fast. And you two are faster than most, which is why you’re Tear Runners. Perhaps,’ he added, ‘they will think you two my children, eh?’
The track lifted and then wound down over the ridge to converge with a broad cobbled road. At the junction three squat, square granaries plumed columns of black smoke. A waste-the locals had lit their own harvest rather than yield it to the Khundryl. Pernicious attitudes annoyed Gall, as if war was an excuse for anything. He recalled a story he’d heard from a Malazan-Fist Keneb, he believed-about a company of royal guard in the city of Bloor on Quon Tali, who, surrounded in a square, had used children as shields against the Emperor’s archers. Dassem Ultor’s face had darkened with disgust, and he’d had siege weapons brought in to fling nets instead of bolts, and once all the soldiers were tangled and brought down, the First Sword had sent in troops to extricate the children from their clutches. Among all the enemies of the Empire during Dassem Ultor’s command, those guards had been the only ones ever impaled and left to die slowly, in terrible agony. Some things were inexcusable. Gall would have skinned the bastards first.
Destroying perfectly good food wasn’t quite as atrocious, but the sentiment behind the gesture was little different from that of those Bloorian guards, as far as he was concerned. Without the crimes that had launched this war, the Khundryl would have paid good gold for that grain. This was how things fell apart when stupidity stole the crown. War was the ultimate disintegration of civility, and, for that matter, simple logic.
At the far end of the plain, perhaps a fifth of a league distant, the Bolkando army was arrayed across a rumpled range of low hills. Commanding the centre, straddling the road, was a legion of perhaps three thousand heavy infantry, their armour black but glinting with gold, matching the facing on their rectangular shields. A small forest of standards rose from the centre of this legion.
‘Ganap, your eyes are said to be sharpest among all Tear Runners-tell me what you see on those standards.’
The woman took a moment to dislodge the wad of rustleaf bulging one cheek, sent out a stream of brown juice, and then said, ‘I see a crown.’
Gall nodded. ‘So.’
The Barghast were presented on the left flank, as Yelk had noted. The ranks were uneven, with some of the mercenaries sitting, helms doffed and shields down. The tall standards rising above their companies were all adorned with human skulls and braids of hair.