The Knight snorted. ‘It is you who does not understand, Elder. Long before he was Lord of the Fallen, he was
During this tirade, Hood continued to stare at the wagon, at its towering, tottering heap of bodies. And then the Lord of the Dead spoke. ‘I often wondered what it looked like, this Hold creaking on its wooden wheels. . a pathetic thing, really. Crude, clumsy.’ He faced Draconus, rotted skin curling back from the tusks. ‘Now,
Ask what the dead face
Snatching the curtain aside
These stony tracks into blind worlds
Where to grope is to recall
All the precious jewels of life
Ask what the dead see
In that last backward glance
These fetish strings knots left untied
Where every sinew strains
To reach and touch once more
Ask what the dead know
When knowing means nothing
Arms full and heaped with baubles
As if to build a home anew
In places we’ve never been
Ask but the dead do not answer
Behind the veil of salty rain
Skirl now amid the rotted leavings
When the worms fall away
To that wealth of silence
Fisher kel Tath
Eyes rolling white, the ox ran for its life. Cart skidding and bouncing, tilting on one wild wheel as the moaning beast hurtled round a corner and raced down a cobbled street.
Even the gods could not reach through that thick-boned pate of skull, down into the tender knot of terror in its murky brain. Once prodded awake, incessant need blurred the world beyond, reducing all to a narrow tunnel with salvation at the far, far end. Why, who could comprehend such extremity? Not mortal kin, much less a god with its eternally bemused brow — to regard such fitful interludes, blank-eyed and mind rushing past like a flash flood, what would be the value of that, after all?
The beast is what it is. Four-legged, two-legged. Panic will use as many limbs as are available to it, and a few more besides. Panic will ride a wheeled cart, and thunder on dung-smeared hoofs. Panic will scrabble up the very walls as one hor shy;rendous Hound after another slinks past.
The night air stinks and that stink fills the nostrils with all the frenzied flags of a ship floundering on shoals. Smoke and blood, bile and piss. But, mostly, blood.
And then there were the screams. Ringing out everywhere, so many of them cutting off in mid-shriek, or, even more chilling, in strangled gurgle. Mothers never before heard such a multitude of beseeching calls! And who could say if the ox was not bellowing for its own, for that sweet teat, the massive hulk looming overhead, with all its sure scents and briny warmth? Alas, the beast’s mam was long since sent off to pull the great cart beyond the veil, and even could she come lumbering back at the desperate call of her get, what might she achieve in the face of a Hound?
No, solitary flight this must remain. For each and all. Ox, horse, dog, cat, mouse and rat, lizard and gnat. And people of all sorts. Old men with limps, old men who never limped in their lives but did so now. Women of all ages, sizes and dispositions, who would have limped could it have earned the necessary sympathy. Yet when even the rooftops hold no succour, why bother riding this bouncing cart of headlong panic? Best to simply flop down in abject surrender, with but a few tugs to rearrange the lie of one’s dress or whatnot. Let the men soil themselves in their terror — they never washed enough as it was.
