The Malazan Empire, page 667
So I left ’em to it. And the detonations died away, but the screams continued, Hood take me.
Sprawled in the high grasses at the edge of the treeline, his squad. They stank. The glory of the Bonehunters, this taking to the grisliest meaning of that name. Koryk’s curse, aye. Who else? Severed fingers, ears, pierced through and dangling from belts, harness clasps, rawhide ties. His soldiers: one and all degraded into some ghastly blood-licking barely human savages. No real surprise there. It was one thing to go covert – as marines this was, after all, precisely what they had been trained to do. But it had gone on too long, without relief, with the only end in sight nothing other than Hood’s own gate. Fingers and ears, except for Smiles, who’d added to the mix with that which only males could provide. ‘My blecker worms,’ she’d said, referring to some offshore mud-dwelling worm native to the Kanese coast. ‘And just like the worms, they start out purple and blue and then after a day or two in the sun they turn grey. Bleckers, Sergeant.’
Didn’t need to lose the path to lose their minds, that much was obvious. Gods below, look at these fools – how in Hood’s name have we lasted this long?
They’d not seen the captain and her runt of a mage in some time, which didn’t bode well. Still, threads of brown telltale smoke drifting around here and there in the mornings, and the faint sounds of munitions at night. So, at least some of them were still alive. But even those signs were growing scarce, when they should have been, if anything, increasing as things got nastier.
We’ve run out. We’re used up. Bah, listen to me! Starting to sound like Cuttle there. ‘I’m ready to die now, Fid. Happy to, aye. Now that I seen—’
‘Enough of that,’ he snapped.
‘Sergeant?’
‘Stop asking me anything, Bottle. And stop looking at me like I’ve gone mad or something.’
‘You’d better not, Sergeant. Go mad, that is. You’re the only sane one left.’
‘Does that assessment include you?’
Bottle grimaced, then spat out another wad of the grass he’d taken to chewing. Reached for a fresh handful.
Aye, answer enough.
‘Almost dark,’ Fiddler said, eyeing once more the quaint village ahead. Crossroads, tavern and stable, a smithy down the main street, in front of a huge pile of tailings, and what seemed too many residences, rows of narrow-laned mews, each abode looking barely enough for a small family. Could be there was some other industry, a quarry or potter’s manufactury, somewhere on the other side of the village – he thought he could see a gravel road wending up a hill past the eastern edge.
Strangely quiet for dusk. Workers still chained to their workbenches? Maybe. But still, not even a damned dog in that street. ‘I don’t like the looks of this,’ he said. ‘You sure you smell nothing awry, Bottle?’
‘Nothing magical. Doesn’t mean there isn’t a hundred Edur crouched inside those houses, just waiting for us.’
‘So send in a squirrel or something, damn you.’
‘I’m looking, Sergeant, but if you keep interrupting me…’
‘Lord Hood, please sew up the mouths of mages, I implore you.’
‘Sergeant, I’m begging you. We’ve got six squads of Edur less than a league behind us, and I’m damned tired of dodging javelins. Let me concentrate.’
Aye, concentrate on this fist down your throat, y’damned rat-kisser. Oh, I’m way too tired, way too old. Maybe, if we get through this – hah! – I’ll just creep away, vanish into the streets of this Letheras. Retire. Take up fishing. Or maybe knitting. Funeral shawls. Bound to be a thriving enterprise for a while, I’d wager. Once the Adjunct arrives with the rest of us snarly losers and exacts a pleasant revenge for all us dead marines. No, stop thinking that way. We’re still alive.
‘Found a cat, Sergeant. Sleeping in the kitchen of that tavern. It’s having bad dreams.’
‘So become its worse nightmare, Bottle, and quick.’
Birds chirping in the trees behind them. Insects busy living and dying in the grasses around them. The extent of his world now, a tiresome travail punctuated by moments of profound terror. He itched with filth and could smell the stale stench of old fear, like redolent stains in the skin.
Who in Hood’s name are these damned Letherii anyway? So this damned empire with its Edur overlords scrapped with the Malazan Empire. Laseen’s problem, not ours. Damn you, Tavore, we get to this point and vengeance ain’t enough—
‘Got her,’ Bottle said. ‘Awake…stretching – yes, got to stretch, Sergeant, don’t ask me why. All right, three people in the kitchen, all sweating, all rolling their eyes – they look terrified, huddling that way. I hear sounds in the tavern. Someone’s singing…’
Fiddler waited for more.
And waited.
‘Bottle—’
‘Slipping into the tavern – ooh, a cockroach! Wait, no, stop playing with it – just eat the damned thing!’
‘Keep your voice down, Bottle!’
‘Done. Woah, crowded in here. That song…up onto the rail, and there—’ Bottle halted abruptly, then, swearing under his breath, he rose. Stood for a moment, then snorted and said, ‘Come on, Sergeant. We can just walk right on in.’
‘Marines holding the village? Spit Hood on a stake, yes!’
The others heard that and as one they were on their feet, crowding round in relief.
Fiddler stared at all the stupid grins and was suddenly sober again. ‘Look at you! A damned embarrassment!’
‘Sergeant.’ Bottle plucked at his arm. ‘Fid, trust me, no worries on that front.’
Hellian had forgotten which song she was singing. Whatever it was, it wasn’t what everyone else was singing, not that they were still singing, much. Though her corporal was somehow managing a double warble, stretching out some bizarre word in Old Cawn – foreigners shouldn’t sing, since how could people understand them so it could be a mean song, a nasty, insulting song about sergeants, all of which meant her corporal earned that punch in the head and at least the warbling half stopped.
A moment later she realized that the other half had died away, too. And that she herself was the only one still singing, although even to her it sounded like some foreign language was blubbering from her numbed lips – something about sergeants, maybe – well, she could just take out this knife and—
More soldiers suddenly, the tavern even more crowded. Unfamiliar faces that looked familiar and how could that be well it was it just was, so there. Damn, another sergeant – how many sergeants did she have to deal with here in this tavern? First there was Urb, who seemed to have been following her around for weeks now, and then Gesler, staggering in at noon with more wounded than walking. And now here was another one, with the reddish beard and that battered fiddle on his back and there he was, laughing and hugging Gesler like they was long lost brothers or lovers or something – everyone was too damned happy as far as she was concerned. Happier than her, which was of course the same thing.
Things had been better in the morning. Was it this day? Yesterday? No matter. They’d been magicked hard to find – was that Balgrid’s doing? Tavos Pond’s? And so the three squads of Edur had pretty much walked right on top of them. Which made the killing easier. That wonderful sound of crossbows letting loose. Thwok! Thwok! Thwokthwokthwok! And then the swordwork, the in-close stabbing and chopping and slashing then poking and prodding but nope ain’t nobody moving any more and that’s a relief and being relieved was the happiest feeling.
Until it made you depressed. Standing around surrounded by dead people did that on occasion. The blood on the sword in your hand. The grunt twist and pull of removing quarrels from stubborn muscle, bone and organs. All the flies showing up like they was gathered on a nearby branch just waiting. And the stink of all that stuff poured out of bodies.
Stinking almost as bad as what was on all these marines. Who’d started all that? The fingers and cocks and ears and stuff?
A sudden flood of guilt in Hellian. It was me! She stood, reeled, then looked over at the long table that served large parties of travellers, the table that went along the side wall opposite the bar. Edur heads were piled high on it, amidst plenty of buzzing, crawling flies and maggots. Too heavy on the belt – pulled Maybe’s breeches down, hah! No wait, I’m supposed to be feeling bad. There’s going to be trouble, because that’s what comes when you get nasty with the corpses of your enemies. It just…what’s the word? ‘Escalates!’
Faces turned, soldiers stared. Fiddler and Gesler who had been slapping each other on the back pulled apart and then walked over.
‘Hood’s pecker, Hellian,’ Fiddler said under his breath, ‘what happened to all the townfolk? As if I can’t guess,’ he added, glancing over at the heaped heads. ‘They’ve all run away.’
Urb had joined them and he said, ‘They were all those Indebted we heard about. Fifth, sixth generations. Working on blanks.’
‘Blanks?’ Gesler asked.
‘For weapons,’ Fiddler explained. ‘So, they were slaves, Urb?’
‘In everything but name,’ the big man replied, scratching at his beard from which dangled one severed finger, grey and black. ‘Under all those Edur heads is the local Factor’s head, some rich bastard in silks. We killed him in front of the Indebted and listened to them cheer. And then they cut off the poor fool’s head as a gift, since we come in with all these Edur ones. And then they looted what they could and headed out.’
Gesler’s brows had risen at all that. ‘So you’ve managed what the rest of us haven’t – arriving as damned liberators in this town.’
Hellian snorted. ‘We worked that out weeks back. Never mind the Lurrii soljers, since they’re all perfessionals and so’s they like things jus’ fine so’s they’s the one y’gotta kill no diff’rent from the Edur. No, y’go into the hamlets and villages and kill all the ’ficials—’
‘The what?’ Gesler asked.
Urb said, ‘Officials. We kill the officials, Gesler. And anybody with money, and the advocates, too.’
‘The what?’
‘Legal types. Oh, and the money-lenders and debt-holders, and the record-keepers and toll-counters. We kill them all—’
‘Along with the soljers,’ Hellian added, nodding – and nodding, for some reason finding herself unable to stop. She kept nodding as she said, ‘An’ what happens then is simple. Looting, lotsa sex, then everybody skittles out, and we sleep in soft beds and drink an’ eat in the tavern an’ if the keepers hang round we pays for it all nice an’ honest—’
‘Keepers like the ones hiding in the kitchen?’
Hellian blinked. ‘Hiding? Oh, maybe we’ve gotten a little wild –’
‘It’s the heads,’ Urb said, then he shrugged sheepishly. ‘We’re getting outa hand, Gesler, I think. Living like animals in the woods and the like—’
‘Like animals,’ Hellian agreed, still nodding. ‘In soft beds and lotsa food and drink an’ it’s not like we carry them heads on our belts or anything. We just leave ’em in the taverns. Every village, right? Jus’ to let ’em know we been through.’ Unaccountably dizzy, Hellian sat back down, then reached for the flagon of ale on the table – needing to twist Balgrid’s fingers from the handle and him fighting as if it was his flagon or something, the idiot. She swallowed a mouthful and leaned back – only it was a stool she was sitting on so there was no back to it, and now she was staring up at the ceiling and puddled whatever was soaking through her ragged shirt all along her back and faces were peering down at her. She glowered at the flagon still in her hand. ‘Did I spill? Did I? Did I spill, dammit?’
‘Not a drop,’ Fiddler said, shaking his head in wonder. This damned Sergeant Hellian, who by Urb’s account had crossed all the way from the coast in an inebriated haze – this soft-featured woman, soft just on the edge of dissolute, with the bright always wet lips – this Hellian had managed to succeed where every other squad – as far as Fiddler knew – had failed miserably. And since Urb was adamant on who was leading whom, it really had been her. This drunken, ferocious marine.
Leaving severed heads in every tavern, for Hood’s sake!
But she had cut loose the common people, all these serfs and slaves and Indebted, and had watched them dance off in joy and freedom. Our drunk liberator, our bloodthirsty goddess – what in Hood’s name do all those people think when they first see her? Endless rumours of a terrible invading army. Soldiers and Edur dying in ambushes, chaos on the roads and trails. Then she shows up, dragging heads in sacks, and her marines break down every door in town and drag out all the ones nobody else has any reason to like. And then? Why, the not-so-subtle cutting away of all burdens for all these poor folk. ‘Give us the bar for a couple nights and then we’ll just be on our way.
‘Oh, and if you run into any Edur in the woods, send somebody back to warn us, right?’
Was it any wonder that Hellian and Urb and their squads had marched so far ahead of the others – or so Captain Sort had complained – with hardly any losses among her marines? The drunk, bright-eyed woman with all the rounded excesses of a well-fed, never sober but still young harlot had somehow managed to co-opt all the local help they’d needed to stay alive.
In a strange kind of floating wonder, the near-euphoria of relief, exhaustion and plenty of admiration that certainly wasn’t innocent of sudden sexual desire – for a damned drunk – Fiddler found a table and moments later was joined by Gesler and Stormy, the latter arriving with a loaf of rye bread, a broached cask of ale and three dented pewter flagons with inscriptions on them.
‘Can almost read this,’ he said, squinting at the side of his cup. ‘Like old Ehrlii.’
‘Maker’s stamp?’ Gesler asked as he tore off a hunk of bread.
‘No. Maybe something like “Advocate of the Year”. Then a name. Could be Rizzin Purble. Or Wurble. Or Fizzin.’
‘Could be that’s the name of this village,’ Gesler suggested. ‘Fizzin Wurble.’
Stormy grunted, then nudged Fiddler. ‘Stop dreaming of her, Fid. She’s trouble and a lost cause too. Besides, it’s Urb who’s all dreamy ’bout her and he looks too dangerous to mess with.’
Fiddler sighed. ‘Aye to all of that. It’s just been a long time, that’s all.’
‘We’ll get our rewards soon enough.’
He eyed Stormy for a moment, then glanced over to Gesler.
Who was scowling at his corporal. ‘You lost your mind, Stormy? The only rewards we’re going to reap are the crow feathers Hood hands out as we march through his gate. Sure, we’re drawing up here, gaining in strength as we do it, but those Edur on our trail will be doing the same, outnumbering us five, ten to one by the time we run out of open ground.’
Stormy waved a dismissive hand. ‘You do a count, Gesler? Look at Urb’s squad. At Hellian’s. Look at Fid’s and ours. We’re all damned near unscathed, given what we’ve been through. More living than dead in every squad here. So who’s to say the other squads aren’t in the same shape? We’re damn near at strength, and you couldn’t say that about the Letherii and the Edur, could you?’
‘There’s a whole lot more of them than us,’ Gesler pointed out as he collected the cask and began pouring the ale into the flagons.
‘Ain’t made that much difference, though. We bulled through that last ambush—’
‘And left the scene so cut up and bleeding a vole could’ve tracked us—’
‘Sharper scatter, is all—’
‘Mayfly’s back was a shredded mess—’
‘Armour took most of it—’
‘Armour she doesn’t have any more—’
‘You two are worse than married,’ Fiddler said, reaching for his ale.
‘All right,’ Koryk pronounced, ‘there’s no disagreement possible. Those bleckers of yours, Smiles, reek the worst of all. Worse than fingers, worse than ears, worse even than tongues. We’ve all voted. All us in the squad, and you’ve got to get rid of them.’
Smiles sneered. ‘You think I don’t know why you want me to toss ’em, Koryk? It’s not the smell, oh no. It’s the sight of them, and the way that makes you squirm inside, makes your balls pull up and hide. That’s what this is all about. Pretty soon, none of us will be smelling much at all – everything’s drying out, wrinkling up—’
‘Enough,’ groaned Tarr.
Koryk glanced across at Bottle. The fool looked to be asleep, his face hanging slack. Well, fair enough. Without Bottle they’d never have come this far. Virtually unscathed at that. He tapped the finger bone strung round his neck – the bone from the pit outside what was left of Y’Ghatan. Always worth a touch or two with thoughts like those.
And he knew they were headed for trouble. They all knew, which was why they’d talk about anything else but that huge grisly beast crouched right there in the forefront of their thoughts. The one with dripping fangs and jagged talons and that smeared grin of knowing. Aye. He touched the bone again.
‘Come through not bad,’ Cuttle said, eyeing the other marines in the crowded main room. ‘Anybody here been thinking about how we’re going to besiege a city the size of Unta? We’re pretty much out of munitions – Fid’s got a cusser left and maybe I do, too, but that’s it. We can hardly try anything covert, since they know we’re coming—’
‘Magic, of course,’ Smiles said. ‘We’ll just walk right in.’
Koryk winced at this turn in the conversation. Besieging Letheras? And nobody standing ranks-deep in their way? Not likely. Besides, the Edur were pushing them right along, and where the marines ended up was not going to be a pleasure palace, now was it? Had Cuttle lost his mind? Or was this just his way of dealing with the death looming in all their minds?
Probably. The sapper had little or no imagination, and he was making his biggest leap possible all the way to a siege that was never going to happen and wouldn’t work anyway if it did, which it wouldn’t. But it gave Cuttle something to think about.
‘The sergeant will figure something out,’ Cuttle concluded suddenly, with a loud sigh, as he settled back in his chair.
