A grunt from the priest beside the woman. ‘Hounds of Shadow. Could my god but witness this!’
‘Perhaps it does, through your eyes.’
‘Oh, I doubt that.’
Edgewalker and his hooded companion watched the shadowy form approach. Short; wavering, then growing more solid. Black-stick cane thumping on the dirt street, raising puffs of dust. The Hounds wandered away, heads lowered as they sniffed the ground. None approached the carcass of the woman’s dog, nor the gasping beast at the feet of her newfound friend.
The hooded one said, ‘Ghastly? I suppose it is. A necropolis of sorts, Shadow-throne. A village of the discarded. Both timeless and, yes, useless. Such places,’ he continued, ‘are ubiquitous.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ said Shadowthrone. ‘Look at us, waiting. Waiting. Oh, if I were one for decorum and propriety!’ A sudden giggle. ‘If any of us were!’
All at once the Hounds returned, hackles raised, gazes keen on something far up the main street.
‘One more,’ whispered the priest. ‘One more and the last, yes.’
‘Will all this happen again?’ the woman asked him, as sudden fear ripped through her. Someone is coming. Oh, gods, someone is coming. ‘Tomorrow? Tell me!’
‘I would imagine not,’ the priest said after a moment. He swung his gaze to the dog carcass lying in the dust. ‘No,’ he said again, ‘I imagine not.’
From the hills, thunder and jade rain slashing down like the arrows from ten thousand battles. From down the street, the sudden rumble of carriage wheels.
She turned at that latter sound and smiled. ‘Oh,’ she said in relief, ‘here comes my ride.’
He had once been a wizard of Pale, driven by desperation into betrayal. But Anomander Rake had not been interested in desperation, or any other excuse
Ditch and his comrades might have proffered. Betrayers of the Son of Darkness kissed the sword Dragnipur, and somewhere among this legion toiling in the perpetual gloom there were faces he would recognize, eyes that could meet his own, And what would he see in them?
Only what he gave back. Desperation was not enough.
These were rare thoughts, no more or less unwelcome than any others, mocking him as in their freedom they drifted in and out; and when nowhere close, why, they perhaps floated through alien skies, riding warm winds soft as laughter. What could not escape was Ditch himself and that which he could see on all sides. This oily mud and its sharp black stones that cut through the rotted soles of his boots; the deathly damp air that layered a grimy film upon the skin, as if the world itself was fevered and slick with sweat. The faint cries-strangely ever distant to Ditch’s ears-and, much nearer, the groan and crunch of the massive engine of wood and bronze, the muted squeal of chains.
Onward, onward, even as the storm behind them drew closer, cloud piling on cloud, silver and roiling and shot through with twisting spears of iron. Ash had begun to rain down on them, unceasing now, each flake cold as snow, yet this was a sludge that did not melt, instead churning into the mud until it seemed they walked through a field of slag and tailings.
Although a wizard, Ditch was neither small nor frail. There was a roughness to him that had made others think of thugs and alley-pouncers, back in the life that had been before. His features were heavy, angular and, indeed, brutish. He had been a strong man, but this was no reward, not here, not chained to the Burden. Not within the dark soul of Dragnipur.
The strain was unbearable, yet bear it he did. The way ahead was infinite, screaming of madness, yet he held on to his own sanity as a drowning man might cling to a frayed rope, and he dragged himself onward, step by step. Iron shackles made his limbs weep blood, with no hope of surcease. Figures caked in mud plod¬ded to either side, and beyond them, vague in the gloom, countless others.
Was there comfort in shared fate? The question alone invited hysterical laughter, a plunge into insanity’s precious oblivion. No, surely there was no such comfort, beyond the mutual recognition of folly, ill luck and obstinate stupidity, and these traits could not serve camaraderie. Besides, one’s companions to either side were in the habit of changing at a moment’s notice, one hapless fool replacing another in a grainy, blurred swirl.
Heaving on the chains, to keep the Burden in motion, this nightmarish flight left no energy, no time, for conversation. And so Ditch ignored the hand buffeting his shoulder the first time, the second time. The third time, however, was hard enough to send the wizard staggering to one side. Swearing, he twisted round to glare at the one now walking at his side.
Once, long ago, he might have flinched back upon seeing such an apparition. His heart would have lurched in terror.
The demon was huge, hulking. Its once royal blood availed it no privilege here in Dragnipur. Ditch saw that the creature was carrying the fallen, the failed, gathering to itself a score or more bodies and the chains attached to them. Mus-eles strained, bunched and twisted as the demon pulled itself forward. Scrawny bodies, hanging limp, crowded like cordwood under each arm. One, still conscious though her head lolled, rode its broad back like a newborn ape, glazed eyes sliding acroii the wizard’s face.
‘You fool,’ Ditch snarled. ‘Throw ’em into the bed!’
‘No room,’ piped the demon in a high, childish voice.
But the wizard had used up his sympathy. For the demon’s sake, it should have left the fallen behind, but then, of course, they would all feel the added weight, the pathetic drag on the chains. Still, what if this one fell? What if that extraordinary strength and will gave way? ‘Curse the fool!’ Ditch growled. ‘Why doesn’t he kill a few more dragons, damn him!’
‘We fail,’ said the demon.
Ditch wanted to howl at that. Was it not obvious to them all? But that quavering voice was both bemused and forlorn, and it struck through to his heart. ‘I know, friend. Not long now.’
‘And then?’
Ditch shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Who does?’
Again the wizard had no answer.
The demon persisted. ‘We must find one who does. I am going now. But I will return. Do not pity me, please.’
A sudden swirl, grey and black, and now some bear-like beast was beside him, too weary, too mindless, to even lunge at him-as some creatures still did.
‘You’ve been here too long, friend,’ Ditch said to it.
Who does?
An interesting question. Did anyone know what would happen when the chaos caught them? Anyone here in Dragnipur?
In his first moments following his kissing the sword, in between his frenzied attempts at escape, his shrieks of despair, he had flung questions at everyone-why, he’d even sought to accost a Hound, but it had been too busy lunging at its own chains, froth fizzing from its massive jaws, and had very nearly trampled him, and he’d never seen it again.
But someone had replied, someone had spoken to him. About something… oh, he could not recall much more than a name. A single name.
Draconus.
She had witnessed many things in this interminable interlude in her career, but none more frustrating than the escape of two Hounds of Shadow. It was not for one such as Apsal’ara, Lady of Thieves, to besmirch her existence with the laborious indignity of tugging on a chain for all eternity. Shackles were to be escaped, burdens deftly avoided.
From the moment of her first stumbling arrival, she had set upon herself the task of breaking the chains binding her in this dread realm, but this task was virtually impossible if one were cursed to ever pull the damned wagon. And she had no desire to witness again the horrible train at the very end of the chains, the abraded lumps of still living meat dragging across the gouged muddy ground, the flash of an open eye, a flopping nub of a limb straining towards her, a terrible army of the failed, the ones who surrendered and the ones whose strength gave out.
No, Apsal’ara had worked her way closer to the enormous wagon, eventually finding herself trudging beside one of the huge wooden wheels. Then she had lagged in her pace until just behind that wheel. From there, she moved
