Toll the Hounds

Traveller shook his head. ‘Where is he?’ he demanded. ‘I can feel-he’s close. Where is he?’.



Not Cotillion. A different ‘he’ this time. The one Traveller seeks. The one he has ever sought.



‘Yes,’said Rake.’Close.’



Thick, flapping sounds, drifting in from the smoky night sky. She looked up in alarm and saw Great Ravens. Landing upon roof ledges. Scores, hundreds, silent but for the beat of air beneath crooked wings. Gathering, gathering, along the arched gate and the sections of wall to either side. Landing everywhere, so long as it’s a place from which they can see.



‘Then stand aside,’ commanded Traveller.



‘I cannot.’



‘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 i nside 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.