Toll the Hounds - Page 447/467

Chains and chains and chains to bind-

A bony hand closed on his shoulder and dragged him back.

Snarling, Draconus half turned. ‘Let go, damn you! I will stand with them, Hood-I must, can’t you see that?’

The Lord of Death’s hand tightened, the nails biting, and Hood slowly pulled him closer. ‘The fray,’ the god said in a rasp, ’is not for you.’

‘You are not my master-’

‘Stand with me, Draconus. It’s not yet time.’

‘For what?’ He struggled to tear free, but a Jaghut’s strength could be immense, and barring the bloody removal of his entire shoulder, Draconus could do nothing. He and the Lord of Death stood alone, not twenty paces from the motionless wagon.

‘Consider this,’ said Hood, ‘a request for forgiveness.’

Draconus stared. ‘What? Who asks my forgiveness?’

Hood, Lord of the Dead, should have been the last to fall to Dragnipur. Whatever the Son of Darkness intended, its final play was found in the slaying of this ancient god. Such was the conviction of Draconus. A mad, pointless gamble, the empty purchase of time already consumed, at the wasting of countless souls, an entire realm of the dead.

As it turned out, Draconus was wrong.

There was one more. One more.

Arriving with the power of a mountain torn apart in a long, deafening, crushing detonation. Argent clouds were shredded, whipped away in dark winds. The legions pressing on all sides recoiled, and the thousand closing paces so viciously won were lost in an instant. Dragons screamed. Voices erupted as if dragged out from throats-the pressure, the pain, the stunning power-

Chaos flinched, and then, slowly, began to gather itself once more.

No single force could defeat this enemy. Destruction was its own law, and even as it devoured itself it would devour everything else. Chaos, riding the road of Darkness, ever to arrive unseen, from sources unexpected, from places where one never thought to look, much less guard against.

The sword and all within it was dying, now, at last; dying.

Hood’s hand had left his shoulder, and Draconus sagged down on to his knees.

One more.

And, yes, he knew who was now among them.

Should he laugh? Should he seek him out, mock him? Should he close hands about his throat so that they could lock one to the other until the descent of oblivion?

No, he would do none of this.

Who asks for my forgiveness?

Had he the strength, he would have cried out.

Anomander Rake, you need not ask. That begging, alas, must come from me.

This was Mother Dark I snared here. Your mother -

And so, what will you now do?

A heartbeat later, a faint gasp escaped Draconus, and he lifted his head, opened his eyes once more. ‘Rake?’ he whispered.

Draconus slowly rose. And turned. To face the wagon.

To witness.

The Second watched yet another Seguleh fall. He then dragged his horse round, to glare with dead eyes at a tall, ornate carriage, as its train of screaming horses lunged forward. Figures pitched to one side, holding on for dear life as a fissure tore open-into which those horses vanished.

Hood’s Herald-that one-eyed soldier-drove heels to his tattered mount, fol-lowing.

And the Lord of Death’s voice drifted through the Second. ‘It seems you are needed after all, as you suspected. Now go-and know this, old friend, you have served me well.

‘I am the god of death no longer.

‘When you have done this last thing, your service is at an end. And then, well, Skinner awaits

The Second tilted back his masked, helmed head and howled in glee. Sheathing his swords, he rode hard after the carriage.

He saw the Herald vanish.

And the fissure began to close.

The Second drove his long-dead Jaghut stallion into that dying portal-

And left the realm of Dragnipur. The other Seguleh were doomed anyway, and though in this last battle they had each redeemed something of their shame in dy-ing to a foreigner, that was no reason to fall at their sides.

The Second did not stay long in the wake of the others as they thundered through unknown warrens, no, not long at all. For he had been summoned. Sum-moned, yes, by a weapon in need-

Hiding a seething storm of fiery winds, plunging through, his horse’s sheaves of armour clattering, its hoofs ringing sharp on cobbles, the Second saw what he sought, and he swept his hand down-

‘I’ll take that,’ laughed a hollow, metallic voice. And the lance was torn from Cutter’s hand. In an array of flapping tatters of hide, frayed straps and mangled buckles, the undead Seguleh who had, long ago now, once given him the weapon, now readied the lance, even as the masked warrior charged straight towards the white Hounds.