Steven Erikson - Memories of Ice

The wizard shrugged. 'High Fist, I'm all you've got. I'll keep 'em busy for a while.'

Paran said, 'I'll assign the Bridgeburners to guard you — we've resupplied on munitions-'

'He's being generous,' Dujek cut in. 'Half a crate, and most of it close-in stuff. If the enemy gets near enough for them to have to use it, you're way too close to one stray arrow headed your way, Wizard. I'm not happy with this, not happy at all.'

'Can't say I am, either,' Quick Ben replied. He waited. He could hear the High Fist's molars grinding.

'Captain?' Dujek grunted.

'Aye, sir?'

'Are the cussers and crackers in place? Can we collapse this damned hillside?'

'Hedge says it's all rigged, High Fist. We can bury every tunnel and flatten every entrenchment.'

'So, we could just pull out and leave the Pannions to retake … a steaming mess of nothing.'

'We could, sir.'

'Meaning, we'll have travelled half the continent, only to retreat before our first engagement.'

'A temporary retreat, sir,' Paran pointed out.

'Or we can bloody their noses … maybe take out ten thousand Beklites, ten, twelve mages and a Septarch. At the possible cost of this army, including Quick Ben here. Gentlemen, is that a fair exchange?'

'That is for you to decide-' Paran began, but Dujek cut him off.

'No, Captain. It isn't. Not this time.'

Quick Ben met the High Fist's eyes. I made a promise to Burn. The captain and I had. plans. To keep all of that, I say no right now. And we blow the entrenchments and scamper. But then again, I'm a soldier. A Bridgeburner. And the brutal truth is, tactically, it's more than a fair exchange. We make it for Whiskeyjack. For the siege to come. We save lives. He glanced at Paran, saw the same knowledge in the captain's eyes. The wizard turned back to Dujek. 'High Fist, it is a fair exchange.'

Dujek reached up and lowered his helm's visor. 'All right, let's get to work.'

Quick Ben watched the two men leave, then he sighed. 'What do you want, Blend?'

'Sir?'

'Don't you "sir" me, woman. Are you planning on rejoining your squad any time soon, or do you want a close look at my impending demise?'

'I thought I might … uh, give you a hand.'

He faced her, eyes narrowing. 'How?'

'Well…' She drew out a small stone from round her neck. 'I picked up this charm, a few years back.'

The wizard's brows rose. 'And what is it supposed to do, Blend?'

'Uh, makes me harder to focus on — seems to work pretty good.'

'And where did you come by it?'

'An old desert merchant, in Pan'potsun.'

Quick Ben smiled, 'Keep it, lass.'

'But-'

'If you weren't wearing it, you wouldn't be Blend any more, would you?'

'I suppose not. Only-'

'Return to your squad. And tell Picker to keep her lads and lasses tight and out of the scrap — you're to remain on that far flank, watching the city. If the condors suddenly show, get back to me as fast as possible.'

'Aye, sir.'

'Go on, then.'

She hurried off.

Well, damn me. The lass buys a worthless piece of stone from a Gral swindler and suddenly she's invisible. Raw but pure talent, right in her bones, and she doesn't even know it.

Hidden beneath fronds and brush, Picker and her squad had a clear view of the Pannion legions, the front lines reaching the base of the treeless ramp that led to the entrenchments. Grey sorcery spun a wall of tangled webbing before the chanting Beklites. The Seerdomin commanders were wreathed in the magic, advancing now on foot ahead of their companies, marching upslope with an air of inexorability.

On a bank high above the Pannions, Quick Ben looked down, exposed and alone. Or so Blend had told her — the trees on her left blocked the view.

Suicide. The wizard was good, she knew, but good only because he kept his head low and did whatever he did behind backs, in the shadows, unseen. He wasn't Tattersail, wasn't Hairlock or Calot. In all the years she had known him, she had not once seen him openly unveil a warren and let loose. Not only wasn't it his style, it also wasn't, she suspected, within his capacity.

You unsheathed the wrong weapon for this fight, High Fist.

Sudden motion in the midst of the first Pannion square. Screams. Picker's eyes widened. Demons had appeared. Not one, but six — no, seven. Eight. Huge, towering, bestial, tearing through the massed ranks of soldiery. Blood sprayed. Limbs flew.

The Seerdomin mages wheeled.

'Damn,' Blend whispered at her side. 'They've swallowed it.'

Picker snapped a glare at the woman. 'What are you talking about?'

'They're illusions, Lieutenant. Can't you tell?'

No.

'It's all that uncertainty — they don't know what they're facing. Quick Ben's playing on their fears.'

'Blend! Wait! How in Hood's name can you tell?'

'Not sure, but I can.'

The Seerdomin unleashed waves of grey sorcery that broke up over the legion, sent snaking roots down towards the eight demons.

'That will have to knock them out,' Blend said. 'If Quick Ben ignored the attack, the Pannions will get suspicious — let's see how — oh!'

The magic darted like plummeting nests of adders, enwreathed the roaring demons. Their death-throes were frenzied, lashing, killing and maiming yet more soldiers on all sides. But die they did, one by one.

The first legion's formation was a shambles, torn bodies lying everywhere. Its onward climb had been shattered, and the reassertion of order was going to take a while.

'Amazing what happens when you believe.' Blend said after a time.

Picker shook her head. 'If wizards can do that, why don't we have illusionists in every damned squad?'

'It only works, Lieutenant, because of its rarity. Besides, it takes serious mastery to manage faking even a lone demon — how Quick Ben pulled off eight of 'em is-'

The Seerdomin mages counterattacked. A crackling, spinning wave rolled up the slope, chewing up the ground, exploding tree stumps.

'That's headed straight for him!' Blend hissed, one hand clutching Picker's shoulder, fingers digging in.

'Ow! Let go!'

A thunderous concussion shook the ground and air.

'Gods! He's been killed! Blasted! Annihilated — Beru fend us all!'

Picker stared at the wailing soldier at her side, then forced her eyes once more to the scene on the ramp.

Another Seerdomin wizard appeared from the legion's ranks, mounted on a huge dun charger. Sorcery danced over his armour, pale, dull, flickering on the double-bladed axe in his right hand.

'Oh,' Blend whispered. 'That's a sharp illusion.'

He rode to join one of his fellow mages.

Who turned.

The axe flew from the rider's hand, its wake sparkling with suspended ice. Changed shape, blackening, twisting, reaching out clawed, midnight limbs.

The victim screamed as the wraith struck him. Death-magic punched through the protective weave of chaotic sorcery like a spearpoint through chain armour, plunged into the man's chest.

The wraith reappeared even as the Seerdomin toppled — up through his helmed head in an explosion of iron, bone, blood and brains — clutching in its black, taloned hands the Seerdomin's soul — a thing that flared, radiating terror. The wraith, hunched over its prize, flew a zigzag path towards the forest. Vanished into the gloom.

The rider, after throwing the ghastly weapon, had driven his heels into his horse's flanks. The huge beast had veered, hooves pounding, to ride down a second Seerdomin in a flurry of stamping that, within moments, flung blood-soaked clumps of mud into the air.

Sorcery tumbled towards the rider.

Who drove his horse forward. A ragged tear parted before them, into which horse and rider vanished. The rent closed a moment before the chaotic magic arrived. The spinning sorcery thunderclapped, gouging a crater in the hillside.