face, stunning him. Stones and dirt and thick choking clouds of dust came billowing over him and he coughed, spitting, and shaking his ringing pummelled head. Multiple blasts punished him, driving him down into the surrounding broken rocks, punching the breath from him.
He didn’t know if he lost consciousness, but at some point he realized that it seemed to be over. He’d been waiting, tensed, curled into a ball beneath his shield, for yet another concussion that never came. He dared to raise his head. Dirt and gravel tumbled from his back. He shook it from his hair and staggered up. All was obscured in hanging drifting smoke and swirling dust. He could hear nothing over the punishing ringing in his ears. He spat again, blinking, holding his chest where his ribs ached from the concussive waves that had battered him.
A huge shape shambled upright nearby, dirt sifting from him: Hektar, arms out, blindly searching about the rocks. Bendan clasped his arm. ‘I’m here,’ he croaked.
The Dal Hon wiped his face where a clear wetness had cut through the dirt caked beneath his bloodied wrappings. ‘Poor bastards,’ he was saying. ‘Poor fucking bastards.’
It occurred to Bendan that the man was crying.
~
Torvald had pressed himself to Galene’s back, one arm around her, the other clasping one of the saddle grips. He squeezed his eyes closed to miss their dizzying near vertical climb scudding over the naked rock face of the valley head. He felt the pressure wave of the multiple eruptions behind him. It was like a hand pressing him into the Moranth Silver and rushing the quorl along like a great tidal push.
Cold wetness chilled his cheeks in the slashing wind and he knew that he was weeping. Galene shifted in the saddle and adjusted the jesses and the quorl tilted, arching backwards. It seemed that they were turning round.
While the smoke and dust swirled and hung in curtains over the blasted slope Bendan patted Hektar’s arm. ‘It’s all right, man. They woulda done for us.’
‘Ain’t right,’ the sergeant was saying over and over. ‘What was done here. Ain’t right. It’s a fucking tragedy is what it is.’
Horrified shouts sounded from the lines and Bendan turned, squinting into the clouds of settling dust. He almost fell then, his knees weakening, a hand going to his throat. ‘Oh no … Hood, no … Don’t do this …’
‘What is it?’ Hektar demanded, peering blindly about.
They came out of the hanging smoke and dust. Some limped, some staggered. Others stayed upright only by virtue of their swords dragging along over the rocks. Still they came onward, advancing.
All around, troopers retreated, backing up the rising slope, edging past boulders. ‘Stop!’ Bendan shouted to one tattered figure making for him. ‘Please — stop!’
It was a woman, one arm shattered, bone glistening white through the flesh. Her mask was broken, half gone, that side of her face a blackened red ruin. Still she raised her sword, pointing.
Bendan backed away, a hand on Hektar’s arm.
‘Where is he?’ the Dal Hon whispered.
‘She’s on your left.’
The Seguleh came on. A trooper scrambled down to her, hunched, sword in one hand, reaching out with the other. ‘Let’s put it down, lass,’ he urged, gently. ‘Drop your sword. It’s all over now.’
Lunging, she slashed one-handed and he fell, eviscerated in a great gout of splashing innards. She straightened again, weaving slightly, blade pointing straight at Bendan.
‘Tell me when she’s close,’ Hektar ground out.
Two more regulars charged her, swinging. Both were weeping as they attacked. She sidestepped, parrying, her sword sliding easily over the first to slash his throat then quickly blocking the other, twisting in a blur round and under his shield, taking the man’s leg off at the knee. He fell shrieking.
It seemed to Bendan that the woman would have fallen at that moment but for leaning her weight on a stab into the crippled man’s chest. She recovered then, her mouth writhing in agony beneath its caked dirt and blood. The sword snapped up again, the point inhumanly steady.
He let go Hektar’s arm. ‘Ready now,’ he whispered beneath his breath, crouching, shortsword raised.
Two quick paces from the woman closed the gap. Bendan hunched even further, eyes barely peeping over his shield. Her blade slashed across the top and he flinched. Warmth ran down his nose. Behind his shield Hektar cocked his head as if listening; then he suddenly launched himself forward with a roar, throwing his arms out.
The woman slashed and a forearm flew but the man’s enormous weight bulled her over and they fell together. Her slim blade somehow licked up between them even as they crashed among the rocks and Bendan jumped after them. He stabbed at the woman, piercing her hip, his blade grating down the pelvis bone. Lancing burning pain erupted in his leg and he glanced down to see the woman’s blade twist free from high in his thigh. Then more troopers crowded him, all thrusting, crying, cursing, weeping. He slumped down against a rock, his leg completely numb. He sat in a cold shaky sweat of pain, shock and panic.
One of the troopers turned Hektar over to reveal the man’s chest slashed open. Pink foam blew at his mouth as he laboured to breathe. Bendan slid down to cradle the man’s head on his lap. Hektar’s wide smile returned but the teeth were bright red with blood now. ‘Got one,’ the big man murmured.
‘Yeah. You got one.’
‘All … done … now.’
‘Yeah, Sarge. All done now.’
Bendan sat for a long time holding the dead man. Squad cutters came and tied off his cuts and stopped the bleeding. When they gently pulled at the corpse he batted them away. Having seen it before, the healers moved off without objecting. The hot sun beat down and still Bendan rocked him. Carrion birds gathered, circling over the blasted field of kicked-up dirt and scattered torn bodies. A shadow occluded the sun over Bendan and he looked up, squinting. It was Corporal Little.
She crouched on her haunches at his side, rested a hand on Hektar, then looked to him.
‘Don’t you say it,’ he croaked. ‘Don’t you fucking say anything.’
She looked away, blinking back tears. ‘No,’ she managed, her voice barely audible. ‘I guess not.’
*
‘Sir?’ Fist K’ess said, clearing his throat. Ambassador Aragan did not turn away from where he had stood since the attack, his gaze steady on the shattered field. K’ess himself was not insensate to the horror: the drifting smoke, the broken bodies lying in droves around craters blasted into the loose talus of the slope. He almost turned away, imagining that firestorm of blasts and the fragmented rock chips lancing like shrapnel through unprotected flesh. What disturbed him the most, however, was the silence. How eerie it was; nothing like any of the many fields of battle he’d known. No cries or moans of wounded echoed over the slopes. No calls for water. No outbursts or hopeless cursing.
Indeed, all the murmured sounds of stricken awe, all the curses, the moans and quiet weeping came now from the Malazan troops behind him. And he wondered: what was worse? To have died in that ill-fated charge, or to have to live now having witnessed it?
It took a strong effort of will to tear his gaze from that appalling field of slaughter and he glanced back to Captain Fal-ej, the woman’s arm and chest bloodied and wrapped in stiff drying cloth. She signed to him to speak again. ‘Sir,’ he repeated, a touch louder. ‘The Moranth have landed. A contingent awaits.’
The ambassador appeared to gather himself. He turned, blinking and wiping at his eyes. He cleared his throat against the back of his hand. ‘Yes. The Moranth,’ he said, his voice shaking with emotion. ‘Thank you, Fist. Let’s go and see what they want, shall we?’
As they clambered down the rocks K’ess was surprised to see a man alongside a Moranth Silver and a battered Red. What was more, the ambassador and the Red actually embraced.
‘Fist K’ess, Captain Fal-ej,’ said Aragan, ‘may I introduce Torn, our attache.’
Torn gestured to the Silver. ‘Galene, an Elect. What you might call a priestess. And this is Torvald, Nom of Nom, member of the Darujhistan Council.’
K’ess and Fal-ej bowed. ‘Councillor, an honour.’
The Darujhistani aristocrat grimaced. He looked shaky and sickly pale. ‘Well, it would seem the Council has been suspended.’
‘None the less,’ Aragan murmured. He gestured aside to another officer, calling, ‘Captain Dreshen!’
The young officer jogged up, bowing. Aragan held out a hand and the man dug in his shoulder bag to pull out
