Assail (Malazan Empire, #6)(121)

He frowned at the man; for the life of him he couldn’t see what Cartheron saw in the fellow. However, having just seen the Ragstopper, it occurred to him that he would fit right in.

Fire suddenly blossomed in a quarter of the tent city. Its billowing eruption lit the tent tops. The noise of the blast washed over the Dawn. ‘What the …’ he stammered. A second blast, this one in a different quarter, now lit the high slopes. The guide smiled again and nodded to himself. ‘What’s this?’ Jute demanded.

The man gave an easy shrug of his bony shoulders. ‘Oh, Lying Gell had a number of caches of food and equipment stashed away. Looks like they’ve been doused in alcohol and set alight.’

Jute gaped at him. ‘But that means … they’ll all be after …’

The fellow nodded again. ‘Oh, yes. My guess is the boys are runnin’ for the dock right now with the entire encampment hot on their tails.’

Jute wasted an instant trying to utter his disbelief, outrage and horror, only to throw his hands in the air and lurch from the side. ‘Man the sweeps!’ he bellowed. ‘Ready poles! Raise anchor! Cut all but one rope there!’

Lieutenant Jalaz and her cohort ran pounding down the gangway then dashed for the base of the dock. Would-be stevedores and touts went flying from the wood slats to land in the mud. A gang of hires-words had been lounging at the base of the dock amid crates and bales; now they came to their feet and peered up-slope to the fires. From the bows of the Dawn, Jute watched as the Malazans came crashing into them. In a moment, it was over. All of the toughs were down, either knocked unconscious or heaved over the side where they struggled knee-deep in the mud.

Lieutenant Jalaz now held the dock.

‘Captain?’ Jute turned; Letita stood armed and ready, helmet cheek-guards lowered. He shook his head. ‘Stay on board, master-at-arms.’ The woman’s mouth hardened but she did not object. Jute pointed out over the bows. ‘However, we do have a good view of the dock from here …’

Her lips climbed in a savage grin; she turned to the mid-deck. ‘Archers! Form up!’

The shouts and iron-clash of fighting now washed down to the Dawn. A gang of Gell’s thugs rushed Jalaz’s squad. This time blood flowed as swords were drawn.

More tents burst into flame. The yells and cries swelled to a steady roar. Jute could now make out a running mêlée making its way down the tent city. Everything in its way was trampled and destroyed as it came. Men were running both away and towards it.

A solid crowd now pressed against Jalaz’s position; Jute nodded to Letita. ‘Archers,’ the weapons master called, ‘Thin them out – try to avoid our crew.’

Her team of forty archers opened fire on the crowd.

A strange clacking noise pulled Jute’s attention to the rear. He glanced back and blanched: Benevolent gods forgive us. The Ragstopper’s springals were being brought round to bear on the shore.

He’d seen what they’d done to the fortifications at Old Ruse, and now … civilians? Yet could any soul here truly be counted as an innocent civilian? Very few, no doubt. And those should be fleeing the scene rather than closing on it.

The springals released with twin bangs and fat bolts shot overhead in trajectories lower than the Dawn’s tops’l. Twin explosions lit the darkness and sent geysers of wet earth to the night sky – along with cartwheeling doll-like figures. The mud and debris came pattering across the dock and smacked into the mud flats like wet fists.

Into the profound silence following the eruptions, Lieutenant Jalaz’s voice came bellowing out of the darkness: ‘Watch where yer shooting, y’damned apes!’

The pause was only momentary as the fighting renewed itself. The running scrum broke into the open close to the waterfront. Jute could make out individual figures within the press: the two Falarans who’d given their names as Red and Rusty – which was a joke of course, all Falarans tell outsiders their name is Red. And in the middle of the pack, a scrawny grey-haired figure pointing and shouting commands: Cartheron. The roiling knot now made for the dock. Sword blades flashed in the light of waving torches. Men and women cursed and grunted at blows given and taken.

The huge figure of Black Bull reared into view before Lieutenant Jalaz. He leaned in swinging two-handed. She met him with twinned shortswords. The weapons slid and grated across one another in blows and parries until one of Jalaz’s swords flicked up across the man’s beard and he reared back in a spray of blood. He clasped his throat, his eyes rolling white in the darkness. She raised a boot to his chest and kicked him down.

Jute couldn’t fathom the numbers of these would-be miners and fortune-hunters all piling in, all struggling to tear the Malazans apart. He’d been there when they’d been told Lying Gell’s thugs numbered some three hundred. Yet far more than that – a horde of over a thousand – now clamoured to pull them down. And more were arriving every minute.

Something, it seemed, had turned the entire tent city of Wrong-way against Cartheron and his crew. Lying Gell couldn’t command that sort of loyalty, could he? But then, maybe it had something to do with them having just blown up or burned all the food in the town.

The crew, or gang, pushed through to the dock and linked with Jalaz and her squad. The entire troop now retreated up the dock. Letita kept up her punishing volleys of arrow fire. Then the springals released once more and Jute couldn’t help but duck.