Toll the Hounds

Amby and Jula bobbed into view to either side of her, grinning through smears of mud.

Inside the carriage, Mappo started to open the door but Quell snapped out a shaky hand to stay him. ‘Gods, don’t do that!’

Precious Thimble had curled up on the floor at their feet, rocking and moaning.

‘What awaits us outside?’ the Trell asked.

Quell shook his head. He was bone white, face glistening with sweat. ‘I should’ve guessed. The way that map on the road narrowed at the far end. Oh, we’ve been used! Duped! Gods, I think I’m going to be sick-’

‘Damned Trygalle,’ muttered Toc. More confused than he had ever been by this sudden, inexplicable arrival. How did they manage to arrive here?. And then he saw Gruntle. ‘Gods below, it’s you!’

Someone was being loudly sick inside the carriage.

Gruntle stared up at Toc, and then frowned.

Ah, I guess I don’t look like Anaster any more. ‘We shared-’

‘Herald,’ said Hood. ‘It is time.’

Toc scowled, and then scratched at his eye socket. ‘What? You’re sending me with them?’

‘In a manner of speaking.’

‘Then I’m to rejoin the living?’

‘Alas, no, Toc the Younger. You are dead and dead you will remain. But this shall mark your final task as my Herald. Another god claims you.’

Toc prepared to dismount but the Lord of Death lifted a hand. ‘Ride in the car-riage’s wake, close in its wake. For a time. Now, Herald, listen well to my last message. The blood is needed. The blood is needed…’

Gruntle had stopped listening. Even the vague disquiet he’d felt when that one-eyed rider had accosted him was fast vanishing beneath a flood of battle lust. He stared out at the enemy, watched the defenders wither away.

A war that could not be won by such sorry souls-a war that begged for a champion, one who would stand until the very end.

Another growl rumbled from him, and he stepped away from the carriage, reaching for his cutlasses.

‘Whoa there, y’damned manx!’

The bark startled him and he glared up at Glanno Tarp, who smiled a hard smile. ‘Shareholders can’t just walk away-we’d have to plug ya fulla arrows. Get back aboard, stripy, we’re leaving all over again!’

There could be but one outcome, and Draconus had known that all along. He had sensed nothing of the Trygalle’s arrival, nor even its departure, with Toc riding in its wake. Whatever occurred behind him could not reach through to awaken his senses.

One outcome.

After all, Dragnipur had never offered salvation. Iron forged to bind, a hundred thousand chains hammered into the blade, layers upon layers entwined, folded, wrapped like rope. Draconus, surrounded in the molten fires of Burn’s heart, drawing forth chains of every metal that existed, drawing them out link by glowing link. Twisted ropes of metal on the anvil, and down came the hammer. The one hammer, the only tool that could forge such a weapon-and he remembered its vast weight, the scalding grip that lacerated his alien hand.

Even in her dreaming, Burn had been most displeased.

Chains upon chains. Chains to bind. Bind Darkness itself, transforming the an-cient forest through which it had wandered, twisting that blackwood into a wagon, into huge, tottering wheels, into a bed that formed a horizontal door-like the entrance to a barrow-above the portal. Blackwood, to hold and contain the soul of Kurald Galain.

He remembered. Sparks in countless hues skipping away like shattered rain-bows. The deafening ringing of the hammer and the way the anvil trembled to every blow. The waves of heat flashing against his face. The bitter taste of raw ore, the stench of sulphur. Chains! Chains and chains, pounded down into glowing impressions upon the blade, quenched and honed and into Burn’s white heart and then-it begins again. And again.

Chains! Chains to bind!

Bind the Fallen!

And now, unbelievably, impossibly, Draconus had felt that first splintering. Chains had broken.

So it ends. I did not think, I did not imagine-

He had witnessed his Bound companions falling away, failing. He had seen the chaos descend upon each one, eating through flesh with actinic zeal, until shackles fell to the ground-until the iron bands held nothing. Nothing left.

I never meant-I never wanted such an end-to any of you, of us.

No, I was far too cruel to ever imagine an end. An escape.

Yet now, witness these thoughts of mine. Now, I would see you all live on, yes, in these chains, but not out of cruelty. Ah, no, not that. Abyss take me, I would see you live out of mercy.

Perhaps he wept now. Or these scalding tears announced the crushing end of hysterical laughter. No matter. They were all being eaten alive. We are all being eaten alive.

And Dragnipur had begun to come apart.

When the chaos disintegrated the wagon, destroyed the door, and took hold of the Gate, the sword would shatter and chaos would be freed of this oh-so clever trap, and Draconus’s brilliant lure-his eternal snare eternally leading chaos on and away from everything else-would have failed. He could not contemplate what would happen then, to the countless succession of realms and worlds, and of course he would not be there to witness the aftermath in any case. But he knew that, in his last thoughts, he would feel nothing but unbearable guilt.

So, chaos, at least unto one victim, what you deliver is indeed mercy.

He had begun walking forward, to join the other Bound, to stand, perhaps, at Pearl’s side, until the end came.

The echo of that snapping chain haunted him. Someone’s broken loose. How? Even the Hounds of Shadow could only slip free by plunging into Kurald Galain’s black heart. Their chains did not break. Dragnipur’s essential integrity had not been not damaged.

But now… someone’s broken loose.

How?

Chains and chains and chains to bind-

A bony hand closed on his shoulder and dragged him back.

Snarling, Draconus half turned. ‘Let go, damn you! I will stand with them, Hood-I must, can’t you see that?’

The Lord of Death’s hand tightened, the nails biting, and Hood slowly pulled him closer. ‘The fray,’ the god said in a rasp, ’is not for you.’

‘You are not my master-’

‘Stand with me, Draconus. It’s not yet time.’

‘For what?’ He struggled to tear free, but a Jaghut’s strength could be immense, and barring the bloody removal of his entire shoulder, Draconus could do nothing. He and the Lord of Death stood alone, not twenty paces from the motionless wagon.

‘Consider this,’ said Hood, ‘a request for forgiveness.’

Draconus stared. ‘What? Who asks my forgiveness?’

Hood, Lord of the Dead, should have been the last to fall to Dragnipur. Whatever the Son of Darkness intended, its final play was found in the slaying of this ancient god. Such was the conviction of Draconus. A mad, pointless gamble, the empty purchase of time already consumed, at the wasting of countless souls, an entire realm of the dead.

As it turned out, Draconus was wrong.

There was one more. One more.

Arriving with the power of a mountain torn apart in a long, deafening, crushing detonation. Argent clouds were shredded, whipped away in dark winds. The legions pressing on all sides recoiled, and the thousand closing paces so viciously won were lost in an instant. Dragons screamed. Voices erupted as if dragged out from throats-the