Memories of Ice & House of Chains - By Steven Erikson Page 0,109

the lassos. Both hung loose, one around the creature's neck, the other high on its right leg.

Earth thumped as the demon took a step towards the Shield Anvil. Itkovian raised his longsword.

As it lifted a three-toed foot for another stride, the two ropes snapped taut, neck to the left, leg to the right. The creature was thrown upward by the savage, perfectly timed yanks to opposite sides. Leg tore away from hip in a dry, ripping snap, even as the head parted from the neck with an identical sickly sound.

Torso and head struck the earth with heavy, bone-breaking thumps.

No movement. The beast was dead.

Suddenly trembling, Itkovian slowly straightened.

Torun had taken three riders with him. Farakalian had done the same. Ropes wound around each saddlehorn, the force behind the sudden, explosive tightening – four warhorses to each side – had managed what weapons could not.

The pair of archers rode up to the Shield Anvil. One reached down an arm. 'Quickly, sir, the stirrup's clear.'

Unquestioningly, Itkovian clasped the wrist and swung himself up behind the rider. And saw what approached.

Four more demons, four hundred paces away and closing with the speed of boulders tumbling down a mountainside.

'We'll not outrun them.'

'Yes, sir.'

'So we split up,' Itkovian said.

The rider kicked his mount into a gallop. 'Yes, sir. We're the slowest – Torun and Farakalian will engage – give us time—'

The horse swerved suddenly beneath them. Caught unprepared, the Shield Anvil's head snapped back, and he tumbled from the saddle. He hit the hard-packed soil, the air bursting from his lungs, then rolled, stunned, to come to a stop against a pair of legs hard as iron.

Blinking, gasping, Itkovian found himself staring up at a squat, fur-clad corpse. The dark-brown, withered face beneath the antlered head-dress tilted downward. Shadowed sockets studied him.

Gods, what a day.

'Your soldiers approach,' the apparition rasped in Elin. 'From this engagement ... you are relieved.'

The archer was still struggling with his startled horse, cursing, then he hissed in surprise.

The Shield Anvil frowned up at the undead figure. 'We are?'

'Against undead,' the corpse said, 'arises an army in kind.'

Distantly, Itkovian heard the sounds of battle – no screams, simply the clash of weapons, relentless, ever growing. With a groan, he rolled onto his side. A headache was building in the back of his skull, waves of nausea rippling through him. Gritting his teeth, he sat up.

'Ten survivors,' the figure above him mused. 'You did well... for mortals.'

Itkovian stared across the basin. An army of corpses identical to the one beside him surrounded the demons, of which only two remained standing. The battle around those two creatures was horrible to witness. Pieces of the undead warriors flew in all directions, but still they kept coming, huge flint swords chopping into the demons, carving them down where they stood. A half-dozen heartbeats later, the fight was over.

The Shield Anvil judged that at least sixty of the fur-clad warriors had been destroyed. The others continued chopping on the felled beasts, swinging ever lower as the remaining pieces grew ever smaller. Even as he watched, dust swirled from the hillsides in every direction – more of the undead warriors with their weapons of stone. An army, motionless beneath the sun.

'We did not know that K'Chain Che'Malle had returned to this land,' the hide-wrapped corpse said.

Itkovian's remaining soldiers approached, tense, driven into watchful silence by the conjurations rising on all sides.

'Who,' Itkovian asked dully, 'are you?'

'I am the Bonecaster Pran Chole, of the Kron T'lan Imass. We are come to the Gathering. And, it seems, to a war. I think, mortal, you have need of us.'

The Shield Anvil looked upon his ten surviving soldiers. The recruit was among them, but not her two guardians. Twenty. Soldiers and horses. Twenty ... gone. He scanned the faces now arrayed before him, and slowly nodded. 'Aye, Pran Chole, we have need.'

The recruit's face was the hue of bleached parchment. She sat on the ground, eyes unfocused, spattered with the blood of one or both of the soldiers who had given their lives protecting her.

Itkovian stood beside her, saying nothing. The brutality of the engagement may well have broken the Capan recruit, he suspected. Active service was intended to hone, not destroy. The Shield Anvil's underestimation of the enemy had made of this young woman's future a world of ashes. Two blindingly sudden deaths would haunt her for the rest of her days. And there was nothing Itkovian could do, or say, to ease the pain.

'Shield Anvil.'

He looked down at her,