The pause was only momentary as the fighting renewed itself. The running scrum broke into the open close to the waterfront. Jute could make out individual figures within the press: the two Falarans who’d given their names as Red and Rusty – which was a joke of course, all Falarans tell outsiders their name is Red. And in the middle of the pack, a scrawny grey-haired figure pointing and shouting commands: Cartheron. The roiling knot now made for the dock. Sword blades flashed in the light of waving torches. Men and women cursed and grunted at blows given and taken.

The huge figure of Black Bull reared into view before Lieutenant Jalaz. He leaned in swinging two-handed. She met him with twinned shortswords. The weapons slid and grated across one another in blows and parries until one of Jalaz’s swords flicked up across the man’s beard and he reared back in a spray of blood. He clasped his throat, his eyes rolling white in the darkness. She raised a boot to his chest and kicked him down.

Jute couldn’t fathom the numbers of these would-be miners and fortune-hunters all piling in, all struggling to tear the Malazans apart. He’d been there when they’d been told Lying Gell’s thugs numbered some three hundred. Yet far more than that – a horde of over a thousand – now clamoured to pull them down. And more were arriving every minute.

Something, it seemed, had turned the entire tent city of Wrong-way against Cartheron and his crew. Lying Gell couldn’t command that sort of loyalty, could he? But then, maybe it had something to do with them having just blown up or burned all the food in the town.

The crew, or gang, pushed through to the dock and linked with Jalaz and her squad. The entire troop now retreated up the dock. Letita kept up her punishing volleys of arrow fire. Then the springals released once more and Jute couldn’t help but duck.

The end of the dock disappeared in twin concussions that shot bodies and timber high into the air to come raining down as debris that knocked more people from the dock. When the smoke cleared, Jute glimpsed the Malazans backing away, headed for the Ragstopper. In their midst, lumbering like two laden oxen, struggled two of the Barghast veterans. They carried between them a huge iron trunk.

Jute almost laid his head on the ship’s railing. Oh, no … Cartheron … y’damned pirate. Don’t tell me you …

Lieutenant Jalaz came bounding up the gangway. ‘Push off!’ she yelled.

Jute blinked and shook his head; at her cry it was as if his daze from the explosion snapped away. ‘Cut that rope!’ he bellowed. ‘Push off! Lower sweeps!’