Toll the Hounds

‘No,’ he said. ‘I was just complaining.’ He drew out a pair of notched, rust-stained swords. ‘You know me better than that. Still, oh, how I wanted Skinner. To lose him this way-by the Tyrant, it galls.’

‘That is why,’ said Hood, ‘you will not lead the Dead into this war.’

‘What? I am the Knight of Death! The damned bony fist himself! I demand-’

‘Oh, do be quiet, Second,’ sighed the Lord of Death. ‘Other tasks await you-and you will not rue them, I am sure. Iskar Jarak, will you command in the Knight’s stead? At the head of the spear, driving into the very heart of the enemy?’

The one so addressed had the look of a veteran among veterans. Grey-bearded, scarred, wearing threadbare, faded colours over his plain chain hauberk. Grey and magenta, bordered in black. At Hood’s request he faced the Jaghut. ‘We will harden the point,’ he said. ‘With Malazans. At the very tip, my Bridgeburners. Dujek on my left flank, Bult on the right with the Seventh and his Wickans.’ He then twisted in the saddle to regard another soldier. ‘Brukhalian and his Grey Swords to the right of Bult.’

Brukhalian nodded. ‘I find honour in that, Iskar Jarak.’

‘Skamar Ara, your Jacuruku legions to the left of Dujek. Hood, listen well. Be-yond the spear, so many of the rest are so much dross. Their will is weakened by countless millennia-they will march into the face of the enemy, but they will not last.’

‘Yes,’ said Hood.

‘Just so you know,’ said Iskar Jarak. ‘Just so you know.’

‘Return now to your forces,’ Hood commanded. ‘Iskar Jarak, send to me the one-eyed outrider. And Bult, find my Soldier, the one once named Baudin. There are things still to do.’

Draconus watched as the commanders rode off, with only the Seguleh remain-ing, swords sheathed once more. ‘Hood,’ he said, ‘what is happening here? You will ask the dead to fight for us? They will fail. They will earn oblivion and naught else. They cannot succeed, Hood. The chaos pursuing Dragnipur will not be denied-do you understand what I’m telling you?’

The Knight snorted. ‘It is you who does not understand, Elder. Long before he was Lord of the Fallen, he was Jaghut. Lords of the Last Stands, hah! Sentinels of the Sundered Keeps. Devourers of the Forlorn Hope-you, Elder, who stood time and again against the Tiste Andii, the Tiste Edur-you, who walked the ashes of

Kharkanas itself-understand me. The dour Tiste Andii and the suicidal Edur, they are as nothing to the miserable madness of the Jaghut!’

During this tirade, Mood continued to stare at the wagon, at its towering, tot tering heap of bodies. And then the Lord of the Dead spoke. ‘I often wondered what it looked like, this Hold creaking on its wooden wheels… a pathetic thing, really. Crude, clumsy.’ He faced Draconus, rotted skin curling back from the tusks. ‘Now, turn it around.’

xx

Ask what the dead face

Snatching the curtain aside

These stony tracks into blind worlds

Where to grope is to recall

All the precious jewels of life

Ask what the dead see

In that last backward glance

These fetish strings knots left untied

Where every sinew strains

To reach and touch once more

Ask what the dead know

When knowing means nothing

Arms full and heaped with baubles

As if to build a home anew

In places we’ve never been

Ask but the dead do not answer

Behind the veil of salty rain

Skirl now amid the rotted leavings

When the worms fall away

To that wealth of silence

– The Lost Treasures Of Indaros, Fisher Kel That

Eyes rolling white, the ox ran for its life. Cart skidding and bouncing, tilting on one wild wheel as the moaning beast hurtled round a corner and raced down a cobbled street.

Even the gods could not reach through that thick-boned pate of skull, down into the tender knot of terror in its murky brain. Once prodded awake, incessant need blurred the world beyond, reducing all to a narrow tunnel with salvation at the far, far end. Why, who could comprehend such extremity? Not mortal kin, much less a god with its eternally bemused brow-to regard such fitful interludes, blank-eyed and mind rushing past like a flash flood, what would be the value of that, after all?

‘The beast is what it is. Four-legged, two-legged. Panic will use as many limbs us arc available to it, and a few more besides. Panic will ride a wheeled cart, and thunder on dung-smeared hoofs. Panic will scrabble up the very walls as one hor-rendous Hound after another slinks past.

The night air stinks and that stink fills the nostrils with all the frenzied flags of a ship floundering on shoals. Smoke and blood, bile and piss. But, mostly, blood.

And then there were the screams. Ringing out everywhere, so many of them cutting off in mid-shriek, or, even more chilling, in strangled gurgle. Mothers never before heard such a multitude of beseeching calls! And who could say if the ox was not bellowing for its own, for that sweet teat, the massive hulk looming overhead, with all its sure scents and briny warmth? Alas, the beast’s mam was long since sent off to pull the great cart beyond the veil, and even could she come lumbering back at the desperate call of her get, what might she achieve in the face of a Hound?

No, solitary flight this must remain. For each and all. Ox, horse, dog, cat, mouse and rat, lizard and gnat. And people of all sorts. Old men with limps, old men who never limped in their lives but did so now. Women of all ages, sizes and dispositions, who would have limped could it have earned the necessary sympathy. Yet when even the rooftops hold no succour, why bother riding this bouncing cart of headlong panic? Best to simply flop down in abject surrender, with but a few tugs to rearrange the lie of one’s dress or whatnot. Let the men soil themselves in their terror-they never washed enough as it was.

Nobles fled ignobly, the fallen fairly flew as if on winged feet, thieves blustered and bullies whined and wheedled, guards in their blind fear observed nothing and soldiers fled every clash of iron, tooth and claw. Fools with nothing stood their ground. Gamblers danced and whores bluffed-and inside a Temple of Shadow deliciously feminine acolytes squealed and darted from the path of a screaming Magus atop his charging mule, straight through the grand altar room, censers flying with tails of uncoiling serpentine smoke and heads with glowing coal eyes in myriad profusion. In the mule’s careering wake, winged bhokarala shrieked and flitted about flinging gobs of snot and segmented cones of hairy dung at every fleeing female, while spiders swarmed up from the old long-forgotten blood drain at the base of the altar stone, a veritable carpet of seething jerky stick-legs, glistening abdomens, patterned thoraxes and beady Dal Honese eyes by the thousands, nay tens of thousands! And was it any wonder the Magus and the mule pelted right across the chamber, the doors at the far end exploding open as if of their own accord?

Even as the High Priestess-stumbling out from behind a curtain like a woman tossed from the throes of manic lovemaking, with stubble-rubbed chin and puffy lips high and low and breasts all awry and great molten swells of