‘You’re a long way from Dun Seren,’ the Kadoshim snarled down at them, its guttural voice cutting through the din of battle.

‘We’d travel twice as far to carve some pain into your stinking hide,’ Cullen yelled back.

The Kadoshim hissed at them.

‘Who are you?’ Sig shouted. ‘Gulla?’

The Kadoshim laughed, the sound of nails scrapping across chalk. ‘Over a hundred years, and yet you know nothing of us.’

‘Gulla is chief of your kind, I have heard,’ Sig said, eyes fixed on the Kadoshim, circling to her right. ‘If not Gulla, who are you, then?’

‘I am Rimmon,’ the Kadoshim snarled. ‘I am your death.’

‘Like to see you try,’ Cullen snapped back, grinning.

Rimmon screeched and swooped down at them, hacking, chopping, stabbing.

Sig leaped away and the Kadoshim turned in mid-air, blade slashing at Cullen as he rushed in, sending the young warrior staggering away with a gash across his forehead. He disappeared amongst the press and heave of battle.

Sig bellowed a battle-cry and stabbed, but Rimmon twisted and Sig’s lunge sliced only air. Battle raged about them as she held her ground against the creature.

Enough of this.

Sig leaped close and the Kadoshim’s blade met hers in a shower of sparks before he fell back before her.

Rimmon’s wings beat hard; the Kadoshim grabbed a fallen spear as he swept back into the air. Sig reached a hand to her belt, felt the mesh of her weighted net, unhooked it and with a flick of her wrist snapped it open.

She raised the net, whirled it about her head as the Kadoshim drew a hand back and hurled the spear down at her. Sig twisted, a figure leaping in front of her and fouling her net throw. It was Cullen, his battered shield taking the force of the Kadoshim’s spear. Sig stumbled as Cullen’s weight slammed into her. He fell to the ground, Rimmon crowing in victory, before speeding away across the room. Sig took a step after him and then heard a groan.

Cullen.

The young warrior was pale as milk, red hair sweat-soaked and plastered to his head. The spear had burst through his half-splintered shield and pinned his arm to his body. He tried to say something but his breath was a wheezing hiss. Sig had no way of telling what the wound behind the shield was like, but from the look of him she feared the worst.

Waiting won’t make it better.

She put one big boot onto the remains of the shield, gripped the spear shaft and pulled it free.