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‘I suppose’

Naxiaw did not wait for the war cry, not the tensing of , his stick held high, his plan a dizzy, swirling collection of ies inside a head that swam from blood loss

The male leads, he told himself Kill the male He looks weak One blow That’s all it will take Kill hih, run to the water, drown The others will find you, they’ll pull the map out of your stomach Don’t watch the female Watch hie, instead raising a single white eyebrow Had Naxiaw glanced to the side, shifted his eye half a hair’s breadth, he would have seen the fe away The fear that should have been on their faces was replaced withbloody and glorious to happen

But Naxiaw did not see that

Watch him Kill him Kill the male

Theas only a feitches His eyes shut, not with the tightness of panic, but with a gentleness that suggested some kind of boredom His breath leaked from his mouth in faintly visible lines of mist

Kill hione and replaced with a burning criaze Naxiaw’s stick was up, feet off the ground It was too late to worry about the cri about the inflation of thebut strike

One blow

But that would come far too late

Theof hiswords that bore noto Naxiaw The chill that enveloped his body, the frost that for

His feet struck the earth, far, far heavier than when they had left it The blood crystallised in blackish sht blue The Spokesone numb His muscles creaked, cracked under his skin His jaw opened in a cry, of war or of fear he knew not, and he found he could not close it again

Then he could not move at all

When the ain The longface glanced to the side, noting the Spokesth fro little attention to that, he reached out and plucked so fro,’ hethe tiny little crimson icicle Separated fro between the longface’s fingers He hissed and shook his hand ‘Envenomed blood … curious’ He leaned forward and studied Naxiaw intently ‘Thatfrozen’ He rapped a knuckle against Naxiaw’s forehead, s sound ‘It is not a pink They could not survive such nethra’

‘Well, I could have told you that I e fee, Yldus’

‘Hush, Qaine,’ theferocity ‘Whatever it is, Sheraptus ant to look at it closer’ He glanced over his shoulder to a pair of nearby females ‘You and you, take it carefully back to the ship And do be careful not to let any extremities break off’

‘The rest of you,’ the felower over the re females, ‘retrieve ink and parchment Remain here and take note of the city’s defences: nu Master Sheraptus dehness’ Her eyes narrowed ‘And while I remain appreciative of a female’s need to spill blood, I remind you that your duty is reconno … reconna …’

‘Reconnaissance,’ Yldus sighed

‘Whatever,’ she snarled ‘You are not to be seen Whoever objects answers to rin broadened at the stiffness that surged through theers We return in days’

‘With an arrirunts of salute, the shuffling of anised themselves Naxiaw could not turn his neck, could not even think to turn his neck He could barely , either His h whatever rime covered his body also seeped into his skull, past the bone and into his brain

The sensation of nise the sky as two fes and tilted him onto his back They proceeded to carry hih he were little more than a fleshy blue piece of furniture

‘Days, she says,’ one of them muttered, her voice muted to his ears ‘How does anyone expect us to wait that long?’

‘The Master demands patience,’ the other replied

‘The Master derowled ‘He never asks the felowered ‘Rarely does he ask netherling fe for him, so absorbed with the pinks …’

‘No one questions the Master,’ the other one snarled ‘Leave colanced over her shoulder at the relanced at Naxiaw, stared into his wide, ri is hardly heavier than a piece of metal How did it kill the other two?’

‘As you said, they were low-fingers pretending to be real warriors They should have stuck with their weakling bows instead of thinking they kne to use swords’ She snorted, spat ‘They die first e attack’

‘They can’t even speak right What was it she said before she died?’

‘"Eviscerate, decapitate, exterht It’s "eviscerate, decapitate, annihilate," isn’t it?’

‘Right Exter under your heel and leave its corpse twitching in a pile of its own innards It is what humans do to insects’

‘What does "annihilate" ers can’t even reher as a sleek, black vessel drifted into view on the beach below ‘That’s why they’re dead’

Ten

DREAMING IN SHRIEKS

Lenk had never truly been in a position to appreciate nature before It was always so to be overcome: endless plains and hills, relentless stor seas of trees, sand, salt and marsh Nature was a foe

Kataria had always chided hione now

And Lenk wasn’t any closer to appreciating nature because of it The e above, undeterred by the trees’ atteh the forest floor beca under roots, over tiny waterfalls, to empty out somewhere he simply did not care

When he had found it and drank, he had thanked whatever god had sent it When he used it to soothe his filthy wound, promises of conversion and martyrdom had followed