‘Eggit’way fra meen!’
Reliko, who was half a hand shorter even than his sergeant and therefore, by Toothy’s own assertion, the smallest heavy infantry soldier in the history of the Malazan Empire, grunted upright and drew out his shortsword as he swung his shield into position. He glanced over at Vastly Blank. ‘Time again.’
The oversized Seti warrior, still sitting on the bed of wet moss, looked up. ‘Huh?’
‘Fighting again.’
‘Where?’
‘Us, Vastly. Remember Y’Ghatan?’
‘No.’
‘Well, won’t be like Y’Ghatan. More like yesterday only harder. Remember yesterday?’
Vastly Blank stared a moment longer, then he laughed his slow ha ha ha laugh and said, ‘Yesterday! I remember yesterday!’
‘Then pick up your sword and wipe the mud off it, Vastly. And take your shield – no, not mine, yours, the one on your back. Yes, bring it round. That’s it – no, sword in the other hand. There, perfect. You ready?’
‘Who do I kill?’
‘I’ll show you soon enough.’
‘Good.’
‘Seti should never breed with bhederin, I think.’
‘What?’
‘A joke, Vastly.’
‘Oh. Ha ha ha! Ha.’
‘Let’s go join up with Lookback – we’ll be on point.’
‘Lookback’s on point?’
‘He’s always on point for this kind of thing, Vastly.’
‘Oh. Good.’
‘Drawfirst and Shoaly at our backs, right? Like yesterday.’
‘Right. Reliko, what happened yesterday?’
Strap Mull stepped close to Neller and they both eyed their corporal, Pravalak Rim, who was just sending Drawfirst and Shoaly up to the other heavies.
The two soldiers spoke in their native Dal Honese. ‘Broke-hearted,’ Strap said.
‘Broker than broke,’ Neller agreed.
‘Kisswhere, she was lovely.’
‘Lovelier than lovely.’
‘Like Badan says, though.’
‘Like he says, yes.’
‘And that’s that, is what he says.’
‘I know that, Strap, you don’t need to tell me anything. You think Letheras will be like Y’Ghatan? We didn’t do nothing in Y’Ghatan. And,’ Neller suddenly added, as if struck by something, ‘we haven’t done nothing here either, have we? Nothing not yet, anyway. If it’s going to be like Y’Ghatan, though—’
‘We’re not even there yet,’ Strap Mull said. ‘Which sword you going to use?’
‘This one.’
‘The one with the broken handle?’
Neller looked down, frowned, then threw the weapon into the bushes and drew out another one. ‘This one. It’s Letherii, was on the cabin wall—’
‘I know. I gave it to you.’
‘You gave it to me because it howls like a wild woman every time I hit something with it.’
‘That’s right, Neller, and that’s why I asked what sword you were going to use.’
‘Now you know.’
‘Now I know so I’m stuffing my ears with moss.’
‘Thought they already were.’
‘I’m adding more. See?’
Corporal Pravalak Rim was a haunted man. Born in a northern province of Gris to poor farmers, he had seen nothing of the world for most of his life, until the day a marine recruiter had come through the nearby village on the very day Pravalak was there with his older brothers, all of whom sneered at the marine on their way to the tavern. But Pravalak himself, well, he had stared in disbelief. His first sight of someone from Dal Hon. She had been big and round and though she was decades older than him and her hair had gone grey he could see how she had been beautiful and indeed, to his eyes, she still was.
Such dark skin. Such dark eyes, and oh, she spied him out and gave him that gleaming smile, before leading him by the hand into a back room of the local gaol and delivering her recruiting pitch sitting on him and rocking with exalted glee until he exploded right into the Malazan military.
His brothers had expressed their disbelief and were in a panic about how to explain to their ma and da how their youngest son had gone and got himself signed up and lost his virginity to a fifty-year-old demoness in the process – and was, in fact, not coming home at all. But that was their problem, and Pravalak had trundled off in the recruiter’s wagon, one hand firmly snuggled between her ample legs, without a backward look.
That first great love affair had lasted the distance to the next town, where he’d found himself transferred onto a train of about fifty other Grisian farm boys and girls and marching an imperial road down to Unta, and from there out to Malaz Island for training as a marine. But he had not been as heartbroken as he would have thought, for the Malazan forces were crowded for a time with Dal Honese recruits – some mysterious population explosion or political upheaval had triggered an exodus from the savanna and jungles of Dal Hon. And he had soon realized that his worship of midnight skin and midnight eyes did not doom him to abject longing and eternal solitude.
Until he first met Kisswhere, who had but laughed at his attempts, as smooth and honed as they had become by then. And it was this rejection that stole his heart for all time.
Yet what haunted him now was, perhaps surprisingly, not all of that unrequited adoration. It was what he had seen, or maybe but imagined, in that dark night on the river, after the blinding flash of the munitions and the roar that shook the water, that one black-skinned hand, reaching up out of the choppy waves, the spinning swirl of the current awakening once more in the wake of the tumult, parting round the elegant wrist – and then that hand slipped away, or was simply lost to his straining sight, his desperate, anguished search in the grainy darkness – the hand, the skin, the dark, dark skin that so defeated him that night . . .
Oh, he wanted to die, now. To end his misery. She was gone. Her sister was gone, too – a sister who had drawn him to one side just two nights earlier and had whispered in his ear, ‘Don’t give up on her, Prav. I know my sister, you see, and there’s a look growing in her eyes when she glances your way . . . so, don’t give up . . .’
Both gone, and that, as Badan repeated again and again when he thought no-one else was close enough to hear him, is that. And that is that.
Sergeant Primly came up then and slapped Pravalak on one shoulder. ‘Ready, Corporal? Good. Lead your squad, just like Sinter would’ve done. Lead ‘em, Prav, and let’s go gut some Edur.’
Skulldeath, whose name had once been Tribole Futan, last surviving male of the Futani royal line of the Gilani tribe of southeast Seven Cities, slowly straightened as he watched the heavies work their way up the slope towards the sounds of fighting.
He readied his two Gilani tulwars, which had once belonged to a Falah’dan champion – his great-uncle – who had fallen to an assassin’s poison three years before the Malazan invasion, when Tribole had been a child not yet cast out onto the mortal sands. Weapons he had inherited as last of the line in a family shattered by a feud, such as were common throughout all of Seven Cities before the conquest. The tulwars seemed large in his hands, almost oversized for his wrists – but he was Gilani and his tribe were a people characterized by bodies virtually devoid of fat. Muscles like ropes, long, gracile and far stronger than they appeared.
The softness of his feminine eyes did not change as he studied the tulwars, remembering when he had been a very young child and these weapons, if balanced on their curved tips, could be made to stand if he set the silver pommels into his armpits, and, gripping the handles just above the hilts, he would pitch himself round the camp like an imp with but one leg. Not long after that, he was using weighted sticks carved to match these tulwars of his great-uncle’s. Working the patterns in the Gilani style, both afoot and atop a desert horse where he learned to perch on the balls of his feet and practise the lishgar efhanah, the leaping attack, the Edged Net. Many a night with bruised shoulders, then, until he learned
how to roll clean after the mid-air attack was done, the three stuffed-grass dummies each sliced into pieces, the wind plucking at those golden grasses as they drifted in the dusty air. And he, rolling, upright once more, weapons at the ready.
He was not tall. He was not outspoken and his smile – rare as it was – was as shy as a young maiden’s. Men wanted him in their beds. So did women. But he was of the royal line, and his seed was the last seed, and one day he would give it to a queen, perhaps even an empress, as befitted his true station. In the meantime, he would let men use him as they would, and even find pleasure in that, harmless as it was. But he refused to spill his seed.
He stood now, and when the signal was given, he moved forward, light on his feet.
Skulldeath was twenty-three years old. Such was his discipline that he had not spilled seed once, not even in his sleep.
As the squad mage Mulvan Dreader would say later, Skulldeath was truly a man about to explode.
And a certain Master Sergeant on Malaz Island had got it right. Again.
Urb ran back from the Factor’s house as fast as he could, angling his shield to cover his right shoulder. The damned woman! Standing there with a damned cask lid with a flight of lances about to wing her way. Oh, her soldiers worshipped her all right, and so blind was that worship that not one of them could see all that Urb did just to keep the fool woman alive. He was exhausted and a nervous wreck besides and now – this time – it looked as if he would be too late.
Five paces from Hellian and out went a half-dozen lances, two winging to intercept Urb. Skidding as he pivoted round behind his shield, he lost sight of her.
One lance darted past a hand’s width from his face. The other struck true against the shield, the iron head punching through to impale his upper arm, pinning it to his side. The impact spun Urb round and he staggered as the lance pulled at him, and, grunting, he slid down on his knees, the hard cobbles driving shocks up his legs. He slammed his sword-hand down – still clutching the weapon – to keep from pitching forward, and heard a knuckle crack.
At that instant, the world exploded white.
Four lances speeding Hellian’s way came close to sobering her up. Crouching, she lifted her flimsy, undersized shield, only to have it hammered from her hand in a splintering concussion that sent it spinning, the snapped foreshafts of two lances buried deep in the soaked, heavy, wonderful-smelling wood. Then her helm was torn from her head with a deafening clang, even as she was struck a glancing blow on her right shoulder that ripped away the leather shingles of her armour. That impact turned her right round so that she faced up the street, and, upon seeing the clay bottle she had thrown away moments earlier, she dived towards it.
Better to die with one last mouthful—
The air above her whistled as she sailed through the air and she saw maybe a dozen lances flit overhead.
She slammed chest-first on the dusty cobbles, all breath punched from her lungs and stared, bug-eyed, as the bottle leapt of its own accord into the air. Then she was lifted by her feet and flipped straight over to thump hard on her back, and above her the blue sky was suddenly grey with dust and gravel, stone chips, red bits, all raining down.
She could not hear a thing, and that first desperate breath was so thick with dust that she convulsed in a fit of coughing. Twisting onto her side, she saw Urb maybe six paces away. The idiot had got himself skewered and looked even more stunned than usual. His face was white with dust except the blood on his lips from a tooth gash, and he was staring dumbly down the street to where all the Edur were – might be they were charging them now so she’d better find her sword—
She’d just sat up when a hand slapped her shoulder and she glared up at an unfamiliar face – a Kanese woman frowning intently at her. With a voice that seemed far away she said, ‘Still with us, Sergeant? You shouldn’t ever be that close to a cusser, you know.’
And then she was gone.
Hellian blinked. She squinted down the street and saw an enormous crater where the Edur had been. And body parts, and drifting dust and smoke.
And four more marines, two of them Dal Honese, loosing quarrels into a side street then scattering as one of them threw a sharper in the same direction.
Hellian crawled over to Urb.
He’d managed to pull the lance out of his arm which had probably hurt, and there was plenty of blood now, pooling beneath him. His eyes had the look of a butchered cow though maybe not as dead as that but getting there.
Another marine arrived, another stranger. Black-haired, pale skin. He knelt down beside Urb.
‘You,’ Hellian said.
The man glanced over. ‘None of your wounds look to kill you, Sergeant. But your friend here is going fast, so let me do my work.’
‘What squad, damn you?’
‘Tenth. Third Company.’
A healer. Well, good. Fix Urb right up so she could kill him. ‘You’re Nathii, aren’t you?’
‘Sharp woman,’ he muttered as he began weaving magic over the huge torn hole in Urb’s upper arm. ‘Probably even sharper when you’re sober.’
‘Never count on that, Cutter.’
‘I’m not really a cutter, Sergeant. I’m a combat mage, but we can’t really be picky about those things any more, can we? I’m Mulvan Dreader.’
‘Hellian. Eighth Squad, the Fourth.’
He shot her a sudden look. ‘Really. You one of the ones crawled out under Y’Ghatan?’
‘Yeah. Urb’s gonna live?’
The Nathii nodded. ‘Be on a stretcher for a while, though. All the lost blood.’ He straightened and looked round. ‘Where are the rest of your soldiers?’
Hellian looked over at the Factor’s house. The cusser explosion seemed to have knocked it flat. She grunted. ‘Damned if I know, Mulvan. You don’t happen to have a flask of something on you, do you?’
But the mage was frowning at the wreckage of the collapsed house. ‘I hear calls for help,’ he said.
Hellian sighed. ‘Guess you found ‘em after all, Mulvan Dreader. Meaning we’re gonna have to dig ‘em out.’ Then she brightened. ‘But that’ll work us up a thirst now, won’t it?’
The multiple crack of sharpers outside the tavern and the biting snap of shrapnel striking the building’s front sent the Malazans inside flinching back. Screams erupted outside, wailing up into the street’s dust-filled air. Fiddler watched Gesler grab Stormy to keep him from charging out there – the huge Falari was reeling on his feet – then he turned to Mayfly, Corabb and Tarr. ‘Let’s meet our allies, then, but stay sharp. Rest of you, stay here, bind wounds – Bottle, where’s Koryk and Smiles?’
But the mage shook his head. ‘They went east side of the village, Sergeant.’
‘All right, you three with me, then. Bottle – can you do something for Stormy?’
‘Aye.’
Fiddler readied his crossbow, then led the way to the tavern entrance. At the threshold he crouched down, peering through the dust.
Allies all right. Blessed marines, a half-dozen, walking through the sprawled Edur bodies and silencing the screamers with quick thrusts of their swords. Fiddler saw a sergeant, South Dal Honese, short and wide and black as onyx. The woman at his side was half a head taller, pale-skinned and grey-eyed, and nearly round but in a way that had yet to sag. Behind these two stood another Dal Honese, this one wrinkled with pierced everything – ears, nose, wattle, cheeks – the gold ornaments a startling contrast to his dark scowling face. A damned shaman.
Fiddler approached, his eyes on the sergeant. There was fighting still going on, but nowhere close. ‘How many of you?’
‘Seventeen to start,’ the man replied. He paused to look down at the barbaric tusk-sword in his hands. ‘Just took off an Edur’s head with this,’ he said, then looked up. ‘My first kill.’
Fiddler gaped. ‘How in Hood’s name did you get this far from the damned coast, then? What are you all, Soletaken bats?’
The Dal Honese grimaced. ‘We stole a fisher boat
and sailed up.’
The woman at his side spoke. ‘We were the southmost squads, moving east till we hit the river, then it was either wading waist-deep in swamp muck or taking to the water. Worked fine until a few nights ago, when we ran straight into a Letherii galley. We lost a few that night,’ she added.
Fiddler stared at her a moment longer. All round and soft-looking, except for those eyes. Hood take me, this one could pluck the skin off a man one tiny strip at a time with one hand while doing herself with the other. He looked away, back to the sergeant. ‘What company?’
‘Third. I’m Badan Gruk, and you’re Fiddler, aren’t you?’
‘Yeggetan,’ muttered the shaman with a warding gesture.
Badan Gruk turned to the pale woman. ‘Ruffle, take Vastly and Reliko and work west until you meet up with Primly. Then back here.’ He faced Fiddler again. ‘We caught ‘em good, I think.’
‘Thought I heard a cusser a while back.’
A nod. ‘Primly had the sappers. Anyway, the Edur pulled back, so I suppose we scared ‘em.’
‘Moranth munitions will do that.’
Badan Gruk glanced away again. He seemed strangely skittish. ‘We never expected to run into any squads this far east,’ he said. ‘Not unless they took to the water like we did.’ He met Fiddler’s eyes. ‘You’re barely a day from Letheras, you know.’
Seven Edur had turned the game on Koryk and Smiles, pushing them into a less than promising lane between decrepit, leaning tenements, that then led to a most quaint killing ground blocked by stacks of timber on all sides but the one with the alley mouth.
Pushing Smiles behind him as he backed away from the Edur – who crowded the alley, slowly edging forward – Koryk readied his sword. Hand-and-a-half fighting now that he’d lost his shield. If the bastards threw lances, he’d be in trouble.
The thought made him snort. Him against seven Tiste Edur and all he had behind him was a young woman who’d used up all her throwing knives and was left with a topheavy gutter that belonged in the hands of a butcher. Trouble? Only if they threw lances.
But these Edur weren’t interested in skewering them from a distance. They wanted to close, and Koryk was not surprised by that. Like Seti, these grey gaunts. Face to face, aye. That is where true glory is found. As they reached the mouth of the alley, Koryk lifted the tip of his sword and waved them forward.