Assail (78 page)

The remaining Imass slashed about itself. Men and women fell clutching at deep eviscerating cuts that spilt blood and bile over the grass. The Imass waded into the crowd which exploded in wild panic. Jute knew that he not could let this attacker come at the wall from the rear, and so he backed off to allow it to pass and then began to stalk it.

Perhaps it was simply too intent upon slaughter to notice his approach, Jute did not know, but he raised his long-hafted axe up over his head for a great swing, charged the last two steps, and brought the iron wedge-shaped blade down upon the mangy, desiccated half-bare skull, and split it nearly in two.

The blade wedged at the base of the neck. As the creature swung round it tore the haft from Jute’s grip. Jute backed away, appalled.
Ye gods! What does it take
…

The creature slashed, catching Jute’s upper arm. He gasped at the sizzling pain of the cut and kept retreating back towards the cliff edge. The Imass kept after, incensed perhaps by this fellow who dared split its head with an axe. His right arm hung blood-soaked and numb, He knelt one-handed for an abandoned spear and gripped it hard, tucking the haft under his armpit for further stability.

The Imass came on. When Jute’s very heels were at the cliff’s lip he lunged, striking the spear home in the Imass’s chest. It raised its blade to hack at the haft; still gripping the weapon, Jute danced a half-circle and pushed with all his might. The Imass sliced through the haft, but not before it staggered backwards and overbalanced, to slip suddenly from view.

Jute lurched back towards the tower and the wall beyond. He gripped his arm where the blood still welled. His vision seemed to darken and there was a roaring in his ears – he suspected it was his laboured pulse. Coming round the base of the tower he found the ground before the entrance blackened and smoking. Three corpses, no more than white bones and charcoal, lay upon the scorched earth. Two were Imass, the other Jute assumed to be the sorceress’s servant, since she herself sat up against one wall of the entrance, her chest heaving, her leg and a hand bloodied.

He tottered to her. ‘Can you stand?’

She nodded tiredly. ‘Barely.’

He helped her up then surveyed the corpses. ‘Your servant saved your life.’

‘He did.’

‘I can’t remember his name.’

‘It was Velmar.’

‘Ah.’ He scanned the walls, blinking to clear his vision. Perhaps he was seeing things, but it seemed that half of those who’d stood defending the walls were gone. Bodies lay thick upon the catwalk. The local northerners were still fighting side by side with the Blue Shields, all struggling to push back the Imass. Malle and the Malazan veterans held the east arc of the wall. Jute watched amazed while the young cadre mage’s roaring streams of flame cleared a swath across the top and the lean older mage thrust with his staff, somehow driving individual Imass off as if punched. Yet more took the wall than were repelled. The young cadre mage jerked, the flames snapping away; she toppled backwards impaled upon a slim cream-hued blade. Sections of the top were being yielded to the Imass. A hoarse bellow of alarm from the old Malazan mage marked his rush to an exposed Malle; he charged, knocking Imass from the wall, clearing a section, only to totter, slashed through to hanging ribbons of cloth and red gashes, and fall forward from sight.

The defenders retreated down the ramps in a solid wedge, the Blue Shields at the rear, fending off the T’lan in their slow advance.

‘We will not last,’ Jute murmured, now certain of it.

‘No. They will win through.’

‘Well, I will guard you now.’

She turned the same affectionate look upon him that he had often noticed. ‘You are gallant, Jute of Delanss. But Ieleen would have you back. Even now she fights to protect you.’

He blinked again, bewildered. ‘Oh? How so?’

‘She is helping to pull the wind out of the heights.’

‘A wind?’ He had noticed how cold the air was and how the banners snapped and whipped.

‘Yes.’ The sorceress’s eyes slipped closed and she stumbled back against the stone wall. She clasped a deep cut in one thigh and fought to open her eyes once more. ‘It brings news from the ice-fields. I only hope their Bonecaster will notice.’

She would have fallen but for Jute catching her, one-armed, and lowering her to sit up against the jamb. They found him like that, kneeling before her, rubbing her hand and whispering that she come back to them.

She smiled then, her eyes shut, and murmured, ‘Ieleen is a lucky woman, Jute of Delanss.’

It was Cartheron who gently urged him aside. He felt for her pulse, then pressed a hand to her chest.

‘Will she …’ Jute began.

‘She’ll live. That we could even dare face them is thanks to her.’

Jute peered about. He was astonished and alarmed to see Tyvar here. The man’s chest was heaving, his mail hacked through across his torso and arms, helmet gone, his cheek and scalp slashed – the blood from these head wounds was soaking his neck and shoulder, yet his eyes were shining with joy.

‘What happened?’ Jute demanded.

‘They’d reached the bailey in places,’ Tyvar explained, each word a laboured breath, ‘and so we pulled the locals back even as they refused to retreat. Then, all at once, the Imass drew off.’ He appeared as bewildered as Jute.

‘I saw it,’ Cartheron said. ‘Their Bonecaster, Ut’el. All of a sudden his head snapped round to the north and he took off without hesitating. The rest followed him.’

‘They are hurrying to the heights to stop it,’ said Orosenn, her voice dreamy with fatigue.

‘Stop what?’ Cartheron asked.

She raised an arm and Jute took it to help her up. She leaned back against the wall, drew a ragged breath. ‘The Imass have their ritual of Tellann, you know. They used it to create the T’lan. We have our ritual as well. The Raising of Phellack. Someone in the heights has invoked it. What powers I possess are as a raindrop in the ocean compared to the might I sense being marshalled there. And when it comes …’ She shook her head, almost falling once more. ‘All of you must flee – now.’

‘What is it? What comes?’ Jute asked, almost unable to believe that anything worse could possibly happen.

She smiled again, but sadly this time. ‘The true end of the world, Jute of Delanss.’

* * *

They walked in silence, for there was nothing more to say. None called for a halt for a meal; no one stopped when the sun set, nor when the sun rose. It seemed unnecessary, even tedious to Shimmer to consider halting so close to their goal.

K’azz led through the woods and high ridges. He pushed through frigid streams and up steep valley slopes. Shimmer followed next in line. Bars came after, then Lean, Keel, Black the Lesser, Turgal, Gwynn, and Blues in the rear. Where Cowl had gone, or even whether he still followed, she did not care.

They were high in these northern mountains now, the Salt range. They parted thick hanging cloud banks as if walking through an underworld of mists. Banners of the opaque fogs wove about them like the sinuous bodies of dragons. For brief moments she would note how loose her mail coat hung from her; how her hair lay tangled about her face and shoulders; how ragged her leather boots had become, yet she walked on, uncaring. K’azz promised their fate lay ahead. The secret of the Vow – which was clearly now a curse.

They came to a high meadow, a clearing that had once been a series of cultivated fields, now long abandoned, and they spread out. K’azz, on her right, was a vague silhouette in the low churning clouds, as was Bars on her left. A burned empty husk of a Greathall emerged from the mists ahead. Whatever tragedy had happened here had been wrought long ago. Saplings grew within the tumbled logs.

Past the overgrown remains of the burned hall stood a modest log cabin, sod-roofed. Here two figures rose from the tall grasses to confront them. Enormous they reared, to Shimmer’s eyes, both far taller than any normal man or woman, yet both obviously young in years. The lad wore supple tanned leathers and possessed a thick curled mane of russet hair and a beard to match. The girl was equally sturdy, in hunting leathers, her long blazingly red hair plaited.

The lad drew two hatchets to stand protectively before the girl. ‘You’ll not take us easily, damn you.’

K’azz raised his open hands. ‘We intend no harm. We seek the heights and those who live there.’

‘You intend no harm?’ the lad repeated, incredulous. ‘You who have slain all our kin?’

‘We have slain no one. We are mercenaries out of lands far to the west.’

The lad frowned his disbelief but rubbed his eyes then examined them more closely. He jerked a nod. ‘I am sorry. For a moment there I mistook you for … for someone else.’

‘What has happened here?’ Shimmer asked.

The lad slipped his hatchets into his belt then gestured to the cabin. ‘Our parents lie within, side by side.’

‘And these others you speak of,’ K’azz said, ‘they did this?’

The girl shook her head. ‘Nay,’ she said, her voice dull, yet full of wonder. ‘They simply chose to go. They bade us seek our elders in the heights then lay down together side by side.’

‘I am sorry,’ Shimmer offered.

The lad shook his head. His great mane of wild hair blew in the strong winds out of the north. ‘No. We do not weep. It is good to see them here together, holding hands. So loving, yet so different. Yullveig the Fierce they called her, and Cull the Kind. Apart too much in life – together now in death.’

Shimmer regarded the modest cabin. The lad’s words pulled at her distantly. There was something here, an ache that fought to squeeze her chest, yet she felt lost in a fog, or dullness, that held her numb to feelings.

‘We travel to the heights,’ K’azz said. ‘We may travel together?’

The two nodded a sort of bruised agreement.

‘Do we leave them in this manner?’ Blues asked the girl.

‘Yes. No flame will burn there now. We will leave them. None shall disturb them.’ She inclined her head to Shimmer. ‘I am Erta and this is Baran.’

Shimmer, K’azz and the rest introduced themselves. The two gathered up small rolls of gear and they headed upland once more.

The higher they climbed the thicker the fogs became and the more intense the cold. It was as if they had entered a realm of frigid winds and coiling mists as dense as streams. Ice now sheathed the trees and blades of tall grasses and they clattered and rattled as Shimmer pushed through. The light was diffuse, silvery; it was almost impossible to tell whether they travelled in night or day. The slopes steepened, became half barren ridges of grey and black rock, the only colour a mute orange and yellow of lichen.

K’azz and Baran, at the fore, halted here, as did the rest of the file in turn. The clattering of rocks no longer echoed about the shrouded steep valley they currently walked. Shimmer moved up to join K’azz. He and Baran stood peering ahead into the blowing, churning clouds where a figure was approaching. It was a girl; yet she stood man-high, slim, in trousers of wool and a leather shirt that hung to her knees, decorated in bright red and blue beadwork. Her hair blew about her, long and in tangles. Streams of tears darkened the ash and dirt that smeared her face.

‘Greetings,’ Baran said gently. ‘I am Baran of the Heels.’

‘Siguna of the Myrni,’ she stammered, her voice soft and wary.

Erta knelt before her. ‘What happened, child?’

Her wide eyes darted about as if expecting attack at any moment. ‘They came out of the river gravel,’ she said, awed. ‘I saw them myself. They came out of the ground. I ran home. There was a fire. Uncle sent me away.’

‘Who came?’ Shimmer asked.

The girl’s terrified gaze flicked to her. ‘Demons. The Army of Dust and Bone.’

Siguna travelled with Erta in the middle of the file. K’azz and Baran led. The closer they were to their destination the more their old general seemed to have shaken off his reluctance and self-imposed isolation. Shimmer for her part was content to leave him to command; she’d begun to suspect that something was wrong with her. When she looked at the young Myrni child alone in the world she knew that something ought to move within her, yet all she felt was a remote poignancy as of an old loss, now a distant memory. She searched her feelings only to find a landscape as desolate and lifeless as these barren rocky slopes.

She was terrified of what was happening to her.

Some time later in the climb, the loose rocks shook beneath her feet. Everyone paused, peering about in alarm. Rocks and boulders came tumbling down out of the ground-hugging fogs. They moved to a nearby ridge and gathered together. Blues came to stand next to her, his arms crossed. She noted how ragged and torn his leather jerkin had become, his scruffy beard and hollowed dark cheeks. Far above, beyond the immediate shoulders and slopes between them and the uppermost peaks, the clouds churned as if being drawn into a funnel. A blue glow suffused the region – a dazzling sapphire brilliance muted only by the cloud cover.

The ground shook again and Shimmer was alarmed to sense that the entire ridge of rock had actually moved. Baran and Erta shared a shocked glance.

‘What is it?’ Shimmer demanded. ‘An earthquake?’

‘This is no earthquake,’ Blues growled, his eyes fixed upon the heights.