A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 2

blood racing like fire in his muscles. He wanted this. Yes, he wanted this very thing.
    Gamet unsheathed his sword, the sound an echoing rasp in the chill air.
    His helmed companion laughed. 'Are you with us, soldier?'
    'I am, friend.'
    They reached the base of the cobbled ramp, slowing to firm up their formation. A broad wedge that then began assailing the slope, hoofs striking sparks off the stones.
    The Dogslayers had yet to sound an alarm.
    Fools. They've slept through it all. Or perhaps sorcery has deadened the sounds of our preparation. Ah, yes. Nil and Nether. They are still there , on the ridge the other side of the basin.
    The company's standard bearer was just a few horses to Gamet's left. He squinted up at the banner, wondered that he had never seen it before. There was something of the Khundryl in its design, torn and frayed though it was. A clan of the Burned Tears, then – which made sense given the archaic armour his comrades were wearing. Archaic and half rotting, in fact. Too long stored in chests – moths and other vermin have assailed it, but the bronze looks sound enough, if tarnished and pitted. A word to the commanders later, I think ...
    Cool, gauging thoughts, even as his proud horse
thundered alongside the others. Gamet glared upward, and saw the crest directly before them. He lifted high his longsword and loosed a savage scream.
    The wedge poured over the crest, swept out into the unaware ranks of Dogslayers, still huddled down in their trenches.
    Screams on all sides, strangely muted, almost faint. Sounds of battle, yet they seemed a league distant, as if carried on the wind. Gamet swung his sword, his eyes meeting those of Dogslayers, seeing the horror writ there. Watching mouths open to shriek, yet hardly any sound came forth, as if the sands were swallowing everything, absorbing sound as eagerly as they did blood and bile.
    Masses surged over the trenches, blackened swords swinging and chopping down. The ramp to the east had been overrun by the Wickans. Gamet saw the waving standards and grinned. Crow. Foolish Dog. Weasel.
    Out of the impenetrably black sky descended butterflies, in swarms, to flit above the carnage in the trenches.
    On the ramp to the west there was the flash of Moranth munitions, sending grim reverberations through the earth, and Gamet could watch the slaughter over there, a scene panoramic and dulled, as if he was looking upon a mural – a painting where ancient armies warred in eternal battle.
    They had come for the Dogslayers. For the butcherers of unarmed Malazans, soldier and civilian, the stubborn and the fleeing, the desperate and the helpless. The Dogslayers, who had given their souls to betrayal.
    The fight raged on, but it was overwhelmingly one-sided. The enemy seemed strangely incapable of mustering any kind of defence. They simply died in their trenches, or seeking to retreat they were run down after but a few strides. Skewered by lances, javelins. Trampled beneath chopping hoofs.
    Gamet understood their horror, saw with a certain satisfaction the terror in their faces as he and his comrades delivered death.
    He could hear the battle song now, rising and falling like waves on a pebbled shore, yet building towards a climax yet to come – yet to come, but soon. Soon. Yes, we've needed a song. We've waited a long time for such a song. To honour our deeds, our struggles. Our lives and our deaths. We've needed our own voice, so that our spirits could march, march ever onward.
    To battle.
    To war.
    Manning these walls of crumbled brick and sand. Defending the bone-dry harbours and the dead cities that once blazed with ancient dreams, that once flickered life's reflection on the warm, shallow sea.
    Even memories need to be defended.
    Even memories.
    He fought on, side by side with his dark warrior companions – and so grew to love them, these stalwart comrades, and when at last the dragon-helmed horse warrior rode up and reined in before him, Gamet whirled his sword in greeting.
    The rider laughed once again. Reached up a blood-spattered, gauntleted hand, and raised the visor – to reveal the face of a dark-skinned woman, her eyes a stunning blue within a web of desert lines.
    'There are more!' Gamet shouted – though even to his own ears his voice sounded far away. 'More enemies! We must ride!'
    Her teeth flashed white as she laughed again. 'Not the tribes, my friend! They are kin. This battle is done – others will shed blood come the morrow. We march