Dust of Dreams

by Erikson, Steven

  ‘Got ’em, soldier!’ Cuttle yelled back. ‘Now it’s just iron.’

  At once a shout rose from the length of the trench. ‘HAIL THE MARINES!’

  And the faces around Corabb suddenly darkened, teeth baring. The instant transformation took his breath away. Iron, aye, you know all about iron.

  The Nah’ruk were five steps behind them.

  The heavies rose to meet them.

  Hedge watched as the lizards clambered from the enormous crater where Quick Ben had been, watched as they re-formed their ranks and resumed their advance. Twisting from where he was lying, he then looked back to study the Letherii legions drawing up at a steady half-trot, pikes set and slowly angling in overlapping layers.

  Hedge grunted. Good weapons for this.

  ‘Bridgeburners! Listen up! Never mind the High Mage. He’s ashes on the wind. We’re going to soften up the lizards for the Letherii. Ready your munitions. One salvo when I say so and then we retreat and if the Letherii are sharp, they’ll make room for us! If they don’t, then swing to the right—to the right, got it? And run like Hood himself is on your heels!’

  ‘Commander!’ someone cried out.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Who’s Hood?’

  Gods below. ‘He’s just the guy you don’t want on your heels, right?’

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  Hedge lifted his head. Shit, these ones got clubs and nodes. ‘Check your munitions! Switch to Blue. You hear me? Blues! And aim for that front line! Nodes, lads and lasses, those white lumps!’

  ‘Commander!’

  ‘Hood’s the—’

  ‘I hear horses! Coming from the southeast—I think—is that horses?’

  Hedge rose slightly higher. He saw two lizard phalanxes smartly wheeling. Oh gods …

  Rolling into a charge, Gall leaned forward on his horse. Just like the Malazans to find the ugliest foes the whole damned world had to offer. And the scariest. But those squares had no pikes to fend off a cavalry charge—and they would pay for that.

  When he’d led his army up to where Rafala had reined in, he’d seen—in the first dozen heartbeats—all he’d needed to see.

  The enemy was devouring the Malazan army, driving them back, cutting down hundreds of soldiers if they were no more than children. This was slaughter, and barely a third of the phalanxes had actually closed with the Bonehunters.

  He saw the Letherii moving up on both flanks, forming bristling pike walls in a sawtooth presentation, but they’d yet to meet the enemy. Out to the far flanks mounted troops mustered, yet held far back—unaccountably so, as far as Gall was concerned.

  Directly ahead of the Khundryl charge, two phalanxes were closing up to present a solid defensive line, denying the Burned Tears the opportunity to drive between the squares, winging arrows on both sides. Gall needed make no gestures or call out commands—his lead warriors knew to draw up upon loosing their arrows; they knew their lanes, through which the heavier lancers would pass to drive deep into the wounded front ranks of the enemy—drive in, and then withdraw. There would be no chance of shattering these phalanxes—the demons were too big, too heavily armoured. They would not break before a charge.

  This is the last day of the Khundryl Burned Tears. My children, do you ride with me? I know you do. My children, be brave this day. See your father, and know that he is proud of you all.

  The foremost line of demons began preparing strange clubs.

  ______

  Hedge saw the lightning erupt from the Nah’ruk line, saw the jagged bolts tear into the mass of Khundryl warriors. The charge seemed to disintegrate inside a horrific cloud of red mist.

  Sickened, he twisted on to his back, stared up at the sky. Didn’t look like sky at all. ‘Bridgeburners, get ready! Munitions in hand! One, two, three—UP!’

  Brys had thought the bodies lying on the ground ahead were corpses. They suddenly rose, forty or fifty in all, and flung objects at the front line of Nah’ruk. The small dark grenados splashed as they struck the enemy warriors. An instant later, the Nah’ruk who had been struck began writhing as the liquid ate through their armour, and then their hides.

  One of the nodes exploded, flinging bodies back. Then another and another. All at once the front ranks of the phalanx were a chaotic mess.

  Brys turned to his signaller. ‘Sound the charge! Sound the charge!’

  Horns blared.

  The legions broke into a dogtrot, pikes levelled.

  The sappers were running, swinging to the left and out from the gap between the two forces. They might just make it clear in time.

  At six paces, the Letherii ranks surged forward, voices lifting in a savage roar.

  The teeth of the saw bit deep, one, three rows, four. The Nah’ruk phalanx buckled. And then the two forces ground to a halt. Pikes were held in place, infighters armed with axes and stabbing swords pushing between the front line to begin their vicious close work. Falchions flashed high, and then descended.

  Brys gestured. Another messenger came up alongside him.

  ‘The onager and arbalest units are to draw up on the hill to the east. Begin enfilade. Cavalry to provide initial screen until they commence firing.’

  The man saluted and rode off.

  Brys looked southeastward. Miraculously, some remnant of the mounted horsewarriors had survived the sorcerous salvos—he could see riders emerging from the dust and smoke, hammering wildly into the front ranks of the Nah’ruk. They struck with inhuman ferocity and Brys was not surprised—to have come through that would have stripped the sanity of any warrior.

  He breathed a soft prayer for them in the name of a dozen long-lost gods.

  A messenger reined in on his right. ‘Commander! The west legions have engaged the enemy.’

  ‘And?’

  The man wiped the sweat from his face. ‘Knocked ’em back a step or two, but now …’

  Seeing that he could not go on, seeing that he was near tears, Brys simply nodded. He turned to study what he could see of the Malazan position.

  Nothing but armoured lizards, weapons lifting and descending, blood rising in a mist.

  But, as he stared, he noticed something.

  The Nah’ruk were no longer advancing.

  You stopped them? Blood of the gods, what manner of soldiers are you?

  The heavy infantry stood. The heavy infantry held the trench. Even as they died, they backed not a single step. The Nah’ruk clawed for purchase on the blood-soaked mud of the berm. Iron chewed into them. Halberds slammed down, rebounded from shields. Reptilian bodies reeled back, blocking the advance of rear ranks. Arrows and quarrels poured into the foe from positions behind the trench.

  And from above, Locqui Wyval descended by the score, in a frenzy, to tear and rend the helmed heads of the lizard warriors. Others quickly closed to do battle with their kin, and the sky rained blood.

  Bottle’s soul leapt from body to body, grasped tight the souls of Locqui Wyval, and flung them down upon the Nah’ruk. As each one was pulled down to the slaughter, he tore himself free to enslave yet another. He had reached out, taking as many as he could—dozens of the creatures—the stench of blood and all that they saw had driven them mad. He needed only crush the tatters of their restraint, loose them upon the nearest beasts that were not wyval.

  When kin attacked, he did not resist—the more dead and dying wyval, the better.

  But he felt himself being torn apart. He felt his mind shredding away. He could not do much more of this. Yet Bottle did not relent.

  Tarr stumbled into a knot of marines. Glared round. ‘Limp—where’s your—’

  ‘Dead,’ Limp said. ‘Just me an’ Crump—’

  ‘Ruffle?’

  The round-faced woman shook her head. ‘Got separated. Saw Skim die, that’s all—’

  ‘So what are you doing sitting here? On your feet, marine—those heavies are dying where they stand. And we’re going to join them. You, Reliko! Pull Vastly on his feet there—you’re all coming with m
e!’

  Silent, without a single word of protest, the marines clambered to their feet. They were bleeding. They were exhausted.

  They gathered up their weapons, and, Tarr in the lead, set out for the trench.

  Nearby, Urb plucked away the shattered fragments of his shield. Hellian crouched beside him, breathing hard, her face streaked with blood and puke, with more of both drenching her chest. She’d said she didn’t know whose blood it was. Glancing at her, he saw her hard eyes, her hard expression. Other soldiers were drawn up behind them.

  Urb turned. ‘We do what Tarr says, soldiers. Back into it. Now.’

  Hellian almost pushed past him on the way to the trench.

  Henar Vygulf reined in beneath the hill—he could see fallen horses and sprawled, scorched bodies where the Adjunct’s command post had been. He slipped down from his horse, drew his two swords and jogged up the slope.

  Reaching the summit, he saw four Nah’ruk arriving on the opposite ridge.

  Lostara Yil and the Adjunct were lying almost side by side. Likely dead, but he needed to make sure. If he could.

  He charged forward.

  The clash of iron woke her. Blinking, Lostara stared into the sky, trying to recall what had happened. Her head ached and she could feel dried blood crusting her nostrils, crackling in her ears. She turned her head, saw the Adjunct lying beside her.

  Chest slowly rising and falling.

  Ah, good.

  Someone grunted as if in pain.

  She sat up. In time to see Henar Vygulf stagger back, blood spraying from a chest wound. Three Nah’ruk closed.

  Henar fell on to his back almost at Lostara’s feet.

  She rose, drawing her blades.

  He saw her, and the anguish in his eyes took her breath away.

  ‘I’m sorry—’

  ‘You’re going to live,’ she told him, stepping past. ‘Prop yourself up, man—that’s an order!’

  He managed to lift himself on one elbow. ‘Captain—’

  She glanced at the Nah’ruk. Almost upon her, slowed by wounds. Behind them, a dozen more appeared. ‘Just remember, Henar, I don’t do this for just anybody!’

  ‘Do what?’

  She stepped forward, blades lifting. ‘Dance.’

  The old forms returned, as if they had but been awaiting her, awaiting this one moment when at last she awoke—possibly one last time—no matter. For you, Henar. For you.

  The Shadow Dance belonged to this.

  Here.

  Now.

  Henar watched her, and his eyes slowly widened.

  ______

  A league to the southeast, Kisswhere dragged herself from her fallen horse. A badger burrow, the den mouth of a fox, something. Her horse thrashed, front legs shattered, its screams shrill in the air.

  Kisswhere’s left leg was bent in four places. The stub of bone thrust through her leggings. She drew a knife and twisted round to study the horse, eyes fixing on a pulsing artery in its neck.

  Didn’t matter. They were all dead. Even if she could have reached the Mortal Sword and that mad red-haired Queen, it wouldn’t have mattered.

  She glanced up. The sky was flesh, and that flesh was rotting before her eyes.

  Sinter. Badan.

  Bonehunters—Adjunct, are you happy? You killed them all.

  You killed us all.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  On this dawn they lined the banks of the ancient river, a whole city turned out, near a hundred thousand, as the sun lifted east of the mouth that opened to the deep bay. What had brought them there? What ever brings the multitudes to a moment, a place, an instant when a hundred thousand bodies become one body?

  As the red waters spilled into the bay’s salty tears, they stood, saying little, and the great ship pyre took hold of the fires and the wind took hold of the soaked sails, and the sky took hold of the black column of smoke.

  Ehrlitan’s great king was dead, the last of the Dessimb line, and the future was blowing sands, the storm’s whisper was but a roar of strife made mercifully distant, a thing of promise drawing ever closer.

  They came to weep. They came seeking salvation, for in the end, even grief masks a selfish indulgence. We weep in our lives for the things lost to us, the worlds done. A great man was dead, but we cannot follow him—we dare not, for to each of us death finds a new path.

  An age was dead. The new age belonged to generations still to come. In the stalls of the market rounds the potters stacked bowls bearing the face of the dead king, with scenes of his past glories circling round and round, for ever outside of time, and this was the true wish of the multitudes.

  Stop. Stop now. Pray this day never ends. Pray the ashes drift for ever. Pray tomorrow never becomes. It is a natural desire, an honest wish.

  The tale dies, but this death will take some time. It is said the king lingered, there in the half breath. And people gathered each day at the palace gates, to weep, to dream of other ends, of fates denied.

  The tale dies, but this death will take some time.

  And the river’s red tongue flows without end. And the spirit of the king said: I see you. I see you all. Can you not hear him? Hear him still?

  DEATH OF THE GOLDEN AGE

  THENYS BULE

  N

  om Kala stood with the others, a silent mass of warriors who had forgotten what it was to live, as the wind pulled at rotted furs, strips of hide and dry tangles of hair. Dull, pitted weapons hung like afterthoughts from twisted hands. Air pitched into the bowls of eye sockets and moaned back out. They could be statues, gnawed by age, withering where they stood facing the endless winds, the senseless rains, the pointless waves of heat and cold.

  There was nothing useful in this, and she knew she was not alone in her disquiet. Onos T’oolan, the First Sword, crouched down on one knee ten paces ahead of them, hands wrapped round the grip of his flint sword, the weapon’s point buried in the stony ground. His head was lowered, as if he made obeisance before a master, but this master was invisible, little more than a smear of obligations swept aside, but the stain of what had been held him in place—a stain only Onos T’oolan could see. He had not moved in some time.

  Patience was no trial, but she could sense the chaos in her kin, the pitch and cant of terrible desires, the rocking rebuffs of vengeance waiting. It was only a matter of time before the first of them broke away, defying this servitude, this claim of righteous command. He would not reach for them. He had yet to do so, why imagine he would change—

  The First Sword rose, faced them. ‘I am Onos T’oolan. I am the First Sword of Tellann. I reject your need.’

  The wind moaned on, like the flow of sorrow.

  ‘You shall, however, bow to mine.’

  She felt buffeted by those words. This is what it means, then, to yield before a First Sword. We cannot deny him, cannot defy him. She could feel his will, closing like a fist about her. We had our chance—before this. We could have drifted away. He gave us that. But not one T’lan Imass had done any such thing. Instead, we fell inside ourselves, ever deeper, that endless eating and spitting out and eating all we spat out—this is the seductive sustenance of hatred and spite, of rage and vengeance.

  He could have led us off a cliff and we would not have noticed.

  The three Orshayn bonecasters stepped forward. Ulag Togtil spoke. ‘First Sword, we await your command.’

  Onos T’oolan slowly faced south, where the sky above the horizon seemed to boil like pitch. And then he swung north, where a distant cloud caught the sun’s dying light. ‘We go no farther,’ the First Sword said. ‘We shall be dust.’

  And what of our dark dreams, First Sword?

  Such was his power that he heard her thought and so turned to her. ‘Nom Kala, hold fast to your dreams. There will be an answer. T’lan Imass, we are upon a time of killing.’

  The statues shifted. Some straightened. Some hunched down as if beneath terrible burdens. The statues—my kin. My sisters, my brothers. There
are none to look upon us now, none to see us, none to wonder at who we once were, at who shaped us with such … loving hands. As she watched, they began, one by one, falling into dust.

  None to witness. Dust of dreams, dust of all that we never achieved. Dust of what we might have been and what we cannot help but be.

  Statues are never mute. Their silence is a roar of words. Will you hear? Will you listen?

  She was the last, alone with Onos T’oolan himself.

  ‘You possess no rage, Nom Kala.’

  ‘No, First Sword, I do not.’

  ‘What might you find to serve in its place?’

  ‘I do not know. The humans defeated us. They were better than we were, it is as simple as that. I feel only grief, First Sword.’

  ‘And is there no anger in grief, Nom Kala?’

  Yes. It may be that there is. But if I must search for it—

  ‘There is time,’ said Onos T’oolan.

  She bowed to him, and released herself.

  Onos T’oolan watched as Nom Kala fell in a gusting cloud. In his mind a figure was approaching, hands held out as if beseeching. He knew that harrowed face, that lone glittering eye. What could he say to this stranger he had once known? He too was a stranger, after all. Yes, they had once known each other. But now look at us, both so intimate with dust.

  Nom Kala’s anguish returned to him. Her thoughts had bled with dread power—she was young. She was, he realized, what the Imass might have become, had the Ritual not taken them, had it not stolen their future. A future of pathos. Sordid surrender. The loss of dignity, a slow, slow death.

  No, Toc the Younger. I give you nothing but silence. And its torrid roar.

  Will you hear? Will you listen?

  Any of you?

  She had dwelt like a parasite deep in its entrails. She had seen, all around her, the broken remnants of some long abandoned promise, the broken clutter, the spilled fluids. But there had been heat, and a pulsing presence as if the very stone was alive—she should have understood the significance of such things, but her mind had been wallowing in its own darkness, a lifeless place of pointless regrets.

  Standing not six paces from the two gold-skinned foreigners, she had turned and, like them, looked with wonder, disbelieving.