The Malazan Empire

by Steven Erikson

‘Aye, though it’s not so much “away” as “just over there”, Badan. Not enough of us to sprawl.’

  Badan found a stick and stirred at the ashes. ‘What is she going to do, Sinter?’

  ‘Kisswhere?’

  ‘The Adjunct.’

  ‘How should I know? I’ve not talked to her. No one has, as far as I can tell – at least, the Fists look to be in charge at the moment.’

  Badan dropped the stick and then rubbed at his face. ‘We got to go back,’ he said.

  ‘That won’t happen,’ Sinter replied.

  He shot her a glare. ‘We can’t just pick up and go on.’

  ‘Keep it down, Badan. We pulled out more soldiers than we should have. We’re not as mauled as we could have been. Ruthan Gudd, Quick Ben, and then what happened at the vanguard. Those things checked them. Not to mention Fid getting us dug in – without those trenches, the heavies would never have—’

  ‘Died?’

  ‘Held. Long enough for the Letherii to bleed off pressure. Long enough for the rest of us to disengage—’

  ‘Disengage, aye, that’s a good one.’

  She leaned closer. ‘Listen to me,’ she hissed. ‘We didn’t die. Not one of us still here—’

  ‘Can’t be more obvious, what you just said.’

  ‘No, you’re not getting it. We got overrun, Badan, but we clawed through even that. Aye, maybe it was the Lady pulling in a frenzy, maybe it was all the others stepping into the paths of the blades coming down on us. Maybe it was how rattled they were by then – from what I heard Lostara Yil was almost invisible inside a cloud of blood, and none of it her own. They had to check at that. A pause. Hesitation. Whatever, the plain truth is, when we started pulling back—’

  ‘They left us to it.’

  ‘Point is, could have been a lot worse, Badan. Look at the Khundryl. Six thousand went in, less than a thousand rode back out. I heard some survivors have been wandering into camp. Joining up with Dead Hedge’s Bridgeburners. They say Warleader Gall is broken. So, you see what happens when the commander breaks? The rest just crumble.’

  ‘Maybe now it’s our turn.’

  ‘I doubt it. She was injured, remember, and Denul don’t work on her. She needs to find her own way of healing. But you’re still missing my point. Don’t break to pieces, Badan. Don’t crawl inside yourself. Your squad lost Skim, but nobody else.’

  ‘Nep Furrow’s sick.’

  ‘He’s always sick, Badan. At least, ever since we set foot on the Wastelands.’

  ‘Reliko wakes up screaming.’

  ‘He ain’t alone in that. He and Vastly stood with the other heavies, right? So.’

  Badan Gruk studied the dead fire, and then he sighed. ‘All right, Sinter. What do you want me to do? How do I fix all this?’

  ‘Fix this? You idiot, stop even trying. It ain’t up to us. We keep our eye on our officers, we wait for their lead.’

  ‘I ain’t seen Captain Sort.’

  ‘That’s because she’s just been made a Fist – where you been? Never mind. We’re waiting for Fid, that’s the truth of it. Same time as the parley, he’s calling all of us together, the last of the marines and heavies.’

  ‘He’s still just a sergeant.’

  ‘Wrong. Captain now.’

  Despite himself, Badan Gruk smiled. ‘Bet he’s thrilled.’

  ‘Been dancing all morning, aye.’

  ‘So we all gather.’ He looked over, met her eyes. ‘And we listen to what he has to say. And then…’

  ‘Then…well, we’ll see.’

  Badan squinted at her, his anxiety returning in a chill rush. Not the answer I expected. ‘Sinter, should we go and get Kisswhere?’

  ‘Oh, she’d like that. No, let the cow stew a while.’

  ‘It was us being so short,’ Ruffle said.

  ‘Ey whev?’

  ‘You heard me, Nep. Those Short-Tails were too tall. Swinging down as low as they had to was hard – their armour wouldn’t give enough at the waist. And did you see us? We learned fast. We waged war on their shins. Stabbed up into their crotches. Hamstrung ’em. Skewered their damned feet. We were an army of roach dogs, Nep.’

  ‘I een no eruch dhug, Errufel. E’en a vulf, izme. Nep Vulf!’

  Reliko spoke up. ‘Think you got a point there, Ruffle. We started fighting damned low, didn’t we? Right at their feet, in close, doing our work.’ His ebon-skinned face worked into something like a grin.

  ‘Just what I said,’ Ruffle nodded, lighting another rustleaf stick to conclude a breakfast of five others. Her hands trembled. She’d taken a slash to her right leg. The roughly sewn wound ached. And so did everything else.

  Sinter settled down beside Honey. In a low voice she said, ‘They had to take the arm.’

  Honey’s face tightened. ‘Weapon arm.’

  Others were leaning in to listen. Sinter frowned. ‘Aye. Corporal Rim’s going to be clumsy for a while.’

  ‘So, Sergeant,’ said Lookback, ‘are we gonna be folded into another squad, too? Or maybe swallow up some other one with only a couple of marines left?’

  Sinter shrugged. ‘Still being worked out.’

  Honey said, ‘Didn’t like what happened to the Tenth, Sergeant. One moment there, the next just gone. Like a puff of smoke. That’s not right.’

  ‘Gaunt-Eye’s a bit of a bastard,’ Sinter said. ‘No tact.’

  ‘Let all his soldiers die, too,’ pointed out Lookback.

  ‘Enough of that. You can’t think of it that way, not this time. Heads went up, heads got blown off, and then they were on top of us. It was every soldier for herself and himself.’

  ‘Not for Fid,’ said Honey. ‘Or Corporal Tarr. Or Corabb or Urb or even Hellian. They rallied marines, Sergeant. They kept their heads and so people lived.’

  Sinter looked away. ‘Too much talking going on around here, I think. You’re all picking scabs and it’s getting ugly.’ She stood. ‘Need another word with Fid.’

  Sergeant Urb walked over to Saltlick. ‘On your feet, squad.’

  The man looked up, grunted his way upright.

  ‘Collect your kit.’

  ‘Aye, Sergeant. Where we headed to?’

  Without replying, Urb set off, the heavy dropping in two steps behind him. Urb wasn’t looking forward to this. He knew the faces of most of this army’s marines. In such matters, his memory was good. Faces. Easy. The people hiding behind them, not easy. Names, not a chance. Now, of course, there weren’t many faces left.

  The marine and heavy infantry encampment was a mess. Disorganized, careless. Squads set up leaving gaps where other squads used to be. Tents hung slack from slipshod pegging. Weapon belts, battered shields and scarred armour were left lying around on the ground, amidst rodara bones and the boiled vertebrae of myrid. Shallow holes reeked where soldiers had thrown up – people complained of some stomach bug, but more likely it was just nerves, the terrible aftermath of battle. The acid of surviving that just kept on burning its way up the throat.

  And around them all, the morning stretched out in its measured madness, senseless as ever. Lightening sky, the spin and whirl of insects, the muted baying of animals being driven to slaughter. One thing was missing, however. No one was saying much of anything. Soldiers sat, heads down, or glancing up every now and then, eyes empty and far away.

  All under siege. By the gaps round the circle, by the heaps of tents left folded and bound with their clutter of poles and bag of stakes. The dead didn’t have anything to say, either, but everyone still sat, listening for them.

  Urb drew up at the foot of one such broken circle of seated soldiers. They’d set a pot on embers and the smell wafting from the brew was heady, alcoholic. Urb studied them. Two women, two men. ‘Twenty-second squad?’

  The elder of the two women nodded without looking up. Urb remembered seeing her. A lively face, he recalled. Sharp tongue. Malaz City, maybe, or Jakatan. Islander for sure. ‘Stand up, all of you.’

  He saw resentment in the faces lifti
ng to him. The other woman, young, dark-skinned and black-haired, had eyes of startling blue, which now flashed in outrage. ‘Fine, Sergeant,’ she said in an accent he’d never heard before, ‘you’ve just filled out your squad.’ Seeing Saltlick standing behind Urb, her expression changed. ‘Heavy.’ She nodded respectfully.

  The other woman shot her companions a hard look. ‘This is the Thirteenth you’re looking at, boys and girls. This squad, and Hellian’s, they drank lizard blood that day. So, all of you, stand the fuck up and do it now.’ She led the way. ‘Sergeant Urb, I’m Clasp. You come to collect us, good. We need collecting.’

  The others had clambered to their feet, but the younger woman was still scowling. ‘We lost us a good sergeant—’

  ‘Who didn’t listen when they said duck,’ Clasp retorted.

  ‘Always had his nose in something,’ said one of the men, a Kartoolian sporting an oiled beard.

  ‘Curiosity,’ observed the other man, a short, broad Falari with long hair the colour of blood-streaked gold. The tip of his nose had been sliced off, stubbing his face.

  ‘You all done with the elegy?’ Urb asked. ‘Good. This is Saltlick. Now, faces I know, so I know all of yours. Give me some names.’

  The Kartoolian said, ‘Burnt Rope, Sergeant. Sapper.’

  ‘Lap Twirl,’ said the Falari. ‘Cutter.’

  ‘Healing?’

  ‘Don’t count on it, not on this ground.’

  ‘Sad,’ said the younger woman. ‘Squad mage. About as useless as Lap right now.’

  ‘Still have your crossbows?’ Urb asked.

  No one spoke.

  ‘First task, then, off to the armoury. Then back here, and clean up this sty. The Twenty-second is retired. Welcome to the Thirteenth. Saltlick, keep them company. Clasp, you’re now corporal. Congratulations.’

  When they’d all trooped off, Urb stood alone, motionless, and for a long time, unnoticed by anyone, he stared at nothing.

  Someone nudged her shoulder. She moaned and rolled on to her side. A second nudge, harder this time. ‘G’way. Still dark.’

  ‘Still dark, Sergeant, because you blindfolded yourself.’

  ‘I did? Well, why didn’t you do the same, then we’d all be sleeping still. Go away.’

  ‘It’s morning, Sergeant. Captain Fiddler wants—’

  ‘He always wants. Soon as they turn inta officers, it’s do this do that alla time. Someone gimme a jug.’

  ‘All gone, Sergeant.’

  She reached up, felt at the rough cloth covering her eyes, pulled one edge down, just enough to uncover one eye. ‘That can’t be right. Go find some more.’

  ‘We will,’ Brethless promised. ‘Soon as you get up. Someone’s been through the squads, doing counts. We don’t like it. Makes us nervous.’

  ‘Why?’ The lone eye blinked. ‘I got me eight marines—’

  ‘Four, Sergeant.’

  ‘Fifty per cent losses ain’t too bad, for a party.’

  ‘A party, Sergeant?’

  She sat up. ‘I had eight last night.’

  ‘Four.’

  ‘Right, four twice over.’

  ‘There wasn’t no party, Sergeant.’

  Hellian tugged to expose her other eye. ‘There wasn’t, huh? Thas what you get for wand’ring off, then, Corporal. Missed the good times.’

  ‘Aye, I suppose I did. We’re melting a lump of chocolate in a pot – thought you might like some.’

  ‘That stuff? I remember now. Balklo chocolate. All right, get outa my tent so I can get decent.’

  ‘You’re not in your tent, Sergeant, you’re in our latrine ditch.’

  She looked round. ‘That explains the smell.’

  ‘None of us used it yet, Sergeant, seeing as how you were here.’

  ‘Oh.’

  His stomach convulsed again, but there was nothing left to spit up, so he rode it out, waited, gasping, and then slowly settled back on his haunches. ‘Poliel’s prissy nipples! If I can’t keep nothing down I’ll waste away!’

  ‘You already have, Widder,’ observed Throatslitter from a few paces upwind, his voice a cracking rasp. The old scars on his neck were inflamed; he’d taken a shot to his chest, hard enough to dent his sternum with matted rows from the mail’s iron links, and something from that trauma had messed up his throat.

  They were away from the camp, twenty paces beyond the eastern picket. Widdershins, Throatslitter, Deadsmell and Sergeant Balm. The survivors of the 9th Squad. The regulars crouched in their holes had watched them pass with red-shot eyes, saying nothing. Was that belligerence? Pity? The squad mage didn’t know and at the moment was past caring. Wiping his mouth with the back of one forearm, he looked past Throatslitter to Balm. ‘You called us up here, Sergeant. What now?’

  Balm drew off his helm, scratched vigorously at his scalp. ‘Just thought I’d tell you, we ain’t breaking the squad up and we ain’t picking up any new bodies. It’s just us, now.’

  Widdershins grunted. ‘We took a walk for that?’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot,’ said Deadsmell in a growl.

  Balm faced his soldiers. ‘Talk, all of you. You first, Throatslitter.’

  The tall man seemed to flinch. ‘What’s to say? We’re chewed to pieces. But Kindly hogtying Fid like that, well, bloody genius. We got ourselves a captain, now—’

  ‘There wasn’t anything wrong with Sort,’ Deadsmell interjected.

  ‘Not saying there was. Definite officer, that woman. But maybe that’s the point. Fid’s from the ground up a marine, through and through. He was a sapper. A sergeant. Now he’s captain of what’s left of us. I’m settled with that.’ He shrugged, facing Balm. ‘Nothing more to say, Sergeant.’

  ‘And when he says it’s time to go, you gonna bleat and whine about it?’

  Throatslitter’s brows lifted. ‘Go? Go where?’

  Balm squinted and then said, ‘Your turn, Deadsmell.’

  ‘Hood’s dead. Grey riders patrol the Gate. In my dreams I see faces, blurred, but still. Malazans. Bridgeburners. You can’t imagine how comforting that feels, you just can’t. They’re all there, and I think we got Dead Hedge to thank for that.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Widdershins asked.

  ‘Just a feeling. As if, in coming back, he blazed a trail. Six days ago, well, I swear they were close enough to kiss.’

  ‘Because we all almost died,’ Throatslitter snapped.

  ‘No, they were like wasps, and what was sweet wasn’t us dying, wasn’t the lizards neither. It was what happened at the vanguard. It was Lostara Yil.’ His eyes were bright as he looked to each soldier in turn. ‘I caught a glimpse, you know. I saw her dance. She did what Ruthan Gudd did, only she didn’t go down under blades. The lizards recoiled – they didn’t know what to do, they couldn’t get close, and those that did, gods, they were cut to pieces. I saw her, and my heart near burst.’

  ‘She saved the Adjunct’s life,’ said Throatslitter. ‘Was that such a good thing?’

  ‘Not for you to even ask,’ said Balm. ‘Fid’s calling us together. He’s got things to say. About that, I expect. The Adjunct. And what’s to come. We’re still marines. We’re the marines, and we got heavies in our ranks, the stubbornest bulls I ever seen.’

  He turned then, since two regulars from the pickets were approaching. In their arms, two loaves of bread, a wrapped brick of cheese, and a Seven Cities clay bottle.

  ‘What’s this?’ Deadsmell wondered.

  The two soldiers halted a few paces away, and the one on the right spoke. ‘Guard’s changed, Sergeant. Came out with some breakfast for us. We weren’t much hungry.’ They then set the items down on a bare patch of ground. Nodded, set off back for camp.

  ‘Hood’s pink belly,’ Deadsmell muttered.

  ‘Save all that,’ Balm said. ‘We’re not yet done here. Widdershins.’

  ‘Warrens are sick, Sergeant. Well, you seen what they’re doing to us mages. And there’s new ones, new warrens, I mean, but they ain’t nice at all. Sti
ll, I might have to delve into them, once I get tired of being completely useless.’

  ‘You’re the best among us with a crossbow, Widder, so you ain’t useless even without any magic.’

  ‘Maybe so, Throatslitter, but it doesn’t feel that way.’

  ‘Deadsmell,’ said Balm, ‘you’ve been doing some healing.’

  ‘I have, but Widder’s right. It’s not fun. The problem – for me, that is – is that I’m still somehow bound to Hood. Even though he’s, uh, dead. Don’t know why that should be, but the magic when it comes to me, well, it’s cold as ice.’

  Widdershins frowned at Deadsmell. ‘Ice. That makes no sense.’

  ‘Hood was a damned Jaghut, so yes, it does. And no, it doesn’t, because he’s… well, gone.’

  Throatslitter spat and said, ‘If he really died, like you say, did he walk into his realm? And didn’t he have to be dead in the first place, being the God of Death and all? What you’re saying makes no sense, Deadsmell.’

  The necromancer looked unhappy. ‘I know.’

  ‘Next time you do some healing,’ said Widdershins, ‘let me do some sniffing.’

  ‘You’ll heave again.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘What are you thinking, Widder?’ Balm asked.

  ‘I’m thinking Deadsmell’s not using Hood’s warren any more. I’m thinking it must be Omtose Phellack.’

  ‘It’s occurred to me,’ Deadsmell said in a mumble.

  ‘One way to test it for sure,’ Balm said.

  Widdershins swore. ‘Aye. We don’t know the details, but the rumour is that she’s got some broken ribs, maybe even spitting up blood, and is still concussed. But with that Otataral in her, no one can do much about it.’

  ‘But Omtose Phellack is Elder.’ Deadsmell was nodding. ‘We should go, then. It’s worth a try.’

  ‘We will,’ said Balm, ‘but first we eat.’

  ‘And leave the Adjunct in pain?’

  ‘We eat and drink here,’ said Balm, eyes flat, ‘because we’re marines and we don’t kick dirt in the faces of fellow soldiers.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Widdershins. ‘Besides,’ he added, ‘I’m starving.’

  Shortnose had lost the four fingers of his shield hand. To stop the bleeding that had gone on even after the nubs had been sewn up, he had held them against a pot left squatting in a fire. Now the ends looked melted and there were blisters up to his knuckles. But the bleeding had stopped.