The sentiment made Jute shudder. He’d forgotten. Their time together had fooled him into thinking the man at his side was a relatively harmless old codger — but he wasn’t. He was a retired commander of Malazan forces, once a High Fist. And to defend his command he was obviously prepared to sacrifice every one of these poor unfortunates arrayed on the field before him.
Jute wrapped his cloak tighter about himself, turned to study the walls. A small complement, a watch, now stood the walls. He spotted the night-black shape of Malle at the wall, flanked by two figures, an old man and a young girl, who he believed had to be imperial cadre mages. Most of the defenders, locals, the Malazans, and Tyvar’s Genabackans, were lying down across the grounds. Jute shuddered again: the sight of all the prone figures crowding the broad yard made him think of a field of graves.
Gods! The T’lan Imass. We won’t see the noon. Yet all I would have to do is drop my weapon and they would pass me by — would they not? Somehow, when the time came, Jute knew he would not yield. He would do his part. And defending walls is spear-work. Thankfully, there were plenty of racks at hand. He collected a spear and leaned upon it.
Out among the demolished houses and huts of Mantle town, along the line of hastily raised barricades, one figure constantly marched back and forth, cajoling, yelling orders. From the voice, Jute knew this officer was a woman. She wore a long coat of mail and a helmet with a faceplate, raised at the moment.
At one point Tyvar came past on an inspection and he paused at Cartheron’s side to motion to the officer. ‘See that one?’
Cartheron nodded tiredly. ‘Yeah. I see.’
‘I’d know that style of armour and helmet anywhere,’ Tyvar continued, sounding almost excited. ‘That’s a shieldmaiden out of northern Genabackis, I’m sure.’
‘They fought us in the north,’ Cartheron observed, a touch irritated — he’d been asleep standing up.
Tyvar gave a serious nod. ‘Aye — as we would’ve if you’d reached the south.’ And he slapped Cartheron on the back and continued his circuit.
Jute blinked heavily then, leaning on his spear, and the next thing he knew there were screams from below and he blinked anew, clutching his spear haft. It was brighter now, fully dawn, though it was hard to tell because of the dense low bank of clouds that hung like a smothering blanket crowded up against the slopes of the Salt range. Men and women among the defenders and civilians below were now pointing west. More among them broke and ran for the east, abandoning their posts and fleeing. The Shieldmaiden sent curses after them.
Jute squinted into the gloom of the west. Figures were approaching just inland from the coast of the Gold Sea. A wide front of shapes. Not a file, or a column, but rather a broad skirmish-line of walkers. The image came to Jute of a net, a line of beaters, driving their prey before them. The image made him almost faint with dread. Imass. So terrifyingly ruthless and unrelenting. They won’t let anyone escape them.
The Shieldmaiden now shouted encouragement to her troops, who readied their spears. She drew her own sword and climbed the barricade.
‘Good for you …’ Cartheron murmured beneath his breath.
The T’lan came on, scarecrow thin, unhurried, yet somehow inexorable — like the tide, Jute thought. Their skirmish-line passed between the burned and scavenged husks of the few houses of Mantle town. They brushed aside the canvas of tents, kicked through smoking campfires. Closer now, Jute saw how their cloaks hung ragged and full of gaping tears. Some few wore animal bones as armour: wide scapulae lashed across the chest, skulls of enormous beasts upon their heads. They came with their slim stone blades gripped negligently in their fists. He put their number at over a hundred.
They met the logs and overturned wagons of the barricade and those blades flashed to hack through the thigh-wide trunks as if they were kindling. The defenders thrust with their spears. They rocked backwards a few of the attackers, but these merely shook off the thrusts and returned to the task of chopping the barrier.
Further panicked yells sounded where individual Imass succeeded in pushing their way through. Defenders closed, spears abandoned and swords drawn. Next to Jute, Cartheron ground out a muttered: ‘Fools …’ yet he sounded admiring all the same.
Jute saw the commander of this desperate — yet needless! — defence charge in to join one fray. A great swipe from her heavy blade chopped down through an Imass at juncture of neck and shoulder: that one fell, evidently crippled. A great cheer arose from the defenders, and Jute noted that Tyvar’s Blue Shields joined in the huzzah.
More Imass came as they pushed and hacked through the heaped wreckage. Defenders fell. However, to his relief, Jute saw now that the Imass were lashing out with their fists and the sides of their blades as they swung to bash the men and women down. Oddly enough, he almost felt grateful to these elders for their restraint — if that was what one might call it.
The Shieldmaiden fell then, taken by a blow to her helmet that laid her flat. A shudder of pain seemed to run through the line of defenders, and it broke. Jute, who had never seen a battle before this journey, sensed it even as it happened. It seemed as if all it took was one defender half stepping back, or flinching, and his fellows shied away as well. Instantly, it seemed, like a contagion, this backpedalling spread up and down the ragged line and men and women were outright fleeing, scrambling, all streaming towards the east.
The T’lan halted their advance to watch them go; hoary ravaged profiles turned to follow the men and women as they fled. Those same cadaver heads then swung up to regard the walls.
Jute felt his mouth turn ash-dry while at the same time his hands were slick upon the spear haft. He wiped them on the thighs of his woollen trousers.
At some silent order, the T’lan resumed their advance. They stepped on dropped shields and abandoned spears as they came.
As they neared the stakes driven into the ground before the ditch beneath the walls, Cartheron leaned forward, cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted down: ‘We of Mantle Keep greet you! With what clan do I speak?’
The ranks halted to stand as silent and still as a file of statues. A weak wind brushed at the hanging tattered ends of hides and fur cloaks.
Jute saw the local young king presumptive, Voti, followed by Malle, come next to Cartheron. The lad stood with his arms crossed, the haft of his spear hugged to his chest. Jute heard a steady murmuring among the local defenders gathered at the walls. Their accent was difficult for him, but eventually he made out the repeated litany of wonder: ‘… bone and dust …’
He turned to the nearest of the locals, a woman, perhaps a mother standing the wall to defend her children within. ‘What does this mean,’ he asked, ‘“bone and dust”?’
‘An old legend among us,’ she replied, sounding oddly resigned. ‘An old story that our world will end with an invasion of the dead.’
Jute could only shake his head in wonder. Ye gods! Was this prescience? Or merely chance? But, he thought, the war between Imass and Jaghut was incalculably ancient. Perhaps this legend was a memory of an earlier clash. One that might even have occurred upon another continent halfway round the world.
Closing now, up the silent unmoving ranks, came two figures. Both were of course of Imass stock, yet they differed strikingly: one was lean while the other markedly squat. The lean one wore the mangy and raggedy hide of what appeared to have once been a white bear. The beast’s head rode his own, the upper fangs hanging down before his mummified face. Necklaces of yellowed bear claws rode his chest, and the clacking and clattering of these were the only sounds Jute could hear.
The other Imass was among the most damaged of those present. She, and Jute intuited somehow that it was female, appeared to have been thrust through multiple times. She bore a primitive face of a broad shelf with a brow and wide jaws. Her canines jutted quite prominently and they glinted copper in the early morning light. Shells laced about her ragged leathers swung and clattered.