‘Yes sir, I will. You just watch me, I will.’ He waited a moment, as they walked side by side through the camp, and then asked, ‘Sir, if there’s something we can’t handle how do we handle it anyway?’
She either grunted or laughed from the same place that grunts came from. ‘Sawtooth wedges and keep going, Beak. Throw back whatever is thrown at us. Keep going, until . . .’
‘Until what?’
‘It’s all right, Beak, to die alongside your comrades. It’s all right. Do you understand me?’
‘Yes sir, I do. It is all right, because they’re my friends.’
‘That’s right, Beak.’
And that’s why no-one needs to worry, Captain.
Keneb watched as his marines fell into formation. Fast march, now, as if these poor souls weren’t beat enough. But they couldn’t dart and hide any more. The enemy had turned the game round and they had the advantage in numbers and maybe, finally, they were also a match for the ferocity of his Malazans.
It had been inevitable. No empire just rolls over, legs splaying. After enough pokes and jabs, it turns and snarls and then the fangs sink deep. And now it was his marines who were doing the bleeding. But not nearly as bad as I’d feared. Look at them, Keneb. Looking meaner than ever.
‘Fist,’ Thom Tissy said beside him, ‘they’re ready for you.’
‘I see that, Sergeant.’
‘No sir. I meant, they’re ready.’
Keneb met the squat man’s dark, beady eyes, and wasn’t sure what he saw in them. Whatever it was, it burned bright.
‘Sir,’ Thom Tissy said, ‘it’s what we’re meant for. All’ – he waved one grimy hand – ‘this. Trained to play more than one game, right? We stuck ‘em enough to get ‘em riled up and so here they are, all those damned Edur drawn right to us like we was a lodestone. Now we’re about to knock ‘em off balance all over again, and Hood take me, it’s got my blood up! Same for us all! So, please, sir, sound us the order to march.’
Keneb stared at the man a moment longer, then he nodded.
To the sound of laughter, Koryk barrelled into the three Edur warriors, his heavy longsword hammering aside two of the out-thrust spears jabbing for his midsection. With his left hand he caught the shaft of the third one and used it to pull himself forward. Edge of his blade into the face of the warrior on his right – not deep enough to cause serious damage, but enough to spray blinding blood. Against the one in the middle, Koryk dropped one shoulder and hit him hard in the centre of his chest – hard enough to lift the Edur from his feet and send him sprawling back. Still gripping the third spear, Koryk twisted the warrior round and drove the point of his sword into the Edur’s throat.
Koryk spun to slash at the first warrior, only to see her tumble back with a throwing knife skewering one eye socket. So he lunged after the middle Edur, sword chopping down in a frenzy until the Edur’s smashed-up arms – raised to fend off the attack – fell away, freeing the half-blood Seti to deliver a skull-crushing blow.
Then he whirled. ‘Will you in Hood’s name stop that laughing!’
But Smiles was on one knee, convulsing with hilarity even as she pulled out her throwing knife. ‘Gods! I can’t breathe! Wait – just wait—’
Snarling, Koryk turned to face the cloister again – these narrow-laned mews created perfect cul-de-sacs – lead them in at a run, flank out then turn and cut the bastards down. Even so, nobody had planned on making this ugly village the site of their last stand. Except maybe the Edur, who now entirely surrounded it and were working their way in, house by house, lane by lane.
Felt good kicking back, though, whenever they got too spread out in their eagerness to spill Malazan blood.
‘They stink at fighting in groups,’ Smiles said, coming up alongside him. She glanced up into his face and then burst out laughing again.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘You! Them! The look in their eyes – the surprise, I mean, oh, gods of the deep! I can’t stop!’
‘You’d better,’ Koryk warned, shaking the blood from his sword. ‘I’m hearing movement – that lane mouth there – come on.’
* * *
Three quarrels flitted out, two of them taking down onrushing Edur. Two lances arced in retaliation, both darting straight for Fiddler. And then Tarr’s huge shield shifted into their path, and the sergeant was pushed hard to one side – grunts from the corporal as both lances slammed solidly against the bronze-scaled face, one of them punching through a finger’s length to pierce Tarr’s upper arm. The corporal swore.
Fiddler ducked down behind the smithy’s quenching barrel as a third lance cracked into it. Water gushed out onto the ground.
The crossfire ambush then caught the half-dozen charging Edur unawares – quarrels sleeting out from the narrow alley mouths on both sides. Moments later all were down, dead or dying.
‘Pull back!’ Fiddler shouted, turning to exchange his unloaded crossbow for the loaded one Bottle now set into his hands.
Tarr covering the three of them, they retreated back through the smithy, across the dusty compound with its piled tailings and slag, through the kicked-down fence, and back towards the tavern.
Where, from the sounds, Stormy and his heavies were in a fight.
Motion on their flanks – the rest of the ambush converging.
Cuttle, Corabb, Maybe, Gesler, Balgrid and Brethless. Reloading on the run.
‘Gesler! Stormy’s—’
‘I can hear it, Fid! Corabb – hand that damned crossbow over to Brethless – you’re useless with it. Join up with Tarr there and you two in first!’
‘I got my target!’ Corabb protested even as he gave one of Hellian’s corporals the heavy weapon.
‘By bouncing your quarrel off the cobbles and don’t tell me that was a planned shot!’
Corabb was already readying the Edur spear he had picked up.
Fiddler waved Tarr forward as soon as Corabb arrived. ‘Go, you two! Fast in and hard!’
Only by leaving his feet and throwing his entire weight on the shaft was the Edur able to drive the spear entirely through Stormy’s left shoulder. An act of extraordinary courage that was rewarded with a thumb in his left eye – that dug yet deeper, then deeper still. Shrieking, the warrior tried to jerk his head away, but the huge red-bearded corporal now clutched a handful of hair and was holding him tight.
With a still louder shriek and even greater courage, the Edur tore his head back, leaving Stormy with a handful of scalp and a thumb smeared in gel and blood.
‘Not so fast,’ the corporal said in a strangely matter-of-fact tone, as he lunged forward to grapple the Edur. Both went down onto the smeared floorboards of the tavern – and the impact pushed the spear in Stormy’s shoulder almost entirely through. Drawing his gutting knife, Stormy drove the blade into the warrior’s side, just beneath the ribcage, under the heart, then cut outward.
Blood gushed in a flood.
Staggering, slipping, Stormy managed to regain his feet – the spear falling from his back – and tottered until he came up against the table with its pile of severed Edur heads. He reached for one and threw it across the room, into the crowd of Edur pushing in through the doorway where Flashwit and Bowl had been holding position until a spear skewered Bowl through the man’s neck and someone knocked off Flashwit’s helm and laid open her head. She was lying on her back, not moving as the moccasin-clad feet of the Edur stamped all over her in the inward rush.
The head struck the lead warrior in the face, and he howled in shock and pain, reeling to one side.
Mayfly stumbled up to take position beside Stormy. Stabbed four times already, it was a wonder the heavy was still standing.
‘Don’t you die, woman,’ Stormy rumbled.
She set his sword into his hands. ‘Found this, Sergeant, and thought you might want it.’
There was no time to answer as the first three Edur reached them.
Emerging from the kitchen entrance – a kitchen now emptied of servin
g staff – Corabb saw that charge, and he leapt forward to take it from the flank.
And tripped headlong over the body of the Edur that Stormy had just stabbed. His hands went forward, still holding the spear. The point drove through the right thigh of the nearest warrior, missing the bone, and plunged out the other side to stab into the next Edur’s left knee, the triangular head sliding under the patella and neatly separating the joint on its way through. Angling downward, the point sticking fast between two floorboards, until the far one sprang loose, in time to foul the steps of the third Edur, and that warrior seemed to simply throw himself onto Stormy’s out-thrust sword.
As Corabb landed amidst falling enemy, Tarr arrived, his shortsword hacking down here and there as he worked forward to plant himself in the path of the rest of the Edur.
Flashwit then stood up in their midst and she had a kethra knife in each hand.
Fiddler led the charge through the kitchen doorway, crossbow ready, to find Tarr cutting down the last standing Edur. The room was piled with bodies, only a few still moving, and crawling out from beneath two Edur corpses was Corabb Bhilan Thenu’alas, coughing in all the blood that had spilled over him.
Brethless moved past to the window. ‘Sergeant! Another mob of ‘em!’
‘Crossbows up front!’ Fiddler snapped.
Hellian squinted across the street at the fancy house. The Factor’s house, she recalled. Had that look. Expensive, tasteless. She pointed with a dripping sword. ‘Over in there, that’s where we’ll make our stand.’
Urb grunted, then spat out a red stream – taken to chewing betel nut, maybe. The things some people would do to their bodies beggared belief. She drank down another mouthful of the local whatever that tasted like bamboo shoots some dog had pissed on, but what a kick. Then waved him forward.
And then the others, except for Lutes and Tavos Pond who’d both been cut to pieces trying to hold a flank at that alley mouth back there. ‘I’ll take up rearguard,’ she said by way of explanation as the six remaining marines staggered past. ‘In a smart line, now!’
Another mouthful. Just got worse, this stuff. Who would come up with a drink like that?
She set out. Was halfway there or maybe just halfway along when a hundred or so Tiste Edur appeared thirty or so paces down the main street. So she threw the clay bottle away and planted her feet to meet the charge. Was what rearguard did, right? Hold ‘em back.
The first row, about ten of them, halted and raised their lances.
‘Not fair!’ Hellian shouted, pulling her shield up and getting ready to duck behind it – oh, this wasn’t a shield at all. It was the lid of an ale cask, the kind with a handle. She stared at it. ‘Hey, I wasn’t issued this.’
Three straight days and nights on the run from the river bank and now the sounds of fighting somewhere ahead. Since he’d lost his corporal two nights past – the fool fell down an abandoned well, one moment there at his side, the next gone. Went through a net of roots at least most of the way, until he jammed his head and pop went the neck and wasn’t it funny how Hood never forgot since it’d been join the marines or dance the gibbet for the corporal and now the fool had done both. Since Badan Gruk lost his corporal, then, he now dragged Ruffle with him – not quite a promotion, Ruffle was not the promoting type, but she kept a cool eye when she wasn’t busy eating everything in sight.
And now it was with a wheeze that Ruffle settled down beside Badan Gruk, 5th Squad sergeant, 3rd Company, 8th Legion, and lifted her pale rounded face up to his with that cold grey regard. ‘We’re kind of tired, Sergeant.’
Badan Gruk was Dal Honese, but not from the north savanna tribes. He had been born in the south jungle, half a day from the coast. His skin was as black as a Tiste Andii’s, and the epicanthic folds of his eyes were so pronounced that little more than slits of white were visible; and he was not a man to smile much. He felt most comfortable on moonless nights, although Skim always complained about how their sergeant just damn disappeared, usually when he was needed the most.
But now here they were, in bright daylight, and oh how Badan Gruk wished for the gloom of the tropical rainforest of his homeland. ‘Stay here, Ruffle,’ he now said, then turned and scrabbled back to where Sergeant Primly crouched with the rest of the marines. Primly’s squad, the 10th, was also but one short, while the 4th was down two, including Sergeant Sinter and that sent yet another pang through Badan Gruk. She’d been from his own tribe, after all. Damn, she’d been the reason he’d joined up in the first place. Following Sinter had always been way too easy.
Drawing close, Badan Gruk waved Primly over and the Quon noble’s corporal, Hunt, tagged along. The three settled a short distance from the others. ‘So,’ Badan breathed, ‘do we go round this?’
Primly’s long ascetic face soured, which is what it always did whenever anyone spoke to him. Badan wasn’t too sure of the man’s history, beyond the obvious, which was that Primly had done something bad, once – bad enough to get him disowned and maybe even on the run. At least he’d left the highborn airs behind. To Badan’s whispered question, Corporal Hunt snorted, then looked away.
‘You’re here,’ Badan said to the Kartoolii, ‘so talk.’
Hunt shrugged. ‘We been running since the river, Sergeant. Ducking and dodging till all three of our mages are used up and worse than walking dead.’ He nodded northwards. ‘Those are marines up there, and they’re in a fight. We’re only down one heavy and one sapper—’
‘And a sergeant and a corporal,’ Badan added.
‘Seventeen of us, Sergeant. Now, I seen what your heavies can do, and both me and Sergeant Primly can tell you that Lookback, Drawfirst and Shoaly are easy matches to Reliko and Vastly Blank. And Honey’s still got three cussers and half again all the sharpers since Kisswhere left ‘em behind when she and Sinter went and—’
‘All right,’ Badan cut in, not wanting to hear again what had happened to Sinter and Kisswhere, since it had been Kisswhere who had been the reason for Sinter’s joining. Nothing good following a woman who was following another woman with worship in her eyes – even a sister – but that had been that and they were both gone now, weren’t they? ‘Primly?’
The Quon rubbed at what passed for a beard on his face – gods, showed just how young the poor bastard was – and cast a searching gaze back on the waiting soldiers. Then he smiled suddenly. ‘Look at Skulldeath, Badan. Here we got a soldier that Toothy himself named first day on Malaz Island, and I still don’t know – was it a joke? Skulldeath’s yet to draw a drop of blood, barring mosquitoes and that blood was his own. Besides, Badan Gruk, you’ve got what looks like some kind of Dal Honese grand council here and you moonless nightshades seem to put holy terror in the Edur, like you were ghosts or something and sometimes I start wondering myself, the way you all manage to vanish in the dark. In any case, there’s you, Nep Furrow, Reliko and Neller and Strap Mull and Mulvan Dreader’s halfway there besides, and, well, we’ve come to fight, haven’t we? So let’s fight.’
Maybe you came to fight, Primly. I’m just trying to stay alive. Badan Gruk studied the two men beside him for a moment longer, then he rose to his full height, coming to very nearly Primly’s shoulder, and drew out the two-handed sickle sword from its deer-hide harness on his broad back. Adjusting his grip on the ivory handle, he eyed the two thin otataral blades inset on both sides of the curved and carved tusk. Vethbela, the weapon was called in his own language, Bonekisser, the blades not deep enough to do more than touch the long bones of a normal warrior’s legs, since those femurs were prized trophies, to be polished and carved with scenes of the owner’s glorious death – and any warrior seeking the heart of a woman needed to place more than a few at the threshold of her family’s hut, as proof of his prowess and courage.
Never did manage to use this thing properly, did I? Not a single thigh bone to show Sinter. He nodded. ‘Time to collect some trophies, then.’
Fifteen paces away, Honey nudged Skim. ‘Hey, beloved, looks like we get to
toss sharpers today.’
‘Stop calling me that,’ the other sapper replied in a bored tone, but she watched as Badan Gruk headed back up to where Ruffle hid, and she watched as Corporal Hunt went back down-trail to collect the 4th Squad’s corporal, Pravalak Rim, who had been guarding their butts with Shoaly and Drawfirst. And pretty soon something less than whispered was dancing through every soldier and she saw weapons being drawn, armour straps tightened, helms adjusted, and finally she grunted. ‘All right, Honey – Hood take me, how I hate saying that – looks like you’ve sniffed it just right—’
‘Just let me prove it—’
‘You’re never prying my legs apart, Honey. Why don’t you get that?’
‘What a miserable attitude,’ the 10th’s sapper complained as he loaded his crossbow. ‘Now Kisswhere, she was—’
‘So tired of your advances, Honey, that she went and blew herself up – and took her sister with her, too. And now here I am wishing I’d been with them in that scull.’ With that she rose and scrabbled over to Nep Furrow.
The old Dal Honese mage lifted one yellowy eye to squint at her, then both eyes opened wide when he saw the sharper she held in each hand. ‘Eggit’way fra meen, tit-woman!’
‘Relax,’ she said, ‘we’re heading into a fight. You got anything left in that bent reed of yours?’
‘Wha’?’
‘Magicks, Nep, magicks – comes from the bleckers in men. Every woman knows that,’ and she winked.
‘You teasin’ tit-woman you! Eggit’way fra meen!’
‘I’m not eggitin’ away from you, Nep, until you bless these two sharpers here.’
‘Bliss ‘em clay balls? Ya mad, tit-woman? Less time I done that—’
‘They blew up, aye. Sinter and Kisswhere. Into pieces but nice and quick, right? Listen, it’s my only way to escape Honey’s advances. No, seriously, I want one of your blissin’ curses or cursed blissin’s. Please, Nep—’