Toll the Hounds

They eventually arrived upon a narrow, sloped street in which sat a massive, ornate carriage of a sort that Mappo had seen before, though he could not for the moment recall where. Six horses stood in their traces, looking bored. Someone had dumped feed all round them, and there was enough fresh dung scattered about to suggest that the animals had been left there a while.

The priest directed Mappo towards a nearby tavern. ‘In there,’ he said. ‘The Trygalle Trade Guild has made a specialty of journeys such as the one you require. Of course, they are expensive, but that is hardly surprising, is it?’

‘And one simply seeks out one such caravan, wherever one might find them? That sounds to be an ineffective business plan.’

‘No, they have offices. Somewhere-not a detail I possess, I’m afraid. I only knew of this carriage because its arrival destroyed the front of my cousin’s shop.’ And, pointing to a nearby ruin, he smiled like a man who had forgotten what real smiling signified. Then he shrugged. ‘All these twists of fate. Blessed by serendip¬ity and all that. If you fail here, Mappo Runt, you will have a long, tedious walk ahead of you. So do not fail.’ He then bowed, turned and walked away.

Mappo eyed the front of the tavern. And recalled when he had last seen that sort of carriage.

Tremorlor.

Shareholder Faint had just stood, stretching out all the alarming kinks in her back, when the tavern door opened and a monstrous figure pushed its way in, shoulders squeezing through the frame, head ducking. A misshapen sack slung over one shoulder, a wicked knife tucked in its belt. A damned Trell.

‘Glanno,’ she said, ‘better get Master Quell.’

Scowling, the last driver left alive in their troupe rose and limped away.

She watched as the huge barbarian stepped over the drunk and made his way to the bar. The rat looked up and hastily retreated down the length of the counter. The Trell nudged Quip Younger’s head. The barkeep coughed and slowly straightened, wiping at his mouth, blinking myopically as he lifted his gaze to take in the figure looming over him.

With a bleat he reeled back a step.

‘Never mind him,’ Faint called out. ‘You want us, over here.’

‘What I want,’ the Trell replied in passable Daru, ’is breakfast.’

Head bobbing, Quip bolted for the kitchen, where he was met by a screeching woman, the piercing tirade dimming as soon as the door closed behind him.

Faint dragged a bench from the nearby wall no chair in this dump would survive-and waved to it with a glance over to the barbarian. ‘Come over, then Sit, but just so you know, we’re avoiding Seven Cities. There was a terrible plague there; no telling if it’s run its course.’

‘No,’ the Trell rumbled as he approached, ‘I have no desire to return to Seven Cities, or Nemil.’

The bench groaned as he settled on to it.

Sweetest Sufferance was eyeing the newcomer with a strangely avid intensity. Reccanto Ilk simply stared, mouth open, odd twitches of his scalp shifting his hairline up and down.

Faint said to the Trell, ‘The truth of it is, we’re really in no shape for any-thing… ambitious. Master Quell needs to put out a call for more shareholders, and that could hold us back for days, maybe a week.’

‘Oh, that is unfortunate. It is said your Guild has an office here in Darujhistan-’

‘It does, but I happen to know we’re the only carriage available, for the next while. Where were you hoping to go, and how quickly?’

‘Where is your Master, or are you the one who does the negotiating?’

At that moment Glanno finally succeeded in dragging Quell out from the wa-ter closet. The Master was pale, and shiny with sweat, and it seemed his legs weren’t working very well. Faint met his slightly wild gaze. ‘Better?’ she asked.

‘Better,’ he replied in a gasp, as Glanno more or less carried him over to his chair. ‘It was a damned kidney stone, it was. Size of a knuckle I never thought… well, never mind. Gods, who is this?’

The Trell half rose to bow. ‘Apologies. My name is Mappo Runt.’ And he sat back down.

Faint saw Quell lick dry lips, and with a trembling hand reach for a tankard. He scowled to find it empty and set it back down. ‘The most infamous Trell of them all. You lost him, didn’t you?’

The barbarian’s dark eyes narrowed.

‘Ah, I see.’

‘Where?’ Quell’s voice sounded half strangled.

‘I need to get to a continent named Lether. To an empire ruled by Tiste Edur, and a cursed emperor. And yes, I can pay you for the trouble.’

Faint had never seen her master so rattled. It was fascinating. Clearly, Quell had recognized the Trell’s name, which signified… well, something.

‘And, er, did he face that emperor, Mappo? In ritual combat?’

‘I do not think so!’

‘Why?’

‘I believe I would have… sensed such a thing-’

‘The end of the world, you mean.’

‘Perhaps. No, something else happened. I cannot say what, Master Quell. I need to know, will you take me there?’

‘We’re under-crewed,’ Quell said, ‘but I can drop by the office see if there’s a list of waiting prospects. A quick interview process. Say by this time tomorrow, I can have an answer.’

The huge warrior sighed. He glanced round. ‘I have nowhere else to go, so I will slay here until then.’

‘Sounds wise,’ Quell said. ‘Faint, you’re with me. The rest of you, get cleaned up, see to the horses, carriage and all that. Then stay close by, keep Mappo company-he might have nasty tusks but he don’t bite.’

‘But I do,’ said Sweetest Sufferance, offering the Trell an inviting smile.

Mappo stared at her a moment, then, rubbing at his face, he rose. ‘Where’s that breakfast, anyway?’

‘Let’s go, Faint,’ said Quell, pushing himself upright with another wince.

‘Can you make it?’ she asked him.

A nod. ‘Haradas is handling the office these days-she can heal me quick enough.’

‘Good point. Hands on?’

There is, as a legion of morose poets well know, nothing inconsequential about love. Nor all those peculiarities of related appetites often confused for love, for example lust, possession, amorous worship, appalling notions of abject surrender where one’s own will is bled out in sacrifice, obsessions of the fetishistic sort that might include earlobes or toenails or regurgitated foodstuffs, and indeed that ado-lescent competitiveness which in adults-adults who should of course know bet-ter but don’t-is manifested as insane jealousy.

Such lack of restraint has launched and no doubt sunk an equal number of ships, if one took the long view of such matters, which in retrospect is not only advisable but, for all the sighs of worldly wind, probably the most essential sur-vival trait of them all-but pray, let not this rounded self wallow unthinkingly into recounting a host of lurid tales of woe, loss and the like, nor bemoan his pres-ent solitude as anything other than a voluntary state of being!

Cast attention, then (with audible relief), upon these three for whom love heaves each moment like a volcano about to erupt, amidst the groan of conti-nents, the convulsion of valleys and the furrowing of furrows-but no, honesty demands a certain revision to what steams and churns beneath the surface. Only two of the three thrash and writhe in the delicious agony of that-which-might-be-love, and the subject of their fixed attention is none other than the third in their quaint trio, who, being of feminine nature, is yet to decide and, now that she basks in extraordinary attention, may indeed never decide. And should the two ever vying for her heart both immolate themselves at some future point, ah well, there are plenty of eels in the muck, aren’t there?

And these three, then, bound together in war and bound yet tighter in the calamity of desire long after the war was done with, now find themselves in the fair city of Darujhistan, two pursuing one and where the one goes so too will they, but she wonders, yes, just how far she can take them and let’s see, shall we?

Being illiterate, she has scrawled her name on to a list, assuming her name can be pictographically rendered into something like a chicken heart’s spasm the mo-ment before death, and lo, did not her two suitors follow suit,