* * *
Nait was sitting with Urfa and Bowl and a few other saboteur sergeants watching their boys and girls trying to get fires going to cook a hot meal. Heuk's darkness still coursed above their position but it was fraying gently, dissipating. Nait figured it'd be gone by dawn. Heuk himself slept still, curled up nearby, a dopey drooling smile on his face, jug clenched tighter than a pricey hired girl, or boy. Nait was all ready to fall asleep too when Urfa sent a bulging, cross-eyed look his way and motioned aside.
There came the Sword of the Empire himself, bandaged and bloodied, armour clattering all bashed and battered, marching up to the officer's fire followed by his guard of lieutenants and captains. Nait hung his head. Gods no – please don't fuck us up!
‘Why are we not moving?’ the man demanded so loud everyone on the slope could hear. ‘I gave the order that we march! The Guard remain on the field. We must attack!’
Faces turned among the assembled saboteurs from where they argued over the best way to start the fires. They'd been comparing tinder boxes and flints, slow-burning coal sticks wrapped in leather, goose-down and lint ember beds, and all the while the fires remained unstruck. Oh, oh. Nait pushed himself up and motioned Urfa and Bowl to come. The three ambled over to where captains Tinsmith, Kepp and Blossom all struggled to their feet. Kepp and Blossom helped Tinsmith up with a padded stick that had been fashioned as a crutch.
‘Yes, Sword?’ Tinsmith offered.
‘Why have the orders for the troops to assemble not been conveyed?’ Korbolo demanded, enunciating his words with great care.
‘Move out – where? Sir?’ Tinsmith inquired.
The Napan commander jabbed an arm to the west. ‘West! A Guard strongpoint remains! They could attack us at any moment. They must be eradicated. Slain to a man!’
Tinsmith thoughtfully ran a thumb and forefinger along his silver moustache. ‘Messages indicate they have effectively withdrawn, Sword,’ he said with all reasonableness.
Korbolo stepped right up to the captain. His mouth twisted in a frown of exaggerated disappointment. ‘You are not refusing a direct order, are you, Captain?’ he asked, his voice now very soft. ‘Because I will have you arrested. And then, tomorrow, after we have killed them all, I, Korbolo Dom, Sword of the Empire, will be proclaimed victor over the Crimson Guard. Defeater of Skinner. And I will have you and your entire command crucified. Believe me – I've done it before. Now … move out.’
A salute from Tinsmith. ‘Hail the Sword.’
Korbolo answered the salute. ‘Very good, Captain. Carry on.’ He marched off followed by his troop leaving Tinsmith hopping in place and studying his crutch. Nait and Urfa and Bowl ran up together with other sergeants. Everyone spoke at once, complaining, threatening, refusing to move. Many pointed in the direction of the sleeping Heuk. Tinsmith, Kepp and Blossom raised their hands for calm.
‘We've no choice,’ Tinsmith said, curtly. ‘Make a stretcher for the mage. We'll take him with us. I want a column of infantry with skirmishers surrounding. At the first sign of trouble we scoot back here. OK?’
Nait could only shake his head at the awesome, monumental stupidity of it all. He'd managed it: he'd fucked them up.
Nait opted to range with the skirmishers, leaving Heuk to be carried within the ranks. This squad didn't march so much as skulk, spread out, crossbows readied, hunched. A faint lightening brushed the eastern horizon; the stars were dimmer there. Nait cast quick glances over his people. They'd been lucky, lost only two: Kal and the lad, Poot. The lad hurt the worst. Not because he was young ‘n’ all that, but because it had been friendly fire. In all the ruckus of people jumping the trench, climbing in and out, someone's crossbow had been jiggled and it fired right next to his head. No warning at all. That had been a hard one for everyone to take.
Thankfully, this portion of the field was relatively empty. The worst was just south where fires still burned and kites and other bold night-feeders wheeled. They'd crossed most of the field when a contingent of horsemen came pounding out of the dark. ‘Hold fire! Hold fire!’ Nait heard sergeants bellow among the skirmishers. It was a troop of Wickan lancers. They pulled up, halting.
‘Who commands?’ one shouted – an old veteran. In fact, they all looked like hard-travelled veterans.
‘Sword of the Empire,’ came the answering shout. ‘Korbolo Dom.’
The Wickans gaped, motionless, then hands went to sheathed long-knives and other weapons. Wickan curses sounded. ‘What name was that?’ the old spokesman asked again as if unbelieving.
‘Mine!’ Korbolo came walking up from the column. ‘What news?’
The grey-haired old veteran rested his forearms on the pommel of his high saddle and studied the man with something akin to amazement. Finally, after a time, he shook his head and spat aside as if to ease his mouth of a sour taste. ‘You are bold and brave, I give you that. How does it feel, murderer, to be in our debt?’
Korbolo appeared supremely untroubled. ‘I am in no one's debt. I am the Sword of the Empire – I command all Imperial forces.’
‘Well for us, then, that according to your own Empress, we are not Imperial forces. Yet you owe your victory to us. I wonder, then, what recompense the Throne might offer to repay such a debt, yes?’
The Sword's smile of self-assurance was almost a smirk. ‘Such matters are for the Empress to judge.’
‘Indeed. And she and the army all bore witness to what happened this night.’ The Wickan sawed his reins around and the troop stormed off.
Nait watched them go. Boy, a lot of history there. Official word was that the Wickans up at Seven Cities had betrayed Imperial interests and Korbolo barely managed to salvage the whole theatre. For himself, Nait didn't believe a word of it; and this confrontation clinched things for him. The Wickans had treated Korbolo as the traitor. He turned to his squad who stood watching the retreating horsemen. ‘Move out! Let's go! Got ground to cover.’
Ahead, the plain rose slightly in a series of modest hills. One held the retreat of the remaining Crimson Guard. Some three thousand, he'd heard; who knew how many Avowed. Surrounding the hill was Fist D'Ebbin's command plus all the Talian and Falaran and other elements that had joined up with him through the night. The Wickan cavalry circled as well, appearing ready to charge the hill all on their own. But no arrows or crossbow bolts flew. The Guard had withdrawn to behind their shieldwall; the Imperials merely maintained their encirclement.
Kibb sidled up next to him. The lad puffed beneath the unaccustomed weight of all his new armour plus the burden of his crossbow, shield, munitions shoulder-bag and a whacking great scab-barded Grisan bastard-sword, the bronze-capped tip of which scraped along the ground behind him. ‘What're we gonna do?’ he asked.
‘You're carrying too much gear, soldier.’
‘Wasn't plannin’ on any marching. We're not gonna attack, are we? I mean, we got lucky once – no point pushin’ it.’
Nait laughed. ‘Listen to you. You was ready to piss in everyone's eye, now you just want to keep your head low. You're all grown up.’
The lad flinched away, bristling. ‘Piss on you!’
Nait continued laughing, walking along. Wasn't it cute the way they got all huffy. The chuckling slowly died in his throat as he peered ahead. The sky was looking all strange over the west. Green, yellow and pink lights blossomed there like the ones that sometimes glowed in the north, but smaller, much more contained. A breeze brushed his face, stirred the trampled, broken stalks of the grass. He raised a fist for a halt, knelt. What was this? Some Avowed mage counter-attack?
The column had halted as well, shields being unslung. Nait spotted Urfa's bunch and waved them over. She ducked down next to him. ‘What is it?’
Oponn's own trouble.’
‘No kidding. What're we going to do?’
Nait scanned the empty slope – not enough cover for an emaciated rat. ‘Don't know.’
‘What about your old boy, the wonder mage?’
‘He's sleepin’ it off. Wouldn't wake even for Hood.’
‘Well …’ She pointed west. ‘I think he's coming.’
The aura brightened, thickening. A wind swelled out of the west. Something big comin’ their way. Then a flash like sheet lightning blinded him. He glanced aside, wincing, as did everyone. An explosion made him drop to the ground. In the distance something huge slammed into the earth, impacting, shaking, crashing in the cacophony of a huge object dissolving into shards. The ground shook beneath Nait. The juddering continued, closing like the constant reports of a thunderstorm on its way. A shape rolled towards them as a mass of churning dirt and pale things flashing. Then it, slowed, falling, sliding, and the blossoming dust-cloud enveloped it, obscuring everything from view.
An eerie silence followed in which rocks clattered, ground shifted, tumbling and sighing. Nait shaded his eyes, blinking back tears.
The great cloud of dust and thrown earth enveloped them. As it slowly drifted away he saw that a bite had been taken out of the shoulder of the hill the Guard held. The bite extended down in a long gouge that cut a swath through Fist D'Ebbin's lines to carry on, shallowing, in a trail of smashed timber to the wreckage of what appeared to be the tangled remains of an actual sailing ship, here, practically at the very centre of the continent.
He stood and stared, as did his squad one after the other together with nearby skirmishers. ‘What do we do?’ Urfa asked, wonder filling her voice, her askew eyes fairly goggling out of her skull.
‘I don't know.’
Movement: someone walking, staggering, out of the shattered ruins. Nait and Urfa exchanged looks of awed amazement. Trake's balls! Who might this be? The figure returned to the wreckage, and then emerged dragging another. That broke the spell for Nait. ‘Let's go,’ he yelled. ‘Help them out!’ The squads and skirmishers jogged for the broken tumble of shattered timber.
It was a broad, heavy-set woman. She was struggling to return to the ruins but was now unable to walk straight. She was obviously in shock. Her face was a mass of torn and bruised flesh; she was practically naked and, bizarrely, her head was unevenly shaved. Nait grasped her shoulders. ‘What's your name? What happened?’
She blinked, her mouth worked, mumbling, dribbled bloody spit. ‘Stop,’ she managed.
‘Stop? Stop what? What do you mean?’
‘Stop … him.’ And she sat heavily, her limbs twitching. More survivors appeared, being dragged from the shell, all dressed alike in rags, with hair hacked short or shaved as well. Too intact – they should've all been shredded like the vessel. Must've been protected by magery.
Two men came running up, dressed just like the ship's crew. One's arm was a lacerated, tattered thing of red flesh, creamy bone, and hanging sinew, but he appeared to be ignoring what would otherwise be an instantly fatal injury to any other human. The other pressed a hand to his side where a length of slivered wood pierced completely through his torso. Blood soaked his front and that leg. Avowed! Must be. ‘Find him!’ this one bellowed, almost weeping his pain. ‘An old man – a Seven Cities native! Find him!’
‘Just sit down!’ Nait yelled, running up. Behind them a troop of Wickans was closing.
‘Find him! Kill him!’ and he wept, his face contorted in agony. His companion's eyes rolled up all white and he tottered, fell to his knees, then his side. Nait reached the impaled fellow then stopped – he had absolutely no idea what to do. ‘Healer!’ he yelled. Then he yelped as the fellow had somehow closed and yanked Nait's own shortsword from his scabbard. Armed, he started limping for the wreck. ‘Wait! Kill who? Why?’
From behind the vessel's remains violet fire lashed out to strike the closing Wickans in a swath of incandescent destruction. Horses and men flew, spinning. The ground itself shook with the concussion and Nait staggered.
‘Him,’ the man snarled. Cursing, he stopped, grasped hold of the jagged shard of wood as long as a sword, and, with a scream, drew it out.
‘Who are you?’ Nait breathed.
‘Ho. Now, get your men – kill him, now!’
Nait signed to the skirmishers to open fire. They hunched, scuttled forward. Violet fire arced into the sky to carve a bright streak across the night. Everyone watched. It hurtled up and over them, curving down to smash into the column. Its churning energies cut a swath some five men wide through the massed ranks. The unit broke like a shattered cup. Knots of men ran in all directions – most back east. Keep runnin lads – seek cover – ‘cause that worst has just arrived.
Ho held out an arm. ‘Take me to the others.’ Nait took his sword back and helped him walk. May came running up, hunched, hands all wet with blood from treating wounds. ‘Dig in!’ Nait bellowed over the roar of coursing power. She saluted, ran off.
Nait led the man to where the ship's survivors had been collected. Here lay the resilient heavy-set woman and another woman, an elderly Wickan; the fellow with the savaged arm; a young fellow who was even more battered and twisted; and two other blood-smeared, lacerated and traumatized survivors. Healers from among the Untan volunteer ranks and a few from the Malazan regulars were busy at work on them, stopping bleeding, hands pressed to bruised flesh.
‘Is this it?’
Clenching down on his pain, Ho said in a tight voice, ‘Yes. And many of these here are of the Guard.’
‘We happen to be fighting them,’ Nait observed, neutrally.
‘We'll need them.’
Nait didn't bother asking what for. ‘What about you? You need a healer.’
‘No – I'm … getting better.’
Nait stepped up to the man, examined his naked side where beneath the drying blood and fluids only a pink scar remained of what had been a gouge worse than a sword thrust. Who – what – was this fellow?
Nait helped the man sit in the grass then turned to watch the skirmishers. They'd taken cover around the sides of the wreckage, firing at something a way east ahead of the pile. They popped up from the grass, fired, then dropped back down again. Damned prairie dogs, is what they are. That's it! The Prairie Dogs.
He was about to congratulate himself when the ground wavered beneath him and he staggered. A curved wall of the dark-blue fire billowed out towards the vessel, scattering the irregulars, erupting the grasses in flame. Nait dived for cover. Something cast an eerie shadow over everything, climbing higher, and he gaped up at a dark mar or bruise in the night sky, coalescing, darkening, seeming to flow inward.
Nait yelled to the men and women staring, gaping upwards, ‘Dig in!’