‘Aye.’

‘Caught no scent of us?’

‘None, Captain. I hid us with grey and blue. It was easy. That mage she kneels in front of the Holds. She knows nothing about the grey and blue warrens.’

‘The Letherii were supposed to join us,’ Faradan Sort muttered. ‘Instead, we find them riding with Tiste Edur, doing their work for them.’

All stirred up, aye. Especially round here.’

‘And that’s the problem,’ she replied, gathering her reins and nudging her mount out from beneath the heavy branches where they had hidden-fifteen paces off the trail-while the war-party rode past. ‘We’re well ahead of the other squads. Either Hellian or Urb has lost their mind, or maybe both of them.’

Beak followed on his own horse, a gentle bay he’d named Lily. ‘Like a hot poker, Captain, pushing right to the back of the forge. Do that and you burn your hand, right?’

‘The hand, yes. Keneb. You and me. All the other squads.’

‘Um, your hand, I meant.’

‘I am learning to tell those moments,’ she said, now eyeing him.

‘What moments?’ Beak asked.

‘When you’ve convinced yourself how stupid you are.’

‘Oh.’ Those moments. ‘I ain’t never been so loyal, Captain. Never.’

She gave him a strange look then, but said nothing.

They rode up onto the trail and faced their mounts east. ‘They’re up there somewhere ahead,’ the captain said. ‘Causing all sorts of trouble.’

Beak nodded. They’d been tracking those two squads for two nights now. And it was truly a trail of corpses. Sprung ambushes, dead Letherii and Tiste Edur, the bodies dragged off into cover, stripped down and so naked Beak had to avert his eyes, lest evil thoughts sneak into his mind. All the places his mother liked him to touch that one night-no, all that was evil thinking, evil memories, the kind of evil that could make him hang himself as his brother had done.

‘We have to find them, Beak.’

He nodded again.

‘We have to rein them in. Tonight, do you think?’

‘It’s the one named Balgrid, Captain. And the other named Bowl-who’s learned magic real fast. Balgrid’s got the white candle, you see, and this land ain’t had no white candle for a long time. So he’s dragging the smell off all the bodies they’re leaving and that’s muddying things up-those ears they’re cutting off, and the fingers and stuff that they’re tying to their belts. That’s why we’re going from ambush to ambush, right? Instead of straight to them.’

‘Well,’ she said after a moment and another long, curious look, ‘we’re on damned horses, aren’t we?’

‘So are they now, Captain.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I think so. Just tonight. It’s the Holds. There’s one for beasts. And if the Letherii mages figure things out, they could turn with that and find them real fast.’

‘Hood’s breath, Beak. And what about us?’

‘Us too. Of course, there’s plenty of people riding horses round here, bad stirrups or no. But if they get close, then maybe even grey and blue candles won’t work.’

‘You might end up having to show a few more, then.’

Oh, he didn’t like that idea. ‘I hope not. I really hope not.’

‘Let’s get going then, Beak.’

Don’t burn me down to the core, Captain. Please. It won’t he nice, not for anyone. I can still hear their screams and there’s always screams and I start first. My screams scare me the most, Captain. Scare me stupid, aye.

‘Wish Masan Gilani was with us,’ Scant said, pulling up clumps of moss to wash the blood from his hands.

Hellian blinked at the fool. Masan who?

‘Listen, Sergeant,’ Balgrid said again.

He was always saying that and so she’d stopped listening to him. It was like pissing in the fire, the way men could do when women couldn’t. Just a hiss into sudden darkness and then that awful smell. Listen, Sergeant and hiss, she stopped listening.

‘You’ve got to,’ Balgrid insisted, reaching out to prod her with a finger. ‘Sergeant?’

She glared down at that finger. ‘Want me t’cut off my left cheek, soldier? Touch me again and you’ll be sorry ‘s what I’m sayin’.’

‘Someone’s tracking us.’

She scowled. ‘For how long?’

‘Two, maybe three nights going,’ Balgrid replied.

‘So you decide to tell me now7. All my soljers are idiots. How they trackin’ us? You and Bowl said you had it covered, had something covered, anyway. What was it you had covered? Right, you been pissing all over our trail or something.’ She glared at him. ‘Hiss.’

‘What? No. Listen, Sergeant-’

And there it went again. She rose to her feet, wobbling on the soft, loamy ground. Where one could fall at every damned step if one wasn’t careful. ‘Someone-you, Corporal, drag them bodies away.’

‘Aye Sergeant.

‘Right away, Sergeant.’

‘And you two. Maybe. Louts-’

‘Lutes.’

‘Help the corporal. You all made a mess killing these ones.’ And that was right enough, wasn’t it? This one had been nasty. Sixteen Letherii and four Edur. Quarrels to the heads did for them Edur what it does for normal people. Like sacks of stones on a big drop, whoo, toppling right off them horses. Then a pair of sharpers, one front of the Letherii column, the other at the tail end. Boom boom and the dusk was nothing but screaming and thrashing limbs human and horse and some couldn’t tell which.

Damned Letherii had recovered a little too fast for her liking. Dead sure too fast for Hanno’s liking, since Hanno went down with only half a skull left after one of the meanest sword swings she’d ever seen. Threw the soldier right off balance, though, with those stupid stirrups, and so it’d been easy for Urb to reach up one of those giant hands of his, grasp a belt or something and drag the fool right off. Throwing him down with such force that all wind rushed out of him both ends. At which point Urb pushed a mailed fist so hard into the face under the helmet that Urb hurt his knuckles on the back of the man’s skull-low, just above the vertables or whatever they were called. Teeth and bone splinters and meat spurting out everywhere.

The first loss in the squads, that’d been. All because Hanno jumped in close thinking the Letherii were still confused and useless. But no, these soldiers, they’d been veterans. They’d come round damned quick.

Saltlick was bad cut up, though Balgrid had worked on him and he wasn’t bleeding out and unconscious any more. And Corporal Reem went and got two fingers of his left hand cut off-a bad fend with his shield. Poor Urb wasn’t doing too well as sergeant.

Hellian worked round carefully until she faced another direction, and could see Urb sitting on a rotting log, looking miserable. She drank down a mouthful of rum then ambled over. ‘We’re both sergeants now, right? Let’s go find some bushes t’crawl under. I’m in the mood for sweat and grunts with somebody, and since we’re the same rank an’ all it’s only obvious and ain’t nobody here gonna c’mplain.’

He blinked up at her, wide-eyed as an owl.

‘Wha’s your probbem, Urb? I ain’t as ugly as you, am I?’

‘Urb ain’t ugly,’ Reem said with an incredulous laugh. ‘Masan couldn’t think straight around him! Probably why she let herself get shifted over to Balm’s squad.’

Hellian grunted, then said, ‘Be quiet, Reem. You’re a corporal. This is sergeant business.’

‘You want a roll with Urb, Sergeant,’ Reem said. ‘Got nothing to do with you two being sergeants and everything t’do with Urb looking like some goddamned god and you drunk enough to get hungry for the sweats and grunts.’

‘Still ain’t your business.’

‘Maybe not, but we gotta listen to those grunts. Like Scant said, if Masan was around we could all of us dream those dreams and maybe even try, hoping she’d be so frustrated trying to get anywhere with Urb she just might-’

‘Since when you find that runaway mouth of yours, Reem?’ Balgrid demanded. ‘You was better being silent and mysterious. So now you lose a couple fingers and what happens?’