A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 3

is naught but your bones. Deliver
your message, dear wood, to our eternally blind eyes.
    Greyfrog had dropped back and now leapt ten paces to
Cutter's right. It seemed even the demon had reached its
stomach's limit of flies, for its broad mouth was shut, the
second lids of its eyes, milky white, closed until the barest
slits were visible. And the huge creature was very nearly
black with those crawling insects.
    As was Cutter's youthful back before him. As was the
horse the Daru rode. And, to all sides, the ground seethed,
glittering and rabid with motion.
    So many flies.
    So many ...
    'Something to show you, now ...'
    Like a savage beast suddenly awakened, Heboric
straightened in his saddle—
     
    Scillara's mount cantered a stride behind the Destriant's, a
little to the old man's left, whilst in her wake rode Felisin.
She cursed in growing alarm as the flies gathered round the
riders like midnight, devouring all light, the buzzing
cadence seeming to whisper words that crawled into her
mind on ten thousand legs. She fought back a scream—
    As her horse shrieked in mortal pain, dust swirling and
spinning beneath it, dust rising and finding shape.
    A terrible, wet, grating sound, then something long and
sharp punched up between her mount's shoulder-blades,
blood gouting thick and bright from the wound. The horse
staggered, forelegs buckling, then collapsed, the motion
flinging Scillara from the saddle—
    She found herself rolling on a carpet of crushed insects,
the hoofs of Heboric's horse pounding down around her
as the creature shrilled in agony, pitching to the left –
something snarling, a barbed flash of skin, feline and fluid,
leaping from the dying horse's back—
    And figures, emerging as if from nowhere amidst
spinning dust, blades of flint flashing – a bestial scream –
blood slapping the ground beside her in a thick sheet,
instantly blackened by flies – the blades chopping, cutting,
slashing into flesh – a piercing shriek, rising in a conflagration
of pain and rage – something thudded against her
as Scillara sought to rise on her hands and knees, and she
looked over. An arm, tattooed in a tiger-stripe pattern,
sliced clean midway between elbow and shoulder, the
hand, a flash of fitful, dying green beneath swarming flies.
    She staggered upright, stabbing pain in her belly,
choking as insects crowded into her mouth with her involuntary
gasp.
    A figure stepped near her, long stone sword dripping,
desiccated skull-face swinging in her direction, and that
sword casually reached out, slid like fire into Scillara's
chest, ragged edge scoring above her top rib, beneath
the clavicle, then punching out her back, just above the
scapula.
    Scillara sagged, felt herself sliding from that weapon as
she fell down onto her back.
    The apparition vanished within the cloud of flies once
more.
    She could hear nothing but buzzing, could see nothing but a
    chaotic, glittering clump swelling above the wound in her chest, through which
    blood leaked – as if the flies had become a fist, squeezing her heart. Squeezing ...
     
    Cutter had had no time to react. The bite of sudden sand
and dust, then his horse's head was simply gone, ropes of
blood skirling down as if pursuing its flight. Down beneath
the front hoofs, that stumbled, then gave way as the decapitated
beast collapsed.
    Cutter managed to roll free, gaining his feet within a
maelstrom of flies.
    Someone loomed up beside him and he spun, one knife
free and slashing across in an effort to block a broad, hookbladed
scimitar of rippled flint. The weapons collided, and
that sword swept through Cutter's knife, the strength
behind the blow unstoppable—
    He watched it tear into his belly, watched it rip its way
free, and then his bowels tumbled into view.
    Reaching down to catch them with both hands, Cutter
sank as all life left his legs. He stared down at the flopping
mess he held, disbelieving, then landed on one side, curling
round the terrible, horrifying damage done to him.
    He heard nothing. Nothing but his own breathing, and
the cavorting flies, now closing in as if they had known all
along that this was going to happen.
     
    The attacker had risen from the very dust, on the right side
of Greyfrog. Savage agony as a huge chalcedony longsword
cut through the demon's forelimb, severing it clean in a
gush of green blood. A second cut sliced through the back
leg on the same side, and the demon struck the ground,
kicking helplessly with its remaining