* * *
While Traveller slept inside the hut Ereko sat cross-legged in the doorway watching the Moon, strangely mottled as of late, reflecting from the surf. The violent predations of these Edur and Traveller's extreme response had stirred dusty memories in him; ones he'd hoped were buried for ever. Memories that still wrenched after millennia. Memories of ancient vows and the violence of further extreme solutions. Vows of absolute extermination levelled against a people, and answering vows of vengeance. Could a similar cycle of destruction be born out of this new exchange? How similar the ages remain despite the passage of aeons. How disheartening!
Brooding upon what had he worked so hard to put behind him for ever, Ereko saw ghosts. For an instant he thought them his own – phantom memories of friends and family long gone – but these were human. Since descending the mountains he'd glimpsed them some nights in the woods. Pallid shadows. Always they lingered nearby, drawn to them – to Traveller certainly – but unwilling or unable to approach. Perhaps Traveller could not see them; he'd yet to remark upon them.
Perhaps it was the blood still wet upon the sands and the presence of alien spirits now wandering these shores, but this night they assembled out among the sighing grasses beyond the glow of the driftwood fire in numbers far greater than any Ereko had yet glimpsed. A troop of opalescent shades. Soldiers in damaged armour revealing ghastly death-wounds. One held a ragged banner that hung limp from a cross-piece: the snake-like twisting of a shimmering bright dragon against a dark field.
More and more congregated. A spectral host. A great battle must have ravaged this coast some time in history. Somehow, Traveller's presence seemed to call to them. Their empty spirits lusted for his essence. Eyes like torn openings into unending desolation fixed past Ereko into the dark of the hut. Clawed hands reached …
Ereko waved them away with the back of a hand. He whispered, ‘Be gone spirits! Trouble not the living with your old hatreds.’ Sleep, rest, wait. Be patient. Wait long enough and your time will come. Was he not living proof?
The spectres dispersed. Some sank into the earth, others drifted away. One remained, however. The standard-bearer. Tall he must've been in life, for a human. He closed upon Ereko. A horrific wound had carried away half his skull. The empty pits of his eyes fixed upon him.
‘My name is Surat,’ came his words, achingly faint – such potent yearning to cross an unbridgeable distance. Great must have been this one's power in life. They come,’ he intoned.
‘Who comes?’
‘The Diaspora ends. The Guard returns. The appointed time has come to us.’ He pointed to the hut. ‘This one shall be destroyed.’
‘What is he to you now?’
Silence, a coldness that bit even at Ereko. ‘Malazan.’
‘Whatever he once was he has given all that up now. He is Malazan no longer. Now, I do not even know what he is.’
The empty pits regarded Ereko and he believed he saw in their depths utter uninterest. ‘The Vow remains.’
A strange emotion stirred in Ereko's stomach then, roused the hairs upon his neck and forearms. It took him a time to recognize it, so long had it been. Anger. Fury at the plain uselessness of hatreds carried beyond life. Who were these Crimson Guardsmen to awaken such an emotion within him? ‘Then you are fools! Put aside your old rivalries, your precious feuds. But you cannot… You dare not release your desperate grip. Without them you would be nothing … They are all you have left. Not even Death awaits you now.’
Ghost hands shifted on the haft of the lifeless banner. ‘He waits for you. He is close now. Closer than you think.’
‘There are few walking the world today whom I fear.’ Ereko's words were trite but he was intrigued and, he must admit, tense with a new emotion, a touch of dread.
‘Such a one you will meet.’
The tension drained from him in a gust of exhalation. Nothing new. No revelations. No darkness dispelled. That meeting was foretold before humans walked these lands, Surat. You have nothing of interest to me.’
He waved the spectre away. It sank, reluctantly, into the windswept grasses. As it disappeared it raised a hand, accusing: ‘That one leads you to Him.’
Ereko nodded. ‘That was the promise made long ago.’