And thought he heard a sound on the other side.
Sirryn pressed his cheek against the door. ‘Tap if you can hear me!’ His own rasp sounded frighteningly loud in his ears.
After a half-dozen heartbeats, he heard a faint tap.
‘I’m Finadd Sirryn Kanar, an agent of the Chancellor’s. There’s no-one else about. Let me through in the name of the Empire!’
Again, another long wait. Then he heard the sound of the bar scraping clear, and then a weight pushed against him and he scrabbled back to let the door open.
The young face of a soldier peered up at him. ‘Finadd?’
Very young. Sirryn edged down into the entranceway, forcing the soldier back. So young I could kiss him, take him right here, by the Errant! ‘Close this door, quickly!’
‘What has happened?’ the soldier asked, hastening to shut the portal, then, in the sudden darkness, struggling with the heavy bar. ‘Where is the army, sir?’
As the bar clunked back in place, Sirryn allowed himself, at last, to feel safe. Back to his old form. He reached out, grasped a fistful of tunic, and dragged the soldier close. ‘You damned fool! Anybody calling himself a Finadd and you open the damned door? I should have you flailed alive, soldier! In fact, I think I will!’
‘P-please, sir, I just—’
‘Be quiet! You’re going to need to convince me another way, I think.’
‘Sir?’
There was still time. That foreign army was a day away, maybe more. And he was feeling so very alive at this moment. He reached up and stroked the lad’s cheek. And heard a sudden intake of breath. Ah, a quick-witted lad, then. It would be easy to—
A knife-tip pricked just under his right eye, and all at once the soldier’s young voice hardened. ‘Finadd, you want to live to climb out the other end of this tunnel, then you’ll leave off right here. Sir.’
‘I’ll have your name—’
‘You’re welcome to it, Finadd, and may the Errant bless your eternal search – because I wasn’t behind this door as a guard, sir. I was readying to make my escape.’
‘Your what?’
‘The mob rules the streets, Finadd. All we hold right now are the walls and gate houses. Oh, and the Eternal Domicile, where our insane Emperor keeps killing champions like it was a civic holiday. Nobody’s much interested in besieging that place. Besides, the Edur left yesterday. All of them. Gone. So, Finadd, you want to get to your lover Chancellor, well, you’re welcome to try.’
The knife pressed down, punctured skin and drew out a tear of blood. ‘Now, sir. You can make for the dagger at your belt, and die. Or you can let go of my shirt.’
Insolence and cowardice were hardly attractive qualities. ‘Happy to oblige, soldier,’ Sirryn said, releasing his hold on the man. ‘Now, if you’re going out, then I had better remain here and lock the door behind you, yes?’
‘Finadd, you can do whatever you please once I’m gone. So back away, sir. No, farther. That’s good.’
Sirryn waited for the soldier to escape. He could still feel that knife-tip and the wound stung as sweat seeped into it. It was not cowardice, he told himself, that had forced him back, away from this hot-headed bastard busy disgracing his uniform. Simple expedience. He needed to get to the Chancellor, didn’t he? That was paramount.
And now, absurdly, he would have to face making his way, unescorted, through the very city where he had been born, in fear for his life. The world had turned on its end. I could just wait here, yes, in this tunnel, in the dark – no, the foreigners are coming. The Eternal Domicile – where, if surrender is demanded, Triban Gnol can do the negotiating, can oversee the handing over of the Emperor. And the Chancellor will want his loyal guards at his side. He’ll want Finadd Sirryn Kanar, the last survivor of the battle at the river – Sirryn Kanar, who broke through the enemy lines to rush back to his Chancellor, bearer, yes, of grim news. Yet he won through, did he not?
The soldier lowered the door back down from the other side. Sirryn moved up to it, found the bar and lifted it into place. He could reach the Eternal Domicile, even if it meant swimming the damned canals.
I still live. I can win through all of this.
There’s not enough of these foreigners to rule the empire.
They’ll need help, yes.
He set out along the tunnel.
The young soldier was twenty paces from the hidden door when dark figures rose on all sides and he saw those terrifying crossbows aimed at him. He froze, slowly raised his hands.
One figure spoke, then, in a language the soldier did not understand, and he flinched as someone stepped round him from behind – a woman, grinning, daggers in her gloved hands. She met his eyes and winked, then mimed a kiss.
‘We not yet decide let you live,’ the first one then said in rough Letherii. ‘You spy?’
‘No,’ the soldier replied. ‘Deserter.’
‘Honest man, good. You answer all our questions? These doors, tunnels, why do sappers’ work for us? Explain.’
‘Yes, I will explain everything. I don’t want to die.’
Corporal Tarr sighed, then turned from the prisoner to face Koryk. ‘Better get Fid and the captain, Koryk. Looks like maybe we won’t have to knock down any walls after all.’
Smiles snorted, sheathing her knives. ‘No elegant back stab. And no torture. This isn’t any fun at all.’ She paused, then added, ‘Good thing we didn’t take down the first one, though, isn’t it? Led us right to this.’
Their horses had not been exercised nearly enough, and were now huffing, heads lifting and falling as Sergeant Balm led his small troop inland. Too dark now to hunt Letherii and besides, the fun had grown sour awfully fast. Sure, slaughter made sense when on the enemy’s own soil, since every soldier who got away was likely to fight again, and so they’d chased down the miserable wretches. But it was tiring work.
When magic wasn’t around in a battle, Moranth munitions took its place, and the fit was very nice indeed. As far as we’re concerned, anyway. Gods, just seeing those bodies – and pieces of bodies – flying up into the air – and I was getting all confused, at the beginning there. Bits of Letherii everywhere and all that ringing in my ears.
He’d come around sharp enough when he saw Cord’s idiot sapper, Crump, running up the slope straight at the enemy line, with a Hood-damned cusser in each hand. If it hadn’t been for all those blown-up Letherii absorbing so much of the twin blasts then Crump would still be standing there. His feet, anyway. The rest of him would be red haze drifting into the sunset. As it was, Crump was flattened beneath an avalanche of body parts, eventually clambering free like one of Hood’s own revenants. Although Balm was pretty sure revenants didn’t smile.
Not witless smiles, anyway.
Where the cussers had not obliterated entire companies of the enemy, the main attack – wedges of advancing heavies and medium infantry with a thin scattering of skirmishers and sappers out front – had closed with a hail of sharpers, virtually disintegrating the Letherii front ranks. And then it was just the killing thrust with those human wedges, ripping apart the enemy’s formations, driving the Letherii soldiers back until they were packed tight and unable to do anything but die.
The Adjunct’s Fourteenth Army, the Bonehunters, had shown, at long last, that they knew how to fight. She’d gotten her straight-in shield to shield dragged-out battle, and hadn’t it been just grand?
Riding ahead as point was Masan Gilani. Made sense, using her. First off, she was the best rider by far, and secondly, there wasn’t a soldier, man or woman, who could drag their eyes off her delicious round behind in that saddle, which made following her easy. Even in the gathering dark, aye. Not that it actually glows. I don’t think. But…amazing how we can all see it just fine. Why, could be a night without any other moon and no stars and nothing but the Abyss on all sides, and we’d follow that glorious, jiggling—
Balm sawed his reins, pulling off to one side, just missing Masan Gilani’s horse – which was stan
ding still, and Masan suddenly nowhere in sight.
Cursing, he dragged his weary horse to a halt, raising a hand to command those behind him to draw up.
‘Masan?’
‘Over here,’ came the luscious, heavenly voice, and a moment later she emerged out of the gloom ahead. ‘We’re on the killing field.’
‘Not a chance,’ Throatslitter said from behind Balm. ‘No bodies, Masan, no nothing.’
Deadsmell rode a few paces ahead, then stopped and dismounted. He looked round in the gloom. ‘No, she’s right,’ he said. ‘This was where Keneb’s marines closed ranks.’
They’d all seen the strange glow to the north – seen it from the ships, in fact, when the transports did their neat turn and surged for the shoreline. And before that, well, they’d seen the Letherii sorcery, that terrifying wave climbing into the sky and it was then that everyone knew the marines were finished. No Quick Ben to beat it all back, even if he could have, and Balm agreed with most everyone else that, good as he was, he wasn’t that good. No Quick Ben, and no Sinn – aye, there she was, perched on the bow of the Froth Wolf with Grub at her side, staring at that dreadful conjuration.
When the thing rolled forward and then crashed down, well, curses rang in the air, curses or prayers and sometimes both, and this, soldiers said, was worse even than Y’Ghatan, and those poor damned marines, always getting their teeth kicked in, only this time nobody was coming out. The only thing that’d be pushing up from the ground in a few days’ time would be slivers of burnt bone.
So the Bonehunters on the transports had been a mean-spirited bunch by the time they emptied the water out of their boots and picked up their weapons. Mean, aye, as that Letherii army could attest to, oh yes.
After the Letherii magic had faded, crashed away as if to nothing in the distance, there had been a cry from Sinn, and Balm had seen with his own eyes Grub dancing about on the foredeck. And then everyone else had seen that blue-white dome of swirling light, rising up from where the Letherii magic had come down.
What did it mean?
Cord and Shard had gone up to Sinn, but she wasn’t talking which was a shock to them all. And all Grub said was something that nobody afterwards could even agree on, and since Balm hadn’t heard it himself he concluded that Grub probably hadn’t said anything at all, except maybe ‘I got to pee’ which explained all that dancing.
‘Could it be that Letherii magic turned them all into dust?’ Throatslitter wondered now as he walked on the dew-laden field.
‘And left the grasses growing wild?’ Masan Gilani countered.
‘Something over here,’ Deadsmell said from ten or so paces on.
Balm and Throatslitter dismounted and joined Masan Gilani – slightly behind her to either side. And the three of them set off after Deadsmell, who was now fast disappearing in the gloom.
‘Slow up there, Corporal!’ It’s not like the Universal Lodestone is bouncing up there with you, is it?
They saw that Deadsmell had finally halted, standing before a grey heap of something.
‘What did you find?’ Balm asked.
‘Looks like a shell midden,’ Throatslitter muttered.
‘Hah, always figured you for a fisher’s spawn.’
‘Spawn, ha ha, that’s so funny, Sergeant.’
‘Yeah? Then why ain’t you laughing? On second thought, don’t – they’ll hear it in the city and get scared. Well, scareder than they already are.’
They joined Deadsmell.
‘It’s a damned barrow,’ said Throatslitter. ‘And look, all kinds of Malazan stuff on it. Gods, Sergeant, you don’t think all that’s left of all those marines is under this mound?’
Balm shrugged. ‘We don’t even know how many made it this far. Could be six of ’em. In fact, it’s a damned miracle any of ’em did in the first place.’
‘No no,’ Deadsmell said. ‘There’s only one in there, but that’s about all I can say, Sergeant. There’s not a whisper of magic left here and probably never will be. It’s all been sucked dry.’
‘By the Letherii?’
The corporal shrugged. ‘Could be. That ritual was a bristling pig of a spell. Old magic, rougher than what comes from warrens.’
Masan Gilani crouched down and touched a badly notched Malazan shortsword. ‘Looks like someone did a lot of hacking with this thing, and if they made it this far doing just that, well, beat-up or not, a soldier doesn’t just toss it away like this.’
‘Unless the dead one inside earned the honour,’ Deadsmell said, nodding.
‘So,’ Masan concluded, ‘a Malazan. But just one.’
‘Aye, just the one.’
She straightened. ‘So where are the rest of them?’
‘Start looking for a trail or something,’ Balm said to Masan Gilani.
They all watched her head off into the gloom.
Then smiled at each other.
Lostara Yil walked up to where stood the Adjunct. ‘Most of the squads are back,’ she reported. ‘Pickets are being set now.’
‘Has Sergeant Balm returned?’
‘Not yet, Adjunct.’ She hesitated, then added, ‘Fist Keneb would have sent a runner.’
Tavore turned slightly to regard her. ‘Would he?’
Lostara Yil blinked. ‘Of course. Even at full strength – which we know would be impossible – he doesn’t have the soldiers to take Letheras. Adjunct, having heard nothing, we have to anticipate the worst.’
During the battle, Lostara Yil had remained close to her commander, although at no point was the Adjunct in any danger from the Letherii. The landing had been quick, professional. As for the battle, classic Malazan, even without the usual contingent of marines to augment the advance from the shoreline. Perfect, and brutal.
The Letherii were already in poor shape, she saw. Not from any fight, but from a fast march from well inland – probably where the wave of sorcery had erupted. Disordered in their exhaustion, and in some other, unaccountable way, profoundly rattled.
Or so had been the Adjunct’s assessment, after watching the enemy troops form ranks.
And she had been proved right. The Letherii had shattered like thin ice on a puddle. And what had happened to their mages? Nowhere in sight, leading Lostara to believe that those mages had used themselves up with that terrible conflagration they’d unleashed earlier.
Moranth munitions broke the Letherii apart – the Letherii commander had sent archers down the slope and the Bonehunters had had to wither a hail of sleeting arrows on their advance. There had been three hundred or so killed or wounded but there should have been more. Malazan armour, it turned out, was superior to the local armour; and once the skirmishers drew within range of their crossbows and sharpers, the enemy archers took heavy losses before fleeing back up the slope.
The Malazans simply followed them.
Sharpers, a few cussers sailing over the heads of the front Letherii ranks. Burners along the slope of the far left flank to ward off a modest cavalry charge. Smokers into the press to sow confusion. And then the wedges struck home.
Even then, had the Letherii stiffened their defence along the ridge, they could have bloodied the Malazans. Instead, they melted back, the lines collapsing, writhing like a wounded snake, and all at once the rout began. And with it, unmitigated slaughter.
The Adjunct had let her soldiers go, and Lostara Yil understood that decision. So much held down, for so long – and the growing belief that Fist Keneb and all his marines were dead. Murdered by sorcery. Such things can only be answered one sword-swing at a time, until the arm grows leaden, until the breaths are gulped down ragged and desperate.
And now, into the camp, the last of the soldiers were returning from their slaughter of Letherii. Faces drawn, expressions numbed – as if each soldier had but just awakened from a nightmare, one in which he or she – surprise – was the monster.
She hardens them, for that is what she needs.
The Adjunct spoke, ‘Grub does not behave like a child who has
lost his father.’
Lostara Yil snorted. ‘The lad is addled, Adjunct. You saw him dance. You heard him singing about candles.’
‘Addled. Yes, perhaps.’
‘In any case,’ Lostara persisted, ‘unlike Sinn, Grub has no talents, no way of knowing the fate of Fist Keneb. As for Sinn, well, as you know, I have little faith in her. Not because I believe her without power. She has that, Dryjhna knows.’ Then she shrugged. ‘Adjunct, they were on their own – entirely on their own – for so long. Under strength to conduct a full-scale invasion.’ She stopped then, realizing how critical all of this sounded. And isn’t it just that? A criticism of this, and of you, Adjunct. Didn’t we abandon them?
‘I am aware of the views among the soldiers,’ Tavore said, inflectionless.
‘Adjunct,’ Lostara said, ‘we cannot conduct much of a siege, unless we use what sappers we have and most of our heavier munitions – I sense you’re in something of a hurry and have no interest in settling in. When will the rest of the Perish and the Khundryl be joining us?’
‘They shall not be joining us,’ Tavore replied. ‘We shall be joining them. To the east.’
The other half of this campaign. Another invasion, then. Damn you, Adjunct, I wish you shared your strategies. With me. Hood, with anyone! ‘I have wondered,’ she said, ‘at the disordered response from the Tiste Edur and the Letherii.’
The Adjunct sighed, so low, so drawn out that Lostara Yil barely caught it. Then Tavore said, ‘This empire is unwell. Our original assessment that the Tiste Edur were unpopular overseers was accurate. Where we erred, with respect to Fist Keneb’s landing, was in not sufficiently comprehending the complexities of that relationship. The split has occurred, Captain. It just took longer.’
At the expense of over a thousand marines.
‘Fist Keneb would not send a runner,’ Tavore said. ‘He would, in fact, lead his marines straight for Letheras. “First in, last out,” as Sergeant Fiddler might say.’
‘Last in, looking around,’ Lostara said without thinking, then winced. ‘Sorry, Adjunct—’
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