Urb handed her a waterskin.

'Not that, idiot.'

'Maybe in the company we're joining…'

She looked up, squinted at him. 'Good idea. All right, help me up – no, don't help me up.' She staggered upright.

'You all right, Sergeant?'

'I will be,' she said, 'after you take my skull in your hands and crush it flat.'

He frowned. 'I'd get in trouble if I did that.'

'Not with me you wouldn't. Never mind. Touchy, take point.'

'We're on a road, Sergeant.'

'Just do it. Practice.'

'I won't be able to see anything,' the man said. 'Too many people and things in the way.'

Oh, gods crawling in the Abyss, just let me live long enough to kill that man. 'You got any problem with taking point, Brethless?'

'No, Sergeant. Not me.'

'Good. Do it and let's get going.'

'Want me out on flank?' Touchy asked.

'Yeah, somewhere past the horizon, you brain-stunted cactus.'

'It's not your average scorpion,' Maybe said, peering close but not too close.

'It's damned huge,' Lutes said. 'Seen that type before, but never one so… huge.'

'Could be a freak, and all its brothers and sisters were tiny. Making it lonely and that's why it's so mean.'

Lutes stared across at Maybe. 'Yeah, could be it. You got a real brain in that skull. All right, now, you think it can kill Joyful Union? I mean, there's two of those…'

'Well, maybe we need to find another one just like this one.'

'But I thought all its brothers and sisters were tiny.'

'Oh, right. Could be it's got an uncle, or something.'

'Who's big.'

'Huge. Huger than this one.'

'We need to start looking.'

'I wouldn't bother,' Bottle said from where he sat in the shadow of a boulder, five paces away from the two soldiers of Borduke's squad.

They started, then Lutes hissed and said, 'He's been spying!'

'Not spying. Grieving.'

'What for?' Maybe demanded. 'We ain't even arrived at Y'Ghatan yet.'

'Met our new captain?'

The two looked at each other, then Lutes said, 'No. Knew one was coming, though.'

'She's here. She killed Joyful Union. Under her heel. Crunch!'

Both men jumped. 'That murderer!' Maybe said in a growl. He looked down at the scorpion ringed in by stones at his feet. 'Oh yes, let's see her try with Sparkle here – he'd get her ankle for sure, right through the boot leather-'

'Don't be a fool,' Bottle said. 'Anyway, Sparkle's not a boy. Sparkle' s a girl.'

'Even better. Girls are meaner.'

'The smaller ones you always see are the boys. Not as many girls around, but that's just the way of it. They're coy. Anyway, you'd better let her go.'

'Why?' Lutes demanded. 'Ain't no prissy captain going to-'

'She'd be the least of your problems, Lutes. The males will pick up her distress scent. You'll have hundreds following you. Then thousands, and they'll be damned aggressive, if you get my meaning.'

Maybe smiled. 'Interesting. You sure of that, Bottle?'

'Don't get any stupid ideas.'

'Why not? We're good at stupid ideas. I mean, uh, well-'

'What Maybe means,' Lutes said, 'is we can think things through. Right through, Bottle. Don't you worry about us.'

'She killed Joyful Union. There won't be any more fights – spread the word, all those squads with new scorpions – let the little ones go.'

'All right,' Lutes said, nodding.

Bottle studied the two men. 'That includes the one you got there.'

'Sure. We'll just look at her a while longer, that's all.' Maybe smiled again.

Climbing to his feet, Bottle hesitated, then shook his head and walked off, back towards the squad's camp. The army was almost ready to resume the march. With all the desultory lack of enthusiasm one might expect of an army about to lay siege to a city.

A sky without clouds. Again. More dust, more heat, more sweat.

Bloodflies and chigger fleas, and the damned vultures wheeling overhead – as they had been doing since Raraku – but this, he knew, would be the last day of that march. The old road ahead, a few more abandoned hamlets, feral goats in the denuded hills, distant riders tracking them from the ridge.

The others in the squad were on their feet and waiting when he arrived. Bottle saw that Smiles was labouring under two packs. 'What happened to you?' he asked her.

The look she turned on him was filled with abject misery. 'I don't know. The new captain ordered it. I hate her.'

'I'm not surprised,' Bottle said, collecting his own gear and shrugging into the pack's straps. 'Is that Strings's kit you got there?'

'Not all of it,' she said. 'He won't trust me with the Moranth munitions.'

Thank Oponn for that. 'The captain been by since?'

'No. The bitch. We're going to kill her, you know.'

'Really. Well, I won't shed any tears. Who is this "we" anyway?'

'Me and Cuttle. He'll distract her, I'll stick a knife in her back.

Tonight.'

'Fist Keneb will have you strung up, you know.'

'We'll make it look like an accident.'

Distant horns sounded. 'All right, everyone,' Strings said from the road. 'Let's move.'

Groaning wagon wheels, clacking and thumping on the uneven cobbles, rocking in the ruts, the lowing of oxen, thousands of soldiers lurching into motion, the sounds a rising clatter and roar, the first dust swirling into the air.

Koryk fell in alongside Bottle. 'They won't do it,' he said.

'Do what? Kill the captain?'

'I got a long look at her,' he said. 'She's not just from Korelri.

She's from the Stormwall.'

Bottle squinted at the burly warrior. 'How do you know that?'

'There's a silver tracing on her scabbard. She was a section commander.'

'That's ridiculous, Koryk. First, standing the Wall isn't something you can just resign from, if what I've heard is true. Besides, this woman's a captain, in the least-prepared Malazan army in the entire empire. If she'd commanded a section against the Stormriders, she'd rank as Fist at the very least.'

'Only if she told people, Bottle, but that tracing tells another story.'

Two strides ahead of them, Strings turned his head to regard them. '

So, you saw it too, Koryk.'

Bottle swung round to Smiles and Cuttle. 'You two hearing this?'

'So?' Smiles demanded.

'We heard,' Cuttle said, his expression sour. 'Maybe she just looted that scabbard from somewhere… but I don't think that's likely.

Smiles, lass, we'd best put our plans on a pyre and strike a spark.'

'Why?' she demanded. 'What's this Stormwall mean, anyway? And how come Koryk thinks he knows so much? He doesn't know anything, except maybe the back end of a horse and that only in the dark. Look at all your faces – I'm saddled with a bunch of cowards!'

'Who plan on staying alive,' Cuttle said.

'Smiles grew up playing in the sand with farm boys,' Koryk said, shaking his head. 'Woman, listen to me. The Stormwall is leagues long, on the north coast of Korelri. It stands as the only barricade between the island continent and the Stormriders, those demonic warriors of the seas between Malaz Island and Korelri – you must have heard of them?'

'Old fishers' tales.'

'No, all too real,' Cuttle said. 'I seen them myself, plying those waters. Their horses are the waves. They wield lances of ice. We slit the throats of six goats to paint the water in appeasement.'

'And it worked?' Bottle asked, surprised.

'No, but tossing the cabin boy over the side did.'

'Anyway,' Koryk said after a moment of silence, 'only chosen warriors are given the task of standing the Wall. Fighting those eerie hordes.

It's an endless war, or at least it was…'

'It's over?'

The Seti shrugged.

'So,' Smiles said, 'what's she doing here? Bottle's right, it doesn't make sense.'

'You could ask her,' Koryk replied, 'assuming you survive this day's march.'