The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (325 page)

‘Will this take long?’ Lady Envy asked, her voice somehow cutting through the tumult to echo in Picker’s ears as she pushed into the press. The Urdomen were better armoured, fresher, and had had surprise on their side. Picker saw Bucklund reel, half his head cut away. ‘No,’ she grated, as two more Bridgeburners crumpled, ‘it won’t…’

*   *   *

Detoran had moved to point as the four Bridgeburners headed down the corridor. Mallet strode five paces behind the big Napan woman, Spindle trotting at his heels, followed by Antsy, with Trotts a dozen paces back as rearguard. Thus far, they’d found naught but bodies – Pannion bodies – cut down one and all by blades.

‘Someone’s a holy terror,’ Spindle muttered behind the healer.

They could hear fighting, but the echoes were bouncing, making it difficult to determine the direction.

Detoran drew up and raised a hand, then waved Mallet forward.

‘Stairs ahead,’ she grunted. ‘Going down.’

‘Clear,’ the healer observed.

‘For now.’

Antsy joined them. ‘What’s the hold-up? We gotta keep moving.’

‘We know, Sergeant,’ Mallet said, then he swung back to the Napan. ‘It’ll have to do. Lead us down, Detoran.’

More corpses littered the stone steps, the blood making purchase uncertain.

They descended past two landings unchallenged. Halfway down the next flight, at a switchback in the stairs, Mallet heard the Napan grunt, and weapons suddenly rang.

A wordless shout from behind twisted into a Barghast warcry.

‘Dammit!’ Mallet snapped. Fighting above and below – they were in trouble. ‘Spin, back up Antsy and Trotts! I’ll lend Det a hand!’

‘Aye, sir!’

The healer plunged down a half-dozen steps to the bend. Detoran had already pushed her attackers back to a landing. The healer saw, beyond the Napan, at least six Seerdomin, heavy, short-handled double-bladed axes in their gauntleted hands. Detoran, a shortsword in her left hand, broadsword in her right, had just cut down the warrior in front of her. Without hesitating, she stepped over the dying Seerdomin, reaching the landing.

The Seerdomin rushed her.

There was no way to get past the Napan. Swearing, Mallet sheathed his shortsword and unlimbered his crossbow. A quarrel already rested in the slot, held in place by a loop of leather that the healer now pulled clear. Ignoring the bellows and singing iron, he hooked the clawfoot over the braided string and cinched it back.

Up beyond the bend in the staircase, Trotts had begun chanting, broken only by an ominous shriek from Antsy. Fresh blood thinned with bile was streaming down the steps.

Mallet moved back to find a clear shot over Detoran.

The Napan had thrust her shortsword up into a Seerdomin’s head from below. The blade jammed between the mandibles. Instead of pulling, Detoran pushed, sending the victim and weapon flying back to foul the two warriors beyond. With the broadsword in her right hand extended, she was keeping another Seerdomin at bay. He was swinging his shorter weapons at the blade in an effort to bat it aside so he could close, but Detoran made her heavy blade dance and weave as if it was a duellist’s rapier.

Mallet’s attention fixed on the two recovering Seerdomin. A third warrior was pulling the fallen Seerdomin away. The healer snapped the crossbow up and depressed the trigger. The weapon bucked in his hands.

One of the recovering Seerdomin shrieked, a quarrel buried to its leather fins in his chest. He sagged back.

A tumbling body knocked Mallet from his feet as he was about to reload. Cursing, the healer fell back against a side wall and made to kick the corpse away with his boots as he fumbled for a quarrel, then he saw that it was Antsy. Not yet dead, though his chest was sheathed in blood. From the sounds above, Trotts was pushing his way back up the stairs.

He twisted round at a shout from Detoran. She had lunged with her broadsword, breaking her timing to dip her blade round a desperate parry, then sliding the edge up and under the Seerdomin’s helm, ripping open the side of the man’s neck – even as his other axe slashed a wild arc, straight for Detoran’s head.

The Napan threw her left shoulder into its path.

Chain snapped, blood sprayed. The axe-blade cut clear, carrying with it most of the muscle of Detoran’s shoulder.

She reeled. Then, blood spurting, righted herself and rushed the remaining two Seerdomin.

The nearest one threw one of his axes.

The Napan chopped it aside then swung a backhand slash that the man barely managed to block. Detoran closed, dropping her sword and jamming her fingers into the helm’s eye-slit. The momentum of her rush carried her round the man, twisting his head to follow.

Mallet heard an audible pop of vertebrae, even as he finished loading his crossbow. He raised it—

The last Seerdomin’s axes flashed.

Detoran’s right arm, stretched out with the fingers still snagged in the visor, was severed halfway between shoulder and elbow.

The second axe drove deep between her shoulder-blades, throwing her forward to slap face first against the landing’s wall.

The Seerdomin moved forward to tug the second axe free.

Mallet’s quarrel vanished into the man’s right arm-pit. He buckled, then collapsed in a clatter of armour.

The healer, setting another quarrel into the slot, clambered to where Detoran still leaned, upright, face first against the wall. The rush of blood from her wounds had slowed to turgid streams.

He did not need to reach out to touch the Napan to know that she was dead.

Boots thumped on the stairs and the healer swung round to see Spindle stumbling onto the landing. He’d taken a blow against his pot-helm, snapping the brow-band and its rivets on one side. Blood painted that side of his face. His eyes were wild.

‘A score of ’em up there, Mallet! Trotts is holding them off—’

‘The damned idiot!’ The healer finished loading his crossbow and scrambled to the stairs, pausing briefly to examine Antsy. ‘Find yourself a new helm, Spin, then follow!’

‘What about Antsy?’

‘He’ll live a while longer. Hurry, damn you!’

The staircase was crowded with fresh bodies, all the way up to the next landing.

Mallet arrived in time to find himself caught in a descending rush – Seerdomin and, in their midst, a snarling Trotts, tumbling in a thrashing wall of flesh straight down onto the healer. A blade – the Barghast’s – plunged through Mallet’s shoulder, then whipped back out as they one and all fell onto the hard stone steps. Axe-blades, daggers, gauntlets, helms and greaves made the human avalanche a vicious shock of pain that did not end even when they were brought to a flailing halt at the bend in the stairwell.

Trotts was the first one to extricate himself, stabbing down with his shortsword, kicking and stamping with his boots. Cursing, Mallet dragged himself clear of the Barghast’s frenzy, fire lancing from the wound in his shoulder.

Moments later, there was only the sound of gasping breaths in the stairwell.

The healer twisted round, found a wall at his back, and slowly pushed himself upright – to glare up at Trotts. ‘You stabbed me, you bastard!’

Even as he said it, his words fell away as he looked at the Barghast. The huge warrior had taken more wounds than Mallet had thought possible. He had been chopped to pieces. Yet he did not ever so much as waver as he grinned down at the healer. ‘Stabbed you, did I? Good.’

Mallet grimaced. ‘I see your point, you blue-toothed cattle-dog. Why should you get all the fun?’

‘Aye. Where’s Antsy and Det and Spin?’

‘Landing below. Det’s dead. We’ll have to carry Antsy. From the sound, Spin’s still looking for a new helm.’

‘They’ll all be too big,’ Trotts growled. ‘We need to find the kitchen – a cup.’

Mallet pushed himself from the wall. ‘Good idea. Let’s get going then.’

‘I’ll take point, now – cooks are dangerous.’

The Barghast, streaming blood, moved past the healer.

‘Trotts,’

He paused. ‘Aye?’

‘Spin said a score.’

‘Aye.’

‘All dead?’

‘Maybe half. The rest ran away.’

‘You scared them off, did you?’

‘Spin’s hairshirt, is my guess. Come on, Healer.’

*   *   *

Toc’s head lolled, the scene rising and falling as the T’lan Imass carried him down the torchlit corridor. Occasionally, Tool stepped over a body or two.

My brother. He called me that.

I have no brother.

Only a mother.

And a god. Seer, where are you? Will you not come for me, now? The wolf dies. You have won. Free me, Lord of All. Free me to walk through Hood’s Gate.

They reached an arched doorway, the door lying shattered on this side. Wood still nailed to bronze bands shifted unsteadily underfoot as Tool crossed it. A large, domed chamber, twenty paces across, was before them. It had once been filled with strange mechanisms – machines used by torturers – but these had all been smashed into ruin, flung to the sides to lean like broken-boned beasts against the walls.

Victims of rage … was this Tool’s work? This undead, emotionless … thing?

A sudden clang of blades from the arched doorway opposite.

The T’lan Imass stopped. ‘I shall have to set you down, now.’

Down. Yes. It’s time.

Toc twisted his head as Tool slowly lowered him to the flagstones. A figure stood in the doorway on the other side of the chamber. Masked, white enamel, twin-scarred. A sword in each hand.
Oh, I know you, do I not?

The figure said nothing and simply waited until Tool had stepped away from Toc. The battered T’lan Imass drew the two-handed flint sword from his shoulder sling, then spoke, ‘Mok, Third among the Seguleh, when you are done with me, would you take Toc the Younger from this place?’

Lying on his side, Toc watched as the masked warrior tilted his head in acknowledgement.
Mok, you damned fool. You are about to kill my friend … my brother.

Blurred motion, two warriors closing too fast for Toc’s lone eye to follow. Iron sang with stone. Sparks shooting through the gloom to light the broken instruments of torture surrounding them, in racing flashes of revelation – shadows dancing in the wood and metal tangle, and, to Toc, it was as if all the accumulated pain that these mechanisms had absorbed in their lifetimes was suddenly freed.

By the sparks.

By the two warriors … and all that sheathed their hidden souls.

Freed, writhing, dancing, spider-bitten –
mad, frantic in answer …

In answer …

Somewhere within him – as the battle continued on, the masked warrior driving the T’lan Imass back, back – the wolf stirred.

Trapped. In this bent but unbroken mechanism, this torturing cage of bone …
He saw, close, the shattered frame of … something. A beam, massive, its end capped in black, bruised bronze. Where bits were smeared – flesh, flesh and hair.

Cage.

Toc the Younger drew his mangled legs under him, planted a pustuled, malformed elbow on the flagstones, felt flesh tear as he twisted round, pivoted, dragged his legs up to kneel – then, hands, frozen into fists, pushing down on the stone. Lifting, tilting back to settle weight on hips that ground and seemed to crumble beneath tendon and thin muscle.

He set his hands down once more, drew the knobbed things that had once been his feet under him, knees lifting.

Balance … now. And will.

Trembling, slick with sweat beneath the tattered remnants of his shapeless tunic, Toc slowly rose upright. His head spun, blackness threatening, but he held on.

*   *   *

Kruppe gasped, lifting her, pulling at her arm. ‘You must touch, lass. This world – it was made for you – do you understand? A gift – there are things that must be freed.’

Freed.

Yes, she understood that word. She longed for it, worshipped it, knelt, head bowed, before its altar. Freed Yes, that made sense.

Like these memories of ice, raining, raining down upon us.

Freed … to feed the earth—

—deliverance, of meaning, of emotion, history’s gift – the land underfoot, the layers, so many layers—

To feed the earth.

What place is this?

‘Reach, dearest Mhybe, Kruppe begs you! Touch—’

She raised a trembling hand—

*   *   *

Upright.

To see Tool reeling beneath blows, the flint sword fending slower with each flashing blade that reached for him.

Upright. A step.
One step. Will do.

The cage, the wolf stirring, the wolf seeking to draw breath – unable—

He lurched towards the beam and its upthrust, bronze-capped end.

One step, then toppling.

Forward, lifting his arms high – clear – the beam’s end seeming to rise to meet him. Meet his chest – the ribs – bones shattering in an explosion of pain—

*   *   *

To touch—

*   *   *

The cage!

Broken!

Freed!

The wolf drew breath.

And howled.

*   *   *

The hammer held high in Brood’s hands, trembling, iron shaking—

As a god’s howl ripped the air, a howl climbing, a call—

Answered.

On the killing field, T’lan Ay rising from the ground, the beasts blurring forward in a silent, grey wave, cutting through K’Chain Che’Malle – tearing the undead reptiles down, rending – the giant, armoured reptiles buckling before the onslaught.

Other K’ell Hunters wheeling, racing for the gate – wolves pursuing.

Far overhead, condors breaking away from their deadly dance with two black dragons, speeding back towards the keep, Korlat and Orfantal following, and behind them, tens of thousands of Great Ravens—

—and above the keep, something was happening—

*   *   *

Holding the Mhybe, now unconscious, in his arms, Kruppe staggered back as Togg tore itself free of the shattered cage, the god’s howl blistering the air.