Reaper's Gate & Toll the Hounds - By Steven Erikson Page 0,963

supposed to be dead. As if Hood would even want this one – Dassem Ultor, the one they had known as Traveller, unsheathed his sword, the water-etched blade flashing as if lapped by molten silver. Samar Dev's sense of a rising wave now burgeoned in her mind. Two forces. Sea and stone, sea and stone.

Among the onlookers to either side, a deep, soft chant had begun.

Samar Dev stared at those arrayed faces, the shining eyes, the mouths moving in unison. Gods below, the cult of Dessembrae. These are cultists – and they stand facing their god.

And that chant, yes, it was a murmuring, it was the cadence of deep water rising. Cold and hungry.

Samar Dev saw Anomander Rake's gaze settle briefly on Dassem's sword, and it seemed a sad smile showed itself, in the instant before Dassem attacked.

To all who witnessed – the cultists, Samar Dev, Karsa Orlong, even unto the five Hounds of Shadow and the Great Ravens hunched on every ledge – that first clash of weapons was too fast to register. Sparks slanted, the night air rang with savage parries, counter-blows, the biting crunch of edges against cross-hilts. Even their bodies were but a blur.

And then both warriors staggered back, opening up the distance between them once more.

'Faces in the Rock,' hissed Karsa Orlong.

'Karsa—'

'No. Only a fool would step between these two.'

And the Toblakai sounded . . . shaken.

Dassem launched himself forward again. There were no war cries, no bellowed curses, not even the grunts bursting free as ferocious swings hammered forged iron. But the swords had begun singing, a dreadful, mournful pair of voices rising in eerie syncopation. Thrusts, slashes, lowedged ripostes, the whistle of a blade cutting through air where a head had been an instant earlier, bodies writhing to evade counter-strokes, and sparks rained, poured, from the two combatants, bounced like shattered stars across the cobbles.

They did not break apart this time. The frenzied flurry did not abate, but went on, impossibly on. Two forces, neither yielding, neither prepared to draw a single step back.

And yet, for all the blinding speed, the glowing shower spraying out like the blood of iron, Samar Dev saw the death blow. She saw it clear. She saw its undeniable truth – and somehow, somehow, it was all wrong.

Rake wide-legged, angling the pommel high before his face with Dragnipur's point downward – as if to echo his opening stance – and higher still, and Dassem, his free hand joining the other upon his sword's grip, throwing his entire weight into a crossways slash – the warrior bodily lifting as if about to take to the air and close upon Rake with an embrace. And his swing met the edge of Dragnipur at a full right angle – a single moment shaping a perfect cruciform fashioned by the two weapons' colliding, and then the power of Dassem's blow slammed Dragnipur back—

Driving its inside edge into Anomander Rake's forehead, and then down through his face.

His gauntleted hands sprang away from the handle, yet Dragnipur remained jammed, seeming to erupt from his head, as he toppled backward, blood streaming down to flare from the tip as the Son of Darkness crashed down on his back.

Even this impact did not dislodge Dragnipur. The sword shivered, and now there was but one song, querulous and fading in the sudden stillness.

Blood boiled, turned black. The body lying on the cobbles did not move. Anomander Rake was dead.

Dassem Ultor slowly lowered his weapon, his chest heaving.

And then he cried out, in a voice so filled with anguish that it seemed to tear a jagged hole in the night air. This unhuman scream was joined by a chorus of shrieks as the Great Ravens exploded into flight, lifting like a massive feathered veil that whirled above the street, and then began a spinning descent. Cultists flinched away and crouched against building walls, their wordless chant drowned beneath the caterwauling cacophony of this black, glistening shroud that swept down like a curtain.

Dassem staggered back, and then pitched drunkenly to one side, his sword dragging in his wake, point skirling a snake track across the cobbles. He was brought up short by a pitted wall, and he sagged against it, burying his face in the shelter of a crooked arm that seemed to be all that held him upright.

Broken. Broken. They are broken.

Oh, gods forgive them, they are broken.

Karsa Orlong shocked her then, as he twisted to one side and pointedly spat on to the street. 'Cheated,' he said.