The wolf thrashed in his chest, launching spikes of pain along his broken, malformed limbs. It yearned to loose its howl, its call to lover and to kin. Yet it could not draw breath—

—cannot draw breath. It dies. The hail, these savage gifts, they mean nothing. With me, the god’s fatal choice, we die—

The sounds of fighting had stopped. Toc heard iron bars snap, one after another, heard metal clang on the flagstones.

Then someone was crouching down beside him. A hand that was little more than rough bone and tendon settled on Toc’s forehead.

The Malazan could not see. There was no light. But the hand was cool, its weight gentle.

‘Hood? Have you come for us, then?’ The words were clearly spoken in his mind, but came out incomprehensibly – and he realized that his tongue was gone.

‘Ah, my friend,’ the figure replied in a rasp. ‘It is I, Onos T’oolan, once of the Tarad Clan, of the Logros T’lan Imass, but now kin to Aral Fayle, to Toc the Younger.’

Kin.

Withered arms gathered him up.

‘We are leaving now, young brother.’

Leaving?

Picker eyed the breach. The bravado that had been behind her proclamation that they would follow the T’lan Imass into the keep had not survived a sudden return to caution once they came within sight of the fortress. It was under assault, and whatever enemy had stormed into the keep had kicked hard the hornet nest.

K’Chain Che’Malle were thundering back through the compound gate. Sorcerous detonations shook the entire structure. Urdomen and Beklites raced along the top of the walls. Twisting spirals of grey lightning writhed skyward from the south roof, linking the score of condors wheeling overhead. Beyond it, filling the sky above the harbour, was an enormous storm-cloud, flashes burgeoning from its heaving depths.

The lieutenant glanced back at her paltry squads. They’d lost the three badly wounded soldiers, as she had expected. Not one of the Bridgeburners crouching in the smoke-hazed street had been spared – she saw far too much blood on the soot-smeared uniforms behind her.

To the northwest, the sounds of battle continued, drawing no closer. Picker knew that Dujek would have sought to reach the keep, if at all possible. From what she could hear, however, he was being pushed back, street by street.

The gambit had failed.

Leaving us on our own.

‘K’Chain Che’Malle!’ a soldier hissed from the back. ‘Coming up behind us!’

‘Well, that settles it, then,’ Picker muttered. ‘Doubletime to Hedge’s breach!’

The Bridgeburners sprinted across the rubble-littered street.

Blend was the first to complete her scramble over the tower’s wreckage. Immediately beyond was a shattered building – three walls and half of the roof remaining. Within lay dusty darkness, and what might be a doorway far to the left of the room’s far wall.