Steven Erikson - Memories of Ice

Standing in the courtyard, Emancipor Reese watched through watering eyes Buke's transformation. A blurring of the man, a drawing inward, the air filling with pungent spice. He watched as the sparrowhawk that had been Buke shot upward in a cavorting climbing spiral.

'Aye,' he muttered. 'You can fly circles around them. But, dear Buke, when they decide to swat you down, it won't be a duel on the wing. It'll be sorcery. Those plodding rooks have no need for speed, no need for agility — and those gifts will avail you nothing when the time comes. Buke … you poor fool…'

High above Capustan, the sparrowhawk circled. The two rooks, Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, were far below yet perfectly visible to the raptor's eyes. Flapping ponderously through wreaths of smoke, southeast, past the East Gate …

The city still burned in places, thrusting columns of black smoke skyward. The sparrowhawk studied the siege from a point of view that the world's generals would die for. Wheeling, circling, watching.

The Tenescowri ringed the city in a thick, seething band. A third of a million, maybe more. Such a mass of people as Buke had never seen before. And the band had begun to constrict. A strangely colourless, writhing noose, drawing ever closer to the city's feeble, crumbled walls and what seemed but a handful of defenders.

There would be no stopping this assault. An army measured not by bravery, but by something far deadlier, something unopposable: hunger. An army that could not afford to break, that saw only wasting death in retreat.

Capustan was about to be devoured.

The Pannion Seer is a monster in truth. A tyranny of need. And this will spread. Defeat him? You would have to kill every man, woman and child on this world who are bowed to hunger, everyone who faces starvation's grisly grin. It has begun here, on Genabackis, but that is simply the heart. This tide will spread. It will infect every city, on every continent, it will devour empires and nations from within.

I see you now, Seer. From this height. I understand what you are, and what you will become. We are lost. We are all truly lost.

His thoughts were scattered by a virulent bloom of sorcery to the east. A knot of familiar magic swirled around a small section of the Tenescowri army. Black waves shot through with sickly purple streamed outward, cut down screaming peasants by the hundreds. Grey-streaming sorcery answered.

The sparrowhawk's eyes saw the twin corbies now, there, in the midst of the magical storm. Demons burst from torn portals on the plain, tore mayhem through the shrieking, flinching ranks. Sorcery lashed back, swarmed over the creatures.

The two rooks swept down, converged on a figure sitting on a bucking roan horse. Waves of magic collided with a midnight flash, the concussion a thunder that reached up to where Buke circled.

The sparrowhawk's beak opened, loosing a piercing cry. The rooks had peeled away. Sorcery hammered them, battered them as they flapped in hasty retreat.

The figure on the stamping horse was untouched. Surrounded by heaps of bodies, into which fellow Tenescowri now plunged. To feed.

Buke screamed another triumphant cry, dipped his wings, plummeted earthward.

He reached the estate's courtyard well ahead of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, spiralling, slowing, wings buffeting the air. To hover the briefest of moments, before sembling, returning to his human form.

Emancipor Reese was nowhere to be seen. The undead Urdomen still stood in the positions where they had first arisen.

Feeling heavy and awkward in his body, Buke turned to study them. 'Six of you to the gate — you' — he pointed — 'and the ones directly behind you. And you, to the northwest tower.' He continued directing the silent warriors, placing them as Bauchelain had suggested. As he barked the last order, twin shadows tracked weaving paths across the cobbles. The rooks landed in the courtyard. Their feathers were in tatters. Smoke rose from one of them.

Buke watched the sembling, smiled at seeing, first Korbal Broach — his armour in shreds, rank tendrils of smoke wreathed around him — then Bauchelain, his pale face bruised along one side of his long jaw, blood crusting his moustache and staining his silver beard.

Korbal Broach reached up to the collar of his cloak, his pudgy, soft hands trembling, fumbling at the clasp. The black leather fell to the ground. He began stamping on it to kill the last of its smouldering patches.

Brushing dust from his arms, Bauchelain glanced over at Buke. 'Patient of you, to await our return.'

Wiping the smile from his lips, Buke shrugged. 'You didn't get him. What happened?'

'It seems,' the necromancer muttered, 'we must needs refine our tactics.'

The instinct of self-preservation vanished, then, as Buke softly laughed.

Bauchelain froze. One eyebrow arched. Then he sighed. 'Yes, well. Good day to you, too, Buke.'

Buke watched him head inside.

Korbal Broach continued stomping on his cloak long after the smouldering patches had been extinguished.

In my dreams I come face to face

with myriad reflections of myself,

all unknown and passing strange.

They speak unending

in languages not my own

and walk with companions

I have never met, in places

my steps have never gone.

In my dreams I walk worlds

where forests crowd my knees

and half the sky is walled ice.

Dun herds flow like mud,

vast floods tusked and horned

surging over the plain,

and lo, they are my memories,

the migrations of my soul.

In the Time before Night

D'arayans of the Rhivi

Whiskeyjack rose in the saddle as his horse leapt over the spiny ridge of outcroppings cresting the hill. Hooves thumped as the creature resumed its gallop, crossing the mesa's flat top, then slowing as the Malazan tautened the reins and settled back in the saddle. At a diminishing canter, he approached the summit's far side, then drew up at its edge.

A rumpled, boulder-strewn slope led down into a broad, dry riverbed. At its base two 2nd Army scouts sat on their horses, backs to Whiskeyjack. Before them, a dozen Rhivi were moving on foot through what seemed to be a field of bones.

Huge bones.

Clicking his mount into motion, Whiskeyjack slowly worked it down onto the ancient slide. His eyes held on the scatter of bones. Massive iron blades glinted there, as well as crumpled, oddly shaped armour and helmets. He saw long, reptilian jaws, rows of jagged teeth. Clinging to some of the shattered skeletons, the remnants of grey skin.

Clearing the scree, Whiskeyjack rode up to the nearest scout.

The man saluted. 'Sir. The Rhivi are jabbering away — can't quite follow what they're talking about. Looks to have been about ten of the demons. Whatever tore into them was nasty. Might be the Rhivi have gleaned more, since they're crawling around among the corpses.'

Nodding, Whiskeyjack dismounted. 'Keep an eye out,' he said, though he knew the scouts were doing just that, but feeling the need to say something. The killing field exuded an air of dread, old yet new, and — even more alarming — it held the peculiar tension that immediately followed a battle. Thick silence, swirling as if not yet settled by the sounds of violence, as if somehow still trembling, still shivering.

He approached the Rhivi and the sprawl of bones.

The tribal scouts were indeed jabbering.

'Dead wolves …'

'Twice tracks, the touches heavy yet light, wider than my hand. Big.'

'Big dead wolves.'

'No blood, agreed? Barrow stench.'

'Black stone dust. Sharp.'

'Glittering beneath forearms — the skin …'

'Black glass fragments.'

'Obsidian. Far south …'