‘No, but that don’t mean—’
‘What it means, Sergeant, is the Seer is holding them back. He knows we’re not the main punch. We messed up his ambush and knocked out a company, and no doubt that’s irritated him enough to send out, what, a third of his army? Maybe a cadre of mages to guard the Septarch? And if they find out we’re a bear in a den, I doubt they’ll push—’
‘Unless the Seer decides that killing six thousand of the Host is worth a third of his army, Picker. If I was him—’
The lieutenant grimaced. ‘Aye, me too.’ I’d annihilate us, stamp us out before the rest arrive. ‘Still, I don’t think the Seer’s that sharp – after all, what does he know of the Malazans? Distant tales of wars far to the north … an invasion that’s bogged down. He’d have no reason to know what we’re capable of.’
‘Picker, you’re fishing with a bare hook. The Seer knows we’ve somehow jumped onto his entrenchments. Knows we slipped past those condors without tickling a single beak. Knows we knocked flat an entire company using Moranth munitions. Knows we’re sitting here, watching this army assemble, and we ain’t running. Knows, too, we ain’t got any support – not yet – and maybe, just maybe, we jumped in the slough before the shit’s settled.’
Picker said nothing for a time. The Pannion legions had settled, officers dispersing to take positions at the head of each one. Drums rattled. Pikes lifted skyward. Then, before each arrayed legion, sorcery began to play.
Oh … ‘Where’s Blend?’
‘Here.’
‘Hightail it back to Dujek—’
‘Aye, Lieutenant. We’re in it, now.’
* * *
Squatting on the lead embankment above the slope, Quick Ben slowly straightened. ‘Spindle, Bluepearl, Toes, Shank, to me, if you will.’
The four mages scrambled to his side and all were babbling. ‘A dozen sorcerors!’ ‘Drawing from the same warren!’ ‘And it’s clean and ugly!’ ‘They’re weaving, Quick!’ ‘Working togeth—’
‘Be quiet, all of you!’
‘We’re all going to die!’
‘Dammit, Toes, shut up!’
He glared until the four men settled, surveyed the bleak expressions for a moment, then grinned. ‘Twelve of the bastards, right? And who is this, standing here before you? Quick Ben. Right? Ben Adaephon Delat. Now, if any of you has already filled his breeches, go change, then rejoin the companies you’ve been attached to—whatever gets through me is for you to handle. Any way you can.’ Glancing over, he saw Dujek, Paran and Blend approaching, the latter looking winded and somewhat wild-eyed. ‘All right, Cadre, dismissed.’
The mages scurried away.
Dujek was wearing his full armour – the first time Quick Ben had seen that in years. The wizard nodded in greeting.
Paran spoke, ‘Quick Ben, Blend here’s delivered some bad—’
‘I know, Captain. I’ve split up my cadre, so we won’t get taken out in a clump. I’ll draw their attention to me, right here—’
‘Hold on,’ Dujek growled. ‘That cadre ain’t a cadre, and worse: they know it. Secondly, you’re not a combat mage. If we lose you early…’
The wizard shrugged. ‘High Fist, I’m all you’ve got. I’ll keep ’em busy for a while.’
Paran said, ‘I’ll assign the Bridgeburners to guard you – we’ve resupplied on munitions—’
‘He’s being generous,’ Dujek cut in. ‘Half a crate, and most of it close-in stuff. If the enemy gets near enough for them to have to use it, you’re way too close to one stray arrow headed your way, Wizard. I’m not happy with this, not happy at all.’
‘Can’t say I am, either,’ Quick Ben replied. He waited. He could hear the High Fist’s molars grinding.
‘Captain?’ Dujek grunted.
‘Aye, sir?’
‘Are the cussers and crackers in place? Can we collapse this damned hillside?’
‘Hedge says it’s all rigged, High Fist. We can bury every tunnel and flatten every entrenchment.’
‘So, we could just pull out and leave the Pannions to retake … a steaming mess of nothing.’
‘We could, sir.’
‘Meaning, we’ll have travelled half the continent, only to retreat before our first engagement.’
‘A temporary retreat, sir,’ Paran pointed out.
‘Or we can bloody their noses … maybe take out ten thousand Beklites, ten, twelve mages and a Septarch. At the possible cost of this army, including Quick Ben here. Gentlemen, is that a fair exchange?’
‘That is for you to decide—’ Paran began, but Dujek cut him off.
‘No, Captain. It isn’t. Not this time.’
Quick Ben met the High Fist’s eyes. I made a promise to Burn. The captain and I had … plans. To keep all of that, I say no right now. And we blow the entrenchments and scamper. But then again, I’m a soldier. A Bridgeburner. And the brutal truth is, tactically, it’s more than a fair exchange. We make it for Whiskeyjack. For the siege to come. We save lives. He glanced at Paran, saw the same knowledge in the captain’s eyes. The wizard turned back to Dujek. ‘High Fist, it is a fair exchange.’
Dujek reached up and lowered his helm’s visor. ‘All right, let’s get to work.’
Quick Ben watched the two men leave, then he sighed. ‘What do you want, Blend?’
‘Sir?’
‘Don’t you “sir” me, woman. Are you planning on rejoining your squad any time soon, or do you want a close look at my impending demise?’
‘I thought I might … uh, give you a hand.’
He faced her, eyes narrowing. ‘How?’
‘Well…’ She drew out a small stone from round her neck. ‘I picked up this charm, a few years back.’
The wizard’s brows rose. ‘And what is it supposed to do, Blend?’
‘Uh, makes me harder to focus on – seems to work pretty good.’
‘And where did you come by it?’
‘An old desert merchant, in Pan’potsun.’
Quick Ben smiled, ‘Keep it, lass.’
‘But—’
‘If you weren’t wearing it, you wouldn’t be Blend any more, would you?’
‘I suppose not. Only—’
‘Return to your squad. And tell Picker to keep her lads and lasses tight and out of the scrap – you’re to remain on that far flank, watching the city. If the condors suddenly show, get back to me as fast as possible.’
‘Aye, sir.’
‘Go on, then.’
She hurried off.
Well, damn me. The lass buys a worthless piece of stone from a Gral swindler and suddenly she’s invisible. Raw but pure talent, right in her bones, and she doesn’t even know it.
* * *
Hidden beneath fronds and brush, Picker and her squad had a clear view of the Pannion legions, the front lines reaching the base of the treeless ramp that led to the entrenchments. Grey sorcery spun a wall of tangled webbing before the chanting Beklites. The Seerdomin commanders were wreathed in the magic, advancing now on foot ahead of their companies, marching upslope with an air of inexorability.
On a bank high above the Pannions, Quick Ben looked down, exposed and alone. Or so Blend had told her – the trees on her left blocked the view.
Suicide. The wizard was good, she knew, but good only because he kept his head low and did whatever he did behind backs, in the shadows, unseen. He wasn’t Tattersail, wasn’t Hairlock or Calot. In all the years she had known him, she had not once seen him openly unveil a warren and let loose. Not only wasn’t it his style, it also wasn’t, she suspected, within his capacity.
You unsheathed the wrong weapon for this fight, High Fist …
Sudden motion in the midst of the first Pannion square. Screams. Picker’s eyes widened. Demons had appeared. Not one, but six – no, seven. Eight. Huge, towering, bestial, tearing through the massed ranks of soldiery. Blood sprayed. Limbs flew.
The Seerdomin mages wheeled.
‘Damn,’ Blend whispered at her side. ‘They’
ve swallowed it.’
Picker snapped a glare at the woman. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘They’re illusions, Lieutenant. Can’t you tell?’
No.
‘It’s all that uncertainty – they don’t know what they’re facing. Quick Ben’s playing on their fears.’
‘Blend! Wait! How in Hood’s name can you tell?’
‘Not sure, but I can.’
The Seerdomin unleashed waves of grey sorcery that broke up over the legion, sent snaking roots down towards the eight demons.
‘That will have to knock them out,’ Blend said. ‘If Quick Ben ignored the attack, the Pannions will get suspicious – let’s see how – oh!’
The magic darted like plummeting nests of adders, enwreathed the roaring demons. Their death-throes were frenzied, lashing, killing and maiming yet more soldiers on all sides. But die they did, one by one.
The first legion’s formation was a shambles, torn bodies lying everywhere. Its onward climb had been shattered, and the reassertion of order was going to take a while.
‘Amazing what happens when you believe.’ Blend said after a time.
Picker shook her head. ‘If wizards can do that, why don’t we have illusionists in every damned squad?’
‘It only works, Lieutenant, because of its rarity. Besides, it takes serious mastery to manage faking even a lone demon – how Quick Ben pulled off eight of ’em is—’
The Seerdomin mages counterattacked. A crackling, spinning wave rolled up the slope, chewing up the ground, exploding tree stumps.
‘That’s headed straight for him!’ Blend hissed, one hand clutching Picker’s shoulder, fingers digging in.
‘Ow! Let go!’
A thunderous concussion shook the ground and air.
‘Gods! He’s been killed! Blasted! Annihilated – Beru fend us all!’
Picker stared at the wailing soldier at her side, then forced her eyes once more to the scene on the ramp.
Another Seerdomin wizard appeared from the legion’s ranks, mounted on a huge dun charger. Sorcery danced over his armour, pale, dull, flickering on the double-bladed axe in his right hand.
‘Oh,’ Blend whispered. ‘That’s a sharp illusion.’
He rode to join one of his fellow mages.
Who turned.
The axe flew from the rider’s hand, its wake sparkling with suspended ice. Changed shape, blackening, twisting, reaching out clawed, midnight limbs.
The victim screamed as the wraith struck him. Death-magic punched through the protective weave of chaotic sorcery like a spear-point through chain armour, plunged into the man’s chest.
The wraith reappeared even as the Seerdomin toppled – up through his helmed head in an explosion of iron, bone, blood and brains – clutching in its black, taloned hands the Seerdomin’s soul – a thing that flared, radiating terror. The wraith, hunched over its prize, flew a zigzag path towards the forest. Vanished into the gloom.
The rider, after throwing the ghastly weapon, had driven his heels into his horse’s flanks. The huge beast had veered, hooves pounding, to ride down a second Seerdomin in a flurry of stamping that, within moments, flung blood-soaked clumps of mud into the air.
Sorcery tumbled towards the rider.
Who drove his horse forward. A ragged tear parted before them, into which horse and rider vanished. The rent closed a moment before the chaotic magic arrived. The spinning sorcery thunderclapped, gouging a crater in the hillside.
Antsy thumped Picker’s other shoulder. ‘Look! Further down! The legions at the back!’
She twisted. To see soldiers breaking formation, spreading out to disappear in the wooded hillside on either side of the ramp. ‘Damn, someone got smart.’
‘Smart ain’t all – they’re going to stumble right onto us!’
* * *
Paran saw Quick Ben reappear on the bank, stumbling from a warren, smoke streaming from his scorched leather armour. Moments earlier, the captain had thought the man annihilated, as a crackling wave of chaotic magic had hammered into the ridge of mounded earth that the wizard had chosen as his position. Grey-tongued fires still burned in the chewed-up soil around Quick Ben.
‘Captain!’
Paran turned to see a marine scrabbling up the entrenchment’s incline towards him.
‘Sir, we’ve had reports – the legions are coming up through the trees!’
‘Does the High Fist know?’
‘Yes sir! He’s sending you another company to hold this line.’
‘Very well, soldier. Go back to him and ask him to get the word passed through the ranks. I’ve got a squad down there somewhere – they’ll be coming up ahead of the enemy, likely at a run.’
‘Aye, sir.’
Paran watched the man hurry off. He then scanned his dug-in troops. They were hard to see – shadows played wildly over their positions, filled the pits and the trenches linking them. The captain’s head snapped round to Quick Ben. The wizard was hunched down, almost invisible beneath swirling shadows.
The ground below the embankment writhed and churned. Rocks and boulders were pushing up through the mulch, grinding and snapping against each other, the water on their surfaces sizzling into steam that cloaked the building mass of stone.
Two warrens unveiled – no, must be three – those boulders are red hot.
Shadows slipped down the bank, flowed between and beneath the gathering boulders.
He’s building a scree – one that the enemy won’t notice … until it’s too late.
Down among the trees Paran could now see movement, ragged lines of Pannions climbing towards them. No shield-lines, no turtles – the toll among the Beklites, once they closed to attack, would be fearful.
Damn, where in the Abyss is Picker and the squad, then?
On the ramp, the first legion had reformed and were doggedly marching upward once more, three Seerdomin mages in the lead. Webs of sorcery wove protective cloaks about them.
In rapid succession, three waves of magic roared up the ramp. The first clambered towards Quick Ben, building as it drew near. The other two rolled straight at the lead trench – in front of which stood Captain Paran.
Paran wheeled. ‘Everyone down!’ he bellowed, then threw himself flat. There was little point, he well knew. Neither his shouted warning nor his lying low would make any difference. Twisting round through the damp mulch, he was able to watch the tumbling wave approach.
The first one, aimed at Quick Ben, should have struck by now, but there was no sound, no dreadful explosion—
—except far down the slope, shaking the ground, shivering through the trees. Distant screams.
He could not pull his gaze from the magic rushing up towards him.
In its path – only moments before it reached the captain and his soldiers – a flare of darkness, a rip through the air itself, slashing across the entire width of the ramp.
The sorcery plunged into the warren with a hissing whisper.
Another detonation, far below among the massed legions.
The second wave followed the first.
A moment later, as a third explosion echoed, the warren narrowed, then vanished.
Disbelieving, Paran twisted further until he could see Quick Ben.
The wizard had built a wall of heaving stone before him, and it began to move amidst the flowing shadows, leaning, shifting, pushing humus before it. Suddenly the shadows raced downslope, between the trees, in a confusing, overwhelming wave. A moment later, the boulders followed – an avalanche that thundered, took trees with it, pouring like liquid towards the ragged lines of soldiers climbing the slope.
If they saw what struck them, there was no time to so much as scream. The slide continued to grow, burying every sign of the Beklites on that flank, until it seemed to Paran that the whole hillside was on the move, hundreds of trees slashing the air as they toppled.
Sharpers exploded on the opposite flank, drawing Paran’s attention. The Beklites on that side ha
d reached the entrenchment’s bank. Following the deadly hail of sharpers, pikes rose above the trench’s line, and the Malazans poured up the side to form a bristling line atop the bank. Among them, heavy-armoured marines with assault crossbows.
The Beklites struggled upward, died by the score.
Then, at almost point-blank range, sorcery lashed the Malazan line. Bodies exploded within the grey fire.
As the miasmic magic dwindled, Paran could see naught but mangled corpses on the bank. The Beklites swarmed upward. Overhead, a condor trailing grey flames climbed laboriously back into the sky.
A flight of thirty Black Moranth darted to meet it. A score loosed crossbow quarrels towards the huge bird. Grey lightning lashed out from the condor, incinerating the missiles. A writhing wave blighted the sky, swept through the Black Moranth. Armour and flesh exploded.
Quick Ben stumbled to Paran’s side, frantically cleared the mulch away in front of the captain, until a patch of bare earth was revealed.
‘What are you—’
‘Draw that damned bird, Captain! With your finger – draw a card!’
‘But I can’t—’
‘Draw!’
Paran dragged his gloved index finger through the damp earth, beginning with a rectangular outline. His hand shook as he attempted to sketch the basic lines of the condor. ‘This is madness – it won’t work – gods, I can’t even draw!’
‘Are you done? Is that it?’
‘What in Hood’s name do you want?’
‘Fine!’ the wizard snapped. He made a fist and thumped the image.
Overhead, the demonic condor had begun another dive.
Suddenly, its wings flapped wildly, as if it could find no air beneath them. The creature plummeted straight down.
Quick Ben leapt to his feet, dragging Paran upright with him. ‘Come on! Pull out your damned sword, Captain!’
They sprinted along the bank, the wizard leading them to where the condor had landed just beyond the overrun trench.
Moments later, they were running through steaming shards of armour and smouldering flesh – all that was left of the company of Malazans. The first wave of Beklites had fought their way to the second trench and were locked in fierce battle with Dujek’s heavy infantry. To Paran and Quick Ben’s right, downslope, the second wave was less than thirty paces away.
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