Midnight Tides by Steven Erikson
The rise Udinaas and Feather Witch stood on was ringed in shadow wraiths, and it was clear to Udinaas that protective sorcery surrounded them. Beyond the rise, out of sight of the facing armies, waited the Edur women, elders and children. Mayen was somewhere among them, still cloistered, still under Uruth Sengar’s direct care.
He looked once more at Feather Witch. ‘Have you seen Mayen?’ he asked.
‘No. But I have heard things…’
‘Such as?’
‘She is not doing well, Udinaas. She hungers. A slave was caught bringing her white nectar. The slave was executed.’
‘Who was it?’
‘Bethra.’
Udinaas recalled her, an old woman who’d lived her entire life in the household of Mayen’s parents.
‘She thought she was being kind,’ Feather Witch continued. Then shrugged. ‘There was no discussion.’
‘I imagine not.’
‘One cannot be denied all white nectar,’ she said. ‘One must be weaned. A gradual diminishment.’
‘I know.’
‘But they are concerned for the child she carries.’
‘Who must be suffering in like manner.’
Feather Witch nodded. ‘Uruth does not heed the advice of the slaves.’ She met his eyes. ‘They have all changed, Udinaas. They are as if… fevered.’
‘A fire behind their eyes, yes.’
‘They seem unaware of it.’
‘Not all of them, Feather Witch.’
‘Who?’
He hesitated, then said, ‘Trull Sengar.’
‘Do not be deceived,’ she said. ‘They are poisoned one and all. The empire to come shall be dark. I have had visions… I see what awaits us, Udinaas.’
‘One doesn’t need visions to know what awaits us.’
She scowled, crossed her arms. Then glared skyward. ‘What sorcery is this?’
‘I don’t know,’ Udinaas replied. ‘New.’
‘Or… old.’
‘What do you sense from it, Feather Witch?’
She shook her head.
‘It belongs to Hannan Mosag,’ Udinaas said after a moment. ‘Have you seen the K’risnan? Those from Fear Sengar’s army are… malformed. Twisted by the magic they now use.’
‘Uruth and the other women cling to the power of Kurald Emurlahn,’ Feather Witch said. ‘They behave as if they are in a war of wills. I don’t think—’
‘Wait,’ Udinaas said, eyes narrowing. ‘It’s beginning.’
****
Beside him, Ahlrada Ahn bared his teeth. ‘Now, Trull Sengar, we stand in witness. And this is what it means to be an Edur warrior today.’
‘We may do more than wait,’ Trull said. We may also die.
The dark dust was spiralling upward in thick columns now, edging forward towards the killing field between the armies.
Trull glanced behind him. Fear stood in the midst of Hiroth warriors. Two K’risnan were before him, one a mangled, hunched survivor from High Fort, the other sent over from Rhulad’s army. Grainy streams of what seemed to be dust were rising from the two sorcerors, and their faces were twisted in silent pain.
The crackle of lightning came from the other side of the killing field, drawing Trull’s attention round once more. Coruscating waves of blinding white fire were building before the arrayed Letherii mages, wrought through with flashes of lightning that arced among them.
Far to the right, Rhulad began moving the mass of his warriors forward, forming a broad wedge formation at the very edge of the killing field. Trull could see his brother, a hazy, blurred figure of gold. Further right was Hannan Mosag and his companies, and beyond them, already moving south alongside the basin’s edge, were thousands of Soletaken Jheck and at least a dozen KenrylPah, each leading a score of their peasant subjects. The route they were taking had been noted, and the flanking Crimson Rampant Brigade was manoeuvring round to face the threat.
There would be nothing subtle in this battle. No deft brilliance displayed by tactical geniuses. The Letherii waited with their backs to the steep hills. The Tiste Edur and their allies would have to come to them. Such were the simple mechanics, seemingly incumbent, and inevitable.
But sorcery spoke with a different voice.
The spiralling pillars of dust towered into the sky, each one keening, the wind shrieking so loud that Edur and Letherii alike began to cower.
The Letherii white fire surged upward, forming its own standing wall of bridled mayhem.
Trull was finding it difficult to breathe. He saw a hapless raven that had made the mistake of flying over the killing field tumble and flutter to the ground, the first casualty of the day. It seemed a pathetic harbinger to his mind. Rather a thousand. Ten thousand ravens, caterwauling through the sky.
The pillars leaned, staggered, lurched forward.
And began toppling.
A rush of wind from behind battered Trull and his fellow warriors, blessedly rich and humid, in the wake of the advancing columns of dust. Faint shouts on all sides, as weapons were readied.
The spiralling pillars were a long time in coming down.
****
Shadow wraiths were suddenly flowing across the ground, a dark, low flood. Udinaas could feel their terror, and the dread compulsion that drove them forward. Fodder. It was too early to launch an attack. They would be beneath the clash of sorcery.
As the columns toppled, the wave of Letherii fire rose to meet them.
Feather Witch hissed. ‘The Empty Hold. The purest sorcery of the Letherii. Errant, I can feel it from here!’
‘Not enough,’ Udinaas muttered.
****
Positioned with the King’s Battalion, Preda Unnutal Hebaz saw the day’s light fade as the shadows of the falling pillars swept over the soldiers. She saw her men and women screaming, but could not hear them, as the roar of the dust thundered ever closer.
The Letherii ritual was suddenly released, the spitting, hissing fire sweeping over the heads of the cowering ranks, the tumbling froth surging upwards to meet the descending pillars.
Rapid concussions, shaking the earth beneath them, tearing fissures up the hillsides, and from Brans Keep a dull groaning. Unnutal spun round even as she was pushed to the ground. She saw, impossibly, the lake beside the keep lift in a mass of muddy water and foam. Saw, as the front wall of the keep bowed inward, pulling away from the flanking towers, dust shooting outward like geysers, and vanishing back into a billowing cloud.
Then the east tower swayed, enough to pitch from the edge the mangonel atop it, taking most of the crew with it. And the mage, Jirrid Attaract. All, plunging earthward.
The west tower leaned back. Its enormous foundation stones pushed outward, and suddenly it vanished into a cloud of its own rubble. The mage Nasson Methuda disappeared with it.
Twisting, Unnutal glared skyward.
To see the white fire shattering, dispersing. To see the pillars plunge through, sweeping the Letherii sorcery aside.
One struck the centre of the Merchants’ Battalion, the dark dust billowing out to the sides and rolling up against the hill.
For a moment, she could see nothing, then the pillar began to reform. Yet not as it had been. Now it was not dust that began spiralling upward, but living soldiers.
Whose flesh blackened like rot even as she watched.
They were screaming as they were lifted skyward, screaming as their flesh peeled away. Screaming—
The shadow above Unnutal Hebaz deepened. She looked up.
And closed her eyes.
****
Whirling in a frenzy, a huge fragment of Letherii sorcery slanted off the side of a collapsing pillar, plunged down and tore a bloody swath through the core of the Merude warriors a thousand paces to Trull’s left.
The warriors died where they stood, in red mist.
The white fire, now stained pink, rolled through the press towards the K’risnan on that side. The young sorceror raised his hands at the last moment, then the magic dev
When it dwindled, wavered, then vanished, the K’risnan was gone, as were those Edur who had been standing too close. The ground was blackened and split.
On the other side of the killing field, columns were rising once more filled with spinning bodies. Higher, the mass of writhing flesh dimming into a muddy hue, then giving way to white bone and polished iron. The pillars rose still higher, devouring more and more soldiers, entire companies torn from the entrenchments and dragged into the twisting maw.
Ahlrada Ahn reached out and pulled Trull close. ‘He must stop this!’
Trull pulled savagely away, shaking his head. ‘This is not Rhulad! This is the Warlock King!’ Hannan Mosag, do you now vie for insanity’s throne?
Around them, the world was transformed into madness. Seething spheres of Letherii magic were thundering down here and there, tearing through ranks of Tiste Edur, devouring shadow wraiths by the hundreds. One landed in the midst of a company of demons and incinerated every one of them, including the Kenryll’ah commanding them.
Another raced across the ground towards the rise to the west of the emperor’s forces. There was nothing to oppose it as it swept up the slope, and struck the encampment of the Edur women, elders and children.
Trull staggered in that direction, but Ahlrada Ahn dragged him back.
Letherii soldiers, nothing now but bones, spun in the sky above the hills. The Merchants’ Battalion. The Riven Brigade. The Snakebelt Battalion. The King’s Battalion. All those lives. Gone.
And the columns had begun moving, each one on an independent path, eastward and westward, plunging into the panicked ranks of more soldiers. Devouring, the hunger unending, the appetite insatiable.
War? This is not war—
‘We’re moving forward!’
Trull stared at Ahlrada Ahn.
The warrior shook him. ‘Forward, Trull Sengar!’
****
Udinaas watched the deadly sorcery cut through the shadow wraiths, then roll towards the rise where he stood with Feather Witch. There was nowhere to run. No time. It was perfect—
A cold wind swept over him from behind, an exhalation of shadows. Rushing forward, colliding with the Letherii magic twenty paces downslope. Entwining, the shadows closing like a net, trapping the wild fire. Then shadow and flame vanished.
Udinaas turned.
Uruth and four other Edur women were standing in a line fifteen paces back. As he stared, two of the women toppled, and Udinaas could see that they were dead, the blood boiled in their veins. Uruth staggered, then slowly sank to her knees.
All right, not so perfect.
He faced the battlefield once more. The emperor was leading his warriors across the blistered, lifeless basin. The enemy positions on the hillsides opposite looked virtually empty. To either side, however, the slave could see fighting. Or, rather, slaughter. Where the pillars had yet to stalk, Letherii lines had broken of their own accord, and soldiers were fleeing, even as Soletaken Jheck dragged them to the ground, as demons ran them down, and squads of Edur pursued with frenzied determination. To the east, the dry river gully had been overrun. To the west, the Crimson Rampant Brigade was routed.
Hannan Mosag’s terrible sorcery continued to rage, and Udinaas began to suspect that it was, like the Letherii magic, out of control. Pillars were spawning smaller kin. For lack of flesh, they began tearing up the ground, earth and stones spinning ever higher. Two bone-shot columns clashed near what was left of Brans Lake, and seemed to lock in mutual obliteration that sent thunderous concussions that visibly battered the hills beyond. Then they tore each other apart.
The bases of many of the pillars broke contact with the ground, and this triggered an upward plunge that ended in their dissolution into white and grey clouds.
All at once, even as ragged companies of Tiste Edur crossed the killing field, bones and armour began raining down. Limbs, polished weapons, helms, skulls, plummeting in murderous sweeps across the basin. Warriors died beneath the ghastly hail. There was panic, figures running.
Sixty paces ahead and below, along the very edge of the slope, walked Hull Beddict. He held a sword in one hand. He looked dazed.
A helm-wrapped skull, minus the lower jaw, thumped and bounded across Hull’s path, but it seemed he did not notice, as he stumbled on.
Udinaas turned to Feather Witch. ‘For Errant’s sake,’ he snapped, ‘see what you can do for Uruth and the others!’
She started, eyes wide.
‘They just saved our lives, Feather Witch.’ He added nothing more, and left her there, making his way down to Hull Beddict.
Bones were still falling, the smaller pieces – fingers, rib fragments. Teeth rained down thirty paces ahead, covering the ground like hailstones, a sudden downpour, ending as quickly as it had begun.
Udinaas moved closer to Hull Beddict.
‘Go no farther, Hull!’ he shouted.
The man halted, slowly turned, his face slack with shock. ‘Udinaas? Is that you? Udinaas?’
The slave reached him, took his arm. ‘Come. This is done, Hull Beddict. A sixth of a bell, no more than that. The battle is over.’
‘Battle?’
‘Slaughter, then. A squalid investment, wouldn’t you say? Training all those soldiers. Those warriors. All that armour. Weapons. I think those days are over, don’t you?’ He was guiding the man back up the slope. ‘Tens of thousands of dead Letherii; no point in even burying what’s left of them. Two, maybe three thousand dead Tiste Edur. Neither had the chance to even so much as lift their weapons. How many shadow wraiths obliterated? Fifty, sixty thousand?’
‘We must… stop. There is nothing…’
‘No stopping now, Hull. Onward, to Letheras, like a rushing river. There will be rearguards to cut down. Gates to shatter. Streets and buildings to fight over. And then, the palace. And the king. His guard – they’ll not lay down their weapons. Even if the king commands it. They serve the kingdom, after all, not Ezgara Diskanar. Letheras, Hull Beddict, will be ugly. Not ugly the way of today, here, but in some ways worse, I would—’
‘Stop, slave. Stop talking, else I kill you.’
‘That threat does not bother me much, Hull Beddict.’
They reached the rise. Feather Witch and a half-dozen other slaves were among the Edur women, now. Uruth was lying prone, suffering convulsions of some sort. A third woman had died.
‘What’s wrong, Hull Beddict?’ Udinaas asked, releasing the man’s arm. ‘No chance to lead a charge against your foes? Those press-ganged Indebteds and the desperate fools who’d found dignity in a uniform. The hated enemy.’
Hull Beddict turned away. ‘I must find the emperor. I must explain…’
Udinaas let the man go. The rain of bones had ceased, finally, and now only dust commanded the sky. The ruined keep was burning, heaving black smoke that would be visible from the walls of Letheras.
The slave strode over to Feather Witch. ‘Will Uruth live?’
She looked up, her eyes strangely flat. ‘I think so.’
‘That was Kurald Emurlahn, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
Udinaas turned away. He studied the basin, the masses of Edur wandering here and there among the burnt bodies of their kin, amongst the bright white bones and shining iron. A bloodless battlefield. Soletaken Jheck ranged the distant hillsides, hunting stragglers, but those who had not already fled were corpses or mere remnants of corpses. A few score wraiths drifted here and there.
He saw Rhulad, surrounded by warriors, marching back across the field. Towards Hannan Mosag’s position. The slave set off to intercept the emperor. Words were about to be exchanged, and Udinaas wanted to hear them.
****
Trull and his company stood at the edge of the dry river gully. The bodies of soldiers littered the other side all the way to the ridge of hills paralleling the course. Fifteen hundred paces to their left, the lead elements of Tomad and Binadas Sengar’s army were approaching. There were signs that they h
‘They have captured the Artisan Battalion’s standard,’ Ahlrada Ahn said, pointing.
Trull looked back to the field east of the gully. ‘Who was here, then?’
‘Whitefinder and Riven, I think. They broke when they witnessed the fate of Merchants’ and the King’s, and the pillars began moving towards them.’
Feeling sick, Trull looked away – but there was no direction available to ease him. On all sides, the slowly settling ashes of madness.
‘The Tiste Edur,’ said Ahlrada Ahn, ‘have won themselves an empire.’
His words were heard by Sergeant Canarth, who strode up to them. ‘You deny half your blood, Ahlrada? Do you find this victory bitter? I see now why you stand at Trull Sengar’s side. I see now – we all see’ – he added with a gesture encompassing the warriors behind him – ‘why you so defend Trull, why you refuse to side with us.’ Canarth’s hard eyes fixed on Trull. ‘Oh yes, Trull Sengar, your friend here possesses the blood of the Betrayers. No doubt that is why the two of you are such close friends.’
Trull unslung the spear at his back. ‘I am tired of you, Canarth. Ready your weapon.’
The warrior’s eyes narrowed, then he grinned, reaching for his own spear. ‘I have seen you fight, Trull. I know your weaknesses.’
‘Clear a space,’ Trull said, and the others moved back, forming a ring.
Ahlrada Ahn hesitated. ‘Do not do this. Trull – Canarth, retract your accusations. They are unfounded. It is forbidden to provoke your commander—’
‘Enough,’ Canarth snapped. ‘I will kill you next, Betrayer.’
Trull assumed a standard stance, then settled his weight and waited.
Canarth shifted his grip back a hand’s width, then probed out, the iron tip at throat-level.
Ignoring it for the moment, Trull slid his hands further apart along the shaft of his spear. Then he made contact, wood against wood, and held it as he stepped in. Canarth disengaged by bringing the iron point down and under, perfectly executed, but Trull was already inside, forcing Canarth to pull his weapon back, even as the sergeant swung the butt-end upward to block an expected up-sweep – which did not come. Instead, Trull lifted his spear high and horizontal, and drove it forward to crack against Canarth’s forehead.