Authors: Steven Erikson
‘Hood’s breath, Stormy, you’re leaking the sickest things.’
‘So get outa my head!’
‘I said “leaking,” you oaf. I ain’t in your head. Listen, stop thinking we’re all vulture shit, all right? I don’t know if these things got anything like morale, but if they do you’ve just beaten it into a pulpy mess.’
‘Those were
my
thoughts!’
‘So figure out a way of keeping them inside. Just picture your thick skull—it’s got holes, right. Out the eyes, the nose, whatever. So, picture blocking ’em all up. Now you’re safe. Now you can think all the stupid things you like to think about.’
‘Is that why I ain’t getting anything from you?’
‘No. Right now, I’m too witless to think. Sky’s lightening—look at that cloud to the south. It’s not a cloud. It’s a hole in the sky. It’s a warren ripped wide open. Just looking at it makes my skin crawl like a leech under a rock.’
‘Ges, these legions—’
‘Furies.’
‘They ain’t presented for battle, unless you plan on us just marching right up to ’em. Like the Quon used to do.’
‘You’re right. The Quon had badly trained troops, but they had a lot of them. Who needs tactics?’
‘We do.’
‘Right. So, see if we can get ’em sawtooth—’ He stopped suddenly.
In the same instant something rushed through Stormy and he grunted, twisting round.
The massive baggage train had halted. Drones—smaller creatures, not much taller than a human—swarmed the beds, unshipping rectangular slabs of iron. ‘Gesler—are those shields?’
Gesler had halted and wheeled his mount. ‘Aye, I think so. I was wondering at those hand-and-a-half axes the Ve’Gath carried. So, these really are heavies—’
‘I couldn’t pick up one of those shields, let alone hang it from one arm. The Nah’ruk got missile weapons?’
‘Unplug your skull,’ said Gesler, ‘and you’ll get your answer. Another innovation from the Matron. She must have been something, I think.’
‘She was a big fat lizard.’
‘She also broke ten thousand years of changing nothing—and the Che’Malle claim they never had a religion.’
Grunting—and not quite understanding what Gesler had meant—Stormy cast about to find the Destriant.
Twenty paces to the west, Kalyth was astride the back of Sag’Churok, but she was not watching the smooth distribution of the huge shields through the Ve’Gath ranks. Instead, she was squinting south. Stormy followed her gaze.
‘Ges, I see ’em. A line of legions—’
‘Furies,’ said Gesler.
‘Five across making the facing. And what, three deep? Hood’s breath, they look to outnumber us badly. I’m thinking three teeth each legion, ranks no more than thirty deep. We can reach that high ground just ahead, shield-lock there.’
‘You’ll screen my K’ell, then, Stormy. Show your teeth and let the Nah’ruk close jaws on ’em. How long you think you can hold that ridge?’
‘How long do you need?’
‘I want most of the enemy Furies committed to pushing you off that ridge. I want you to savage them, enough to get them ducking their heads and thinking about nothing but the next step forward. I don’t want ’em looking right or left.’
‘What’s Ampelas Uprooted going to be doing during all this?’ Stormy demanded.
‘Unplug your skull.’
‘No, this is better.’
Kalyth had ridden closer. ‘There is sorcery—defences, weapons.’
Stormy wasn’t understanding something. He knew he would if he knocked down the walls he’d raised around his thoughts, but he didn’t want to do that. Ampelas Uprooted—Gesler wasn’t factoring it into his tactics at all. Why not?
No matter.
‘Ges, when holding isn’t what we need to do any more, what do you want from us?’
‘Single wedge, advance at the walk. Cut the bastards in half, Stormy. One wing will be healthier than the other. That one needs blocking—we annihilate the weaker wing. Then we can wheel and take down the other half.’
‘Ges, these Ve’Gath never fought this way before. The K’Chain Che’Malle had no tactics at all, from what I can see in my head.’
‘That’s why they need us humans,’ Kalyth said. ‘She understood. You two—’ she shook her head. ‘The Che’Malle—they drink down your confidence. They are sated. They hear you, discussing the battle to come, and they are awestruck with wonder. And . . . faith.’
Stormy scowled.
Woman, if you could read me right now, you’d run screaming. Of course we say we’re doing this and then that and then this other thing
and it’s all so perfect and so logical. We know it’s all a joke. We know that once the battle is engaged, it all turns into Hood’s hoary picnic basket.
Me and Ges, we’re just amateurs. Dujek was damned good at this, but Dassem Ultor, ah, he was the best of them all. He could stand there in front of ten thousand soldiers, and he’d take ’em all through every sword-stroke in the battle to come. By the end of all that wheeling here, driving there, breaking through there, we’d all be nodding half bored and ready to get on with it. It was a done deal to us, and the First Sword, why, he’d just take us all in with his eyes and give back one single nod.
Then the day went out and mayhem was a field of flowers and by dusk the enemy was dead or on the run.
Aye, Gesler, I hear you echoing him. I see you taking on his matter-of-fact tone and that face of sun-warmed iron that we all knew would turn to ice when the time came. I’ll give you this, friend, you’re stealing from the best of ’em all, and doing good.
He clawed through his beard. ‘Anyone got a cask of ale? I can’t remember the last time I went into a battle not belching sour brew.’ He studied Kalyth for a moment, and then sighed. ‘Never mind. Go on, Ges, go hide your K’ell, I got it here.’
‘See you when it’s done, Shield Anvil.’
‘Aye, Mortal Sword.’
Heat was building beneath Kalyth. Sag’Churok was flooded with flavours of violence. But she sat hunched, chilled, her very bones feeling like sticks trapped in lakeshore ice. These two soldiers appalled her. Their confidence was insane. The ease with which they took command—and the mockery with which they exchanged their titles moments before separating—left her reeling.
Her people had met with traders from Kolanse. She had seen armoured caravan guards, looking bored as the merchants haggled with the Elan elders. Children had drawn close to them, eyes shining, but none drew close enough to touch, as much as they might have wanted to. Killers were lodestones. Their silence and their flat eyes fed something in the young boys and girls, and Kalyth could see their childlike longing, the whispering romance of the horizons these warriors had seen. Such scenes had frightened her, and she had prayed to the spirits for the strangers to leave, to take their dangerous temptations with them.
Looking into Gesler’s eyes moments ago, she had seen the same terrible promise. The world was ever too small for him. The horizon chained him and that chain’s pull was relentless. He didn’t care what he left in his wake. His kind never did.
Yet I knew. Gu’Rull saw true. These were the ones I was seeking. These two men are the answer to Gunth’an Acyl’s vision. A future alive with hope.
But they don’t care. They will lead us in this battle, and if we all die they will either flee at the last moment, or they will fall—it’s no matter to them. They are no different from Redmask.
Those caravan guards still squatting in her memory, they were dead and they knew it. This knowledge was the one lover every warrior and every soldier shared, a whore of monstrous proportions. Paid in blood, pimped by kings and generals and fanatic prophets.
And it’s all twisted round. It’s the whore who does the raping.
You couldn’t catch her in a thousand years.
One time, two young braves had vanished after a caravan’s departure. The elders and parents met to discuss whether or not to set out after them, to drag them back to the village. In the end, the elders wandered off, and the mothers wept softly with their husbands looking on.
They put chains on and called it freedom. The whore stole them.
She wanted Gesler and Stormy to die. She wanted it with all her heart. There was no reason for it. They’d done nothing wrong. In fact, they were about to do precisely what they were meant to do. And they would not shrink from their destiny.
They are not to blame for my hate and my fear.
But I want a world without soldiers. I want to see them all kill each other. I want to see kings and generals standing alone—not a single soul within reach of their grasping claws. No weapon to back their will, no blade to sing their threats. I want to see them revealed for the weak, miserable creatures they truly are.
What can bring this about? How do I make such a world?
Spirits bless my ancestors, I wish I knew.
She’d lost her Mahybe, her clay vessel awaiting her soul. For her, death was a nightmare she knew was coming. She had no reason to dream of any future. In this, was she not like those caravan guards? Was she not the same as Gesler and Stormy? What did they see in
her
eyes?
I am Destriant. And yet I dream of betrayal.
When she looked upon the Ve’Gath, the echoes of their agony of birth returned to her, the terrors of the Womb. They did not deserve what was coming, and yet they longed for it. Could she steal them away from this day of dying, she would. She’d lead them, instead, against her own kind. A holy war against the soldiers of the world and their masters.
Leaving only herders and farmers and fisherfolk. Artists and tanners and potters. Story-tellers and poets and musicians.
A world for them and them alone. A world of peace.
The Nah’ruk Furies seemed to devour the broken plain as they advanced. The east was bright with the sun’s birth, but the sky above the enemy legions was a vast stain, a bruise, a maw from which wind howled.
Stormy drew his sword. He could see the front ranks of the foe preparing clubs—weapons of sorcery: the visions or stolen memories flashed scenes of devastating magic through his mind.
Ready your shields, and pray the iron holds.
He glared over a shoulder to Ampelas Uprooted. A veil of white smoke enwreathed the sky keep. Clouds? Scowling, Stormy turned his attention to his Ve’Gath. They were arrayed upon the ridge as if painted from his own mind—they
knew his thoughts now that he’d knocked down his mental walls. They knew what he wanted, what he needed.
And they will never break. Never flee—unless panic takes me, and Hood knows, for all the shit I been through, it ain’t happened yet. And it won’t today neither.
‘So, we stand, lizards. We stand.’
A sudden rustling through the ranks as heads lifted.
Stormy swung round.
From the gaping hole in the morning sky shapes were emerging. Towering, black, pushing out from the maelstrom foaming out from the warren.
Sky keeps. None as huge as the one behind him, massing perhaps two-thirds, and none were carved beyond angled plains of black stone. And yet . . .
Three . . . five . . . eight—
‘
Beru fend!
’
Ampelas Uprooted ignited like a star behind him.
The deafening, blinding salvo of sorcery ripped across the sky. Enormous chunks of gouged, burning stone erupted from the nearest three Nah’ruk sky keeps. Streaming churning smoke and rubble, shattered fragments the size of tenement blocks plunged earthward, slamming into the ground in the midst of the rearmost ranks of the Nah’ruk.
Ears numbed by the concussion, Gesler rose high on his stirrups—Ampelas Uprooted had drawn closer, looming almost directly overhead. ‘Hood’s breath! Ke’ll Hunters—flee the shadow! Get out from under it! East and west—
run
!’
He charged forward on his Ve’Gath.
Stormy! Fuck the stand—charge ’em! You hear? Charge and close!
He’d heard the stories of the Siege of Pale. Moon’s Spawn’s rain of wreckage into the city had broken the backs of the defenders. This deadly rain of rubble could shatter his entire army.
More Nah’ruk sky keeps emerged from the wound.
Lightning crackled, arced savagely out from a half-dozen sky keeps, converging on Ampelas Uprooted.
The detonations thundered. And the rain of slaughter began.
The huge wagons and their scrambling drones vanished beneath an avalanche that lifted nearby K’ell Hunters into the air, tails lashing for balance as they flailed about. Dust rolled out thick as a tidal wave to swallow the spreading horror as massive chunks of stone descended from the battered Uprooted.
Through the torrential, billowing smoke and rubble, Ampelas lashed back.
The saw-tooth line of Ve’Gath lifted as if heaved forward by the ridge itself, and all at once the huge warriors were pouring down the slope, straight for the lines of Nah’ruk.
Sorcery arced out from the wired clubs, crashed into a shield-locked wall of iron. The Ve’Gath staggered, but not one fell.
There was no time for a second salvo.
The Ve’Gath toothed line hammered into the Nah’ruk. The impact of the charge flattened two, then three ranks of the Short-Tails. Weapons lashed down as the Ve’Gath trampled the fallen enemy, closing with the deeper lines still reeling from the impact.