Korlat’s hissing retort shocked him. ‘Do not dare underestimate them!’

‘Underest—’

‘I have come to know many of your soldiers, Whiskeyjack. They are not fools. Perhaps many of them – if not most – are unable to articulate their fullest understanding, but they understand none the less. Do you not think that they – each in his or her own way – have faced the choice you faced this morning? The knife-point turn of their lives? And every one of them still feels the scar within them.’

‘I see little—’

‘Whiskeyjack, listen to me. They witnessed. They saw, in fullest knowing. Damn you, I know this for I felt the same. They hurt for you. With every brutal blow, they felt the old wounds within them resonate in sympathy. Commander, your shame is an insult. Discard it, or you will deliver unto your soldiers the deepest wound of all.’

He stared down at her. ‘We’re a short-lived people,’ he said after a long moment. ‘We lack such complexity in our lives.’

‘Bastard. Remind me to never again apologize to you.’

He looked back once more at the Malazan legions. ‘I still fear to face them at close range,’ he muttered.

‘The distance between you and them has already closed, Whiskeyjack. Your army will follow you into the Abyss, should you so command.’

‘The most frightening thought uttered thus far today.’

She made no reply to that.

Aye, war’s imposition – of extremities. Harsh, yet simple. It is no place for humanity, no place at all. ‘Dujek was displeased,’ he said.

‘Dujek wants to keep his army alive.’

His head snapped round.

Her eyes regarded him, cool and gauging.

‘I have no interest in usurping his authority—’

‘You just did, Whiskeyjack. Laseen’s fear of you be damned, the natural order has reasserted itself. She could handle Dujek. That’s why she demoted you and put him in charge. Gods, you can be dense at times!’

He scowled. ‘If I am such a threat to her, why didn’t she—’ He stopped, closed his mouth. Oh, Hood. Pale. Darujhistan. It wasn’t the Bridgeburners she wanted destroyed. It was me.

‘Guard your trust, my love,’ Korlat said. ‘It may be that your belief in honour is being used against you.’

He felt himself go cold inside.

Oh, Hood.

Hood’s marble balls on an anvil. . .

Coll made his way down the gentle slope towards the Mhybe’s wagon. Thirty paces to the right were the last of the Trygalle Trade Guild’s carriages, a group of shareholders throwing bones on a tarp nearby. Messengers rode in the distance, coming from or returning to the main army’s position a league to the southwest.

Murillio sat with his back to one of the Rhivi wagon’s solid wood wheels, eyes closed.

They opened upon the councillor’s arrival.

‘How does she fare?’ Coll asked, crouching down beside him.