A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 3

and
unconscious soldiers being helped back to the healers in
camp, watching fresh infantry filing forward, through the
secured areas, and ahead to the battle that was the
closing of the Malazan fist around Leoman and his
followers, around the last living vestiges of the rebellion
itself.
    He saw that Red Blade officer of Tene Baralta's, Lostara
Yil, leading three squads towards the distant sounds of
fighting. And Tene himself stood nearby, speaking with
Captain Kindly.
    Keneb had sent Faradan Sort ahead, to make contact
with the advance squads. There was to be a second
rendezvous, near the palace itself, and hopefully everyone
was still following the battle plan.
    Shouts, then cries of alarm – from behind him. From outside
the breach! Fist Keneb spun round, and saw a wall of
flame rising in the killing field beyond – where the narrow,
deep trench had been dug by Leoman's warriors. Buried
urns filled with olive oil began exploding from the trench,
spraying burning liquid everywhere. Keneb saw the line of
retreating wounded scatter apart near the trench, figures
aflame. Shrieks, the roar of fire—
    His horrified gaze caught motion to his right, up on the
nearest building's rooftop, where it faced onto the rubble of
the breach. A figure, lantern in one hand, flaring torch in the
other – bedecked in web-slung flasks, surrounded by
amphorae, at the very edge of the roof, arms outstretched,
kicking over the tall clay jars – ropes affixed between them
and his ankles, the weight then plunging the figure over the
side.
    Down into the rubble of the breach.
    He struck, vanished from view, then a sudden flaring of
flames, rushing out in sheets—
    And Keneb saw, upon other rooftops, lining the city's
walls, more figures – flinging themselves down. Down, then
the glow of raging fire, rising up, encircling – from the
bastions, more flames, billowing out, spreading wild like a
flood unleashed.
    Heat rushed upon Keneb, driving him back a step. Oil
from shattered casks, beneath the wreckage of fallen wall
and collapsed buildings, suddenly caught flame. The breach
was closing, demonic fire lunging into sight.
    Keneb looked about, horror rising within him, and saw
the half-dozen signallers of his staff huddled near a fragment
of rubble. Bellowing, he ran to them. 'Sound the
recall! Damn you, soldiers, sound the recall!'
     
    Northwest of Y'Ghatan, Temul and a company of Wickans
rode up the slope to the Lothal road. They had seen no-one.
Not a single soul fleeing the city. The Fourteenth's
horse-warriors had fully encircled it. Wickans, Seti, Burned
Tears. There would be no escape.
    Temul had been pleased, hearing that the Adjunct's
thinking had followed identical tracks with his own. A sudden
strike, hard as a knife pushed into a chest, straight into
the heart of this cursed rebellion. They had heard the
munitions go off – loud, louder than expected, and had
seen the flame-shot black clouds billowing upward, along
with most of Y'Ghatan's south wall.
    Reining in on the road, seeing beneath them the signs of
the massive exodus that had clogged this route only days
earlier.
    A flaring of firelight, distant rumbling, as of thunder, and
the horse-warriors turned as one to face the city. Where
walls of flame rose behind the stone walls, from the
bastions, and the sealed gates, then, building after building
within, more flames, and more.
    Temul stared, his mind battered by what he was seeing,
what he now understood.
    A third of the Fourteenth Army was in that city by now.
A third.
    And they were already as good as dead.
     
    Fist Blistig stood beside the Adjunct on the road. He felt
sick inside, the feeling rising up from a place and a time he
had believed left behind him. Standing on the walls of
Aren, watching the slaughter of Coltaine's army. Hopeless,
helpless—
    'Fist,' the Adjunct snapped, 'get more soldiers filling in
that trench.'
    He started, then half-turned and gestured towards one of
his aides – the woman had heard the command, for she
nodded and hurried off. Douse the trench, aye. But ...
what's the point? The breach had found a new wall, this one
of flames. And more had risen all round the city, beginning
just within the tiered walls, buildings bursting, voicing
terrible roars as fiery oil exploded out, flinging mud-bricks
that were themselves deadly, burning missiles. And now,
further in, at junctures and along the wider streets, more
buildings were igniting. One, just beyond the palace, had
moments earlier