Steven Erikson - Reaper's gale

‘P-please, sir, I just-’

‘Be quiet! You’re going to need to convince me another way, I think.’

‘Sir?’

There was still time. That foreign army was a day away, maybe more. And he was feeling so very alive at this moment. He reached up and stroked the lad’s cheek. And heard a sudden intake of breath. Ah, a quick-witted lad, then. It would be easy to-

A knife-tip pricked just under his right eye, and all at once the soldier’s young voice hardened. ‘Finadd, you want to live to climb out the other end of this tunnel, then you’ll leave off right here. Sir.’

‘I’ll have your name-’

‘You’re welcome to it, Finadd, and may the Errant bless your eternal search-because I wasn’t behind this door as a guard, sir. I was readying to make my escape.’

‘Your what?’

‘The mob rules the streets, Finadd. All we hold right now are the walls and gate houses. Oh, and the Eternal Domicile, where our insane Emperor keeps killing champions like it was a civic holiday. Nobody’s much inter-ested in besieging that place. Besides, the Edur left yesterday. All of them. Gone. So, Finadd, you want to get to your lover Chancellor, well, you’re welcome to try.’

The knife pressed down, punctured skin and drew out a tear of blood. ‘Now, sir. You can make for the dagger at your belt, and die. Or you can let go of my shirt.’

Insolence and cowardice were hardly attractive qualities., ‘Happy to oblige, soldier,’ Sirryn said, releasing his hold on the man. ‘Now, if you’re going out, then I had better remain here and lock the door behind you, yes?’

‘Finadd, you can do whatever you please once I’m gone. So back away, sir. No, farther. That’s good.’

Sirryn waited for the soldier to escape. He could still feel that knife-tip and the wound stung as sweat seeped into it. It was not cowardice, he told himself, that had forced him back, away from this hot-headed bastard busy disgracing his uniform. Simple expedience. He needed to get to the Chancellor, didn’t he? That was paramount.

And now, absurdly, he would have to face making his way, unescorted, through the very city where he had been born, in fear for his life. The world had turned on its end. I could just wait here, yes, in this tunnel, in the dark-no, the foreigners are coming. The Eternal Domicile-where, if surrender is demanded, Triban Gnol can do the negotiating, can oversee the handing over of the Emperor. And the Chancellor will want his loyal guards at his side. He’ll want Finadd Sirryn Kanar, the last survivor of the battle at the river-Sirryn Kanar, who broke through the enemy lines to rush back to his Chancellor, bearer, yes, of grim news. Yet he won through, did he not?

The soldier lowered the door back down from the other side. Sirryn moved up to it, found the bar and lifted it into place. He could reach the Eternal Domicile, even if it meant swimming the damned canals.

I still live. I can win through all of this.

There’s not enough of these foreigners to rule the empire.

They’ll need help, yes.

He set out along the tunnel.

The young soldier was twenty paces from the hidden door when dark figures rose on all sides and he saw those terrifying crossbows aimed at him. He froze, slowly raised his hands.

One figure spoke, then, in a language the soldier did not understand, and he flinched as someone stepped round him from behind-a woman, grinning, daggers in her gloved hands. She met his eyes and winked, then mimed a kiss.

‘We not yet decide let you live,’ the first one then said in rough Letherii. ‘You spy?’

‘No,’ the soldier replied. ‘Deserter.’

‘Honest man, good. You answer all our questions? These doors, tunnels, why do sappers’ work for us? Explain.’

‘Yes, I will explain everything. I don’t want to die.’

Corporal Tarr sighed, then turned from the prisoner to face Koryk. ‘Better get Fid and the captain, Koryk. Looks like maybe we won’t have to knock down any walls after all’

Smiles snorted, sheathing her knives. ‘No elegant back stab. And no torture. This isn’t any fun at all.’ She paused, then added, ‘Good thing we didn’t take down the first one, though, isn’t it? Led us right to this.’

Their horses had not been exercised nearly enough, and were now huffing, heads lifting and falling as Sergeant Balm led his small troop inland. Too dark now to hunt Letherii and besides, the fun had grown sour awfully fast. Sure, slaughter made sense when on the enemy’s own soil, since every soldier who got away was likely to fight again, and so they’d chased down the miserable wretches. But it was tiring work.

When magic wasn’t around in a battle, Moranth munitions took its place, and the fit was very nice indeed. As far as we’re concerned, anyway. Gods, just seeing those bodies-and pieces of bodies-flying up into the air-and 1 was getting all confused, at the beginning there. Bits of Letherii everywhere and all that ringing in my ears.

He’d come around sharp enough when he saw Cord’s idiot sapper, Crump, running up the slope straight at the enemy line, with a Hood-damned cusser in each hand. If it hadn’t been for all those blown-up Letherii absorbing so much of the twin blasts then Crump would still be standing there. His feet, anyway. The rest of him would be red haze drifting into the sunset. As it was, Crump was flattened beneath an avalanche of body parts, eventually clambering free like one of Hood’s own revenants. Although Balm was pretty sure revenants didn’t smile.

Not witless smiles, anyway.

Where the cussers had not obliterated entire companies of the enemy, the main attack-wedges of advancing heavies and medium infantry with a thin scattering of skirmishers and sappers out front-had closed with a hail of sharpers, virtually disintegrating the Letherii front ranks. And then it was just the killing thrust with those human wedges, ripping apart the enemy’s formations, driving the Letherii soldiers back until they were packed tight and unable to do anything but die.

The Adjunct’s Fourteenth Army, the Bonehunters, had shown, at long last, that they knew how to fight. She’d gotten her straight-in shield to shield dragged-out battle, and hadn’t it been just grand?

Riding ahead as point was Masan Gilani. Made sense, using her. First off, she was the best rider by far, and secondly, there wasn’t a soldier, man or woman, who could drag their eyes off her delicious round behind in that saddle, which made following her easy. Even in the gathering dark, aye. Not that it actually glows. I don’t think. But… amazing how we can all see it just fine. Why, could be a night without any other moon and no stars and nothing but the Abyss on all sides, and we’d follow that glorious, jiggling-

Balm sawed his reins, pulling off to one side, just missing Masan Gilani’s horse-which was standing still, and Masan suddenly nowhere in sight.

Cursing, he dragged his weary horse to a halt, raising a hand to command those behind him to draw up.

‘Masan?’

‘Over here,’ came the luscious, heavenly voice, and a moment later she emerged out of the gloom ahead. ‘We’re on the killing field.’

‘Not a chance,’ Throatslitter said from behind Balm. ‘No bodies, Masan, no nothing.’

Deadsmell rode a few paces ahead, then stopped and dismounted. He looked round in the gloom. ‘No, she’s right,’ he said. ‘This was where Keneb’s marines closed ranks.’

They’d all seen the strange glow to the north-seen it from the ships, in fact, when the transports did their neat turn and surged for the shoreline. And before that, well, they’d seen the Letherii sorcery, that terrifying wave climbing into the sky and it was then that everyone knew the marines were finished. No Quick Ben to beat it all back, even if he could have, and Balm agreed with most everyone else that, good as he was, he wasn’t that good. No Quick Ben, and no Sinn-aye, there she was, perched on the bow of the Froth Wolf with Grub at her side, staring at that dreadful conjuration.