Ian Esslemont - Return of the Crimson Guard

He handed them over to the reaching arms of Heuk, two Avowed named Treat and Sept, and even the old Wickan witch who had come forward. She took them and immediately began berating them in Wickan; the two flinched, hanging their heads, looking like remorseful schoolchildren. Nait turned back to try to find the others. The two Avowed slipped up and out after him, running hunched.

Movement on the field dropped Nait to his chest — two of the fallen mages — up and closing on the summoner: Blues and Ho. Despite torn bloodied rags revealing gaping wounds, Blues’ back wet with blood that ran down darkening his legs, both limped inexorably towards the mage. Blues drew two short blades. They reached the outermost spiralling layer of energy, pushing inward, hands protecting their faces. And it seemed to Nait that, somehow, despite the punishing, scouring conflagration, both were pushing through. The two Avowed threw themselves down next to Nait. ‘Blues!’ one urged, ‘Get ‘im!’

Even Nait found his hands clenched in fists. Yes! Get him! Send him to Hood!

Shapes appeared from nowhere behind Blues and lunged up from the grass behind Ho. The Avowed cursed, leapt to their feet running, drawing weapons. Blues turned, defending himself only to be thrust from his feet by the power of the churning energy to fall in a tangle with his attackers. The three figures tackling Ho struck Nait as all bizarrely similar, as if they were all members of the same family. The four rolled away in a blur of ferocious kicks and blows that sent up swaths of earth.

Sizzling actinic power slashed out to strike the closing Avowed, Treat and Sept, throwing them tumbling across the slope like tossed balls. Two more figures ran past Nait, bent over, faces averted from the blasting magics — the Wickan youths, heading for the brawl of Ho and his attackers.

Lady, this is seriously not what I signed up for. Not what I signed up for at all.

He was considering heading back for the trench when he froze. Someone was standing right beside him. Nait slowly edged his head up: the man wore loose trousers, sashed, and a long-sleeved pale-blue tunic; his long loose hair blew about his mahogany face, which was wrinkled up in sour disgust. Nait had never seen the man before in his life. ‘I allow them their petty squabbles,’ the fellow said as if thinking aloud. ‘I do not interfere in succession. My forbearance I thought unassailable. But this! This I cannot allow.’

The man merely raised a hand and a blinding eruption threw Nait aside. He rolled tumbling to lie stunned, gasping in the hot dust-choked air. He didn't know whether he blacked out. He couldn't tell. But when he shook his head, blinking and coughing, eyes watering, he reared up to look: a slash of brilliant light was hammering the mage in his gyre of protective energies. It was pushing the entire tornado of writhing force backwards while this new mage advanced at a steady pace.

Hood's balls! Who was this guy?

More wreckage flew overhead, whipping for the fellow. No! Not again! But as it neared it burst into flames, the shattered timbers incinerating instantly into wafting black flakes. The mangled iron glowing, melting and misting into smoke.

Three figures emerged from the churning smoke and dust, Ho supported by the Wickan youths. They were making for the trench. Though he was beaten and bruised the mage's face held an idiotic grin. The Wickan girl spotted Nait and signed retreat. He didn't need any more encouragement than that.

They piled into the trench. People reached out, supporting Nait. One was Heuk. ‘Who in Hood's mercy is that!’ Nait said.

‘Tayschrenn.’ The old mage grinned his blackened rotten teeth. ‘Ain't he somethin’?’

‘I'll say.’

The aged Wickan witch helped with Ho, who offered a broken-lipped smile. ‘You won?’ she asked him. He gave a tired nod.

‘They acceded to me.’

‘Good. I knew they would.’ She turned on the two youths. ‘And you two — where is the other, Blues? Why did you not come back with him? We still may need him.’

The two exchanged suffering glances, but bowed. ‘Yes, Nana,’ they said, and scrambled back out on to the field.

‘Healers!’ the old woman barked, waving them to Ho. ‘See to him!’

Nait peered up at the mar still hanging in the clear blue sky like a bruise or ugly wound. It had grown since he last looked. ‘It's low,’ he said to Heuk.

‘Yes, but-look!’

The enemy mage, named Yath apparently, had been plucked off the ground. He flailed now, limbs churning, enmeshed in the argent puissance invoked by Tayschrenn. It looked as though the High Mage intended to force him through his own rift.

‘Yes…’ Heuk murmured appreciatively, ‘he may just bridge it…’ Then the mage stiffened and turned to Nait, his face blanching. He gripped Nait's shoulder. ‘Eldest forgive me! What of Tourmaline? The munitions! Tayschrenn stands almost on top of them!’

No one asked Kyle to leave the hilltop and so he remained, arms crossed, watching the fireworks of the mage duel out on the battle plain. With him was the Untan nobleman who'd come as part of the Wickan delegation — Kyle hadn't caught the man's name. He watched and listened just as Kyle did, his face torn between awe and dread. The battle below reminded Kyle of the Spur, only on an even grander scale. So this was what the old hands meant when they spoke about the Warren-clashes of the old campaigns. Fearsome stuff. He understood more clearly now the relationship between the different arms of these armies out of Quon. No wonder the presence of a powerful mage corps could deter any aggression — or the lack invite it. Still, from the reactions around him he understood what they were seeing now to be unprecedented; a deliberate effort at whole-scale destruction.

That duelling appeared to jump to a yet greater confrontation as light like the reflection of the sun from still water blossomed on the plain. The Avowed mages remaining around Kyle, Opal, Lor-sinn and Shell, all cursed and winced, Shell staggering backwards as if pushed by some unseen force.

‘I know that!’ Opal said through clenched teeth.

‘Brethren report it is the High Mage,’ said Shimmer, her tone amazed.

‘The only time I've ever been glad to see him,’ K'azz said.

The old Malazan commander, Urko, grunted appreciatively. ‘Couldn't turn a blind eye to something like this .’

‘Did you witness the confrontation at Pale?’ Lor-sinn asked of Shell.

Shell straightened her jerkin, her lined face wrinkled up as though pained. ‘I watched from the distance.’

‘Challenged Anomander,’ Lor-sinn breathed. ‘Lord of Moon's Spawn.’

Kyle watched Opal shake her mop of curly auburn hair. ‘Hubris. The Ascendant held back.’

‘And how do we know that?’

Opal gestured to the field. ‘And risk such consequences?’

Lor-sinn, Kyle could tell, remained unconvinced. A glimmering brilliance out of the field made Kyle flinch and look away; he glanced back, a hand shading his eyes. The rumbling of a particularly loud eruption of power rolled over them. The mages winced in empathic pain.

K'azz raised a hand for attention. ‘Brethren say a messenger is here for Commander Urko.’

‘Well?’ asked Urko.

‘The messenger claims to be an officer of the assembled Cawnese Provincial Army.’

Kyle looked to the Malazan commanders Urko and Fist D'Ebbin. Urko's greying brows rose like shelves. Fist D'Ebbin, though beaten down by what he had endured through the night, at first appeared pleased, then that pleasure slipped into unease as he glanced to K'azz. These two were all that remained of Imperial command in the field — other than the Sword, who was rumoured to be in charge of the eastern redoubt. Cowl's Veils had taken an awful toll.