The Crippled God

in a flash of light. The sound of the impact threatened to crush her. Stunned, she staggered away from the blazing gate – saw Commander Erekala lying not ten paces away, in the wreckage of the toppled platform. Vague motions from his body drew her to him.
    ‘Brother Erekala!’ she cried.
    His eyes were open, but the whites were crazed with blood. His mouth opened and closed like that of a beached fish, but she could hear no breaths going in or out.
    Just as she reached his side she heard a desperate gasp from the man, and all at once he was on his side, coughing.
    ‘Commander!’
    But he did not hear her – she could see that. She looked up – entire companies of Perish had been thrown to the ground by multiple impacts.
    This is not war .
    This is slaughter .
    And in her skull, she thought she could hear the howling of her gods. A sound of impotent rage and blind defiance. A sound that understood nothing.
    A gloved hand grasped Stern by the shoulder and spun him round. Snarling, he reached for his sword, and then stared. ‘Fist!’
    ‘Cease the bombardment immediately!’
    The corporal looked up and down the rough line of redbolt stations. The crates positioned behind them had each been cracked, and bundlesof fleece-packed padding lay torn and scattered between the crates and the launch sites. He did a quick count of the nearest ones. ‘Still got four or five salvos left, sir – right down the line!’
    ‘I said stop! The High Fist does not want the Perish engaged!’
    Stern blinked. ‘But we ain’t engaging the Perish!’
    ‘Have you any idea how far those bolts are going?’
    The corporal turned to spit grit from his mouth – there was another taste there, bitter, new to his tongue. ‘We’re softening up that wall, that’s all. Not one’s gone beyond it, Fist. On my word!’
    ‘Pass it down, cease your fire !’
    ‘Aye, Fist! – oh, Fist – did you see that Fiddling Hedge Drum? Gods below – in all my days left I’ll never forget—’
    He stopped when he saw the black rage in her face. ‘We wanted them broken , sapper – not all dead!’
    Stern scowled. ‘Sorry, Fist, but nobody told us that.’
    For a moment he thought she might attack him. Instead, off she stormed. Stern watched her head laterally across the slope to where regulars and heavies were drawing up, struggling to stay on what was left of the cobbled road. Shit, we’re going to have to rebuild that, aren’t we? But isn’t that the secret truth of everything in the military? Order us to blow it up, and then order us to rebuild the fucker. Ah, the sapper’s lot …
    Manx crunched down at his side, his face flash-burned and smeared with greasy smoke. ‘Why’re we holding up? Got plenty left!’
    ‘Fist’s orders, Manx. Listen, pass word along – repack the crates, use all that extra padding.’ He straightened, arched out the ache in his lower back, and then looked round. Enormous holes in the earth, huge craters steaming, heaps of shattered bodies, dust and dirt and blood still raining down through the choking smoke. He sighed. ‘Looks like our work here is done.’
    Staylock helped Erekala to his feet. There was a storm in his head, a droning rush as if the heavens had opened to a deluge, and beneath that pounded the labouring drum of his own heart. Looking up, squinting through the pall of smoke and dust, he saw his soldiers swarming like wasps – officers were shouting, straining to assert some order in the chaos. ‘What – what is happening?’ He heard his own question as the faintest of whispers.
    Staylock replied from what seemed a thousand paces away. ‘There are Malazans on the other side of the pass, Commander – at least four companies.’
    ‘But that’s impossible.’
    ‘They simply appeared, sir. Now we are trapped between two armies!’
    Erekala shook his head, struggling to clear his thoughts. This cannot be. We were told there was no other way through the mountains . ‘Form up into hollow squares, the wounded in the centre.’ Staggering, he set out towards the southern stretch of the pass. Behind him, Staylock was shouting orders.
    Pushing through his soldiers – appalled at their shattered discipline – Erekala moved through the camp, still half dazed, until he was beyond the last of the Perish tents. The smoke and dust flowed past him, carrying with it the stench of burnt meat and scorched cloth and leather. He thought back to what he had seen down among the trenches and shivered. What