Assail (Malazan Empire, #6)(136)

More stone-headed spears thrust at the joints of the naked vertebrae, and levered. Yrkki roared his panic and spun. A rock-shattering crack sounded and the vertebrae parted. The giant tottered in two directions. The enormous bones came crashing down upon the remaining T’lan Imass.

Gor’eth righted himself and approached to kick through the wreckage. He stopped before the fallen dragon skull and regarded the faint azure flame still guttering within its sockets. ‘Your masters have not been kind to you, Yrkki.’

‘Omtose Phellack has withdrawn,’ came a faint breath. ‘That is true. But as a spirit of the earth, I sense its stirring. I tell you, the ice shall once again claim these lands.’

Gor’eth extended a finger that was no more than flanges sheathed in cured leather flesh. He traced a suture where it ran in a jagged line between the rises of the orbital ridges of the dragon skull’s sockets. Then he gripped his stone weapon in both fists and brought it high up overhead to swing it crashing down upon the skull, splitting it into fragments.

He turned to his gathered brethren. ‘Let us go.’

The file of silent figures climbed a trail that led to a bare rock ridge. Behind them, spanning its dark gap, the trellis-like bridge groaned and tilted ponderously from side to side. Thundering cracking and popping split its length and sections fell, toppling, to disappear into the depths. After one immense shudder, the remaining structure collapsed in an impact that shook the ground the Imass stood upon and brought a small avalanche of loose rock and gravel tumbling down the slope.

Making the crest of the ridge, Gor’eth paused, glanced back down into the murk of the valley. A great billowing cloud of dust obscured the site where the bridge once stood. He returned his attention to the north, then studied his own skeletal hands.

Another Imass joined him. This one’s skull bore a hideous crack that revealed withered fibrous remains within. ‘I sense our brothers and sisters to the west.’

‘Yes, Sholas. While we must yet walk.’

‘Tellann lies beyond our reach – as yet.’

Gor’esh lowered his hands. ‘Those broken must thus remain.’

‘They will re-join us – eventually.’

The tendons of Gor’esh’s neck creaked as he nodded his agreement. ‘Yes, Sholas. Eventually. As before.’

They started down the slope to where the grade shallowed and a forest of thin spruce boles gripped the bare talus.





CHAPTER X



ON HIS THIRD day descending into the valleys and ridges of the Bain Holding, Orman spotted something strange in a meadow of waving tall green grasses far below: the single figure of a large man running. But ponderously, awkwardly so. And, breaking from the cover of a nearby treeline, a pursuing party of some ten men. Orman froze in his sliding descent down a steep scree slope. He shaded his one good eye. He might be mistaken, what with his different vision now, but that shambling figure practically had the appearance of a bear running on two legs.

He charged down the slope. He skittered and slid, kicked up a great fan of tumbling gravel and rocks. These he leapt in greater and greater jumps until an ankle turned on a loose rock and he joined the minor landslide as one more object making its way in the inevitable rush, rolling and tumbling, down to the rocky base. As the hissing wash of stones slowed he jumped up and cleared the mass of boulders awaiting him, rolled, and leapt up to continue running.

He drew his hatchets as he ran. He jumped fallen logs, or attempted to, as he still was not used to his differing vision and fell a few times. Standing, damning the irreversible loss, he shouldered through dense thickets then burst forth on to the meadow. The roars of battle-joy he heard from over a nearby gentle rise confirmed his suspicions, and he charged.

From the crest he saw Old Bear himself below, surrounded by spearmen. The man held a body in front of him and this he raised in both arms over his head and threw upon a spearman, then charged. The ring flinched, men backpedalling. Old Bear batted the glinting spearheads aside.

Orman was spotted and the ring eased back into a line, facing the two of them. He charged in headlong. He took one prodding spear on the notch of his bearded hatchet and yanked the haft aside, then smashed his blade into the nook where shoulder met neck and half decapitated the man. A spear thrust at him from his blind side, appearing from nowhere, and he was rocked by the surprise. He had only an instant to realize what a disadvantage he now possessed and took to bobbing his head from side to side. He successfully knocked aside two more thrusts.

Roaring with laughter now, Old Bear picked up another corpse to hurl on to the spearmen. He took a thrust in the shoulder for his trouble.

‘Stop fooling around!’ Orman yelled.

Another spearman lunged forward. Old Bear snatched the weapon from his hands and cracked the butt-end across his head, felling him. ‘Fooling around?’ he bellowed, affronted. ‘Why, you young pup!’

Three charged. Orman hurled a hatchet taking one in the chest. The remaining two Old Bear somehow managed to force to cross hafts, and these he yanked from their hands. A blow from one of his huge paws felled one; the other fled. The remaining ones also backed off then turned to flee.

Old Bear simply waved them off as he stood puffing and drawing in great lungfuls of air. He eyed Orman and a wide grin spread across his shaggy features. Then he frowned. ‘I resent your interference,’ he said, practically wheezing.