Midnight Tides & The Bonehunters - By Steven Erikson Page 0,563

all sides, the ground seethed, glittering and rabid with motion.

So many flies.

So many ...

'Something to show you, now ...'

Like a savage beast suddenly awakened, Heboric straightened in his saddle—

Scillara's mount cantered a stride behind the Destriant's, a little to the old man's left, whilst in her wake rode Felisin. She cursed in growing alarm as the flies gathered round the riders like midnight, devouring all light, the buzzing cadence seeming to whisper words that crawled into her mind on ten thousand legs. She fought back a scream—

As her horse shrieked in mortal pain, dust swirling and spinning beneath it, dust rising and finding shape.

A terrible, wet, grating sound, then something long and sharp punched up between her mount's shoulder-blades, blood gouting thick and bright from the wound. The horse staggered, forelegs buckling, then collapsed, the motion flinging Scillara from the saddle—

She found herself rolling on a carpet of crushed insects, the hoofs of Heboric's horse pounding down around her as the creature shrilled in agony, pitching to the left – something snarling, a barbed flash of skin, feline and fluid, leaping from the dying horse's back—

And figures, emerging as if from nowhere amidst spinning dust, blades of flint flashing – a bestial scream – blood slapping the ground beside her in a thick sheet, instantly blackened by flies – the blades chopping, cutting, slashing into flesh – a piercing shriek, rising in a conflagration of pain and rage – something thudded against her as Scillara sought to rise on her hands and knees, and she looked over. An arm, tattooed in a tiger-stripe pattern, sliced clean midway between elbow and shoulder, the hand, a flash of fitful, dying green beneath swarming flies.

She staggered upright, stabbing pain in her belly, choking as insects crowded into her mouth with her involuntary gasp.

A figure stepped near her, long stone sword dripping, desiccated skull-face swinging in her direction, and that sword casually reached out, slid like fire into Scillara's chest, ragged edge scoring above her top rib, beneath the clavicle, then punching out her back, just above the scapula.

Scillara sagged, felt herself sliding from that weapon as she fell down onto her back.

The apparition vanished within the cloud of flies once more.

She could hear nothing but buzzing, could see nothing but a chaotic, glittering clump swelling above the wound in her chest, through which blood leaked – as if the flies had become a fist, squeezing her heart. Squeezing ...

Cutter had had no time to react. The bite of sudden sand and dust, then his horse's head was simply gone, ropes of blood skirling down as if pursuing its flight. Down beneath the front hoofs, that stumbled, then gave way as the decapitated beast collapsed.

Cutter managed to roll free, gaining his feet within a maelstrom of flies.

Someone loomed up beside him and he spun, one knife free and slashing across in an effort to block a broad, hookbladed scimitar of rippled flint. The weapons collided, and that sword swept through Cutter's knife, the strength behind the blow unstoppable—

He watched it tear into his belly, watched it rip its way free, and then his bowels tumbled into view.

Reaching down to catch them with both hands, Cutter sank as all life left his legs. He stared down at the flopping mess he held, disbelieving, then landed on one side, curling round the terrible, horrifying damage done to him.

He heard nothing. Nothing but his own breathing, and the cavorting flies, now closing in as if they had known all along that this was going to happen.

The attacker had risen from the very dust, on the right side of Greyfrog. Savage agony as a huge chalcedony longsword cut through the demon's forelimb, severing it clean in a gush of green blood. A second cut sliced through the back leg on the same side, and the demon struck the ground, kicking helplessly with its remaining limbs.

Grainy with flies and thundering pain – a momentary scene played out before the demon's eyes. Broad, bestial, clad in furs, a creature of little more than skin and bone, stepping placidly over Greyfrog's back leg, which was lying five paces distant, kicking all by itself. Stepping into the black cloud.

Dismay. I can hop no more.

Even as he had leapt from the back of his horse, two flint swords had caught him, one slashing through muscle and bone, severing an arm, the other thrusting point first into, then through, his chest. Heboric, throat filled with animal snarls, twisted in mid-air in a desperate effort