Toll the Hounds полностью

But this was a dream. From some ancient time. And even if he sought to guide them to the shore they sought, he would awaken long before that journey was completed. Awaken, and so abandon them to their fates. And what if he grew hungry in this next moment? What if his instinct exploded within him, launch shy;ing him at this hapless female, closing his jaws on her throat?

Was this where the notion of human sacrifice came from? When nature eyed them avid with hunger? When they had naught but sharpened sticks and a smoul shy;dering fire to protect them?

He would not kill them this night.

He would find something else to kill. Gruntle set off, into the jungle. A thou shy;sand scents filled him, a thousand muted noises whispered in the deep shadows. He carried his massive weight effortlessly, silent as he padded forward. Beneath the canopy the world was dusk and so it would ever remain, yet he saw every shy;thing, the flit of a green-winged mantis, the scuttle of woodlice in the humus, the gliding escape of a millipede. He slipped across the path of deer, saw where they had fed on dark-leaved shoots. He passed a rotted log that had been torn apart and pushed aside, the ground beneath ravaged by the questing snouts of boar.

Some time later, with night descending, he found the spoor he had been seek shy;ing. Acrid, pungent, both familiar and strange. It was sporadic, proof that the crea shy;ture that left it was cautious, taking to the trees in its moments of rest.

A female.

He slowed his pace as he tracked the beast. All light was gone now, every colour shifted into hues of grey. If she discovered him she would flee. But then, the only beast that wouldn’t was the elephant, and he had no interest in hunting that wise leviathan with its foul sense of humour.

Edging forward, one soft step at a time, he came upon the place where she had made a kill. A wapiti, its panic a bitter breath in the air. The humus scuffed by its tiny hoofs, a smear of blood on curled black leaves. Halting, settling down, Gruntle lifted his gaze.

And found her. She had drawn her prey up on to a thick branch from which lianas depended in a cascade of night blossoms. The wapiti — or what remained of it — was draped across the bole, and she was lying along the branch’s length, lam shy;bent eyes fixed upon Gruntle.

This leopard was well suited to hunting at night — her coat was black on black, the spots barely discernible.

She regarded him without fear, and this gave Gruntle pause.

A voice then murmured in his skull, sweet and dark. ‘Go on your way, Lord. There is not enough to share. . even if I so desired, which of course I do not.’

‘I have come for you,’ Gruntle replied.

Her eyes widened and he saw muscles coiling along her shoulders. ‘Do all beasts know riders, then?’

For a moment Gruntle did not comprehend her question, and then under shy;standing arrived with sudden heat, sudden interest. ‘Has your soul travelled far, my lady?’

‘Through time. Through unknown distances. This is where my dreams take me every night. Ever hunting, ever tasting blood, ever shying from the path of the likes of you, Lord.’

‘I am summoned by prayer,’ Gruntle said, knowing even as he said it that it was the truth, that the half-human creatures he had left behind did indeed call upon him, as if to invite the killer answered some innate refusal of random chance. He was summoned to kill, he realized, to give proof to the notion of fate.

‘Curious idea, Lord.’

‘Spare them, Lady.’

‘Who?’

‘You know of whom I speak. In this time, there is but one creature that can voice prayers.’

He sensed wry amusement. ‘You are wrong in that. Although the others have no interest in imagining beasts as gods and goddesses.’

‘Others?’