A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

seething masses of people. Even as they
carved through like a ship cutting crazed seas, ragged,
rotting arms reached up to the sides. Some caught hold
only to have their arms torn from their sockets. Others
were pulled off their feet, and these ones started climbing,
seeking better purchase.
    Upon which the primary function of the shareholders
was made apparent. Sweetest Sufferance, the short, plump
woman with the bright smile, was now snarling, wailing
with a hatchet into an outreaching arm. Bones snapped
like sticks and she shouted as she kicked into a leering
desiccated face, hard enough to punch the head from the
shoulders.
    Damned corpses – they were riding through a sea of
animated corpses, and it seemed that virtually every one of
them wanted to book passage.
    A large brutish shape reared up beside Gruntle.
Barghast, hairy as an ape, filed blackened teeth revealed
in a delighted grin.
    Releasing one hand from the brass rung, Gruntle tugged
loose one of his cutlasses, slashed the heavy blade into the
corpse's face. It reeled away, the bottom half of the grin
suddenly gone. Twisting further round, Gruntle kicked the
Barghast in the chest. The apparition fell back. A moment
later someone else appeared, narrow-shouldered, the top
of its head an elongated pate with a nest of mousy hair
perched on the crown, a wizened face beneath it.
    Gruntle kicked again.
    The carriage pitched wildly as the huge wheels rolled
over something big. Gruntle felt himself swinging out
over the roof edge and he shouted in pain as his hand
was wrenched where it gripped a rung. Clawed fingers
scrabbled against his thighs and he kicked in growing
panic. His heel struck something that didn't yield and
he used that purchase to launch himself back on to the
roof.
    On the opposite side, three dead men were now mauling
Sweetest Sufferance, each one seemingly intent on some
kind of rape. She twisted and writhed beneath them, chopping
with her hatchets, biting at their withered hands and
head-butting the ones that tried for a kiss. Reccanto Ilk
then joined the fray, using a strange saw-toothed knife as
he attacked various joints – shoulders, knees, elbows – and
tossing the severed limbs over the side as he went.
    Gruntle lifted himself on to his knees and glared out
across the landscape. The masses of dead, he realized,
were all moving in one direction, whilst the carriage cut
obliquely into their path – and as the resistance before
them built, figures converging like blood to a wound,
forward momentum began inexorably to slow, the horses
stamping high as they clambered over ever more undead.
    Someone was shouting near the rear of the carriage, and
Gruntle turned to see the woman named Faint leaning
down over the side, yelling through the shuttered window.
    Another heavy blow buffeted the carriage, and something
demonic roared. Claws tore free a chunk of wood.
    'Get us out of here!'
    Gruntle could not agree more, as the demon suddenly
loomed into view, reptilian arms reaching for him.
    Snarling, he leapt to his feet, both weapons now in
hand.
    An elongated, fanged face lunged at him, hissing.
    Gruntle roared back – a deafening sound – cutlasses
lashing out. Edges slammed into thick hide, sliced deep
into lifeless flesh, down to the bones of the demon's long
neck.
    He saw something like surprise flicker in the creature's
pitted eyes, and then the head and half of the neck fell
away.
    Two more savage chops sent its forearms spinning.
    The body plunged back, and even as it did so smaller
corpses were scrambling on to it, as if climbing a ladder.
    He now heard a strange sound ahead, rhythmic, like
the clashing of weapons against shield rims. But the sound
was too loud for that, too overwhelming, unless – Gruntle
straightened and faced forward.
    An army indeed. Dead soldiers, moving in ranks, in
squares and wedges, marching along with all the rest – and
in numbers unimaginable. He stared, struggling to comprehend
the vastness of the force. As far as he could see before
them . . . Gods below, all of the dead, on the march – but
where? To what war?
    The scene suddenly blurred, dispersed in fragments. The
carriage seemed to slump under him. Darkness swept in, a
smell of the sea, the thrash of waves, sand sliding beneath
the wheels. The carriage side nearest him lurched into the
bole of a palm tree, sending down a rain of cusser-sized nuts
that pounded along the roof before bounding away. The
horses stumbled, slowing their wild plunge,