The Crippled God

gulps of breath were fading, the groans falling off as wounds were bound. Few soldiers had the strength to move, and he knew that they were now settled as he was, here against this stone. Too tired to move.
    From the slope on all sides, the low cries and moans of wounded Kolansii lifted up, soft and forlorn, abandoned. The Malazans had killed hundreds, had wounded even more, and still the attackers would not relent, as if this hill had become the lone island in a world of rising seas.
    But it’s not that .
    It’s just the place we chose. To do what’s right .
    But then, maybe that alone gives reason to take us down, to destroy us .
    Hedge was silent beside him, but not asleep – if he had been, his snores would have driven them all from this place, the Crippled God included, chains be damned. And from the army still surrounding them, down on the lower ground, nothing more than a sullen mutter of sound – soldiers resting, checking weapons and armour. Readying for the next assault.
    The last assault .
    Twenty-odd soldiers cannot stop an army .
    Even these soldiers .
    Someone coughed nearby, from some huddle of stones, and then spoke. ‘So, who are we fighting for again?’
    Fiddler could not place the voice.
    Nor the one that replied, ‘Everyone.’
    A long pause, and then, ‘No wonder we’re losing.’
    Six, a dozen heartbeats, before someone snorted. A rumbling laugh followed, and then someone else burst out in a howl of mirth – and all at once, from the dark places among the rocks of this barrow, laughter burgeoned, rolled round, bounced and echoed.
    Fiddler felt his mouth cracking wide in a grin, and then he barked a laugh, and then another. And then he simply could not stop, pain clenching his side. Beside him, Hedge was suddenly hysterical, twisting over and curling up as the laughter poured out of him.
    Tears now in Fiddler’s eyes – wiping them frantically – but the laughter went on.
    And on.

    Smiles looked over at the others in her squad, saw them doubling over, saw faces flushed and tears streaming down. Bottle. Koryk. Even Tarr. And Smiles … smiled.
    When her squad-mates saw that, they convulsed as if gut-stabbed.
    Lying jammed in a crack between two stones a third of the way down the slope, half buried beneath Kolansii corpses, and feeling the blood draining away from the deep, mortal wounds in his chest, Cuttle heard that laughter.
    And in his mind he went back, and back. Childhood. The battles they fought, the towering redoubts they defended, the sunny days of dust and sticks for swords and running this way and that, where time was nothing but a world without horizons – and the days never closed, and every stone felt perfect in the palm of the hand, and when a bruise arrived, or a cut opened red, why he need only run to his ma or da, and they would take his shock and indignation and make it all seem less important – and then that disturbance would be gone, drifting into the time of before, and ahead there was only the sun and the brightness of never growing up.
    To the stones and sweat and blood here in his last resting place, Cuttle smiled, and then he whispered to them in his mind, You should have seen our last stands. They were something .
    They were something .
    Darkness, and then brightness – brightness like a summer day without end. He went there, without a single look back.
    Lying beneath the weight of the chains, the Crippled God, who had been listening, now heard. Long-forgotten, half-disbelieved emotions rose up through him, ferocious and bright. He drew a sharp breath, feeling his throat tighten. I will remember this. I will set out scrolls and burn upon them the names of these Fallen. I will make of this work a holy tome, and no other shall be needed .
    Hear them! They are humanity unfurled, laid out for all to see – if one would dare look!
    There shall be a Book and it shall be written by my hand. Wheel and seek the faces of a thousand gods! None can do what I can do! Not one can give voice to this holy creation!
    But this is not bravado. For this, my Book of the Fallen, the only god worthy of its telling is the crippled one. The broken one. And has it not always been thus?
    I never hid my hurts .
    I never disguised my dreams .
    And I never lost my way .
    And only the fallen can rise again .
    He listened to the laughter, and suddenly the weight of those chains was as nothing. Nothing .
    ‘They have resurr—’ Brother Grave stopped. He turned, faced the dark