The Bonehunters

****

No track, alley or street in Y'Ghatan ran straight for more than thirty paces. Laid upon successive foundations, rising, it was likely, from the very first maze-wound fortress city built here ten thousand years or more past, the pattern resembled a termite mound with each twisting passageway exposed to the sky, although in many cases that sky was no more than a slit, less than an arm's length wide, overhead.



To look upon Y'Ghatan, and to wander its corridors, was to step into antiquity. Cities, Leoman had once told Corabb, were born not of convenience, nor lordship, nor markets and their babbling merchants.



Born not even of harvest and surplus. No, said Leoman, cities were born from the need for protection. Fortresses, that and nothing more, and all that followed did just that: follow. And so, cities were always walled, and indeed, walls were often all that remained of the oldest ones.



And this was why, Leoman had explained, a city would always build upon the bones of its forebears, for this lifted its walls yet higher, and made of the place a more formidable protection. It was the marauding tribes, he had said, laughing, that forced the birth of cities, of the very cities capable of defying them and, ultimately, conquering them.



Thus did civilization arise from savagery.



All very well, Corabb mused as they walked towards this city's heart, and possibly even true, but already he longed for the open lands of the Odhans, the desert's sweet whispering wind, the sultry heat that could bake a man's brain inside his helmet until he dreamed raving that he was being pursued by herds of fat aunts and leathery grandmothers who liked to pinch cheeks.



Corabb shook his head to dispel the recollection and all its attendant terrors. He walked at Leoman's left, cutlass drawn and a scowl of belligerence ready for any suspicious-looking citizen. Third Dunsparrow was to Leoman's right, the two brushing arms every now and then and exchanging soft words, probably grim with romance, that Corabb was pleased he could not overhear. That, or they were talking about ways of doing away with him.



'Oponn pull me, push her,' he said under his breath.



Leoman's head turned. 'You said something, Corabb?'



'I was cursing this damned rat path, Avenger.'



'We're almost there,' Leoman said, uncharacteristically considerate, which only deepened Corabb's foul mood. 'Dunsparrow and I were discussing what to do with the priesthood.'



'Were you now? That's nice. What do you mean, what to do with them?'



'They are resisting the notion of leaving.'



'I am not surprised.'



'Nor am I, but leave they shall.'



'It's all the wealth,' Corabb said. 'And their reliquaries and icons and wine cellars – they fear they will be set upon on the road, raped and robbed and their hair all unbunned.'



Both Leoman and Dunsparrow peered over at him with odd expressions.



'Corabb,' Leoman said, 'I think it best you remove that new great helm of yours.'



'Yes,' Dunsparrow added. 'There are streams of sweat pouring down your face.'



'I am fine,' Corabb said in growl. 'This was the Champion's helm. But Leoman would not take it. He should have. In truth, I am only carrying it for him. At the appropriate time, he will discover the need to tear it from my head and don it himself, and the world shall right itself once more, may all the yellow and blue gods be praised.'



'Corabb-'



'I am fine, although we had better do something about all those old women following us. I will spit myself on my own sword before I let them get me. Ooh what a nice little boy! Enough of that, I say.'



'Give me that helm,' Leoman said.



'It's about time you recognized your destiny, Adjunct Slayer.'



****

Corabb's head was pounding by the time they reached the Temple of Scalissara. Leoman had elected not to wear the great helm, even with its sodden quilted under-padding removed – without which it would have been too loose in any case. At least the old women were gone; in fact, the route they had taken was almost deserted, although they could hear the chaotic sounds of crowds in the main thoroughfares, being driven from the city, out onto the west road that led to Lothal on the coast.



Panic rode the sweltering currents, yet it was clear that most of the four thousand soldiers now under Leoman's command were out in the streets, maintaining order.



Seven lesser temples, each dedicated to one of the Seven Holies, encircled the octagonal edifice now sanctified in the name of the Queen of Dreams. The formal approach was spiral, wending through these smaller domed structures. The flanking compound walls had been twice defaced, first with rededication to Malazan gods soon after the conquest; then again with the rebellion, when the temples and their new foreign priesthoods had been assailed, the sanctuaries sundered and hundreds slaughtered. Friezes and metopes, caryatids and panels were all ruined now, entire pantheons defiled and made incomprehensible.