Toll the Hounds Read online

  On a street close to Coll’s estate, a cloaked man paused, stood rooted like a stone whilst the fête swirled round him, and even as he concluded that a public return, such as had first occurred to him, might prove unwise, so walked another man – younger but with the same look in his hardened eyes – on his way to the Phoenix Inn.

  Far in this one’s wake, down at the quayside, a blacksmith, his halfwit servant, and a woman whose generous curves drew admiring glances from all sides, ambled their way towards the night markets of the Gadrobi, seeing all with the wonder and pleasure only foreigners could achieve when coming for the first time upon one of the greatest cities in the world.

  Closer to the ship from which they had disembarked, a High Priest of Shadow scurried for the nearest shadows, pursued mostly unseen by spiders drifting on the lake breeze, and on the trail of both scampered a score of bhokarala – many burdened with new offerings and whatever baubles they claimed as rightful possessions – a fang-bearing squall that flowed through crowds accompanied by shouts of surprise, terror and curses (as their collection of possessions burgeoned with every pouch, purse and jewel within reach of their clawed hands).

  Aboard the ship itself, the captain remained. Now she was wearing loose, flowing robes of black and crimson silks, her face white as moonlight as she frowned at the city before her. A scent on the air, some lingering perfume redolent with memories . . . oh, of all places, but was this truly an accident? Spite did not believe in accidents.

  And so she hesitated, knowing what her first step on to solid stone would reveal – perhaps, she decided, it would do to wait for a time.

  Not long.

  Just long enough.

  In another part of Darujhistan, a merchant of iron dispatched yet another message to the Master of the Assassins’ Guild, then retired to his secret library to pore once more over ancient, fraught literature. Whilst not too far away sat a merchant guard with fading barbed tattoos, frowning down at a cup of spiced, hot wine in his huge, scarred hands; and from the next room came a child’s laughter, and this sound made him wince.

  Down among the new estates of certain once-criminal moneylenders who had since purchased respectability, a destitute Torvald Nom stealthily approached the high, spike-topped wall of one such estate. Debts, was it? Well, fine, easily solved. Had he lost any of his skills? Of course not. If anything, such talents had been honed by the rigours of a legendary journey across half the damned world. His glorious return to Darujhistan still awaited him. Come the morning, aye, come the morning . . .

  At this moment, in a small chamber above the taproom of the Phoenix Inn, a man was lying on his back on a bed, still weak from blood loss, and in his thoughts he walked the cemetery of his past, fingers brushing the tops of weathered tombstones and grave markers, seeing the knots of tangled grass climbing the sides of dusty urns, while stretching away in his wake was the shadow of his youth – fainter, longer, fraying now at the very edges. He would not lift his hand yet to feel his own face, to feel the wrinkles and creases that wrote out in tired glyphs his age, his waning life.

  Oh, flesh could be healed, yes . . .

  Below, amidst a mob of bellowing, reeling drunks and screeching whores of both sexes, a small round man, seated as ever at his private table, paused with his mouth stuffed full of honeyed bread, and, upon hearing the tenth bell sound through the city, cocked his head and settled his tiny, beady eyes upon the door to the Phoenix Inn.

  Arrivals.

  Glory and portent, delightful reunion and terrible imminence, winged this and winged that and escapes and releases and pending clashes and nefarious demands for recompense over a single mouthful of spat wine, such a night!

  Such a night!

  CHAPTER FOUR

  We were drowning amidst petals and leaves

  On the Plain of Sethangar

  Where dreams stirred like armies on the flatland

  And to sing of the beauty of all these blossoms

  Was to forget the blood that fed every root

  On the Plain of Sethangar

  We cried out for shelter from this fecund storm

  The thrust and heave of life on the scouring winds

  Was dry as a priest’s voice in fiery torment

  On the Plain of Sethangar

  And no wise words could be heard in the roar

  Of the laughing flowers reaching out to the horizon

  As the pungent breath left us drunk and stagger’d

  On the Plain of Sethangar

  Must we ever die in the riches of our profligacy

  Succumbing to the earth cold and dark each time

  Only to burst free wide-eyed in innocent birth

  On the Plain of Sethangar?

  Which god strides this field scythe in hand

  To sever the grandiose mime with edged judgement

  Taking from our souls all will in bundled sheaves

  On the Plain of Sethangar

  To feed as befits all burdensome beasts?

  Flowers will worship the tree’s fickle blessing of light

  Forests reach into the sweetness of a sky beyond touch

  Even as streams make pilgrimage to the sea

  And the rain seeks union with all flesh and blood

  Hills will hold fast over every plain, even Sethangar

  And so we dream of inequity’s end

  As if it lay within our power

  There in the plainness of our regard

  So poorly blinded to beauty . . .

  Declamation (fragment)

  (?) Keneviss Brot

  First Century Burn’s Sleep

  Groaning like a beast in its death-throes, the ship seemed to clamber up on to the black rocks before the keel snapped and the hull split with a splintering cry. Cut and bloodless corpses rolled and slid from the deck, spilling into the thrashing foam where pale limbs flopped and waved in the tumult before the riptide dragged them tumbling over the broken sea floor, out and down into the depths. The lone living figure, who had tied himself to the tiller, was now tangled in frayed ropes at the stern, scrabbling to reach his knife before the next huge wave exploded over the wreck. A salt-bleached hand – the skin of the palm hanging in blighted strips – tugged the broad-bladed weapon free. He slashed at the ropes binding him to the up-thrust tiller as the hull thundered to the impact of another wave and white spume cascaded over him.

  As the last strand parted he fell on to his side and slid to the crushed rail, the collision driving the air from his lungs as he pitched across the encrusted rock, then sagged, limp as any corpse, into the churning water.

  Another wave descended on to the wreck like an enormous fist, crushing the deck beneath its senseless power, then dragging the entire hull back into the deeper water, leaving a wake of splintered wood, lines and tattered sail.

  Where the man had vanished, the in-rushing seas swirled round the black rock, and nothing emerged from that thrashing current.

  In the sky overhead dark clouds clashed, spun sickly arms into a mutual embrace, and though on this coast no trees rose from the ravaged ground, and naught but wind-stripped grasses emerged from pockets here and there among the rock and gravel and sand, from the wounded sky dried, autumnal leaves skirled down like rain.

  Closer to the shore heaved a stretch of water mostly sheltered from the raging seas beyond the reef. Its bottom was a sweep of coral sand, agitated enough to cloud the shallows.

  The man rose into view, water streaming. He rolled his shoulders, spat out a mouthful thick with grit and blood, then waded on to the strand. He no longer carried his knife, but in his left hand was a sword in a scabbard. Made from two long strips of pale wood reinforced with blackened iron, the scabbard revealed that it was riven through with cracks, as water drained out from a score of fissures.

  Leaves raining on all sides, he walked up beyond the tide line, crunched down on to a heap of broken shells and sat, forearms on his knees, head hung down. The bizarre deluge thickened into flurries of rotting vegetati
on, like black sleet.

  The massive beast that slammed into him would have been thrice his weight if it was not starved. Nor would it have attacked at all, ever shy of humans, but it had become lost in a dust storm, and was then driven from the grasslands leagues inland on to this barren, lifeless coast. Had any of the corpses from the ship reached the beach, the plains bear would have elected to scavenge its meal. Alas, its plague of misfortunes was unending.

  Enormous jaws snapped close round the back of the man’s head, canines tearing through scalp and gouging into skull, yet the man was already ducking, twisting, his sodden hair and the sudden welter of blood proving slick enough to enable him to wrest free of the bear’s bite.

  The sword was lying, still in its cracked scabbard, two paces away, and even as he lunged towards it the bear’s enormous weight crashed down on to him. Claws raked against his chain hauberk, rings snapping away like torn scales. He half twisted round, hammering his right elbow into the side of the bear’s head, hard enough to foul its second attempt to bite into the back of his neck. The blow sprayed blood from the beast’s torn lip along the side of its jaw.

  The man drove his elbow again, this time into the bear’s right eye. A bleat of pain and the animal lunged to the left. Continuing his twist, the man drew up both legs, then drove them heels first into its ribs. Bones snapped.

  Another cry of agony. Frothing blood sprayed out from its mouth.

  Kicking himself away, the man reached his sword. His motions a blur of speed, he drew the weapon, alighted on his feet in a crouch, and slashed the sword into the side of the bear’s neck. The ancient watermarked blade slid through thick muscle, then bit into bone, and through, bursting free on the opposite side. Blood and bile gushed as the bear’s severed head thumped on to the sand. The body sat down on its haunches, still spewing liquid, then toppled to one side, legs twitching.

  Blazing heat seethed at the back of the man’s head, his ears filled with a strange buzzing sound, and the braids of his black, kinked hair dripped thick threads of bloody saliva as he staggered upright.

  On the sword’s blade, blood boiled, turned black, then shed in flakes.

  Still the sky rained dead leaves.

  He staggered back down to the sea, fell on to his knees in the shallows and plunged his head into the vaguely warm water.

  Numbness flowed out along the back of his skull. When he straightened once more, he saw the bloom of blood in the water, a smear stretching into some draw of current – an appalling amount. He could feel more, streaming down his back now.

  He quickly tugged off the chain hauberk, then the filthy, salt-rimed shirt beneath. He tore loose the shirt’s left sleeve, folded it into a broad bandanna and bound it tight round his head, as much against the torn skin and flesh as he could manage by feel.

  The buzzing sound was fading. A dreadful ache filled the muscles of his neck and shoulders, and in his head there now pounded a drum, each beat pulsating until the bones of his skull seemed to reverberate. He attempted to spit again, but his parched throat yielded nothing – almost three days now without water. A juddering effect assailed his vision, as if he stood in the midst of an earthquake. Stumbling, he made his way back up the beach, collecting his sword on the way.

  On to his knees once more, this time at the headless carcass. Using his sword to carve into the torso, then reaching in to grasp the bear’s warm heart. He tore and cut it loose, raised it in one hand and held it over his mouth, then squeezed it as if it was a sponge. From the largest of the arteries blood gushed into his mouth.

  He drank deep, finally closing his lips round the artery and sucking the last drop of blood from the organ.

  When that was done he bit into the muscle and began to eat it.

  Slowly, his vision steadied, and he noticed for the first time the raining leaves, the torrent only now diminishing, as the heavy, warring clouds edged away, out over the sea.

  Finished eating the heart, he licked his fingers. He roughly skinned the bear and then rose once more and retrieved the scabbard, sheathing the sword. The drumbeat was fading, although pain still tormented his neck, shoulders and back – muscles and tendons that had only begun their complaint at the savage abuse they had suffered. He washed the one-sleeved shirt then wrung it – tenderly, since it was threadbare and liable to fall apart under too rigorous a ministration. Slipping it on, he then rinsed out the chain hauberk before rolling it up and settling it down over one shoulder.

  Then he set out, inland.

  Above the crest of the shoreline, he found before him a wasteland. Rock, scrub, drifts of ash and, in the distance, ravines and outcrops of broken bedrock, a rumpling of the landscape into chaotic folds that lifted into raw, jagged hills.

  Far to his left – northward – a grainy, diffuse haze marred the sky above or beyond more hills.

  He squinted, studied that haze for thirty heartbeats.

  Patches of dusty blue above him now, as the storm rolled westward over the sea, its downpour of leaves trailing like claw marks in the air, staining the whitecaps beyond the reef. The wind lost some of its chill bite as the sun finally broke through, promising its own assault on mortal flesh.

  The man’s skin was dark, for he had been born on a savannah. His was a warrior’s build, the muscles lean and sharply defined on his frame. His height was average, though something in his posture made him seem taller. His even features were ravaged by depredation, but already the rich meat of the bear’s heart had begun to fill that expression with stolid, indomitable strength.

  Still, the wounds blazed with ferocious heat. And he knew, then, that fever was not far off. He could see nothing nearby in which to take shelter, to hole up out of the sun. Among the ravines, perhaps, the chance of caves, overhangs. Yet . . . fifteen hundred paces away, if not more.

  Could he make it that far?

  He would have to.

  Dying was unthinkable, and that was no exaggeration. When a man has forsaken Hood, the final gate is closed. Oblivion or the torment of a journey without end – there was no telling what fate awaited such a man.

  In any case, Traveller was in no hurry to discover an answer. No, he would invite Hood to find it himself.

  It was the least he could do.

  Slinging the scabbard’s rope-belt over his left shoulder, checking that the sword named Vengeance was snug within it, its plain grip within easy reach, he set out across the barren plain.

  In his wake, stripped branches spun and twisted down from the heaving clouds, plunging into the waves, as if torn from the moon itself.

  The clearing bore the unmistakable furrows of ploughs beneath the waist-high marsh grasses, each ribbon catching at their feet as they pushed through the thick stalks. The wreckage of a grain shed rose from brush at the far end, its roof collapsed with a sapling rising from the floor, as exuberant as any conqueror. Yet such signs were, thus far, all that remained of whatever tribe had once dwelt in this forest. Fragments of deliberate will gouged into the wilderness, but the will had failed. In another hundred years, Nimander knew, all evidence would be entirely erased. Was the ephemeral visage of civilization reason for fear? Or, perhaps, relief? That all victories were ultimately transitory in the face of patient nature might well be cause for optimism. No wound was too deep to heal. No outrage too horrendous to one day be irrelevant.

  Nimander wondered if he had discovered the face of the one true god. Naught else but time, this ever changing and yet changeless tyrant against whom no creature could win. Before whom even trees, stone and air must one day bow. There would be a last dawn, a last sunset, each kneeling in final surrender. Yes, time was indeed god, playing the same games with lowly insects as it did with mountains and the fools who would carve fastnesses into them. At peace with every scale, pleased by the rapid patter of a rat’s heart and the slow sighing of devouring wind against stone. Content with a star’s burgeoning light and the swift death of a raindrop on a desert floor.

  ‘What has earned the smile, cous
in?’

  He glanced over at Skintick. ‘Blessed with revelation, I think.’

  ‘A miracle, then. I think that I too am converted.’

  ‘You might want to change your mind – I do not believe my newfound god cares for worship, or answers any prayers no matter how fervent.’

  ‘What’s so unique about that?’

  Nimander grunted. ‘Perhaps I deserved that.’

  ‘Oh, you are too quick to jump into the path of what might wound – even when wounding was never the intention. I am still open to tossing in with your worship of your newfound god, Nimander. Why not?’

  Behind them, Desra snorted. ‘I will tell you two what to worship. Power. When it is of such magnitude as to leave you free to do as you will.’

  ‘Such freedom is ever a delusion, sister,’ Skintick said.

  ‘It is the only freedom that is not a delusion, fool.’

  Grimacing, Nimander said, ‘I don’t recall Andarist being very free.’

  ‘Because his brother was more powerful, Nimander. Anomander was free to leave us, was he not? Which life would you choose?’

  ‘How about neither?’ Skintick said.

  Although she walked behind them, Nimander could see in his mind’s eye his sister’s face, and the contempt in it as she no doubt sneered at Skintick.

  Clip walked somewhere ahead, visible only occasionally; whenever they strode into another half-overgrown clearing, they would see him waiting at the far end, as if impatient with lagging, wayward children.

  Behind Nimander, Skintick and Desra walked the others, Nenanda electing to guard the rear as if this was some sort of raid into enemy territory. Surrounded by suspicious songbirds, nervous rodents, irritated insects, Nenanda padded along with one hand resting on the pommel of his sword, a glower for every shadow. He would be like that all day, Nimander knew, storing up his disgust and anger for when they all sat by the fire at night, a fire Nenanda deemed careless and dangerous and would only tolerate because Clip said nothing, Clip with his half-smile and spinning rings who fed Nenanda morsels of approval until the young warrior was consumed by an addict’s need, desperate for the next paltry feeding.