Location 3413:

Aye, there’s a sentimental streak in me. I don’t deny it, and maybe it’s wide as an ocean like Ges says. But I didn’t ask for it. I cried for a dying mouse once – dying because I tried to catch it only my hand was too clumsy and something got broken inside. Lying there in my palm, breaths coming so fast, but the tiny limbs’d stopped moving, and then the breaths slowed. I knelt on the stones and watched it slowly die. There in my hand. Gods, it’s enough to make me bawl all over again, just remembering. How old was I? Twenty?



Location 3673:

He’d intended to call them all together during the Adjunct’s parley, but re-forming the squads had taken longer than he’d thought it would – a notion which, he decided, had been foolishly optimistic. Even with spaces in each campfire’s circle yawning like silent howls, marines and heavies might as well have been rooted to the ground. They’d needed pulling, kicking, dragging out of their old places. To fit into a new thing you had to leave the old thing behind, and that wasn’t as easy as it sounded, since it meant accepting that the old thing was dead, for ever gone, no matter where you tried standing or how stubbornly you held fast. Fiddler knew he’d been no different. As bad as Hedge in that regard, in fact. The heavies and the marines were a chewed-up mess. Standing over them, like some cutter above a mauled patient, trying to work out exactly what he was looking at – desperate for something even remotely recognizable – he’d watched them trickle slowly into the basin he’d chosen for this meeting. As the sun waned in the sky, as pairs of squad-mates set out to find some missing comrade, eventually returning with a scowling companion in tow – aye, this was a rough scene, resentment thickening in the dusty air. He’d waited, weathering their impatience, until at last, with dusk fast rushing in, the final recalcitrant soldier walked into the crowd – Koryk. Well. You can try all the browbeating you want, when the skull’s turned into a solid stone wall there’s no getting in. ‘So,’ Fiddler said, ‘I’m captain to you lot now.’ He stared at the faces – only half of which seemed to be paying him any attention. ‘If Whiskeyjack could see me right now, he’d probably choke – I was never cut out for anything more than what I was in the beginning. A sapper—’ ‘So what is it,’ a voice called out, ‘you want us to feel sorry for you?’ ‘No, Gaunt-Eye. With you all feeling so sorry for yourselves I wouldn’t stand a chance, would I? I look out at you now and you know what I’m thinking? I’m thinking: you ain’t Bridgeburners. You ain’t even close.’ Even the gloom wasn’t enough to hide the hard hostility fixed on him now. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘You see, it was back in Blackdog that it finally clunked home that we were the walking dead. Someone wanted us in the ground, and damn if we didn’t mostly end up there. In the tunnels of Pale, the tombs of the Bridgeburners. Tombs they dug for themselves. Heard a few stragglers hung on until Black Coral, and those bodies ended up in Moon’s Spawn the day it was abandoned by the Tiste Andii. An end to the tale, but like I said, we saw that end coming from a long way off.’ He fell silent then, momentarily lost in his own memories, the million losses that added up to what he felt now. Then he shook himself and looked up once more. ‘But you lot.’ He shook his head. ‘You’re too stupid to know what’s been beating you on the heads ever since Y’Ghatan. Wide-eyed stupid.’ Cuttle spoke up. ‘We’re the walking dead.’ ‘Thanks for the good news, Fid,’…



Location 5205:

‘Tehol, about this Imperial Standard—’ ‘Not again, Brys. I thought we were past all that. It’s lovely and most apt—’ ‘But who will rally under it?’ ‘Brys, if an army must rally, one must presume it is in dire straits, yes? Well then, where better to hide than under the king’s bed?’ ‘With all the other chickens,’ added Bugg. ‘Well now, sire, that’s clever.’



Location 5848:

‘Write the following: “Private missive, from Lieutenant Master-Sergeant Field Quartermaster Pores, to Fist Kindly. Warmest salutations and congratulations on your promotion, sir. As one might observe from your advancement and, indeed, mine, cream doth rise, etc. In as much as I am ever delighted in corresponding with you, discussing all manner of subjects in all possible idioms, alas, this subject is rather more official in nature. In short, we are faced with a crisis of the highest order. Accordingly, I humbly seek your advice and would suggest we arrange a most private meeting at the earliest convenience. Yours affectionately, Pores.” Got that, Himble?’ ‘Yes sir.’ ‘Please read it back to me.’ Himble cleared his throat, squinted at the tablet. ‘“Pores to Kindly meet in secret when?”’ ‘Excellent. Dispatch that at once, Himble.’



Location 10114:

‘Profound…huh.’ Temper was silent for a long moment, studying the cobbles of the alley mouth. And then he lifted his helmed head, faced Shadowthrone, and said, ‘Fuck off.’



Location 13188:

‘She simply asks,’ Kalam said. Quick Ben snorted. ‘That’s it?’ ‘I think so. No offers – no riches, no titles, nothing any of us can see as payment or reward. No, she just looks you straight in the eye, and she asks.’ ‘You just sent a shiver up my spine, Kalam, and I don’t even know why.’ ‘You don’t? More rubbish.’ The wizard waved his hands, ‘Well, Hood knows it ain’t chivalry, is it? She won’t even nudge open that door. No fluttering eyelashes, no demure look or coy glance…’ Kalam grunted a laugh at the image, but then he shook himself. ‘She asks, and something in your head tells you that what she’s doing is right – and that it’s the only reason she has to live. She asked me to die defending her – knowing I didn’t even like her much. Quick, for the rest of my life, I will never forget that moment.’



Location 13426:

The first truly Malazan card for the Deck of Dragons. Artist, you did me proud. A single misshapen, vaguely polished object in the centre of a dark field. ‘Behold,’ Paran said under his breath, ‘the Shaved Knuckle in the Hole.’



Location 13796:

‘He’s younger,’ Kalam said. ‘That’s all it takes, you know. Us old farts ain’t got a chance.’ ‘Speak for yourself.’ ‘Wipe that grin off, Quick, or I’ll do it for you.’ They were closing on Erekala now, and would meet approximately halfway between the two armies. The way it should be. ‘Look at us,’ Quick Ben said again, low, under his breath. ‘What do we know about negotiating?’ ‘So leave it to me,’ Kalam replied. ‘I mean to keep it simple.’ ‘Oh, this should be fun.’ They halted six paces from the Perish commander, who also stopped, and the assassin wasted no time. ‘Commander Erekala, High Fist Paran extends his greetings. He wants you to surrender, so we don’t have to kill all of you.’



Location 14892:

‘Will you think less of me if I choose to remain here, commanding these defences?’ ‘Brys, if I had to, I’d have tied you down to keep you here. Close to me. We’re not saving you just to see you fall to some errant arrow – no, you stay back, issue orders and leave the rest to everyone else.’ He smiled. ‘You have begun to show a stubborn side, Atri-Ceda.’ ‘Idiot.’ She lit a stick of rustleaf. ‘The only thing just begun is you noticing it – but that’s what makes the first flush of love so dangerous, and once it fades and you start seeing clearly again, why, it’s too late.’



Location 15722:

‘It is not enough to wish for a better world for the children. It is not enough to shield them with ease and comfort. Lostara Yil, if we do not sacrifice our own ease, our own comfort, to make the future’s world a better one, then we curse our own children. We leave them a misery they do not deserve; we leave them a host of lessons unearned.



Location 16475:

‘Sure, it’s wore us out, all that stuff. Tell me, Fid, we going to get time to rest up first?’ ‘Little late asking me that now.’ ‘So what? I’m still asking you.’ ‘To be honest, I don’t know. Depends.’ ‘On what?’ ‘Whether the Spire’s fallen to us. Whether they got the heart undamaged. Whether they managed to break its own set of chains, or whatever geas is protecting it – could be twenty Kenyll’rah demons for all we know, and imagine the scrap that’d be.’ ‘Twenty Kenyll’rah demons? What is this, some bad fairy tale? Why not a demon king? Or a giant three-headed ogre with scorpion tails at the end of every finger, and a big one on his cock for added measure? Breathing fire outa his arse, too.’



Location 17552:

And only the fallen can rise again.



Location 18237:

And now the page before us blurs. An age is done. The book must close. We are abandoned to history. Raise high one more time the tattered standard of the Fallen. See through the drifting smoke to the dark stains upon the fabric. This is the blood of our lives, this is the payment of our deeds, all soon to be forgotten. We were never what people could be. We were only what we were. Remember us.