The two rooks swept down, converged on a figure sitting on a bucking roan horse. Waves of magic collided with a midnight flash, the concussion a thunder that reached up to where Buke circled.
The sparrowhawk's beak opened, loosing a piercing cry. The rooks had peeled away. Sorcery hammered them, battered them as they flapped in hasty retreat.
The figure on the stamping horse was untouched. Surrounded by heaps of bodies, into which fellow Tenescowri now plunged. To feed.
Buke screamed another triumphant cry, dipped his wings, plummeted earthward.
He reached the estate's courtyard well ahead of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, spiralling, slowing, wings buffeting the air. To hover the briefest of moments, before sembling, returning to his human form.
Emancipor Reese was nowhere to be seen. The undead Urdomen still stood in the positions where they had first arisen.
Feeling heavy and awkward in his body, Buke turned to study them. 'Six of you to the gate — you' — he pointed — 'and the ones directly behind you. And you, to the northwest tower.' He continued directing the silent warriors, placing them as Bauchelain had suggested. As he barked the last order, twin shadows tracked weaving paths across the cobbles. The rooks landed in the courtyard. Their feathers were in tatters. Smoke rose from one of them.
Buke watched the sembling, smiled at seeing, first Korbal Broach — his armour in shreds, rank tendrils of smoke wreathed around him — then Bauchelain, his pale face bruised along one side of his long jaw, blood crusting his moustache and staining his silver beard.
Korbal Broach reached up to the collar of his cloak, his pudgy, soft hands trembling, fumbling at the clasp. The black leather fell to the ground. He began stamping on it to kill the last of its smouldering patches.
Brushing dust from his arms, Bauchelain glanced over at Buke. 'Patient of you, to await our return.'
Wiping the smile from his lips, Buke shrugged. 'You didn't get him. What happened?'
'It seems,' the necromancer muttered, 'we must needs refine our tactics.'
The instinct of self-preservation vanished, then, as Buke softly laughed.
Bauchelain froze. One eyebrow arched. Then he sighed. 'Yes, well. Good day to you, too, Buke.'
Buke watched him head inside.
Korbal Broach continued stomping on his cloak long after the smouldering patches had been extinguished.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
In my dreams I come face to face
with myriad reflections of myself,
all unknown and passing strange.
They speak unending
in languages not my own
and walk with companions
I have never met, in places
my steps have never gone.
In my dreams I walk worlds
where forests crowd my knees
and half the sky is walled ice.
Dun herds flow like mud,
vast floods tusked and horned
surging over the plain,
and lo, they are my memories,
the migrations of my soul.
In the Time before Night
D'arayans of the Rhivi
Whiskeyjack rose in the saddle as his horse leapt over the spiny ridge of outcroppings cresting the hill. Hooves thumped as the creature resumed its gallop, crossing the mesa's flat top, then slowing as the Malazan tautened the reins and settled back in the saddle. At a diminishing canter, he approached the summit's far side, then drew up at its edge.
A rumpled, boulder-strewn slope led down into a broad, dry riverbed. At its base two 2nd Army scouts sat on their horses, backs to Whiskeyjack. Before them, a dozen Rhivi were moving on foot through what seemed to be a field of bones.
Huge bones.
Clicking his mount into motion, Whiskeyjack slowly worked it down onto the ancient slide. His eyes held on the scatter of bones. Massive iron blades glinted there, as well as crumpled, oddly shaped armour and helmets. He saw long, reptilian jaws, rows of jagged teeth. Clinging to some of the shattered skeletons, the remnants of grey skin.
Clearing the scree, Whiskeyjack rode up to the nearest scout.
The man saluted. 'Sir. The Rhivi are jabbering away — can't quite follow what they're talking about. Looks to have been about ten of the demons. Whatever tore into them was nasty. Might be the Rhivi have gleaned more, since they're crawling around among the corpses.'
Nodding, Whiskeyjack dismounted. 'Keep an eye out,' he said, though he knew the scouts were doing just that, but feeling the need to say something. The killing field exuded an air of dread, old yet new, and — even more alarming — it held the peculiar tension that immediately followed a battle. Thick silence, swirling as if not yet settled by the sounds of violence, as if somehow still trembling, still shivering.