Aye, answer enough.
‘Almost dark,’ Fiddler said, eyeing once more the quaint village ahead. Crossroads, tavern and stable, a smithy down the main street, in front of a huge pile of tailings, and what seemed too many residences, rows of narrow- laned mews, each abode looking barely enough for a small family. Could be there was some other industry, a quarry or potter’s manufactory, somewhere on the other side of the village-he thought he could see a gravel road wending up a hill past the eastern edge.
Strangely quiet for dusk. Workers still chained to their workbenches? Maybe. But still, not even a damned dog in that street. ‘I don’t like the looks of this,’ he said. ‘You sure you smell nothing awry, Bottle?’
‘Nothing magical. Doesn’t mean there isn’t a hundred Edur crouched inside those houses, just waiting for us.’
‘So send in a squirrel or something, damn you.’
‘I’m looking, Sergeant, but if you keep interrupting me…’
‘Lord Hood, please sew up the mouths of mages, I implore you.’
‘Sergeant, I’m begging you. We’ve got six squads of Edur less than a league behind us, and I’m damned tired of dodging javelins. Let me concentrate.’
Aye, concentrate on this fist down your throat, y’damned rat’kisser. Oh, I’m way too tired, way too old. Maybe, if we get through this-hah!-I’ll just creep away, vanish into the streets of this Letheras. Retire. Take up fishing. Or maybe knitting. Funeral shawls. Bound to be a thriving enterprise for a while, I’d wager. Once the Adjunct arrives with the rest of us snarly losers and exacts a pleasant revenge for all us dead marines. No, stop thinking that way. We’re still alive.
‘Found a cat, Sergeant. Sleeping in the kitchen of that tavern. It’s having bad dreams.’
‘So become its worse nightmare, Bottle, and quick.’
Birds chirping in the trees behind them. Insects busy living and dying in the grasses around them. The extent of his world now, a tiresome travail punctuated by moments of profound terror. He itched with filth and could smell the stale stench of old fear, like redolent stains in the skin.
Who in Hood’s name are these damned Letherii anyway? So this damned empire with its Edur overlords scrapped with the Malazan Empire. Laseen’s problem, not ours. Damn you, Tavore, we get to this point and vengeance ain’t enough-
‘Got her,’ Bottle said. ‘Awake… stretching-yes, got to stretch, Sergeant, don’t ask me why. All right, three people in the kitchen, all sweating, all rolling their eyes-they look terrified, huddling that way. I hear sounds in the tavern. Someone’s singing…’
Fiddler waited for more.
And waited.
‘Bottle-’
‘Slipping into the tavern-ooh, a cockroach! Wait, no, stop playing with it-just eat the damned thing!’
‘Keep your voice down, Bottle!’
‘Done. Woah, crowded in here. That song… up onto the rail, and there-’ Bottle halted abruptly, then, swearing under his breath, he rose. Stood for a moment, then snorted and said, ‘Come on, Sergeant. We can just walk right on in.’
‘Marines holding the village? Spit Hood on a stake, yes!’
The others heard that and as one they were on their feet, crowding round in relief.
Fiddler stared at all the stupid grins and was suddenly sober again. ‘Look at you! A damned embarrassment!’
‘Sergeant.’ Bottle plucked at his arm. ‘Fid, trust me, no worries on that front.’
Hellian had forgotten which song she was singing. Whatever it was, it wasn’t what everyone else was singing, not that they were still singing, much. Though her corporal was somehow managing a double warble, stretching out some bizarre word in Old Cawn-foreigners shouldn’t sing, since how could people understand them so it could be a mean song, a nasty, insulting song about sergeants, all of which meant her corporal earned that punch in the head and at least the warbling half stopped.
A moment later she realized that the other half had died away, too. And that she herself was the only one still singing, although even to her it sounded like some foreign language was blubbering from her numbed lips-something about sergeants, maybe-well, she could just take out this knife and-
More soldiers suddenly, the tavern even more crowded. Unfamiliar faces that looked familiar and how could that be well it was it just was, so there. Damn, another sergeant-how many sergeants did she have to deal with here in this tavern? First there was Urb, who seemed to have been following her around for weeks now, and then Gesler, staggering in at noon with more wounded than walking. And now here was another one, with the reddish beard and that battered fiddle on his back and there he was, laughing and hugging Gesler like they was long lost brothers or lovers or something-everyone was too damned happy as far as she was concerned. Happier than her, which was of course the same thing.
Things had been better in the morning. Was it this day? Yesterday? No matter. They’d been magicked hard to find-was that Balgrid’s doing? Tavos Pond’s? And so the three squads of Edur had pretty much walked right on top of them. Which made the killing easier. That wonderful sound of crossbows letting loose. Thwok! Thwok! Thwokthwokthwok! And then the swordwork, the in-close stabbing and chopping and slashing then poking and prodding but nope ain’t nobody moving any more and that’s a relief and being relieved was the happiest feeling.
Until it made you depressed. Standing around surrounded by dead people did that on occasion. The blood on the sword in your hand. The grunt twist and pull of removing quarrels from stubborn muscle, bone and organs. All the flies showing up like they was gathered on a nearby branch just waiting. And the stink of all that stuff poured out of bodies.
Stinking almost as bad as what was on all these marines. Who’d started all that? The fingers and cocks and ears and stuff?
A sudden flood of guilt in Hellian. It was me! She stood, reeled, then looked over at the long table that served large parties of travellers, the table that went along the side wall opposite the bar. Edur heads were piled high on it, amidst plenty of buzzing, crawling flies and maggots. Too heavy on the belt-pulled Maybe’s breeches down, hah! No wait, I’m supposed to be feeling bad. There’s going to be trouble, because that’s what comes when you get nasty with the corpses of your enemies. It just… what’s the word? ‘Escalates!’
Faces turned, soldiers stared. Fiddler and Gesler who had been slapping each other on the back pulled apart and then walked over.
‘Hood’s pecker, Hellian,’ Fiddler said under his breath, ‘what happened to all the townfolk? As if I can’t guess,’ he added, glancing over at the heaped heads. ‘They’ve all run away.’
Urb had joined them and he said, ‘They were all those Indebted we heard about. Fifth, sixth generations. Working on blanks.’
‘Blanks?’ Gesler asked.
‘For weapons,’ Fiddler explained. ‘So, they were slaves, Urb?’
‘In everything but name,’ the big man replied, scratching at his beard from which dangled one severed finger, grey and black. ‘Under all those Edur heads is the local Factor’s head, some rich bastard in silks. We killed him in front of the Indebted and listened to them cheer. And then they cut off the poor fool’s head as a gift, since we come in with all these Edur ones. And then they looted what they could and headed out.’
Gesler’s brows had risen at all that. ‘So you’ve managed what the rest of us haven’t-arriving as damned liberators in this town.’
Hellian snorted. ‘We worked that out weeks back. Never mind the Lurrii soljers, since they’re all perfessionals and so’s they like things jus’ fine so’s they’s the one y’gotta kill no diff ‘rent from the Edur. No, y’go into the hamlets and villages and kill all the ‘ficials-’
‘The what?’ Gesler asked.
Urb said, ‘Officials. We kill the officials, Gesler. And anybody with money, and the advocates, too.’
‘The what?’
‘Legal types. Oh, and the money-lenders and debt-holders, and the record-keepers and toll-counters. We kill them all-’
‘Along with the soljers,’ Hellian added, nodding-and nodding, for some reason finding herself unable to stop.
