Toll the Hounds

‘Then stand aside,’ commanded Traveller.

‘I ca

‘Dammit, Rake, you are not my enemy.’

The Son of Darkness tilted his head, as if receiving a compliment, an unex-pected gift.

‘Rake. You have never been my enemy. You know that. Even when the Umpire…’

‘I know, Dassem. I know.’

‘He said this would happen.’ There was dismay in that statement, and resig-nation.

Rake made no reply.

‘He said,’ continued Dassem, ‘that you would not yield.’

‘No, I will not yield.’

‘Please help me, Rake, help me to understand… why?’

‘I am not here to help you, Dassem Ultor.’ And Samar Dev heard genuine regret in that admission. The Son of Darkness closed both hands about the long grip of Dragnipur and, angling the pommel upward and to his right, slowly widened his stance. ‘If you so want Hood,’ he said, ‘come and get him.’

Dassem Ultor-the First Sword of the Malazan Empire-who was supposed to he dead. As if Hood would even want this one-Dassem Ultor, the one they had known as Traveller, unsheathed his sword, the water-etched blade flashing as if lapped by molten silver. Samar Dev’s sense of a rising wave now burgeoned in her mind. Two forces. Sea and stone, sea and stone.

Among the onlookers to either side, a deep, soft chant had begun.

Samar Dev stared at those arrayed faces, the shining eyes, the mouths moving in unison. Gods below, the cult of Dessembrae. These are cultists-and they stand facing their god.

And that chant, yes, it was a murmuring, it was the cadence of deep water rising. Cold and hungry.

Samar Dev saw Anomander Rake’s gaze settle briefly on Dassem’s sword, and it seemed a sad smile showed itself, in the instant before Dassem attacked.

To all who witnessed-the cultists, Samar Dev, Karsa Orlong, even unto the five Hounds of Shadow and the Great Ravens hunched on every ledge-that first clash of weapons was too fast to register. Sparks slanted, the night air rang with savage parries, counterblows, the biting crunch of edges against cross-hilts. Even their bodies were but a blur.

And then both warriors staggered back, opening up the distance between them once more.

‘Faces in the Rock,’ hissed Karsa Orlong.

‘Karsa-’

‘No. Only a fool would step between these two.’

And the Toblakai sounded… shaken.

Dassem launched himself forward again. There were no war cries, no bellowed curses, not even the grunts bursting free as ferocious swings hammered forged iron. But the swords had begun singing, a dreadful, mournful pair of voices rising in eerie syncopation. Thrusts, slashes, low-edged ripostes, the whistle of a blade cutting through air where a head had been an instant earlier, bodies writhing to evade counterstrokes, and sparks rained, poured, from the two combatants, bounced like shattered stars across the cobbles.

They did not break apart this time. The frenzied flurry did not abate, but went on, impossibly on. Two forces, neither yielding, neither prepared to draw a single step back.

And yet, for all the blinding speed, the glowing shower spraying out like the blood of iron, Samar Dev saw the death blow. She saw it clear. She saw its unde-niable truth-and somehow, somehow, it was all wrong.

Rake wide-legged, angling the pommel high before his face with Dragnipur’s point downward-as if to echo his opening stance-and higher still/and Dassem, his free hand joining the other upon his sword’s grip, throwing his entire weight into a crossways slash-the warrior bodily lifting as if about to take to the air and close upon Rake with an embrace, and his swing met the edge of Dragnipur at a full right angle’-a single moment shaping a perfect cruciform fashioned by the two weapons’ colliding, and then the power of Dassem’s blow slammed Dragnipur back-

Driving its inside edge into Anomander Rake’s forehead, and then down through his face,

His gauntleted hands sprang away from the handle, yet Dragnipur remained jammed, seeming to erupt from his head, as he toppled backward, blood streaming down to flare from the tip as the Son of Darkness crashed down on his back.

Even this impact did not dislodge Dragnipur. The sword shivered, and now there was but one song, querulous and fading in the sudden stillness.

Blood boiled, turned black. The body lying on the cobbles did not move. Anomander Rake was dead.

Dassem Ultor slowly lowered his weapon, his chest heaving.

And then he cried out, in a voice so filled with anguish that it seemed to tear a jagged hole in the night air. This unhuman scream was joined by a chorus of shrieks as the Great Ravens exploded into flight, lifting like a massive feathered veil that whirled above the street, and then began a spi

Dassem staggered back, and then pitched drunkenly to one side, his sword dragging in his wake, point skirling a snake track across the cobbles. He was brought up short by a pitted wall, and he sagged against it, burying his face in the shelter of a crooked arm that seemed to be all that held him upright.

Broken. Broken. They are broken.

Oh, gods forgive them, they are broken.

Karsa Orlong shocked her then, as he twisted to one side and pointedly spat on to the street. ‘Cheated,’ he said. ‘Cheated!’

She stared at him, aghast. She did not know what he meant-but no, she did. Yes, she did. ‘Karsa, what just happened?’ Wrong. It was wrong. ‘I saw-I saw-’

‘You saw true,’ he said, baring his teeth, his gaze fixed upon that fallen body. ‘As did Traveller, and see what it has done to him.’

The area surrounding the corpse of Anomander Rake churned with Great Ravens-although not one drew close enough to touch the cooling flesh-and now the five Hounds of Shadows, not one spared of wounds, closed in to push the birds aside, as if to form a protective circle around Anomander Rake.

No, not him. The sword…

Unease stirred awake in Samar Dev. ‘This is not over.’

A beast can sense weakness. A beast knows the moment of vulnerability, and op-portunity. A beast knows when to strike.

The moon died and, in dying, began its torturous rebirth. The cosmos is indif-ferent to the petty squabbles of what crawls, what whimpers, what bleeds and what breathes. It has flung out its fates on the strands of immutable laws, and in the skirling unravelling of millions of years, tens of millions, each fate will out. In its time, it will out.

Something massive had arrived from the depths of the blackness beyond and struck the moon a short time back. An initial eruption from the impact had briefly showered the moon’s companion world with fragments, but it was the shock wave that delivered the stricken moon’s death knell, and this took time. Deep in the core, vast tides of energy opened immense fissures. Concussive forces shattered the crust. Energy was absorbed until nothing more could be borne. The moon blew apart.

Leave it to the flit of eager minds to find prophetic significance. The cosmos does not care. The fates will not crack a smile.

From a thousand sources, now, reflected sunlight danced wild upon the blue, green and ochre world far below. Shadows were devoured, darkness flushed away. Night itself broke into fragments.

In the city of Darujhistan, light was everywhere, like a god’s fingers. Brushing, prodding, poking, driving down into alleys that had never seen the sun. And each assault shattered darkness and shadow both. Each invasion ignited, in a procla-mation of power.

Dearest serendipity, yet not an opportunity to be ignored, no. Not on this night. Not in the city of Darujhistan.