Precious Thimble spoke in a strangely squeaky voice, ‘Jaghut Anap, the curse afflicting this village’s daughters—’
‘There have been twelve in all,’ said Bedusk Agape.
‘Thus far.’
‘Oh. What happened to the other nine?’
The Jaghut flicked his gaze over to her. ‘You are not the first trouble to arrive in the past few years. Of course,’ he added, after sipping his wine, ‘all the young girls are now sent to the next village along this coast – permanently, alas, which does not bode well for the future of this town.’
‘I thought I saw women down in the tavern cellar,’ said Precious Thimble.
‘Bearing a child prevents the settling of the curse. Mothers are immune. Therefore, if you or your fellow female companions have at any time produced a child, you need not worry.’
‘Um,’ said Precious Thimble, ‘I don’t think any of us qualify.’
‘How unfortunate,’ said Bedusk.
‘So how is it you got elected Provost?’ Quell asked. ‘Just curious, you see – I’m the nosy type, that’s all. I didn’t mean anything—’
‘I believe it was a collective attempt to ameliorate my grief, my solitude. None would deny, I now expect, that such an invitation was ill-conceived.’
‘Oh? Why?’
‘Well, had I remained in my isolation, this terrible curse would not exist, I am afraid.’
‘It’s your curse, then?’
‘Yes.’
A long moment of silence. From near the staircase, Mappo slowly turned to face them.
‘Then you can end it,’ said Quell.
‘I could, yes, but I shall not.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you are not that important.’
Quell crossed his legs. ‘May I ask, what happened to your mate?’
‘We argued. I lost. I buried her.’
There seemed to be, at least to the wizard’s thinking, something missing in that answer. But he was getting distracted by his bladder. He couldn’t think straight.
‘So,’ said Precious Thimble in a thin voice, ‘if you lose an argument to someone, you then kill them?’
‘Oh, I didn’t say she was dead.’
Mappo spoke from where he still stood, ‘She is now, Jaghut.’
Bedusk Agape sighed. ‘That does seem likely, doesn’t it?’
‘How long,’ the Trell asked, ‘was she pinned down? Your mate?’
‘Nine years or so.’
‘And the argument?’
‘I sense a certain belligerence in you, Trell.’
‘Belligerence, Jaghut?’ Mappo bared his fangs in a cold grin. ‘Your senses have dulled with disuse, I think.’
‘I see. And you imagine you can best me?’
‘I was asking you about the argument.’
‘Something trivial. I have forgotten the details.’
‘But you found yourself alone, at least until the villagers took pity on you and elected you their Provost. And then . . . you fell in love?’
Bedusk Agape winced.
Precious Thimble gasped. ‘Oh! I see now. Oh, it’s like that. She spurned you. You got mad, again, only this time you couldn’t very well bury the whole village—’
‘Actually, I considered it.’
‘Um, well, you decided not to, then. So, instead, you worked up a curse, on her and all her young pretty friends, since they laughed at you or whatever. You turned them all into Tralka Vonan. Blood Feeders.’
‘You cannot hope to break my curse, Witch,’ said Bedusk. ‘Even with the wizard’s help, you will fail.’ The Jaghut then faced Mappo. ‘And you, Trell, even if you manage to kill me, the curse will not die.’ He refilled his goblet for the third time. ‘Your women will have a day or so before the curse takes effect. In that time, I suppose, they could all endeavour to become pregnant.’
All at once Quell sat straighter.
But when he saw Precious Thimble’s expression, his delighted smile turned somewhat sheepish.
Down on the narrow strand of what had once been beach, at the foot of the raw cliff, waves skirled foam-thick tendrils through the chunks of clay and rock and black hairy roots, gnawing deep channels and sucking back into the sea milky, silt-laden water. The entire heap was in motion, settling, dissolving, sections collapsing under the assault of the waves.
Farther down the beach the strand re-emerged, the white sand seemingly studded with knuckles of rust, to mark the thousands of ship nails and rivets that had been scattered in profusion along the shoreline. Fragments of wood formed a snagged barrier higher up, and beyond that, cut into the cliff-face, weathered steps led up to a hacked-out cave mouth.
This cave was in fact a tunnel, rising at a steep angle up through the bowels of the promontory, to open out in the floor of the village’s largest structure, a stone and timbered warehouse where the wreckers off-loaded their loot after the long haul of the carts from the cliff base. A tidy enterprise, all things considered, one that gave employment to all the folk of the village – from tending the false fires to rowing the deep-hulled boats out to the reef, where the stripping down of the wrecks took place, along with clubbing survivors and making sure they drowned. The local legend, concocted to provide meagre justification for such cruel endeavours, revolved around some long-ago pirate raids on the village, and how someone (possibly the Provost, who had always lived here, or the locally famous Gacharge Hadlorn Who Waits – but he had left so there was no way to ask him) had suggested that, since the sea was so eager to deliver murderers to this shore, why could it not also deliver death to the would-be murderers? And so, once the notion was planted, the earth was tilled, with mallet and pick and flint and fire, and the days of fishing for a living off the treacherous shoals soon gave way to a far more lucrative venture.
Oh, the nets were cast out every now and then, especially in the calm season when the pickings got slim, and who could deny the blessing of so many fish these days, and fat, big ones at that? Why, it wasn’t so long ago that they’d damned near fished out the area.
The beach was comfortable with half-eaten corpses rolling up on to the sands, where crabs and gulls swarmed. The beach helped pick the bones clean and then left them to the waves to bury or sweep away. On this fast-closing night, however, something unusual clawed its way to the shore. Unusual in that it still lived. Crabs scuttled from its path as fast as their tiny legs could manage.
Water sluiced from the figure as it heaved itself upright. Red-rimmed eyes scanned the scene, fixing at last on the steps and the gaping mouth of the cave. After a moment, it set out in that direction, leaving deep footprints that the beach hastened to smooth away.
‘Do you really think I can’t see what’s going on in your skull, Quell? You’re right there, first in line, with the three of us lying in a row, legs spread wide. And in you dive, worse than a damned dog on a tilted fence post. Reccanto waiting for his turn, and Glanno, and Jula and Amby and Mappo here and Gruntle and probably that damned undead—’
‘Hold on a moment,’ growled the Trell.
‘Don’t even try,’ Precious Thimble snapped.
They were marching back to the tavern, Precious Thimble in the lead, the other two hastening to keep up. That she was tiny and needed two steps for every one of theirs seemed irrelevant.
‘Then again,’ she went on, ‘maybe that Jaghut will go and jump the queue, and by the dawn we’ll all be planted with some ghastly monster, half Trell, half Jaghut, half pissy wizard, half—’
‘Twins?’ asked Quell.
She swung a vicious glare back at him. ‘Oh, funny.’
‘Anyway,’ added Quell, ‘I’m pretty sure that’s not how things like that work—’
‘How would you know? No, me and Sweetest and Faint, we’re out of here as soon as we can get our gear together – you can collect us somewhere down the road. This damned village can go to Hood, with Bedusk Pall Kovuss Agape in the lead. They’re damned wreckers anyway, and if anybody deserves cursing
to damnation, it’s them.’
‘I wouldn’t disagree there,’ said Mappo.
‘Stop trying to get under my skirt, Trell.’
‘What? I wasn’t—’
Quell cut in with a snort. ‘You don’t wear skirts, Witch. Though if you did, it’d be so much easier—’
Now she spun round. ‘What would be, Quell?’
He’d halted and now backed up. ‘Sorry, did I think that out loud?’
‘You think the curse on this village is bad, you just wait and see what I can come up with!’
‘All right, we take your point, Precious. Relax. You three just go, right? We’ll get the carriage fixed up and find you, just like you said.’
She whirled about once more and resumed her march.
Gruntle saw the three in the street, closing fast on the entrance to the tavern. He shouted to catch their attention and hurried over.
‘Master Quell, your driver is a heap of broken bones back there, but he’s still breathing.’
‘Well, he should have let go of the damned reins,’ Quell said in a growl. ‘And now I got to do healing and that takes time. That’s just great – how am I supposed to fix the carriage? Why can’t anybody else do anything useful round here? You, Witch – go and heal Glanno—’
‘I can’t do that! Oh, I can set splints and spit on wounds to chase infection away, but it’s sounding as if he needs a whole lot more than that. Right, Gruntle?’
The tattooed warrior shrugged. ‘Probably.’
‘Don’t even try,’ she snarled at him, and then stalked into the tavern.
Gruntle stared after her. ‘What did she mean? Try what?’
‘Getting under her skirt,’ said Quell.
‘But she doesn’t wear—’
‘That’s not the point,’ the wizard cut in. ‘You’re thinking like a man. That’s your mistake. It’s all our mistakes, in fact. It’s why we’re standing out here, three men, no women. If we’d gone and said, why, Precious, we wouldn’t even think of it, you know what she’d say then? “What’s wrong with me? Am I too ugly or something?” and we’d be in trouble all over again!’
Gruntle glanced bemusedly at Mappo, who, rather cryptically, simply nodded.
Quell straightened his still-wet clothes. ‘Lead me to him, then, Gruntle.’
At one end of the corral there was a stable and next to it, a loading platform built of weathered planks that marked one end of a huge, solidly built warehouse. Jula and Amby had helped Glanno sit up, and Cartographer, cut loose from the wheel, was staggering in circles as he plucked and scraped manure off his face, neck, and rotted clothes.
Glanno had reached the eleventh love of his life, some woman named Herboo Nast, ‘. . . who wore a fox round her neck – not just its fur, you understand, the actual animal, paws trussed up in berbraided silk, gamuzzled in leather, but it was the beast’s eyes I remember most – that look. Panic, like it’d just realized it was trapped in its worst nightlymare. Not that she wasn’t good-looking, in that goat-like way of hers – you know, those long curly hairs that show up under their chin after a certain age – did I mention how I liked my women experientialled? I do. I most certainly do. I wanna see decades and decades of miserable livin’ in their eyes, so that when I arrive, why, it’s like a fresh spring rain on a withered daisy. Which one was I talking about? Fox, goat, panic, trussed up, right, Herboo Nast—’
He stopped then, so abruptly that neither Jula nor Amby noticed the sudden, ominous silence, and just kept on with the smiles and nods with which they had accompanied Glanno’s monologue, and they were still smiling and nodding when the figure that had appeared on the warehouse loading platform – the one whose arrival had so thoroughly stunned Glanno Tarp’s flapping tongue – walked up to halt directly in front of all three, as the horses bolted for the most distant corner of the corral in a drum-roll of hoofs.
*
‘No losses so far and that’s good,’ said Quell as he and Gruntle walked towards the corral.
‘I didn’t know you were a practitioner of Denul,’ Gruntle said.
‘I’m not, not really, I mean. I have elixirs, unguents, salves, and some of those are High Denul, for emergencies.’
‘Like now.’
‘Maybe. We’ll see.’
‘Broken legs—’
‘Doesn’t need legs to drive the carriage, does he? Besides, he might decline my services.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘Healing expenses cut into his share. He could come out of this owing the Guild rather than the other way round.’ He shrugged. ‘Some people refuse.’
‘Well,’ said Gruntle, ‘he said to get you, so I don’t think he’s going to refuse, Master Quell.’
They reached the low stone wall and then halted.
‘Who in Hood’s name is that?’ Gruntle asked, squinting at the tall ragged figure standing with the Bole brothers.
Quell grunted, and then said, ‘Well, and it’s just a guess, mind you, but I’d say that that’s the Provost’s wife.’
‘He’s married to a Jaghut?’
‘Was, until he buried her, but then the yard collapsed into the sea, taking her with it. And now she’s back and I’d wager a trip’s profit she’s not in the best of moods.’ And then he smiled up at Gruntle. ‘We can work all this out. Oh, yes, we can work all this out, now.’
This confidence was shattered when Jula and Amby Bole suddenly took it upon themselves to attack the Jaghut. Bellowing, they flung themselves at her, and all three figures lurched about as they struggled, clawed, scratched and bit, until finally they lost their footing and toppled in a multi-limbed mass that slopped heavily in the muck.
Quell and Gruntle scrambled over the wall and raced for them.
Glanno Tarp was shrieking something, his words unintelligible as he sought to crawl away from the scrap.
From the Jaghut woman sorcery erupted, a thundering, deafening detonation that lit up the entire corral and all the buildings nearby. Blinking against the sudden blindness, Gruntle staggered in the mud. He heard Quell fall beside him. The coruscating, actinic light continued to bristle, throwing everything into harsh shadows.
Glanno Tarp resumed his shrieks.
As vision returned, Gruntle saw, to his astonishment, that both Boles still lived. In fact, they had each pinned down an arm and were holding tight as the Jaghut woman thrashed and snarled.
Drawing his cutlasses, Gruntle made his way over. ‘Jula! Amby! What are you doing?’
Two mud-smeared faces looked up, and their expressions were dark, twisted with anger.
‘A swamp witch!’ Jula said. ‘She’s one of them swamp witches!’
‘We don’t like swamp witches!’ added Amby. ‘We kill swamp witches!’
‘Master Quell said this one can help us,’ said Gruntle. ‘Or she would have, if not for you two jumping her like that!’
‘Cut her head off!’ said Jula. ‘That usually works!’
‘I’m not cutting her head off. Let her go, you two—’
‘She’ll attack us!’
Gruntle crouched down. ‘Jaghut – stop snarling – listen to me! If they let you go, will you stop fighting?’
Eyes burned as if aflame. She struggled some more, and then ceased all motion. The blazing glare dimmed, and after a few deep, rattling breaths, she nodded. ‘Very well. Now get these two fools off me!’
‘Jula, Amby – let go of her—’
‘We will, once you cut her head off!’
‘Do it now, Boles, or I will cut your heads off.’
‘Do Amby first!’
‘No, Jula first!’
‘I’ve got two cutlasses here, boys, so I’ll do it at the same time. How does that suit you?’
The Boles half lifted themselves up and glared across at each other.
‘We don’t like it,’ said Amby.
‘So leave off her, then.’
They rolled to the sides, away from the Jaghut woman, and she pulled her arms loose and
clambered to her feet. The penumbra of sorcery dimmed, winked out. Breathing hard, she spun to face the Bole brothers, who’d rolled in converging arcs until they collided and were now crouched side by side in the mud, eyeing her like a pair of wolves.
Clutching his head, Master Quell stumbled up to them. ‘You idiots,’ he gasped. ‘Jaghut, your husband’s cursed this village. Tralka Vonan. Can you do anything about that?’
She was trying to wipe the mud from her rotted clothes. ‘You’re not from around here,’ she said. ‘Who are you people?’
‘Just passing through,’ Quell said. ‘But our carriage needs repairs – and we got wounded—’
‘I am about to destroy this village and everyone in it – does that bother you?’
Quell licked his muddy lips, made a face, and then said, ‘That depends if you’re including us in your plans of slaughter.’
‘Are you pirates?’
‘No.’
‘Wreckers?’
‘No.’
‘Necromancers?’
‘No.’
‘Then,’ she said, with another glare at the Boles, ‘I suppose you can live.’
‘Your husband says even if he dies, the curse will persist.’
She bared stained tusks. ‘He’s lying.’
Quell glanced at Gruntle, who shrugged in return and said, ‘I’m not happy with the idea of pointless slaughter, but then, wreckers are the scum of humanity.’
The Jaghut woman walked towards the stone wall. They watched her.
‘Master Quell,’ said Glanno Tarp, ‘got any splints?’
Quell shot Gruntle another look. ‘Told you, the cheap bastard.’
At last the sun rose, lifting a rim of fire above the horizon on this the last day of the wrecker village on the Reach of Woe.
From a window of the tower, Bedusk Pall Kovuss Agape stood watching his wife approaching up the street. ‘Oh,’ he murmured, ‘I’m in trouble now.’
In the moments before dawn, Kedeviss rose from her blankets and walked out into the darkness. She could make out the shape of him, sitting on a large boulder and staring northward. Rings spun on chains, glittering like snared stars.
Her moccasins on the gravel scree gave her away and she saw him twist round to watch her approach.
Toll the Hounds Page 92