by Ian Whates
Suddenly, all that changed. The nick standing one in from the left, next to the girl, took a shuffling step backwards. The lad at the opposite end said, "Breck," before he turned and ran, and then all five of them were in retreat, not sauntering as Tom had pictured, but running for all they were worth.
Kat laughed, a triumphant cackle. "Go on, you breckers, run!" She sheathed her knives with dramatic flourish. "That showed 'em!"
Tom wasn't so certain. There had been a look of terror on the face of the first nick to turn and flee, one that appeared all of a sudden and, now that he came to think of it, he wasn't at all sure that the nick in question had actually been looking at either him or Kat as he did so.
These thoughts percolated through Tom's mind as he watched the five Thunderheads stampede away. These same thoughts were punctuated by a woman's scream, just as Tom reached the conclusion that the nicks were not in fact running from him and Kat at all, but from something behind them.
He whipped around, to find himself confronted by an apparition out of nightmare. A great beast was pacing towards them - still some distance away, but coming closer. A dog, at least in appearance, but on a gigantic scale. Oxen were far from common in the City Below but Tom had seen a few in his time, even stroked one once, and this dog was as big as the tallest ox he'd ever seen. Sandy-brown in colour, its fur looked coarse and wiry, while it had long legs and a body that tapered to a slender stomach, and a thin tail which was currently held out rod-stiff behind, but it was the front end which truly impressed: all barrel chest, compact neck, thick muscle, and broad mouth bristling with teeth.
Tom was vaguely aware of people hurrying away beyond it, though one woman, presumably the source of the scream, huddled against a wall sobbing. By the look of things she need not have worried. The creature ignored her. Its gaze was fixed firmly on Tom.
"Oh, Thaiss!" Kat exclaimed from beside him.
"What the breck is it?" Tom hissed.
"A demon hound, from out the Stain; they raid into the city from time to time, but I've never known them to come this far."
Tom started to back away, "It's as mean as it looks, I suppose?"
"Worse. They're vicious as demons and twice as hard to kill."
"Seems to me those Thunderheads had the right idea."
"Yeah, I was thinkin' the same. Come on!"
With that they were both running, following in the wake of the now vanished Thunderheads.
Tom could hear the hound behind him and risked a glance back, only to be horrified at how quickly the beast was catching them. It had broken into a gallop, long strides eating up the ground. Then it barked; a sound that rolled forth like the tolling of a giant bell, deep and dark and more chilling than any sound Tom had ever heard before.
"It's coming!" he called out, shouting the obvious in his panic.
"We need to get off the street. Can't outrun it," the girl yelled back. "There!"
She darted to the right, choosing an alleyway between two buildings. On impulse, Tom went in the opposite direction, running into the alley's counterpart on the left-hand side, reasoning that if they split up at least one of them might get away.
He dared to hope that they both would, that the dog would keep going, that it had not been chasing them at all and they were simply unfortunate enough to be running in the same direction.
No such luck.
He charged forward and was just registering the fact that this was a dead end, that there was a solid wall directly ahead, when he heard the hound follow him, its breath and the click of claws on the hard ground sounding louder and closer in the confined space of the alley. He ran on, desperately looking for a way out - a doorway, something to climb - but there was nothing.
The wall was coming up fast, the demon hound even faster. Why hadn't he followed Kat? At least then there would have been someone with him and he wouldn't have been alone when he died.
He turned to face the hound before quite reaching the wall, determined not to be run down and killed without knowing precisely when the death-stroke was descending. The beast had slowed, perhaps realising that its prey was trapped. It padded forward steadily, confidently, head lowered, the hackles on the back of its neck standing proud, mouth curled in a snarl and eyes glinting with the promise of death. A long strand of viscous drool hung from the monster's mouth, stretching down towards the ground, and steam rose from its hide, giving the impression that the beast was newly emerged from some fiery realm of hell.
Tom still clutched his knife - he hadn't had a chance to put it away since the confrontation with the Thunderheads. He now thrust it out before him. Little more than a gesture of defiance, the blade might perhaps be useful for picking lodged food from between the demon hound's teeth, but he doubted it would achieve much else. Still, the knife was all he had, and he might as well give as good an account of himself as he could. Perhaps he might even get in a good blow or two and cause this brecking dog some minor hurt before it tore him apart.
He crouched, knife held in his right hand, left arm slightly raised, ready to provide balance. A rumbling growl started to gather somewhere deep within the hound, a crescendo building towards the inevitable bark which, when it came, was so loud and fierce that it startled Tom even though he was expecting it, causing him to miss what might have been his best or possibly even his only chance, as the dog raised its head to release the sound. For a split second the beast's throat was exposed, but before Tom could think to react the head came down again and the opportunity had passed, with him still rooted to the spot.
He couldn't afford to dwell on that though, he had to concentrate. The hound gathered itself in preparation to charge or pounce and Tom realised his time had run out. He decided to go low, in the hope that he could somehow slip beneath the hound's attack and strike at its underbelly or perhaps throat, if he got the chance.
Suddenly the dog's growling changed to a yelp of pain and the beast leapt into the air, twisting as it did so, its back legs coming down alarmingly close to Tom, who instinctively shied away, pressing up against the wall. The hound landed awkwardly, one back leg buckling beneath it, and Tom saw that the beast was injured, fresh blood streaming from a deep wound in the suspect leg. At the same time, he realised there was somebody else on the opposite side of the beast.
"Kat!"
So intent had he been on the monster and his own imminent demise that he hadn't even noticed her approach. Nor, apparently, had the dog, though it certainly had now. The hound turned its attention to the girl, ignoring Tom, presumably concluding she represented the greater threat. It might be injured, but the demon hound was by no means beaten. It attacked the girl - a lunge hampered by its unsound leg. Teeth snapped on empty air as the girl danced back, twin blades flashing towards the dog's face but missing in turn.
"Come on, kid, hurry up and get out of there!"
Easy enough for her to say. She didn't have an injured and riled demon hound between her and the only way out.
Tom edged forward, debating whether he could slip past the beast, but its bulk still blocked most of the alley. He looked left then skipped across and looked right, but there simply wasn't room. Whichever way he went, he would be all but touching the hound. It would only need the beast to turn its head as he passed - one snap of those jaws and he was a dead man.
"Come on!"
"I'm trying!"
At the sound of his voice the hound looked around, as if remembering him again. Kat took her chance and leapt in, but the hound's head whipped back towards her and Tom heard the girl cry out, though he was unable to see what was happening, how badly she had been hurt, since his view was blocked by the hound itself. He had to do something.
So thinking, he reversed his grip on the knife and flung himself onto the monster's back, smelling damp fur and feeling warmth and muscle and coarse hair beneath his arms and thighs. The hair he clung to, while he stabbed down with his knife again and again.
The hound toppled, not through any blow he had struck bu
t because its leg buckled, the boy's weight evidently too much for an animal already coping with an injury. It didn't fall sedately like some severed post, but instead writhed and thrashed and snarled and snapped. Tom was thrown off, barely pulling his arm away in time to avoid it being caught and most likely pinned or even broken beneath the wounded beast. And still it fought. Feet kicked at him, claws like great blades that could surely have disembowelled him narrowly missing his head as he ducked and cowered and shrank against the wall. Kat was there, screaming as her twin knives rose and fell, blood trailing from their blades. A string of ruby droplets arced towards Tom, spattering his face and hair.
He wiped the warm moisture away with one hand while, with the other, frantically searching for his knife, which had been dropped during the stomach-lurching confusion of the hound's fall. At the same time he kept one eye on the back leg nearest him, the uninjured one, with its fistful of razors that were flailing unpredictably as the beast struggled to regain its feet. Not that the hound was paying any attention to him at the time. The fight was now all about Kat; but if those claws were to catch him by accident as the foot thrashed, he'd be just as dead as if the attack had been deliberate.
Finally his fingers closed around the familiar hilt. Back pressed against the wall, he scrambled to his feet, ready to rejoin the fight, but it was already over. The great hound lay dead, and Kat peered at him over the corpse.
In fact, she glared at him. "Its shoulders? Was that the best you could do? You leap on its back and try to stab it in the breckin' shoulder? Have you any idea how much fur and skin and muscle a demon hound has there? It probably didn't even feel your knife."
"Well I had to try something!"
"Fine, but you go for the underbelly, the throat, the eyes, or the sinews in the leg like I did to start with - they're the only soft spots a demon hound has. You don't go for its frissing shoulder!"
"Well it's a lot of breckin' good your telling me that now! We haven't all had the advantage of learning stuff like that in the Pits, you know."
The girl snorted. "Advantage? I've never heard it called that before."
Then he noticed her arm: the blood, not all of it the hound's, and the long gash. "You're hurt."
She frowned, following his gaze and glancing down at the wound as if noticing it for the first time. "Yeah, happens I am. Need to sort that out, but first things first, let's put some distance between us and this overgrown dog."
He grinned. "Why? It's not going to be troubling us anymore."
"This one won't, but I've never seen a demon hound on its own before. They hunt in packs."
"Oh." That wiped the smile from his face.
He stepped gingerly around the huge carcass, half-fearing one final twitch of a back leg and doing his best not to tread in the pool of blood which oozed from beneath the still form.
"Thank you," he said to the girl.
"What for?"
"Coming back for me. You could have got clean away."
She shrugged, a little self consciously. "Yeah well, didn't want to let ol' Ty-gen down, did I? And I've still got that sculpture of his to go back and claim...
"Oh, breck!"
The final comment mirrored Tom's feelings exactly. A huge form had materialised in the mouth of the alley, blocking their way out. A demon hound, an apparent mirror image of the one that lay dead behind them. This time Kat was trapped with him, and it seemed unlikely that anyone else was going to come to their rescue by crippling the hound from behind.
The two knives, sheathed after the fight, appeared in the girl's hands once more and Tom reached for his own recovered weapon, then paused, struck by a sudden thought. Demon hounds? He remembered the precious dust which he had been guarding so carefully, both because it was costly and because it was said to be a rare weapon that could actually affect the Demons of the Upper Heights.
Would demon dust work on a demon hound? There was only one way to find out. Instead of his knife, Tom fumbled for the pouch holding the dust, forgotten until that moment.
The hound snarled at the two of them before throwing back its head and voicing a long, mournful howl. Then it charged.
"Hold your breath," he yelled to Kat, loosening the chord at the mouth of the pouch and reaching inside to grasp a fistful of the coarse, gritty dust.
"What?"
"Don't breathe!"
That was all he had the time to say. Teeth flashed towards him, a brawny shoulder struck him and he staggered backwards. Kat's knives were there but the hound ignored her, seemingly intent on Tom. Drawing a ragged breath and heeding his own advice by holding it, Tom flung the dust towards the face, the eyes, and that impossibly gaping maw.
The passage of his hand was marked by a puff of smoke, a grey trail shot through with sparkling silver motes that blossomed into a twinkling cloud before sinking around the demon hound's head.
The results were startling and immediate; the beast hesitated, breaking off its attack. It snorted, sneezed, and then began to tremble. Initially, a slight tremor ran down its body, which soon developed into continuous shaking. Tom and Kat both edged back, waiting to see what happened.
The trembling became convulsions. The hound staggered a few paces and then its front legs gave way, folding up beneath it so that the barrel-like chest thudded to the ground. The back legs followed almost at once and the hound collapsed, to roll onto its side, pushed that way by erratically convulsing limbs. It lay there twitching, movements that became slighter and less frequent.
"What did you do?" Kat asked. "What is that stuff?"
"Demon dust."
"Why didn't you use it on the first hound?"
"I forgot about it."
"You forgot?"
"Hadn't we better get out of here?" Tom asked, keen to change the subject.
"Yeah, let's." They hurried out of the alley, both sparing a glance back at the still-twitching hound. "What the hell is demon dust?"
"No idea. Something I was given. Your arm..." The cut was deeper than he'd realised; blood now bathed the girl's forearm.
"I know. Need to get something on it."
"If we were near the Thair I'd cut you some larl reeds and wrap the wound in them," he said helpfully.
The girl grunted. "No river near here, kid, but there is an 'erbalist I know around the corner, in Ink Lane. She'll have something."
The houses in Ink Lane were single storey and neither the worst nor the best Tom had seen. Proper buildings rather than shanty huts but they had a tired, slightly wilted look, as if they had known better days. Kat went up confidently to a door that looked no different from the rest and knocked.
The elderly woman who answered greeted them sourly, as if customers were the very last thing she wanted to see. However, she led them into her front room, which was dingy and had the oddest smell of anywhere Tom could remember. She caught him wrinkling his nose and the scowl deepened. Bunches of plant stalks and withered leaves hung at intervals from the ceiling; some dried and brittle, others well on the way to becoming so. They dangled from strings that looped across the room, causing Tom to duck as he entered. The woman moved around without the need to do so, presumably through familiarity. Rows of glass and earthenware jars were racked on wooden shelving around the walls and the room even boasted a hearth, where a pot of something bubbled and steamed over an open fire. This seemed the most likely culprit for the unpleasant smell.
A younger woman emerged from a back room, presumably the herbalist's daughter or apprentice, or both; there were no introductions.
The old woman tutted when she saw Kat's arm, as if it were negligent of the girl to receive such a wound. She then brought them some water, using it to wash the arm while Tom cleaned the residual blood from his face and hands.
Without any direction, the daughter or apprentice selected two jars from different shelves, the second of which was dusty from disuse, and carried them to the herbalist. The first contained a powder, which looked golden orange in the dim light. The old woma
n sprinkled some over the wound before scooping a large dollop of white ointment from the second container and smearing it liberally on top. She then wrapped a bandage around the arm and they were done. Coins changed hands and the pair were ushered hurriedly from the house. The whole process took a mere handful of minutes.
Tom blinked, wondering whether the incident felt as unreal to Kat as it did to him.
He drew a breath, preparing to ask that very question, except that as he did so a mournful howl forestalled him. It was a sound impossible to mistake: the howl of a demon hound. And it was answered almost immediately by a second, similar call.
Tom stared at Kat. She stared at him. Neither said a word, they simply turned and ran.
SEVEN
"In here, quickly!"
The baying of the hounds pursued them relentlessly, drawing ever closer. Tom had no idea how many of the brutes were hunting them, but knew for certain that they were being hunted and that there was more than one demon hound on their trail.
How could they lose them? "Running water's the only thing," Kat supplied, "but we're a long way from the Thair."
So they ran, which was not a solution at all but only a means of delaying the inevitable. And now the howls sounded very close indeed and Tom knew they didn't have much longer, so he decided to take a gamble, to try something before it was too late. The only problem being that his idea was a desperate one and if it failed there would be little opportunity to try anything else.
He grabbed the girl by the wrist and started to haul her into a narrow alley.
"What in Thaiss's name? You're going to get us both killed!"
She struggled but he clung on and pulled her after him, surprised by his own strength, fuelled as it was by fear and desperation.
"Trust me!" he hissed, turning to glare at her, trying to convey in that look all the confidence he didn't feel.
Her struggles ceased and she glared back. "What choice do I have? We've lost so much time they'll catch us for sure unless you can come up with a miracle."