Assail (Malazan Empire, #6)(78)

Kyle blew out a breath. ‘I see. Well … we thank you for the gifts. They will aid us greatly.’

‘Very good. Fare well, then. Remember us to the ancients. Prove your worth and bring honour to us all.’

Kyle inclined his head. ‘I will try. Fare well.’

The old man walked away. Lyan already had a hand on the neck of the biggest of the three, a broad roan. ‘That one’s mine,’ Kyle called.

‘No she ain’t. I’m heavier than you in my armour, so she’s mine.’

Kyle just shook his head. He wasn’t about to argue with her over that subject.

* * *

Aiken was out hunting birds when he saw the smoky ochre cloud to the south. A storm, but one unlike any he’d seen before. He shouldered his bow and ran for the village.

When he arrived many of the elders were already out peering to the south. They were quiet, and to Aiken they appeared strangely troubled by a mere storm. He found his mother standing before their hide and pole hut. ‘A storm!’ he announced, excited. He’d always enjoyed storms: the lighting and thunder of gods battling overhead.

‘I see, little grub,’ she answered distractedly, her gaze still to the south. ‘Get inside.’

‘But Mama!’ She clenched his arm and thrust him within. ‘Mama!’

A warband ran past the hut, led by Hroth Far-seer. They ran with their knives in their hands.

‘Who is it?’ he asked, now wondering if perhaps he should be afraid.

‘Stay within,’ his mother barked. She pulled her blades from her belt, and ran.

A rumbling and crackling reached him, as of thunder, and a dark wall burst over the hut obscuring almost all the light. Dust washed within, choking him. Of course! A dust-storm! He’d seen one of these before. But what was there to fear? Save the animals wandering lost?

Footfalls sounded all about, sifting and thumping. He heard the crack and grating of weapons clashing, gasped breaths, hisses of pain, and the grunt of mortal blows taken. He stared out of the opening, now an ochre curtain of shifting and gusting dust. Blurred shapes ran past, wrestled, duelled.

He recognized the outline of his own, and was chilled by the hoary shapes they battled: cloaked in wind-blown rags, skeleton thin, some bearing armour of animal bones.

The demons of his people’s legends. The demons of dust. Come for them at last, as their oldest myths warned.

Then he screamed as a shape darkened the doorway. His mother burst within. Her head was bloodied, her hide trousers slit at the leg, streaming blood. She scanned the hut, her eyes wild, found him, took his arm and thrust him amid piled hides and blankets.

Tears streamed down her face. ‘Quiet, love,’ she croaked, hoarse.

‘Mama –what …?’

‘Quiet now as a woodlouse, yes?’

She pressed her hand over his face, left behind a smear of warm blood, pulled the hides over his head.

Through a gap in the layered hides he watched her feet as she crossed to the doorway. From her stance he could see she was crouched, blades ready. The feet shifted, scuffing. He heard blades clash and scrape, heard his mother growl and gasp. The feet shifted anew, weakly. Blood came running down one leg. Something hissed through the air and his mother’s feet tilted and she fell.

New feet entered the hut. Inhuman. Earth-brown bone and sinew in tatters of thick leather hide. The skins were yanked aside and he stared up at a demon face of bone, dark empty sockets, and naked amber teeth. Riding atop the head of patchy hair was another skull of some sort of gigantic horned beast.

‘This one?’ the demon asked someone outside.

‘Nay – the scent is too thin. Come, they are fleeing.’

This demon thrust him back into the hides, stalked from the hut, was swallowed by the swirling dust. Aiken crawled to his mother. She lay staring sightlessly skyward, thrust through the chest. He rested his head upon her breast, and weeping, gently closed her staring eyes.

Three days later a lone rider came galloping up from the south. Aiken happened to be with the mourners that day. He’d brought flowers to his mother where she lay in her tall raised bier, exposed to the sun’s kiss and the wind’s embrace. Others were out as well, his neighbours, cousins, and aunts. Those who’d survived the demons’ attack.

Everyone snatched up their weapons, of course. Even Aiken: as warriors were few now.

But it was an old woman. She threw herself from her lathered mount and ran to them. Her hunting leathers were dust-caked. Bead necklaces rattled about her neck. Her hair was a thick tangled nest.

‘How many?’ she gasped; she clutched a thin weathered hand to her throat. Aiken thought her a maddened survivor from another village.

‘A full third of our people,’ answered Jalia, Aiken’s great-aunt. Then she hissed, flinching from the newcomer. She pointed to her waist. Aiken glanced there and saw that the knives thrust through the old woman’s leather belt were of nut-brown stone, knapped, the grip leather-wrapped.

‘Demon weapons …’ Jalia snarled, and she went for her own daggers.

The ground erupted around them. Bone arms yanked clear of the dirt. Skulls denuded of flesh burst free. Aiken backed away, terrified yet fascinated. Jalia thrust for the woman but a demon stepped up between them, taking her arm and tossing her aside.

‘Do not harm them!’ the old woman bellowed. Then her wild gaze found Aiken and she yelled to him: ‘Go! Run!’