The Malazan Empire, page 983
Excerpt
Book Eleven
Throne, Sceptre and Crown
Rise Hara
(Coral Trove)
PITHY STAGGERED CLEAR, SHEATHED IN BLOOD. THE BLISTERING WHITE of the strand shocked her, tilting and rocking before her eyes. She fell to her knees, and then on to her side. She let go of her sword but the grip clung to her hand a moment longer, before sobbing loose. With her other hand she tugged off her helm. The blade cut was a slit scoring right through the dented iron. Strands of bloody hair and the tufted padding of her under-helm filled the gap.
She let her head drop back, the terrible sounds of battle fading. Overhead the sky spun. Torn fragments of light drifted in the gloom. Ah, Brev. He warned us. In that way of his, he warned us. Back and forth he walked, drawing and sheathing and drawing that damned sword. Over and over again.
You can think about what’s to come. You can try and picture it in your mind. What warriors did. What soldiers walked into. But none of it readies you. None of it.
The screaming seemed far away now. The surge and terrible clatter, the maw of the breach a mass of blades, spear and sword, knife and axe, and all that mouth did was chew people to bloody bits, those iron fangs clashing and grinding – there was no end to its appetite.
So long as there’re more people to shove into it.
Her body felt hot, the sweaty gambeson chafing under her arms. She could smell her own reek.
So we called ourselves captains, did we, Brev? Good at giving orders. Good at standing around looking important. There with the prince. With his knot of elite soldiers he now calls his Watch. Me and you, Brevity, we were officers.
In an army of fools.
Blood ran warm to pool in her ears, first the one on the left, then the one on the right. Other sounds were drowned in the deluge. Is that the ocean I’m hearing? An ocean of blood? Is this, I wonder, the last thing we ever hear? Dear ocean, then, call my soul. I would swim the waters again. Let me swim the waters again.
Something trembled the sands beneath her. No, they won’t quit. They want through. Just like he said.
She was no captain. She knew nothing about what being a real captain meant. From that first moment, when the breach opened, when light flared out like a tongue of fire, and all those voices from beyond the barrier ripped through…
She saw Yedan Derryg marching down to the breach. His Watch had been arrayed, positioned as squad leaders in the forward line of Letherii volunteers. And there was Withal, moving quickly back up the ravaged slope, into the forest. Word to the queen of Kharkanas: the battle begins.
Pithy’s attention returned to the breach. Stick the mercenaries to the front, in a place where there’s no retreat except through your more loyal soldiers. They’re there for the loot to come. But loot never held any man or woman, not for long, not when it all rips open. These Letherii islanders – they’re my people. Mine.
She took up her sword as she ran down to that first high berm. The weapon in her hand never felt right. It frightened her, in fact. She dreaded spitting herself as much as she did some snarling enemy’s spear thrust. Where was Brevity? Somewhere in the rush – we’re like a kicked-over nest of termites.
Someone was wailing – a mother whose child has just pulled loose from her embrace, has just vanished into the press with a sword and shield, a spear or a pike. It’s a scene of the world. Every world. On the other side of the barrier, some mother screams her fear, loses sight of her cherished one. She stumbled, dropped to one knee, vomited into the crushed bones of the beach. Coughing, spitting, feeling a strange hollowness inside, blossoming outward, until it felt as if her brain was attached to nothing, floating free of her body.
She could hear a roar. The sound of battle – no, she’d never heard it before, not like this. The flight from the coast back in Lether had been nothing like this. Back then, the voices and the will had come from pain and fear, from broken needs. It had possessed a plaintive timbre. Against the discipline of Yedan Derryg and his elites, those wretched foes had not stood a chance.
This was different. The sound that erupted from the breach was by itself enough to drive the defenders back a step. Triumph and rage – they were through! At last, through! And the hated enemy would not stop them, would not even slow them. With the mass of their comrades driving them from behind, with the slashing spear points dropping horizontal before them, the Tiste Liosan poured from the wound.
Pithy forced herself back on to her feet, forced herself forward. She was still floating free, but her vision seemed impossibly sharp. She saw the front line of Letherii lifting bizarrely into the air, saw their heads tilting back, their mouths wide open. Lifted on the spears of the enemy.
The sword slipped from her hand. Numbed, confused, she spun to retrieve it. Someone collided with her, knocked her down. She coughed on a lungful of dusty sand. Where was her sword? There. She crawled over to it. The grip was gritty, biting into her palm. Pithy wiped at her hand. Looked over at the breach.
Somehow, the Letherii line was still there. They were fighting back. They were holding the Liosan on the berm’s slope. The press from their own side was vicious, pushing to hold and then pushing to advance. Gaps opened here and there and torn bodies were carried back out, limbs dragging.
The two witches were now among the wounded. Each held a dagger in one hand. Pithy watched Skwish kneel beside an injured woman, leaning close to examine a wound. With a shake of her head she slid the knife into the Letherii’s chest, straight into her heart, then moved on to the next casualty.
You fucking murderers.
Pully was stuffing bandages into a hole in a man’s side, shouting for stretcher-bearers. A second station for the wounded was forming higher up the strand, where cutters worked to staunch bleeding, stitch gashes and saw off ruined limbs. Nearby was a pit dug into the sand, for those severed limbs and for those wounded no one could save.
It’s…organized. They planned for this. Yes, I remember now. We all planned for this. For what’s happening right now.
Pithy scrambled forward again. ‘They’re holding,’ she gasped. ‘They’re holding!’
‘Captain!’
A boy ran up to her. She’d never seen him before. He was frighteningly thin, with sores crusting his mouth. A Letherii. ‘Who sent you?’ she demanded.
‘Corporal Nithe of the Watch, right anchor, has been wounded and pulled from the line, sir. The prince needs you to immediately take up command of those flank squads, sir.’
Errant’s push. She licked her lips. Her bladder was stinging as if everything it held had turned into acid. She looked down at her sword.
‘Sir?’
The damned boy was staring at her. Those weeping sores around his mouth, the smears on his face. She could see that he was terrified. An orphan whose new family was being killed before his very eyes. He had carried the prince’s words. He had found her, done what Yedan had asked of him. He was doing what he was supposed to be doing. Following orders. Holding on to duty, as desperate as the rest of us. Stop looking at me like that. ‘Lead me through,’ she said.
And like a boy eager for the beach, he took her hand and led her forward.
The smell of the heaving press made her choke. The sweat and spewed vomit, the fear and the shit and the piss. How could anyone fight in this? Pithy almost pulled herself loose from the boy’s cold grip. But now hands were pushing at her from behind. Faces lunged close, shouting things. Eyes met her own, filled with pleading. Panic roiled in like a grey, grainy cloud.
Her knees found a figure down on all fours. As she struggled to step over him, she looked down. Unwounded by any weapon but terror itself. The realization triggered a surge of fury. She halted and twisted round. ‘Get up, you worthless pile of shit! They’re dying up there! For you! On your feet!’ And this time she managed to prise her hand loose from the boy’s. Reaching down, she took the man by the hair. ‘Stand up! You’re with me – let’s go!’
Those close by were watching. Staring. She saw things harden in their eyes and wondered what that was about. ‘Lead on, lad! Front line, quick! You, soldier, don’t even think of pullin’ back!’
Listen to me! Like I know what I’m doing. Like I done this before.
She heard voices around her now.
‘Look, Captain’s here—’
‘Cap’n Pithy – see her? There—’
‘She choked a coward—’
‘Killed him!’
‘Pithy killed a coward – right in front of my eyes!’
‘Gods below,’ she muttered. The boy glanced back at her as he struggled to push between two Letherii men. His eyes were suddenly bright.
And then, all at once, she could see spear points, flashing as they rocked up from impacts with shields, lashing out, clashing with swords and Andiian pikes. For the first time, she caught a glimpse of a Liosan face. Long, narrow, stretched – but – Errant! They look like the Andii! They look just like them!
White-skinned instead of black-skinned. Is that it? Is that the only fucking difference?
Those eyes locked on her own, pale blue and frighteningly young, above the struggling press between them. And she saw his fear. His terrible, horrifying fear. ‘No,’ she murmured. Don’t do this. Go back. Please—
An axe blade slammed into the side of the Liosan’s head. Bones folded in around sundered flesh. Blood sprayed from eye, nose and mouth. The lone visible eye still staring at her suddenly went blank, sightless, and he fell down, out of her sight.
Pithy moaned. Tears rose inside her. Her sinuses closed up, forcing her breaths to her mouth – she couldn’t get enough air. She could barely see through the blur. And the light was pouring down, mottled by shadows. Pouring down and down—
A Letherii woman reached back and closed a bloody grip on her wrist. Pulling her forward. ‘Corporal Nithe said he’d be back soon, sir.’
Was this going to be a conversation? She could see the fighting – right there, almost within reach. Where had the boy gone? Nowhere in sight. Her coward? There, suddenly in the front line and screaming as he brought a shield round to block a savage thrust. ‘What happened to him?’
‘Captain?’
‘Nithe! What happened to him?’
‘Got a hand cut off, sir. Went to get it scabbed – said he’d be back soon.’ The woman faced front again, raised her voice. ‘Captain Pithy’s in command!’
No one seemed to heed that announcement.
And then Pithy felt the air change, as if her ears had popped. Something seethed, up around her, and then outward. From nowhere and everywhere there came a roar, and the flank lurched, heaved into the face of the Liosan front.
As if caught in a current, Pithy was pulled forward.
She stepped on something that rolled underfoot. Looked down.
The boy stared up at her. But no, he was staring up at nothing. Around his gaping mouth, the sores were black with dirt.
No, clean those up—
And then the bodies underfoot were Liosan, twisted, curled round welters of blood and gaping wounds. Broken spear shafts, soiled clothing. Empty faces.
She could hear other roars, and she knew – she knew – that the entire Letherii line was driving forward, one section after another. Go back to your hole, you poor miserable dogs! ‘Go back!’ she shouted. ‘Back! This is ours! This is ours!’
And all at once, that cry was taken up.
She saw the Liosan reel before it, saw the enemy ranks buckling as the Letherii surged into them, again and again.
A sudden gap before her. A Liosan, settling on one knee, one shoulder sliced open, down through the joint, the arm hanging. Seeing her, he struggled to rise. He was old, his face lined, and the look in his eyes was bleak.
Pithy’s sword swing was awkward, but all of her strength was behind it. She clipped the edge of his jaw before the blade cut deep into his neck. Blood spurted, gushed all over her. Shocked by the hot deluge, she stepped back—
And that one step saved her life. A spear thrust caught her head, bit into her helm. She felt the blade edge cut into her scalp, grind along the bone of her skull – and then she was pulled away.
A burly man dragged her close. ‘Never mind that – y’still got your head, don’t you? Seen my sword?’ he asked. ‘I dropped the fucker – you’ll know it ’cause it’s still in my hand – never mind—’ He bent down and came up with a wood-cutter’s axe. ‘Errant’s horse-humped earhole, what the fuck is this? Never mind – to the back line with you, Captain Pithy. I started this and I mean to finish it up.’
Nithe? Never Mind Nithe? Is that what they call you?
‘This is ours!’ The chant went on and on.
Hands took hold of her. She was being pulled out. Her first engagement against the Liosan. Her first taste – of everything. The slaughter. The hurt. The anger. The falling light. All of it. All of it. Oh, gods, all of it!
Suddenly she stumbled clear.
Winced at the blinding glare of the strand, as tendrils of agonizing light writhed overhead. Down, on to her knees. Down, on to her side. Sword and helmet away. Sounds, dimming, fading…
Someone drove a pair of knees against her left hip. Blinking, she looked up at Skwish, saw the knife in the witch’s gore-drenched left hand. ‘Don’t even think it,’ Pithy said in a growl.
The witch grinned.
Then was gone.
The last end of the rout, a scattering of Liosan, converging as they dragged wounded comrades back through the breach, vanishing into blinding light. Yedan Derryg’s sword was unaccountably heavy in his hand, so he let the tip crunch down into the soaked strand.
‘Prince!’
‘Address that front line, Sergeant – get our wounded and dead out of there.’ He glared at the breach. The blackened, weeping mar in Lightfall. Too damaged to do anything as miraculous as heal before his eyes, but the first probe of the enemy had been denied.
The Liosan had taken as many of their dead and dying with them as they could, but there were still scores and scores, bodies heaped up at the base of the first berm. ‘Get a crew to start piling them up, against the breach. Make a wall, but tell them to be careful – make sure the fallen are actually dead or near enough as to make no difference.’
‘Yes, sir.’
He lifted his gaze as a shadow crossed the Lightfall, just above the wound. Bared his teeth.
A new voice spoke beside him. ‘That was closer than I liked, Prince.’
He turned. ‘Bedac. Was it you behind that last push?’
‘Far right flank,’ the woman said.
‘Nithe? Could’ve sworn that was a woman’s shout.’
‘Nithe got his hand chopped off. Didn’t bleed out, thankfully. Captain Pithy took that flank command, sire. Nithe made it back in time to drive a wood-axe into the skull of one of the last Liosan on that side. Hard enough to break the handle.’
Yedan frowned. ‘What’s a wood-axe doing in our ranks? My orders on weapon choices were clear enough. That reminds me – Sergeant! Collect up the better Liosan weapons, will you?’
‘Got plans with your trophy, Prince?’
‘What trophy?’
She nodded down at his sword.
He glanced at it. A Liosan head was impaled on the blade, from the top of the skull down and out through the neck, which had already been half severed. He grunted. ‘No wonder it felt heavy.’
Yan Tovis stood at the forest verge. Watching them dragging bodies clear, watching others tossing limbs and rolling corpses into the pit. None of it seemed real. The triumphant and suddenly exhausted Letherii ranks along the berm were settling to catch their breaths, to check on weapons and armour, to take the skins of water from the youths now threading through the ranks. They think they’ve won.
Without Yedan and his Watch, that front line would have quickly crumpled. Instead, the survivors now felt bold, filled to bursting. In this one clash, something had been tempered. She knew what she was seeing. A fighting force cannot be simply assembled. It needed that brutal forge and it needed all its fires quenched in the blood of battle. Her brother was making something here.
But it would not be enough.
She could see how her own Shake were looking on, no different from Yan Tovis herself. Yedan was not about to expend the Letherii ranks as if they were useless skirmishers, not with what he’d now made of them. He would pull them back, holding them in reserve during the next battle.
They probed to test our mettle. Next time, we will see their true fury. And if that beachhead is established, then the first dragon will come through.
Her Shake watched, yes, and thought about their own time to come, their own stand against the Liosan. Few of the Letherii were trained as soldiers, and that was no different from the Shake. But Yedan’s Watch would be there, solid as standing stones. Until they start falling. They can only do so much. They’re Yedan’s most precious resource, but he must risk them each time. And, as they begin to fall, why, he’ll have a new crop of veterans to draw upon. These very Letherii here, and then from among our own Shake.
It’s so very…logical. But, dear brother, it’s what you do best, isn’t it?
How can I kneel to this? By doing so, do I not make it all…inevitable? No. That I will not do. But I will take my place among my people, on that berm. I know how to fight. I might not be Yedan’s equal in that, but I’m damned close.
It’s carved into the souls of the royal line. To stand here, upon the First Shore. To stand here, and to die.
They were stacking Liosan corpses, making a wall across the breach. The contempt of that gesture was as calculated as everything else Yedan did. Rage is the enemy. Beware that, Liosan. He will make your rage your downfall, if he can.
You cannot make my brother angry. He’s not like you. He’s not like any of us. And his army will follow his lead. They will look to him and take inside what he gives. It’s cold. Lifeless. They’ll take it in and it will change them all.
Your army, brother. My people. I can’t win this, but neither can you.
