Deadhouse Gates полностью

'Aye, same for my crew. They're neighing in their sleep, and more than one's died from it.'

Three dogs loped past them, the huge one named Bent, a female, and the lapdog scrambling in their wake.

'They'll outlive us all,' Lull grumbled. 'Those damned beasts!'

The sky deepened overhead, the first stars pushing through the cerulean gauze.

'Gods, I'm tired.'

Duiker nodded. Oh, indeed, we've travelled far, friend, and now stand face to face with Hood. He takes the weary as readily as the defiant. Offers the same welcoming grin.

'Something in the air tonight, Historian. Can you feel it?'

'Yes.'

'Maybe Hood's Warren has drawn closer.'

'It has that feel, doesn't it?'

They arrived at the Fist's command tent, entered.

The usual faces were arrayed before them. Nil and Nether, the last remaining warlocks; Sulmar and Chenned, Bult and Coltaine himself. Each had become a desiccated mockery of the will and strength once present in their varied miens.

'Where's Bungle?' Lull asked, finding his usual camp-chair.

'Listening to her sergeant, I'd guess,' Bult said, with a ghost of a grin.

Coltaine had no time for idle talk. 'Something approaches, this night. The warlocks have sensed it, though that is all they can say. We are faced with preparing for it.'

Duiker looked to Nether. 'What kind of sense?'

She shrugged, then sighed. 'Vague. Troubled, even outrage — I don't know, Historian.'

'Sensed anything like it before? Even remotely?'

'No.'

Outrage.

'Draw the refugees close,' Coltaine commanded the captains. 'Double the pickets-'

'Fist,' Sulmar said, 'we face a battle tomorrow-'

'Aye, and rest is needed. I know.' The Wickan began pacing, but it was a slower pace than usual. It had lost its smoothness as well, its ease and elegance. 'And more, we are greatly weakened — the water casks are bone dry.'

Duiker winced. Battle? No, tomorrow will see a slaughter. Soldiers unable to fight, unable to defend themselves. The historian cleared his throat, made to speak, then stopped. One word, yet even to voice it would be to offer the cruellest illusion. One word.

Coltaine was staring at him. 'We cannot,' he said softly.

I know. For the rebellion's warriors as much as for us, the end to this must be with blood.

'The soldiers are beyond digging trenches,' Lull said into the heavy, all-too-aware silence.

'Holes, then.'

'Aye, sir.'

Holes. To break mounted charges, snap legs, send screaming beasts into the dust.

The briefing ended then, abruptly, as the air was suddenly charged, and whatever threatened to arrive now announced itself with a brittle crackle, a mist of something oily, like sweat clogging the air.

Coltaine led the group outside, to find the bristling atmosphere manifested tenfold beneath the night's sparkling canopy. Horses bucked. Cattle-dogs howled.

Soldiers were rising like spectres. Weapons rustled.

In the open space just beyond the foremost pickets, the air split asunder with a savage, ripping sound.

Three pale horses thundered from that rent, followed by three more, then another three, all harnessed, all screaming with terror. Behind them came a massive carriage, a fire-scorched, gaudily painted leviathan riding atop six spoked wheels that were taller than a man. Smoke trailed like thick strands of raw wool from the carriage, from the horses themselves, and from the three figures visible behind the last three chargers.

The white, screaming train was at full gallop — as if in headlong flight from whatever warren it had come from — and the carriage pitched wildly, alarmingly, as the beasts plunged straight for the pickets.

Wickans scattered to either side.

Staring with disbelief, Duiker saw all three figures sawing the reins, bellowing, flinging themselves against the backrest of their tottering perch.

The horses drove hooves into the earth, biting down on their momentum, the towering carriage slewing behind them, raising a cloud of smoke, dust and an emanation that the historian recognized with a jolt of alarm as outrage. The outrage, he now understood, of a warren — and its god.

Behind the lead carriage came another, then another, each pitching to one side or the other to avoid collision as they skidded to a halt.

As soon as the lead carriage ceased its headlong plunge, figures poured from it, armoured men and women, shouting, roaring commands that no-one seemed to pay any attention to, and waving blackened, smeared and dripping weapons.

A moment later, even as the other two carriages stopped, a loud bell clanged.