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Equine shrills

The wheels sla hard for the first time in four days

And, with every last rerease scrubbed ahy, those wheels locked up, a e 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 ca was far fros 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 tie behind them elected to take a sharp left turn on to a side street, just behind the for on its belly, barrelled another sixty paces down the avenue before co 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 quitebench The is, and the driver found hih the air, pulled back down as the horses, hoofs haround, drew taut the leather harness, and then whipped hi the next low stone wall-and ould they? They had found themselves in a corral

Glanno landed in deepmostly of horse shit and piss, which was probably what saved his two legs, already broken, froht off The horses calooony of his two dislocated shoulders, and he was able to rolldown his face, his eyes closed, with only a little blood dripping frohtened 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, fro, whereupon they dragged the on the tavern door, and staggered whenceforth inside Only a few e door opened with a squeal, to unleash of gush of foa with a gigantic tattooed ogre The tavern’s patrons, one and all, really had nothing to say

Standing in the highest rooly tall, bluish-skinnedtusks, curved like the horns of a ram to frame his bony face, slowly turned away fro no notice of the dozen servants staring fixedly at hihed and said, ‘Not again’

The servants, reptilian eyes widening with co dirge reached down through the tower, past cha down the spiral staircase and into the crypt that was the tower’s hollowed-out root Wherein three wo motionless on stone slabs, each opened their eyes And in doing so, a crypt that had been in darkness was dark no longer

Fro sound, as of chelae clashing behind the full lips A conversation, perhaps, about hunger And need And dreadful i

High above, in the top 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 round beneath them, dry roof overhead A pitcher of mulled wine midway between

At the table beside theh she was there in flesh only, since everything else had been battered senseless-and the two Bole brothers were talking

‘The storot 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 coether in the middle and make my head ache, so if you shut up then one ear’s open so the sound froh 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 ’e,’