Toll the Hounds

‘I’m not a damned priestess!’ She saw the surprise on the faces of Karsa and Traveller, forced herself back from the ragged edge of anger. ‘I wouldn’t know where to start, Tulas Shorn.’



‘I believe the poison comes from a stranger’s pain.’



‘The Crippled God.’



‘Yes, Samar Dev.’



‘Do you actually think it can be healed?’



‘I do not know. There is physical damage and then there is spiritual damage. The former is more easily mended than the latter. He is sustained by rage, I suspect. His last source of power, perhaps his only source of power whilst chained in this realm.’



‘I doubt he’s in the negotiating mood,’ Samar Dev said. ‘And even if he was, he’s anathema to the likes of me.’



‘It is an extraordinary act of courage,’ said Tulas Shorn, ‘to come to know a stranger’s pain. To even consider such a thing demands a profound dispensation, a willingness to wear someone else’s chains, to taste their suffering, to see with one’s own eyes the hue cast on all things-the terrible stain that is despair.’ The Tiste Edur slowly shook its head. ‘I have no such courage. It is, without doubt, the rarest of abilities.’



None spoke then for a time. The fire ate itself, indifferent to witnesses, and in its hunger devoured all that was offered it, again and again, until night and the disinterest of its guests left it to starve, until the wind stirred naught but ashes.



If Tulas Shorn sought amiable company, it should have talked about the weather.



In the morning, the undead Soletaken was gone. And so too were Traveller’s and Samar Dev’s horses.



‘That was careless of us,’ Traveller said.



‘He was a guest,’ Samar Dev said, baffled and more than a little hurt by the betrayal. They could see Havok, standing nervously some distance off, as if reluctant to return from his nightlong hunting, as if he had been witness to something unpleasant. There was, however, no sign of violence the picket stakes remained where they had been pounded into the hard ground.



‘It wanted to slow us down,’ Traveller said. ‘One of Hood’s own, alter all.’



‘All right,’ Samar Dev glared across at a silent Karsa Orlong, ‘the fault was all mine. I should have left you two to chop the thing to bits. I’m sorry.’



But Karsa shook his head. ‘Witch, goodwill is not something that needs an apology. You were betrayed. Your trust was abused. If there are strangers who thrive on such things, they will ever remain strangers-because they have no other choice. Pity Tulas Shorn and those like it. Even death taught it nothing.’



Traveller was regarding the Toblakai with interest, although he ventured no comment.



Havok was trotting towards them. Karsa said, ‘I will ride out, seeking new mounts-or perhaps the Edur simply drove your beasts off.’



‘I doubt that,’ Traveller said.



And Karsa nodded, leaving Samar Dev to realize that he had offered the possibility for her sake, as if in some clumsy manner seeking to ease her self-recrimination. Moments later, she understood that it had been anything but clumsy. It was not her inward chastisement that he spoke to; rather, for her, he was giving Tulas Shorn the benefit of the doubt, although Karsa possessed no doubt at all-nor, it was clear, did Traveller.



Well then, I am ever the fool here. So be it. ‘We’d best get walking, then.’



In setting out, they left behind a cold hearth ringed in stones, and two saddles.



Almost two leagues away, high in the bright blue sky, Tulas Shorn rode the freshening breeze, the tatters of its wings rapping in the rush of air.



As it had suspected, the trio had made no effort to hunt down the lost horses. Assuming, as they would, that the dragon had simply obliterated the animals.



Tulas Shorn had known far too much death, however, to so casually kill innocent creatures. No, instead, the dragon had taken them, one in each massive clawed foot, ten leagues to the south, almost within sight of a small, wild herd of the same breed-one of the last such wild herds on the plain.



Too many animals were made to bow in servitude to a succession of smarter, crueller masters (and yes, those two traits went together). Poets ever wailed upon witnessing fields of slaughter, armies of soldiers and warriors frozen in death, but Tulas Shorn-who had walked through countless such scenes-reserved his sorrow, his sense of tragedy, for the thousands of dead and dying horses, war dogs, the oxen trapped in yokes of siege wagons mired in mud or shattered, the beasts that bled and suffered through no choice of their own, that died in a fog of ignorance, all trust in their masters destroyed.