Steven Erikson - Blood follows

The bells pealed across the lamentable city of Moll, clamouring along the crooked, narrow alleys, buffeting the dawn-risers hurriedly laying out their wares in the market rounds. The bells pealed, tumbling over the grimy cobblestones, down to the wharfs and out over the bay’s choppy, gray waves. Shrill iron, the bells pealed with the voice of hysteria.

The terrible, endless sound echoed deep inside the slate-covered barrows that humped the streets, tilted the houses and cramped the alleyways in every quarter of Moll. Barrows older than the Lamentable City itself, each long ago riven through and tunnelled in fruitless search for plunder, each now remaining like a pock, the scarring of some ancient plague. The bells reached through to the scattered, broken bones bedded down in hollowed-out logs, amidst rotted furs and stone tools and weapons, bone and shell beads and jewellery, the huddled forms of hunting dogs, the occasional horse with its head removed and placed at its master’s feet, the skull with the spike-hole gaping between the left eye and ear. Echoing among the dead, bestirring the shades in their centuries-long slumber.

A few of these dread shades rose in answer to that call, and in the darkness moments before dawn they’d lifted themselves clear of the slate and earth and potsherds, scenting the presence of… someone, something. They’d then returned to their dark abodes-and for those who saw them, for those who knew something of shades, their departure seemed more like flight.

In Temple Round, as the sun edged higher over the hills inland, the saving wells, fountains and bowl-stones overflowed with coin: silver and gold glinting among the beds of copper. Already crowds gathered outside the high-walled sanctuaries of Burn-relieved and safe under the steamy morning light-there to appease the passing over of sudden death, and to thank the Sleeping Goddess, who slept still. And many a manservant was seen exiting the side-postern of Hood’s Temple, for the rich were ever wont to bribe away the Lord of Death, so that they might awaken to yet another day, gentled of spirit in their soft beds.

It was the monks of the Queen of Dreams for whom the night just past was cause for mourning, with clanging dirge of iron, civilisation’s scarred, midnight face. For that face had a name, and it was Murder. And so the bells rang on, a shroud of fell sound descending upon the port of Moll, a sound cold and harsh that none could escape…

… while in an alley behind a small estate on Low Merchant Way, a diviner of the Deck of Dragons noisily emptied his breakfast of pomegranates, bread, prunes and watered wine, surrounded by a ring of dogs patiently awaiting theirs.

The door slammed behind Emancipor Reese, Rat tling the flimsy drop-latch a moment before sagging back down on its worn leather hinges. He stared at the narrow, musty hallway in front of him. The niche set waist-high on the wall to his right was lit with a lone tallow candle, revealing water stains and cracked plaster and the tiny stone altar of Sister Soliel, heaped with wilted flower heads. On the back wall at the far end, six paces from where he stood, where the passage opened on both sides, hung a black-iron broadsword-cross-hilted and bronze-pommeled, most likely rusted into its verdigrised scabbard. Emancipor’s lined, sun-scoured face fell, becoming heavy around his eyes as he gazed on the weapon of his youth. He felt every one of his five, maybe six decades.

His wife had gone silent in the kitchen, halfway through heating the wet sand, the morning’s porridge pot and the plates on the wood counter at her side still awaiting cleansing; and he could see her in his mind, motionless and massive and breathing her short, shallow, increasingly nervous breaths.

“Is that you, Mancy?”

He hesitated. He could do it, right now-back outside, out into the streets-he knew how to sound depths, he knew knots-all kinds of knots. He could stand a pitching deck. He could leave this damned wart of a city, leave her and the squalling, simpering brats they’d begetted. He could… escape. Emancipor sighed. “Yes, dear.”

Her voice pitched higher. “Why aren’t you at work?”

He drew a deep breath. “I am now…” he paused, then finished with loud, distinct articulation: “unemployed.”

“What did you say?”

“Unemployed.”

“Fired? You’ve been fired? You incompetent, stupid-”

“The bells!” he screamed. “The bells! Can’t you hear the bells?”

Silence in the kitchen, then: “The Sisters have mercy! You idiot! Why aren’t you finding work? Get a new job-if you think you can laze around here, seeing our children tossed from their schooling-”

Emancipor sighed. Dear Subly, ever so practical. “I’m on my way, dear.”

“Just come back with a job. A good job. The future of our children-”

He slammed the door behind him, and stared out on the street. The bells kept ringing. The air was growing hot, smelling of raw sewage, rotting shellfish, and human and animal sweat. Subly had come close to selling her soul for the tired old house behind him. For the neighbourhood, rather. As far as he could tell, it stank no different from all the other neighbourhoods they’d lived in. Saving perhaps that there was a greater variety among the vegetables rotting in the gutters. “ Positioning, Mancy. It’s all in positioning.”

Across the way Sturge Weaver waddled about the front of his shop, unlocking and folding back the shutters, casting nosy, knowing glances his way over the humped barrow mound that bulged the street between their houses. The lingering fart heard it all. Don’t matter. Subly’ll be finished with the pot and plates in record time, now. Then she’ll be out, gums flapping and her eyes wide as she fishes shallow waters for sympathy, and whatnot.

It was true enough that he’d need a new job before the day’s end, or all the respect he’d earned over the last six months would disappear faster than a candle-flame in a hurricane; and that grim label-“ Mancy the Luckless ”-would return, the ghost of old in step with his shadow, and neighbours like Sturge Weaver making warding signs whenever their paths crossed.

A new job. It was all that mattered, now. Never mind that some madman stalked the city every night since the season’s turning, never mind that horribly mutilated bodies were turning up every morning-citizens of Lamentable Moll, their eyes blank (when there were eyes) and their faces twisted in a rictus of terror-and their bodies-all those missing parts-Emancipor shivered. Never mind that Master Baltro wouldn’t need a coachman ever again, except for the grave-digger’s bent, white-faced crew and that one last journey to the pit of his ancestors, closing forever the line of his blood.

Emancipor shook himself. If not for the grisly in-between, he almost envied the merchant’s final trip. At least it’d bring silence-not Subly, of course, but the bells. The damned, endless, shrill, nagging bells…

“Go find the monk on the end of that rope and wring his neck.”

The corporal blinked at his sergeant, shifted uneasily under the death-detail’s attire of blue-stained bronze ringed hauberk, lobster-tailed bowl helm, and the heavy leather-padded shoulder-guards. Damn, the lad’s bloody well swimming in all that armour. Not quite succeeding at impressing the onlookers-the short sword at his belt’s still wax-sealed in the scabbard, for Hood’s sake. Guld turned away. “Now, son.”

He listened to the lad’s footsteps recede behind him, and glumly watched his detachment enforcing the cordon around the body and the old barrow pit it laid in, keeping at a distance the gawkers and stray dogs, kicking at pigeons and seagulls and otherwise letting what was left of the dead man lie in peace under the fragment of roof-thatch some merciful passerby had thrown over it.