Sunlight flashed through the ice.
A rider was coming up from behind and to his left. Poor bastard. That’s what you get for taking orders. Without a backward glance, he drove his spurs into the flanks of his mount. Sparks flashed from the ice. The beast lunged forward.
You sorry Malazans. Watch me, and then ask yourself: How deep can you dig?
Fiddler cocked his crossbow, carefully inserted a sharper-headed quarrel. Now that it was happening, he felt fine. Nothing more to be done, was there? Everything was alight, cut clear, the colours of the world suddenly saturated, beautiful beyond belief. He could taste it. He could taste it all. ‘Everybody loaded?’
Grunts and nods from his squad, all of them crouched down in the trench.
‘Keep your heads right down,’ Fiddler told them again. ‘We’ll hear the charge, count on it. Nobody pokes up for a look until my say so, understood?’
He saw, a few squads down, Balgrid edging up for a look. The healer shouted, ‘Gudd’s charging them!’
Along the entire line of marines, helmed heads sprung up like mushrooms.
Fuck!
Crump was on his hands and knees, a clutch of sharpers set like black-turtle eggs in a shallow pit pushed into the stony floor of the trench.
Ebron stared in horror. ‘Have you lost your mind? Spread ’em down the line, you idiot!’
Crump looked up, eyes widening. ‘Can’t do that, mage. They’re mine! All I got left!’
‘Someone could step on them!’
But Crump was shaking his head. ‘I’m protecting them, mage!’
Ebron swung round. ‘Cord! Sergeant! It’s Crump! He’s-’
The wire-bound clubs in the front line seemed to ignite like torches. Lightning arced from the blunt heads, two serpentine tendrils snaking into the air. From each weapon, one of the bolts twisted and spun to sink into one of the strange ceramic packs-a dozen such arcs for each pack. The second crackling tongue of white fire seemed to throb for an instant, and then as one they lashed out, a score or more converging on the charging, ice-clad rider and horse.
The detonation engulfed Ruthan Gudd and his mount, tore gouts of earth and stone from the ground in a broad, ragged crater.
An instant before the explosion, other front lines had awakened their own weapons, and even as the flash erupted, hundreds of bolts snapped out to strike the front trench.
On his way back to the squad, Bottle was thrown down into the trench, the impact punching the breath from his lungs. Gaping, his head tilted to one side, he saw a row of bodies lifted into the air along the entire length of the berm-all those who had climbed up to watch Ruthan’s charge. Marines, most of them headless or missing everything above their rib cages, twisted amidst dirt and rocks and pieces of armour and weapons.
Still unable to breathe, he saw a second wave of the sorcery lance directly over his trench. The ground shook as ranks behind him were struck. The blue of the sky vanished behind thick clouds. Bodies sailed in and out of those churning clouds.
Bottle writhed, deaf, his lungs howling. He felt the muted impacts of sharpers, too close, too random-
A hand reached down out of the sudden gloom and closed on his chest harness. He was dragged out from the slumped side of the collapsed trench.
Bottle coughed out a mouthful of earth, hacked agonizing breaths, his throat afire. Tarr’s spattered face was above him, shouting-but Bottle could hear nothing. No matter, he pushed Tarr back, nodding. I’m all right. No, honest. I’m fine-where’s my crossbow?
Keneb had come too close. The detonation caught him and his horse and literally ripped them both to pieces. Chunks of flesh sprayed outward. Ebron, leaning hard over the berm, saw part of the Fist’s upper torso-a shoulder, a stub of the arm and a few splayed ribs-cartwheel skyward, lifted on a column of dirt.
Even as the mage stared, disbelieving, a sorcerous bolt caught him dead centre on his sternum. It tore through him, disintegrating his upper chest, shoulders and head.
Limp howled as one of Ebron’s arms flopped down across his thighs.
But no one heard him.
They had seen Quick Ben, but had elected to ignore him. He flinched as the first waves of lightning ploughed into the defences along the ridge. Thunder rattled the ground and the entire facing side of the Bonehunter army vanished inside churning clouds of dirt, stone, and dismembered bodies.
He saw the nodes recharging on the shoulders of the drones. How long? ‘No idea,’ he whispered. ‘Little acorns, listen. Go for the drones-the ones with the packs. Forget the rest… for now.’
Then he set out, walking down towards the nearest phalanx.