Toll the Hounds

The hooded figure turned slightly, and the woman thought he might be looking down on the dead dog. ‘Disgust,’ he replied.

A soft rasping laugh from Edgewalker.

‘What ghastly place is this?’ hissed a new voice, and the woman saw a shape — no more than a smeared blur of shadows — whisper out from an alley in flowing silence, though he seemed to be hobbling on a cane, and all at once there were huge beasts, two, four, five, padding out around the newcomer.

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 shy;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 shy;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.