The Malazan Empire

by Steven Erikson

  Hah, yes, Fiddler, Lord of the Sappers. Hie and fall on your knees!

  Bottle sat looking through the ever-sharp eyes of a cat. Perched on the ridge of the tavern roof, gaze fixing and tracking on birds whenever the mage’s concentration slipped – which was getting too often, but exhaustion did that, didn’t it?

  But now, there was movement there, along the edge of the forest there – where the squad had been hiding not so long ago. And more, to the north of that. And there, an Edur scout, edging out from the south end, other side of the road. Sniffing the air as was their wont – no surprise, the Malazans carried a carrion reek with them everywhere they went these days.

  Oh, they were cautious, weren’t they? They don’t want a real engagement. They just want us to bolt. Again. Once their strength’s up, they’ll show themselves more openly. Show their numbers, lances at the ready.

  A little time yet, then. For the other marines to relax. But not too much, lest they all got so drunk they couldn’t stand, much less fight. Although, come to think on it, that Hellian seemed capable of fighting no matter how sodden she got – one of her corporals had talked about how she sobered up and turned into ice whenever the fighting started. Whenever orders needed delivering. That was a singular talent indeed. Her soldiers worshipped her. As did Urb and his squad. Worship all bound up with terror and probably more than a little lust, so a mixed-up kind of worship, which probably made it thick as armour and that was why so many were still alive.

  Hellian, like a more modest version of, say, Coltaine. Or even Dujek during the Genabackan campaigns. Greymane in Korel. Prince K’azz for the Crimson Guard – from what I’ve heard.

  But not, alas, the Adjunct. And that’s too bad. That’s worse than too bad—

  Twenty Tiste Edur visible now, all eyeing the village – ooh, look at that bird! No, that wasn’t them. That was the damned cat. He needed to focus.

  More of the barbaric warriors appearing. Another twenty. And there, another group as big as the first two combined.

  A third one, coming down from due north and maybe even a little easterly—

  Bottle shook himself, sat up, blinked across at his fellow marines. ‘They’re coming,’ he said. ‘We got to run.’

  ‘How many?’ Koryk demanded.

  Three hundred and climbing. ‘Too many—’

  ‘Bottle!’

  ‘Hundreds, damn you!’

  He glared around the room, in the sudden silence following his scream. Well now, that sobered ’em up.

  Beak’s eyes felt full of sand. His tongue was thick in his mouth and he felt slightly nauseous. He wasn’t used to keeping a candle lit for so long, but there had been little choice. The Tiste Edur were everywhere now. He had been muffling the sounds of horse hoofs from their mounts, he had been blurring their passage to make them little more than deeper shadows amidst the dappled cascade beneath branches. And he had been reaching out, his every sense awakened to almost painful precision, to find these stealthy hunters as they closed in on their trail. On everyone’s trail. And to make matters worse, they were fighting in the same way as the Malazans – fast, vicious clashes, not even worrying about actually killing because wounding was better. Wounding slowed the marines down. Left blood trails. They cut then withdrew. Then did it all over again, later. Nights and into the days now, so there was no time to rest. Time only to…run.

  And now he and the captain were riding in daylight, trying to find a way back to Fist Keneb and all the squads that had linked up with his company. Four hundred marines as of two days ago. Beak and the captain had pushed east in an effort to contact those squads that had moved faster and farther than all the others, but they had been driven back – too many Tiste Edur bands in between. He now knew that Faradan Sort feared those squads lost, if not dead already then as good as.

  He was also pretty sure that this invasion was not quite going as planned. Something in the look in the captain’s dark eyes told him that it wasn’t just the two of them who kept stumbling into trouble. They’d found three squads, after all, that had been butchered – oh, they’d charged a high toll for the privilege, as Faradan Sort had said after wandering the glade with its heaps of corpses and studying the blood trails leading off into the woods. Beak could tell just by the silent howl of death roiling in the air, that cold fire that was the breath of every field of battle. A howl frozen like shock into the trees, the trunks, the branches and the leaves. And in the ground underfoot, oozing like sap, and Lily, his sweet bay, didn’t want to take a single step into that clearing and Beak knew why.

  A high toll, yes, just like she’d said, although of course no real coins were paid. Just lives.

  They worked their weary mounts up an embankment all overgrown with bushes, and Beak was forced to concentrate even harder to mute the sounds of scrabbling hoofs and snapping brush, and the candle in his head flared suddenly and he very nearly reeled from his saddle.

  The captain’s hand reached across and steadied him. ‘Beak?’

  ‘It’s hot,’ he muttered. And now, all at once, he could suddenly see where all this was going, and what he would need to do.

  The horses broke the contact between them as they struggled up the last of the ridge.

  ‘Hold,’ Faradan Sort murmured.

  Yes. Beak sighed. ‘Just ahead, Captain. We found them.’

  A score of trees had been felled and left to rot directly ahead, and on this side of that barrier was a scum-laden pool on which danced glittering insects. Two marines smeared in mud rose from the near side of the bank, crossbows at the ready.

  The captain raised her right hand and made a sequence of gestures, and the crossbows swung away and they were waved forward.

  There was a mage crouched in a hollow beneath one of the felled trees, and she gave Beak a nod that seemed a little nervous. He waved back as they reined in ten paces from the pool.

  The mage called out from her cover: ‘Been expecting you two. Beak, you got a glow so bright it’s damned near blinding.’ Then she laughed. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not the kind the Edur can see, not even their warlocks. But I’d dampen it down some, Beak, lest you burn right up.’

  The captain turned to him and nodded. ‘Rest now, Beak.’

  Rest? No, there could be no rest. Not ever again. ‘Sir, there are hundreds of Edur coming. From the northwest—’

  ‘We know,’ the other mage said, clambering out like a toad at dusk. ‘We was just getting ready to pack our travelling trunks and the uniforms are pressed and the standards restitched in gold.’

  ‘Really?’

  She sobered and there was a sudden soft look in her eyes, reminding Beak of that one nurse his mother had hired, the one who was then raped by his father and had to go away. ‘No, Beak, just havin’ fun.’

  Too bad, he considered. He would like to have seen that gold thread.

  They dismounted and walked their horses round one end of the felled trees, and there, before them, was the Fist’s encampment. ‘Hood’s mercy,’ Faradan Sort said, ‘there’s more.’

  ‘Six hundred and seventy-one, sir,’ Beak said. And like the mage had said, there were getting ready to leave, swarming like ants on a kicked mound. There had been wounded – lots of them – but the healers had done their work and all the blood smelled old and the smell of death stayed where it belonged, close to the dozen graves on the far side of the clearing.

  ‘Come along,’ said the captain as two soldiers arrived to take charge of the horses, and Beak followed her as she made her way to where stood Fist Keneb and Sergeant Thom Tissy.

  It felt strange to be walking after so long seated in those strange Letherii saddles, as if the ground was crumbling underfoot, and everything looked oddly fragile. Yes. My friends. All of them.

  ‘How bad?’ Keneb asked Faradan Sort.

  ‘We couldn’t reach them,’ she replied, ‘but there is still hope. Fist, Beak says we have to hurry.’

  The Fist glanced at Beak and the young mage nearly wilted. Attention
from important people always did that to him.

  Keneb nodded, then sighed. ‘I want to keep waiting, in case…’ He shook his head. ‘Fair enough. It’s time to change tactics.’

  ‘Yes sir,’ said the captain.

  ‘We push hard. For the capital, and if we run into anything we can’t handle…we handle it.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘Captain, gather ten squads with full complement of heavies. Take command of our rearguard.’

  ‘Yes sir.’ She turned and took Beak by the arm. ‘I want you on a stretcher, Beak,’ she said as she led him along. ‘Sleeping.’

  ‘I can’t, sir—’

  ‘You will.’

  ‘No, I really can’t. The candles, they won’t go out. Not any more. They won’t go out.’ Not ever, Captain, and it isn’t that I don’t love you because I do and I’d do anything you asked. But I just can’t and I can’t even explain. Only, it’s too late.

  He wasn’t sure what she saw in his eyes, wasn’t sure how much of all that he didn’t say got heard anyway, but the grip of her hand on his arm loosened, became almost a caress, and she nodded and turned her head away. ‘All right, Beak. Help us guard Keneb’s back, then.’

  ‘Yes sir, I will. You just watch me, I will.’ He waited a moment, as they walked side by side through the camp, and then asked, ‘Sir, if there’s something we can’t handle how do we handle it anyway?’

  She either grunted or laughed from the same place that grunts came from. ‘Sawtooth wedges and keep going, Beak. Throw back whatever is thrown at us. Keep going, until…’

  ‘Until what?’

  ‘It’s all right, Beak, to die alongside your comrades. It’s all right. Do you understand me?’

  ‘Yes sir, I do. It is all right, because they’re my friends.’

  ‘That’s right, Beak.’

  And that’s why no-one needs to worry, Captain.

  Keneb watched as his marines fell into formation. Fast march, now, as if these poor souls weren’t beat enough. But they couldn’t dart and hide any more. The enemy had turned the game round and they had the advantage in numbers and maybe, finally, they were also a match for the ferocity of his Malazans.

  It had been inevitable. No empire just rolls over, legs splaying. After enough pokes and jabs, it turns and snarls and then the fangs sink deep. And now it was his marines who were doing the bleeding. But not nearly as bad as I’d feared. Look at them, Keneb. Looking meaner than ever.

  ‘Fist,’ Thom Tissy said beside him, ‘they’re ready for you.’

  ‘I see that, Sergeant.’

  ‘No sir. I meant, they’re ready.’

  Keneb met the squat man’s dark, beady eyes, and wasn’t sure what he saw in them. Whatever it was, it burned bright.

  ‘Sir,’ Thom Tissy said, ‘it’s what we’re meant for. All’ – he waved one grimy hand – ‘this. Trained to play more than one game, right? We stuck ’em enough to get ’em riled up and so here they are, all those damned Edur drawn right to us like we was a lodestone. Now we’re about to knock ’em off balance all over again, and Hood take me, it’s got my blood up! Same for us all! So, please, sir, sound us the order to march.’

  Keneb stared at the man a moment longer, then he nodded.

  To the sound of laughter, Koryk barrelled into the three Edur warriors, his heavy longsword hammering aside two of the out-thrust spears jabbing for his midsection. With his left hand he caught the shaft of the third one and used it to pull himself forward. Edge of his blade into the face of the warrior on his right – not deep enough to cause serious damage, but enough to spray blinding blood. Against the one in the middle, Koryk dropped one shoulder and hit him hard in the centre of his chest – hard enough to lift the Edur from his feet and send him sprawling back. Still gripping the third spear, Koryk twisted the warrior round and drove the point of his sword into the Edur’s throat.

  Koryk spun to slash at the first warrior, only to see her tumble back with a throwing knife skewering one eye socket. So he lunged after the middle Edur, sword chopping down in a frenzy until the Edur’s smashed-up arms – raised to fend off the attack – fell away, freeing the half-blood Seti to deliver a skull-crushing blow.

  Then he whirled. ‘Will you in Hood’s name stop that laughing!’

  But Smiles was on one knee, convulsing with hilarity even as she pulled out her throwing knife. ‘Gods! I can’t breathe! Wait – just wait—’

  Snarling, Koryk turned to face the cloister again – these narrow-laned mews created perfect cul-de-sacs – lead them in at a run, flank out then turn and cut the bastards down. Even so, nobody had planned on making this ugly village the site of their last stand. Except maybe the Edur, who now entirely surrounded it and were working their way in, house by house, lane by lane.

  Felt good kicking back, though, whenever they got too spread out in their eagerness to spill Malazan blood.

  ‘They stink at fighting in groups,’ Smiles said, coming up alongside him. She glanced up into his face and then burst out laughing again.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘You! Them! The look in their eyes – the surprise, I mean, oh, gods of the deep! I can’t stop!’

  ‘You’d better,’ Koryk warned, shaking the blood from his sword. ‘I’m hearing movement – that lane mouth there – come on.’

  Three quarrels flitted out, two of them taking down onrushing Edur. Two lances arced in retaliation, both darting straight for Fiddler. And then Tarr’s huge shield shifted into their path, and the sergeant was pushed hard to one side – grunts from the corporal as both lances slammed solidly against the bronze-scaled face, one of them punching through a finger’s length to pierce Tarr’s upper arm. The corporal swore.

  Fiddler ducked down behind the smithy’s quenching barrel as a third lance cracked into it. Water gushed out onto the ground.

  The crossfire ambush then caught the half-dozen charging Edur unawares – quarrels sleeting out from the narrow alley mouths on both sides. Moments later all were down, dead or dying.

  ‘Pull back!’ Fiddler shouted, turning to exchange his unloaded crossbow for the loaded one Bottle now set into his hands.

  Tarr covering the three of them, they retreated back through the smithy, across the dusty compound with its piled tailings and slag, through the kicked-down fence, and back towards the tavern.

  Where, from the sounds, Stormy and his heavies were in a fight.

  Motion on their flanks – the rest of the ambush converging. Cuttle, Corabb, Maybe, Gesler, Balgrid and Brethless. Reloading on the run.

  ‘Gesler! Stormy’s—’

  ‘I can hear it, Fid! Corabb – hand that damned crossbow over to Brethless – you’re useless with it. Join up with Tarr there and you two in first!’

  ‘I got my target!’ Corabb protested even as he gave one of Hellian’s corporals the heavy weapon.

  ‘By bouncing your quarrel off the cobbles and don’t tell me that was a planned shot!’

  Corabb was already readying the Edur spear he had picked up.

  Fiddler waved Tarr forward as soon as Corabb arrived. ‘Go, you two! Fast in and hard!’

  Only by leaving his feet and throwing his entire weight on the shaft was the Edur able to drive the spear entirely through Stormy’s left shoulder. An act of extraordinary courage that was rewarded with a thumb in his left eye – that dug yet deeper, then deeper still. Shrieking, the warrior tried to jerk his head away, but the huge red-bearded corporal now clutched a handful of hair and was holding him tight.

  With a still louder shriek and even greater courage, the Edur tore his head back, leaving Stormy with a handful of scalp and a thumb smeared in gel and blood.

  ‘Not so fast,’ the corporal said in a strangely matter-of-fact tone, as he lunged forward to grapple the Edur. Both went down onto the smeared floorboards of the tavern – and the impact pushed the spear in Stormy’s shoulder almost entirely through. Drawing his gutting knife, Stormy drove the blade into the warrior’s side, just be
neath the ribcage, under the heart, then cut outward.

  Blood gushed in a flood.

  Staggering, slipping, Stormy managed to regain his feet – the spear falling from his back – and tottered until he came up against the table with its pile of severed Edur heads. He reached for one and threw it across the room, into the crowd of Edur pushing in through the doorway where Flashwit and Bowl had been holding position until a spear skewered Bowl through the man’s neck and someone knocked off Flashwit’s helm and laid open her head. She was lying on her back, not moving as the moccasin-clad feet of the Edur stamped all over her in the inward rush.

  The head struck the lead warrior in the face, and he howled in shock and pain, reeling to one side.

  Mayfly stumbled up to take position beside Stormy. Stabbed four times already, it was a wonder the heavy was still standing.

  ‘Don’t you die, woman,’ Stormy rumbled.

  She set his sword into his hands. ‘Found this, Sergeant, and thought you might want it.’

  There was no time to answer as the first three Edur reached them.

  Emerging from the kitchen entrance – a kitchen now emptied of serving staff – Corabb saw that charge, and he leapt forward to take it from the flank.

  And tripped headlong over the body of the Edur that Stormy had just stabbed. His hands went forward, still holding the spear. The point drove through the right thigh of the nearest warrior, missing the bone, and plunged out the other side to stab into the next Edur’s left knee, the triangular head sliding under the patella and neatly separating the joint on its way through. Angling downward, the point sticking fast between two floorboards, until the far one sprang loose, in time to foul the steps of the third Edur, and that warrior seemed to simply throw himself onto Stormy’s out-thrust sword.

  As Corabb landed amidst falling enemy, Tarr arrived, his shortsword hacking down here and there as he worked forward to plant himself in the path of the rest of the Edur.

  Flashwit then stood up in their midst and she had a kethra knife in each hand.