some places the sound of shattering wood was a seemingly unstoppable progression, coming ever closer.
Apsalar increased pace as one of those unseen, sundering avalanches drew near the group, driving for the arched gate. A moment later, amidst a rising roar, they all broke into a run.
'Where?' Fiddler demanded as he scrambled forward, head darting as he searched frantically in all directions. 'Where in Hood's name is it?'
The answer came in a sudden sleet of ice-cold water from above, the savage opening of a warren. Emerging from within that hovering, strangely suspended spray — not fifty paces behind them — the enormous head and maw of a dhenrabi lunged into view, wreathed in uprooted sea grasses, kelp and strange, skeletal branches.
A swarm of wasps rose before it and was devoured entire without pause.
Three more dhenrabi appeared from that torrential portal. The roiling spume of water that held them seemed to burn off wherever it descended upon the roots of the maze, yet the creatures remained suspended, riding the hissing maelstrom.
Images flashed through Fiddler within the span of a single heartbeat.
A moment later, it became clear just how untested the Hounds of Shadow had been thus far. He
Shan was the first to reach the lead dhenrabi, the first to plunge into its gaping, serrated mouth — and vanish within that yawning darkness. The creature reared back lightning-quick, and if that massive, blunt visage could show surprise, it did so now.
Gear reached the next one, and the dhenrabi lunged, not to swallow, but to bite down, to flense with the thousand jagged plates of its teeth. The Hound's power buckled under those snapping jaws, but did not shatter. An instant later, Gear was through, past those teeth, burying itself within the creature — where it delivered mayhem.
The other Hounds made for the remaining two dhenrabi. Only Blind remained with the group.
The lead dhenrabi began thrashing now, whipping its enormous bulk as the torrent of its warren collapsed around it — crushing flat walls of the maze, where long-imprisonedvictims stirred amidst the wreckage, withered limbs reachingskyward through mud-churned water, clutching air. Thesecond dhenrabi fell into the same writhing tumult.
A hand clutched Fiddler's arm, pulling him hard around.
'Come on,' Crokus hissed. Moby was still clinging to his shirt. 'We've got more company, Fid.'
And now the sapper saw the object of the Dam's attention — off to his right, almost behind Tremorlor, still a thousandpaces distant, yet fast approaching. A swarm like no other.Bloodflies, in a solid black cloud the size of a thunderhead,billowing, surging towards them.
Leaving the dhenrabi in the throes of violent death behind them, the group sprinted for the House.
As he passed beneath the leafless arch of vines, the sapper saw Apsalar reach the door, close her hands on the broad, heavy ring-latch and twist it. He saw the muscles rise on her forearms, straining. Straining.
Then she staggered back a step, as if dismissively, contemptuously shoved. As Fiddler, trailed by Crokus, Mappo with his charge, Apsalar's father, then Pust and Blind, reached the flat, paved landing, he saw her spin round, her expression one of shock and disbelief.
The sapper skidded to a halt, whirled.
The sky was black, alive, and coming straight for them.
At Vathar's sparse, blistered edge, where the basolith of bedrock sank once more beneath its skin of limestone, and the land that stretched southward before and below their vantage point was nothing but studded stones in windswept, parched clay, they came upon the first of the Jaghut tombs.
Few among the outriders and the column's head paid it much attention. It looked like nothing more than a cairn marker, a huge, elongated slab of stone tilted upward at the southernmost end, as if pointing the way across the Nenoth Odhan to Aren or some other, more recent destination.
Corporal List had led the historian to it in silence while the others prepared rigging to assist in the task of guiding the wagons down the steep, winding descent to the plain's barren floor.
'The youngest son,' List said, staring down at the primitive tomb. His face was frightening to look at, for it wore a father's grief, as raw as if the child's death was but yesterday — a grief that had, if anything, grown with the tortured, unfathomable passage of two hundred thousand years.
'How old?' Duiker's voice was as parched as the Odhan that awaited them.
'Five. The T'lan Imass chose this place for him. The effort of killing him would have proved too costly, given that the rest of the family still awaited them. So they dragged the child here — shattered his bones, every one, as many times as they could on so small a frame — then pinned him beneath this rock.'
Duiker had thought himself beyond shock, beyond even despair, yet his throat closed up at List's toneless words. The historian's imagination was too sharp for this, raising images in his mind that seared him with overwhelming sorrow. He forced himself to look away, watched the activities among the soldiers and Wickans thirty paces distant. He realized that they worked mostly in silence, speaking only as their tasks required, and then in low, strangely subdued tones.
'Yes,' List said. 'The father's emotions are a pall unrelieved by time — so powerful, so rending, those emotions, that even the earth spirits had to flee. It was that or madness. Coltaine should be informed — we must move quickly across this land.'
'And ahead? On the Nenoth plain?'
'It gets worse. It was not just the children that the T'lan Imass pinned — still breathing, still aware — beneath rocks.'
'But why?' The question ripped from Duiker's throat.
'Pogroms need no reason, sir, none that can weather challenge, in any case. Difference in kind is the first recognition, the only one needed, in fact. Land, domination, pre-emptive attacks — all just excuses, mundane justifications that do nothing but disguise the simple distinction. They are not us. We are not them.'
'Did the Jaghut seek to reason with them, Corporal?'
'Many times, among those not thoroughly corrupted by power — the Tyrants — but you see, there was always an arrogance in the Jaghut, and it was a kind that could claw its way up your back when face to face. Each Jaghut's interest was with him or herself. Almost exclusively. They viewed the T'lan Imass no differently from the way they viewed ants underfoot, herds on the grasslands, or indeed the grass itself. Ubiquitous, a feature of the landscape. A powerful, emergent people, such as the T'lan Imass were, could not but be stung-'
'To the point of swearing a deathless vow?'
'I don't believe that, at first, the T'lan Imass realized how difficult the task of eradication would be. Jaghut were very different in another way — they did not flaunt their power. And many of their efforts in self-defence were … passive. Barriers of ice — glaciers — they swallowed the lands around them, even the seas, swallowed whole continents, making them impassable, unable to support the food the mortal Imass required.'
'So they created a ritual that would make them immortal-'
'Free to blow like the dust — and in the age of ice, there was plenty of dust.'
Duiker's gaze caught Coltaine standing near the edge of the trail. 'How far,' he asked the man beside him, 'until we leave this area of… of sorrow?'
'Two leagues, no more than that. Beyond are Nenoth's true grasslands, hills. . tribes, each one very protective of what little water they possess.'
'I think I had better speak with Coltaine.'
'Aye, sir.'
The Dry March, as it came to be called, was its own testament to sorrow. Three vast, powerful tribes awaited them, two of them, the Tregyn and the Bhilard, striking at the beleaguered column like vipers. With the third, situated at the very western edge of the plains — the Khundryl — there was no immediate contact, though it
