She grunted.

Traveller was silent for a moment and then he said, ‘A man like that… well, I am curious. I would like to meet him.’

‘Don’t expect hugs and kisses,’ she said. ‘He will not be pleased to see you?’

‘I have no idea, although I am bringing him his horse, which should count for something.’

‘Does he know how you feel about him?’

She shot him a look, and then snorted. ‘He may think he does but the truth is I don’t know how I feel about him, so whatever he’s thinking it’s bound to be wrong. Now that we’re closing in, I’m the one getting more nervous. It’s ridiculous, I know.’

‘It seems your examination of those two women has soured your mood. Why?’

‘I don’t know what you wanted me to do about them. They were pregnant, not in labour. They looked hale enough, better than I expected in fact. They didn’t need me poking and prodding. The babies will be born and they will live or they will die. Same for the mothers. It’s just how things are.’

‘My apologies, Samar Dev. I should not have so ordered you about. Were I in your place, I too would have been offended by the presumption.’

Was that what had annoyed her? Possibly. Equally likely, her mute acquiescence, the doe-eyed ease with which she had fallen into that subservient role. As when I was with Karsa Orlong. Oh, I think I now step on to the thinnest cmst of sand above some bottomless pit. Samar Dev discovers her very own secret weaknesses. Was she foul of mood earlier? See her now.

A talent, a sensitivity-something-clearly told Traveller to say nothing more.

They rode on, the horses’ hoofs thumping the taut drum of the earth. The warm wind slid dry as sand. In a low, broad depression on their left stood six pronghorn antelope, watching them pass. Rust-red slabs of flat rock tilted up through the thin ground along the spines of hills. Long-billed birds of some kind perched on them, their plumage the same mix of hues. ‘It is all the same,’ she murmured.

‘Samar Dev? Did you speak?’

She shrugged. ‘The way so many animals are made to match their surroundings. I wonder, if all this grass suddenly grew blood red, how long before the markings on those antelope shift into patterns of red? You’d think it could never be the other way round, but you would be wrong. See those flowers-the bright colours to attract the right insects. If the right insects don’t come to collect the pollen the flower dies. So, brighter is better. Plants and animals, it goes back and forth, the whole thing inseparable and dependent. Despite this, nothing stays the same.’

‘True, nothing ever stays the same.’

‘Those women back there…’

‘Gandaru. Kin to the Kindaru and Sinbarl-so the men explained.’

‘Not true humans.’

‘No.’

‘Yet true to themselves none the less.’

‘I imagine so, Samar Dev.’

‘They broke my heart, Traveller. Against us, they don’t stand a chance.’ He glanced across at her. ‘That is quite a presumption.’

‘It is?’

‘We are riding towards a Tartheno Toblakai, belonging to a remnant tribe isolated somewhere in northern Genabackis. You tell me that Karsa Orlong intend todeliver destruction to all the “children” of the world-to us, in other words. When you speak ol this, I see fear in your eyes. A conviction that he will succeed. So now, tell me, against one such as Karsa Orlong and his kind, do we stand a chance?’

‘Of course we do, because we can fight back. What can these gentle Gandaru manage? Nothing. They can hide, and when that fails they are killed, or enslaved. Those two women were probably raped. Used. Vessels for human seed.’

‘Barring the rape, every animal we hunt for food possesses the same few choices. Hide or flee.’

‘Until there is no place left to hide.’

‘And when the animals go, so too will we.’

She barked a laugh. ‘You might believe so, Traveller. No, we won’t go that way. We’ll just fill the empty lands with cattle, with sheep and goats. Or break up the ground and plant corn. There is no stopping us.’

‘Except, perhaps, for Karsa Orlong.’

And there,, then, was the truth of all this. Karsa Orlong pronounced a future of destruction, extinction. And she wished him well.

‘There,’ Traveller said in a different voice, and he rose in his stirrups. ‘He didn’t travel too far after all-’

From Havok’s saddle, Samar Dev could now see him. He had halted and was facing them, a thousand paces distant. Two horses stood near him, and there were humps in the grass of the knoll, scattered like ant hills or boulders but, she knew, neither of those. ‘He was attacked,’ she said. ‘The idiots should have left well enough alone.’

‘I’m sure their ghosts concur,’ Traveller said.

They cantered closer.

The Toblakai looked no different from the last time she had seen him-there on the sands of the arena in Letheras. As sure, as solid, as undeniable as ever. ‘I shall kill him… once.’ And so he did. Defying… everything. Oh, he was look-ing at her now, and at Havok, with the air of a master summoning his favourite hunting dog.

And suddenly she was furious. ‘This wasn’t obligation!’ she snapped, savagely reining in directly in front of him. ‘You abandoned us-there in that damned foreign city! “Do this when the time is right”, and so I did! Where the Hood did you go? And-’

And then she yelped, as the huge warrior swept her off the saddle with one massive arm, and closed her in a suffocating embrace, and the bastard was laughing and even Traveller-curse the fool-was grinning, although to be sure it was a hard grin, mindful as he clearly was of the half-dozen bodies lying amidst blood and entrails in the grasses.

‘Witch!’

‘Set me down!’

‘I am amazed,’ he bellowed, ‘that Havok suffered you all this way!’

‘Down!’

So he dropped her. Jarring her knees, sending her down with a thump on her backside, every bone rattled. She glared up at him. But Karsa Orlong had already turned away and was eyeing Traveller, who re-mained on his horse. ‘You are you her husband then? She must have had one somewhere-no other reason for her forever refusing me. Very well, we shall light for her, you and me-’

‘Be quiet, Karsa! He’s not my husband and no one’s fighting for me. Because I belong to no one but me! Do you understand? Will you ever understand?’

‘Samar Dev has spoken,’ said Traveller. ‘We met not long ago, both journeying on this plain! We chose to ride as companions. I am from Dal Hon, on the continent of Quon Tali-’

Karsa grunted. ‘Malazan.’

An answering nod. ‘I am called Traveller.’

‘You hide your name.’

‘What I hide merely begins with my name, Karsa Orlong.’ The Toblakai’s eyes thinned at that.

‘You bear the tattoos,’ Traveller went on, ‘of an escaped slave of Seven Cities. Or, rather, a recaptured one. Clearly, the chains did not hold you for long.’

Samar Dev had picked herself up and was now brushing the dust from her clothes. ‘Are these Skathandi?’ she asked, gesturing at the bodies. ‘Karsa?’

The giant turned away from his study of the Malazan. ‘Idiots,’ he said. ‘Seeking vengeance for the dead king-as if I killed him.’

‘Did you?’

‘No.’

‘Well,’ she said, ’at least now I will have a horse of my own.’

Karsa walked over to Havok and settled a hand on his neck. The beast’s nos-trils flared and the lips peeled back to reveal the overlong fangs. Karsa laughed. ‘Yes, old friend, I smell Of death. When was it never thus?’ And he laughed again.

‘Hood take you, Karsa Orlong-what happened?’

He frowned at her. ‘What do you mean, Witch?’

‘You killed the Emperor.’

‘I said I would, and so I did.’ He paused, and then said, ‘And now this Malazan speaks as if he would make me a slave once more.’

‘Not at all,’ said Traveller. ‘It just seems as if you have lived an eventful life, Toblakai. I only regret that I will probably never hear your tale, for I gather that you are not the talkative type.’