‘We not yet decide let you live,’ the first one then said in rough Letherii. ‘You spy?’
‘No,’ the soldier replied. ‘Deserter.’
‘Honest man, good. You answer all our questions? These doors, tunnels, why do sappers’ work for us? Explain.’
‘Yes, I will explain everything. I don’t want to die.’
Corporal Tarr sighed, then turned from the prisoner to face Koryk. ‘Better get Fid and the captain, Koryk. Looks like maybe we won’t have to knock down any walls after all’
Smiles snorted, sheathing her knives. ‘No elegant back stab. And no torture. This isn’t any fun at all.’ She paused, then added, ‘Good thing we didn’t take down the first one, though, isn’t it? Led us right to this.’
Their horses had not been exercised nearly enough, and were now huffing, heads lifting and falling as Sergeant Balm led his small troop inland. Too dark now to hunt Letherii and besides, the fun had grown sour awfully fast. Sure, slaughter made sense when on the enemy’s own soil, since every soldier who got away was likely to fight again, and so they’d chased down the miserable wretches. But it was tiring work.
When magic wasn’t around in a battle, Moranth munitions took its place, and the fit was very nice indeed. As far as we’re concerned, anyway. Gods, just seeing those bodies-and pieces of bodies-flying up into the air-and 1 was getting all confused, at the beginning there. Bits of Letherii everywhere and all that ringing in my ears.
He’d come around sharp enough when he saw Cord’s idiot sapper, Crump, running up the slope straight at the enemy line, with a Hood-damned cusser in each hand. If it hadn’t been for all those blown-up Letherii absorbing so much of the twin blasts then Crump would still be standing there. His feet, anyway. The rest of him would be red haze drifting into the sunset. As it was, Crump was flattened beneath an avalanche of body parts, eventually clambering free like one of Hood’s own revenants. Although Balm was pretty sure revenants didn’t smile.
Not witless smiles, anyway.
Where the cussers had not obliterated entire companies of the enemy, the main attack-wedges of advancing heavies and medium infantry with a thin scattering of skirmishers and sappers out front-had closed with a hail of sharpers, virtually disintegrating the Letherii front ranks. And then it was just the killing thrust with those human wedges, ripping apart the enemy’s formations, driving the Letherii soldiers back until they were packed tight and unable to do anything but die.
The Adjunct’s Fourteenth Army, the Bonehunters, had shown, at long last, that they knew how to fight. She’d gotten her straight-in shield to shield dragged-out battle, and hadn’t it been just grand?
Riding ahead as point was Masan Gilani. Made sense, using her. First off, she was the best rider by far, and secondly, there wasn’t a soldier, man or woman, who could drag their eyes off her delicious round behind in that saddle, which made following her easy. Even in the gathering dark, aye. Not that it actually glows. I don’t think. But… amazing how we can all see it just fine. Why, could be a night without any other moon and no stars and nothing but the Abyss on all sides, and we’d follow that glorious, jiggling-
Balm sawed his reins, pulling off to one side, just missing Masan Gilani’s horse-which was standing still, and Masan suddenly nowhere in sight.
Cursing, he dragged his weary horse to a halt, raising a hand to command those behind him to draw up.
‘Masan?’
‘Over here,’ came the luscious, heavenly voice, and a moment later she emerged out of the gloom ahead. ‘We’re on the killing field.’
‘Not a chance,’ Throatslitter said from behind Balm. ‘No bodies, Masan, no nothing.’
Deadsmell rode a few paces ahead, then stopped and dismounted. He looked round in the gloom. ‘No, she’s right,’ he said. ‘This was where Keneb’s marines closed ranks.’
They’d all seen the strange glow to the north-seen it from the ships, in fact, when the transports did their neat turn and surged for the shoreline. And before that, well, they’d seen the Letherii sorcery, that terrifying wave climbing into the sky and it was then that everyone knew the marines were finished. No Quick Ben to beat it all back, even if he could have, and Balm agreed with most everyone else that, good as he was, he wasn’t that good. No Quick Ben, and no Sinn-aye, there she was, perched on the bow of the Froth Wolf with Grub at her side, staring at that dreadful conjuration.
When the thing rolled forward and then crashed down, well, curses rang in the air, curses or prayers and sometimes both, and this, soldiers said, was worse even than Y’Ghatan, and those poor damned marines, always getting their teeth kicked in, only this time nobody was coming out. The only thing that’d be pushing up from the ground in a few days’ time would be slivers of burnt bone.
So the Bonehunters on the transports had been a mean-spirited bunch by the time they emptied the water out of their boots and picked up their weapons. Mean, aye, as that Letherii army could attest to, oh yes.
After the Letherii magic had faded, crashed away as if to nothing in the distance, there had been a cry from Sinn, and Balm had seen with his own eyes Grub dancing about on the foredeck. And then everyone else had seen that blue-white dome of swirling light, rising up from where the Letherii magic had come down.
What did it mean?
Cord and Shard had gone up to Sinn, but she wasn’t talking which was a shock to them all. And all Grub said was something that nobody afterwards could even agree on, and since Balm hadn’t heard it himself he concluded that Grub probably hadn’t said anything at all, except maybe ‘I got to pee’ which explained all that dancing.
‘Could it be that Letherii magic turned them all into dust?’ Throatslitter wondered now as he walked on the dew-laden field.
‘And left the grasses growing wild?’ Masan Gilani countered.
‘Something over here,’ Deadsmell said from ten or so paces on.
Balm and Throatslitter dismounted and joined Masan Gilani-slightly behind her to either side. And the three of them set off after Deadsmell, who was now fast disappearing in the gloom.
‘Slow up there, Corporal!’ It’s not like the Universal Lodestone is bouncing up there with you, is it?
They saw that Deadsmell had finally halted, standing before a grey heap of something.
‘What did you find?’ Balm asked.
‘Looks like a shell midden,’ Throatslitter muttered.
‘Hah, always figured you for a fisher’s spawn.’
‘Spawn, ha ha, that’s so funny, Sergeant.’
‘Yeah? Then why ain’t you laughing? On second thought, don’t-they’ll hear it in the city and get scared. Well, scareder than they already are.’
They joined Deadsmell.
‘It’s a damned barrow,’ said Throatslitter. ‘And look, all kinds of Malazan stuff on it. Gods, Sergeant, you don’t think all that’s left of all those marines is under this mound?’
Balm shrugged. ‘We don’t even know how many made it this far. Could be six of ‘em. In fact, it’s a damned miracle any of ‘em did in the first place.’
‘No no,’ Deadsmell said. ‘There’s only one in there, but that’s about all I can say, Sergeant. There’s not a whisper of magic left here and probably never will be. It’s all been sucked dry.’
‘By the Letherii?’
The corporal shrugged. ‘Could be. That ritual was a bristling pig of a spell. Old magic, rougher than what comes from warrens.’
Masan Gilani crouched down and touched a badly notched Malazan shortsword. ‘Looks like someone did a lot of hacking with this thing, and if they made it this far doing just that, well, beat-up or not, a soldier doesn’t just toss it away like this.’
‘Unless the dead one inside earned the honour,’ Deadsmell said, nodding.
‘So,’ Masan concluded, ‘a Malazan. But just one.’