Toll the Hounds

  Thank whatever gods squatted in the muck of this damned village that these demons were so stupid. Not one had tried either of the shuttered windows flanking the entrance, although with that barbed hulk, Gruntle, waiting at one of ‘em with his cutlasses at the ready, and Faint and the Bole brothers at the other, at least if them demons went and tried one of ‘em they’d be cut to pieces in no time. Or so Reccanto hoped, since he was hiding under a table and a table wasn’t much cover, or wouldn’t be if them demons was nasty enough to tear apart Gruntle and Faint and the Boles and the Trell, and Sweetest Sufferance, too, for that matter.

  Master Quell and that swampy witch, Precious Thimble, were huddled together at the back, at the barred cellar door, doing Hood knew what. Glanno Tarp was missing – he’d gone with the horses when they went straight and the carriage went left, and Reccanto was pretty sure that the idiot had gone and killed himself bad. Or worse.

  As for that corpse, Cartographer, why, the last Ilk had seen of it it was still lashed to a wheel, spinning in a blur as the damned thing spun off its axle and bounded off into the rainy night. Why couldn’t the demons go after it? A damned easier fight—

  Repeated blows were turning the door into a shattered wreck, and one of the arms angled down to slash deep gouges across Mappo’s back, making the Trell groan and groaning wasn’t good, since it meant Mappo might just give up trying to hold ‘em back and in they’d come, straight for the man hiding under the table. It wasn’t fair. Nothing was fair and what was fair about that, dammit?

  He drew out his rapier and clutched the grip in one shaky hand. A lunge from the knees – was such a thing possible? He was about to find out. Oh, yes, he’d skewer one for its troubles, just watch. And if the other two (he was pretty sure there were three of ‘em) ripped him up then fine, just fine. A man could only do so much.

  Gruntle was shouting something at Mappo, and the Trell bellowed a reply, drawing his legs up under himself as if about to dive to one side – thanks a whole lot, you ogre! – and then all at once Mappo did just that, off to the right, slamming into the legs of the Boles and Faint and taking all three down with him.

  An explosion of wood splinters and thrashing arms, clacking fangs, unclean hair and terribly unreasonable expressions, and the three screeching women plunged in.

  Two were brought up short pretty fast, as their heads leapt up in gouts of greenish uck and their bodies sprawled in a thrashing mess.

  Even as this was happening, the third woman charged straight for Reccanto. He shrieked and executed his lunge from the knees, which naturally wasn’t a lunge at all. More like a flèche, a forward flinging of his upper body, arm and point extended, and as he overbalanced and landed with a bone-creaking thump on the floorboards the rapier’s point snagged on something and the blade bowed alarmingly and so he let go, so that it sprang up, then back down, the pommel crunching the top of Reccanto’s head, not once, but twice, each time driving his face into the floor, nose crackling in a swirl of stinging tears and bursting into his brain the horrid stench of mouse droppings and greasy dirt – immediately replaced by a whole lot of flowing blood.

  It was strangely quiet, and, moaning, Reccanto rolled on to his side and lifted himself up on one elbow.

  And found himself staring into the blank, horrible eyes of the woman who’d charged him. The rapier point had driven in between her eyes, straight in, so far that he should be able to see it coming back out from somewhere beneath the back of her skull – but it wasn’t there. Meaning—

  ‘She broke it!’ he raged, clambering on to his feet. ‘She broke my damned rapier!’

  The demonic woman was on her knees, head thrust forward, mouth still stretched open, the weight of her upper body resting on the knocked-over chair that had served as pathetic barricade. The other two, headless, still thrashed on the floor as green goo flowed. Gruntle was studying that ichor where it slathered the broad blades of his cutlasses.

  Mappo, the Boles and Faint were slowly regaining their feet.

  Sweetest Sufferance, clutching a clay bottle, staggered up to lean against Reccanto. ‘Too bad about your rapier,’ she said, ‘but damn me, Ilk, that was the neatest flèche I ever did see.’

  Reccanto squinted, wiped blood from his streaming nose and lacerated lips, and then grinned. ‘It was, wasn’t it. The timing of a master—’

  ‘I mean, how could you have guessed she’d trip on one of them rolling heads and go down on her knees skidding like that, straight into your thrust?’

  Tripped? Skidded? ‘Yes, well, like I said, I’m a master duellist.’

  ‘I could kiss you,’ she continued, her breath rank with sour wine, ‘except you went and pissed yourself and there’s limits t’decency, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘That ain’t piss – we’re all still sopping wet!’

  ‘But we don’t quite smell the way you do, Ilk.’

  Snarling, he lurched away. Damned overly sensitive woman! ‘My rapier,’ he moaned.

  ‘Shattered inside her skull, I’d wager,’ said Gruntle, ‘which couldn’t have done her brain any good. Nicely done, Reccanto.’

  Ilk decided it was time to strut a little.

  Whilst Reccanto Ilk walked round like a rooster, Precious Thimble glanced over worriedly at the Boles, and was relieved to see them both apparently unharmed. They hadn’t been paying her enough attention lately and they weren’t paying her any now either. She felt a tremor of unease.

  Master Quell was thumping on the cellar door. ‘I know you can hear me,’ he called. ‘You, hiding in there. We got three of ‘em – is there more? Three of ‘em killed. Is there more?’

  Faint was checking her weapons. ‘We got to go and find Glanno,’ she said. ‘Any volunteers?’

  Gruntle walked over, pausing to peer out of the doorway. ‘The rain’s letting off – looks as if the storm’s spent. I’ll go with you, Faint.’

  ‘I was asking for volunteers – I wasn’t volunteering myself.’

  ‘I’ll go!’ said Amby.

  ‘I’ll go!’ said Jula.

  And then they glared at each other, and then grinned as if at some private joke, and a moment later both burst out laughing.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ Precious Thimble demanded, truly bewildered this time. Have they lost their minds? Assuming they have minds, I mean.

  Her harsh query sobered them and both ducked, avoiding her stare.

  The cellar door creaked open, drawing everyone’s attention, and a bewhiskered face poked out, eyes wide and rolling. ‘Three, ya said? Ya said three?’

  The dialect was Genabackan, the accent south islander.

  ‘Ya got ah three? Deed?’

  Quell nodded. ‘Any more lurking about, host?’

  A quick shake of the head, and the tavern keep edged out, flinching when he saw the slaughtered bodies. ‘Oh, darlings,’ he whispered, ‘ahm so soory. So soory!’

  ‘You know them?’ Quell asked. ‘You know what they were?’

  More figures crowded behind the keep, pale faces, frightened eyes. To Quell’s questions the whiskered man flinched. ‘Coarsed,’ he said in a rasp. ‘Our daughters . . . coarsed.’

  ‘Cursed? When they come of age, right?’

  A jerky nod, and then the man’s eyes widened on the wizard. ‘You know it? You know the coarse?’

  ‘How long have you had it, host? Here, in this village – how long have you had the curse?’

  ‘Foor yars now. Foor yars.’ And the man edged out. ‘Aai, their heeds! Ya cart erf their heeds!’ Behind him the others set up a wailing.

  Precious Thimble met Quell’s eyes and they exchanged a nod. ‘Still about, I’d say,’ Precious said under her breath.

  ‘Agreed. Should we go hunting?’

  She looked round once more. Mappo was dragging the first naked, headless corpse out through the doorway. The green blood had blackened on the floor and left tarry streaks trailing the body. ‘Let’s take that Trell with us, I think.’

  ‘Good idea.’ Quel
l walked up to the tavern keep. ‘Is there a constable in this village? Who rules the land – where in Hood’s name are we anyway?’

  Owlish blinks of the eyes. ‘Reach of Woe is war ye are. Seen the toower? It’s war the Provost leeves. Yull wan the Provost, ah expeect.’

  Quell turned away, rubbed at his eyes, then edged close to Precious Thimble. ‘We’re agreed, then, it’s witchery, this curse.’

  ‘Witch or warlock,’ she said, nodding.

  ‘We’re on the Reach of Woe, a wrecker coast. I’d wager it’s the arrival of strangers that wakes up the daughters – they won’t eat their kin, will they?’

  ‘When the frenzy’s on them,’ said Precious Thimble, ‘they’ll eat anything that moves.’

  ‘That’s why the locals bolted, then, right. Fine, Witch, go collect Mappo – and this time, tell him he needs to arm himself. This could get messy.’

  Precious Thimble looked over at the last body the Trell was now dragging outside. ‘Right,’ she said.

  Flanked by the Boles, Jula on his right, Amby on his left, Gruntle walked back down to the main street, boots squelching in the mud. The last spits of rain cooled his brow. Oh, he’d wanted a nastier fight. The problem with mindless attackers was their mindlessness, which made them pathetically predictable. And only three of the damned things—

  ‘I was going first,’ said Amby.

  ‘No, I was,’ said Jula.

  Gruntle scowled. ‘Going where? What are you two talking about?’

  ‘That window back there,’ said Jula, ‘at the tavern. If’n the girlies got in through the door, I was goin’ out through the window – only we couldn’t get the shutters pulled back—’

  ‘That was your fault,’ said Amby. ‘I kept lifting the latch and you kept pushing it back down.’

  ‘The latch goes down to let go, Amby, you idiot.’

  ‘No it goes up – it went up, I saw it—’

  ‘And then back down—’

  ‘Up.’

  ‘Then down.’

  Gruntle’s sudden growl silenced them both. They were now following the hoof prints and various furrows of things being dragged in the wake of the animals. In the squat houses to either side, muted lights flickered through thick-glassed windows. The sound of draining water surrounded them, along with the occasional distant rumble of thunder. The air mocked with the freshness that came after a storm.

  ‘There they are,’ said Amby, pointing. ‘Just past that low wall. You see them, Gruntle? You see them?’

  A corral. The wreckage of the carriage high bench was scattered along the base of the stone wall.

  Reaching it, they paused, squinted at the field of churned-up mud, the horses huddled at the far end – eyeing them suspiciously – and there, something sprawled near the middle. A body. Far off to the left was one of the carriage wheels.

  Gruntle leading the way, they climbed the wall and set out for Glanno Tarp.

  As they drew closer, they could hear him talking.

  ‘. . . and so she wasn’t so bad, compared to Nivvy, but it was years before I surrealized not all women talked that way, and if I’d a known, well, I probably would never have agreed to it. I mean, I have some decency in me, I’m sure of it. It was the way she carried on pretending she was nine years old, eyes so wide, all those cute things she did which, when you think about it, was maybe cute some time, long ago, but now – I mean, her hair was going grey, for Hood’s sake – oh, you found me. Good. No, don’t move me just yet, my legs is broke and maybe a shoulder too, and an arm, wrist, oh, and this finger here, it’s sprained. Get Quell – don’t go moving me without Quell, all right? Thanks. Now, where was I? Nivvy? No, that stall keeper, Luft, now she didn’t last, for the reasons I experplained before. It was months before I found me a new woman – well, before Coutre found me, would be more reaccurate. She’d just lost all her hair . . .’

  The carriage wheel had moved slightly. Gruntle had caught the motion out of the corner of his eye and, leaving Glanno babbling on to the Boles, who stood looking down with mouths hanging open, he set out for it.

  He sheathed his cutlasses and heaved at the wheel. It resisted until, with a thick slurping sound, it lifted clear of the mud and Gruntle pushed it entirely upright.

  Cartographer was a figure seemingly composed entirely of clay, still bound by the wrists and ankle to the spokes. The face worked for a time, pushing out lumps of mud from its mouth, and then the corpse said, ‘It’s the jam-smeared bread thing, isn’t it?’

  ‘Look at that,’ Quell said.

  Precious Thimble made a warding gesture and then spat thrice, up, down, straight ahead. ‘Blackdog Swamp,’ she said. ‘Mott Wood. This was why I left, dammit! That’s the problem with Jaghut, they show up everywhere.’

  Behind them, Mappo grunted but otherwise offered no comment.

  The tower was something between square and round, the corners either weathered down by centuries and centuries of wind or deliberately softened to ease that same buffeting, howling wind. The entranceway was a narrow gloomy recess beneath a mossy lintel stone, the moss hanging in beards that dripped in a curtain of rainwater, each drop popping into eroded hollows on the slab of the landing.

  ‘So,’ said Quell with brittle confidence, ‘the village Provost went and moved into a Jaghut tower. That was brave—’

  ‘Stupid.’

  ‘Stupidly brave, yes.’

  ‘Unless,’ she said, sniffing the air. ‘That’s the other problem with Jaghut. When they build towers, they live in them. For ever.’

  Quell groaned. ‘I was pretending not to think that, Witch.’

  ‘As if that would help.’

  ‘It helped me!’

  ‘There’s two things we can do,’ Precious Thimble announced. ‘We can turn right round and ignore the curse and all that and get out of this town as fast as possible.’

  ‘Or?’

  ‘We can go up to that door and knock.’

  Quell rubbed at his chin, glanced back at a silent Mappo, and then once more eyed the tower. ‘This witchery – this curse here, Precious, that strikes when a woman comes of age.’

  ‘What about it? It’s a damned old one, a nasty one.’

  ‘Can you break it?’

  ‘Not likely. All we can hope to do is make the witch or warlock change her or his mind about it. The caster can surrender it a whole lot more easily than someone else can break it.’

  ‘And if we kill the caster?’

  She shrugged. ‘Could go either way, Wizard. Poof! Gone. Or . . . not. Anyway, you’re stepping sideways, Quell. We were talking about this . . . this Provost.’

  ‘Not sideways, Witch. I was thinking, well, about you and Sweetest Sufferance and Faint, that’s all.’

  All at once she felt as if she’d just swallowed a fistful of icy knuckles. Her throat ached, her stomach curdled. ‘Oh, shit.’

  ‘And since,’ Quell went on remorselessly, ‘it’s going to be a day or two before we can effect repairs – at best – well . . .’

  ‘I think we’d better knock,’ she said.

  ‘All right. Just let me, er, empty my bladder first.’

  He walked off to the stone-lined gutter to his left. Mappo went off a few paces in the other direction, to rummage in his sack.

  Precious Thimble squinted up at the tower. ‘Well,’ she whispered, ‘if you’re a Jaghut – and I think you are – you know we’re standing right here. And you can smell the magic on our breaths. Now, we’re not looking for trouble, but there’s no chance you don’t know nothing about that curse – we need to find that witch or warlock, you see, that nasty villager who made up this nasty curse, because we’re stuck here for a few days. Understand? There’s three women stuck here. And I’m one of them.’

  ‘You say something?’ Quell asked, returning.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she said as Mappo arrived, holding an enormous mace.

  They walked to the door.

  Halfway there, it swung open.

  ‘My mate,?
?? said the Provost, ‘is buried in the yard below.’ He was standing at the window, looking out over the tumultuous seas warring with the shoals.

  Quell grunted. ‘What yard?’ He leaned forward and peered down. ‘What yard?’

  The Provost sighed. ‘It was there two days ago.’ He turned from the window and eyed the wizard.

  Who did his best not to quail.

  Bedusk Pall Kovuss Agape, who called himself a Jaghut Anap, was simply gigantic, possibly weighing more than Mappo and at least a head and a half taller than the Trell. His skin was blue, a deeper hue than any Malazan Napan Quell could recall seeing. The blue even seemed to stain the silver-tipped tusks jutting from his lower jaw.

  Quell cleared his throat. He needed to pee again, but that would have to wait. ‘You lost her long ago?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Er, your mate?’

  Bedusk Agape selected one of the three crystal decanters on the marble table, sniffed at its contents, and then refilled their goblets. ‘Have you ever had a wife, Wizard?’

  ‘No, not that I’m aware of.’

  ‘Yes, it can be like that at times.’

  ‘It can?’

  The Jaghut gestured towards the window. ‘One moment there, the next . . . gone.’

  ‘Oh, the cliff.’

  ‘No, no. I was speaking of my wife.’

  Quell shot Precious Thimble a helpless look. Off near the spiral staircase, Mappo stood examining an elaborate eyepiece of some kind, mounted on a spike with a peculiar ball-hinge that permitted the long black metal instrument to be swivelled about, side to side and up and down. The damned Trell was paying attention to all the wrong things.

  Precious Thimble looked back at Quell with wide eyes.

  ‘Loss,’ stammered the wizard, ‘is a grievous thing.’

  ‘Well of course it is,’ said Bedusk Agape, frowning.

  ‘Um, not always. If, for example, one loses one’s, er, virginity, or a favourite shiny stone, say . . .’

  The red-rimmed eyes stayed steady, unblinking.

  Quell wanted to squeeze his legs together – no, better, fold one over the other – lest his snake start drooling or, worse, spitting.