A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 2

dull eyes a Capan woman pick up a gauntleted hand, severed raggedly at the wrist by one of Gruntle's cutlasses, and calmly pull the hand from the scaled glove, which she then donned.
    Gruntle stepped over bodies on his way to the stairwell.
    It was time to retreat to the next level, time to take command of the outer-lying rooms with their feebly shuttered windows, and the back stairs and the central stairs. Time to jam yet more souls down Hood's clogged, choking throat.
    At the stairs, Gruntle clashed his cutlasses.
    Outside, a resurging tide of noise ...
     
    Brukhalian sat astride his huge, lathered warhorse, watching as the Destriant's cutters dragged a barely breathing Itkovian into a nearby building that would serve, for the next bell or two, as a triage. Karnadas himself, drawing once more on his fevered Warren of Denul, had quelled the flow of blood from the chest of the Shield Anvil's horse.
    The surviving Grey Swords at the cemetery were being helped clear by the Mortal Sword's own companies. There were wounds to be tended to there as well, but those that were fatal had already proved so. Corpses were being pulled away in a frantic search for more survivors.
    The cutters carrying Itkovian now faced the task of removing buried iron from the Shield Anvil, weapons that had, by virtue of remaining embedded, in all likelihood saved the man's life. And Karnadas would be on hand for that surgery, to quench the blood that would gush from each wound as the iron was drawn free.
    Brukhalian's flat, hard eyes followed the Destriant as the old man stumbled after his cutters. Karnadas had gone too far, pulled too much from his warren, too much and too often. His body had begun its irreversible surrender. Bruises marked the joints of his arms, the elbows, the wrists, the fingers. Within him, his veins and arteries were becoming as cheesecloth, and the seepage of blood into muscle and cavity would only grow more profound. Denul's flow was disintegrating all that it flowed through – the body of the priest himself.
    He would be, Brukhalian knew, dead before dawn.
    Yet, before then, Itkovian would be healed, brutally mended without regard to the mental trauma that accompanied all wounds. The Shield Anvil would assume command once again, but not as the man he had been.
    The Mortal Sword was a hard man. The fate of his friends was a knowledge bereft of emotion. It was as it had to be.
    He straightened on his saddle, scanned the area to gauge the situation. The attack upon the barracks had been repelled. The Tenescowri had broken on all sides, and none still standing remained within sight. This was not the case elsewhere, Brukhalian well knew. The Grey Swords had been virtually obliterated as an organized army. No doubt pockets of resistance remained, but they would be few and far between. To all intents and purposes, Capustan had fallen.
    A mounted messenger approached from the northwest, horse leaping the mounds of bodies littering the avenue, slowing as it neared the Mortal Sword's companies.
    Brukhalian gestured with his blade and the young Capan woman reined in before him.
    'Sir!' she gasped. 'I bring word from Rath'Fener! A message, passed on to me by an acolyte!'
    'Let us hear it, then, sir.'
    'The Thrall is assailed! Rath'Fener invokes the Reve's Eighth Command. You are to ride with all in your company to his aid. Rath'Fener kneels before the hooves – you are to be the Twin Tusks of his and Fener's shadow!'
    Brukhalian's eyes narrowed. 'Sir, this acolyte managed to leave the Thrall in order to convey his priest's holy invocation. Given the protective sorcery around the building, how was this managed?'
    The young woman shook her head. 'I do not know, sir.'
    'And your path across the city, to arrive here, was it contested?'
    'None living stood before me, sir.'
    'Can you explain that?'
    'No, sir, I cannot. Fener's fortune, perhaps ...'
    Brukhalian studied her a moment longer. 'Recruit, will you join us in our deliverance?'
    She blinked, then slowly nodded. 'I would be honoured, Mortal Sword.'
    His reply was a gruff, sorrowful whisper that only deepened her evident bewilderment, 'As would I, sir.' Brukhalian lowered the visor, swung to his followers. 'Eleventh Mane to remain with the Destriant and his cutters!' he commanded. 'Remaining companies, we march to the Thrall! Rath'Fener has invoked the Reve, and to this we must answer!' He then dismounted and handed the reins of his warhorse to the messenger. 'My mind has