think. Or hope.
Heroic stands usually end up with not a single hero left standing.
Held out longer than expected, but the end was the same anyway. The end's always the same.'
'Abyss below, Gesler,' Strings said, 'ain't you a cheery one.'
'Just being realistic, Fid. Damn, I wish Stormy was here, now it's up to me to keep an eye on my squad.'
'Yes,' Cuttle said, 'that's what sergeants do.'
'You suggesting Stormy should've been sergeant and me corporal?'
'Now why would I do that?' the sapper asked. 'You're both just as bad as each other. Now Pella here…'
'No thanks,' Pella said.
Strings sipped his tea. 'Just make sure everybody sticks together.
Captain wants us on the tip of the spear, as fast and as far in as we can get – the rest will just have to catch up. Cuttle?'
'Once the wall's blown I'll pull our sappers together and we meet you inside the breach. Where's Borduke right now?'
'Went for a walk. Seems his squad got into some kind of sympathetic heaves. Borduke got disgusted and stormed off.'
'So long as everybody's belly is empty by the time we get the call,'
Cuttle said. 'Especially Maybe.'
'Especially maybe,' Gesler said, with a low laugh. 'That's a good one.
You've made my day, Cuttle.'
'Believe me, it wasn't intentional.'
Seated nearby, hidden from the others in a brush-bordered hollow, Bottle smiled. So that's how the veterans get ready for a fight. Same as everyone else. That did indeed comfort him. Mostly. Well, maybe not. Better had they been confident, brash and swaggering. This – what was coming – sounded all too uncertain.
He had just returned from the mage gathering. Magical probes had revealed a muted presence in Y'Ghatan, the priestly kind, for the most part, and what there was of that was confused, panicked. Or strangely quiescent. For the sappers' advance, Bottle would be drawing upon Meanas, rolling banks of mist, tumbling darkness on all sides. Easily dispelled, if a mage of any skill was on the wall, but there didn't seem to be any. Most troubling of all, Bottle would need all his concentration to work Meanas, thus preventing him from using spirit magic. Leaving him as blind as those few enemy soldiers on the wall.
He admitted to a bad run of nerves – he hadn't been nearly so shaky at Raraku. And with Leoman's ambush in the sandstorm, well, it was an ambush, wasn't it – there'd been no time for terror. In any case, he didn't like this feeling.
Rising into a crouch, he moved away, up and out of the hollow, straightening and walking casually into the squad's camp. It seemed Strings didn't mind leaving his soldiers alone for a while before things heated up, letting them chew on their own thoughts, then – hopefully – reining everyone in at the last moment.
Koryk was tying yet more fetishes onto the various rings and loops in his armour, strips of coloured cloth, bird bones and chain-links to add to the ubiquitous finger bones that now signified the Fourteenth Army. Smiles was flipping her throwing-knives, the blades slapping softly on the leather of her gloves. Tarr stood nearby, shield already strapped on his left arm, short sword in his gauntleted right hand, most of his face hidden by his helm's cheek-guards.
Turning, Bottle studied the distant city. Dark – there seemed not a single lantern glowing from that squat, squalid heap. He already hated Y'Ghatan.
A low whistle in the night. Sudden stirring. Cuttle appeared. '
Sappers, to me. It's time.'
Gods below, so it is.
Leoman stood in the Falah'd's throne room. Eleven warriors were arrayed before him, glassy-eyed, their leather armour webbed in harnesses with straps and loops dangling. Corabb Bhilan Thenu'alas studied them – familiar faces one and all, yet now barely recognizable beneath the blood and strips of skin. Deliverers of the Apocalypse, sworn now to fanaticism, sworn not to see the coming dawn, bound to death this night. The very sight of them, with their drug-soaked eyes, chilled Corabb.
'You know what is asked of you this night,' Leoman said to his chosen warriors. 'Leave now, my brothers and sisters, under the pure eyes of Dryjhna, and we shall meet again at Hood's Gate.'
They bowed and headed off.
Corabb watched until the last of them vanished beyond the great doors, then faced Leoman. 'Warleader, what is to happen? What have you planned? You spoke of Dryjhna, yet this night you have bargained with the Queen of Dreams. Speak to me, before I begin to lose faith.'
'Poor Corabb,' Dunsparrow murmured.
Leoman shot her a glare, then said, 'No time, Corabb, but I tell you this – I have had my fill of fanatics, through this lifetime and a dozen others, I have had my fill-'
Boots sounded on the floor in the hallway beyond, and they turned as a tall, cloaked warrior strode in, drawing his hood back. Corabb's eyes widened, and hope surged through him as he stepped forward. 'High Mage L'oric! Truly, Dryjhna shines bright in the sky tonight!'
The tall man was massaging one shoulder, wincing as he said, 'Would that I could have arrived within the damned city walls – too many mages stirring in the Malazan camp. Leoman, I did not know you had the power to summon – I tell you, I was headed elsewhere-'
'The Queen of Dreams, L'oric.'
'Again? What does she want?'
Leoman shrugged. 'You were part of the deal, I'm afraid.'
'What deal?'
'I will explain later. In any case, we need you this night. Come, we climb to the South Tower.'
Another surge of hope. Corabb knew he could trust Leoman. The Holy Warrior possessed a plan, a diabolical, brilliant plan. He had been a fool to doubt. He set off in the wake of Dunsparrow, High Mage L'oric and Leoman of the Flails.
Loric. Now we can fight the Malazans on equal terms. And in such a contest, we can naught but win!
In the dark, beyond the rough ground of the pickets, Bottle crouched a few paces away from the handful of sappers he had been assigned to protect. Cuttle, Maybe, Crump, Ramp and Widdershins. Nearby was a second group being covered by Balgrid: Taffo, Able, Gupp, Jump and Bowl. People he knew from the march, now revealed as sappers or wouldbe sappers. Insane. Never knew there were so many in our company.
Strings was in neither group; he would be leading the rest of the squads into the breach before the smoke and dust settled.
Y'Ghatan's walls were a mess, tiered with older efforts, the last series Malazan-built in the classic sloping style, twenty paces thick at its base. As far as anyone knew, this would be the first time the sappers would challenge the engineering of imperial fortifications – he could see the gleam in their eyes.
Someone approached from his right and Bottle squinted through the gloom as the man arrived to crouch down beside him. 'Ebron, isn't it?'
'Aye, Ashok Regiment.'
Bottle smiled. 'They don't exist no more, Ebron.'
He tapped his chest, then said, 'You got a squad-mate of mine in your group.'
'The one named Crump.'
