And to them DragonStar smiled, and said. "Soon."
As he passed, the weeping people silently fell into step behind the hounds, so that DragonStar eventually found himself at the head of a long column of the desolate and dispossessed dead.
"Soon," he whispered.
Elsewhere, Qeteb still ran through the Maze. He could hear the thunderous hooves of the Hunter's stallion behind him, hear the tightening of the string of the bow, and hear the clamour of the hounds.
He howled and screeched and babbled in fury and fear, his mind embracing possible escapes with one breath, and then discarding them as useless with the next.
He would not allow himself to be destroyed. Not after all this time. Not after all this effort.
He had been tested before, and he had always won.
Evil always ultimately won. It was one of the given truths of the universe.
Besides, his Demons had won three to two against DragonStar's witches.
Hadn't they?
Just as Qeteb thought that, he ran directly into a blank wall.
A blank wall with a doorway in it.
Qeteb's eyes bulged with triumph. He could smell the enchantment that bound that doorway, and knew that once he passed through, it would disappear forever.
DragonStar could not come after him.
Roaring his victory, Qeteb flung open the door, and stepped through.
As the door closed behind him, a butler stepped out from nowhere, placed an ornate brass key in the lock, and turned it.
As the locks clunked into place, the Butler withdrew the key and the door faded into the stonework of the wall.
The Butler smiled in satisfaction, pencilled an annotation in the account book he held, and disappeared again.
Suddenly the Demons halted. Their feet had carried them into a narrower street, and a wooden cart blocked their way forward.
Get in.
"No!" the Demons cried.
Get in.
They got in, bellowing with rage and frustration that they could not control the movement of their own limbs.
An old man appeared, bent and grey and dressed in an enveloping shabby coat with a large book in one pocket. He positioned himself between the shafts of the cart, grasping them in his gnarled hands. He grunted, strained, and the cart jolted forward.
The Demons howled, their hands clutching at the sides of the cart, but they could not gain enough purchase to pull themselves out, and their bodies felt as if they had lead boulders grating to and fro within them. They could not heave themselves off the tray of the cart.
The splinters of the tray dug and worked themselves deep into their flesh.
DragonStar smiled slightly, then composed himself, and continued to ride some fifteen paces behind the cart.
Behind him were strung the many hundreds of thousands, perhaps the many millions, of those who had died amid demonic destruction. They walked silently, some wringing their hands, others trying in vain to wipe away the tears that stained their cheeks, still others clinging to children or babes in arms.
The cart, and the column it led, wound deeper and deeper into the twisted city.
Eventually the cart lumbered into a huge market square. In the centre of the square stood a shoulder-high wooden platform, and on that platform had been built a scaffold.
Three rope nooses hung down, patiently swinging in a non-existent breeze.
The Demons wriggled and writhed, moaned and wept, turning their voices from defiance to piteousness.
Why them? Hadn't they been acting under orders from His Ghastliness himself? What else could they have done? They'd been terrified, certain in fact, that if they'd gone against his wishes, Qeteb would have done them a messy murder. No, no, they'd only been acting to save their own lives, and had always meant to somehow undergo some form of penance for the deeds they'd been forced to do. Not that they were admitting guilt, of course, but they were pitiful creatures, and felt that it might do someone some good if perhaps they said they were sorry.
"Oh, shut up," said DragonStar, and pulled the Star Stallion up as the cart rumbled to a halt before the scaffold.
Behind DragonStar streamed the uncountable dead, moving out to encircle the scaffold until the crowd was a thousand deep.
They filled the square, and only when their masses had come to a full halt did DragonStar nod at the old man still standing between the shafts of the cart.
Grunting slightly with the effort, the old man bent down and rested the shafts on the cobbles. Then he shuffled around to the back of the cart.
DragonStar rode closer, and, leaning one hand behind him, took an arrow from the quiver strung against his back.
"Here," he said, and handed it to the old man.
The man nodded, and, tucking the arrow under one arm for the moment, took hold of Barzula's left ankle and dragged him over the lip of the cart.
