Toll the Hounds

More Hounds, these ones pale as ghosts, a pack twice the number of the Hounds of Shadow. Loping up the street from Lakefront, moments from a charge.



‘It’s the sword,’ said the woman named Samar Dev. ‘They’ve come for the sword.’



Cutter felt his limbs turn to ice, even as the lance in his hands flared with heat.



‘Give me room,’ said the giant, lumbering forward into a clear space.



Against ten Hounds? Are you mad?



Cutter moved out to the left of the warrior. The witch rushed over to Traveller.



The lance trembled. It was getting too hot to hold, but what else did he have? Some damned daggers-against these things? Gods, what am I even doing here?



But he would stand. He would die here, beside a giant-who was just as doomed. And for what? There is nothing… there is nothing in my life. To explain any of this. He glared at the white Hounds. It’s just a sword. What will you even do with it? Chew the handle? Piss on the blade? He looked across at the huge warrior beside him. ‘What’s your name at least?’



The giant glanced at him. ‘Yes,’ he said with a sharp nod. ‘I am Karsa Orlong of the Teblor. Toblakai. And you?’



‘Crokus. Crokus Younghand.’ He hesitated, then said, ‘I was once a thief.’



‘Be one again,’ said Karsa, teeth bared, ‘and steal me a Hound’s life this night.’



Shit. ‘I’ll try.’



‘That will do,’ the Toblakai replied.



Thirty paces away now. And the white Hounds fanned out, filled the street in a wall of bleached hide, rippling muscle and rows of fangs.



A gust of charnel wind swept round Cutter; something clattered, rang sharp On cobbles, and then a hand swept down-



The Hounds of Light charged.



As, on the side street to the left, the daughters of Draconus unleashed their warrens in a howling rush of destruction that engulfed the five beasts before them.



Scything blade of notched iron, driving Spinnock Durav back. Blood sprayed with each blow, links of ringed armour pattered on the ground. So many tiny broken chains, there was a trail of them, marking each step of the warrior’s rocking, reeling retreat. When his own sword caught Kallor’s frenzied blows, the reverberation ripped up Spinnock’s arm, seeming to mash his muscles into lifeless pulp.



His blood was draining away from countless wounds. His helm had been bat-tered off, that single blow leaving behind a fractured cheekbone and a deaf ear.



Still he fought on; still he held Kallor before him.



Kallor.



There was no one behind the High King’s eyes. The berserk rage had devoured the ancient warrior. He seemed tireless, an automaton. Spinnock Durav could find no opening, no chance to counterattack. It was all he could do to simply evade each death blow, to minimize the impacts of that jagged edge, to turn the remaining fragments of his hauberk into the blade’s inexorable path.



Spreading bruises, cracked bones, gaping gouges from which blood welled, soaking his wool gambon, he staggered under the unceasing assault.



It could not last.



It had already lasted beyond all reason.



Spinnock blocked yet another slash, but this time the sound his sword made was strangely dull, and the grip suddenly felt loose, the handle shorn from the tine-the pommel was gone. With a sobbing gasp, he ducked beneath a whistling blade and then pitched back-



But Kallor pressed forward, giving him no distance, and that two-handed sword lashed out yet again.



Spinnock’s parry jolted his arm and his weapon seemed to blow apart in his hand, tined blade spinning into the air, the fragments of the grip a handful a shards falling from his numbed fingers.



The back-slash caught him across his chest.



He was thrown from his feet, landing hard on the slope of the ditch, where he sagged back, blood streaming down his front, and closed his eyes.



Kallor’s rasping breaths drew closer.



Sweat dripped on to Spinnock’s face, but still he did not open his eyes. He had felt it. A distant death. Yes, he had felt it, as he feared he might. So feared that he might. And, of all the deeds he had managed here at these crossroads, all that he had done up until this moment, not one could match the cost of the smile that now emerged on split, bleeding lips.



And this alone stayed Kallor’s sword from its closing thrust. Stayed it… for a time.



‘What,’ Kallor asked softly, ‘was the point, Spinnock Durav?’



But the fallen warrior did not answer.



‘You could never win. You could never do anything but die here. Tell me, damn you, what was the fucking point?’



The question was a sob, the anguish so raw that Spinnock was startled into opening his eyes, into looking up at Kallor.