Paran saw the dark forms of the sappers, converging directly ahead, squatting down amidst dead and dying Pannions.
Crossbows thunked in the hands of the dozen or so Bridgeburners who carried them.
Screams rang.
Trotts leading the way, the Bridgeburners reached the charnel path, passed around the crouching sappers who were one and all readying the larger cussers. Two drops of acid to the wax plug sealing the hole in the clay grenado.
A chorus of muted hisses.
‘Run!’
Paran cursed. Ten heartbeats suddenly seemed no time at all. Cussers were the largest of the Moranth munitions. A single one could make the intersection of four streets virtually impassable. The captain ran.
His heart almost seized in his chest as he fixed his eyes on the gate directly ahead. The thousand corpses were stirring. Oh damn. Not dead at all. Sleeping. The bastards were sleeping!
‘Down down down!’
The word was Malazan, the voice was Hedge’s.
Paran hesitated only long enough to see Spindle, Hedge and the other sappers arrive among them … to throw cussers. Forward. Into the massing ranks of Tenescowri between them and the gates. Then they dived flat.
‘Oh, Hood!’ The captain threw himself down, slid across gritty mud, releasing his grip on his sword and clamping both hands to his ears.
The ground punched the breath from his lungs, threw his legs into the air. He thumped back down in the mud. On his back. He had time to begin his roll before the cussers directly ahead exploded. The impact sent him tumbling. Bloody shreds rained down on him.
A large object thumped beside Paran’s head. He blinked his eyes open. To see a man’s hips – just the hips, the concavity where intestines belonged yawning black and wet. Thighs were gone, taken at the joints. The captain stared.
His ears were ringing. He felt blood trickling from his nose. His chest ached. Distant screaming wailed through the night.
A hand closed on his rain-cape, tugged him upright.
Mallet. The healer leaned close to press the captain’s sword into his hands, then shouted words Paran barely heard. ‘Come on! They’re all getting the Hood out of here!’ A shove sent the captain stumbling forward.
His eyes saw, but his mind failed to register the devastation to either side of the path they now ran down towards the north gate. He felt himself shutting down inside, even as he slipped and staggered through the human ruin … shutting down as he had once before, years ago, on a road in Itko Kan.
The hand of vengeance stayed cold only so long. Any soul possessing a shred of humanity could not help but see the reality behind cruel deliverance, no matter how justified it might have at first seemed. Faces blank in death. Bodies twisted in postures no-one unbroken could achieve. Destroyed lives. Vengeance yielded a mirror to every atrocity, where notions of right and wrong blurred and lost all relevance.
He saw, to the right and left, fleeing figures. A few sharpers cracked, hastening the rout.
The Bridgeburners had announced themselves to the enemy.
We are their match, the captain realized as he ran, in calculated brutality. But this is a war of nerves where no-one wins.
The unchallenged darkness of the gate swallowed Paran and his fellow Bridgeburners. Boots skidded as the soldiers halted their mad sprint. Dropping into crouches. Reloading crossbows. Not a word spoken.
Trotts reached a hand out and dragged Hedge close. The Barghast shook the man hard for a moment, then made to throw him down. A squeal from Spindle stopped him. Hedge, after all, carried a leather sack half full of munitions.
His face still a mass of bruises from Detoran’s fond touch, Hedge cursed. ‘Ain’t no choice, you big ape!’
Paran could hear the words. An improvement. He wasn’t sure who he sided with on this one, but the truth of it was, it no longer mattered. ‘Trotts!’ he snapped. ‘What now? If we wait here—’
The Barghast grunted. ‘Into the city, low and quiet.’
‘Which direction?’ Antsy asked.
‘We head to the Thrall—’
‘Fine, and what’s that?’
‘The glowing keep, you thick-skulled idiot.’
They edged forward, out from beneath the archway’s gloom, onto the concourse immediately beyond. Their steps slowed as flickering firelight revealed the nightmare before them.
There had been vast slaughter, and then there had been a feast. The cobbles were ankle-deep in bones, some charred, others red and raw with bits of tendon and flesh still clinging to them. And fully two-thirds of the dead, the captain judged from what he could see of uniforms and clothing, belonged to the invaders.
‘Gods,’ Paran muttered, ‘the Pannions paid dearly.’ I think I should revise my estimation of the Grey Swords.
Spindle nodded. ‘Even so, numbers will tell.’
‘A day or two earlier…’ Mallet said.
No-one bothered finishing the thought. There was no need.
‘What’s your problem, Picker?’ Antsy demanded.
‘Nothing!’ the woman snapped. ‘It’s nothing.’
‘Is that the Thrall, then?’ Hedge asked. ‘That glowing dome? There, through the smoke—’
‘Let’s go,’ Trotts said.
The Bridgeburners ranging out cautiously in the Barghast’s wake, they set forth, across the grisly concourse, to a main avenue that seemed to lead directly towards the strangely illumined structure. The style of the houses and tenement blocks to either side – those that were still standing – was distinctly Daru to Paran’s eyes. The rest of the city, he saw from fragmented glimpses down side alleys and avenues where fires still burned – was completely different. Vaguely alien. And, everywhere, bodies.
Further down the street, piles of still-fleshed corpses rose like the slope of a hill.
The Bridgeburners said nothing as they neared that slope. The truth before them was difficult to comprehend. On this street alone, there were at least ten thousand bodies. Maybe more. Sodden, already swollen, the flesh pale around gaping, blood-drained wounds. Concentrated mounds around building entrances, alley mouths, an estate’s gate, the stepped approaches to gutted temples. Faces and sightless eyes reflected flames, making expressions seem to writhe in mocking illusion of animation, of life.
To continue on the street, the Bridgeburners would have to climb that slope.
Trotts did not hesitate.
Word arrived from the small company’s rearguard. Tenescowri had entered through the gate, were keeping pace like silent ghosts behind them. A few hundred, no more than that. Poorly armed. No trouble. Trotts simply shrugged at the news.
They scrambled their way up the soft, flesh-laden ramp.
Do not look down. Do not think of what is underfoot. Think only of the defenders, who must have fought on. Think of courage almost inhuman, defying mortal limits. Of these Grey Swords – those motionless, uniformed corpses in those doorways, crowding the alley mouths. Fighting on, and on. Yielding nothing. Cut to pieces where they stood.
These soldiers humble us all. A lesson … for the Bridgeburners around me. This brittle, heart-broken company. We’ve come to a war devoid of mercy.
The ramp had been fashioned. There was an intention to its construction. It was an approach. To what?
It ended in a tumbled heap, at a level less than a man’s height below the roof of a tenement block. Opposite the building there had been another just like it, but fire had reduced it to smouldering rubble.
Trotts stopped at the ramp’s very edge. The rest followed suit, crouching down, looking around, trying to comprehend the meaning of all that they saw. The ragged end revealed the truth: there was no underlying structure to this ghastly construct. It was indeed solid bodies.
‘A siege ramp,’ Spindle finally said in a quiet, almost diffident tone. ‘They wanted to get to somebody—’
‘Us,’ a low voice rumbled from above them.
Crossbows snapped up.
Paran looked to the tenement bui
lding’s roof. A dozen figures lined its edge. Distant firelight lit them.
‘They brought ladders,’ the voice continued, now speaking Daru. ‘We beat them anyway.’
These warriors were not Grey Swords. They were armoured, but it was a ragtag collection of accoutrements. One and all, their faces and exposed skin were daubed in streaks and barbs. Like human tigers.
‘I like the paint,’ Hedge called up, also in Daru. ‘Scared the crap out of me, that’s for sure.’
The spokesman, tall and hulking, bone-white black-barbed cutlasses in his mailed hands, cocked his head. ‘It’s not paint, Malazan.’
Silence.
Then the man gestured with a blade. ‘Come up, if you like.’
Ladders appeared from the rooftop, slid down its edge.
Trotts hesitated. Paran stepped close. ‘I think we should. There’s something about that man and his followers—’
The Barghast snorted. ‘Really?’ He waved the Bridgeburners to the ladders.
Paran watched the ascent, deciding he would be the last to go. He saw Picker hanging back. ‘Problem, Corporal?’
She flinched, massaging her right arm.
‘You’re in pain,’ the captain said, moving to her side, studying her pinched face. ‘Did you take a wound? Let’s go to Mallet.’
‘He can’t help me, Captain. Never mind about it.’
I know precisely how you feel. ‘Climb, then.’
As if approaching gallows, the corporal made her way to the nearest ladder.
Paran glanced back down the ramp. Spectral figures moved in the gloom at its far base. Well out of any kind of missile range. Unwilling, perhaps, to ascend the slope. The captain wasn’t surprised at that.
Fighting twinges, he began climbing.
The tenement’s flat roof had the look of a small shantytown. Tarps and tents, hearths smouldering on overturned shields. Food packs, caskets of water and wine. A row of blanket-wrapped figures – the fallen, seven in all. Paran could see others in some of the tents, most likely wounded.
A standard had been raised near the roof’s trapdoor, the yellow flag nothing more than a dark-streaked child’s tunic.
The warriors stood silent, watchful as Trotts sent squads out to each corner of the roof, where they checked on whatever lay both below and opposite the building.
Their spokesman turned suddenly, a fluid, frighteningly graceful motion, and faced Corporal Picker. ‘You have something for me,’ he rumbled.
Her eyes widened. ‘What?’
He sheathed one of his cutlasses and stepped up to her.
Paran and the others nearby watched as the man reached out to Picker’s right arm. He gripped her chain-sleeved bicep. A muted clatter sounded.
Picker gasped.
After a moment she dropped her sword to clunk on the tarred rooftop, and began stripping off her chain surcoat with quick, jerky motions. In a flood of relief, she spoke. ‘Beru’s blessing! I don’t know who in Hood’s name you are, sir, but they’ve been killing me. Getting tighter and tighter. Gods, the pain! He said they’d never come off. He said they’d be on me for good. Even Quick Ben said that – can’t make a deal with Treach. The Tiger of Summer’s mad, insane—’
‘Dead,’ the Daru cut in.
Half out of her surcoat, Picker froze. ‘What?’ she whispered. ‘Dead? Treach is dead?’
‘The Tiger of Summer has ascended, woman. Treach – Trake – now strides with the gods. I will have them now, and I thank you for delivering them to my hand.’
She pulled her right arm clear of the chain sleeve. Three ivory armtorcs clattered down to her hand. ‘Here! Yes, please! Glad to oblige—’
‘Hood take your tongue, Picker,’ Antsy snapped. ‘You’re embarrassing us! Just give him the damned things!’
The corporal stared about. ‘Blend! Where in the Abyss you hiding, woman?’
‘Here,’ a voice murmured beside Paran.
Startled, he stepped back. Damn her!
‘Hah!’ Picker crowed. ‘You hear me, Blend? Hah!’
The squads were converging once more.
The Daru rolled up a tattered sleeve. The striped pattern covered the large, well-defined muscles of his arm. He slid the three torcs up past the elbow. The ivory clicked. Something flashed amber in the darkness beneath the rim of his helmet.
Paran studied the man. A beast resides within him, an ancient spirit, reawakened. Power swirled around the Daru, but the captain sensed that it was born as much from a natural air of command as from the beast hiding within him – for that beast preferred solitude. Its massive strength had, somehow, been almost subsumed by that quality of leadership. Together, a formidable union. There’s no mistaking, this one’s important. Something’s about to happen here, and my presence is no accident. ‘I am Captain Paran, of Onearm’s Host.’
‘Took your time, didn’t you, Malazan?’
Paran blinked. ‘We did the best we could, sir. In any case, your relief this night and tomorrow will come from the White Face clans.’
‘Hetan and Cafal’s father, Humbrall Taur. Good. Time’s come to turn the tide.’
‘Turn the tide?’ Antsy sputtered. ‘Looks like you didn’t need no help to turn the tide, man!’
‘Trotts,’ Hedge called out. ‘I ain’t happy about what’s underfoot There’s cracks. This whole roof is nothing but cracks.’
‘Same for the walls,’ another sapper noted. ‘All sides.’
‘This building is filled with bodies,’ said a small warrior in Lestari armour beside the Daru. ‘They’re swelling, I guess.’
His eyes still on the big Daru, Paran asked, ‘Do you have a name?’
‘Gruntle.’
‘Are you some kind of sect, or something? Temple warriors?’
Gruntle slowly faced him, his expression mostly hidden beneath the helm’s visor. ‘No. We are nothing. No-one. This is for a woman. And now she’s dying—’
‘Which tent?’ Mallet interrupted in his high, thin voice.
‘The Warren of Denul is poisoned—’
‘You feel that, do you, Gruntle? Curious.’ The healer waited, then asked again, ‘Which tent?’
Gruntle’s Lestari companion pointed. ‘There. She was stuck through bad. Blood in the lungs. She might already be…’ He fell silent.
Paran followed Mallet to the tattered shelter.
The woman lying within was pale, her young face drawn and taut. Frothy blood painted her lips.
And here, there’s more.
The captain watched the healer settle to his knees beside her, reach out his hands.
‘Hold it,’ Paran growled. ‘The last time damn near killed you—’
‘Not my gift, Captain. Got Barghast spirits crowding me with this one, sir. Again. Don’t know why. Someone’s taken a personal interest, maybe. It may be too late anyway. We’ll see … all right?’
After a moment, Paran nodded.
Mallet laid his hands on the unconscious woman, closed his eyes. A dozen heartbeats passed. ‘Aai,’ he finally whispered. ‘Layers here. Wounded flesh … wounded spirit. I shall need to mend both. So … will you help me?’
The captain realized the question was not being asked of him, and so made no reply.
Mallet, eyes still closed, sighed. ‘You will sacrifice so many for this woman?’ He paused, eyes still closed, then frowned. ‘I can’t see these threads you speak of. Not her, nor Gruntle, nor the man at my side—’
At your side? Me? Threads? Gods, why don’t you just leave me alone?
‘—but I’ll take your word for it. Shall we begin?’
Moments passed, the healer motionless above the woman. Then she stirred on her pallet, softly moaned.
The tent was torn from around them, guidewires snapping. Paran’s head jerked up in surprise. To see Gruntle, chest heaving, standing above them.
‘What?’ the Daru gasped. ‘What—’ He staggered back a step, was brought up by Trotts’s firm hands on his shoulders.
‘No
such thing,’ the Barghast growled, ‘as too late.’
Approaching, Antsy grinned. ‘Hello, Capustan. The Bridgeburners have arrived.’
* * *
The sounds of fighting from the north and the east accompanied the dawn. The White Face clans had finally engaged the enemy. Picker and the others would later learn of the sudden and bloody pitched battle that occurred at the landings on the coast and on the shore of Catlin River. The Barahn and Ahkrata clans had collided with newly arrived regiments of Betaklites and Betrullid cavalry. The commander there had elected to counterattack rather than hold poorly prepared defensive positions, and before long the Barghast were the ones digging in, harried on all sides.
The Barahn were the first to break. Witnessing the ensuing slaughter of their kin had solidified the resolve of the Ahkrata, and they held until midday, when Taur detached the Gilk from the drive into the city and sent the turtle-shell-armoured warriors to their aid. A plains clan whetted on interminable wars against mounted enemies, the Gilk locked horns with the Betrullid and became the fulcrum for a renewed offensive by the Ahkrata, shattering the Betaklites and seizing the pontoon bridges and barges. The last of the Pannion medium infantry were driven into the river’s shallows, where the water turned red. Surviving elements of the Betrullid disengaged from the Gilk and retreated north along the coast to the marshlands – a fatal error, as their horses foundered in the salty mud. The Gilk pursued to resume a mauling that would not end until nightfall. Septarch Kulpath’s reinforcements had been annihilated.
Humbrall Taur’s push into the city triggered a panicked rout. Units of Seerdomin, Urdomen, Beklite, Scalandi and Betaklite were caught up and driven apart by the tens of thousands of Tenescowri fleeing before the Barghast hook-swords and lances. The main avenues became heaving masses of humanity, a swirling flood pushing westward, pouring through the breaches on that side, out onto the plain.
Taur did not relent in his clans’ vigorous pursuit, driving the Pannions ever westward.
Crouched on the rooftop, Picker looked down on the screaming, panic-stricken mob below. The tide had torn into the ramp, cutting swathes through it, each one a narrow gully winding between walls of cold flesh. Every path was choked with figures, whilst others scrambled overtop, at times less than a long pike’s reach from the Malazan’s position.
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