Toll the Hounds

‘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 inward, slipping beneath the creaking bed with its incessant rain of brown water, blood and the wastes that came of rotting but still living flesh. Dragging the chain behind her she had worked her way on to a shelf of the undercarriage, just above the front axle, wedging herself in tight, legs drawn up, her back against slimy wood.

Fire had been the gift, the stolen gift, but there could be no flame in this sodden underworld. Failing that, there was… friction. She had begun working one length of chain across another.

How many years had it been? She had no idea. There was no hunger, no thirst. The chain sawed back and forth. There was a hint of heat, climbing link by link and into her hands. Had the iron softened? Was the metal worn with new, silvery grooves? She had long since stopped checking. The effort was enough. For so long, it had been enough.

Until those damned Hounds.

That, and the inescapable truth that the wagon had slowed, that now there were as many lying on its bed as there were still out in the gloom beyond, heaving desperate on their chains. She could hear the piteous groans, seeping down from the bed directly above her, of those trapped beneath the weight of countless others.

The Hounds had thundered against the sides of the wagon. The Hounds had plunged into the maw of darkness at the very centre.

There had been a stranger, an unchained stranger. Taunting the Hounds-the Hounds! She remembered his face, oh yes, his face. Even after he had vanished…

In the wake of all that, Apsal’ara had attempted to follow the beasts, only to be driven back by the immense cold of that portal-cold so fierce it destroyed flesh, colder even than Omtose Phellack. The cold of negation. Denial.

No greater curse than hope. A lesser creature would have wept then, would have surrendered, throwing herself beneath one of the wheels to be left dragging in the wagon’s wake, nothing more than one more piece of wreckage, of crushed bone and mangled flesh, scraping and tumbling in the stony mud. Instead, she had returned to her private perch, resumed working the chains.

She had stolen the moon once.

She had stolen fire.

She had padded the silent arching halls of the city within Moon’s Spawn.

She was the Lady of Thieves.

And a sword had stolen her life

This will not do, This will not do.

Lying in its usual place on the flat rock beside the stream, the mangy dog lifted its head, the motion stirring insects into buzzing flight. A moment later, the beast rose. Scars covered its back, some deep enough to twist the muscles beneath. The dog lived in the village but was not of it. Nor was the animal one among the village’s pack. It did not sleep outside the entrance to any hut; it allowed no one to Come close. Even the tribe’s horses would not draw near it.

There was, it was agreed, a deep bitterness in its eyes, and an even deeper sorrow. God-touched, the Uryd elders said, and this claim ensured that the dog would never starve and would never be driven away. It would be tolerated, in the ma

Surprisingly lithe despite its mangled hip, the dog now trotted through the village, down the length of the main avenue. When it came to the south end, it kept on going, downslope, wending through the moss-backed boulders and the bone-piles that marked the refuse of the Uryd.

Its departure was noted by two girls still a year or more from their nights of passage into adulthood. There was a similarity to their features, and in their ages they were a close match, the times of their births mere days apart. Neither could be said to be loquacious. They shared the silent language common among twins, although they were not twins, and it seemed that, for them, this language was enough. And so, upon seeing the three-legged dog leave the village, they exchanged a glance, set about gathering what supplies and weapons were near at hand, and then set out, on the dog’s trail.

Their departure was noted, but that was all.

South, down from the great mountains of home, where condors wheeled between the peaks and wolves howled when the winter winds came.

South, towards the lands of the hated children of the Nathii, where dwelt the bringers of war and pestilence, the slayers and enslavers of the Teblor. Where the Nathii bred like lemmings until it seemed there would be no place left in the world for anyone or anything but them.

Like the dog, the two girls were fearless and resolute. Though they did not know it, such traits came from their father, whom they had never met.

The dog did not look back, and when the girls caught up to it the beast maintained its indifference. It was, as the elders had said, god-touched.

Back in the village, a mother and daughter were told of the flight of their children. The daughter wept. The mother did not. Instead, there was heat in a low place of her body, and, for a time, she was lost in remembrances.