What inhuman will… He wiped his gloved hand on the wall then yanked his hand away. Warm. The dirt walls fairly radiated a strange heat. The fires? As his vision adjusted he made out the low shapes of legs lying straight out from either side forming a kind of aisle leading straight to the opposite wall where the lone torch cast a fading light on a single figure, waiting.

Rillish walked the aisle. To either side lay the elders, heart thrust, every one. No sign of any child, nor of any struggle. Their slack features appeared calm, resigned. His boots slipped and sucked in the soaked, mud-slick earth. A strange humid warmth assaulted him while an impenetrable darkness seemed to hover just beyond the torch and motionless figure.

Drawing close, he recognized the shaman, Clearwater, sunk to his knees. Horribly, two spears supported him, thrust downward through his back and crossed beneath his chest, impaling him on his knees. Blood ran drying in rivulets down the wood hafts, pooling beneath him.

incredibly, the shaman's head rose, sending Rillish backwards, gripping his swords. ‘Greetings, Malazan,’ the apparition breathed, wetly.

Rillish could not speak. Above, boots stamped the timber floor, shouts for relief for the bulwark beyond the door sounded. Should they yield that, he knew, the end would not be far behind. He found his voice. ‘Clearwater – what have you done?’

The shaman's smile was ferocious, and victorious. He glanced to the eerie darkness past the torchlight. ‘Forbidden one fight, we found another. And succeeded, though the cost was dear. Go now, bring your men. A way has been bought.’

‘What do you mean? Bought? What kind of bargain is this?’

A shudder took the shaman and his torso slipped a hand's width down the shafts. The man spoke through lips drained pale. ‘An escape, fool. Life for our children and your men. This site was holy once. To our ancestors. Blood called, just as it always did. But hungry! So hungry… there were barely enough of us. Now go, send your men. I hold the way.’

‘A way where?’

A clipped laugh cut off by an agonized grunt. ‘Not far. Go.’

Rillish ran to the stairs, his boots slipping and sliding. He roared up the passage, ‘Send Sergeant Chord down here!’

In the end he managed to evacuate thirty-two men and women of his command before the building's burning roof forced him into the passage. His last act was to help those wounded who volunteered to carry out the ones who couldn't walk. Bent over, his leg stabbing with pain, he could wait no longer. A soldier rearguard steadied him on the stairs. Together, they pulled shut the trapdoor against the furnace roar of the barracks.

‘Sergeant Chord?’

‘First through, sir,’ she said.

‘Very good. Our turn now.’

‘Yes, sir. After you, sir.’

‘No. I'll go last.’

The woman smiled – dark, Talian or part Dal Hon, her mailed shoulders as broad as any man's. ‘Not the sergeant's orders, beggin’ your pardon.’

A glow licked its way between the thick timbers of the trapdoor. They backed away, hunched. ‘No time for that, soldier. After you.’

A salute. ‘Aye, sir.’

At the darkness, the soldier drew her shortsword, readied the wide shield from her back. ‘Good luck, soldier,’ Rillish said.

‘Aye. Hood spare me,’ she spat, muttered a short prayer, then launched herself forward, disappearing.

Rillish turned to the now still form of Clearwater; the shaman's head was sunk to his chest, his greasy hair obscuring his face. He knelt beside him. ‘Clearwater? Can you hear me? I don't know what to say… Thank you. Thank you for my men.’

‘Thank not for a fair bargain,’ came a hoarse whisper. ‘Honour it.’

Rillish straightened, ‘Yes.’ He faced the darkness, a hand on the grip of one Untan duelling sword, stepped forward…

… And walked into a forest – tall conifers, birdsong, sunlight shafting down through boughs, movement between the thick trunks, a kind of large deer? – then one more step and into cool night. Hands steadied him, Chord and the female soldier. He looked up and was reassured to see familiar constellations: the Twins, the Wolf, the broad Path of Light. ‘Where are we?’

‘Just west of the fort, seems,’ supplied Chord. ‘You can see the flames from the hilltop.’

Rillish peered about, getting his bearings. They were in a deep gully, a dry river bed. Around them was – no one. ‘Where is everyone? The children?’

‘Headed off north-west already, sir. Couldn't stop them. Said they had directions from Clearwater. I sent the men with them.’

‘Very well, Sergeant.’

‘Shall we go?’ East, a pale orange glow backlit a hill. Rillish watched it for a time. ‘Care to take one last look, sir?’

Wincing, Rillish squeezed his leg and brushed the night flies from his face. ‘No, Sergeant. It's all right. We best go.’

‘Yes, sir. There's our guide.’ Chord gestured up the gully where the dim figure of a Wickan girl stood waving them on impatiently.

The female soldier slipped her shield to her back, offered an arm. Rillish accepted.

The weather of the Western Explorer's Sea had proven remarkably calm these last few days. The morning of the sixth day Shimmer took her usual place next to Jhep, her tillerman on the Wanderer, She wore only her long linen undershirt and pantaloons but the cold dawn wind did not chill her. A sailor brought her hot tea that she sipped, her eyes fixed on the waters far ahead on the north horizon. There an emerald nimbus grew, wavering like the lights one sometimes saw in the night sky. Cowl's ritual. It made her uneasy, this relying on Ruse's uncharacteristic, how had the High Mage put it, compliance. Shimmer's instincts told her to mistrust any such pose – for pose it surely must be. Especially when an Elder is involved. And this demonic rush to reach Quon… There was no need as far as she could see; and every reason for the opposite. Again, especially with unfinished business left behind.

She looked to the Gedrand, the captured Kurzan three-tiered warship Skinner had taken as his flag vessel. Despite the incalculable advantage his presence brought to their Vow, Shimmer could not help wishing he had never returned. Simply catching sight of him now made her wince – where was the man she'd known? Who was this impostor? Her sources told her they'd yet to see him outside his armour. Reportedly, he slept sitting up, fully accoutred. And that armour; she had never seen anything like it. What was that dark patina that covered it with a crystal-like glitter? Skinner did not hide that his patron, Ardata of Jacuruku, had gifted it to him. She was some sort of witch queen, perhaps an Ascendant herself of those alien lands. And he made no secret they had been close. Lovers? Shimmer felt the cold wind and she wrapped her arms about herself. The Vow still drove him; of that she was sure. Yet what other, lesser, vows might he have sworn during all those years away? She dashed the cold tea over the side.

‘Send for Smoky,’ she called to a guardsman.

‘Aye.’

Shortly afterwards the mage came working his way sternward, hand over hand along the gunwale, his face sickly pale. Shimmer could not help but smile. Never one to find his sea-legs was Smoky. ‘No further word from the investigation?’ she asked as he came close.

‘No, Commander.’ The mage's face was milky beneath his greasy tangled locks. His eyes narrowed ahead where a greenish curtain of light now climbed from the waves.

Her sergeants brought Shimmer her armour. She raised her arms for them to slip the quilted aketon over her head, followed by her mail shirt that they shook to hang down to her calves, slit back and front. ‘You have questioned the Brethren?’

‘Yes. They maintain they saw nothing that night. Indeed, they even claim that nothing happened – because they did not see it.’