A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 2

sword and wheeled his horse round to face his troops. The sorcerous assault of terror had reached them, battering at the lines. They rippled, but not a single soldier stepped back. A moment later, his Malazans steadied.
    "Ware!' Korlat cried. 'My Lord arrives in his fullest power!'
    The air seemed to descend on all sides, groaning beneath a vast, invisible weight. The sky darkened with a palpable dread.
    Whiskeyjack's horse stumbled, legs buckling momentarily before the animal regained its balance. The beast screamed.
    A cold, bitter wind whistled fiercely, flattening the grasses before the commander and Korlat, then it struck the charging mass of Tenescowri.
    The Women of the Dead Seed were thrown back, staggering, stumbling, onto the ground where they writhed. Behind them, the front runners in the mob tried to stop and were overrun. Within a single heartbeat, the front ranks collapsed into chaos, figures seething over others, bodies trampled or pushed forward in a flailing of limbs.
    The silver-maned black dragon swept low over Whiskeyjack's head, sailing forward on that gelid gale.
    The lone figure of Anaster, astride his roan horse that had not even flinched, awaited him. The front line of the Tenescowri was a tumbling wall behind the First Child.
    Anomander Rake descended on the youth.
    Anaster straightened in his saddle and spread his arms wide.
    Huge talons snapped down. Closed around the First Child and plucked him from the horse.
    The dragon angled upward with its prize.
    Then seemed to stagger in the air.
    Korlat cried out. 'Gods, he is as poison!'
    The dragon's leg whipped to one side, flinging Anaster away. The young man spun, cartwheeling like a tattered doll through the air. To plunge into the mob of Tenescowri on the far right, where he disappeared from view.
    Righting himself, Anomander Rake lowered his wedge-shaped head as he closed on the peasant army. Fanged mouth opened.
    Raw Kurald Galain issued from that maw. Roiling darkness that Whiskeyjack had seen before, long ago, outside the city of Pale. But then, it had been tightly controlled. And more recently, when led by Korlat through the warren itself; again, calmed. But now, the Elder Warren of Darkness was unleashed, wild.
    So there's another way into the Warren of Kurald Galain – right down that dragon's throat.
    A broad, flattened swathe swept through the Tenescowri. Bodies dissolving to nothing, leaving naught but ragged clothing. The dragon's flight was unswerving, cutting a path of annihilation that divided the army into two seething, recoiling halves.
    The first pass completed, Anomander Rake lifted skyward, banked around for another.
    It was not needed. The Tenescowri forces had broken, figures scattering in all directions. Here and there, Whiskeyjack saw, it turned on itself, like a hound biting its own wounds. Senseless murder, self-destruction, all that came of blind, unreasoning terror.
    The dragon glided back over the writhing mobs, but did not unleash its warren a second time.
    Then Whiskeyjack saw Anomander Rake's head turn.
    The dragon dropped lower, a wide expanse clearing before it as the Tenescowri flung themselves away, leaving only a half-score of figures, lying prone but evincing motion none the less – slowly, agonizingly attempting to regain their feet.
    The Women of the Dead Seed.
    The dragon, flying now at a man's height over the ground, sembled, blurred as it closed on the witches, reformed into the Lord of Moon's Spawn – who strode towards the old women, hand reaching up to draw his sword.
    'Korlat—'
    'I am sorry, Whiskeyjack.'
    'He's going to—'
    'I know.'
    Whiskeyjack stared in horror as Anomander Rake reached the first of the women, a scrawny, hunchbacked hag half the Tiste Andii's height, and swung Dragnipur.
    Her head dropped to the ground at her feet on a stream of gore. The body managed an eerie side-step, as if dancing, then crumpled.
    Anomander Rake walked to the next woman.
    'No – this is not right—'
    'Please—'
    Ignoring Korlat's plea, Whiskeyjack spurred his horse forward, down the slope at a canter, then a gallop as they reached level ground.
    Another woman was slain, then a third before the Malazan arrived, sawing his reins to bring his horse to a skidding halt directly in Rake's path.
    The Lord of Moon's Spawn was forced to halt his stride. He looked up in surprise, then frowned.
    'Stop this,' Whiskeyjack grated. He realized he still held his sword unsheathed, saw Rake's unhuman eyes casually