Snarling, Koryk turned to face the cloister again-these narrow-laned mews created perfect cul-de-sacs-lead them in at a run, flank out then turn and cut the bastards down. Even so, nobody had planned on making this ugly village the site of their last stand. Except maybe the Edur, who now entirely surrounded it and were working their way in, house by house, lane by lane.
Felt good kicking back, though, whenever they got too spread out in their eagerness to spill Malazan blood.
‘They stink at fighting in groups,’ Smiles said, coming up alongside him. She glanced up into his face and then burst out laughing again.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘You! Them! The look in their eyes-the surprise, I mean, oh, gods of the deep! I can’t stop!’
‘You’d better,’ Koryk warned, shaking the blood from his sword. ‘I’m hearing movement-that lane mouth there-
come on.’
Three quarrels flitted out, two of them taking down onrushing Edur. Two lances arced in retaliation, both darting straight for Fiddler. And then Tarr’s huge shield shifted into their path, and the sergeant was pushed hard to one side-grunts from the corporal as both lances slammed solidly against the bronze-scaled face, one of them punching through a finger’s length to pierce Tarr’s upper arm. The corporal swore.
Fiddler ducked down behind the smithy’s quenching barrel as a third lance cracked into it. Water gushed out onto the ground.
The crossfire ambush then caught the half-dozen charging Edur unawares-quarrels sleeting out from the narrow alley mouths on both sides. Moments later all were down, dead or dying.
‘Pull back!’ Fiddler shouted, turning to exchange his unloaded crossbow for the loaded one Bottle now set into his hands.
Tarr covering the three of them, they retreated back through the smithy, across the dusty compound with its piled tailings and slag, through the kicked-down fence, and back towards the tavern.
Where, from the sounds, Stormy and his heavies were in a fight.
Motion on their flanks-the rest of the ambush converging. Cuttle, Corabb, Maybe, Gesler, Balgrid and Brethless. Reloading on the run.
‘Gesler! Stormy’s-’
‘I can hear it, Fid! Corabb-hand that damned crossbow over to Brethless-you’re useless with it. Join up with Tarr there and you two in first!’
‘I got my target!’ Corabb protested even as he gave one of Hellian’s corporals the heavy weapon.
‘By bouncing your quarrel off the cobbles and don’t tell me that was a planned shot!’
Corabb was already readying the Edur spear he had picked up.
Fiddler waved Tarr forward as soon as Corabb arrived. ‘Go, you two! Fast in and hard!’
Only by leaving his feet and throwing his entire weight on the shaft was the Edur able to drive the spear entirely through Stormy’s left shoulder. An act of extraordinary courage that was rewarded with a thumb in his left eye-that dug yet deeper, then deeper still. Shrieking, the warrior tried to jerk his head away, but the huge red-bearded corporal now clutched a handful of hair and was holding him tight.
With a still louder shriek and even greater courage, the Edur tore his head back, leaving Stormy with a handful of scalp and a thumb smeared in gel and blood.
‘Not so fast,’ the corporal said in a strangely matter-of-fact tone, as he lunged forward to grapple the Edur. Both went down onto the smeared floorboards of the tavern-and the impact pushed the spear in Stormy’s shoulder almost entirely through. Drawing his gutting knife, Stormy drove the blade into the warrior’s side, just beneath the ribcage, under the heart, then cut outward.
Blood gushed in a flood.
Staggering, slipping, Stormy managed to regain his feet-the spear falling from his back-and tottered until he came up against the table with its pile of severed Edur heads. He reached for one and threw it across the room, into the crowd of Edur pushing in through the doorway where Flashwit and Bowl had been holding position until a spear skewered Bowl through the man’s neck and someone knocked off Flashwit’s helm and laid open her head. She was lying on her back, not moving as the moccasin-clad feet of the Edur stamped all over her in the inward rush.
The head struck the lead warrior in the face, and he howled in shock and pain, reeling to one side.
Mayfly stumbled up to take position beside Stormy. Stabbed four times already, it was a wonder the heavy was still standing.
‘Don’t you die, woman,’ Stormy rumbled.
She set his sword into his hands. ‘Found this, Sergeant, and thought you might want it.’
There was no time to answer as the first three Edur reached them.
Emerging from the kitchen entrance-a kitchen now emptied of serving staff-Corabb saw that charge, and he leapt forward to take it from the flank.
