Steven Erikson - Dust of Dreams

The snake halted, and then began a slow, tortured crawl into and out of the churned-up mud. The wait alone killed scores, and even as children emerged from the morass, slathered black, some fell to convulsions, curling round mud-filled guts. Some spilled out their bowels, fouling things for everyone that came after.

It was another bad day for the Chal Managal.

Later in the afternoon, during the worst of the heat, they spied a greyish cloud on the horizon ahead. The ribbers began howling, dancing in terror, and as the cloud rushed closer, the dogs finally fled.

What looked like rain wasn’t rain. What looked like a cloud wasn’t a cloud.

These were locusts, but not the normal kind of locusts.

Wings glittering, the swarm filling half the sky, and then all the sky, the sound a clicking roar-the rasp of wings, the snapping open of jaws-each creature a finger long. Out from within the cloud, as it engulfed the column, lunged buzzing knots where the insects massed almost solid. When one of these hammered into a huddle of children, shrieks of pain and horror erupted-the flash of red meat, and then bone-and then the horde swept on, leaving behind clumps of hair and heaps of gleaming bone.

These locusts ate meat.

This was the first day of the Shards.

Corporal Tarr’s memory of his father could be entirely summed up inside a single recollected quote, ringing like Talian death bells across the breadth of Tarr’s childhood. A raw, stentorian pronouncement battering down on the flinching son. ‘Sympathy? Aye, I have sympathy-for the dead and no one else! Ain’t nobody in this world deserves sympathy unless they’re dead! You understanding me, son?’

‘ You understanding me, son? ’

Yes, sir. Good words for making a soldier. Kept the brain from getting too… cluttered. With things that might get in the way of holding his shield just so, stabbing out with his short sword right there. It was a kind of discipline, what others might call obstinate stupidity, but that simply showed that lots of people didn’t understand soldiering.

Teaching people to be disciplined, he was discovering, wasn’t easy. He walked the length of Letherii soldiers-and aye, that description was a sorry stretch-who stood at what passed for attention for these locals. A row of red faces in the blazing sunlight, dripping like melting wax.

‘Harridict Brigade,’ Tarr said in a snarl, ‘what kind of name is that? Who in Hood’s name was Harridict-no, don’t answer me, you damned fool! Some useless general, I’d imagine, or worse, some merchant house happy to kit you all in its house colours. Merchants! Businesses got no place in the military. We built an empire across three continents by keeping ’em outa things! Businesses are the vultures of war, and maybe those beaks look like smiles, but take it from me, they’re just beaks.’

He halted then, his repertoire of words exhausted, and gestured to Cuttle, who stepped up with a hard grin-the idiot loved this Braven role, as it was being called now (‘Letherii got master sergeants; we Malazans got Braven Sergeants, and say it toothy when you say it, lads, and be sure to keep the joke private’-so said Ruthan Gudd and that , Tarr had decided then and there, was a soldier ).

Cuttle was wide and solid, a perfect fit to the role. Wider than Tarr but shorter by half a head, which meant that Tarr was an even better fit. Not one of these miserable excuses for soldiers could stand toe to toe with either Malazan for anything past twenty heartbeats, and that was the awful truth. They were soft. ‘This brigade,’ Cuttle now said, loud and contemptuous, ‘is a waste of space!’ He paused to glare at the faces, which were slowly hardening under the assault.

About time. Tarr watched on, thumbs hooked now in his weapon belt.

‘Aye,’ Cuttle went on, ‘I’ve listened to your drunken stories-’ and his tone invited them to sit at his table: knowing and wise and damned near… sympathetic. ‘And aye, I’ve seen for myself that raw, ugly pig you call magic hereabouts. Undisciplined-no finesse-brutal power but nothing clever. So, for you lot, battle means eating dirt, and a battlefield is where hundreds die for no good reason. Your mages have made war a miserable, useless joke-’ and he spun round and stepped up to one soldier, nose to nose. ‘You! How many times has this brigade taken fifty per cent or more losses in a single battle?’

The soldier-and Cuttle had chosen well-almost bared his teeth. ‘Seven times, Braven Sergeant!’

‘Seventy-five per cent losses?’

‘Four, Braven Sergeant!’

‘Losses at ninety?’

‘Once, Braven Sergeant, but not ninety-one hundred per cent, Braven Sergeant.’

Cuttle let his jaw drop. ‘One hundred?’

‘Yes, Braven Sergeant!’

‘Wiped out to the last soldier?’

‘Yes, Braven Sergeant!’

And Cuttle leaned even closer, his face turning crimson. In a bellowing shout, he said, ‘And has it not once occurred to you-any of you-that you might do better by murdering all your mages at the very start of the battle?’

‘Then the other side would-’

‘You parley with ’em first, of course-you all agree to butcher the bastards !’ He reeled back and threw up his hands. ‘You don’t fight wars! You don’t fight battles! You just all form up and make new cemeteries!’ He wheeled on them. ‘ Are you all idiots? ’

On a balcony overlooking the parade grounds, Brys Beddict winced. Beside him, standing in the shade, Queen Janath grunted and then said, ‘You know, he has a point.’

‘It is, for the moment,’ Brys said, ‘almost irrelevant. We have few mages of any stature left, and even those ones have gone to ground-it seems there is a quiet revolution under way, and I suspect that when the dust has settled, the entire discipline of sorcery will be transformed.’ He hesitated, and then said, ‘In any case, that wasn’t what alarmed me-listening to that soldier down there. It’s their notion of taking matters into their own hands.’

‘An invitation to mutiny,’ Janath was nodding, ‘but you could look at it another way. Their kind of thinking in turn keeps their commanders in check-following orders is one thing, but if those orders are suicidal or just plain stupid…’

‘The thought of my soldiers second-guessing me at every turn hardly inspires confidence. I am beginning to regret employing these Malazans in the reshaping of the Letherii military. Perhaps the way they do things works for them, but it does not necessarily follow that it will work for us.’

‘You may be right, Brys. There is something unusual about the Malazans. I find them fascinating. Imagine, an entire civilization that does not suffer fools.’

‘From what I have heard,’ Brys pointed out, ‘that did not protect them from betrayal-their very own Empress was prepared to sacrifice them all.’

‘But they did not kneel to the axe, did they?’

‘I see your point.’

‘There exists an exchange of trust between the ruler and the ruled. Abuse that from either direction and all mutual agreements are nullified.’