‘I shall remain here,’ Bedit said, lowering himself into a crouch.
‘If they move sound the call.’
‘Yes, Warleader.’
Talt hesitated, turning to squint at a mountainous mass of storm clouds to the southwest. Closer, yes.
Bedit must have followed his gaze. ‘We are in its path. It will do much to cool us down, I think.’
‘Be sure to leave this hilltop before it arrives,’ Talt advised. ‘And hold that spear to the ground.’
Nodding, Bedit grinned and tapped the side of his bone and horn helm. ‘Tell the fools below who are wearing iron peaks.’
‘I will, although it’s the Akrynnai who should be worried.’
Bedit barked a laugh.
Talt turned and trotted back down to his warriors.
Inthalas, third daughter of Sceptre Irkullas, leaned forward on her saddle.
Beside her, Sagant shook himself and said, ‘They’re done, I think.’
She nodded, but somewhat distractedly. She had lived her entire life on these plains. She had weathered the fiercest prairie storms—she recalled, once, seeing a hundred dead bhederin on a slope, each one killed by lightning—but she had never before seen clouds like these ones.
Her horse was trembling beneath her.
Sagant gusted out a breath. ‘We have time, I think, if we strike now. Get it over with quickly and then try to outride the storm.’
After a moment, Inthalas nodded.
Sagant laughed and swung his horse round, leaving the small troop of outriders to ride down to where waited—unseen by any Barghast—three wings of Akrynnai horse-archers and lancers, along with nine hundred armoured, axe-wielding shock troops: in all, almost three thousand warriors. As he drew closer, he gestured with his free hand, saw with pleasure the alacrity with which his troops responded.
The Sceptre’s great success had been founded, in part, on the clever adoption of the better qualities of the Letherii military—foot-soldiers capable of maintaining tight, disciplined ranks, for one, and an adherence to a doctrine of formations, as well as dictating the field of battle in situations of their own choosing.
Leading the Barghast ever onward, until they were exhausted—leading them straight to their waiting heavy infantry, to a battle in which the White Faces could not hope to triumph—Inthalas had learned well from her father.
This would be a fine day of slaughter. He laughed again.
______
Inthalas had done her part. Now it was time for Sagant. They would finish with these Barghast quickly—she glanced again at the storm-front—yes, it would have to be quickly. The blackened bellies of those clouds seemed to be scraping the ground, reminding her of smoke—but she could not smell anything like a grass fire—no, this was uncanny, troubling. Still a league or more distant, but fast closing.
She shook herself, faced her fellow outriders. ‘We will ride to find a better vantage point once the battle is engaged—and should any Barghast break free, I give you leave to chase them down. You have done well—the fools are spent, unsuspecting, and even now the great village they left behind is likely burning to the Sceptre’s touch.’
At that she saw cold smiles.
‘Perhaps,’ she added, ‘we can capture a few here, and visit upon them the horrors they so callously delivered upon our innocent kin.’
This pleased them even more.
Bedit had watched one of the riders disappear down the other side of the ridge, and this struck him with a faint unease. What reason for that, except to join another troop—hidden in the hollow beyond? Then again, it might be that the entire village waited there, crowded with hundreds of terrified fools.
He slowly straightened—and then felt the first rumble beneath his feet.
Bedit turned to face the storm, and his eyes widened. The enormous, swollen clouds were suddenly churning, lifting. Walls of dust or rain spanned the distance between them and the ground, but not—as one would expect—a single front; rather, countless walls, shifting like curtains in a broken row of bizarre angles—and he could now see something like white foam tumbling out from the base of those walls.
Hail.
But if that was true, then those hailstones must be the size of fists—even larger—else he would not be able to see anything of them at this distance. The drumming beneath him shook the entire hill. He shot the Akrynnai a glance and saw them riding straight for him.
Beneath hail and lightning then! He tilted his head back and shrieked his warning to Talt and the others, then collected up his spear and ran down to join them.
He had just reached the ranks when Akrynnai horse-warriors appeared behind the Barghast, and then on both sides, reining up and closing at the ends to form a three-sided encirclement. Cursing, Bedit spun to face the hill he had just descended. The scouts were there, but well off to one side, and as he stared—half-hearing the shouts of dismay from his fellow warriors through the tumult of thunder—he saw the first ranks of foot-soldiers appear above the crest. Rectangular shields, spiked axes, iron helms with visors and nose-guards, presenting a solid line advancing in step. Rank after rank topped the rise.
We have the battle we so lusted after. But it shall be our last battle. He howled his defiance, and at his side—stunned, appalled, young Talt visibly flinched at Bedit’s cry.
Then Talt straightened, drawing his sword. ‘We shall show them how true warriors fight!’ He pointed at the closing foot-soldiers. ‘Nith’rithal! Charge!’
Inthalas gasped, eyes widening. The Barghast were rushing the foot-soldiers in a ragged mass, uphill. True, they were bigger, but against that disciplined line they would meet nothing but an iron wall and descending axe blades.
She expected them to break, reel back—and the Akrynnai ranks would then advance, pressing the savages until they routed—and as they fled, the cavalry would sweep in from the flanks, arrows sleeting, while at the far end of the basin the lancers would level their weapons and then roll down in a charge into the very face of those fleeing Barghast.
No one would escape.
Thunder, flashes of lightning, a terrible growing roar—yet her eyes held frozen on the charging Barghast.
They hammered into the Akryn ranks, and Inthalas shouted in shock as the first line seemed to simply vanish beneath a crazed flurry of huge Barghast warriors, swords slashing down. Shield edges crumpled. Fragments of shattered helms spat into the air. The three front rows were driven back by the concussion. The chop and clash rose amidst screams of pain and rage, and she saw the Akryn legion bow inward as the remainder of the Barghast pushed their own front ranks ever deeper into the formation. It was moments from being driven apart, split in half.
Sagant must have seen the same from where he waited with the lancers. In actual numbers, the Barghast almost matched the foot-soldiers, and their ferocity was appalling. Darkness was swallowing the day, and the flashes of lightning from the west provided moments of frozen clarity as the battle was joined now on all sides—arrows lashing into the Barghast flanks in wave after wave. The plunging descent of Sagant and his lancers closed fast on the rearmost enemy warriors—who seemed indifferent to the threat at their backs as they pushed their comrades in front of them, clawing forward in a frenzy.
But that made sense—carve apart the Akryn legion and a way would be suddenly open before the Barghast, and in the ensuing chaos of the breakout the lancers would end up snarled with the foot-soldiers, and the archers would hunt uselessly in the gloom to make out foe from friend. All order, and with it command, would be lost.
She stared, still half-disbelieving, as the legion buckled. The Barghast had now formed a wedge, and it drove ever deeper.
Should the enemy push through and come clear, momentarily uncontested, they could wheel round and set weapons—they could even counter-attack, slaughtering disordered foot-soldiers and tangled lancers.
Inthalas turned to her thirty-odd scouts. ‘Ride with me!’ And she led them down the back slope of the ridge,
cantering and then galloping, to bring her troop round opposite the likely fissure in the legion.
‘When the Barghast fight clear—we charge, do you understand? Arrows and then sabres—into the tip of the wedge. We tumble them, we slow them, we bind them—if with our own dead horses and our own dying bodies, we bind them!’
She could see a third of a wing of horse-archers pulling clear to the east—they were responding to the threat, but they might not be ready in time.
Damn these barbarians!
Inthalas, third daughter of the Sceptre, rose on her stirrups, gaze fixed on the writhing ranks of the legion. My children, your mother will not be returning home. Never again to see your faces. Never—
A sudden impact sent the horses staggering. The ground erupted—and she saw figures wheeling through the air, flung to one side as the storm struck the flank of the hills to the west, struck and tumbled over those hills, swallowing them whole. Inthalas, struggling to stay on her mount, stared in horror as a seething crest of enormous boulders and jagged rocks lifted over the nearest ridge—
Something huge and solid loomed within the nearest cloud—towering to fill half the sky. And its base was carving a bow-wave before it, as if tearing up the earth itself. The avalanche poured over the crest and down the slope of the basin in a roaring wave.
An entire wing of horse-archers was simply engulfed beneath the onslaught, and then the first of the broken boulders—many bigger than a trader’s wagon—crashed into the milling mass of Barghast and Akryn. As the rocks rolled and bounced through the press, pieces of crushed, smeared bodies spun into the air.
At that moment the lightning struck. Lashing, actinic blades ripping out from the dark, heaving cloud, cutting blackened paths through Sagant’s lancers and the clumps of reeling foot-soldiers. The air was filled with burning fragments—bodies lit like torches—men, women, horses—lightning danced from iron to iron in a crazed, terrifying web of charred destruction. Flesh burst in explosions of boiling fluid. Hair ignited like rushes—
Someone was shrieking in her ear. Inthalas turned, and then gestured—they had to get away. Away from the storm, away from the slaughter—they had to—
Deafening white light. Agony, and then—
As if a god’s sword had slashed across the hills on the other side of the valley, not a single ridge remained. Something vast and inexorable had pushed those summits down into the valley, burying the Snakehunter camp in a mass of deadly rubble. Here and there, Tool could see, remnants were visible among the shattered boulders—torn sections of canvas and hide, snarled shreds of clothing, guy-rope fetishes and feather-bundles, splintered shafts of ridge-poles—and there had been mangled flesh once, too, although now only bleached bones remained, broken, crushed, jutting—yet worse, to Tool’s mind, was the black hair, torn loose from flaps of scalp by the beaks of crows, and now wind-blown over the entire slope before them.
Riggis had shouldered aside a speechless Bakal and now glared down into that nightmarish scene. After a moment he shook his huge frame and spat. ‘This is our enemy, Warleader? Bah! An earthquake! Shall we war against the rocks and soil, then? Stab the hills? Bleed the rivers? You have led us to this? Hoping for what? That we beg you to take us away from an angry earth?’ He drew his tulwar. ‘Enough wasting our time. Face me, Onos T’oolan—I challenge your right to lead the White Face Barghast!’
Tool sighed. ‘Use your eyes, Riggis. What shifting of the earth leaves no cracks? Pushes to one side hilltops without touching their roots? Drives three—possibly more—furrows across the plain, each one converging on this valley, each one striking for the heart of the Snakehunter camp?’ He pointed to the north channel of the valley. ‘What earthquake cuts down fleeing Barghast in the hundreds? See them, Riggis—that road of bones?’
‘Akryn raiders, taking advantage of the broken state of the survivors. Answer my challenge, coward!’
Tool studied the enormous warrior. Not yet thirty, his belt crowded with trophies. He turned to the others and raised his voice, ‘Do any of you challenge Riggis and his desire to be Warleader of the White Face Barghast?’
‘He is not yet Warleader,’ growled Bakal.
Tool nodded. ‘And should I kill Riggis here, now, will you draw your weapon and voice your challenge to me, Bakal?’ He scanned the others. ‘How many of you will seek the same? Shall we stand here over the broken graveyard of the Snakehunter clan and spill yet more Barghast blood? Is this how you will honour your fallen White Faces?’
‘They will not follow you,’ Riggis said, his eyes bright. ‘Unless you answer my challenge.’
‘Ah, and so, if I do answer you, Riggis, they will then follow me?’
The Senan warrior’s laugh was derisive. ‘I am not yet ready to speak for them—’
‘You just did.’
‘Spar no more with empty words, Onos Toolan.’ He widened his stance and readied his heavy-bladed weapon, teeth gleaming amidst his braided beard.
‘Were you Warleader, Riggis,’ Tool said, still standing relaxed, hands at his sides, ‘would you slay your best warriors simply to prove your right to rule?’
‘Any who dared oppose me, yes!’
‘Then, you would command out of a lust for power, not out of a duty to your people.’
‘My finest warriors,’ Riggis replied, ‘would find no cause to challenge me in the first place.’
‘They would, as soon as they decided to disagree with you, Riggis. And this would haunt you, in the back of your mind. With every decision you made, you would find yourself weighing the risks, and before long you would gather to yourself an entourage of cohorts—the ones whose loyalty you have purchased with favours—and you would sit like a spider in the centre of your web, starting at every tremble of the silk. How well can you trust your friends, knowing how you yourself bought them? How soon before you find yourself swaying to every gust of desire among your people? Suddenly, that power you so hungered for proves to be a prison. You seek to please everyone and so please no one. You search the eyes of those closest to you, wondering if you can trust them, wondering if their smiles are but lying masks, wondering what they say behind your back—’
‘Enough!’ Riggis roared, and then charged.
The flint sword appeared as if conjured in Tool’s hands. It seemed to flicker.
Riggis staggered to one side, down on to one knee. His broken tulwar thumped to the ground four paces away, the warrior’s hand still wrapped tight about the grip. He blinked down at his own chest, as if looking for something, and blood ran from the stump of his wrist—ran, but the flow was ebbing. With his remaining hand he reached up to touch an elongated slit in his boiled-leather hauberk, from which the faint glisten of blood slowly welled. A slit directly above his heart.
He looked up at Tool, perplexed, and then sat back.
A moment later, Riggis fell on to his side, and no further movement came from him.
Tool faced Bakal. ‘Do you seek to be Warleader, Bakal? If so, you can have it. I yield command of the White Face Barghast. To you’—he turned to the others—‘to any of you. I will be the coward you want me to be. For what now comes, someone else shall be responsible—not me, not any more. In my last words as Warleader, I say this: gather the White Face Barghast, gather all the clans, and march to the Lether Empire. Seek sanctuary. A deadly enemy has returned to these plains, an ancient enemy. You are in a war you cannot win. Leave this land and save your people. Or remain, and the White Faces shall all die.’ He ran the tip of his sword through a tuft of grass, and then slung it back into the sheath beneath his left arm. ‘A worthy warrior lies dead. The Senan has suffered a loss this day. The fault is mine. Now, Bakal, you and the others can squabble over the prize, and those who fall shall not have me to blame.’
‘I do not challenge you, Onos Toolan,’ said Bakal, licking dry lips.
Tool flinched.
In the silence following that, not one of the other warriors spoke.
Damn you, Bakal. I was almo
st . . . free.
Bakal spoke again, ‘Warleader, I suggest we examine the dead at the end of the valley, to determine what manner of weapon cut them down.’
‘I will lead the Barghast from this plain,’ Tool said.
‘Clans will break away, Warleader.’
‘They already are doing so.’
‘You will have only the Senan.’
‘I will?’
Bakal shrugged. ‘There is no value in you killing a thousand Senan warriors. There is no value in challenging you—I have never seen a blade sing so fast. We shall be furious with you, but we shall follow.’
‘Even if I am a leader with no favours to grant, Bakal, no loyalty I would purchase from any of you?’
‘Perhaps that has been true, Onos Toolan. In that, you have been . . . fair. But it need not remain so . . . empty. Please, you must tell us what you know of this enemy—who slays with rocks and dirt. We are not fools who will blindly oppose what we cannot hope to defeat—’
‘What of the prophecies, Bakal?’ Tool then smiled wryly at the warrior’s scowl.
‘Ever open to interpretation, Warleader. Will you speak to us now?’
Tool gestured at the valley below. ‘Is this not eloquent enough?’
‘Buy our loyalty with the truth, Onos Toolan. Gift us all with an even measure.’ Yes, this is how one leads. Anything else is suspect. Every other road proves a maze of deceit and cynicism. After a moment, he nodded. ‘Let us look upon the fallen Snakehunters.’
The sun was low on the horizon when the two scouts were brought into Maral Eb’s presence where he sat beside a dung fire over which skewers of horse meat sizzled. The scouts were both young and he did not know their names, but the excitement he observed in their faces awakened his attention. He pointed to one. ‘You shall speak, and quickly now—I am about to eat.’
The Malazan Empire Page 873