The Malazan Empire, page 644
And then Toc Anaster was alone, arrow still nocked, in the wasteland just inside the berms. Watching another wave of sorcery sweep past his position, pursuing the fleeing Awl.
Before he could think either way, Toc found himself riding hard, in behind that dread wave, into the scalding, brittle air of the magic’s wake – and there, sixty paces away, within a mass of advancing soldiers, he saw the mage. The latter clenched his hands and power tumbled from him, forming yet another excoriating conjuration of raw destruction that rose up to greet Toc, then heaved for him.
One eye or not, he could see that damned wizard.
An impossible shot, jostled as he was on the horse’s back as the beast weaved between pits and suspect tufts of grass, as its head lifted in sudden recognition of terrible danger.
Silver-veined power surging towards him.
Galloping now, mad as any other fool this night, and he saw, off to his left, a deep, elongated trench – drainage for the camp’s latrines – and he forced his mount towards it, even as the sorcery raced for him on a convergent path from his right.
The horse saw the trench, gauged its width, then stretched out a moment before gathering to make the leap.
He felt the beast lift beneath him, sail through the air – and for that one moment all was still, all was smooth, and in that one moment Toc twisted at the hips, knees hard against the animal’s shoulders, drew the bow back, aimed – damning this flat, one-eyed world that was all he had left – then loosed the stone-tipped arrow.
The horse landed, throwing Toc forward onto its neck. Bow in his right hand, legs stretching out now along the length of the beast’s back, and his left arm wrapping, desperately tight, about the animal’s muscle-sheathed neck – behind them and to the right, the heat of that wave, reaching out, closer, closer—
The horse screamed, bolting forward. He held on.
And felt a gust of cool air behind him. Risked a glance.
The magic had died. Beyond it, at the front line of the advancing – now halted and milling – Letherii troops, a body settling onto its knees. A body without a head; a neck from which rose, not blood, but something like smoke—
A detonation? Had there been a detonation – a thumping crack, bludgeoning the air – yes, maybe he had heard—
He regained control of his horse, took the knotted reins in his left hand and guided the frightened creature round, back towards the crest.
The air reeked of cooked meat. Other flashes lit the night. Dogs snarled. Soldiers and warriors died. And among Masarch’s cavalry, Toc would later learn, half were not there to see the dawn.
High overhead, night and its audience of unblinking stars had seen enough, and the sky paled, as if washed of all blood, as if drained of the last life.
The sun was unkind in lighting the morning sky, revealing the thick, biting ash of incinerated humans, horses and dogs. Revealing, as well, the strewn carnage of the battle just done. Brohl Handar walked, half numbed, along the east edge of the now-dishevelled encampment, and approached the Atri-Preda and her retinue.
She had dismounted, and was now crouched beside a corpse just inside the berms – where, it seemed, the suicidal Awl had elected to charge. He wondered how many had died to Letherii sorcery here. Probably every damned one of them. Hundreds for certain, perhaps thousands – there was no way to tell in this kind of aftermath, was there? A handful of fine ash to mark an entire human. Two for a horse. Half for a dog. Just so. The wind took it all away, less than an orator’s echo, less than a mourner’s gut-deep grunt of despair.
He staggered to a halt opposite Bivatt, the corpse – headless, it turned out – between them.
She looked up, and perhaps it was the harsh sunlight, or the dust in a thin sheath – but her face was paler than he had ever seen before.
Brohl studied the headless body. One of the mages.
‘Do you know, Overseer,’ Bivatt asked in a rough voice, ‘what could have done this?’
He shook his head. ‘Perhaps his sorcery returned to him, uncontrolled—’
‘No,’ she cut in. ‘It was an arrow. From a lone archer with the audacity to outrun…to slip between – Overseer, an archer riding bareback, loosing his arrow whilst his horse leapt a trench…’
She stared up at him, disbelieving, as if challenging him to do other than shake his head. He was too tired for this. He had lost warriors last night. Dogs rushing from the high grasses. Dogs…and two Kechra – two, there were only two, weren’t there? The same two he had seen before. Only one with those strapped-on swords.
Swords that had chopped his K’risnan in half, one swinging in from one side, the other from the opposite side. Not that the blades actually met. The left one had been higher, from the top of the shoulder down to just below the ribcage. The right blade had cut into ribs, down through the gut, tearing free below the hip and taking a lot of that hip out with it. So, to be accurate, not in half. In three.
The other Kechra had just used its talons and jaws, proving no less deadly – in fact, Brohl thought this one more savage than its larger companion, more clearly delighting in its violent mayhem. The other fought with perfunctory grace. The smaller, swordless Kechra revelled in the guts and limbs it flung in every direction.
But those beasts were not immortal. They could bleed. Take wounds. And enough spears and swords had managed to cut through their tough hides to drive both of them off.
Brohl Handar blinked down at the Atri-Preda. ‘A fine shot, then.’
Rage twisted her features. ‘He was bound with another of my mages, both drawing their powers together. They were exhausted…all the wards.’ She spat. ‘The other one, Overseer, his head burst apart too. Same as this one here. I’ve lost two mages, to one damned arrow.’ She clambered stiffly to her feet. ‘Who was that archer? Who?’
Brohl said nothing.
‘Get your K’risnan to—’
‘I cannot. He is dead.’
That silenced her. For a moment. ‘Overseer, we mauled them. Do you understand? Thousands died, to only a few hundred of our own.’
‘I lost eighty-two Tiste Edur warriors.’
He was pleased at her flinch, at the faltering of her hard gaze. ‘An arrow. A lone rider. Not an Awl – the eyewitnesses swear to that. A mage-killer.’
The only thorn from this wild ride through the night. I see, yes. But I cannot help you. Brohl Handar turned away. Ten, fifteen strides across cracked, crackling, ash-laden ground.
Sorcery had taken the grasses. Sorcery had taken the soil and its very life. The sun, its glory stolen before it could rise this day, looked down, one-eyed. Affronted by this rival.
Yes. Affronted.
Chapter Seventeen
When I go in search
The world cries out
And spins away
To walk is to reach
But the world turns
Shied into sublime fend
Flinching to my sting
So innocent a touch
This is what it is to search
The world’s answer
Is a cornered retort
It does not want seeing
Does not suffer knowing
To want is to fail
And die mute
Ever solitary these steps
Yielding what it is
To be alone
Crying out to the world
Spinning away
As in its search
It finds you out.
Search
Gaullag of the Spring
He might well speak of mystery and show a mask of delighted wonder, but the truth of it was, mystery frightened Beak. He could smell sorcery, yes, and sense its poetic music, so orderly and eloquent, but its heat could so easily burn, right down to a mortal man’s core. He was not much for bravery; oh, he could see it well enough among other soldiers – he could see it in every detail of Captain Faradan Sort, who now sat her horse at his side – but he knew he possessed none of it himself.
Coward and stupid were two words that went together, Beak believed, and both belonged to him. Smelling magic had been a way of avoiding it, of running from it, and as for all those candles within him, well, he was happiest when nothing arrived that might send their flames flickering, brightening, bursting into a conflagration. He supposed it was just another stupid decision, this being a soldier, but there was nothing he could do about it now.
Marching across that desert in that place called Seven Cities (although he’d only seen two cities, he was sure there were five more somewhere), Beak had listened to all the other soldiers complaining. About…well, everything. The fighting. Not fighting. The heat of the day, the cold at night, the damned coyotes yipping in the dark sounding so close you thought they were standing right beside you, mouth at your ear. The biting insects, the scorpions and spiders and snakes all wanting to kill you. Yes, they’d found lots to complain about. That terrible city, Y’Ghatan, and the goddess who’d opened one eye that night and so stolen away that evil rebel, Leoman. And then, when all had seemed lost, that girl – Sinn – showing her own candle. Blindingly bright, so pure that Beak had cowered before it. They’d complained about all of that, too. Sinn should have snuffed that firestorm out. The Adjunct should have waited a few days longer, because there was no way those marines would have died so easily.
And what about Beak? Hadn’t he sensed them? Well, maybe. That mage, Bottle, the one with all the pets. Maybe Beak had smelled him, still alive under all those ashes. But then he was a coward, wasn’t he? To go up to, say, the Adjunct, or Captain Kindly, and tell them – no, that was too much. Kindly was like his own father, who didn’t like to listen whenever it was something he wasn’t interested in hearing. And the Adjunct, well, even her own soldiers weren’t sure of her.
He’d listened with all the rest to her speech after they’d left Malaz City (a most terrifying night, that, and he was so glad he’d been far away from it, out on a transport), and he remembered how she talked about going it alone from now on. And doing things nobody else would ever know about. Unwitnessed, she said. As if that was important. Such talk usually confused Beak, but not this time. His entire life was, he knew, unwitnessed. So, she had made all the other soldiers just like him, just like Beak, and that had been an unexpected gift from that cold, cold woman. Coward or no and stupid as he was, she’d won him that night. Something she wouldn’t think much of, obviously, but it meant a lot to him.
Anyway, his heart had slowed its wild run, and he lifted his head and glanced over at the captain. She sat her horse in the deep shadow, unmoving just as he had been, and yet, in an instant, he thought he caught from her a sound – the hammering of waves against stone, the screams of soldiers in battle, swords and slaughter, lances like ice piercing hot flesh, and the waves – and then all of that was gone.
She must have sensed his attention, for she asked in a low voice: ‘Are they well past, Beak?’
‘Aye.’
‘Caught no scent of us?’
‘None, Captain. I hid us with grey and blue. It was easy. That mage she kneels in front of the Holds. She knows nothing about the grey and blue warrens.’
‘The Letherii were supposed to join us,’ Faradan Sort muttered. ‘Instead, we find them riding with Tiste Edur, doing their work for them.’
‘All stirred up, aye. Especially round here.’
‘And that’s the problem,’ she replied, gathering her reins and nudging her mount out from beneath the heavy branches where they had hidden – fifteen paces off the trail – while the war-party rode past. ‘We’re well ahead of the other squads. Either Hellian or Urb has lost their mind, or maybe both of them.’
Beak followed on his own horse, a gentle bay he’d named Lily. ‘Like a hot poker, Captain, pushing right to the back of the forge. Do that and you burn your hand, right?’
‘The hand, yes. Keneb. You and me. All the other squads.’
‘Um, your hand, I meant.’
‘I am learning to tell those moments,’ she said, now eyeing him.
‘What moments?’ Beak asked.
‘When you’ve convinced yourself how stupid you are.’
‘Oh.’ Those moments. ‘I ain’t never been so loyal, Captain. Never.’
She gave him a strange look then, but said nothing.
They rode up onto the trail and faced their mounts east. ‘They’re up there somewhere ahead,’ the captain said. ‘Causing all sorts of trouble.’
Beak nodded. They’d been tracking those two squads for two nights now. And it was truly a trail of corpses. Sprung ambushes, dead Letherii and Tiste Edur, the bodies dragged off into cover, stripped down and so naked Beak had to avert his eyes, lest evil thoughts sneak into his mind. All the places his mother liked him to touch that one night – no, all that was evil thinking, evil memories, the kind of evil that could make him hang himself as his brother had done.
‘We have to find them, Beak.’
He nodded again.
‘We have to rein them in. Tonight, do you think?’
‘It’s the one named Balgrid, Captain. And the other named Bowl – who’s learned magic real fast. Balgrid’s got the white candle, you see, and this land ain’t had no white candle for a long time. So he’s dragging the smell off all the bodies they’re leaving and that’s muddying things up – those ears they’re cutting off, and the fingers and stuff that they’re tying to their belts. That’s why we’re going from ambush to ambush, right? Instead of straight to them.’
‘Well,’ she said after a moment and another long, curious look, ‘we’re on damned horses, aren’t we?’
‘So are they now, Captain.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I think so. Just tonight. It’s the Holds. There’s one for beasts. And if the Letherii mages figure things out, they could turn with that and find them real fast.’
‘Hood’s breath, Beak. And what about us?’
‘Us too. Of course, there’s plenty of people riding horses round here, bad stirrups or no. But if they get close, then maybe even grey and blue candles won’t work.’
‘You might end up having to show a few more, then.’
Oh, he didn’t like that idea. ‘I hope not. I really hope not.’
‘Let’s get going then, Beak.’
Don’t burn me down to the core, Captain. Please. It won’t be nice, not for anyone. I can still hear their screams and there’s always screams and I start first. My screams scare me the most, Captain. Scare me stupid, aye.
‘Wish Masan Gilani was with us,’ Scant said, pulling up clumps of moss to wash the blood from his hands.
Hellian blinked at the fool. Masan who?
‘Listen, Sergeant,’ Balgrid said again.
He was always saying that and so she’d stopped listening to him. It was like pissing in the fire, the way men could do when women couldn’t. Just a hiss into sudden darkness and then that awful smell. Listen, Sergeant and hiss, she stopped listening.
‘You’ve got to,’ Balgrid insisted, reaching out to prod her with a finger. ‘Sergeant?’
She glared down at that finger. ‘Want me t’cut off my left cheek, soldier? Touch me again and you’ll be sorry ’s what I’m sayin’.’
‘Someone’s tracking us.’
She scowled. ‘For how long?’
‘Two, maybe three nights going,’ Balgrid replied.
‘So you decide to tell me now? All my soljers are idiots. How they trackin’ us? You and Bowl said you had it covered, had something covered, anyway. What was it you had covered? Right, you been pissing all over our trail or something.’ She glared at him. ‘Hiss.’
‘What? No. Listen, Sergeant—’
And there it went again. She rose to her feet, wobbling on the soft, loamy ground. Where one could fall at every damned step if one wasn’t careful. ‘Someone – you, Corporal, drag them bodies away.’
‘Aye Sergeant.
‘Right away, Sergeant.’
‘And you two. Maybe. Louts—’
‘Lutes.’
‘Help the corporal. You all made a mess killing these ones.’ And that was right enough, wasn’t it? This one had been nasty. Sixteen Letherii and four Edur. Quarrels to the heads did for them Edur what it does for normal people. Like sacks of stones on a big drop, whoo, toppling right off them horses. Then a pair of sharpers, one front of the Letherii column, the other at the tail end. Boom boom and the dusk was nothing but screaming and thrashing limbs human and horse and some couldn’t tell which.
Damned Letherii had recovered a little too fast for her liking. Dead sure too fast for Hanno’s liking, since Hanno went down with only half a skull left after one of the meanest sword swings she’d ever seen. Threw the soldier right off balance, though, with those stupid stirrups, and so it’d been easy for Urb to reach up one of those giant hands of his, grasp a belt or something and drag the fool right off. Throwing him down with such force that all wind rushed out of him both ends. At which point Urb pushed a mailed fist so hard into the face under the helmet that Urb hurt his knuckles on the back of the man’s skull – low, just above the vertables or whatever they were called. Teeth and bone splinters and meat spurting out everywhere.
The first loss in the squads, that’d been. All because Hanno jumped in close thinking the Letherii were still confused and useless. But no, these soldiers, they’d been veterans. They’d come round damned quick.
Saltlick was bad cut up, though Balgrid had worked on him and he wasn’t bleeding out and unconscious any more. And Corporal Reem went and got two fingers of his left hand cut off – a bad fend with his shield. Poor Urb wasn’t doing too well as sergeant.
Hellian worked round carefully until she faced another direction, and could see Urb sitting on a rotting log, looking miserable. She drank down a mouthful of rum then ambled over. ‘We’re both sergeants now, right? Let’s go find some bushes t’crawl under. I’m in the mood for sweat and grunts with somebody, and since we’re the same rank an’ all it’s only obvious and ain’t nobody here gonna c’mplain.’
