The ambush had been a clever one, he admitted. Should have taken them all down. Instead, half a league back, in a small grassy glade, there was the carcass of a deer – a deer that Corabb had inadvertently flushed out – with about twenty arrows in it. Cleverly planned, poorly executed.
The Malazans had quickly turned it. Sharpers cracking in the night, crossbows thudding, the flit of quarrels and the punch of impact. Shrieks of agony. A rush from Gesler’s heavies had broken one side of the ambush—
And then the sorcery had churned awake, something raw and terrible, devouring trees like acid. Grey tongues of chaotic fire, heaving into a kind of standing wave. Charging forward, engulfing Sands – his scream had been mercifully short. Fiddler, not ten paces away from where Sands had vanished, saw the Letherii mage, who seemed to be screaming with his own pain, even as the wave hurled forward. Bellowing, he’d swung his crossbow round, felt the kick in his hands as he loosed the heavy quarrel.
The cusser had struck a bole just above and behind the mage’s head. The explosion flattened nearby trees, shredded a score of Letherii soldiers. Snuffed the sorcery out in an instant. As more trees toppled, branches thrashing down, the Malazans had pulled back, fast, and then they ran.
Movement from Fiddler’s left and a moment later Gesler dragged himself up alongside. ‘Hood’s damned us all, Fid. We’re running out of forest – how’s Cuttle?’
‘Arrow’s deep,’ Fiddler replied, ‘but not a bleeder. We can dig it out when we get a chance.’
‘Think they’re tracking us?’
Fiddler shook his head. He had no idea. If there were enough of them left. He twisted round. ‘Bottle,’ he hissed, ‘over here.’
The young mage crawled close.
‘Can you reach back?’ Fiddler asked. ‘Find out if they’re after us?’
‘Already did, Sergeant. Used every damned creature in our wake.’
‘And?’ Gesler wanted to know.
‘That cusser did most of them, Sergeant. But the noise brought others. At least a dozen Tiste Edur and maybe a few hundred Letherii. Are they tracking us now? Aye, but still a way behind – they’ve learned to be cautious, I guess.’
‘We’re losing the dark,’ Gesler said. ‘We need a place to hide, Fid – only that’s probably not going to work this time, is it? They’re not going to rest.’
‘Can we lose them?’ Fiddler asked Bottle.
‘I’m pretty tired, Sergeant—’
‘Never mind. You’ve done enough. What do you think, Gesler? Time to get messy?’
‘And use up our few cussers?’
‘Don’t see much choice, to be honest. Of course, I always hold one back. Same for Cuttle.’
Gesler nodded. ‘We had ours distributed – good thing, too, the way Sands went up. Still, he had munitions on him, yet they didn’t ignite—’
‘Oh, but they did,’ Fiddler said. ‘Just not in this realm. Am I right, Bottle? That sorcery, it’s like a broken gate, the kind that chews up whoever goes through it.’
‘Spirits below, Fid, you smelled it out about dead right. That magic, it started as one thing, then became another – and the mage was losing control, even before you minced him.’
Fiddler nodded. He’d seen as much. Or thought he had. ‘So, Bottle, what does that mean?’
The young mage shook his head. ‘Things are getting out of hand . . . somewhere. There was old stuff, primitive magic, at first. Not as ancient as spirit-bound stuff. Still, primitive. And then something chaotic grabbed it by the throat . . .’
A short distance away, Koryk rolled onto his back. He was bone tired. Let Bottle and the sergeants mutter away, he knew they were neck-deep in Hood’s dusty shit.
‘Hey, Koryk.’
‘What is it, Smiles?’
‘You damned near lost it back there, you know.’
‘I did, did I?’
‘When them four came at you all at once, oh, you danced quite a jig, half-blood.’ She laughed, low and brimming with what sounded like malice. ‘And if I hadn’t come along to stick a knife in that one’s eye – the one who’d slipped under your guard and was ready to give you a wide belly smile – well, you’d be cooling fast back there right now.’
‘And the other three?’ Koryk asked, grinning in the gloom. ‘Bet you never knew I was that quick, did you?’
‘Something tells me you didn’t either.’
He said nothing, because she was right. He’d been in something like a frenzy, yet his eye and his hand had been cold, precise. Through it all it had been as if he had simply watched, every move, every block, every shift in stance and twist, every slash of his heavy blade. Watched, yes, yet profoundly in love with that moment, with each moment. He’d felt some of this at the shield wall on the dock that night in Malaz City. But what had begun as vague euphoria was now transformed into pure revelation. I like killing. Gods below, I do like it, and the more I like it, the better at it I get. He never felt more alive, never more perfectly alive.
‘Can’t wait to see you dance again,’ Smiles murmured.
Koryk blinked in the gloom, then shifted to face her. Was she stirred? Had he somehow kissed her awake between those muscled legs of hers? Because he’d killed well? Did I dance that jig, Smiles? ‘You get scarier, woman, the more I know you.’
She snorted. ‘As it should be, half-blood.’
Tarr spoke from Koryk’s other side: ‘I think I’m going to be sick.’
A slightly more distant laugh from Cuttle, ‘Aye, Tarr, it’s what happens when your entire world view collapses. Of course,’ he added, ‘if you could manage to dance like poetry when killing people, who knows—’
‘Enough of that. Please.’
‘No worries,’ Cuttle persisted. ‘You ain’t the dancing kind. You’re as rooted as a tree, and just about as slow, Tarr.’
‘I may be slow, Cuttle, but the fools go down eventually, don’t they?’
‘Oh aye, that they do. Not suggesting otherwise. You’re a one-man shield-wall, you are.’
Corporal Stormy was spitting blood. A damned elbow had cracked his mouth, and now two teeth were loose and he’d bitten his tongue. The elbow might have been his own – someone had collided hard with him in the scrap and he’d had his weapon arm lifted high with the sword’s point angled downward. Nearly wrenched his shoulder out of its damned socket.
A savage back-swing with the pommel had crunched the attacker’s temple and he’d reeled away, one eye half popped out. Shortnose had then cut the Letherii down.
That had been some charge, him and his heavies, Shortnose and the trio of dread ladies each one of whom could both stare down a rutting bhederin bull and beat it into a pulp if it came to that. Making Stormy a very happy sergeant. Bad luck about Sands, though. But we ain’t gonna lose any more. Not one. I got my heavies and we can take down whatever they throw at us.
And not just us neither. That Tarr and Koryk . . . Fid’s got a good mean pair in those. And that Smiles, she’s got the blackrock heart of a Claw. Good squads here, for this kinda work. And now we’re gonna turn round and kick ‘em dead in the jaw, I can feel it. Fid and Gesler, cooking in Kellanved’s old cauldron.
He was delighted the Adjunct had finally cut them loose. In just this way, too. To Hood with damned marching in column. No, cut in fast and low and keep going, aye, and keep their heads spinnin’ every which way. So the fools on their trail were coming for them, were they? And why not? Just two puny squads. And them probably in the hundreds by now.
‘Kellanved’s curse,’ he muttered with a grin.
Flashwit’s round face loomed into view, ‘Say something, Corporal?’
‘Malazan marines, my dear, that’s us.’
‘Not heavies? I thought—’
‘You’re both, Flash. Relax. It’s this, you see – the Malazan marines haven’t done what they was trained to do in years, not since before Kellanved died. Trained, y’see. To do exactly what we’re doing right now, praise Fener. Them poor bastards Letherii and
Edur, gods below, them poor ignorant fools.’
‘Smart enough to ambush us,’ Uru Hela said from beyond Flashwit.
‘Didn’t work though, did it?’
‘Only because—’
‘Enough from you, Uru Hela. I was talking here, right? Your corporal. So just listen.’
‘I was just askin’—’
‘Another word and you’re on report, soldier.’
If she snorted she fast turned it into a cough.
From Gesler up with Fiddler: ‘Quiet down there! ‘
Point proved. Stormy nodded.
Malazan marines. Hah.
Fiddler nodded at the narrow, wending track snaking towards the nearest farmhouse and its meagre outbuildings. ‘We jog good and heavy, dragging our wounded, down there. Straight for the farmhouse along that cart path.’
‘Like we was still running scared, panicked,’ Gesler said. ‘Aye. Of course, we got to clear that farmhouse, which means killing civilians, and I have to say, Fid, I don’t like that.’
‘Maybe we can figure a way round that,’ Fiddler replied. ‘Bottle?’
‘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.