Toll the Hounds Read online

  Bedek was eyeing Gruntle. ‘Glad you made it back,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Heard about you at the gate and that moment in Worrytown – damn, but I wish I wasn’t so . . . useless.’

  Setting Harllo down, Gruntle sighed. ‘Maybe your days of riding with caravans are done, but that doesn’t make you useless. You’re raising a fine family, Bedek, a fine family.’

  ‘I ain’t raising nothing,’ Bedek muttered, and Harllo knew that tone, knew it all too well, and it might be days, maybe even a week, before Uncle One climbed back up from the dark, deep hole he was now in. The problem was, Bedek liked that place, liked the way Myrla closed round him, all caresses and embraces and soft murmurings, and it’d go on like that until the night came when they made noises in their bed, and come the next morning, why, Bedek would be smiling.

  When Myrla was like that, though, when she was all for her husband and nothing else, it fell to Harllo to tend to the girls and do everything that was needed, and worst of all, it meant no one was holding back Snell. The beatings would get bad, then.

  Myrla couldn’t work much, not since the last baby, when she’d hurt something in her belly and now she got tired too easy, and even this glorious supper she was creating would leave her exhausted and weak with a headache. When able, she’d mend clothes, but that wasn’t happening much of late, which made Harllo’s raiding the local markets all the more important.

  He stayed close to Gruntle, who now sat opposite Uncle Bedek and had produced a jar of wine, and this kept Snell away for now, which of course only made things worse later but that was all right. You couldn’t choose your family, after all, not your cousins, not anyone. They were there and that was that.

  Besides, he could leave early tomorrow morning, so early Snell wouldn’t even be awake, and he’d make his way out of the city, out along the lake shore where the world stretched away, where beyond the shanties there were hills with nothing but goats and shepherds and beyond even them there was nothing but empty land. That such a thing could exist whispered to Harllo of possibilities, ones that he couldn’t hope to name or put into words, but were all out in the future life that seemed blurry, ghostly, but a promise even so. As bright as Gruntle’s eyes, that promise, and it was that promise that Harllo held on to, when Snell’s fists were coming down.

  Bedek and Gruntle talked about the old days, when they’d both worked the same caravans, and it seemed to Harllo that the past – a world he’d never seen because it was before the Rape – was a place of great deeds, a place thick with life where the sun was brighter, the sunsets were deeper, the stars blazed in a black sky and the moon was free of mists, and men stood taller and prouder and nobody had to talk about the past back then, because it was happening right now.

  Maybe that was how he would find the future, a new time in which to stand tall. A time he could stretch into.

  Across from Harllo, Snell crouched in a gloomy corner, his eyes filled with their own promise as he grinned at Harllo.

  Myrla brought them plates heaped with food.

  The papyrus sheets, torn into shreds, lit quickly, sending black flakes upward in the chimney’s draught, and Duiker watched them go, seeing crows, thousands of crows. Thieves of memory, stealing everything else he might have thought about, might have resurrected to ease the uselessness of his present life. All the struggles to recall faces had been surrendered, and his every effort to write down this dread history had failed. Words flat and lifeless, scenes described in the voice of the dead.

  Who were those comrades at his side back then? Who were those Wickans and Malazans, those warlocks and warriors, those soldiers and sacrificial victims who perched above the road, like sentinels of futility, staring down at their own marching shadows?

  Bult. Lull. Sormo Enath.

  Coltaine.

  Names, then, but no faces. The chaos and terror of fighting, of reeling in exhaustion, of wounds slashed open and bleeding, of dust and the reek of spilled wastes – no, he could not write of that, could not relate the truth of it, any of it.

  Memory fails. For ever doomed as we seek to fashion scenes, framed, each act described, reasoned and reasonable, irrational and mad, but somewhere beneath there must be the thick, solid sludge of motivation, of significance, of meaning – there must be. The alternative is . . . unacceptable.

  But this was where his attempts delivered him, again and again. The unacceptable truths, the ones no sane person could ever face, could ever meet eye to eye. That nothing was worth revering, not even the simple fact of survival, and certainly not that endless cascade of failures, of deaths beyond counting.

  Even here, in this city of peace, he watched the citizens in all their daily dances, and with each moment that passed, his disdain deepened. He disliked the way his thoughts grew ever more uncharitable, ever more baffled by the endless scenes of seemingly mindless, pointless existence, but there seemed no way out of that progression as his observations unveiled the pettiness of life, the battles silent and otherwise with wives, husbands, friends, children, parents, with the very crush on a crowded street, each life closed round itself, righteous and uncaring of strangers – people fully inside their own lives. Yet should he not revel in such things? In their profound freedom, in their extraordinary luxury of imagining themselves in control of their own lives?

  Of course, they weren’t. In freedom, such as each might possess, they raised their own barriers, carried shackles fashioned by their own hands. Rattling the chains of emotions, of fears and worries, of need and spite, of the belligerence that railed against the essential anonymity that gripped a person. Aye, a most unacceptable truth.

  Was this the driving force behind the quest for power? To tear away anonymity, to raise fame and infamy up like a blazing shield and shining sword? To voice a cry that would be heard beyond the gates of one’s own life?

  But oh, Duiker had heard enough such cries. He had stood, cowering, in the midst of howls of defiance and triumph, all turning sour with despair, with senseless rage. The echoes of power were uniform, yes, in their essential emptiness. Any historian worthy of the title could see that.

  No, there was no value in writing. No more effect than a babe’s fists battering at the silence that ignored every cry. History meant nothing, because the only continuity was human stupidity. Oh, there were moments of greatness, of bright deeds, but how long did the light of such glory last? From one breath to the next, aye, and no more than that. No more than that. As for the rest, kick through the bones and wreckage for they are what remain, what lasts until all turns to dust.

  ‘You are looking thoughtful,’ Mallet observed, leaning forward with a grunt to top up Duiker’s tankard. ‘Which, I suppose, should not come as a surprise, since you just burned the efforts of most of a year, not to mention a high council’s worth of papyrus.’

  ‘I will reimburse you the cost,’ Duiker said.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ the healer said, leaning back. ‘I only said you looked thoughtful.’

  ‘Appearances deceive, Mallet. I am not interested in thinking any more. About anything.’

  ‘Good, then this is a true meeting of minds.’

  Duiker continued studying the fire, continued watching the black crows wing up the chimney. ‘For you, unwise,’ he said. ‘You have assassins to consider.’

  Mallet snorted. ‘Assassins. Antsy’s already talking about digging up a dozen cussers. Blend’s out hunting down the Guild’s headquarters, while Picker and Bluepearl work with Councillor Coll to sniff out the source of the contract. Give it all a week and the problem will cease being a problem. Permanently.’

  Duiker half smiled. ‘Don’t mess with Malazan marines, retired or otherwise.’

  ‘You’d think people would know by now, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘People are stupid, Mallet.’

  The healer winced. ‘Not all of us.’

  ‘True. But Hood waits for everyone, stupid, smart, witty, witless. Waits with the same knowing smile.’

  ‘No wo
nder you burned your book, Duiker.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So, since you’re no longer writing history, what will you do?’

  ‘Do? Why, nothing.’

  ‘Now that’s something I know all about – oh, don’t even try to object. Aye, I heal someone every now and then, but I was a soldier, once. And now I’m not. Now I sit around getting fat, and it’s fat poisoned through and through with some kind of cynical bile. I lost all my friends, Duiker. No different from you. Lost ‘em all, and for what? Damned if I know, damned and damned again, but no, I don’t know the why of it, the why of anything.’

  ‘A meeting of minds, indeed,’ Duiker said. ‘Then again, Mallet, it seems you are at war once more. Against the usual implacable, deadly enemy.’

  ‘The Guild? I suppose you’re right. But it won’t last long, will it? I don’t like being retired. It’s like announcing an end to your worth, whatever that worth was, and the longer you go on, the more you realize that that worth wasn’t worth anything like you once thought it was, and that just makes it worse.’

  Duiker set down his tankard and rose. ‘The High Alchemist has invited me to lunch on the morrow. I’d best go to bed and get some sleep. Watch your back, healer. Sometimes the lad pushes and the lady’s nowhere in sight.’

  Mallet simply nodded, having assumed the burden of staring at the fire now that Duiker was leaving.

  The historian walked away from the warmth, passing through draughts and layers of chill air on his way to his room. Colder and colder, with every step.

  Somewhere above this foul temple, crows danced with sparks above the mouth of a chimney, virtually unseen in the darkness. Each one carried a word, but the sparks were deaf. Too busy with the ecstasy of their own bright, blinding fire. At least, until they went out.

  Gaz stormed out early, as soon as he realized he wasn’t going to get enough coin from the day’s take to buy a worthwhile night of drinking. Thordy watched her husband go, that pathetic forward tilt of the man’s walk which always came when he was enraged, the jerky strides as he marched out into the night. Where he went she had no idea, nor, truth be told, did she even care.

  Twice now in the past week that skinny mite of an urchin had raided her vegetable stand. Gods, what were parents up to these days? The runt was probably five years old, no older that’s for sure, and already fast as an eel in the shallows – and why wasn’t he leashed as a child should be? Especially at that age when there were plenty of people who’d snatch him, use him or sell him quick as can be. And if they used him in that bad way, then they’d wring his neck afterwards, which Thordy might not mind so much except that it was a cruel thought and a cruel picture and more like something her husband would think than her. Though he’d only be thinking in terms of how much money she might make without the thieving going on. And maybe what he might do if he ever got his hands on the runt.

  She shivered at that thought, then was distracted by Nou the watchdog in the garden next to hers, an unusual eruption of barking – but then she remembered her husband and his walk and how Nou hated Gaz especially when he walked like that. When Gaz stumbled back home, drunk and useless, the mangy dog never made a sound, ignored Gaz straight out, in fact.

  Dogs, she knew, could smell bad intentions. Other animals too, but especially dogs.

  Gaz never touched Thordy, not even a shove or a slap, because without her and the garden she tended he was in trouble, and he knew that well enough. He’d been tempted, many times, oh, yes, but there’d be, all of a sudden, a glint in his eyes, a surprise, flickering alight. And he’d smile and turn away, saving that mangled fist and all that was behind it for someone else. Gaz liked a good fight, in some alley behind a tavern. Liked kicking faces in, so long as the victim was smaller than he was, and more drunk. And without any friends who might step in or come up from behind. It was how he dealt with the misery of his life, or so he said often enough.

  Thordy wasn’t sure what all that misery was about, though she had some ideas. Her, for one. The pathetic patch of ground she had for her vegetables. Her barren womb. The way age and hard work was wearing her down, stealing the glow she’d once had. Oh, there was plenty about her that made him miserable. And, all things considered, she’d been lucky to have him for so long, especially when he’d worked the nets on that fisher boat, the nets that, alas, had taken all his fingers that night when something big had waited down below, motionless and so unnoticed as the crew hauled the net aboard. Then it exploded in savage power, making for the river like a battering ram. Gaz’s fingers, all entwined, sprang like topped carrots, and now he had thumbs and rows of knuckles and nothing else.

  Fists made for fighting, he’d say with an unconscious baring of his teeth. That and nothing more.

  And that was true enough and good reason, she supposed, for getting drunk every chance he could.

  Lately, however, she’d been feeling a little less generous – no, she’d been feeling not much of anything at all. Even pity had dwindled, whispered away like a dry leaf on the autumn wind. And it was as if he had changed, right in front of her eyes, though she now understood that what had changed was behind her eyes – not the one looked at, but the one doing the looking. She no longer recoiled in the face of his fury. No longer shied from that marching tilt and all its useless anger, and would now study it, seeing its futility, seeing the self-pity in that wounded pitch.

  She was empty, then, and she had first thought she would remain so, probably for the rest of her life. Instead, something had begun to fill the void. At first, it arrived with a start, a twinge of guilt, but not any more. Now, when thoughts of murder filled her head, it was like immersing herself in a scented bath.

  Gaz was miserable. He said so. He’d be happier if he were dead.

  And, truth be told, so would she.

  All this love, all this desperate need, and he was useless. She should have driven him out of her life long ago, and he knew it. Holding on to him the way she was doing was torture. He’d told her he only fought weaklings. Fools and worse. He told her he did it to keep his arms strong, to harden his knuckles, to hold on to (hah, that was a good one) some kind of reason for staying alive. A man needs a skill, aye, and no matter if it was good or bad, no matter at all. But the truth was, he chose the meanest, biggest bastards he could find. Proving he could, proving those knuckles and their killing ways.

  Killing, aye. Four so far, that he was sure of.

  Sooner or later, Gaz knew, the coin would flip, and it would be his cold corpse lying face down in some alley. Well enough. When you pay out more than you’re worth, again and again, eventually somebody comes to collect.

  She’d not mourn him, he knew. A man in love could see when the one he loved stopped loving him back. He did not blame her, and did not love her any less; no, his need just got worse.

  The Blue Ball Tavern occupied one corner of a massive, decrepit heap of tenements that stank of urine and rotting rubbish. In the midst of the fête, the nightly anarchy on these back streets up from the docks reached new heights, and Gaz was not alone in hunting the alleys for trouble.

  It occurred to him that maybe he wasn’t as unusual as he might have once believed. That maybe he was just one among thousands of useless thugs in this city, all of them hating themselves and out sniffing trails like so many mangy dogs. Those who knew him gave him space, slinking back from his path as he stalked towards his chosen fighting grounds, behind the Blue Ball. That brief thought – about other people, about the shadowed faces he saw around him – was short-lived, flitting away with the first smell of blood in the damp, sultry air.

  Someone had beaten him to it, and might even now be swaggering out the opposite end of the alley. Well, maybe the fool might circle back, and he could deliver to the bastard what he’d done to somebody else – and there was the body, the huddled, motionless shape. Walking up, Gaz nudged it with one boot. Heard a blood-frothed wheeze. Slammed his heel down on the ribcage, just to hear the snap and crunch. A cough, sprayi
ng blood, a low groan, then a final exhalation.

  Done, easy as that.

  ‘Are you pleased, Gaz?’

  He spun round at the soft, deep voice, forearms lifting into a guard he expected to fail – but the fist he thought was coming never arrived, and, swearing, he stepped back until his shoulders thudded against the wall, glared in growing fear at the tall, shrouded figure standing before him. ‘I ain’t afraid,’ he said in a belligerent growl.

  Amusement washed up against him like a wave. ‘Open yourself, Gaz. Your soul. Welcome your god.’

  Gaz could feel the air on his teeth, could feel his lips stretching until cracks split to ooze blood. His heart hammered at his chest. ‘I ain’t got no god. I’m nothing but curses, and I don’t know you. Not at all.’

  ‘Of course you do, Gaz. You have made sacrifice to me, six times now. And counting.’

  Gaz could not see the face within the hood, but the air between them was suddenly thick with some pungent, cloying scent. Like cold mud, the kind that ran in turgid streams behind slaughterhouses. He thought he heard the buzz of flies, but the sound was coming from somewhere inside his own head. ‘I don’t kill for you,’ he said, his voice thin and weak.

  ‘You don’t have to. I do not demand sacrifices. There is . . . no need. You mortals consecrate any ground you choose, even this alley. You drain a life on to it. Nothing more is required. Not intent, not prayer, nor invocation. I am summoned, without end.’

  ‘What do you want from me?’

  ‘For now, only that you continue harvesting souls. When the time comes for more than that, Gaz of the Gadrobi, you will be shown what must be done.’

  ‘And if I don’t want—’

  ‘Your wants are not relevant.’

  He couldn’t get that infernal buzzing out of his skull. He shook his head, squeezed shut his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again the god was gone.

  The flies. The flies are in my head. Gods, get out!

  Someone had wandered into the alley, weaving, mumbling, one hand held out to fend off any obstacles.