The Malazan Empire, page 646
‘Aye, Sergeant. I’m tired, but I could probably glamour them. Maybe even throw some false ideas in their heads. Like, we went north when we really went south. Like that.’
‘Don’t ever die on us, Bottle,’ Gesler said. To Fiddler, he added, ‘I’ll go collect munitions from my squad, then.’
‘Me and Cuttle,’ Fiddler said, nodding again.
‘Trip wires?’
‘No, it’ll be daylight by then. No, we’ll do the drum.’
‘Hood take me,’ Gesler breathed. ‘You sure? I mean, I’ve heard about it—’
‘You heard because me and Hedge invented it. And perfected it, more or less.’
‘More or less?’
Fiddler shrugged. ‘It either works or it doesn’t. We’ve got Bottle’s deception, in case it doesn’t—’
‘But there’ll be no coming back to retrieve those cussers, though, will there?’
‘Not unless you want to see the bright white light, Gesler.’
‘Well,’ the amber-hued man said with a grin, ‘since there’s a chance at seeing the legend come real, with the genius who invented it right here…I ain’t gonna talk you out of it, Fid.’
‘Half the genius, Gesler. Hedge was the other.’
‘Second thoughts?’
‘Second, ninth and tenth, friend. But we’re doing it anyway. When everyone’s ready, you lead them ahead, excepting me and Cuttle. To that farmhouse – the near one. I think the far one’s abandoned. Could be the owner rebuilt. The fields look damned well kept, don’t they?’
‘Yeah, especially given how small the homestead is.’
‘Let Bottle sniff it out before you go charging in.’
‘Aye. You hear that, mage?’
‘What? Sorry, I think I fell asleep.’
Gesler glared across at Fiddler. ‘Our lives are in this man’s hands? Hood help us.’
Orders were given, passed down the ragged row of supine soldiers. Dawn was just tingeing the air when Gesler, Bottle at his side and trailed by Corabb Bhilan Thenu’alas, led his now oversized squad onto the cart path. Scuffing the ground, dragging furrows here and there – not too obvious, just enough – as they made their way towards the modest farmhouse.
Fiddler and Cuttle watched them for a time, until they were well enough away from the place they’d decided was best for the trap. Shrubs running close to the cart path, narrowing lines of sight for that span. Beyond the bushes, two middle-aged trees on the left and one old ancient on the right.
Four cussers for this. Two close together, then one, and then the last.
Cuttle, his face sheathed in sweat from the arrow-head lodged in his shoulder, was strangely lacking in commentary as Fiddler directed the sapper to pace the track from this side of the narrowing to twenty strides beyond it, and set sticks in the ground when Fiddler so commanded. Once this was done, Cuttle’s task was to dig holes in the packed earth where the sticks had been. Shallow holes.
A sapper who trusted to Oponn’s pull might have left it at that, praying to the fickle Twins that a horse hoof would descend on at least one of the planted cussers. But that was not how the drum worked. All that was needed was vibration. If the cussers were thinned on one side just right; if the sharp stone against that spot was sharp enough and angled just right so that the reverberation would drive its tip into the clay shell. The real challenge, Fiddler and Hedge had discovered, was down to shaving the cusser – right down to eggshell thin – without breaking it and so painting leaves in the highest trees with one’s own blood and guts.
As soon as Cuttle finished the first scooped-out hole, Fiddler headed towards it with a cusser cradled in his hands. Setting it down carefully on the ground, he drew a knife and made some minute adjustments to the hole. Then he turned his attention to the cusser. This one, furthest down along the track, would be the one to go first. Which would trigger the others, in the midst of the troop, with two at the back end in case the column was especially long.
He set the cusser into the hole, then settled down onto his stomach and brought his knife close to one side of the mine. And began scraping clay.
The sun had risen, and although the air was still cool sweat streamed down Fiddler’s face as he shaved away minute slivers of the fine-grained clay. He wished for direct sunlight on the cusser, the side he was working on, so he could work until he saw that faint glow reaching through to the bright yellow incendiary powder with its shards of iron. But no such luck. All remained in shadow.
Finally, one last scrape, then he carefully edged the blade away. Found the sharp stone and set it down beside the thinned shell. Point against the clay, he made a half-twist – breath held, eyes squeezed shut – then slowly withdrew his hand. Opened his eyes. Studied his handiwork.
A few more deep breaths to settle his nerves, then he began filling the hole with small handfuls of earth. Then scattered detritus over the spot.
Fiddler belly-crawled away, until he reached the edge of the track where he’d left the other cussers. Glancing up the path, he saw Cuttle waiting at the far end, arms wrapped about his torso, looking like he’d just pissed himself. Aye, he knows why we’re a dying breed.
Taking the second cusser, Fiddler made his way – lightly – to the second hole. Not as thin this time, but thin enough. Each one in turn slightly easier, which made shaving each of them increasingly dangerous – the risk of getting careless, sloppy, just in that wash of relief at having managed the first one…well, he knew all the dangers in all this, didn’t he?
Teeth gritted, he arrived at the second hole in the path, slowly sank to his knees. Set the cusser down, and reached for his knife.
Cuttle was as close to pissing himself as he had ever been. Not at the prospect of dying – he was fine enough with that and had been ever since finding himself in the Fourteenth – but at what he was witnessing here.
The last great Malazan sapper. No-one else came close. Imagine, shaving cusser shells. With a knife. Eggshell thin. Cuttle had watched, unable to make out much from this distance, as Fiddler had set to work on the first one, the deadliest one of all. And he had prayed, to every god he could think of, to gods he didn’t even know the names of, to spirits and ghosts and every sapper living or dead, each name a benediction to one man’s brilliance. Praying that the one man he truly worshipped wouldn’t…wouldn’t what?
Let me down.
How pathetic. He knew that. He kept telling himself that, in between the breathed-out beseechings. As if he’d have time to rue the failing of his faith.
So there was Fiddler, closer now, at the second hole, doing it all over again. Imagine, Fid and Hedge, the way they must have been together. Gods, those Bridgeburners must have been holy terrors. But now…just Fiddler, and Cuttle here poorer than a shadow of the famous Hedge. It was all coming to an end. But so long as Fiddler stayed alive, well then, damn them all, it was worth holding on. And this arrow lodged in his left shoulder, well, true he’d seen it coming, but he hadn’t exactly leaned into it, had he? Might have looked that way. Might have at that. As if he’d had time to even think, with everything going on around him. He wasn’t superhuman, was he?
Edging back from the second set mine, Fiddler glanced over at Cuttle. The man’s face was white as death. Well, thinking on it, he didn’t need the man that close any more, did he?
He hand-signalled Leave, rejoin the squads.
Cuttle shook his head.
Shrugging – this was no time to argue and if Cuttle had a death-wish it wasn’t news to Fiddler – he rose and set off to collect the third cusser. Even footfalls were now risky, forcing him to move slowly along the verge of the track. There was plenty of superstition about where to stash munitions when working. Hedge would have insisted the cussers be ahead of the work at all times, but the less Fiddler handled them the better he felt. No matter what, there was back and forth with the damned things, wasn’t there?
He reached the spot and looked down at the two remaining cussers. More superstition. Which one? Heart side or head side? Facing the hole or with the hole behind him as it was now? Hood’s breath, Hedge was clambering around in his skull like a fiend. Enough of the superstition! Fiddler crouched and collected a cusser.
Heart side.
And was random chance really any more than just that? The Moranth were fanatics when it came to precision. Every class of munitions perfect beyond belief. No variation at all. With variation, being a sapper would be nothing more than being a rock-thrower – with explosive rocks, mind, but even so. No real talent involved, no hard-earned skill.
Fiddler remembered, with the appalling clarity of a god-touched revelation, his first encounter with Moranth munitions. Northern Genabackis, a week before the march on the city of Mott followed by the twin nightmares of Mott Wood and Blackdog Swamp. There had been rumours of contact and extensive negotiations with a strange people ruling a place called Cloud Forest, far to the south. An isolated people, said to be terrifying and inhuman in appearance, who rode enormous domesticated four-winged insects – giant dragonflies – and could rain death upon enemies from great heights.
The Malazan negotiators had included Tayschrenn, some nobleborn dignitary named Aragan, and a lone T’lan Imass named Onos T’oolan. The Second and Third Armies had been encamped on Nathii farmland two days from the landing south of Malyntaeas. A crate had been carried – gingerly, by sweating soldiers from the quartermaster’s unit – and set down ten paces from the squad’s hearth fire. Whiskeyjack had gestured Hedge and Fiddler over.
‘You two do most of the sapping in this miserable squad,’ the sergeant had said, grimacing as if he’d swallowed something unpleasant – which he had, by virtue of legitimizing Fid and Hedge’s destructive anarchy. ‘In yon box there are grenados and nastier stuff, come from the Moranth now that we’re allied with ’em. Seems to make sense – in an insane way – to hand ’em over to you two. Now, obviously, you need to do some experimenting with what’s in that box. Just make sure you do it half a league or more from this here camp.’ He hesitated, scratched at his bearded jaw, then added, ‘The big ones are too big to throw far enough, far enough to survive them exploding, I mean. So you’ll need to crack your heads together to work out trying them. As a final order, soldiers, don’t kill yourselves. This squad’s under strength as it is and I’d need to pick out two others to hump these damned things around. And the only two I could use are Kalam and Trotts.’
Aye, Trotts.
Fiddler and Hedge had pried the lid loose, then had stared down, bemused, at the well-packed grenados, nestled in frames and matted straw. Small round ones, long tapered ones, spike-shaped ones of exquisite glass – not a bubble to be seen – and, at the bottom, much larger ones, big enough to ride a catapult cup if one was so inclined (and, it turned out, suicidal, since they tended to detonate as soon as the catapult arm struck the brace. Great for destroying catapults and their hapless crews, though).
Experimentation indeed. Hedge and Fid had set out, the crate between them, on a long, exhausting walk into some out-of-the-way place, where they threw the small ones they decided to call sharpers because when detonated too close they had a tendency to pepper the thrower with slivers of iron and made the ears bleed; where they discovered the incendiary properties of the burners, to the wailing protestations of a farmer who’d witnessed the fiery destruction of a hay wagon (at least until they’d handed over four gold imperial sceptres – Kellanved’s newly minted currency – which was enough money to buy a new farm). Crackers, driven into elongated wedge-shaped holes in hard-packed earth, did sweet mayhem on foundation stones, mortared or otherwise. And, finally, the cussers, the ugliest, nastiest munitions ever created. They were intended to be dropped from high overhead by the Moranth on their Quorls, and Hedge and Fid had used up most of their allotted supply trying to work out an alternative means of practical, non-fatal use. And, in the end, had needed twenty more – two crates’ worth – to finally conclude that a fool would have to be Oponn-kissed by the Lady to try anything but secondary usage; add-ons to crackers and burners and, if the chance presented itself, a well-thrown sharper.
The oversized crossbows came much later, as did maniacal variations like the drum and the slow burn. And through all of that, the Lady’s Pull always remained as the last resort. Had Fiddler been a religious man, he would have been obliged, he well knew, to drop every single coin of pay and loot he earned into the coffers of the Lady’s temples, given how many times he had loosed a cusser at targets well within blast range of himself and countless other Malazans. Hedge had been even less…restrained. And, alas, his demise had therefore been of a nature succinctly unsurprising.
Reminiscing had a way of arriving at the worst of moments, a glamour of nostalgia no doubt infused with subtle but alluring suicidal inclinations, and Fiddler was forced to push all such remembrances aside as he approached Cuttle and the last hole in the path.
‘You should have hightailed it out of here,’ Fiddler said as he settled down beside the modest excavation.
‘No chance of that,’ Cuttle replied in a low voice.
‘As you like, then, but don’t be standing there at Hood’s Gate if I mess this one up.’
‘I hear you, Fid.’
And, trying not to think of Hedge, of Whiskeyjack, Trotts and all the rest; trying not to think of the old days, when the world still seemed new and wondrous, when taking mad risks was all part of the game, Fiddler, the last great saboteur, went to work.
Bottle squinted at the farmhouse. Someone or ones inside there, he was sure enough of that. Living, breathing folk, oh yes. But…something, a faint odour, charnel recollections, or…whatever. He wasn’t sure, couldn’t be sure, and that made him seriously uneasy.
Gesler had moved up beside him, had lain there patient as a tick on a blade of grass, at least to start. But now, a hundred or more heartbeats on, Bottle could sense the man growing restless. Fine enough for him, with that gold skin that didn’t burn once in Y’Ghatan – of course, Truth had shown that the strange skin wasn’t truly impervious, especially when it came to Moranth munitions. Even so, Gesler was a man who had walked through fire, in every permutation of the phrase Bottle could think of, so all of this skulking and trickery and brutal slaughter was fine for him.
But I’m the one they’re all counting on, and I couldn’t use this stupid sword at my belt to hack my way clear of a gaggle of puritanical do-gooders with their pointing fingers and sharp nails and all – gods below, where did that image come from? Damned Mockra, someone’s leaking thoughts. Bottle glanced over at Gesler. ‘Sergeant?’ he whispered.
‘What?’
‘Got strange notions in your skull, by any chance?’
A suspicious glance, then Gesler shook his head. ‘Was thinking of an old mage I knew. Kulp. Not that you remind me of him or anything, Bottle. You’re more like Quick Ben, I think, than any of us are comfortable with. Last I saw of Kulp, though, was the poor bastard flung head over heels off the stern rail of a ship – in a firestorm. Always wondered what happened to him. I like to think he made it just fine, dropping out of that furnace of a warren and finding himself in some young widow’s back garden, waist-deep in the cool waters of her fountain. Just as she was on her knees praying for salvation or something.’ All at once he looked embarrassed and his gaze flicked away. ‘Aye, I paint pretty pictures of what could be, since what is always turns out so damned bad.’
Bottle’s grunt was soft, then he nodded. ‘I like that, Sergeant. Kind of…relieves me.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Only, shows that you’re not as far from the rest of us as it sometimes seems.’
Gesler grimaced. ‘Then you’d be wrong, soldier. I’m a sergeant, which makes me as far from you and these other idiots as a cave bear from a damned three-legged stoat. Understood?’
‘Aye, Sergeant.’
‘Now why are we still hiding here? There’s smoke trickling up from that chimney, meaning we got folks inside. So, give us the damned go-ahead on this, Bottle, then your task’s done, for now.’
‘All right. I think there’s two in there. Quiet, contemplative thoughts, no conversation yet.’
‘Contemplative? As in what a cow thinks with a bellyful of feed in her and a calf tugging wet and hard at a teat? Or like some kind of giant two-headed snake that’s just come down the chimney and swallowed up old Crud-nails and his missus?’
‘Somewhere in between, I’d say.’
Gesler’s expression turned into a glare; then, with a snort, he twisted round and hand-signalled. A moment later Uru Hela crawled past Corabb Bhilan Thenu’alas – who was directly behind the sergeant – and came up on Gesler’s left.
‘Sergeant?’
‘Bottle says there’s two in there. I want you to walk up peaceful-like and call ’em out – you’re thirsty and want to ask for a ladle or two from that well there.’
‘I ain’t thirsty, Sergeant.’
‘Lie, soldier.’
Bottle could see the notion upset her. Spirits fend, the things you find out…
‘How about I just ask to refill my waterskin?’
‘Aye, that will do.’
‘Of course,’ she said, frowning, ‘I’ll need to empty it out first.’
‘Why don’t you do that?’
‘Aye, Sergeant.’
Gesler twisted to look at Bottle, and the young mage could plainly see the man’s battle with pathos and despair. ‘Get yourself ready,’ he said, ‘to hit ’em with a glamour or something, in case things go all wrong.’
Bottle nodded, then, seeing an entirely new expression on Gesler’s face, he asked, ‘What’s wrong, Sergeant?’
‘Well, either I just wet myself or Uru Hela’s draining her waterskin. On some level,’ he added, ‘I think the distinction’s moot.’
That’s it, Sergeant. You’ve just won me. Right there. Won me, so I’ll give you what I got. From now on. Yet, even with that quasi-serious notion, he had to turn his head away and bite hard on the sleeve of his tanned leather shirt. Better yet, Sergeant, wait till we all see that fine wet patch on your crotch. You won’t live this one down, no sir, not a chance of that. Oh, precious memory!
