The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (817 page)

 

‘Not a drop,' Fiddler said, shaking his head in wonder. This damned Sergeant Hellian, who by Urb's account had crossed all the way from the coast in an inebriated haze – this soft-featured woman, soft just on the edge of dissolute, with the bright always wet lips – this Hellian had managed to succeed where every other squad – as far as Fiddler knew – had failed miserably. And since Urb was adamant on who was leading whom, it really
had
been her. This drunken, ferocious marine.

Leaving severed heads in every tavern, for Hood's sake!

But she had cut loose the common people, all these serfs and slaves and Indebted, and had watched them dance off in joy and freedom.
Our drunk liberator, our bloodthirsty goddess – what in Hood's name do all those people think when they first see her? Endless rumours of a terrible invading army. Soldiers and Edur dying in ambushes, chaos on the roads and trails. Then she shows up, dragging heads in sacks, and her marines break down every door in town and drag out all the ones nobody else has any reason to like. And then? Why, the not-so-subtle cutting away of all burdens for all these poor folk. ‘Give us the bar for a couple nights and then we'll just be on our way.

‘Oh, and if you run into any Edur in the woods, send somebody back to warn us, right?'

Was it any wonder that Hellian and Urb and their squads had marched so far ahead of the others – or so Captain Sort had complained – with hardly any losses among her marines? The drunk, bright-eyed woman with all the rounded excesses of a well-fed, never sober but still young harlot had somehow managed to co-opt all the local help they'd needed to stay alive.

In a strange kind of floating wonder, the near-euphoria of relief, exhaustion and plenty of admiration that certainly wasn't innocent of sudden sexual desire –
for a damned drunk
– Fiddler found a table and moments later was joined by Gesler and Stormy, the latter arriving with a loaf of rye bread, a broached cask of ale and three dented pewter flagons with inscriptions on them.

‘Can almost read this,' he said, squinting at the side of his cup. ‘Like old Ehrlii.'

‘Maker's stamp?' Gesler asked as he tore off a hunk of bread.

‘No. Maybe something like “Advocate of the Year”. Then a name. Could be Rizzin Purble. Or Wurble. Or Fizzin.'

‘Could be that's the name of this village,' Gesler suggested. ‘Fizzin Wurble.'

Stormy grunted, then nudged Fiddler. ‘Stop dreaming of her, Fid. She's trouble and a lost cause too. Besides, it's Urb who's all dreamy 'bout her and he looks too dangerous to mess with.'

Fiddler sighed. ‘Aye to all of that. It's just been a long time, that's all.'

‘We'll get our rewards soon enough.'

He eyed Stormy for a moment, then glanced over to Gesler.

Who was scowling at his corporal. ‘You lost your mind, Stormy? The only rewards we're going to reap are the crow feathers Hood hands out as we march through his gate. Sure, we're drawing up here, gaining in strength as we do it, but those Edur on our trail will be doing the same, outnumbering us five, ten to one by the time we run out of open ground.'

Stormy waved a dismissive hand. ‘You do a count, Gesler? Look at Urb's squad. At Hellian's. Look at Fid's and ours. We're all damned near unscathed, given what we've been through. More living than dead in every squad here. So who's to say the other squads aren't in the same shape? We're damn near at strength, and you couldn't say that about the Letherii and the Edur, could you?'

‘There's a whole lot more of them than us,' Gesler pointed out as he collected the cask and began pouring the ale into the flagons.

‘Ain't made that much difference, though. We bulled through that last ambush—'

‘And left the scene so cut up and bleeding a vole could've tracked us—'

‘Sharper scatter, is all—'

‘Mayfly's back was a shredded mess—'

‘Armour took most of it—'

‘Armour she doesn't have any more—'

‘You two are worse than married,' Fiddler said, reaching for his ale.

 

‘All right,' Koryk pronounced, ‘there's no disagreement possible. Those bleckers of yours, Smiles, reek the worst of all. Worse than fingers, worse than ears, worse even than tongues. We've all voted. All us in the squad, and you've got to get rid of them.'

Smiles sneered. ‘You think I don't know why you want me to toss 'em, Koryk? It's not the smell, oh no. It's the sight of them, and the way that makes you squirm inside, makes your balls pull up and hide. That's what this is all about. Pretty soon, none of us will be smelling much at all – everything's drying out, wrinkling up—'

‘Enough,' groaned Tarr.

Koryk glanced across at Bottle. The fool looked to be asleep, his face hanging slack. Well, fair enough. Without Bottle they'd never have come this far. Virtually unscathed at that. He tapped the finger bone strung round his neck – the bone from the pit outside what was left of Y'Ghatan. Always worth a touch or two with thoughts like those.

And he knew they were headed for trouble. They all knew, which was why they'd talk about anything else but that huge grisly beast crouched right there in the forefront of their thoughts. The one with dripping fangs and jagged talons and that smeared grin of knowing. Aye. He touched the bone again.

‘Come through not bad,' Cuttle said, eyeing the other marines in the crowded main room. ‘Anybody here been thinking about how we're going to besiege a city the size of Unta? We're pretty much out of munitions – Fid's got a cusser left and maybe I do, too, but that's it. We can hardly try anything covert, since they know we're coming—'

‘Magic, of course,' Smiles said. ‘We'll just walk right in.'

Koryk winced at this turn in the conversation. Besieging Letheras? And nobody standing ranks-deep in their way? Not likely. Besides, the Edur were pushing them right along, and where the marines ended up was not going to be a pleasure palace, now was it? Had Cuttle lost his mind? Or was this just his way of dealing with the death looming in all their minds?

Probably. The sapper had little or no imagination, and he was making his biggest leap possible all the way to a siege that was never going to happen and wouldn't work anyway if it did, which it wouldn't. But it gave Cuttle something to think about.

‘The sergeant will figure something out,' Cuttle concluded suddenly, with a loud sigh, as he settled back in his chair.

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.'