Deadhouse Gates (The Malazan Book of the Fallen #2) 34

'All right, Cuttle,' the big man drawled. 'Yank the hair.'

Duiker swung back to see the sapper in the pit raise both hands, gripping a long, black cord that trailed down into the water. Cuttle's dirt-smeared face twisted into a fierce grimace, his eyes squeezing shut. Then he pulled. The cord went slack.

Nothing happened.

The historian chanced to look the big man's way. He had a finger stuck in each ear, though his eyes remained open and fixed on the river. Realization struck Duiker even as List cried, 'Sir!'

The ground seemed to drop an inch under them. The water on the ford rose up, humped, blurred, the hump seeming to roll with lightning swiftness down the submerged road's length. The peasants on the river simply vanished. Then reappeared a heartbeat later – even as the concussion struck everyone on shore with a wind like a god's fist – in blossoms of red and pink and yellow, fragments of flesh and bone, limbs, hair, tufts of cloth, all lifting higher and higher as the water exploded up and out in a muddy, ghastly mist.

Duiker's mare backstepped, head tossing. The sound had been deafening. The world shivered on all sides. A Wickan rider had tumbled from his saddle and now writhed on the ground, hands held to his ears.

The river began to fall back, horridly churned with bodies and pieces of bodies, steam twisting away on sudden gusts of wind. The giant snake's head was gone. Obliterated. As was another third of its length – all who had been in the water were gone.

Though he now stood close by, the big man's words sounded faint and distant to Duiker's ringing ears as he said, 'Fifty-five cussers – what the Seventh's been hoarding for years. That ford's now a trench. Ha.' Then his satisfied expression drained away. 'Hood's toes, we're back to digging with shovels.'

A hand plucked the historian's sleeve. List leaned close and whispered, 'Where to now, sir?'

The historian looked downstream at the twisting eddies, red-stained and full of human flotsam. For a moment he could not comprehend the corporal's question. Where to? Nowhere that's good, no place where giving pause to slaughter will yield some' thing other than despair.

'Sir?'

'To the melee, Corporal. We see this through.'

The swift arrival of Coltaine and his Crow horsewarriors to strike at the west flank of the Tithansi lancers on this side of the river had turned the tide of battle. As they rode towards the engagement at the earthworks, Duiker and List could see the Tithansi crumbling, exposing the Semk footmen to the mounted Wickan bowmen. Arrows raked through the wild-haired Semk fighters.

At the centre stood the bulk of the Seventh's infantry, holding at bay the frenzied efforts of the Semk, while a hundred paces to the north, the Guran heavy infantry still waited to close with the hated Malazans. Their commander was evidently having second thoughts. Kamist Reloe and his army were trapped – for this battle at least – on the other side of the river. Apart from the battered rearguard marines and the Weasel Clan, Coltaine's force was relatively intact.

Five hundred paces farther west, out on a broad, stony plain, the Weasel Clan pursued remnants of Guran cavalry.

Duiker saw a knot of colour amidst the Seventh, gold and red – Baria Setral and his Red Blades, in the heart of the fighting. The Semk seemed eager to close on the Malazan lapdogs, and were paying in blood for their desire. Nonetheless, Setral's troop looked at no more than half strength – less than twenty men.

'I want to get closer,' Duiker announced.

'Yes, sir,' List said. He pointed. 'That rise there – it'll put us in bow range though, sir.'

'I'll take that risk.'

They rode towards the Seventh. The company standard stood solitary and dust-streaked on a low hill just behind the line. Three grey-haired veterans guarded it – Semk bodies strewn on the slope indicated that the hill had been hotly contested earlier in the day. The veterans had been in the fight, and all bore minor wounds.

As the historian and the corporal rode to their position, Duiker saw that the three men crouched around a fallen comrade. Tears had clawed crooked trails down their dusty cheeks. Arriving, the historian slowly dismounted.

'You've a story here, soldiers,' he said, pitching his voice low to reach through the clangour and shouts of the struggle thirty paces north of them.

One of the veterans glanced up, squinting. 'The old Emperor's historian, by Hood's grin! Saw you in Falar, or maybe the Wickan Plains—'

'Both. The standard was challenged, I see. You lost a friend in defending it.'

The man blinked, then glanced around until he focused on the Seventh's standard. The pikeshaft leaned to one side, its tattered banner bleached into ghost colours by the sun. 'Hood's breath,' the man growled. 'Think we'd fight to save a piece of cloth on a pole?' He gestured at the body his friends knelt around. 'Nordo took two arrows. We held off a squad of Semk so he could die in his own time. Those bastard tribesmen snatch wounded enemies and keep 'em alive so's they can torture 'em. Nordo wasn't gettin' none of that.'