The Crippled God (130 page)

The man looked like he’d been caught in the blast-wave of a cusser or sharper. His face was speckled with tiny cuts and gashes. Dust covered his uniform and he’d lost one chain-backed gauntlet. Erekala opened his mouth, shut it, and then tried again. ‘Surrender?’

Kalam scowled. ‘Those sappers have only just started. You understanding me?’

‘What have you done?’

Kalam grimaced, glanced away, hands now on his hips, and then looked back at the commander. ‘You’re seeing how it’s going to be – the old way of fighting is on its way out. The future, Erekala, just stood up and bit off half your face.’

Erekala was clearly confused. ‘The future …’

‘This is how it’ll be. From now on. Fuck all the animals – they’ll all be gone. But we’ll still be here. We’ll still be killing each other, but this time in unimaginable numbers.’

The commander shook his head. ‘When all the beasts are gone—’

‘Long live the cruellest beast of all,’ Kalam said, suddenly baring his teeth. ‘And it won’t end. It’ll never end.’

Erekala’s eyes slowly widened, and then his gaze shifted past Quick Ben and Kalam, to the waiting ranks of Malazan soldiers. ‘When all the beasts are gone,’ he whispered, and then raised his voice, once more addressing Kalam. ‘Your words … satisfy me. Inform your High Fist. The Perish Grey Helms surrender.’

‘Good. Disarm – we’ll collect your weapons on our way through. Sorry we can’t help with your wounded, though – we’re in something of a hurry.’

‘And what do you intend to do with my brothers and sisters?’

Kalam frowned. ‘Nothing. Just don’t follow us – your role in this whole Hood-damned mess is now done. Look,’ the assassin added, ‘we had to get through the pass. You got in our way. We got no qualms killing the Assail and their Shriven – that’s what we’re here to do. But you Perish – well, the High Fist made it clear enough – you ain’t our enemy. You never was.’

As they made their way back Quick Ben shot Kalam a look. ‘How did you know?’

‘Know what?’

‘The thought of us humans slaughtering each other for ever and ever – how did you know that he’d settle with that?’

The assassin shrugged. ‘I just told him how it was going to be. Soon as he heard it, he knew the truth of it. They may be fanatics but that don’t make them fools.’

Quick Ben snorted. ‘Beg to differ on that one, Kalam.’

Grunting, Kalam nodded and said, ‘Soon as I said it … all right, try this. Even a fanatic can smell the shit they’re buried in. Will that do?’

‘Not really. They’re fools because they then convince themselves it smells sweet. Listen, you basically told him that his sacred beasts were finished.’

‘Aye. Then I made it taste sweet.’

Quick Ben thought about that for a time, as they approached the ranks, and finally he sighed. ‘You know, Erekala ain’t the only fool around here.’

‘What’s that smell? And I thought you were smart, wizard. Now, get us some horses while I report to Paran.’

‘Tavore?’

‘If she’s alive, we’ll find her.’

With an enraged scream, Korabas snapped her head down, jaws closing on the Eleint’s shoulder. Bones exploded in her mouth. With the talons of one of her feet, she scythed the beast’s underbelly, and then struck again, claws plunging deep. Blood and fluids gushed down as she tore loose the dragon’s guts. With its carcass still in her jaws, she whipped it to one side, into the path of another Eleint.

Claws scored across her back. The Otataral Dragon twisted round, lashing with her talons. Puncturing scaly hide, she snatched the dragon close, bit through its neck, and then flung it away. Jaws crunched on one ankle. When her own jaws lunged down, they closed sideways around the back of the Eleint’s head. A single convulsive crunch collapsed the skull. Another dragon hammered down on her from above. Talons razored bloody tracks just beneath her left eye. Fangs
chewed at the ridge of her neck. Korabas folded her wings, tearing loose and plummeting away from the attacker. A dragon directly below her took the full impact of her immense weight. It spun away, one wing shattered, spine snapped, and fell earthward.

Thundering the air, she lifted herself higher once more. Eleint swarmed around her, like crows surrounding a condor, darting close and then away again. The air was filled with their reptilian shrieks, the Ancients among them roaring their fury.

She had killed scores already, had left a trail of dragon corpses strewn on the dead ground in her wake. But it was not enough. Blood streamed from her flanks, her chest creaked with her labouring breath, and the attacks were growing ever more frenzied.

The change was coming. She could taste it – in the gore sliming her mouth, shredded between her fangs – in the frantic furnaces of her nostrils – in the air on all sides.
Too many Eleint. Too many Ancients – the Storms are still in collision, but soon they will merge
.

Soon, T’iam will awaken
.

Another Storm struck. Howling, Korabas lashed out. Crushing chests, tearing legs from hips, wings from shoulders. Ripping heads from necks. She bit through ribcages, sent entrails spilling. Bodies fell away, trailing tails of ruin. The air was thick with blood, and much of it her own.
Too much of it my own
.

T’iam! T’iam! Mother! Will you devour me? Will you devour your child so wrong, so hated, so abandoned?

Mother – see the coming darkness? Will you hear my cries? My cries in the dark?

There was terrible pain. The blind rage surrounding her was its own storm, all of it whirling in and down to ceaselessly batter her. She had not asked to be feared. She had not wanted such venom – the only gift from all of her kin. She had not asked to be born.

I hurt so
.

Will you kill me now?

Mother, when you come, will you kill your wrong child?

Around her, an endless maelstrom of dragons. Weakening, she fought on, blind now to her path, blind to everything but the waves of pain and hate assailing her.

This life. It is all that it is, all that I am. This life – why do I deserve this? What have I done to deserve this?

The Storms ripped into her. The Storms tore her hide, rent vast tears in her wings, until her will alone was all that kept her aloft, flying across these wracked skies, as the sun bled out over the horizon far, far behind her.

See the darkness. Hear my cries
.

On this grey day, in a valley deep in stone
Where like shades from the dead yard
Sorrows come forth in milling shrouds
And but a few leaves grey as moths
cling to branches on the shouldered hillsides,
Fluttering to the winds borne on night’s passing
I knelt alone and made voice awaken
to call upon my god

Waiting in the echoes as the day struggled
Until in fading the silence found form
For my fingers to brush light as dust
And the crows flapped down into the trees
To study a man on his knees with glittering regard
Reminding me of the stars that moments before
Held forth watchful as sentinels
On the sky’s wall now withdrawn
behind my eyes

And all the words I have given in earnest
All the felt anguish and torrid will so sternly
Set out like soldiers in furrowed rows
Hovered in a season’s sundering of birds
With no song to beckon them into flight
Where my hands now spreading like wings
Bloodied in the passion of prayer
Lay dying in the bowl
of my lap

My god has no words for me on this grey day
Pallor and pallid dust serve a less imagined reply
Mute as the leaves in the absence of bestir
And even the sky has forgotten the sun
Give me the weal of silence to worry answers
From this tease of indifference – no matter
I am done with prayers on the lip of dawn
And the sorrows will fade
with light

My Fill of Answers
Fisher kel Tath

HE’D BROUGHT THE BUNDLED FORM AS CLOSE AS HE DARED, AND
now it was lying on the ground beside him. The cloth was stained, threadbare, the colour of dead soil. Astride his lifeless horse, he leaned over the saddle horn and with his one eye studied the distant Spire. The vast bay on his left, beyond the cliffs, crashed in tumult, as if ripped by tides – but this violence did not belong to the tides. Sorceries were gathering and the air was heavy and sick with power.

It had all been unleashed and there was no telling how things would fall. But he had done all that he could. Hearing horse hoofs behind him he twisted round.

Toc saluted. ‘Sir.’

Whiskeyjack’s face was cruel in its mockery of what it had once been, in the times of living. His beard was the hue of iron below a gaunt, withered face, like the exposed roots of a long-dead tree. The eyes were unseen beneath the ridge of his brows, sunken into blackness.

We are passing away. Sinking back from this beloved edge
.

‘You cannot remain here, soldier.’

‘I know.’ Toc gestured with one desiccated hand, down to the shrouded form lying on the ground. Behind Whiskeyjack the Bridgeburners waited on their mounts, silent, motionless. Toc’s eye flitted over them. ‘I had no idea, sir,’ he said, ‘there were so many.’

‘War is the great devourer, soldier. So many left us along the way.’

The tone was emptied of all emotion and this alone threatened to break what remained of Toc’s heart.
This is not how you should be. We are fading. So little remains. So little
…

When Whiskeyjack wheeled his mount and set off, his Bridgeburners following, Toc rode with them for a short distance, flanking the solid mass of riders, until something struck him deep inside, like the twist of a knife, and he reined in once more, watching as they continued on.
Longing tore at his soul.
I once dreamed of being a Bridgeburner. If I had won that, I would now be riding with them, and it would all be so much simpler. But, as with so many dreams, I failed, and nothing was how I wanted it
. He drew his mount round and stared back at that now distant shape on the ground.

Fallen One, I understand now. You maimed me outside the city of Pale. You hollowed out one eye, made a cave in my skull. Spirits wandered in for shelter time and again. They made use of that cave. They made use of me
.

But now they are gone, and only you remain. Whispering promises in the hollow of my wound
.

‘But can’t you see the truth of this?’ he muttered. ‘I hold on. I hold on, but I feel my grip … slipping. It’s slipping, Fallen One.’ Still, he would cling to this last promise, for as long as he could. He would make use of this one remaining eye, to see this through.

If I can
.

He kicked his horse into motion, swinging inland, into the wake of the Guardians of the Gate. The hamlets and villages of the headland were grey, abandoned, every surface coated in the ash from the Spire. Furrowed fields made ripples of dull white, as if buried in snow. Here and there, the jutting cage of ribs and hip bones made broken humps. He rode past them all, through the hanging dust cloud left behind by the Bridgeburners. And in the distance ahead, rising above banks of fog, the Spire.

Huddle close in this cave. It’s almost time
.

Once, long ago, the treeless plains of this land had been crowded with vast herds of furred beasts, moving in mass migrations to the siren call of the seasons. Brother Diligence was reminded of those huge creatures as he watched the bulky provision wagons wheel upslope on the raised tracks, away from the trenches and redoubts. Feeding almost fifty thousand soldiers had begun to strain the logistics of supply. Another week of this waiting would empty the granaries of the city.

But there would be no need for another week. The enemy was even now marshalling to the south, with outriders riding along the far ridge on the other side of the valley’s broad, gentle saddle.

The dawn air was brittle with surging energies. Akhrast Korvalain swirled so thick it was almost visible to his eyes. Yet he sensed deep agitation, alien currents gnawing at the edges of the Elder Warren’s manifestation, and this troubled him.

He stood on a slightly raised, elongated platform overlooking the defences, and as the day’s light lifted he scanned yet again the complicated investment of embankments, slit-trenches, machicolations, fortlets and redoubts spread out below him. In his mind, he envisioned
the enemy advance, watched as the subtle adjustments he’d had made to the approaches funnelled and crowded the attackers, punishing them at the forefront by onager defilade, and then taking them on the flanks by enfilading arrow fire from the mounded redoubts. He saw the swarming waves of enemy soldiers thrust and driven this way and that, chewing fiercely at the strongpoints only to reel back bloodied.

His eyes tracked down to the centre high-backed earthworks where he had positioned the Perish Grey Helms – they were locked in place, thrust down on to the flatland, with few avenues for retreat. Too eager to kneel, that Shield Anvil. And the young girl – there had been a feral look in her eyes Diligence did not trust. But, they would fight and die in one place, and he was confident that they would hold the centre for as long as needed.