She would destroy them – soon, once this last Imass was crushed and torn apart.
She stepped over a dead horse-warrior, one boot cracking into the side of the man’s head.
The blow rang loud, and Gall opened his eyes. Blinked up at the sky. I should be dead. Why am I not yet dead?
Behind him he heard someone speak. ‘Surrender to me, T’lan Imass. Your kin are all gone. There is no point in continuing this fight. Stand and I will destroy you. But I will give you leave to depart. Be done with this – it is not your battle.’
Gall reached down, took hold of a handful of his intestines, just under his ribcage and tore it free. He groped, slicing open the palm of his hand on a discarded sword – a Kolansii blade, straight and tipped for thrusting. A child’s toy. Not like my tulwar. But it will have to do. He climbed to his feet, almost folded as a weight slipped behind his ribs and sternum – with his free hand he reached in, to hold everything up.
Turning, he found himself staring at the back of the Forkrul Assail. Beyond her stood a T’lan Imass, the one he knew to be named Nom Kala. Her left thigh had been shattered, bent and splintered, yet still she stood, her spear held at the ready.
Gall stepped forward, and drove the sword through the Forkrul Assail, through her spine. She arched in shock, the breath rushing from her.
The Khundryl fell back, his lungs slipping past his spread fingers to flop in his lap.
He was dead before his head hit the ground.
Nom Kala stepped forward. The Forkrul Assail’s eyes were wide, staring into her own. The T’lan Imass had been watching those eyes for what seemed an eternity, since the moment they had risen up from the ground beneath her. She had studied the malice and ferocity in that unhuman glare. She had witnessed the flares of pleasure and triumph each time the Assail had shattered another of her kin. She had seen their delight when breaking Kalt Urmanal’s spine.
But now there was a sword thrust through the Forkrul Assail, iron gleaming blue-red, and those eyes held nothing but astonishment.
Nom Kala took one more step closer. Then drove her harpoon into the bitch’s eye.
Hard enough to drive through, punching out the back of the Assail’s skull.
The Malazan army was crumbling. Driven back, pushed ever tighter inward, they left bodies heaped in ribboned mounds with every step they yielded. Joined by a stumbling Pores, Banaschar led the non-combatants – the children of the Snake and the Khundryl – as far back as they dared, but it was clear that the Kolansii sought only to annihilate the Bonehunters. All the heavy infantry now working round from the south were ignoring the huddled mass of unarmed onlookers.
Blistig was still fighting, a hard, defiant knot at the front of the centre phalanx. Banaschar could see Kindly, there on the right, doing the same. And Faradan Sort on his left. These three Fists, chosen by the Adjunct, simply refused to fall.
The ex-priest could no longer see Tavore, but something told him that she still stood – somewhere in the ranks on the south-facing line. That attack, with the squad of regulars coming up to join it, had been … extraordinary.
And that magic was … ridiculous. But see that commander – lying dead. That’s real enough. Not much Assail blood in that one, to have succumbed to nothing but invented nightmares. Nice play, regulars.
But it was all hopeless. All that he’d seen here, all that he’d witnessed.
He felt a presence to his right and turned to see Hanavat, and a step behind her and to one side, Rutt carrying the child. ‘Your husband – I am sorry,’ said Banaschar.
She shook her head. ‘He stopped them. They all did. And now – see? The Forkrul Assail herself has fallen.’
‘It was well fought, was it not?’
She nodded.
‘Tell me, have you named the child?’
Hanavat met his eyes. ‘I believed … what is the point? Until this moment. Until you spoke.’ Then her eyes fell from his. ‘Yet for the life of me, I cannot think of one.’
‘Gall?’
‘Gall bears but one face in my life, and so it shall ever be. Priest, I am lost.’
He could say nothing to that.
We are all lost.
Banaschar faced the terrible battle once more, Hanavat upon one side with the boy and the baby, Pores upon the other. They looked on, silent.
To where the Bonehunters were dying. Every one of them.
The air swirling brittle with outrage, High Fist Ganoes Paran rode to the top of the ridge, Fist Rythe Bude at his side. Behind them the Host was drawing up at the trot – he did not need to look behind him, or listen to Bude’s desperate breaths, to know that they were exhausted.
That legion of heavy infantry had savaged them. Without Kalam and Quick Ben’s deadly antics, the High Watered who had commanded the Kolansii had proved a stubborn foe, refusing to yield to the inevitable – they had been forced to kill every last one of them before finally cutting down the commander.
And now his army was bleeding, dragging itself up the slope like a wounded dog.
They reached the rise and reined in.
Before them, the Bonehunters formed a crumbling core under sustained attack from three sides, and in moments the fourth side would be engulfed as well. Ganoes could barely comprehend the magnitude of the slaughter he was seeing – corpses made low hills around the combatants, as orderly as the berms of an earthworks fortification.
Shock and horror tightened like a fist round his heart.
His sister’s army had been reduced to less than half a thousand, and they were falling fast.
‘High Fist—’
Rythe Bude’s mouth snapped shut when he spun to her and she saw his face. Paran swung his mount round as the first line of soldiers reached the summit. ‘To the edge! To this damned edge! Close up, damn you! Those are fellow Malazans dying down there! Look on them! All of you, look on them!’
His horse staggered beneath him, but he righted it with a savage sawing of the reins, then reached up and dropped the full visor over his face. Drew out his sword and rose in his stirrups as still more soldiers crowded the ridge.
‘Draw breath, you bastards! And CHARGE!’
As he and Fist Rythe Bude drove their mounts down the slope, Ganoes Paran angled close to her. ‘Into that flank – leave the south alone!’
‘Yes sir!’
‘Look for any mixed-bloods.’
The look she shot him was venomous. ‘Oh really, sir?’
Behind them the ground shook as the Host thundered down the slope.
‘High Fist! If we take down their commanders! Mercy?’
He glared ahead, drawing his mount away from the woman, angling towards the unoccupied flats between the fighters and the non-combatants. ‘Today, Fist, I don’t know the word!’
But he knew he would change his mind. Cursed with softness. I got it all. Left nothing for Tavore, my sister of ice-cold iron. We should have shared it out. Like coins. Gods, so many things we should have done. Is it now too late? Does she live?
Sister, do you live?
High Watered Melest, still shaken by the deaths of the Pures, turned at the cries of shock and dismay from the Kolansii on the right flank, and his eyes widened upon seeing another foreign army pouring down from the hills. Even as he watched, they slammed into the heavy infantry – and these attackers were as heavily armoured, and with the weight of the downhill charge behind them they shattered the wing with the force of an avalanche.
Howling in rage, he pushed back through the ranks – he needed one of the Pures’ horses, to attain a higher vantage point. They still held the centre and fully commanded the south side of the field. Victory was still possible.