Toll the Hounds

go wilh you, Faint,’

‘I was asking for volunteers 1 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.’ Quell 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 ime, tell him he needs to arm himself. This could get messy.’

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

Flanked by the Boles, Tula 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 Tula.

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

‘That window back there,’ said Tula, ’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 win-dows. 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 surre-alized 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, 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 leg 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 mc 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 weath-ered down by centuries and centuries of wind or deliberately softened to ease that same buffeting, howling wind. The entranceway was a narrow gloomy recess be-neath 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