Equine shrills.
The wheels slammed down on to something hard for the first time in four days.
And, with every last remnant of axle grease scrubbed away, why, those wheels locked up, a moment of binding, and then the carriage leapt back into the air, and Glanno’s head snapped right and left at the flanking blur of wheels spinning past at high speed.
Oh.
When the carriage came back down again, the landing was far from smooth.
Things exploded. Glanno and the bench he was strapped to followed the horses down a broad cobbled street. Although he was unaware of it at the time, the carriage behind them elected to take a sharp left turn on to a side street, just behind the formidable tower, and, skidding on its belly, barrelled another sixty paces down the avenue before coming to a rocking rest opposite a squat gabled building with a wooden sign swinging wildly just above the front door.
Glanno rode the bench this way and that, the reins sawing at his fingers and wrists, as the horses reached the end of the rather short high street, and boldly leapt, in smooth succession, a low stone wall that, alas, Glanno could not quite manage to clear on his skidding bench. The impact shattered all manner of things, and the driver found himself flying through the air, pulled back down as the horses, hoofs hammering soft ground, drew taut the leather harness, and then whipped him round as they swung left rather than leaping the next low stone wall-and why would they? They had found themselves in a corral.
Glanno landed in deep mud consisting mostly of horse shit and piss, which was probably what saved his two legs, already broken, from being torn right off. The horses came to a halt beneath thrashing rain, in early evening gloom, easing by a fraction the agony of his two dislocated shoulders, and he was able to roll mostly on to his back, to lie unmoving, the rain streaming down his face, his eyes closed, with only a little blood dripping from his ears.
Outside the tavern, frightened patrons who had rushed out at the cacophony inthe street now stood getting wet beneath the eaves, staring in silence at the wheel less carriage, from the roof of which people on all sides seemed to be falling, whereupon they dragged themselves upright, bleary eyes fixing on the tavern door, and staggered whenceforth inside. Only a few moments afterwards, the nearest carriage door opened with a squeal, to unleash of gush of foamy seawater, and then out stumbled the occupants, beginning with a gigantic tattooed ogre. The tavern’s patrons, one and all, really had nothing to say.
Standing in the highest room of the tower, an exceedingly tall, bluish-skinned man with massive, protruding tusks, curved like the horns of a ram to frame his bony face, slowly turned away from the window, and, taking no notice of the dozen servants staring fixedly at him-not one of whom was remotely human-he sighed and said, ‘Not again.’
The servants, reptilian eyes widening with comprehension, then began a wailing chorus, and this quavering dirge reached down through the tower, past chamber after chamber, spiralling down the spiral staircase and into the crypt that was the tower’s hollowed-out root. Wherein three women, lying motionless on stone slabs, each opened their eyes. And in doing so, a crypt that had been in darkness was dark no longer.
From the women’s broad, painted mouths there came a chittering sound, as of chelae clashing behind the full lips. A conversation, perhaps, about hunger. And need. And dreadful impatience.
Then the women began shrieking.
High above, in the topmost chamber of the tower, the man winced upon hearing those shrieks, which grew ever louder, until even the fading fury of the storm was pushed down, down under the sea’s waves, there to drown in shame.
In the tavern in the town on the coast called the Reach of Woe, Gruntle sat with the others, silent at their table, as miserable as death yet consumed with shaky relief. Solid ground beneath them, dry roof overhead. A pitcher of mulled wine midway between.
At the table beside them, Jula and Amby Bole sat with Precious Thimble-although she was there in flesh only, since everything else had been battered senseless-and the two Bole brothers were talking.
‘The storm’s got a new voice. You hear that, Jula?’
‘I hear that and I hear you, Amby. I hear that in this ear and I hear you in that ear, and they come together in the middle and make my head ache, so if you shut up then one ear’s open so the sound from the other can go right through and sink into that wall over there and that wall can have it, ’cause I don’t.’
‘You don’t-hey, where’d everyone go?’
‘Down into that cellar-you ever see such a solid cellar door, Amby? Why, it’s as thick as the ones we use on the pits we put wizards in, you know, the ones nobody can open.’’It was you that scared ’em, Jula, but look, now we can drink even more and pay nothing,’
