Reaper's Gale (The Malazan Book of the Fallen #7)

Again, Venitt did not speak.

Rautos looked out onto the river. Fisher boats gathered in the bay opposite, two merchant traders drawing in towards the main docks. One of them, bearing the flag of the Esterrict family, looked damaged, possibly by fire. Rautos brushed the dirt from his hands and turned about, making his way back into the building, his servant falling into step behind him.

‘I wonder, what lies beneath those stones?’

‘Master?’

‘Never mind, Venitt. I was but thinking out loud.’

The Awl’dan camp had been attacked at dawn by two troops of Atri-Preda Bivatt’s Bluerose cavalry. Two hundred skilled lancers riding into a maelstrom of panic, as figures struggled out from the hide huts, as the Drene-bred war-dogs, arriving moments before the horse-soldiers, closed on the pack of Awl herder and dray dogs, and in moments the three breeds of beast were locked in a vicious battle.

The Awl warriors were unprepared, and few had time to even so much as find their weapons before the lancers burst into their midst. In moments, the slaughter extended out to encompass elders and children. Most of the women fought alongside their male kin-wife and husband, sister and brother, dying together in a last blending of blood.

The engagement between the Letherii and the Awl took all of two hundred heartbeats. The war among the dogs was far more protracted, for the herder dogs-while smaller and more compact than their attackers-were quick and no less vicious, while the drays, bred to pull carts in summer and sleds in winter, were comparable with the Drene breed. Trained to kill wolves, the drays proved more than a match for the war-dogs, and if not for the lancers then making sport of killing the mottle-skinned beasts, the battle would have turned. As it was, the Awl pack finally broke away, the survivors fleeing onto the plain, eastward, a few Drene wardogs giving chase before being recalled by their handlers.

Whilst lancers dismounted to make certain there were no survivors among the Awl, others rode out to collect the herds of myrid and rodara in the next valley.

Atri-Preda Bivatt sat astride her stallion, struggling to control the beast with the smell of blood so heavy in the morning air. Beside her, sitting awkward and in discomfort on the unfamiliar saddle, Brohl Handar, the newly appointed Tiste Edur Overseer of Drene City, watched the Letherii systematically loot the encampment, stripping corpses naked and drawing tlieir knives. The Awl bound their jewellery-mostly gold-deep in the braids of their hair, forcing the Letherii to slice away those sections of the scalp to claim their booty. Of course, there was more than just expedience in this mutilation, for it had been extended to the collecting of swaths of skin that had been decorated in tattoos, the particular style of the Awl rich in colour and often outlined in stitched gold thread. These trophies adorned the round-shields of many lancers.

The captured herds now belonged to the Factor of Drene, Letur Anict, and as Brohl Handar watched the hundreds of myrid come over the hill, their black woolly coats making them look like boulders as they poured down the hillside, it was clear that the Factor’s wealth had just risen substantially. The taller rodara followed, blue-backed and long-necked, their long tails thrashing about in near-panic as wardogs on the herd’s flanks plunged into feint attacks again and again.

The breath hissed from the Atri-Preda’s teeth. ‘Where is the Factor’s man, anyway? Those damned rodara are going to stampede. Lieutenant! Get the handlers to call off their hounds! Hurry!’ The woman unstrapped her helm, pulled it free and set it atop the saddle horn. She looked across at Brohl. ‘There you have it, Overseer.’

‘So these are the Awl.’

She grimaced, looked away. A small camp by their standards. Seventy-odd adults.’

‘Yet, large herds.’

Her grimace became a scowl. ‘They were once larger, Overseer. Much larger.’

‘I take it then that this campaign of yours is succeeding in driving away these trespassers.’

‘Not my campaign.’ She seemed to catch something in his expression for she added, ‘Yes, of course, I command the expeditionary forces, Overseer. But I receive my orders horn the Factor. And, strictly speaking, the Awl are not trespassers.’

‘The Factor claims otherwise.’

‘Letur Anict is highly ranked in the Liberty Consign.’

Brohl Handar studied the woman for a moment, then said, ‘Not all wars are fought for wealth and land, Atri-Preda.’

‘I must disagree, Overseer. Did not you Tiste Edur invade pre-emptively, in response to the perceived threat of lost land and resources? Cultural assimilation, the end of your independence. There is no doubt in my mind,’ she continued, ‘that we Letherii sought to obliterate your civilization, as we had done already with the Tarthenal and so many others. And so, an economic war.’