Assail (Malazan Empire, #6)(103)

‘I will do my best. Push off immediately.’

‘I am not used to this crouching behind the cover of another.’

‘Think of me as your priestess, then.’

The big man barked a laugh. ‘Would that were so, m’lady.’

She urged him onwards. ‘Quickly, set the crew to work. No time for talking.’

‘Yes ma’am.’ Jute ran for the Silver Dawn. Drawing near, he waved, shouting: ‘Push off! All crew! Now!’

First Mate Buen appeared at the side. He shouted back, ‘What’s that?’

Jute came stumbling and slogging through the mud. ‘I said get the crew out, damn you!’

Buen gestured to the bay, now shrouded in dense mists. ‘It’s too foggy to set out. Can’t see a thing.’

Jute nearly screamed his frustration. He drew the shortsword at his side – the first time he could recall ever doing so – and pointed it at his mate. ‘Get everyone over the side now! We’re leaving or we’re dead!’

Buen raised his hands. ‘All right all right. What’s the big rush?’

‘Just do it!’

The mate turned away. ‘You heard the cap’n. Over the side.’

‘But it’s muddy out there,’ someone complained. Dulat, perhaps.

Jute leaned an arm against the slick planks and rested his head there in disbelief. He glanced across the flats: Lady Orosenn stood in the muck next to her launch, facing inland. Her oarsmen, stiff figures in rags, hardly stirred a muscle. Something about them made him jerk his gaze away to examine the Resolute. Tyvar was of course making far greater headway than he. His crew had jumped down and even now were crowding around the bows to push.

We’re going to die, he told himself.

Movement up the slope caught his eye. A lone figure, running, arms waving. It was a sailor by the rags he wore. ‘Take me!’ the man bellowed, his voice cracking. ‘By the merciful gods – take me with you!’

Buen appeared in the muck at Jute’s side. He pointed. ‘Who in the green Abyss is that?’

Jute glared, then shoved him to the planks. ‘Push, damn you!’ More of his crew came jumping reluctantly into the clinging mud. ‘Push, all of you! Push!’

‘Please take me wi—’ Something choked off the man’s call and Jute turned to look.

Coils of mist enmeshed the sailor. As Jute watched, those ropes and scarves lifted the man up into the air where he struggled in eerie silence. Then the ribbons of shifting gossamer fog about his middle yanked tight. The man vomited – but not the normal stomach contents. The very organs themselves came bursting from his mouth in a rain of escaping fluids to slap to the ground as a mess of pulped viscera. Jute fought his own gorge. The corpse, nearly cut in half now, a blood-red organ dangling from its mouth, jerked as the banners of mist yanked each limb clean off, one after the other, the arms first and then the legs.

One of Jute’s crew gagged and vomited.

The tendrils then lashed like whips and Jute ducked as the dismembered parts of the corpse came flying at the Dawn to bang against the hull. The torso thumped wetly to the deck.

‘Fucking Abyss!’ Buen yelled, ducking.

‘I told you to push,’ Jute observed. He was surprised by how calm he sounded.

The crew dashed themselves against the hull. Feet dug and slid frantically in the muck. Someone was whimpering and Jute couldn’t blame him.

A strange sort of pressure brushed against him then and he turned. Lady Orosenn had her arms out, as if pushing. Jute glanced about: the mist was rolling backwards as though in a stiff wind. Though no true wind ruffled any of them. It lashed and whipped on all sides yet was driven back – if only a short distance.

Two great bellows of rage sounded from the obscuring banks of fog. Jute’s head sank once again. Do these foreign gods never tire of their jokes? Two enormous shadowed silhouettes came lumbering down the slope.

As if this new threat were the key, the bows of the Dawn lurched backwards. The sailors followed, heaving. Water kicked up about them as they pushed into the weak surf. The hull lifted free of the flats. Jute could’ve kissed every one of the damned crew as those few left on board now reached down to help lift them up and in. He clung to the top rail, his feet dangling in the surf, and peered back. Lady Orosenn still had her arms outstretched yet even from this distance Jute could see them shuddering with effort. All about, in a clear semicircle around the ships, whips and tatters of fog lashed and writhed.

We are clear – but what of her? Jute wondered, horrified. How will she …

As he watched, the sorceress took one shaky step backwards into the launch then tumbled the rest of the way as if thrown. The stiff upright oarsmen started rowing; the launch surged out into the surf. The scarves of mist came unravelling down the slope just as the brothers, Anger and Wrath, emerged like two fiends out of myth. The brothers stopped on the shore and shook their fists, bellowing their rage. The mist, however, did not halt. It came on, brushing sinuously over the waves like a horde of sea-snakes, straight for him – or so it seemed.

‘Pull me up, damn you all!’ he roared.

Hands yanked at him, heaved him up. On deck he straightened to peer at everyone gaping at the shore, then turned as something crashed into the waves just short of the bow. It sent up a towering burst of spray that splashed everyone.