From the ruined farmhouse, the second Kenryll’ah was beginning to clamber free.

Smiles tossed another sharper into the wreckage. A second snapping explosion, more smoke, more of the building falling down.

‘We’re pulling out!’

Bottle saw Koryk and Tarr hesitate, desperate to close in on the stunned demon. At that moment Fiddler and Cuttle arrived.

‘Hood’s balls!’ Fiddler swore. ‘Get moving, Koryk! Tarr! Move!’

Gesler was making some strange gesture. ‘We go south! South!’

Saltlick and Shortnose swung in that direction, but Stormy pulled them back. ‘That’s called misdirection, y’damned idiots!’

The squads reforming as they moved, eastward, now in a run. The shock of Uru Hela’s death and the battle that followed keeping them quiet now, just their gasping breaths, the sounds of armour like broken crockery underfoot. Behind them, smoke billowing from the farmhouse. An axe-wielding demon staggering about in a daze, blood streaming from its head.

Damned sharper should have cracked that skull wide open, Bottle well knew. Thick bones, I guess. Kenryll’ah, aye, not their underlings. No, Highborn of Aral Gamelon, he was sure of that.

Stormy started up. ‘Hood-damned demon farmers! They got Hood-damned demon farmers! Sowing seeds, yanking teats, spinnin’ wool-and chopping strangers to pieces! Gesler, old friend, 1 hate this place, you hear me? Hate it!’

‘Keep quiet!’ Fiddler snarled. ‘We was lucky enough all those sharpers didn’t mince us on the road-now your bleating’s telling those demons exactly where we’re going!’

‘I wasn’t going to lose any more,’ Stormy retorted in a bitter growl. ‘I’d swore it-’

‘Should’ve known better,’ Gesler cut in. ‘Damn you, Stormy, don’t make promises you can’t keep-we’re in a fight here and people are going to die. No more promises, got me?’

A surly nod was his only answer.

They ran on, the end of a long, long night now tumbled over into day. For the others, Bottle knew, there’d be rest ahead. Somewhere. But not him. No, he’d need to work illusions to hide them. He’d need to flit from creature to creature out in the forest, checking on their backtrail. He needed to keep these fools alive.

Crawling from the wreckage of the farmhouse, the demon prince spat out some blood, then settled back onto his haunches and looked blearily around. His brother stood nearby, cut and lashed about the body and half his face torn away. Well, it had never been much of a face anyway, and most of it would grow back. Except maybe for that eye.

His brother saw him and staggered over. ‘I’m never going to believe you again,’ he said.

‘Whatever do you mean?’ The words were harsh, painful to utter. He’d inhaled some flames with that second grenade.

‘You said farming was peaceful. You said we could just retire.’

‘It was peaceful,’ he retorted. ‘All our neighbours ran away, didn’t they?’

‘These ones didn’t.’

‘Weren’t farmers, though. I believe I can say that with some assurance.’

‘My head hurts.’

‘Mine too.’

‘Where did they run to?’

‘Not south.’

‘Should we go after them, brother? As it stands, I’d have to venture the opinion that they had the better of us in this little skirmish, and that displeases me.’

‘It’s worth considering. My ire is awakened, after all. Although I suggest you find your matlock, brother, instead of that silly wood-axe.’

‘Nearest thing within reach. And now I’ll have to dig into our crumpled, smouldering abode-all that digging we did, all for nothing!’

At that moment they heard, distinctly, the sound of horses. Coming fast up the track.

‘Listen, there’s more of them. No time to find your matlock, brother. Let us set forth and commence our sweet vengeance, shall we?’

‘Superior notion indeed. One of my eyes still works, which should suffice.’

The two Kenryll’ah demon princes set out for the cart path.

It was really not their day.

A quarter of a league now from the farmhouse, and Fiddler swung round, confirming for Bottle yet again that the old sergeant had hidden talents. ‘Horses,’ he said.

Bottle had sensed the same.

The squads halted, under bright sunlight, alongside a cobbled road left in bad repair. Another cluster of farm buildings awaited them a thousand paces to the east. No smoke rising from the chimney. No surprise with demons for neighbours, 1 suppose.

The detonations were a drumbeat of thunderous concussions that shook the earth beneath them.

‘Four!’ Fiddler said with a savage grin.

Bottle saw Cuttle staring at the sergeant with undisguised awe and more than a little worship.

Smoke now, billowing in the distance, an earthen blot rising above the treeline.

‘Let’s make for that farm ahead,’ Fiddler said. ‘We’ll rest up there for the day-I don’t think our pursuers are in any condition to do much.’

‘The drum,’ Cuttle whispered. ‘I seen it. The drum. Now I can die happy.’

Damned sappers. Bottle shook his head. There was pain there, now, in that mangled stretch of track a quarter-league away. Human, beast, and… oh, and demon. You’d have done better chasing us. Even so, what a mess we’ve made.

Yes, plenty of pain, but more death. Flat, dwindling death, spreading dark as that dust in the air. Fiddler’s drum. No better announcement imaginable, that the Malazans were here.

Thom Tissy’s descent from the tree was a little loud, a little fast. In a skein of snapped branches, twigs, leaves and one abandoned wasp nest, the sergeant landed heavy and hard on his backside. ‘Ow, gods below, gods below!’

‘Ain’t no god at that end, just a tailbone,’ a soldier called out from the nearby squads.

Keneb waited for a few more heartbeats, then asked, ‘Sergeant, tell me what you saw.’

Thom Tissy slowly, carefully, regained his feet. He walked about on his short bandy legs, squat as an ogre, replete with pocked face and warty hands. ‘Smoke, Fist, and plenty of it. Counted ten spots in all, one of ‘em big-probably the thunder we heard a little while back-more than one cusser for sure. Maybe three, maybe more.’

Meaning someone was in desperate trouble. Keneb glanced away, scanned the motley soldiers hunkered down in the forest glade. ‘Ten?’

‘Aye, Fist. I guess we stirred ‘em up some, enough so that the fighting’s getting fierce. When the captain gets back, we’ll find out some details, I suppose.’

Yes. Faradan Sort. But she and Beak had been away for days, almost a week now.

‘Ten.’

‘Expecting more, Fist!’ Thorn Tissy asked. ‘My line of sight wasn’t bad, but not perfect. I saw six on the north side, four on the south, putting us near dead centre and a half a night’s travel behind. Anyway, the outermost smokes were right on the horizons, so we’re still spread well out, the way we should be. And the smoke just tells us where bigger fights happened, not all the other little ambushes and the like. Something wrong, Fist?’

‘Settle the squads in,’ Keneb replied, turning away. Oh, aye, there was fighting going on. But nothing evenly matched. His marines were outnumbered; no chance of acquiring the allies they’d thought they’d get. True, they were loaded down with munitions, but the more mages arriving with the Edur and Letherii troops the more the sheer overwhelming imbalance would start to tell. His squads, even paired up, couldn’t afford losses. Four or five dead and that threshold of effectiveness would have been crossed. There would have to be convergence, merging of survivors-and this leagues-long line of advance would start thinning out. Instead of gaining in strength and momentum as the advance began to close in on this empire’s capital, the Malazan marines would in fact be weaker.

Of course, this invasion was not simply Keneb’s covert marine advance. There were other elements-the Adjunct and Blistig’s regular infantry, who would be led in the field, when that time came, by the terrifying but competent Captain Kindly. There were the Khundryl Burned Tears and the Perish-although they were, for the moment, far away. A complicated invasion indeed.