Hellian looked over at the Factor’s house. The cusser explosion seemed to have knocked it flat. She grunted. ‘Damned if I know, Mulvan. You don’t happen to have a flask of something on you, do you?’
But the mage was frowning at the wreckage of the collapsed house. ‘I hear calls for help,’ he said.
Hellian sighed. ‘Guess you found ‘em after all, Mulvan Dreader. Meaning we’re gonna have to dig ‘em out.’ Then she brightened. ‘But that’ll work us up a thirst now, won’t it?’
The multiple crack of sharpers outside the tavern and the biting snap of shrapnel striking the building’s front sent the Malazans inside flinching back. Screams erupted outside, wailing up into the street’s dust-filled air. Fiddler watched Gesler grab Stormy to keep him from charging out there-the huge Falari was reeling on his feet-then he turned to Mayfly, Corabb and Tarr. ‘Let’s meet our allies, then, but stay sharp. Rest of you, stay here, bind wounds-Bottle, where’s Koryk and Smiles?’
But the mage shook his head. ‘They went east side of the village, Sergeant.’
‘All right, you three with me, then. Bottle-can you do something for Stormy?’
Aye.’
Fiddler readied his crossbow, then led the way to the tavern entrance. At the threshold he crouched down, peering through the dust.
Allies all right. Blessed marines, a half-dozen, walking through the sprawled Edur bodies and silencing the screamers with quick thrusts of their swords. Fiddler saw a sergeant, South Dal Honese, short and wide and black as onyx. The woman at his side was half a head taller, pale-skinned and grey-eyed, and nearly round but in a way that had yet to sag. Behind these two stood another Dal Honese, this one wrinkled with pierced everything-ears, nose, wattle, cheeks-the gold ornaments a startling contrast to his dark scowling face. A damned shaman.
Fiddler approached, his eyes on the sergeant. There was fighting still going on, but nowhere close. ‘How many of you?’
‘Seventeen to start,’ the man replied. He paused to look down at the barbaric tusk-sword in his hands. ‘Just took off an Edur’s head with this,’ he said, then looked up. ‘My first kill-Fiddler gaped. ‘How in Hood’s name did you get this far from the damned coast, then? What are you all, Soletaken bats?’
The Dal Honese grimaced. ‘We stole a fisher boat and sailed up.’
The woman at his side spoke. ‘We were the southmost squads, moving east till we hit the river, then it was either wading waist-deep in swamp muck or taking to the water. Worked fine until a few nights ago, when we ran straight into a Letherii galley. We lost a few that night,’ she added.
Fiddler stared at her a moment longer. All round and soft-looking, except for those eyes. Hood take me, this one could pluck the skin off a man one tiny strip at a time with one hand while doing herself with the other. He looked away, back to the sergeant. ‘What company?’
‘Third. I’m Badan Gruk, and you’re Fiddler, aren’t you?’
‘Yeggetan,’ muttered the shaman with a warding gesture.
Badan Gruk turned to the pale woman. ‘Ruffle, take Vastly and Reliko and work west until you meet up with Primly. Then back here.’ He faced Fiddler again. ‘We caught ‘em good, I think.’
‘Thought I heard a cusser a while back.’
A nod. ‘Primly had the sappers. Anyway, the Edur pulled back, so I suppose we scared ‘em.’
‘Moranth munitions will do that.’
Badan Gruk glanced away again. He seemed strangely skittish. ‘We never expected to run into any squads this far east,’ he said. ‘Not unless they took to the water like we did.’ He met Fiddler’s eyes. ‘You’re barely a day from Letheras, you know.’
Seven Edur had turned the game on Koryk and Smiles, pushing them into a less than promising lane between decrepit, leaning tenements, that then led to a most quaint killing ground blocked by stacks of timber on all sides but the one with the alley mouth.,
Pushing Smiles behind him as he backed away from the Edur-who crowded the alley, slowly edging forward- Koryk readied his sword. Hand-and-a-half fighting now that he’d lost his shield. If the bastards threw lances, he’d be in trouble.
The thought made him snort. Him against seven Tiste Edur and all he had behind him was a young woman who’d used up all her throwing knives and was left with a top-heavy gutter that belonged in the hands of a butcher. Trouble? Only if they threw lances.
But these Edur weren’t interested in skewering them from a distance. They wanted to close, and Koryk was not surprised by that. Like Seti, these grey gaunts. Face to face, aye. That is where true glory is found. As they reached the mouth of the alley, Koryk lifted the tip of his sword and waved them forward.
‘Stay right back,’ he said to Smiles who crouched behind him. ‘Give me plenty of room-’
‘To do what, you oaf? Die in style? Just cut a few and I’ll slide in low and finish ‘em.’
‘And get a pommel through the top of your head? No, stay back.’
‘I ain’t staying back t’get raped by all the ones you were too incompetent to kill before dying yourself, Koryk.’
‘Fine! I’ll punch my pommel through your thick skull, then!’
‘Only time you’re ever gettin’ inside of me, so go ahead and enjoy it.’
‘Oh, believe me, I will-’
They might have gone on, and on, but the Edur had fanned out, four in front and three behind, and now they rushed forward.
Koryk and Smiles argued often, later, about whether their saviour descended on wings or just had a talent for leaping extraordinary distances, for he arrived in a blur, sailing right across the path of the first four Tiste Edur, and in that silent flight he seemed to writhe, amidst flashing heavy iron blades. A flurry of odd snicking sounds and then the man was past-and should have collided badly with a stack of rough-barked wood. Instead, one of those tulwars touched down tip first on a log, and pivoting on that single point of contact the man twisted round to land in a cat- like crouch against the slope of timbers-at an impossible to maintain angle, but that didn’t matter since he was already springing back the way he had come, this time sailing over the collapsing, blood-drenched forms of four Tiste Edur. Snick snick snicksnick-and the back three Edur toppled.
He landed again, just short of the opposite timber wall this time, head ducking and shoulder seeming to barely brush the ground before he tumbled right over, touched one foot on a horizontal log and used it to twist round before landing balanced on the other foot now drawn tight beneath him. Facing the seven corpses he had just felled.
And facing two Malazan marines who, for once and just this once, had precisely nothing to say.
The marines of the 3rd and 4th Companies gathered in front of the tavern, stood or sat on the bloodstained cobbles of the main street. Wounds were tended to here and there, while others repaired armour or filed the nicks from sword edges.
Fiddler sat on the edge of a water trough near the hitching post to one side of the tavern entrance, taking stock. Since the coast, the three other squads of 4th Company had taken losses. Gone from Gesler’s squad were Sands and Uru Hela. From Hellian’s, Lutes and Tavos Pond, both of whom had died in this cursed village, while from Urb’s both Hanno and now Bowl were dead, and Saltlick had lost his left hand. Fiddler’s own squad had, thus far, come through unscathed, and that made him feel guilty. Like one of Hood’s minions, one in the row just the other side of the gate. Crow feathers in hand, or wilted roses, or sweetcakes, or any of the countless other gifts the dead were eager to hand their newly arrived kin-gods below, Smiles is turning me into another Kanese with all these absurd beliefs. Ain’t nobody waiting other side of Hood’s Gate, unless it’s to jeer.
The two sergeants from the 3rd came over. Badan Gruk, whom Fiddler had met earlier, and the Quon, Primly. They made an odd pair, but that was always the way, wasn’t it?
Primly gave Fiddler a strangely deferential nod. ‘We’re fine with this,’ he said.
‘With what?’
‘Your seniority, Fiddler. So, what do we do now?’
Grimacing, Fiddler looked away. ‘Any losses?’
‘From this scrap? No. Those Edur pulled out fast as hares in a kennel. A lot shakier than we’d expected.’
‘They don’t like the shield to shield fighting,’ Fiddler said, scratching at his filthy beard. ‘They’ll do it, aye, especially when they’ve got Letherii troops with them. But of late they dropped that tactic, since with our munitions we made it a costly one. No, they’ve been hunting us, ambushing us, driving us hard. Their traditional way of fighting, I’d guess.’
