Assail (Malazan Empire, #6)(138)

Keth – or was it Kasson? – directed Orman’s gaze to the stream. He peered about for a moment, uncertain, then he saw it: where the waves slapped up over the fallen bodies the water left behind a wash of sand, and amid the sifting granules tiny flecks gleamed in the fading light. It was as if someone had tossed a handful of gold dust over the corpses.

Orman could only shake his head at the poetry of it. ‘They came seeking gold …’ he said.

‘… and they found it,’ Keth finished.

The other brother motioned to Kyle’s patch. ‘The Eithjar reported you had lost your eye. They say that one who loses an eye, gains a second sight.’

Orman offered a weak smile; they were trying to cheer him up, but they all knew what a handicap he now carried in any battle.

Vala had been studying both valley slopes, and now she nodded to herself. ‘Very good. I believe we’ve drawn them in. Now it’s time to push them.’ She faced the north, upstream, and waved a hand low over the surface of the chilling water. It looked to Orman as if she were casting something out across the stream, or perhaps summoning something.

The arrow fire intensified. It seemed more of the outlanders had arrived. He dared a glance over the top of his cover; some twenty archers were now creeping out into the stream, stepping over the wet rocks, searching for sound footing.

Damn the hoary old Taker! It would be the end if they succeeded in flushing them.

Keth tapped his shoulder, inclined his head upstream. Orman squinted into the shadows of the gathering dusk. A fog was rising. It came tumbling down the stream in thick billows and rolls. And it was no normal mist or haze: Orman could hardly see through it.

Curses sounded from the archers, along with mutterings about Iceblood magics. A new party of attackers came crashing through the thick verge along the shore. Here they halted, blinking. They took in the descending wall of fog, the archers now retreating before it, and they too ran.

The treacle billows washed over them, and the shocking chill stole Orman’s breath. Stars of frost appeared on the iron of his hatchets. He felt his beard frosting over. Yet while the cold was sharp, even biting, he did not feel uncomfortable. Instead, as before, he felt refreshed, even invigorated.

They straightened. Their breath plumed in the icy fog. Vala gestured anew; she thrust her hands down the slope. She waved for them to accompany her and started slogging through the water.

Far off, disembodied in the fog, came Old Bear’s booming laughter.

‘Was that them?’ Orman asked.

‘Who?’

‘The invaders.’

Vala’s laugh was just as loud and unreserved as Old Bear’s. ‘That was a scouting party. The main body is camped to the south. We will attack on the morrow.’

Orman almost laughed himself. ‘Us? Attack? How many of them are there?’

‘Some five hundreds,’ she answered, indifferent.

‘So all ten of us have them surrounded?’

‘The Losts have hired mercenary hearthguards,’ Kasson explained in his soft voice, perhaps so quiet he never used it.

‘Must have amassed a lot of gold …’ Keth mused.

That was the most he’d heard from either of them; they seemed to get quite voluble during a fight.

‘Find a campsite and start a fire,’ Vala told them.

‘A fire?’ Orman wondered.

Vala smiled indulgently. ‘None will see it in this fog. I have no use for it – but you might wish to dry yourself.’

Her leathers were rimed with ice, yet mist drifted from her as if the Iceblood woman were afire. But Orman knew it was not heat driving those tendrils of mist; he knew that if he touched her, his hand would probably freeze. He ducked his head. ‘Thank you.’ Then he remembered he was walking with Jass’s mother – a lover of his own father – and what had happened, and he hung his head even more. ‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured.

‘Do not chastise yourself. The Eithjar told me of it. Your only mistake was in not understanding that Lotji is very … old-fashioned.’

‘Old-fashioned?’

She nodded; her mane of black hair was frozen in one solid slab down her back. ‘For Lotji, the old bloodfeud and vendetta remain everything. That is what drives him. These invaders, these lowlanders … he cares nothing for them.’

‘I see. So he is here for you Sayers.’

‘And you.’

The Reddin brothers had selected a copse of trees to camp in and had started gathering dry branches for a fire. The fog remained dense about them; they moved in some otherworld where shapes emerged suddenly from shifting walls of haze, and sounds returned distorted and echoing eerily.

‘Me?’

Vala’s smile appeared touched with melancholy. ‘Haven’t you seen it yet, Orman?’

He had no idea what the Iceblood woman was hinting at. ‘Seen what?’

‘We are the same, you and I. Your people and mine. We share the same ancestors from long ago.’

Orman stared, dumbfounded. Impossible, he thought. How could that possibly be? They are Icebloods!

Vala continued, her voice calm, almost wistful. ‘Your clans separated from ours long ago to make their own way in the southlands. They mixed with humans they found there. Over the generations we drifted apart. Yet not so far apart. Orman, our numbers are few, we remaining clans. Our blood is too similar. When we wish to add to our numbers we take a mate from among you lowlanders – our distant cousins. Or, sometimes, we offer a position in our families to those few who arise every generation or so who seem to fit in among us.’