As he was walking up the trail, the man shouted after him: ‘It took my brother!’

Fisher glanced back but the man had turned away to return to his work, cutting wood. The bard stood for a time, watching, but the man said no more. Fisher returned to the column.

When he fell in with the Malazans once more, Jethiss gave him a questioning look. Fisher gestured ahead, where the ground climbed to another ridge and another high pass. ‘Some sort of possible threat ahead. Something haunting the highlands.’

Jethiss nodded. ‘Ah. I saw your mage friends. They did not appear convinced.’

Fisher chuckled. ‘No. But then, they have not seen what I have seen.’

‘And neither have I, it would seem.’

Fisher studied him, his lined face, his blowing white-streaked hair. ‘I believe you have. You just do not remember it.’

The man gave an easy shrug. ‘Perhaps. Immaterial now. What is gone is gone. How could I miss that which I do not even recall?’

Sidelong, Fisher studied the man. Could he cultivate such an untroubled equanimity if he’d lost all that he’d ever been? He doubted it. It would take a strong and centred spirit to awake into a strange new existence and still keep one’s sanity. Let alone one’s sense of humour, or irony.

He shivered in the cold wind blowing down out of the heights and shaking the trees. Dampness chilled it. A late snowstorm? Would the pass be open? He pulled his travelling cloak tighter about himself. ‘The old songs and stories are consistent on it. There must be something there.’

‘Perhaps they merely reference one another, perpetuating the myth.’

He walked for a time in silence. Ahead, Malle, the old Gris matriarch on her donkey, raised a parasol and opened it. Fisher held out a hand; a few drops struck. A cold rain. And perhaps snow in the upper passes. This late in the season, too. He drew his idum from his back to check its oiled leather wrap. ‘Perhaps,’ he allowed. ‘We shall see.’

That night it snowed. Fisher watched it from the open front of his tent. The fat flakes hissed and melted as they slapped the ground.

He played late into the evening. At times Jethiss stirred, thrashing on his bedding. It was not until Fisher put away the instrument and lay down upon his own Malazan-issued blankets that he realized he’d unconsciously been playing themes from Anomandaris, his epic lay concerning Anomander Rake.

Yelling from somewhere in the camp shocked him awake in the dead of night. He bolted up, pulled on his boots, and ran out of the tent in his leather shirt and trousers. Almost everyone was up and milling about, most running to the perimeter. He spotted Marshal Teal with a bodyguard of four men, jogging for Enguf’s camp, and followed. The pirate commander was shouting and waving to disperse his crew back to their campfires and tents.