'He was giving her a chance, you see.'
'Of course. And do you lasses now believe he made a mistake?'
The women shrugged in unison. 'Don't matter, now,' one said. 'We're here and here's here and that's that.'
'So be it and so be it,' Kruppe said, rising with a sigh. 'Wondrous conversation. Kruppe thanks you and will now take his leave.'
'Right. Thanks for the cakes.'
'Kruppe's pleasure. Good night, dears.'
He ambled off, back towards the supply wagons.
As he disappeared into the gloom the two marines said nothing for a time, busy as they were licking the sap from their fingers.
Then one sighed.
The other followed suit.
'Well?'
'Ah, that was damned easy.'
'Think so?'
'Sure. He came expecting to find two brains and found barely one.'
'Still, it might've babbled too much.'
'That's the nature of half-brains, love. T'do otherwise would've made him suspicious.'
'What do you figure he and Tattersail talk about, anyway?'
'The old woman, is my guess.'
'I'd figured the same.'
'They got something in the works.'
'My suspicions exactly.'
'And Tattersail's in charge.'
'So she is.'
'Which is good enough for me.'
'Same here. You know, that black-cake wasn't quite the same without the twigs and leaves.'
'That's odd, I was just thinking the same thing…'
Within the wheeled fort, Kruppe approached another campfire. The two men huddled around it looked up as he arrived.
'What's with your hands?' Murillio asked.
'All that Kruppe touches sticks to him, my friend.'
'Well,' Coll rumbled, 'we've known that for years.'
'And what's with that damned mule?' Murillio enquired.
'The beast haunts me in truth, but never mind that. Kruppe has had an interesting discourse with two marines. And he is pleased to inform that the lass Silverfox is in capable hands indeed.'
'Sticky as yours?'
'They are now, dear Murillio, they are now.'
'What you say is fine enough,' Coll said, 'but is it any help to us? There's an old woman sleeping in yon wagon whose broken heart is the least of her pains and it's bad enough to break the strongest man, let alone a frail ancient.'
'Kruppe is pleased to assure you that matters of vast mercy are in progress. Momentary appearances are to be discounted.'
'Then why not tell her that?' Coll growled, nodding towards the Mhybe's wagon.
'Ah, but she is not yet ready to receive such truths, alas. This is a journey of the spirit. She must begin it within herself. Kruppe and Silverfox can only do so much, despite our apparent omnipotence.'
'Omnipotence, is it?' Coll shook his head. 'Yesterday, and I'd laugh at that claim. So you faced down Caladan Brood, did you? I'm interested in precisely how you managed that, you damned toad.'
Kruppe's brows rose. 'Dear boon companion Coll! Your lack of faith crushes frail Kruppe to his very toes which are themselves wriggling in anguish!'
'For Hood's sake don't show us,' Murillio said. 'You've been wearing those slippers for as long as I've known you, Kruppe. Poleil herself would balk at what might lurk likely between them.'
'And well she should! To answer Coll with succinct precision, Kruppe proclaims that anger—nay, rage—has no efficacy against one such as himself, for whom the world is as a pearl nestled within the slimy confines of his honed and muscled brain. Uh, perhaps the allusion falters with second thought… and worse with third. Kruppe tries again! For whom, it was said, the world is naught but a plumaged dream of colours and wonders unimagined, where even time itself has lost meaning, speaking of which, it's very late, yes? Sleep beckons, the stream of calm transubstantiation that metamorphoses oblivion into reparation and rejuvenation, and that alone is wonder enough for one and all to close this fitful night!' He fluttered his hands in a final wave and walked off. After a moment, the mule trotted in his wake.
The two men stared after them.
'Would that Brood's hammer connected with that oily pate,' Coll rumbled after a moment.
'It'd likely slip,' Murillio said.
'Aye, true enough.'
'Mussels and brains and cheesy toes, by the Abyss, I think I'm going to be sick.'
High above the camp, Crone crooked her weary, leaden wings and spiralled down towards the warlord's tent. Despite her exhaustion, shivers of excitement and curiosity ran through her. The fissure to the north of the encampment still bled Burn's fouled blood. The Great Raven had felt that detonation when still over the Vision Mountains far to the southeast, and had instantly known it for what it was.
Caladan Brood's anger.
Kiss of the hammer, and with it an explosive reshaping of the natural world. She could see despite the darkness, and the sharply defined spine of a basaltic mountain range loomed where no mountains belonged, here at the heart of the Catlin plain. And the sorcery emanating from the blood of the Sleeping Goddess—it, too, Crone recognized.
The touch of the Crippled God. Within Burn's veins, a transformation was taking place. The Fallen One was making her blood his own. And that is a taste I know well, for it was as mother's milk to me, so very long ago. To me, and to my kin.
Changes had come to the world below, and Crone revelled in changes. Her soul and that of her kin had been stirred once more to acute wakefulness. She never felt more alive.
Slipping beneath the warm thermals, she descended, bobbing on pockets of cool air—echoes of the traumatic disturbance that had churned through the atmosphere at the eruption of Brood's fury—then sliding down to land with a soft thump on the earth before the warlord's tent.
No lights showed within.
Faintly cackling, Crone hopped beneath the half-hitched entrance flap.
'Not a word,' Brood rumbled from the darkness, 'about my temper's snapped leash.'
The Great Raven cocked her head towards the cot. The warlord was seated on its edge, head in his hands. 'As you wish,' Crone murmured.
'Make your report.'
'I shall. First, from Anomander Rake. He has succeeded. Moon's Spawn has passed unseen and now… hides. My children are ranging far over the lands of the Pannion Seer. Warlord, not just their eyes have witnessed the truth of all that lies below. I myself have seen—'
'Save those details for later. Moon's Spawn is in place. Good. Did you fly to Capustan as I requested?'
'I did, grave one. And was witness to the first day and first night of battle.'
'Your assessment, Crone?'
'The city will not hold, Warlord. Through no fault of the defenders. What opposes them is too vast.'
Brood grunted. 'Perhaps we should have reconsidered Dujek's disposition of the Black Moranth—'
'Ah, they too are emplaced, precisely where Onearm wanted them to be.' Crone hesitated, turning first one eye then the other towards Caladan Brood. 'One unusual detail must be uttered now, Warlord. Will you hear it?'
'Very well.'
'The Seer wages a war to the south.'
Brood's head snapped up.
'Aye,' Crone nodded. 'My children have seen Domin armies, routed and retreating north. To Outlook itself. The Seer has unleashed formidable sorceries against the unknown enemy. Rivers of ice, walls of ice. Blistering cold, winds and storms—it has been a long time since we have witnessed said particular warren unveiled.'
'Omtose Phellack. The warren of the Jaghut.'
'Even so. Warlord, you seem less surprised by that than I had anticipated.'
'Of a war to the south, I am indeed surprised, Crone.' He rose, drawing a fur blanket about his shoulders, and began pacing. 'Of Omtose Phellack… no, I am not surprised.'
'Thus. The Seer is not as he seems.'
'Evidently not. Rake and I had suspicions…'
'Well,' Crone snapped, 'had I known th
em I would have more closely examined the situation at Outlook. Your recalcitrance wounds us all.'
'We'd no proof, Crone. Besides, we value your feathered hide too highly to risk your close approach to an unknown enemy's fastness. It is done. Tell me, does the Seer remain in Outlook?'
'My kin were unable to determine that. There are condors in the area, and they did not appreciate our presence.'
'Why should mundane birds cause you trouble?'
'Not entirely mundane. Aye, mortal birds are little more than feathered lizards, but these particular condors were more lizard than most.'
'The Seer's own eyes?'
'Possibly.'
'That could prove troublesome.'
Crone shrugged with her wings half crooked. 'Have you some slivers of meat? I hunger.'
'There's leftover goat from supper in the refuse pit behind the tent.'
'What? You would have me eat from a refuse pit?'
'You're a damned raven, Crone, why not?'
'Outrage! But if that's all there is…'
'It is.'
Clucking to contain her fury, Crone hopped towards the tent's back wall. 'Take me as an example in the future,' she murmured as she began edging her way under the fabric.
'What do you mean?' Brood asked behind her.
She ducked her head back inside, opened her beak in a silent laugh, then replied, 'Did I lose my temper?'
Growling, he stepped towards her.
The Great Raven squawked and fled.
Chapter Sixteen
The First Child of the Dead Seed dreams of a father's dying breath and hears in eternal refrain the scream trapped in his lungs
Dare you step behind his eyes even for a moment?
The First Child of the Dead Seed leads an army of sorrow down hunger's bone-picked road where a mother dances and sings
Dare you walk in his steps and dearly hold her hand?
The First Child of the Dead Seed is sheathed in the clutter of failed armour defending him from the moment of birth through years of dire schooling
Do not dare judge him hard lest you wear his skin.
Silba of the Shattered Heart
K'alass
THE TENESCOWRI ROSE LIKE AN INEXORABLE FLOOD AGAINST EVERY wall of the city. Rose, then swept over, a mass of humanity driven mad by hunger. Gate barricades buckled to the pressure, then gave way.
And Capustan drowned.
Four hundred paces from the barracks, Itkovian wheeled his blood-spattered mount. Figures reached up from below, clawed along the horse's armoured limbs. The beast, in cold fury, stamped down repeatedly, crushing bones, caving in chests and heads.
Three Manes of Grey Swords surrounded the Shield Anvil where they had been cut off from the barracks atop the gentle hill that was the cemetery of pillars. Most of those upright coffins had been toppled, shattering to spill their mouldy, cloth-wrapped contents, now jumbled among their cousins in death.
Itkovian could see the barracks gate, against which bodies were piled high—high enough to climb, which is what scores of Tenescowri were doing, clambering up towards the flanking revetments only to be met by the serrated blades of long-handled pikes. Pikes that killed, that wounded peasants who made no effort to defend themselves, that whipped back and forth trailing banners of blood and gore.
Itkovian had never witnessed such a horrifying sight. For all his battles, for all the terrors of combat and all that a soldier could not help but see, the vision before him swept all else from his mind.
As peasants fell back, tumbled their way down the slope of corpses, women leapt at the men among them, tore at their clothing, pinned them in place with straddled legs and, amidst blood, amidst shrieks and clawing fingers, they raped them.
Along the edges of the dead and dying, others fed on their kin.
Twin nightmares. The Shield Anvil was unable to decide which of the two shook him the most. His blood flowed glacial cold in his veins, and he knew, with dread verging on panic, that the assault had but just begun.
Another wave surged to close with the hapless band of Grey Swords in the cemetery. To all sides, the wide avenues and streets were packed solid with frenzied Tenescowri. All eyes were fixed on Itkovian and his soldiers. Hands reached out towards them, no matter what the distance, and hungrily clawed the air.
Locking shields, the Grey Swords reformed their tattered square surrounding the Shield Anvil. It would be swallowed, Itkovian well knew, as it had been only moments earlier, yet, if his silent soldiers could do as they had done once before, the square would rise again from the sea of bodies, cutting its way clear, flinging the enemy back, clambering atop a newly made hill of flesh and bone. And, if Itkovian could remain on his horse, he would sweep his sword down on all sides, killing all who came within his reach—and those whom he wounded would then die beneath his mount's iron-clad hooves.
He had never before delivered such slaughter, and it sickened him, filled his heart with an overwhelming hatred—for the Seer. To have done such a thing to his own people. And for Septarch Kulpath, for his bloodless cruelty in sending these hapless peasants into the maw of a desperate army.
Even more galling, the tactic looked likely to succeed. Yet at a cost beyond comprehension.
With a roar, the Tenescowri attacked.
The first to reach the bristling square were cut to pieces. Reeling, shrieking, they were pulled back by their comrades, into a devouring midst that was even more vicious than the enemy they'd faced when in the front line. Others pushed ahead, to suffer an identical fate. Yet still more came, climbing the backs of the ones before them, now, whilst others clambered over their own shoulders. For the briefest of moments, Itkovian stared at a three-tiered wall of savage humanity, then it collapsed inward, burying the Grey Swords.
The square buckled beneath the weight. Weapons were snagged. Shields were pulled down, helms ripped from heads, and everywhere the Shield Anvil looked, there was blood.
Figures scrambled over the heaving surface. Cleavers and hatchets and knives swung down in passing, but Itkovian was their final target, as he knew he would be. The Shield Anvil readied his broadsword and shield. A slight shift in the pressure of his legs began turning his mount into a ceaseless spin. The beast's head tossed, then ducked low to defend its throat. The armour covering its brow, neck and chest was already smeared and dented. Hooves stamped, eager to find living flesh.
The first peasant came within range. Itkovian swung his sword, watched a head spin away from its body, watched as the body shivered and twitched before crumpling. His horse lashed out its hind hooves, connecting with crunching thumps, then the animal righted itself and reared, iron-shod front hooves kicking and clawing, dragging a screaming woman down. Another Tenescowri leapt to grab one of the horse's front legs. Itkovian leaned forward and drove his sword against the man's lower back, cutting deep enough to sever his spine.
His horse spun, the leg flinging the corpse away. Head snapped forward, teeth cracking down on a peasant's hair-matted pate, punching through bone to pull back with a mouthful of hair and skull.
Hands clawed against Itkovian's thigh on his shield side. He twisted, swung down across his mount's withers. The blade chopped through muscle and clavicle. Blood and meat reeled away.
His horse kicked again. Bit and stamped and whirled, but hands and pressure and weight were on all sides now. Itkovian's sword flashed, whipped blindly yet never failed to find a target. Someone climbed up onto the horse's rump behind him. He arched his back, gauntleted hand swinging up over his own head, point driving downward behind him. He felt the edge slice its way through skin and flesh, skitter along ribs, then punch down into lower belly.
A flood of bile and blood slicked the back of his saddle. The figure slid away.
He snapped a command and the horse ducked its head. Itkovian swung his weapon in a sweeping, horizontal slash. Cutting, glancing contact stuttered its entire path. His mount pivoted and the Shield Anvil reversed the slash. Spun again, and Itkovian whi
pped the sword again.
Man and beast turned in a full circle in this fashion, a circle delivering dreadful wounds. Through the blistering heat beneath his visored helm, Itkovian gained a fragmented collection of the scene on all sides.
There would be no rising from his Grey Swords. Not this time. Indeed, he could not see a single familiar surcoat. The Tenescowri closed on the Shield Anvil from all sides, a man's height's worth of bodies under their feet. And somewhere beneath that heaving surface, were Itkovian's soldiers. Buried alive, buried dying, buried dead.
He and his horse were all that remained, the focus of hundreds upon hundreds of avid, desperate eyes.
Captured pikes were being passed forward to those peasants nearest him. In moments, those long-handled weapons would begin jabbing in on all sides. Against this, neither Itkovian's nor his horse's armour would be sufficient.
Twin Tusks, I am yours. To this, the last moment. 'Break!'
His warhorse was waiting for that command. The beast surged forward. Hooves, chest and shoulders battered through the press. Itkovian carved his blade down on both sides. Figures reeled, parted, disappeared beneath the churning hooves. Pikes slashed out at him, skittered along armour and shield. The ones to his right he batted aside with his sword.
Something punched into the small of his back, snapping the links of his chain, twisting and gouging through leather and felt padding. Agony lanced through Itkovian as the jagged point drove through skin and grated against his lowest rib close to the spine.
At the same moment his horse screamed as it stumbled onto the point of another pike, the iron head plunging deep into the right side of its chest. The animal lurched to the left, staggering, head dipping, jaws snapping at the shaft.
Someone leapt onto Itkovian's shield, swung over it a woodsman's hatchet. The wedged blade buried itself deep between his left shoulder and neck, where it jammed.
The Shield Anvil jabbed the point of his sword into the peasant's face. The blade carved into one cheek, exited out through the other. Itkovian twisted the blade, his own visored face inches from his victim's as his sword destroyed her youthful visage. Gurgling, she toppled back.