Assail (Malazan Empire, #6)(93)

‘No indeed,’ the Andii answered. He startled Fisher by running out into the open. ‘Yrkki!’ he bellowed. ‘I demand that you give me my name!’

The creature straightened and turned round. He held a struggling brother in each hand. The giant dragon skull lowered to regard Jethiss more closely. The otherworldly deep ocean-blue flames seemed to brighten in its empty sockets ‘Your name would only make you weep,’ he boomed in his basso voice.

‘No!’ The word seemed torn from Jethiss. He thrust out his hands as if refusing to accept what he heard. Darkness flew at the Bone-wright. Ink-black folds seemed to coalesce from the surrounding night to enmesh it. It threw the brothers free to claw at them.

‘What is this?’ Yrkki bellowed. ‘Galain?’

Jethiss thrust out his hands again and the monster tottered backwards, flailing. The folds and scarves of night appeared to be yanking it back into the ravine. The naked talons of its feet slid and gouged at the dirt as it slid. ‘None shall remember your name!’ it boomed as the black folds enmeshed its skull and it fell backwards, bone legs kicking, to disappear over the cliff’s edge.

Jethiss slumped to the dirt. Fisher ran to pick him up. Badlands joined him and threw the Andii over his shoulder. ‘Run!’ the man yelled, spraying blood from a split lip. They ran. Coots came behind, weapons out, covering their retreat.

They climbed a switchback trail that led to a knife-sharp ridge of rotten rock. The far side sloped down into a high mountain valley. It was a dark night but Fisher could make out a stretch of woods below. Badlands set Jethiss down in the hollow of two large leaning halves of rock, then sat rather heavily. Fisher eased himself down next to him. Badlands felt at his mouth. ‘I think I lotht a damned toof!’

Coots came to stand over them. ‘You’re always okay ’cause you land on your head.’

‘Same as you ’cept it’th your ath!’

Coots gestured to Jethiss, who lay unconscious. ‘How’d your friend do that?’

‘I don’t think even he knows,’ Fisher answered.

Coots grunted his acceptance, then rubbed the wide bulge of his stomach. ‘I’m hungry,’ he said, peering about. ‘I’m gonna hunt something up.’ He walked off into the dark.

‘Better be thoft and thewy!’ Badlands called after him, then groaned and cupped his mouth.

Fisher tucked a roll of bedding under Jethiss’s head. ‘I’ll take watch, if you like,’ he told Badlands.

The brother waved a negative. ‘Naw. You thweep. My mouth hurths.’

Fisher nodded, edged down further into his seat against the rock, tucked his hands under his arms, and let his chin fall. After the exhausting rush of the encounter with Yrkki, sleep came quite quickly.

The delicious smell of roasting meat woke him. He sat up, blinking. Badlands and Coots were crouched at a small fire. Two skinned and gutted rabbits roasted on sticks over the flames. Jethiss sat nearby, arms draped over his crossed legs. He appeared troubled and distracted; Fisher could imagine why. What the man had accomplished was the manipulation of Elemental Night. Something open to the mages of his kind, yet he had made no mention of such a capacity. Who knows what else might lie hidden in him?

‘Found the trail of your buddies,’ Coots said, and licked fat from his fingers.

‘Thank you.’

‘Easy to follow. They only have a few days on you.’

‘Thanks.’ Fisher searched among his feelings: he found no desire to return to the raiding party. He’d much rather strike straight north. ‘I thought we were heading to the Lost Holding.’

Badlands carried a swollen purple-bruised mouth and cheek. He slurred: ‘It’s othay. You doan’ have to come.’

‘I want to. What of you, Jethiss?’

The Andii was staring at the fire. ‘It matters not to me,’ he murmured.

‘We’ll come with you, then.’

The brothers exchanged dubious looks. ‘We move pretty fast,’ Coots explained.

‘We’ll keep up.’

‘Suit yourself.’ He gestured to the rabbits. ‘Eat up and we’ll go.’

Fisher discovered that the brothers were not exaggerating. After they’d eaten and drunk from waterskins and Fisher had rubbed his teeth with a green twig, the brothers kicked dirt over the fire then took off at a run. Fisher was quite startled, but followed quickly. Jethiss came after. Soon, Fisher found that he had to increase his pace considerably in order to keep the brothers in sight.

The Losts ran pell-mell down slopes, dodged trees, jumped from fallen logs and leaned into steep slides of loose talus and broken rock, guiding themselves with a hand. Fisher struggled to follow. His breath came hard and his chest burned. But as the sun climbed overhead his legs loosened up and his breathing eased. He found his pace, and glancing back saw that so too had Jethiss, as the man followed with an easy loping gait.

He came abreast of Badlands. Or rather, Badlands fell back to him; the man ran with a hand pressed to his mouth, breathing loudly, leaning over to spit blood, cursing and wincing as he went. He fell back behind Fisher, then Jethiss as well.

Coots did not stop for any sort of mid-day rest or meal and so Fisher had no choice but to follow. The man appeared to be striking a course far more east than north. They crossed steep mountain shoulders and narrow valleys, scrambled up naked rock ridges, shuffled and half tumbled down the other sides into dense forests of conifer and slashing stiff-branched brush that exploded in sharp bursts when Coots bulled through.