Toll the Hounds (The Malazan Book of the Fallen 8)

‘Please-’

‘I do not think enough of me can reach through-not against him. I am sorry. If you do not stand in his way, I will fall. I will fail. I feel in your blood a whisper of… someone. Someone dear to me. Someone who might have withstood him.

‘But he does not await us. He is not there to defend me. What has happened? Nimander, I have only you.’

The small hand, that had felt dry and cool and so oddly reassuring in its re-moteness, now felt suddenly frail, like thin porcelain.

She does not guide me.

She holds on.

He sought comprehension from all that she had said. The blood of someone dear. She cannot reach through, not enough to make her powerful enough against Clip, against the Dying God. She-she is not Aranatha.

‘Nimander, I have only you.’

We stand in the dust of what’s done.’

‘Nimander, we have arrived.’

Tears streamed down Seerdomin’s ravaged face. Overwhelmed by the helplessness, by the futility of his efforts against such an enemy, he rocked to every blow, staggered in retreat, and if he was laughing-and gods, he was-there was no hu-mour in that terrible sound.

He’d hadn’t much pride to begin with-or so he had made his pose, there be fore the Redeemer, one of such humility-but no soldier with any spine left did not hold to a secret conviction of prowess. And although he had not lied when he’d told himself he was fighting for a god he did not believe in, well, a part of him was unassailed by that particular detail. As if it’d make no difference. And in that was revealed the secret pride he had harboured.

He would surprise her. He would astonish her by resisting far beyond what she could have anticipated. He would fight the bitch to a standstill.

How grim, how noble, how poetic. Yes, they would sing of the battle, all those shining faces in some future temple of white, virgin stone, all those shining eyes so pleased to share heroic Seerdomin’s triumphant glory.

He could not help but laugh.

She was shattering him piece by pathetic piece. It was a wonder any part of his soul was left that could still recognize itself.

See me, Spinnock Durav, old friend. Noble friend. And let us share this laugh.

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‘Please-’

‘I do not think enough of me can reach through-not against him. I am sorry. If you do not stand in his way, I will fall. I will fail. I feel in your blood a whisper of… someone. Someone dear to me. Someone who might have withstood him.

‘But he does not await us. He is not there to defend me. What has happened? Nimander, I have only you.’

The small hand, that had felt dry and cool and so oddly reassuring in its re-moteness, now felt suddenly frail, like thin porcelain.

She does not guide me.

She holds on.

He sought comprehension from all that she had said. The blood of someone dear. She cannot reach through, not enough to make her powerful enough against Clip, against the Dying God. She-she is not Aranatha.

‘Nimander, I have only you.’

We stand in the dust of what’s done.’

‘Nimander, we have arrived.’

Tears streamed down Seerdomin’s ravaged face. Overwhelmed by the helplessness, by the futility of his efforts against such an enemy, he rocked to every blow, staggered in retreat, and if he was laughing-and gods, he was-there was no hu-mour in that terrible sound.

He’d hadn’t much pride to begin with-or so he had made his pose, there be fore the Redeemer, one of such humility-but no soldier with any spine left did not hold to a secret conviction of prowess. And although he had not lied when he’d told himself he was fighting for a god he did not believe in, well, a part of him was unassailed by that particular detail. As if it’d make no difference. And in that was revealed the secret pride he had harboured.

He would surprise her. He would astonish her by resisting far beyond what she could have anticipated. He would fight the bitch to a standstill.

How grim, how noble, how poetic. Yes, they would sing of the battle, all those shining faces in some future temple of white, virgin stone, all those shining eyes so pleased to share heroic Seerdomin’s triumphant glory.

He could not help but laugh.

She was shattering him piece by pathetic piece. It was a wonder any part of his soul was left that could still recognize itself.

See me, Spinnock Durav, old friend. Noble friend. And let us share this laugh.

At my stupid posing.

I am mocked, friend, by my own pride. Yes, do laugh, as you so wanted to do each and every time you defeated me on our tiny field of battle, there on the stained table in that damp, miserable tavern.

You did not imagine how I struggled to hold on to that pride, defeat after de. feat, crushing loss after crushing loss.

So now, let us cast aside our bland masks. Laugh, Spinnock Durav, as you watch me lose yet again.

He had not even slowed her down. Blades smashed into him from all sides, three, four at a time. His broken body did not even know where to fall-her attacks were all that kept him standing.

He’d lost his sword.

He might even have lost the arm and hand that had been wielding it. There was no telling. He had no sense beyond this knot of mocking knowledge. This lone inner eye unblinkingly fixed on its pathetic self.

And now, at last, she must have flung away all her weapons, for her hands closed round his throat.

He forced his eyes open, stared into her laughing face-

Oh.

I understand now. It was you laughing.

You, not me. You I was hearing. Yes, I understand now -

That meant that he, why, he’d been weeping. So much for mockery. The truth was, there was nothing left in him but self-pity. Spinnock Durav, look away now. Please, look away.

Her hands tightening round his throat, she lifted him from the ground, held him high. So she could watch his face as she choked the last life from him. Watch, and laugh in his face of tears.

The High Priestess stood with hands to her mouth, too frightened to move, watching the Dying God destroy Endest Silann. He should have crumbled by now, he should have melted beneath that onslaught. And indeed it had begun. Yet, somehow, unbelievably, he still held on.

Making of himself a final, frail barrier between the Tiste Andii and this horrendous, insane god. She cowered in its shadow. It had been hubris, mad hubris, to have believed they could withstand this abomination. Without Anomander Rake, without even Spinnock Durav. And now she sensed every one of her kin be-ing driven down, unable to lift a hand in self-defence, lying with throats exposed, as the poison rain flooded the streets, bubbled in beneath doors, through windows, eating the tiles of roofs as if it was acid, to stream down beams and paint brown every wall. Her kin had begun to feel the thirst, had begun to desire that deadly first sip-as she had.

And Endest Silann held the enemy back.

Another moment.

And then yet another-