thing about cactus spit was all the parts of the brain it stamped dead underfoot. Seemed that counting and figuring was among them.
Fireballs! Racing straight for him!
Grisp screamed. Or, rather, tried to. Instead, two wads were sucked in quick succession to the back of his throat, and all at once he couldn’t breathe, and could only stare as a horde of giant dogs attacked in a thundering charge, straight across his three weepy rows, leaving a churned, uprooted, trampled mess. Two of the beasts made for him, jaws opening. Grisp had rocked on to the two back legs of the chair with that sudden, shortlived gasp, and now all at once he lost his balance, pitching directly backward, legs in the air, even as two sets of enormous jaws snapped shut in the place where his head had been a heartbeat earlier.
His shack erupted behind him, grey shards of wood and dented kitchenware exploding in all directions.
The thumping impact when he hit the porch sent both wads out from his mouth on a column of expelled air from his stunned lungs. The weight of the jug, two fin-gers still hooked through the lone ear, pulled him sideways and out of the toppled chair on to his stomach, and he lifted his head and saw that his shack was simply gone, and there were the beasts, fast dwindling as they charged towards the city.
Groaning, he lowered his head, settling his forehead on to the slatted boards, and could see through the crack to the crawlspace below, only to find Scamper’s two beady eyes staring back up at him in malevolent accusation.
‘Fair ‘nough,’ he whispered. ‘Time’s come, Scamper old boy, for us to pack up ‘n’ leave. New pastures, hey? A world before us, just waitin’ wi’ open arms, just-’
The nearest gate of the city exploded then, the shock wave rolling back to flatten
Grisp once more on the floorboards. He heard the porch groan and sag under him and had one generous thought for poor Scamper-who was scrambling as fast as two legs could take him-before the porch collapsed under him.
Like a dozen bronze bells, hammered so hard they tore loose from their frames and, in falling, dragged the bell towers down around them, the power of the seven Hounds obliterated the gate, the flanking unfinished fortifications, the guard house, the ring-road stable, and two nearby buildings. Crashing blocks of stone, wooden beams, bricks and tiles, crushed furniture and fittings, more than a few pulped bodies in the mix. Clouds of dust, spurts of hissing flame from ruptured gas pipes, the ominous subterranean roar of deadlier eruptions-
Such a sound! Such portentous announcement! The Hounds have arrived, dear friends. Come, yes, come to deliver mayhem, to reap a most senseless toll. Vio-lence can arrive blind, without purpose, like the fist of nature. Cruel in disregard, brutal in its random catastrophe. Like a flash flood, like a tornado, a giant dust-devil, an earthquake-so blind, so senseless, so without intent!
These Hounds… they were nothing like that.
Moments before this eruption, Spite, still facing the estate of her venal bitch of a sister, reached a decision. And so she raised her perfectly manicured hands, up be-fore her face, and closed them into fists. Then watched as a deeper blot of darkness formed over the estate, swelling ever larger until blood-red cracks appeared in the vast shapeless manifestation.
In her mind, she was recalling a scene from millennia past, a blasted landscape of enormous craters-the fall of the Crippled God, obliterating what had been a thriving civilization, leaving nothing but ashes and those craters in which magma roiled, spitting noxious gases that swirled high into the air.
The ancient scene was so vivid in her mind that she could scoop out one of those craters, half a mountain’s weight of magma, slap it into something like a giant ball, and then position it over the sleepy estate wherein lounged her sleepy, unsuspecting sister. And, now that it was ready, she could just…
The mass descended in a blur. The estate vanished-as did those nearest to it-and as a wave of scalding heat swept over Spite, followed by a wall of lava thrashing across the street and straight for her, she realized, with a faint squeal, that she too was standing far too close
Ancient sorceries were messy, difficult to judge, harder yet to control. She’d let her eponymous tendencies affect her judgement. Again.
Undignified flight was the only option for survival, and as she raced up the alley she saw, standing thirty paces ahead, at the passageway’s mouth, a figure.
Lady Envy had watched the conjuration at first with curiosity, then admiration, and then awe, and finally in raging jealousy. That spitting cow
Then released a seething wave of magic straight into her sister’s slightly pre-tier face.
Spite never thought ahead. A perennial problem, a permanent flaw-that she hadn’t killed herself long ago was due only to Envy’s explicit but casual-seeming indifference. But now, if the cow really wanted to take her on, at last, to bring an end to all this, well, that was just dandy.
As her sister’s nasty magic engulfed her, Spite did the only thing she could do under the circumstances. She let loose everything she had in a counterattack. Power roared out from her, clashed and then warred with Envy’s own.
They stood, not twenty paces apart, and the space between them raged like the heart of a volcano. Cobbles blistered bright red and melted away. Stone and brick walls rippled and sagged. Faint voices shrieked. Slate tiles pitched down into the maelstrom as roofs tilted hard over on both sides.
Needless to say, neither woman heard a distant gate disintegrate, nor saw the fireball that followed, billowing high into the night. They did not even feel the thun-derous reverberations rippling out beneath the streets, the ones that came from the concussions of subterranean gas chambers igniting one after another.
No, Spite and Envy had other things on their minds.
There could be no disguising a sudden rush to the estate gate by a dozen black-clad assassins. As five figures appeared from an alley mouth directly opposite Scorch and Left, three others, perched on the rooftop of the civic building to the right of the alley, sent quarrels hissing towards the two lone guards. The remaining four, two to a side, sprinted in from the flanks.
The facing attack had made itself known a moment too soon, and both Scorch and Leff had begun moving by the time the quarrels arrived. This lack of coordi-nation could be viewed as inevitable given the scant training these assassins pos-sessed, since this group was, in fact, little more than a diversion, and thus comprised the least capable individuals among the attackers.
One quarrel glanced off Leff’s helm. Another was deflected by Scorch’s chain hauberk, although the blow, impacting his left shoulder blade, sent him stumbling.
The sky to the west lit up momentarily, and the cobbles shook as Leff reached his crossbow, managed a skidding turn and loosed the quarrel into the crowd of killers fast closing.
A bellow of pain and one figure tumbled, weapons skittering.
Scorch scrabbled for his own crossbow, but it looked to Leff as if he would not ready it in time, and so with a shout he drew his shortsword and leapt into the path of the five attackers.
Scorch surprised him, as a quarrel sped past to thud deep into a man’s chest, punching him hack and fouling up the assassin behind him. Left shifted direction and went in on that side, slashing with his sword at the tangled figure-a thick, heavyset woman-and feeling the edge bite flesh and then bone.
Shapes darted in on his left-but all at once Scorch was there.
Things got a bit hot then.
Torvald Nom was looking for a way down when the tiles beneath his boots trem-bled to the sounds of running feet. He spun round to find four figures charging to-wards him. Clearly, they had not been expecting to find anyone up here, since none carried crossbows. In the moment before they reached him, he saw in their hands knives, knotted clubs and braided saps.
The nearest one wobbled suddenly-a bolt was buried deep in his right temple-and then fell in a sprawl.
Torvald threw himself to one side and rolled-straight over the roof edge. Not quite what he had planned, and he desperately twisted as he fell, knowing that it wouldn’t help in the least.
He had tucked into his belt two Blue Moranth sharpers.
Torvald could only close his eyes as he pounded hard on to the pavestones. The impact threw him back upward on a rising wave of stunning pain, but the motion seemed strangely slow, and he opened his eyes-amazed that he
