Smaller chunks fell all about him. They burst to shards against the wall. Some punched through the timbers of the catwalk. Nearby, a man fell as if mattocked, his head a shattered ruin. Jute ducked, arms over his head, and staggered down the ramp to take cover under the catwalk. Here, beneath his hand and his rump, the bedrock shook as if drummed. A deep wounded-animal sort of groan mounted into a high-pitched cracking. In his mind’s eye, he imagined the stupendous weight of the ice pulling it downslope to the east and to the west, naturally tugging in opposite directions. And so it would split – not of intent, but because the great ice-river merely wished to find the lowest level. He rose and clambered out to look. The ramp had been shaken to nothing more than a heap of dirt, and this he climbed to pull himself one-handed up on to the catwalk. The huge blocks of the wall were now misaligned and uneven in their course, and it seemed wondrous to Jute that the snow still fell as if nothing had happened. To the right and left coursed the dirty snow-blown river of ice, down to where the two arms came together again before sweeping out over the obliterated shore of the Sea of Gold.

They sat atop a scoured-clean island of naked rock.

He went to find Cartheron and spotted him collapsed against the wall, watched over by two of his crew. He was pale, squeezing his chest, his face clenched against pain. Jute knelt next to him. The roar of the creaking and groaning ice was still like a thunderstorm, and he had to yell to make himself heard. ‘Are you all right?’

The old man laughed weakly. ‘When Lady Orosenn sewed me up she told me to avoid any stress.’

‘Good thing you’re taking it easy, then.’

There was a tremor in the Malazan’s hands that he didn’t seem to notice. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘it’s the retired life for me.’

Jute stood. ‘I’ll get Orosenn.’

The old commander was too exhausted even to respond. Jute ran, searching for the sorceress. He found her at the extreme southern end of the catwalk close to the wall’s edge overlooking the cliff. She was watching the great tongue of ice where it crept out over the Sea of Gold.

Gaining her attention, he put a hand to his mouth to shout: ‘Cartheron is in a bad way.’

She nodded. ‘I’ve done what I can for him. It’s a miracle he’s still alive.’

He gestured out towards the sea. ‘What can we do?’

‘We wait.’

‘Will it be like this for ever?’

She bestowed the familiar affectionate smile upon him once more. ‘No, Jute of Delanss. This was a ferociously rapid invocation. It will fade faster than most. Perhaps a mere hundred years.’

Oh. A mere hundred years. ‘So it is over,’ he breathed, immensely relieved.