Dust of Dreams: Book Nine of The Malazan Book of the Fallen - By Steven Erikson Page 0,472

Abyss itself, Stormy was finally in the midst of war’s sharpest truths and nothing else—nothing—mattered. Laughing, he slashed and hacked at the Nah’ruk as they pressed in, as the dead-eyed lizards sought to clamber over the Ve’Gath, sought by numbers alone to overwhelm this savage wall of denial.

Gesler’s charge down the pocket had pierced the bastards like a boar-sticker, forcing them into the narrow spaces between the frenzied K’ell and the shield-locked Ve’Gath. They fought with appalling ferocity, and died in chilling silence.

His mount was wounded. His mount was probably dying—who could tell? All these lizards fought until their last breath. But its defences had slowed, weakened. There was blood everywhere and he could feel its chest heaving with shuddering cadence.

A short-snouted maw lunged at his face.

Cursing, he pitched back to avoid the snapping dagger teeth, struggled to draw close his short-handled axe—but the damned Nah’ruk surged still closer, clawing its way up the Ve’Gath’s shoulder. His mount staggered—

He chopped with his axe, but the range was too tight, and though the edge bit into the side of the lizard’s head the wound it delivered was not enough to sway the creature. The jaws opened wide. The head snapped forward—

Something snarling struck the Nah’ruk, a knotted mass of mottled, scar-seamed hide and muscle, savage canines sinking deep into the lizard’s neck.

Disbelieving, Stormy kicked his boots free of the stirrups to roll further back—

A fucking dog?

Bent?

That you?

Oh, but it surely was.

Greenish blood spilled from the Nah’ruk’s mouth. The eyes dulled, and a heartbeat later dog and lizard pitched down from the Ve’Gath.

At that moment, Stormy saw the burning sky keeps.

And the storm was gone, the thunder vanished, the world filling with sounds of iron, flesh and bone. The song of ten thousand battles, made eerily surreal by there being not a single scream, not a single cry of agony or shriek begging mercy.

The Nah’ruk were falling.

Battle halted. Slaughter commenced.

No song lives upon a single note.

But to a soldier, who had faced death for an eternity since the dawn, this grisly music was the sweetest music of all.

Slaughter! For my brave Ve’Gath! Slaughter! For Gesler and his K’ell! Slaughter, for the Bonehunters—my friends—SLAUGHTER!

As if some fulcrum had been irrevocably destroyed, Ampelas Uprooted slowly rolled upside down. The entire edifice was burning now, spilling sheets of flaming oil that splashed bright upon rubble, corpses and wounded drones directly below.

Gesler knew it was now dead, a lifeless hulk slowly tumbling in the sky.

Two sky keeps still raged in death-throes behind it, leaning like drunks, moments from colliding with one another. The smoke column from a third was shredding apart to high winds, but of the keep itself there was no sign. The rest were but ashes on the black wind.

Before them rose a mountain of gnarled rock, enclosing the wreckage that had once been Kalse Uprooted, holding it up as if it was a gem, or a giant shattered eye. Something about the stone was familiar, but for the moment, he could not place it. The manifestation reached stunningly high, piercing through the dust and smoke.

Stormy’s hunt for the last fleeing Nah’ruk had taken him and a thousand or so Ve’Gath beyond the hills to the southeast.

Exhausted, numbed beyond all reason, Gesler leaned back in the strange saddle. Some damned dog was yapping at his mount’s ankles.

He saw Kalyth, Sag’Churok, Gunth Mach and the J’an Sentinel, and beyond them, approaching at a careless walk, two children.

Grub. Sinn.

Gesler leaned forward and glared down at the yapping dog. ‘Gods below, Roach,’ he said in a hoarse voice, ‘you returning the favour?’ He drew a shuddering breath. ‘Listen, rat, cos I’m only going to say this once—I guarantee it. But right now, your voice is the prettiest sound I’ve ever heard.’

The miserable thing snarled up at him.

It had never learned how to smile.

Slipping down from the Ve’Gath, Gesler sagged on aching legs. Kalyth was kneeling, facing the direction from which Sinn and Grub were approaching. ‘Get up, Destriant,’ he said, finding himself leaning against the Ve’Gath’s hip. ‘Those two got heads so swelled it’s a wonder a mortal woman pushed ’em out.’

She looked over and he saw the muddy streaks of tears on her cheeks. ‘She had . . . faith. In us humans.’ The woman shook her head. ‘I did not.’

The two children walked up.

Gesler scowled. ‘Stop looking so smug, Sinn. You two are in a lot of trouble.’

‘Bent and Roach found us,’ said Grub, scratching in the wild thatch of hair on his head. It