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

Revelations were the world’s sharpest spice, and she’d just had a noseful. Making the night somehow clearer, cleaner. Every detail blade-edged, eager to be seen, noted by her glittering eyes. She heard the small creatures moving through the scrub of the fallow field, heard the frogs race up the boles of nearby trees. Mosquito hum and-

A sudden blinding flash to the south, a bloom of fiery light lifting skyward above a distant treeline. A moment later the rumble of twin detonations reached them. Everyone motionless now, crouched down. The small creatures frozen, quivering, terrified.

‘Bad time for an ambush,’ Koryk muttered as he worked his way back, slipping past Tarr.

‘So not one sprung by Malazan marines,’ Fiddler said, moving up to meet Koryk and Tarr. ‘That was a league away, maybe less. Anyone recall which squads were to our right first night?’

Silence.

‘Should we head over, Sergeant?’ Tarr asked. He had drawn his shortsword. ‘Could be they need our help.’

Gesler arrived. ‘Stormy says he heard sharpers after the cussers,’ the sergeant said. ‘Four or five.’

‘Could be the ambush got turned,’ Smiles said, struggling to control her breathing. Oh, take us there, you damned sergeant. Let me see Koryk fight again. It’s this itch, you see…

‘Not in our orders,’ Fiddler said. ‘If they’ve been mauled, the survivors will swing north or south and come looking for friends. We keep going.’

‘They come up to find us and they might have a thousand enemy on their heels,’ Gesler said.

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Revelations were the world’s sharpest spice, and she’d just had a noseful. Making the night somehow clearer, cleaner. Every detail blade-edged, eager to be seen, noted by her glittering eyes. She heard the small creatures moving through the scrub of the fallow field, heard the frogs race up the boles of nearby trees. Mosquito hum and-

A sudden blinding flash to the south, a bloom of fiery light lifting skyward above a distant treeline. A moment later the rumble of twin detonations reached them. Everyone motionless now, crouched down. The small creatures frozen, quivering, terrified.

‘Bad time for an ambush,’ Koryk muttered as he worked his way back, slipping past Tarr.

‘So not one sprung by Malazan marines,’ Fiddler said, moving up to meet Koryk and Tarr. ‘That was a league away, maybe less. Anyone recall which squads were to our right first night?’

Silence.

‘Should we head over, Sergeant?’ Tarr asked. He had drawn his shortsword. ‘Could be they need our help.’

Gesler arrived. ‘Stormy says he heard sharpers after the cussers,’ the sergeant said. ‘Four or five.’

‘Could be the ambush got turned,’ Smiles said, struggling to control her breathing. Oh, take us there, you damned sergeant. Let me see Koryk fight again. It’s this itch, you see…

‘Not in our orders,’ Fiddler said. ‘If they’ve been mauled, the survivors will swing north or south and come looking for friends. We keep going.’

‘They come up to find us and they might have a thousand enemy on their heels,’ Gesler said.

‘Always a possibility,’ Fiddler conceded. ‘All right, Koryk, back on point. We go on, but with extra stealth. We’re not the only ones to see and hear that, so we might run into a troop riding hard across our path. Set us a cautious pace, soldier.’

Nodding, Koryk set out along the trail.

Smiles licked her lips, glowered at Tarr. ‘Put the damned pig-sticker away, Tarr.’

‘That’s “Corporal” to you, Smiles.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Hood’s breath, it’s gone to his head.’

‘And those aren’t knives in your hands?’

Smiles sheathed them, said nothing.

‘Go on,’ Fiddler ordered them. ‘Koryk’s waiting.’

Corabb picked up his end of the stretcher again and set out after the others. Bottle had slept through that distant succession of explosions. Sign of just how exhausted the poor man was. Still, it was unnerving not having him awake and keeping an eye on things, the way he could leap from animal to animal. Birds, too, And even insects. Although Corabb wondered just how far an insect could see.

He reached up and crushed a mosquito against one eyelid. The stretcher pitched behind him and he heard Cuttle swear under his breath. Corabb quickly regained his hold on the sapling. Damned insects, he needed to stop thinking about them. Because thinking about them led to hearing and feeling them, crawling and biting everywhere and him with both hands used up. This wasn’t like the desert. You could see chigger fleas coming on the wind, could hear a bloodfly from five paces, could pretty much guess that under every rock or stone there was a scorpion or a big hairy spider or a snake all of which wanted to kill you. Simple and straightforward, in other words. None of this devious whispering in the night, this whining at the ear, this winged flit up a man’s nostril. Or crawling into the hair to take nips of flesh that left a swollen, oozing, damnably itching hole.

And then there were the slithery things that sucked blood. Hid under leaves waiting for some poor bastard handless soldier to go past. And ticks. And plants that, when one brushed innocently against them, started up an awful itching rash that then leaked some kind of oil-this was a true underworld, peopled by demon farmers and every life form of the night a raving, rapacious devourer of desert-born men. And never mind the Tiste Edur and the spineless Letherii. Imagine, fighting at the behest of tyrannical masters. Had they no pride? Might be smart to take a prisoner or two, just to get some answers. A Letherii. He might mention the idea to the sergeant. Fiddler was all right with suggestions. In fact, the entire Malazan Army seemed all right with that kind of thing. Sort of a constant warrior gathering, when anyone could speak up, anyone could argue, and thus decisions were forged. Of course, among the tribes, when that gathering was done, argument ended.

No, the Malazans did almost everything differently, their own way. Corabb wasn’t bothered by that any more. It was probably a good thing he had held to so many ignorant, outrageous beliefs about them back when he was among the rebels. Otherwise, he might have found it hard to hate the enemy the way he was supposed to, the way it needed to be.