The captain turned to him and nodded. ‘Rest now, Beak.’
Rest? No, there could be no rest. Not ever again. ‘Sir, there are hundreds of Edur coming. From the northwest-’
‘We know,’ the other mage said, clambering out like a toad at dusk. ‘We was just getting ready to pack our travelling trunks and the uniforms are pressed and the standards restitched in gold.’
‘Really?’
She sobered and there was a sudden soft look in her eyes, reminding Beak of that one nurse his mother had hired, the one who was then raped by his father and had to go away. ‘No, Beak, just havin’ fun.’
Too bad, he considered. He would like to have seen that gold thread.
They dismounted and walked their horses round one end of the felled trees, and there, before them, was the Fist’s encampment. ‘Hood’s mercy,’ Faradan Sort said, ‘there’s more.’
‘Six hundred and seventy-one, sir,’ Beak said. And like the mage had said, there were getting ready to leave, swarming like ants on a kicked mound. There had been wounded-lots of them-but the healers had done their work and all the blood smelled old and the smell of death stayed where it belonged, close to the dozen graves on the far side of the clearing.
‘Come along,’ said the captain as two soldiers arrived to take charge of the horses, and Beak followed her as she made her way to where stood Fist Keneb and Sergeant Thorn Tissy.
It felt strange to be walking after so long seated in those strange Letherii saddles, as if the ground was crumbling underfoot, and everything looked oddly fragile. Yes. My friends. All of them.
‘How bad?’ Keneb asked Faradan Sort.
‘We couldn’t reach them,’ she replied, ‘but there is still hope. Fist, Beak says we have to hurry.’
The Fist glanced at Beak and the young mage nearly wilted. Attention from important people always did that to him.
Keneb nodded, then sighed. ‘I want to keep waiting, in case…’ He shook his head. ‘Fair enough. It’s time to change tactics.’
‘Yes sir,’ said the captain.
‘We push hard. For the capital, and if we run into anything we can’t handle… we handle it.’
‘Yes sir.’
‘Captain, gather ten squads with full complement of heavies. Take command of our rearguard.’
‘Yes sir.’ She turned and took Beak by the arm. ‘I want you on a stretcher, Beak,’ she said as she led him along. ‘Sleeping.’
‘I can’t, sir-’
‘You will.’
‘No, I really can’t. The candles, they won’t go out. Not any more. They won’t go out.’ Not ever, Captain, and it isn’t that I don’t love you because I do and I’d do anything you asked. But I just can’t and I can’t even explain. Only, it’s too late.
He wasn’t sure what she saw in his eyes, wasn’t sure how much of all that he didn’t say got heard anyway, but the grip of her hand on his arm loosened, became almost a caress, and she nodded and turned her head away. ‘All right, Beak. Help us guard Keneb’s back, then.’
‘Yes sir, I will. You just watch me, I will.’ He waited a moment, as they walked side by side through the camp, and then asked, ‘Sir, if there’s something we can’t handle how do we handle it anyway?’
She either grunted or laughed from the same place that grunts came from. ‘Sawtooth wedges and keep going, Beak. Throw back whatever is thrown at us. Keep going, until…’
‘Until what?’
‘It’s all right, Beak, to die alongside your comrades. It’s all right. Do you understand me?’
‘Yes sir, I do. It is all right, because they’re my friends.’
‘That’s right, Beak.’
And that’s why no-one needs to worry, Captain.
Keneb watched as his marines fell into formation. Fast march, now, as if these poor souls weren’t beat enough. But they couldn’t dart and hide any more. The enemy had turned the game round and they had the advantage in numbers and maybe, finally, they were also a match for the ferocity of his Malazans.,
It had been inevitable. No empire just rolls over, legs splaying. After enough pokes and jabs, it turns and snarls and then the fangs sink deep. And now it was his marines who were doing the bleeding. But not nearly as bad as I’d feared. Look at them, Keneb. Looking meaner than ever.
‘Fist,’ Thorn Tissy said beside him, ‘they’re ready for you.’
‘I see that, Sergeant.’
‘No sir. I meant, they’re ready.’
Keneb met the squat man’s dark, beady eyes, and wasn’t sure what he saw in them. Whatever it was, it burned bright.
‘Sir,’ Thorn Tissy said, ‘it’s what we’re meant for. All’-he waved one grimy hand-‘this. Trained to play more than one game, right? We stuck ‘em enough to get ‘em riled up and so here they are, all those damned Edur drawn right to us like we was a lodestone. Now we’re about to knock ‘em off balance all over again, and Hood take me, it’s got my blood up! Same for us all! So, please, sir, sound us the order to march.’
Keneb stared at the man a moment longer, then he nodded.
To the sound of laughter, Koryk barrelled into the three Edur warriors, his heavy longsword hammering aside two of the out-thrust spears jabbing for his midsection. With his left hand he caught the shaft of the third one and used it to pull himself forward. Edge of his blade into the face of the warrior on his right-not deep enough to cause serious damage, but enough to spray blinding blood. Against the one in the middle, Koryk dropped one shoulder and hit him hard in the centre of his chest-hard enough to lift the Edur from his feet and send him sprawling back. Still gripping the third spear, Koryk twisted the warrior round and drove the point of his sword into the Edur’s throat.
Koryk spun to slash at the first warrior, only to see her tumble back with a throwing knife skewering one eye socket. So he lunged after the middle Edur, sword chopping down in a frenzy until the Edur’s smashed-up arms-raised to fend off the attack-fell away, freeing the half-blood Seti to deliver a skull-crushing blow.
Then he whirled. ‘Will you in Hood’s name stop that laughing!’
But Smiles was on one knee, convulsing with hilarity even as she pulled out her throwing knife. ‘Gods! I can’t breathe! Wait-just wait-’
Snarling, Koryk turned to face the cloister again-these narrow-laned mews created perfect cul-de-sacs-lead them in at a run, flank out then turn and cut the bastards down. Even so, nobody had planned on making this ugly village the site of their last stand. Except maybe the Edur, who now entirely surrounded it and were working their way in, house by house, lane by lane.
Felt good kicking back, though, whenever they got too spread out in their eagerness to spill Malazan blood.
‘They stink at fighting in groups,’ Smiles said, coming up alongside him. She glanced up into his face and then burst out laughing again.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘You! Them! The look in their eyes-the surprise, I mean, oh, gods of the deep! I can’t stop!’
‘You’d better,’ Koryk warned, shaking the blood from his sword. ‘I’m hearing movement-that lane mouth there-
come on.’
Three quarrels flitted out, two of them taking down onrushing Edur. Two lances arced in retaliation, both darting straight for Fiddler. And then Tarr’s huge shield shifted into their path, and the sergeant was pushed hard to one side-grunts from the corporal as both lances slammed solidly against the bronze-scaled face, one of them punching through a finger’s length to pierce Tarr’s upper arm. The corporal swore.
Fiddler ducked down behind the smithy’s quenching barrel as a third lance cracked into it. Water gushed out onto the ground.
The crossfire ambush then caught the half-dozen charging Edur unawares-quarrels sleeting out from the narrow alley mouths on both sides. Moments later all were down, dead or dying.