Toll the Hounds

  Desra snorted.

  Nenanda’s expression filled with fury and he would have risen, if not for Aranatha’s gentle hand settling on his arm, magically dispelling his rage.

  Skintick twisted the arms of the tiny figure until they were above the knotted head with its lone green leaf, and held it up over the fire so that it faced Nenanda. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘he surrenders.’

  ‘Do not mock me, Skintick.’

  ‘On the contrary, I applaud your desire to have things simple. After all, either you can cut it with your sword or you can’t.’

  ‘There you go again.’

  The bickering would go on half the night, Nimander knew. And as it went on it would unravel, and Skintick would increasingly make Nenanda into a thick-witted fool, when he was not anything of the sort. But words were indeed ephemeral, able to sleet past all manner of defences, quick to cut, eager to draw blood. They were the perfect weapons of deceit, but they could also be, he well knew, the solid pavestones of a path leading to comprehension – or what passed for comprehension in this murky, impossible world.

  There were so many ways to live, one for every single sentient being – and perhaps for the non-sentient ones too – that it was a true miracle whenever two could meet in mutual understanding, or even passive acceptance. Proof, Skintick had once said, of life’s extraordinary flexibility. But then, he had added, it is our curse to be social creatures, so we’ve little choice but to try to get along.

  They were camped on a broad terrace above the last of the strange ruins – the day’s climb had been long, dusty and exhausting. Virtually every stone in the rough gravel filling the old drainage channels proved to be some sort of fossil – pieces of what had once been bone, wood, tooth or tusk – all in fragments. The entire mountainside seemed to be some sort of midden, countless centuries old, and to imagine the lives needed to create so vast a mound was to feel bewildered, weakened with awe. Were the mountains behind this one the same? Was such a thing even possible?

  Can’t you see, Nenanda, how nothing is simple? Not even the ground we walk upon. How is this created? Is what we come from and where we end up any different? No, that was badly put. Make it simpler. What is this existence?

  As Nenanda might answer, it does a warrior no good to ask such questions. Leave us this headlong plunge, leave to the moment to come that next step, even if it’s over an abyss. There’s no point in all these questions.

  And how might Skintick respond to that? Show a bhederin fear and watch it run off a cliff. What killed it? The jagged rocks below, or the terror that made it both blind and stupid? And Nenanda would shrug. Who cares? Let’s just eat the damned thing.

  This was not the grand conflict of sensibilities one might think it was. Just two heads on the same coin, one facing right on this side, the other facing left on the other side. Both winking.

  And Desra would snort and say, Keep your stupid words, I’ll take the cock in my hand over words any time.

  Holding on for dear life, Skintick would mutter under his breath, and Desra’s answering smile fooled no one. Nimander well remembered every conversation among his followers, his siblings, his family, and remembered too how they could repeat themselves, with scant variation, if all the cues were triggered in the right sequence.

  He wondered where Clip had gone to – somewhere out beyond this pool of firelight, perhaps listening, perhaps not. Would he hear anything he’d not heard before? Would anything said this night alter his opinion of them? It did not seem likely. They bickered, they rapped against personalities and spun off either laughing or infuriated. Prodding, skipping away, ever seeking where the skin was thinnest above all the old bruises. All just fighting without swords, and no one ever died, did they? Nimander watched Kedeviss – who had been unusually quiet thus far – rise and draw her cloak tighter about her shoulders. After a moment, she set off into the dark.

  Somewhere in the crags far away, wolves began howling.

  Something huge loomed just outside the flickering orange light, and Samar Dev saw both Karsa and Traveller twist round to face it, and then they rose, reaching for their weapons. The shape shifted, seemed to wag from side to side, and then – at the witch’s eye level had she been standing – a glittering, twisting snout, a broad flattened halo of fur, the smear of fire in two small eyes.

  Samar Dev struggled to breathe. She had never before seen such an enormous bear. If it reared, it would tower over even Karsa Orlong. She watched that uplifted head, the flattened nose testing the air. The creature, she realized, clearly relied more on smell than on sight. I thought fire frightened such beasts – not summoned them.

  If it attacked, things would happen . . . fast. Two swords flashing into its lunge, a deafening bellow, talons scything to sweep away the two puny attackers – and then it would come straight for her. She could see that, was certain of it. The bear had come for her.

  De nek okral. The words seemed to foam up to the surface of her thoughts, like things belched from the murky depths of instinct. ‘De nek okral,’ she whispered.

  The nostrils flared, dripping.

  And then, with a snuffling snort, the beast drew back, out of the firelight. A crunch of stones, and the ground trembled as the animal lumbered away.

  Karsa and Traveller moved their hands away from their weapons, and then both eased back down, resuming their positions facing the fire.

  The Toblakai warrior found a stick and dropped it into the flames. Sparks whirled skyward, bright with liberation, only to wink out. His expression looked thoughtful.

  Samar Dev glanced down at her trembling hands, and then slipped them beneath the woollen blanket she had wrapped about herself.

  ‘Strictly speaking,’ said Traveller, ‘not an okral. De nek . . .’ He raised his brows. ‘“Short nose”?’

  ‘How should I know?’ Samar Dev snapped.

  His brows lifted higher.

  ‘I don’t know where those words came from. They just . . . arrived.’

  ‘They were Imass, Samar Dev.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Okral is the word for a plains bear, but that was no plains bear – too big, legs too long—’

  ‘I would not,’ said Karsa, ‘wish to be chased by that beast, even on horseback. That animal was built for running its prey down.’

  ‘But it was not hunting,’ said Traveller.

  ‘I don’t know what it was doing,’ Karsa conceded with a loose shrug. ‘But I am glad it changed its mind.’

  ‘From you two,’ Samar said, ‘it would have sensed no fear. That alone would have made it hesitate.’ Her voice was harsh, almost flinging the words out. She was not sure why she was so angry. Perhaps naught but the aftermath of terror – a terror that neither companion had the decency to have shared with her. They made her feel . . . diminished.

  Traveller was still studying her, and she wanted to snarl at him. When he spoke, his tone was calm. ‘The old gods of war are returning.’

  ‘War? The god of war? That was Fener, wasn’t it? The Boar.’

  ‘Fener, Togg, Fanderay, Treach, and,’ he shrugged, ‘De nek Okral – who can say how many once existed. They arose, I would imagine, dependent on the environment of the worshippers – whatever beast was supreme predator, was the most savage—’

  ‘But none were,’ cut in Karsa Orlong. ‘Supreme. That title belonged to us two-legged hunters, us bright-eyed killers.’

  Traveller continued to stare at Samar Dev. ‘The savagery of the beasts reflected the savagery in the souls of the worshippers. In war, this is what was shared. Boar, tigers, wolves, the great bears that knew no fear.’

  ‘Is this what Fener’s fall has done, then?’ Samar Dev asked. ‘All the hoary, forgotten ones clambering back to fight over the spoils? And what has that to do with that bear, anyway?’

  ‘That bear,’ said Traveller, ‘was a god.’

  Karsa spat into the fire. ‘No wonder I have never before seen such a beast.’

  ‘They once existed,’ said
Traveller. ‘They once ruled these plains, until all that they hunted was taken from them, and so they vanished, as have so many other proud creatures.’

  ‘The god should have followed them,’ said Karsa. ‘There are too many faces of war as it is.’

  Samar Dev grunted. ‘That’s rich coming from you.’

  Karsa eyed her over the flames, and then grinned, the crazed tattoos seeming to split wide open on his face. ‘There need be only one.’

  Yours. Yes, Toblakai, I understand you well enough. ‘I have one true fear,’ she said. ‘And that is, when you are done with civilization, it will turn out that you as master of everything will prove no better than the ones you pulled down. That you will find the last surviving throne and plop yourself down on it, and find it all too much to your liking.’

  ‘That is an empty fear, witch,’ said Karsa Orlong. ‘I will leave not one throne to sit on – I will shatter them all. And if, when I am done, I am the last left standing – in all the world – then I will be satisfied.’

  ‘What of your people?’

  ‘I have listened too long to the whispers of Bairoth Gild and Delum Thord. Our ways are but clumsier versions of all the other ways in which people live – their love of waste, their eagerness to reap every living thing as if it belonged to them, as if in order to prove ownership they must destroy it.’ He bared his teeth. ‘We think no differently, just slower. Less . . . efficiently. You will prattle on about progress, Samar Dev, but progress is not what you think it is. It is not a tool guided by our hands – not yours, not mine, not Traveller’s. It is not something we can rightly claim as our destiny. Why? Because in truth we have no control over it. Not your machines, witch, not a hundred thousand slaves shackled to it – even as we stand with whips in hand.’

  Now Traveller had turned slightly and was studying the Toblakai with that same curious wonder that she had seen before. ‘What then,’ he asked, ‘is progress, Karsa Orlong?’

  The Toblakai gestured into the night sky. ‘The crawl of the stars, the plunge and rise of the moon. Day, night, birth, death – progress is the passage of reality. We sit astride this horse, but it is a beast we can never tame, and it will run for ever – we will age and wither and fall off, and it cares not. Some other will leap aboard and it cares not. It may run alone, and it cares not. It outran the great bears. The wolves and their worshippers. It outran the Jaghut, and the K’Chain Che’Malle. And still it runs on, and to it we are nothing.’

  ‘Then why not let us ride it for a time?’ Samar Dev demanded. ‘Why not leave us that damned illusion?’

  ‘Because, woman, we ride it to hunt, to kill, to destroy. We ride it as if it is our right and our excuse both.’

  ‘And yet,’ said Traveller, ‘is that not precisely what you intend, Karsa Orlong?’

  ‘I shall destroy what I can, but never shall I claim to own what I destroy. I will be the embodiment of progress, but emptied of greed. I shall be like nature’s fist: blind. And I shall prove that ownership is a lie. The land, the seas, the life to be found there. The mountains, the plains, the cities, the farms. Water, air. We own none of it. This is what I will prove, and by proving it will make it so.’

  He leaned forward then and gathered up in his hands a heap of dusty earth. The Toblakai rose to his feet, and dropped the soil on to the fire, snuffing out the flames. Darkness took them all, as if but awaiting this moment. Or, she thought with a chill, as if it has always been there. The light blinded me, else I would have seen it.

  As I do now.

  God of war, what did you want with me?

  With an ear-piercing scream the enkaral crashed down on to Pearl, talons slashing through flesh, dagger fangs closing on the back of the demon’s neck. Grunting, he reached up and closed one hand about the winged beast’s throat, the other forcing its way beneath the enkaral’s upper jaw – fingers sliced into shreds as he reached ever farther and then began prising the mouth back open. The fangs of the lower jaw sank deeper into the muscles of Pearl’s neck, and still he pushed. As this was going on, the talons never ceased their frantic rending along the demon’s lower back, seeking to hook round his spine, seeking to tear loose that column – but the chains and shackles snarled its efforts, as did Pearl’s twisting to evade each stabbing search through his muscles.

  Finally, as his grip on the beast’s throat tightened, he could hear the desperate squeal of its breath, and the jaws weakened. Something crunched and all at once Pearl was able to rip the jaws free of his neck. He staggered forward, dragging the huge beast round, both hands closing on its scaled throat – and more things collapsed inside that crushing grip.

  The enkaral flailed about, legs kicking wildly now, talons scoring furrows on Pearl’s thighs. He forced the beast down on to the ground. The thrashing slowed, and then, with a spasm, the creature went limp.

  Pearl slowly rose, flinging the carcass to one side; a thud, the slap and rustle of chains. The demon then glanced over to the figure walking alongside it. ‘Did I anger it somehow, Draconus?’

  The man squinted, shifting the weight of his chains over his other shoulder before replying, ‘No, Pearl. Madness took it, that’s all. You just happened to be near.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Pearl. And then the demon sighed. ‘Then it is good it was me and not something . . . smaller.’

  ‘Can you continue, Pearl?’

  ‘I can, yes. Thank you for asking.’

  ‘Not much longer, I should think.’

  ‘No, not much longer,’ agreed Pearl. ‘And then?’

  ‘We will see, won’t we?’

  ‘Yes, that is true. Draconus?’

  ‘Pearl?’

  ‘I think I will welcome an end – is that a terrible thing for me to say?’

  The man shook his head, his expression hinting that he might be in pain. ‘No, my friend, it is not.’

  Fully one half of the sky was now a seething argent storm. Thunder rolled from the horizon behind them, as the very ground was ripped up, annihilated – their world had acquired an edge, raw as a cliff, and that cliff was drawing closer as vast sections sheared away, as the raging abyss swallowed the toppling stone columns one by one.

  And it occurred to Draconus, then, that each of them here, seemingly alone, each with his or her own shackle, his or her own chain, had finally, at long last, come together.

  We are an army. But an army in retreat. See the detritus we leave in our wake, the abandoned comrades. See the glaze of our eyes, this veil of numbed exhaustion – when at last we tear it aside, we will find the despair we have harboured for so long, like a black poisoned fruit under a leaf – all revealed as we look into each other’s eyes.

  Was the comfort found in mutual recognition of any true worth? Here, at the last? When the common ground is failure? Like a field of corpses after a battle. Like a sea of skulls rolling in the tide. Is not the brotherhood too bitter to bear?

  And now, he wanted to . . . to what? Yes, to rage, but first, let me close my eyes. Just for a moment. Let me find, again, my will—

  ‘Draconus?’

  ‘Yes, Pearl?’

  ‘Do you hear drums? I hear drums.’

  ‘The thunder—’ and then he stopped, and turned round, to look back at that fulminating, crazed horizon.

  ‘Gods below.’

  Chaos had found a new way to mock them. With legions in ranks, weapons and armour blazing, with standards spitting lightning into the sky. Emerging in an endless row, an army of something vaguely human, shaped solely by intent, in numbers unimaginable – they did not march so much as flow, like a frothing surge devouring the ground – and no more than a league away. Lances and pike heads flashing, round shields spinning like vortices. Drums like rattling bones, rushing to swarm like maddened wasps.

  So close . . . has the hunger caught fresh our scent – does the hunger now rush to us, faster than ever before?

  Is there something in that storm . . . that knows what it wants?

  ‘I do not understand,’ sai
d Pearl. ‘How can chaos take shapes?’

  ‘Perhaps, friend, what we are seeing is the manifestation of what exists in all of us. Our secret love of destruction, the pleasure of annihilation, our darkest glee. Perhaps when at last they reach us, we shall realize that they are us and we are them.’ That Dragnipur has but cut us in two, and all chaos seeks is to draw us whole once more.

  Oh, really now, Draconus, have you lost your mind?

  ‘If they are the evil in our souls, Pearl, then there can be no doubt as to their desire.’

  ‘Perhaps not just our souls,’ mused Pearl, wiping blood from his eyes. ‘Perhaps every soul, since the beginning of creation. Perhaps, Draconus, when each of us dies, the evil within us is torn free and rushes into the realm of Chaos. Or the evil is that which survives the longest . . .’

  Draconus said nothing. The demon’s suggestions horrified him, and he thought – oh, he was thinking, yes – that Pearl had found a terrible truth. Somewhere among those possibilities.

  Somewhere among them . . . I think . . . there is a secret. An important secret.

  Somewhere . . .

  ‘I do not want to meet my evil self,’ said Pearl.

  Draconus glanced across at him. ‘Who does?’

  Ditch was dreaming, for dreaming was his last road to freedom. He could stride, reaching out to the sides, reshaping everything. He could make the world as he wanted it, as it should be, a place of justice, a place where he could be a god and look upon humanity as it truly was: a mob of unruly, faintly ridiculous children. Watch them grasp things when they think no one’s looking. Watch them break things, hurt things, steal. Listen to their expostulations of innocence, their breathless list of excuses, listen to how they repent and repent and repent and then go and do the same damned things all over again. Children.

  With all his godly powers, he would teach them about consequences, that most terrible of lessons, the one resisted the longest. He would teach them because he had learned in the only way possible – with scars and broken bones, with sickness in the soul tasting of fear, with all the irreparable damage resulting from all his own thoughtless decisions.