Toll the Hounds

The torment of this existence should not include pain. That was unfair. Of course, most of that pain was fading now-he was too far gone to curl and flinch, to gasp and sob-but the memories remained, like fire in his skull.



Pulled onward over loose stones, their sharp edges rolling up his back, gouging new furrows through the pulped meat, knuckling against the base of his skull to tear away the last’ few snarls of hair and scalp. And as the chain snagged, only to give and twist him round, he stared again and again upon that storm in their wake.



Songs of suffering from the groaning wagon somewhere ahead, an unending ehorus of misery ever drifting back.



Too bad, he reflected, that the huge demon had not found him in the moments following his collapse, had not lifted him to its shoulder-not that it could carry any more than it already had been carrying. But even if it had done little more than drag him to one side, then the edge of the wagon’s massive wheel would not have crushed his right arm and shoulder, grinding both into pulp until only threads of gristle were all that held it to his body. After that, all hopes-faint as they had been-of rising again to add his strength to the procession had vanished. Me had become yet one more dead weight, dragged in the wake, adding to the suf-fering of those who trudged on.



Nearby, almost parallel to him, a huge chain sheathed in moss ended in the remnants of a dragon. Wings like tattered sails, spars snapped and dangling, the mostly skinless head dragged behind a shredded neck. When he had first seen it he had been shocked, horrified. Now, each time it came into view, he felt a wave of dread. That such a creature should have failed was proof of the desperate ex-tremity now plaguing them.



Anomander Rake had stopped killing. The legion was failing. Annihilation edged ever closer.



Life fears chaos. It was ever thus. We fear it more than anything else, because it is anathema. Order battles against dissolution. Order negotiates cooperation as a mechanism of survival, on every scale, from a patch of skin to an entire menagerie, of interdependent creatures. That cooperation, of course, may not of essence be necessarily peaceful-a minute exchange of failures to ensure greater successes.



Yes, as I am dragged along here, at the very end of my existence, I begin to understand…



See me, see this gift of contemplation.



Rake, what have you done?



A calloused hand closed about his remaining arm, lifted him clear of the ground, and he was being carried forward, closer to that crawling wagon.



‘There is no point.’



‘That,’ replied a deep, measured voice, ’is without relevance.’



‘I am not worth-’



‘Probably not, but I intend to find you room on that wagon.’



Ditch hacked a ragged laugh. ‘Just tear my foot off, good sir, and leave me.’



‘No. There may be need for you, mage.’



Need? Now that was an absurd thing to say. ‘Who are you?’



‘Draconus.’



Ditch laughed a second time. ‘I looked for you… seems centuries ago, now.’



‘Now you have found me.’



‘I thought you might know a way of escaping. Now, isn’t that funny? After all, if you had, you would not still be here, would you?’



‘That seems logical.’



An odd reply. ‘Dracomus.’



‘What?’



‘Are you a logical man?’



‘Not in the least. Now, here we are.’



The sight that greeted Ditch as he was heaved round to face forward was, if anything, even more terrifying than anything else he had witnessed since arriving in the accursed realm of Dragnipur. A wall of bodies, projecting feet jammed amongst staring faces, the occasional arm hanging out, twitching, dripping sweat. Here a knee, there a shoulder. Tangles of sodden hair, fingers with dagger-long nails. Human, demon, Forkrul, Assail, K’Chain Che’Malle, others of natures Ditch could not even identify. He saw one hand and forearm that appeared to be made entirely of metal, sockets and hinges and rods and a carapace of iron skin visible in mottled, pitted patches. Worse of all were the staring eyes, peering from faces that seemed to have surrendered every possible expression, leaving behind some-thing slack and dull.



‘Make space up top!’ bellowed Draconus.



Cries of ‘No room!’ and ‘Nowhere left!’ greeted him.



Ignoring such protests, Draconus began climbing the wall of flesh. Faces twisted in rage and pain, eyes widened in affronted disbelief, hands clawed at him or beat him with fists, but the huge warrior was indifferent to all of it. Ditch could feel the man’s enormous strength, an implacable certainty to every movement that bespoke something unconquerable. He was awed into silence.