The Crippled God (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #10)

by Steven Erikson

A massive shape looming in the breach, filling it, and then out from the fulminating light snapped a reptilian head, jaws open in a hissing snarl. Lunging down at her brother. She screamed. Heard the jaws impact the ground like the fist of a god – and knew that Yedan was no longer there. Her own voice now keening, she slashed forward, barely seeing those she cut down. Manic laughter filled the air – Hust! Awake! She broke through, staggered, and saw— The dragon’s head was lifting in a spray of blood-soaked sand, the neck arching, the jaws stretching wide once more, and then, as if from nowhere, Yedan Derryg was directly beneath that enormous serpent head, and he was swinging his laughing sword – and that glee rose to a shriek of delight as the blade’s edge chopped deep into the dragon’s neck. He was a man slashing into the bole of a centuries-old tree. The impact should have shattered the bones of his arms. The sword should have rebounded, or exploded in his hands, spraying deadly shards. Yet she saw the weapon tear through that enormous, armoured neck. She saw the blood and gore erupt in its wake, and then a fountain of blood spraying into the air. The dragon, its shoulders jammed in the breach, shook with the blow. The long neck whipped upward, seeking to pull away, and in the welling gape of the wound in its throat Yan Tovis saw the gleam of bone. Yedan had cut through to the dragon’s spine. Another gloating shriek announced his backswing.