‘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’azzfor 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.’