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

The young mage crawled close.

‘Can you reach back?’ Fiddler asked. ‘Find out if they’re after us?’

‘Already did, Sergeant. Used every damned creature in our wake.’

‘And?’ Gesler wanted to know.

‘That cusser did most of them, Sergeant. But the noise brought others. At least a dozen Tiste Edur and maybe a few hundred Letherii. Are they tracking us now? Aye, but still a way behind-they’ve learned to be cautious, I guess.’

‘We’re losing the dark,’ Gesler said. ‘We need a place to hide, Fid-only that’s probably not going to work this time, is it? They’re not going to rest.’

‘Can we lose them?’ Fiddler asked Bottle.

‘I’m pretty tired, Sergeant-’

‘Never mind. You’ve done enough. What do you think, Gesler? Time to get messy?’

‘And use up our few cussers?’

‘Don’t see much choice, to be honest. Of course, I always hold one back. Same for Cuttle.’

Gesler nodded. ‘We had ours distributed-good thing, too, the way Sands went up. Still, he had munitions on him, yet they didn’t ignite-’

‘Oh, but they did,’ Fiddler said. ‘Just not in this realm.

Am I right, Bottle? That sorcery, it’s like a broken gate, the kind that chews up whoever goes through it.’

‘Spirits below, Fid, you smelled it out about dead right. That magic, it started as one thing, then became another-and the mage was losing control, even before you minced him.’

Fiddler nodded. He’d seen as much. Or thought he had. ‘So, Bottle, what does that mean?’

The young mage shook his head. ‘Things are getting out of hand… somewhere. There was old stuff, primitive magic, at first. Not as ancient as spirit-bound stuff. Still, primitive. And then something chaotic grabbed it by the throat

A short distance away, Koryk rolled onto his back. He was bone tired. Let Bottle and the sergeants mutter away, he knew they were neck-deep in Hood’s dusty shit.

‘Hey, Koryk.’

‘What is it, Smiles?’

‘You damned near lost it back there, you know.’

‘I did, did I?’

‘When them four came at you all at once, oh, you danced quite a jig, half-blood.’ She laughed, low and brimming with what sounded like malice. ‘And if I hadn’t come along to stick a knife in that one’s eye-the one who’d slipped under your guard and was ready to give you a wide belly smile-well, you’d be cooling fast back there right now.’

‘And the other three?’ Koryk asked, grinning in the gloom. ‘Bet you never knew I was that quick, did you?’

‘Something tells me you didn’t either.’

He said nothing, because she was right. He’d been in something like a frenzy, yet his eye and his hand had been cold, precise. Through it all it had been as if he had simply watched, every move, every block, every shift in stance and twist, every slash of his heavy blade. Watched, yes, yet profoundly in love with that moment, with each moment. He’d felt some of this at the shield wall on the dock that night in Malaz City. But what had begun as vague euphoria was now transformed into pure revelation. 1 like killing. Gods below, I do like it, and the more 1 like it, the better at it I get. He never felt more alive, never more perfectly alive.

‘Can’t wait to see you dance again,’ Smiles murmured.

Koryk blinked in the gloom, then shifted to face her. Was she stirred? Had he somehow kissed her awake between those muscled legs of hers? Because he’d killed well? Did 1 dance that jig, Smiles? ‘You get scarier, woman, the more I know you.’

She snorted. ‘As it should be, half-blood.’

Tarr spoke from Koryk’s other side: ‘I think I’m going to be sick.’

A slightly more distant laugh from Cuttle, ‘Aye, Tarr, it’s what happens when your entire world view collapses. Of course,’ he added, ‘if you could manage to dance like poetry when killing people, who knows-’

‘Enough of that. Please.’

‘No worries,’ Cuttle persisted. ‘You ain’t the dancing kind. You’re as rooted as a tree, and just about as slow, Tarr.’

‘I may be slow, Cuttle, but the fools go down eventually, don’t they?’

‘Oh aye, that they do. Not suggesting otherwise. You’re a one-man shield-wall, you are.’

Corporal Stormy was spitting blood. A damned elbow had cracked his mouth, and now two teeth were loose and he’d bitten his tongue. The elbow might have been his own-someone had collided hard with him in the scrap and he’d had his weapon arm lifted high with the sword’s point angled downward. Nearly wrenched his shoulder out of its damned socket.