House of Chains (The Malazan Book of the Fallen #4) 73

He crouched down over it and was motionless for some time.

Sloped forehead, solid chinless jaw, a brow ridge so heavy it formed a contiguous shelf over the deep-set eye sockets. The hair still clinging to fragments of scalp was little longer than what had covered the body, dark brown and wavy.

More ape-like than a T’lan Imass… the skull behind the face is smaller, as well. Yet it stood taller by far, more human in proportion. What manner of man was this?

There was no evidence of clothing, or any other sort of adornment. The creature-a male-had died naked.

L’oric straightened. He could see the hyena’s route through the reeds, and he set out along it.

The overcast was burning away and the air growing hotter and, if anything, thicker. He reached the sward and stepped onto dry ground for the first time. The hyena was nowhere to be seen, and L’oric wondered if it was still running. An odd reaction, he mused, for which he could fashion no satisfactory explanation.

He had no destination in mind; nor was he even certain that what he sought would be found here. This was not, after all, Tellann. If anything, he had come to what lay beneath Tellann, as if the Imass, in choosing their sacred sites, had been in turn responding to a sensitivity to a still older power. He understood now that Toblakai’s glade was not a place freshly sanctified by the giant warrior; nor even by the T’lan Imass he had worshipped as his gods. It had, at the very beginning, belonged to Raraku, to whatever natural power the land possessed. And so he had pushed through to a place of beginnings. But did I push, or was I pulled ?

A herd of huge beasts crested a distant rise on his right, the ground trembling as they picked up speed, stampeding in wild panic.

L’oric hesitated. They were not running towards him, but he well knew that such stampedes could veer at any time. Instead, they swung suddenly the other way, wheeling as a single mass. Close enough for him to make out their shapes. Similar to wild cattle, although larger and bearing stubby horns or antlers. Their hides were mottled white and tan, their long manes black.

He wondered what had panicked them and swung his gaze back to the place where the herd had first appeared.

L’oric dropped into a crouch, his heart pounding hard in his chest.

Seven hounds, black as midnight, of a size to challenge the wild antlered cattle. Moving with casual arrogance along the ridge. And flanking them, like jackals flanking a pride of lions, a score or more of the half-human creatures such as the one he had discovered at the lakeshore. They were clearly subservient, in the role of scavengers to predators. No doubt there was some mutual benefit to the partnership, though L’oric could imagine no real threat in this world to those dark hounds.

And, there was no doubt in his mind, those hounds did not belong here.

Intruders. Strangers to this realm, against which nothing in this world can challenge. They are the dominators… and they know it.

And now he saw that other observers were tracking the terrible beasts. K’Chain Che’Malle, three of them, the heavy blades at the end of their arms revealing that they were K’ell Hunters, were padding along a parallel course a few hundred paces distant from the hounds. Their heads were turned, fixed on the intruders-who in turn ignored them.

Not of this world either, if my father’s thoughts on the matter are accurate. He was Rake’s guest for months in Moon’s Spawn, delving its mysteries. But the K’Chain Che’Malle cities lie on distant continents. Perhaps they but recently arrived here, seeking new sites for their colonies… only to find their dominance challenged.

If the hounds saw L’oric, they made no sign of it. Nor did the half-humans.

The High Mage watched them continue on, until they finally dipped into a basin and disappeared from sight.

The K’ell Hunters all halted, then spread out cautiously and slowly closed to where the hounds had vanished.

A fatal error.

Blurs of darkness, launching up from the basin. The K’ell Hunters, suddenly surrounded, swung their massive swords. Yet, fast as they were, in the span of a single heartbeat two of the three were down, throats and bellies torn open. The third one had leapt high, sailing twenty paces to land in a thumping run.

The hounds did not pursue, gathering to sniff at the K’Chain Che’Malle corpses whilst the half-humans arrived with hoots and barks, a few males clambering onto the dead creatures and jumping up and down, arms waving.

L’oric thought he now understood why the K’Chain Che’Malle had never established colonies on this continent.

He watched the hounds and the half-humans mill about the kill site for a while longer, then the High Mage began a cautious retreat, back to the lake. He was nearing the edge of the slope down to the reeds when his last parting glance over one shoulder revealed the seven beasts all facing in his direction, heads raised.