Toll the Hounds Read online

  He glanced away. ‘His horse, yes.’

  ‘And other things.’

  Traveller considered for a time. He studied the broad, churned-up track. A thousand or five thousand; when people were moving in column it was always difficult to tell. The carriage itself would be a thing worth seeing, however, and the direction just happened to be the one he needed to take. The prospect of being forced into a detour was unacceptable. ‘If your friend is smart, he won’t do anything overt. He’ll hide, as best one can on these plains, until he sees an advantage – though what that advantage might be, against so many, I can’t imagine.’

  ‘So you will stay with me for a while longer?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Then I should tell you some things, I think.’

  They guided their horses on to the track and rode at the trot.

  Traveller waited for her to continue.

  The sun’s heat reminded him of his homeland, the savannahs of Dal Hon, although in this landscape there were fewer flies and of the enormous herds of countless kinds of beasts – and the ones that hunted them – there was little sign. Here on the Lamatath there were bhederin, a lone species of antelope, hares, wolves, coyotes, bears and not much else. Plenty of hawks and falcon overhead, of course – but this place did not teem as one might expect and he wondered about that.

  Had the conflagration at Morn wiped everything out? Left a blasted landscape slow to recover, into which only a few species drifted down from the north? Or were the K’Chain Che’Malle rabid hunters, indulging in a slaughterfest that did not end until they themselves were extinct? ‘What do you know of the Emperor of a Thousand Deaths?’

  He glanced across at her. ‘Not much. Only that he cannot be killed.’

  ‘Right.’

  He waited.

  Locusts crawled across the dusty track amidst shredded blades of grass, as if wondering who had beaten them to it. Somewhere high above a raptor loosed a piercing cry, the kind intended to panic a bird in flight.

  ‘His sword was forged by the power of the Crippled God. Possessing levels of sorcery which the wielder can reach, each time, only by dying – fighting and dying with that weapon in his hands. The Emperor, a poor ravaged creature, a Tiste Edur, knew that death was but an illusion. He knew, I am certain of it, that he was cursed, so terribly cursed. That sword had driven him mad.’

  Traveller imagined that such a weapon would indeed drive its wielder insane. He could feel sweat on the palms of his hands and shifted the reins into his right hand, settling the other on his thigh. His mouth felt unaccountably dry.

  ‘He needed champions. Challengers. Sometimes they would kill him. Sometimes more than once. But as he came back again and again, ever stronger, in the end the challenger would fall. And so it went.’

  ‘A terrible fate,’ Traveller muttered.

  ‘Until one day some ships arrived. On board, yet more champions from distant lands. Among them, Karsa Orlong, the Toblakai. I happened to be with him, then.’

  ‘I would hear the story behind such a partnership.’

  ‘Maybe later. There was someone else, another champion. His name was Icarium.’

  Traveller slowly twisted in his saddle, studied the woman across from him. Some unconscious message told the gelding to halt.

  Samar’s Jhag horse continued on for a few steps, then she reined it in and turned to meet Traveller’s eyes. ‘I believe, if Icarium had met the Emperor, well, the dying would still be going on, spreading like a wildfire. An entire continent . . . pretty much incinerated. Who knows, perhaps the entire world.’

  He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

  ‘Instead,’ Samar Dev said, ‘Karsa was sent for first.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Her smile was sad. ‘They fought.’

  ‘Samar Dev,’ Traveller said, ‘that makes no sense. The Toblakai still lives.’

  ‘Karsa killed the Emperor. With finality.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I have some suspicions. I believe that, somewhere, somehow, Karsa Orlong spoke with the Crippled God – not a pleasant conversation, I’m sure. Karsa rarely has those.’

  ‘Then the Emperor of a Thousand Deaths—’ ‘Gone, delivered unto a final death. I like to believe Rhulad thanked Karsa with his last breath.’

  If there was need for such a thought she was welcome to it. ‘And the sword? Does the Toblakai now carry it as his own?’

  She collected her reins and nudged her mount onward. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Another reason why I have to find him.’

  You are not alone in that, woman. ‘He bargained with the Crippled God. He replaced the Emperor.’

  ‘Did he?’

  He urged his horse forward, came up alongside her once more. ‘What other possibility is there?’

  And to that she grinned. ‘Ah, but that is where I know something you don’t, Traveller. I know Karsa Orlong.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It’s his favourite game, you see, pretending to be so . . . obvious. Blunt, lacking all subtlety, all decorum. Just a savage, after all. The only possibility is the obvious one, isn’t it? That’s why I don’t believe that’s what he’s done.’

  ‘You don’t wish to believe, you mean. Now I will speak plain, Samar Dev. If your Toblakai wields the sword of the Crippled God, he shall have to either yield it or draw it against me. Such a weapon must be destroyed.’

  ‘You set yourself as an enemy of the Crippled God? Well, you’re hardly alone in that, are you?’

  He frowned. ‘I did not then,’ he said, ‘nor do I desire to do so now. But he goes too far.’

  ‘Who are you, Traveller?’

  ‘I played the game of civilization, once, Samar Dev. But in the end I remain as I am, a savage.’

  ‘Too many have put themselves into Karsa Orlong’s path,’ she said. ‘They do not stand there long.’ A pause, and then, ‘Civilized or barbarian – those are but words – the cruel killer can wear all the costumes he wants, can pretend to great causes and hard necessities. Gods below, it all sickens me, the way you fools carry on. Over the whole damned world it’s ever the same.’

  He answered this rant with silence, for he believed it was ever the same, and that it would never change. Animals remained just that, whether sentient or not, and they fought, they killed, they died. Life was suffered until it was over, and then . . . then what?

  An end. It had to be that. It must be that.

  Riding on, now, no words between them. Already past the telling of stories, the recounting of adventures. All that mattered, for each of them, was what lay ahead.

  With the Toblakai named Karsa Orlong.

  Some time in his past, the man known as the Captain had been a prisoner to someone. At some point he had outlived his usefulness and had been staked out on the plain, wooden spikes driven through his hands, his feet, hammered to the hard earth to feed the ants, to feed all the carrion hunters of Lamatath. But he’d not been ready to die just then. He had pulled his hands through the spikes, had worked his feet free, and had crawled on elbows and knees half a league, down into a valley where a once-mighty river had dwindled to a stream fringed by cottonwoods.

  His hands were ruined. His feet could not bear his weight. And, he was convinced, the ants that had crawled into his ears had never left, trapped in the tunnels of his skull, making of his brain a veritable nest – he could taste their acidic exudations on his swollen, blackened tongue.

  If the legend was true, and it was, hoary long-forgotten river spirits had squirmed up from the mud beneath the exposed bank’s cracked skin, clawing like vermin to where he huddled fevered and shivering. To give life was no gift for such creatures; no, to give was in turn to take. As the king feeds his heir all he needs to survive, so the heir feeds the king with the illusion of immortality. And the hand reaches between the bars of one cage, out to the hand reaching between the bars of the other cage. They exchange more than just touch.

  The spirits fed h
im life. And he took them into his soul and gave them a new home. They proved, alas, restless, uncivil guests.

  The journey and the transformation into a nomadic tyrant of the Lamatath Plains was long, difficult, and miraculous to any who could have seen the wretched, maimed creature the Captain had once been. Countless tales spun like dust-devils about him, many invented, some barely brushing the truth.

  His ruined feet made walking an ordeal. His fingers had curled into hook-like things, the bones beneath calcifying into unsightly knobs and protrusions. To see his hands was to be reminded of the feet of vultures clutched in death.

  He rode on a throne set on the forward-facing balcony of the carriage’s second tier, protected from the midday sun by a faded red canvas awning. Before him walked somewhere between four hundred and five hundred slaves, yoked to the carriage, each one leaning forward as they strained to pull the enormous wheeled palace over the rough ground. An equal number rested in the wagons of the entourage, helping the cooks and the weavers and the carpenters until their turn came in the harnesses.

  The Captain did not believe in stopping. No camps were established. Motion was everything. Motion was eternal. His two wings of cavalry, each a hundred knights strong, rode in flanking positions, caparisoned in full banded armour and ebony cloaks, helmed and carrying barbed lances, the heads glinting in the sunlight. Behind the palace was a mobile kraal of three hundred horses, his greatest pride, for the bloodlines were strong and much of his wealth (that which he did not attain through raiding) came from them. Horse-traders from far to the south sought him out on this wasteland, and paid solid gold for the robust destriers.

  A third troop of horse warriors, lighter-armoured, ranged far and wide on all sides of his caravan, ensuring that no enemy threatened, and seeking out possible targets – this was the season, after all, and there were – rarely these days, true enough – bands of savages eking out a meagre existence on the grasslands, including those who bred grotesque mockeries of horses, wide-rumped and bristle-maned, that if nothing else proved good eating. These ranging troops included raiding parties of thirty or more, and at any one time the Captain had four or five such groups out scouring the plains.

  Merchants had begun hiring mercenary troops, setting out to hunt him down. But those he could not buy off he destroyed. His knights were terrible in battle.

  The Captain’s kingdom had been on the move for seven years now, rolling in a vast circle that encompassed most of the Lamatath. This territory he claimed as his own, and to this end he had recently dispatched emissaries to all the bordering cities – Darujhistan, Kurl and Saltoan to the north, New Callows to the southwest, Bastion and Sarn to the northeast – Elingarth to the south was in the midst of civil war, so he would wait that out.

  In all, the Captain was pleased with his kingdom. His slaves were breeding, providing what would be the next generation to draw his palace. Hunting parties carried in bhederin and antelope to supplement the finer foodstuffs looted from passing caravans. The husbands and wives of his soldiers brought with them all the necessary skills to maintain his court and his people, and they too were thriving.

  So like a river, meandering over the land, this kingdom of his. The ancient, half-mad spirits were most pleased.

  Though he never much thought about it, the nature of his tyranny was, as far as he was concerned, relatively benign. Not with respect to foreigners, of course, but then who gave a damn for them? Not his blood, not his adopted kin, not his responsibility. And if they could not withstand his kingdom’s appetites, then whose fault was that? Not his.

  Creation demands destruction. Survival demands that something else fails to survive. No existence was truly benign.

  Still, the Captain often dreamed of finding those who had nailed him to the ground all those years ago – his memories of that time were maddeningly vague. He could not make out their faces, or their garb. He could not recall the details of their camp, and as for who and what he had been before that time, well, he had no memory at all. Reborn in a riverbed. He would, when drunk, laugh and proclaim that he was but eleven years old, eleven from that day of rebirth, that day of beginning anew.

  He noted the lone rider coming in from the southwest, the man pushing his horse hard, and the Captain frowned – the fool had better have a good reason for abusing the beast in that manner. He didn’t appreciate his soldiers posturing and seeking to make bold impressions. He decided that, if the reason was insufficient, he would have the man executed in the traditional manner – trampled into bloody ruin beneath the hoofs of his horses.

  The rider drew up alongside the palace, a servant on the side platform taking the reins of the horse as the man stepped aboard. An exchange of words with the Master Sergeant, and then the man was climbing the steep steps to the ledge surrounding the balcony. Where, his head level with the Captain’s knees, he bowed.

  ‘Sire, Fourth Troop, adjudged ablest rider to deliver this message.’

  ‘Go on,’ said the Captain.

  ‘Another raiding party was found, sire, all slain in the same manner as the first one. Near a Kindaru camp this time.’

  ‘The Kindaru? They are useless. Against thirty of my soldiers? That cannot be.’

  ‘Troop Leader Uludan agrees, sire. The proximity of the Kindaru was but coincidental – or it was the raiding party’s plan to ambush them.’

  Yes, that was likely. The damned Kindaru and their delicious horses were getting hard to find of late. ‘Does Uludan now track the murderers?’

  ‘Difficult, sire. They seem to possess impressive lore and are able to thoroughly hide their trail. It may be that they are aided by sorcery.’

  ‘Your thought or Uludan’s?’

  A faint flush of the man’s face. ‘Mine, sire.’

  ‘I did not invite your opinion, soldier.’

  ‘No, sire. I apologize.’

  Sorcery – the spirits within should have sensed such a thing anywhere on his territory. Which tribes were capable of assembling such skilled and no doubt numerous warriors? Well, one obvious answer was the Barghast – but they did not travel the Lamatath. They dwelt far to the north, along the edges of the Rhivi Plain, in fact, and north of Capustan. There should be no Barghast this far south. And if, somehow, there were . . . the Captain scowled. ‘Twenty knights shall accompany you back to the place of slaughter. You will then lead them to Uludan’s troop. Find the trail no matter what.’

  ‘We shall, sire.’

  ‘Be sure Uludan understands.’

  ‘Yes, sire.’

  And understand he would. The knights were there not just to provide a heavier adjunct to the troop. They were to exact whatever punishment the sergeant deemed necessary should Uludan fail.

  The Captain had just lost sixty soldiers. Almost a fifth of his total number of light cavalry.

  ‘Go now,’ he said to the rider, ‘and find Sergeant Teven and send him to me at once.’

  ‘Yes, sire.’

  As the man climbed back down, the Captain leaned back in his throne, staring down at the dusty backs of the yoked slaves. Kindaru there, yes. And Sinbarl and the last seven or so Gandaru, slope-browed cousins of the Kindaru soon to be entirely extinct. A shame, that – they were strong bastards, hard-working, never complaining. He’d set aside the two surviving women and they now rode a wagon, bellies swollen with child, eating fat grubs, the yolk of snake eggs and other bizarre foods the Gandaru were inclined towards. Were the children on the way pure Gandaru? He did not think so – their women rutted anything with a third leg, and far less submissively than he thought prudent. Even so, one or both of those children might well be his.

  Not as heirs, of course. His bastard children held no special rights. He did not even acknowledge them. No, he would adopt an heir when the time came – and, if the whispered promises of the spirits were true, that could be centuries away.

  His mind had stepped off the path, he realized.

  Sixty slain soldiers. Was the kingdom of Skathandi at war? Pe
rhaps so.

  Yet the enemy clearly did not dare face him here, with his knights and the entire mass of his army ready and able to take the field of battle. Thus, whatever army would fight him was small—

  Shouts from ahead.

  The Captain’s eyes narrowed. From his raised vantage point he could see without obstruction that a lone figure was approaching from the northwest. A skin of white fur flapped in the breeze like the wing of a ghost-moth, spreading out from the broad shoulders. A longsword was strapped to the man’s back, its edges oddly rippled, the blade itself a colour unlike any metal the Captain knew.

  As the figure came closer, as if expecting the massed slaves to simply part before him, the Captain’s sense of scale was jarred. The warrior was enormous, easily half again as tall as the tallest Skathandi – taller even than a Barghast. A face seemingly masked – no, tattooed, in a crazed broken glass or tattered web pattern. Beneath that barbaric visage, the torso was covered in some kind of shell armour, pretty but probably useless.

  Well, the fool – huge or not – was about to be trampled or pushed aside. Motion was eternal. Motion was – a sudden spasm clutched at the Captain’s mind, digging fingers into his brain – the spirits, thrashing in terror – shrieking—

  A taste of acid on his tongue—

  Gasping, the Captain gestured.

  A servant, who sat behind him in an upright coffin-shaped box, watching through a slit in the wood, saw the signal and pulled hard on a braided rope. A horn blared, followed by three more.

  And, for the first time in seven years, the kingdom of Skathandi ground to a halt.

  The giant warrior strode for the head of the slave column. He drew his sword. As he swung down with that savage weapon, the slaves began screaming.

  From both flanks, the ground shook as knights charged inward.

  More frantic gestures from the Captain. Horns sounded again and the knights shifted en masse, swung out wide to avoid the giant.

  The sword’s downward stroke had struck the centre spar linking the yoke harnesses. Edge on blunt end, splitting the spar for half its twenty-man length. Bolts scattered, chains rushed through iron loops to coil and slither on to the ground.