A similar formation was assembling north of the lesser berm, although there both flanking forces were Tiste Edur.
‘The wraiths will charge first,’ Moroch predicted, ‘with the demons behind them seeking to break our lines. And there, signal flags from the Grass Jackets. They have no doubt sighted their own enemy ranks.’
‘Were you the Edur commander,’ Quillas said, ‘what would you do? The attack cannot be as straightforward as it now seems, can it?’
‘If the commander is a fool, it can,’ Janall said.
‘The sorcery will prove mutually negating, as it always does. Thus, the battle shall be blade against blade.’ Moroch thought for a moment, then said, ‘I would make use of the Dry Gully. And seek a sudden charge against your mage cadre, Prince.’
‘They would become visible—and vulnerable—for the last fifty or sixty paces of the charge, Finadd. The bastions will slaughter them, and if not them, then the westernmost company of the Grass Jackets can mount a downslope charge into their flank.’
‘Thus leaving their rampart under-defended. Use the Dry Gully as a feint, and a reserve force to then rush the rampart and seize it.’
‘That rampart crouches in the shadow of High Fort’s largest bastion tower, Finadd. The Edur would be slaughtered by the answering enfilade.’
After a moment, Moroch nodded. ‘It is as you say, Prince. I admit, I see nothing advantageous to the Tiste Edur.’
‘I agree,’ Prince Quillas said.
‘Strangely quiet,’ Moroch mused after a time as the enemy forces assembled.
‘It’s the wraiths and demons, Finadd. No soldiers like thinking of those.’
‘The mages will annihilate them,’ Janall pronounced. She was dressed in elaborate armour, her helm filigreed in silver and gold. Her sword was the finest Letherii steel, but the grip was bound gold wire and the pommel a cluster of pearls set in silver. Beadwork covered her tabard. Beneath, Moroch knew, was steel scale. He did not think she would find need to draw her sword. Even so…The Finadd swung about and gestured to an aide, whom he then drew to one side. ‘Ready the queen’s horses, in the south lee of the west bastion.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Something was wrong. Moroch felt it as he watched the aide hurry off. He scanned the sky. Grey. Either the sun would burn through or there would be rain. He returned to his original position and studied the distant ranks. ‘They’re in position. Where are the chants? The exhortations? The ritual curses?’
‘They see the doom awaiting them,’ Quillas said, ‘and are silenced by terror.’
A sudden stirring among the queen’s mages. Alertness. Janall noticed and said, ‘Prepare the lines. The Edur have begun sorcery.’
‘What kind?’ Moroch asked.
The queen shook her head.
‘Betrayer’s balls,’ the Finadd muttered. It felt wrong. Terribly wrong.
Ahlrada Ahn had drawn his cutlass and was grinning. ‘I never understood you spear-wielders. This will be close fighting, Trull Sengar. They will hack the shaft from your hands—’
‘They will try. Blackwood will not shatter, as you know. Nor shall my grip.’
Standing behind the wedge of demons was a K’risnan. The warlock’s comrade was with the other force, also positioned behind a demon cohort. Hanradi Khalag commanded there, and the K’risnan in his charge was his son.
B’nagga and a thousand of his Jheck were just visible in a basin to the west. Another thousand were moving down the gully, whilst the third thousand accompanied the easternmost force along with wraiths and demons.
It occurred to Trull that he knew almost nothing of the huge, armoured demons bound to this war by the K’risnan. Not even the name by which they called themselves.
Warriors of the Arapay and Hiroth were massed along the forest line, less than a third of their total numbers visible to the enemy. Outwardly, the dominant Edur army would appear to be the central one, Hanradi Khalag’s eighteen thousand Hiroth and Merude, but in truth Fear’s force here in the forest amounted to almost twenty-three thousand Edur warriors. And arrayed among them were wraiths in numbers beyond counting.
Tendrils of grey mist swirled round the nearest K’risnan, forming a fluid web that began to thicken, then rise. Thread-thin strands snaked out, entwining the nearest ranks of Edur. Flowing out like roots, embracing all within sight barring the wraiths and the demons. In a billowing, grey wall, the sorcery burgeoned. Trull felt it playing over him, and its touch triggered a surge of nausea that he barely defeated.
From the Letherii cadre, a wave of raging fire rose in answer, building with a roar directly in front of the rampart, then plunging swift and savage across the killing field.
As suddenly as that, the battle was begun.
Trull stared as the massive wall of flame rushed towards them. At the last moment the grey skein rushed out, colliding with the wave and lifting it straight up in explosive columns, pillars that spiralled with silver fire.
And Trull saw, within the flames, the gleam of bones. Thousands, then hundreds of thousands, as if the fire’s very fuel had been transformed. Towering higher, fifty man-heights, then a hundred, two hundred, filling the sky.
The conjoined wave then began toppling. Fiery pillars heaving over, towards the Letherii entrenchments.
Even as they plunged earthward, the wraiths from the forest and those in the foremost line launched into a rushing attack. The wedge of demons promptly vanished.
It was the signal Trull and the other officers had been waiting for. ‘Weapons ready!’ He had to bellow to make himself heard—
The wave struck. First the killing field, and the ground seemed to explode, churning, as if a multitude of miner’s picks had struck the earth, deep, tearing loose huge chunks that were flung high into the air. Dust and flames, the clash of split bones ripping the flat expanse, a sound like hail on sheets of iron. Onward, onto the slopes of the ramparts.
In its wake, a flowing sea of wraiths.
‘Forward!’
And then the Edur were running across broken, steaming ground. Behind them, thousands pouring from the forest edge.
Trull saw, all too clearly, as the wave of burning, hammering bones reached the entrenchments. A blush of crimson, then pieces of human flesh danced skyward, a wall, rising, severed limbs flailing in the air. Fragments of armour, the shattered wood of the bulwarks, skin and hair.
The queen’s cadre was engulfed, bones rushing in to batter where they had been. A moment later the mass exploded outward in a hail of shards, and of the four sorcerors who had been standing there a moment earlier only two remained, sheathed in blood and reeling.
A demon rose from the ravaged earth in front of them, mace swinging. The mage it struck seemed to fold bonelessly around it, and his body was tossed through the air. The last sorceror staggered back, narrowly avoiding the huge weapon’s deadly path. She gestured, even as a hail of heavy quarrels hammered into the demon.
Trull heard its squeal of pain.
Flickering magic swarmed the demon as it spun round and toppled, sliding down the blood-soaked slope, the mace tumbling away.
Other demons had appeared among the remnants of the Letherii soldiery, flailing bodies flying from their relentless path.
Another wave of sorcery, this time from somewhere to the southeast, a rolling column, crackling with lightning as it swept crossways on the killing field, plunging into the advancing ranks of wraiths. They melted in their hundreds as the magic tore through them.
Then the sorcery struck Hanradi Khalag’s warriors, scything a path through the press.
The Merude chief’s son counter-attacked, another surge of grey, tumbling bones. A rampart to the east vanished in a thunderous detonation, but hundreds of Edur lay dead or dying on the field.
Deafened, half-blinded by dust and smoke, Trull and his warriors reached the slope, scrambled upward and came to the first trench.
Before them stretched an elongated pit filled with unrecognizable flesh, split bo
nes and spilled organs, strips of leather and pieces of armour. The air was thick with the stench of ruptured bowels and burnt meat. Gagging, Trull stumbled across, his moccasins plunging down into warm pockets, lifting clear sheathed in blood and bile.
Ahead, a raging battle. Wraiths swarming over soldiers, demons with mauls and maces crushing the Letherii closing on them from all sides, others with double-bladed axes cleaving wide spaces round themselves. But ballista quarrels were finding them one by one. Trull watched a demon stagger, twice impaled, then soldiers rushed in, swords hacking.
And then he and his company closed with the enemy.
Moroch Nevath stumbled through the dust, the screaming soldiers and the fallen bodies, bellowing his prince’s name. But Quillas was nowhere to be seen. Nor was Janall. Only one mage remained from the cadre, launching attack after attack on some distant enemy. A company of heavy infantry had moved up to encircle her, but they were fast dying beneath an onslaught of Tiste Edur.
The Finadd, blood draining from his ears after the concussion of the wave of bones, still held his sword, the Letherii steel obliterating the occasional wraith that ventured near. He saw one Edur warrior, the spear a blur in his hands, leading a dozen or so of his kin ever closer to the surviving mage.
But Moroch was too far away, too many heaving bodies between them, and he could only watch as the warrior broke through the last of the defenders and lunged at the mage, driving his spear into her chest, then lifting her entire, the spear-shaft bowing as he flung her spasming body to one side. The iron point of the spear broke free in a stream of blood.
Reeling away, Moroch Nevath began making his way to the south slope of the rampart. He needed a horse. He needed to bring the mounts closer. For the prince. The queen.
Somewhere to the east, a roar of sound, and the ground shook beneath him. He staggered, then his left leg swept out, skidding on slime, and something snapped in the Finadd’s groin. Pain lanced through him. Swearing, he watched himself fall, the ruptured ground rising in front of him, and landed heavily. Burning agony in his left leg, his pelvis, up the length of his spine. Still swearing, he began dragging himself forward, his sword lost somewhere in his wake.
Bones. Burning, plunging from the sky. Bodies exploding where they struck. Crushing pressure, the air roiling and screaming like a thing alive. The sudden muting of all noise, the outrageous cacophony of grunts as a thousand men died all at once. A sound that Moroch Nevath would never forget. What had the bastards unleashed?
The Letherii were broken, fleeing down the south slope of the rampart. Wraiths dragged them down. Tiste Edur hacked at their backs and heads as they pursued. Trull Sengar clambered onto a heap of corpses, seeking a vantage point. To the east, on the two berms that he could see, the enemy were shattered. Jheck, veered into silver-backed wolves, had poured up from the gully alongside a horde of wraiths to assault what had survived of the Letherii defences. Mage-fire had ceased.
In the opposite direction, B’nagga had led his own beasts south, skirting the foremost rampart, to attack the reserve positions on the west side of the city. There had been enemy cavalry there, and the horses had been driven to panic by the huge wolves rushing into their midst. A dozen demons had joined the Jheck, forcing the Letherii into a chaotic retreat that gathered up and carried with it the southernmost elements. Companies of Arapay Edur were following in B’nagga’s wake.
Trull swung to face north. And saw his brother standing alone above a body, on the far side of the killing field.
The K’risnan.
‘Trull.’
He turned. ‘Ahlrada Ahn. You are wounded.’
‘I ran onto a sword—held by a dead man.’
The gash was deep and long, beginning just below the warrior’s left elbow and continuing up into his shoulder. ‘Find yourself a healer,’ Trull said, ‘before you bleed out.’
‘I shall. I saw you slay the witch.’ A statement to which Ahlrada added nothing.
‘Where is Canarth?’ Trull asked. ‘I do not see my troop.’
‘Scattered. I saw Canarth dragging Badar from the press. Badar was dying.’
Trull studied the blood and fragments of flesh on the iron point of his spear. ‘He was young.’
‘He was blooded, Trull.’
Trull glanced over at High Fort’s walls. He could see soldiers lining it. The garrison, witness to the annihilation of the Letherii manning the outer defences. The nearest bastion was still launching quarrels, tracking the few demons still in range.
‘I must join my brother, Ahlrada. See if you can gather our warriors. There may be more fighting to come.’
Huddled in the lee of the west wall, Moroch Nevath watched a dozen wolves pad from one heap of corpses to another. The beasts were covered in blood. They gathered round a wounded soldier, there was a sudden flurry of snarls, and the twitching body went still.
All over…so fast. Decisive indeed.
He had never found the horses.
On the rampart opposite him, eighty paces distant, a score of Tiste Edur had found Prince Quillas. Dishevelled but alive. Moroch wondered if the queen’s corpse lay somewhere beneath the mounds of broken flesh. Beadwork unstrung and scattered in the welter, her jewelled sword still locked in its scabbard, the ambitious light in her eyes dulled and drying and blind to this world.
It seemed impossible.
But so did all these dead Letherii, these obliterated battalions and brigades.
There had been no negation of magic. The eleven mages had been destroyed by the counter-attack. A battle had been transformed into a slaughter, and it was this inequity that stung Moroch the deepest.
He and his people had been on the delivering end, time and again, until it seemed inherently just and righteous. Something went wrong. There was treachery. The proper course of the world has been…upended. The words repeating in his head were growing increasingly bitter. It is not for us to be humbled. Ever. Failure drives us to succeed tenfold. All will be put right, again. It shall. We cannot be denied our destiny.
It began to rain.
An Edur warrior had seen him and was approaching, sword held at the ready. The downpour arrived with vigour as the tall figure came to stand before Moroch Nevath. In traders’ tongue he said, ‘I see no wounds upon you, soldier.’
‘Torn tendon, I think,’ Moroch replied.
‘Painful, then.’
‘Have you come to kill me?’
A surprised expression. ‘You do not know? The garrison surrendered. High Fort is fallen.’
‘What of it?’
‘We come as conquerors, soldier. What value killing all of our subjects?’
Moroch looked away. ‘Letherii conquer. We are never conquered. You think this battle means anything? You have revealed your tactics, Edur. This day shall not be repeated, and before long you will be the subjugated ones, not us.’
The warrior shrugged. ‘Have it your way, then. But know this. The frontier has fallen. Trate, High Fort and Shake Fort. Your famous brigades are routed, your mage cadres dead. Your queen and your prince are our prisoners. And we begin our march on Letheras.’
The Tiste Edur walked away.
Moroch Nevath stared after him for a time, then looked round. And saw Letherii soldiers, stripped of weapons but otherwise unharmed, walking from the fields of battle. Onto the loggers’ road, and south, on the Katter Road. Simply walking away. He did not understand. We will reassemble. Pull back and equip ourselves once more. There is nothing inevitable to this. Nothing. Wincing, he forced himself to move away from the wall—
A familiar voice, shouting his name. He looked up, recognized an officer from the queen’s entourage. The man bore minor wounds, but otherwise seemed hale. He quickly approached. ‘Finadd, I am pleased to see you alive—’
‘I need a horse.’
‘We have them, Finadd—’
‘How was the queen captured?’ Moroch demanded. Why did you not die defending her?
‘A demon,’ the man repl
ied. ‘It was among us in the blink of an eye. It had come to take her—we could not prevent it. We tried, Finadd, we tried—’
‘Never mind. Help me up. We must ride south—I need a healer—’
Trull Sengar picked his way across the killing field. The rain was turning the churned ground into a swamp. The bones of the sorcery had vanished. He paused, hearing piteous cries from somewhere off to his right. A dozen paces in that direction, and he came upon a demon.
Four heavy quarrels had pierced it. The creature was lying on its side, its bestial face twisted with pain.
Trull crouched near the demon’s mud-smeared head. ‘Can you understand me?’
Small blue eyes flickered behind the lids, fixed on his own eyes. ‘Arbiter of life. Denier of mercy. I shall die here.’
The voice was thin, strangely childlike.
‘I shall call a healer—’
‘Why? To fight again? To relive terror and grief?’
‘You were not a warrior in your world?’
‘A caster of nets. Warm shoals, a yellow sky. We cast nets.’
‘All of you?’
‘What war is this? Why have I been killed? Why will I never see the river again? My mate, my children. Did we win?’
‘I shall not be long. I will return. I promise.’ Trull straightened, went on to where stood Fear and, now, a dozen others. The K’risnan was alive, surrounded by healers—none of whom seemed capable of doing anything for the figure writhing in the mud. As Trull neared, he saw more clearly the young warlock.
Twisted, deformed, his skin peeling in wet sheets, and eyes filled with awareness.
Fear stepped into Trull’s path and said, ‘It is the sword’s sorcery—the gift-giver’s own, channelled from the weapon into Rhulad, and from Rhulad to whomever he may choose. Yet…’ He hesitated. ‘The body cannot cope. Even as it destroys the enemy, so it changes the wielder. This is what the women are telling me.’
His brother’s face was pale, and nowhere in his expression could Trull see triumph or satisfaction at the victory they had won this day.
The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen Page 431
