Toll the Hounds Read online

  Gruntle reined in and slowly dismounted.

  Sirik waved his hands in a helpless gesture. ‘But – but—’

  Drawing off his cloak revealed the damage on Gruntle’s chain hauberk, the slashes through the black iron links, the gouges and punctures, the crusted blood. ‘Dwell raiders,’ he said in a rumble, grinning once more.

  ‘But—’

  ‘We gave good account,’ Gruntle resumed, squinting at the guards behind the merchant. ‘And if you’d let loose a few more of your precious preeners there, we might ha’ done better still. The raiding party was a big one, a hundred shrieking savages. The fools torched the other wagons even as they looted ‘em.’

  One of the bodyguard, Sirik’s scar-faced captain, stepped forward, scowling at the wagons. ‘A hundred, was it? Against what, eight guards under your command, Gruntle? Do you take us for idiots? A hundred Dwell and you’d not be here.’

  ‘No, Kest, you’re not an idiot,’ Gruntle allowed. ‘Thick-skulled and a bully, but not an idiot.’

  As the captain and his men bridled, Sirik held up a trembling hand. ‘Gruntle, Gisp sits that wagon but he’s dead.’

  ‘He is. So are the other three.’

  ‘But – but how?’

  Gruntle’s shrug was an ominous roll of his massive shoulders. ‘Not sure,’ he admitted, ‘but they took my orders anyway – granted, I was desperate and yelling things I normally wouldn’t, but by then I was the last one left, and with four surviving wagons and as many horses . . .’ He shrugged again, then said, ‘I’ll take my pay now, Sirik. You’ve got half the Bastion kelyk you wanted and that’s better than none.’

  ‘And what am I to do with four undead drivers?’ Sirik shrieked.

  Gruntle turned, glared up at Gisp. ‘Go to Hood, you four. Now.’

  The drivers promptly slumped, sliding or tottering from their perches. The three crows picking at Gisp’s shredded face set up an indignant squall, then flapped down to resume their meal once the body settled on the dust of the compound.

  Sirik had recovered enough to show irritation. ‘As for payment—’

  ‘In full,’ Gruntle cut in. ‘I warned you we didn’t have enough. Kest may not be an idiot, but you are, Sirik. And sixteen people died for it, not to mention a hundred Dwell. I’m about to visit the Guild, as required. I get my pay in full and I’ll keep my opinions to myself. Otherwise . . .’ Gruntle shook his head, ‘you won’t be hiring any more caravan guards. Ever again.’

  Sirik’s sweat-sheathed face worked for a time, until his eyes found a look of resignation. ‘Captain Kest, pay the man.’

  A short time later, Gruntle stepped out on to the street. Pausing, he glanced up at the morning sky, then set out for home. Despite the heat, he donned his cloak and drew up the hood once more. The damned markings on his skin rose flush with battle, and took weeks to fade back into a ghostly tint. In the meantime, the less conspicuous he could make himself the better. He suspected that the hovel he called home was already barricaded by a murder of acolytes awaiting his return. The tiger-skinned woman who proclaimed herself High Priestess of the local temple would have heard the fierce battle cry of Trake’s Mortal Sword, even at a distance of thirty or so leagues out on the Dwelling Plain. And she would be in a frenzy . . . again, desperate as ever for his attention.

  But Gruntle didn’t give a damn about her and the mangy losers she’d gathered to her temple. Killing those raiders had not been a task he had welcomed. No pleasure in spilling blood, no delight in his own savage rage. He’d lost friends that day, including the last pair who had been with him ever since Capustan. Such wounds were far deeper than those his flesh still carried, and they would take much longer to heal.

  Mood foul despite the bulging purse of councils at his belt, he was disinclined to suffer the normal jostling necessary to navigate the city’s major avenues and streets – one push or snarl too many and he’d be likely to draw blades and set about carving a path through the crowds, and then he’d have no choice but to flee Darujhistan or risk dangling from High Gallows Hill – and so once through the Estates Gate just south of Borthen Park, and down the ramp into Lakefront District, Gruntle took a roundabout route, along narrow, twisting alleys and rubbish-filled wends between buildings.

  The few figures he met as he walked were quick to edge aside, as if struck meek by some instinct of self-preservation.

  He turned on to one slightly wider track only to find it blocked by a tall carriage that looked as if it had been through a riot – reminding Gruntle that the fête was still on – although, as he drew closer and found himself stepping over withered, dismembered limbs and streaks of slowly drying blood, and when he saw the gaping hole in the carriage where a door should have been, with the dark interior still and grey with motionless haze, and the horses standing with hides crusted in dried sweat and froth – the entire mess unattended and seemingly immune to looting – he recognized that this was one of those damned Trygalle Guild carriages, well and truly infamous for sudden, inexplicable and invariably violent arrivals.

  Just as irritating, the Trygalle was a clear rival to the city’s own Caravanserai Guild, with its unprecedented shareholding system. Something the Caravanserai should have thought of long ago, although if what Gruntle had heard was anywhere near the truth, then the attrition rate among the Trygalle’s shareholders was appallingly high – higher than any sane guard would accept.

  Then again, he reconsidered, here he was, the lone survivor of Sirik’s caravan, and despite the councils he now carried his financial return was virtually nothing compared to the profits Sirik would harvest from the kelyk, especially now that he didn’t have to pay his drivers. Of course, he’d need to purchase new wagons and repair the ones Gruntle had delivered, but there was insurance to offset some of that.

  As he edged round the carriage in the street, he was afforded a closer look, concluding, sourly, that the Trygalle built the bastards to weather just about anything. Scorched, gouged as if by the talons of plains bears, bitten and chopped at, gaudy paint peeled away as if splashed with acid. As battered as a war wagon.

  He walked past the horses. Then, five strides onward, Gruntle turned about in surprise. That close and the beasts should have panicked – they always panicked. Even ones he had broken to his scent shivered uncontrollably beneath him until sheer nervous exhaustion dulled their fright. But here . . . he scowled, meeting the eyes of one of the leaders and seeing naught but jaded disinterest.

  Shaking his head, Gruntle resumed his journey.

  Damned curious. Then again, he could do with a horse like one of those.

  Better yet, how about a dead one? Dead as Gisp?

  The thought brought him back to certain un-pleasantries he didn’t much want to think about at the moment. Like my being able to command the dead.

  He was, he considered, too old to be discovering new talents.

  The walrus-skin coracle bobbed perilously in the chop between two trader barges, at risk of being crushed between them before a frantic scull by the lone occupant squirted the craft through, to draw up moments later alongside a mud-smeared landing crowded with crayfish traps. The man who clambered up from the coracle was soaked from the hips down, and the knapsack he slung on to one shoulder sloshed, then began to drain incontinently as he worked his way up the dock to the worn stone steps that climbed to the quayside.

  He was unkempt, his beard two or three days old, and the leathers he wore seemed a strange mix of those normally worn beneath armour and those a Nathii fisher might wear in a squall. The floppy sealskin hat covering his head was misshapen, sun-faded and salt-rimed. In addition to his knapsack he carried an odd-looking scimitar in a split scabbard bound together by frayed strips of leather. The serpent-head pommel revealed empty sockets where gems had once resided for eyes, fangs and collar. Tall, wiry, he moved with a vaguely furtive haste once he reached the quay, cutting through the crowds towards one of the feeder alleys on the other side of Front Street.

  From th
e landing down on the water, someone was yelling, demanding to know who had left a half-awash coracle beside his cages.

  Reaching the alley mouth, the man walked in a few paces, then paused in the shadow between the high-walled warehouses. He drew off his floppy hat and wiped the grime from his brow. His black hair, while thinning from the front, hung in a long ponytail that had been tucked up beneath the hat but now fell to the small of his back. His forehead and face were seamed in scars, and most of his left ear was missing, slashed away some time past. Scratching a moment at his beard, he settled the hat back on, and headed off down the alley.

  He was set upon less than ten paces later, as two figures closed on him from alcoves, one to either side. The one on his left jammed the point of a dagger against his ribs, while the other waved a shortsword in front of his eyes, using it to direct the man against a grimy wall.

  Mute, the man complied. In the gloom he squinted at the one with the sword, then scowled. ‘Leff.’

  A stained grin. ‘Hey, old partner, fancy you showing up.’

  The one with the knife snorted. ‘Thought we’d never spy you out wi’ that stupid hat, did you?’

  ‘Scorch! Why, I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you both. Gods below, I would’ve thought you two would have met grisly ends long ago. But this is a great discovery, friends! Had I any coin – any at all – why, I’d buy you both a drink—’

  ‘Enough of that,’ Leff said in a growl, still waving the sword in front of the man’s face. ‘You’re on our list, Torvald Nom. Aye, way down on it since most people figured you were long gone and almost as long dead. But you ran out on a debt – a big one and bigger now, aye – not to mention running out on me and Scorch—’

  ‘Hardly! I seem to recall we formally absolved our partnership, after that night when—’

  Scorch hissed, ‘Quiet, damn you! Nobody knows nothing about none of that!’

  ‘My point was,’ Torvald hastily explained, ‘I never ran out on you two.’

  ‘Don’t matter,’ Leff said, ‘since that ain’t why you’re on the list now, is it?’

  ‘You two must be desperate, to take on one of those—’

  ‘Maybe we are,’ said Scorch, ‘and maybe we ain’t. Now, you saying you’re broke is bad news, Torvald. For you more’n us, since we now got to deliver you. And my, won’t Lender Gareb be pleased.’

  ‘Wait! I can get that money – I can clear that debt. But I need time—’

  ‘No time to give ya,’ Leff said, shaking his head. ‘Sorry, old friend.’

  ‘One night, that’s all I’m asking.’

  ‘One night, for you to run as far as you can.’

  ‘No, I swear it. Gods, I’ve just returned! Here to honour all my debts!’

  ‘Really, and how are you planning to do that?’

  ‘Best leave the details to me, Scorch, just to keep you and Leff innocent. Now, I’m way down on that list – I’d have to be, since it’s been years. That means nobody’s expecting you to come up with me, right? Give me a night, just one, that’s all I’m asking. We can meet again right here, this time tomorrow. I won’t run out on you two, I promise.’

  ‘You must think we’re idiots,’ Leff said.

  ‘Listen, once I’ve cleared Gareb’s debt, I can help you. With that list. Who’s better than me at that kind of stuff?’

  Scorch’s disbelieving expression stretched his face until it seemed his eyes would fall out of their sockets. He licked his lips, shot Leff a glance.

  Torvald Nom saw all this and nodded. ‘Aye, you two are in trouble, all right. Those lists chew up whoever takes ‘em on. I must tell you, I’m amazed and, well, deeply disappointed to find that you two have sunk that far since I left. Gods, if I’d known, well, I might’ve considered staying—’

  Leff snorted. ‘Now that’s a damned lie.’

  ‘All right, perhaps an exaggeration. So what is Gareb saying I’m owing him now?’

  ‘A thousand silver councils.’

  Torvald Nom gaped, the colour leaving his face. ‘For Hood’s sake, he just bought me a supper and a pitcher or two! And even then, I figured he was simply being generous. Wanted me to do some work for him or something. I was insulted when he sent me a bill for that night—’

  ‘Interest, Torvald,’ said Leff. ‘You know how it is.’

  ‘Besides,’ added Scorch, ‘you just up and ran. Where ya been all this time?’

  ‘You’d never believe me.’

  ‘Is that shackle scars on your wrists?’

  ‘Aye, and worse. Nathii slave pens. Malazan slavers – all the way to Seven Cities. Beru fend, my friends, none of it was pretty. And as for the long journey back, why, if I was a bard I’d make a fortune spinning that tale!’

  The sword hovering in front of his face had wavered, dipped, and now finally fell away, while the knife point jabbing his ribs eased back. Torvald looked quickly into both faces before him, and said, ‘One night, old friends, and all this will be cleared up. And I can start helping you with that list.’

  ‘We already got us help,’ Leff said, although he didn’t seem pleased by that admission.

  ‘Oh? Who?’

  ‘Kruppe. Remember him?’

  ‘That oily, fat fence always hanging out at the Phoenix Inn? Are you two mad?’

  Scorch said, ‘It’s our new taproom, Torvald, ever since Bormen threw us out for—’

  ‘Don’t tell him stuff like that, Scorch!’

  ‘One night,’ Torvald said, nodding. ‘Agreed? Good, you won’t regret it.’

  Stepping back, Leff sheathed his shortsword. ‘I already do. Listen, Torvald. You run and we’ll chase you, no matter where you go. You can jump straight back into the Nathii slave pens and we’ll be there right beside you. You understanding me?’

  Torvald frowned at the man for a moment, then nodded. ‘That I do, Leff. But I’m back, now, and I’m not going anywhere, not ever again.’

  ‘One night.’

  ‘Aye. Now, you two better head back to watching the quay – who knows who might be readying to flee on the next outbound ship.’

  Both men suddenly looked nervous. Leff gave Torvald a push as he worked past, Scorch on his heels. Torvald watched them scurry to the alley mouth, then plunge into the crowd on Front Street.

  ‘How is it,’ he asked under his breath, of no one, ‘that complete idiots just live on, and on? And on?’

  He adjusted his Moranth raincape, making certain that none of the items secreted in the underside pockets had been jostled loose or, gods forbid, broken. Nothing dripping. No burning sensations, no slithering presence of . . . whatever. Good. Tugging down his floppy hat, he set off once more.

  This thing with Gareb was damned irritating. Well, he’d just have to do something about it, wouldn’t he? One night. Fine. So be it. The rest can wait.

  I hope.

  Born in the city of One Eye Cat twenty-seven years ago, Humble Measure was of mixed blood. A Rhivi woman, sold to a local merchant in exchange for a dozen bars of quenched iron, gave birth to a bastard son a year later. Adopted into his father’s household eight years on, the boy was apprenticed in the profession of ironmongery and would have inherited the enterprise if not for one terrible night when his sheltered, stable world ended.

  A foreign army had arrived, investing the city in a siege. Days and nights of high excitement for the young man, then, with the streets aflame with rumours of the glory promised by the city’s membership in the great, rich Malazan Empire – if only the fools in the palace would capitulate. His father’s eyes had glowed with that imagined promise, and no doubt it was on the rising tide of such visions that the elderly trader conspired with agents of the Empire to open the city gates one night – an attempt that ended in catastrophic failure, with the merchant suffering arrest and then execution, and his estate invaded by city garrison soldiers with swords drawn.

  That assault had left nightmare memories that would never leave Humble Measure. Witnessing his mother’s rape and murder
, and that of his half-sisters. Screams, smoke and blood, everywhere blood, like the bitter gift of some dark god – oh, he would remember that blood. Beaten and in chains, he had been dragged into the street and would have suffered the same fate as the others if not for the presence of a mercenary company allied with the city. Its commander, a tall, fierce warrior named Jorrick Sharplance, had taken command of the handful of surviving prisoners.

  That company was subsequently driven from One Eye Cat by the city’s paranoid rulers, sailing out on ships across Old King Lake, shortly before yet another act of treachery proved more successful than the first attempt. Another night of slaughter, this time at the bloodied hands of Claw assassins, and One Eye Cat fell to the Malazan Empire.

  Jorrick Sharplance had taken his prisoners with him, setting them free on the wild south shore of the lake, at the very feet of One Eye Range, with sufficient supplies to take them through the mountain passes on to the Old King Plateau. From there, Humble Measure had led his household’s survivors, slaves and free citizens alike, down the trader tracks to the city of Bear. A brief stay there, then southward to Patch and on to the Rhivi Trail.

  A short stay in Pale, until, fleeing yet another Malazan siege, down to Darujhistan in the midst of a decrepit column of refugees.

  Whereupon Humble Measure had settled in the last surviving office of his father’s business, there to begin a long, careful rebuilding process that honed his tactical skills and, indeed, his fortitude.

  Such a long, fraught journey had ensured the loyalty of his staff. The slaves were rewarded with emancipation, and not one refused his offer of employment. His trade in iron burgeoned. For a time, it seemed that the curse that was the Malazan Empire might well track him down once more, but there had been a gift, a gift of blood that he well understood now, and the city’s life had been spared.

  For how long? Humble Measure was well acquainted with how the Empire got things done. Infiltration, clever acts of destabilization, assassinations, the fomenting of panic and the dissolution of order. That they now had an embassy in the city was no more than a means of bringing their deadly agents into Darujhistan. Well, he was done running.