'Understand what?'

'That the Fourteenth Army can no longer be counted on as a fighting force on Seven Cities.'

Is that true? 'That remains to be seen,' he said. 'In any case, the rebellion is crushed-'

'Leoman escaped.'

'What?'

'He has escaped. Into the Warren of D'riss, under the protection of the Queen of Dreams – only she knows, I suppose, what use he will be to her. I admit, that part worries me – gods are by nature unfathomable, most of the time, and she is more so than most. I find this detail… troubling.'

'Stand here, then, and fret.' Blistig turned away, made for the hastily erected hospital tents. Hood take that damned Claw. The sooner the better. How could he know such things? Leoman… alive. Well, perhaps that could be made to work in their favour, perhaps his name would become a curse among the people of Seven Cities as well. The Betrayer. The commander who murdered his own army.

But it is how we are. Look at High Fist Pormqual, after all. Yet, his crime was stupidity. Leoman's was… pure evil. If such a thing truly exists.

The storm raged on, unleashing waves of heat that blackened the surrounding countryside. The city's walls had vanished – for no humanbuilt wall could withstand this demon's fury. A distant, pale reflection was visible to the east. The sun, rising to meet its child.

His soul rode the back of a small, insignificant creature, fed on a tiny, racing heart, and looked through eyes that cut into the darkness. Like some remote ghost, tethered by the thinnest of chains, Bottle could feel his own body, somewhere far above, slithering through detritus, cut and scraped raw, face gone slack, eyes straining. Battered hands pulled him along – his own, he was certain – and he could hear soldiers moving behind him, the crying of children, the scrape and catch of buckles, leather straps snagging, rubble being pushed aside, clawed at, clambered over.

He had no idea how far they had gone. The rat sought out the widest, highest passages, following the howling, whistling wind. If people remained in the temple, awaiting their turn to enter this tortured tunnel, that turn would never come, for the air itself would have burst aflame by now, and soon the temple would collapse, burying their blackened corpses in melting stone.

Strings would have been among those victims, for the sergeant had insisted on going last, just behind Corabb Bhilan Thenu'alas. Bottle thought back to those frantic moments, before the dust-clouds had even cleared, as chunks of the domed ceiling rained down…

'Bottle!'

'I'm looking!' Questing down, through cracks and fissures, hunting life. Warm-blooded life. Brushing then closing in on the muted awareness of a rat, sleek, healthy – but overheating with terror.

Overwhelming its meagre defences, clasping hard an iron control about its soul – that faint, flickering force, yet strong enough to reach beyond the flesh and bones that sheltered it. Cunning, strangely proud, warmed by the presence of kin, the rule of the swarm's master, but now all was in chaos, the drive of survival overpowering all else.

Racing down, following spoor, following the rich scents in the airAnd then it turned about, began climbing upwards once more, and Bottle could feel its soul in his grasp. Perfectly still,, unresisting now that it had been captured. Observing, curious, calm. There was more, he had always known – so much more to creatures. And so few who understood them the way he did, so few who could reach out and grasp such souls, and so find the strange web of trust all tangled with suspicion, fear with curiosity, need with loyalty.

He was not leading this morsel of a creature to its death. He would not do that, could not, and somehow it seemed to understand, to sense, now, a greater purpose to its life, its existence.

'I have her,' Bottle heard himself saying.

'Get down there, then!'

'Not yet. She needs to find a way up – to lead us back down-'

'Gods below!'

Gesler spoke: 'Start adopting children, soldiers. I want one between everyone behind Cuttle, since Cuttle will be right behind Bottle-'

'Leave me to the last,' Strings said.

'Your leg-'

'That's exactly right, Gesler.'

'We got other injured – got someone guiding or dragging each of 'em.

Fid-'

'No. I go last. Whoever's right ahead of me, we're going to need to close up this tunnel, else the fire'll follow us down-'

'There are copper doors. They covered the pool.' That was Corabb Bhilan Thenu'alas. 'I will stay with you. Together, we shall use those panels to seal our retreat.'

'Second to last?' someone snarled. 'You'll just kill Fid and-'

'And what, Malazan? No, would I be allowed, I would go last. I stood at Leoman's side-'

'I'm satisfied with that,' Strings said. 'Corabb, you and I, that will do.'

'Hold on,' said Hellian, leaning close to Bottle. 'I ain't going down there. Someone better kill me right now-'

'Sergeant-'

'No way, there's spiders down there-'

The sound of a fist cracking into a jaw, then a collapsing body.

'Urb, you just knocked out your own sergeant.'

'Aye. I known her a long time, you see. She's a good sergeant, no matter what all of you think.'

'Huh. Right.'

'It's the spiders. No way she'd go down there – now I got to gag her and tie her arms and feet – I'll drag her myself-'

'If she's a good sergeant, Urb, how do you treat bad ones?'

'Ain't had any other sergeant, and I mean to keep it that way.'

Below, the broad crevasse that Bottle had sensed earlier, his rat scrambling free, now seeking to follow that wide but shallow crack – too shallow? No, they could scrape through, and there, beneath it, a tilted chamber of some kind, most of the ceiling intact, and the lower half of a doorway – he sent the rat that way, and beyond the doorway… 'I have it! There's a street! Part of a street – not sure how far-'

'Never mind! Lead us down, damn you! I'm starting to blister everywhere! Hurry!'

All right. Why not? At the very least, it'll purchase us a few more moments. He slithered down into the pit. Behind him, voices, the scrabble of boots, the hissing of pain as flesh touched hot stone.

Faintly: 'How hot is that water in that pool? Boiling yet? No? Good, those with canteens and skins, fill 'em now-'

Into the crevasse… while the rat scurried down the canted, littered street, beneath a ceiling of packed rubble…

Bottle felt his body push through a fissure, then plunge downward, onto the low-ceilinged section of street. Rocks, mortar and potsherds under his hands, cutting, scraping as he scrabbled forward. Once walked, this avenue, in an age long past. Wagons had rattled here, horse-hoofs clumping, and there had been rich smells. Cooking from nearby homes, livestock being driven to the market squares. Kings and paupers, great mages and ambitious priests. All gone. Gone to dust.

The street sloped sharply, where cobbles had buckled, sagging down to fill a subterranean chamber – no, an old sewer, brick-lined, and it was into this channel his rat had crawled.

Pushing aside broken pieces of cobble, he pulled himself down into the shaft. Desiccated faeces in a thin, shallow bed beneath him, the husks of dead insects, carapaces crunching as he slithered along. A pale lizard, long as his forearm, fled in a whisper into a side crack. His forehead caught strands of spider's web, tough enough to halt him momentarily before audibly snapping. He felt something alight on his shoulder, race across his back, then leap off.

Behind him Bottle heard Cuttle coughing in the dust in his wake, as it swept over the sapper on the gusting wind. A child had been crying somewhere back there, but was now silent, only the sound of movement, gasps of effort. Just ahead, a section of the tunnel had fallen in.