A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 2

illusionists in every damned squad?'
    'It only works, Lieutenant, because of its rarity. Besides, it takes serious mastery to manage faking even a lone demon – how Quick Ben pulled off eight of 'em is—'
    The Seerdomin mages counterattacked. A crackling, spinning wave rolled up the slope, chewing up the ground, exploding tree stumps.
    'That's headed straight for him!' Blend hissed, one hand clutching Picker's shoulder, fingers digging in.
    'Ow! Let go!'
    A thunderous concussion shook the ground and air.
    'Gods! He's been killed! Blasted! Annihilated – Beru fend us all!'
    Picker stared at the wailing soldier at her side, then forced her eyes once more to the scene on the ramp.
    Another Seerdomin wizard appeared from the legion's ranks, mounted on a huge dun charger. Sorcery danced over his armour, pale, dull, flickering on the double-bladed axe in his right hand.
    'Oh,' Blend whispered. 'That's a sharp illusion.'
    He rode to join one of his fellow mages.
    Who turned.
    The axe flew from the rider's hand, its wake sparkling with suspended ice. Changed shape, blackening, twisting, reaching out clawed, midnight limbs.
    The victim screamed as the wraith struck him. Death-magic punched through the protective weave of chaotic sorcery like a spearpoint through chain armour, plunged into the man's chest.
    The wraith reappeared even as the Seerdomin toppled – up through his helmed head in an explosion of iron, bone, blood and brains – clutching in its black, taloned hands the Seerdomin's soul – a thing that flared, radiating terror. The wraith, hunched over its prize, flew a zigzag path towards the forest. Vanished into the gloom.
    The rider, after throwing the ghastly weapon, had driven his heels into his horse's flanks. The huge beast had veered, hooves pounding, to ride down a second Seerdomin in a flurry of stamping that, within moments, flung blood-soaked clumps of mud into the air.
    Sorcery tumbled towards the rider.
    Who drove his horse forward. A ragged tear parted before them, into which horse and rider vanished. The rent closed a moment before the chaotic magic arrived. The spinning sorcery thunderclapped, gouging a crater in the hillside.
    Antsy thumped Picker's other shoulder. 'Look! Further down! The legions at the back!'
    She twisted. To see soldiers breaking formation, spreading out to disappear in the wooded hillside on either side of the ramp. 'Damn, someone got smart.'
    'Smart ain't all – they're going to stumble right onto us!'
     
    Paran saw Quick Ben reappear on the bank, stumbling from a warren, smoke streaming from his scorched leather armour. Moments earlier, the captain had thought the man annihilated, as a crackling wave of chaotic magic had hammered into the ridge of mounded earth that the wizard had chosen as his position. Grey-tongued fires still burned in the chewed-up soil around Quick Ben.
    'Captain!'
    Paran turned to see a marine scrabbling up the entrenchment's incline towards him.
    'Sir, we've had reports – the legions are coming up through the trees!'
    'Does the High Fist know?'
    'Yes sir! He's sending you another company to hold this line.'
    'Very well, soldier. Go back to him and ask him to get the word passed through the ranks. I've got a squad down there somewhere – they'll be coming up ahead of the enemy, likely at a run.'
    'Aye, sir.'
    Paran watched the man hurry off. He then scanned his dug-in troops. They were hard to see – shadows played wildly over their positions, filled the pits and the trenches linking them. The captain's head snapped round to Quick Ben. The wizard was hunched down, almost invisible beneath swirling shadows.
    The ground below the embankment writhed and churned. Rocks and boulders were pushing up through the mulch, grinding and snapping against each other, the water on their surfaces sizzling into steam that cloaked the building mass of stone.
    Two warrens unveiled – no, must be three – those boulders are red hot.
    Shadows slipped down the bank, flowed between and beneath the gathering boulders.
    He's building a scree – one that the enemy won't notice . . . until it's too late.
    Down among the trees Paran could now see movement, ragged lines of Pannions climbing towards them. No shield-lines, no turtles – the toll among the Beklites, once they closed to attack, would be fearful.
    Damn, where in the Abyss is Picker and the squad, then?
    On the ramp, the first legion had reformed and were doggedly marching upward once more, three Seerdomin