“The Wickans feed themselves,” List said. “They’ll use the hides, too. And the bones, and the tails and mane, and the teeth, and the—”
“Got it,” Duiker cut in.
The enemy infantry continued their slow march. The Hissari and Tithansi horsewarriors had recovered and now made a slower, more cautious approach.
“There’s an old wall on the island,” List said. “We could climb it and get a better view of all sides. If you don’t mind walking on the backs of cattle to get there, that is. It’s not as hard as it sounds—you just have to keep moving.”
Duiker raised an eyebrow.
“Honest, sir.”
“All right, Corporal. Lead the way.”
They took the roped road westward toward the ford. The old channel of the oxbow was bridged by wooden slats, bolstered with new supports placed by the Seventh’s sappers. This avenue was maintained to allow for the movement back and forth of mounted messengers, but, as everywhere else, chaos reigned. Duiker held close in List’s wake as the corporal weaved and danced his way down to the bridge. Beyond it rose the hump of the island and thousands of cattle.
“Where did this herd come from?” the historian asked as they reached the slatted crossing.
“Purchased, for the most part,” List replied. “Coltaine and his clans laid claim to land outside Hissar, then started buying up cattle, horses, oxen, mules, goats—just about anything on four legs.”
“When did all this happen?”
“About the same day they arrived,” the corporal said. “When the uprising came, most of the Foolish Dog Clan was with the herds—the Tithansi tribes thought to snatch the livestock and got their noses bloodied instead.”
As they neared the trailing end of the herd the noise rose to a roar with shouting drovers, the bark of cattle-dogs—solidly muscled, half-wild beasts born and bred on the Wickan Plains—the lowing of the cattle and the ceaseless rumbling thunder of their hooves. The dust cloud engulfing the river was impenetrable.
Duiker’s eyes narrowed on the seething mass ahead. “Not sure about your idea, Corporal—these beasts look jumpy. We’re likely to get crushed in seconds flat.”
A shout from behind caught their attention. A young Wickan girl was riding toward them.
“Nether,” List said.
Something in his tone pulled Duiker around. The lad was pale under his helmet.
The girl, no more than nine or ten, halted her horse before them. She was dark, her eyes like black liquid, her hair cut bristly short. The historian recalled seeing her among Sormo’s charges the night before. “You seek the wall as vantage,” she said. “I will clear you a path.”
List nodded.
“There is aspected magic on the other side,” she said, eyes on Duiker. “A lone god’s warren, no D’ivers, no Soletaken. A tribe’s god.”
“Semk,” the historian said. “The Red Blades are carrying word.” He fell silent as he realized the import of her words, the significance of her presence at the meeting last night. One of the warlocks reborn. Sormo leads a clan of children empowered by lifetimes.
“I go to face them. The spirit of the land is older than any god.” She guided her horse around the two men, then loosed a piercing cry. A clear avenue began to take shape, animals pushing away to either side and moaning in fear.
Nether rode down that aisle. After a moment List and Duiker followed, jogging to keep up. As soon as they trod on the path they could feel the earth shivering beneath their boots—not the deep reverberations of countless hooves, but something more intense, muscular. As if we stride the spine of an enormous serpent…the land awakened, the land eager to show its power.
Fifty paces ahead the ridge of a weathered, vine-cloaked wall appeared. Squat and thick, it was evidently the remnant of an ancient fortification, rising over a man’s height and clear of the cattle. The path that Nether had created brushed one edge of it, then continued on down to the river.
The girl rode on without glancing back. Moments later List and Duiker reached the stone edifice and clambered up on its ragged but wide top.
“Look south,” List said, pointing.
Dust rose in a gold haze from the line of hills beyond the heaving mass of refugees.
“Coltaine and his Crows are in a fight,” List said.
Duiker nodded. “There’s a village on the other side of those hills, right?”
“Yes, sir. L’enbarl, it’s called. The scrap looks to be on the road linking it to the ford. We haven’t seen the Sialk cavalry, so it’s likely Reloe sent them around to try and take our flank. Like Coltaine always says, the man’s predictable.”
Duiker faced north. The other side of the island consisted of marsh grasses filling the old oxbow channel. The far side was a narrow stand of dead leadwood trees, then a broad slope leading to a steep-sided hill. The regularity of that hill suggested that it was a tel. Commanding its flat plateau was an army, weapons and armor glinting in the morning light. Heavy infantry. Dark banners rose amidst large tents behind two front-line legions of Tithansi archers. The archers had begun moving down the slope.
“That’s Kamist Reloe and his hand-picked elites,” List said. “He’s yet to use them.”
To the east the feints and probes between the Weasel Clan’s horsewarriors and their Tithansi and Hissari counterparts continued, while the Sialk and Hissar infantry steadily closed the distance to the Wickan defenses. Behind these legions, the peasant army swirled in restless motion.
“If that horde decides to charge,” Duiker said, “our lines won’t hold.”
“They’ll charge,” List affirmed grimly. “If we’re lucky, they’ll wait too long and give us room to fall back.”
“That’s the kind of risk Hood loves,” the historian muttered.
“The ground under them whispers fear. They won’t be moving for a while.”
“Do I see control on all sides, or the illusion of control?”
List’s face twisted slightly. “Sometimes the two are one and the same. In terms of their effect, I mean. The only difference—or so Coltaine says—is that when you bloody the real thing, it absorbs the damage, while the other shatters.”
Duiker shook his head. “Who would have imagined a Wickan warleader to think of war in such…alchemical terms? And you, Corporal, has he made you his protégé?”
The young man looked dour. “I kept dying in the war games. Gave me lots of time to stand around and eavesdrop.”
The cattle were moving more quickly now, plunging into the stationary clouds of dust masking the ford. If anything, to Duiker’s eyes the heaving flow was too quick. “Four and a half feet deep, over four hundred paces…those animals should be crossing at a crawl. More, how to hold the herds to the shallows? Those dogs will have to swim, the drovers will get pushed off to the deeps, and with all that dust, who can see a damned thing down there?”
List said nothing.
Thunder sounded on the other side of the ford, followed by rapid percussive sounds. Columns of smoke pillared upward and the air was suddenly febrile. Sorcery. The Semk wizard-priests. A lone child to oppose them. “This is all taking too long,” Duiker snapped. “Why in Hood’s name did it take all night just to get the wagons across? It will be dark before the refugees even move.”
“They’re closing,” List said. His face was covered in dust-smeared sweat.
To the east the Sialk and Hissar infantry had made contact with the outer defenses. Arrows swarmed the air. Weasel Clan horsewarriors battled on two sides—against Tithansi lancers at the front, and pike-wielding infantry on their right flank. They were struggling to withdraw. Holding the earthen defenses were Captain Lull’s marines, Wickan archers and a scattering of auxiliary units. They were yielding the first breastworks to the hardened infantry. The horde had begun to boil on the slopes beyond.
To the north the two legions of Tithansi archers were rushing forward for the cover of the leadwoods. From there they would start killing cattle. There was no one to
challenge them.
“And so it shatters,” Duiker said.
“You’re as bad as Reloe. Sir.”
“What do you mean?”
“Too quick to count us out. This isn’t our first engagement.”
Faint shrieks drifted across from the leadwoods. Duiker squinted through the dust. The Tithansi archers were screaming, thrashing about, vanishing from sight in the high marsh grasses beneath the skeletal trees. “What in Hood’s name is happening to those men?”
“An old, thirsty spirit, sir. Sormo promised it a day of warm blood. One last day. Before it dies or ceases or whatever it is spirits do when they go.”
The archers had routed, their panicked flight taking them back to the slope beneath the tel.
“There go the last of them,” List said.
For a moment Duiker thought the corporal referred to the Tithansi archers, then he realized, with a start, that the cattle were gone. He wheeled to face the ford, cursing at the tumbling clouds of dust. “Too fast,” he muttered.
The refugees had begun moving, streamers of humanity flowing across the old oxbow channel and onto the island. There was no semblance of order, no way to control almost thirty thousand exhausted and terrified people. And they were about to sweep over the wall where Duiker and the corporal stood.
“We should move,” List said.
The historian nodded. “Where?”
“Uh, east?”
To where the Weasel Clan now covered the marines and other footmen as they relinquished one earthen rampart after another, the soldiers falling back so quickly that they would be at the slatted bridge in minutes. And then? Up against this mob of shrieking refugees. Oh, Hood! What now?
List seemed to read his mind. “They’ll hold at the bridge,” he asserted. “They have to. Come on!”
Their flight took them across the front of the leading edge of the refugees. The awakened land trembled beneath them, steam rising with a reek like muddy sweat. Here and there along the east edge of the island, the ground bulged and split open. Duiker’s headlong sprint faltered. Shapes were clambering from the broken earth, skeletal beneath arcane, pitted and encrusted bronze armor, battered helms with antlers on their heads and long red-stained hair hanging in matted tufts down past their shoulders. The sound that came from them chilled Duiker’s soul. Laughter. Joyous laughter. Hood, are you twisting in affronted rage right now?
“Nil,” List gasped. “Nether’s twin—that boy over there. Sormo said that this place has seen battle before—said this oxbow island wasn’t natural…oh, Queen of Dreams, yet another Wickan nightmare!”
The ancient warriors, voicing blood-curdling glee, were now breaking free of the earth all along the eastern end of the island. On Duiker’s right and behind him, refugees screamed with terror, their headlong flight staggering to a halt as the horrific creatures rose among them.
The Weasel Clan and the footmen had contracted to a solid line this side of the bridge and channel. That line twitched and shuffled as the raised warriors pushed through their ranks, single-edged swords rising—the weapons almost shapeless beneath mineral accretions—as they marched into the milling mass of the Hissar and Sialk infantry. The laughter had become singing, a guttural battle chant.
Duiker and List found themselves in a cleared area pocked with smoldering, broken earth, the refugees behind them withdrawing as they pushed toward the ford, the rearguard before them finally able to draw breath as the undead warriors waded into their foe.
The boy Nil, Nether’s twin, rode a huge roan horse, wheeling back and forth along the line, in one hand a feather-bedecked, knobbed club of some sort which he waved over his head. The undead warriors that passed near him bellowed and shook their weapons in salute—or gratitude. Like them, the boy was laughing.
Reloe’s veteran infantry broke before the onslaught and fell back to collide with the horde that had now checked its own advance.
“How can this be?” Duiker asked. “Hood’s Warren—this is necromantic, not—”
“Maybe they’re not true undead,” List suggested. “Maybe the island’s spirit simply uses them—”
The historian shook his head. “Not entirely. Hear that laughter—that song—do you hear the language? These warriors have had their souls awakened. Those souls must have remained, held by the spirit, never released to Hood. We’ll pay for this, Corporal. Every one of us.”
Other figures were emerging from the ground on all sides: women, children, dogs. Many of the dogs still wore leather harnesses, still dragged the remnants of travois. The women held their children to their bosoms, gripping the bone hafts of wide-bladed bronze knives they then plunged into those children. An ancient, final tragedy in frozen tableau, as a whole tribe faced slaughter at the hands of some unknown foe—how many thousands of years ago did this happen, how long have these trapped souls held on to this horrifying, heart-rending moment? And now? Are they doomed to repeat that eternal anguish? “Hood bless these,” Duiker whispered, “please. Take them. Take them now.”
The women were locked into that fatal pattern. He watched them thrusting daggers home, watched the children jerk and writhe, listened to their short-lived wails. He watched as the women then fell, heads crumpling to unseen weapons—to memories only they could see…and feel. The remorseless executions went on, and on.
Nil had ceased his frenzied ride and now guided his roan at a walk toward the ghastly scene. The boy was sickly pale beneath his tanned skin. Something whispered in Duiker’s mind that the young warlock was seeing more than anyone else—rather, anyone else who was alive. The boy’s head moved, tracking ghost-killers. He flinched at every death-dealing blow.
The historian, his legs as awkward as wooden crutches beneath him, stumbled toward the boy. He reached up and took the reins from the warlock’s motionless hands. “Nil,” he said quietly. “What do you see?”
The boy blinked, then slowly looked down to meet Duiker’s gaze. “What?”
“You can see. Who kills them?”
“Who?” He ran a trembling hand across his brow. “Kin. The clan split, two rivals for the Antlered Chair. Kin, Historian. Cousins, brothers, uncles…”
Duiker felt something breaking inside him at Nil’s words. Half-formed expectations, held by desperate need, had insisted that the killers were…Jaghut, Forkrul Assail, K’Chain Che’Malle…someone…someone other. “No,” he said.
Nil’s eyes, young yet ancient, held his as the warlock nodded. “Kin. This has been mirrored. Among the Wick. A generation ago. Mirrored.”
“But no longer.” Please.
“No longer.” Nil managed a small wry smile. “The Emperor, as our enemy, united us. By laughing at our small battles, our pointless feuds. Laughing and more: sneering. He shamed us with contempt, Historian. When he met with Coltaine, our alliance was already breaking apart. Kellanved mocked. He said he need only sit back and watch to see the end of our rebellion. With his words he branded our souls. With his words and his offer of unity he bestowed on us wisdom. With his words we knelt before him in true gratitude, accepted what he offered us and gave him our loyalty. You once wondered how the Emperor won our hearts. Now you know.”
The enemy resolve stiffened as the corroded weapons of the ancient warriors shattered and snapped against modern iron. Skeletal, desiccated bodies proved as unequal to the task. Pieces flew, figures stumbled, then fell, too broken to rise again.
“Must they live through their defeat a second time?” Duiker asked.
Nil shrugged. “They purchased us a spell to breathe, to steady ourselves. Remember, Historian, had these warriors won the first time, they would have done to their victims what was done to their own families.” The child warlock slowly shook his head. “There is little good in people. Little good.”
The sentiment jarred coming from one so young. Some old man’s voice comes from the boy, remember that. “Yet it can be found,” Duiker countered. “All the more precious for its rarity.”
Nil reclaimed
the reins. “You’ll find none here, Historian,” he said, his voice as hard as the words. “We are known by our madness—this, the island’s ancient spirit shows us. The memories that survive are all horror, our deeds so dark as to sear the land itself. Keep your eyes open,” he added, spinning his mount around to face the battle that had resumed at the slatted bridge, “we’re not finished yet.”
Duiker said nothing, watching the child warlock ride toward the line.
Impossibly to the historian’s mind, the path before the refugees suddenly cleared, and they began crossing. He looked into the sky. The sun edged toward noon. Somehow, it had felt much later. He glared back at the dust-shrouded river—the crossing would be a terrible thing, the deep water perilous on both sides, the screaming of children, the old men and women, too weak to manage, slipping away in the current, vanishing beneath the surface. Dust and horror, the swirling water absorbing every echo.
Crow Clan horsewarriors rode around the edges of the milling, fearful thousands, as if tending a vast herd of mindless beasts. With long blunted poles, they kept the crowds from spreading and spilling outward, swinging them down to crack shins and knees, stabbing at faces. The refugees flinched back en masse wherever they rode.
“Historian,” List said at his side. “We should find horses.”
Duiker shook his head. “Not yet. This rearguard defense is now the heart of the battle—I’m not leaving. I have to witness it—”
“Understood, sir. But when they do withdraw, they’ll be collected by the Wickans, an extra soldier for each rider. Coltaine and the rest of his clan should be joining them soon. They’ll hold this side of the ford to allow the rearguard to cross. If we don’t want our heads on spears, sir, we’d better find some horses.”
The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen Page 105