Night of Knives_ A Novel of the Malazan Empire - By Ian C. Esslemont Page 0,95

wall when something rammed him in the side and sent him tumbling farther into the yard.

Lying in the dirt, Temper twisted to face the wall. There stood a Claw dressed in black, a staff at his side. What by Fener’s prang was a Claw doing here? Yells and the explosions of Warren energy out beyond the walls answered his question. In a chaotic melee of smoke, mist, Warren-fire and whirling, snapping robes, black fought grey. At the gate, Trenech and Faro battled the Jaghut and no one, wisely, seemed willing to interfere with that titanic duel. Elsewhere at the walls, cultists and Claws fought side-by-side against the dead, who seemed less inclined to defend the walls than to clamber over them.

The Claw who’d struck him pulled back his hood, revealing long black hair and a narrow hatchet-face. Possum. The man looked to have been in a fight himself, his robes torn and bloodied. Possum grinned at Temper the way a starving man might regard a roast ox.

Temper invited him in with a wave. Possum shook his head. He pushed himself up to rush the bastard but fell; another grip like a dog’s jaws held his ankle. His foot had already been yanked into the earth.

‘Damn you to Hood’s Abyss!’ he screamed.

‘After you!’ Possum answered through the bursts of magefire.

Enraged, Temper threw one of his swords at the Claw who knocked it aside with his staff. Laughing, Possum waved, stepped back, and disappeared.

Temper struggled to rise, almost weeping his frustration. He’d nearly made it! If it weren’t for that bastard he’d have escaped. With a yell, he reached down into the loose earth and blindly felt about. This wasn’t a hand but a vine or root of some kind, its grip like iron. He yanked but it was as taut as a rope.

From down the hillside a particularly fierce exchange of Warren energy caught his attention. There, what looked like the few remaining cultists had gathered in a fighting retreat against the Claws. Trenech and Faro still held the gate against the huge bellowing Jaghut. At the walls Claws had replaced cultists but from their panicked shouts they appeared to be faring no better.

A dry creaking whispered from his rear and he twisted round. There stood one of the yard’s stunted trees, its branches reaching for him. The tree! The blasted tree had him! Stark horror drove all coherent thought from him. Throwing his second sword out over the wall, he pulled out both fighting gauches and slammed the short heavy blades into the earth.

At the first touch of iron the root jerked and the tree shuddered from bottom to top. Temper thought that he’d bested it, but then the root tightened about his ankle and yanked his leg farther into the earth, up to the knee. He grunted his pain and terror and drove one arm down, cutting and slicing. Now pain flamed in his other leg as it too was drawn into the dirt. Frantic, he slashed with both blades as deeply as he dared reach. Yet no sooner had he severed one root than another wrapped itself around him. Tendrils grasped at his arms. One cheek-guard was pressed against the earth and he knew that at any moment a root would take his neck. From where he lay he could see the tree dark against the sky. He eyed it. It was a scrawny thing, stunted and gnarled, the trunk no thicker than his wrist and barely his height. He grinned, thinking You look to be in reach you bastard. With a bellow of rage, he tore his arms out of the earth and lunged.

Kiska may have lay stunned for some time; she did not know. She simply became aware of something wavering at the edge of her vision and a voice familiar and close saying, ‘I am very surprised to see you here.’ Blinking back tears of pain, Kiska squinted up at Oleg Vikat’s furrowed, madness-contorted face. His shade looked remarkably solid here, wherever here was. Next to her stood a wall of haphazardly piled granite and limestone blocks – it was against this she’d cracked her head.

‘Where are we?’ she whispered, wincing and rubbing her skull behind an ear.

Oleg slipped a hand under her arm to lift her up and pointed over the wall. ‘The eye of the storm.’

Groaning, Kiska rested her chin on the low wall. They were at the one building in Malaz she’d never dared enter. The old building with its ridiculous name,