She reined in hard, her horse's hooves kicking up dust. 'Why in Hood's name should I tell you?'
'Then why in Hood's name did you ride back to us?'
She scowled. 'I was simply returning to my position, oaf — and you, Itkovian, that had better not be a hint of a smile I see there. If it was, I'd have to kill you.'
'Most certainly not, sir.'
'Glad to hear it.'
'So?' Gruntle asked her.
'What?'
'The news, woman!'
'Oh, that. Wonderful news, of course, it's the only kind we hear these days, right? Pleasing revelations. Happy times-'
'Stonny.'
'Old friends, Gruntle! Trundling after us about a league back. Big, bone carriage, pulled by a train that ain't quite what it seems. Dragging a pair of flatbed wagons behind, too, loaded with junk — did I say junk? I meant loot, of course, including more than one sun-blackened corpse. And an old man on the driver's seat. With a mangy cat in his lap. Well, what do you know? Old friends, yes?'
Gruntle's expression had flattened, his eyes suddenly cold. 'No Buke?'
'Not even his horse. Either he's flown, or-'
The Mortal Sword wheeled his horse round and drove his heels into the beast's flanks.
Itkovian hesitated. He glanced at Stonny and was surprised to see undisguised sympathy softening her face. Her green eyes found him. 'Catch up with him, will you?' she asked quietly.
He nodded, lowered the visor of his Malazan helm. The faintest shift in weight and a momentary brush of the reins against his horse's neck brought the animal about.
His mount was pleased with the opportunity to stretch its legs, and given its lighter burden was able to draw Itkovian alongside Gruntle with two-thirds of a league remaining. The Mortal Sword's horse was already labouring.
'Sir!' Itkovian called. 'Pace, sir! Else we'll be riding double on the return!'
Gruntle hissed a curse, made as if to urge his horse yet faster, then relented, straightening in the saddle, reins loose, as the beast's gallop slowed, fell into a canter.
'Fast trot now, sir,' Itkovian advised. 'We'll drop to a walk in a hundred paces so she can stretch her neck and open full her air passages.'
'Sorry, Itkovian,' Gruntle said a short while later. 'There's no heat to my temper these days, but that seems to make it all the deadlier, I'm afraid.'
'Trake would-'
'No, don't even try, friend. I've said it before. I don't give a damn what Trake wants or expects of me, and the rest of you had best stop seeing me that way. Mortal Sword — I hate titles. I didn't even like being called captain when I guarded caravans. I only used it so I could charge more.'
'Do you intend to attempt harm upon these travellers, sir?'
'You well know who they are.'
'I do.'
'I had a friend. '
'Aye, the one named Buke. I recall him. A man broken by sorrow. I once offered to take his burdens, but he refused me.'
Gruntle's head snapped round at that. 'You did? He did?'
Itkovian nodded. 'Perhaps I should have been more … direct.'
'You should have grabbed him by the throat and done it no matter what he wanted. That's what the new Shield Anvil's done to that one-eyed First Child of the Dead Seed, Anaster, isn't it? And now the man rides at her side-'
'Rides unknowing. He is naught but a shell, sir. There was naught else within him but pain. Its taking has stolen his knowledge of himself. Would you have had that as Buke's fate as well, sir?'
The man grimaced.
Less than a third of a league remained, assuming Stonny's claim was accurate, but the roll of the eroded beach ridges reduced the line of sight, and indeed it was the sound that the carriage made, a muted clanking riding the wind, that alerted the two men to its proximity.
They crested a ridge and had to rein in quickly to avoid colliding with the train of oxen.
Emancipor Reese was wearing a broad, smudged bandage, wrapped vertically about his head, not quite covering a swollen jaw and puffy right eye. The cat in his lap screamed at the sudden arrival of the two riders, then clawed its way up the servant's chest, over the left shoulder, and onto the roof of the ghastly carriage, where it vanished into a fold of K'Chain Che'Malle bone and skin. Reese himself jumped in his seat, almost toppling from his perch before recovering his balance.
'Bathtardth! Why you do tha? Hood'th b'eth!'
'Apologies, sir,' Itkovian said, 'for startling you so. You are injured-'
