The Malazan Empire, page 647
Strapping her now empty waterskin onto her belt, Uru Hela then squirmed forward a little further, and climbed to her feet. Adjusting her heavy armour and plucking twigs and grass from metal joins and hinges, she tightened the helm strap and set out for the farmhouse.
‘Oh,’ Bottle muttered.
‘What?’ Gesler demanded.
‘They’re suddenly alert – I don’t know, maybe one of them saw her through a crack in the window shutters – no, that’s not right.’
‘What?’
‘Still not talking, but moving around now. A lot. Fast, too. Sergeant, I don’t think they saw her. I think they smelled her. And us.’
‘Smelled? Bottle—’
‘Sergeant, I don’t think they’re human—’
Uru Hela was just passing the well, fifteen paces from the farmhouse’s door, when that door flew open – pushed hard enough to tear it from its leather hinges – and the creature that surged into view seemed too huge to even fit through the frame, coming up as if from stairs sunk steep below ground level – coming up, looming massive, dragging free an enormous single-bladed two-handed wood-axe—
Uru Hela halted, stood motionless as if frozen in place.
‘Forward!’ Gesler bellowed, scrambling upright as he swung up his crossbow—
Corabb Bhilan Thenu’alas charged past the sergeant, blade out—
Bottle realized his mouth was moving, yet no sounds came forth. He stared, struggling to comprehend. A demon. A Hood-damned Kenryll’ah demon!
It had lunged clear of the doorframe and now charged straight for Uru Hela.
She threw her waterskin at it, then spun to flee, even as she tugged at her sword.
Not nearly fast enough to escape – the demon’s huge axe slashed in a gleaming, blurred arc, caught the soldier solid in her left shoulder. Arm leapt away. Blood spurted from joins in the scales right across her entire back, as the blade’s broad wedge drove yet deeper. Deeper, severing her spine, then further, tearing loose with her right scapula – cut halfway through – jammed on the gory blade as it whipped clear of Uru Hela’s body.
More blood, so much more, yet the sudden overwhelming gouts of red quickly subsided – the soldier’s heart already stopped, the life that was her mind already fleeing this corporeal carnage – and she was collapsing, forward, the sword in her right hand half drawn and never to go further, head dipping, chin to chest, then down, face-first onto the ground. A heavy sound. A thump. Whereupon all motion from her ceased.
Gesler’s crossbow thudded, releasing a quarrel that sliced past Corabb, not a hand’s breadth from his right shoulder.
A bellow of pain from the demon – the finned bolt sunk deep into its chest, well above its two hearts.
Corabb Bhilan Thenu’alas closed fast, yelling something in the tribal tongue, something like ‘Leoman’s balls!’
Gesler reloading on one knee. Stormy, Saltlick and Shortnose thundering past him, followed by Koryk and Tarr. Smiles swinging wide, crossbow in her hands – one of Fid’s weapons, this one headed with a sharper – which she then trained on the farmhouse entrance, where a second demon had appeared. Oh, she was fast indeed, that quarrel flitting across the intervening space, making a strange warbling sound as it went, and the second demon, seeing it, somehow swinging his weapon – a tulwar – into its path – not much use, that gesture, as the sharper exploded.
Another scream of pain, the huge demon knocked back, off its feet, crashing into the side of the farmhouse. Wood, sod and chinking bowed inward, and as the demon fell, the entire wall on that side of the doorframe went with it.
And what am I doing? Damn me, what am I doing? Bottle leapt upright, desperately drawing on whatever warren first answered his summons.
The axe-wielding demon surged towards Corabb. The wedge-blade slashed its deadly arc. Struck Corabb’s shield at an oblique angle, caromed upward and would have caught the side of Corabb’s head if not for the man’s stumbling, left knee buckling as he inadvertently stepped into a groundhog hole, losing his balance and pitching to one side. His answering sword-swing, which should have been batted aside by the demon’s swing-through, dipped well under it, the edge thunking hard into the demon’s right knee.
It howled.
In the next instant Stormy, flanked by his heavies, arrived. Swords chopping, shields clattering up against the wounded Kenryll’ah. Blood and pieces of meat spattered the air.
Another bellow from the demon as it launched itself backward, clear of the deadly infighting, gaining room to swing the wood-axe in a horizontal slash that crumpled all three shields lifting to intercept it. Banded metal and wood exploded in all directions. Saltlick grunted from a broken arm.
‘Clear!’ someone shouted, and Stormy and his heavies flung themselves backward. Corabb, still lying on the ground, rolled after them.
The demon stood, momentarily confused, readying its axe.
Smiles’s hand-thrown sharper struck it on its left temple.
Bright light, deafening crack, smoke, and the demon was reeling away, one side of its bestial face obliterated into red pulp.
Yet Bottle sensed the creature’s mind already righting itself.
Gesler was yelling. ‘Withdraw! Everyone!’
Summoning all he had, Bottle assailed the demon’s brain with Mockra. Felt it recoil, stunned.
From the ruined farmhouse, the second Kenryll’ah was beginning to clamber free.
Smiles tossed another sharper into the wreckage. A second snapping explosion, more smoke, more of the building falling down.
‘We’re pulling out!’
Bottle saw Koryk and Tarr hesitate, desperate to close in on the stunned demon. At that moment Fiddler and Cuttle arrived.
‘Hood’s balls!’ Fiddler swore. ‘Get moving, Koryk! Tarr! Move!’
Gesler was making some strange gesture. ‘We go south! South!’
Saltlick and Shortnose swung in that direction, but Stormy pulled them back. ‘That’s called misdirection, y’damned idiots!’
The squads reforming as they moved, eastward, now in a run. The shock of Uru Hela’s death and the battle that followed keeping them quiet now, just their gasping breaths, the sounds of armour like broken crockery underfoot. Behind them, smoke billowing from the farmhouse. An axe-wielding demon staggering about in a daze, blood streaming from its head.
Damned sharper should have cracked that skull wide open, Bottle well knew. Thick bones, I guess. Kenryll’ah, aye, not their underlings. No, Highborn of Aral Gamelon, he was sure of that.
Stormy started up. ‘Hood-damned demon farmers! They got Hood-damned demon farmers! Sowing seeds, yanking teats, spinnin’ wool – and chopping strangers to pieces! Gesler, old friend, I hate this place, you hear me? Hate it!’
‘Keep quiet!’ Fiddler snarled. ‘We was lucky enough all those sharpers didn’t mince us on the road – now your bleating’s telling those demons exactly where we’re going!’
‘I wasn’t going to lose any more,’ Stormy retorted in a bitter growl. ‘I’d swore it—’
‘Should’ve known better,’ Gesler cut in. ‘Damn you, Stormy, don’t make promises you can’t keep – we’re in a fight here and people are going to die. No more promises, got me?’
A surly nod was his only answer.
They ran on, the end of a long, long night now tumbled over into day. For the others, Bottle knew, there’d be rest ahead. Somewhere. But not him. No, he’d need to work illusions to hide them. He’d need to flit from creature to creature out in the forest, checking on their backtrail. He needed to keep these fools alive.
Crawling from the wreckage of the farmhouse, the demon prince spat out some blood, then settled back onto his haunches and looked blearily around. His brother stood nearby, cut and lashed about the body and half his face torn away. Well, it had never been much of a face anyway, and most of it would grow back. Except maybe for that eye.
His brother saw him and staggered over. ‘I’m never going to believe you again,’ he said.
‘Whatever do you mean?’ The words were harsh, painful to utter. He’d inhaled some flames with that second grenade.
‘You said farming was peaceful. You said we could just retire.’
‘It was peaceful,’ he retorted. ‘All our neighbours ran away, didn’t they?’
‘These ones didn’t.’
‘Weren’t farmers, though. I believe I can say that with some assurance.’
‘My head hurts.’
‘Mine too.’
‘Where did they run to?’
‘Not south.’
‘Should we go after them, brother? As it stands, I’d have to venture the opinion that they had the better of us in this little skirmish, and that displeases me.’
‘It’s worth considering. My ire is awakened, after all. Although I suggest you find your matlock, brother, instead of that silly wood-axe.’
‘Nearest thing within reach. And now I’ll have to dig into our crumpled, smouldering abode – all that digging we did, all for nothing!’
At that moment they heard, distinctly, the sound of horses. Coming fast up the track.
‘Listen, there’s more of them. No time to find your matlock, brother. Let us set forth and commence our sweet vengeance, shall we?’
‘Superior notion indeed. One of my eyes still works, which should suffice.’
The two Kenryll’ah demon princes set out for the cart path.
It was really not their day.
A quarter of a league now from the farmhouse, and Fiddler swung round, confirming for Bottle yet again that the old sergeant had hidden talents. ‘Horses,’ he said.
Bottle had sensed the same.
The squads halted, under bright sunlight, alongside a cobbled road left in bad repair. Another cluster of farm buildings awaited them a thousand paces to the east. No smoke rising from the chimney. No surprise with demons for neighbours, I suppose.
The detonations were a drumbeat of thunderous concussions that shook the earth beneath them.
‘Four!’ Fiddler said with a savage grin.
Bottle saw Cuttle staring at the sergeant with undisguised awe and more than a little worship.
Smoke now, billowing in the distance, an earthen blot rising above the treeline.
‘Let’s make for that farm ahead,’ Fiddler said. ‘We’ll rest up there for the day – I don’t think our pursuers are in any condition to do much.’
‘The drum,’ Cuttle whispered. ‘I seen it. The drum. Now I can die happy.’
Damned sappers. Bottle shook his head. There was pain there, now, in that mangled stretch of track a quarter-league away. Human, beast, and…oh, and demon. You’d have done better chasing us. Even so, what a mess we’ve made.
Yes, plenty of pain, but more death. Flat, dwindling death, spreading dark as that dust in the air. Fiddler’s drum. No better announcement imaginable, that the Malazans were here.
Thom Tissy’s descent from the tree was a little loud, a little fast. In a skein of snapped branches, twigs, leaves and one abandoned wasp nest, the sergeant landed heavy and hard on his backside. ‘Ow, gods below, gods below!’
‘Ain’t no god at that end, just a tailbone,’ a soldier called out from the nearby squads.
Keneb waited for a few more heartbeats, then asked, ‘Sergeant, tell me what you saw.’
Thom Tissy slowly, carefully, regained his feet. He walked about on his short bandy legs, squat as an ogre, replete with pocked face and warty hands. ‘Smoke, Fist, and plenty of it. Counted ten spots in all, one of ’em big – probably the thunder we heard a little while back – more than one cusser for sure. Maybe three, maybe more.’
Meaning someone was in desperate trouble. Keneb glanced away, scanned the motley soldiers hunkered down in the forest glade. ‘Ten?’
‘Aye, Fist. I guess we stirred ’em up some, enough so that the fighting’s getting fierce. When the captain gets back, we’ll find out some details, I suppose.’
Yes. Faradan Sort. But she and Beak had been away for days, almost a week now.
‘Ten.’
‘Expecting more, Fist?’ Thom Tissy asked. ‘My line of sight wasn’t bad, but not perfect. I saw six on the north side, four on the south, putting us near dead centre and a half a night’s travel behind. Anyway, the outermost smokes were right on the horizons, so we’re still spread well out, the way we should be. And the smoke just tells us where bigger fights happened, not all the other little ambushes and the like. Something wrong, Fist?’
‘Settle the squads in,’ Keneb replied, turning away. Oh, aye, there was fighting going on. But nothing evenly matched. His marines were outnumbered; no chance of acquiring the allies they’d thought they’d get. True, they were loaded down with munitions, but the more mages arriving with the Edur and Letherii troops the more the sheer overwhelming imbalance would start to tell. His squads, even paired up, couldn’t afford losses. Four or five dead and that threshold of effectiveness would have been crossed. There would have to be convergence, merging of survivors – and this leagues-long line of advance would start thinning out. Instead of gaining in strength and momentum as the advance began to close in on this empire’s capital, the Malazan marines would in fact be weaker.
Of course, this invasion was not simply Keneb’s covert marine advance. There were other elements – the Adjunct and Blistig’s regular infantry, who would be led in the field, when that time came, by the terrifying but competent Captain Kindly. There were the Khundryl Burned Tears and the Perish – although they were, for the moment, far away. A complicated invasion indeed.
For us, here, all we need to do is sow confusion, cut supplies to the capital whenever we can, and just keep the enemy off balance, guessing, reacting rather than initiating. The fatal blows will come from elsewhere, and I need to remind myself of that. So that I don’t try to do too much. What counts is keeping as many of my marines alive as possible – not that the Adjunct’s tactics with us give me much chance of that. I think I’m starting to understand how the Bridgeburners felt, when they were being thrown into every nightmare, again and again.
Especially at the end. Pale, Darujhistan, that city called Black Coral.
But no, this is different. The Adjunct doesn’t want us wiped out. That would be insanity, and she may be a cold, cold bitch, but she’s not mad. At least not so it’s showed, anyway.
Keneb cursed himself. The strategy had been audacious, yes, yet founded on sound principles. On traditional principles, in fact. Kellanved’s own, in the purpose behind the creation of the marines; in the way the sappers rose to pre-eminence, once the Moranth munitions arrived to revolutionize Malazan-style warfare. This was, in fact, the old, original way of employing the marines – although the absence of supply lines, no matter how tenuous or stretched, enforced a level of commitment that allowed no deviation, no possibility of retreat – she burned the transports and not a Quorl in sight – creating a situation that would have made the Emperor squirm.
Or not. Kellanved had known the value of gambles, had known how an entire war could shift, could turn on that single unexpected, outrageous act, the breaking of protocol that left the enemy reeling, then, all at once, entirely routed.
Such acts were what made military geniuses. Kellanved, Dassem Ultor, Sher’arah of Korel, Prince K’azz D’avore of the Crimson Guard. Caladan Brood. Coltaine. Dujek.
Did Adjunct Tavore belong in this esteemed company? She’s not shown it yet, has she? Gods above, Keneb, you’ve got to stop thinking like this. You’ll become another Blistig and one Blistig is more than enough.
He needed to focus on the matters at hand. He and the marines were committed to this campaign, this bold gamble. Leave the others to do their part, believing at all times that they would succeed, that they would appear in their allotted positions when the moment arrived. They would appear, yes, with the expectation that he, Keneb, would do the same. With the bulk of his marines.
Game pieces, aye. Leave the deciding hand to someone else. To fate, to the gods, to Tavore of House Paran, Adjunct to No-one. So bringing me round, damn this, to faith. Again. Faith. That she’s not insane. That she’s a military genius to rival a mere handful of others across the span of Malazan history.
Faith. Not in a god, not in fate, but in a fellow mortal. Whose face he knew well, remembering with grim clarity its limited range of expression, through grief to anger, to her ferocious will to achieve…whatever it is she seeks to achieve. Now, if only I knew what that was.
Perhaps this kind of fighting was suited to the marines. But it was not suited to Keneb himself. Not as commander, not as Fist. It was hard not to feel helpless. He wasn’t even in contact with his army, beyond sporadic murmurings among the squad mages. I’ll feel better when Faradan Sort returns.
If she returns.
‘Fist.’
Keneb turned. ‘You following me round, Sergeant?’
‘No sir,’ Thom Tissy replied. ‘Just thought I’d say, before I sack out, that, well, we understand.’
‘Understand what? Who is “we”?’
‘All of us, sir. It’s impossible. I mean, for you. We know that.’
‘Do you now?’
‘Aye. You can’t lead. You’re stuck with following, and not knowing what in Hood’s name is happening to your soldiers, because they’re all over the place—’
‘Go get some sleep, Sergeant. And tell the rest, I am not aware that any of this is impossible. We maintain the advance, and that is that.’
‘Well, uh—’
‘You presume too much, Sergeant. Now return to your squad, tell your soldiers to stow all the theorizing, and go get some sleep.’
‘Aye, sir.’
Keneb watched the squat man walk away. Decent of him, all that rubbish. Decent, but pointless and dangerous. We’re not friends, Thom Tissy. Neither of us can afford that.
After a moment, he allowed himself a wry smile. All of his complaints regarding Tavore, and here he was, doing the same damned thing that she did – pushing them all away.
