Assail (Malazan Empire, #6)(173)

‘Keep your head down!’ one of the Avowed shouted.

‘Let them fire,’ another called. ‘We can use the arrows.’

Kyle kept one eye on the front ranks of swordsmen, searching for any motion that might reveal a charge. More arrows slashed the air above him. The banners of mist and vapours thinned as the sun rose, but the sky remained heavily overcast by a blanket of clouds that hung so steady and unmoving as to seem fixed about the mountains. Kyle shifted to lie with one shoulder in the cold damp earth. Even through the leather under-layers, the chain of his sleeve chilled his arm.

The Avowed on his right, he noted, in a long mail coat, gripping two longswords, was a wiry young-looking woman with short dark hair under an iron dome helmet. He shouted, ‘What’s your name?’

‘Leena,’ she answered. She did not ask his name; everyone here, he knew, called him the name that made him wince each time he heard it.

A loud deep horn sounded and an answering roar arose from the gathered ranks.

‘Here they come!’ Leena yelled.

Kyle straightened and readied the spear he’d collected for just this moment.

The ground seemed to drum as the solid mass of men came roaring and yelling. Most carried swords and medium-sized shields. Kyle scanned the ranks until he found the one who’d marked him; he bore a scruffy beard, his eyes wild with rage and terror as he drove himself to the task of risking his life.

Aye, my friend, Kyle answered to himself, like us all.

He met him with the spear in his gut as the fellow slashed his way through the maze of pits and sharpened sticks. The man collapsed round the weapon and Kyle cursed: it was caught fast. The fellow’s neighbour hacked the haft, snapping it. Kyle thrust it at him as he lunged but the broken end wasn’t strong enough to penetrate the man’s leather hauberk and merely winded him. Kyle drew the white blade as the man straightened and was pushed forward by those closing behind.

To his right, the Avowed mercenary, Leena, was clearing the mound in businesslike sweeps and thrusts, skilfully entrapping weapons between her crossed blades, counter-striking, and easily deflecting wild swings.

The Letherii soldier before Kyle now held the high ground and he closed, chopping downward from his advantage. Kyle stepped inside the blow to take off the man’s hand just above the wrist. The fellow gaped, astonished. Then, enraged, he shield-bashed Kyle, pushing him back even further.

‘Hold the wall, damn you!’ Leena snarled, sounding more anxious than angry.

The invaders did not press their advantage, however; these Letherii soldiers flinched and winced as forces behind them thrust and shouldered them aside. Kyle was amazed to find himself staring at the band of blue-cloaked Stormguard from the Lady’s Luck.

Their captain pointed and yelled, triumphant. ‘Found you again, Whiteblade! Some day one of us will take you!’

Kyle suddenly realized they’d wanted him dead all along. From the very moment they saw him. He now understood his mistake in his use of the weapon in his hand. Ruthlessness. Pure, bloody-minded callousness. He’d been too timid. To the Abyss with the limbs! Cripple and finish them!

He took the man’s spearhead off then swung low and severed his leg beneath the knee. He returned the swing to slice through four thrusting hafts, and the second rank fared no better as Kyle now understood that to properly exploit this vicious weapon he had to set aside normal swordplay.

He waded in, shield on his left, hacking through the spears, then forelimbs, taking any portion of anatomy within reach. Thighs, knees, it mattered not; the shock of the deep cuts slowed any opponent for the finishing return blow. He regained the earthworks, now a bloodied steaming heap of half-dismembered corpses.

Still the rear ranks pressed forward. Sick of shearing through thrusting spear hafts, he waded onward down the steep side into the flinching ranks. Shorn lengths of hafts flew until he was met with arms, then shoulders, and the thighs of braced legs.

The screams of the wounded now drowned out the clamour from any surrounding engagements. A hand yanked him backwards by his hauberk and he jumped to one side, swinging. Badlands’ raised forearm blocked his own just inside his grip on the white blade. The Lost’s eyes held his, close enough for the men’s steaming breath to meld into one. ‘That’s enough, lad,’ he warned, urging him back. ‘Leave some for the rest of us.’

Kyle spun to the ranks; only Letherii troopers remained, and these held off behind shields, swords raised. Their eyes, white all around, were filled with something Kyle had never before seen in any opponent: open dread. Badlands slowly walked him backwards.

‘Archers!’ came a familiar bellow.

‘Run for it!’ Badlands shouted and pelted up the mound.

Kyle had time for three panicked steps in the yielding mounded dirt and a leap before arrows whisked the air over his back and punched the heavy logs of the Greathall.

He lay panting in the muddy ground, his front wet with gore and pooled rainwater.

‘Up for another rush!’ Leena warned.

Groaning, he staggered to his feet and hefted his shield, which, from the weight of it, seemed to have been transformed into lead. Badlands padded off to continue his watch on the defence. All about the ring of mounded dirt the new ranks of attackers came storming up, shouting and slamming swords into shields. He waited, tensed, the white blade readied, but none appeared at his section of the perimeter. No cursing wild-eyed soldier came charging up the slope.