The Hound with the chewed-up torso was now eating it with all the mindless intensity common to carnivores filling their stomachs. The other beast had half turned away and seemed to be listening to that distant fight.
Cotillion was unrelenting.
For the god, for Traveller, and for Samar Dev and Karsa Orlong, the world be-yond this scene had virtually vanished. A moment was taking portentous shape, hewn one piece at a time, like finding a face in the heart of a block of stone. A mo-ment that spun on some kind of decision, one that Traveller must make, here, now, for it was obvious that Cotillion had placed himself in the warrior’s path, and would not step to one side.
‘Karsa-if this goes wrong-’
‘I have his back,’ said the Toblakai in a growl.
‘But what if-’
An inhuman cry from Traveller cut through her words, cut through every thought, slashing like a knife. Such a forlorn, desperate sound-it did not belong to him, could not, but he had thrust out one arm, as if to shove Cotillion aside.
They stood too far apart for that. Yet Cotillion, now silent, simply stepped away from Traveller’s path.
And the warrior walked past, but now it was as if each boot needed to be dragged forward, as if Traveller now struggled against some terrible, invisible tide. That ferocious obsession seemed to have come untethered-he walked as would a man lost.
Cotillion watched him go, and she saw him lift a forearm to his eyes, as if he did not want the memory of this, as if he could wipe it away with a single, private gesture.
Although she did not understand, sorrow flooded through Samar Dev. Sorrow for whom? She had no answer that made sense. She wanted to weep. For Traveller. For Cotillion. For Karsa. For this damned city and this damned night.
The Hounds had trotted off.
She blinked. Cotillion too had disappeared.
Karsa shook himself, and then led her onward once more.
The pressure was building, leaning in on her defences. She sensed cracks, the sifting of dust. And as they stumbled along in Traveller’s wake, Samar Dev realized that the warrior was marching straight for the nexus of that power.
The taste of fear was bitter on her tongue.
No, Traveller, no. Change your mind. Change it, please.
But he would not do that, would he? Would not. Could not. The fate of the fated, oh, that sounds clumsy, and yet… what else can it be called? This force of inevitability, both willed and unwilling, both unnecessary and inexorable. The fate of the fated.
Walking, through a city trapped in a nightmare, beneath the ghoulish light of a moon in its death-throes. Traveller might as well be dragging chains, and at the ends of those chains, none other than Karsa Orlong and Samar Dev. And Traveller might as well be wearing his own collar of iron, something invisible but undeniable heaving him forward.
She had never felt so helpless.
In the eternity leading up to the moment of the Lord of Death’s arrival, the world of Dragnipur had begun a slow, deadly and seemingly unstoppable convulsion. Everywhere, the looming promise of annihilation. Everywhere, a chorus of des-perate cries, bellowing rage and hopeless defiance. The raw nature of each chained thing was awakened, and each gave that nature voice, and each voice held the flavour of sharp truth. Dragons shrilled, demons roared, fools shrieked in hysteria. Bold heroes and murderous thugs snatched deep breaths that made ribs creak, and then loosed battle cries.
Argent fires were tumbling down from the sky, tearing down through clouds of ash. An army of unimaginable size, from which no quarter was possible, had be gun a lumbering charge, and weapons clashed the rims of shields and this white, rolling wave of destruction seemed to surge higher as if seeking to merge with the stormclouds.
Feeble, eroded shapes dragged along at the ends of chains now flopped blunted limbs as if to fend off the fast closing oblivion. Eyes rolled in battered skulls, rem-nants of life and of knowledge flickering one last time.
No, nothing wanted to die. When death is oblivion, life will spit in its face. If it can.
The sentient and the mindless were now, finally, all of one mind.
Shake awake all reason. These gathered instincts are not the end but the means. Rattle the chains if you must, but know that that which binds does not break, and the path is never as wayward as one might believe.
Ditch stared with one eye into the descending heavens, and knew terror, but that terror was not his. The god that saw with the same eye filled Ditch’s skull with its shrieks. Bom to die! I am born to die! I am born to die! Not fair not fair not fair! And Ditch just rattled a laugh-or at least imagined that he did so-and replied, We’re all born to die, you idiot. Let the span last a single heartbeat, let it last a thousand years. Stretch the heartbeat out, crush down the centuries, it’s no different. They feel the same, when the end arrives.