At that instant, the world exploded white.
Four lances speeding Hellian’s way came close to sobering her up. Crouching, she lifted her flimsy, undersized shield, only to have it hammered from her hand in a splintering concussion that sent it spinning, the snapped foreshafts of two lances buried deep in the soaked, heavy, wonderful-smelling wood. Then her helm was torn from her head with a deafening clang, even as she was struck a glancing blow on her right shoulder that ripped away the leather shingles of her armour. That impact turned her right round so that she faced up the street, and, upon seeing the clay bottle she had thrown away moments earlier, she dived towards it.
Better to die with one last mouthful-
The air above her whistled as she sailed through the air and she saw maybe a dozen lances flit overhead.
She slammed chest-first on the dusty cobbles, all breath punched from her lungs and stared, bug-eyed, as the bottle leapt of its own accord into the air. Then she was lifted by her feet and flipped straight over to thump hard on her back, and above her the blue sky was suddenly grey with dust and gravel, stone chips, red bits, all raining down.
She could not hear a thing, and that first desperate breath was so thick with dust that she convulsed in a fit of coughing. Twisting onto her side, she saw Urb maybe six paces away. The idiot had got himself skewered and looked even more stunned than usual. His face was white with dust except the blood on his lips from a tooth gash, and he was staring dumbly down the street to where all the Edur were-might be they were charging them now so she’d better find her sword-
She’d just sat up when a hand slapped her shoulder and she glared up at an unfamiliar face-a Kanese woman frowning intently at her. With a voice that seemed far away she said, ‘Still with us, Sergeant? You shouldn’t ever be that close to a cusser, you know.’
And then she was gone.
Hellian blinked. She squinted down the street and saw an enormous crater where the Edur had been. And body parts, and drifting dust and smoke.
And four more marines, two of them Dal Honese, loosing quarrels into a side street then scattering as one of them threw a sharper in the same direction.
Hellian crawled over to Urb.
He’d managed to pull the lance Out of his arm which had probably hurt, and there was plenty of blood now, pooling beneath him. His eyes had the look of a butchered cow though maybe not as dead as that but getting there.
Another marine arrived, another stranger. Black-haired, pale skin. He knelt down beside Urb.
‘You,’ Hellian said.
The man glanced over. ‘None of your wounds look to kill you, Sergeant. But your friend here is going fast, so let me do my work.’
‘What squad, damn you?’
‘Tenth. Third Company.’
A healer. Well, good. Fix Urb right up so she could kill him. ‘You’re Nathii, aren’t you?’
‘Sharp woman,’ he muttered as he began weaving magic over the huge torn hole in Urb’s upper arm. ‘Probably even sharper when you’re sober.’
‘Never count on that, Cutter.’
‘I’m not really a cutter, Sergeant. I’m a combat mage, but we can’t really be picky about those things any more, can we? I’m Mulvan Dreader.’
‘Hellian. Eighth Squad, the Fourth.’
He shot her a sudden look. ‘Really. You one of the ones crawled out under Y’Ghatan?’
‘Yeah. Urb’s gonna live?’
The Nathii nodded. ‘Be on a stretcher for a while, though. All the lost blood.’ He straightened and looked round. ‘Where are the rest of your soldiers?’
Hellian looked over at the Factor’s house. The cusser explosion seemed to have knocked it flat. She grunted. ‘Damned if I know, Mulvan. You don’t happen to have a flask of something on you, do you?’
But the mage was frowning at the wreckage of the collapsed house. ‘I hear calls for help,’ he said.
Hellian sighed. ‘Guess you found ‘em after all, Mulvan Dreader. Meaning we’re gonna have to dig ‘em out.’ Then she brightened. ‘But that’ll work us up a thirst now, won’t it?’
The multiple crack of sharpers outside the tavern and the biting snap of shrapnel striking the building’s front sent the Malazans inside flinching back. Screams erupted outside, wailing up into the street’s dust-filled air. Fiddler watched Gesler grab Stormy to keep him from charging out there-the huge Falari was reeling on his feet-then he turned to Mayfly, Corabb and Tarr. ‘Let’s meet our allies, then, but stay sharp. Rest of you, stay here, bind wounds-Bottle, where’s Koryk and Smiles?’